The Healer by Sharon Sala Page B

Hicks said. “Now, if you don’t want a lot more of your friends to turn up dead, you’ll do what we say.”
    Jonah felt helpless. “Who are you? What do you want of me?”
    “You don’t get to ask the questions. Just start walking.”
    The wolves began to circle Jonah, moving around him in both directions, sniffing at his heels, trying to get between his legs to stop his motion.
    He stopped, then looked down at them and held out his hands. Their noses were cold, their tongues warm, as they all touched his hands, acknowledging him as one of their own.
    “Thank you, my brothers. Now go home. Go now.”
    Their anxiety over leaving him was palpable. They whined and snarled and yipped their displeasure.
    Hicks’s finger tightened perceptibly on the trigger.
    “Get rid of them now, or I swear to God I’ll shoot!”
    Tears were running down Jonah’s face. The pain in his heart was sharper than the gunshot had been. He looked up, staring long and hard at the back of the house—the house that had been his home—and thought of the man lying dead on the floor.
    Because of Jonah’s fear for the others in Snow Valley, his free will had been taken from him. He turned to the wolves.
    “Go!” he said sharply.
    Without a sound, they left as one, slipping back into the trees and disappearing.
    Jonah felt the eyes of the Snow Valley community on him as he began walking toward a bright blue helicopter next to Harve Dubois’s old black one.
    A neighbor came out of a house with a rifle in his hand, willing to come to Jonah’s aid, but when he stepped into sight, Hicks shoved his gun against Jonah’s head and screamed at the man.
    “Get back in the house, or I’ll blow his brains all over the ground.”
    The man hesitated.
    Jonah felt his kidnappers’ fears. They’d already killed and would do it again if they had to.
    “Go back,” he said. “Go back.”
    The man hesitated.
    Hicks fired one shot in the air, then jammed the gun so hard against Jonah’s head that he stumbled.
    Helpless against such a threat, the man lowered his rifle and stepped back inside. The rest of the population watched from their windows with their children held close. They watched as Jonah was forced into the waiting helicopter. As it lifted off, they ran out of their homes toward Adam’s house. When they found the doctor dead, they realized that, by doing nothing, they’d let their only other healer be taken away.
     
    Jonah’s legs twitched in his sleep as the dream carried him deeper into hell. In the living room, Hobo sensed the man’s distress and whined, then got up from his bed by the fireplace and lay down in front of Jonah’s door.
    In the next room, Luce tossed and turned, unable to find comfort in bed. Finally she got up. Dressed in sweatpants and an old T-shirt, she padded barefoot through the living room. Curious to see if the thunderstorm had passed, she opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch.
    Tonight, as sometimes happened after a storm passed, fog had settled over the mountain, muffling all but the nearest sounds. Droplets of moisture clung to her face and bare feet as she walked to the edge of the porch. The storm was over, but the threat she’d been living with for the past five months was still there. She shuddered as she wrapped her arms around herself and peered toward the barely visible trees, wondering if he was out there watching…waiting.
    Five months of living in constant fear was getting to her. Never knowing if when she came home he would finally be inside waiting for her. Wondering if she had the strength to fight for her life. And it would be a fight to the death for one of them, that she knew for sure. She wasn’t the kind of woman who gave up.
    It had all started with a note on her door. She’d come home from work to find it hanging from an old nail in one of the porch posts.
    I’m watching you.
    She’d taken the note to town with her the next day and shown it to the police chief. He’d