Wolfman - Art Bourgeau (32 page)

Obviously he was seeing Adam as his stepfather. She
must try to keep him from the next transference, seeing her as
mother. She pushed away thoughts of the consequences of that. . .

"You are not selfish, Loring. You’re a good
man. Do you think I could care about you, as you know I do, if you
weren’t?"

He looked at her, eyes suddenly sharp. "You're
afraid of me, aren't you?"

Be careful, he goes in and out of reality. Don't lie.
"Yes."

Her reply hurt him. Didn't she understand he was her
only hope? He loved her, didn't she know that?

And then he said it.

"I know you do, Loring. Let me help you. Sit
down, please." Her words sounded like whispers. Could she go on
with this charade? She’d better, her life depended on it.

Loring felt the old pull of emotions. She did care
for him, even knowing so many of his secrets. With her he didn't have
to be stronger than he was. He looked down at the body on the floor.
His enemy was gone.

"Let’s sit here, like we've done before."
If only she could get him to do this simple thing it could mean he
was beginning to respond to her.

Her voice was so soothing, he wanted to capitulate —
as soon as his mind formed the word he knew he felt tricked,
deceived. He looked up and there it was, twinkling deep in her left
eye. The number 13. The mark of the beast.

Margaret saw the change. Something had gone wrong.
Something she said, or something he thought had brought back the
anger. She saw his muscles tense. She hurried on to say, "You
didn’t want your stepfather to do those things, we both know that."

The urgency in her tone stopped him for a moment,
then he repeated Abaddon’s words. "It was my punishment."

She was losing him again. "But why? You did
nothing to be punished for."

He shook his head. "Yes, I did. He was right all
along."

"About what?"

He didn’t want to tell her, he'd never told anyone
before.

"Please help me understand . . ."

Finally he said, "He was right when he said I
killed my father . . . even though he didn’t know it."

He saw the look on her face, knew he had disappointed
her.

"But that’s all over now. I have my orders,
and my redemption."

He said it proudly.

Margaret stared in disbelief. There was no end to it,
the layer upon layer of horror that made up his life.

"
Surely it was an accident," she said
automatically.

"
No." Said in a quiet tone that chilled
her. "I was eight. One night he and my mother quarreled, he made
her cry. I promised myself he would never make her cry like that
again. The next day when we were alone in house I took his gun. I
went to his office where he was working and I shot him. Then I put it
in his hand. They thought it was suicide."

He looked down at Adam's, his stepfather’s body.
"That's how he made me do it. He knew I was alone in the house
with my father that day. He said he would tell the police I killed
him and I'd be locked up until I died if I didn't do what he wanted .
. . Don't you see the joke? He was right, only he didn’t know it. I
thought about killing him, too, a thousand times, but I knew if I did
my mother would go out and marry another one like him and it would
start all over again. I knew that. It was easier to let it happen.
After all, it was my punishment . . ."

Loring saw the understanding in her face. He had been
right to tell her —

A loud pounding on the front door. "Police, open
up."

Loring looked in the direction of the hallway, knew
what was happening. They were trying to stop him from giving Margaret
her salvation. He heard Abaddon’s voice . . . "Do it now while
there is still time. For her. For yourself . . . It's the only way
she can be saved from eternal damnation . . ."

With a growl he sprang forward, teeth bared, his
hands now shaped like gnarled claws, knocking Margaret down, climbing
on top of her.

"Dear God, no!" she screamed, feeling his
breath. She twisted under him, fighting, trying to keep his teeth
from reaching her throat.

His hands were squeezing. Everything was becoming a
blur. There was a ringing in her ears, a coldness seeping through
her. The fight was going out of her as his face came closer Faraway,
like down a long tunnel, she heard the door burst open, the sound of
running feet, but in her oxygen-deprived brain they no longer
mattered.

Nor did they matter to Loring. The only thing that
mattered was his love for Margaret, using his power to protect her
from. . .from them. . .

Mercanto, first in the room, grabbed Loring's hair,
jerking his head back before his teeth could find their mark. With
visions of Catherine Poydras’s body etched in his mind, he smashed
Loring in the face with his pistol until Sloan finally pulled him
away from the unconscious body.

Margaret turned on her side, pulled herself into a
fetal position. Charles Foster hurried to her and held her, rocking
her like she was a child.

Loring was manacled and taken away to the psychiatric
wing of the Detention Center. Mercanto went along, staying until he
saw him sedated and handcuffed to his bed. As he looked at him for
the last time, his thoughts went back to Loring's forerunners —
Stubbe Peeter and lean Grenier. Even though all that Erin had said
about the disease was true, something he rationally understood, it
was too much to find sympathy. Not for a man who had done what Loring
had done. Fortunately, he thought as he turned to go, that was all up
to a judge, not to him. He was just a cop. And never more glad of it.
 

EPILOGUE

DR. FOSTER took Margaret home to his house and kept
her there for the next two weeks, staying with her until she began to
regain something of her old strength, physically and emotionally.

It wasn't easy. On the fourth day following her
ordeal, in one of her low points, she said, "I’m giving it up,
Charles. All those people, dead because I couldn’t handle the case
— "

"Margaret, it’s time we both came down from
our pedestals. Me the all-knowing mentor, you the Fallen Doctor. And
stop chewing on the guilt. You don’t deserve it, and if you were
your patient you'd tell yourself so. What it's really about is the
old Creek hubris, pride, and you know what it went before — a fall.
You’re too human to be beyond a mistake, a bad one, I grant you.
But you're also too valuable a therapist to run and hide in an orgy
of guilt and self-pity."

"I appreciate what you're saying, Charles, but —
"

"But bullshit. There, a good scientific term.
Just about as scientific as our knowledge of the worst of ourselves.
We’ve got a lot to learn, but we've no right to stop trying. Sorry,
I’m lecturing again, but I can't help it. And you know I’m right
about this, or you will once you give yourself a chance to recover .
. . from Adam . . . from Loring Weatherby . . ."

"We'll see," she
said, more to appease him than believing.

* * *

On the sixth day she
dreamed she was walking through a green field filled with tall grass
and spring flowers. The day was sunny. She was wearing a spring dress
and carrying a straw hat with a wide brim. Near the edge of the field
she heard a whimpering sound. When she went to investigate, on the
road nearby she saw the body of a large dog. One that had been run
over by a car. The whimpering was coming from it. Moving closer, she
saw the dog had no face. In its place was Loring Weatherby's face

* * *

The sound of the phone woke her and she walked to the
door, where she could see Charles. When he hung up he turned to her.
"That was Detective Sloan. There’s a problem. I have to go
out"

"About Loring?"
The dream returning to her. He nodded. "I'm coming, too,"
she said

* * *

Sloan was waiting for them. An attendant unlocked a
series of steel doors, one after another, until they were beside
Loring's bed.

He lay on top of it uncovered, dead, his unseeing
eyes staring into space, his teeth still bared. Somehow he had gotten
one hand free of its handcuff. No one offered an explanation about
how it happened. But he hadn't been able to free the other one. In
his desperation, fury, or whatever, he had gnawed it until his teeth
had found their mark, ripping out veins and arteries alike, bleeding
to death. Like a wolf caught in a trap.

Written in blood on the wall beside his bed was the
word "Margaret".