Three: Wren

You don’t get used to it, but you get good at pretending. That’s my trick.

Another close shifts over. Another two a.m. where the world peels down to the sound of my boots and the scrape of my own voice inside my head. I slam the bar’s side door behind me and stand for a second under the eaves, watching snow drop from the roof in clumps big as raccoon skulls. Pinecrest looks like it always does at this hour: a row of dead eyes, every window blacked out, the only signs of life a cluster of brown-bag empties in the gutter and the sick glow of the ancient streetlamps.

I light a cigarette and instantly regret it. The wind kills the flame and tries to steal the whole pack, howling up Timber Road like it owns the place. My scarf’s already wet, plastered to my jaw; my breath comes out foggy and fast, like I’m running even when I’m standing still.

The first hundred feet is the easy part—just a parking lot, a frozen playground, the back of Della’s Diner looking like a crime scene waiting for a body. I keep my hands in my pockets and my head down, counting steps to the corner, running through the same dumb checklist I always do. Two blocks to the bridge, left at the old pharmacy, up the stairs past the burned-out streetlamp, and then home. If you’re quick, you can make it before the cold works through the layers, before the silence figures out you’re trespassing.

Tonight the silence is wrong. Not just the absence of cars or kids sneaking smokes behind the dumpster. The silence has teeth. I walk slower, listening for the familiar background: the yip of coyotes out by the mill, the clicky chuckle of a magpie perched on a transformer. But it’s blank—so blank that my own footsteps make me flinch, like I’m too loud for the set of a funeral.

I pass the hardware store. Its windows are covered in brown paper, a taped sign announcing “REOPENING SPRING 2019” even though it’s three years out of date. There’s a metal snow shovel propped outside the door; last week it was an axe. I move to the far side of the sidewalk, just like always, and make myself not look in the reflection. Don’t feed the habit. I tell myself that, but my eyes flick anyway. Just me: hat pulled down, jaw set, looking like every mugshot in the post office.

The wind shifts, and for a second I hear something almost like music—one of those toy pianos, each note bent and sour. It’s just the wind, I tell myself, bouncing around in some broken eaves, but the hair at the back of my neck tries to stand up and then freezes that way.

One block to the bridge.

There’s the patch of sidewalk where the streetlamp died last November. The snow’s thicker here, more shadow than light. I walk a little faster, breath burning now, cigarette pinched between my teeth like a dare. I don’t remember lighting it.

On the bridge, the rails are slick and rimed, moonlight making the ice glow like a fresh knife. I stop dead center and scan the river below, but all I see is black. No current, no ice floes, just a low mist snaking along the water line. I focus on the far bank and pick out the row of trees, each one a bent, white skeleton. One of them isn’t a tree. I blink, thinking my eyes are playing tricks, but it’s still there—a lump of darkness wedged between two trunks, twice the size of a man and breathing.

My pulse goes tight, squeezing at my wrists and throat. I should keep walking. I don’t. The thing in the trees moves. Not fast, not dramatic, just a slow uncurl like something remembering how to use its own body. I can’t see details, but there’s a loping, careful grace to it—a patience. It steps clear of the trees and onto the road at the far end of the bridge.

I drop the cigarette. For a second, the wind dies, and there’s only the tick-tick of ash burning down on my boots.

I know what’s about to happen before it happens. Every cell in my body screams GO. My legs listen, but they’re too slow. I make it three strides before the thing on the bridge covers the whole distance in a heartbeat. There’s a snarl, not animal but not human either, and then fur and muscle slam into me like a tackle from hell.

We hit the ground hard enough to punch the air out of my lungs. My head cracks the sidewalk, eyes going full white for a second. The smell hits me: wet dog, iron, rot. The thing’s weight pins me down, claws digging through the jacket and into my ribs. I get one hand free, swing wild, and connect with the side of a muzzle. It barely notices.

Its teeth clamp down on my forearm. I hear the bone splinter before I feel it. The pain lights me up from scalp to toes, electric and blinding. I shriek, ugly and raw, and try to ram my thumb into its eye. All I get is a mouthful of fur and the thump of my own pulse in my ears.

The wolf drags me off the sidewalk and into the alley behind the hardware store. I try to fight, I really do. But the cold is inside me now, and blood is splashing hot and fast down my sleeve. The only thing I can think of is how stupid I am for not calling Dana, for not carrying the damn pepper spray, for letting myself believe for one second that tonight would be like any other night.

The wolf’s eyes catch mine for a heartbeat. They’re not yellow like in the stories. They’re dark, flat, and bottomless, like the world fell away behind them.

I want to spit in its face. I want to laugh. But all I do is bleed and shake.

It drags me deeper into the dark, claws raking the frozen ground, and I swear the last thing I hear before the night drowns me is the wind, picking up again, singing through the alley like it’s mourning.