He used to run around the moors after dark. Picking up pace across poorly tended trails in just the light of his head-torch. He thought of nothing those nights. Seeing, no one. Hearing, no one. Whenever the fog fell, he would see the wolf. He would turn his lamp to its lowest setting to reduce the blinding effect it had if he kept it on its highest beam. And he followed it. The shifting shape of the wolf would move in and out of sight, always making its slow deliberate strides ahead of him - fifty paces away.

He knew the wolf was there to be followed. He would get his bearing on it and go after it - he could move slowly, it was not in a rush. Even when he ran faster on a trail he was more confident of, they would always maintain their fifty paces. Eventually a run without the fog grew to feel like a waste. Whenever it fell he would pursue the wolf until it lifted. There was no compulsion, and no frustration at being led away from some planned route.

That night he rushed through dinner because he could see from the kitchen window the fog already descending on the moor. The wolf was already out there - waiting. Dinner was salty, it always was. He ate fast, too fast. His stomach was protesting violently as he drove up to the lay-by where he always parked. As he pulled up he could see it sprinting through the brush as he drove alongside it. He glimpsed its eyes for the first time. The car came to a halt, he reached over and grabbed his head-torch out of the glovebox, snatched his running pack off the back seat and set off after it.

It was thick ahead of him, but the beast was vivid. Its eyes flashed brightly as it made its sharp turns. It slowed, and before he noticed it was now just twenty paces ahead of him. Ten. It turned and faced him. It strode closer and the man froze. This wolf was no friend, was it. It was very much a wolf, a curtain-closing foe.

The man was no runner, less so in the fog. He remained still and prayed for no mercy, since none would arrive. The wolf savaged him. The next twenty minutes of his life were just two. All flashes of red and white. He'd nearly drowned once swimming in the ocean during a storm. This felt a little like that. Exactly like that, he kept gasping and then holding his breath for as long as he could. Coming up he clawed for air again. He supposed he cried out at one point, but there was no way of knowing, the wolfs wild jerks and cries of delight drowned out everything else. The flashes slowed, then stopped altogether. A screaming chaos rang in his ears as he lay, watching the stars above him. The fog had cleared entirely.

Left alone he closed his eyes. He searched for some rest but it had long delays. When it eventually arrived it was was dark, empty and complete. Thankfully it was also brief. When this rest ended, the agony began in earnest.

He awoke and regarded himself in his hospital bed. He was a new man. His right hand was bandaged entirely, but he could sense at least three fewer fingers were available. His right leg, likewise, had been irreparably hacked at. He was wildly surprised to see it still attached. The medical staff had certainly been far more optimistic than he'd have been.

He was thirsty, desperately thirsty. Rising in his bed he set about to shimmy himself upwards with his hands. Fortunately he paused, and used his right elbow instead. There were no good options. As he dragged his body up he regarded his right leg - while motionless it had felt as though he were next to a radiator that was far too hot, or that he'd dropped a big mug of tea on himself. Now he'd moved he was in a petro-chemical disaster, he was some naked napalm victim, he'd fallen fleeing a bushfire. It all subsided again as he returned to a halt. He reached out left and grabbed the bottle of water that had been left for him. If he had imagined it to be one of his siblings to have left the bottle for him, he couldn't have chosen who it would have been. But this possibility hadn't even crossed his mind until she walked in.

He heard her walking down the corridor, a brother always knows his sisters cadence. It was long and slow. He'd grown used to waiting. Anywhere a path had diverged during his childhood they'd lose her. Cara would not be hurried. After the accustomed eternity she walked in.
"And how did this happen then?"
He paused. Not that it mattered.
"How on earth did you burn your leg like that? and that hand - it's bizarre, James".
That's what happens when you walk so slowly you see, you arrive in a room and find everyone waiting for you. So of course they are all ready to listen to you.
"Do you know how much of your other leg and arse they are going to use for grafts? What happened? Were you camping or something? No, you didn't have any stuff with you. Up on the moors - right?
I knew this girl once, she'd burnt her own thumb on the hob at home, just held it there and watched it blister and blacken. Do you remember that? Did they section her? Anyway that's not relevant really is it."
Cara always spoke like she was making up for the time she'd lost in transit.
She asked -
"I haven't called Sam yet - should I?"
She took a long gulp of his water. Or was it hers.
"No, we needn't bother her with this, you know how she'd get. And besides - look at you - you'll soon be back at it! These things don't take long."

He was hardly listening. He was looking at a dark spot on his leg, just below the knee. The spot was spreading but he could feel whatever was weeping from it calmly being absorbed by the bandage. It would last a while longer. She was there in his mind when he needed her, to rewrap the bandage. She should call Sam.

Too late.
"I'll be back as soon as I can, but it won't be tonight."
He missed most of her evening plans, though they were offered in great detail. Covering for her boss in some capacity. The words "big opportunity" were uttered a number of times. She really had best be going.

The fog was descending again, outside and close. He watched it roll in until it completely covered the overgrown courtyard by his window. The fog brought to light and focus all those parts of the courtyard that had been completely invisible when it was all on display moments earlier.

"You'd best be going, Cara. You don't want to be late."

The next day they returned him to theatre, he emerged with more bandages, now covering some of his upper left thigh and a fair portion of his arse. She was right, they'd plastered him up properly. Supposedly there was no chance of recovery without a series of major grafts. He hadn't had much on him to offer to begin with, unable to be a very generous donor to himself, but they had confidence that the grafts were good and that the leg would improve.

The hand was done though, he wretched the first time he saw in unbandaged. The tip of his thumb was gone, a blackened nub where the nail used to start. His three middle fingers were almost down to the root. The index finger was the worst, it was practically in negative figures, having been properly chewed down below its own knuckle. His little finger required renaming, as it now towered above its rivals, unscathed. He wished it were gone also. If he'd asked would they have taken it too and used its skin for the grafts?

He had burns elsewhere, spotted all around. Every nurse and doctor looked at him with an extra wrinkle between their brows. A novel furrow for each of them as they wondered how someone could be burned quite as variably as he had been. It could certainly be explained if he told them about the wolf. 'Certainly' would be a stretch. He needed a way to explain what had happened.

He did know the girl that had burnt her thumb on the hob. He knew her quite well. He should call Sam.

He needed a way to explain what had happened. The truth was not an option. The story everyone had started to tell themselves and their faces was that he'd had a psychotic break and done it to himself. Cara was fuelling that narrative. She'd turned the ward into a Bazaar, and was selling that and other stories about her poor brother at every stall she could. God, she was loving it, morbid woman.

Early morning dog walkers had found him on the moor several hours after the attack. Enough time had passed that he could say whatever he wanted to about what had happened. Anything could have happened, and he didn't have to know who had done this to him. That was the job of the authorities - right.

"Last thing I remember was this little group of kids pulling up on mountain bikes. Probably stolen.
"They followed me, I tried to hop onto paths they couldn't track me on but it was all just so open. So they just kept on me.
"They mostly stayed about fifty paces behind me. I thought they were just trying to be intimidating, but I started to tire and they just sped up and jumped me.
"They hopped off the bikes, knocked me down and started spraying me all over with lighter fluid - but I don't really remember anything from there. It's just blank until I woke up here.
"My mind probably just logged everything that happened next and decided to get rid. Honestly I'm glad."
The officers took notes in their little flip books. He thought that odd. Ain't broke, he supposed.
"Did they say anything?"
"Just the standard - a lot of names I don't care to repeat. They sounded like local lads."
"Faces? Names?"
"There was a deep fog out there, I could only really hear them and the blur of their bike lights."
"Why were you out running in that weather?"
"I run in all weather."
"Fair enough. Do let us know if you recall anything new from that night."

A moment later he heard Cara call out after them and the accustomed pause as they waited for her to make her way down the corridor to them. Too far for their conversation to be anything other than muffled intrigue doubtless discrediting his own story. The next day he was discharged. Cara had been in with him just four times. She was only coming in to make matters worse for him, and to drink his water. He had never asked, and so Sam had never been called.

Five days had passed since he'd ran out into the fog. Five days since manufactured, bigoted teens had committed their phantom assault. Five days since the wolf had come closer than its fifty paces. Five days since it had stalked him, and left him with unaccountable burns where the punctured flesh of its great jaws should have been.

There was no fog as he left the ward and walked into bright daylight. It was far too clear, too open. No spotlight. How he hated days like this where he could see everything. His eyes darted across the carpark, rays flashing off bonnets, mirrors and the puddles from a recent rain. Across to the park over the way, a small woodland dripping green. To his left was the bus stop. He rushed over to it, hobbling over at Cara's pace. He sat down and checked the display for the 74B. Thirty eight minutes. He closed his eyes and waited.