The Cynic and the Wolf by Julie Steimle (ebook voice reader TXT) 📕

Audry paled. That boy was probably Rick's friend. He was, after all, studying to be a policeman. People rescued by cops tended to want to become one.  

She peered over the list again. The list of deaths seemed more like a list of near misses rather than a list of crimes the Deacons had caused. Most of the deaths happened to people the Deacons claimed friendship to, or employees. It made her wonder what connection Deacon Gannon had with the Deacon family. It was more likely that he was Mr. Deacon the First's father.

However, one of the deaths on the list was blamed on Rick. The dead man's name was George Zeballos. And the site identified him as an SRA hunter. The incident also happened just two years ago, the summer before Audry had gone to the convention to get her permission form signed. It had a link to the SRA site connecting her to their version of the events along with other information.

According to the SRA site, George Zeballos had followed Rick Deacon into a 'black hole' and had gotten killed, just like with Rick's grandfather in Russia. They had no details on his death except that Mr. Zeballos's body was found in South Carolina and had to be identified using dental records as it was mostly decomposed with lime. And there was evidence that he had been attacked by wild animals. Teeth and claw marks were in some of the bone. The SRA claimed it was most likely a pack of werewolves that had killed him—a pack which, according to the site, had moved on and was no longer in the area.

But Audry went back to the other site for the alternate theory, which was more likely. It said a cult had murdered the man—as reported by a former manager of the Deacons' Alabama factory who had claimed to have seen it all. The factory was not far from the Alabama/Tennessee border, but that did not mean much. According to the former factory manager, Rick had fallen in with a pagan cult during a summer internship at the factory—how or why, the man did not say. There were claims that the factory boss had defied orders on how Rick's summer internship was supposed to go, and the boy had run off for a few days instead of following the new schedule.

Audry skimmed over the article. The facts were mostly fuzzy, based off of a police report written up, giving the testimony of the Alabama man alongside the things they had witnessed. The police's notes indicated the manager had a nervous breakdown, and the only thing they could verify about it was that both Rick and the manager were traumatized by the experience.

…H. Richard Deacon the Third was reported by the police to be 'disoriented, out of sorts, and exhibiting addictive behavior'. It should also be noted that his father, after that incident, had his son closely watched by trusted friends and colleagues while H. Richard Deacon was scheduled for therapy for addiction for the rest of the summer—verified in payroll records to a Pastor Cartwright. It is assumed that the cult had attempted to brainwash the young man using opiates and mind control. And as far as we know—though he regularly sees a therapist—most believe his addiction has been kicked or is under control.

Addiction? Audry had heard rumors to that effect, but she hadn't really believed it. But a backward cult had gotten hold of him… That was freaky.

Audry was about to close that website when her eyes caught on the link about the divorce. Curious on their take about the subject, she opened that one up.

And there it was. The story.

Audry scoured it.

There were two tales there. The first was the general story the writer believed. The second was the story the werewolf-believing kooks followed. And the gist was simple. Emmaline D. Richardson, the New York debutante who had married Howard the Second, had not been told the entire dark history of the family. And though she had moved into the manor house in Middleton Village, Massachusetts, and had lived the life of wealthy wife and matron of the Deacon legacy, she eventually had a nervous breakdown (which seemed common in connection to that family) when her son was around thirteen years old. The details about what pressures she was under were vague. But it was clear the trigger to her breakdown had to do with a wolf.

To this point, all the stories agreed. Where they disagreed was the nature of the wolf and what actually happened from here on.

According to the werewolf-kook legend, Rick himself had transformed into a wolf and had attacked his mother. But according to the writer, he believed the family must have owned a pet wolf which had not been allowed in the house. But Rick (who was a known hellion at that age and was not thinking) had snuck the wolf in as a prank, and it had surprised his mother. And she freaked out.

There were several facts to consider in the case. First, Mrs. Deacon did not have any claw marks or bites on her, so she could not prove a wolf had attacked her. However, there was no denial from the Deacons that she had not interacted with a wolf in that time period. Second, that Mrs. Deacon had been under a lot of pressure for years from the locals—specifically the Ladies Aid Society, of which she refused to become a member. She had written back letters to her parents about harassment from them, even calling them witches. After a while, her letters focused more on them being witches rather than on their cruelty, and it was surmised that she was becoming mentally unhinged. And third, when she had run back to New York, leaving her husband and son, she was saying that her son had turned into a wolf.

Another factor to consider was that it was rumored the Deacons owned an enormous collection of wolf artwork (much of which was depicted on the site) that hung on the walls of Deacon Manor in Massachusetts. The writer made note that in a house entirely full of such wolf art, it was possible that it mentally affected Mrs. Deacon to the point that she might have merely hallucinated the wolf attacking her.

Audry stared at some of the art replications they owned. There was Peter Paul Rubens's Paintings Wolf and Fox, Sergei Pankejeff's Freud’s Wolf Dream, The Dead Wolf by Jean Baptiste Audrey, a Jackson Pollock called The She-Wolf, Prince Ivan on the Gray Wolf, and a number of paintings she did not recognize as well as sculptures of Romulus and Remus suckling at the she wolf. She stared at the thumbnail of the Frederic Remington's 1909 painting, Moonlight, thinking about that first night when she saw the wolf in the snow. And Rick grew up with these paintings all over his walls.  

The other details the writer considered inconsequential, but he noted those details all the same for the sake of objectivity and to give the entire picture of the circumstances. It had been the full moon at the time. Her husband had been away on business and she was at home with only her son and their family's butler/driver. Also, after the presumed attack, she refused to see husband or son during the divorce at all, having night terrors over the incident almost nightly. And to top it off, Mr. Deacon granted her the right to divorce without contesting it, almost as if he felt guilty.

Of course Emmaline's parents had not believed her claim about her son turning into a wolf. It was ludicrous. However, instead of getting their daughter private therapy as they ought to have done, they sent her to a mental institution for full time care—which she promptly escaped from.

Audry stared at that one for a long time. Rick's mother had been harassed, lost her mind, divorced his father, left them both, was institutionalized, and then escaped the institution. And the site said that no one knew where she currently was, though Mr. Deacon was reported to have private investigators out searching for her. That's when she read the writer's speculations over what had happened to her.

Most likely, Emmaline D. Richardson Deacon is dead. The SRA speculates that she was killed by Mr. Deacon to silence her. Her son was not involved, according them, as it is clear her son is intensely sensitive to information about his mother, and blames himself for the divorce. But I believe something more mundane had occurred. She most likely lived on the streets for a while and was killed on the streets, either by a car accident or starvation—and she is one of the millions of Jane Does on New York homeless death records.

Audry felt sick reading that. Rick Deacon, the man she knew, did not tolerate any bad-mouthing toward his mother or any speculation about the divorce. She even had heard the rumor that he blamed himself. So maybe he had let a wolf into his house as a prank, and he was never able to take it back. Audry wondered if he thought his mother was living on the streets or was dead.

But thinking about his prank with the wolf reminded her of the rumor that the Deacons owned a pet wolf. It was such an unlawful thing keeping a wild animal as a pet. And yet, it made sense. Rich people were so eccentric. Some owned tigers and gorillas. A family obsessed with wolves was likely to keep one as a pet.

Maybe the wolf she had rescued was his pet wolf….

Audry drew in a breath. It made so much sense. No wonder he had that chicken set out each night. No wonder he worried about its safety.

Going into her computer files, Audry drew up the jpg containing her pictures of that wolf. She actually had three. In the low light, under the moonlight, she had been able to capture the wolf's image just well enough to see him. And one of the three images was perfectly striking.

The wolf was most unusual. In the generally colorless picture, she could just barely make out the color of the wolf's reddish hair. It looked like a common gray wolf. But as she stared at it, she could see its large number of scars which she had felt when she had bandaged it. There were a few scratches on his nose, newly crusted. His fur was a little wonky on the shoulder of his right front leg, and there was sign of an old bullet grazing one of his rear thighs. In fact, the more she looked at this picture, the more she realized it was the perfect picture of the endangered wolf.

He was so beautiful.

And the more she looked at the wolf, the more she thought it was one of the most beautiful wolves she had ever seen. Its stare was so intelligent, almost human like. Its eyes seemed to beg, 'please don't hurt me' yet not looking weak.

Taking it to Photoshop, Audry looked to see if she could enhance the color a little, just enough to bring out the colors her eyes had seen that night. It took a little tweaking, but she finally adjusted the picture so that it was perfect. She drew in a breath, staring at it. She saved the file, transferring it to her screen saver.

Once she closed all the files, Audry shut off her computer and went out to her car to get a few more things which she would need. Her Kindle, her leftovers from Mrs. Gruber's food package, and the ski equipment, which she wanted to clean and put away—as she had borrowed it from her brother. After finishing off the leftovers for lunch, she went out for a walk. She took the