the wolf hour

The wolf hour is when you can hear the whispers.

It is when you can sense the movement of water.  It is when the wind carries sounds you cannot recognize just outside of your wall.  If the void had a sound, this would be it. You wonder if perhaps the void does carry sounds, but this you cannot know until you’ve been altered enough that you are no longer recognizable.  The only thoughts that matter occur during the wolf hour, and the thoughts are close, so close.

Almost as close as the scrapes.

The scrapes, sharp as nails beneath the muffled whispers.  The broken glass edge against rusty metal.  The shapes you cannot recognize.  During the wolf hour the pulsing in your ears is at its loudest.  If you don’t roll over right now and steady the beat of your heart you will die.  Your heart will beat too hard and too fast.  The throbbing in your ears will burst.  Most people die during the wolf hour.

Some of this story takes place during the wolf hour.

The above four paragraphs are the beginning to a story I wrote a little over a year ago. I post them not to discuss the story, which has its charms but never quite worked out as I wanted. Rather, I find myself thinking tonight of the concept of the wolf hour.

Our friend Wikipedia defines the hour of the wolf thusly: 

The hour of the wolf is the hour between night and dawn during which the wolf is said to lurk outside people's doors, usually cited as between 3 and 5 AM.

I prefer the term “wolf hour,” which I believe I came across in a Stephen King essay years ago. Damned if I remember exactly where or what the context was, but the phrase made complete sense to me and has stuck with me ever since. The wolf hour is the time of night where you feel the universe as it is, in all its vastness. It’s also an impossible time to lie to yourself—the core of your being, couched in the darkness, is exposed no matter how many blankets you pull over your head. Ever notice your heart beats differently that time of night? As if it could so easily stop. And should there be a few wolves just outside the door, they’d be glad to help.

My, what big teeth you have!

I am not a night owl. When the wolf hour rolls around—let’s say it starts at 3 a.m.—I’ve been asleep anywhere from 3-5 hours, usually closer to five. Often, though, I wake up when the wolf hour begins. Sometimes it is because I have to pee. Sometimes it is because of indigestion. Sometimes it is because of a dream, one too intense to continue sleeping. Sometimes it is simply because it is the wolf hour. I am awake, my fears exposed. I hear the wolves just outside the bedroom walls.

Last night there were two dreams. The first involved trying to help a friend rid their house of the spirit of their partner who was recently deceased. If you know me, in my waking life I don’t put credence into such things. But dreams play in a whole different reality. The spirit in this dream had turned malevolent, and I could feel myself losing the battle to drive it out. I also did not understand the forces that were operating around me and I got very scared. As the urn containing the ashes of the deceased fell off the mantle in front of me, I awoke in complete fear. My heart was racing, my whole chest hurt. I was sleeping on my side and one ear had plugged up (a problem I frequently have) and my insides felt as though they’d been wrenched out of their natural positions by a few inches. 

I rolled over and looked at the clock. It was 2:30, almost the wolf hour. I could hear, on the other side of the wall, the sound of the bathtub draining which meant my wife (who is a night owl) would soon be in bed. Slowly my breathing returned to normal and the pain went away. But I was wide awake. My wife came to bed and I wanted to cuddle but I was too twitchy, talk but I didn’t know what to say. I yearned for closeness, for union. I had been scared and wanted comfort. But I’ve never been able to ask for comfort and even after decades of marriage I have a hard time reading my wife in the dark. Soon she was asleep.

I tried to do the same and after an hour or so, I finally did. That’s when the second dream came. This dream is too personal to fully describe here—the wolf hour has no shame about ripping every last mask away to get to the fears—but I can say that it involved a humiliating rejection from my wife in which she was, literally, laughing at me. Such a scenario is fortunately far from reality in my waking life, but remember we are in the wolf hour and the rules are different. I awoke from this dream around 3:45. This time my heart was not racing and my chest did not hurt, but I felt completely crushed by an overwhelming sadness. The wolf hour is as much about sadness as fear, and on this night I’d run the gauntlet. I felt tiny, futile and alone.

Eventually I fell asleep once more and whatever dreams then happened did not stick around to my waking hours. I awoke to daylight and the sound of the water cycling through the fish tank that sits at my bedside. Funny thing, the sound of that water: during the wolf hour it is sharp and dissonant, like knives clattering to the pavement. In the morning hours it gentle and melodic. Yet it was the same water. Except that it really wasn’t, was it? Things change during the wolf hour. Different notes are played. Molecules move. Somewhere above stars are born and stars die. We spend all of our waking hours ignoring this so we can live our little lives. The wolf hour then comes around to remind us.

I find it remarkable that on a night like last night the feelings of fear and sadness, of being lost and being alone, are so powerful that I can still touch them the next day. Of course, it is like touching an object that lies covered. There is a barrier there and no way to quite remember just how intense it really felt. Such barriers keep us all sane, allow life to go on, same as it ever was.

But there will once more come a night when the wolves are hungry. That they are there never entirely leaves the mind. It shadows everything you do. Life is what you make of it…as long as you keep the wolves fed.