Wolfsbane

by William W. Johnstone

  No, he corrected his thinking . . . not walking, shuffling.

  “ ‘But she can send someone to take you alive,’ ” Annie had warned him, in her own manner of speaking.

  Yeah, Pat thought. And here they come.

  He clicked the riot gun off safety as the two men approached. Pat looked at them. Both of them were very pale and had fresh bite marks on the neck. When Blaine spoke, his words were hollow, spoken very slowly, as if carefully rehearsed.

  “Hi . . . Pat . . . did . . . you . . . come . . . to . . . get . . . us . . . out . . . of . . . here?”

  “One way or the other, boys,” Pat said, laying his left hand on the shotgun.

  “There . . . is . . . no . . . need . . . for . . . a . . . gun . . . Pat.” Earl smiled, exposing bloody teeth.

  “Yes . . . Pat.” Blaine smiled. Blood leaked out of a corner of his mouth. “We’re . . . your . . . friends.”

  “In a pig’s assl” Pat tensed.

  Then they leaped at him.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The men had been watching the shotgun. But Pat’s right hand had been on the butt of the .41 mag. The pistol boomed four times: two slugs in each man. Earl’s head swelled from the impact of the hand-loaded expanding slugs, pushed by the maximum powder load. The back of his head exploded in a mass of gray matter and blood. Blaine took the slugs in the chest and throat. One clipped his spinal cord, the other traveled out the back of his neck, almost decapitating him.

  Both men kicked and trembled for a few seconds, then lay still.

  Pat carefully reloaded the .41, pushed it back into leather, then calmly ate the remainder of his sandwich, washing it down with a drink of water from his canteen. He stepped out of the gazebo and looked around him. The sky was cloudy overhead, but not a drop of rain was falling within the grounds of Amour House.

  He looked at the bayou to his left. “You ready?”

  The bayou bubbled joyfully.

  Pat nodded. “Play ball.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Pat prowled the grounds around the mansion, further familiarizing himself with each bush, each clump of flowers, each line of bricks or stones beside the many walkways. As he walked, he picked up twigs and sticks and an armful of dry grass. He might have to do a lot of running this afternoon, and did not want to stumble over anything and break his neck.

  He kept his mind clear of any thoughts that might give him away; he knew Victoria was reading his every thought.

  At the garçonnière, where the body of Harold Callier had been found, Pat broke a window and tossed the dry grass and sticks and twigs inside. He struck a kitchen match and tossed that inside, on the dry grass, then stepped back and waited for the action.

  The old wooden floor caught quickly, as did the beams in the small quarters. Screaming broke out as fire and smoke poured from the building. Pat smiled grimly. He knew the creature could not expose itself to the day . . . not as a loup-garou. The light, God’s light, would destroy it. The night belonged to Satan. The thing would have to present itself in its human form.

  And Pat knew then why it was not raining and gloomy inside the grounds of Amour. He looked up. “Thanks,” he said. “I need all the help I can get.”

  The black waters of the bayou bubbled their disdain. “If we had a decent umpire, that would be disallowed. It just isn’t fair.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Pat muttered. He pulled his gaze back to the garçonnière. But he was not prepared for what he witnessed.

  The creature that hurled itself out of the smoky door was not human. It was nothing more than rags and bare bone and rotting flesh clinging to the whiteness of bone. It stank of the grave and of evil. The thing spun around and opened its mouth, pulling back blackened lips, exposing its red tongue and yellowed teeth. It screamed at Pat, the sound of a soul in torment. It held out its bony hands and lunged.

  Pat fought back revulsion that threatened to boil from his stomach, leveled the shotgun, and pulled the trigger, pumping. The living dead one took a charge in its chest, but the slugs seemed to have no effect except to slow it momentarily. Pat threw the shotgun to his shoulder and fired, aiming at the creature’s head, the slugs decapitating the nondead one. It ran flapping headless toward the house, running into a tree, losing an arm from the impact. Pat fired once more, severing the trunk from the legs. The creature fell apart, the bones clattering to the ground.

  Pat glanced around him, in a crouch, and caught sight of a manlike thing running for the protection of the great house. It loped ungainly from an outbuilding. Pat dropped to one knee and pumped the riot gun three times, sending bones flying in all directions.

  A smaller horror ran toward him, no more than a child. It shrieked incomprehensible words at him, pushing them past a blood-red tongue and rotting lips. Its teeth were fanged. Pat used the last rounds in the shotgun to blow it apart.

  He reloaded, chambered a round, and kept the shotgun off safety, his finger on the trigger guard.

  “Very good, Mr. Strange,” the bayou bubbled in a deep watery voice. “Reminiscent of the mental alertness of the old Gas House Gang. Why, I recall . . .”

  “Oh, who the hell cares!” Pat said.

  “There is no need for rudeness,” the bayou bubbled. “Really! You probably enjoy football. You look the type. All brawn and no brains.”

  “Did you watch the Super Bowl last year?” Pat asked.

  “I most certainly did not! It does not interest me. Very little finesse in the sport. All that leaping about and running into each other. No, indeed, I was . . . preoccupied during that time.”

  “Well, you missed it, bubbles. I recall it was the third quarter. The score was . . .”

  “Oh, who cares, Mr. Strange! Good day, sir.” The bayou grew silent. Offended.

  The bayou belched a noxious odor.

  Pat walked the grounds, carefully inspecting each outbuilding. He found one of the living dead huddled in the darkness and shot it to splintered bones before it could run.

  He squatted in the deep shade of a live oak tree and looked at Amour House, knowing the nightmares that awaited him and knowing he had them to face. He thought about setting the big house on fire.

  “I won’t permit that to happen,” the bayou bubbled.

  Victoria’s triumphant laughter rang over the grounds. Evil in victory.

  “Why?” Pat questioned.

  “You have to go inside.” The voice sounded peevish, sulky.

  “That wasn’t discussed with me.”

  “I changed the rules. It’s my ball game and my bat and ball, so I make the rules.”

  “I should have known you’d be a bad sport.”

  The bayou was silent.

  “Are you really the devil?”

  “Of course, I’m the devil! Who do you think I am, Barbra Streisand? But I much prefer to be called Diabolus. That has a certain . . . ah . . . south-of-the-border ring to it, don’t you think?”

  “Olè!”

  “Thank you.”

  “So I can’t burn down the house out here, eh?”

  “That is correct.”

  “You’re firm on that?”

  “Solid as Ty Cobb.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Please do.”

  “Why are you treating all this as a joke? A very bad joke, at that.”

  “Why, Mr. Strange—it is a joke. You surprise me. Do you think those who follow my teachings are void of humor? Why, when you were walking about the yard, gathering up all that dry grass, I was actually humming” Bringing in the Sheaves.” Isn’t that hysterically amusing?”

  “Yeah,” Pat said. “You’re breaking me up. How many more rules are you going to screw up?”

  “None,” the bayou bubbled.

  “I suppose you expect me to believe that?”

  “I give you my word, Mr. Strange—and that is something I rarely do—that I will not go back on my word.”

  “Hell! Ah . . . heaven, I don’t have any choice but to acc
ept it.”

  “Good luck, Mr. Strange. And . . . oddly enough, I mean that.”

  Pat nodded and glanced at his watch. He sat in the shade of the tree and rested for a time; then, his mind made up, he rose to his feet and walked to the front door of Amour House. As he reached for the latch, the door slowly swung open. But there was no one behind it.

  “Do come in, darling.” Victoria’s voice drifted to him. “I’ve been waiting for this moment.”

  Pat stepped inside, the foul odor insulting his nostrils. He stopped, looking left and right. He was alone in the hall.

  The door slammed behind him.

  Victoria’s laughter ripped toward him.

  And then evil hurled itself at Pat.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Pat jumped to one side as a torrent of blood gushed from out of nowhere, slopping crimson at his boots. Mingled within the thickness were parts of human bodies: eyes looked at him from the horror, unattached to sockets; opened, fanged mouths, with only the lips, snapped and snarled at him; ghostly shapes flung themselves at him. He ignored it all. He stepped into the hall and found it filled with writhing snakes of all descriptions, striking at him. Rats, with red beady eyes and long yellow teeth bit at his boots. He kicked them away and stepped through the snakes.

  Everything vanished, leaving the hall, with its polished floor, gleaming and empty as before.

  Pat knew the next time the snakes and rats might well be real. He also knew he had but one chance to survive: attack.

  He screamed, his voice echoing strongly through the great house. As he yelled, he raced for the large sitting room to his left. Creatures appeared in the door, eyes wide and startled from this unexpected charge. Pat leveled the shotgun and began pumping. The doorway was suddenly cleared, blood and brains and bits of hairy flesh splattering the walls of the room. Pat slipped and slid through the gore on the floor, ropes of slick intestines looping around his ankles. He kicked them away.

  A clawed hand closed around one ankle as a beast attempted to pull its shattered body to Pat, the fanged mouth open wide to bite. Pat shot the creature in the face, turning the evil into a bloody, headless torso that thumped its bare feet on the slick floor, jerking in a dance of death.

  Pat stepped over the stinking bodies, some still trembling as the shock of death moved over them, stilling the evil. He ran into the next room, pushing fresh loads into the shotgun as he ran.

  Sylvia leaped into his path, her gown gore-splattered. It was as if nothing had changed since Pat had last been in the house. The woman’s intestines hung in ropes from the hole in her belly. When she screamed at Pat, her breath was a strong wind from an open, rotting grave. Pat jerked the shotgun up and shot her in the neck. Her head lolled to one side, the bones in her neck shattered, unable to hold the weight. Pat fired again; the head blew off, bouncing on the floor. It rolled to a stop. The eyes opened. The mouth grinned at him. The headless body charged at him and Pat gunned it apart, aiming the slugs at the bloody shoulders. She sagged and slumped to the floor.

  Bethencourt leaped at him, and the scene was replayed. But this time Pat used the heavy .41 mag on the living dead one, literally destroying the head. Bethencourt ran headless from the room, flapping his arms in a silent race no one among them knew who would win. Only Good and Evil, and neither of them was talking.

  Eli appeared before him, a great hole in his chest where Pat had shot him. The man screamed and lunged, exposing fanged teeth, his breath putrid. Pat blew his head off with two fast rounds and kept going, ignoring the gore that littered the area around him.

  The bullet-torn form of Emily met him. Then the hovering image changed and she was whole and naked. The sight of her almost brought tears to Pat’s eyes.

  “They hurt me, Pat,” she said, her voice hollow. “They did things to me before they killed me. You can’t imagine what they did to me and mother.”

  Pat, with years of combat behind him, knew fully well man’s capacity of inhumanity toward man. He had seen rape and torture all over the world.

  He tried to wave Emily away, but she would not leave. Her mother joined her in the projected image. They were naked, pinned to the ground, naked men around them, raping them, taking turns with the women. They held the weeping screaming women to the ground, on their knees, and took them as animals, in an anal rape of pain and degradation. And then the torture began.

  Pat brushed the screaming women aside and ran past their fading forms. “Pat,” Emily called. “Don’t leave me again. You said you loved me. Come back . . . help me. I can’t stand the pain.”

  “You’re dead!” Pat screamed over his shoulder. “You’re dead. Go back.”

  The image of mother and daughter faded, then was gone. If it had really ever been.

  Phoebe almost got him with the club she swung at his head. Screaming, she swung the club again, just missing him. Pat ducked and pulled the trigger of the shotgun. With the muzzle less than six inches from the maid’s belly, the impact of the slugs threw her backward. She jarred the wall when she struck it, then slid down to the floor, legs spread wide. She died with her eyes open, cursing Pat, hands clutching at emptiness, clawing nothing.

  Sylvia’s head rolled across the floor, leaving a trail of gray and red as it came toward him. Her eyes were open and her mouth a gash of fanged horror as she bit at Pat’s boots, attempting to pierce the leather.

  Pat kicked it as one might kick a football, sending the grotesqueness sailing across the large room to bounce off the far wall. Blood and brains splattered. Pat took aim and blew the head apart.

  “I knew it!” the voice roared and gurgled from the bayou. “I knew you liked football better than baseball—you cretin. I just knew it.”

  “Oh, shut up!” Pat panted, attempting to catch his breath and control his shaky nerves.

  The walls in the mansion began dripping blood as scenes from his childhood assailed Pat. The time his playmate had jumped into the water in the sluggish river where they had been swimming. He had surfaced just once, with water moccasins—literally hundreds of them—twisting and coiling around him. Pat had been able to see only one hand and part of his head. The rest had been covered with striking snakes. When his body was recovered, it was three times normal size and black from the effects of the venom . . .

  The funeral . . .

  The time Pat had witnessed the old man, deaf and mute, step into the path of that fast freight. The townspeople had found bits and pieces of him for days afterward. . .

  His brother, stillborn . . .

  His mother’s screaming . . .

  All those scenes were replayed for him, as vividly as life. The ghastly wailing of the boy with the snakes encircling his small body. The old man, flung high into the air, coming down on the cattle guard, rolling off.

  A wailing sound filled the room in the mansion. An infant, umbilical cord attached, floated toward him, crying from a wound on its chest. The baby drew closer. Pat could see the name STRANGE spelled out, burning into the child’s flesh. The odor of burning human flesh assailed his nostrils.

  Pat ran from the room into a room filled with creatures that were slobbering and howling. They seemed to be in a panic, not knowing what to do or where to go. The booming of the shotgun and Pat’s yelling had confused them.

  Pat emptied his shotgun into a hairy mass of them, turning the elegant room into a slaughterhouse. He was pumped up, the adrenalin flowing hard in him. He continued his attack, reloaded as he ran into the next room.

  There seemed to be no end to the creatures, in various forms of transformation. Pat knew then he had been wise in choosing the daylight to attack: the beast/men were addled, their systems not knowing how to react. Some of them unable to alter their human forms into that which the devil had made them.

  Pat fired into them, again and again, emptying the riot gun, finishing the gruesome task with his .41. He quickly reloaded and stood with his back to a wall, his chest heaving from the sudden exertion.

  His breath
ing was the loudest noise in the mansion. Could it be . . . ?

  He mentally counted the bodies, comparing the number with the total Janette had said were buried around the parish.

  One left, he concluded.

  And he knew where that one would be hiding.

  He slung the shotgun over his shoulder and removed the knapsack, fingering the small bottles of gasoline. “I’ll be damned if I’m going down in that basement after him,” Pat muttered.

  He grimaced. Damned is a swell word to use at this time, Strange, he thought.

  Stepping over the gore, Pat walked into the kitchen, opening the door to the pantry. There stood a door. It could lead only one way: down.

  Pat rigged his cocktails, lit the rags protruding from the necks of the bottles, opened the door leading to the basement, and tossed the cocktails into the foul-smelling darkness. The bottles shattered, the gas exploding, lighting the basement. Something howled in pain and fright. Feet and toenails scraped on the steps, the sound coming toward Pat. Pat leveled the shotgun and emptied all eight rounds into the darkness. A thudding sound drifted upward.

  At least a part of the battle was over.

  Pat removed two shotgun shells from his pants pocket and loaded the shotgun with them. These two had to do it or the game was over. For him. He stepped into the once-elegant hallway, with the upper gallery overlooking. He glanced upward. Victoria Bauterre was staring down at him.

  “Quite a show, Pat, darling,” she complimented him. “You took my people by surprise. I have to respect you for that. Too bad you’re still going to lose the game.”

  Pat smiled. “I’m not going to lose, Victoria.”

  “Oh, Pat—my dear, dear man. Why do you do this? You can’t kill me; don’t you see that?”

  “I don’t see anything of the kind, Vicky baby.”

  “Fat . . . listen to me. I was once the most beautiful woman in all of New Orleans.”

  Smoke drifted from out of the kitchen; the floor under Pat’s feet was growing warm.

  “My beauty far surpassed Janette’s. And I will be beautiful again . . . in my—our—next life. My Master has promised me that. And one more thing, darling.”