It was Roberta Dempsey who first saw the black wolf.   It came out of nowhere and stopped in the middle of the road fifty metres or so in front of the rattly old station wagon.   The wolf seemed transfixed by the glare of the car’s headlights; its eyes shining almost supernaturally as the car rattled toward it.

“Look out Garrick!” Roberta called to her husband.

“Don’t hit it dad!” pleaded young Stanlee from the back seat.   He leant forward to peer out at the enormous black shape through the car’s front windscreen.

Garrick Dempsey strained to see what his eleven-year-old son was pointing at.   But the black wolf blended into the dark of the moonless night, so that it was almost invisible against the black bitumen road.   The car was nearly on top of the wolf before Garrick finally spotted the animal and began frantically tugging upon the steering wheel, using all of his strength to force the car to veer to the left.

Held spellbound by the glare of the headlights, the wolf began to move in the same direction, as though intent upon diving straight under the wheels of the car.   At the last second though, the black wolf put on an extra burst of speed, zoomed past the grill of the car, and began loping toward the thick forest a hundred metres away from the verge of the road.

By the time that Garrick had brought the sliding car back under control, the large wolf had disappeared from sight.

*      *      *

After his close encounter with death the black wolf ran through the forest, weaving his way between the trees, seemingly miraculously avoiding high-speed collisions with the wattles, pines, and grey-white ghost gums, until his heart pounded from the exertion and the pads of his feet ached.   Spurred on by his fear of the car, fear of the boom boom boom that rang out from his own chest, fear of the crunching of the pine needles beneath his feet, which made him imagine that the Dempseys were running along behind him, the wolf tore through the forest for more than an hour.

He might have kept running until collapsing from fatigue, if he had not suddenly found himself at the edge of a clearing, looking out at a weatherboard farmhouse.   Although the small, white house offered little real protection against attack, the building seemed like a fortress to the wolf, offering shelter from the terrors of the forest by night.

Weary after the mad rush through the forest, the wolf stood near the perimeter of the clearing for a few minutes, to allow his breathing to return to normal.   Then, dropping to his belly, he began to crawl out into the open, inching his way toward the metre-high, chain-link fence which ringed the farmhouse yard, and extended all the way down to the dog yard, a hundred metres away from the house, where thirty or so Kelpies, Barb-Kelpies, Border Collies, and other farm dogs were chained up for the night.

Stealthily the wolf crept along the short grass, until he lay against the base of the fence.   He felt confident that he had gone unnoticed, until a low, rumbling growl made him look round to his left, and he found himself looking straight into the black face of a Barb-Kelpie.   Although they were separated by a hundred metres of open yard, the wolf seemed to be looking eyeball-to-eyeball at the Australian Sheep Dog through the links of the fence.

For almost a minute the black wolf lay beside the wire-mesh fence looking across at the Barb-Kelpie.   Then, not wanting to be trapped outside the farmyard when the dog yard erupted into a chorus of barking, the wolf rose up to his full height, stretched out his front paws to pull himself up onto the top of the fence, then kicked off with his front feet.

Hurtling into space, the wolf rocketed across the small yard toward the farmhouse, expecting to be greeted any second by an angry ululation from the dog yard.   But one look at the huge, black shape leaping the metal fence had been enough to silence the growling in the throat of the Barb-Kelpie, and send it whimpering backwards into the upended, halved 200-litre drum that acted as its kennel.

The wolf halted against the nearest side of the house and waited for a moment, still half expecting to hear furious barking from the dog yard.   After a minute he summoned up enough courage to start across the back of the farmhouse, looking for a way into the building.   All the doors were locked, but on the opposite side of the house he discovered two windows wide open.

The windows were high off the ground, so the wolf was forced to stand up upon his back feet.   Tottering slightly, he managed to just reach the sill with his front paws, then by a combination of kicking with his back feet and pulling with the front, he ungainfully dragged himself up along the wall to fall through the open window.

Landing in a heap at the bottom of a small single bed, the black wolf scurried to his feet and found himself looking down at a small face, seemingly swimming in a sea of honey-blonde hair.   As the little girl rolled over and began to mutter in her sleep, the wolf inched forward till his gaping jaws were only centimetres from the small face.

*      *      *

“A black wolf?” asked Andrew Braidwood.   He stared up at the trio who stood before his desk in the small police station.

“That’s right, constable,” assured Roberta Dempsey, throwing out her voluminous chest, like an opera singer about to burst out into song.   “It ran straight out in front of the car and just sat there…Right in the middle of the road.”

Andrew looked slowly from the towering, corpulent figure of Roberta Dempsey, to the diminutive figure of her husband Garrick (who seemed dwarf-like beside the obesity of his wife), to the short, slender figure of young Stanlee.   Finally he asked, “Are you positive that it was a wolf?”

“Of course we’re positive,” insisted Roberta, clearly offended by the question.

“Maybe it was a kangaroo, or an emu?” suggested the policeman.   “After all, in the dark…?”

“No sir, it was definitely a large, black wolf,” insisted Stanlee.   “It sat on the road till we were almost on top of it, then took off into the bush just like it was jet-propelled.”

‘A jet-propelled wolf yet?’ thought Andrew, writing up a report of the sighting in his notebook.

*      *      *

The black wolf stood on the bed for a moment, gazing down at the young girl, watching the subtle rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.   Then slowly he lowered his large face to gently nuzzle the soft flesh of her cheeks, enjoying the feel of her silky blonde hair against his face.

Feeling the furry face rubbing against her, the little girl cooed in pleasure and stretched out one hand to stroke the wolf’s muzzle.   Responding in her sleep as though she were being nuzzled by Blacky or Marg — the only two of the station’s dogs ever allowed inside the house.

After a moment the wolf pulled away from the girl and dropped to the floor.   He padded across to the bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway.   He walked down the corridor to the second bedroom, where a beautiful honey-blonde woman lay sleeping in the king-size bed.   The wolf padded across to the bed, climbed up next to the woman and lay down to sleep beside her.   After a moment the woman rolled over in her sleep and draped one arm lightly across the wolf’s black flank.

*      *      *

“A black wolf yet?” said Andrew Braidwood a few hours later.   He and his sergeant, Melvin Forbes, stood by the side of the road, examining the skid marks made by the Dempseys’ car the night before.

“Well what do you think it was?” asked Mel.   Twenty years older than Andrew, Mel had lived long enough not to be automatically sceptical of unusual reports.

“Surely you don’t believe them?” asked Andrew.   He followed the older man as he started toward the forest.

“Perhaps not, but on the other hand there have been reports of a large, black wolf around the LePage-to-Merridale area for a number of years now.”   He stooped to examine a large paw print on the forest floor and asked, “What do you make of that?”

Andrew knelt to examine the print, then looked ahead to where a trail of large prints continued into the forest.   “Dog tracks,” he suggested lamely.

“Too large for dog tracks,” insisted Mel.

“One of Old Man Frazer’s Great Danes perhaps?”

“Even a Dane doesn’t make tracks this large.”

“But they can’t be wolf tracks!” protested Andrew Braidwood, refusing to be convinced.

Mel followed the trail of prints for a few moments, then said, “They certainly head the way the Dempseys said: toward the sheep stations outside Merridale.”

“So what are we going to do about it?” asked Andrew.   He hoped his sergeant would say to file their report then forget it.

“Hunt the bastard down, I suppose,” said Mel.   “These tracks are deep enough after all the rain we’ve had lately.   So they ought to still be here when we’ve got a hunting party together.”

*      *      *

Awakening at cocks’ crow, Rowena Singleton sat up, blinking against the blinding light, which streamed in through the open bedroom window.   Yawning, she stretched wide, then looked down and was shocked to see a large black wolf lying on the bed beside her.

Stifling a scream, she backed away and tried to climb out of bed, only to find her feet tangled in the blankets.   Fighting back hysteria, she managed to untangle one foot before falling out of bed in a heap on the floor, taking the blankets off the bed with her.

Hurriedly climbing to her feet, she looked down at the bed in trepidation, only to see the naked figure of her husband, Ernie.   His tall, lean body lay curled in the foetal position in the centre of the bed.   For a while she stood watching Ernie in wonder, before deciding that it had been a hallucination caused by the sunlight dazzling her.

After a moment’s hesitation, she leant across to lightly shake Ernie awake.   Then she hurriedly dressed in readiness for the hectic breakfast rush which would soon ensue, with man, child, and beasts all demanding to be fed.

*      *      *

Forgetting that she hated it, Rowena reached down with one hand to lightly stroke her daughter’s long yellow tresses as the little girl climbed up into a kitchen chair.

“Don’t mum!” protested Kirsty.   She reached up to slap away the offending hand, before leaning down to stroke the head of Blacky, as he and Marg scooted about under the kitchen table.

“What are you two dogs doing inside the house?” demanded Rowena, as she put bread in the toaster for her daughter’s breakfast.

“They want their breakfast too,” explained Kirsty.

“They’ll get a boot up the backside if your father catches them begging at the table,” said Rowena.   She walked across to the screen door to let the dogs outside.

Seeing their mistress opening the back door, the two dogs raced outside, expecting her to dish out their food.   Instead she slammed the screen door shut.   Realising that they had been tricked, the two dogs raced back toward her.

Looking past the red Kelpie bitch, Marg, to the larger Barb-Kelpie, Blacky, Rowena remembered her hallucination in the bedroom earlier and said, “Blacky?” drawing furious tail wagging from the large dog at the mention of his name.   “Yes it could have been you, couldn’t it?” she said, wondering whether it had been the Barb-Kelpie that she had seen on the bed between her and Ernie.   Although the dogs spent the night chained up in the dog-yard, both Marg and Blacky managed to slip their collars on occasions to sneak into the house through any conveniently open window.   Usually they would creep in to spend the night on the end of Kirsty’s bed, to her delight.   But Rowena remembered the open window in their bedroom that morning and decided that Blacky could have entered that way, then could have raced out again while she was on the floor tangled in the blankets.

As she raced across to rescue Kirsty’s toast before it started to smoke, Rowena decided to raise the subject with Ernie.   But at the sight of her husband when he appeared, all thought of dogs vanished from her mind.

“My God!   You look a wreck!” Rowena said.   She leant down to give him a peck on the cheek after he virtually fell into a chair beside Kirsty.

“I feel like I’ve just done a sixty-Kay marathon,” agreed Ernie.   He stretched wide to relieve an ache in his shoulder blades.

Watching her husband slumped across the table, Rowena wondered how he would get through the day.   Farm work meant a hard ten-hour day at the best of times, but in his present state he would be lucky to finish by nightfall.

Ernie devoured a huge breakfast over the next hour, and then set out to do his farm chores.   He worked slowly to avoid straining his muscles, which still ached from the long dash through the forest the night before.

Ernie Singleton had been a werewolf since early 1983.

He was unsure how his complaint had come about.   But he had heard rumours of a strange black beast roaming the neighbourhood all his life, so he wondered whether he had inherited the trait from his father?   But Gregory Singleton had died in a farming accident fifteen years ago, in July 1980, so Ernie was unable to question him.

At first Ernie had been horrified by the transformation to a wolf.   He had lived in dread of attacking his wife and friends, or ravaging the livestock in local farms.   But he had finally realised that as a wolf he had no urge to attack people or animals either.   Although the transformations to wolf and back again burnt up a tremendous amount of energy, leaving him ravenous, the hunger only struck after his return to human form, so he was able to sate the “famine” by raiding the fridge.   In the beginning Rowena had teased Ernie about his monthly eating binges.   But country life breeds hearty appetites, so his wife had gradually accepted his two or three famines a month.

Once Ernie realised that as the black wolf he was not a crazed killer, he settled down to enjoy his nighttime romps.   Occasionally he came across wild animals on his romps, and rarely, despite staying clear of neighbouring farms as much as possible, he had encounters like the near collision with the Dempseys the night before.   But no one took the reported sightings of the black wolf very seriously.   So Ernie did not expect any trouble from the Dempseys.

*      *      *

“Black wolf!   Black wolf!   Black wolf!” chanted Warren Horne as the station wagon pulled up near the spot where the Dempseys had almost been forced off the road the night before.

“Can’t you shut that bloody freak up!” snapped Sam Hart.   The local sheep farmer had had to listen to Warren’s childish chants and games for the last thirty minutes.

“You’re all heart, Sam,” said Danny Ross, making Hart scowl and the others snicker.

“Well just keep him away from me!”

“That’s okay, Warren can walk with me,” offered Danny.   A barrel-chested giant, nicknamed “Bear” by his close friends, Danny Ross (sergeant of the Glen Hartwell Police Force) was a compassionate man who had only agreed to take part in the wolf-hunt to see that no one got hurt and to help Brian look after his brother.

In his early twenties and a giant of a man like Bear, mentally Warren Horne was at the level of a seven year old.   He would have been confined to Queen’s Grove Sanatorium in Westmoreland five years earlier when their parents had both died, if Brian hadn’t pledged to take on the task of looking after “Weird” Warren (as the local school kids had nicknamed him) and keeping him out of trouble.

“Black wolf!   Black wolf!” chanted Warren happily.   He waved his double-barrel shotgun in the air, not caring that Brian had not given him any cartridges.

“Been waiting long?” asked Mel Forbes, climbing from the cabin of the Holden Rodeo Ute before it had quite come to a stop.

“Just got here,” said Hart as Andrew and the others climbed out of the Rodeo.

“Well let’s get to it!” said Des Hutchinson impatiently.   He checked to see that he had loaded his pump-action shotgun.

“Black wolf!   Black wolf!   Black wolf!” chanted Warren Horne as they set off to follow the wolf spoors into the forest.

Sam Hart turned round to tell him to shut up, then seeing Des Hutchinson changed his mind.   Hutchinson had a soft spot for Weird Warren and unlike Warren, Des was far from harmless.   So Hart decided to ignore Warren and try to walk as far from Hutchinson as possible as the ten men set out on the wolf-hunt shortly after 8:00 p.m.

*      *      *

The small posse was close to exhaustion long before sighting the black wolf.   They followed the wolf tracks deep into the forest, using high-powered flashlights to guide their way along.   Like the wolf the night before they were forced on a short marathon, following the spoors for nearly thirty kilometres from the road outside LePage to the countryside around Merridale.

Unlike the hunters who had set out shortly after sunset, Ernie was unable to commence his nighttime activity until well after eleven p.m.   Although he could not prevent the shape shifting from occurring altogether, Ernie was able to hold it off long enough to give Rowena and Kirsty plenty of time to fall asleep.

When he finally set out as the black wolf, he had given the hunters enough time to grow tired and irritable.   Two of the men had already given up and returned to the ute, but there were still eight men left, when suddenly, around midnight, Warren Horne again chanted, “Black wolf!   Black wolf!”

“Will you shut that…!” began Sam Hart, before realising that Warren was pointing toward a grove of grey-brown ghost gums a hundred metres ahead of where they stood.

Standing between two of the gum trees, facing directly away from them, stood a large, black wolf.

‘I don’t believe it!’ thought Sam, starting to swing his Winchester repeater up toward the wolf.

Because there was a strong headwind blowing past the wolf, toward the hunters, the wolf had not heard Weird Warren’s chant, or Sam’s curse.   But he heard readily enough when Warren aimed his shotgun toward the wolf, pressed both triggers, letting the hammers click click onto the empty chambers, and shouted, “Bang!   Bang!” at the top of his lungs.

The black wolf jumped a metre straight into the air from fright, allowing Sam’s Winchester to fire harmlessly into the ground beneath the animal, sending up a spray of dead gum leaves.   Before Hart could fire again, the wolf returned to earth and took off like a rocket into the dark forest.

Two other men in the posse were quick enough to fire off shots before the wolf had disappeared from sight.   But he was long out of range, so they only managed to take bark off gum trees a few metres behind the fleeing animal.

“You bloody retard!” shouted Sam Hart, rounding on Weird Warren.   In his anger forgetting his fear of Des Hutchinson.

“Leave him alone!” warned Des.   Although he was also annoyed by the missed opportunity to bag the black wolf.

Ignoring the warning, Sam continued to storm toward the cringing figure of Warren Horne, until Des fired a warning shot from his pump-action shotgun.   The shot missed Sam by mere centimetres, blasting away a great chunk of bark from a ghost gum nearby.

Jumping away in shock, Sam swung his Winchester up toward Des.   The dispute might have ended in bloodshed, if Mel Forbes and Bear Ross hadn’t stepped between the two men to give them a chance to cool down.

“We’re wasting valuable time here!” pointed out Bear.   “The longer we stand here feuding, the less chance we have of catching up with the bastard.”

“We’ll never get him now!” insisted Sam.   “Thanks to that bloody retard!”

“Don’t be too sure,” said Andrew Braidwood.   He walked across to where the black wolf had been standing beside the ghost gums only moments before.   The forest floor was covered in a thick carpet of dried gum leaves and pine needles, and in his haste to escape; the black wolf had thrown up the leaves and needles in his wake, leaving a clear trail behind him.   “All we have to do is follow along behind at an easy pace until he tires himself out, then we nail him.”

*      *      *

With memories of the previous night’s terror, the black wolf found himself running full pelt through the woodland again.   Once more his heart pounded from fear at the thought of being chased through the forest.   Except this time he knew that his fear was based on reality, not mere cowardice.   Vividly he remembered the reports of the rifles behind him, remembered the thud-thud of great chunks of bark and wood being ripped away from trees only centimetres behind him.   Recalling the sight of a brutal kangaroo-hunt that he had taken part in years ago as a teenager in human form, Ernie realised that the bullets or buckshot would rip away far greater chunks from his own trunk, than they had from the trunks of the pines and ghost gums.

This time he only had a couple of kilometres to run to reach the sheep station.   He didn’t waste time lying in the long grass outside the chain-link fence tonight, but leapt straight over the fence and raced across to the side of the white, weatherboard farmhouse, to conceal himself from the station dogs.   Although he knew that the dogs wouldn’t dare to stand up to him, he was afraid that one or two might at least risk a stray bark, giving the hunters a clue to the direction he had taken.

The black wolf waited for a minute or two to allow himself to calm down, and to let his pounding heart return to something like normal.   Then he set off around the back of the house in search of an open bedroom window.

He crept around the front of the farmhouse without any problems.   But when he reached the opposite side, he found both windows firmly shut.   Leaping up onto his back feet, he pulled himself up along the outside wall until he was able to peer in through the first window.   Directly beneath the window he could see a small bed, in which lay a large Garfield-the-cat doll, swathed in long, golden tendrils, as though Garfield had decided to let his hair grow down.   Using his front paws on the sill to pull himself up the wall a fraction, the wolf was just able to make out the small figure of Kirsty Singleton lying on the edge of the bed, beneath the window, and realised that the golden hair belonged to the little girl.

He stood against the weatherboards, gazing down at the sleeping child for a moment, then remembering his fear of the hunters, dropped to all fours and scampered across to the second window.

This time he could see Rowena sprawled out in the middle of the double bed.   Trying his best not to waken her, he began scraping at the window, desperately trying to force it to slide upward.   Although the window was not latched, the wolf’s clawed feet weren’t designed for gripping onto shiny surfaces, so try as he might he couldn’t get the window to budge a single millimetre.

In desperation he tried to shape-change where he was.   Although he had managed to do this on occasions while outside, he knew that usually he had to return to the bedroom first.   And as he had expected, he failed to transform.

Hearing excited barking coming from the dog yard out back of the house, he pricked up his ears in the hope of hearing whatever had set off the dogs.   But after a few moments he gave up and turned back toward the bedroom window, where he saw the face of Rowena staring out at him.

*      *      *

Rowena stood by the end of the bed, staring out in terror at the large black shape, which stood peering in at her through the bedroom window.   As she watched the wolf began frantically leaping up off the ground, scratching and pressing at the window with its front paws.

*      *      *

“Let me in!   Let me in!” Ernie tried to call out to his wife.   But in wolf form his vocal cords were not able to manage human speech. So all Rowena heard was a series of throaty snarls, as the wolf jumped up against the window, making the glass rattle precariously in its frame.

*      *      *

“Ernie!   Ernie!” cried Rowena, backing deeper into the bedroom, not daring to look away from the leaping wolf, not wanting to be caught alone in the room with the creature.   “Ernie, where are you?” she pleaded, unsure whether she had articulated the words, or merely thought them.

*      *      *

The black wolf heard Rowena calling his human name, even as he heard the hunters around the front of the house.   At first he thought that somehow she had recognised him as her husband.   Then seeing her look of terror, he realised that she was calling to his two-legged self, Ernie, to rescue her from his four-legged self, the black wolf.

Not wanting to frighten Rowena any more than she already was, he turned away and started off toward the chain-link fence a dozen metres away from the farmhouse.   But then, catching sight of Weird Warren leading the leg-weary hunters around the side of the house, the wolf stopped in his tracks.   He looked toward the empty paddock beyond the fence, wondering whether he could make it to the start of the forest, over a quarter of a kilometre away, before the hunters gunned him down.

Eyes shining with fear the black wolf turned to face Warren again, then turned back toward the farmhouse.   After a second’s hesitation, he sprinted forward, and, using his powerful back legs like springs, leapt straight through the bedroom window.

The window shattered with a report like a shotgun blast, showering the double bed with shards of glass and causing Rowena to shriek and faint.

“Get out of the way, you bloody freak!” shouted Sam Hart.   He raced past Warren Horne at the sound of breaking glass around the side of the house.

Des Hutchinson followed suite and the two men arrived at the bedroom window together….

Instead of the black wolf though, they found the naked figure of Ernie Singleton kneeling over his wife, Rowena, who lay unconscious on the bedroom floor.

“What happened here?” asked Des Hutchinson.

“She fainted when she saw the black wolf,” replied Ernie truthfully.

“Luckily I was here to frighten him away.”

“Where did he go?” demanded Sam Hart.

“Back out through the window,” said Ernie.   He pointed to the paddock behind them.

The two men looked round in surprise.   They had expected to corner the wolf inside the house.   But the few moments it had taken to force their way past Warren could just have given the wolf enough time to reverse direction and race across the empty paddock without them seeing him.

“Here we go again!” said Sam Hart as the tired hunters straggled off once more.

They crossed the chain-link fence and were almost at the start of the forest before realising that they had lost all trace of the wolf’s paw prints.

*      *      *

As the hunting party slowly disappeared from sight, with Weird Warren happily chanting, “Black wolf!   Black wolf!” Ernie stood by the window, ignoring the broken glass, which cut into his naked feet.   His heart raced as he watched the retreating men, wondering whether they would give up when they failed in the wolf hunt tonight?   Or whether they would be out again tomorrow night and every night after that.   ‘Until eventually they kill me!’ he thought as he turned away to start to attend to Rowena.

THE END