Wolfsbane

by William W. Johnstone

“Things been seen, Eddie. You know what I mean. Just lak that tourist seen today.”

  Eddie fought back the rising fear in him. It was far too early for the swamp men to appear; they always came out in October. Ever since . . . He willed his mind not to remember that night. His mind refused to obey. They had been seen ever since that early morning so many years ago.

  “Where you hear all dis talk?” he asked his wife.

  She sulled up, refusing to look at him or reply.

  “Come on, Jenny—you tale me, now. Hear?”

  “Annie Metrejean,” she mumbled.

  “Aw, shit!” Eddie turned away. “I tole you and tole you to stay the hell away from dat woman. She’s crazyl”

  “Is she, Eddie?” Her eyes were serious. “Eddie, I’m scared. Papa was wit you men in turdy-four. Where is he? Why ain’t he been around lak he usually do? How come we ain’t seen him in three, four days?”

  He put his arms around her and patted her trembling shoulder. “I’ll ride out to his place in the morning, Jenny. Check on the old man. He’s awrat. Probably fishin’, is all.”

  “Annie Metrejean says bad tings gonna happen in Ducros . . . soon. Says they alratty begun in some ways.”

  “Jenny,” he said, holding her close, hoping his own fear would not transmit itself to her. “I want you to stay ’way from Annie. She’s gittin’ you all worked up ’bout nuttin’. But he seriously doubted his own words. Madame Bauterre had said she would be back, and she would have her revenge. He pushed that thought from him. ”Annie is jist as bad—in her own way—as them damn Bauterres was.”

  “Non!” She pulled away from him, spitting the denial at him. “She’s rat and you know it. She sees and hears tings we don’t. Everbody knows that. You know well as me who tole Sheriff Cargol ’bout Claude Bauterre. Annie Metrejean did. Said he wasn’t no bad person. Said the sheriff was pickin’ on the wrong person. And she was rat, wasn’t she?” she glared at her husband.

  “I don know, Jenny. I don know what to believe no more. I don know whether the old ways was rat or not. I don know whether Annie is a sorcière or not. She ain’t lak us, I know ’at much. Prowls the bayous at night; goes into places wit her pirogue where big men won go. Believes in the old ways; won turn loose.”

  “She says the roo-garous are walking.”

  Eddie lost his .temper. “Goddamnit, Jenny! There ain’t no such creature as a roo-garou. Doc Lormand said Claude Bauterre had a disease. Can’t pronounce the name of it. Don ’member it. Don wanna ’member it.”

  “If old Claude Bauterre had a disease, and wasn’t no roo-garou, how come you men—my papa wit you—shoot the man more’un fifty time? Burn his body? Seal him in a steel box? Burry him in tree, four feet of cement?”

  “ ’Cause we was stupid, Jenny! Me, you poppa, and the priest, too. We was clingin’ to ways that never were true and ain’t true now.” He shook her like a child. “Jenny, listen to me: there ain’t no such ting as a gris-gris. No such ting as a spirit man that roams the bayous. And they ain’t no such ting as a roo-garou.”

  She stubbornly shook her head. “You said you seen him change from a beast, Eddie. You been lyin’ to me all these years?”

  “Non, Jenny,” he said softly. He wanted desperately to believe his own words. “But Doc Lormand said sometimes men who have this disease can really look lak a beast. Jist lak Trahan’s dog-boy! Act lak one, too. Claude Bauterre was sick in the body and in his head. And we—all of us—was drinkin’ at night. To hep our courage. Bauterre—or somebody,” he said, a sickness welling up within him. “had killed the sheriff and been prowlin’ the bayous for years. Maybe kilt tree, four others, too. Can’t be sure. But our . . . emotions was runnin’ high and hot; makes men do and see funny tings. ”

  “I believe the priest, Eddie. Father Huval wasn’t wrong. He said this has happen before, here and in other places, too. Maybe we oughtta talk to the priest, Eddie. Talk to young Father Huval. Maybe his cousin tell him someting ’bout what happen ’fore he died?”

  Eddie shook his head. “Old Father Huval din tale his cousin nuttin ’bout that night and followin’ day, Jenny. I know that.” He walked to the door.

  “Where you goin’, Eddie?”

  “To pick up LeJeune and Bares. I got to see someting wit my eyes. After that, the tree of us will ride out to see ’bout your poppa.”

  Eddie picked up Tony LeJeune and Frank Bares. They drove to Claude Bauterre’s crypt. There, they all saw something. They looked in horror at something: Claude Bauterre’s ashes were gone. The steel box that had contained them was broken open.

  But what chilled them all and paled their faces was the crypt: it looked as though it had not been broken into, but out of.

  They drove into the country, to the house where Jenny’s father lived. The house was dark. Frank Bares crossed himself just before Eddie pushed open the door. Tony LeJeune uttered a sick, choking sound as Eddie flipped on the lights and the harshness of what lay on the floor filled the men’s eyes.

  The old man was naked, and stiff with death. The body was as white as a first fall of snow. There were bite marks on his neck, on both sides, and there appeared to be not a drop of blood left in him. His eyes were wide with the shock of horrible death.

  “Eddie . . .” Bares said.

  “Shut up! Eddie warned him. ”Don say it. I can’t let Jenny see the old man lak this. Perverts attack him; did this. Nothing else.”

  “Bauterre . . .” Bares said.

  “Bauterre is dead! Vandals broke into his grave and took the ashes. People that was sick in the head. Kids maybe.”

  “She said we’d all pay,” LeJeune said, his face pale under his heavy tan. “Victoria Bauterre said we’d all pay for killing her husband.”

  Eddie shook his head. “No. Madmen did this. Not a roo-garou. They don exist. You, Bares . . . spill a little coal oil around the heater and set it afire. Better that way. The old man jist burned up; careless. Don nobody have to know nuttin else ’bout it.”

  “We ought to tell the others, Eddie.”

  Guilbeau shook his head. “Maybe . . . if someting else happens. But there ain’t gonna be nuttin else happen. And what we seen here tonight stays wit us.” His eyes touched the other men. “Rat?”

  They slowly shook their heads in agreement, Bares adding, “Unless someting else happen, Eddie.”

  “Don even tink it.”

  Outside, a faint howling came from the dark bayou.

  Bares crossed himself.

  Chapter Two

  Switzerland

  Janette Bauterre Simmons threw back the covers, almost savagely kicking them from her. This was the third morning in a row she had awakened in such a manner; hideous nightmares filling her sleep. Monsters, hairy beasts with animal-like faces, dripping fangs and red-rimmed eyes.

  Was it a premonition of some sort? A deadly warning? Janette discounted that. She did not believe in such things. Anyone who believed in the supernatural was a fool.

  She rose from the bed, slipped into a robe, and walked to the windows of the chalet, nestled in the great mountains, shaking sleep from her as she walked.

  Gazing out the window, down into the valley, she felt a stirring within her. Not a sexual urging, but more a dark feeling of foreboding that she could not understand. This should be a nice vacation, away from her children, with their grandparents in St. Louis. But so far it had been a dismal flop.

  Five years since Lyle was killed in that stupid car accident, she thought, her breath fogging the pane. Five years. And I have been without a man all that time, she reminded herself.

  Not that there hadn’t been hundreds of opportunities, for she knew she was a beautiful woman, but Lyle had been the type of man not easily replaced.

  I’ve got to get my life back in order, she thought. There has been entirely too much grief, too much aloneness. I’ve pretended it was sorrow for the last two years . . . but that’s not really true: I think I’m afraid to get involved with another man.

 
; She had her bath, dressed, and took breakfast in her room, as was her custom. The tourists were descending upon the land like droves of locust, and Janette did not feel like sharing in their sometimes too-loud mirth.

  The memory of the nightmares stayed with her all morning.

  On impulse, she placed a call to her grandmother in Paris.

  “Je regrette, but Madame Bauterre has gone for the summer. ”

  “Gone? Where”

  “Louisiana. The United States.”

  “I know Louisiana is in the United States!” Janette was short with the servant. She was in mild shock. Victoria Bauterre, in her ninetieth year, seldom left the villa outside Paris. And she vehemently hated Louisiana—even though her property holdings in that state were considerable. Janette knew her grandmother had not been back to Louisiana in years. “When did she leave?”

  “Ten days ago.”

  “Did she leave any messages for me?”

  “Oui, Madame. Said to tell you to enjoy your vacation. And do not come to Louisiana.”

  “Do not?”

  “Those were her instructions.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Madame Bauterre said her business there was unfinished from years ago. Something, she said, that must be attended to immediately.”

  “Did she say what business?”

  “Non.”

  “Have my rooms ready for me,” Janette instructed. “I will be in Paris tomorrow. The mid-afternoon flight. Have someone meet me.”

  “You and your husband may take the rest of the day off,” Janette instructed the maid and the caretaker. “And tomorrow as well. I want the house cleared. Instruct the guards to allow no one on the grounds. Do you understand? No one!”

  “Is Madame certain? I mean . . .”

  “Madame is certain.” Janette dug in her purse and handed the startled woman a fistful of francs. “A bonus. Enjoy yourself.”

  The servant giggled nervously. “Oui, Madame. We shall do that.”

  An hour later, the huge villa still and silent in the late afternoon, Janette glanced out the window of the hall. The guards had closed the gates. She glanced upward: the sky was growing dark, a storm approaching.

  On the flight to Orly International, Janette had dozed, and the nightmares had touched her . . . as they did everytime she closed her eyes of late. But this time it had something to do with her grand’mère . . . and the old villa outside Paris. And there was a huge, beautiful old antebellum home, with a sluggish stream running beside it. The nightmare had been jumbled and confused, but one scene stood out from all the rest: there was something in her grand’mère’s rooms that was the key.

  And Janette intended to find the key that would unlock the door to her nightmares and end them.

  Sylvia, the haughty English housekeeper, had gone with Madame Bauterre to Louisiana. But Janette knew where she kept the ring of master keys.

  The weather turned nasty in the French countryside, dark clouds moving closer to the earth, lashing the estate with heavy rain, the lights occasionally flickering off and on.

  “Nightmares, now this,” Janette muttered as she walked the dimly lit hall to her grandmother’s suite of rooms. She inserted the key into the old lock, and the door swung open.

  For half an hour she prowled the rooms, finding nothing. Everything in the rooms was something familiar to her. Naturally. She had been in these rooms hundreds—perhaps thousands—of times since she was a little girl. She had spent her summers in this villa.

  She looked through her grand’mère’s desk, feeling very much like an intruder as she did so, for she knew Victoria Bauterre would not approve of this. But something, she remembered, had been troubling the old lady for some time, and she had been sharp with Janette when her granddaughter had questioned her about it. Refused, rudely (which was not like her) to discuss it.

  Janette went on vacation not only in an attempt to solve her own personal problems, but to get away from Victoria’s testy mood.

  There was nothing of interest in the old desk. Janette slammed her hand on the desk in frustration. A second after her palm struck the desk—hurting her hand—she heard an almost inaudible click. A small drawer, built into what Janette had always thought a solid front on the left side, slowly crept open. She looked at the drawer, closed it, then struck the desk once more, in exactly the same spot. The click was heard, the drawer slid out.

  “Cute,” Janette muttered. “Very cute.”

  The drawer contained two books, leather-bound. They both looked very old. She picked one up and found it was a diary, the letter “C” embossed on the old leather. She opened it up at random and began to read. The date was 1816, the writing in French.

  “. . . I have been discovered. But should that come as any surprise? I think not. Just as they discovered the devil’s curse of our ancestors in France, so too, would they here in this malaria-infested cesspool . . .”

  Janette turned back a few pages to find the location. Louisiana. Ducros Parish.

  “. . . So, rather than allow the rabble in the village to have their way with me, I shall drink the potion she has prepared for me and sleep for a time. I shall have a proper Mass said for me. How interesting it shall be to hear my own eulogy spoken . . .”

  “What the hell is he talking about?” Janette muttered, her voice just audible over the pounding of the rain.

  She skipped forward a number of pages. Ducros Parish. 1892.

  “Such a dismal lot of fools my grandfather led us into. Ignorant louts all. Ah, well. As my father was discovered, and, I’m certain, all our ancestors, so, too, have I. So, as my father did, I will drink the potion she has prepared for me and take my leave. To rest for a time. But someday we shall all rise, if not to correct this gross injustice done to us all, perhaps simply to sit on the side of the crypt and chat. And howl . . .”

  “Boy,” Janette muttered. “Have I got a bunch of yo-yos in my background. Sit on the side of the crypt and chat and howl? Good God!”

  She turned a few more pages. Everything was still in Ducros Parish, and all was written in French.

  1933.

  “. . . Sheriff Cargol thinks he has fitted all the pieces of this puzzle together. But he is wrong, as were those fools in France, two centuries ago. But I do not seek revenge. I do not wish to rise again. So I will not drink the potion that allows men cursed to sleep only for a time, to be awakened by the Dark One’s call. No, I will not lie down like some docile, dumb animal to await his call. I want to die. To be free of this curse. I have killed no innocent. I have harmed no child. I have killed only those who have tormented me; and what is the sin in that? Crime? I think not. But Cargol is pursuing me closely and I fear (?) the end is very near. Annie has told him he is wrong about me. But is he? I pray God my son is free of the Bauterre curse.

  “Oh, God—release us from this bloody curse . . .”

  Janette looked at the remaining pages in the book. All blank.

  She picked up the other volume from the secret compartment. Again, the letter “C” was embossed on the cover.

  “C,” she spoke aloud. “Why that letter when our name is Bauterre?”

  She opened the slim book and recognized her grandmother’s handwriting.

  Victoria Bauterre had written: “Someday I will return and with the Dark One’s help I shall call them out of their graves. When I feel my days—in this form—are ending, I shall return. I shall walk among those who only rise when the wolfsbane grows, and I shall call them out to live forever . . .”

  “In this form?” Janette said. “Call them out of their graves to live forever!”

  She read on.

  “. . . And I, with my family by my side, will have our revenge on the rabble of that village. I swear to the Dark One that with his help, this will be done. I swear it! . . .”

  A violent, smoking stab of lightning struck just outside the villa. The lights flickered, dimmed, came back on, then sank to a faint yellow glow. Janette smelled something
foul in the room. She turned just as the huge closet doors were ripped open and . . . something leaped into the room, freezing her with fright, unable to speak or move.

  In the dimness, she could see only that whatever stood snarling at her from the open closet was not human. Its face was spotted with thick tufts of hair, the hands clawlike, the mouth filled with fanged teeth, the eyes red-rimmed.

  The monster in her dreams?

  Am I still dreaming? she thought.

  The creature moved catlike toward her.

  Janette found the strength to leap to her feet just as the beast was reaching for her, its breath fouling the close air of the room. Her fingers found the long brass candleholder on the desk. Summoning all her strength, she smashed the thick, heavy candleholder into the creature’s face.

  The beast screamed in pain and rage as blood spurted from its broken nose. Janette screamed, looking up just in time to see a thick, hairy hand reaching for her. She turned as the forearm smashed onto her shoulder, knocking her sprawling.

  She began screaming, loud and long.

  The creature stopped its march toward her, confusion and fear on its face.

  She threw the candleholder at the beast. He deflected the metal with one arm and it sailed across the room, smashing through a window, shattering the old glass.

  Janette screamed again just as the dim lights went black, plunging the room into darkness. The beast howled in its rage. Downstairs, she could hear the door flung open, men’s voices—the guards—shouting to her.

  “Up here!” she yelled. “Be careful.” She sensed the beast coming toward her. “Help me!” she screamed.

  Janette rolled across the carpet, bumping her head on a bedpost. She scrambled under the high-canopied bed just as flashlights dotted the hallway and the creature roared in anger.

  “Mon Dieu!” a man called out. “What was that?”

  “Kill it!” Janette screamed. “Kill the thing!”

  The lights came on, but only dimly, casting more shadows than light. The beast screamed as men filled the entrance to the room.

  The lights went out as a burst of lightning ripped the soaked countryside.