The Howling III (17 page)

Kruger caught him under the chin with the prod. His facial muscles twisted and jumped in the sudden agony.

“I’ll show you what you really are, freak-boy. I’ll show you who’s ugly.” Kruger capered grotesquely around the three exposed walls of the cage stabbing here, there, anywhere he could find a bit of exposed flesh.

Malcolm’s legs bent on him in a strange way and he fell to the floor. The sound that came from his throat was half whine, half growl. Like nothing human. His mind was a jumble of images - the forest at night, flames, burning flesh; a kind bearded giant; a beautiful woman who was his friend; a doctor who drugged him and took him away; a thick-necked witless lump of a man who tortured him.

The hands before Malcolm’s face no longer bore any resemblance to his own. They had darkened and stretched, and grown patches of fine black hair.

The pain continued, the anger grew, and the fire within him burned hotter.

Even watching closely, Holly missed the logging trail the first time past, and she had to drive back at ten miles an hour with her head craning out the window to find it. The old trail was no more than two faint paths through the weeds leading up the hill. Years ago logging trucks had hauled the huge Douglas fir logs down from the mountain to sawmills that had long since disappeared.

Minutes after she headed up the grade, the little orange car appeared. It stopped for a moment while the driver peered up the hill, then followed Holly up the trail.

Holly drove carefully up the grade. The second-growth timber had almost reached the density of the virgin stand that attracted the lumber companies in a previous generation. On both sides the thick brush made it difficult to see. Rocks and stumps jutted unexpectedly from the centre where the weeds grew unmashed. The Volkswagen Rabbit was not designed for off-road adventure, and Holly winced with every scrape and bump against the underside of the little car.

As she emerged from one especially thick clump of trees, Holly came suddenly and unexpectedly upon the clinic of Dr Pastory. It was a dark, two-storey house of redwood shingle and heavy oak beams with an overhanging roof. The house was built in the 1920s by the owner of a Hollywood studio as a playhouse for his favourite starlet. Sadly, before she could occupy it, the starlet died from drinking bootleg gin and laudanum at a party hosted by a popular slapstick comedian. The house had remained empty since that time until the studio magnate died several years ago. It was put up for auction, and because of the remote location Wayne Pastory was able to buy it cheaply.

There was no other vehicle in sight, and Holly felt a rush of disappointment at the thought that she might have made the trip for nothing. However, fresh tyre tracks told her that someone was using the place.

She snugged the Rabbit in under a tree and walked across the cushion of pine needles to the heavy front door. There was no bell, so she reached for the heavy cast-iron knocker.

Before she could lift the knocker Holly froze at a sound from somewhere inside the house. It was a cry of mingled fear, rage, and pain. The voice was distorted, yet something in the tone made her sure it was Malcolm. Reacting to a sudden blaze of anger, she tried the latch of the heavy door, found it open, and walked in.

The interior of the old house had been redone and modernized, if not improved, with metals and plastics. Wallboard had been added to section the large old rooms into many smaller ones. Holly kept moving, following the sound of the voice that continued to cry out every few seconds.

She passed along a hallway with doors on both sides. Some of the doors stood open, revealing cell-like rooms with narrow beds and a minimum of simple furnishings. Most looked unoccupied. In one of them, however, the bed was rumpled and recently slept in. Holly paused to look at a crumpled bit of white fabric stuffed into a wire waste basket. She recognized the stitched blue lettering that would spell out La Reina County Hospital. A patient’s gown.

She hurried on through what appeared to be a laboratory, dominated by an examination table with heavy straps riveted to the corners. Although she did not pause to look around, Holly was impressed by the quantity and variety of equipment in the lab. No wonder Olan Schaeffer at Landrud & Co. had been so eager to do business.

There was a large, well-equipped kitchen, then a short flight of steps leading down to a wing of the house that was on a lower level. It was from a room down there she heard the agonized cries.

The door to the large room on the lower level was ajar. Holly could see it was brightly lit within. She was close enough now to hear a crackling sound along with the cries of pain. She stepped through the door and stood for a frozen moment, stunned by what she saw.

A thick-shouldered brute of a man with scrubby black hair on a bullet head turned when she entered. He held what appeared to be an electrified metal rod in one hand. He was standing in front of a steel mesh cage. Inside the cage a pitiful figure writhed on the floor.A boy, Holly thought, though she could not be sure. He lay curled on the floor, muscles twitching, his limbs bent into strange, unnatural positions. On the visible areas of skin grew uneven patches of hair.

“Malcolm!” she cried. “My good God, what have they done to you?”

The face that looked up at her from the floor of the cruel cage wrenched Holly’s heart. She recognized in it the boy Malcolm, yet it was not Malcolm. The bones seemed to have shifted subtly, elongating the face. The eyes were a strange luminescent green. He said something that might have been her name, then quickly covered his mouth with a darkened, long-nailed hand.

“Who are you, girlie?”

It took a moment for Holly to realize the brutish man was talking to her. She turned toward him and fought down the rage inside her. Her impulse was to strike out blindly at him, but she knew this was a time for control.

“I am Dr Hollanda Lang. I demand to know what you are doing to this boy.”

The Doctor seemed to confuse the man; to draw from him a touch of respect. At least temporarily.

“How did you get in?” he asked.

“I walked in. The door was open.”

“You shouldn’t of done that.” A sly look crept into his dark little eyes.

“I want you to release this boy at once.”

“I can’t do that. Dr Pastory said I was supposed to keep him in there.”

“Did Dr Pastory also give you orders to torture the boy?”

“What are you talkin” about?”

“Answer my question.”

“Are you a friend of the doctor?”

The figure in the cage had pulled itself half erect on the steel mesh. The hands were more human now, the boy more recognizable as Malcolm. He looked so terribly young and vulnerable in the oversized pyjamas.

“Holly,” he said, his voice hoarse but clearing.

“Malcolm, thank God I’ve found you. Are you badly hurt?”

The boy looked down at his hands, which still bore patches of dark hair. He let go the screen and tried to hide the hands behind him.

“I… I… “

Holly moved quickly to the cage. She lay one hand flat against the diamond mesh. He backed away.

“Don’t be afraid, Malcolm. And don’t worry. I’m going to get you out of here, and I’m going to help you.”

She turned at the sound of a movement behind her. The big man had taken a step toward her. He was clenching and unclenching his hands. The metal rod hung forgotten at his side.

“What’s your name?” she demanded.

The authority in Holly’s voice held him for a moment. “K-Kruger,” he stammered. “Dr Pastory left me in charge while he’s gone.”

“Well, Kruger, you just get the key to this lock and open the cage right now.” She spoke with an assurance she did not feel. This Kruger was obviously unbalanced mentally. God only knew what sadistic tortures he had been subjecting Malcolm to, but Holly knew she was treading a thin line with him.

Kruger shook his bullet head slowly from side to side. “No, I don’t think I’m gonna do that.”

She tried softening her tone.

“It’s all right, Kruger. I’ll explain to Dr Pastory that I told you to let the boy out.”

A crafty smile slid over the man’s thick features. “Oh, no you don’t. I know who you are. You’re that Holly woman. The one he,” Kruger nodded toward Malcolm, “keeps calling for. You ain’t no friend of the doctor.”

“You just let him out of there. Right now, Kruger, or you’re going to be in a whole lot of trouble.”

“Not me, girlie. It ain’t me who’s going to be in trouble.” Moving with surprising speed, Kruger crossed the room and placed himself between her and the door.

“Run, Holly,” Malcolm said in a strangled voice. “He’ll hurt you.”

Sensing the menace in the big man’s tensed body, Holly tried to step around him to the door. He seized her by the arm above one elbow and squeezed it painfully.

“Let go of me!” she demanded, but her voice betrayed the fear that was building within her.

Kruger felt it too. “Your little freak friend is right,” he said. “I can hurt you if I want to. So you better be nice to me. You understand?”

“Let go!” Holly said again.

Before she could move, she was pulled hard against Kruger’s body. His thick, moist lips covered her mouth. His tongue tried to force itself past her clenched teeth.

Acting on instinct, she pumped one knee up between the big man’s legs. Her knee slid off the hard muscles of his inner thigh, weakening the blow to his testicles.

Kruger grunted and pulled his head back.

“Bitch!”

He balled one huge fist and hit Holly on the point of the jaw.

It seemed her head had been slammed up against the ceiling. The lights went out for Holly Lang and she fell heavily to the floor. Kruger laughed and knelt over her.

*****

When Gavin Ramsay returned to his office, supporting a hysterical Louis Zeno, two men in neat business suits were waiting for him with Deputy Nevins. They introduced themselves as Hoyden and Placerman from the California attorney general’s office.

“We got your request,” said Hoyden, the senior of the two, “to assist with the investigation you’re running down here.”

“I can sure use you,” Ramsay said. He briefly described the scene he had found at the old Whitaker cabin. “I left my man Fernandez in charge there. He’ll keep the sightseers away until we can secure the area.”

“This a witness?” Hoyden said, nodding toward Zeno.

“He found the body.”

The writer took this as a cue to start talking. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m talking bad, man. Blood everywhere. Pieces of my man all over the cabin. My typewriter was ruined.”

“Did you get a look at the guy who did it?” Deputy Nevins asked.

“No man did that,” Zeno said.

“What do you mean?”

“No one man could make an unholy mess like that in the

little time I was gone.”

“Gang of some kind?” Placerman suggested.

“Shit if I know. That’s you guys” job. You figure it out.”

“Try to relax, Mr Zeno,” Ramsay said. “Deputy Nevins here will take your statement.”

“Stole my car too,” said Zeno.

“What’s that? Who stole your car?”

“Whoever… whatever tore up Abe Craddock. Drove off in my car right when I came out of the cabin.”

“What kind of a car was it, Mr Craddock?”

“Datsun. 1972. Orange.”

“Licence number?”

“I… I… oh, shit, I know it… “

“Hey, I think I saw that car, maybe an hour ago,” Nevins interrupted.

“Where, Roy?”

“I was watching Holly, Dr Lang, drive away, and this orange Datsun pulled out right behind her and went off in the same direction.”

“Holly was here? When?”

“Like I said, maybe an hour ago. She left you a note.” Nevins pointed at the sheriffs desk.

Ramsay snatched up the sheet from his calendar pad and read it swiftly. As Holly had done, he glanced at the wall map to check the location of Bear Paw.

“I’m going after her,” he said. “Will you be all right here, Roy?”

“I can handle it, Gavin,” said Deputy Nevins, sucking in his stomach.

“Good. I’m sure Hoyden and Placerman here will give you all the help they can.”

The attorney general’s men nodded their agreement.

“I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

Ramsay started out of the office, then hesitated. He looked thoughtfully at Louis Zeno, who was still pale and shaking from what he had found at the cabin. Ramsay himself had been shocked at the inhuman violence done to Abe Craddock. He strode back to his desk and unlocked the bottom drawer. From it he took a square, heavy box and dropped it into a jacket pocket.

“What’s that, Sheriff?” Roy asked.

“Bullets,” he said. “Just in case.” What he did not add was that they were the special bullets given to him by Ken Dowd, the occult-shop owner. Silver bullets.

*****

Malcolm watched in tearful, helpless rage as Kruger fumbled with the snap at the waist of Holly Lang’s jeans. His fingers clamped over the heavy steel mesh like the claws of a caged beast.

Kruger paid him no attention. He popped the snap and slid down the zipper, revealing the filmy blue bikini pants Holly wore underneath. The man’s breathing grew louder. His eyes glistened.

“Leave her alone,” Malcolm cried. In his voice was a strange new quality. A growl. Even Kruger, in his lust, stopped and turned toward the cage.

“Hey, look at freak-boy! Look at that face! Too bad the doctor ain’t here to see this. Maybe you get off on watching, huh, freak-boy? Well you pay attention, then, “cause I’m gonna give you plenty to watch.”

He returned his concentration to pulling the tight jeans down Holly’s legs. She moaned softly, but did not regain consciousness. The bluish bruise from Kruger’s fist was already beginning to show on her jaw.

With some difficulty, Kruger pulled the jeans completely off, taking Holly’s boots with them and exposing her long, slim legs. He reached up and touched her pubic mound through the blue nylon.

Malcolm snarled. The fires inside burned hotter than ever before. The sinewy, hairy hands that now grew at the ends of his arms gripped the steel mesh and pulled. With a loud rip the material of his pyjamas tore at the shoulders where new muscles bulged and humped. The mesh of the cage bent and started to pull apart where he gripped it.