• The haunting notes pierced the night like a spear through the veil of silence. The wolf’s howl. I had heard it many times before, but all alone in this dark landscape it was chilling. It reflected my loneliness and made me stop and listen. The moon shone upon the forrest like daylight. The branch I had been wrestling to break from the tree bounced up and down silently, almost mocking my efforts. I sighed, they hadn’t even given me a knife.
    There were two cabins. One was down in the valley, and one was higher up. Me and a group of friends had been spending the weekend in the smaller cabin in the lower part of the valley. They said the bigger cabin was haunted, nobody ever went up there. Big creek cabin they called it. Though it was better insulated, we had chosen to spend our nights huddled together in the small cabin because we didn't dare go into the big cabin after dark, which was most of the day up here in Alaska. But every year, the truth or dare game was started, and someone would be dared to spend the night alone in the big cabin. Most of the time they would come whimpering back to our door by nine, asking to be let back in. Needless to say, I had been dared this year. I was determined to stay up here all night, even if I never went to sleep. The only problem was that the door did not latch, so I was trying to break off a branch to jam the door shut.
    All of the sudden I caught something move from the corner of my eye. It was large. Turning sharply I saw a set of glowing dots in the dark. Eyes. A creature was watching my every move. As I watched with awe and stiff fear, the eyes moved out of the shadows and revealed, by the moonlight, a wolf with silver fur. It watched me in silence for a moment with it’s dark eyes, then turned and loped away through the trees, making no sound.
    I wondered wether it was alone. How long had it been standing there before I saw it? It unnerved me to think that I was unaware of many things watching me right now. The sight of the wolf standing in the moonlight was beautiful, yet scary, for it was so close. The icicles shimmered on the edge of the roof as I stepped cautiously back in the cabin, dreading the horrors that my imagination would cook up.
    Sitting in the cold cabin I started at every little noise. I imagined transparent figures rising from the floor, things moving by themselves, and floating heads. But one sound I did not imagine, footsteps. They slowly came closer, it sounded as if there were lots of people coming towards the door. There was a pause. I couldn't take it anymore and screamed, running for my life out the door, and ran smack into a big black creature. Thinking it was death itself, I kept shrieking until I registered that death probably didn’t wear a fluffy down coat. I scrambled to my feet and stumbled back a few steps. It was one of my friends who had come to check on me.
    “Geeze! Is it that bad in there?” she asked, exasperated. I just simply started laughing helplessly.
    She decided to stay with me in the cabin as long as we could stand, but our nerve broke at ten and we went scampering back to the small cabin. Through the years we held the record of the longest stay in that cabin. Ever-after there was a story that went with it. The reason nobody went up there. The wolf of big creek cabin.