Wild Things: Four Tales

WILD THINGS: FOUR TALES

From Douglas Clegg comes a special quartet of stories dealing with creatures of the wild – some are wolf, some bird, some the most terrifying of beasts: the human variety. Two of these tales – “The Wolf” and “The American” are previously unpublished.

“The Wolf” is the dark story of a wolf hunter who guides a younger man up a mountain to kill a wolf that has been slaughtering in the valley below.

“The American” takes place at a late-night cafe in Rome where foreigners gather. On this particular night a stranger steps out of the shadowy park to sit at the sidewalk tables and speak of love and murder.

In “A Madness of Starlings,” a father, teaching his children about protection from the predators of life, takes in a fledgling bird. But when it’s time for the bird to fly away, the forces of nature come undone and a secret wisdom and terror enter the mind of the one who understands the language of birds.

Finally, in “The Dark Game,” a war hero and his men are captured and taken into a prison camp. There, tortures and torments await them, but the man named Gordon Raglan begins to use a childhood game of escape to help him discover a way to hunt the wolves surrounding him.