by Matt Hults
“Really, David, I’m quite all right,” Karyn said, but she allowed herself to be led into the house.
“Sit down there in the big chair,” David said when they reached the living room. “Put your feet up.”
Karyn did as she was told.
“Now wait right there and I’ll get something to calm your nerves.” He went off to the kitchen, and returned a minute later carrying a tall glass.
“Here’s a nice glass of milk,” he said.
A nice shot of Scotch would do her nerves a whole lot more good, Karyn thought, but she smiled her thanks and took the glass from David’s hand.
He stood with his arms folded, studying her gravely as she sipped at the milk. “You gave me quite a scare.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What a shame that this should happen just when you seemed to be getting better.”
Karyn set the glass down carefully on the end table next to the chair. “I hate that expression,” she said. “Getting better. It’s a constant reminder that I’m a convalescent mental case.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that I’m a little disappointed that, after a year, Dr. Goetz hasn’t done more for you. Do you think we should try someone else?”
“Dr. Goetz is as good as any of them,” Karyn said. “Really, David, you’re making too much out of this. The dog came up behind me and took me by surprise. I overreacted, that’s all.”
“The dog,” David said, watching her. “It reminded you of that Drago business, didn’t it?”
Sure. That Drago business. The unpleasantness in the mountains. Nothing remarkable, really––just fighting off a pack of werewolves and seeing your husband change into… Karyn broke off the thought and shuddered.
David moved quickly to her side. “I’m sorry dear, I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
Karyn squeezed his hand. “No, darling, it should never become a taboo subject, or I will be in trouble. And you’re right about the dog. Seeing its face suddenly so close to mine took me back for a moment to Drago. It’s been only three years, you know, and we’ve got to expect incidents like that from time to time.”
“And you’re still having the dreams, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Karyn admitted. “But not so often, anymore.”
David frowned. “When is your next appointment with Goetz?”
“Tomorrow.”
“And you really think he’s helping you?”
“As much as anyone could.”
David patted her hand awkwardly. “All right, then, we’ll go on with him. I just hope he can make you see that this Drago business is all… behind you.”
As she lay that night in bed beside her sleeping husband, Karyn recalled his words. She knew that what he had started to say was, “All in your mind.” She would be happier than anyone to be convinced of that, but it was not so. Drago was as real as the moon outside their bedroom window, and much closer. The werewolves were real too. And somewhere, Karyn knew, one or more of them survived.
* * *
Nine hundred miles away, in the grape country of California, another woman lay awake beside her man. Her long, supple body gleamed like old ivory in the moonlight. Across the pillow, her hair spread in gentle waves of glossy black, shot through with a startling streak of silver.
The man stirred in his sleep. The woman quieted him with a hand on his broad, bare shoulder.
“Rest easy, my lover,” she whispered. “Soon we will have much work to do.”
2
From the window of Dr. Arnold Goetz’s office in the new Farrell Building, Karyn could see the sailboats skimming across Lake Washington under a stiff westerly breeze. It was one of those brightly washed summer days when the dreary months of rain are forgotten and the people of Seattle go outdoors to celebrate the sun.
Karyn stood at the window talking in a flat, emotionless voice. Finally she said, “So that’s all there was to it. Just a silly incident with a dog, and it was all over in a minute.”
Dr. Goetz waited a full fifteen seconds. It was a technique of his that Karyn recognized. The purpose was to encourage the patient to elaborate on, or perhaps contradict, the last thought. When Karyn did not offer to continue, the doctor spoke.
“There is no doubt in your mind, then, that it was only a dog yesterday.”
Karyn spun around to face him. “Of course it was only a dog.” She walked over and sat down in the chair facing the doctor’s desk. “I was frightened for a moment because it brought back bad memories. That’s all.”
Dr. Goetz nodded sagely. “Yes, I see. And tell me about the dreams. You say you still have them?”
Karyn bit her lip and frowned. “Yes. And they worry me more than the business with the dog. Will I ever stop hearing it at night, Doctor? The howling?”
“You do understand that it is only in dreams that you hear this… howling?”
Karyn leaned back in the chair. Sunlight from the window caught her pale blond hair and made it a glowing frame for her face. She was twenty-eight now, and there were little lines at the corners of her eyes, but the touch of maturity only emphasized her beauty.
“Yes, Doctor,” she said wearily, “I know it only happens in dreams. Now. But three years ago in Drago, the howling was real. As real as death.”
Dr. Goetz touched his glasses. Karyn had determined that it was his unconscious gesture of disbelief. He put on an understanding smile.
“Yes, I see,” he said.
“Bullshit.”
The doctor brightened. Gut reactions always encouraged him.
“You don’t see at all,” Karyn told him. “You don’t believe Drago actually happened any more than my husband does. Any more than all the other people I’ve told about it.”
After his customary wait the doctor said. “Karyn, whether I believe or not isn’t important. What happened in the past or didn’t happen really doesn’t concern us. Our bag is the here and now. All that matters to us is how you feel about it.”
Karyn met the doctor’s sincere gaze. He was having a difficult time making the transition from the traditional Freudian to the trendy transactional school of analysis. Everybody’s got problems, she thought.
“What it makes me feel is scared shitless,” she said.
Pause.
“Why?”
“Because I know they aren’t all dead.”
“When you say ‘they’ you mean––”
“I mean the wolves,” Karyn supplied. “The werewolves.”
She watched closely for a reaction––the narrowing of the eyes, or the little quirk, which she had seen so often at the corner of his mouth. Dr. Goetz held his expression of friendly concern. He was good.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” he said.
“Doctor, I have told you about it.”
“Tell me again, if you think it would help.”
Hell, why not, Karyn thought. There was no pain in the telling any more, and that, at least, was an improvement. Maybe if she heard the story often enough herself it would become meaningless, the way a familiar word repeated over and over eventually becomes a nonsense sound.
She stood up again and walked back to the window. There, watching the peaceful scene down on the lake, she repeated the story of the damned village of Drago, and the six months she spent there with Roy Beatty.
She described the way it began, with the howling in the night. Then there had been the cruel killing of her little dog. She told of the strange people who had lived in the village, and the huge, unnatural wolves that had roamed the woods at night. In a quiet, controlled voice she spoke of the black-haired Marcia Lura, who had bewitched Karyn’s husband and finally taken him forever with the virulent bite of the werewolf. Finally she told of the escape from Drago as she and Chris Halloran had fled the burning village.
Dr. Goetz waited, then spoke. “You said they aren’t all dead. The wolves.”
“As we drove out of the valley with everything behind us in flames, I hear
d it again from off in the forest. The howling.”
Abruptly Karyn stopped talking and went back to her chair across from the doctor. “Telling the story doesn’t make it any better or any worse,” she said. “All it does is keep the memory fresh. What I want to do is put Drago out of my mind, now and forever.”
“I can understand that,” Dr. Goetz said reasonably. “And that’s what we’re working toward, isn’t it? But, Karyn, before we can finally put this idea out of your mind, we have to find out what put it in.
Karyn stared at him. She spaced out her words carefully. “What put this idea into my mind, God-dammit, is that it happened.”
“Yes, of course,” the doctor went on. “Maybe when you were a little girl there was some experience, something ugly, with wolves or large dogs.”
Karyn shook her head wearily. “No, Doctor, not when I was a little girl. My only traumatic experience with wolves came when I was a full-grown woman. Three years ago. In Drago. You’re telling me the same old thing, aren’t you, that it’s a delusion?”
“Delusion is a term we don’t use much any more. We understand now that things that happen in the mind are every bit as vivid, and often more damaging than what we call reality. I’m sure your experience in Drago is as real to you today as this room we are sitting in. The important thing, as I said––”
Karyn only half-listened as Dr. Goetz droned on in his silky, reassuring voice. He was saying the thing everyone else did. Namely, that she had imagined the whole Drago episode. Maybe in time he could convince her of that. If he could, he would be well worth whatever David was paying him. In the meantime, it did help a little to be able to talk.
There was a subtle change in the doctor’s tone, and Karyn saw his eyes flick over at the discreet little clock on his desk. Her hour was up.
3
Karyn drove slowly north over the Aurora Bridge toward Mountlake Terrace, where she and David had their home. Her thoughts, as usual when she left Dr. Goetz, were on Drago and what happened afterward.
There had been one moment of triumph at the very end when she had fired the deadly silver bullet into the head of the black she-wolf. But that small victory, like the escape with Chris Halloran, had lacked a ring of finality. Even as she and Chris had paused to look back on the valley in flames, neither of them had really believed it was over.
For six tempestuous months they had tried to pretend it was, and that they were just another ordinary couple. After sharing the horror of Drago, it had seemed a natural thing to stay together. How wrong they were.
For a time they had traveled aimlessly from place to place, living on pills and nervous energy. Before long their pent-up emotions were turned against each other. At the end of six months these two people, who had shared more in a day than many couples do in a lifetime, were living on the edge of violence. The most insignificant squabble could erupt in an ugly word battle. They were staying in a Las Vegas hotel when the final blowup came.
Karyn had spent the morning in their room. She had the air conditioner turned up full and wore a sweater buttoned to the throat as protection against the dry cold. Chris had gone down to the swimming pool early, after making only a half-hearted attempt at persuading her to come with him.
At noon Chris returned. He glanced briefly at Karyn and went into the bathroom. Not until he had showered, shaved, and dressed, did he speak to her.
“Do you want to go down and get some lunch?”
“Can’t we have something sent up?”
“Why?”
“I’d rather not leave the room, that’s all.”
“For God’s sake, Karyn, you can’t just sit up here and hide from the world like a frightened child.”
His words cut into her like a dull knife. She fired back, “I can do anything I want. Who are you to tell me what I can’t do? Nobody asked you to run my life.”
Chris’s eyes had turned dark and dangerous for a moment, then he whirled and stormed out the door. Karyn fought down the angry impulse to throw something after him.
The rush of blood through the veins made a roaring in her ears. She walked over to the window, parted the draperies, and blinked at the bright white Las Vegas sunlight. Twelve stories down, she could see people in the pool and on the deck around it. Everyone seemed to be laughing and having a fine time. Was she the only one in the world, Karyn wondered, who was miserable?
She let the draperies fall back across the window, and returned to the chair where she had sat all morning. She was still there, shivering with the cold, an hour later when Chris returned.
He closed the door firmly behind him and stood looking at her. “Why the hell don’t you turn the air conditioning down?”
“I like it this way.”
She could see him start to get angry, then, with an effort, relax.
“Karyn, we have to talk.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re destroying each other.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Cut it out, damn it. I’ve had all of this I can take.”
“Poor you.”
“This continual picking at each other is tearing me apart. It isn’t doing you any good, either. Have you looked at yourself closely in the mirror lately?”
“Well, thank you very much.”
“Will you please stop playing childish games? I know what you went through at Drago, but––”
Karyn sprang out of the chair and faced him angrily. “You have no idea what I went through. You were there only at the very end. I spent six months in that place. Six months in hell.”
Chris spoke in a carefully controlled voice. “I know that, Karyn. I know you suffered a lot. What I want to do now is help you.”
“Oh? And just how do you think you can help me?”
“It would be a start if we brought the whole thing out in the open and talked about it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Karyn snapped. “Not to you, not to anybody.”
“I’m the only one you can talk to about Drago,” he said. “I am the only person in the world who would believe it, because I was there. I saw the wolves, and I know what they were.”
Karyn clapped her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to think about it. Why don’t you let me forget Drago, so it will go away?”
“It will never go away,” Chris said. “It will always be locked in the back of your head. If we could just talk about it––”
“There you go with your ‘talk about it’ again. You sound like one of those fucking parlor psychologists. Tell me, where did you get your medical degree, Doctor?”
“Cut it out. I can’t take any more of this.”
“Don’t then. Don’t take a Goddamn thing you don’t want to. Nobody’s holding you.”
“That’s right,” he said in a voice that had gone suddenly cold. “Nobody is.”
In thirty minutes Chris Halloran had packed his clothes and left the hotel. That had been two and a half years ago. Karyn had not seen him since.
* * *
The weeks that followed the Las Vegas breakup with Chris were fragmented in Karyn’s memory. She knew that during that time she was very close to losing her hold on sanity. Somehow, she had made her way back to her parents’ home in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood. For two months she had a full-time nurse, and never left the upstairs bedroom that had been hers when she was a little girl. The days were blanks and the nights were filled with shadows where lurked unspeakable horrors.
Then gradually the world came back into focus. Karyn at last learned to talk about the summer in Drago. Then as now, no one really believed her, but they listened sympathetically. She learned that Chris had been right. Talking about it did help.
After six months in the quiet, comfortable house with her family, Karyn began to feel whole again. She tried to contact Chris Halloran, but learned he had taken a traveling assignment with his engineering firm and was seldom in town for long. Maybe, she decided, it was better thi
s way. She would have liked to say she was sorry about the bad days at the end, and keep at least a part of Chris’s friendship, but seeing him might just open old wounds.
Instead, she had accepted the invitation of a college classmate and flown to Seattle for a visit. That was when she met David Richter.
David was twenty years older than Karyn, and solid as Mount Rainier. He did not have the dreamy romanticism of Roy Beatty, nor the charm and dash of Chris Halloran, but he was exactly what Karyn needed. She had been a little hesitant about meeting David’s son, but she need not have worried. She and Joey hit it off immediately.
The big test, in Karyn’s mind, came when she told David the story of Drago. He had listened patiently and seriously, without laughing or patronizing her. He did not, of course, treat it as reality, but accepted it as a minor eccentricity as he might have accepted a slight limp.
David asked her to marry him two months after they met. He offered her security and stability, and a kind of quiet love she had never known. She said yes.
All in all Karyn was content with her life as Mrs. David Richter. Now if she could just stop dreaming of the wolves, and shake the feeling that someday, somewhere, they were going to kill her.
Want to keep reading?
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GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING II
* * *
Preview of:
GARY BRANDNER’S - THE HOWLING III
1
Sheriff Gavin Ramsay stretched out a foot and nudged the switch on the electric heater to OFF with the toe of his boot. The heater coils twanged as the red glow faded. The voters of La Reina County, all 4,012 of them, would be proud of their sheriff’s economy moves.
Ramsay hoisted his foot back to the top of the desk and resumed his contemplation of the view from his office window. Out in front ran S31, a two-lane blacktop with a flaking yellow center stripe badly in need of repainting. S31 was also the main street of Pinyon, California, seat of La Reina County, Pop. 2,109, Elev. 3550.