Return of the Wolf Man (42 page)

“The fire brigade arrived then and used well water to fight the fire. I stayed at the governor’s house that night and went back the next morning with a bunch of local stevedores. We buried Talbot in a field and collected Tom Stevenson’s remains. A group of us also hunted down the rest of Dracula’s zombies and killed them. You know the rest of the story from the report.”

Willis offered Caroline his handkerchief. She took it and blew her nose. He stared at her after she’d handed it back.

“That’s your story.”

“That’s the truth.” She looked up at him through red eyes. “See? You don’t believe it.”

“I didn’t say that,” Willis replied.

“Well, it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other,” she said. “The truth you’re looking for, Trooper Willis—all of it—is that Lawrence Talbot was a werewolf, Count Dracula and Dr. Mornay were vampires, and the Frankenstein Monster was patched together from dead human bodies and reanimated by electricity. If you don’t believe me, you might want to take a trip to Marya Island.”

“I told you, I have no jurisdiction there.”

“Don’t go as a state trooper,” she said. “Go as a tourist, a truth-seeker. Everybody on the island lived in terror of Dracula, including a pair of very educated men, the two doctors. Ask them to tell you who or what leaves bite marks like these.” She lowered her collar and pulled off the bandage she’d placed there. The two puncture wounds were still visible. “The population is celebrating now that Dracula’s finally dead. I was invited to stay for the feast, as a guest of honor, but I wanted to be here for Tom Stevenson’s funeral.”

Trooper Willis leaned forward. He examined the wounds then stepped back. He put his hands on his hips and stared to the east, toward the iron gates of the small La Viuda cemetery.

“Did I tell you that a lot of people here appreciate what you did for Tom?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Flying him back in a coffin instead of a body bag. That was a thoughtful and very sensitive thing to do.”

Caroline looked away. “I wanted the people who knew Tom to remember him the way he was.”

“Like I said,” Willis told her, “you did the right thing. It’s also nice of you to have Tom buried here on La Viuda. He was a real environmentalist, you know. Greenpeace and op-ed pieces and all that. He’d have appreciated the fact that someone would be here to put fresh flowers on his grave.”

Caroline looked out at the layer of dull yellow flowers she’d ordered from the florist and planted that morning. She thought of the vows she’d made as she’d turned up the soil with her bare hands, of the goals she’d set for herself.

Willis turned back to her. “Caroline, you’ve been honest with me so I’ll be honest with you. I’ve been standing here listening and thinking and I truly don’t believe most of what you just told me. Lunatics and satanists, those I accept. I saw them when I was stationed in Miami. I’ve dealt with them. And I’ve arrested people who were dressed like vampires, with white greasepaint on their faces and drinking blood from ceramic mugs shaped like skulls. But real vampires and werewolves—I just don’t know. Those are too much for me to buy.”

“They’re part of every culture,” Caroline said. “The governor of Marya Island has an extensive library on monsters. Seems you find the same kinds of creatures in every culture around the world. There are werewolves in Europe, werebears in the United States, weretigers in India, weregorillas in Africa. There are people who think that Bigfoot is a were-creature. That’s why he’s seen only some of the time.”

“Yeah, well, people are crazy all over.”

“Yes, they are,” Caroline agreed. “But are the crazy ones the people who have open minds or closed ones?”

Willis didn’t answer. He looked back at the castle. “I don’t know the answer to that,” he admitted. “As for me, I confess that I
have
seen and heard things over the past few days I can’t explain any other way. So maybe I’d be smart to keep my mind a little ajar on the subject.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Caroline said. “Just in case your team missed anything back at the castle.”

“Like I said,” Willis replied, “the team was pretty thorough.”

Caroline said nothing.

Willis put his sunglasses back on and fitted his hat on his head. “Unfortunately, my report’s got to be close-minded. So it’s going to say that Talbot killed Mrs. Bally and then became a fugitive from justice who forced Tom Stevenson to help him. I plan to call Talbot a madman instead of a werewolf. And I’ll say that the fur under Mrs. Bally’s nails was from a dog that she’d been petting.”

“Write what you want,” she said. “It’s your report.”

Willis looked back at the castle. He was wearing a strange, pinched expression. “So, Caroline. You say you’ll be doing research here?”

Caroline nodded. “I can’t go back to treating spoiled little kids with their designer outfits and shrill little voices and abused nannies.”

“Might I ask what kind of research you were thinking about?”

She flexed her finger and popped the blade of grass she’d wrapped around it. “Legitimate research,” she said. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Frankly, yes.”

“I have some pharmaceutical contacts, friends from college who could use some outside help creating new drugs,” Caroline said. “Maybe I can help find a cure for something.”

“Sounds good to me,” Willis said. “After the godawful things that’re said to have gone on here, all the stories of vivisection and torture and grave-robbing, what you’re planning will be very welcome.”

“Thanks,” she said.

He looked at his watch. “I’m going to head back now. If you need anything, just holler.”

“I’ll have to,” she said. “The phones won’t be fixed until tomorrow. Seems the lineman doesn’t want to stay past sunset.”

“This is still LaMirada,” Willis said, “and some things are never going to change.”

The trooper offered her his hand, then headed down the hill. After she watched him walk down to the dock, the young woman faced the cemetery. The wind seemed to howl as it swept through the trees.

“Later,” she said softly to the cool breeze. “Later.”

THIRTY-SIX

T
he autumn moon was a clawlike crescent as Caroline stood at the grave of Tom Stevenson. The faint moonlight cast a white glow on the pale yellow flowers she’d planted—wolfbane, a plant that originated in the mountainous regions of Europe and was said to have the power to repulse a werewolf.

Caroline was alone on the island. Stephen Banning, Jr., and his crew had left promptly at sunset, leaving the foyer full of scaffolding and unfinished cans of soda. But Caroline didn’t mind. She had bought a sleeping bag in town. After making a fire and cooking some hot dogs like she used to do when she was a Girl Scout, Caroline was going to bed down outside, under the stars.

The quiet here was unlike anything Caroline had ever experienced. The peace reached from her skin to her soul. It didn’t ease the horror of the last few days, but it reminded her that for every flame of Hell which flared on earth there was also a cooling piece of Heaven. For every monstrous Wolf Man there was a pure-of-heart Lawrence Talbot—often in the same place, in the same person. It was the yin and yang, the eternal dualism in nature.

Caroline knew that there was some of that intrinsic polarity in her. She wanted to break the grabby little fingers of kids in her office, yet she wanted to develop new medicines to help people. She loved the confines of a cluttered research lab, yet she was thrilled by the open spaces of her own island surrounded by sea.

And then there was this grave. She’d buried poor Tom Stevenson in a sugar cane field on Marya Island so she could ship Lawrence Talbot’s body to LaMirada and then she lied to people, telling them that it was the other way around. Only she and Thurman Coldwater III knew the truth. The governor was only too happy to see the werewolf crated up and sent back to the States. Having two monsters and a small army of zombies buried on his island was more than enough for him.

“I believe that Tom Stevenson would have appreciated this too,” she said to herself as she gazed out at LaMirada. “His remains get recycled while Lawrence Talbot gets another chance at life.” She looked down at the fresh grave. “The other day I told you to trust me, Lawrence, just like you trusted my aunt.” She glanced at the grave beside Talbot’s, where Joan Raymond was buried. Then she squatted and lovingly ran her slender hands over the leaves of wolfbane. “I have blood samples and specimens of your tissue and hair. In the morning I’ll begin ordering the things I need to set up a laboratory. I’ll work days to earn a living and at night I’ll study this delicate flower, learn why it repels your kind. With the papers my aunt left me, I’ll find a way to remake your cells and metabolism, eliminate your condition at its root. I
will
discover a cure for your illness, Lawrence, I promise. And when I do, I’ll open this temporary resting place, let the full moon revive you, and treat you so that you can enjoy the rest of your natural life.”

The wind came in again, howling through the headstones and rustling the wolfbane. Caroline stood. She looked over at the headstones of the Mornays.

“ ‘Godawful things,’ ” she said. “That’s what Trooper Willis called your experiments. And many of them were.” She walked toward the graves and knelt on the grass of one of them. “I know, Miklos Mornay. I know because I spent last night looking through your notebooks. My aunt left them to me along with the journal of Dr. Frankenstein. She found them in your laboratory and kept them safe, all these years, in a box labeled ‘unpublished manuscripts.’ She used them for reference in her writings. The note in the box said that although she knew they could be dangerous in the wrong hands, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy them. I’m glad she didn’t, Dr. Mornay. So very, very glad.”

The wind howled again as Caroline rose. She walked up the hill to where she could see the castle. She looked at the dark windows where the laboratory once stood. Where it would stand once more.

Where the questions of life and death, of mortality and immortality, would be addressed again.

Where universal horrors were explored and embraced, not feared.

EPILOGUE

D
r. Wilfred Glendon III looked up from the writing desk in the study of his spacious London estate. He pushed aside the stack of letters, leaned back, and folded his strong hands on the waist of his brown smoking jacket.

“Fascinating,” he said in a strong but gentle voice.

The tall, handsome thirty-one-year-old Oxford professor of anthropology turned his gray eyes toward the shelves and wood-paneled walls lined with rare, natural artifacts. A fossil of the skull of the prehistoric cat
Smilodon.
A hinged frame containing a patch of fur that reportedly came from the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas—fur retrieved by his grandfather Wilfred Glendon, the world-renowned botanist. A glass case holding the Eye of Ra, a mystical gem from the tomb of the mummy Klaris, a distant cousin to the more infamous Egyptian Kharis.

These and the other relics surrounding him bespoke of a world more astonishing than people knew. Glendon had devoted his life to exploring those mysteries, and very little surprised him. But what he’d just read was more amazing than any phenomenon he’d ever encountered. More amazing—and centered right here, in his own family.

He had just been given the correspondence of his grandmother, Lisa Glendon, with Baroness Elizabeth Frankenstein, wife of the infamous Dr. Henry Frankenstein. The two women had died within days of each other in 1948. The letters had been found in a strongbox at the office of the late solicitor who had handled the legal affairs of all the Glendons. His grandmother’s letters were secretarial copies of the originals, made before they were posted. But he did not doubt their authenticity. The replies from Baroness Frankenstein attested to the accuracy of the transcriptions.

The letters spoke of a condition that had afflicted Wilfred’s grandfather—a curse, as his grandmother described it, that had befallen him in Tibet where he’d gone searching for the rare phosphorescent moonblossom,
Mariphasa lupino lumino.
A curse that caused him to become a werewolf when the moon was full.