گرگینه ی باتلاق فیور فصل 12

The Werewolf of Fever Swamp - Chapter 12

“It—it’s got me!” I screamed as it pushed me to the ground and jumped on my chest.

“Help! It—it’s licking my face!”

I was so startled, it took me a long time to realize my attacker was a dog.

By the time Mom and Dad came to my rescue and started to pull the big creature off my chest, I was laughing. “Hey—that tickles! Stop!” I wiped the dog spit off my face with my hands and scrambled to my feet.

“Where’d you come from?” Mom asked the dog. She and Dad were holding on to the enormous beast.

They both let go, and it stood wagging its tail excitedly, panting, its big red tongue hanging down practically to the ground.

“He’s enormous!” Dad exclaimed. “He must be part shepherd.” I was still wiping the sticky saliva off my cheeks.

“He scared me to death,” I confessed. “Didn’t you, fella?” I reached down and stroked the dark gray fur on the top of his head. His long tail started wagging faster.

“He likes you,” Mom said.

“He practically killed me!” I exclaimed. “Look at him. He must weigh more than a hundred pounds!”

“Were you the one scratching at our door last night?” Emily appeared in the doorway, still in the long T-shirt she used as a nightshirt. “I think this clears up the mystery,” she said to me, yawning sleepily and pulling her blonde hair behind her shoulders with both hands.

“I guess,” I muttered. I got down on my knees beside the big dog and stroked his back. He turned his head and licked my cheek again. “Yuck! Quit that!” I told him.

“I wonder who he belongs to?” Mom said, staring at the dog thoughtfully.

“Grady, check his collar. There’s probably an ID tag.” I reached up to the dog’s broad neck and felt around in his fur for a collar.

“Nothing there,” I reported.

“Maybe he’s a stray,” Emily said from inside the kitchen. “Maybe that’s why he was scratching the door last night.”

“Yeah,” I said quickly. “He needs a place to live.” “Whoa,” Mom said, shaking her head. “I don’t think we need a dog right now, Grady. We just moved in, and—”

“But I need a pet!” I insisted. “It’s so lonely here. A dog would be great, Mom.

He could keep me company.”

“You have the deer for pets,” Dad said, frowning. He turned to the deer pen. The six deer were all standing alertly at attention, staring warily at the dog.

“You can’t walk a deer!” I protested. “Besides, you’re going to set the deer free, right?”

“The dog probably belongs to someone,” Mom said. “You can’t just claim any dog that wanders by. Besides, he’s so big, Grady. He’s too big to—” “Aw, let him keep it,” Emily called from the house.

I stared at her in shock. I couldn’t remember the last time Emily and I had been on the same side of a family argument.

The discussion continued for several minutes more. Everyone agreed that he seemed like a sweet-tempered, gentle dog despite his huge size. And he certainly was affectionate. I couldn’t make him stop licking me.

Glancing up, I saw Will come out of his house and head across the back lawns toward us. He was wearing a sleeveless blue T-shirt and blue Lycra bicycle shorts.

“Hi! Look what we found!” I called.

I introduced Will to my mom and dad. Emily had disappeared back to her room to get dressed.

“Have you seen this dog before?” Dad asked Will. “Does he belong to someone in the neighborhood?”

Will shook his head. “Nope. Never seen him.” He cautiously petted the dog’s head.

“Where’d you come from, fella?” I asked, staring into the creature’s eyes. They were blue. Sky-blue.

“He looks more like a wolf than a dog,” Will said.

“Yeah. He really does,” I agreed. “Was that you howling like a wolf all last night?” I asked the dog. He tried to lick my nose, but I pulled my face back in time.

I glanced up at Will. “Did you hear those howls last night? They were really weird.”

“No. I didn’t hear anything,” Will replied. “I’m a very sound sleeper. My dad comes into my room and shouts through a megaphone to wake me up in the morning.

Really!”

We all laughed.

“He really does look like a wolf,” Mom commented, staring at the dog’s blue eyes.

“Wolves are skinnier,” Dad remarked. “Their snouts are narrower. He could be part wolf, I suppose. But it’s not very likely in this geographical area.” “Let’s call him Wolf,” I suggested enthusiastically. “It’s the perfect name for him.” I climbed to my feet. “Hi, Wolf,” I called to the dog. “Wolf! Hi, Wolf!” His ears perked straight up.

“See? He likes the name!” I exclaimed. “Wolf! Wolf!” He barked at me, a single yip.

“Can I keep him?” I asked.

Mom and Dad exchanged long glances. “We’ll see,” Mom said.

That afternoon, Will and I headed to the swamp to do some exploring. My nightmares about the swamp lingered in my mind. But I did my best to force them away.

It was a blazing hot day. The sun burned down in a clear, cloudless sky. As we crossed my back yard, I hoped it would be cooler in the leafy shade of the swamp.

I glanced back at Wolf. He was napping in the hot sunlight on his side, his four legs stretched straight out in front of him.

We had fed him before lunch, some leftover roast beef scraps from our dinner the night before. He gobbled it up hungrily. Then, after slurping up an entire bowl of water, he dropped down in the grass in front of the back stoop to take his nap.

Will and I followed the dirt path into the slanting trees. Black-and-orange monarch butterflies, four or five of them, fluttered over a bank of tall wildflowers.

“Hey!” I cried out as my foot sank into a marshy spot in the dirt. When I pulled my sneaker out, it was covered with wet sand.

“Have you seen the bog?” Will asked. “It’s kind of neat.” “Yeah. Let’s go there,” I said enthusiastically. “We can throw sticks in and stuff, and watch them sink.”

“Do you think any people ever got sunk in the bog?” Will asked thoughtfully. He brushed a mosquito off his broad forehead, then scratched his short, dark brown hair.

“Maybe,” I replied, following him as he turned off the path and headed through a wide patch of tall reeds. “Do you think it would really suck you down into it, like quicksand?”

“My dad says there’s no such thing as quicksand,” Will said.

“I bet there is,” I told him. “I bet people have fallen into the bog accidentally and gotten sucked down. If we brought a fishing rod, we could cast a line in and pull up their bones.”

“Gross,” he said.

We were walking over a carpet of dead brown leaves. Our sneakers crunched noisily as we made our way under tangled palm trees toward the bog.

Suddenly, Will stopped. “Ssshhh.” He raised a finger to his lips.

I heard it, too.

Crunching behind us.

Footsteps.

We both froze in place, listening hard. The footsteps drew closer.

Will’s dark eyes narrowed in fear. “Someone’s following us,” he murmured. “It’s the swamp hermit!”