"Ooh, fussy," you laugh at him, though Helen just shrugs like she expected it. You're not at all averse to eating kibble: it rarely spoils, you don't have to catch it, and a giant bag of calories is nothing to turn your nose up at. Still: chicken. And salami. And what looks like nice bread rolls, which Helen doles out very slowly, in between making a rough little sandwich and eating it herself, an action that somewhat dampens your appreciation of her. Finally she reports, "Just veggies left. Anyone want a carrot?" "I want a carrot!" She gives you a carrot. You happily chew it into a lot of orange shreds. Carrots are fun.
You nose amongst the vegetable packages because now that the smells are less overwhelming, you think you can detect... aha! You carefully pick out the little tupperware tub and offer it to Helen to open. She pops the lid, and the delicious smell of curried lentils rolls forth. You're so pleased by the familiarity of your dad's cooking that you almost forget to get in a reference to today's morse lesson. Almost. CURRY PLEASE, you tap out distinctly, tail waving like a flag on the Fourth of July.
You can't decipher what he's tapping, but from the smell and the big stupid grin that wags his whole ass, it's not hard to guess. You bop his face, fondly, and help yourself to a few licks. He's more excited than you are about it, so you leave him to it. "Help me down?" you ask the human, and get put back on three legs. You take a last, slow walk around while she packs up.
"You're gonna get the farts," Pancho points out. "Hell, that'd give you the farts if you were human." "Worth it," you retort as you lick out the tub. That done, you help Helen pack up while Pancho joins Erskin for a slow circuit of the parking lot. Just when you're thinking it's time to hit the road again, Pancho says, "Logan, did you pee?" "I dunno?" Logan stops in her tracks, thinking hard. Pancho sighs. "She's smart for a dog, but half an hour ago is another country." "I'll take her around the grassy bit. Come on, Logan! Come on, good girl!" "I am, I'm good!" Logan agrees, and trots after you obediently. The embarrassment and stench of watching a dog poop while in wolf form is almost worth finally finding out what dogs are thinking when they sniff around in search of the perfect spot to deposit their offering to the local ecosystem. According to Logan's mutterings, tall grass tickles your butt and it's annoying, and you don't want a turd to roll downhill and touch your foot. "I am enlightened," you assure her solemnly, confusing the hell out of her, then tell her she's good and lead her back to the truck.
For all you threatened to sit up front, your resolve breaks at the last moment and you whine to be put in the back of the truck with everyone else. Pancho is nice enough not to tease and you climb back on to the tarp feeling pathetically happy. Your shoulders are on fire, one from being pretty well fucked and the other from the strain of taking all your weight, and you just want to sleep forever. When Bel nuzzles the area you give a few grateful tail thumps and are asleep before the moving van even makes it back on to the highway.
Pancho bundles Logan into a roundness and uses her for a pillow, conversing with her quietly until they both drift off. You're the last one awake, patiently soothing Erskin's sore shoulder with licks and nuzzles so he can get properly to sleep. You entertain the idea of trying to keep watch. You decide against it, firmly and a little defiantly. You're safe, you tell yourself sternly. You're safe and Erskin and Pancho are safe and it will be okay. You can rest. You can sleep. Once you give up fighting it, you sink easily into sleep as if into a warm bath, and you don't dream. You don't have nightmares nearly as often when you're a wolf.
Another two hours of travel takes them well into North Dakota, off the highway and onto an increasingly faint and ill-maintained roads. After another hour on forlorn one-lane country roads, not another car in sight, Helen finally pulls to a stop, checks her phone a few times, and gets out of the cab to let the passengers free. The very last horizontal rays of sunset illuminate a peeling, abandoned grain elevator. Around them, the land stretches out flat and empty, nothing but snow-dusted scrub and empty trees. It's impossible to tell if there are fields or it's all just gone back to prairie tundra. "The safehouse, apparently. I suppose you can't get safer than dead," Helen says, pulling her leather jacket close. She checks all her pockets— field knife, pack of smokes, two lighters, sage bundle, red and black sharpie marker, string, ipod— then heaves Erskin back up into the truck. "Hey!" he protests. "You can't run like this. We'll get you after the place checks out." He huffs, but not strenuously, and curls back up on the couch. "Bel, if you'd like to come along, it'd be appreciated. Pancho, do you want to sit this out? You can keep an eye on your buddies."
Pancho nods, and blocks Logan from getting down. "Help me guard Erskin," she tells the dog. "I can guard anything!" Logan agrees. Pancho resettles herself to keep Erskin warm. You lick them both goodbye and hop down to follow Helen. "What a discouraging sight," you sigh. "I hope it's nicer on the inside."
"Lord knows that wouldn't be hard," Helen agrees. "Alright, pretty boy, we're going to split up— you've got a better weight distribution for exploring the upstairs, plus my hips don't much like this weather. Check to see what's structurally sound, if anyone else is in residence, and if there's any bad vibes. Dead cats, dead satanists, whatever. If there's ghosts, that's actually just fine for us, but I'm going to need to know what and where so we can use 'em right. Keep your whiskers up for cold spots, weird vibrations, that kind of thing. "We don't have time to get you up to speed on the forty years of stupid werewolf injokes our agency passes off as howl code, so here's the basics: flat high pitched woowoowoo like a police siren if you need immediate, violent backup. Bark like a guard-dog if there's some regular human squatters around and you want me to come nonviolently get involved. Long and then short tone like okay to mean basically, okay, all clear. Sound that one when you're finished if everything's gone okay. Low woo, high woo, low woo again to mean ghosts you want me to come and see. Just basically scream your head off if you break through the floor and get stuck somewhere. I'll be poking around the ground floor, taking stock, seeing if there's any underground bits. Sound alright?"
You commit this to memory, then give a sharp nod and the 'okay' tone. You trot off purposefully toward the building, nose to the ground. It's honestly not that different from doing recon as a human, aside from the total lack of technology.
Helen does a circuit of the grounds, peers into the vast, overgrown bottom floors of the silo and garage areas, then goes into the smaller attachment. A few presumably-offices, an equipment storage room with long-vanished equipment, a string of rooms with even more obscure purposes. She counts off the doors and turns, sketching a map precisely as she goes on a small notepad, checking herself frequently against a compass pendant, and smiles when the rooms start to overlap on the page. She traces her route carefully back to the very first front office, with the door that leads to outside. Then, striding purposefully through the dark and peeling rooms, she takes four left turns as soon as each one is presented, and winds up not in the same room as before, but the actual safehouse. There's no exterior windows, but a bulb with a pull cord lights up a five-by-five meter concrete cube of a room. 40-gallon water tanks, a two-burner kerosene camping stove beside a milk crate of cookingware and another of cleaning supplies and another of medical, a wall of crates of rice and lentils and canned meats, two army cots, a drain grating in the corner with a bucket and soap and towels. There's a milk crate of pulp paperbacks, pens, notepads, and batteries. A couple of people could live here for months, it looks like. A single person might last most of a year. The light's even a full-spectrum bulb, not fluorescent. The door outside the room was peeling, wooden, with a snapped-off doorknob. The door on the inside is inch-thick iron with a drop-bar. "Well," Helen says. "Guess we don't have to worry about outstaying our welcome." She props the door open with a moldy half brick, lights a smudging stick, and clears each corner of the space. This done, she pockets the remains of the sage bundle and wanders off to find out how Bel's doing.
Just about then is when you give the ghost howl. You are standing foursquare, head low, hackles standing, staring straight at the first ghost you've ever seen. It's just a hobo, just a harmless old guy walking back and forth, except he walks through a closed door on one end of his pacing, and he has no smell. Not to mention the fact that anyone on enough drugs not to notice a two hundred pound black wolf flipping its shit would probably not be able to walk.
Helen picks up the pace and strides outside, then goes around the building, into the garage, up some stairs, and through a hallway into what might be a loft complex in the grain silo area. Or might not. Bel is just around the turn, puffed up like a soot sprite. "Huh," Helen says. "Good job, Bel, that's a big one." She doesn't bother to pat the wolf while he's so unnerved, but she does lean her hip against his shoulders. She pulls out her pack of smokes and makes a leisurely show of breaking the plastic, opening the cardboard. Selecting just the right cigarette. "You're not going to like this smell," she warns Bel, getting her lighter out. "But he sure will." She lights up, takes a drag— grimaces— blows it out while approaching the ghost. "Hey, man," she says. "How's things?" The ghost looks up from pacing. He sniffs, slows down. "Could be worse, could be worse. Can't find my fucking bag. Can't find it. You seen my bag?" "Can't say I have. What'd it look like?" Helen takes another drag, makes a long production of it. When she leans against the wall, he comes over, shiftily, eying the smoke, and leans against the wall as well. "It was my bag. Can't find it. Fucking thing. Had it around here. I won twenty off James last night. Twenty fucking dollars in that bag. Can't find it. You seen it? Hey, can I—" She hands the cigarette over. "Kind of you." The ghost takes it greedily, fits it to his mouth, cups his hands around the burning end. He darkens like tea around his inhalation. "Cold night, huh," Helen says. "Been colder. Been colder for sure. If I could just fucking find my bag. You seen it? I won twenty off James just last night. Twenty dollars! Can you believe it? Twenty fucking dollars, and I can't find it. My fucking bag." He doesn't give the cigarette back. Helen smiles. "I got some dogs," she says. "We could help you look?" "Yeah? Kind of you. Damn kind of you. I gotta go, you know! But I just can't find my fucking bag. Twenty dollars in it I won off James in that bag." "Think someone stole it?" "Nah. Nah. Couldn't have. James wouldn't for sure. Good guy, James. Won twenty off him, didn't even fuss. Handed it right over. Said he'd win it back soon enough. Just can't find it now, that twenty in my bag. Just can't find it." The ghost makes as if to start pacing again. Helen lights another cigarette and holds it up, and he pays attention. "Listen," she says. "Me and my dogs will help you find your bag and your money. Okay? We're gonna be around here for awhile, we'll look for your bag. But if you see anyone else besides me and my dogs, they're no good. They want to steal your bag." "Okay. There's twenty dollars in there. Lotta money. It's a good bag, too." "Yep. They wanna steal your bag. You'll come get me and my dogs if you see anyone else?" "I'll come get you if I see anyone else. Awfully kind of you. And your dogs. Awfully kind of you and your dogs." "You'll come get me?" "Yeah. I'll come get you." "Thanks. I'm Helen." "Harper." "Nice to meet you, Harper." She shakes his hand, gives him the second cigarette. He grabs it happily, and waves goodbye as she walks back down the hall. He goes back to searching once she's far enough off, though in a calmer, almost desultory way. "Well, that's one of them set," Helen remarks to Bel. "How're you doing? First ghost?"
You huff/nod an affirmative, and shake yourself all over. The way she handled the ghost was amazing, you admire her for it, but you're still extremely creeped out and you just want to get out of here.
"Okay, let's go outside for awhile. Shame you can't lend a hand with getting any of that furniture shifted." She follows Bel outside and back to the truck. It's well past dark, by now, and too cloudy for many stars. She uses her cel phone for a flashlight. "It's all safe," she says. "Decent set-up, too. Down you go." She helps Pancho out, then picks up Erskin. A small wolf is still a wolf, and she huffs a bit as she carries him across the rough ground and inside the building. "Keep the dog close," she warns Pancho. "I'm going to be closing off as many wrong doors as I can, but I think she could get herself into trouble with the hallways. The saferoom's perfectly fine, but rest is a mess."
"I found a ghost," you explain. "He's on the third floor. I'm still freaked out, look, my hackles are like, I am wearing porcupines on my back, it's hilarious." "Are you scared of ghosts?" Pancho teases you. "Fuck yes I'm scared of ghosts, aren't you?" "Well, they don't seem all that relevant to my life, on account of, they're dead." "That's the problem!"
You laugh at him from your lofty vantage. "Look at the brave soldier!" you coo. "Don't worry, Bel, ghosts almost never come for you in the night and eat your eyes and chew up your bones and pull off your tail for a hat. It's a very rare phenomenon!"
"Probably only unless your tail is as gorgeous as mine," you rally, but it's weak and you know it. You thought Helen was going to get rid of the ghost but instead she bribed him to play lookout. How good could a dead guy be at that? Then Helen leads you into a well-stocked concrete bunker that is bigger than it can possibly be considering how you got in, and you're distracted even from ghosts. You make a confusion noise that's embarrassingly Scooby-Doo-like. You pop out the door and back in a couple times, eyes like saucers. That can't be right.
Helen puts you down with a relieved grunt and stretches her back out, with a number of loud crackles. She watches Bel's confusion with some amusement. "The space is folded up," she explains. "Like a ball of paper, there's a lot of surface area packed into a small diameter. Places like this are easy to manipulate— they often start folding on their own, and from there can just be encouraged further inwards. This room's far enough inside that there's plenty of space for it, but not so far that things get weird. Or at least too weird for concrete." She pats a wall. "Folded spaces are a hell of a time if you get lost, though, make sure to keep track of where you've come from," you comment, and limp over to put just a bit of a mark against the outside of the door. Helen goes and pokes around at the cans and kerosene stove, which is much more interesting than dusty old mazes. You limp quickly back over to her side to endear yourself.
"I'm in either math heaven or math hell, and I can't decide which," you say. When Pancho and Erskin are both more interested in creature comforts than abstracts, you repeat yourself in Morse in case Helen wants to talk theory. Because you feel like if you don't get to discuss this total violation of the laws of physics with someone you're going to explode slightly.
