The young man was so focused on the task at hand that he did not notice when an older man dressed in business attire entered the room, crossed to the desk and stopped directly behind him. Suddenly he whipped the paper away from the younger man’s grasp and stared down at the extremely lifelike sketch of a glacial waterfall as it cascaded into a crystal mountain lake. Circling the desk to glare down at his son, the man asked, “What is this?” When he received no answer, the man turned to face a marble fireplace and ripped the sketch into small pieces, before tossing into the roaring fire.

A muscle in the man’s jaw began twitching and his temporal pulse point pounded visibly. Slamming his hands down on the desktop, he leaned over and shouted at the young man, “What do you think you are doing?! Damn it Archibald! What have I told you about wasting your time with that foolishness?” The man moved to pace in front of the fireplace.

The young man looked up from the paper as it curled and burned, and facing his father, anger flashing in his eyes, said, “I enjoy drawing and I am good at it.”

The older man’s temper snapped with the fury of a Titan. Without warning he picked up a Ming dynasty vase off the mantle and threw it at Archibald, narrowly missing the younger man’s head. “Damn it, boy! No son of mine is going to waste his life drawing pictures!” He moved to the desk and with a sweeping motion, flung the entire contents onto the floor. “I have not worked hard all of my life to have you throw it away. I picked myself up from the gutter and have made myself into a leader in the business world. The whole town in named for me and you want to throw it all away!” The man walked around the desk and jerked Archibald out of the chair by the collar of his shirt and shouted into his face, “If I ever see you drawing again, you will regret it forever!” His anger spent, the older man dropped Archibald back into the chair and stormed from the room without another word.

Archibald sat staring into a fire and a timid young maid fearfully entered the room and began cleaning up the shards of priceless porcelain. As the room faded away the maid ventured too closely to the brooding Archibald and was backhanded for her trouble.

Susan stared at the young girl, crying as she scooped up more rubble, until she could no longer be seen. Turning to Emma she asked, “Where do we go from here?”

Emma replied, “We will go see your friend, John Milton Johnson’s death.”

Susan shuddered and gasped, “Please, not that. Anything, but that. Do you have to show it—couldn’t you just explain it?”

“If I just told you what happened, it wouldn’t have the same effect.”

Without another word, they were standing alongside a country road as the sun set. As they watched, John’s green pickup truck came rattling around a corner and country music could be heard playing loudly within the cab. Suddenly Archibald’s semi-transparent form could be seen standing on the edge of the blacktop. Slowly moving fully into the roadway, he shifted his appearance to that of a large wolf and became fully visible.