The Howling III

Chapter Sixteen

Even watching closely, Holly missed the logging trail the first time past, and she had to drive back at ten miles an hour with her head craning out the window to find it. The old trail was no more than two faint paths through the weeds leading up the hill. Years ago logging trucks had hauled the huge Douglas fir logs down from the mountain to sawmills that had long since disappeared.

Minutes after she headed up the grade, the little orange car appeared. It stopped for a moment while the driver peered up the hill, then followed Holly up the trail.

Holly drove carefully up the grade. The second-growth timber had almost reached the density of the virgin stand that attracted the lumber companies in a previous generation. On both sides the thick brush made it difficult to see. Rocks and stumps jutted unexpectedly from the centre where the weeds grew unmashed. The Volkswagen Rabbit was not designed for off-road adventure, and Holly winced with every scrape and bump against the underside of the little car.

As she emerged from one especially thick clump of trees, Holly came suddenly and unexpectedly upon the clinic of Dr Pastory. It was a dark, two-storey house of redwood shingle and heavy oak beams with an overhanging roof. The house was built in the 1920s by the owner of a Hollywood studio as a playhouse for his favourite starlet. Sadly, before she could occupy it, the starlet died from drinking bootleg gin and laudanum at a party hosted by a popular slapstick comedian. The house had remained empty since that time until the studio magnate died several years ago. It was put up for auction, and because of the remote location Wayne Pastory was able to buy it cheaply.

There was no other vehicle in sight, and Holly felt a rush of disappointment at the thought that she might have made the trip for nothing. However, fresh tyre tracks told her that someone was using the place.

She snugged the Rabbit in under a tree and walked across the cushion of pine needles to the heavy front door. There was no bell, so she reached for the heavy cast-iron knocker.

Before she could lift the knocker Holly froze at a sound from somewhere inside the house. It was a cry of mingled fear, rage, and pain. The voice was distorted, yet something in the tone made her sure it was Malcolm. Reacting to a sudden blaze of anger, she tried the latch of the heavy door, found it open, and walked in.

The interior of the old house had been redone and modernized, if not improved, with metals and plastics. Wallboard had been added to section the large old rooms into many smaller ones. Holly kept moving, following the sound of the voice that continued to cry out every few seconds.

She passed along a hallway with doors on both sides. Some of the doors stood open, revealing cell-like rooms with narrow beds and a minimum of simple furnishings. Most looked unoccupied. In one of them, however, the bed was rumpled and recently slept in. Holly paused to look at a crumpled bit of white fabric stuffed into a wire waste basket. She recognized the stitched blue lettering that would spell out La Reina County Hospital. A patient's gown.

She hurried on through what appeared to be a laboratory, dominated by an examination table with heavy straps riveted to the corners. Although she did not pause to look around, Holly was impressed by the quantity and variety of equipment in the lab. No wonder Olan Schaeffer at Landrud & Co. had been so eager to do business.

There was a large, well-equipped kitchen, then a short flight of steps leading down to a wing of the house that was on a lower level. It was from a room down there she heard the agonized cries.

The door to the large room on the lower level was ajar. Holly could see it was brightly lit within. She was close enough now to hear a crackling sound along with the cries of pain. She stepped through the door and stood for a frozen moment, stunned by what she saw.

A thick-shouldered brute of a man with scrubby black hair on a bullet head turned when she entered. He held what appeared to be an electrified metal rod in one hand. He was standing in front of a steel mesh cage. Inside the cage a pitiful figure writhed on the floor.A boy, Holly thought, though she could not be sure. He lay curled on the floor, muscles twitching, his limbs bent into strange, unnatural positions. On the visible areas of skin grew uneven patches of hair.

"Malcolm!" she cried. "My good God, what have they done to you?"

The face that looked up at her from the floor of the cruel cage wrenched Holly's heart. She recognized in it the boy Malcolm, yet it was not Malcolm. The bones seemed to have shifted subtly, elongating the face. The eyes were a strange luminescent green. He said something that might have been her name, then quickly covered his mouth with a darkened, long-nailed hand.

"Who are you, girlie?"

It took a moment for Holly to realize the brutish man was talking to her. She turned toward him and fought down the rage inside her. Her impulse was to strike out blindly at him, but she knew this was a time for control.

"I am Dr Hollanda Lang. I demand to know what you are doing to this boy."

The Doctor seemed to confuse the man; to draw from him a touch of respect. At least temporarily.

"How did you get in?" he asked.

"I walked in. The door was open."

"You shouldn't of done that." A sly look crept into his dark little eyes.

"I want you to release this boy at once."

"I can't do that. Dr Pastory said I was supposed to keep him in there."

"Did Dr Pastory also give you orders to torture the boy?"

"What are you talkin" about?"

"Answer my question."

"Are you a friend of the doctor?"

The figure in the cage had pulled itself half erect on the steel mesh. The hands were more human now, the boy more recognizable as Malcolm. He looked so terribly young and vulnerable in the oversized pyjamas.

"Holly," he said, his voice hoarse but clearing.

"Malcolm, thank God I've found you. Are you badly hurt?"

The boy looked down at his hands, which still bore patches of dark hair. He let go the screen and tried to hide the hands behind him.

"I… I… "

Holly moved quickly to the cage. She lay one hand flat against the diamond mesh. He backed away.

"Don't be afraid, Malcolm. And don't worry. I'm going to get you out of here, and I'm going to help you."

She turned at the sound of a movement behind her. The big man had taken a step toward her. He was clenching and unclenching his hands. The metal rod hung forgotten at his side.

"What's your name?" she demanded.

The authority in Holly's voice held him for a moment. "K-Kruger," he stammered. "Dr Pastory left me in charge while he's gone."

"Well, Kruger, you just get the key to this lock and open the cage right now." She spoke with an assurance she did not feel. This Kruger was obviously unbalanced mentally. God only knew what sadistic tortures he had been subjecting Malcolm to, but Holly knew she was treading a thin line with him.

Kruger shook his bullet head slowly from side to side. "No, I don't think I'm gonna do that."

She tried softening her tone.

"It's all right, Kruger. I'll explain to Dr Pastory that I told you to let the boy out."

A crafty smile slid over the man's thick features. "Oh, no you don't. I know who you are. You're that Holly woman. The one he," Kruger nodded toward Malcolm, "keeps calling for. You ain't no friend of the doctor."

"You just let him out of there. Right now, Kruger, or you're going to be in a whole lot of trouble."

"Not me, girlie. It ain't me who's going to be in trouble." Moving with surprising speed, Kruger crossed the room and placed himself between her and the door.

"Run, Holly," Malcolm said in a strangled voice. "He'll hurt you."

Sensing the menace in the big man's tensed body, Holly tried to step around him to the door. He seized her by the arm above one elbow and squeezed it painfully.

"Let go of me!" she demanded, but her voice betrayed the fear that was building within her.

Kruger felt it too. "Your little freak friend is right," he said. "I can hurt you if I want to. So you better be nice to me. You understand?"

"Let go!" Holly said again.

Before she could move, she was pulled hard against Kruger's body. His thick, moist lips covered her mouth. His tongue tried to force itself past her clenched teeth.

Acting on instinct, she pumped one knee up between the big man's legs. Her knee slid off the hard muscles of his inner thigh, weakening the blow to his testicles.

Kruger grunted and pulled his head back.

"Bitch!"

He balled one huge fist and hit Holly on the point of the jaw.

It seemed her head had been slammed up against the ceiling. The lights went out for Holly Lang and she fell heavily to the floor. Kruger laughed and knelt over her.

When Gavin Ramsay returned to his office, supporting a hysterical Louis Zeno, two men in neat business suits were waiting for him with Deputy Nevins. They introduced themselves as Hoyden and Placerman from the California attorney general's office.

"We got your request," said Hoyden, the senior of the two, "to assist with the investigation you're running down here."

"I can sure use you," Ramsay said. He briefly described the scene he had found at the old Whitaker cabin. "I left my man Fernandez in charge there. He'll keep the sightseers away until we can secure the area."

"This a witness?" Hoyden said, nodding toward Zeno.

"He found the body."

The writer took this as a cue to start talking. "It was the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. I'm talking bad, man. Blood everywhere. Pieces of my man all over the cabin. My typewriter was ruined."

"Did you get a look at the guy who did it?" Deputy Nevins asked.

"No man did that," Zeno said.

"What do you mean?"

"No one man could make an unholy mess like that in the

little time I was gone."

"Gang of some kind?" Placerman suggested.

"Shit if I know. That's you guys" job. You figure it out."

"Try to relax, Mr Zeno," Ramsay said. "Deputy Nevins here will take your statement."

"Stole my car too," said Zeno.

"What's that? Who stole your car?"

"Whoever… whatever tore up Abe Craddock. Drove off in my car right when I came out of the cabin."

"What kind of a car was it, Mr Craddock?"

"Datsun. 1972. Orange."

"Licence number?"

"I… I… oh, shit, I know it… "

"Hey, I think I saw that car, maybe an hour ago," Nevins interrupted.

"Where, Roy?"

"I was watching Holly, Dr Lang, drive away, and this orange Datsun pulled out right behind her and went off in the same direction."

"Holly was here? When?"

"Like I said, maybe an hour ago. She left you a note." Nevins pointed at the sheriffs desk.

Ramsay snatched up the sheet from his calendar pad and read it swiftly. As Holly had done, he glanced at the wall map to check the location of Bear Paw.

"I'm going after her," he said. "Will you be all right here, Roy?"

"I can handle it, Gavin," said Deputy Nevins, sucking in his stomach.

"Good. I'm sure Hoyden and Placerman here will give you all the help they can."

The attorney general's men nodded their agreement.

"I'll be back as soon as possible."

Ramsay started out of the office, then hesitated. He looked thoughtfully at Louis Zeno, who was still pale and shaking from what he had found at the cabin. Ramsay himself had been shocked at the inhuman violence done to Abe Craddock. He strode back to his desk and unlocked the bottom drawer. From it he took a square, heavy box and dropped it into a jacket pocket.

"What's that, Sheriff?" Roy asked.

"Bullets," he said. "Just in case." What he did not add was that they were the special bullets given to him by Ken Dowd, the occult-shop owner. Silver bullets.

Malcolm watched in tearful, helpless rage as Kruger fumbled with the snap at the waist of Holly Lang's jeans. His fingers clamped over the heavy steel mesh like the claws of a caged beast.

Kruger paid him no attention. He popped the snap and slid down the zipper, revealing the filmy blue bikini pants Holly wore underneath. The man's breathing grew louder. His eyes glistened.

"Leave her alone," Malcolm cried. In his voice was a strange new quality. A growl. Even Kruger, in his lust, stopped and turned toward the cage.

"Hey, look at freak-boy! Look at that face! Too bad the doctor ain't here to see this. Maybe you get off on watching, huh, freak-boy? Well you pay attention, then, "cause I'm gonna give you plenty to watch."

He returned his concentration to pulling the tight jeans down Holly's legs. She moaned softly, but did not regain consciousness. The bluish bruise from Kruger's fist was already beginning to show on her jaw.

With some difficulty, Kruger pulled the jeans completely off, taking Holly's boots with them and exposing her long, slim legs. He reached up and touched her pubic mound through the blue nylon.

Malcolm snarled. The fires inside burned hotter than ever before. The sinewy, hairy hands that now grew at the ends of his arms gripped the steel mesh and pulled. With a loud rip the material of his pyjamas tore at the shoulders where new muscles bulged and humped. The mesh of the cage bent and started to pull apart where he gripped it.

Kruger, his fingers now hooked under the elastic of Holly's bikini, looked over. His wet, red mouth opened in surprise.

The window high on the wall above them burst inward. A beast, lithe and muscular, dived headfirst through the shattering glass. The beast landed gracefully on all fours, his great shaggy head swivelling to take in the situation. The black lips peeled back in a snarl.

Malcolm froze where he stood. The mesh of the cage before him was ripped wide enough for him to slip through, but he could not move.

Holly moaned again. Her eyelids fluttered. She tried to raise her head.

Kruger let go of her and scrambled to his feet. He stared at the creature now advancing on him.

"Get back! Get back!"

Malcolm, from inside the torn cage, stared at the beast. It rose on hind legs to a full seven feet. The talons, the gleaming teeth, the powerful jaws all were capable of killing a man in seconds. The eyes glowed an unholy green.

But Malcolm felt no fear. There was recognition. A kinship. As the eyes of the creature held his own, the boy sensed the message in his mind: Flee!

When he looked down at his hands they were again smooth, smallish, normal boy's hands. He touched his face. It was his own unmarked, beardless face.

Flee! The message sounded again in his mind. A command. Malcolm squeezed his slim body through the split he had torn in the steel mesh.

"Hey! Where d'you think you're going'?" Kruger, remembering his orders, turned his attention for a moment from the towering beast to the boy.

The beast opened its great jaws and roared. Kruger whirled to face the menace. Malcolm, compelled by the telepathic command, slipped past Kruger and the beast to the open door. There he stopped and looked down at Holly.

Conscious now, she raised herself on an elbow. She shuddered at the sight of the beast, but saw that its full attention was given to Kruger. She looked to Malcolm who hesitated in the doorway. Unable to find her voice, she motioned with a hand for him to run. Malcolm opened his mouth as though he would speak, then turned and vanished through the doorway.

The beast roared again and advanced on Kruger.

The big man, his mouth loose and drooling with fear, backed away. He stumbled, and remembered suddenly the cattle prod hanging by the wires from his belt pack. He seized the leather-wrapped grip and switched the current to its highest level. He thrust the rod out before him like a rapier.

"Awright," he babbled, "You want some of this? Come on, I'll give you some. I'll give you all you want."

He stabbed the metallic tip of the prod at the advancing creature.

The beast swatted at the measly weapon the man brandished and felt the electric shock that coursed all the way up to the hump of shoulder muscle. The shock was no more than a tickle to the beast, but it knew now what had been done to the boy Malcolm. It understood what had driven Malcolm to change as much as he had. The tiny shock was exactly what the beast needed to rekindle the bloodlust that had been so recently satisfied in the cabin outside Pinyon.

Kruger literally did not know what hit him. One moment he was holding the cattle prod, jabbing it at the huge hairy thing that had burst through the window. The next moment his arm, fingers still twitching on the leather grip, was lying on the floor at his feet. He stared dumbly at the empty shoulder socket where arterial blood pumped out in rhythm with his heartbeat.

Sitting now on the floor, Holly sucked in her breath as the beast cleaved Kruger's arm from his shoulder with one swift blow. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away, unable to watch any more. She heard, however, Kruger's mewling little cries, and the crackle of teeth on bone.

Gavin Ramsay kept the accelerator to the floor all the way from Pinyon to Bear Paw. He did not bother with red lights and siren. There was not enough traffic along the way to make any difference. By the time he hit the brakes at the faint logging trail that led up to Pastory's clinic, the three-year-old Plymouth Fury bought by the taxpayers of La Reina County was sweating and snorting like a used-up racehorse.

He jounced up the grade, swerving against the brush on both sides, finally jamming to a stop when he came suddenly upon the old high-roofed house among the pines. Louis Zeno's orange Datsun was parked at an angle out in front, one door hanging open as though the driver had abandoned it hastily. Tucked neatly under a tree was Holly's little Volkswagen.

A sound came from inside the house that raised the short hairs at the back of Ramsay's neck. A snarling growl that reminded him of nothing so much as the feeding of big, dangerous animals at the zoo.

A door banged at the rear of the house. Ramsay galloped around the side of the building in time to see a figure running swiftly away, darting between the trees.

"Halt!" he called, unholstering his revolver.

The running figure never slowed down, vanishing as Ramsay watched. A shot would be fruitless at that range and with all the trees between him and the target. Anyway, Ramsay never fired his piece without knowing what he was shooting at. Another growl came from inside the house, and he abandoned any thought of giving chase.

He started in through the open back door, then came to a stop. He thumbed the catch and rolled out the cylinder of his revolver, ejecting the copper-jacketed.38 cartridges on to the ground. Sweating with concentration, he dived a hand into his jacket pocket and dug out six of the silver bullets. He slipped them into the cylinder, locked it in place, and ran into the house.

Ramsay almost fell down several steps into a semi-sunken room, but caught his balance in time to stumble upright through the door. He took in the scene with a fast, sweeping glance. Against one wall stood a ruined cage. Rising shakily from the floor, clad in a sweater and bikini underpants, was Holly Lang. But dominating the room was a huge wolflike beast that stood upright holding the armless, headless body of a man.

"Holly!'he called.

She looked up at him, dazed and unbelieving for a moment, then scrambled toward him.

The beast, still holding the dismembered body, glared at him with bright green eyes. Ramsay raised the pistol.

At the moment he fired, Holly Lang stumbled into him, throwing off his aim. The soft silver bullet smacked into the far wall. Where an ordinary slug would have bitten out a chunk of concrete, the silver bullet flattened on impact and bounced to the floor.

The beast looked down at the bright blob of metal, then back at Gavin. A flash of understanding passed between them. The beast let the mangled body fall, dropped to all fours, and bounded past Ramsay and out the door before he could bring the revolver back into play.

Ramsay did not try to go after the thing. He stood where he was and wrapped both arms around Holly. He held her close to him until she finally stopped shivering. Then, supporting her with one arm, he picked up her jeans and her boots and led her gently out into the clean air.

Several minutes later they sat together in the front seat of the sheriffs car, still parked before the peaceful-looking house that was Dr Pastory's clinic. As Holly calmed down she told him all that had happened to her since leaving his office early this morning.

"Then that was Malcolm I saw running into the woods,"

he said.

"Yes. We've got to find him, Gavin, and help him."

"I'm not sure we can."

"We've got to try. If you won't help me, I'll go after him alone."

"No, you won't," Ramsay said quietly. "We're together in this thing now. Wherever it leads."

"You know what we're going up against?"

"I know," he said. "I saw it in there. But I'm not going to try to convince anybody else. I would suggest that you don't either, unless you want to be locked in a rubber room."

"No," she said, "I don't imagine we could get anybody to believe us. Not anybody who could help."

"I'm afraid that's it," he said gently. "It will have to be you and me, Holly, and that's it."

She lay her head against his shoulder for a moment, then looked up at him. "I think I'd like to be kissed now," she said.

He complied.