Stunned, Ian and Charlie glanced at each other. They were beginning to wonder if everyone knew what they were up to. Ian was made additionally uneasy by the multitude of stuffed, furry mummies, corporeal remains of critters that stood ominously in suspended rigor. Posed in lifelike postures, the woodland creatures were everywhere throughout the shed. All of them seemed to be starring directly at him, watching his every move.
Perhaps it was because of the sincerity on Charbonneau’s face when he asked the question, but for whatever reason, at that very moment Charlie couldn’t bring himself to lie.
“Yes, Louis, that’s right. We’re going to hunt and kill the Loup-garou.”
Charbonneau took the bag of silver jewelry and dumped it out on his workbench. He appeared to be examining the metal as he bit into some of the pieces. Charbonneau then retrieved a small brown glass jar from a drawer in his workbench that was labeled Aqua Regina. He opened the jar and poured from it a yellowish, semi-transparent liquid down onto some of the jewelry pieces. A small swirl-cloud of vapor and small bubbles began forming in a few seconds as the liquid boiled and danced on the surface of the silver.
“Dis good silver! Louis can do it. Come back de trois hour will have done!”
Charlie and Ian smiled at each other. Ian knew immediately that Charlie had been right. They were definitely in the presence of a true craftsman.
They thanked Charbonneau and then left him to do his work. Back at the car, they stood there looking at each other for one protracted, uncomfortable moment. Charlie finally spoke up.
“Ian, we’re gonna go back to my house. I’m gonna get my thirty-ought-six. There should be pretty good visibility tonight if the sky remains clear, what with the full moon and all. Anyway, if we get lucky, maybe we can take this thing down from a distance. That is, unless you want to wait until we see the whites of its eyes? Mind you, I’ll still be packing my Glock for close encounters of the worst kind!”
Ian looked for a fleeting second down at the ground and then back at Charlie. Suddenly, the thought of whatever the hell they were going up against up close and personal crept vividly into his mind’s eye. Without further hesitation, Ian replied, “Hell yes, let’s go get your rifle!”
That said, they climbed into the car and Charlie turned it around, driving back down the long, gravel driveway until it reached the main road, then headed east back towards town.
Chapter 31
French Connection – Part I
Charlie and Ian had just reached the Harmony Falls township when they were abruptly passed by an old Dodge truck that sped past them on their left then swerved back into the right lane. The old Dodge began picking up speed. The truck had two men in the cab and three baying hounds riding in its back. The dogs continued to bellow shrilly as the truck sped away.
“Charlie, aren’t you going to pull those guys over and give ‘em a ticket or something? He’s driving like he’s pretty drunk!”
Charlie didn’t seem concerned. “Nah, that’s just old John Eagle driving one of our local colorful Frenchies. Old John ain’t drunk, just a bad driver. Hell, he ain’t even got a driver’s license. And his truck hasn’t had new license tabs in twenty years I’d guess. Now John Eagle, he’s second only to my grandfather as a tribal elder. The man’s a relic. I’m not about to run him in. Looked like he was hauling Jean-Chastel around. He does that from time to time. Anyway, we got much bigger concerns facing us today than writing up an Indian for driving without a license, taxiing around one of our crazy, in-bred Cajuns! Chastel must have got a ride to town to pick up some supplies. He don’t buy much and not often. He lives nearly self-sufficient. Hunts and fishes for what he needs. He’s a hermit type like most of the Frenchies around these parts. Keeps to himself. He lives on reservation land a few miles up the mountain from the falls and Ape Caves. It’s said his great-great-grandfather was given land by my people as a dowry and that he’s the descendant of a French trapper that married the daughter of a chief. Bud and I figured he must be a bastard. His father must have screwed one of the whores that came around once in a while chasing local loggers for their paychecks, ‘cause neither of us knew of his mother or of his father for that matter. His father and all his family before him, well, it’s said that family bury their dead way up in the mountains. Believe me, if you wanted to bury a body up in those hills, well, there’s a whole lot of dense forest and nearly impassable terrain up there to do it in. Places that you could plant someone that would never be found. Everyone ‘round here knows Jean-Chastel Gevaudan is a poacher, just no way to prove it. My grandfather told me a few years back that he once spoke to Gevaudan for a long spell. He told me that Gevaudan had extensive knowledge of our ancestors and the old ways of our people. Once, Bud told me he had a run-in with Jean-Chastel. This happened before I was deputy. Chastel got drunk and disorderly at Gracie’s bar. Bud got called in to make him leave. Bud told me Chastel held a grudge against him for that. Bud used to jokingly refer to Jean-Chastel Gevaudan as the red-skinned Frenchman!”
Charlie laughed, but Ian looked over at Charlie consideringly.
“Gevaudan … Huh, you don’t say? Charlie, that name happens to be the name of a province in France. Nothing uncommon about that. Lots of Europeans took their names from their ancestral roots like provinces and towns. But I need to use a computer. I need to access the Internet to check my fuzzy memory … something I once read about a long time ago, back in college at UCLA.”
Charlie glanced over at Ian. “Southern California man, huh? You don’t look much like the surfer type!”
Ian replied, “No, not much of a surfer. I tried it once on vacation in Hawaii. Damn near drowned!”
Both men laughed. Ian then got serious as he looked intensely back at Charlie.
“Charlie, you’ve got a computer with Internet connection at your house, don’t you?”
“Yeah, we’re not that backward up here. It’s mainly my wife’s. She uses it mostly for keeping her books and staying in touch with family and friends through Facebook. I mainly use the computer at the office, but we want to stay clear of Jenny if you know what I mean. But yeah, no problem. We’ve got one. What are you wanting to look up?”
“Well, it’s just something about that guy Jean-Chastel Gevaudan. His name, I’ve heard that name before. I believe there was an outbreak of unexplainable animal attacks in France a few hundred years ago in the general area … the province of Gevaudan. But I’m not certain of how accurate my memory is. I want to check my … I want to check the facts.”
Charlie glanced over at Ian as he drove up the street towards his house. Charlie looked confused as he raised his voice a bit.
“A few hundred years ago? Huh?”
Charlie pulled into his driveway. Both men exited his car and proceeded into the house.
Chapter 32
French Connection – Part II
Charlie led Ian straight into the kitchen to his wife’s computer. “Go ahead, Ian. There’s no password protection, so just sit down and go for it!”
Ian did just that. He began by Googling, “Strange phenomena Gevaudan, France.” That brought up exactly what he was looking for. Charlie was looking over Ian’s shoulder, staring at the computer screen. He was still more than a little confused but intrigued nonetheless.
Ian glanced back at Charlie, flashing him a sly smile. “All right, here we go. Charlie, can you see the screen okay?”
Charlie nodded and replied, “Yeah Ian, I can see just fine. You just selected Wikipedia: The Beast of Gevaudan.”
“Yeah, that’s right!” Ian replied. “Okay, here we are!” Ian began speed-reading the page. Charlie was trying to do the same, but he was having some difficulty due to his disadvantaged distance from the screen.
“Charlie, in a nutshell, what this is all about is this: There was a series of brutal animal attacks that occurred around the area of Gevaudan, France back in the seventeen hundreds. Maybe as many as two hundred people were killed by some kind of beast that was later des
cribed as a very strange, huge, wolf-like creature. Now here’s where it gets really weird. The beast was finally brought down by a master hunter, one who was contracted by King Louis the Fifteenth of France to hunt it down and kill it. The beast had been shot many times before by other hunters but with little or no effect to the creature. Many of the hunters were killed by the beast during their efforts, and so the rumors that it was a werewolf began to prevail across the countryside. So the King appointed a master hunter who decided he was going to take no chances, much like you and I this afternoon. He had silver bullets made and, in his successful hunt, shot the creature twice. Once through the heart, which apparently killed it. I say apparently because it gets even stranger. Oh yeah, and as far as our master hunter goes, well, unfortunately for him, it was said he was savagely bitten by the beast prior to getting his second kill shot off.”
Ian paused for effect as he spun himself around in the swivel chair to face Charlie.
“Now Charlie, get this. The name of the hunter was Jean-Chastel. Isn’t that the same name as your local crazy Cajun as you call him?” Ian already knew that was the guy’s name. He’d heard Charlie say it plain and simple.
Charlie took a deep breath while taking a step closer to the computer. He had to read the screen himself. After doing so, he just stood there without speaking for a long moment, staring at the computer monitor as if he were mesmerized by the words. Charlie finally broke his silence.
“Yeah, that’s his name. Holy shit! Ian, of course, this could all be coincidence. I mean of course it is. Hell, you said yourself that lots of immigrants took their last names from the towns and provinces they came from. And Jean-Chastel … That has to be a really common Frenchy name, don’t you think? Besides, if there was anything here, I mean anything to this, he would have changed his name or something, wouldn’t he?”
Ian reluctantly nodded in agreement but with little conviction. “Yeah, I think the name is common enough, but why would he bother changing his name? I mean, who would believe anything like this would ever be more than coincidence? Anything else would be unbelievable. What I’m even suggesting here any rational person would say is impossible! But impossible or not, I want to check out something else.” Charlie watched Ian go back to Google to check something via search engine.
Ian typed in, “Jean-Chastel - Beast of Gevaudan.” The page loaded in seconds.
“All right. Charlie, it says here Jean-Chastel recovered from the wounds he sustained while killing the beast. It says he was paid handsomely by the King of France for killing the creature and ending the reign of terror. Oh, and by the way, it says here that the beast didn’t look like any typical wolf but was wolf-like. It was said to have had many very strange features, but nothing really credible was recorded regarding what those strange features were exactly. This is bizarre. The very night the wolf-like creature was killed, its body was reported as probably stolen. Anyway, it mysteriously disappeared without a trace. It says here it went missing sometime in the night while being transported by wagon. It was being sent to Paris to be stuffed and preserved by a master taxidermist. It was supposed to have been eventually sent on from there to be put on display at the Royal Museum in Versailles. Oh, you got to love this. The night the beast’s body disappeared, it was said to have been a full moon! Hmm, maybe it wasn’t quite as dead as they thought.”
Ian paused to catch his breath. He took a moment to fully absorb what he’d read and was telling Charlie, then resumed reading. He continued to pause now and again to summarize to Charlie what he’d read.
“Okay, this is interesting. It says here that Jean-Chastel used the money the King gave him for killing the beast to buy passage on a ship bound for the Americas. The last known records are sketchy. There is pretty clear evidence to support that he became a mountain man, a fur trapper, who spent some years in and around Quebec. It says from there he was thought to have migrated west and then south. And get this: Though not substantiated, it is commonly believed by most historians that Jean-Chastel followed trade routes that eventually led him to settle near a predominantly French pioneer settlement located in the foothills near the Colombia River in what is now Southwest Washington State.”
Ian once again swiveled his chair around to look up at Charlie, curious to see if this was as interesting and disturbing to Charlie as it was to him. Ian could see by the expression on Charlie’s face that it was. Ian then stood up to look eye-to-eye with Charlie.
“Granted, much if not most of what happened to Jean-Chastel after he left the ship is pure conjecture. I mean, records show that he made the journey to North America all right. Records show clearly that he disembarked near what is now Nova Scotia. But beyond that, this is all speculative. Just best guesses by historians.”
Without saying a word, Charlie left the kitchen, leaving Ian alone just standing there. Ian walked into the living room where he stood, attempting to make sense of the facts and theories, anything that might be useful.
When Charlie returned, he was no longer wearing his uniform. He was dressed in camouflage hunting gear from head to toe.
“Okay, Ian, I’m gonna grab my rifle and put it in the car. You all done with the computer?”
Ian nodded.
“I figure we’ve got another couple of hours to kill. That’s enough time for us to drop by Gracie’s and grab a beer or a stiff drink. Whatever’s your poison is on me. Confidentially, Ian, I used to have a tiny bit of a drinking problem. Sort of a mean drunk you might say when I’d be hitting the Wild Turkey. It wasn’t anything serious, mind you. I wasn’t, you know, the stereotype raging alcoholic Indian that can’t hold his fire-water or nothing like that!”
Charlie smirked slightly as he looked at Ian to check what reaction those last words might invoke. Ian stood stoic, emotionless. He was the last person in the world to be judgmental regarding any form of alcoholism. One thing Ian could spot a mile away was denial and rationalization. When it came to those aspects of the illness, he was a practiced master! Yeah, it takes one to know one, Ian thought.
Charlie continued, “I guess I never really climbed up all the way onto the wagon so to speak. Not like Elaine wanted me to anyway. I still enjoy a nice cold beer or two now and again. Hey, since I never climbed all the way onto the wagon, I guess I can’t fall off it!”
Charlie laughed and Ian smiled and chuckled. Charlie became serious once again.
“I did mostly give up the hard stuff when I became Bud’s deputy. Had to. That was Bud’s one demand of me. But Bud’s no longer around, and under the circumstances … Hell, a shot or two don’t sound too bad.”
As perceptive as Charlie was, Ian was guessing that Charlie must have noticed the slight shaking of his hands while he was typing. That and the perspiration that had begun welling up due to stress-accelerated detoxification.
Charlie no doubt can smell the alcohol sweating out of me like dander falls from a mangy dog. Yeah, he’s put two and two together. Sure as shit, it takes one to know one.
Ian hadn’t woken up that morning with much of a hangover to speak of. Nothing more than he was used to dealing with daily. But he was beginning to suffer a bit more of the afternoon jitters than was typical.
“Yeah Charlie. Not a bad idea!” Ian replied, trying not to sound too eager or desperate as he thought, Jack Daniels: A little hair of the dog … that’s the ticket. Cure for a mangy hangover.
Chapter 33
Liquid Courage
Charlie and Ian had been sitting in their chairs for a little over an hour. Both men had for the last half-hour forgone their usual drinks in lieu of several shots of distilled nectar from the blue agave cactus.
Charlie held his shot high. He said out loud for all the bar patrons to hear, “Here’s to Bud O’Brien! The best goddamn man I ever knew and the best friend I ever had!”
Ian motioned his hand in a downward motion, signaling Charlie to bring it down a couple of notches before he unnecessarily brought on attention that might arouse any suspicions re
garding Bud’s absence. Then he stood up from his chair. He staggered ever so slightly as he began straightening his shirt and re-tucking it into his jeans. “What do you think, Charlie? Should we get out to Old Charbonneau’s place to pick up the … package? Ian looked around to see if anyone was listening to him. Nobody cared. They were all off in their own worlds.
Before Charlie could answer, he was distracted by the opening of the door to the parking lot. He glanced over to see who was entering, then looked up at Ian. With an exaggerated shift of his eyes and simultaneous half turn of his head in the direction of the door, Charlie signaled Ian to turn and have a look.
Ian did just that. His heart sank into the pit of his stomach. It was her. Marsha Steward. She briskly walked across the room straight up to their table. Ian sat back down abruptly.
“Hello, boys!” Marsha said with sly enthusiasm.
Charlie spoke first. “Ma’am.”
Ian then said, “Hi Marsha, would you like to have a seat?”
“No. No, I just saw the deputy’s car out front. I thought maybe I’d find you here. Ian, I noticed your car and trailer were still parked at your campsite, so I knocked on your trailer to say goodbye. We’re leaving. Not much more to report on around here. You know, now that the bodies have been discovered. Is there …? So how come you’re still hanging around?”
“No reason for me to be hanging around any longer either. I’m just saying my goodbyes to Charlie here. Guess I’m getting a bit of a late start to get moving. I’ll probably pull up stakes either tonight or tomorrow morning.”
Ian sounded convincing, but Marsha still looked at him with suspicious eyes.
Loup-Garou: The Beast of Harmony Falls (The Ian McDermott, Ph.D., Paranormal Investigator Series Book 1) Page 13