Wolf of the Tesseract Read online

  “Yeah,” Vivian noted, “I wonder if this… thing… in the photos might just be that intersection.”

  Vivian pulled the car into the private cul-de-sac below a sprawling Tudor; it rested upon a blanket of carefully manicured landscaping. Claire and Jackie exited the car. The sheer size of it silenced even the passionate conversation they’d been engaged in.

  Claire turned her head in panoramic fashion, taking in the scenery. The entire estate was flanked with an old-growth forest abutting one of the many state parks in the area. The wild greenery’s border was kept in careful check against the carpet of grass that covered the expansive yards.

  A middle aged woman wearing a wide smile and a pencil skirt rushed out the front entry to greet them. Claire recognized her photo from the business card as the real estate agent.

  “Welcome!” she greeted them over-warmly. “I’m Emily Washington, at your service. Your fiancé said you would need a full tour.” She beamed as if she already knew the deal was as good as inked.

  The agent guided them on a detailed tour of the bedrooms and other amenities. Starry-eyed, both Claire and Jackie practically staggered through the immaculate halls of the mini-mansion.

  When they got to the large den, the agent sat on one of the loveseats and motioned for them to join her. The three girls each took a seat and surveyed the comfortably staged and appointed room.

  Emily handed them each a binder filled with information, photo sheets, and disclosures. The packets highlighted the acreage, features, and floorplan as well as details and dimensions on the house’s niceties.

  “Just take a moment to imagine yourself right here. Imagine your belongings and furniture; perhaps envision a party or a gathering of your close friends. Envision your family, and family to be, pictured in those photo frames…” she trailed off to let the moment of imagination take over.

  Claire sighed, focusing on a large gilded frame nearby and thought of her favorite photo. She imagined the picture of her and her father, taken at a dig-site outside of Thebes, filling its decorative edging.

  “I think my father would love seeing me here,” she found herself saying. Beneath her smile, her mind imagined a million simultaneous scenarios, each filling the home’s grandiose proportions. She thought of raising future children here; graduation ceremonies and garden parties. She imagined her father visiting between his expeditions. She thought of going on her own expeditions. Claire suddenly panicked, wondering if settling down was truly the nature of her heart—the most alive she’d ever felt was journeying through strange and foreign lands on adventures of discovery: a researcher on the trail to uncovering ancient, lost truths!

  Her thoughtful digression evaporated as a nearby floor beam groaned loudly, like a stressed galleon mast beneath a heavy gale. Silence—everyone froze in shock. One breath passed silently. The fleeting moment of quiet erupted in flame and chaos as the finely crafted hardwood flooring erupted in splinters, propelled by the detonation.

  Claire flung herself to the side. Her couch flipped backwards with Jackie still on it; she could hear her friend’s scream as it tipped. Vivian had already fled through the door.

  Fire shot up through the hole in the ground and spread to everything within seconds. Claire crawled backwards as a curtain of flames draped itself between her and the exit. It seemed to move supernaturally, not flickering in rapid and random succession, but a constant conflagration designed to isolate her from any help or exit.

  Claire screamed in terror. The roaring inferno muted Jackie’s pleas as the spreading pyre forced her near the door; the acrid stench of burning hair and fear enveloped the room as the real estate agent flailed about, fully immolated like a living torch. She cried with an otherworldly shriek and crumpled to the floor. Jackie screamed and fainted as Emily Washington collapsed into a burning heap.

  The wall of living fire pressed against Claire. Soot caked her face and the heat blew her hair back and dried any fearful tears that would have otherwise streamed down her face. A solid pillar of fire burst up from the floor; it spun like a whirlwind, taking on humanoid features.

  It singed Claire’s hair and buffeted her to the side. As the fire demon pressed towards her, seeming to reach for her with an arm-like tendril, Claire was sure she could hear a dark laugh coming from its core.

  The ceiling suddenly collapsed, crushing and dissipating the flame demon as another monster entered the fray. A massive beast smashed through the upper level and fell down into the room, roaring as it dropped through.

  Scorching the debris, the renewed column of fire shot upwards again. The intense prison of flame that trapped them burned ever hotter as the blazing fiend swatted the animalistic humanoid. It howled in pain, a blackened and singed swath burned across his snout.

  Claire shuddered with shock. The raging noise of the hellish chamber choked out her groans. The beast’s ears perked at her pained sound and whirled to face her.

  She immediately recognized its lupine features from a million movies. Perhaps more horrific than the mythical Sasquatch, the beast which locked its gaze on her was a hulking werewolf. Claire couldn’t stop staring as it approached, shrugging off the ferocious lashes of the animated flame mephit. She did all she could do to keep her eyes from rolling back inside her skull. Claire clung to her only hope: maintaining consciousness. She turned and tried to crawl away, but collapsed under the thin, smoky air, doomed to watch helplessly as the wolfman rushed forward and scooped her up.

  More ash and smoke whirled. The enraged, living fire seemed to scream and burst forward, rattling the ceiling, threatening to bring the whole house down on them. Claire could barely see her friends through the flame wall.

  Growling with pain, the beast leapt through the pyre, charging through. He busted though the sheetrock wall and stumbled into the adjacent room. The smell of burning canine fur and flesh filled Claire’s nostrils; she hung limp in his rippling muscles.

  The fire chased after, allowing only a moment for the two to catch their breath. Tendrils of flames grabbed a hold on the massive hole and pulled the blazing entity into the next room as it gave chase.

  Tensing for action, the werewolf leapt away and rushed towards the window. He lowered his head and used his body to protect Claire from any cuts as he soared through the massive panes of glass. Breaking through to the rear yard, the beast bound ahead, aiming for the forest.

  Only three giant-steps away from the edge of the wood, Claire’s vision blurred. Her sight went black and she slipped beyond consciousness.

  Claire awoke with a start. Even unconscious, her heart had been pounding a hundred beats per minute. She hadn’t dreamt at all—and she hoped that her most recent recollections had been nothing more than a new, intense nightmare—hoping it had merely been the worst ever variant of her “wolf dream.” Claire ached all over and her head was foggy; the pain in her body told her that it had all been very real.

  The unmistakable chirping of medical instruments and the strong scent of expensive men’s cologne informed her of her location, and told her she was not alone. Claire turned her head, searching the hospital room for her fiancé. “James?”

  His coat lay over a chair nearby. Past that, muted by the door and distance, she could see James through a window, clearly angry at whomever he was speaking with. She hadn’t seen him wear a look of worry very often, but it clung to him now.

  She hurt all over. The radiant ache of minor burns spotted her skin. Claire touched the wounds and wiped away the sticky topical ointments she’d been treated with. More than the pain, though, she felt anger. She couldn’t pinpoint the source of her rage, but a feeling of helplessness made her want to lash out.

  The frustration mounted as she lay there, unable to get comfortable because of her burns, she listened to the beeping machines. Beep. Beep. Beep. Minutes on end. Finally, her calm broke and she started ripping the sticky sensors off her body, making the machines lose their calm as well. Beep. Beep. Breeeeeeeeeeeee!

  Nurses came st
orming into the room, trailed closely by James. “What are you doing? You can’t do that!” they chided.

  “Are you holding me here against my will?” Claire snapped.

  “No, but you’re not well,” a large nurse replied. Claire was pretty sure the large nurse could hold her against Claire’s will if she’d wanted to. The other nurse and a doctor stood near the door, only one step closer than James.

  “If I stay here a minute longer, I swear I’ll lose my mind,” Claire threatened.

  The nurses and the doctor traded sagacious glances. James interrupted their silent conversation. “Doctor Smith, is she well enough to check herself out?”

  “Wait,” Claire stopped him. “I want to know. What do you mean by that? I said ‘I feel like being in here is making me ‘crazy’’ and everyone freaks out.”

  The long pause after her demand hung palpably. Finally, Doctor Smith said, “Miss Jones, when they admitted you, you were raving about fire demons and werewolves. They found you in the woods early this morning suffering a psychotic break from reality.”

  Silence again. None dared break it. Only Claire had that right.

  “The fire. The burns,” a confused Claire stammered.

  “Yes,” James helped her. “There was an explosion at the house. A gas line ruptured, the fire marshal says. It was very traumatic; the real estate agent died, but Vivian and Jackie got out the front door. Vivian dragged Jackie to safety, but when she came back, you’d escaped out the back entry of the room and apparently fled into the woods.”

  “Right!” She exclaimed. “Vivian saw the whole thing! She can tell you, something big—a creature, saved me. He scooped me up and carried me to the woods!”

  Her physician regarded her coolly. His white coat sported a gold star-shaped lapel pin and a name tag identifying him as Ryan Smith, M.D.

  Doctor Smith watched her carefully as she repeated the same details she’d arrived raving about. “You do appear more coherent, this time,” he said, only stating the facts of his observation, avoiding any diagnosis.

  Claire grimaced at him. James had slid in closer and now had his hand on her shoulder in full support of her, crazy or not.

  “Can you tell me, Miss Jones, did you lose consciousness at any time?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said, unclear why the doctor didn’t have that written on his little notepad too. “Right before I got to the woods; that’s why I had to be carried.” Her frustration mounted again. James met her frustration with a gentle shoulder rub. “What did Vivian say?” Claire demanded, looking at James.

  James shook his head negative very slightly, as if it was an answer he was sorry to give. He spoke gently. “She didn’t see anything, Clairebear. Just the fire and chaos.”

  Claire withdrew into her shell for a few quiet minutes, leaving the doctor to stand there while she took stock of herself. The nurses switched the machines off and dutifully wrapped the cords, further quieting the room.

  “How is Jackie,” she finally asked.

  “She’s okay,” said James. “She was treated for minor injuries and burns, and then went to her parents.”

  The doctor nodded and then turned to leave but motioned to James. “A brief word, Mr. Shianan?” They stepped into the hall.

  After one minute, the nurses left. Claire waited in silence; her frustration waned, morphing into resign. She couldn’t even bring herself to think—only stare at the white wall. Two minutes later, James returned.

  Claire looked to him hopefully. Her eyes asked for news.

  “The doctor says that he just wants to keep you overnight for observation, but that you can go home tomorrow as long as I keep a close eye on you.”

  She nodded at the news.

  “Whatever you saw,” he led cautiously into the subject, “has the doctor concerned, but he’s ruled out neurological damage, except for the blackout, there aren’t any physical indicators. He thinks it was a stressed induced state, almost like a PTSD fugue. I mean, my god, a woman burned alive right in front of you,” he said sympathetically.

  Claire’s mind started wandering. She wondered if there was any truth to their concerns for her mental state. After all, she worried more about the possibility that her mind was unreliable than the fact that a human being burned to death only feet away from her. She nodded, submitting to Doctor Smith’s verdict.

  “Listen,” James slid in next to her, “I’m right here with you. Every step of the way,” he promised. Something in his voice soothed her anxiety; even as Claire felt like she slipped away from her grip on reality, she knew that James could keep her grounded.

  Claire squeezed his hand to respond with gratitude. James leaned in and kissed her forehead.

  “Get some rest.”

  She suddenly felt very relaxed, as if a sedative kicked in. Claire closed her eyes and nodded off.

  . . .

  The rest of her hospital stay passed uneventfully. Claire had awoken the following morning fully rested. Oddly, she had not dreamt. Perhaps her body needed every scrap of power to continue healing, or maybe it simply couldn’t handle another surreal, recycled psychological encounter.

  She passed the remaining time watching television reruns and reading a trashy novel she borrowed from the nurses’ station. James acted admirably. He handled everything, and despite the fatality in the accident, he was able to run interference with the police so she hadn’t had to relive the encounter by giving a statement.

  Nothing demanded that she engage it with her brain. It was as if her thoughts cycled in neutral, spinning freely.

  A foreboding sense that she’d lost control of her life, and perhaps her mind as well, seemed to envelope her. Claire followed and did as told as if in shell-shock.

  Sometime after a soft, bland hospital lunch she signed the discharge paperwork that an orderly brought to her. She neatly packed her few belongings and prepared to return to her apartment. Her mobile phone had been destroyed in the ordeal and so she pulled the memory card from its back and tossed the smashed device in the wastebasket and then met James who waited to drive her home.

  The remainder of her day passed like a gray cloud; everything felt tainted by the dull, murky wash. Claire and James went over wedding plans, discussed other houses, and talked guest lists; he changed her wound dressings, but they did not speak about what happened.

  She felt like she watched her life as a passenger, looking in from a window but helpless to intervene. The only thing she needed to complete the scene were the three ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.

  Evening crept up. James drifted off to sleep on her couch. Claire retired to her bedroom, laid her head on her pillow, and let go. Her mind slipped off, and she, too, slept.

  . . .

  Claire awoke with the sun. She looked over where she would have normally left her phone charging and in alarm-clock mode, but she no longer had it. It was very early still, but she knew returning to sleep would be impossible for her.

  Standing in front of her bedroom window, Claire greeted the daylight with silence. She dressed herself and peeked in on James. He snored almost inaudibly on the couch and Claire picked up her keys and her wallet and slipped quietly out the front door.

  Longing for some sense of normalcy amidst the haze of uncertainty that enveloped her, she wandered towards the coffee shop on the corner near her apartment. After crossing the road, she very nearly tripped over a pair of feet sticking from the alleyway. A homeless man sat bent at a ninety degree angle against the brick building as he rested his back.

  She’d almost stepped around him when he sleepily called her name, “Claire?”

  Claire didn’t recognize him. “Sorry. I don’t have any change,” she lied, trying to walk past.

  “Claire Jones,” He stated.

  The fact that the man knew her full name startled her, called her mind to attention.

  “He’s got you enthralled, you know. The warlock, the sorcerer. But I don’t think he sent the fire demon.”

 
; Claire chided herself for being fooled. Clearly, this hobo was insane, rattling off the kind of crazy talk one expected from his kind. Maybe she’d merely misheard her name being spoken. Still, compassion had always intertwined around her innermost being. She put a hand in her pocket, searching for some money.

  Her eyes searched vainly for a change cup, or somewhere to drop coins. He didn’t have any such thing.

  “Nitthogr’s in your mind, Claire Jones. But this will protect you. He thought it would trap you, but it has some resistant power as well. The amulet helps you resist his magics, even if it endears you to him.” The bum held up a necklace pendant. Her pendant, the one her father had given her. It dangled from his fingertips as he freely offered it to her.

  Claire looked into his eyes, suspicious of him. They contained not a shred of deception or threat; she snatched the necklace from his outstretched arm. “Nith-who?”

  As soon as she grabbed it, the fog in her mind lifted. Her sight seemed to clear and things became more apparent to her state of mind, as if it had been struggling to wake up this entire time; it tingled like a foot one sat on too long before suddenly having blood restored.

  “Rob?” she asked, bewildered but suddenly recognizing the vagrant. “What happened?” She stared at his scarred and bandaged forearms; a puffy, red burn mark raked across his face and nose. Soot and grime ringed his face and hairline.

  Rob nodded as she latched the clasp of her necklace behind her head. “Don’t lose that.” He suddenly looked over her shoulder at something.

  Claire turned to see James opening her patio door. He walked onto her balcony and rubbed his eyes, yawning.

  “There you are,” he called out loudly, putting enough force behind his voice for her to hear him across the street. “What are you doing out here?”

  She turned back, but Rob had disappeared. She touched the jewelry hanging from her neck. Yesterday she might’ve questioned if Rob was even real; she might’ve believed he’d been a figment of her imagination or a delusion. Now? Now she knew better.