Wolfsbane (22 page)

“GAME?” Janette screamed at her, trying to pull away.

Annie slapped her across the face, then held her as Janette began to cry. “It's allrat, child. He be back. It's one good Strahan 'gainst one bad one. He be back.” But deep within her, she wasn't sure.

Don't trust the Dark One, she wanted to call out to Pat. But she held her tongue. She was not invited to play in this game.

And for that, she was very thankful.

“Who is he talking with?” Janette sobbed.

“The Dark One,” Annie replied.

 

“Well, Mr. Strange,” the voice bubbled from the waters. “We finally meet. Tell me, have you returned to right a wrong?”

“I don't know what you mean. I don't even know who you are.”

“Moloch, Mephistopheles, the Tempter, the Prince of Darkness. I'm known by many names. And very few—if any of them—complimentary. And I don't understand why. I'm really not that bad a fellow.”

“The devil.”

“That, too, unfortunately.”

“What wrong?” Pat asked the waters. He did not feel at all foolish speaking to a bayou.

“Much to the chagrin of your ancestors, Mr. Strange/Strahan, the people in the village persecuted the wrong family of Strahans . . . centuries ago. Killed most of them. In a very unpleasant manner, I might add. You know how it is: certain types of mortals become so . . . well,
emotional
about some things.” The voice seemed to sigh. “I suppose I knew it would someday come to this moment. Very well, please allow me to lay the ground rules and chalk out the foul lines.”

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, yes, my dear fellow. I'm quite serious. I assure you of that.”

“Foul lines?”

“As in every game, Mr. Strange.”

“The rules are simple and the hell . . . ah . . . heaven with your foul lines. I'm going to kill Victoria Bauterre and put an end to this nightmare.”

The waters bubbled with laughter. “She's already been thought to be dead three times, Mr. Strange. Rather an active corpse, wouldn't you say? No, Mr. Strange, you may succeed in removing her from this community of ninnies and dolts, but you shall not kill her—unless I am badly mistaken, and I doubt I am. However . . . and this is your last chance to back out before my batters knock you off the
mound
—no pun intended. She can do you irreparable harm.”

“Don't stop now. I'm all
fired
up with anticipation—no pun intended.”

“I do so love a man with a sense of humor. We're going to get along so well. I can just see it. Well . . . she may succeed in . . . ah . . . this is so crude, biting you on the neck, and of course, you know what happens next. It's really nauseating.”

“No way.”

“Don't speak too quickly, sir. Granted, you do have some help from . . . that Person . . . but He can't help you all that much.”

“The rules?”

“Very simple. If you live through the next thirty-four hours—that is to say, through midnight next—you win. I leave, more or less. As much as I ever leave any community. But Victoria and her friends will be gone; the community will return to all its abysmal normality; beasts will no longer prowl the bayous . . . etcetera, etcetera. However . . .”

“. . . Should I not survive the game . . . ?” Pat finished it.

The waters bubbled and boiled. A foul smell permeated the growing darkness. “There will be no joy in Mudville.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Mr. Strange—you disappoint me. Surely you've read Thayer's
Casey at the Bat?”

“I will strike out.” Not a question.

“Exactly. Oh, Mr. Strange, I have such plans for you. And,” the waters chuckled, “so does Victoria. What an addition you will make on my team. Why . . . we'll be the Yankees of the . . . ah . . . nether regions, so to speak. Do you enjoy baseball, Mr. Strange? I love it. I just love it. I attend every game. Why, I was in New York the year the Babe . . .”

“Don't get carried away,” Pat said. “Let's finish this.”

“Oh. Yes. Please accept my apologies. I do so enjoy the sport. Well. There isn't that much left to talk about. Do get a good night's sleep, Mr. Strange. Your ordeal begins at noon tomorrow. I'll grant you a few hours free of Victoria, since you seem to be a rather good sport about all this. So, good night, sir.”

The waters bubbled, then were silent.

Pat walked back to the small group, gathered now in the rear of the house.

“What were you discussing?” Edan asked.

Pat looked at him and smiled. “Baseball.”

It was unusually humid for late October; clouds were boiling in from the west, casting a false darkness over the bayou country. The few drops of rain that fell were of the pregnant kind. Pat glanced at his watch: nine o'clock. He drank his coffee and wondered who was to start the dance this day.

“You,” Victoria's voice said to him. “Whenever you are ready to become mine.”

Pat projected his thoughts: I'll never become yours. Is this more rules of the game?

“No, merely conversation.” Her voice was firm and very confident. “The rules remain the same.”

Where do I start?

“You know where, darling.”

I'll be along shortly. But first, may I have a few moments alone with Janette? And I mean
really
alone.

A short pause. “Yes, I suppose so. I owe you both that much—since you will not be returning to her.”

I'll see you in an hour or so.

“I shall certainly be waiting, my precious one.”

Silence. Pat felt her presence drift away.

Janette came to his side, sitting by him on the picnic table in the back yard. “I was watching your face. Victoria was talking with you, wasn't she?”

“Yes. We were chatting about this and that. I love you, Janette. I really mean that.”

“And I love you, Pat. I'll see you later tonight?”

“I don't know.” He was honest with her.

They talked for a time and he asked her for something of hers to carry with him into battle. She gave him what he requested and he tucked it into a shirt pocket.

He kissed her and said, “Go into the house, Janette. I need to be alone for a few minutes.”

And she understood.

 

Pat had carefully cleaned and oiled his riot gun and his .41 mag. He had filled three bandoleers and a belt with shells for the shotgun, a full belt with cartridges for the pistol. In addition, using small medical bottles, he now had six small molotov cocktails: homemade bombs filled with gasoline and a small amount of flour; the flour would act as napalm, sticking to the surface and burning. The bottles were packed carefully in cotton and placed in a small knapsack. He had a canteen of water, a sandwich Janette had fixed for him, a sharp knife, and a surprise—he hoped—for Victoria.

He knew he could kill the beasts, the roo-garous—whatever the hell they were—but he wasn't sure if what he had fixed would kill Victoria. True, he had blown out Sylvia's guts but he knew he had not killed her, or Bethencourt. He felt he would see her this day . . . or at least see pieces of the old bag.

No one in the house had spoken to him since he and Janette had met at the picnic table. They all sensed he wanted no conversation. They knew—and all were ashamed of it—that Pat did not have to do this thing. He could, if he so desired, just walk away from it and let them sink or swim on their own.

And all wondered if they would have the courage to do what Pat was about to do.

Most of them had reached the conclusion they would not have the courage. But had they spoken to Pat about that low opinion of themselves, he would have told them they were wrong. He would have told them they did not have the training for it; the hard discipline that comes only after hundreds and hundreds of hours of brutal training, and hundreds of hours of actual combat; that they did not possess the state of mind needed to walk into the unknown; that their concept of heroes and warriors was, in truth, 180 degrees away from reality.

But they did not ask, and Pat did not volunteer any opinions. He simply picked up his weapons and then did what true heroes and warriors have been doing for thousands of years: his duty.

 

He drove through the storm and the winds to Amour House; a lonely drive. He parked the car by the side of the road, left the keys in it, and walked the last five hundred yards. He paused only briefly at the gates of the estate and smiled at what he saw: it was not raining inside the grounds of Amour House. There, all seemed very peaceful, very serene, very lovely.

He felt eyes on him . . . from all directions.

Laughter from the dark waters of the bayou surrounding the grounds.

Pat pushed open the gates and walked into hell.

 

At a gazebo by the north side of the mansion, under a huge tree, Pat stepped in and rested for a moment. He unwrapped the sandwich Janette had fixed for him and slowly ate it, savoring each bite. He saw movement from the house, and watched Earl Latour and Blaine Andrus walk toward the small gazebo.

No, he corrected his thinking . . . not walking, shuffling.

“ ‘But she can send someone to take you alive,' ” Annie had warned him, in her own manner of speaking.

Yeah, Pat thought. And here they come.

He clicked the riot gun off safety as the two men approached. Pat looked at them. Both of them were very pale and had fresh bite marks on the neck. When Blaine spoke, his words were hollow, spoken very slowly, as if carefully rehearsed.

“Hi . . . Pat . . . did . . . you . . . come . . . to . . . get . . . us . . . out . . . of . . . here?”

“One way or the other, boys,” Pat said, laying his left hand on the shotgun.

“There . . . is . . . no . . . need . . . for . . . a . . . gun . . . Pat.” Earl smiled, exposing bloody teeth.

“Yes . . . Pat.” Blaine smiled. Blood leaked out of a corner of his mouth. “We're . . . your . . . friends.”

“In a pig's assl” Pat tensed.

Then they leaped at him.

The men had been watching the shotgun. But Pat's right hand had been on the butt of the .41 mag. The pistol boomed four times: two slugs in each man. Earl's head swelled from the impact of the hand-loaded expanding slugs, pushed by the maximum powder load. The back of his head exploded in a mass of gray matter and blood. Blaine took the slugs in the chest and throat. One clipped his spinal cord, the other traveled out the back of his neck, almost decapitating him.

Both men kicked and trembled for a few seconds, then lay still.

Pat carefully reloaded the .41, pushed it back into leather, then calmly ate the remainder of his sandwich, washing it down with a drink of water from his canteen. He stepped out of the gazebo and looked around him. The sky was cloudy overhead, but not a drop of rain was falling within the grounds of Amour House.

He looked at the bayou to his left. “You ready?”

The bayou bubbled joyfully.

Pat nodded. “Play ball.”

Pat prowled the grounds around the mansion, further familiarizing himself with each bush, each clump of flowers, each line of bricks or stones beside the many walkways. As he walked, he picked up twigs and sticks and an armful of dry grass. He might have to do a lot of running this afternoon, and did not want to stumble over anything and break his neck.

He kept his mind clear of any thoughts that might give him away; he knew Victoria was reading his every thought.

At the
garçonnière,
where the body of Harold Callier had been found, Pat broke a window and tossed the dry grass and sticks and twigs inside. He struck a kitchen match and tossed that inside, on the dry grass, then stepped back and waited for the action.

The old wooden floor caught quickly, as did the beams in the small quarters. Screaming broke out as fire and smoke poured from the building. Pat smiled grimly. He knew the creature could not expose itself to the day . . . not as a
loup-garou.
The light, God's light, would destroy it. The night belonged to Satan. The thing would have to present itself in its human form.

And Pat knew then why it was not raining and gloomy inside the grounds of Amour. He looked up. “Thanks,” he said. “I need all the help I can get.”

The black waters of the bayou bubbled their disdain. “If we had a decent umpire, that would be disallowed. It just isn't fair.”

“Oh, shut up,” Pat muttered. He pulled his gaze back to the
garçonnière
. But he was not prepared for what he witnessed.

The creature that hurled itself out of the smoky door was not human. It was nothing more than rags and bare bone and rotting flesh clinging to the whiteness of bone. It stank of the grave and of evil. The thing spun around and opened its mouth, pulling back blackened lips, exposing its red tongue and yellowed teeth. It screamed at Pat, the sound of a soul in torment. It held out its bony hands and lunged.

Pat fought back revulsion that threatened to boil from his stomach, leveled the shotgun, and pulled the trigger, pumping. The living dead one took a charge in its chest, but the slugs seemed to have no effect except to slow it momentarily. Pat threw the shotgun to his shoulder and fired, aiming at the creature's head, the slugs decapitating the nondead one. It ran flapping headless toward the house, running into a tree, losing an arm from the impact. Pat fired once more, severing the trunk from the legs. The creature fell apart, the bones clattering to the ground.

Pat glanced around him, in a crouch, and caught sight of a manlike thing running for the protection of the great house. It loped ungainly from an outbuilding. Pat dropped to one knee and pumped the riot gun three times, sending bones flying in all directions.

A smaller horror ran toward him, no more than a child. It shrieked incomprehensible words at him, pushing them past a blood-red tongue and rotting lips. Its teeth were fanged. Pat used the last rounds in the shotgun to blow it apart.

He reloaded, chambered a round, and kept the shotgun off safety, his finger on the trigger guard.

“Very good, Mr. Strange,” the bayou bubbled in a deep watery voice. “Reminiscent of the mental alertness of the old Gas House Gang. Why, I recall . . .”

“Oh, who the hell cares!” Pat said.

“There is no need for rudeness,” the bayou bubbled. “Really! You probably enjoy football. You look the type. All brawn and no brains.”

“Did you watch the Super Bowl last year?” Pat asked.

“I most certainly did not! It does not interest me. Very little finesse in the sport. All that leaping about and running into each other. No, indeed, I was . . . preoccupied during that time.”

“Well, you missed it, bubbles. I recall it was the third quarter. The score was . . .”

“Oh, who cares, Mr. Strange! Good day, sir.” The bayou grew silent. Offended.

The bayou belched a noxious odor.

Pat walked the grounds, carefully inspecting each outbuilding. He found one of the living dead huddled in the darkness and shot it to splintered bones before it could run.

He squatted in the deep shade of a live oak tree and looked at Amour House, knowing the nightmares that awaited him and knowing he had them to face. He thought about setting the big house on fire.

“I won't permit that to happen,” the bayou bubbled.

Victoria's triumphant laughter rang over the grounds. Evil in victory.

“Why?” Pat questioned.

“You have to go inside.” The voice sounded peevish, sulky.

“That wasn't discussed with me.”

“I changed the rules. It's my ball game and my bat and ball, so I make the rules.”

“I should have known you'd be a bad sport.”

The bayou was silent.

“Are you really the devil?”

“Of course, I'm the devil! Who do you think I am, Barbra Streisand? But I much prefer to be called Diabolus. That has a certain . . . ah . . . south-of-the-border ring to it, don't you think?”

“Thank you.”

“So I can't burn down the house out here, eh?”

“That is correct.”

“You're firm on that?”

“Solid as Ty Cobb.”

“I'll remember that.”

“Please do.”

“Why are you treating all this as a joke? A very bad joke, at that.”

“Why, Mr. Strange—it is a joke. You surprise me. Do you think those who follow my teachings are void of humor? Why, when you were walking about the yard, gathering up all that dry grass, I was actually humming” Bringing in the Sheaves.” Isn't that hysterically amusing?”

“Yeah,” Pat said. “You're breaking me up. How many more rules are you going to screw up?”

“None,” the bayou bubbled.

“I suppose you expect me to believe that?”

“I give you my word, Mr. Strange—and that is something I rarely do—that I will not go back on my word.”

“Hell! Ah . . . heaven, I don't have any choice but to accept it.”

“Good luck, Mr. Strange. And . . . oddly enough, I mean that.”

Pat nodded and glanced at his watch. He sat in the shade of the tree and rested for a time; then, his mind made up, he rose to his feet and walked to the front door of Amour House. As he reached for the latch, the door slowly swung open. But there was no one behind it.

“Do come in, darling.” Victoria's voice drifted to him. “I've been waiting for this moment.”

Pat stepped inside, the foul odor insulting his nostrils. He stopped, looking left and right. He was alone in the hall.

The door slammed behind him.

Victoria's laughter ripped toward him.

And then evil hurled itself at Pat.