“But first, I knew, I must convince her that she had within her the essence of a wolf. And so, the séance.”
“She was no medium,” I said again.
“I made her think she was. I hypnotized her, and myself did weird wonders in the dark room. But she, in a trance, did not know. I needed witnesses to convince her.”
“So you invited Mr Wills,” supplied Judge Pursuivant.
“Yes, and her father. They had been prepared to accept her as medium and me as observer. Seeing a beast-form, they would tell her afterward that it was she.”
“Zoberg,” I said between set teeth, “you’re convicted out of your own mouth of rottenness that convinces me of the existence of the Devil after whom this grove was named. I wish to heaven that I’d killed you when we were fighting.”
“Ach, Wills,” he chuckled, “you’d have missed this most entertaining autobiographical lecture.”
“He’s right,” grumbled O’Bryant; and, “Let him go on,” the judge pleaded with me.
“Once sure of this power within her,” Zoberg said deeply, “she would be prepared in heart and soul to change at touch of the ointment – the ectoplasm. Then, to me she must turn as a fellow-creature. Together, throughout the world, adventuring in a way unbelievable—”
His voice died, and we let it. He stood in the firelight, head thrown back, manacled hands folded. He might have been a martyr instead of a fiend for whom a death at the stake would be too easy.
“I can tell what spoiled the séance,” I told him after a moment. “Gird, sitting opposite, saw that it was you, not Susan, who had changed. You had to kill him to keep him from telling, there and then.”
“Yes,” agreed Zoberg. “After that, you were arrested, and, later, threatened. I was in an awkward position. Susan must believe herself, not you, guilty. That is why I have championed you throughout. I went then to look for you.”
“And attacked me,” I added.
“The beast-self was ascendant. I cannot always control it completely.” He sighed. “When Susan disappeared, I went to look for her on the second evening. When I came into this wood, the change took place, half automatically. Associations, I suppose. Constable, your brother happened upon me in an evil hour.”
“Yep,” said O’Bryant gruffly.
“And that is the end,” Zoberg said. “The end of the story and, I suppose, the end of me.”
“You bet it is,” the constable assured him. “You came with the judge to finish your rotten work. But we’re finishing it for you.”
“One moment,” interjected Judge Pursuivant, and his fire-lit face betrayed a perplexed frown. “The story fails to explain one important thing.”
“Does it so?” prompted Zoberg, inclining toward him with a show of negligent grace.
“If you were able to free yourself and kill Mr Gird—”
“By heaven, that’s right!” I broke in. “You were chained, Zoberg, to Susan and to your chair. I’d go bail for the strength and tightness of those handcuffs.”
He grinned at each of us in turn and held out his hands with their manacles. “Is it not obvious?” he inquired.
We looked at him, a trifle blankly I suppose, for he chuckled once again.
“Another employment of the ectoplasm, that useful substance of change,” he said gently. “At will my arms and legs assume thickness, and hold the rings of the confining irons wide. Then, when I wish, they grow slender again, and—”
He gave his hands a sudden flirt, and the bracelets fell from them on the instant. He pivoted and ran like a deer.
“Shoot!” cried the judge, and O’Bryant whipped the big gun from his holster.
Zoberg was almost within a vine-laced clump of bushes when O’Bryant fired. I heard a shrill scream, and saw Zoberg falter and drop to his hands and knees.
We were all starting forward. I paused a moment to put Susan behind me, and in that moment O’Bryant and Pursuivant sprang ahead and came up on either side of Zoberg. He was still alive, for he writhed up to a kneeling position and made a frantic clutch at the judge’s coat. O’Bryant, so close that he barely raised his hand and arm, fired a second time.
Zoberg spun around somehow on his knees, stiffened and screamed. Perhaps I should say that he howled. In his voice was the inarticulate agony of a beast wounded to death. Then he collapsed.
Both men stooped above him, cautious but thorough in their examination. Finally Judge Pursuivant straightened up and faced toward us.
“Keep Miss Susan there with you,” he warned me. “He’s dead, and not a pretty sight.”
Slowly they came back to us. Pursuivant was thoughtful, while O’Bryant, Zoberg’s killer, seemed cheerful for the first time since I had met him. He even smiled at me, as Punch would smile after striking a particularly telling blow with his cudgel. Rubbing his pistol caressingly with his palm, he stowed it carefully away.
“I’m glad that’s over,” he admitted. “My brother can rest easy in his grave.”
“And we have our work cut out for us,” responded the judge. “We must decide just how much of the truth to tell when we make a report.”
O’Bryant dipped his head in sage acquiescence. “You’re right,” he rumbled. “Yes, sir, you’re right.”
“Would you believe me,” said the judge, “if I told you that I knew it was Zoberg, almost from the first?”
But Susan and I, facing each other, were beyond being surprised, even at that.
Adrian Cole
HEART OF THE BEAST
Adrian Cole’s recent books include the dark fantasy novel Blood Red Angel and Oblivion Hand, the latter a novelization of some of the stories featuring his heroic fantasy character, the Voidal. His series “The Omaran Saga” (A Place Among the Fallen, Throne of Fools, The King of Light and Shadows and The Gods in Anger) and “Star Requiem” (Mother of Storms, Thief of Dreams, Warlord of Heaven and Labyrinth of Worlds) have been published on both sides of the Atlantic, and recent short story appearances include Dark Voices 2, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror Fourth Annual Collection, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural and Shadows Over Innsmouth.
As the writer explains: “I originally intended to write a werewolf novel using the title Heart of the Beast, and a year or two ago I started on a draft manuscript. After about 100 pages I decided it wasn’t working out, so shelved it and went on to write something else, although the idea of a werewolf theme persisted. In the end I came up with a variant on my original with creatures called cyberwolves. They run their particular course in the new book, Armageddon Road.
“I still had it in mind to write another werewolf novel and sketched out a plot, characters and a few themes. This was sitting on the back boiler for a while, until the opportunity came to write a short story for this collection. So the title survived, the main character (initially called simply, Arnoth) has partially survived, and elements of the novel have resurfaced. Perhaps such transformations are apt.
“I still intend to develop Heart of the Beast, although the working title of the new novel will be the name of the main protagonist, John Vigilant.”
In the end there was only the terror. There was no other way he could have described it. And just as they said, it was cold, icy: he shivered with it, struggling to control his hands. He had the advantage, the primed shotgun. He should have been able to draw on other emotions: after all, they had fuelled him earlier. Disgust, anger, frustration, fury, the blind determination to exact justifiable retribution. These had shaped him and his companions into what they thought would be an irresistible force. The moment had come to exercise that potential power. Briefly he had known another emotion: exultation. The joy of the anticipated kill. Its feral grip had been almost sublime.
Down below him in the shadows his prey skulked. Trapped. Like a fish in a barrel. All he had to do was go down there and finish this. It should be easy. Just go down and end it.
Down into terror.
Grainger lived alone, but he was not a loner. He ha
d many friends in the town and any time there was a party or a gathering, he was always included. He’d come close to marrying once, ten years ago, but the affair had broken off; at the time he wasn’t sure if he should have given it more time, a better chance, but now he knew they had been right to end it. These days he was too set in his ways to look for a partner, though he sensed there were still a few interested parties. And God knew his friends had tried hard enough to pair him off. His real friends had stopped trying, or at least, the men had. The wives still hoped he would find a mate. They meant well, but at times it irritated him. He wasn’t sure why.
They were not a closely-knit community, not a closed shop, but they drew a lot of comfort from knowing that they could depend on each other when the going got a little rough. The suburbs sprawled, one district blurring into another, but they had their own invisible divides. Grainger had adapted to their ways eagerly. He had lived in the hub of the city before moving, and there he had been truly alone. Out here he had become protective of his new place in society. Just how protective he could not have realized.
Maybe they had been lucky here: the media bawled ceaselessly about crime, vandalism, brutality. Grainger wasn’t blind to it, nor was he careless. The dark side of humanity was quite capable of poking its indiscriminate snout anywhere. It was just that here things seemed to be under control. The kids were okay, thieving was minimal, mugging almost unheard of and killing didn’t happen, or at least, not often.
So when it began, no one understood what it would lead to, not at first.
Ed Carlyon had disappeared. It didn’t make a lot of sense. Ed was a car salesman who’d upset a few people in his time as was the way of car salesmen, but he had a reputation for being fair, and he looked after his friends. He had a wife and three kids. Not a marriage made in heaven, but they were happy. If Ed had been having an affair, it was the best kept secret in history. No money troubles, no problems with drink or gambling. Ed was just a steady guy. But one night he didn’t come home.
The police couldn’t locate him. Helen, his wife, was going crazy with grief and fear. No trace. They found his car parked at work, no sign of a struggle, no clues. After six weeks, the police filed the case, defeated. Grainger and others knew that they were assuming he’d taken off. Some of the locals who didn’t know Ed that well assumed the same.
Then it was Lou Irlam’s turn. He was fifty-four, a few years older then Ed Carlyon, but otherwise lived the same kind of life. His two sons had left home a few years before, heading for secure jobs and their own lives, but his marriage was fine. He liked a game of cards, but knew the limits. Another steady guy.
Again, no trace. Walked out of the office where he worked one afternoon, to pick up some groceries. Never seen again. The police gave it their best shot. Another fat zero.
In eight months, five men disappeared. All in the same district. No clues, no signs of foul play, no suggestion of discontent at home, infidelity, personal crisis. None of them had any reason to up and go. And not one of them had taken money from a bank or anything else. They had no more than what they were dressed in.
The police, embarrassed at their inability to learn anything whatsoever about the disappearances, refused to consider the possibility that the men had been murdered. They didn’t say as much, but they suspected a conspiracy. They were up against a brick wall and were fed up banging their heads against it. They eased off their investigation.
Five families mourned. And a lot more people got angry. Afraid, but angry. Grainger was one of them. The five men had all been friends. And like other friends, Grainger thought of himself as a survivor. A potential victim.
Because something was hunting them.
No one could say anything that would convince the police that the men had been somehow taken. They paid lip service to the idea, but the file stopped growing, became just another wad of papers in a steel cabinet. The newspapers made a big thing of it at first: Grainger did a good job getting them involved. But the stories and the conjecture got wilder. By the time the media had worn out the “alien invaders” theory and had given voice to all the cranks and weirdos this side of Hell, the public had lost interest.
Tony Garcia had been the first one to come up with the idea. A unit, a defence mechanism. “I won’t be the next,” he said. “I’ll shoot first.”
The men, sequestered in Grainger’s flat, talking deep into the night, looked singularly haggard.
“If the police can’t protect us, it’s up to us to do it for ourselves,” said Garcia.
“You sayin’ we should carry guns all the time?” said Ray Probin nervously. “That ain’t goin’ to be easy, Tony.”
“Maybe not. But we’re agreed on one thing. Someone is doing this. We don’t know who, or why. But they’re out there. Waiting for a chance to do it again. I say it’s our turn to react.”
“To do what?” said Al Hayes, a huge, bearded man who should have been afraid of no one. But like the rest, he was full of unease.
“Find them before they find us,” said Garcia.
“How will we know?” said Probin.
“They’ll make a mistake—”
“And then what?”
Garcia mimicked using a shotgun, pulling back his trigger finger.
Hayes snorted. “Hell, Tony, you gotta be sure about this. Can’t just shoot every snooper in town.”
“No. But we need to show our intentions. Let this bastard know we mean to defend ourselves.”
“The law says this killer doesn’t exist,” said Grainger with a wry smile. “So they won’t miss him if we do deal with him.”
There were smiles at that, and in them a silent acquiescence. They would become hunters.
They set up midnight patrols, rotating every few nights in groups of threes and fours. Their wives and families, those that had them, argued, for when it came to it, they didn’t want their men at risk. But they knew the families of the five missing men, shared their torments. They didn’t want the reality. The risk was worth it.
The police found out about it, but they turned a blind eye. Maybe they assumed it wouldn’t last. Let these people blow off steam, they told themselves. A few wasted nights and they’ll soon get tired chasing shadows, or stumbling over drunks. Put their goddamed guns away.
For a few weeks nothing happened. The patrols went out, did their agreed rounds and saw only the excesses of youth mingled with the sad decay of an underclass structure that inevitably seeped outwards even here. It depressed them to realize that there was more dissatisfaction and more resentment in their society than they had perceived. Walking the streets was a very different reality to the cushioned experience of artificial images on a television screen: the pain out here was alive.
Grainger met Al Hayes one night after both had been discreetly traversing their patches. They huddled in shadows, Hayes offering a flask of hot coffee which Grainger gladly accepted.
“Think it’s time to quit this?” said the big man. In the darkness he was like a bear, his bulk a deterrent to any potential assailant.
Grainger sipped from the plastic cup. “Maybe whoever it was has moved on. Maybe they only take out so many from each district. Could be in another town by now.”
“Yeah. Once they saw us, maybe it’s been enough to scare them off. You reckon?”
It was what they wanted to believe. The group was tiring of the night work. Grainger nodded. “We better talk to the others—”
Hayes stiffened, his whole bulk quivering for a moment. He dropped the flask and coffee gushed out of it, splattering the pavement. Nothing seemed to move, apart from the upwardly curling tendrils of steam.
Grainger followed the big man’s gaze, drawing in his breath, fingers crushing the plastic cup. Across the road, beneath a tree something was watching them. They knew they were in deep shadow, but the figure’s eyes seemed to pierce the darkness: it was obvious they saw clearly.
Hayes swore obscenely, the words cutting the night air as though it were a curtain.
The figure hunched up its shoulders, turned and moved swiftly away down the sidewalk. It seemed to be injured, as if it had damaged a leg: its flight was awkward, unnatural.
Grainger had released his cup, was now gripping the big man’s arm. “Christ, Al, did you see who that was? Did you see the face?”
“I think so—”
“Al, it was Ed, Ed Carlyon! I swear to God—”
“No,” Hayes murmured, but he knew Grainger was right.
For a moment they gaped at each other. Neither wanted to admit the sudden shudder of fear that went through them.
“We have to catch up with him. Ask him—” began Grainger, but Hayes cut him short with a curt nod. Without saying anything, they both checked their shotguns.
They ran, relieved to be doing something. Their footfalls broke the night silence. Somewhere ahead of them they thought they glimpsed movement, the imperfect flight of their former friend. They had said nothing about the changes in the face they had seen, but in both their minds those images burned. It was not the Ed Carlyon they had known. The man had changed inexplicably. They were almost afraid to catch up with him.
There was a park, its gates partly open. The locks had been snapped off long ago, never repaired. The fugitive had gone this way. Hayes squinted, pointing with his gun barrel to a cluster of trees and the slope beyond. “Lou Jaeger’s breaker’s yard is down there. Plenty of places for Ed to hole up. Think that’s where he’s been all this time?”
Grainger grunted. It was too confusing, the implications too bizarre. Why the heck should Ed Carlyon want to quit his home and hide out in a landscape of mangled machinery and autos?
They heard a shout ahead of them, but it wasn’t the fleeing figure. Someone else had emerged from the trees. It was Tony Garcia, another of the night watch, and he was moving across the grass, intent on cutting off Carlyon’s flight. The latter had bent almost double now, loping along in an ungainly way.
Grainger and Hayes were some fifty yards from Carlyon as Garcia stepped out directly in front of him, gun lowered. They had all moved well away from the park’s pattern of pathways and the light out there was poor. Grainger and Hayes slowed, walking forward, the big man’s chest heaving, his breath coming in rasps. If they thought that Carlyon would stop for Garcia, they were wrong.
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 40
