by T. M. Wright
"Who?" Doug said, looking up and smiling amiably from behind his desk.
"Greta. From what you've told me, I thought you'd be camped out at her door."
Miller shook his head once, quickly. "No, I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"At the hospital. I thought you'd be camped out by her door at the hospital, Doug."
"Greta's in the hospital?" Miller was stunned; it was the first he'd heard of it. The previous day, a Monday, had been his regular day off, and Sunday had been his golfing day with Jack Youngman. "I don't understand. I thought this was her day off." For the last two weeks, Tuesdays had been Greta's regular day off, a situation she'd arranged because it gave her three days in a row away from Doug Miller. "Why's she in the hospital?" He stood shakily. "What happened?"
Roger Crimm went over to him, put a hand comfortingly on his shoulder. "Are you okay, Doug? Can I get you something?"
"No!" Miller shook his head quickly, in agitation. "No!" He looked urgently, pleasingly at Crimm. "What hospital? Please. Which one?"
"Strong Memorial. I thought you knew. I'm sorry-"
And Doug sprinted around from behind his desk and headed for the Ridge Road exit. He got all the way to the street and stopped. What the hell was he doing? he asked himself. His car was in the north parking lot on the opposite side of the plant, where he always parked it. Greta, he told himself. Greta; it's you, isn't it?! Because there were those countless end-of-shifts when he'd walked her to her car out the Ridge Road exit, and now, with her so much on his mind…
He turned around and went back through the doors he'd just come out, because it was easier to get to the north parking lot by going through the plant than going all the way around outside.
He stopped.
Above him he saw the magnificent Ansel Adams mural-transparency-"Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico."
And he felt something strange inside him, as if there were insects loose in his belly, and in his groin.
Sandi Hackman tugged on Bud Wygant's arm as he led her through Building Seven's basement corridor. "Bud," she said testily, "I mean it, I really do mean it. If you make me do this, we're done, through, kaput, over, finished!"
But Bud, to whom No from a woman had always meant "Yes, harder!" (and to whom Yes meant "Yes, but make me say 'no' first") merely grinned and led her farther down the corridor that led, quickly enough, to the exact spot where Walt Morgan had been killed. "I wanta show you something, Sandi." What he wanted to show her were some remnants of Walt's blood that the cleanup crew-who'd come and gone from the area as fast as spinning tops-had left behind in the seams where the baseboard met the wall.
"Well I don't want to see it, whatever it is!" Sandi protested, but they were at the junction where the south corridor meets the west corridor-the corridor where Walt's murder had happened-and Bud's need to strut and sneer in the face of Death and so impress his lady was nearly overwhelming. "Don't be a wimp!" he said, glancing back at her. "Don't be a wimp!" he repeated.
She looked confusedly at him. "Huh?"
"Just c'mon," he snapped at her, and pulled her arm harder. She followed very reluctantly, as much afraid now of Bud himself as of the thing that moved about in these basement corridors.
But the thing wasn't moving about. It was still. It was numb, confused, frightened, hungry all at the same time, and it, like Bud, had an overwhelming need to fill; because when it was filled, the anguish, the hunger, the fear, and the numbness would end.
It had followed the lead of its twisted and tortured soul. Down. Into the lower levels. Into the earth, after a fashion. Because it realized, with the kind of horrible intuition that all such creatures shared, that the way to its satisfaction lay in the quiet and aloneness that existed in the lower levels.
It had sought out the room marked "AIR," because there was peace of a sort in it. And it was a place to lie in wait, as well, for the prey that inevitably appeared, as if fulfilling a role of its own.
"No, Bud!" Sandi said, planting her feet firmly on the cement floor. I'm not going to go a step farther. I'm going to turn around and I'm going to go back upstairs, because I think you're acting like a crazy man."
He whirled around and slapped her hard across the face; she staggered to the right and nearly fell. He pulled her closer, hissed at her, "Don't you ever call me crazy again!"
She said nothing. She stiffened up.
"Because if I was crazy, and you called me crazy-listen to me, goddamnit-if I was crazy, and you called me crazy, then I'd get upset." He stopped, listened to himself, mentally said Huh?
And from the other end of the corridor, from the room marked "AIR," both of them heard a deep, low growling sound that came and went as quickly as a burp. Bud smiled. It was the werewolf, sure (it was The Great American Hero, it was Mork from Ork, it was Kitt the Wonder Car). He grabbed Sandi's arm, pulled her down the corridor.
"Damn you, damn you, damn you!" she screamed.
"It's okay," he assured her. "It'll be fun!"
"Let me go, you asshole, you jerk, you numbskull, you cretin!"
Bud glanced around at her; she'd never called him a cretin before, and he wasn't sure he liked it. "I'm not a cretin," he said, almost sullenly. "I just want us to have some fun. Everybody's gotta have fun, Sandi."
Sandi quieted, her gaze riveted on the door marked "AIR," which had just opened toward the two of them, so whatever had opened it was hidden by it.
Bud saw her wide-eyed gaze and for a moment did not want to turn and look; if he didn't look, of course, there wouldn't be anything there. But then he did look, smiling, at the door marked "AIR," and he saw what Sandi had seen, although now a huge, misshapen, reddish hand with wide, yellow, pointed nails appeared around the edge of the door frame, and Bud wondered Why's it red? and answered himself, looking more closely. It's fur, and he called, "Hey, Mr. Werewolf, fuck you, Mr. Werewolf, and the horse you may or may not have rode in on." He looked, smiling, at Sandi, who was still wide-eyed, still moving stiffly along behind him; and he said to her, "Funny, huh?" But she didn't answer. She'd fallen into a kind of paralyzed recognition of her fate and was hoping deep within herself, as Walt Morgan had hoped, that there wouldn't be much pain.
Then Bud looked back and saw a flat, wide, reddish face appear-like a cross between the face of an ape and the smashed, beaten face of a pig-and he whispered to himself, "Oh, awesome!" turned to Sandi again, "Hey, looka that, Sandi!" turned back to the thing that had been near the end of the corridor, behind the door marked "AIR," and saw that it was nearly on top of him now, its great shaggy arms outstretched, and Bud thought, Time for a commercial.
But there was no commercial. The show went on without a break for a full five minutes. And the special effects were terrific.
Chapter Fourteen
George Dixon, head of security at The Park, bellowed, "Goddammit it all to hell! Goddamnit!"
And Tom McCabe said to Ryerson, "I guess we should have posted some people down here; this isn't going to be easy to explain to the brass."
Ryerson, with Creosote in his arms, could only shake his head in disbelief and mutter a confused, "I don't understand this."
And Dixon, standing nearby, was also shaking his head but had his hands on his hips as if upset by some personal affront. "Jesus Christ," he growled, "isn't this the pits, isn't this the fucking pits?!"
Detective Bill Andrews came over from an examination of one of the bodies. "Girl's name is Sandi Hackman," he said, and Ryerson knew that he was trying very hard for a Dirty Harry persona. "She works here; at least she used to. She's twenty-two, unmarried." He gave them both a lopsided grin. "And she used to be pretty damned attractive, or so I've heard; not that you'd be able to tell from what's left of her now."
McCabe interrupted, "Don't overcompensate, Detective Andrews."
"Sorry?"
"Accept your feelings. See that"-and he nodded briskly at Sandi Hackman's body-"for what it is, damnit. It's a body that's been mutilated, and it's your job to find out who d
id it. Don't give me all this other horseshit, okay?!"
Detective Andrews looked crestfallen. "Sure, Chief, I was just trying to lighten things up, I guess-"
"The effort's not required, or appreciated. Thanks, anyway. Now go and find out who the other victim is, please."
"Sure," Andrews said, nodded humbly, and went over to the area where the major parts of Bud Wygant's body lay strewn about in the corridor.
Ryerson looked quizzically at McCabe. "That was quite a speech, Tom."
"Yeah, and I meant it-this isn't a sideshow, for Christ's sake! Some of us have to act as if we're civilized human beings." He was clearly upset. He inhaled deeply, lowered his head, closed his eyes, then sighed and looked half-pleadingly at Ryerson, "Do your job, too, okay, Rye?"
Ryerson said nothing.
McCabe finished, "Help me catch this lunatic. Reach into that brain of yours, that special brain of yours, and help me catch this lunatic."
"I've been doing what I can-"
"No," McCabe cut in, "you haven't. You've been holding back; I don't know why. But now's the time to do your job."
And it was true, Ryerson had to admit. He had been holding back, had been keeping his special talents reined in. And he knew why. It was that old standby, that first and most reliable line of self-defense: fear. He nodded. "Sure, Tom." He stroked Creosote affectionately. Creosote looked up at him and growled benignly. Ryerson concluded, "I'll do what I have to do."
In Edgewater, at the cemetery where poor Lila Curtis had been buried, dug up, reburied, dug up, and reburied yet again, the thing that had stayed near her because it had nowhere else to go, and no real need to go anywhere, hitched a ride on a passing raccoon. The raccoon was old and arthritic, but had a very wide mean streak, so the thing saw it as essentially friendly. The raccoon didn't notice the extra weight, because it amounted to half a gram or less (a weight that bore a kind of inverse relationship to its power), lumbered out of the cemetery and eventually onto Route Ninety-three, where a sixteen-year-old boy driving alone for the very first time hit it. The boy-Larry Wilde, from Edgewater-hadn't seen the raccoon, but he heard the awful thump of its body hitting the right front tire. He brought his 1977 Mustang II to a jarring halt, put it in reverse, and backed up frantically a good one hundred feet. He leaned over toward the passenger's window and peered out into the early evening darkness. He saw nothing on the gravel shoulder, so he dug a flashlight out of the glove compartment and shone it past the shoulder into tall weeds. He saw what he supposed was the hind end of a dog. "Oh, shit!" he whispered. "Crud, horseshit, crap!" His first night out-and on a junior license, he realized, he wasn't supposed to be out past dusk, which it now was-and he'd hit a damned dog.
He slid carefully over the console between the bucket seats and opened the passenger door. He shone the flashlight around the area of what he supposed was the dog's hind end and, still whispering curses at himself, got out of the Mustang. He left the passenger door open; the light from within the car was comforting.
He took a couple of steps onto the shoulder toward the tall weeds. "Jees, I'm sorry, mutt!" he said.
If he'd been a full-fledged country boy, Larry would have known at once that the thing in the weeds was a raccoon and he'd merely have kicked it farther into the weeds, checked for any damage to the Mustang-a now-you've-got-your-license gift from his father-and driven off. But he was a transplanted city boy from Pittsburgh, and he knew practically nothing about raccoons, only that they had "masks," that they liked to raid garbage cans, and that they washed their paws in streams. So when he bent over and touched this particular raccoon, it was simple human concern that was pushing through him. He'd hit a dog, damnit! He'd hit someone's pet! And that caring, that good feeling would have served him well had the thing that hitched a ride on the raccoon wanted only to hitch a ride on him. Because the thing was repulsed by good feelings; good feelings were like a Star Wars force field against it. The only way it could penetrate them was through the blood.
Through the skin and into the blood.
If, for instance, the raccoon had just enough strength left in it to turn and bite the hand that wanted to help it.
The raccoon had that strength.
And it was fully ten minutes later, when Larry Wilde pulled frantically into his driveway in Edgewater, that he had recovered enough from the shock of being bitten to realize that he'd probably have to have rabies inoculations.
But the raccoon didn't have rabies, of course. It had something far deadlier.
Ryerson had the Erie medical examiner's two autopsy reports on Lila Curtis opened on the desk in front of him-one of them dated February 12, when she'd killed herself, and the other April 17, when Ryerson had discovered her body just inches below ground level at the Edgewater Cemetery. He muttered, "A silver bullet! My God, a silver bullet. The Lone Ranger strikes again." She'd been shot twice, the reports showed. Once on February 12, with a thirty-eight that she'd turned on herself, and then some time later, after she'd been buried, someone had shot her again. This time with a silver bullet.
"Joan," Ryerson whispered, "it was you, wasn't it? You did this." He wondered if he'd ever find out who `Joan' was. He was certain, now, that Greta Lynch was only a very troubled woman who happened to have lived in Erie and had no connection at all with Lila Curtis.
"Why, Joan?" Ryerson went on. It was a method he used occasionally, a kind of conversational self-hypnosis. "Was Lila a threat?" He hesitated, absently stroked Creosote, asleep on his lap. He droned on, "What kind of threat, Joan? And how did you know?" He stopped again, realized-without knowing how he realized it that he was on the wrong track. "What sort of friend were you, Joan? Tell me. And what sort of friend was Lila to you? Did you end her suffering for her? Was that it?" And again he realized he was on the wrong track; he continued absently stroking Creosote. Then, suddenly, he sat bolt upright in the chair, his mouth wide as if in a scream. But he was silent, stiff, for a full minute. "Christ!" he yelled. "Christ, Lila, no!" And his head slumped forward over Creosote.
He heard Loren Samuelson pounding on the door, heard him yelling, "Mr. Biergarten, what's wrong, what are you doing in there?" But it was some time before he was able to call, "I'm okay. It's okay, Mr. Samuelson. It's nothing." He managed to go to the door, and open it.
Samuelson said, "Good heavens, I thought someone was being murdered up here, Mr. Biergarten."
A weary smile creased Ryerson's lips. "No," he assured the old man. "No one's being murdered."
"It was only a figure of speech, Mr. Biergarten. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't allow-"
Ryerson pushed past him into the hallway, Creosote squirming like a piece of living baggage under his arm, the soft plastic duck in his teeth. "I'm sorry," Mr. Samuelson," Ryerson called as he started downstairs, "It won't happen again, I promise."
McCabe held a chicken leg up in front of his face. "Hi," he said to Ryerson at his front door, "you want some? My own recipe."
"We've got to talk; can we talk?" Ryerson asked urgently.
McCabe shrugged. "Sure. Let's go into the den." Again he held up the chicken leg, which had a huge chunk missing from it. "Have some, Rye. It's my own version of Chicken French-"
Ryerson pushed past him into the house. "Where's the den, Tom?"
McCabe motioned to the left, down a short hall-way. "Over here." They started toward it. McCabe said, behind Ryerson, "How about what's-his-name, your mutt?"
"He's fine," Ryerson said over his shoulder.
"I mean, would he like some of my Chicken French?"
"No, Tom. He doesn't eat people food."
"Oh, good." A pause. "To the right, Rye, it's the door at the end of the hallway."
Ryerson looked back. "Why do you live alone in a house this big, Tom?"
McCabe chomped on the chicken leg and answered as he chewed, "Gives me room to breathe, Rye."
Then Ryerson opened the door to the den, and they went in and sat facing each other in two big cream-colored wing chairs. McCa
be set his chicken leg down in a floor-standing ashtray near his chair, hunkered forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands elapsed. "Okay, Rye. What's the scoop?"
Ryerson nodded at Creosote. "Do you mind if I put him down, Tom?"
"Does he pee?"
"Outside, yes."
"As long as he doesn't pee on anything, Rye. I have a housekeeper who'd throw a fit if he peed on anything."
Ryerson put Creosote on the floor; the dog looked around for a moment, sniffed at one of the Argyle socks Ryerson was wearing as if it were an old friend, then settled down for a snooze under the chair his master was sitting in. Ryerson sat back, arms flat on the arms of the chair. He said, "I still don't believe in werewolves, Tom."
"That's good to know, Rye." McCabe sat back, too, as if on cue from Ryerson.
Ryerson went on, "But I believe that there are plenty of people out there who do. And I believe that faith can move mountains."
McCabe smiled uneasily. "You've got religion, right, Rye?"
Ryerson shook his head. "No; no more than usual, anyway." He sat forward suddenly, assumed the same position that McCabe had-elbows on his knees, hands clasped. "What I've got is a new way of looking at our murderer. What I've got, Tom, is a new twist to the old werewolf legend."
Chapter Fifteen
Sixteen-year-old Larry Wilde had two hobbies. One was coin-collecting; he was currently into completing his collection of early twentieth-century Lincoln-head pennies. And the other was Great Movie Slashers of the Past. That was, in fact, the title of a book he'd been putting together. Of course, when you're sixteen, "the past" doesn't mean what it means to a thirty-year-old (and when you're thirty, it doesn't mean what it means to a sixty-year-old, either). So, his book began with the faceless drowned adolescent from the original Friday the Thirteenth, proceeded to the equally faceless slasher from the original Halloween (which, he maintained, was worlds better than the losers that followed), and involved itself further with Terror Train and The Fog and The Creeping Dead and a half dozen others. He'd gotten 120 single-spaced typewritten pages done on the book and was beginning to check the current Writer's Market for possible agents and publishers.