Texas Strange

by West, Terry M.

  Harlson gripped Luke’s shoulders. “Now be quiet for a second and listen to me. We’ve got men combing forty-five for her. We’re checking every god damn bush out there. We’ll find her.”

  “No you won’t,” Luke said, tearing himself away from Harlson. “I told you. The killer has her. We have to do something before it’s too late.”

  Harlson considered his next sentence carefully. He knew he would just be fanning the fire, but it had to be said. “If the killer abducted her, Lucas, then it’s already too late.”

  “No,” Luke said, shaking his head and pacing the conference room as he spoke. “I feel her, Harlson. I’ve spent twenty years with that woman and I know she’s alive. She broke her arm two years ago while I was on the road. I knew it. Her car broke down near Conroe once, miles from a pay phone. Before she called me, I knew it. When her father died and she was in pain and I was in Tyler working on a case, I knew it. She’s alive, but I don't know for how long.”

  “What do you propose we do about it, then?” Harlson asked.

  “I have to get back on this case,” Luke insisted desperately.

  “Luke, I can’t do that. You could have died the other day. The commissioner will roast my nuts if I let you have another go,” Harlson protested.

  “Fuck the commissioner,” Lucas said. “Look, detective, we’re both working on tight schedules. You catch my drift, right? You want this killer and I want my wife. And this game just went into overtime- time that we’re pissing away and neither one of us can afford to waste. Do you know what I mean, detective?”

  “Yes,” Harlson replied, his voice thickening a bit. Luke was throwing his illness in his face. He had figured Luke knew, the first time he met the psychic. He realized that Lucas Glover was a desperate man at that moment who would say anything to save his wife, but Harlson still resented it.

  “I know exactly what you fucking mean. But I still don’t see how we are going to manage anything this time.”

  “I think I have a way around the wolf,” Luke said. “I sat up all night thinking about it. But I need to get at some of the evidence again. And I heard there was a survivor last night.”

  “Lorrie Macroon,” Harlson informed him. “She had to be heavily sedated and her doctor thinks it could be days before we can question her. She was severely traumatized.”

  “I don’t need to question her,” Luke said, holding up an open palm for Harlson to see. “I only need to touch her.”

  ***

  Dreg crouched on the wood plank floor of the shed, watching the woman as she slumbered. He had scraped frost out of the freezer and wrapped it in a towel, using it as a cold compress for the bump on her forehead. He hoped he had not seriously injured her. He didn’t think so. She had moaned and her eyelids fluttered when he brought her into the shed adjacent to his den. He had set a dingy mattress on the floor next to the generator for her. He could not keep her in the house. Not until she was ready for the truth. He had keepsakes inside that she wasn’t prepared to see.

  Dreg watched her as she slept, his eyes wide and fascinated by her. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid his eyes on. She had a golden mane of hair, the shade of sunshine on a calm pond. She had a healthy figure- her chest and hips were very shapely and round.

  Dreg preferred meaty women. His mother had been that shape. Most of the women he came across were unhealthy, fragile things. Either too thin or too fat.

  Not his louve, though. She was perfection, sprawled on the mattress before him. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to do more than that. He wanted to strip her clothes away, and then take the under things off of her and survey his prize. He wanted to touch every inch of her. Smell every inch of her. He wanted to taste every inch of her. Dreg wanted to open her legs and crawl between them and plant his offspring.

  But no, he thought, calling back the hand that was reaching out toward her of its own accord. The young girl that had hurt him had made him realize something. He was ugly- a Bête noire. The only way to make this woman love him was to win her trust and appeal to her on a higher level. To take her now would spoil the process. She had to love him, if she was to be his louve and angel maker. She had to be taught the ways, and she had to accept those ways.

  He could take her now. It would be a very easy thing to do. Dreg had to call upon every ounce of willpower he had to stop himself. But then he pictured her face under his siege. She would look upon him with fear and disgust. He couldn’t stand the thought of that image. He wanted her to crave his touch.

  If I learn her of Le Loup, he thought, and do good by her and take care of her and feed her every day, she might come around.

  With time and patience, anything was possible.

  The woman stirred, and Dreg crept forward. He was ready to serve her in any way that he could. She grimaced and she gripped her head as she came to. She slowly opened her eyes and she rose up painfully from the mattress. Her confused face took in the dark surroundings. Dreg watched her, losing himself for a second in the fantasy of having her for a mate. Her eyes, blue as the sky on a clear day, finally fixed on him, and Dreg’s heart raced nervously as their gazes mingled together.

  And then the world was the same place it had always been for Dreg as the woman’s face contorted in fear and she screamed. She scrambled away from him. The woman edged herself to the generator, her back plastered to the greasy machinery.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she begged him, drawing her knees to her chin.

  Her eyes misted up, and seeing her like that made Dreg want to weep himself.

  “Is okay,” Dreg said, wishing he knew better English. He knew enough but it was mostly small words and how would he ever appeal to this woman- make her understand- on small words?

  “Don’t be afeared. I won’t hurt you. Dreg be vieil homme, eh? Old man.”

  She didn’t seem convinced. Her fear was still strong, but she managed to hold back her tears.

  “What do you want?” she asked, apprehensively.

  “Is okay,” Dreg repeated, nodding and smiling at her. “Jes’ gonna be in here for a spell. You be okay.”

  “Are you going to let me go? I won’t tell anyone if you do. I promise. You seem like a nice person,” she said, forcing a smile and Dreg sensed her insincerity. “We’ll just pretend this never happened.”

  “Is okay!” Dreg shouted, irritated by the woman. What did he have to do to calm her down? And did she think he was stupid? He couldn’t let her go. She would be his louve, or she would be his meat. But she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

  He instantly regretted his outburst as the woman sobbed and covered her face. He was going about this all wrong. He shook his head apologetically.

  “Is okay,” he said, softly. “You stay here and I learn you. I learn you good and proper. You be okay. Yeh-heh?”

  The woman choked back her tears but she still stared wide-eyed at Dreg. She nodded, more subdued, but she still looked very distrustful.

  Time and patience, Dreg reminded himself. “I be Dreg,” he said, jabbing his thumb into his chest. “Who you be?”

  “Tammy,” the woman said, smiling slightly, but she was still balled up fearfully.

  “Tammy,” Dreg said thoughtfully, rolling the name around in his head. It was a name he would be using often from now on, and it suited his louve. Her name could have been shit, for all he cared, and it still would have issued from her lips like a sweet song.

  “Tammy,” he repeated, nodding with approval. “Tammy is good.”

  Dreg suddenly cursed himself for his inconsideration. “You be hungry, eh? Dreg go get you a repas. Dat means meal,” he said, standing and adjusting the lantern on the work bench.

  The shed had no windows and it was a vault of darkness, day or night. Though it was a tool shed, there were no tools, as Dreg had cleaned them out while Tammy slept. He left the shack, Tammy's frightened eyes transfixed on him as he closed the door.

  He drew a bolt across the entrance, having prepared it as
a cage a few seasons ago. Tammy was its first guest, and Dreg was confident his louve would not escape.

  She was only a girl, after all.

  Dreg inhaled the morning, his senses drunk and he headed to his den to make Tammy breakfast.

  CHAPTER 36

  “The poor kid,” Harlson muttered, as he and Luke stood at the side of Lorrie Macroon’s hospital bed.

  She slept, her thin form writhing under the hospital sheets. Her brow was furrowed and Luke imagined that she was reliving the horror she had experienced. He imagined she would relive it, over and over. Her boyfriend had been slaughtered right in front of her. He was killed for no rational reason. His death had been an amusement for a maniac.

  Shaw Austen, a seventeen-year-old kid with the future stretched in front of him as wide and long as the Interstate he had been traveling.

  Luke clenched his fists and gritted his teeth.

  He’ll pay for this, he swore to himself. I’ll make him suffer for this and even more for taking Tammy.

  But deep down Lucas felt helpless. So helpless.

  “You better do your thing before her doctor gets back,” Harlson reminded him. “I don’t know if he would appreciate us being in here with her.”

  “It won’t take long,” Luke said, pulling a chair next to the girl. She still moved fretfully in her bed, the sedation trapping her in whatever nightmare she was having.

  Luke touched her cheek. She flinched, and then her body relaxed slightly.

  Luke leaned close to her ear.

  “Lorrie,” he whispered. “I don’t know if you can hear me. If you can, then know that I’m a friend. I can catch the man responsible for Shaw’s death. To do that, I have to touch you. You can help me by remembering it. I know how horrible it is to remember, but someone else, someone close to me, will die if you don’t help me. So please, please help me. I’m going to touch you, now. I won’t hurt you.”

  The girl didn’t respond, but she settled down a bit. Luke gripped her small hand. He felt her hand tighten in his and he smiled. He closed his eyes, clearing his mind to receive the data that would come to him from Lorrie. It wasn’t normally an easy thing for him to do, and it was an even harder task with Tammy on his mind. But the girl was being receptive, and he prayed it would make things easier.

  Luke pictured his tranquil pond. He focused on its golden surface, barely disturbed by the tiny bugs skimming on it. Their patterns ran like tiny veins through the water. Lucas lost himself in his peaceful little place. It was so easy to leave the world outside of it behind, and he hoped that if heaven existed this was it. He sat on a mossy patch of earth under the shade of an aged cypress tree. He leaned back against the trunk, feeling the rough bark against his back. He inhaled the scent of marigolds. He pulled a wild onion from the ground and nibbled on it. Here was only peace and sunshine and-

  “Magoo! Magoo! Magoo!”

  A schoolyard.

  Winter.

  Little bodies bundled up to keep warm.

  Lorrie standing on a sidewalk, her downcast eyes fixed on a hopscotch board, as a circle of children chanted at her teasingly.

  “Magoo! Magoo!” they shouted, and though the taunt was a harmless one, an abstract insult, Lucas felt bad emotions well within her. Anger, frustration, alienation. He felt them boil in her small frame until he thought she would burst. She ran from the schoolyard, tears clouding her vision and the cold air biting at her face.

  Her life continued before Luke’s inner eye. He felt her pain, recent pain over her mother’s inattention, her father’s absence, Shaw’s inability to face the world. But she had admired Shaw’s innocence. She even envied it. He could shrug the worst the world threw at him away and Shaw wasn’t hardened by it, like Lorrie.

  ‘You were born an old woman,’ her mother was fond of saying before she quit saying anything.

  Luke saw the mother before she turned gray and quiet. She had been a pleasant woman. A beautiful woman with dark hair and tender eyes. A woman who existed only for her daughter.

  ‘Why does a child have to fuss and worry so much as you? Relax. Enjoy your youth. It won’t be long before-’

  ‘You got the problem, meat!’

  Lorrie shook, her hand clamping to Luke’s as tightly as a vise.

  He heard the voice through Lorrie and Luke recognized it from his first vision at Tonya Lawley's apartment. He was being sucked toward Shaw’s death, and Lorrie was resisting it.

  ‘I’m here, Lorrie,’ Luke thought, maintaining the rapport. He didn’t know why, but he was sure she could hear him. ‘I know it hurts, but you have to show me.’

  Lorrie moaned fitfully and then she released the vision.

  Luke saw it all. Shaw’s death. Lorrie stumbling from the car and confronting the killer. Luke witnessed it from Lorrie's point of view. He watched from inside of Lorrie as her eyes gazed up at the killer. Lucas looked once again into the face of a wolf. Even though Lorrie had gotten a good look at the bastard, something was still keeping Luke from seeing the killer's human face. Luke was suddenly frustrated and scared that some force had the power to stifle him in his visions.

  He saw the wolf pull Lorrie up and lustfully maul her.

  ‘Maybe Dreg have other plans for you. Yeh-heh?’

  And then the image broke.

  Lorrie relaxed again and she loosened her grip on the psychic.

  Luke stroked her head tenderly and whispered, “It’s over. Rest. Thank you, Lorrie.

  Luke gently kissed the girl’s forehead.

  He stood. “Let’s go,” he said to Harlson. “I want to touch that piece of his shirt you were telling me about.”

  “What did you get?” Harlson asked, following Luke into the hallway.

  “Not much again,” Luke replied. “I can still only see him as a wolf. I do know his name, though. It’s Dreg.”

  “Dreg?” Harlson said, curiously. “What the hell kind of name is that?”

  “I don’t know,” Luke admitted. “But I’m positive now that he hasn’t hurt Tammy. He’s looking for a mate.”

  The revelation chilled him to the bone. Dreg might- Christ. He couldn’t think about it. His wife in the hands of a lustful man-beast.

  Louve.

  The words suddenly rose unbidden into his mind.

  Louve?

  Luke stopped in the middle of the hallway. Harlson nearly ran into him.

  “What do you mean by mate?” Harlson asked cautiously. “You mean he’s-”

  “Louve,” Luke muttered, lost in thought.

  “Love?” Harlson asked. “Luke, fill me in. What’s going on?”

  “That dream I had- what the demon baby said,” Luke answered, closing his eyes and trying to grasp the memory with both hands. “‘If light is tainted by darkness, the pack shall rise again, and the old hunger shall lead them’,” Luke recited. “‘He searches for the louve. The angel maker to bear his cubs’.”

  “What does it all mean?”

  “He wants to make little maniacs,” Luke explained angrily. “With my wife. Why didn’t I see this coming?"

  “Take it easy on yourself,” Harlson said, gripping Luke’s shoulder.

  Luke shook his head and he walked into the hospital wing waiting room. He recognized Lorrie’s mother from his connection with the traumatized young woman. She sat on a vinyl sofa seat, staring vacantly at the television mounted on the opposite wall. She wore no make-up and her hair was covered by a scarf. She shook her head remorsefully, and Luke could almost read her mind.

  Poor me. First my husband, now my daughter. Why me, God? Why does this always happen to me?

  “Eileen Macroon?” Luke called out, approaching the teary woman.

  “Yes?” the woman replied, clutching her purse to her chest.

  Luke looked at her and he thought of the gray woman in Lorrie’s mind. She was writing off her daughter as she had written off everything else. Giving up. Throwing in the towel. More misery for her to wallow in.

  “Why are you out here?�
�� he asked, harshly. “Why aren’t you in there with her?”

  “Please,” the woman said, confused. “My daughter, she’s-”

  “Take it easy, Luke,” Harlson reprimanded him. “She’s going through hell.”

  “Who isn’t?” Luke growled. He turned his attention back to the woman. He realized he was going overboard. He calmed himself and knelt down to the woman, grasping her hand.

  “Lorrie needs you in there holding her and speaking to her and pulling her back from this madness. Don’t lose anymore than you’ve lost already.”

  Luke stood up. He turned away from the woman who stared perplexedly at him and he faced Harlson once again. "Let's go. We're running out of time."

  ***

  Tammy pounded on the thick wooden door that barred her from the outside and freedom. Panic rose from the pit of her stomach. Her shoulder ached from her assault against the entrance, and she stepped away from it, rubbing her bruised limb. She searched the gray, decaying wooden planks that formed the four walls around her for a weak point.

  Her head pounded from the goose egg on her brow. Her heart hammered savagely and she felt on the verge of hyperventilation. She pulled her hands away from the rough wood and she wrapped her trembling arms around herself.

  Stay calm, she told herself, fighting back the hot tears that blurred her dark prison. You’re not the kind of woman that gets hysterical. You’re strong. There has to be a way out.

  She continued her search for a loose board.

  Concentrate, Tammy, concentrate. Don’t think about what could happen.

  Her eyes scanned the dingy walls. Though old, the pieces of the shed were strong. Sunshine poured in through the cracks of the shed and Tammy pressed her face against the wall, peering through the crack.

  She saw forest- a thick wall of green spotted with parched yellow and dying brown. She moved to the wall on her right, looking through the space between the boards. She saw more forest, an observation that heightened her apprehension.