Demon Child (19 page)

    “Were you responsible for-for Freya's condition?” she asked him. She hoped he would say no, that he would not compound his already heinous crimes by admitting to the ruthless use of a child to obtain whatever it was that he was after.

    But he said yes.

    “Yes. Though that was Malmont's side of the game.”

    “But how could you insure her coma at the proper time?” Richard wanted to know.

    “Malmont diagnosed a vitamin deficiency in the child,” Hobarth said. “He prescribed packets of vitamins which he supplied. Each vitamin was nestled in a plastic slot in a card that held thirty, and each day was marked below the pill. Certain tablets contained a strong sedative. The only times the system did not work was when, rarely, Harold or Anna forgot to give Freya the pill. Always, they gave it to her the next morning-thus her mid-morning comas that broke the usual pattern.”

    “That's cruel!” Jenny said.

    Hobarth laughed. “The stakes are too high, in all this, to allow sentiment to intrude, my dear.”

    “Where is Freya now?” Jenny asked.

    “It's a shame we had to go to such extravagant lengths,” Hobarth said. “But we needed to have her disappear, so that Cora would finally be pushed to the point of selling. As I treated her for her nervous condition, I used post-hypnotic suggestions to insure that she would favor selling the house and grounds. But when she saw how strongly you disliked the idea of selling the homestead, Richard, she shook off some of the demand those post-hypnotic suggestions made on her. She must love you a great deal. Only strong emotion could have helped her stave off the desires I helped nourish in her.”

    “And Freya?” Richard asked.

    “I had reached the point, in our daily sessions, where I could instantly hypnotize her. I went to her room, shortly before six, found her alone, spoke the triggering words, and put her in a trance. It took her out of the house, unseen, to my car. She is with Dr. Malmont. He knows the phrase that will bring her around, and he will use it just as he reaches the house. He'll tell everyone he found her outside the main gate, delirious. For good measure, he has a small bottle of blood, rabbit's blood, which he'll smear her with.”

    “You're mad!” Jenny shouted.

    Hobarth frowned for the first time. “Mad? I fail to see that. I have an important goal to reach, a sensible goal. If my means of attaining it are unconventional, that doesn't mean I am insane.”

    “You want that land,” Richard said.

    “Every inch of it,” Hobarth affirmed.

    “But why, man?” Richard asked. “Whatever you could gain on it-none of that would pay for murder, for all the other things you've done. We'd ask a stiff price, knowing this will be developed land soon, worth a good bit. Your eventual profit would not be that great.”

    Hobarth laughed. “Again, I am more clever than you think.” It seemed that he had to prove to them that he was a formidable man, a man of wit and great cunning. “We would never have embarked on so complicated and potentially a dangerous plan if we expected only moderate profits. But it seems that a friend of Malmont's, a business executive in Boston, called the good doctor some months ago and asked him to look around for a small farm near the new interstate exchange and to negotiate purchase of it. When Malmont found a farm for sale, he thought the price exhorbitant. He phoned his Boston friend and told him that the going price was too high to allow a profit, even considering how land values would soar once the road was completed. But his friend snapped the land up, just the same. This made Malmont suspicious. In time, he forced his friend to tell him that a major resort-center hotel chain has been cautiously negotiating purchase of the Briaryoke Mountain and surrounding foothills since late last year. They plan to install a luxury ski resort with mineral water facilities, a lake and beach to permit year-round operation. This area will become one of the largest resort centers in the United States. Land tripled in value when the exchange was announced. But when this news breaks, shortly, it will skyrocket. If land is worth five thousand an acre now, it will be worth thirty thousand an acre then, along access roadways, at least. Malmont and I, buying through a third party-the man constantly bothering Cora with offers, by the way-stand to realize anywhere from one and half to two million profit inside of a year.”

    Richard whistled. Whether it was an involuntary reaction or whether he had planned to make it as part of some plan to put Walter off balance, Jenny did not know.

    “Yes,” Hobarth said. “Not as large as the Brucker fortune, perhaps, but not a bad second to it, I suppose.”

    “But what about that horrible session I sat through, when Freya told you in detail about what it was like to be a werewolf and what the wolf wanted to do next?” Jenny still felt as if she must prove that Hobarth was not the only evil afoot-and that, therefore, he might be somehow good as well as bad. Desperate reasoning, but all she was capable of at the moment.

    He laughed, enjoying himself. “I implanted all those notions in her head the day before, when she was tranced.”

    “That's disgusting!” she hissed.

    “You're letting sentiment creep in again,” Hobarth said. “You'd never make a good businessman.”

    “Or madman.”

    Again, the smile disappeared. For a moment, he looked at her with deadly intent. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “Think what you wish,” he said.

    How could she have thought that she loved him? How could she ever have been fooled by a man such as this? She saw that his gentility, his surface good humor, was only a thin veneer. Below all that crust, he was evil as a man could be. What had distracted her from those qualities and had lead her to believe that he was so saintly?

    Lightning cracked across the sky.

    The horses stamped the ground, restless.

    To think that she had worried what he would think of her, that she would not look pretty enough to suit him or talk intelligently enough to engage his interest. She had worried that he would notice her chipped nails. And all the time, she had not seen that he was far worse; he was a cold, cruel operator intent only on his own benefit. Where had her danger alarm been all that while? Why hadn't the voices of the dead warned her about him with the same clarity they used when telling her to be cautious of Richard?

    “I see that you are wrestling with yourself,” Hobarth said, watching Jenny closely. “May I analyze you?”

    “Why? What's the point? We're going to be chewed up by that wolf of yours or shot with your gun, aren't we?”

    “With Richard's gun,” he said. “I'd prefer to use that if I have to. Make the police less suspicious. But I doubt Brutus will leave anything alive for the gun to handle.” He petted the dog again. “But I would derive great pleasure from analyzing you.”

    Jenny looked at Richard.

    Richard said, “Go on, then.”

    Hobarth smacked his lips. He looked as if he wanted his pipe, but he didn't want to put down either gun to get it. He advanced across the open space, the dog hanging close at his side, never taking its eyes from them. They were absolutely deadly eyes, the bloodlust visible in them. Thirty feet from them, he stopped, brought the dog to heel.

    “I know very little of your background,” Hobarth went on. “Just that your parents died in an automobile accident when you were young and that your grandmother died suddenly less than four months ago. But, watching you and knowing that little bit, I think I can see some classic patterns of mental behavior in you.”

    He waited for her to respond.

    “And?” she asked. Now she was more frightened than ever. She did not think she wanted to know about herself, to peek into her own mind and see how it worked. But she had to buy time for them.

    “You are desperate for stability-in much the way Freya was. And she was. I didn't lie about that part of my analysis. I just used the truth to bolster the places where I had to stretch the truth. Anyway, you crave stability, security, safety. You verge on mild paranoia, always looking for some evil force that is about to do you in.”

    “And you're that evil force,” she said.

    “But only because your paranoia and your need for security helped things work out that way. You see, you were afraid of Richard because you couldn't understand him. It is the same reason why you are afraid, to one degree or another, of everyone about you. And until you realize the source of your problem, you'll always be that way. Because intelligent, thinking men and women are always impossible to completely understand. You could know Richard a lifetime and still be surprised by him. The only people you will make friends with are dense people, people with so little intelligence and wit that you can understand everything about them and feel safe. Or…”

    “Or?” Jenny prompted.

    “Or you'll make friends with people who wish to deceive you. If someone plays a role, puts on a simple facade and becomes a stereotype, you'll think you know them, and you'll be friends with them. I am the perfect example of that. You thought I was the nice, understanding, omniscient psychiatrist right off the television tube. You befriended me. I think you even fell in love with me. Just a bit? I thought so! I was playing a role that offered you security and contentment. You accepted me quickly.”

    “That's the complete analysis?” Jenny asked. She had been shaken by what he had said, right down to the last cell in her body. All of it had been so painfully true.

    “Pretty much, yes. You should always remember that the unexpected is only unexpected because it manages to sneak up on us in some familiar and reassuring guise. When you think you know someone perfectly-that's when you should begin to suspect that they aren't being completely honest with you.”

    “Too bad she won't have a chance to use your advice, Hobarth,” Richard said.

    He still held Jenny under his left arm. He felt warm and solid beside her. She was humiliated to know that she had thought so wrongly of such a good man as he -but at least, before the end, she stood corrected.

    “Yes, isn't it?” Hobarth asked. He knelt beside the dog and hugged its burly head.

    “Look,” Richard said, “you know you won't get away with this. Two more bodies will have the police in here again.”

    “And all they'll find are two corpses badly mauled by a wolf. The same wolf who has already given the area so much trouble.”

    Brutus was licking his chops and nuzzling his master with all the cuddly affection one might expect in a house dog. Nevertheless, he would tear them apart when the time came.

    “There's going to be a hunt,” Richard said. He squeezed Jenny more tightly, reassuringly.

    “I expect so,” Hobarth said. He was growing bored with them. He was preparing to give the dog its command.

    “You don't get my point,” Richard said.

    The doctor looked up. “And what is your point?”

    “They won't find a wolf.”

    “Why should that upset them? They didn't find a wolf the first time, either.”

    “Three will be dead now. They'll make an all-out effort, over the entire area, until they have a dead wolf. And if they don't find a wolf, they're going to start thinking about the possibilities-and someone will remember that dogs sometimes are trained to kill.”

    “It's academic anyway,” Hobarth said. “Because they will find a wolf when they have the next hunt.”

    Richard looked surprised. “They will?”

    “Of course. We've already considered this. Malmont has access to laboratory animals. He has already obtained a wolf for us. Yesterday, in fact. We only need turn it loose on the grounds tomorrow before the hunt. Once it's been killed and there are no more maulings, everyone will be happy.”

    The inhumanly methodical planning was almost too much for Jenny to bear. They were going to die here, and they had no hope of escaping or even of leaving a clue to avenge their own deaths.

    Hobarth began speaking to the dog.

    It turned its glare on them, bared its teeth, snarled deep in its throat as it considered them.

    Richard began pulling her backwards across the rough terrain. But they had only put another fifty feet between them and Hobarth when the doctor gave the dog it's final command.

    “Kill,” Hobarth said quietly.

    

    The horses sensed the evil that was loose in the darkness and reacted to it from their posts by the woods. They snorted and whinnied, crying like children, scuffed their hooves on the earth and tested the leather which held them to the elm trees. Tulip rose on her hind hooves, danced in place, kicked her forefeet in the air as if slapping at some invisible opponent. She struck the ground hard when she came down, making sparks on stone, and rose almost immediately into the air again.

    Hobarth still knelt on the ground, smiling that wicked smile that Jenny did not believe could appear on his handsome face. He petted the dog one last time.

    Brutus was on his feet.

    His yellow-red eyes, the color of fire and blood, glared malevolently at them. He was a huge animal, approximately sixty or sixty-five pounds of sinew, teeth and claws. No man could hope to stand, for long, against his natural grace and power.

    Tulip continued her dance, rattled her reins against the small tree to which she was tethered.

    The hair on the back of Brutus' neck raised like wire bristles. Its head was held low between its shoulders as if it were brooding, and it swung its head slowly back and forth like a pendulum as it searched for the best way to get at them.

    It threw its head back.

    It howled.

    Many nights, they had listened to that forlorn wail and had quakingly envisioned what manner of monster might have made it. But in all of those conjured pictures, they had never imagined any beast more vile or more terrifying than this Vietnamese guard dog transferred from his natural environment.