The Howling h-1

by Gary Brandner

  Without warning Roy's eyes snapped wide open. Karyn recoiled as for an instant she looked into the haunted face of a stranger. Then his features went slack and his eyes closed in uneasy sleep. It had happened so fast Karyn could not be sure she hadn't imagined it. She backed away from the bed and went out. Softly she closed the door behind her.

  Dr. Volkmann, waiting in the living room, was quick to reassure her. "Your husband will be all right," he said. "What he needs is rest and quiet."

  "We were talking about going back to Los Angeles," Karyn said, "but he doesn't seem to remember."

  "It's up to you, of course, but I don't think the added pressure of going back to the city right now would help his condition."

  "I suppose we'll stay now, as least until he's better. Doctor…" Karyn hesitated, searching for the words. "Do you think it's possible Roy could have been attacked by… by…"

  "By the werewolf?"

  Karyn nodded.

  "You saw his body. There were no wounds."

  "Could it have come after him and he escaped?"

  "We have no way of knowing what happened. In the morning you might question him some more about that dream he mentioned. But be gentle. He's not in any condition to be quizzed about a werewolf."

  "Doctor, I have to ask you something."

  "Yes?"

  "Have you treated Anton Gadak in the last couple of days?"

  "No. Why?"

  "Do you remember I told you about wounding the wolf out in front of the house?"

  "I remember. You thought at the time it might have been Etienne Jolivet."

  "Yes, until you explained about his migraines."

  "What has this to do with Anton Gadak?"

  "As Inez Polk and I drove away from your house we saw Gadak on the street. He had a bandage covering one side of his head. And the ear."

  "Why didn't you come to me at once?"

  "To tell the truth, we thought you might be involved."

  "Because you thought I'd put the bandage on and not told you about it, is that it?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I didn't, but I can understand your caution. Nevertheless, we'd be better off to trust each other. I'll find out what I can about Anton Gadak's injury. Meanwhile, you be very careful."

  "You don't have to worry about that."

  "You should be in no danger in the daytime, but if you can avoid it, don't go out after dark alone."

  Karyn saw Dr. Volkmann to the door and watched him start back towards Drago. Then she returned to the bedroom and looked at Roy. He was sleeping peacefully enough, except for a nerve that twitched at the corner of one eye.

  Throughout the day Karyn kept watch while Roy continued to sleep. By nightfall she was exhausted. She undressed and slipped into bed next to him, being careful not to disturb him. She was so tired she dropped off in minutes.

  Sometime during the night she was pulled up out of a dreamless sleep. Roy sat stiffly upright beside her, his eyes wide open, staring at emptiness.

  "Roy, what is it?"

  Then she heard, in the woods not far away, the howling.

  Chapter Twenty

  Karyn did not sleep again until it was almost dawn. When next she awoke, Roy lay quietly beside her. His eyes were closed, but the frown line between his brows showed he was awake.

  "Good morning, darling," she said softly.

  He rolled his head on the pillow and looked at her. "Hello, Karyn."

  "How are you feeling?"

  "So-so."

  "Are you hungry? Would you like me to bring you some breakfast?"

  Roy sat up suddenly and pushed the covers away. "No. Stop treating me like an invalid. I've got to get up and do some work."

  "Dr. Volkmann said you should rest."

  "Doctors always say that. You rest. I've got work to do."

  Karyn got out of bed on her own side. "If that's what you want. But try not to tire yourself."

  She prepared a big breakfast of buttermilk pancakes with fried eggs and thick country bacon. Roy only toyed with his food. He answered Karyn's attempts at conversation with monosyllables. His thoughts were far away.

  "You should eat something," Karyn said. "You didn't have any dinner last night. Did you?"

  "I'm just not very hungry," he said, attempting a smile. "It wouldn't hurt me to take off a few pounds anyway."

  Karyn looked across the table into the shadowed eyes of her husband and said nothing. This was a mood she had never seen.

  Roy got up, leaving most of the food on his plate, and waited impatiently while Karyn cleared the dishes from the table. Then he spread out his papers and sat down to work. Karyn kept out of the way, but watched him. He grew increasingly restless, cursing at the manuscripts in front of him, scribbling angrily on the pages. Before an hour had passed he threw down the pencil and expelled his breath in exasperation.

  "Dammit, there are pages missing. You'd think that somebody would check this garbage before they send it to me. I can't edit what's not here."

  "Why don't you take a break?" Karyn suggested.

  Roy slammed both hands flat on the table and stood up. He paced back and forth across the room with his fists jammed into his pockets.

  "Wouldn't you like to lie down for a while?" Karyn said.

  "No, I wouldn't like to lie down for a while," he answered, mimicking her voice. "I'm going out."

  Without waiting for a response from Karyn he threw open the door and stalked out of the house. She watched him cross the clearing and take one of the forest paths. When Roy was out of sight she walked back to the table and leafed through the pages of the manuscript. They were all there.

  She dropped into a chair and stared down at her hands. Things seemed to be closing in, pressing her down, stifling her breath.

  The morning dragged into afternoon. Roy came home in the same irritable mood as when he had left. He refused lunch and sat down to try to work again. It was painful for Karyn to watch.

  "Roy, do you think we ought to go in and see Dr. Volkmann?"

  "What for?"

  "He said he'd like to see you again if you were feeling well enough."

  "What's the matter, didn't you pay him for yesterday?"

  "That's not fair. He's been very good about coming out when we need him."

  "Well, we don't need him now." Roy drew a long, heavy sigh, then got up and came over to Karyn. "You're right, I shouldn't take it out on Volkmann." He started to put his arms around her, then backed away. "I'm just jumpy. Worrying about those hours I can't account for, maybe. Put up with me for a little while longer, okay?"

  Karyn gazed at him levelly. "Have you remembered anything more about last night?"

  "No, I haven't," he said, the sharpness returning to his voice. "If anything comes to me I'll tell you about it. It doesn't help any to have you nagging at me."

  "I wasn't nagging, I was asking."

  Roy went angrily back to his papers, muttering something too low for Karyn to hear. She went into the kitchen and made a cup of instant coffee, telling herself she must not lose her temper. When she went back into the living room the front door was open and Roy was gone again.

  "Oh, damn, damn, damn," Karyn said aloud. "What am I going to do?"

  She looked up at the sound of a car stopping outside. Footsteps crossed the clearing, and Inez Polk appeared in the doorway. With a rush of emotion Karyn ran to her friend and embraced her.

  "Oh, Inez, I'm so glad you're here. I need somebody so badly."

  Inez patted her gently on the shoulder until Karyn regained her composure and stepped back.

  "How did you know to come?"

  "Dr. Volkmann called and told me about Roy, and I came as soon as I could. How is he?"

  Karyn shook her head. "I wish I knew. He's been irritable all day, pacing around the house like a caged animal. He went out this morning, and he's gone again now. I don't know where he goes."

  "Exactly what happened to him last night?"

  "I don't know. You saw him a
fter our argument when he went into Drago to pay our bills. He didn't come back the rest of the day or all night. Early the next morning I heard something outside the door, and I found him lying there."

  "Was he hurt?"

  "Just scratches and bruises, but he couldn't remember anything."

  "There was no sign that he'd been attacked?"

  "No," Karyn said quickly. "I thought of that too."

  Inez frowned thoughtfully. "Karyn, we're going to have to act, you and I."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Talk to the authorities. Will you come with me to the sheriff's office in Pinyon?"

  "I thought we'd decided they wouldn't believe us."

  "Not if we told them there's a werewolf here, they wouldn't, but we've got to get them interested somehow. What about those two hikers who stopped here? What were their names?"

  "Neal Edwards and Pam Sealander. But I don't see what we can do now."

  "Maybe we can get somebody interested enough to start asking questions. At least it's a beginning, and better than just waiting for the next thing to happen."

  "Yes, of course it is," Karyn agreed. "I'll leave a note for Roy and be right with you."

  Karyn inserted a blank sheet of paper into Roy's typewriter and pecked out: Dear Roy — I've gone into Pinyon with Inez to do some shopping. I won't be late. Love, Karyn. She left the note in the typewriter and went out with Inez to get into the car.

  They drove down the lane and slowly through the main street of Drago. As usual, there was little activity in the village. A few of the silent people were out on the street. None of them looked up as the women drove past.

  Three miles out of Drago, where the road started to climb into the Tehachapi Mountains, Inez turned off on a little-used back road. In a few minutes they reached Pinyon. The contrast to the dark village of Drago was startling. Here flowers bloomed, children laughed, and people smiled at you on the street. It made Drago look like a town in perpetual shadow.

  Inez drove to a neat cinderblock building that housed the local sheriff's substation. The women went inside and introduced themselves to the uniformed young man at the desk.

  "Good afternoon, ladies," he said pleasantly. "I'm Deputy Paul Spears. What can I do for you?"

  "We want to inquire about some missing hikers," said Inez.

  "I see." The deputy took a pad from his desk and picked up a ballpoint pen. "What are the people's names?"

  "Neal Edwards and Pam — I suppose that's Pamela — Sealander. They have been missing for some time."

  Karyn proceeded to tell the entire story, as the deputy took rapid notes.

  When she had finished, the deputy looked up. "Are you sure the van you saw belonged to this Edwards and Sealander?"

  "I'm reasonably sure. As I said, they told me they were driving a van and they had left it in Drago. When I saw it, it was being hooked up to a tow truck. I went over to ask why. The tow-truck driver told me he had instructions from a man named Anton Gadak."

  "Yes, I know Mr. Gadak," the deputy put in. "Since the sheriffs department doesn't patrol Drago, he's been our unofficial contact there."

  Karyn's hopes sagged, but she went gamely on. "When I asked Anton Gadak about the van he gave very evasive answers. He didn't seem interested in knowing who owned it. He said there was no registration or identification inside."

  "Are you saying that Mr. Gadak was not telling the truth?"

  "I think he knows more than he told me."

  "I see. And have you any evidence to indicate that these people, as you suggest, met with foul play?"

  Karyn's throat closed up, and she could not speak. She looked to Inez for help.

  "We have no evidence," Inez said. "There is no proof that anything happened to them. But those two people are unaccounted for, and that should be reason enough to investigate."

  "It will be looked into," the deputy assured her. "Now suppose you give me the home addresses of the missing people."

  "They're from Santa Barbara," Karyn said. "That's as much as I know."

  "We'll check out the names through the police there. If your people are in fact missing, we'll be in touch with you."

  "Is that all you're going to do?" Karyn asked.

  "Ma'am, excuse me, but this doesn't sound like what you'd call an emergency. After all, from your account you waited five days before reporting that you were worried about these people."

  "I know, but… other things have happened since. Couldn't you do something now?"

  "What would you suggest?"

  Inez took over. "Come with us to Drago and talk to Anton Gadak. He might be more willing to talk to you about the van."

  While Deputy Spears considered the request, another young man in a sheriff's-department uniform came into the office.

  "Take over the desk for me, will you, Jed?" said Spears. "I'm going over to Drago with these ladies. I shouldn't be gone long." He came around the desk and gestured Karyn and Inez out of the building ahead of him.

  While the women buckled themselves into Inez' Valiant, Deputy Spears drove a black-and-white sheriff's car out of the parking lot and pulled up behind them. Inez started down the road towards Drago with the deputy following.

  "Do you really think this will do any good?" Karyn asked.

  "We can hope." said Inez. "At least it can't do any harm."

  Karyn gazed out the window at the trees slipping by. "I only wish I could be sure of that."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When the two cars turned up the main street of Drago, Anton Gadak was standing beneath the empty theater marquee, almost as though he had been waiting for them. Under the ever-present Stetson the white bandage still covered his ear.

  Inez pulled to the side of the street and stopped. The deputy swung in and parked behind her. Gadak nodded to the women, touching his hat brim, and walked back to the sheriff's car.

  "Hi, Paul," he said as the deputy climbed out. "Haven't seen you for a spell."

  "They've been keeping me pretty busy," the deputy said.

  "What can I do for you?"

  Deputy Spears waited for Inez and Karyn to get out of the car and come back to join them. "These two ladies have some questions, Mr. Gadak."

  "That so?"

  "They're concerned about a couple of people who are missing. Backpackers."

  "Yes." Karyn did not look at Anton Gadak. "They parked their van here in town."

  "Van?" Gadak rubbed his chin in apparent puzzlement. His callused fingers made a raspy sound.

  "It was taken away by a tow truck," Karyn said.

  "Oh, sure, the van," Gadak said. "The one you was worried about the other day. That was parked out here on the street for a week. Nobody showed up to claim it, so I called the Highway Patrol to come and get it. That's what we always do with an abandoned vehicle. More'n likely it was stolen by kids and dumped here when they were through with it."

  "It wasn't stolen," Karyn said heatedly, "and it wasn't abandoned. It belonged to a boy named Neal Edwards who was hiking up here in the mountains with his girlfriend."

  "I wouldn't know anything about that," Gadak said. "Like I told you the other day, there was no registration. The Highway Patrol can check out the owner through the licence number. I ain't equipped to do that."

  "And it wasn't parked here for any week, either," Karyn persisted.

  "'Scuse me, Mrs. Beatty," Gadak said, "but that vehicle was parked right here in front of this theater for a full seven days. Otherwise, I would've let it be."

  Karyn looked at Deputy Spears. She saw he was accepting Gadak's story.

  "You can check it out with the Highway Patrol, Paul," Gadak said. "They took the van over to Palmdale. Sergeant Cutter's the man to talk to there."

  "I'll give him a call," said the deputy. He turned to Karyn and Inez. "Apparently Mr. Gadak acted here strictly in accordance with our procedures. Did you have any other questions?"

  "Is that it?" Karyn said. "Is that all you're going to do?"

  "I c
an check with the Highway Patrol in Palmdale if you want, but it's their job to get in touch with the owner of an impounded vehicle."

  "What about Santa Barbara? You said you could do something there."

  "All I can do is send a routine request for information to the local police."

  "You're brushing us off, aren't you?" Karyn's voice was tight with anger.

  Deputy Spears looked down, but failed to hide a patronizing expression.

  In frustration, Inez Polk, who had been standing by watching, spoke up. "Mr. Gadak, what happened to your ear?"

  Gadak turned on her suddenly, but his expression revealed nothing. He took off the Stetson and touched the bandage.

  "You mean this?" he said. "I had a boil back there. It was pretty sore, but I guess it ought to be all right by now. I probably don't even need this bandage anymore."

  He pulled the strips of adhesive loose and eased the gauze pad away from his head. Underneath was an ear — intact and unmarked.

  Gadak's smile was cold. "I appreciate your askin', but as you can see, it's nothing to worry about. Was there anything else I can do for you ladies?"

  "No," Karyn said quickly. "Sorry we troubled you."

  Deputy Spears politely took his leave, and Karyn and Inez walked back to the Valiant. The women drove away without a glance to the rear, but Karyn knew Anton Gadak's eyes had followed them.

  "Why did you do that?" Karyn said. "Come right out and ask him about his ear?"

  "I had to do something. It was obvious the deputy wasn't going to help us."

  "But what good did it do? All we found out is that Gadak's ear is all right."

  "It is now, but remember it's been three days since you shot the wolf. I told you those creatures heal amazingly fast from ordinary wounds."

  "But it could have been a boil, as he said."

  "Do you believe that?"

  "I don't know what to believe."

  Inez turned up the narrow road. Suddenly Karyn could hold herself in check no longer. She broke into great wracking sobs that shook her whole body, and couldn't stop. Inez brought the car to a stop and took Karyn in her arms. Karyn responded instantly, pressing herself against her friend.

  For the first time in many days Karyn relaxed completely and let the tears come. Her locked-in emotions flooded out as though a gate had been opened. After several minutes the convulsive sobbing eased and she was able to draw a full breath. Still, in her need for another human being, she continued to cling to Inez.