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Water Wolf

by Kassandra Montag

About the Author: Kassandra Montag has an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Creighton University. She has won the Plainsongs Award and New Year’s Poet Award. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Briar Cliff Review, Midwestern Gothic, Midwest Quarterly and other literary journals. She lives in Omaha with her husband and son.

Excerpt

Legend had it that two children went into the forest and never came back. Florence Agnor was familiar with the story from her books, but she didn’t like the tale being told on the streets or in the shops of Whitefish, as she clung to her mother’s hand, eyeing the rock candy jar.

The De Smit family owned a wheat farm next to the Agnors’ sheep ranch in Flathead County, Montana. In April of ’52, two of the De Smit children disappeared into the forest, on an errand to pick bearberries, and never returned.

Part of the De Smit and Agnor land lay in a thin valley beneath a range of mountains, next to a forest, wherein a small river curled among the spruces and firs. The two children had wandered away from the house at mid-morning after chores of washing breakfast dishes, sweeping the front stoop, gathering eggs, and milking the cow. The De Smit parents weren’t alarmed that the children were gone for hours, they often disappeared to explore the hillside, ice-skate on the river or fish in it, build forts or pick fruit from neighbor’s trees. It wasn’t until that afternoon when the flash flood rose from the banks of the river, crawled beside the roots of trees through the forest, toward the wheatfields and sheep pastures that panic rose among the De Smits and they contacted the police to help them find the children.

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