by Frank Lauria
Hair-covered palms. The sign of the beast. The full moon. Another memory lashed out against the ravenous hunger. If he tasted flesh, he wouldn’t be able to stop.
His memory balanced on the crest of a swelling wave of pain that threatened to spill across his consciousness. He knew that the only way he could dam the approaching agony was to consume the squirming flesh in his hands.
He lifted his arms over his head and hurled the rat to -the tracks below. The roar of the arriving train covered his howl of anguish as the torment broke across his mutilated nerves.
When he staggered through the doors of the train his jaw was set in a grin of sheer effort as he struggled to.stifle the screams in his throat. The few passengers in the car left quickly as he fell into a seat, wrapped his arms around his stomach, and pressed his head against his knees. As new pains convulsed his muscles he groaned and repeated Hazer’s address through his clenched teeth. He droned the words and numbers over and over again like some frantic, garbled prayer. There was no comprehension in his delirium except his need for help. He began to tremble as another shard of pain skewered his will with the certainty that he could resist the agony no longer.
He left the train at the next stop and walked blindly through corridors trying to find an exit. He found a stairway that led to fresh air and he took the steps two at a time.
When he reached the street the wind brought a faint but familiar spoor to his nostrils: a hot, sweet scent that stood out vividly against the gasoline-tinted air. The intense pain dulled as his appetite for flesh awoke and took complete control of his instincts.
He started to walk and then broke into a loping run, padding toward the smell like an animal stalking his prey. Other odors drifted near his senses, but the musty prominence of the scent drew him past, leading him to the object of his clawing hunger. He trotted for blocks, all memory of Hazer’s instructions blotted out by the compelling aroma in the darkness ahead of him.
The scent grew stronger when he reached a tree-lined street; floating warm through the cool mint of the foliage. He slowed down to a walk as he tried to pinpoint the exact source of the smell. He moved fluidly, his hungry muscles responding instantly to the dominance of the scent.
He walked past a house, stopped, and then came back. The smell was coming from inside the door of the house. He was standing in front of a four-story brick building that adjoined two other houses of the same simple bow design. There was a light coming from a window on the -top floor.
When Orient saw the name on the top bell a brief elation lanced his mindless raving. Professor Daniel Hazer. But as he repeated the name he felt the pain stirring again.
He tugged at his will. If he could hold on, Hazer would be able to help him. He ground his teeth together and pushed open the door as a tide of anguish loomed in his brain.
By the time he neared the top landing he was straining to contain the swelling torment. He saw a door marked D. Hazer and tried the knob. It was locked. Feverish with frustration and enraged by the nearness of the scent, he shoved against the door. It gave away and he stumbled inside.
The bright overhead light made it hard for him to focus his eyes. All he could make out were blurry, unfamiliar shapes. But his nostrils were clogged by the warm, musty scent around him.
He took a few steps forward and the aroma became overpowering. Unable to resist, he bent his body close to the source of the smell and he made out a crumpled shape in front of him on the floor. As he grasped what it was, spasm after spasm of pain rippled through his consciousness. He cried out only once before the blurs became a blackness that shut out all sensation.
A high wail pierced the silence,
Orient’s eyelids fluttered open. He was lying facedown on the floor. He blinked and tried to focus. His temples were hammering, their heavy pulses battering his brain like measured drumbeats.
There was something he had to remember, but the rising whine punctuated by the booming inside his skull drowned out his thoughts.
Then his vision cleared and the memory was a reality in front of him.
Half of Hazer’s face had been gouged away, exposing part of his cheekbone. The old man’s throat had been ripped apart like a paper bag, spilling blood and tissue across his chest.
Orient had difficulty getting to his feet as a series of convulsions in his stomach squeezed bitter fluid into his mouth. He inhaled and groped for his concentration. The bruised cells in his mind responded sluggishly and thought began to form.
Hazer was dead. Torn apart like Neilson.
He looked around the small room. It was a shambles.
Every closet, cabinet, and shelf had been ransacked and their contents strewn on the floor.
Then he realized that the piercing whine in the room was the electronic wail of a siren, and he knew that he had to get away from there.
As he turned to leave, he saw something on the floor. It was a smear of reddish brown powder on the carpet.
The high-pitched sound of the siren began to decline. He went to the door, stopping to wipe his fingerprints from the knob as he glanced wildly around the darkened hallway for an escape route. The siren growled lower and was silent.
Orient saw a ladder against the wall that led to a trap door in the ceiling and decided to try it. He climbed up, pulled back the bolt locking the door, and pushed it open.
As he crouched on the roof, lowering the door shut, he heard the sound of voices at the bottom of the stairs.
He closed the trap door and walked quickly across the rooftops until he came to the edge of the last house.
There was a short gap and a drop of perhaps six feet between him and the next roof. His reflexes squashed all hesitation. He leaped out and landed lightly on his hands and feet on the edge of the far roof.
Even though his senses were charred and his mind was gutted of all emotion, some instinct in his body, some desperate chemistry of survival, kept the vital fluids flowing through his muscles.
Far away he could see the blazing towers of the city, rising like luminous spikes from some glass-skinned cactus at the edge of the silver-streaked water. Overhead the sky was clear, and a white, swollen moon lit his swift passage across the rooftops to the other side of the block.
He found an open doorway and went down a long, dark stairway. He didn’t run when he reached the street, but crossed over and made himself walk slowly to the corner. There he crossed the street and turned the next corner before picking up his pace slightly. He didn’t slow down until he saw the glowing blue globes of a subway entrance up ahead.
He took the first train that came and spent the next few hours wandering from wrong stop to wrong station, lost in the bottomless mechanical caverns beneath the city. When he reached the street again he saw that dawn was streaking the sky pink and the moon had fled.
10
He was awakened by a burst of static and a series of electronic barks. He rolled over, opened his eyes, then quickly squeezed them shut as memory flared in his mind.
“Doctor?” Sordi’s voice squawked through the intercom. “Sybelle is on the phone.”
Eyes still closed, Orient stretched out his arm and pushed the speak button on the wall. “I’ll call her back.”
“She says it’s important.”
“Can’t talk to anyone right now.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’ll call her later.” He pulled the disconnect switch and slumped head-down on the bed, limp from the effort of moving his body. Every part of him, from his fingertips to his toes, felt as if they had been individually and methodically punished. A swarm of images overran his tired brain. Flashes of crowded bars, empty-streets, endless tunnels, Hazer’s mutilated body, and the relentless pain all clamored around his desire to sleep like an unruly mob.
He opened his eyes and sat up. He was still wearing his clothes. He had only a vague recollection of how he had made it back to his bedroom from Hazer’s apartment.
His thoughts moved gingerly through h
is throbbing brain. He knew what Sybelle wanted to tell him. But he didn’t know what he could say to her. He got to his feet arid shuffled wearily to the bathroom, feeling old and damaged.
The clothes he was wearing were stained with whiskey and vomit, but a long, hot shower washed away the dirt and stink clinging to his body. When he was finished he turned off the hot nozzle and let the stinging cold spray clear the fuzziness in his senses.
Then he went into the bedroom and began going through the physical-meditation exercises. He ignored the discomfort, pushing his concentration and repeating the movements until the tension locking his muscles released. He felt his neck and spine respond and become supple. He inhaled through his nose and began a rhythmic breathing pattern, trying to rebuild the shattered surface of his awareness. As his senses reconnected, the rhythms of his breathing pattern set off harmonies in his mind. The music drew the momentum of his concentration to a dark, cool place and his thoughts gratefully dove into a pool of soothing liquid.
His consciousness remained beneath the healing waters for a long time while his body drank the energy vibrating from the liquid.
The first thing he felt when he returned to normal awareness was a clean, sharp pang of hunger.
He dressed and went downstairs, his body refreshed, but his thoughts still balanced between confusion and depression. When he reached the next landing he smelled fresh coffee and followed its cheering scent to the studio. A tray containing a pot of coffee, orange juice, buttered toast, jam, yogurt, and honey was on his worktable. His balance toppled into depression as he recalled his unreasoning rage at Sordi the night before. But then raw hunger pushed remorse aside and he began to eat.
He was having a second cup of coffee when Sordi came into the studio.
“Everything all right? Need anything else?” he asked cautiously.
Orient set down his cup and stood up. “1 want to apologize for last night,” he murmured.
Sordi picked up the pot and poured some coffee into an empty cup on the tray. “You’ve been on edge lately.”
For a moment, Orient considered telling him what had happened but a leaden certainty stopped him. He didn’t understand himself what had taken place to alter his personality. “Still doesn’t excuse anything,” he said instead. “It won’t happen again.”
Sordi smiled. “Don’t worry about it. What you need is a vacation. You’ve taken care of your money problems. Relax for a while.”
Orient nodded. “You’re right. I have been on edge lately.”
As he spoke, he remembered the lust for flesh that had dominated his instincts the night before.
“Sure I’m right. Try a few weeks in the Caribbean, maybe even Mexico.”
“Not right away,” he sighed. “There’s still some things to clear up.”
“Sybelle sounded excited when she called.”
Something arranged itself in Orient’s memory and he understood what he had to do. “Would you call her back and ask her to come over here? Tell her it’s vital.”
As Orient waited for Sybelle to arrive, he went to the library and began looking through his occult manuscripts, psychiatric journals, and microfilmed textbooks. All the information he found led to the same numbing conclusion.
His violent symptoms of the night before were those of a Lycanthropic Schizophrenic The appearance of hair on his palms, the headaches, the influence of the full moon, his raging desire to kill—it was all there.
He began to tremble as his memory dredged up the twisted images of violence, and the breakfast he’d just eaten turned to acid in his body. He’d hurt and tried to loll like an uncontrolled beast. And it was possible that he had attacked Hazer in his madness. He took a deep breath and tried to keep his emotions from crashing through his sanity.
“Owen? Have you heard? It’s simply dreadful.”
He looked up from the manuscript on his desk and saw Sybelle advancing on him, a rolled newspaper held out in front of her like a lance. “Just like poor Mr. Neilson. It’s just awful” When she reached the desk she plopped the paper down. “Daniel is dead,” she said in a small, wavering voice. “It’s on page three.” He opened the newspaper and found the headline.
“PHOTO HEALER”
FOUND MURDERED
Professor Daniel Hazer, 77, famed around the world for his ability to heal sickness by examining photographs of patients, was found brutally murdered in Brooklyn home today.
Police acting on a phone tip found the body, which had been mutilated. Police spokesmen said they had not ruled out the possibility that Hazer was the victim of a Black Magic rite.
Professor Hazer was able to take ordinary snapshots and make accurate, often startling findings. His, cures were lauded by many noted physicians but were never recognized by the American Medical Association.
He first received international acclaim in 1927 for his successful cure of child movie star Midge La Rosa, who had suffered a sudden attack of paralysis.
“We’ve simply got to do something,” Sybelle was saying.
Orient wondered if he could tell her what really happened.
“Don’t you see? It’s just like Neilson.”
He got up and pulled over a chair for her. “What do you think we can do?”
She flashed him a grateful smile and sat down. “Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? We should go to the police and tell them about poor Mr. Neilson in Sweden. I knew they were wrong about Hannah. Now this proves it.”
Orient folded his arms. He had to tell her. She was the only person who could understand what was happening to him. For a split second he thought of Lily, but he pushed the memory aside. He needed help right now. “There’re a few things you should know,” he said softly, “before you go to the police.”
He told her everything he could remember about the night before—losing his temper at Sordi, drinking, meeting Dominique, his violent attack on Robin and the bartender, the pain, the overwhelming hunger that led him to Hazer’s home-—as if by explaining it to Sybelle very carefully he could finally put the nightmare fragments into a sequence he himself could comprehend. But at the end of his account there were still too many entries missing. “So you see,” he concluded shaking his head, “I don’t know if I killed Daniel or if he was dead when I got there.”
Sybelle was staring at him wide-eyed, her cupid lips forming a small o.
She closed her mouth then opened it again.
“Owen... I can’t tell you... I’m... I don’t know what to say... I can’t believe...”
“I know, but it’s true,” he said calmly. “What to do about it is another problem. I don’t think going to the police will do any good.”
“Police? I should say not. What can a detective do about a were—? Oh, it’s all so dreadful. What can we do, darling? I’ll do anything possible to help.”
“Thanks. But it maybe too late for help.”
“Owen Orient what do you mean?” she scolded. “We must remain positive and have faith.”
Orient looked at her. “In the papers the police found in Hannah’s room, Carl Bestman claimed that if a Lycanthropic ate raw flesh the disease became incurable. And I may have lost control and attacked Daniel.” He sat down behind the desk and stretched out his legs. As he waited for her to speak, he stared at his upturned palms. He remembered the fine glove of hair covering the cracked skin. His hairy fingers.
Something jogged against the brooding memory. “But you couldn’t hurt anyone,” Sybelle insisted.
He shook his head. “The pain and hunger are too intense to resist. There’s just one small thing that gives me hope that I’m not incurable yet.”
“Well, what is it, darling?”
“Last night I saw some talcum powder on Hazer’s rug. It had a very strong odor. And I remembered that there were powder traces like that in Neilson’s car and on Hannah’s shawl the night she was killed.”
“But didn’t the police analyze some talcum powder?”
He nodded. “They said it was th
e same as some powder they found in Hannah’s room.”
“But Hannah’s dead. How could her powder be on Daniel’s carpet? I think you’ve found something very significant. You’ve got to stop blaming yourself. After all, you certainly didn’t kill Nels.”
Orient shrugged. His thoughts struggled to emerge from a bog of despair in his brain. He bit his lip and tried to remember some detail he might have overlooked, something that would give him hope.
Suddenly, he saw it. On the wrinkled palm of his hand.
“Gloves,” he grunted.
Sybelle raised her eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”
“The night Hannah was killed I was attacked by someone wearing gloves. But it wasn’t gloves. It was hair. The disease caused hair to grow on my palms last night. But when I saw Hannah’s hands they were smooth.”
“Someone else attacked you,” she exclaimed triumphantly. “I knew you couldn’t have killed Daniel just -like I knew Hannah was innocent. The real werewolf killed Nels, attacked you, and killed Daniel.”
“Not the real werewolf,” Orient reminded her, “the other werewolf.”
There was a long pause before she spoke again and when she did her voice was subdued. “Owen, I’m sure Anthony Bestman has something to do with these murders.”
“Perhaps. I don’t know,” he said wearily.
“Well I do!” Sybelle snapped with an air of sudden decision. “The very first thing we should do is talk to Anthony and find out what he blows about all this.”
Orient watched her as she dialed the telephone. He tried to rally his will against the sucking hopelessness that was draining his energy, but one thing weighed down his efforts—the reality that he was infected with the disease of the beast.
“Oh good. Thank you very much,” Sybelle was saying. She put the receiver down and smiled. “Mission accomplished. He’s staying at the Delmonico. His secretary said he had a business meeting.” She lowered her voice as if the fact had great significance. “He’s been there all weekend.”
