Wolf House

I was thirty when I inherited the house from my grandfather.

It has been in our family for as long as it had existed, built by my ancestor. No one knows how he built it or even where he got the plans. Some of the family stories mention deals with Gods and Devils, other stories regard him as a mentally ill man with far too much money.

My family fall neatly in two groups, those who believe in the house and its purpose and those who don’t. My parent’s didn’t believe, and that, according to my grandfather, is why they died.

“It would never have happened had they believed.”

When I was little, I swallowed his words with blind faith, but as I aged I became more critical. I think my grandfather sensed my losing faith, and that was why he’d took me over the threshold of the house at age ten.

I’d believed in the house since then.

On the outside the house was nothing special, a freestanding, ramshackle, colonial style building that had seen far better days. But for those who paid closer attention, they would spot the house’s strange nature. We boarded the windows on the inside of the property, and for all its cobwebs, chipped paint and rotten wood on the porch, the front door is always brand new, spotless and heavy duty. 

The house squatted in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles of forest and wasteland. The only access was a long, overgrown dirt road, manageable by off-road vehicles alone, unless you wanted to destroy your car’s tires, suspension, under carriage and bodywork in record time.

My family has guarded the house forever and, with my grandfather’s passing, the duty has now passed to me.

***

I pull up outside the house the day after grandfather’s funeral.

Turning off the Wranglers engine, my self-help audio book dies. I take a deliberate breath before clambering out of the mud covered jeep. Even just standing outside of the house, the air feels wrong. Usually forests are places of life, there’s always something moving somewhere, leaves rustling and birds shouting abuse at each other. But here there’s nothing. The trees grow tightly packed, dark trunked with even darker sparse leaves. There’s no sound, no movement.

I’ve dallied long enough, I grab my bag off the back seat of the Jeep and head up the wooden steps to the house proper. The front door is in the rightmost corner of the front wall.

The key has changed over the years. The original key was a great wrought iron monstrosity, which is now encased behind glass in grandfather’s, now my, library. These days the key is small, backed up with a number pad and fingerprint scanner.

I unlock the door and it glides silently open.

The smell is the first thing to hit me, pungent and heavy. I take a step back before immediately stopping myself and dashing into the house, closing the door behind me.

The bolts within the door slide home with a finality that leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

The corridor is dark, the only light in this place filters in through the trees outside and then through the wooden planks covering every window, not much makes it through. I take the heavy torch out of my bag and turn it on. The house has never had power, or running water, or heat.

We did not make it for people.

Torch in hand I step forward, the floorboards creak under my feet, heavily scarred and marred. Great long gouges in the wood expose splinters and offer injury if you ever dared walk through here in anything other than boots.

Fur litters the floor, piling up in the corners, mixed in with dust and a host of insect life. An over fed spider has made its home along the join of wall and ceiling, growing fat on a host of fleas and flies.

Taking a deep breath, I walk forwards, slow and steady until I reach the end of the corridor. Then I turn and start down another that runs parallel. I repeat this again and again. We lined each corridor with doors, all placed flush against each other. None of the doors have handles. There are no rooms behind the doors, there’s no space in the house for rooms, only corridor after corridor.

I keep going until I reach the left most wall and find the stairs. The stairs, like everything else, are marred with claw marks and littered with fur.
I walk the upstairs corridors, slow and steady, concentrating on keeping my breathing deep and calm. The darkness is oppressive, I can feel my shoulders dipping with each step. The stench makes the air thick. I have almost reached the one door in the house that I can open. There’s a flutter in my belly as I turn the last corner and see the one door that has a door handle. My pace picks up, relief making me reckless.

A door on the left opens. I freeze on the spot and gulp down a breath. For a moment I can see the endless dark beyond the door. A great black wolf steps out of the abyss. It’s the size of a large draft horse, jaws wide enough to snap my entire body if it so chose. I drop my flashlight, the wolfs burning eyes snap to me.

I turn away, my eyes tightly closed, unable to watch as the beast fills the corridor. My hands cover my ears as it takes a deafening breath. The wood behind me creaks and groans under the massive wolfs weight. My hair moves, disturbed by the monster’s breath, and I can’t stop the whimper that escapes me.

The virulent hatred pouring off the creature is almost a solid force. My legs, already shaking, give out and I crumple to the ground.

The growl behind me reverberates through my bones, dust falls from the walls. The slow, steady steps of the wolf cause the entire house to shake. Another door opens, then closes. The beast has gone.

The miasma left in the wolfs wake is thick and toxic, breathing it in makes my skin want to crawl off my bones and flee. I take a moment to collect myself before getting to my feet, taking a shaky step forwards and another and another. When I reach out and touch the golden door handle, tears are freely flowing down my face. I open the door and cross the threshold.

The moment the door closes behind me, I put my back to it and slide down to the ground. My bag thumps the ground beside me and my sobs come thick and fast. It takes twenty minutes before I can control myself enough to stand back up. 

Standing, I realise I’m in utter darkness; I left my flashlight in the corridor. Walking forward, I stretch out my arms, trying to feel for the table I know is in the centre of the room. I bump into it and feel around for the candles. But I left my bag on the floor by the door. I fumble back and retrieve it, searching I find the matches and light the candles.

Able to see, I start the work I came to do.

The ritual is simple, light the candles, give my blood to the house, recite the words and get the hell out of dodge.

The candles lit, I take the overly ostentatious knife out of the bag and wrap my fingers around the blade. The cut into my palm feels hot but doesn’t hurt. I speak the words.

“Sköll heitir ulfr,

er fylgir inu skírleita goði
til varna viðar,
en annarr Hati,
hann er Hróðvitnis sonr,
sá skal fyr heiða brúði himins.”

The house rumbles and shakes around me. A door slams open downstairs and I drop the knife. Another slams open and another and another until I’m sure every single door in the house, including the one behind me, is open. I can hear them breathing. Bile rises in my throat. I face the corridor, putting the table at my back.

Standing on the cusp of the door are the wolves.

They are the one who mocks and the one who hates. Skoll and Hati.

“I am Rachel Elizabeth Hjorth, Daughter of Mary and Thomas Hjorth, Granddaughter of Bjorn Hjorth, Great Granddaughter of Eirik Hjorth all the way back to Leif Hjorth.” My voice trembles. The wolves watch and wait. “Bjorn has fallen, I have come to take his place, your aid in the hunt for Sol and Mani.” I take the knife and cut into my hand again. The wolves visibly sniff the air. 

I wait.

The only sound is the breathing of the gigantic beasts.

As one, they dip their heads. The candles go out and I am left in darkness, the only light coming from my fallen flashlight down the corridor.

It’s done.

I collect my things and run through the house, closing every single door on my way through. I am outside, breathing in the wet forest air before it hits me that the wolves accepted me. I am the new guardian. I laugh, a desperate high pitched sound. I did it.

“Well done, lass,”

I almost leap out of my skin. There, in one of the old rocking chairs on the rotting porch, sits an old man. The wide-brimmed hat he wears obscures his face. But his faded eye patch and scraggily beard are easily visible.

“I’ve seen men who claimed to be brave take far longer than that to complete the ritual.” The man gestures to the empty chair. “Come, let me look at you, I make a point of looking at all of my guardians.”

Saying nothing, I do as he asks and come to stand before him. He gestures to the chair again and I sit. He stares at me.

“Hm,” he says after what feels like an age. “Not much to you physically, but then your family has always been scrawny.” He leans forward and lifts the eye patch. Light shines out from underneath it, so bright that I flinch back and shield my eyes. “Ahh, yes,” he releases the patch, and it snaps back into place. The light is gone. “That’s more like it, yes, you’ll do.”

“Thank you,” I say. My throat is dry, so dry that my words tear like sandpaper. The man opposite laughs at me.

“You remind me of him,” he says. “Leif had more of Loki in him than Thor.” I frown.

“Leif, my ancestor, Leif?” I swallow, trying desperately to wet my throat. The man opposite nods.

“Yes, he was a scrawny runt, but smart, smart enough to create this for me.” He leans back and thumps the wall of the house.

“He made the house for you?” I say. “I thought he made it for the wolves?” the man leans back and all but roars with laughter.

“You think they asked him for their cage?” he manages after a time. “No, he made this for me. He wanted to prove himself, begged for a challenge. I gave him one I thought no mortal would succeed at.” The man looks around, then reaches behind him and pulls a long walking stick from where it leans against the wall. As he pulls it into the light, I realise it is a spear. He uses it to poke at my bag. I flail and almost fall from my chair, light, trying to get into the bag to pull out the mead bottle my grandfather had told me must always remain in the bag. For emergencies, he had said.

The bottle is old, but the mead has never gone bad. Usually mead will only last a short time once opened, but this one, this one was always good.

“Ahh,” the man takes the bottle from me, opens it and takes a long sip. “I will miss this when it is gone.” I say nothing. “I gave this to Leif, on successful completion of his task.”

“Yes, sir,” I nod.

“I never thought he’d actually do it,” the man looks up at the house. He laughs again suddenly. “Maybe one day I will tell you the story of how a mortal man pulled them from the sky and convinced the great wolves that Sol and Mani race through the halls of this house.”

“I’d like that,” I say. The man raises an eyebrow at me.

“You earn that story,” he said, his tone heavy. “But I have faith that you will.” I bow my head.

When I lift my eyes, the All Father is gone, and I am alone. Sitting on the porch of a rotting old house that is all that stands between the gods and Ragnarok.