Back home, we knew well enough to be wary of the weather. Our little corner of the world was as windy as they come and we regularly had to hunker down and wait for the worst storms to pass. The adults talked about the wind up there like it was alive - don’t let the Howler catch you, they would say, over and over so that we wouldn’t forget. And it did howl. It whipped around the mountaintops and got into the caves and you could hear that wind for miles around, screaming like a banshee and making you all the more grateful to be locked up, safe and warm in your house.
As we got older and and our rebellious cynicism awakened we cared less for the warnings and more for the prospects of drinking up in the woods and fields outside town, if and when we could persuade someone who at least looked old enough to buy us a few cans. None of us could pass for adults but there were a few we knew we could ask if we saw them. Most of the time we’d hand them over the money and they’d pick up two four packs for us and take one for themselves then leave us to it. Sometimes they’d take a couple. One time, a guy took our money and just kept walking because he knew there was very little a trio of underage drinkers could do about that. I mean, who could we have complained to? But for the most part, we would be indulged and we’d make our way up the backroads to whichever of our various haunts suited our needs at the time. On a rainy day we might have headed into one of the long-forgotten stone barns that still provided some cover or a spot in the surrounding woods where the pine trees were thickest and made for a natural roof. That sunny day, we were headed to the Fallow Field.
The Fallow Field was just far enough from town for us to drink without fear of being hassled by adults and close enough not to be a chore to get to. It lay between two hills we used to climb sometimes and that gave us a cascading, panoramic view of the streets we called home. We usually went up there as darkness approached so that we could watch the lights gradually plink on, from one side of the town to the other, as the sun retreated.
We didn’t know who owned the field we were now settling into but nobody ever cut its grass for hay, like they did in the surrounding fields. The grass was left long and was therefore ideal for us to nest in, mostly unseen to dog-walkers, while we cracked open our tins beneath the sun.
It was a glorious day, I remember. The sky was completely blue with not a single cloud to worry it, or us, as we sipped our beers and listened to music on the boombox. The boombox belonged to Alex, who was there with his brother Tom and that made three of us. There was a lot of great stuff coming out that year and that day, I’d brought a new tape - ‘Superunknown’ by Soundgarden and it was about as perfect a soundtrack as we could have wished for.
I remember noticing, at some point, that the rustling in trees at the edges of the field was getting louder. I remember realising it was colder, too, and that sky was turning quickly from that perfect azure to portentous grey. My friends didn’t seem to care but it made me nervous. It had been a few weeks since the last time the town had locked down so we were due a Howler. I suggested we head back but they didn’t want to. We hadn’t finished the beers. And how dangerous could wind be, anyway, in the middle of an open field?
A little later, the wind was still rising fast. The boys seemed to enjoy how dramatic and exciting it was and perhaps a part of them felt like they were sticking it to the man by sitting there in that field as the Howler drew in around us. For years we’d heeded the warnings and now, emboldened by hormones and alcohol, they were going to ignore all they’d been told and do whatever they wanted. Fuck the Howler, I’m sure I remember one of them saying. They were standing with their arms up to the sky, their coats and hair blowing madly around them, inviting the storm to come, willing it to do its worst. I hadn’t drunk enough to share their enthusiasm. I was getting more scared by the second. The force of the gale seemed to grow with every gust as if it was some living thing that warranted a name after all and it was angry at the boys’ indifference to its power.
There was a moment of dreadful stillness as the wind suddenly stopped. From the direction of the mountains to the north, we heard it coming. This was it. The storm was finally living up to the name it was now screaming down upon us from on high. The Howler was here.
In all my years living there I’d never once been outside when it had hit the town. To hear it then and know that I was at its mercy terrified me and I knew we had made a terrible mistake. I remember yanking on their arms to get them to come with me, back to the safety of a building, any building, but they were laughing at me and laughing at the wind as it carried on screaming down from the mountains. I was too scared to stay and too scared to go. I knew it wasn’t safe in the field and it wasn’t safe to travel, either, especially on foot. Especially by myself.
Then I noticed it. Somewhere within the howling and the whistling and the screaming of the wind as it tried to uproot trees and flatten the hills at either side of our little party, there was something else. Something of a different pitch that came alongside the wind, disharmonious and off-key. I heard it in the wind and I saw it in the sky. There was something up there, heading towards us from the direction of the mountains. A big bird whose nest had been reduced to twigs, I’d thought at first, or a bat blown from its roost in a cave.
I grabbed the arm closest to me - Tom’s - and pointed . He squinted and said something I couldn’t hear over the wind. His brother, I noticed, now saw it too and I watched the colour drain from both of their faces, their expressions of bemusement turning to dread before my eyes.
I looked back at the thing in the sky and felt the colour drain from my own face as I saw the impossible. It was a person, or something like it. It had a long robe or a dress that whipped and billowed around its body. Its arms were outstretched on either side, like it was nailed to an invisible cross. The dress was, as best I can remember, dark green, as was its hair. I couldn’t see its face because of the hair that draped down in front of it but that didn’t make sense because the wind should have been blowing it all over the place. It was like her head was in the eye of a tornado but the rest of her was dancing in the wind. The sleeves of the robe-thing she wore were snapping violently around her outstretched arms to reveal their awful whiteness. Those arms were not a shade that I’ve ever seen on the flesh of a human being. They were snow and bone and moon.
Her hair moved then, standing slowly up above her head like seaweed as if on command. It revealed a silvery thing that must have been its face but I only caught a glimpse before I turned and ran from her, understanding now that the Howler was not a storm and that it was coming after us.
I was the fastest - I’d proven it countless times - but I was too scared to go ahead so we ran in a ragged line. The wind continued to howl and so did she. I didn’t dare look back because the awful sound she was making was getting louder, which meant she was gaining on us. I didn’t look to the boys on my right, I looked ahead, focusing on the gate at the edge of the field that lead out onto the road home.
By the time I reached it I thought I was going to puke my lungs up but I did reach it. I didn’t slow down for a heartbeat. I grabbed the top of the gate with both hands and side-vaulted it. Something smashed against the gate behind me and I heard a thump and a yelp and I turned back to see Tom getting up off the ground. As he did, the wind all but stopped and that dreadful stillness returned. We were no longer being pursued, it seemed. There was nobody behind us at all. Alex was gone.
I remember my dad hugging me very tightly when Tom and I bumped into him on the way through the streets. He was with Tom and Alex’s dad. They’d come looking for us. I remember Tom’s dad asking where Alex was and Tom just crying. We were all crying then but Tom and Alex’s dad cried the hardest.
My home town is a little bigger now but it’ll always be small and news will always travel fast, just as it did back then. Tom and I weren’t blamed, not really. We were only kids, after all, although his dad didn’t really speak to me again after that day. I grew to understand that they knew what had happened. All the adults knew. I wondered why they’d never told us the truth but I came to understand that, too. If you want your kids to be safe, you tell them about the danger that seems the most real because they’ll stop believing in the boogeyman eventually. Even real danger doesn’t phase a child who thinks they know better and let’s face it - most of them do.
My dad and I never spoke of it again. He knew he didn’t need to warn me anymore and I sure as hell wasn’t going back up to the Fallow Field come wind, rain or shine. I still haven’t been back up there, even as an adult.
I spoke to him on the phone the other day and he told me there had been some trouble. You know how savage the winds are up here, he said. I asked if anyone died and he was silent for a few seconds then said yes, a little girl got caught out in it. The family were new to town, didn’t know the risks, as much as people had tried to warn them. In my gut I knew but I asked my dad what had happened to the girl anyway, hoping that, at least, it had been something quick. He didn’t elaborate much.
The Howler took her, he said.