Loup-Garou: The Beast of Harmony Falls (The Ian McDermott, Ph.D., Paranormal Investigator Series Book 1)

by David Reuben Aslin

  The Beast of Harmony Falls.

  Doc Matthews and Charlie came walking into the room as Doc said, “Yep, it was just as I suspected. Charlie here’s got two cracked ribs. He’s gonna be feeling them real good when he wakes up in the morning. As you can see, I went ahead and patched him up proper in the other room after taking the X-rays. He’ll live. Okay, now let’s have a look at your quiet friend here.”

  Doc walked over to Tom. He flashed a small penlight into Tom’s eyes then looked up at Charlie. “Well, maybe you’d make a fair doctor after all ‘cause you’re right. This man’s in deep, almost catatonic shock. I’ll give him a sedative. Best you take him home with you, Charlie, and have that lovely wife of yours nurse him for a least a day or two. He’s in no shape to travel tonight. Unless maybe that television station he works for sends someone to fetch him. Then I suppose he could fare the trip okay enough.”

  Charlie said, “Yeah, well, Doc they’re gonna have to pick him up even if he gets feeling like himself. His van’s too smashed up to drive. I’ll take him home with me tonight like you said. Tomorrow, I’ve got a lot of calls to make. Paperwork up the ass to fill out. Things to explain to a lot of folks, including his people. That’s gonna be one hell of a conversation. I’ve got to tell them their star reporter has been killed on the job, and her cameraman driver has been scared to the point that he can’t even speak. How ‘bout we switch jobs, Doc?”

  Doc Matthews laughed while shaking his head. “What the hell happened anyhow? That pretty reporter everyone in town’s been yapping about, you say she’s dead?”

  Ian stepped over to Charlie, who was sitting in a chair near the exam table Tom was on. Ian opened up his sketch pad and showed Charlie his drawing. Charlie smiled and looked up at Ian.

  “Hell Ian, that ain’t half bad. That looks pretty much dead on. Except when I saw it up close, it didn’t look like no comic book monster like your drawing here!”

  Ian and Charlie laughed for a brief moment. Both men knew too well it was no laughing matter.

  Doc Matthews tried to see what Ian had shown Charlie, but from his vantage point, he couldn’t.

  “All right, what’s all the secrecy? What’re you two jokers looking at?”

  Ian looked Charlie straight in the eyes. “Well, do we show him? Do we tell him?

  Charlie held his right side with his left hand. Doc had given him a couple of pain pills, but they hadn’t kicked in yet. The pain was increasing by the minute. With his right hand, Charlie made a ‘go on’ gesture.

  Ian motioned for Doc Matthews to take a seat after he’d carried a couple of extra chairs into the room. Tom continued to lie on the exam table, staring up at the ceiling. He remained almost motionless except for the unsteady, shallow raising and lowering of his chest as he breathed.

  Ian took a deep breath and began.

  “Okay, Doc, what I’m about to tell you is going to sound nothing short of crazy, but please keep an open mind and hear me out.”

  Doc Matthews nodded.

  “Okay then. Without going into each and every little detail—that would take the rest of the night to cover—suffice it to say in a nutshell, it’s like this. The local man that got all tore up and is in the hospital in Portland and those hikers that got killed—and Sheriff Bud O’Brien, he lost his life because of it as well—they were all attacked by a … Well, for lack of a better word, a monster!”

  Doc Matthews turned his attention to Charlie, who bowed his head while nodding. Doc looked back at Ian. “Bud! Bud, dead? All right, I can take a joke as good as the next guy, but right now … What in the hell is going on?”

  Neither man flinched. Doc ran his fingers through what little hair he had left.

  “Hold your horses. You two are just gonna sit here and tell me that Bud and that young couple were killed by a monster? Hell-fire and brimstone. Rob Richards was going on about Big Foot attacking him. Now don’t tell me you two are saying Big Foot’s running around attacking and killing people. You two high on something? I sure as shit hope so. I sure as shit hope you’re not even suggesting … You’re serious, Bud’s dead? God almighty!”

  Doc shook his head. He had a slight grin on his face as if he was waiting for the punch line of the joke.

  Ian thought hard about how he was going to present the rest of it. There simply was no way to tell it and not sound like both he and Charlie were nuts. With that, Ian decided to just go for it and deal with damage control after the fact.

  “Well, to call a spade a spade so to speak, the monster we’re speaking of is both a man as well as a wolf-like beast.”

  Doc Matthews looked from Ian to Charlie and back at Ian, looking for any sign that they were anything less than completely serious. Doc didn’t know Ian, but he knew Charlie. Whatever they were talking about, Charlie believed every word that was coming from Ian’s mouth.

  “Wait just a minute. Wolf-beast? Are you trying to tell me … Now let me get this straight. No, no don’t tell me. This is going too far. You don’t expect me to believe for an instant that you’ve been chasing around after some kind of werewolf!”

  Both Ian and Charlie looked directly at Doc Matthews while nodding. All three men then turned simultaneously to look at Tom, who had managed to grunt barely loud enough to be heard. Hearing Doc’s reaction to what Ian had been saying, Tom had tears streaming from the corners of his eyes. He gasped for air over and over, trying with all his might to summon the strength necessary to communicate, to make Doc understand a fraction of the nightmare vision that held his severed psyche in gridlock. After what appeared to Ian, Charlie, and Doc to be several excruciatingly painful and exhaustive attempts, Tom finally managed to summon what little was left of his severely bent mind, just enough to scream, “Were… Werewolf!”

  He was then overcome by what Doc Matthews would later describe as a grand mal seizure followed by a massive coronary. After twenty minutes of non-stop CPR until Doc was nearly to the point of collapsing himself, he looked for a second over at Charlie, who stood next to him at the exam table. Charlie shook his head slowly. Doc nodded in agreement, then glanced up at the clock and noted the time.

  Ian paced. Regardless of what Doc chooses to write in his report as the actual cause of this man’s death, the plain and simple truth is Tom had been scared to death!

  Chapter 38

  Believe!

  Without speaking, Doc Matthews momentarily left Charlie and Ian. He returned less than a minute later with a white cotton sheet that he placed over the body, covering the face of Tom Iverson.

  Doc’s entire mood had changed. He sat down and motioned for both Ian and Charlie to do the same. To both Charlie and Ian’s surprise, Doc spoke calmly. “All right. It’s clear to me that this television cameraman had been severely traumatized by something he’d seen. Due to the nature of his work, he’s no doubt seen his share of terrible things. Yet something frightened this man to the point of, well, he must have seen something beyond that of normal human experience to put him in such a state as he was when you brought him to me. I should have taken that more seriously than I did. For that, I’m sorry. As for the rest of what you were telling me, I don’t know what I believe, but it’s clear to me that you two believe it. And I’ve known Charlie all his life. He’s not the sort to make up fantastic stories. So I guess you two are at least telling me the truth based on what you believe you saw. And something with powerful claws tore through Charlie’s protective clothing, gashed him up, and broke his ribs. You say that shirt you were wearing, its fabric was Kevlar?”

  Charlie nodded.

  “Hmm, your wounds are very similar to some of the wounds I saw on Rob Richards. Okay, I’m willing to accept that there is some kind of rogue beast out there.”

  Charlie then spoke up. He went into detail about how he’d found Bud’s head and how he’d stored the head in his freezer chest and the reasons why. Charlie then asked Doc for advice on how he and Ian should proceed based on the presumption that everything they’d told him was fact.
As the hours passed, Doc became more and more convinced that he was being told the truth.

  “Doc, I’m telling you straight. I saw Jean-Chastel turn into a—well, hell, a werewolf best describes it—right before my eyes! Ian didn’t see him make the change. But Ian saw him after he’d changed into what he did!”

  Ian spoke up without hesitation. “What I saw, it was no normal animal! Don’t even suggest that it could have been a bear reared up on its hind legs or something like that. I saw it plain as I see you now. The sky was clear, and the moon was full. Plenty of light. I’m telling you, Doc, this thing mostly resembles a wolf, but it can stand and walk upright like a man. It even looked to me like it had an opposable appendage like a thumb of sorts. My bet is it can grasp objects … Oh, and when it struck Charlie, I mean it sent him flying like he was a rag doll. What are you, Charlie, about six one or two? I’m guessing two-twenty, two-twenty-five?”

  Charlie replied, “Yeah, that’s about right.”

  “Doc, the thing towered over Charlie. It’s huge! I mean, it must have been nearly eight feet tall, by the look of it. And the depth of its tracks that we saw, it’s very heavy. God knows what it weighs. And when it finally took off running, it took off on two legs, but after a few yards, it dropped down onto all fours. I tell you, when it hit all fours, it took off like a bat out of hell. I’d guess it was moving at thirty-five maybe forty miles an hour when it hit full stride!”

  Doc rubbed his chin, took a deep breath, then interjected, “Why do you figure … I mean if this beast was a big as you say it was, why’d it take off running? I mean couldn’t it have easily killed you both?”

  Ian thought about that question for a couple seconds. Charlie didn’t reply. He was waiting to hear what Ian was going to say in response to that very good question.

  “Doc, it’s like we’ve been trying to tell you. It’s both beast and a man. No doubt even in its beast form, it retains at least some human intelligence. It heard me clearly state that my gun was loaded with silver bullets!”

  Doc Matthews smiled and shook his head before replying, “Silver bullets! Are you serious?”

  Charlie finally could sit on the sidelines no longer. “That’s right, Doc. We had old Charbonneau the gunsmith make us up some silver bullets for Ian’s pistol. And damn good thing we did ‘cause I figure if we hadn’t, if that thing hadn’t ran at the thought of getting shot with silver, well, we wouldn’t be here talking to you about it now. One more thing you should know, I shot the thing point-blank in the center of its chest with my rifle. My rifle was loaded to bring down an elephant, and all it did was piss the thing off! You know me, Doc. I’m handy as hell with a rifle. I don’t miss, ‘specially point blank. And where I found Bud’s … head … his shotgun was on the ground surrounded by the thing’s prints, along with three spent shotgun shells strewn about. You tell me, Doc. You’ve been hunting dozens of times with Bud. You ever known Bud O’Brien to shoot at any animal and not bring it down dead-bang? Let alone after firing three times with heavy-load buckshot?”

  Doc Matthews just sat there with an expression of concern on his face, one that nearly mirrored the depth of conviction to their story. Doc had nearly been convinced.

  Finally Doc slapped his knees with the palms of his hands. He stood up, took a long, deep breath, then said, “Okay. Fellows, you didn’t hear this from me, but as far as dealing with the fact that you froze Bud’s head and drove Bud’s Blazer to Charlie’s house, I recommend you drive the Blazer back up to Little Merwin. Park it near that television van. Now aside from dental records, well, fire does one hell of a job of making it difficult, if not impossible, to tell whether something has been tampered with, frozen or otherwise. Also, from what I know about that hermit Jean-Chastel, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts there aren’t any dental records to concern yourself with as far as dealing with his remains, if you get my drift. Now that’s all I have to say about any of this. You two need to get back up there and finish this thing before he sets out to finish you! You represent a real threat to him. You believe you know what he is. You know where he lives and maybe how to deal with him. He knows this too, so that makes you a priority target! Chastel’s either gonna pull up stakes and hightail it out of here or he’s gonna stand his ground. If he eliminates you and the evidence, he’s pretty much home free. But like I said before, I’m not telling you or suggesting that you do anything. Nothing at all. You heard none of this from me. I’ve got my own worries with reporting this television man’s death. By the way, I’ll need at least one of your signatures as witnesses on the death certificate. But we’ll concern ourselves with all that later. You two get going. Sunrise is supposed to be at 5:40 a.m. You’re gonna want to be up there before first light. It’s already too light from the full moon to offer much cover, but maybe if you’re lucky, you can sneak back up to his place and catch him off guard. He probably figures he hurt Charlie more than he did. Maybe he figures he scared the hell out of both of you, so he’s got some time. He might figure you guys won‘t be coming back his way for a while. Who knows? Like I said, you might get lucky. If he’s anything like you say, he’s very nocturnal. Hell, he’s got to sleep sometime. God almighty. It hasn’t even sunk in with me that Bud got himself killed. Let alone by some kind of monster! Charlie, you got a beautiful wife and fine young boy to get back to. Ian, you seem like a likeable sort. Both of you take caution and come back in one piece.”

  Ian finally summoned the courage to hand over to Doc his notepad with the drawing he’d made of the beast. Doc took the notebook, opened it up, and looked at Ian’s sketch. Surprisingly, Doc had nothing smart-alecky to say about it. In fact, although he seemed intrigued by the drawing he said nothing at all about it.

  Doc continued, “By the way, Charlie, there’s a couple reasons beyond what you’ve told me that even as crazy as this all sounds, I am finding myself believing at least some of it. Jeremy and his gal friend Katie, they both gave pretty much the same description of that thing as you two, and there’s more. I read in the newspaper this morning that Rob Richards up and disappeared from that Portland hospital. The article said he was bedded in a room by himself on the sixth floor. A nurse making her midnight rounds found the window in his room busted out. A search of the parking lot below showed no sign that he’d jumped. They did spot some rain-smeared bloody paw prints around the glass from the shattered window. The prints were thought to have come from a very large dog that had stepped on the broken glass. The sixth floor hallway security camera tapes were reviewed. Rob didn’t leave by way of the front door, if you get my meaning.”

  Charlie and Ian looked at each other in dismay. Ian began shaking his head as he thought, That’s right. Rob Richards was bitten! Christ, him disappearing like that would have been useful information earlier.

  Doc continued, “Charlie, that kid of yours has got a good head on his shoulders. Make sure you two return with yours!”

  Chapter 39

  Incineration

  3:00 a.m.

  Charlie and Ian drove back to Charlie’s house to retrieve his former boss’s Chevy Blazer and head. Ian stayed in the car while Charlie went into the house to fetch the keys to the Blazer. No lights came on within the house, and he was back out in less than a minute. Ian guessed that Charlie had managed not to wake his wife or son. Charlie went and got a gas can from his garage, and Ian noticed by the way Charlie was lugging the can it must have been full. He set the gas can in the back end of the Blazer, then returned to his garage and completed the grisly task of retrieving the frozen head from the freezer chest. He placed the bagged head into the trunk of his car.

  When he was done, Charlie walked over to Ian and handed him the keys to the Blazer. They agreed that Ian would drive the Blazer and follow Charlie back up to Little Merwin. Both men climbed into their vehicles. Ian drove the Blazer from behind Charlie’s garage around the block and met up with Charlie at the front of his home. Ian then noticed Elaine was watching the two men as they pulled away from the house.
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br />   Once again, Ian was amazed by Elaine Redtail, who he surmised must have had at least a notion as to what they were up to.

  Little Merwin Lake - 4:30 a.m.

  Charlie and Ian arrived at Little Merwin as daylight began to take over the moonlight. Charlie climbed out of his car and walked briskly up to Ian, who was still seated in the Blazer. Ian opened the driver door, hopped out of the Blazer, and joined Charlie. Both men stood leaning up against the truck. A couple seconds passed while Charlie further contemplated their next move.

  “Ian, here’s how I see it. Now if you spot any holes in my plan, don’t be shy. I want to hear ‘bout it. Okay?”

  Ian smiled reassuringly at Charlie and nodded.

  “All right. I say we splash gas all over inside both the van and the Blazer. We torch them big time. We carry the gas can up to Chastel’s cabin and do the same up there. I haven’t got all the details worked out. We’re gonna have to play some of this as it comes. First, I’m gonna move my car far away from the van and Blazer. Don’t want my car going up in flames, leaving us stuck up there with no ride home.

  “I’ll just leave my rifle in my car and carry my Glock in a shoulder holster so I can carry other things.” Like gas or the head of my dead best friend, Charlie thought.

  Charlie continued, “On the drive up here, I did a lot of figuring. At first, I thought we should torch Bud’s head inside his Blazer. But that didn’t fit into the story I’m working on. Anyway, I figure I’ll pack Bud’s head up to Chastel’s and place it in that shed with his other parts. Well, and other folks’ parts as well, I reckon. But anyway, we’ll then torch that shed as well. They’ll be able to identify Bud’s skull by dental records. And that’s good. We want to pin this where it belongs: all on Chastel. It’s good and bad that it’s not raining and windy. The rain masks scent and makes moving around without being heard much easier, but at least we won’t get too soaked. We’re gonna still get plenty wet from the wet branches and such that we got to make our way through.”