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{For all of you out there who weren't quite ready for it to end for Wolf Howl,
here he is at the End of All Things in the year 2012.
Chained to the bed rail by a handcuff, Wolf Howl senses a dark, hungry presence at his hospital window.
He is quoting Thomas Wolfe on death
but stops in the middle of the passage as he spots the Mossad assassin, Shadow, standing in his doorway.
The remainder of her injuries from the Wendigo has been healed by the Turquoise Woman ....}
The door to my hospital room opened silent and quick. A chill filled the darkness within me.
Shadow, the Mossad assassin, stood in the doorway and looked at me with haunted green eyes. In her mid-thirties now, she had been a lost angel at twenty when I had spared her on the Isle of Skye.
Now she was just a fallen angel, no longer able to remember the scent of lost innocence.
She continued the Wolfe quote in a husking British accent,
"To lose the earth you know for greater knowing. To lose the life you have for greater life. To leave the friends you loved for greater loving.
To find a land more kind than home, more large than earth --"
She couldn't go on. Her jade green eyes seemed cold to most. But they were only a bold front to hide the fact that they had lost their way long ago. Maybe mine looked the same.
"I see the hours have been kind to your body but hard to your heart," I said.
Her smile was a raw wound. "It seems we only meet when death has you boxed in."
I glanced at the dark window, then back to her. "More than you know."
Green eyes flashed in sudden anger. "Oh, Wolf Howl, why did you have to bring a dead girl to a hospital? You knew what they would do to you."
"Abby died being true to her word to the Mossad. She deserved a decent burial. And I had to honor a worthy enemy."
She shook her living waterfall of black hair. "There will be no honor in how you will be treated."
"I am Lakota. We are used to that."
I cocked an eyebrow. "Last I checked you were Mossad. You with the Agency now?"
She made a face, gesturing gracefully with long fingers at her simple black business pant suit. "I still am. I have infiltrated the F.B.I. "
"Well, that must make you the most special Special Agent I've ever seen."
Her eyes became hollows. "I am their ... Expeditor."
She had spoken the last word as if it had been dipped in filth.
I looked away from the self-hate in her eyes up to the blank television mounted on the wall, a mute symbol of the wisdom of the White Man. No remote, of course.
Drew August, AKA Wolf Howl, was much too dangerous to be given something he could use as a weapon.
As if I needed a weapon. I was a weapon. GrandMother had seen to that.
And that was why, at first, all the intelligence agencies the world over had courted me. My face grew more sour.
As if I would be the bought dog of any government. I finally convinced each one of them I was not available.
That was when the fun began.
They all had come to the unofficial conclusion that if they could not have me, then no agency could.
The hunt had been on.
The F.B.I. sending their expeditor told me that they were tired of losing agents to me. But those who start the war have no right to complain of its cost.
I jerked lightly on the handcuff chaining me to the hospital bed railing.
Now they thought they had run me to ground. They couldn't imagine it was they, all the peoples of the world in fact, who were in danger.
I smiled like my namesake. What was it that an old friend had once told me ... God punishes us for what we can't imagine.
I looked up at the television. Its one great dark eye looked back down upon me. What was the latest craze in programing these days? Oh, yes, I remembered. Reality T.V.
Reality. I wanted to laugh. Or to cry. Maybe a little of both.
How like the White Man to smear himself in the blood and despair of strangers and call it entertainment.
To view desperate, talentless dreamers make fools of themselves and to laugh as they were fileted by smug judges. And the white doctors said I was insane.
Too much paranormal power had pushed me over the slippery cliff of reason their reports all read. I no longer saw reality as it was.
Maybe.
Or maybe I did see clear, and it was the white man who saw only what he expected ... what he needed to see.
It was in Man's nature to destroy himself, destroy the very world around him.
I kept looking up at the one eye of the television. A change crept into the room like chill, invisible fog. Life seemed to grow slow and terrible as when dream becomes nightmare.
Shadow, the very special Special Agent whispered, "Drew, are you doing this?"
I shook my head. "We are strangers now in the stars, sailors on strange seas."
Her full lips curled, "What the bloody hell are you going on about? They're the same stars."
"Yes, but the space we swim through has changed."
"Space is space."
"The Aztecs thought different. It is October of the last year in their calendar. We have until ...."
"December twenty-first. I know, I read those phony tabloids, too."
The blank cyclop eye of the television blurred. This put a whole new twist to "Reality TV."
No longer shiny and black, its surface grew gray and smoky. Faint tendrils of mist breathed from it as if from Hell.
"Check out time," I whispered.
***
here he is at the End of All Things in the year 2012.
Chained to the bed rail by a handcuff, Wolf Howl senses a dark, hungry presence at his hospital window.
He is quoting Thomas Wolfe on death
but stops in the middle of the passage as he spots the Mossad assassin, Shadow, standing in his doorway.
The remainder of her injuries from the Wendigo has been healed by the Turquoise Woman ....}
The door to my hospital room opened silent and quick. A chill filled the darkness within me.
Shadow, the Mossad assassin, stood in the doorway and looked at me with haunted green eyes. In her mid-thirties now, she had been a lost angel at twenty when I had spared her on the Isle of Skye.
Now she was just a fallen angel, no longer able to remember the scent of lost innocence.
She continued the Wolfe quote in a husking British accent,
"To lose the earth you know for greater knowing. To lose the life you have for greater life. To leave the friends you loved for greater loving.
To find a land more kind than home, more large than earth --"
She couldn't go on. Her jade green eyes seemed cold to most. But they were only a bold front to hide the fact that they had lost their way long ago. Maybe mine looked the same.
"I see the hours have been kind to your body but hard to your heart," I said.
Her smile was a raw wound. "It seems we only meet when death has you boxed in."
I glanced at the dark window, then back to her. "More than you know."
Green eyes flashed in sudden anger. "Oh, Wolf Howl, why did you have to bring a dead girl to a hospital? You knew what they would do to you."
"Abby died being true to her word to the Mossad. She deserved a decent burial. And I had to honor a worthy enemy."
She shook her living waterfall of black hair. "There will be no honor in how you will be treated."
"I am Lakota. We are used to that."
I cocked an eyebrow. "Last I checked you were Mossad. You with the Agency now?"
She made a face, gesturing gracefully with long fingers at her simple black business pant suit. "I still am. I have infiltrated the F.B.I. "
"Well, that must make you the most special Special Agent I've ever seen."
Her eyes became hollows. "I am their ... Expeditor."
She had spoken the last word as if it had been dipped in filth.
I looked away from the self-hate in her eyes up to the blank television mounted on the wall, a mute symbol of the wisdom of the White Man. No remote, of course.
Drew August, AKA Wolf Howl, was much too dangerous to be given something he could use as a weapon.
As if I needed a weapon. I was a weapon. GrandMother had seen to that.
And that was why, at first, all the intelligence agencies the world over had courted me. My face grew more sour.
As if I would be the bought dog of any government. I finally convinced each one of them I was not available.
That was when the fun began.
They all had come to the unofficial conclusion that if they could not have me, then no agency could.
The hunt had been on.
The F.B.I. sending their expeditor told me that they were tired of losing agents to me. But those who start the war have no right to complain of its cost.
I jerked lightly on the handcuff chaining me to the hospital bed railing.
Now they thought they had run me to ground. They couldn't imagine it was they, all the peoples of the world in fact, who were in danger.
I smiled like my namesake. What was it that an old friend had once told me ... God punishes us for what we can't imagine.
I looked up at the television. Its one great dark eye looked back down upon me. What was the latest craze in programing these days? Oh, yes, I remembered. Reality T.V.
Reality. I wanted to laugh. Or to cry. Maybe a little of both.
How like the White Man to smear himself in the blood and despair of strangers and call it entertainment.
To view desperate, talentless dreamers make fools of themselves and to laugh as they were fileted by smug judges. And the white doctors said I was insane.
Too much paranormal power had pushed me over the slippery cliff of reason their reports all read. I no longer saw reality as it was.
Maybe.
Or maybe I did see clear, and it was the white man who saw only what he expected ... what he needed to see.
It was in Man's nature to destroy himself, destroy the very world around him.
I kept looking up at the one eye of the television. A change crept into the room like chill, invisible fog. Life seemed to grow slow and terrible as when dream becomes nightmare.
Shadow, the very special Special Agent whispered, "Drew, are you doing this?"
I shook my head. "We are strangers now in the stars, sailors on strange seas."
Her full lips curled, "What the bloody hell are you going on about? They're the same stars."
"Yes, but the space we swim through has changed."
"Space is space."
"The Aztecs thought different. It is October of the last year in their calendar. We have until ...."
"December twenty-first. I know, I read those phony tabloids, too."
The blank cyclop eye of the television blurred. This put a whole new twist to "Reality TV."
No longer shiny and black, its surface grew gray and smoky. Faint tendrils of mist breathed from it as if from Hell.
"Check out time," I whispered.
***
***
OOooo, creepy! I thought Shadow would be able to see that what he was seeing and doing were real.
ReplyDeleteI hope before it's too late that she does and somehow saves both of them....
Going to read the next one now. I feel really tense, btw. These are nearly too good at sucking me in-I can imagine it all too well. Whoever it was that suggested this as a movie had a great idea....
And end, but totally. You left room for Wolf Howl to survive by right of his Lakota blood. Perhaps it is merely the End for the White Man, and all the foul deeds. A chance for rebirth for the First People.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading through the last several excerpts, however, perhaps this end is meant to signify the sacrifice of Wolf Howl, as his devotion to his enemies never wavers.
An interesting, thought provoking end. Leaves the reader to their own conclusions.
.....dhole