The Ultimate Werewolf (16 page)

Stuart Samson walked on. He was beyond asking for forgiveness. He was beyond finding fault. He survived.

Debbie stood in the midst of it all, and watched the carnage in shock. But the wolves wouldn't touch her, for he had loved her, and given her his gift, just as Lorraine had given it to him all those years ago.

Two wolves looked up from their meal as he walked forward. Both cried in fright and ran from him as fast as their new paws could carry them, their tails between their legs.

The animals always knew.

Mel Gilden

▼▼▼

IT WAS a beautiful night for an execution, warm and fragrant with summer flowers. Though, in his shaggy brown bathrobe, Cornelius Miller looked a little as if his Transformation had already begun, the full moon would not be up for nearly twenty minutes. Besides, if the Transformation really had begun, Miller would not have been outside the gazebo joshing with Mayor and Mrs. Grimes. The best sort of people walked by and nodded at them in greeting. The men tipped their flat straw hats. Nearby, a uniformed officer stood at ease near one of the gazebo's two entrances.

The natural amphitheater in which the gazebo was the central and main attraction was lit by hundreds of torches that stood at odd angles where people had thrust them into the turf. Light and shadow shivered, giving the scene a nervous quality it would have possessed in any case.

At the top of the natural amphitheater, just beyond the outside row of seats, a swarthy foreign-looking person in clothes too colorful to be in good taste turned the handle on a hurdy-gurdy, loudly playing "The Man On the Flying Trapeze" in a monotonous sing-songy way. A monkey on a leash begged coins from the crowd.

A man in white carried a small ice chest from a harness slung around his neck while he bellowed, "Ice cream!" He wound his way through the crowd of people dressed in their best, trying not to be run down by children who, for this occasion, were allowed to be a little wilder than was usually considered proper.

Mayor Grimes stopped the man in white and said, "Ice cream, Mr. Miller? How about you, Mrs. Grimes?"

Miller smiled shyly and shook his head, but Mrs. Grimes said that she would be delighted. Like her husband, she was a substantial and stately person. An explosion of purple ostrich feathers complemented the beauty of her large purple hat and of her purple silk dress. Mayor Grimes was outfitted all in pearl gray. Miller was thin and rangy. He might have been suffering through the early stages of a terrible wasting disease, but he wasn't.

While Mrs. Grimes used a wooden spoon to take refined globs of ice cream, Miller waved at Allegra Idaho, a delicate woman in the front row who wore the palest blue, from her wide-brimmed straw hat to her satin shoes. Allegra lowered her eyes for a moment and then waved back, her hand like the wing of a bird.

As the time approached, parents reeled in their children and everyone found seats. A big man and his six children noisily evicted seven people who had been sitting in the front row since early that evening.

"Nice night, Mr. Tivley," said one young man who hurried out of the way of a small blonde Tivley girl.

As he settled himself, Mr. Tivley said, "Any night when justice is done is a nice night."

Allegra Idaho glanced at the late-comers and shook her head.

"We'll be starting soon," Mayor Grimes said as he studied the crowd. He popped open his big turnip pocketwatch and nodded.

Miller glanced at the clear summer sky and made an affirming noise. He glanced at Allegra Idaho and she nodded encouragement.

Mrs. Grimes wished him luck, and the mayor pressed the traditional gold coin into his palm. Mr. and Mrs. Grimes sat down in the seats that had been saved for them, and Mr. Grimes and Mr. Tivley shook hands. Cornelius Miller stood at his entrance, alone but for the company of the single uniformed policeman. Miller slipped the coin into a bathrobe pocket.

The policeman took his work seriously. As he opened the outer barred door and Miller stepped inside, the policeman barely looked at him. The outer door closed with the click of a catch. Miller now had a single barred door behind him and one in front of him.

The crowd hissed and booed as Chief O'Mara walked forward leading a tumbrel in which knelt a very worried man dressed in prisoner's stripes. The tumbrel was pushed by three of O'Mara's men. The eyes of the prisoner, staring straight ahead, were ringed with red. He had the surprised, unhappy and dazed appearance of a man who had been hit on the back of the head with a baseball bat. No one had bothered to comb his hair, which was long and a luminous golden color in the torchlight.

Chief O'Mara unlocked the outside door of a small cage directly opposite the small cage in which Miller stood. Two policemen grabbed the prisoner while the third unlocked the shackle around his neck. As they forced him into the small cage, the prisoner struggled a little, but without energy or hope, the way a sick old cat might struggle on its way to an inevitable bath.

The door was slammed and the crowd became silent. The hurdy- gurdy stopped in mid-phrase. A very young child asked a parent what was going on. The parent hissed and the child settled right down. The policemen backed away from the cage. The prisoner started to whimper and moan.

Two men stood ready. The one in the shaggy brown bathrobe, calmly; the one in the stripes whimpering, clutching the bars of the door he'd just come through, his knees a trifle bent as if his legs would not support his weight. A light wind shook the leaves, making the sound of grain rushing down a chute.

The waiting continued for a long time, stretching like a rubber band. When the rubber band was tight and in danger of breaking, a white shape peeked through the arms of the trees. Then it rose slowly over the trees like a silver serving plate.

As the full moon drifted higher, Cornelius Miller shed his bathrobe. It dropped at his feet and he stood there buck naked, but no more offensive than a statue in a park. His Transformation began slowly. Then an intake of breath came from the audience as if from one throat. The crowd sat frozen, the only movement being by individuals leaning this way or that to get a better view.

Miller's reddish brown hair spread across his body in waves while his limbs changed. His face grew into a muzzle. His ears lengthened into demonic points. Soon the growling in one cage nearly blotted out the sounds of distress in the other.

A policeman at each cage pulled the inner door aside on tracks. Miller-the-Wolf trotted forward and stiffened, his ears up, his nose pulsing. The prisoner glanced over his shoulder, then tried to climb his outer door and to melt through the bars. He shouted for help.

Miller-the-Wolf growled and took another step. The prisoner, finding himself to be more solid than smoke, turned around. He shouted for help again, slinging a string of spit down his stubbly chin. He pleaded for mercy, for help, for release.

Miller-the-Wolf leaped at the same time the prisoner shrieked. Mil- ler-the-Wolf tore into the prisoner's neck and blood spurted. Soon the prisoner stopped struggling and Miller-the-Wolf dragged the carcass into the center of the gazebo where he settled down to pull meat from bone. He paid no attention to either the polite applause or the sound of crying children.

Much later, Cornelius Miller returned to his human form and collapsed next to the messy remains of the prisoner. It would not take an expert to be certain the prisoner was dead, but Doc Kelly's signature on a paper made the pronouncement official.

Doc had no hair under his bowler, and he smiled most of the time, as if his work pleased him. The smile comforted some and disconcerted others. He and Mayor Grimes supervised as Chief O'Mara and his men loaded Miller onto a stretcher. Doc threw the brown bathrobe over him. At Miller's hotel, Doc made sure that he was properly tucked in.

▼▼▼

The remainder of that night, an entire day, and most of the following morning had passed when Miller awoke. He moved slowly under the covers, then opened his eyes. After a while he got out of bed, moving carefully. He poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the night stand, swished his mouth and spit the water into a bowl. He did this a few times, and then just sat on the bed with the half-full glass in his hand.

Miller got dressed and went downstairs, still moving like a man made of sticks. In the lobby he found Doc Kelly waiting for him in a big wing chair. Smoke rose from a cigar in a silver stand next to him.

Miller sat in a wing chair across from him and said, "Hello, Doc."

"Hello, Cornelius. Justice was done."

Miller nodded and said, "Thank goodness. Too many months without an execution was making me crazier than a snake with the mange." He patted the arms of his chair. 'Tm going to dinner. Want to come?"

"Delighted," Doc said and smiled in a way that may not have meant anything. He said, "You haven't seen this," and threw that morning's Mill River
Rambler
into Miller's lap.

The headline said:  
ALLEGRA IDAHO HELD
.

"What's this?" Miller said, surprised and horrified.

"Read the story."

"Tell me." Miller said. "My head is full of hay."

"Allegra was arrested yesterday for malpractice."

"What does that mean?" Miller said hotly.

"Manor Tivley's hen house burned down. They say it's her fault."

"She wouldn't do that."

"Maybe not on purpose. That's why they're calling it malpractice."

Miller stood up, seemingly too fast, because he swayed a little and touched the arm of the chair. "I'm going to see her."

"I'll be keeping office hours. Come by when you want that dinner."

After giving Doc Kelly a curt nod, Miller marched out of the hotel and across the wide porch. The day was hot, as summers always were. "Justice was done," said a fat man rocking in the thick shade. "Thanks," Miller said and kept moving. He nearly tripped himself as he ran down the steps into the sunshine.

Nobody much was out on the street except a few kids still in knickers, too excited about summer vacation to stay out of the sun. From the porches of big wooden houses that sprawled on their wide lawns like self-satisfied white cats, people nodded at him. Some offered him lemonade. He waved and was polite but kept moving.

City Hall was a three-story brick building on the town square. He galloped up the steps and went along the cool dim hallway to its end where he entered the office of the chief of police.

Miller walked up to the counter and said, "Hello, Casey," to the young uniformed man behind a desk.

"Justice was done," Casey said, looking uncomfortable.

"I'd like to see Allegra."

A thick brown door with a pebbled glass window opened and Chief O'Mara stood in front of it. "Here to see Allegra?" he said. He was solemn.

Miller nodded and said, "Want to search me?"

O'Mara looked at the floor and puckered his lips. "I don't think that will be necessary."

Casey led Miller through another door and down a hallway much dimmer and cooler than the one outside. Ev Dinks, the town drunk, slept loudly in one cell. Casey and Miller stopped in front of another. In it, Allegra Idaho sat on her bunk reading a book. She wore a light summer dress with a flower pattern, certainly clothing she had brought from home. Her normally thin face was even thinner, and in that light had the appearance of a death mask. She looked up and smiled, as if doing it through pain.

"Brought you a visitor," Casey said and stood there like a kid at his first dancing class.

"So I see," Allegra said.

"Can I talk to her alone?"

"Sure," said Casey, relieved. "I'll be outside if you want anything."

When Casey was gone and the only sound in the block was of Ev Dinks's snoring, Allegra Idaho threw aside her book and came to the front of the cell where she hugged Miller as best she could through the bars. The hug was not a great success, and soon both she and Miller backed away.

"What is this?" Miller said.

"Manor Tivley's accused me of burning down his hen house."

"What really happened?"

"His hen house really did burn down."

"Can't you be serious for a minute?"

Allegra sat down on her bunk and said, "Manor's son, Irvin, had a terrible cold. Home remedies didn't work and Doc Kelly couldn't do much for him so they sent for me. Well, Irvin had evidently attracted a minor imp someplace—"

"I'm not surprised. That Irvin will come to a bad end."

"A bad end. Didn't you read all this in the
Rambler?"