Return of the Wolf Man (6 page)

Talbot’s shoulders sunk. Joan couldn’t believe that she actually felt compassion for this man who had just torn away Professor Stevens’s throat and drank his blood.

But had it been this man?
she asked herself.

Talbot sighed. “Perhaps I
am
asking too much of you,” he said. “You’ve been through so much tonight.” He walked over to one of the candelabra. There was a wooden match in a dish beside it. He used it to light the candles. “Maleva once told me that if I tried to take my own life, the wolf in me would resist. She said that if I tried to kill myself he would emerge and fight me.”

“Mr. Talbot, don’t talk like that.”

“Why not? It’s the only way I know of ending the curse.” He looked at the candelabrum and shook his head. “Brass,” he muttered. He began looking around the room.

“But there’s still hope!” Joan said.

“Hope? Miss Raymond—forgive me, but I can still taste Professor Stevens’s blood in the back of my throat!”

“He’s dead. You’re
alive—”

“Only until I find something made of silver.”

That took her aback. “Silver?”

“Its purity will break the curse of my immortality,” Talbot said. “Anything will work. A silver cross, a silver-tipped cane”—Talbot’s eyes locked on something—“or that.”

Joan turned as Talbot ran to the right. He stopped by the wall where there was a long Louis XVI console table with more brass candlestick holders on either side. There was also a large mirror above it. Talbot looked into the mirror. He seemed startled by what he saw. He touched the deep lines along his nose, the loose flesh under his eyes, the creases and long scar on his forehead.

“Hope.” Talbot snickered. “Do you know, Miss Raymond, I’m only forty-seven years old. Evil ages a man.”

“You aren’t evil,” Joan said. “You’re afflicted.”

“There’s evil in all of us. This thing you call an affliction lets it come out.” He touched the glass. “Today I will find a way to kill that evil before anyone else can be killed . . . or cursed, as I am.”

A part of Joan understood the man’s self-pity. A part of her also found it weak and objectionable. And a part of her didn’t want Talbot to die for purely selfish reasons. Joan Raymond had spent her entire life solving mysteries. She had to know if what he’d told her was true. Because if his condition were supernatural rather than biological, it would be very difficult for her to go back to the real world, hunting down missing art, jewelry, and people.

“Mr. Talbot,” she said patiently, “you were in England during the war. Weren’t there times when the struggle against the Axis seemed hopeless?”

“There were.”

“But we pressed on. We found ways to win. We invented new weapons. I believe in hoping for the best, not the worst.”

“You’re young,” Talbot said. “When you’ve experienced what I have you become weary. You have to fight to hold on to hope.” With easy grace Talbot leaned toward the mirror and removed it from the wall. Dust flew from the frame and flickered as it caught the candlelight. Talbot raised the mirror above his head then stepped back and dropped it to the floor. Joan winced as the glass shattered in large chunks. Then Talbot lifted the frame and threw it aside. He bent and picked up a large, jagged piece of the mirror. He looked at it longingly.

“This should do.”

“Don’t,” Joan said. “Come with me. We’ll find help. And if that doesn’t work out
then
I’ll help you end your life.”

“It’s too late for that,” Talbot said. His eyes on the piece of glass, he dropped to his knees, turned the silvered side up, and placed the point against the pentagram on his chest. He put both hands around the glass then looked at Joan. “I ask only one thing. If you truly believe that I am not like the Frankenstein Monster or Count Dracula, tell that to people. Tell them that Lawrence Talbot had a conscience . . . that he was not entirely inhuman.”

“I do believe that,” Joan said as she looked at him. “Which is why it’s wrong to do what you’re doing.”

He looked over at her. “Thank you,” he said. As sad as his face appeared, it seemed more at peace right now than it had all night. “But the greater wrong is to keep on living.” He looked from the woman to his chest. As he pressed the point into his skin, his hands began to shake. His cheeks and jowls began to darken. “Oh, God!” he moaned.
“No!”

“What is it?” Joan asked. But even as she asked she knew the answer. Talbot had said that the wolf would emerge if he tried to take his life.

“Help . . . me!” Talbot cried as his lips pulled back from his teeth. Thick spittle began to roll along his upper and lower teeth. His hands trembled violently. “God . . .
help me!”

Joan shook her head and stepped back. She bumped into the front door and watched as Talbot struggled to put the glass through his chest.

“Please!” Talbot wailed. “He’s
resisting
—trying to get out!”

“No! Whatever it is, you’ve got to fight it!”

Talbot’s nails began to grow. His nose seemed to tighten and grow darker. “Don’t you understand?” Talbot cried.
“I won’t be able to control him!
He’ll stop me and then he’ll hunt you down!”

Joan had always prided herself on being a woman of principle. An idealist, always choosing the right course over the convenient one. But she wasn’t foolish. Breathing deeply, she ran toward Talbot.

“God help us both,” she said as she knelt in front of him. Her face was directly in front of his. She could smell the inhuman breath coming from his mouth. “What do you want me to do?”

“Push!” he cried. “Just push!”

Joan extended her left hand toward the piece of glass. She wrapped her fingers around Talbot’s. She could literally feel the fingers becoming thicker, hair pushing from under the skin.

“Hurry!” Talbot implored her, his voice gruff and deepening.

Joan placed the heel of her right hand against the edge of the fragment. She saw his wrist thicken and short, bristlelike hair rise from it. This was not an illusion. It was proof of the existence of hell.

As her resolve grew stronger, Joan pressed more firmly against the smooth edge of the glass. It penetrated Talbot’s bare flesh. A trickle of blood spilled out as spittle dripped onto her hand.

“Do I need to put the glass—all the way through the pentagram?” Joan asked.

“As far as you can,” Talbot said. His woeful eyes found hers. The eyes were narrowing, the flesh around them darkening. “Quickly!” he urged.

She hesitated. Her fingers weakened and her grip relaxed. If there were a hell then there had to be a heaven. And one day she would be judged for this—

“I don’t think I can do this!” she cried.

“You must!” Talbot gurgled, his voice changing into a low rasp as he slipped one of his big hands from underneath hers. He placed it firmly behind Joan’s. She felt a strong push on the back of her hand and, surrendering, she went with it.

Talbot’s frown became a grimace as the sharp-edged glass penetrated his chest more deeply. Joan shut her mouth and breathed through her nose and pressed harder on the mirror. He moaned, a trace of the wolf still in his voice as the silver-backed shard slid between his ribs.

“More!” he pleaded as his blood spilled onto her dress.

“God, no—”

“The silver must penetrate . . . my heart.”

With a cry, Joan turned her face to the side and put both palms on the back of the shard. She leaned into his chest. Talbot sucked down air as the makeshift weapon found its target. He smiled, exhaled loudly, and then slumped forward.

“At last,” he gasped. “At last.”

Joan shrieked and pulled her hands away as blood poured over the back of the glass. She put her gory palms on the cold stone floor and scuttled away, watching as Talbot bent over further. His forearms hit the floor. Blood dripped into a puddle under his chest. She raised the back of one hand to her mouth and began to cry.

“Forgive me,” she said, as much to God as to Talbot.

“No,” Talbot said. “It’s . . . what . . . I’ve wanted.”

The candle threw off enough light so Joan could see Talbot’s face reflected in the spreading pool of blood. She wanted to go to him and comfort him. But it was all so horrible—

“Listen . . . carefully,” he wheezed. “My body . . . must not . . . be burned. It must be buried . . . in an unmarked place. And the mirror . . . must never be removed.” Talbot looked over at her. “Will you . . . see to it?”

“This can’t be happening!” she cried as his blood streamed toward her. It seemed almost as though the blood were alive, seeking her out. The wolf’s life essence determined to mark her for all time.

“Will you . . . see . . . to . . . it?”

Joan moved aside at the last moment. She was relieved as the thin stream of blood flowed past her.

“Yes,” she cried. “I’ll make sure no one finds you!”

“Thank . . . you,” Talbot said. His torso drooped and his head struck the floor. He struggled briefly for breath. “I must never . . . live . . . again.”

“Never,” Joan repeated.

With a little smile and a final gasp, Lawrence Stewart Talbot shuddered and rolled onto his side.

Joan waited a long minute before crawling toward him. She felt as though she were in a Grand Guignol play, dressed in a costume, creeping through a gothic setting, going to examine a corpse. She bent over the body, lifted one of his wrists, and looked for a pulse. There wasn’t any. Slipping the shawl from around her shoulders, Joan laid it over his head and stood. She felt guilty as she looked down at the peaceful body and then into the laboratory at the butchered remains of Professor Stevens. Stevens had come back to save her. Had he remained on the mainland, he’d still be alive. So why did she feel bad for Talbot and not for him? And why did she actually believe the most fantastic thing Talbot had said?

I must never live again.

How could he live again? He was dead. So were Professor Stevens and Dr. Mornay, though they were
truly
dead. Or were they? It was all too much to assimilate.

Joan didn’t understand what she’d seen, and she still didn’t believe she’d actually seen much of it. But Talbot had believed. And if nothing else, she had promised that no one would ever find his body. She would keep that promise.

Joan had heard enough lame alibis in the course of her career to be able to create better ones. She considered what she must do. She’d telephone the police and tell them that Professor Stevens had been murdered by a madman named Count Dracula. Dracula had also attacked Dr. Mornay before he left the island—left it in a motorboat, she suspected. She heard it leave. Maybe he’d set fire to the pier to try to prevent any other boats from pursuing. Lawrence Talbot? She had no idea what happened to him after their brief encounter at the ball. As for Chick Young and Wilbur Grey, if they were foolish enough to tell what had really happened here, it would only legitimize her own story. No one would believe them.

Poor men,
she thought. They really were innocent victims caught in the scheme of Count Dracula.

Young and Grey had said there was a basement in the castle. Joan began opening doors around the foyer until she found it. The torchlit wooden staircase led to a grotto, which had probably been constructed by the original Dr. Mornay to allow secret access to the sea. It was a clever and convenient way to dispose of failed experiments, Joan thought. As she walked cautiously down the steep stairs, looking for a place to conceal the body, she leaned on the moldy walls for support. At the first landing she nearly lost her balance as the wall turned inward. She gasped as it revealed a hidden chamber. She looked inside. There was a heavy wooden chair against one wall and a grate in the floor. A choking, sulfurous smell rose from the pit beneath the grate. Whatever unspeakable activities had taken place here, the room would serve only one purpose henceforth. It would provide Lawrence Talbot with a suitable tomb.

Returning to the foyer, Joan picked up her shawl, grabbed the shoulders of Talbot’s shirt, and began pulling him across the smooth stones. His body left a long red smear in its wake. The young woman looked away. She knew she’d think of Talbot often after tonight, and she didn’t want to think of him dead. She wanted to picture him savoring that moment of death—not happy, but at least at peace.

At the top of the steps, Joan picked him up under the arms and backed down ahead of him. She wanted to lend some measure of dignity to his final descent. Upon reaching the secret room, she lay him on his back on the cold, damp floor. After wiping her bloody hands on her shawl, she closed the revolving section of wall. Then she looked back at the wall and touched it.

She thought of the race she’d been running for seven years. The race to build a career. Pretending to be someone’s daughter or secretary or long-lost relative or, most recently, Wilbur Grey’s lover. Then she thought of the race Lawrence Talbot had run. Pursuing Count Dracula around the world. The depression brought on by his failure. The passion he harbored for his own destruction and the pleasure he experienced when he succeeded. Her own goals and achievements seemed mundane by comparison. Though Joan had not known Lawrence Talbot before this evening, and she had not known him for very long, she knew that the encounter would change her life.

Slowly, she walked back up the damp, slippery stairs. She used her shawl to wipe Talbot’s blood from the floor. When she was finished, she took a poker from the fireplace and stuck it through the garment. She walked over to the basement, threw the poker into the water, and shut the door. Then she sat at the wooden writing desk, picked up the telephone, and asked the operator to connect her with the LaMirada sheriff’s office.

She told him who she was. She told him where she was and what had just happened—more or less. The sheriff asked Joan if she were in any immediate danger. She said no, she didn’t believe so. He told her that a patrol boat would be over within a half hour and she should stay where she was.

Joan hung up and looked around the sunlit foyer. The light dispelled the horrors without destroying the history and character of the room.

Stay where you are.