Coyote Storm

It made no sense that we should be haunted by the coyote, and a whole town no less. If it had been the ghost of the child, or if it had haunted the Weaver family, or Joe Maclean, the man who’d tracked the creature, shot it and brought back the tattered dress of Lily Weaver to her parents, that might have made some kind of sense, as much sense at least as hauntings are bound to make in this world, but that wasn't the case. The coyote haunted us all, the entire unincorporated community of Tickston, and by midwinter that year there wasn't a single one of us who didn't have a coyote tale of their own to tell.

There were only three of us at Mac’s Hand that night, not including the bartender Hanna Toller. Even for a blizzard that was strange. Snow means little in Tickston, and on a Friday night when there wasn't shit else to do save drink with your neighbors or drink while listening to the wind, half the town should have chained up their vehicles and ventured out, crawling down the snow choked paths from their little plots of paradise up in the hills, out to 87 and then the five or so miles to the small neon bar across from the Shell–the entirety of Tickston civilization, but we knew what had kept them away. We knew because it had almost kept us locked up and hunkered down for the night, but for one reason or another, each of us had said damn a coyote and drove out into the howling night.

Charlie Brock pushed wiry black hair over his scalp, smiling that easy, handsome smile of his. “Maybe it don't mean any harm,” he said, both hands splayed out on the bar like he was preparing to say something important, which was unlikely. “I mean, what's it done anyway? Scared a few folks? Scratched up the heels on Linda Brinksi’s new sow?”

“Did worse than that to the new family from Idaho,” Quentin Howl said. His watery eyes looked magnified behind the broad rimmed glasses, and his scalp, torn and splotchy with age, seemed like it was held together by the gelled strands of a thin combover. He sipped a triple shot of vodka, staring hard at the rot-wood shelving behind the bar. 

A dampness soaked Mac’s Hand. The bar top itself sagged, like if you tried hard enough you could press your hand straight through the surface. It was like that small dugout of dim light and receding warmth could barely keep back the snow melting on its exterior. There were only two windows in the joint, a pair of long double-paned glass slabs on either side of the oak door that stood, heavy and reassuring, to the left of the bar top. The scene through the windows looked like television static, the flurry of white snow lit by a single unseen bulb outside the door, which blinded against the black night. Mac’s Hand smelled, as perhaps all bars do, like stale beer and wood rot, but another scent, the crisp smell of winter wind, would suddenly slice through the air from some unknown crack. It felt cold inside. The howling wind leaked in.

“Was regular coyotes that tore up those dogs,” Hanna Toller said, brown hair in a ponytail, hard lines at the edges of her eyes and mouth. “I'm shamed of you Quentin. Outta these hayseeds it's one thing, but an educated man like you it's ridiculous. Ain't no coyote ghost, just regular animals and folks too bored to do anything more than drink and tell stories tryna scare each other.” Hanna filled my glass from the tap and slid me the foamy paper-smelling drink. She wore a heavy gray sweatshirt and blue jeans, and while she waited for us to finish our drinks she leaned her elbows on the bar, her lined cheek resting on dry, cracked knuckles.

Hannah had set a few tables and chairs out behind us, but we all sat close together at the bar. To our right was a flat wall decorated with cowboy kitsch–a few lassos, a few old Stetsons, a vest purportedly worn by Jim Shoulders, but what stood out most was the jawbone of what looked like an over-large horse at the center of the collection. I’d asked Hannah about it one time. She said it had been there for as long as she knew, and that she didn’t know anything about it except that it was real. I told her it couldn’t have been, that horses weren’t that big, but she’d just shrugged and said that maybe it was a big horse.

Quentin shrugged. The shoulders on his slush-colored windbreaker bunched up awkwardly. “Maybe you're right, Hanna, but a few nights ago, I saw something, and I don’t know what it was.”

“What did ya see Quent?” Charlie yanked a pack of reds from his jeans and gently plyed a cigarette with his thick lips, then went fishing for a lighter in the pocket of his black leather jacket.

“Not in here you don’t.” Hanna pointed at him with her thumb raised, like she was leveling an imaginary pistol. Charlie rolled his eyes and removed the cigarette, then went to work trying to balance it upright on the uneven bar. 

“Well, it was just a coyote I guess, but there was something different about it.” Quentin rubbed his thigh like he was kneading a muscle. “You all know the Parker girl? Kayla? Little girl. Pretty. Face like a fairy.” He kneaded hard.

“Ben Parker’s kid,” I said and tugged at the tan lapels of my Carhartt. It was damn cold. The wind outside had an agenda.

“Well, Ben called me a few nights ago. Maybe a week even. These winters defeat me. Anyway, he tells me the girl found a litter of kittens in his tool shed, soft little things just perfectly vulnerable, and he didn’t have the heart to step on their heads, so he was wondering if I knew anyone willing to adopt, or if I could lend him some of Patton’s old cat-stuff. I still had the cat’s old bed and some other things, so I drove out there early the next day to drop it off. Before I even rang the bell I could hear the little girl crying inside. I guess something had gotten into the shed and left quite a mess for that pretty little girl to find.”

“Ooof,” Charlie said. “Now that’s gotta traumatize.”

“Ben was a little shaken himself in fact. He kept saying it didn’t make sense. That the shed was locked up good and tight and he couldn’t see how something got in. Worse than that, whatever did it wasn’t there for a meal. Ben said everything was just kind of spread around. Almost arranged, he said. Like a painting.”

“You said you saw something,” I said.

“I did.” Quentin drained his vodka and slid the glass over to Hanna, who poured him another triple. “I’m maybe halfway down the Parker’s drive. They live way up there you know. And I saw a coyote out on a hill, standing in the snow, maybe a quarter mile away.”

“What was it doing?” Charlie said.

“Wasn’t doing anything. Was just standing there, but there was something off about it. It was looking right at me. It was probably just the light, but I couldn’t really make out its face. It was like the eyes were dark, but it had this big smile. Even that far away I could see it. Its teeth were stark white. It was wrong. Almost looked human.”

“That’s just how coyotes look,” Hannah said. “There’s a pack been going round. Was that same pack what did for those Idaho folk’s dogs that did for the kittens, I’m sure.”

“You been hearing coyotes at night Hannah?” I asked. 

“No more than I hear ‘em every year.”

“I never used to hear ‘em,” Charlie said. “Seems like every night now. Y'all hear that?”

“Shut up Charlie,” Hannah said, leaning on the bar, hands clasped just above her elbows. “I swear I’m gonna shoot you one of these days.” It wasn’t an empty threat. I’d known Hannah since she started at Mac’s Hand ten years ago, and I knew she kept a twelve gauge pump action below the bar. Before she came to Tickston, Mac’s Hand had been a pit. She chased away the trash smell, the rats, and the regulars who didn’t know how to behave themselves. Women could stop in now without relentless harassment, and families could get a bite to eat without having to hear every last profane thought that crossed a man’s mind, but the dampness she couldn’t get rid of. The weather was always knocking.

“I ain’t fooling Hannah, listen.” Charlie Brock looked far away. His eyes were glassy, maybe from the bourbon he’d been sipping, but it seemed to me less a drunken glaze than something rippling with an uncomfortable memory. 

A glaze fell across all our faces as we listened to the sound of wind ripping across the flatland. It was a furious peaking noise that rose to a piercing height, before plummeting to a low bellow, a collision of moans, each fading into the next. Something, a sign or a shingle, had come loose and was tapping somewhere out in the blizzard, a hollow knocking sound. Behind it all, behind even the sound of blood pumping in my ears, I thought I could hear a wavering giggle, a yip in the storm.

Of course the lights went out. 

“Oh fuck you very much,” I heard Charlie say. 

“It's fine. We have a generator. Should kick on in a second,” I heard Hannah say. 

The two windows, which before had been black slates thrashing with flecks of white, were now the only sources of light, and I could see the outlines of shapes, suggestions of a building–the dark gas station across the street, its power also cut, and the silhouettes of the four parked trucks outside that we had driven in. There was something misshapen about one of the trucks. One of the windows darkened with a human silhouette.

“That you Quentien?” I asked.

The silhouette at the window didn’t speak. I got up from the bar and moved over to him. My eyes started to adjust, and I could barely make out the awkward bunching of Quentien’s windbreaker. He was staring out the window. 

“What are y’all looking at?” I heard Charlie say. He stood nearby. 

I followed Quentien’s gaze out the window. Something was wrong with one of the trucks parked outside. I leaned closer. A dark shape crouched in the truck bed. I saw four legs and a white grin.

“Aw hell. Aw hell,” Charlie said

“What is it?” I heard Hannah say as she slipped beside me.

All four of us stood at the window looking out. From the bed of the truck the coyote smiled back. Its eyes were dark, like shadows squirmed over its face, but the grin was large and white. Quentin had been right. There was something wrong with it. It almost looked human.

There was a click and a buzz, and the vision of the coyote in the truck bed disappeared as the lights switched back on. The window flashed back to a dark screen flickering with the static of snow. Quentin marched to the bar and threw back his second triple vodka of the night.

“That ain’t right,” Charlie said, returning to the bar. Hannah and I followed him. 

“It’s just a damn coyot,” Hannah said.

“You ever known a coyote to climb up on a truck like that? And in a damn blizzard? Besides, did you see that thing Hannah? That coyote ain’t right.” Charlie scratched the back of his neck.

“It's probably rabid. That would splain it fine.” Hannah filled Quentin’s glass and slammed the bottle of vodka on the bar. The sound made us all look up. 

“I swear I’ve seen that fucker before,” Charlie said.

“When?” Quentin said. His face was turning red. 

“Aw hell. Hell.” Charlie’s knee was bouncing, his foot resting on the stool beneath him. 

Hannah filled my glass again, “how’s your brother been Bill?”

“Fine,” I lied. Abel was the reason I was there that night. He’d been home six months from a tour somewhere in Eastern Europe. Where exactly, I wasn’t sure; he wasn’t allowed to talk about it, but every night he’d been home he’d passed out on the couch, or the floor, with a bottle close by, always enough left to start him up again in the morning. I needed a break from it, from the stories, none of which made any sense, but all of which ended in something blurred and violent–things he’d done, or things he said he could do. Sometimes it sounded like he was bragging, other times he talked about it like there was something in him trying to get out, and sometimes he would look at me with those eyes that could have been staring at the horizon, and he’d say, “It's in you too Bill. You just ain’t acquainted like me.”

Coyotes hadn’t been much on my mind. I’d been hearing them at night. A few times I’d even woken up in a sweat, their yapping so loud outside our house I’d felt they were standing on the front porch, but I’d run downstairs, thinking maybe to chase them off, and I’d find Abel on the couch, mouth open, twitching in his sleep, sometimes moaning, sometimes crying. I wasn’t much of a skeptic, not like Hannah, who refused to believe anything other than the ground beneath her own two feet. Something was happening in Tickston that winter, but for me it was just a gnawing at my heel. There were worse monsters for me. One day, only a week before that night at Mac’s Hand, I’d come home from getting groceries in Front Benton and found the door open. Abel had left and there were two empty bottles I didn’t know he’d been hiding sitting out in the living room. I found him maybe a quarter mile behind the house. He’d been naked, curled up on the ground in the snow and gnawing on a piece of wood like an animal. 

I felt guilty being at the bar that night. I wanted to help my brother, but I worked in the marketing department of the State Park Service. Save four years at Wyoming State, and a month-long trip in the Colorado Rockies, I had barely been outside of Montana, much less America. I had never seen a dead body. I didn’t even like guns, which was something I rarely admitted in Tickston. I knew there was nothing I could do for Abel. Maybe I wasn’t admitting it just then, but I knew deep down that I was useless for him. I was a child. I think maybe we all are. We pretend we have a grasp on what’s right, and we pretend that our opinions are worth something. We pretend because we need to believe that we’re on top, that we have a grasp, but there’s people out there who have stared into the black deluge. You spend a little time around folks like that, and you start to realize what you knew deep down all along. You’re just a child trying anyway he can to crawl back to the womb. That’s the proper place for us. Out here, in the storm of it all, it's more wild and frantic than we could ever possibly know.

“Well you just tell Abel that he’s welcome over anytime,” Hannah said. “We all miss him.” She looked far away, like she was talking through me.

“When did you see the coyote Charlie?” Quentin said. His eyes were blank, unblinking behind his heavy glasses. Something about him reminded me of Abel.

Hannah slammed her hand on the bar. “Will you just leave it Goddamn it?” 

“Why don’t you shut your fucking mouth,” Quentin turned on Hannah. His face was red and splotchy, and the hand that held his glass trembled. I could feel a heat coming off him, something brutal and vivid. He smelled like pure alcohol and cold wind. 

Hannah straightened up. The lines at the edge of her wind-burnt face formed solid and hard. I could tell she was preparing to toss Quentin out, right into the blizzard and whatever else was out there. Charlie threw back the rest of his bourbon.

“You know I got this old poem tossing around in my head,” Charlie said. “Coleman Weaver recited it at his daughter’s funeral. I couldn’t do it justice, but it was a good one. None of y’all went. There wasn’t any burial of course, but it was a right beautiful service at the church in Front Benton. You know I worked as a wildland firefighter for a few summars in Wyoming? Shit, now those were storms, real proper fire storms, but I was never afraid of ‘em. Maybe it was ‘cause I was just a drunk kid, but I never had any fear of those fires. The thing about it is that you’re fighting something alien, and you got a whole squad on your side, all of you bent against this big totally not-human force. It’s simple, clear. After the funeral, I stopped at this dive just outside of Benton, or at least I tried to stop. The whole place was shut down, but I needed a drink bad because, I don’t know, I just had this poem tossing around my head. It gets in ya sometimes like a sermon does. I park and get outta the car to check the front doors, which are locked, but then I get this panic feeling. I’m standing by the doors of this dark building, and I feel like there’s a storm around me. It was a clear night, but I felt like the air was just pressing in. I ain’t never felt like that before. Not when I was fighting fires, not during any Montana storm I ever saw. I was sweating, felt like there was something in my chest tryna claw its way out. And I got this fucking poem just tossing around that Lily Weaver’s daddy recited over an empty coffin, and I realize that the poem isn’t just in my head. I can hear it coming from somewhere just around the building. It’s this high-pitched voice. It's a laughing voice. It's saying, 'It costs no inward struggle not to go. It costs no inward struggle not to go.' It was a coyote voice. I swear it. I could hear coyotes laughing out there in the dark."

“You said you saw something,” Quentin said, his eyes hard on Charlie.

“I don’t know what the hell I saw.”

“What the fuck did you see?”

Charlie drained his bourban and turned to Quentin.“Man, has that coyote got your number so bad? Why don’t you watch how you’re speaking to all of us.”

“Enough of this shit.” Hannah Toller reached below the bar and removed the Browning twelve-gauge. Holding the gun by the barrel, she marched to the front door, where a heavy coat hung by a nail. “All you grown men shitting yourself ‘cause of a goddamn animal.” She shouldered on the coat.

“Hannah don’t,” I said, standing.

“Aw hell Bill,” she said. “The damn thing’s probably run off already.” There was something soft and trembling about the hard edges of her face. 

“I mean it's terrible out there.”

“Yeah, it's just a bit of snow.” Hannah opened the door and stalked into the storm. She slammed the door behind her.

“Shit!” Charlie sprang off his stool and rushed to the window. “Turn out the lights. I can’t see her.” 

Quentin rose and found the switch. The lights inside the bar went out, but the bulb just outside the door stayed on, and we could barely make out Hannah’s shape standing in the snow-slashed parking lot, the silhouette of a dark rod across one of her shoulders. We watched her take a few steps forward, leaning into the wind. She paused. The row of parked trucks were invisible against the light of the bulb. Through the window, we saw Hannah level the shotgun, pause, aim, and fire. The retort was mild, a small pop out in the roaring night. 

“Jesus! She’s gonna blow out someone’s back window,” Charlie said. “That your truck Quent?”

Quentin stayed silent. Behind his glasses, his eyes narrowed and locked on Hannah’s figure. Hannah lowered the gun and took a few hesitant steps forward, then suddenly, she charged out into the flurry and disappeared.

“Shit.” Charlie grabbed his heavy coat from where it hung near the front door. Already wearing my coat, I yanked open the door. There was a sucking sound as the wind roared into the bar. The blizzard was getting worse. Charlie and I plunged outside. The door slammed shut behind us. 

“Can you see her!?” Charlie roared over the wind. We stood close together. 

“I can’t see shit!” I yelled back. 

Above us the single lightbulb lit a small island outside the front door. Beyond the little island of light, I could just make out the shapes of our trucks. Everything else was lashed in snow and night. The snow on the ground had been building for hours and my feet were buried halfway up my shins. I pulled up my hood against the biting wind, which burned the inside of my nose, a cold, dry smell. All around us the storm whipped and bit. We had known the blizzard was going to be a big one, but this was worse than anyone would have thought. Another muffled gunshot popped somewhere out ahead of us. It was followed by two more shots in quick succession. Charlie and I bared on toward where our trucks were parked, dragging our feet through the snow. Quentin’s truck, an old red Ford, loomed into sight out of the storm as we neared. When we finally reached the vehicle we could see the back windshield had been shot out. Snow was already beginning to pile inside.

Charlie tore ahead of me and I followed. The next truck, Hannah’s, looked fine, but as we neared Charlie’s new Dodge and my Toyota, we saw the marks of buckshot peppered into their sides. Charlie’s back wheel was out and the right side window of my Toyota was missing.

“Fucking hell,” I heard Charlie roar over the storm. He tried to yell something else, but he was interrupted by a muffled crash ahead of us. I stared across the street, which was now nothing more than a blank white plain. Something big had fallen at the Shell, which was still powerless, a shapeless mass in front of us. Charlie made a move to forge ahead, but I grabbed his coat. 

“We have to go back!” I roared.

“She’s over there!” Charlie pointed towards the Shell, but at that moment, we heard another gunshot. It was almost imperceptible this time, far away, just a little snap somewhere out in the distance, away from the Shell, away from the road, somewhere out in the countryside, smothered by the wind and snow.

“We won’t find her in this! But she’ll be able to see that!” I turned to point back at the bar, which had been lit by the bright bulb at the door, but the space that I pointed to was now just another black mass. The bar had lost power again. “We have to go back Charlie!” I tugged at his coat. He was still staring off toward where the gunshot had come from. “Look at the fucking bar!” I yelled. He turned and looked. “We won’t be able to find our way back! We’ll call the cops!” Reluctantly Charlie let me lead him back to where the dark shape of the bar hunkered, nearly invisible against the storm. We reached the front door. The lights were all off, and the windows were dark. Charlie grabbed the metal bar on the front door and yanked. It wouldn’t open. 

“Help!” he yelled.

I grabbed the handle and pulled. We threw our weight back, but it wouldn’t budge. I fell to my knees and started digging at the snow blocking the door, tossing wet clumps behind me, my ungloved hands were numb by now and I barely noticed the bite of the cold. I heard a thumping noise behind the door and then a click. Suddenly the door swung open in the small space I had cleared and smashed into my forehead. I fell backward into the snow. For a moment, my vision blinked down to a little pinhole. I was staring up at the sky, just a flurry of static, but I felt like I had already sunk deep down into the snow and was staring up from a white, narrow ditch. The roaring wind seemed far away, and the sound of the blood pulsing in my ears was deafening. Somewhere out in the din, I could hear the sound of a coyote tipping. 

The next thing I knew two pairs of arms pulled me into a dark warm space. The sound of the storm was suddenly muffled as the door to Mac’s Hand slammed shut behind me. I was lying on the floor.

“Did you lock the fucking door?” I could hear Charlie yell. 

“There’s been noises,” Quentin said.

My entire body trembled. Snow melted inside of my jacket, and I pulled off the bulky coat, still lying on the floor. It was dark, but my eyes had been adjusting out in the storm, and I could make out the shapes of Charlie and Quentin. Quentin was sitting at the bar. He had a bottle next to him that looked nearly finished. Charlie was rustling in the pockets of his coat, looking for something.

“Shit. Shit,” Charlie was saying. From the floor, I watched his shape move to Quentin. “Quent, give me your cell phone. We need to call someone.”

“Don’t have one,” Quentin said.

“What do you mean you don’t have one?”

“Don’t like them.”

Charlie moved over to me and grabbed my arm. “Bill, stand up.” I let him pull me to my feet. “Bill, I need your phone.”

“What happened to yours?” Quentin said.

“I must have dropped it outside. I almost busted my ass when you unlocked the door. It’s probably buried in the snow.”

I dug into my pocket and pulled out an old Nokia flip phone. 

“Jesus Bill, that thing’s ancient.”

“It’s reliable,” I said and flipped it open. Melted snow had found its way between the screen and the keypad, and there was moisture on the screen, but it shone bright in the dark bar, illuminating our faces. Charlie looked bad. His thick, easy smile was gone, replaced by two tightly pressed, bloodless lips. His face was splotched with red, and moisture dripped from his frazzled black hair. 

“Call 911,” Charlie said.

I dialed. It rang twice before I heard a female voice say, “911 operator, what is your emergency?”

“We need some help. We need something. We’re stranded out at Mac’s Hand on 87, and one of us is out in the storm. We got no power and she won’t be able to get back to us. I don’t know what you all can do, but we need something out here. Hello?” I could hear breathing over the phone, but the voice said nothing. “Hello? Can you hear me?” The breathing got louder and faster, but no voice. “Hello? What the fuck? Can you hear me?” The breathing on the other end was heavy and fast, a canine pant. I felt ice in my stomach.

“What is it? What’re they saying?” Charlie said.

I held the phone out to him. He held it to his ear for a moment, then quickly pulled it away. In the phone screen’s blue light I saw his eyes widen and his mouth open. He flipped the phone closed and placed it on the bar next to Quentin’s bottle. “This isn't real,” he said. “I’m drunk. I wouldn’t have driven out in this fucking storm. I got drunk and maybe I got high, and right now I’m laying on my couch passed out in my own piss.”

Then we heard the scratching. It was light, almost imperceptible against the sound of the wind outside, but undeniable, a scratching from the wall on the other side of the bar–the windowless wall with the lassos, the stetsons, and the enormous jawbone, a scratching behind the wood.

“You all hear that?” Quentin said. We could see the shape of his back from where Charlie and I stood. He was hunched over the bar, his head low. “From the moment you two stepped outside it’s been scratching, but I don’t think it’s trying to get in. I just think it doesn’t want us to forget it's here. That’s alright with me. I don’t forget. That’s a problem with all of you.” His voice was slurring and I could see the bottle of vodka was almost empty now. He sipped his glass again. “That’s the problem. That was the problem with old Joe McLean. He thought he was doing something. Taking justice into his hands for poor little Lily all gobbled up. God, she was a pretty one wasn’t she? But it wasn’t justice. What Joe did wasn’t right. You see, Joe forgot. He forgot like all of you forget.”

“What is it Quent?” Charlie said, “What the fuck are you saying? What do we forget?” I could hear the scratching getting louder. The wind outside howled. 

Quentin turned around and faced us. Even in the dark his face looked twisted. There was a sheen on the lenses over his eyes, the little bit of light splitting in from the window. His face looked blank and inhuman. “You forget that you’re no different than the coyote. You think animals go around seeking justice? They would never be so arrogant as to call killing justice. Maybe some of the smarter ones go out for revenge once in a while. A mama wolf going for the throat of something that got her pup. Chimps having blood feuds with other troops even maybe, but they don’t ever call it justice. It's always a family affair.” I could see Quentin’s white teeth. His lips curled into a smile in the dark. Scratching. Scratching in the walls. “That pretty little thing. Just a meal to a coyote. The coyote doesn’t see it any other way. What Joe did wasn’t a family affair. He should have let Coleman Weaver do it himself. Cole should have been man enough. That would have been right. That would have been simple revenge. A coyote could understand that, but when Joe McLean went out and killed that coyote he called it justice. That’s why we’re here. That’s why this is happening to Tickston. You call something like that justice and you are denying the truth.”

“And what’s the truth Quent?” I said.

Quentin poured the last of the bottle into his cup and threw it back. His voice was a single slur, every word pushed into the next. I could smell him. He smelled like hot, rancid sweat. “It’s Little Red Riding Hood Bill. That’s the truth. A Frenchman four hundred years ago knew it. We’re wolves, coyotes just the same. Given the chance, I woulda fucked Lily Weaver and left her in a ditch. Ha! Right-O. That’s what you want to hear isn’t it? That’s the truth of it! That’s what we–”

Charlie’s fist collided into the side of Quentin’s head. In the dark I could hardly see it, just a pair of shapes struggling on the floor near the legs of the bar stools. I was frozen. I heard a scattering sound and then a crunch as Quentin’s glasses were crushed. Charlie pulled himself up and stood over Quentin’s shape on the floor. He kicked Quentin in the side–twice, hard. The scratching sound in the walls was almost unbearable now. It rose up over the sound of the wind. It clawed its way past the sound of blood pounding in my ears. 

“Get up, you fucker,” Charlie reached down and grabbed Quentin by the shoulders. 

“Charlie, stop,” I said, but something was locked within me. I felt like I couldn’t move.

“No Bill, no. The coyote wants him. That’s what it is.” Charlie started dragging Quentin towards the door. In the dark it looked like one big shape lumbering across the floor. “You always thought you were better than us, didn't you Quent?” Charlie was saying. “Fancy East Coast boy buying his dream home. Playing at cowboy. You were never one of us. You’re a proper Democrat. A real sick fuck. He’s a sick fuck Bill. Why don’t you help me over there?”

“Charlie.” I took a few steps forward. Scratching. Scratching.

Suddenly I felt a cold gust of wind hit my face. Wind roared and the storm burst inside. Charlie had thrown open the door and was yanking Quentin out into the snow. Quentin wrenched in Charlie’s grasp, but the old man was beaten and drunk. “Fuckoffameyou–” I heard Quentin scream. Then I heard the door slam and the screaming wind was muffled again. 

“You lock us out hu?” Charlie yelled. There was a pounding noise at the door. I could hear Quentin’s muffled shouts on the other side. I burst forward. Whatever had been frozen and locked inside of me suddenly released, but Charlie stopped me with an arm.

“Listen,” Charlie said.

“I can hear him pounding outside, Charlie.”

“No. The scratching.”

Charlie was right. The scratching had stopped. A moment later, the pounding at the front door stopped too. Through the window I watched Quentin’s figure move across the snow-smothered lot towards where the cars were parked.

“See? That was the fix. He’ll be fine as long as the coyote don’t want a piece of his meat. He’s got his truck,” Charlie said, returning to the bar. 

I heard the distant muffled sound of Quentin’s truck starting. I stepped towards the bar and kicked something small and light on the ground. The floor of the bar was cold as I felt for what I had kicked. “Charlie, look,” I said, holding up Quentin’s shattered glasses. 

“He’ll be fine.”

“He doesn’t even have his coat. His car had the back window out. It’ll be half filled with snow by now.”

“Did you hear how he talked about Lily Weaver? That sick fuck had it coming. Only just.” Charlie went behind the bar and started looking through the bottles. He found something dark and two glasses and returned to his spot, pouring a glass for himself and me. “We can wait out the storm.”

I joined him at the bar and drained my glass.

“What’s your coyote story Bill?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t got one.”

“Bullshit, everyone’s got one by now.”

“I been hearing them at night I guess, but nothing more than that. I haven’t been paying much attention. I been busy with Abel. I guess this’ll be my coyote story now.”

“Oh that’s certain.” Charlie finished his glass and poured himself another. He dug into his jacket pocket, removed a pack of cigarettes, stuck one in his mouth and lit it. The cigarette dangled between the curves of his lips. He left it there, both hands around his glass, lips puckering occasionally to inhale, then releasing the smoke past the little cylinder. He was breathing hard.

“It’s letting up.” The storm outside had quieted. The knocking of whatever was loose outside the building had stopped, and the wind was down to nothing more than a low groan. But it was cold inside. The smell of stale beer was gone, replaced by the dry smell of cold wind and the plume of Charlie’s cigarette. I looked at the floor for where I had left my coat, stood from the stool and went to get it. When I shouldered on the coat, Charlie made a noise, something half like a hiccup and half like a laugh.

“Charlie?” I spoke to his back.

He hiccup-laughed again. “You want to know what I saw that night after the funeral?” Charlie said. His voice sounded strange, maybe just drunk, but flushed and high-pitched. “I could hear coyotes. They were right around the building; I knew it.” Another hiccup-laugh. Smoke curled around his head, thick and opaque in the dark. “I can hear a voice reciting the poem. I can remember it a bit: ‘When the wind works against us in the dark, and pelts the snow, the lower chamber window on the east, The Beast, come out! Come out!–’ Man, it was so loud, so curling, and I freak. I mean, I totally freak. Come out! Come out!” Charlie coughed, a deep guttural hacking. His voice was twisted, at once high and growling. “So I bolt. Just bolt for it,” he squealed. “But before I can really get going I see my face in the reflection of a bar window. It wasn’t me, Bill.” 

Charlie turned around. Even in the dark, even in the haze of cigarette smoke that curled around his face like long gray fingers, I could see his disfigured face. His nose stretched forward and the side of his mouth split upward into a fleshy grin so wide that it reached just beneath his now yellow eyes. “It was that coyote looking back at me, Bill. That coyote in the reflection.” He growled at me. The cigarette was caught between two teeth that had separated from each other on Charlie’s lengthening jaw, a red gummy gape between all his teeth that his tongue lolled over, a wet, uncontrolled muscle unfamiliar in his reforming head. His nose extended into a snout, his whole skull wrenched and twitched. I could hear the sounds of something cracking inside of him. Charlie clenched his teeth, biting down on the filter of the cigarette. From deep within his throat Charlie started to yip. The sound came out through clenched teeth, his throat bobbing and vibrating, his back hunched and reshaped, things like bones stretching and reshaping beneath his coat. “Yipyipyipyip–yipyipyipyip!” And then a hacking growl, “Come out! Come out!” Charlie fell off the stool and writhed on the floor. I ran.

I ran through the bar, out the doors, into the storm. I ran through the thick snow blanketing the parking lot. I ran to my truck, threw open the door, dug into my coat for the keys, jammed the ignition. Snow had drifted in through the window that Hannah had shot out, and a pile rose on the passenger seat. I backed out, the chains on my wheels tearing up the soft white cushion of snow. I threw the car into drive, but before I could move forward, before I could scream off down 87, I stopped, there was movement in the bar.

The blizzard had all but stopped. Fat flakes drifted down to earth slowly, undisturbed by the now silent wind. The blanket of snow that stretched out beyond the parking lot, beyond the highway, into the rolling flatland beyond, was a blank and untouched slate, a white sheet that reflected all light. Now, with the storm finally over, I could just make out the front door of the bar from where I sat behind the wheel of my truck. I had left the front door open and I could see something moving inside. A coyote padded out. It was small, rib-skinny, with a patchy gray-brown pelt. It looked like any regular old coyot, malnourished and trembling in the cold. Then it turned to face me. Its mouth curled up into a wide grin. Its teeth were square and separated–human teeth, and from the side of its mouth, still burning, a cigarette sent up trails of smoke to twist around its long ears. 

What happened in Tickston, Montana, that winter? I can’t speak for Joe Mclean, who they found out in the cold, entrails of rabbit dangling from his teeth. I can’t speak for Ben Parker, who cut the tips of his ears into sharp points with a paring knife. And I can’t speak for the Weaver family, who simply disappeared one night, meat still frying in the pan, the tattered dress the cowboy Mclean had recovered found nailed to the wall where a crucifix had been, dressed up on a life-sized doll glued over with dog hair. What I saw that night at Mac’s Hand was only a piece, a single claw-nail pulled from the black deluge. There are things that live out in the storm of it all, and try as we might to get away, to pretend our little cabins up in the hills are protection enough to keep it out, until we slip back into that warm drifting place we all come from, we best makes friends with it, because you can’t force out the storm. 

Zak Bucinsky is an MFA student in fiction writing at UCI. Much of his fiction writing concerns addiction, recovery, and the three legged dog race of growing up, but he is also an avid horror junkie. He lives in a small apartment in Irvine, CA, with a little black kitten named Kali (after the Hindu goddess of death). If you enjoyed this story, check out his analyses of horror movies and American culture at 

https://zbuczinsky.substack.com/