Darker Than You Think (47 page)

A
brief elation lifted him when he found that no important bones were
broken. Oddly, his bruised and aching body wasn't even bleeding.
Shuddering from the icy bite of the rain-laden wind, he was
staggering back toward the pavement when the white bitch howled above
him.

He
tried to run from the eerily triumphant quaver of her wail, but a
trembling sickness had taken his strength. He stumbled on the wet
rubble and couldn't get up. Cowering helplessly back against a
dripping boulder, he lay staring up at the sleek she-wolf.

"Well,
Barbee!" She had paused at the edge of the road where the car
had left it on the curve above, peering down at him with greenish
sardonic eyes. Her voice was April Bell's, bright with a kindly
malice. "So you tried to get away?"

He
caught up a handful of gravel and flung it at her weakly.

"Damn
you!" he sobbed. "Won't you even let me die?"

Ignoring
his angered voice and the futile spatter of gravel, she came bounding
gracefully down the stony slope. He tried to pull himself up the
rough face of the boulder, and slipped back into gray illness. He
heard the light patter of her paws and smelled the pleasant fragrance
of her wet fur close to him and felt her warm tongue licking his
face.

"Get
away!" He sat up painfully and tried weakly to push her away.
"What the devil do you want?"

"Only
to help you when you need me, Barbee." She sat on her haunches
in front of him, white fangs smiling. "I followed you here to
grasp a linkage of probability and help you free yourself. I know it
must be painful and confusing, but you'll soon feel better."

"Oh!"
he muttered bitterly. "You think so?"

He
relaxed against the jagged rock, staring at her. One slim forepaw was
lifted, and her greenish eyes shone with a friendly amusement. Even
as a wolf she was beautiful, slenderly graceful as the red-haired
girl, her clean fur snowy white. Yet he shuddered back from her.

"Get
the hell away!" he rapped hoarsely. "Can't you even let me
die?"

"No,
Barbee." She shook her delicate head. "Now you'll never
die."

"Huh?"
He shivered. "Why not?"

"Because,
Barbee—" Her pointed ears lifted suddenly, and she turned
quickly to listen with a motionless alertness. "I'll tell you,"
she murmured swiftly. "Sometime. Now I can feel another forming
linkage that we must prepare to use—it involves your friend Sam
Quain. But he can't harm you yet, and I'll
come
back."

Her
quick cold kiss astonished him. She raced back up to the road and
left him lying there. Her mocking eyes haunted him, and he was sick
with a stunned bewilderment. Even death was denied him. He couldn't
understand—he wished April Bell had told him more of the theory
of free mind webs and the linkage of matter and mind through control
of probability. Perhaps she had twisted probability to save him, as
she and the great saber-tooth had twisted it the other way to cause
Rex Chittum's death. He only knew that he had failed to kill himself.

He
lay there a long time, shivering in the thin rain, too miserable to
think. He was waiting with a sick and hopeless apprehension for the
white bitch, but she didn't come back. Presently he felt stronger,
and the moaning gears of a van grinding up the hill aroused him with
a hope of shelter from the rain.

He
staggered into the blinding glare of the headlamps, waving his arms
desperately; but the grimy-faced driver merely scowled at him. He
shook his fist and shouted. The driver swerved the truck as if to run
him down, and then ignored him.

The
heavy wheel brushed him, and the van lurched on, slowing for the
steep curve above. It was empty, the back yawning open. A sudden
impulse sent him stumbling after it, as it paused while the driver
shifted gears. He caught the edges of the body, and flung himself
puffing aboard.

The
black cavern of the covered body was empty except for a pile of
musty-smelling army blankets that must have been used to pack a load
of furniture. He wrapped himself in them and sat huddled on the hard
floor, dully watching the dark road unroll behind.

The
night-clad foothills flowed back around him, and the first scattered
farms, and the lonely lights at a crossroads service station.
Clarendon lay ahead. He knew the police would be looking for him
again, armed now with Troy's description of his borrowed clothing;
but still he felt too sick to try to think of any plan.

He
was vanquished, and there was no sanctuary. Even death had barred its
doors. Only an animal urge to keep out of the cold rain lived on in
him, and a brooding apprehension of the white she-wolf's return.

No
green eyes followed, however, and a faint hope glowed again in the
icy night of his mind. The dark buildings of the university slid back
past him as the driver slowed for the traffic light at the corner of
the campus and turned left on the north river highway. He saw then
that the van would pass Glennhaven, and a sudden purpose seized him.

He
was going back to Dr. Glenn.

He
didn't want to go back. He didn't want the false escape of insanity,
or the hard refuge of a cell in the state asylum. But the white bitch
would soon be following again. He needed the comforting armor of
Glenn's skeptical materialism. He waited for the van to slow again on
the curve beyond Glennhaven and dropped to the wet pavement.

Too
stiff to run, he fell on his face. He lumbered painfully to his feet,
too dazed to feel the cold rain. He was tired. He wanted a dry place
to sleep, and he had almost forgotten any other purpose when a dog
yelped beside a dark house across the road, shrill with panic. That
aroused him, for he thought the white werewolf must be near.

Other
dogs began to howl as he stumbled back down the highway to the square
stone pillars at the entrance to the hospital grounds. Lights were
still on in Glenn's big dwelling. He staggered up the walk to it,
peering apprehensively behind. Still no green eyes followed. He
leaned on the bell, and the tall psychiatrist came to the door. His
tanned handsome face showed only faint surprise.

"Hello,
Barbee. I thought you would come back."

Barbee
stood swaying, licking at the numb stiffness of his lips.

"The
police?" he whispered anxiously. "Are they here?"

Glenn
smiled at his drenched and battered figure with a suave professional
sympathy.

"Let's
not worry about the law just now," he urged soothingly. "You
really look all in, Barbee. Why don't you just relax, and let our
staff help you solve your problems? That's our business, you know.
We'll just telephone Sheriff Parker and the police that you're safe
here, and forget your legal troubles until tomorrow. Right?"

"Right,"
Barbee agreed uncertainly. "Only—there's one thing you've
got to know," he added desperately. "I didn't run down Mrs.
Mondrick!"

Glenn
blinked sleepily.

"I
know her blood is on the fender of my car," Barbee said wildly.
"But a white wolf killed her—I saw the blood on its
muzzle!"

Glenn
nodded easily.

"We
can talk more about that in the morning, Mr. Barbee. But whatever has
happened—in the reality situation or in your own mind—I
want to assure you that I'm deeply interested in your case. You
appear very much disturbed, but I intend to use every resource of
psychiatry to help you."

"Thanks,"
Barbee muttered. "But you still think I killed her."

"All
the evidence is pretty convincing." Still smiling, Glenn stepped
cautiously back. "You mustn't try to leave again, and you'll
have to move into a different ward in the morning."

"The
disturbed ward," Barbee said bitterly. "I'll bet you still
don't know how Rowena Mondrick got out of there!"

Glenn
lifted his shoulders unconcernedly.

"Dr.
Bunzel is still upset about that," he admitted casually. "But
we needn't worry about anything else tonight. You look pretty
uncomfortable. Why don't you just go on back to your room and take a
hot bath and get some sleep—"

"Sleep?"
Barbee echoed hoarsely. "Doctor, I'm afraid to sleep—because
I know that same white wolf is coming back for me. She's going to
change me into some other shape and make me go with her to kill Sam
Quain. You won't be able to see her—even I can't see her
yet—but no walls can keep her out."

Glenn
smiled again, nodding in meaningless agreement.

"She's
coming!" Barbee's voice turned high. "Listen to the dogs!"

He
could hear the frightened dogs howling at every farm down the wind.
He gestured toward the sound, shaking with a wave of frantic panic.
Glenn merely waited in the doorway, his brown face blandly smooth.

"That
white wolf is April Bell," Barbee whispered huskily. "She
murdered Dr. Mondrick. She made me help her kill Rex Chittum and Nick
Spivak. I saw her standing over Mrs. Mondrick's body, licking her
fangs." His teeth chattered. "She'll come back the moment I
sleep, to make me change again and go with her to hunt Sam Quain."

Glenn
shrugged again, professionally placid.

"You're
tired," he said. "You're excited. Just let me give you
something to help you sleep—"

"I
won't take anything." Barbee tried to keep his ragged voice from
screaming. "This is something more than madness—I've got
to make you understand! Listen to what Sam Quain told me tonight—"

"Now,
Mr. Barbee," Glenn protested blandly. "Let's be calm—"

"Calm?"
Barbee gasped hoarsely. "Listen to this!" Clutching the
door facing to hold himself upright, dripping muddy pools on the mat,
he launched desperately into the story: "There are witches,
Doctor—Mondrick called them Homo lycanthropus. They evolved in
the first ice age, and haunted men until every myth and legend of
werewolves and vampires and evil spirits is a racial memory of their
free mind webs, preying on mankind."

"So?"
Glenn nodded sympathetically, unimpressed.

"And
Mondrick discovered that the human race today is a hybrid mixture—"

Barbee's
troubled voice ran desperately on. Once he recalled Sam Quain's
disquieting suspicion that Glenn himself might be a witch man, but he
dismissed the idea instantly. That odd sense of recognition and
confident liking was awake again. He was glad to see the quiet
attentiveness on Glenn's gravely sympathetic face.
All
he
wanted was the competent aid of Glenn's skeptical scientific mind.