The Howling III (7 page)

“Shut up, you stupid fuck. We got to get out of here.”

Craddock seized him by the arm. “Hold it! There’s another one.”

“Oooh, shit!”

They turned back and saw that there was sure enough a companion with the man they had killed. More of a boy than a man. He knelt over the bloody remains of the big man sobbing. Then he raised his head and looked straight at Craddock and Vane. Curly Vane brought up the Winchester.

“What are you doing?” Craddock said.

“We’ve got to kill him, you dumb fuck. He seen us.”

Vane’s rifle cracked. A branch snapped off inches from the boy’s face. For one frozen instant the boy stared at the hunters. His lips spread in a snarl unlike anything the men had seen on a human face. Then he was up and running.

Curly fired again, but the boy was already lost in the brush. They could hear his feet pounding the carpet of fir needles. He was fast.

“Come on,” Curly urged. “We’ve got to catch him.”

The two hunters crashed through the brush, heedless of the branches that whipped their faces and tore at their clothing. Ahead they caught glimpses of the fleeing boy. Their only thought was to kill.

*****

There was yet another witness to the killing of Jones. After many weeks of searching out the scattered survivors of Drago, Derak, the leader, had finally found Malcolm. He saw him leave the cabin with the big man and start for the town. Derak had paced them silently, awaiting his chance to move in and take the boy. He knew of Jones, and had no wish to harm the big man. But Malcolm had to be brought back to his own kind.

Then the other two had approached. The drunken men with their guns. The scent of them alone, their sweat, the whiskey on their breath, had been enough to start the change in Derak. He felt the bones shift and crack and reshape themselves under his skin. He stripped away the restraining clothes and dropped silently to all fours. His jaw worked silently as the teeth grew to their terrible length, strong, yellow, and sharp as knives.

Without warning the men had fired and Jones fell. Malcolm dropped beside him, and for a moment Derak thought the boy was going to go through the full change for the first time in his life. If it happened before he was prepared, it could be devastating. But the boy’s body was not quite ready. He rose and fled.

The men fired at him and gave chase.

The ancient rage of his kind welled up in Derak. He flexed the powerful muscles under the thick coat of coarse fur and bounded after them.

The men were far too clumsy to elude him. Derak broke from the bushes with a roar and fell upon the one nearest to him, the one with the thin body and the head of tight black curls. He bore the man screaming to the forest floor and tore out his throat. The other threw down his useless gun and ran.

As his rage ebbed, Derak’s hunger grew. He pushed his muzzle into the raw open flesh of the man’s chest and fed.

Abe Craddock was a mess.

On his best days Abe Craddock did not look like anything a man would want to take home to dinner, but when Gavin Ramsay entered his office with young Milo Fernandez, Craddock was in worse shape than the sheriff had ever seen him.

He was sitting stiffly in one of the office chairs with both hands clamped around a styrofoam cup of coffee. He tried with little success to hold the cup steady. Much of the coffee had spilled down the front of his denim jacket, adding to other stains that crusted the man’s clothing.

Deputy Roy Nevins leaned against the far wall of the office, well away from Craddock, who smelled like a sewer.

The fat deputy turned gratefully when the sheriff and Milo entered.

“Hi, Gavin,” he said. “One of the lost sheep is found.”

“So I see. Is he hurt?”

“Doesn’t appear to be.”

“Then what’s the matter with him?”

“Damned if I know. He stumbled in here half an hour ago babbling about lions and tigers and bears, or some damn thing. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of what he was saying, so I sent Milo down to the hospital to get you.”

“Has Mrs Craddock been notified?”

“Yep, I called right away. Betty Craddock says as far as she’s concerned we can lock the so -” he glanced over at the shivering hunter. “Lock the guy up and throw away the key.”

“Have we got anything to lock him up for?”

“Damned if I know. Defacing the local scenery, maybe.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Gavin said. “You can go get some lunch if you want to.”

“Thanks, but the smell of our friend here ruined my appetite. I wouldn’t mind some fresh coffee, though.” He nodded at the styrofoam cup gripped by Craddock. “That was the last of the office pot.”

“Go ahead,” Gavin told him. “I’ll give a yell if I need you.”

“I’ll be at the Inn,” Nevins said with obvious relief. He shrugged into a jacket and hurried out the door before the sheriff could change his mind.

“Is it all right if I stay?” Milo asked.

“Sure. I need a second officer here for interrogation anyway.”

Abe Craddock swivelled his head toward Gavin. Fear glittered in his small, red-rimmed eyes. “Interrogation?” he croaked.

“That means I want to ask you some questions, Abe.”

“I t-told the fat guy everything.”

“Sometimes Roy doesn’t get all the details straight,” Gavin said in a soothing tone. “You don’t mind telling me again, do you?”

“I-I guess not.” Craddock carried the cup to his mouth and sipped noisily. A brown trickle ran down his unshaven chin. He wiped it away negligently with the back of a scabbed hand.

Gavin walked over and perched with one buttock on his desk. The sour smell of Abe Craddock was sharp in his nostrils.

“Okay, Abe, any time you’re ready.”

“It was a bear,” Craddock said. His eyes darted nervously about the room. “We shot a bear.”

“You said “we”?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that you and Curly Vane?”

A spasm shook Abe Craddock, spilling most of the coffee left in the cup. “Yeah. Me and Curly. We was out together. Hunting. It was a bear.”

“You are telling me that you and Curly Vane saw a bear?”

“Shot it. Shot at it.”

“Right up here in our own Tehachapi Mountains?”

“Yeah. Bear.” The big man in the chair seemed to try to pull his head down into his shoulders.

Ramsay took a kitchen match from his shirt pocket and stuck the end of it between his teeth. He did that sometimes when he wanted to look rustic and relaxed. He also did it to keep himself from losing his temper and yelling at a citizen.

“Abe,” he said very quietly, “there has not been a bear reported in La Reina County or anywhere within a hundred miles of here since the 1930s.” Ramsay had no idea if his figures were correct, but they were close enough to make the point of what he thought of Abe Craddock’s bear sighting.

“It was a bear,” Craddock insisted. “A big one.”

“Where’s Curly, Abe?”

The sudden question seemed to jolt the big man, as it was supposed to.

“It… it got him.”

“The bear got Curly?” Ramsay fought down his rising impatience.

“Not the bear. Worse.”

Craddock began to shake. He raised the styrofoam cup and swallowed the dregs of the coffee, gagging as he did so. Ramsay moved over and took the cup from his hand. He shook the few remaining drops of coffee into the metal trash can.

To Milo Fernandez he said, “Get me Roy’s office bottle.”

The young officer looked doubtful. “Gee, Sheriff, I don’t-“

“It’s in the centre drawer of his desk. Behind the Mexican travel brochures.”

Milo sat down and pulled open the desk drawer with obvious reluctance.

“Don’t worry,” Ramsay told him. “I know it’s there and Roy knows I know. I don’t give a damn if he has an occasional shooter. Right now I’m appropriating the bottle for official use.”

Milo pulled out a bottle of Seagram’s Seven Crown and handed it to Ramsay. The sheriff poured a generous slug into the coffee cup and gave it back to Abe Craddock.

“Here, Abe, this will do you more good than coffee. Steady you down.”

Craddock seized the cup and drank greedily, swallowing the entire contents in two gulps. He held out the cup for more.

“That’s enough for now, Abe. We don’t want you to get too steady. Now do you want to tell me once more about you and Curly and this… bear?”

Craddock slumped in the chair. The shaking in his hands lessened as the whiskey took hold. He spoke in a hoarse monotone. “It looked like a bear. We thought it was a bear. No shit.”

“And you shot at it.”

“Curly did.”

“He was the only one who fired?”

“Well, I guess I did too.”

“Did you hit it? The… bear?”

Craddock’s head dropped. He frowned down at his hands as though they had betrayed him. In a voice barely audible he said,’We hit it.”

“It wasn’t a bear, was it, Abe.”

“No.” The words were wrenched out of him. “It was a man.” He looked up beseechingly at Ramsay. “It looked like a bear, though. Anybody would of thought so. All hairy the way he was, and he jumped up so fast. How was we to know?”

Ramsay drew a deep sigh and walked back over to sit on the edge of his desk again. It was Milo Fernandez who finally broke the silence.

“Is it the guy over in the hospital freezer?”

Ramsay nodded. “I picked up the pathologist’s report this morning. Three 30.06 slugs in the chest; face blown away by a shotgun blast. Nibbled on by small animals.” From the corner of his eye he saw Abe Craddock flinch. “Name’s Jones. Kind of a local character. Been living up in the woods since before I got here. Came to town once in a while to do odd jobs. Harmless. Kind of likeable, matter of fact.”

“We didn’t know it was no man.” Craddock’s voice took on an unpleasant whine.

Ramsay turned back and gave him a hard look. “Tell me about Curly Vane.”

Craddock began to tremble again. “Something got him.”

“Not another bear?”

“No.” Craddock shook his head emphatically. “It was real. Like a wolf, kind of.”

“Come off it, Abe,” Ramsay said. “I didn’t buy your bear, and I sure as hell don’t buy your wolf. What happened to Curly? Did you shoot him too?”

“No, Gavin, I swear to God!” Craddock braced his hands on the arms of the chair and strained forward. “It was like a wolf, but it wasn’t a wolf. Bigger. Bigger than a man, even. And it kind of… stood up.” His voice faded, as though he knew his words lacked conviction.

“What did you do then? Did you try to help him?”

“There wasn’t nobody could help Curly when this thing hit him.”

In spite of himself, Ramsay felt a chill between his shoulder blades. “Do you have any idea what it was, Abe?”

Craddock nodded, his eyes shifting toward the door. “It was one of them things from up at Drago. Some of them got away, you know.”

“Give it a name, Abe.”

“All right, dammit, call me crazy if you want to. It was… a werewolf.”

For half a dozen ticks there was dead silence. Then Ramsay said, “Keep an eye on the office, Milo. Abe and I are going for a ride.”

There were about two hours of daylight remaining when Gavin Ramsay brought Craddock to the spot where the two young hikers had stumbled across Jones’s body. Although he paid little attention to the fantastic stories about Drago, the sheriff had no desire to be caught in these woods after nightfall.

He gestured at the patch of ground where they stood. There were dark stains visible on the carpet of fir needles.

“This is where we found him, Abe,” Ramsay said.

“Remember the spot?”

Craddock looked at the ground, then quickly away. “Yeah. You can see the bush here where he kind of reared up. We had no way of knowin” if it was a man or what.”

“So you blasted away?”

“Honest, Gavin, I’m tryin” to tell you how it happened.”

“Okay, okay. After you shot and he fell, what did you do?”

“Then we seen the other one and we - “

“The other one?” Ramsay snapped.

“Oh, yeah, didn’t I say?”

“No, Abe, you didn’t.”

“Well, when we came closer we seen there was another guy. Smaller. Like a kid, maybe.”

“A kid,” Gavin repeated.

“Yeah. Well, he saw us coming and he took off running. We went after him.”

“Why, Abe?”

“Well, we, uh, thought he’d be scared and might hurt himself, or something.”

“You weren’t going to shoot him too, were you, Abe?”

“Jesus, Gavin, shooting the hermit was an accident. What do you think I am?”

I know damn well what you are, Ramsay thought. I know what Curly Vane is, too. Or was, as the case may be. He said, “Which way did you go?”

Craddock looked around, seeming to sniff the air. He was on surer ground now. He pointed off at an angle. “That way. The kid left the trail and took off through the brush. Curly and me went after him.”

“Show me.”

“I am showin” you.” Craddock jabbed with his forefinger.

“Off that way.”

“Let’s go.”

“You don’t want to go in there, Gavin.”

The muscles tightened around Ramsay’s jaw. “I said let’s go. I’m not playing games with you, Abe.”

Craddock met the sheriffs hard gaze for a moment, then turned and led the way through the brush in the direction he had pointed.

“I want you to show me where this “wolf or whatever it was jumped Curly,” Ramsay said.

Some fifty yards into the brush Craddock stopped. He pointed. “It was up there at the base of that leaning fir tree. I was just about here when it hit him. He never had a chance. Nobody would of had a chance with that thing.”

Ramsay walked in careful steps to the tree Craddock had pointed out. He hunkered down at the base of the trunk and examined the ground. The dead needles were stained dark and crusted. He pulled out one of the plastic zip-lock bags he had brought from the office and carefully scraped a few of the needles into it. There was also a whitish powder and bits of what might have been bone. Ramsay took some of that too.

A flash of colour beyond the tree caught his eye. He walked over and prodded the brush aside with his foot. A bright red cap with a Budweiser logo on the front lay there upside down. There were shredded bits of a jacket, tough denim trousers, a boot, and part of another boot. All of it was stiff and black with clotted blood.