The Howling III

Chapter Fourteen

While Holly Lang took hasty leave of the offices of Landrud & Co. in Ventura, Abe Craddock was draining a can of Coors in the old Whitaker place. It was a falling-down cabin set well back in the trees at the south end of Pinyon, and had not been used since old George Whitaker's Dodge slipped off a jack while he was under it down at Art Moore's Exxon station.

The cabin had been rented from old George Whitaker's widow by a smart-talking writer fella from Los Angeles who was doing a story for one of the scandal sheets they sold over at the Safeway where you paid for your groceries. This so-called writer had bailed Abe Craddock out of jail and promised him a cool thousand dollars just for telling him the story of what happened in the woods that day with Curly Vane and the wolf thing. The catch was that Craddock would tell his story to no one else.

Abe figured he flat had it made. Not only was he living fairly comfortably in the cabin with Betty out of his hair, he was taking this smart-ass LA writer for all the booze he could drink, and figured he could probably up the dollar price on him, too. As for the manslaughter charge against him for blowing up Jones, that was no sweat any more. With the kid gone and Curly nothing but raw meat, there were no witnesses. It was an accident pure and simple. Yes, things were surely going old Abe Craddock's way for a change.

The LA writer, Louis Zeno by name, was hammering away at the old typewriter he'd brought with him like he was trying to set the thing on fire. Abe had never in his life seen a man who could type so fast.

Zeno ripped out the page he was working on and handed it over to Craddock. "All right, Abe, I want you to take a look at this and see if it sounds all right. Remember, this is supposed to be you telling the story, and I want to be sure the facts are reasonably close to what really happened."

Craddock took the page, set aside the Coors can, wiped his mouth, cleared his throat. He began to read in a laboured schoolboy manner:

"When Curly Vane and I entered the dense, dripping forest outside Pinyon on that fateful afternoon, perhaps we should have sensed… "

Abe stopped reading and looked up, frowning.

"Something the matter?" Zeno asked impatiently.

"It's that dripping forest business. The forest don't drip. Least, I don't remember no dripping that particular day."

"That's alliteration for effect," Zeno told him.

"Huh?"

"Don't worry about it. Read the rest."

Craddock went through his preliminary mouth wiping and throat clearing again and continued:

"… should have sensed a certain foreboding: an ominous presence lurking unseen in the shadows. But in our innocent good spirits, neither of us could foresee the unspeakable fate that would befall one of us before we would see the sun again… "

Abe stopped again, shaking his head.

"What now?" the writer said wearily.

"Uh, I ain't sure I get that business about the sun. I mean, it was up there all the time. We weren't in no cave, you know."

"Never mind that," Zeno told him. "That's just for atmosphere. All I want you to do is make sure that what I say you say happened is more or less what happened. So if anybody asks you about it after the story comes out you can tell them sure, that's the way it was. Okay?"

"Yeah, okay. I get it." Craddock sucked noisily at the empty beer can. "Reading this stuff is mighty thirsty work, and damn if I don't think this is the last of the Coors."

"Jesus, Abe, it isn't even noon yet, and you've put away a whole six-pack and part of another."

"Hell, that's nothin'. You should of seen me and Curly when we really got down to some serious drinking. Hell, we wouldn't leave no bottle untapped in three counties."

"I'll bet," Zeno said unhappily.

"An" you did say you'd provide the drinking stuff as long as I gave my story to you and nobody else. Ain't that right?"

"That's right, Abe," Zeno said. "Let's just finish this part where you walk into the woods and first see the Wolfman."

Craddock coughed loudly. "Damn, Lou, I just don't think I can rightly concentrate any more without something to cool down my throat."

"All right," the writer snapped. "I'll go get some more beer. Do you think a twelve-pack will hold you till lunchtime?"

"Might be," Craddock said. "If you get the sixteen-ounce cans, it'll go farther."

"Yeah, yeah, sixteen-ounce." Louis Zeno lowered the cover onto his precious portable Royal and stood up.

Someday, some blessed day, Louis Zeno would finish the book that was finally going to make him some real money and free him forever from writing trash for the supermarket tabloids and dealing with scum like this foul-smelling Abe Craddock. He had the outline tucked away in his apartment in West Hollywood. All he needed was a free month or so to get it down on paper and off to a publisher.

In the meantime, he would just have to keep turning out stories about mothers who stuffed their babies into microwave ovens, country girls fucked by green men from outer space, and assholes like Abe Craddock and his imaginary werewolf. He could look forward to one small victory when Craddock tried to collect the imaginary thousand dollars Zeno had promised him. The writer crossed the cabin's single room to where his jacket hung from a bent nail.

"You might pick up some Fritos while you're at the store," Craddock suggested. "One of the big bags."

"Big bag. Sure."

"When you get back I'll tell you the part where I took on the wolf thing with my bare hands after I seen what he done to Curly. I mean, I was holdin" my own too. Maybe gettin" a little the best of things. If only I hadn't of caught my boot there in them bushes and tripped myself up it might of been a whole nother story."

"Yeah, Abe, swell, but let's just stick to the story we've got. I'll ask the questions and you tell me what happened in your own halting words. I'm the professional. I know how to put these things together."

"I guess that's right," Abe said slyly, "but without me you wouldn't have nothing to put together. Ain't that so?"

Fuck you, you stinking ignorant redneck bastard! is what Louis Zeno thought. What he said was, "Yeah, that's so, Abe. Without you I'd be standing in the unemployment line."

"Well, don't you worry, Lou buddy. You and me are going to make us a whole shitpot full of money with this before we're through."

Zeno shrugged into his jacket and headed for the door.

Neither man looked toward the dusty window pane at the side of the cabin. If they had, they might have seen the eyes that watched them. Eyes that gradually changed colour until they seemed to glow an unearthly green.

Derak watched the man from the city leave the cabin and stalk down the trail to the clearing where he had parked the little orange car. The engine fired and the city man drove off. Derak looked back through the window at the gross, murdering hunter. The smouldering hatred inside him kindled to a flame. Derak moved a short distance away from the cabin and carefully removed his clothes so they would not be shredded as the transformation began.

Abe Craddock thumbed a wad of Copenhagen into his cheek and sucked out the good tobacco flavour. He should have told the writer fella to pick up a couple tins of that too. The dumb prick would bring anything Abe wanted as long as he got what he called an exclusive on Abe's battle with the werewolf. In Abe's mind the whole thing by now had actually taken place as he told the story and retold it. He came out looking a little more heroic every time.

There was no doubt in Abe's mind that he could milk more than a thousand dollars out of this. Hell, he could probably get double that. Those papers must pay good money for a story like this, and if Zeno was going to use his name he was going to have to pay for it.

Something scratched at the door.

Abe took a look at his waterproof Timex. It was much too soon for Zeno to be back from the liquor store. He didn't want to see any of the reporters who were still hanging around Pinyon, so he'd have to drive clear to Darnay.

Something scratched again.

Could the damn fool writer have forgotten something and come back for it? No, they had a special knock that Zeno would give to show it was him. He didn't want anybody else getting close to Abe before he had the exclusive story all written and handed over to the editor. That was the whole idea of hiding up here in the Whitaker cabin where nobody had come in years.

Scratch. Scratch.

You don't suppose the widow Whitaker would of told somebody they were up here? Not likely, since she didn't know what the fool city man wanted with her broken-down cabin and was just glad to get the ten bucks Zeno offered her.

Thump.

There was sure as hell something outside the door. Well, it wouldn't hurt to take a tiny peek. Zeno had bored a hole in the door at eye level and stuck a patch of leather over it so he could look out in case anybody came sniffing around.

Abe went over, lifted the leather patch, and put his eye to the hole. He had a full two seconds for his brain to register the fact that he was looking into another eye of the most terrible fiery green.

Then the door splintered inward like it was dynamited.

Abe staggered backwards, knocking over the card table with Zeno's typewriter on it and stumbling among the empty beer cans on the floor. The thing that came at him had to bend down to get its head through the doorway. Even inside the cabin the thing's pointed hairy ears brushed against the ceiling. The terrible black-lipped muzzle had a wet, just-born look. And the teeth. My God, the teeth. Abe Craddock vividly recalled what those teeth had done to Curly Vane, and all his heroic fantasies dissolved before the roaring reality.

"No, don't! No, don't! No, don't!" Abe cried. He might as well have appealed to the wind.

His back thumped against the opposite wall of the cabin and he could retreat no farther. A voice he did not recognize as his own whimpered in his ear.

The beast paused before him, its mighty chest twice the girth of Abe's own. The powerful jaws worked up and down. The beast seemed to savour the helplessness of the man before it.

When the beast struck, it was faster than Abe Craddock's eyes could follow. He was intent on those terrible teeth when it struck out at him with a forepaw. The razor talons ripped four parallel gashes down the front of him from sternum to pubic bone.

For an instant Abe felt nothing. He looked down stunned at the slashes through his T-shirt, his jeans, his jockey shorts, and the fatty flesh beneath. Then the pain came. And the blood.

The blood oozed at first, then bubbled out of him, splashing the bare wooden floor where he stood. Abe clutched at himself, trying to hold his intestines in place. But they bulged and coiled out over his hands like a nest of wet red snakes.

The beast let him scream for a while, as his legs gave out and he sank to the floor in a pool of his own blood and guts. Abe saw the gaping mouth come down toward him. Felt the teeth clamp on his head. Heard the crack of his skull…

Derak curled himself on the ground near the pile of his clothes and focused his will on the shape change. The transformation from beast back to man held none of the wild joy that was a part of becoming a wolf. Ideally, there should be a full, uninterrupted night to let the tension ease and change back gradually. When it had to be forced and speeded up, the changes to the body were painful in the extreme.

However, there was no help for it now. Derak had a mission, and it was only partly complete. He had set himself the task of returning Malcolm to his own people before the boy could do irreparable harm to himself or others of his kind. If along the way he could destroy some human garbage like Abe Craddock, it would add pleasure to his task.

Derak's body shuddered. He ground his teeth against the pain. The internal organs shifted and jumped under his skin. His skeleton cracked as the bones returned to human form. The body hair vanished as though sucked back into the hide. The ears shrank and rounded off, the muzzle pulled in, the killing teeth receded into the harmless molars and incisors of a man.

Slowly, slowly, the pain eased. Derak moved, straightening his body, testing his limbs and extremities. He shivered with the cold on his naked flesh.

As he pulled his clothes back on, Derak froze at a sound from the road below and ducked behind a bush. The little orange car chugged into the clearing and stopped. The man from the city climbed out, bringing with him a half-case of beer and a crinkly bag of chips. Derak watched as the man laboured up the path with his burden toward the cabin. The wise thing would be to destroy him, but the blood lust was stilled, and Derak had no wish to kill now without reason.

He waited until the city man had lumbered past the bush where he crouched, then he loped silently down the trail to the car. The door was unlocked. He tore away a fibreboard panel beneath the dash and found the ignition wires.

At the top of the trail the man from the city had seen the shattered remnants of the door. He dropped the beer and the bag of chips and walked stiff-legged toward the cabin. Derak stripped the wires with a tough thumbnail and twisted them together.

By the time Louis Zeno staggered out of the cabin, white-faced, with his mouth agape in a silent scream, his little orange car was turning onto the road toward the town of Pinyon.

As he drove, Derak pulled tissues from a carton on the dash panel and wiped away what he could of the blood and mud from his face. He was a fastidious man, and it made him uncomfortable not to bathe after a killing. However, this time the change back had to be done so fast there was no time.

Derak's mind had not completely reoriented, and as soon as he had a chance, he pulled the car off into a sheltered spot alongside the road next to an Exxon station. He was startled to see only then that the backs of his hands were still thickly overgrown with hair. He tucked the hands away out of sight, leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes, and let himself slip into a light doze.

He awoke some time later, refreshed and alert. He rubbed his hands front and back to be sure that the change was now truly complete. Only then did he realize he had brought the little car to a stop almost directly across from the office of La Reina County's sheriff.

Derak immediately choked down an impulse to panic. If anyone were still looking for a man of his description after the wild werewolf tales that had clouded the killing of Dr Qualen, they would hardly expect him to be sitting in a car parked almost under the sheriffs nose.

Using mental techniques learned from those who had travelled his road before, Derak settled into a quiet watchfulness that had protected his kind through the ages.

A small, square car pulled into the parking area before the sheriffs office. A young woman got out. The doctor. Derak had followed closely the events in Pinyon, and he knew that she, of all the people here, was the most anxious to find Malcolm. If anyone could lead him to the boy, it would be she.

Derak slid lower in the driver's seat and watched as the young woman got out and went into the office.