The image that burst into his vision made him shriek suddenly, and even his head colliding against the backboard couldn't knock it from him. A faceless lump of flesh, a gaping hole where eyes should be, where nose and mouth should be. The jawbone was still there, sagging without the support of muscle and skin, a useless protuberance against the collapsed gore of brain matter seeping from the cavity.
Max barely made it into the bathroom. He vomited into the toilet bowl, tears seeping through the seams of his eyelids. Emptied of substance and spirit, he sagged against the porcelain for a moment, eyes still closed, until the smell of rusty iron filtered through the tang of bile. He opened his eyes. The toilet was full of blood.
Gagging, his glasses speckled with red, he clambered backward as though the blood was reaching for him. He made it to his feet only after he had tumbled out the bathroom door, and stood there trembling, staring back into the lavatory. He only made it as far as the threshold of his bedroom before he had to brace against the door jam, his forehead pressed into his arm.
Someone knocked on his front door, the noise jolting him so, he stumbled backward.
Damned if he'd answer it! Screw whoever it was! Screw whatever emergency it might be! He needed time to sort this out. Jesus, the blood! Where had it come from?
Again that jagged, gore-filled image and Max pulled away from the door jam as if he could leave the horror there. No. There was no relation between the blood in his belly and the faceless hole in his mind, no! He trod heavily into the kitchen, but the blood and the vision followed him.
The knocking came again. Max stood in the middle of the cabin's kitchen, the cracked linoleum cold against his feet. He felt caged, unable to move forward or backward. The knocking was more insistent. Max was startled by the sound of his own voice, deeper than it should be, threatening as it boomed out, "Get the hell away from here!"
Abruptly, the knocking stopped. Max stood panting in the cold kitchen. Then, suddenly, he was weeping, his head so full of agony and despair he thought it might burst. He knew he had to sit before he crumpled to the linoleum. He let his folded arms cradle his head against the kitchen table as he sank into a chair.
What's happening to me, what's happening?
Doomed. He was overwhelmed with the gut wrenching knowledge that he was doomed. But, why? What had he done? He couldn't think of a soul on earth, in Heaven or in Hell that could answer that question or would give him some glimmer of redemption.
The knocking came again, this time behind Max, at the door that led from the kitchen to the barren area behind the cabin. With it was a muffled voice Max couldn't recognize until the intruder named himself.
"Captain, let me in. I know what you're going through and I can help. Captain, it's David Alma Curar. You must try to trust me."
When Max shouted back, he was ashamed of the sob in his voice, but at least it was his own voice again. "Get the hell away from me!"
"Captain. Please. The memories are getting worse, aren't they? You're seeing the bodies now. Tonight, the seizures will be more violent than ever. Someone should sit with you. Captain..."
"Goddamn it, I don't know what you're talking about! Get out of here!"
"If you don't let me help, there'll be more deaths, there'll be more torture. Have you begun vomiting the blood, yet?"
Max's voice became throaty again. "Get your ass away from my door or I swear to God I'll kill you!"
A swath of terror coursed through him. He'd meant it. If Alma Curar wasn't careful, Max might crash straight through that door and kill him.
God. Oh, dear God in Heaven. Help me!
"Captain! I'm not leaving until I at least see your face!"
Max sprang to his feet, flung the door open. He bore his ashen complexion, the swollen eyes bulbous beneath blood spattered glasses, the stained throat of his tee shirt, to Alma Curar.
"Here's my face," he said, seething. "Here's my face."
The air was gray behind the healer as dawn softened the night. Alma Curar stood in stunned silence looking up at Max in the raised doorway. Finally he said, "Let me come in."
"What for?"
"I can help you stop the pain."
"No one can help me. I'm dying."
"You don't have to, Captain..."
"Take your medicine show someplace else. The best surgeons in three states weren't able to help me."
"You're not sick, Captain, you're entangled."
"Get the hell out of here. I'm warning you."
"If you can't do this for yourself, Captain, do it for the victims."
"I don't know what the hell you're talking about!"
"Last month I would have said you're telling me the truth. Now all you're doing is lying to yourself."
Max stepped back and shoved the door in one, fluid motion, but Alma Curar was stunningly fleet, leaping upward and colliding with the door before it slammed shut.
Max couldn't stop what happened next. Something rose up in him like bile and blood, rose up and clutched Alma Curar's shirtfront. In spite of the threat of silver and turquoise at the healer's throat, Max dragged Alma Curar the rest of the way into the cabin.
Chapter 26
Tulenar Internment Camp
Afternoon. Second Night. Full Moon.
Doris was screaming inside, somewhere deep inside, a place in her that plunged into the core of the earth. She was distantly aware of the commotion all around her, the hysteria that no amount of damage control would cap. Eisenhower was screeching through the telephone wire. The F.B.I. had taken up residence in the M.P.'s compound. Newspaper and radio reporters were bursting through the weaker seams of security. The camp itself was stricken dumb in its terror, like a bleeding animal curled into a far corner, helpless and trapped.
She had nothing to protect her from her grief. No one knew she had loved Arthur Satsugai. No one knew. So the details coming from the F.B.I were brutal and blunt. Found him, dead. Close to the Ataki site, but not buried. Looked like somebody took a posthole digger to his face. Stink, good god, it was amazing how quick a corpse begins to stink.
She knew she didn't seem normal to anyone. Even Harriet approached her cautiously. But the staff's careful words and behavior told her they assumed her vacant gaze and chalky pallor was because of the deepening crisis, to the disintegration of her future.
Arthur. Arthur. No one knew.
This camp was no longer hers. Lip service was given by Eisenhower's representative and the F.B.I.'s special agents, but it was really they who were in control. "Sign this, please," and "what's Madame Administrator's opinion on that?" Any choices they gave her had been telegraphed from Washington D.C.
She didn't care. Her mind was elsewhere, her vision riveted on memory, where she saw over and over again something she would never have believed possible.
There was her little house last night, shot through by moonlight. There she was at the kitchen sink, which she had walked straight toward, not even bothering to turn on a ligh. Bending toward the running water, cupping her hands, intent on splashing away the heat in her face. It was burning from Arthur's lips on her mouth, on her cheeks, on her eyes, on her mouth again.
There was that quick, odd motion disappearing over the small rise behind her house, so quick it was almost gone before she could wipe the water from her eyes. Almost. A quick, wild motion, like legs kicking helplessly upward.
She had been sure she was imagining it, sure her fatigue was teasing her with illusions. The vision of those kicking legs...so fleeting. By the time she had come around the house, by the time she stood atop the little mound, her thoughts were rational again. No one could have dragged a person so quickly and noiselessly out of sight.
By eleven o'clock that night, Arthur was reported missing. By first light, Arthur's death was a reality. When the first call came, Doris rose numbly from the kitchen table and walked to the side of the house. In the morning light, the drag marks in the dust were easy to see. So was the one animal print that Arthur's struggling body had
not erased. Large. Immense. Doris could fit both hands into it.
She pointed it out to the M.P.'s. She pointed it out to the special agents. She pointed it out to anyone that could make use of the information. They were all very polite, and they all thought she was absurd. So fatigued and stressed that she was no longer thinking logically.
Yes, of course, Mrs. Tebbe, we see it, yes, it is huge. No, Mrs. Tebbe, we don't think it's canine, it's too big. Probably a cougar, an uncommonly large male. Odd, but not unheard of. An expert opinion, what for? Let's get back to the investigation, shall we?
A monster had swallowed their mother's head and dragged her through the fence.
They saw what appeared to be a wolf, a massive wolf.
The group of old backwoodsmen I wound up hunting with were convinced Alderquest had a werewolf.
Pierce. Where was Pierce today? It only occurred to her to wonder now. Only now was her soul emerging from grief enough to wonder about anything. Where was Pierce?
Harriet brought Doris's mail. She perfunctorily rummaged through it until one large, brown envelope emerged, special delivery, its return address from Bellingham, Washington. Doris stared at it, waiting for Harriet to leave before tearing it open.
Al's tight script was on a slip of paper attached to the coroner's report: "What the hell's going on?" There was even a mimeograph of Captain Maxwell Pierce's statement on the death of his wife, Anne Patricia Wellington Pierce.
The captain's statement and what he had told Doris during their dinner weeks ago were similar. Doris set it aside and scanned the coroner's report, touching on pre-mortem and post-mortem. Most of the trauma was post-mortem. But the important one wasn't. Jesus. Jesus.
Yes, the body was found at the bottom of a snowy ravine. Yes, Annie had died of severe blood loss. But her throat had not been torn open by a jagged rock. An animal had done it. Seemingly canine. Both carotid arteries severed, the larynx gone. Her head was nearly avulsed from her body.
The snow had been too deep to offer clear tracks, but the indications were also strongly canine. Most likely wolf, of an unprecedented size.
The report began to rattle in her hands, and Doris set it down, pressing her fists into her lap to try to stop the trembling. Pierce. She didn't understand exactly how or why, but she knew this was all Pierce's doing. And she knew just as instinctively that there was no one at Tulenar that could or would help her. She was all alone. She wanted to scream.
Outside her door she heard a sound like a telephone receiver being slammed down and Shackley, Eisenhower's man, cursed. He asked the same question she had asked minutes before.
"Where in holy hell is Captain Pierce!"
/ / / /
Was he stalking again tonight, Doris wondered as she lay on her couch, watching the full moon through her window. Would someone actually see him tonight?
Someone would, in spite of all the security, in spite of the sundown curfew, sealing the internees into the barracks. Would it be one of the internee police this time, as he made his rounds perpendicular to the M.P.'s in their Jeep, to the soldiers assigned the dreadful duty of walking the barbed wire? Would that evacuee, in one unguarded second, when his military counterparts were not present, just one fleeting moment...would he turn to look into the eyes of his death?
Who would it be? When would it be?
Stop, she told herself. Think this through. Climb out of the grief, climb out of the fear. To think of Arthur as Arthur now will interfere. He is...he is Victim Three. Victim Three in as many months.
Mrs. Tebbe, was the moon full when Mr. Ataki died?
She couldn't remember.
Isn't it staring us in the face this minute?
When Mrs. Tamura was taken, yes, it was. Yes! And it was full now. It was full last night. Once a month. On the first night of the full moon.
Doris pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, raked her fingers through her dark red hair as it lay loose and scattered across the sofa's arm. Good lord, it can't be, it can't be. Terrifying enough to think of Pierce -of Pierce!- as a homicidal mad man. She'd be insane herself to think there were such things as werewolves...
A revelation pulled her upright. Doris sat staring ahead of her as if she could see the logic shining brilliantly before her eyes. The wolf attack at Alderquest, the murder of his wife. Pierce. Pierce thinks he's a werewolf!
/ / / /
Doris had the coroner's report clutched in her hand. "If you'll just let me finish, Mr. Shackley..."
"Mrs. Tebbe, it's almost midnight. Let's discuss this in the morning."
"Will you please just look at this? I know I'm right! The captain was giving me clues all the time without even being aware that he was. Can you explain his disappearance, otherwise?"
Mr. Shackley, his triangular frame blocking the entrance of his motel room, tugged irritably at the tie of his bathrobe.
"Tomorrow," he insisted, his voice devoid of any pretense.
"Damn it, Shackley, we're talking murder here! The man's a lunatic! A damn sharp one, but a lunatic, just the same. Fake tracks, swift abduction, his military mind, it all makes perfect sense. We can't get around the logic! The only part that I'm not sure about is does he know he's doing it. Good lord, he seems so innocent when I talk to him..."
Shackley reached up with both hands and pressed against his thinning hairline, stretching the skin on his forehead and around his eyes. He was clearly vexed.
"Tomorrow," he repeated with emphasis.
Doris clenched her jaw and held the coroner's report on Annie Pierce stubbornly toward him. Shackley's glower slid from Doris's face to the brown envelope, which he snatched irritably from her fingers. What he said then would have seemed compassionate had his tone not been so heated.
"Mrs. Tebbe, you're under immense pressure. You've done an excellent job up to now, but I think the stress you're experiencing warrants a suspension of duties. We'll talk in the morning, goodnight!"
/ / / /
"Relieved" was the official word for it, and Doris was set aside as easily as Shackley had set aside the coroner's report. When she asked what he had thought, he said that he thought she was much too traumatized by the present crisis. The only thing he saw in the report was a tragic accident, with only a fragment of coincidence anywhere in the findings.
Furthermore, procuring such information was unethical and illegal. She was advised to tread lightly and accept the WRA's decision to relieve her.
The official story? Due to illness, Doris was temporarily alleviated of her position and was expected to return in three weeks. No one was buying it. The staff and the press knew as well as Doris that she would never be returned to duties. But the WRA couldn't allow the appearance of internal disintegration. Shackley would wait for an opportune moment before shipping her off.
Actually, in a literal sense, Doris truly was relieved. Shackley wouldn't have let her work, anyway. Not in any real capacity. She would have sat in her office, a puppet administrator, with only enough paperwork to make her appear in control. There would be nothing to shield her from Arthur's ghost.
But, now she could fill her days. By seven a.m. she'd been bounced. By seven-forty-five a.m. she was at Lakeside Assembly Center pounding furiously at Pierce's front door, but she got no answer. She walked briskly around the cabin, thinking to surprise Pierce at a window if he was hiding inside. But she slowed, the hair at her neck prickling as the back door came into view. It was wide open, flung back against the kitchen wall. The kitchen was in shambles, one chair overturned, another broken, even the table was on its side. A scattered trail of cooking knives led to their wooden holder lying in a corner. And there was blood. Two large smears, one on the tilted table, one on the floor nearby. Hand prints.
Doris was several steps inside when a young, harsh voice came from behind. "Hold right there! This is government prop-- Holy - Mother of --!"
Doris turned to see the astounded expression of a baby-faced M.P. corporal, peering into the kitchen.
"What the hell happened here?" she snapped.
"I don't... don't..."
"Didn't you people come looking for the captain yesterday?"
"Yeah! Yes, they sent me, but I...I was only at the front..."
"What?"
"I just...when there was no answer...I came by a couple three times, but I..."
"You mean no one's seen this until now?"
The youngster struggled to collect himself and asked defensively, "Ma'am, who are you and why are you here?"
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