Return of the Wolf Man (24 page)

T
albot’s scream echoed for a moment and then died. Somehow, the room seemed even quieter than before.

Caroline walked toward Talbot slowly, hesitantly, as though she were approaching a wounded animal. She didn’t know what to expect. She hadn’t seen him transform at the castle and she didn’t know if he was transforming or whether he was fighting it. He was still on one knee, his hands gripping the bars, his forehead pressed between them. When she reached the cell she crouched and faced him. The window was at her back, the edge of the moon peeking over the sill. Talbot was facing down, his forehead creased, his hair spilling over it. She put her left hand between the bars and touched his shoulder. He didn’t seem to feel it.

“Lawrence?” she said quietly.

Caroline could hear him breathing, each breath shallow and labored. As she watched, perspiration collected on his brow and the creases deepened, as if he were in pain. And then he looked up, a strange darkness coming over his face. Greasy shadows appeared on his full cheeks, along his forehead, and under his eyes.

Caroline put her other hand into the cell and held his cheeks between her hands. “Lawrence, stay with me. Don’t let this happen.”

He swallowed another scream and tried to turn away, but Caroline held his face tightly. Suddenly, her fingertips tickled strangely and she withdrew them. The young woman watched as bristly hair grew along the side of his face and across his hairline. It sprouted so quickly and so fully that it just seemed to
appear.
She wanted to touch it, to assure herself that it was real, though she knew it was. As new wedges grew behind his cheekbones and up his neck, she also knew that it wasn’t hair. It was fur. Thick, tawny wolf-fur.

Talbot’s lips and nose darkened. His eyes narrowed as more fur grew. It seemed to be closing in on his face—down his forehead, inward along his cheeks, up his chin toward the mouth. As it did, the fur thickened and grew longer.

After a moment Talbot no longer stared straight ahead. His gaze snapped from side to side. At the same time Talbot’s bottom jaw extended slightly and rode up over his top lip. His nose grew wider. The wrinkles deepened along the bridge of his nose and down the sides. Caroline forced her eyes from his face and looked down. The backs of Talbot’s hands were covered with thick, curly fur. His fingers seemed fatter, the skin more wrinkled. His nails had grown long and sharp. She looked up again. Now his face, head, and neck were completely covered with fur. She heard a pop and looked down. His boots had burst and he was perched on his toes, his insteps off the ground. His four-toed feet were covered with fur. Like his fingernails, his toenails had become claws.

“My God!” said Stevenson, who had followed her over.

The werewolf growled and thrust his arm through the bars, trying to get at the attorney. Caroline screamed and fell back on the floor. Stevenson also cried out and stumbled against the water cooler in an effort to get away. The cooler wobbled; the jug fell and exploded, startling the Wolf Man. Enraged, snarling and snapping, the Wolf Man twisted so that his arm stretched farther between the bars. The other hand gripped the bars, rattling them. Caroline looked up as dust sprinkled down from the ceiling.

“Deputy!” she cried. “Is that going to hold?”

Clyde had run over, his nightstick in his hand.

“It should,” he said. “The cell’s a solid piece. Even if it came free of the building, he’d still be locked inside.”

“Unless he managed to bend the bars,” she said.

“Yeah,” Clyde agreed. “In that case, we’d have a big problem.”

Caroline was still on the ground. Clyde helped her to her feet.

“God almighty,” the deputy said and made the sign of the cross on his chest. “Jesus God, what is he?”

“A lycanthrope,” Caroline said. “A werewolf.”

“Just like your aunt wrote about,” Stevenson said. “Everything you told me, everything that happened on La Viuda—it’s true.”

Caroline stood away from the cell—or was it a cage now? She watched as the Wolf Man stepped back from the bars. His body remained crouched and alert as his eyes shifted from one to the other of them.

“He tried to warn us,” she said. “Forgive me, Lawrence. Forgive me thinking I was a lot smarter than I am.”

The werewolf howled, his cry echoing through the darkening room.

“What do we do now?” Clyde asked.

Caroline watched as the werewolf paced the cage for a moment. Then, suddenly, he lunged at them again, rattling the bars furiously, pulling and pushing on them, even attempting to squeeze through them. Just like in the castle, there was no ingenuity in his attack against his cage. Unable to make any headway, he turned to the bricks along the back wall of the cell. He raked them with his claws, pounded them with his palms, and hit them with his shoulders. Then, his anger increasing, he turned on the cot. He ripped it from its legs, which were bolted to the floor, and threw it at the bars. Then he attacked the mattress, shredding it and tossing the springs aside.

Throughout the assault the werewolf howled. Fiercely, loudly, and bitterly. The only times he stopped his attack were when Caroline walked nearer. He would pause and wrap his large hands around the bars. Then he’d move his face between them, cock his head slightly to one side, and growl softly. Caroline didn’t know whether it was because he recognized her or because she was the only woman in the group. Whatever the reason, the peaceful interludes were brief. After a few seconds the werewolf would begin to shake the bars lightly, then roughly. Then he would be tearing at them again with all of his strength and Caroline would leave in despair. She didn’t like to think of poor Talbot trapped inside that monstrous form. She was also frustrated because she couldn’t think of any way to help him. There was no way to get a sedative to him in this condition.

There was also no way she could attribute this to a disturbed state of mind. As far as she was aware, no one in recorded medical history had ever undergone a psychosomatic change like this. This was a physical malady. It didn’t shake her faith in medical science, though it did force her to acknowledge that the textbooks weren’t as complete as they thought they were. At least, not any textbooks she’d ever read.

After a few minutes of watching Talbot’s savage struggles—and ascertaining that the cell bars would hold—Deputy Trooper Clyde returned to his desk to phone Trooper Willis. As he sat down, the scanner picked up a call for the volunteer fire department to report to the fire station.

“Man, there are going to be some very tired fire fighters by the end of this day,” Clyde said. “That’s how it is with this town. Disaster always strikes in bunches.” Clyde looked back at the cage. “You know, I’d stake my pension on the fact that what we’ve got here is the legendary Beast of LaMirada. He sure fits some of the descriptions of what the Beast was supposed to look like.”

“Is there any way you could check that?” Caroline asked.

“There might be,” he said. “I’m checking the computer files now.”

Caroline didn’t think the deputy was right. Talbot was supposed to have been locked in her aunt’s cellar during that period.

Accessing the records, he announced that according to a forensics report from 1948, experts at the Federal Bureau of Investigation had determined that hairs found in one of the victim’s wounds were canine.

“Mr. Talbot would certainly seem to qualify there,” Clyde said. “If we can get a hair sample we can compare it to the one the F.B.I. had.”

“Excellent idea,” Stevenson said. “You go in with the scissors. I’ll notify your next of kin.”

Still reading, Clyde frowned. “I’m not going anywhere near that cell. However, according to this the Beast was considered to be a mad animal and not human. They compared him to a rabid raccoon or dog here. As such, it says that agents were within their legal rights to shoot him on sight.”

“I wouldn’t try that now,” Stevenson said.

“Oh no?” Clyde said. “What’re you going to do—put him on the witness stand?”

“If he’s charged with a crime, yes,” Stevenson said. “First, we haven’t established that Lawrence Talbot is the Beast of LaMirada. Second, we have in our possession information that the F.B.I. didn’t have—namely that Talbot spends a great deal of his time as a human. He is certainly not a mad dog who has to be destroyed. Third, we have to determine whether this is a physiological or psychological condition. If his problem is psychological then Mr. Talbot may be insane and eligible for the protective custody of an asylum.”

Caroline didn’t bother to tell the men that the discussion was academic, since she didn’t think bullets would have any effect on the Wolf Man. However, she did suggest that they might try firing different kinds of tranquilizers into him.

Stevenson nixed that plan as well.

“You should know, Doctor, that we have no way of knowing how he might react to different kinds of sedatives. Apart from not wanting to harm him, we don’t want a lawsuit from the family.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Clyde said. “There isn’t any family.”

Caroline fired him a look. “How do you know that?”

“One of the things that Trooper Willis was doing this afternoon was requesting information about the Talbot family. Records were faxed over from Llanwelly Village, Wales, and Los Angeles.”

“Deputy, can I see those documents?” Caroline asked.

Clyde shrugged. “Don’t see why not. Got them here on my desk.”

Caroline walked over and Clyde handed her a thin stack of papers. Behind them, the Wolf Man was silent and still, watching and waiting. It was strange, Caroline thought. She never considered how much patience a predator required—the willingness to wait for prey to come, do something to cause it to panic, drive it to make a mistake.

“Talbot’s great-grandparents Martin and Elizabeth are
very
dead,” Stevenson said, reading over her shoulder. “They died in Llanwelly Village in 1837 and 1845, respectively. His grandparents Lawrence and Anne are dead. Talbot’s father, Sir John, is also dead. Brother, John, Jr., dead. Mother, Cleva Creighton Tull of North Hollywood, dead since 1943. No living relatives by that name.”

“I’m curious about the estate in Wales,” Caroline said.

Stevenson pointed to a small line at the bottom. “They always put family history first on these things, holdings second. It says here the property went into receivership in 1950. Nothing about its current status.”

“We’re running a name search through census records in other cities,” Clyde said. “So far, nothing’s turned up.”

“I promise you,” Stevenson said, looking at the printout, “if we do something to harm Mr. Talbot, some long-lost cousin will come calling.”

Caroline turned to the next page, Talbot’s birth certificate.

“Deputy?” Stevenson said. “Looks to me like you’ve got a problem.”

“Why do you say that?” Clyde asked.

“Because it says here that Lawrence Stewart Talbot was born in 1910. The man in that jail cell is definitely not an individual nearly ninety years of age.”

“Yeah, we’re checking that,” Clyde said. “We figure it’s a transmission error. Probably should say 1940.”

“I don’t agree,” Caroline said. She was unnerved but also gratified to see that there was evidence to support the story Talbot had told her. “I believe that Lawrence Talbot may well be eighty-eight years old. That he is what he claims to be, a werewolf, and that tomorrow morning he’s going to return to his human form—just like he did last night.” She flipped the rest of the papers, which were records of employment and immigration. “When he does, I’m going to ask to have him incarcerated in a secure environment, but one to which I must have full access. No one’s going to believe me, so I want both of you to back me up.”

“Like they’ll believe us?” Clyde said. “Even if I had a video camera, they’d think we staged this.”

“We’ll make them believe,” Caroline said. “We have to.”

“Why?” Stevenson asked.

“Because I very much want to help him,” Caroline said. “Because what you said a few minutes ago is correct, Mr. Stevenson. In many ways Lawrence Talbot is still a man.” She glanced toward the cell. “Perhaps he’s the first of a new kind of man—a survivor.”

“A new man?” Clyde said. “He’s more like a throwback.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Caroline said. “In either case, we’ve got a remarkable opportunity to learn. In this state, what he refers to as his ‘spell,’ he’s much stronger than we are. His senses are more acute than ours. So are his reflexes, his balance. He could stand right beside you in the dark and you wouldn’t know he was there. I know. He did it to me last night. And his natural life expectancy is definitely longer than ours. He says he has to drink human blood to survive. Maybe he does. But inside, Mr. Stevenson, Deputy Clyde—inside he’s still very much a human being.”

“Oh, come
on,
Dr. Cooke!” said Clyde. “You call him a person and in the same breath you say he survives by drinking human blood!”

“His increased metabolism may demand it,” she replied. “We do, when we exercise. Or when it’s freezing outside and blood collects in the major organs to protect them, which is why our extremities get cold.”

“One big difference,” Clyde said. “We use our own blood to do that. He uses someone else’s.”

“He’s less efficient that way, more primitive. He also hibernates when he’s wounded, like a bear. But that doesn’t mean he deserves to be executed.”

“For God’s sake, Dr. Cooke!” Clyde exclaimed.

His shout brought a rumble of anger from the Wolf Man. A moment later the werewolf vaulted toward the bars, shaking them violently.

“Look at that!” Clyde said. “He’s a killer who’s going to keep on killing until he’s eliminated.”

“Or
cured!”
Caroline insisted.

The radio on Clyde’s desk beeped.

“Excuse me,” the deputy said to Caroline. Talbot was still rattling the cell, so Clyde put the call on speaker and turned up the volume. “Yes?”

“Clyde, it’s Willis.”

“Hey, Chief. You’ll have to speak up—it’s pretty noisy here. How are things going with—”

“You mean to tell me you didn’t hear that?”