The Wolfman (14 page)

But the bear made the kind of noise an old man might make when sinking into a chair. It sat down heavily on the cold ground and began biting its own rump in an attempt to catch some fleas.

The momentum of the confrontation stalled. Kirk looked around as if he expected a second and much more terrifying bear to be on display. A few of the Gypsies laughed quietly.

One of the vigilantes lowered his shotgun. “Kirk, I think we might be off our mark here—”

Kirk was having none of it. His face was livid and the look he gave his companion was murderous. He swung around and leveled his shotgun at the bear. The snake handler stepped between Kirk and the bear but the moment was suddenly spinning out of control.

Lawrence had reached his limit with this nonsense. He jumped down from the vardo and shoved his way roughly into the clearing. He strode straight toward Kirk and slapped the barrel away, but Kirk took a half step back and brought the weapon up again. Several of the bigger Gypsies began closing in from all points of the circle.

“Stand back!” bellowed Kirk. “We have a right!”

“You have no rights, you idiot,” Lawrence fired back. “You have no idea what you’re doing.”

“You should be with us, Talbot. That bear killed your own brother.”

“Don’t be a fool! I saw my brother’s body. I saw the wounds. Only a fool would think that this pathetic creature—”

But he was immediately interrupted by a shrill whistle from the woods. Everyone turned and even the bear looked up with myopic interest as Constable Nye came wobbling into the clearing on a bicycle, his whistle caught between his teeth.

Lawrence almost burst out laughing. The moment had gone through drama nearly to tragedy and was now transforming mid-scene into farce.

“Get out of my way! Get out of my way!” Nye demanded as he skidded to a stop and dismounted. He took in the scene and blew out his cheeks like a gasping fish, then wheeled on Kirk. “Thomas . . . what the hell is going on here?”

The men with the shotguns lowered them, except for Kirk, who stood his ground.

“Thomas,” Nye said to him, “what the hell are you about?”

“We come for the bear, Nye,” said Kirk. “It done all the killing.”

Constable Nye looked from him to the pathetic creature huddled in the firelight. The bear’s hide was bare in spots and his muzzle was white as snow.

“For goodness sake, Thomas,” Nye said with exasperation, “don’t be daft. I mean . . . these poor beggars make their living off this sorry creature. It couldn’t hurt a fly.”

The bear handler nodded emphatically and reached over to stroke the bear’s shaggy head.

“You see?” said Nye. “Harmless. It’s not a—”

But his words were cut off as the threadbare old bear suddenly let out a terrible roar and rose up onto its hind legs, rising to full height above the startled crowd. There were shouts and screams—both male and female—and everyone staggered back from the bear. The vigilantes brought up their guns and the Gypsies stared in shock at the sudden ferocity of their old pet. The bear’s stubby claws were out and it pawed the air—but it did not attack anyone. Instead it let out a howl that was almost human: high and piercing and thoroughly charged with naked terror.

“Oh my god!” someone yelled at the back of the crowd and Lawrence, along with everyone in the packed crowd, turned to see what had spooked the animal. There was a flash of movement and then a splash of red spattered everyone in the clearing. The rearmost of the vigilantes, the one who had shoved a Gypsy into Lawrence, staggered forward and dropped to his knees as a
geyser of hot blood shot up from between his shoulders. His head spun through the air and struck the bear full in the chest and the moment froze into insanity and impossibility.

Then, from the outermost edge of the camp, something huge rose up out of the darkness. Not as bulky as the bear but taller and far, far more terrible. Lawrence stood transfixed, his mind juddering to a halt as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. It was dressed like a man, but the shirt and waistcoat and trousers were split at the seams and hung in shreds. The thing was covered in brown fur that was tipped with silver and as it rose up muscles bunched and flexed under its skin. It stood on two legs, but the feet were gnarled and twisted parodies—part animal, part human, with claws that tore ragged lines in the hard-packed earth. It had a deep chest and shoulders that sloped upward to a bull neck and great muscular arms that were spread wide as if to gather and crush the entire crowd. The hands were dreadful, with long fingers tipped with claws that curved into wicked points. Fresh blood steamed from the tips of each wicked claw.

But the worst thing was its head, its face. Tufted ears rose above a knotted brow beneath which were yellow eyes rimmed with red. It had a short muzzle that wrinkled back as it opened its mouth in a snarl of primal animal hate. Teeth like daggers dripped with hot saliva.

Lawrence could not move, could not think; his heart slammed against the walls of his chest. He could not blink or swallow or scream. All he could do was stand there and behold this
thing
. This monstrous impossibility. This perversion of all sense and sanity.

This . . .
werewolf.

T
he creature threw back its head and the massive muscles of its chest and sides flexed as it let loose with a howl so loud that it threatened to break the fragile scaffolding of Lawrence’s sanity. The sound was too loud. It exploded inside his head and though he was aware of other screams all around him, the howl of the werewolf muted them to meaningless noise. Then everything was in motion as panic swept through the crowd and pandemonium scattered vigilantes and Gypsies, young and old, like leaves in a windstorm.

The Gypsy snake handler shoved Lawrence out of the way and ran to gather up two small children; women screamed and ran, babies cried in uncomprehending fear. Horses reared and kicked the air.

The werewolf lunged forward and raked its claws across a man’s chest and Lawrence saw lungs and heart slide through shattered bone and spill onto the ground before the man could even fall. Then the werewolf leaped forward and dove into one of the vardos, chasing a Gypsy woman who had fled inside. Lawrence saw the silhouette of the creature—a form painted in light and shadow and fashioned in Hell itself—as the monster rushed the length of the wagon and pounced on the woman. As the massive arm swept across her she seemed to fly apart
like a doll and the inside of the vardo’s canvas covering was splashed with dark droplets.

A Gypsy screamed a woman’s name and rushed toward the wagon, a wicked knife held in his fist, but the werewolf exploded out through the back door. The man was impaled by splinters from his own wagon before he could even attempt to avenge his woman’s death. The werewolf pounced on him, driving him into the dirt and then leaped at another man who was bent over trying to load an old cap-and-ball pistol. The werewolf clamped its jaws around his throat and tore away everything but the spine. The blood spray caught the creature in the face and for a moment Lawrence could swear that its eyes rolled high and white as if in ecstasy.

Lawrence saw Kirk—as shocked to stillness as he was himself, his shotgun pointed uselessly at the ground. Seeing that ignited something within Lawrence and he suddenly found himself moving forward, pulling the pistol from his belt, aiming wildly, firing, firing. He thought he saw one of his bullets hit home, saw cloth puff up on the thing’s shoulder, but if it was a hit the bullet did no good. The monster didn’t flinch or slow; instead it wheeled around and spotted Kirk standing nearby with one of the remaining vigilantes. The eyes narrowed and the mouth stretched in a parody of a smile as it slashed out with its paw.

Kirk tried to say something—perhaps a plea, perhaps a prayer—but then the claws struck him with such terrible force that his face was completely torn away. Eyes, nose, teeth and jaw . . . all of it gone in a red flash. The publican’s body shuddered as shock and convulsions burst through his nerve endings and he fell to the ground, dying . . . but in a twist of perversity, not yet dead. He
flopped on the ground as the monster stepped across his body toward the vigilante who had not managed to get off a single shot during the attack.

Lawrence grabbed the sleeve of a Gypsy man and bellowed at him. “Get the women and children to safety!” He hurled the man toward some of his fellows and, terrified as they were, they ran to obey.

Lawrence raised his gun and tried to fire, but as he shuffled forward for the best shot he stumbled over the dirt rim of the dancing circle and went down, his bullet firing into the campfire. He landed hard and the pistol fell from his grasp, landing in the hot coals.

The monster moved quickly past the vigilante, and for a moment Lawrence thought that the creature had chosen, for whatever reason, to ignore him, but in his mind there was an afterimage of a blurred movement and then Lawrence—and the vigilante—looked down and saw the truth. The man’s guts slid out of a gaping wound and splashed heavily onto the dirt. The vigilante’s finger flexed on the trigger and the shotgun exploded, peppering the still-twitching Kirk with buckshot. Then the vigilante fell across Kirk’s body and they both settled into a terminal stillness.

The monster turned its head and its hellish eyes found Lawrence. It uttered a low, hungry growl.

Lawrence scrambled to his feet and ran. For his life and soul and sanity, he ran. He saw Nye ahead of him, running toward his bicycle, which stood against a tree near the tethered gelding. The constable was screaming like a girl as he fumbled for his pistol, but the lanyard had become hopelessly tangled. Lawrence ran past him. The knife in Lawrence’s pocket was useless, his pistol was in the fire, but in the scabbard on his saddle was his
father’s Holland & Holland elephant gun. Monster or not, the huge bullets in that rifle would blow this beast’s head off.

The last of the vigilantes rose up in his path and gruffly brushed Lawrence aside as he took up a shooting stance, seating the butt of the shotgun hard into his shoulder, aiming with professional skill along the barrel. Lawrence threw a backward glance to watch the shot, but the werewolf was not there.

Startled, Lawrence slowed to a half-run and looked around. People still screamed and ran, but the clearing was empty except for the dead and the bear, who had snuck back into its cage and cowered there, trembling like a whipped dog.

The vigilante shouted at Lawrence. “Where is the goddamned—”

It came out of the shadows to their left. Moving with inhuman speed it had circled them and come at them out of the forest, and it drove into the gap between Lawrence and the vigilante. One powerful shoulder clipped Lawrence and sent him spinning into a gorse bush. Lawrence wrestled himself onto his back and tried to find his footing, but as he raised his head he saw the werewolf use one paw to tear the shotgun from the vigilante’s hand and toss the weapon a hundred feet into the darkness. With the other it slashed him back and forth, and the man seemed to come apart like layers of a paper doll.

Then it flung the man toward Lawrence and vanished behind the row of vardos. Nye stood at the edge of the campfire, his face white with shock and splattered with drops of blood. Lawrence slapped his shoulder to shake him out of his stupor.

“It’s gone around back. I’ll circle to the right, you go to the left. We can catch it in a crossfire.”

The constable licked his lips and gagged as he realized that he was tasting blood. But his face hardened and he nodded and set off, pistol in hand. Lawrence lost sight of him almost at once.

Nye crept along the edge of a line of utility carts and saw the rearmost vardo. It trembled and shook, rocking sideways onto one set of wheels and then the other.

“Got you, you bastard!” Nye growled and hurried over. When he was ten feet from it he saw a figure slumped in the shadows. A man. He had no throat and his head lolled grotesquely from a single strand of tendon. The cart was no longer trembling. Had the monster done its bloody work and fled? Nye stepped over the dead man and parted the curtains with the barrel of his pistol. The interior of the vardo was black and he heard nothing. Then something bumped against his arm and he jerked it back.

He stared at it without comprehending what he was seeing. His coat sleeve was there, and the cuff of his shirt. But the hand that held the pistol was . . .
gone.

A red geyser pumped from a jagged stump. The pain didn’t hit him for a full second. But by then a massive, shaggy arm had reached out of the shadows of the vardo and grabbed his gaping lower jaw. With a jerk Nye was plucked off the ground and pulled into the vardo. He fell forward into the shadows and there was no end to his plummet into darkness.