Free Wolfwraith by John Bushore Page B

damn good shots in these parts—but no one ever hit it. Eventually, they began to believe it probably wasn’t a wolf after all, but ‘you know who’ in animal form. My grandmother called it a ‘wolfwraith.’”
    “Quite a story,” Shadow said.
    “Yep.” Jonesy was quiet for a while and Shadow thought he was done with the story, but then he asked, “Since you lived here, you ever find a light or appliance turned on that you were sure you had turned off, or had things disappear on you, just to show up another place?”
    Shadow took his last bite of chocolate. “Sure I misplace things sometimes, but who doesn’t?”
    “Have you noticed that sometimes the lights in the environmental building or the boathouse turn on in the night, with no one around? And you might leave your car locked but, when you get in the next morning, your things have been moved around. Or you turn on the key and the radio and heater are set on full blast?”
    “Yeah.” Shadow grinned. “That happened to me a couple of times, but I sort of figured it was you, messing with me.” He crinkled the empty candy wrapper into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder into the rear seat.
    Jonesy looked over, with a deadpan expression. “Wasn’t me. Maybe it was ‘her.’ I’ve had a quite a few things happen around the Taj Mahal. She was supposed to be an evil old woman, but nothing real bad has ever happened—at least not since I’ve been staying in Wash Woods. Just pranks. Back then, she was supposed to have soured cow’s milk, made litters of piglets stillborn, given children the colic—stuff like that. Maybe it’s all she’s good at. Anyhoo, I’m surprised you haven’t had things happening, like me—you living in Wash Woods, too, so close to me. What her grave would have to do with old False Cape Frank, I have no idea.”
    They talked for a while longer, but Shadow learned nothing more about False Cape Frank. Jonesy rambled on, telling the history of the park, although Shadow knew most of it already. The Parks Commission had acquired the land below Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge in the early sixties. The original intention for False Cape State Park was as a major tourist attraction because it was so near Virginia Beach. The state had planned to build a two-lane road through the wildlife refuge to provide access for hundreds of visitors daily. However, the federal government refused to allow the road through the refuge, and Virginia ended up with a remote park that very few people visited.
    When Shadow’s truck came alongside the refuge headquarters, he drove over a passage in the dunes, raising an access barrier with an electronic key. The gate was there to keep unauthorized vehicles off the beach. On the other side of the dunes, they drove past the headquarters building, where the paved road coming from town ended. Soon they were at the maintenance compound, where False Cape Park had been granted permission to erect a large hangar-type building within the enclosure to store gasoline and maintain their vehicles.
    The two men entered the hangar through a small door next to the large, closed roll-up door. An old, olive drab bus stood parked along one wall and two of the park’s pick-up trucks were on the far side, with their hoods up. The hybrid vehicle in the center dominated the garage. It was a huge all-wheel-drive truck with a boxy, covered passenger compartment for twenty people. The box sat so high that a retractable ladder was necessary to get aboard. School bus yellow with a black stripe, its large, fender-less tires were as wide as they were tall to provide traction over mud and even the softest sand. The Terra-Gator had been developed with funds from a government grant to solve the problem of wintertime access to the state park, when the federal refuge’s interior roads were closed to avoid disturbing over-wintering waterfowl. Its motor was running with a quiet hum and Shadow noticed that an exhaust hose carried the