House of Wolves

By Kellin D. Andrews

After Jasper narrowly avoids death and Accalia is nearly blamed for the attack, Hallam returns, offering protection, and he won't take no for an answer. His power over them threatens to grow stronger, and neither can face him without falling back under his control.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kellin Andrews
• Release date: Jul 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781778238031

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House of Wolves

House of Wolves

House of Wolves

Kellin D. Andrews

Kellin Andrews

All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.

― Edgar Allan Poe

Copyright © 2022 by Kellin Andrews

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7782380-2-4

EPUB ISBN: 978-1-7782380-3-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Printing, 2022

Chapter One

I

Matthew knows that he is dreaming.

He doesn’t know that, while he dreams, his body is dying.

In his dream, he walks through a field on a sunny day. He can’t feel the sun on his skin. With each step he takes, his heart skips a beat, and slows. He is walking away from living.

He looks ahead of him and squints. The sun is too bright, and oversaturates the playground sitting in the distance. He walks toward it.

He sees two young boys, one with jet black hair, the other blond.

Jasper is small, and afraid of the world and everything in it. Even of Matthew, who tumbles through life, oblivious.

The Matthew who is a dream reminds the Matthew who is dreaming of a dopey golden retriever. The Matthew who is dreaming wonders if he ever really changed.

As he walks closer to the playground, the boys grow. Matthew feels each step he takes in his chest. He knows that behind him, there is a figure. A shadow. That shadow thrust a knife through his back, into his lungs, long before Matthew appeared in the field. With each step, the shadow twists the blade. It turns and tears through muscle and scrapes against bone.

But Matthew keeps walking. He walks away from his body which is not in the field, and closer to the boys on the playground, who are aging rapidly in a timelapse of years collapsed into mere seconds.

He watches Jasper catch up to him in height and then grow taller still. He watches him grow from a boy scared of the world into a young man afraid of himself.

The Matthew who is dreaming, and walking, and dying, watches the Matthew who is a dream grow up. He grows taller and changes proportions to look more like a man than a chubby little boy. But he never changes. Always the same. Always immature, impulsive, annoying. Insecurities come back like diagnoses and hurt more than the shadow’s blade in his chest. He turns away.

The field sprouts stones like weeds. Bare, unengraved stones stand up in rows upon rows. Matthew walks between them. There’s a casket waiting to be lowered. The stone behind it stands engraved with familiar handwriting, the only one not bare. Signed, rather than lettered: Jasper.

The box hovering over the grave is open, still. And empty. Faces gather around and mourn silently. Matthew doesn’t understand. The person the figures grieve isn’t here.

It doesn’t make sense.

He turns on his heel once more, and the stones sink back into the field as he walks.

The blade in his chest turns, and turns, and turns with each step like a clock’s hand with each second. Each time it does, the pain feels further and further away.

He stops walking. The pain in his chest is faint now, just a dull ache. A lone tree stands in the field before him. He sinks to the ground and rests against it.

He looks to the side and sees the shadow, looming in the distance. The shadow watches, waiting, but cannot come any closer. It glides back and forth across the field and waits for Matthew to return, waiting to sink the blade back in.

A rabbit appears in front of Matthew and his outstretched legs. The rabbit has antlers.

His dad used to tell him about those.

He knows that the strange rabbit is really a person. He doesn’t know which person, but he knows that it usually takes a human form nonetheless. It speaks without moving its mouth, in a voice that is familiar in the way a song once heard in early childhood remains familiar. It melds into many voices, and then into one.

It can’t get you here, the rabbit says.

Matthew rests his head back against the tree trunk. He wants to close his eyes and rest.

Nobody will find you here, the rabbit says.

Matthew blinks a long blink, and when he opens his eyes, the rabbit is a man.

The man is him. The boy from the playground – the Matthew who is a dream – has surpassed the dying Matthew in age. He now looks many years older. The older Matthew points at the shadow.

Go back.

It hurts, thinks the Matthew who is dying. He cannot make a real sound.

Like hell, the older, dream Matthew agrees.

Matthew who is dying wonders if the older man in front of him has done good things. He wonders if he has a family, if he’ll have kids. He wonders if he ever got into college. He looks again at the shadow, waiting for him. It hurts.

He knows that he can stay here forever. He can feel the sun’s heat now, and the field has become more real with each passing second. He closes his eyes, and lets the sun warm his skin. The pain in his chest is gone now. It’s nice.

His ears ring, but even that goes quiet with each passing second.

He opens his eyes. The man is a rabbit again, and he walks upright, away from the Matthew who is dead. He walks toward the shadow, who still waits patiently across the field. He takes the shadow by the hand and invites him back toward the tree.

Matthew who is dead does not want the shadow to come nearer, but he can no longer move, and the strange rabbit does not care.

It is time to go back, now, says the rabbit, and the shadow, with one voice.

No.

The shadow reaches forward, and drives his blade once more into Matthew’s chest.

Matthew is dead. He cannot feel it.

Go, says the rabbit.

The pain sets him on fire, and the field disappears.

II

Lou

We’re interrupted after an eternity of sitting in the dark. The snow whipping by outside has slowed some. It has calmed, and so have Cal and I. We’ve moved to sit on my bed, our backs against the wall, leaning shoulder to shoulder. We’re both still, affording ourselves a moment of numb reprieve, but neither of us has retreated back into our heads.

The news of Matthew’s death has devastated us both.

We startle at a knock at the front door. I force myself to move, to answer the door the way I usually would despite how odd it is that someone is there. It’s the dead of night, and it only seems fitting that the entire world ought to be in a state as shaken as we are. Stranger still is that Cal follows along.

I open the front door to find Jasper, who should be in the hospital, hoodie up against the wind and shoulders hunched. He looks even paler and more tired than usual. I step out of his way to let him in and close the door.

You didn’t answer. Have you heard from him?

I stare, processing. Jasper makes a face and asks again.

He backtracks when I’m still lost. Matthew. No one’s seen him. He’s gone. Just, disappeared from the hospital hours ago.

And then it dawns on me. I could almost laugh, if I wasn’t still caught in the dregs of despair. I pull my phone from my pocket, still open to the message Jasper sent me, and thrust it toward him.

Look at the words you sent to me, Jasper.

He leans forward and looks, and I watch realization set in. I’m so stupid, he exhales. Then, I’m so sorry. I’m an idiot. He looks behind me to Cal, and I take the shift in his attention as a cue to move. I pace away from the door into the dining room, hands on my head.

Where is he, Cal demands. I hate to hear so much pain and confusion and anger behind her words, but it’s a relief not to hear calm and calculating apathy – not to see the walls back up.

I don’t know.

Cal shakes her head, and Jasper moves to step closer.

Stay away from me, Cal warns. Jasper stops where he is. "I’ve driven myself crazy over and over the last couple of months. I don’t want to hear one thing and then another. Do not tell me what you think I want to hear, Jasper, and do not lie to me. Is Matthew really dead: yes, or no?"

I- No. I don’t know. He’s go- missing.

Cal’s voice trembles, but she sounds far from weak. That’s a third option, not a definitive. Tell. Me.

Jasper steps forward again, reaching out to her. Lightning-quick, before I can intervene, Cal has grabbed an empty pop bottle that Liam left on the back of the sink and smashed it on the tile floor between them. Even seeing it happen, the crash startles me.

Cal, I gasp. Things are still moving too slowly to react otherwise.

Jasper goes still, and none of us move our feet. My pulse rushing in my ears could be all of ours’ together, beating as one in the silence.

I said stay away from me, Cal whispers. I see what she’s done; if Jasper steps closer, he’ll be stepping on the glass shards showered across the kitchen floor.

Jasper exhales. "Cal, listen. I don’t know where Matthew is. I don’t know if he’s okay. I don’t know anything, and I am so, so sorry for the way I worded that text. My brain is just – scattered, right now. That is my answer."

Dad was one of the paramedics who responded to the scene in the woods. His shift isn’t quite over yet, and I haven’t seen him since he brought Cal home from the police station earlier this evening. She was arrested with Vankev. While it was soon apparent that Vankev was a liar and Cal wasn’t a threat, Dad still needed to take a break from his shift to pick her up. I’m glad she didn’t end up having to spend the night in jail. Even though she can stop herself from shifting now, it isn’t a good place for her to be.

But even with Dad still at work, he filled me in a little over the phone after everything was cleaned up and the boys were handed over to the hospital. Jasper overdosed on mixed amphetamine salts and definitely should not be out of the hospital yet. He must have barely stuck around long enough to have the drug pumped from his system.

Cal listens to his words, processing them as moments of silence tick by. She’s silent for a while, as if she has to translate Jasper’s words into her own language to understand. I see the moment her expression changes, loss and confusion taking the place of fury when the words sink in. Her hands snake up to the back of her neck and into her hair, and she bows her head. I don’t. I don’t…

We’ve just spent our night grieving and shutting out the outside world to hold each other up, finally learning to cope together. We lost a friend and we cried through it for hours and now I don’t know how to handle the news that it may have been for nothing either. The ache still gripping my chest, the puffiness under my eyes, the cottony feeling in my head: it’s all real and there, but as far as we know, Matthew could walk through the front door right now, and all of it would have been over nothing real at all.

Cal, talk to me, I plead.

I don’t know what to think. She says it all in one whispered breath.

Neither do I, Jasper steps in. I really am sorry about the text. I panicked. I’ve been trying to hold off a breakdown all night too. He pauses to think about the right words. I know what the it was like with Dad. With Hallam. I won’t lie to you like he did. I know I made it hard to know what to believe, but it was a mistake. You’re not crazy. I made a mistake.

Cal meets his gaze, hands still clasped behind her neck. Her face is streaked with new tears on top of the old, dried ones. After a few seconds, she just nods.

The room lets out a breath. I drop my shoulders and let out a heavy sigh of my own. I look down at the sea of glass shards beneath our feet. Is anyone hurt? Cal and Jasper both respond with a weak shake of their heads, the two of them still watching each other.

I spot the broom propped in a corner closest to me and tiptoe carefully to it.

You’re bleeding, Lou, Cal says, her voice fragile. I look down.

It’s just a little, I tell her. There’s a small cut just above my ankle. I didn’t even feel it. I’m okay.

I sweep out underneath the table and find a pair of my shoes abandoned there as I do. I pick them up and reach them over to Cal. As she slides them on without stepping on glass with her bare feet, Jasper gets the idea and reaches back to where he left his own shoes at the door.

I’m halfway done sweeping the floor, having waved away Cal’s offer to take over with her shaking hands, when I hear Dad’s car pull into the driveway.

Like three deer stuck in the same pair of oncoming headlights, still shell-shocked and slow to process, we stand around the kitchen, still scattered with glass shards, waiting for him to come in. When he does, he stops and takes in the scene in front of him. Though he’s in the same uniform still, the Dad I see here looks smaller, more human than he did in the woods. His eyes look tired as he looks around at each of us and then at the rest of the mess still left on the floor. The Dad back in the woods was a machine, unmoved by the presence of his family, unbothered by resuscitating a kid he’d seen hanging around his house like usual just yesterday, and just doing his job.

Are you guys alright?

We all shake our heads. It would be funny, any other time, how synchronized we are in our certainty that we are not okay.

Later, I have Liam drive me to the hospital in Charlesborough just as the sun is beginning to come up. Dad stays at home with Cal. I’m worried about her still, but she seems to be holding herself together. I think Dad doesn’t trust her not to tear her way through the hospital Matthew just disappeared from. She hasn’t drawn into herself or turned everything off in favour of apathy, and it’s made her volatile.

Dad is more shaken than I’ve seen him in ages. He spent a long while last night sitting with us in silence, just staying in the room to ensure that we were really home and safe. None of us have slept.

It’s a long, silent drive. The snow on the ground sparkles in shades of pink and orange from the rising sun, and I look out the window, watching it fly by. Bradley’s buildings fall away to the dark woods that surround the small town and line the highway. The trees turn into fields and farmland, sparsely dotted with woodlots, and gradually, the city builds itself up around us.

Liam pulls into the visitor parking lot across from the hospital and parks. He doesn’t turn off the ignition, though, and doesn’t unlock the doors. He stares out the windshield and bites down on his lip.

Why did you go? he asks. Why did you guys go out into the woods?

He needed us.

I turn in my seat to face him. He’s tearing up a little, but wipes at his face to hide it. You both could have died.

We didn’t.

Liam takes a deep breath and shuts the engine off.

Will you come with me? I ask.

He nods, and we get out of the car and step into the crisp winter morning. The weather calmed down some, and it doesn’t seem like Charlesborough got as much snow as Bradley, but the lot and the road are slick with patches of ice and the wind bites.

After just the short walk from the parking lot across the street, the warmth inside the hospital is welcome. We step inside and kick the snow off our boots on the mat. Before I can look for a reception desk to ask where Jasper is, somebody calls my name.

I look around for the source of the voice while Liam takes me by the upper arm to guide me away from the door. I spot a woman with mousy brown hair in jeans and an oversized sweater, waving at me from across the waiting room. She crosses between the rows of chairs in the room to meet us.

Lou? she asks again. I nod, and she holds out her hand. I’m Sarah, Jasper’s mother.

I shake her hand with a smile. Nice to meet you.

She grimaces, then lets the face fall into a tired smile of her own. It would be nicer, under other circumstances. In a lighter tone, she says, I’m glad I found you before the front desk; they’re being snobby. They didn’t even want to let my husband in. Just come with me. She gestures back toward the hallway she came from, gently so as not to spill the two steaming cups of coffee in the tray in her hand.

As we walk, Sarah speaks over her shoulder to Liam and me. How are you two holding up?

We’re okay, I answer for both of us. Still a little in shock, I think.

Sarah nods.

How’s Jasper?

Sarah sighs. Better. With a knowing look back at me as we step into an elevator, she says, you saw him a few hours ago; he seems more himself now. She reaches into the front pouch of her sweatshirt as the elevator doors close, and there is the distinct jangle of a set of keys. I’m keeping my keys on me, now.

Jasper borrowed his mom’s keys and her car to get back to Bradley as soon as he found out that Matthew had gone missing. He shouldn’t have been standing, let alone driving. His step-dad drove him back shortly after he arrived at our house, and he has, thankfully, stayed put.

Have you heard anything from Matthew’s family? Sarah asks as the elevator doors slide open, and we step out onto a floor more bustling than the first. The lights are brighter, and nurses mill about.

I shake my head. So far, nobody’s been able to get in touch with Matt’s parents or sisters, and all I can see is that there is one car missing from their driveway, and the house is dark.

Sarah stops at one of the last doors of the hallway and glances through the small window before letting us in.

Directly across the room, a man I assume to be Jasper’s step-dad sits in the only chair. He looks exhausted. A young girl is asleep on his lap, legs sprawled over his and the arm of the chair. Emma.

Liam is still a shadow behind me when Jasper looks up from the bed in the centre of the far wall. He looks miserable – sleep deprived but wide awake – but Sarah’s right. He seems more substantial than he did standing in our kitchen, explaining himself to Cal and me.

Hey, Jasper says. I recognize his clothes as his own, not hospital clothes. I’m not sure if that’s typical, or if he asked for his own change of clothes. One sleeve of his hoodie is rolled up to allow for the IV feed in his arm.

I think I’m gonna wait downstairs, Liam whispers to me. I figured it was only a matter of time before he excused himself: he hates hospitals, and he hasn’t met any of the people here. Liam retreats back into the hall and away.

Sarah hands her husband one of the coffees she brought up, and Emma stirs awake in his lap as he adjusts to take it. Why don’t we take her and get her some breakfast? Sarah suggests. Emma stands and stretches, and her father follows.

Stay, Sarah says with a pointed look at Jasper, who smiles back, sheepish. We’ll be back in a bit.

Jasper gestures to the now-empty chair when they leave, and I pull it closer to the bed to sit. How are you feeling? I ask.

Like I took a month’s worth of Adderall. He smiles at his own humour, so I do too.

His attention flicks back to the IV in his arm, and he tugs at his sweater sleeve a little, but doesn’t move it anywhere near the tubing. I realize he’s trying to cover up a stretch of pale, healed scars on his arm, rows of thin parallel lines. I don’t give any indication that I noticed.

Where’s Cal? he asks, giving up on adjusting his sleeve.

At home. She’s a little unpredictable.

Jasper nods. Was she really arrested?

I fill him in, tell him about how Vankev tried to claim that Cal, in some kind of psychotic break, had been the one to attack Matthew. He wanted to paint himself as a hero for trying to stop her, and for keeping Jasper and me, at least, safe. But the gun was his, and he was outnumbered, and the cops saw through him instantly. Cal was held until she composed herself and stopped fighting the police officers who tried to speak to her. She’s lucky they released her to Dad, and I wonder if it’s because the officers of the small-town police department were tired of dealing with her. Somehow, I don’t think I would have been so lucky after aggravating an entire police department like that.

Jasper’s frowning. Vankev tried to kill me because I know about Cal. What if he comes after you, too?

I put my hand over his, and he turns his over to lace his fingers through mine. He holds on tight, as if I’m keeping him here, and I let him. He’s dead.

He doesn’t look ready to believe me.

He killed himself before they could get him processed, I say.

Coward, Jasper mutters.

Yeah.  I don’t clarify that, officially, Samuel Vankev’s death hasn’t yet been ruled a suicide. He died in custody. But we’ve all seen, last night, what kind of a guy he is. Was. No secrets exposed, no loose ends, including himself.

Jasper winces and adjusts the way he’s sitting. At the look of concern on my face, he says, chest hurts.

Mm. You shouldn’t have run off, I tease.

I shouldn’t have made it here, he counters.

Jasper, I warn.

It was supposed to be me, he continues. Matthew could be- But he chokes on the words.

It wasn’t supposed to be anyone, I tell him. Cal blames herself, too.

It wasn’t her fault.

Exactly. You’re both wrong. Neither of you is at fault, and nobody should have been hurt.

Jasper gives me a very similar look to one I’ve seen dozens of times from Cal. It’s the one that means I sound like a mom.

How did you guys find me? he asks, changing the subject.

Cal saw tree forts, I say, and it’s explanation enough. Matthew knew where they are.

Since Cal and Jasper met – when they were abruptly kidnapped by their estranged father Hallam – they’ve discovered that they share a unique connection. They can communicate with each other without saying a word, placing knowledge and images and associations in each other’s thoughts. In a moment of panic, Jasper sent Cal an image of tree forts in the woods.

Jasper chews on his lip, thinking.

Where did those forts come from? I ask to drag his thoughts away from last night.

He tells me about them. Almost ten years ago, most of the boys Jasper’s age in Bradley worked together and started to build a small village of forts in the woods with sticks and logs and wooden pallets and old sections of barn board walls. Over every weekend and school holiday and summer vacation, they gathered to work on the buildings and play made-up adventure games in their little city. He tells me that one of the boys, back then, had produced a pocket knife, and in a sort of ritual initiation into the little city, each boy carved his name into one of the walls.

I think it’s cute. I imagine the collaborative months-long effort of a bunch of kids to build the miniature village. I wish Cal and I had been part of something like that when we were younger.

Cal and I were in a Scouts group together, back in Harley. But after she was attacked and bitten by a man in the woods on a camping trip, we didn’t go back.

III

Accalia

Anger is something I am familiar with. For as long as I can remember, it’s been the quickest feeling to come up in any situation. It’s been the most consistent companion and the one to break loose when every other emotion is locked away.

I was once asked where my anger lives; where the feeling manifests itself in my body. I feel it in my hands. They’re the first things to move when I’m frustrated, and when I’m consumed with rage, the muscles in my fingers twitch as if in preparation for destruction. I don’t mean to cause damage, but sometimes I give in to the urge, satiate the need for chaos, and things get broken. I reach my breaking point and cause more disaster.

When I was younger, I worried that I was a psychopath, considering how I fantasized about causing pain and damage to keep myself in check. Lou’s cousins would catch me on the wrong day wanting to roughhouse, and it was so hard to restrain my young self and walk away with bruises and scrapes when everything in me wanted nothing more than to retaliate with wailing fists and nails dug in like claws. I was fascinated with the idea of eyes and soft skin, and the damage that could be done to either with my bare hands. I was a sick kid. An incredibly angry one.

When I was a little bit older, I thought it was because of the wolf. I thought, maybe, it was the monster I had to hide away inside that craved violence. The anger was deeply ingrained in me, but at the same time, it felt so massive and overwhelming that maybe it wasn’t mine at all – maybe, I could blame it on the beast.

But now I’ve met other wolves. I’ve met other wolves who are monsters, yes – sadistic and villainous. But I know now that, even though some of us are awful, there are others who are gentle and kind. They aren’t governed by the wolf, and neither am I. The rage is just me.

And if it lives in my hands, its secondary residence is in my legs. After my thirst for destruction, when anger grows to the point of being explosive and can’t be tamed with the shattering of glass or punching a wall, I take it away. The itch moves from my fingertips to my legs, and I need to run. I need to move. Over the years, I’ve let running itself be the outlet: I release the rage and its grip on me with the burn of cold air in my lungs and the ache in my muscles after a long run. Deep down, though, I know the only important part of running is leaving. I can run as many laps as I want, but they all come around in a circle. Even after miles and miles, I haven’t escaped.

I’m tired of it. After all this time, I wish that rage would let go of my hand and join the legion of things I’ve lost.

Lou asked me to stay. She begged me not to shut myself down again. I’m trying, but I don’t know how else to cope. All I know how to feel is anger, but I don’t want it anymore. It’s all I have, but I hate how it makes my shoulders ache from tension and makes my teeth hurt from grinding them. I hate that I can't seem to release the feeling trapped inside, no matter how hard I squeeze my fists or shake my hands. I’m so tired of being angry, but I