Darker Than You Think (48 page)

"Now,
Doctor!" A bleak challenge broke into his husky whisper as he
finished. "What do you say to that?"

Deliberately,
with that old reflective gesture, Glenn fitted the capable brown
fingers of his two hands together.

"You're
ill,
Mr.
Barbee," his deep voice said soberly. "Remember that.
You're too ill to see reality except in a distorting mirror of your
own fears. Your story of Homo lycanthropus, it seems to me,
is
a
kind of warped hysterical parallel to the truth."

Barbee
tried to listen—and shuddered when he heard the dogs still
howling behind him.

"It's
true that some of the parapsychology boys have interpreted their
findings as scientific evidence for the existence of a spirit
separate from the body that can somehow influence the probability of
events in the real world and may even survive after physical death."

Glenn
nodded as if pleased with his own argument "It's also true that
men are descended from savage animals. We've all inherited traits
that are no longer useful in civilized society. The unconscious mind
does sometimes seem a dark cave of horrors, and the same unpleasant
facts are often expressed in the symbolism of legend and myth. It's
even true that interesting throwbacks do occur."

Barbee
shook his head in a weary protest.

"But
you can't explain those witches away," he gasped hoarsely. "Not
when they're looking for the linkage of probability to kill Sam Quain
right now!" He looked uneasily behind him, shrinking from the
frightened howling of the dogs. "Think of poor Nora," he
whispered. "And dear little Pat! I don't want to murder Sam
tonight—that's the reason I'm afraid to sleep!"

"Please,
Mr. Barbee." Glenn's calm voice was warmly sympathetic. "Won't
you try to understand? Your fear of sleep is nothing more than your
fear of those unconscious wishes which sleep sets free. The witch of
your dreams may turn out to be nothing except your guilty love of
Nora Quain, and your thoughts of murder only the natural consequence
of an unconscious jealous hatred of her husband."

Barbee
clenched his fists, shaken with a silent wrath.

"You
deny such ideas now," Glenn said calmly. "You must learn to
accept them, to face them and dispose of them on a realistic basis.
That will be the objective of our therapy. There's nothing unique
about such fears.
All
people
express them—"

"All
people," Barbee broke in huskily, "are tainted with the
witch blood."

Glenn
nodded easily.

"Your
fantasy expression of
a
fundamental
truth. All people experience the same inner conflicts—"

Barbee
heard footsteps behind him on the walk and turned with a muffled sob
of terror. It wasn't the sleek white bitch, however, but only
horse-faced Nurse Graulitz and muscular Nurse Hellar. He looked
accusingly back at Glenn.

"Better
go with them quietly, Mr. Barbee," the tall psychiatrist told
him gently. "They
'll
put
you to bed and help you get to sleep—"

"I'm
afraid to sleep," Barbee sobbed. "I won't—"

He
caught his breath and tried to run. The two white-starched Amazons
caught his arms, and he surrendered to a chilled exhaustion. They
took him back to his room in the annex. A hot shower stopped the
chattering of his teeth, and the clean bed was insidiously relaxing.

"I'll
be watching the hall," Nurse Hellar told him.
"I'll
give
you a shot if you don't go right to sleep."

He
needed no shot. Sleep tugged and beckoned. It was a silken web that
meshed him, a tireless insistent line that drew upon him unceasingly.
It was
a
ruthless
pressure, a driving wind, a soothing song. It became a screaming
agony of need.

Yet
he found it—until something made him look at the closed door.
The bottom panels were silently dissolving. The white wolf-bitch came
trotting through the opening. She sat down on her haunches in the
middle of the room, watching him with amused, expectant eyes. Her
long red tongue lolled beside her shining fangs.

"You
can wait till daylight," he told her wearily.

"But
you can't change me—because I'm not going to sleep."

Her
greenish eyes smiled limpidly.

"You
don't need to sleep." She spoke with the warm velvet voice of
April Bell. "I've just told your half brother what happened
tonight on Sardis Hill—and he's very happy about it. He says
you must be very powerful, because even the nurses didn't notice. He
says you can change when you like now, without the aid of
sleep—because, you see, you no longer have any human resistance
that has to be relaxed."

"What's
all this?" Barbee sat up quickly on the edge of the bed,
frowning in puzzlement. "What didn't the nurses notice?"

The
white bitch grinned maliciously.

"Don't
you know, Barbee?"

"Know
what?" he rasped, annoyed. "And who's my half brother?"

"Didn't
Archer tell you anything?" The she-wolf shook her slender head.
"No, he wouldn't. He probably meant to spend a whole year
awakening your ancestral powers, the way he did mine—at forty
dollars an hour. But the clan can't wait. I cut you free tonight
because we've got to do something about Sam Quain and your human
taint made you too reluctant."

Barbee
blinked confusedly.

"I
don't get any of this," he muttered. "I don't even believe
I have a half brother. Of course I never knew my parents. Mother died
when I was born, and my father was soon afterward committed to the
state asylum. I was brought up in an institution till I started to
attend the university and came to board with Mrs. Mondrick."

"That's
all a fairy tale." The she-wolf laughed silently. "Of
course there really was a Luther Barbee— but he and his wife
were paid to adopt you. They happened to find out what an inhuman
little monster you were. That's why the woman had to be killed and
the man put away—before they talked too much."

Barbee
shook his head unbelievingly. "Then what—" he
muttered unwillingly. "What am
I?"

"You
and I are special beings, Barbee." The bitch smiled redly. "We
were bred from mankind, by a special art and for a special end—but
we are neither of us more than slightly human."

Barbee
nodded reluctantly.

"Sam
was telling me about Homo lycanthropus," he murmured dazedly.
"About the taint in the blood of men and the rebirth of the
witch race from the genes."

"Quain
knows too much," the white bitch observed. "The technique
of gathering the genes by mental control of genetic probability was
perfected here at Glennhaven," she added. "Your own famous
father finished the work nearly thirty years ago."

Barbee
shivered, clutching the iron bedpost.

"Who
was my father?"

"The
older Dr. Glenn," the she-wolf said. "That makes Dr. Archer
Glenn your half brother. He is a few years older than you and a
slightly less successful genetic experiment."

Barbee
gulped uneasily, thinking of that odd feeling of warm kinship toward
the tall psychiatrist—was it a recognition of their common dark
inheritance? He whispered huskily: "My mother?"

"You
knew her." The white bitch laughed at his shocked wonderment.
"She was a woman your father had selected for her genes—he
brought her to Glennhaven as a nurse. She was richly gifted with our
ancestral legacy, but unfortunately never able to overcome the
unfortunate influence of her tragic human taint. She was foolish
enough to believe your father loved her, and she never forgave him
when she learned the truth. She joined our human enemies—but
you were already born."

Goose
flesh roughened Barbee's skin.

"She
wasn't—" he gulped— "Rowena Mondrick?"

"Miss
Rowena Stalcup, then," the white bitch purred. "She wasn't
aware of her own ancestral powers until your father began arousing
them. A bit of a prude, I believe—she was horrified at the idea
of bearing you out of wedlock, even when she thought you would be
human."

The
white bitch snickered, and Barbee caught his breath.

"And
I killed her!" he gasped faintly. "My own mother!"

"Nonsense,
Barbee!" The she-wolf lolled her scarlet tongue, still laughing
at him. "You needn't be so squeamish about the extermination of
a mongrel traitress, but I'm the one who killed her. Your car on the
bridge merely completed the linkage of probability, so that I could
get her throat."

She
nodded brightly, licking her cruel white fangs.

"But—"
Barbee whispered strickenly, "if she was really my mother—"

"She
was our enemy." The white bitch snarled savagely. "She
pretended to join your father's coven and then used the arts she had
learned to escape him and carry the secrets of the clan to old
Mondrick— that's what first put Mondrick on our trail. Rowena
worked with him until one of us tore out her eyes years ago in
Nigeria, when she was about to uncover one of those Stones—those
disk-shaped weapons of something deadlier than silver—that our
ancient human enemies buried with our murdered ancestors to keep them
in their graves."

Barbee
nodded uncomfortably, recalling that lethal reek seeping from the
silver-lined box that had nearly killed them in Sam Quain's study,
and that malodorous plaster cast of some circular object that Nick
Spivak had been working over when the great snake killed him. He
clutched the bedpost with both hands until his knuckles cracked, but
he couldn't stop the shudder of foreboding that swept him.

"That
should have been a lesson to her," the white bitch was
whispering. "But she still helped old Mondrick all she could.
She's the one who warned him to test you when he was about to take
you into the Foundation."

"She
was?" Barbee shifted doubtfully on the bed. "But she was
always so kind and friendly," he protested, "even after
that. I thought she liked me—"

"She
loved you, I imagine," the she-wolf said. "After all, you
did have some strong human traits— that's why we decided to set
you free. Perhaps she hoped you would revolt from the coven, when the
time came, as she had done. She didn't know how strong your
inheritance would be."

Barbee
stared a long time at the wolf's red grin.