THE DAY OF THE WOLF.
________________________Ned McCann.

Love , Hilde reflected as Erwin rolled off her, is short, but brutally sweet.
Erwin, reached for his wine flask, drained it, wiped his mouth and lay on his back to sleep. He left the front of his breeches unlaced, and the juices of their coupling drying to a crust on his belly.
The Angelus bell tolled across the meadow, as Hilde smoothed her skirt, re arranged her bodice and retrieved her ribbon from the branch of a sapling, Toeing Erwin to the side, she picked up her cloak and gave it a good shake. The cloak was the colour of a Robin’s breast, and as Hilde tied the neck cord, she remembered with a fond smile her reflection in the mirror, that morning. How the cloak’s colour glowed on her face, complimenting her pale skin and golden hair. Lifting the lid of her little basket, she checked that everything was as it should be. Honey, a piece of smoked bacon, and some snuff in a screw of paper for her Granny.
The cottage was snuggled between two huge oaks. Exposed roots crawled like the tentacles of a forest Bogle across the buckled paving stones leading to its front door. It was so gloomy under the trees, and the cottage could have done with a coat of white wash. Hilde also noticed the thatch was in need of attention, thinning in places. If she left it to the old woman nothing would be done and her promised inheritance decay into the forest floor, as it seemed to do more and more each time she visited.
As Hilde made her way up the path, she was struck by the quiet. There were no birds. And the sentinel geese, who normally announced an approach, were mute. Not a leaf rustled. It was as if someone had sworn the forest to a silence whose deadness moaned through the trees, afraid and reluctant to divulge what it knew. There was not even a smudge of smoke from the cottage’s chimney, and Hilde wondered if perhaps the old lady was dead at last.
*
“Who’s that?” A voice croaked as Hilde rattled the latch.
The old woman lay huddled under mountains and valleys of eiderdown.
”I thought you’d never come,” she complained, as Hilde fluffed up her pillows. “What a night I’ve had.”
Hilde kindled the ashes and put on the kettle.
“That wolf was over here last night,” her Granny called over.
Hilde’s heart chilled at the thought of wolf.
“I think he got the geese,” the old woman said as Hilde put some chopped bacon in a pot with lentils.
“Clawed and howled the whole night.”
Hilde made up the old woman’s sheets and noticed the tea stains were getting bigger, beginning to stain the mattress... her mattress.
“I’ll tell my father to come over with his traps,” she said.
*
“You know that was no ordinary wolf last night?”
Hilde looked up from her bowl. and watched as her Granny let soup drip down her chin to the coverlet.
“It was a werewolf,” the old woman confided.
Hilda put down her bowl. She could hardly swallow, hardly speak. “How do you know?” she whispered.
“Just when he’d nearly scratched the door in, I splashed some Holy Water through the letter box,” the old woman wheezed with laughter, spilling her soup, ”and he was off howling, as if he’d an arseful of burning coals.”
“Well,” Hilde said. “If it’s a werewolf, I”d better tell Father to bring his gun as well as the traps.”
The old woman raised a pinch of snuff between twig thin fingers. “And silver bullets for the gun,” she said, and sneezed over the eiderdown.
*
Hilde hurried through the darkening forest. Rootlings tripped her and bramble fronds left her legs kiss slashed in red. She jumped around at a noise, but it was only the dry scuttle of some leaves on the path behind her. And when she faced again the way in which she had been going, she could see through the trees the flat land of the common.
Racing and tumbling over its tussocks and hummocks, she cried with relief when she at last saw the twinkling lights of the tavern. And, even although a good woman never did, nearly went in to the smoke and grog warmth of it. But stopped as the clouds parted above it and a huge Harvest moon gleamed through them. Full moon was Paynight. She knew. Erwin, her Father, and the other men would spend it as usual; ending up covered in sour vomit or the arms of Marthe the Whore.
Hilde hurried on until she reached her cottage at the end of the road. She locked the door behind her, lit every lamp and candle she could find, and after heaping the fire with logs, sat looking into the flames until she heard her Father’s foot. She let him in on his knock, and received a cuff for being slow about it.
As she put out his supper, she told him of the Werewolf, but didn’t know if he heard her, for all he did was grunt, finish his supper, and fall across his bed.
Hilde made up the fire and sat beside it thinking.
Outside, a night creature screamed as it fell prey to another, causing her to huddle further into the ingle nook, where she lay until those other creatures, who had made it through the night, had long scuttled to their lairs...
*
The sun flowed into the kitchen. Hilde’s Father complained about it as he slurped his Kasha. When he had finished, Hilde told him again about the Werewolf.
Her Father blessed himself. “ Go and tell your Grandmother,” he said. “I shall be with her before this day’s Angelus hour with traps and silver bullets, and stay with her until I come.”
Hilde was terrified. She’d been through the dark wood’s malevolence. Seen what she’d seen, felt what she’d felt, didn’t want to go back until it had been cleaned, and told her Father so.
He upbraided her. Called her an ingrate. Reminded her of duty, and the fact that she was the old woman’s only grandchild and sole heir.... and was still going on as he stamped out of the house to get his traps, and mould his bullets.
As Hilde washed the breakfast things she began to think idly of what she could do when she inherited the old woman’s money. Sell the land, of course. She glanced out the window to a mud rutted street , and leave this midden. Hilde thought vaguely of the City, imagined wearing a long fluffy dress, and dancing till dawn. What a life would be hers’ when the old woman died. But the old don’t die readily in this Parish. Hilde could be old as the Verger, just coming up the street, before.her Granny died.
The Verger tipped his hat to her as he passed the window. He was eighty, if he was a day, Hilde thought. Yet his ruby red cheeks glowed with health, and a mat of crow black hair lay thick on his head.
The Verger adjusted the gravedigger’s shovel on his shoulder. His back was straight as a plumb line, Hilde noted. Good for another twenty or more years yet. Must be all the digging.
It was then that a malevolence which had been buzzing in Hilde’s head for hours, spread its’ dark wings and became a thought. Before the thought could become word and betray her, Hilde had made her decision.
Hilde went to the garden shed and searched among the implements until she found a hand rake and a metal file. As if in a dream, she sharpened the teeth of the rake until they were needle tipped, razor edged blades. Putting it in her basket, she donned her cloak, and set off for the forest.
*
Hilde tripped over every pebble and rootling on the path. It was as if they were trying to stop her; and birds shrieked at her from the hedgerow as if they were trying to warn her. While oblivious, the thing in her heart festering and glowing with a life all its’ own, drove her through the spells of night and other dark things, still wisping between the trees.
The cottage door was scratched through.
Hilde, bracing herself for what could be lying behind it, rattled the latch.
An old voice croaked out “Thank God you’ve come.”
Knowing what she now had to do, Hilde braced her self even more, and stepped into the cottage.
*
“What a night I had last night,” the old woman couldn’t wait to tell her.
“The werewolf,” Hilde went over to her.
“Sounded like a pack of them,” the old woman said. “Did you bring any holy water?” she asked. “I’ve used the lot.”
Hilde opened her basket.
“You can get me ready,” the old woman said. “I wont stay another night here ‘till it’s caught.” And she wriggled out of bed.
Hilde hit her behind the ear. While the old lady lay moaning on the floor, she undressed and laid her clothes neatly across a chair.
Hilde dragged her Granny into the middle of the room, and making sure she didn’t spill any blood on her clothes or bedding, began to slaughter her with the garden fork. Dragging it in long crimson furrows down the old woman’s body. Crissing and crossing the blades across the vital parts as she imagined a werewolf would use its’ claws.
Before Hilde was satisfied with what she had done, the old woman was long dead of shock.
Hilde dragged her by the heels from the cottage. She made no attempt to conceal her passing. The old woman’s blood smeared the ferns and bracken as her carcass was taken deep into the forest and laid across the roots of an oak tree, like a discarded kill.
In a stream bubbling from the mountains,Hilde washed her body of every blood stain, and her mind of every dark thing done. She combed her wet hair with her fingers, and stood in the sun to dry. The fingers of its’ beams speckled her body in faun dapples.
With the wolf madness on him, the Verger leapt on her from the bushes...
He clamped his teeth into her neck, held her there.
And after ripping her open with his claws lapped hungrily at her pulsing blood.
THE END.
1739 words.