The Greenwich Memoirs by Keioskie Luke

Author:Keioskie, Luke [Keioskie, Luke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2015-01-14T23:00:00+00:00

11

I can remember it now so clearly, my first sighting of the creature. At the time, it felt as if I was dreaming; the scene was surreal, distorted by my fatigued mind as I lay on the valley floor mere feet from the beast. But I can see it now, as I did then, and even after so many long and full years the vision makes my blood run like iced water and my pen shake upon the page.

I remember I heard it before I could actually make out what it was. Strange sucking and tearing sounds issued from it, much like a ravenous man makes over a Sunday roast, and the air was thick with the coppery twinge of spent blood.

The fog of gun smoke still surrounded the camp, only now it was more like walls; I could see nothing that wasn’t within ten feet of me, and yet I could also see the moon high above, shedding its light through the semi-transparent ceiling of fog. It was this light that let me see the White Werewolf in all its hideous glory.

There, standing over the dismembered corpse of the outlaw who had seemed only moments ago to be holding my very life in his claw-like hands, was a beast of pure nightmare. A wolf, although larger than any I had seen before, and rendered in the purest white fur as if it had come from some snow-capped landscape before arriving in the parched land of California. Its back was corded with muscle, its legs ending in wicked nails, and its sharp muzzle was buried in the medicine man’s chest like a mongrel in a garbage can.

My vision was patchy; in one moment, the creature was as tall as the stars, looming across the earth like a behemoth, its shadow staining all it touched; in another, it was merely man-sized, preternaturally burly and shaggy with fur across its entire body.

I did not move. A trickle of sweat ran down my forehead to fall stingily in my eye, but still I didn’t move.

The wolf feasted upon the corpse, making loud slurping sounds as it sucked the marrow from the Indian’s bones. The sound, to my frightened ears, was like supper being taken in Dante’s Hell; though which ring was reserved for malign beasts of nightmare, I knew not then, nor now.

I looked around cautiously and noted that since the fog of gun smoke was still apparent, I might be able to use it as cover to make my escape; although, at the time, I knew not how, given my body’s unresponsiveness. But the boldness of my plan was quashed when my movement raised the tiniest of scrapes; only a minute sound, to be sure, but loud enough to make the supping beast’s ears prick with attention.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to quell the rising scream in my throat, for now I could hear the creature stalking towards me, its toenails grating the earth like fingernails on a tombstone.

It stepped

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