Return of the Wolf Man (14 page)

“How do you do, Mr. Talbot. I’m Caroline Cooke.”

He looked out and bowed his head slightly. “Miss Cooke,” he said softly. Then he flopped back against the wall.

His courtliness didn’t surprise her. It was genuine, utterly unaffected. That, more than anything else, suggested that he was from a different time.

“A moment ago you said there’s no end to this,” Caroline went on. “What were you talking about, Mr. Talbot?”

“The curse,” Talbot said solemnly. “A curse that transforms me into a wolf when the moon is full. A curse that drives me to eat human flesh. A curse that is more powerful than death.” He shook his head. “Miss Raymond is dead while I live. There’s no justice in existence. None at all.”

“So you’re telling me, Mr. Talbot, that not only are you a—a werewolf, if that’s the correct term—”

“It is.”

“—but that you’ve also died and been resurrected.”

“Several times,” Talbot replied. “Your great-aunt, Miss Raymond, helped me to die the last time. She also promised to bury me someplace where I’d never be found.” He ran his hand through his hair again. “But they found me. They always find me. The grave robbers in Llanwelly Village, the scientists who were more concerned with research than with human lives—”

“This one wasn’t her fault,” Caroline said. She stopped a few feet from the opening. Pieces started coming together—pieces that made sense if she were willing to believe him. “Then you were the reason Aunt Joan had the basement sealed off when she bought this place.”

“Probably.”

“You were dead when she did that?”

He nodded again. “We did it together, with a piece of glass from a mirror.”

“Glass?” Caroline said.

“Glass that had a silver backing. We thrust it here,” Talbot said, pointing to the star-shaped wound on his chest. “The only way I could ever return from the grave was if someone removed it.”

“Which is why my aunt made her executor swear never to open the basement,” Caroline said. “God, we were so stupid. All of us.”

“The executor should have listened to her.”

“Maybe he would have if she’d given him her reasons,” Caroline said with a trace of bitterness. “Jesus, Aunt Joan. You should have trusted him. You should have at least let
me
know.”

“Why?” Talbot asked. “Would you have believed her?”

“Probably not,” Caroline admitted. She regarded him for a long moment. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Talbot, I see you wearing the same clothes I saw on the beast. I see you sitting in the basement from which this is the only way in or out. And I see that you can’t fit through the opening we cut. Yet despite all of that I still find this all difficult to believe.”

“That’s why creatures such as myself are so dangerous,” Talbot said. “People never believe until it’s too late.”

He has a point,
Caroline told herself. And once again she felt mortified by the fact that Stephen Banning had been smarter than all of them. Yet in the sane and comforting light of morning, the young woman still couldn’t help but return to the notion that the people of LaMirada were playing a trick on her. Of course, there was one way to find out if this were a joke.

“Mr. Talbot,” she said, “last night the executor and another man were attacked down there. Can you see them?”

Talbot sighed heavily. Then he turned around and leaned down the steps, out of the sunlight, so it could shine down to the landing. He peered into the basement. After a moment, he turned back to Caroline. He did not look up at her.

“I see one of them,” he said.

Caroline knelt by the opening. The revolving door was slightly ajar and there was a hand lying behind it, palm up. It was coated with blood. Of course, Caroline told herself, that too could be part of a sick gag.

“I’m coming in,” she said. “I’ve got to see if they’re—”

“Don’t,” Talbot said. He swung around, barring her way.

“I’m a doctor,” she told him. “I’ve seen cadavers before.”

“Have you ever seen them with the moment of death still frozen in their faces?” Talbot asked.

“Actually, yes,” she said. “And during my residency in Los Angeles I saw a few that didn’t even have faces.”

“Please,” Talbot said. “Let me go down. I’ll look at them and then bring them up if you want—that room is no place for a woman. Even one who’s a doctor.”

Caroline sat back on her heels. He
was
an antique. “All right,” she said, “but be careful. The steps that weren’t wrecked last night are still pretty rotten.”

Talbot nodded and rose.

“Mr. Talbot?”

He stopped and looked back at her.

“Before you go, would you mind showing me what’s in your pants pockets?”

Without hesitation, Talbot pushed his big hands into the deep-cut pockets of his trousers. He lay the contents on the stone step just inside the opening. Then he turned and started down, using the wall for support as he stepped over the decaying boards.

Caroline reached in and picked the items up. There was a handkerchief, a passport, a torn ticket to the LaMirada Masque, a money clip and currency, coins, and a key. She looked at the key. Stamped in the front was an address: H
OTEL
L
A
M
IRADA,
4 H
AZEL
C
OURT,
L
A
M
IRADA,
F
LA.

It did not say
FL
but
Fla.
—the old-style abbreviation. And there was no zip code. Caroline wondered if the hotel even existed anymore. She examined the coins. There were some British coins as well as two pennies, a nickel, and a shiny silver dollar. They were heavier than any coins Caroline had ever held. She put them down on the handkerchief and slipped the currency from the diamond-studded brass clip. She unfolded it. The seven notes were from the U.S. and from Great Britain, though the designs of the British money were different from any she’d ever seen. She examined the passport. It was British, though she had never seen one like it. The photo was pasted on, not laminated, and it expired in 1949. If this were a gag, someone had been awfully thorough.

She put the money in the clip and pushed everything back through the opening. She sat back again on her heels.

Her great-aunt had begun writing after she moved in here. The first stories she penned were her popular werewolf tales. This man claimed to be such a creature. Her great-aunt’s werewolf was from England, and so was Mr. Talbot. From Wales? she wondered. While it was true that someone could have slipped in here to mimic Joan Raymond’s stories, the reverse was also true. Her great-aunt may have been inspired to write horror stories after encountering Lawrence Talbot.

Talbot disappeared through the revolving door to the right of the landing. While Caroline waited for him the telephone rang. She hurried over to the antique desk in the corner. In addition to the black telephone, there was a computer, a laserjet printer, and stacks of paper piled in a corner of the desk. Behind the desk were rows of bookshelves thick with volumes old and new.

Caroline hesitated before answering the telephone. It could be her parents calling to see how she was doing, or it might be Mr. Banning wondering if she still wanted him to come back. LaMiradans probably got up with the sun. On the other hand, it could be someone calling for Henry Pratt or William Porterhouse, wondering why they hadn’t come home the night before.

Caroline was about to pick up the receiver when the built-in answering machine took the call.

“Hello there. This is Joan Raymond. I’m unable to answer your call, but if you’ll leave a message at the tone I’ll ring you back. Thank you and goodbye.”

There was a beep followed by a man’s gruff voice. “Well, it figures I’d call Mornay Castle and get a dead person. If anyone’s listening, this is Jim Pratt, Hank’s granddad. Hank, when I couldn’t reach you at home or on the boat, I woke your secretary and got the number where she thought you’re at. If you’re still there and can tear yourself away from consoling your pretty new client, it’s a little before six a.m. These old hips aren’t going to make it around the swamp without you. Think you could give me a call and let me know when you’ll be here? Thanks, son. Bye.”

Jim Pratt hung up.

Caroline took a deep breath. The shock of what had happened to Pratt and Porterhouse hit her anew. They were
dead.
She couldn’t believe this was happening.

Suddenly, Talbot called out. “I thought you said Miss Raymond was dead!”

Caroline turned. Talbot was leaning through the opening. He was struggling to get through.

“She is, Mr. Talbot.”

“But I heard her voice! Where is she?”

“That was just her answering machine,” Caroline said.

“Her answering machine?”

“Yes. It’s a tape recording . . . like a record. A phonograph record that answers the phone and then records the caller’s voice.”

Talbot’s brow wrinkled deeply. After a moment he withdrew. He sat back down and leaned heavily against the wall.

Caroline walked over. “Did you examine the men?”

“I did,” Talbot said. “They’re both dead. There’s no point in bringing them up. Just call the police so I can turn myself in.”

Caroline squatted. She looked down the stairs. The hand was gone and the revolving door was closed. Even in his suffering this man was the embodiment of decorum.

“When the police come,” he said, “you must convince them that I am what I am. Tell them what you saw last night. They must waste no time killing me.”

“You can forget that,” she said.

Talbot looked at her. “What do you mean? I’ve killed again. The evidence is down there.”

“With trials and appeals it’ll take anywhere from ten to thirteen years before they put you in the electric chair.”

“Ten to thirteen years?” Talbot said. “No, it has to be tonight! And I have to be killed with a silver bullet.”

As Caroline crouched there she suddenly smelled something strange. It was different from the decaying odor that had been so strong the day before. This smelled like burnt rubber. Frowning, Caroline stuck her head into the opening. She leaned toward the left side of the staircase, the side that overlooked the still waters.

“What is it?” Talbot asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you smell something?”

Talbot sniffed. “Yes.”

They both looked downstairs. The sun was rising higher and a few rays of light reached the long-still waters. They revealed a mirror-flat surface, dark and lifeless.

“The smell is definitely coming from that direction,” Caroline said as she leaned over further.

Just then she saw something break the surface. It was small, smooth, and grayish-green. Then whatever it was attached to began to rise. Caroline could tell at once that it was not a marine mammal. It was something from hell.

Talbot bolted toward the water side of the ledge. In his eagerness to see what was there he nearly slipped off the mossy surface. Caroline reached in and grabbed him. When he had regained his balance he looked down.

“No,” he cried.
“No!”

“Who is it?” Caroline demanded.
“What
is it?”

Talbot didn’t answer. They watched together as the nose became a face and it rose slowly from the water. The flesh was wrinkled and brittle-looking, vivid green on the cadaverously hollow cheeks and temples, shading to pale green around the eyes and mouth, and grayish on the chin, nose, and along the jaw. There were patches of scabbed, bubbled flesh on the broad forehead and heavy brow, on the neck, and around the ears. They seemed to Caroline like imperfectly healed burns. The lips were pale red and parted slightly, the heavily-lidded eyes were shut, and the long raven-black hair lay flat on top of the squarish head. There was an ugly, jagged rip in the flesh which ran from the hairline nearly to the right eye. As the face rose, another long, ragged scar was visible just beneath the left side of the jaw. Below it, incongruously fresh against the parchmentlike tissue, was a silvery neck-bolt. It glistened with its own sheen as well as the sparkle of the clinging water.

“In answer to both of your questions,” Talbot said gravely, “that, Miss Cooke, is the Monster of Frankenstein.”

SEVEN

A
s Caroline and Talbot watched, the Monster’s thick, crusted lids opened gradually. The eyes peered ahead. They were not so much black as completely dead and colorless, with only a hint of white on either side of the large irises. The eyes turned slowly toward the top of the staircase.

“It’s alive,” Talbot said. “Somehow, after all of these years, the Frankenstein Monster is still alive!”

Caroline looked from the creature to Talbot. She’d always dreamed of going down a rabbit hole and finding Wonderland. That was what she’d been looking for in the field when she’d found the dead cats. Now that she’d finally found her rabbit hole she wished she could close it forever.

“This has to be a joke,” she said. “You’re all in on it for some reason—everyone in LaMirada!”

“I wish it were a joke,” Talbot said. “The Monster is real enough to kill. I’ve seen him do it many times.”