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Thorns Along The Way
By Kay Kelly
Rating: M | Status:
Complete | Genre: Drama | Series: None
Summary: Original Series Novella. In 1960, a dream comes true for
Quentin... but it soon turns into
a nightmare.
Warning: Contains graphic content for mature readers
only. Do not read if you are under 16 years of age.
Go to: Part 1
| Part 2 | Part
3
Part 3
"I--I can't get it." Betty was crying and giggling at the
same time. "My hand keeps shaking. Here, you do it." She
pressed the key into Quentin's hand.
He had the shakes too. But he got the door open somehow, and they
stumbled into the living room and collapsed on the sofa. A moment later
they were embracing again, each of them rapturously caressing a warm,
vital young body they had thought lost forever.
They made love again. But this time, when their passion was spent, he
held her at arm's length and looked long and hard into those shining
eyes.
"Betty. Do you understand what I turned into last night?"
The light in her eyes faded. "Y-yes." She hugged herself,
looking away. "I'd know about it from your books, even if I'd never
heard of it before. You became a"--she choked on the word--"a
werewolf."
"All right. I'll try to explain. But..." He looked around,
trying to organize his thoughts. Feeling more and more bewildered.
"I don't understand what happened here."
It made sense, on reflection, that their screams the night before hadn't
roused the neighborhood. He'd had the house soundproofed a while back,
after the neighbors objected to an especially noisy occult ritual he had
tested prior to describing it in a novel. Their protests would have been
even more vocal if they'd guessed that the howls in response to his
chants were, in all probability, of demonic origin.
But why hadn't those private duty nurses rushed into his room last
night? If they'd been afraid to come in, why hadn't they called the
police? They obviously hadn't, or the place would be swarming with cops
now. All Betty had told him in the car was that the nurses were all
right.
She met his eyes. "You're wondering about the nurses. I had
dismissed them, Rick, earlier yesterday. B-b-because I thought you were
dying, that you wouldn't last the night. There was nothing anyone could
do at that point. And I just w-wanted to be alone with you!" She
broke down in tears. He gathered her into his arms, felt her quivering
like a frightened bird.
He held her, stroking her until she was calmer. Then she looked up, and
continued in a shaky voice. "I-I tried to stop you from running out
of here, after you ch-changed. But of course I couldn't. I didn't know
what to do... I cried all night, then started out at daybreak to look
for you. But I never expected to find you, certainly not l-like this. I
didn't expect to find you alive at all!"
"I didn't expect to find you alive either." He studied her
troubled face. "Betty. Do you have any idea why I didn't kill
you?"
"Y-yes." She gave a long shudder. "I think it was because
of...this."
She fumbled inside her turtleneck, and pulled out something he had never
seen on her before. A silver chain...and suspended from it, a medallion.
A pentagram.
He recoiled in spite of himself. Confused, hurt. "You knew? You expected
me to turn into a werewolf?"
"No, of course not!" Her eyes blazed. "How could I? All I
expected you to do last night was die! I didn't even know there
was a full moon. I was so wrapped up in you that I was completely out of
it."
"Then why--?"
"Why was I wearing a pentagram?" She sighed. "Because I
always wear it, Rick. Or rather, almost always. Inside my clothes.
"I knew what it was, and I knew you understood such things, so I
was self-conscious around you. I never wanted you to see it. When I was
getting ready to go to bed with you, I always took it off and slipped it
under the pillow."
He reached out and touched it with a tentative finger. Still mystified.
Betty captured his hand and lifted it to her lips. "I'll tell you
why I wear it now. It's...the only memento I have. Of...my father."
His jaw dropped. "Your father?" His mind raced back,
struggling to recall what little she had told him about that mysterious
parent. "Your father was--?"
"No, no! It's not what you think. He didn't give it to me for
protection." Her hand closed on the medallion, and her eyes misted.
"It was the best day I ever spent with him. The one time I ever
felt close to him.
"He told me he wanted me to have this to remember him by, always.
Because it was his most treasured possession. He said he had taken
it--this 'piece of jewelry,' he called it--from the dead body of the
only woman he had ever loved. Not his wife, or my mother. Someone
else..."
"How strange," Quentin breathed. "That was all it meant
to him, a 'piece of jewelry' of sentimental value? He didn't understand
the significance of the pentagram?"
"I can only tell you what he told me, Rick. Not what was in his
mind."
"Of course... Betty, I wonder about the woman! Did she know
what it was, I wonder? Or had it simply been handed down in her family
for generations, its purpose forgotten?"
She shot a glance at him, and gave a shaky laugh. "I know you.
You're already thinking of using her story in a novel!"
He felt a rush of blood to his cheeks. "I'm sorry." Still, he
forged on. "If she was concerned about an actual werewolf, I assume
it didn't kill her. Couldn't have, if she was wearing this. Did your
father tell you how she died?"
"Y-yes. She drowned. And my father..." She bit her lip.
"What? What were you going to say?"
"Only that...he sometimes wondered if he was the only one who
mourned her. He was young at the time, but he never forgot."
She had released her hold on the medallion, and Quentin fingered it
again. Reverently, this time. "Betty," he whispered, "do
you realize they saved your life last night? Your life and my sanity, at
the very least.
"Your father, a man I never knew. And a woman neither of us knew, a
woman we can't even name..."
"Only a writer. Only a writer would give it a romantic gloss like
that!" She was laughing at him again.
But her eyes were brimming with tears.
Twenty minutes later Quentin was digging into a stack of pancakes,
eating with the same gusto with which he found himself doing everything
now. "Great to have teeth," he said around a mouthful of food.
"Not that I really need them for pancakes, but you know what I
mean."
"Yes, I know." Betty hadn't touched her own meal, beyond
moving it around the plate with her fork. She was smiling indulgently at
him, but the smile failed to reach her eyes.
He stuffed another forkful into his mouth. "I am--" He had to
give up on it, wait till he'd swallowed. "I am going to tell you
about myself. But I was just so hungry!"
"I understand, really I do." She reached across the table to
pat his arm. "You haven't eaten properly in a week. Relax, enjoy
your breakfast. You can tell me over coffee."
The morning Globe lay on a corner of the table, where she had
dropped it after skimming the front page.
As Quentin returned to his pancakes, she nudged it out of sight behind
the toaster.
They took their coffee into the living room. He still hadn't been able
to bring himself to look into the study.
He surveyed the living room and announced, "This year I want a
Christmas tree! Right there, in the bay window."
Betty frowned up at him. "You never wanted a tree before."
"I know. I don't understand what's come over me." He closed
his eyes, reveling in the imagined scent of new-cut pine warring with
the aroma of mincemeat that would drift in from the kitchen. Christmas
goose, plum pudding. All the things he hadn't bothered with for a
half-century or more. "I feel...more alive than I have in a
long, long time. I want to sense everything, experience everything! This
may be the way I felt when I really was as young as I look. It's been so
long, I'm not sure."
"Well, that answers one of my questions." She rolled her eyes.
"Whether you're actually closer to thirty or ninety."
"I'm ninety." He sank onto the sofa, pulling her down beside
him. "And I swear, the only reason I never told you this before is
that you wouldn't have believed it."
He told her everything. Or rather, almost everything. He didn't omit the
parts that reflected worst on him, chief among them his half-accidental,
half-deliberate strangulation of Jenny. His betrayed wife had been
insane, trying to kill him--but in light of the difference in
their strength, that was no excuse.
It certainly hadn't impressed Jenny's sister, the gypsy Magda, who'd
saddled him with the werewolf curse.
But in explaining his own past, he was careful to safeguard secrets
entrusted to him by others. The time-traveling vampire cousin who
might--or might not--lie sleeping in a chained coffin in the Collins
family mausoleum. The grandson who had borne the werewolf curse for six
years, and now roamed Europe in the ageless body of Garth Blackwood.
It was to protect Gavin, he told himself, that he omitted all mention of
Count Petofi. If he discussed the old sorcerer, he'd have to assure
Betty they were in no danger from him, wouldn't he? And he could hardly
convince her he knew Petofi was dead without telling her how he had
died, exposing Gavin's secret. He knew Betty could be trusted, but he
had promised Gavin absolute confidentiality.
Strange, how easily the story flowed without his including Petofi. Tate
had painted his charmed portrait, Tate had stolen it after Quentin took
Amanda away from him, Tate had--as he thought--enjoyed his final revenge
in New York last week. It was all Tate. He merely let Betty assume Tate
had painted the portrait of his own volition, for money. No lies in this
tale, only omissions.
To protect Gavin. Solely to protect Gavin.
Petofi was dead, dead, dead. And yet...why did he have this fear, deep
in his gut, that mention of the sorcerer's name might rouse forces best
allowed to sleep undisturbed?
Betty had listened with rapt attention, asking only occasional
questions. Her face was like a thundercloud when he haltingly described
the tortures Tate had inflicted on him in New York.
Now he brought his story to a close, and shifted uneasily on the sofa.
"I've been...sort of taking for granted that you and I would still
be together. But maybe, now that you know the truth..."
"Rick." She squeezed his hand. "It's okay. I'm still
here.
"This past week, I realized for the first time how much I...care
for you. I didn't mean for this to happen, but it did. So I'm here for
the long haul."
He was still uncomfortable. "You're not upset that I was willing to
dump you, as Tate so elegantly put it, for Amanda?"
"No." Did he imagine tears welling in her eyes? She blinked
furiously. "They say everyone has...one great love in their
lifetime. I can understand that. And I'm proud that you were willing to
make the sacrifice you did for her."
She cleared her throat. "One thing you haven't explained--I don't
know if you can. Do you have any idea why you transformed into a young
man this morning?"
Relaxing, he pondered the question. "I haven't had much time to
think about it. But yes, I can offer a theory.
"It may be that the werewolf brain, such as it is, controls the
transformation back into human form. And that brain must have been
totally confused. If I had aged in a normal way, transforming into a
werewolf every month, it could have adjusted to the gradual changes in
my human form. But I was only a werewolf for four months back in 1897,
when I was twenty-seven years old! Then, from the wolf's point of view,
nothing for over sixty-three years. And now, suddenly, I was a dying old
man.
"I think the wolf brain was unable to cope with that. So it
transformed back into the form to which it had become accustomed over
that four-month period in 1897."
He heaved a sigh of relief. "And I'm certainly glad it did!"
Betty was nodding thoughtfully. "Rick, that could explain why
you're bursting with energy today. You've always seemed like a young man
to me. But perhaps, now, you really are twenty-seven years old, in a way
you weren't when you were dependent on the portrait."
"I think you're right." His sudden, barking laugh made her
jump. "Tate may actually have done me a favor!" He got
up and headed for the kitchen. "More coffee?"
"No," she said weakly. "And, Rick, I wouldn't have put it
quite that way..."
It was mid-afternoon before she succeeded in breaking through his
exuberance. "Rick, aren't you concerned that the moon may be full
again tonight?"
He froze. "Oh, hell. It's so wonderful just to feel well again that
I haven't thought of it all day.
"I can't believe I'll transform tonight." He looked at her
pleadingly, as if she could somehow control it. "A day as perfect
as this one couldn't end like that!"
"I hope you're right," she said heavily.
"There's...something else you haven't thought of, Rick. I hesitated
to bring it up, but...once you were sure I was all right, you never
asked what you actually did last night."
"What I...did?" Not comprehending. Refusing to comprehend.
She retrieved the Globe from behind the toaster. "It's all
over Page One." Forced herself to look up, directly into his
anxious blue eyes. "Two people were mauled to death by a 'wild
animal.' A woman...and a five-year-old girl."
"I never killed a child before." Quentin swished the remains
of a drink, gazing moodily into its depths. "I killed two women as
a werewolf in 1897, but I never killed a child."
Unless you count my ghost's killing David Collins in 1969, in a
history Barnabas supposedly changed. Who knows. By the time 1969 rolls
around, maybe I will be a ghost. Killing children.
He drained his glass, and reached automatically for the decanter.
"You've had enough, Rick." Betty moved it away from him.
"S'pose you're right."
"And, Rick"--she leaned across the table and lifted his chin,
making him look at her--"this isn't your fault. You bore
some responsibility for what happened in 1897. But this is Tate's
doing."
He settled back in his chair. "Is it?" he mused. "I
believed I was doing the noble thing when I risked myself to save
Amanda. But I never thought of the people I might kill or maim if I
became a werewolf.
"I've killed two people already. Even if I had saved Amanda
from a 'fate worse than death,' would that be a morally acceptable
trade?"
"If you intended it as a trade, no," she said reasonably.
"But you didn't. You were thrust without warning into a desperate
situation, given no time to think. What you did was heroic! You could
easily have died without ever becoming a werewolf again."
"I suppose I could die now." Then he shook his head
vehemently. "No, no! I've heard frightening legends about what
happens to werewolves who commit suicide.
"But aside from that...after the past week, the shock of getting my
life back, I can't give it up. God help me, I can't!" His shoulders
heaved as he began to sob.
"And there's no reason you should." She came around the table
to comfort him, and hugged him fiercely. "I can't lose you. I
won't! I tell you, Rick, you're an innocent victim."
"M-maybe you're right." He tried to pull himself together.
"Tate hasn't heard the last of this!" Anger flared, then
collapsed under the weight of his depression. What was the use of
railing against Tate? The man was invulnerable.
Concentrate on the immediate problem. "When you saw I wasn't
thinking clearly, you should have reminded me sooner. About the danger
tonight."
"I didn't have the heart. But what difference would it have made?
We can't do anything about it." Her face was a study in
frustration. "If you become what you became last night, I don't
think there's any lock that would hold you."
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. He had almost mentioned a
doctor of his acquaintance...a doctor who had kept one werewolf safely
under lock and key during full moons, and would willingly have done the
same for another.
But could he, in all conscience, appeal to Julian Hoffman? His son's
friend was approaching eighty, and had a wife who would have to be kept
in the dark.
Could he, for that matter, risk going to Collinsport?
No.
He sighed. "I could have gotten out of town, maybe to a forest
where the wolf would attack only animals. But I'd have to drive a long
way from Boston to find a place like that.
"Anyway, I'm here now. I may as well be doing something." He
pushed his chair back.
"What?"
"Burning those clothes. The ones I"--watching her
closely--"stole this morning."
As he thought, it hadn't occurred to her that the clothes were stolen.
He saw her eyes widen slightly as she grappled with that, then accepted
it. "Why do you have to burn them?"
"Maybe I'm being over-cautious," he conceded. "But I
chucked that nightshirt in the clothing store I broke into. And I
realize now it had the werewolf victims' blood on it. Even if someone
connects the incidents, they can't search every closet in the Greater
Boston area for those missing clothes--but I'd still prefer to be on the
safe side."
She nodded emphatically. "What about fingerprints, Rick? You must
have left some in the store. Are your prints on file anywhere?"
"N-no." He wracked his brain, then shook his head and said
confidently, "No. Interpol had them a few years ago, associated
with a different alias. But I broke into their files and got rid of
everything they had on me."
"I won't ask why Interpol was after you." A thin smile.
"While you're burning the clothes, I can call some acquaintances,
mention that your grandfather died last night. I suppose I should say
his body has been taken back to New York State for burial--Monday?"
Quentin nodded, feeling more like himself as they dealt with manageable
problems. "That sounds about right. Then we can go somewhere
Monday, be seen driving off and coming back hours later. The neighbors
may not be paying any heed, but we should cover all bases.
"And as soon as possible, I'll have to replace the study window the
werewolf"--he couldn't bring himself to say
"I"--"broke last night. If anyone notices, I'll say the
wind broke it."
"The wind?" Betty frowned. "Rick, it hasn't been that
windy."
"Then..." He turned the problem over in his mind, and came up
with a solution. "It didn't fit well. Rattled so much, in even
light wind, that the glass was finally weakened enough to break. It must
have broken out rather than in, but there's still enough ratty
grass out there that no one will have seen the shards. And the neighbors
don't know poor old Grandpa was in that room, so the coincidence of its
breaking the night he died won't seem unbelievable.
"Thank God the shutters weren't closed. We never could have
explained their being broken too!"
By the time he had burned the clothes in the living room fireplace, and
Betty had made her phone calls, darkness was descending.
Betty strolled outside. Noted that the Dennison house, on one side, was
completely dark, while the O'Briens, on the other, were apparently in
their living room.
She went back in and said tersely, "Kitchen."
So they sat in the kitchen, back door open despite the chill, Betty's
pentagram outside her sweater.
And waited.
After an hour, Quentin allowed himself to relax. "It's okay. It
would have happened by now." He was shaking visibly.
Betty stood up, ashen-faced. Stumbled, and had to grab a chair for
support. But she pulled herself erect, took a deep breath.
And said, "Let's get dinner."
They fell into bed early, exhausted from the strain they'd been under.
Lay side by side, too tired for lovemaking.
"I'll have time to prepare for next month," Quentin assured
her. "I'll drive around well in advance, find a wild area where I
can hole up for as many days as necessary." He traveled frequently,
researching legends he could adapt for his novels. No one would become
suspicious.
"Let me go with you," she suggested. "At least next time.
The moon will be full New Year's night. Our going away together over the
holiday would be more believable than your going alone."
"All right." He rolled on his side and kissed her bare
shoulder. "Thank you, Betty. For everything..." His voice
trailed off.
She lay awake for another hour, listening to his regular breathing.
And wondering why, in telling her the life story she in fact knew almost
as well as he did, he had never mentioned Count Petofi.
They drove to New York on Monday, and spent hours cruising the city as
Quentin searched for Tate's studio.
"It's no use," he said at last. "It was dark that night,
snowing. I probably wouldn't know the building again if I did see
it."
"There's nothing you could do to him anyway, is there?" Betty
scowled as she tried to maneuver out of a dead-end street. "It's
maddening, but..."
"You're right, of course." He balled his fist, thinking of
Tate. "I can't harm him while his portrait is intact. And he's too
bright to keep it with him, or in any obvious place.
"Even if I had his portrait, I'm not sure I could bring
myself to destroy it. As long as he retains his powers, damn him, he
represents my only hope. What he did for me once, he could conceivably
do again.
"I have no reason to believe he can ever be persuaded--or
forced--to help me. But I could only have revenge by throwing away the
possibility, turning him into a ninety-year-old man who might never
again be able to paint anything. Could I do that? I'm not sure."
"You certainly couldn't pressure him by threatening to destroy
it," Betty said glumly. "He'd know you were bluffing."
"Right." He sighed and glanced at his watch. "We may as
well give up on this, head for home. I'm beginning to think that
warehouse wasn't even his real studio. Can't imagine him not wanting
better light. I think it was more like a stage set, prepared for my
benefit. He may have abandoned it the next day.
"Let me drive now! You've been doing it long enough, while I gaped
at alleys."
But after they changed places behind the wheel he sat for a moment,
gazing wistfully at the dilapidated warehouses that hemmed them in.
"I really wanted to let Tate see me. Let him know, at least,
that I didn't die, that I'm young and vigorous again. But...I guess
he'll just have to be surprised when Frederic Thorn novels keep right on
coming!"
He stepped on the gas.
The study window had been replaced, "Grandpa" officially laid
to rest, and the question of whether he could find Tate's studio
answered, however unsatisfactorily. So that evening, Quentin resumed
work on the novel he'd abandoned when he received the fateful note from
"Amanda." After staring at a blank page for more than an hour,
he found his stride, and was typing at a steady clip when Betty looked
in on him.
She smiled affectionately. "It's past eleven, sweetheart. Think
I'll go on to bed. But if I'm asleep when you come in, wake me."
He looked up from the typewriter. "If I take you up on that at 3:00
a.m., remember you asked for it!"
Laughing, she planted a kiss on his head and was gone.
He worked for another hour, concluding the chapter with a flourish. His
vampire antihero had just walked through a door in Glastonbury,
Connecticut and emerged in Glastonbury, England--in broad daylight,
distressingly far from his native soil.
Deciding to leave it at that, he turned out the light and went upstairs.
Betty was reading one of his books. She dropped it eagerly, smiling up
at him.
He chuckled. "Hold your horses, girl! I'm going to take a
shower." Kicking his shoes off, he began casually stripping as he
headed for the bathroom.
He returned ten minutes later, still toweling himself dry. Betty had
turned a brighter light on. She was sitting up in bed, no longer
smiling.
"Rick--drop the towel."
He blinked, then agreeably dropped it. "What's the matter, love?
Can't wait another second to admire my body?"
"Right." She laughed, but it was an uneasy laugh.
Her probing gaze made him uncomfortable. "Hey, what's the matter?
Is something wrong?" He looked down at his torso, but saw nothing
out of the ordinary.
"No, no, nothing. Trick of the light..." She switched the lamp
off. "I mean, I'm just impatient. Come to bed!"
He didn't have to be asked again. As hour later, cradled in her arms, he
sank into a contented sleep.
He was awakened by Betty's scream.
Instinct took over, and he leapt out of bed even before his eyes were
fully open. Came up in fighting stance, prepared to do battle with--
"Wh-what?" He looked around. Saw no one, nothing out of the
way.
Betty was still sitting in the middle of the bed. Hands clasped tightly
over her mouth, eyes wide with terror.
She was looking directly at him.
"Wh-what's the matter?" He heard the note of panic in his
voice.
She brought her hands down with an effort. Her face was so white that
the marks left by her fingers were barely visible.
"I...I'm sorry. I shouldn't have screamed." She took a deep
breath, tried to compose herself. "Rick...s-something
is...happening to you."
"Don't be silly!" he snapped. "Nothing is happening to
me. We both know I'm not exactly normal--I'm a werewolf--but that won't
affect me in any way until the next full moon."
He believed what he was saying. So why were his palms sweating?
Betty moaned.
Exasperated, he strode over to the dresser. It was broad daylight, he
could see himself clearly in the mirror...
His hair was liberally streaked with gray.
He gave a strangled gasp. His legs buckled...but Betty was there to
catch him, and they fell to their knees together, rocking in a desperate
embrace.
They wept together, grieved together, for what might have been ten
minutes--or an hour--before he forced himself to get up.
And take another look.
"At least it isn't happening all at once, the way it did in New
York." He studied his reflection. The graying hair, the new but not
unattractive maturity in the face. "I look, maybe, late thirties
rather than late twenties. Hair as dark as mine often goes gray early.
Though my sister's didn’t..." His voice had a hollow ring. It all
seemed unreal, as if he were talking about someone else.
Betty put her arm around him and led him back to the bed, where they sat
down shakily.
"I know now that I really did see something last night." She
wiped her eyes, calmer now. "I thought I saw a difference in your
body. A thickening in the midsection, flabbiness in the muscles. Not a
big difference, just what you said, a matter of about a ten-year age
difference. But I convinced myself it was my imagination."
After a long silence, he forced himself to say what they were both
thinking. "If it were only this, it would be okay. Ten
years--nothing. A little hair-dye, and no one would even notice.
"But...now that it's begun, I have to believe it's going to
continue."
She didn't offer any argument.
Finally, she broke another miserable silence. "At least that scar
on your face hasn't reappeared."
"That's right." He nodded thoughtfully. "So it is
different from what happened when the portrait was destroyed. Then I turned
into the man in the portrait, absorbed everything that had
happened--or should have happened--to him over the years. Old injuries,
as well as medical conditions like arthritis to which I was genetically
predisposed.
"This is simply a normal aging process, accelerated. So I'll
develop the arthritis, anything like that. But not the aftereffects of
cuts that were never stitched, broken bones that were never set. Or
infectious diseases that other Quentin may have contracted without
knowing it."
He didn't say the word that was in his mind.
Syphilis.
Was it in her mind, too?
He forged ahead. "And after I transform into the werewolf, there's
a good chance I'll change back into a twenty-seven-year-old, like I did
last week.
"And the cycle will begin all over again..."
If I live long enough to transform into the werewolf. How rapidly am
I going to age? What if I reach ninety by the end of this week? Even
without the effects of a beating and the ravages of syphilis, can I
survive as a ninety-year-old for three weeks?
The moon will be full the night of January first, 1961. Will I live to
see 1961?
Do I even want to, if it means that this descent into hell will be
repeated over and over, month after month, until I die because Betty is
too old and frail to spoon-feed me?
He kept those thoughts to himself.
They lived that month in constant tension. Shut up in the house, seeing
no one, thinking of nothing but the doom that hung over him. The
hospital bed they had meant to return was moved back into the study, to
be ready in case of necessity.
Betty made contingency plans for explaining a second frail old man as her
grandfather. She mumbled something about "irony."
Quentin locked his manuscript in a drawer, never mentioned it again.
Work was out of the question. One day he might pace the floor like a
caged animal; the next, huddle motionless in bed. Similarly, he
alternated between periods of frenzied rushing from mirror to mirror,
and times when he impulsively demanded they all be turned to the wall.
He drank heavily for the first few days. Then Betty forcefully reminded
him that he was damaging his liver, and would feel the effects of that
damage sooner rather than later. After that he stopped drinking, but his
moods grew blacker. Ever more of his energy was spent in futile rage
against Tate.
One night, when he lay exhausted in Betty's arms, she brought herself to
ask a painful question. "This is turning out to be worse
than New York, isn't it?"
"Y-yes," he said reluctantly. "I wouldn't have thought
anything could be worse. But at least, there, the aging was over and
done, quickly. Even allowing for the things Tate and Jared did to me
later, the whole business was over in an hour or so, and my body was as
ruined as it ever would be.
"This torment drags on and on. I can't rest. I'm afraid to sleep,
never knowing how much stiffer and more crippled I'll be when I wake up.
If I wake up. This stress...isn't doing me any good." He
decided against telling her he was sure he had already suffered one
heart attack.
She smoothed his hair--still thick, but gone totally gray. "I know
this is small consolation, but I think I’ve identified a pattern in
the rate of your aging. It seems to be, roughly, ten years in every
three-day period. Sometimes over one night, sometimes more gradually,
but that rate is constant. So you won't be ninety, or close to
it, for another week. About December twentieth."
He said nothing, and she knew he was thinking of the number of days he
would have to survive, after that, to be "saved" by the full
moon.
"And so," she continued quickly, "in future months, you
should be able to appear publicly as Frederic Thorn for a good week.
Touching up your hair toward the end, and staying out of strong light.
For a second week, you'll be too obviously aging to pass as Thorn, but
you'll still be fairly healthy, functional.
"That's two weeks out of every month to work on your novels,
travel, enjoy life! You won't become an invalid, really, till the third
week."
He was quiet so long she thought he had fallen asleep.
Then he said, "That's four weeks out of every month to plan what
I'm going to do to Charles Delaware Tate."
"Where is he?" Betty had barely had time to close the front
door behind her, and Quentin was already struggling to a sitting
position on the sofa. "Did you learn anything?"
"Just a second, darling." She kicked her boots off, shed coat
and muffler.
At least he seemed to be all right. He'd apparently kept his promise,
and stayed exactly where she'd left him. She hated leaving him alone,
now that he was becoming so feeble. The whole time she was out she'd
been afraid he'd try to put another log on the fire, and fall into the
fireplace.
"Here I am!" She kissed him, then settled on the floor at his
feet. Took a moment to tuck the afghan around his legs.
"What did you find out about Tate?" he asked querulously.
She braced herself for his probable reaction to her news. She had, in
truth, established the central fact through telephone inquiries. Had
hoped to be able to add something else, more encouraging, before she
broke it to him. That was why she'd gone to Boston U. to track down the
elusive Professor Sterling, who knew the art world inside out. And
visited her old friend Faith Devereaux--now a police lieutenant--to call
in some favors. Faith had frequently turned to Rick for help with cases
involving Boston's occult underground.
But they had added woefully little to what she already knew.
She took a deep breath. "Rick...Charles Delaware Tate has been
officially dead for a year and a half."
Shock only silenced him for a moment. Then he launched the flood of
protests she had expected. "I did see Tate! I don't imagine things!
I saw Charles Delaware Tate--and he wasn't a ghost, either. I know who I
saw... You believe me, don't you, Betty? Tell me you believe me!"
Bony hands clutched at her, watery eyes searched her face.
"Yes, yes, darling, I believe you." She eased him back against
the cushions. "I never doubted you. That's why I said he was officially
dead.
"Listen to me, Rick. Tate faked his death in 1959, do you
understand? It makes sense when you think about it. His age was a matter
of public record--he couldn't go on painting forever."
"Y-yes. I see." Calmer now, probably thinking clearly.
She watched him closely for a moment, then continued. "It all adds
up. Tate had supposedly been a recluse for many years--still painting,
but only landscapes. Get it? He could hardly paint portraits, his old
specialty, without letting his subjects see him. And realize he looked
one-third his age."
"Yes." Quentin nodded slowly. "But...I'm sure he was
still painting portraits, charmed portraits to preserve wealthy
clients' youth. That's where the real money was. If he wasn't doing
that, it wouldn't have been worth his while to keep the Tate identity
alive as long as he did."
She breathed a sigh of relief that he was making sense. Basically, his
mind was still sound. It was illness and frustration that too frequently
brought him to the edge of hysteria. "I'm sure you're right. His
serious clients were being steered to him, somehow. And for them, his
own appearance was his best advertisement.
"His contact with the world, for years, was through a so-called
nephew named Jeffrey. And Jeffrey inherited everything on his
death."
Quentin sat bolt upright again. "Jeffrey was Tate himself!"
"Yes, I'm sure he was." She took his hands, praying he
wouldn't become agitated. "But as soon as he had the inheritance
free and clear, he changed his name. Vanished without a trace."
He wept, and cursed. But quietly. Let her put his legs up on the sofa.
She stayed with him until he dozed off, then tiptoed out to hang up her
coat and muffler.
He hadn't had a plan for dealing with Tate, anyway.
But she had.
If she had located Tate, she would have begged him to paint another
charmed portrait of Rick, after the werewolf-change restored his youth.
If he lived that long.
She had been prepared to offer Tate all her wealth.
And, if necessary, to offer herself.
Quentin determinedly slept on the sofa for the first few nights after he
found himself unable to climb the stairs. Betty slept--or rather, didn't
sleep--in a living room chair.
On December twentieth, he bowed to the inevitable and let her move him
into the hospital bed in the study. Watched her bring in a sleeping bag
for herself.
She raised the head of the bed to a height she hoped would ease his
breathing. "There. Are you comfortable?"
"Yes." A lie, but what difference did it make? "Betty...I
had such great plans, didn't I? I was going to spend half the month
searching for a safe place to transform into a werewolf, so I wouldn't
endanger humans.
"And here I am, back in the study. I'll break the same window all
over again."
Maybe. Or maybe, the next time I feel that crushing weight on my
chest, it won't let up.
"Don't worry about the window, sweetheart."
She straightened his pillow. "And don't talk so much. Just take it
easy. I'll get you up in a wheelchair once or twice a day.
"There's no reason to think the rapid aging will continue, now
you've reached your true age. And you'll only have to hang on a few days
longer than you did last month, when you were in worse condition."
She couldn't meet his eyes.
But last month, he thought, I had medical help.
This month, nurses, IVs, and medication for his numerous ailments were
out of the question. To have any chance of doing this month after month
without being caught, they'd have to do it alone.
If they couldn't do that--if he couldn't survive--they might as well
find out now.
The dreary days ran together. He supposed that in some ways, his
bedridden state made life easier for Betty. She could at least go out
for groceries now without worrying that he might fall and injure himself
while she was gone.
Of course, he might suffer a fatal heart attack. But if that happened,
her presence would make no difference.
Worn down by pain, he found himself sleeping more and more. Betty roused
him at mealtimes--when his dogged attempts to feed himself invariably
resulted in spilled food, more work for her.
Soon he was resisting those transfers to the wheelchair. But she always
prevailed. "I'm sorry, Rick. I know it's exhausting. But I'm trying
to keep you alive. Lying in bed all day could cause blood clots, or
pneumonia."
This time he was almost too weak to argue. But not quite. "Betty,
it's after dark!"
"I know, darling," she said soothingly. "I'm sorry. But
you were sleeping so soundly before...and besides, it's not really late.
It gets dark early this time of year."
He sank into the wheelchair, moaned, and closed his eyes again.
But she wasn't prepared to let him rest. "I'm going to take you out
into the living room, Rick. Okay? I want to change the bed while you're
out of it, and there isn't much room to work in here."
"All right." I don't care where you take me. Just stop
talking and let me sleep.
Barely awake, he felt the chair stop rolling. Felt, too, the warmth
emanating from the fireplace. That felt good, almost good enough to
compensate for the discomfort of sitting up. If he had to be out of bed,
he was glad she was leaving him here.
"Rick? Open your eyes. Please!"
He moaned again. Struggled briefly to comply, then began drifting off.
"Come on, Rick." Stroking his face. "Wake up."
Why the hell wouldn't she let him sleep? He was so weary...
But he managed to get his eyes open.
And saw the lights.
Blinking, multi-colored lights, transformed by his weak vision into
glimmering globes three times their actual size.
Lights that rose in a towering triangle, filling the bay window...
A Christmas tree.
"Oh, my God," he whispered. "You remembered..."
"Do you like it, darling?" A child's voice, pathetically
eager. "I tried so hard. I could only guess at what you would have
done, but I made it sort of Victorian. You'll be able to see the
decorations better by daylight."
"It's...magical." His eyes filled with tears, and the
lights blossomed into stars. "It's...just like the trees I remember
from my childhood, before my parents died. Oh, Betty...my love..."
She gave a small, broken cry. Dropped to her knees, burying her head in
his lap. And he stroked her hair with palsied hands as they wept,
silently, for the beauty of what they had...and the loss of everything
else they had dreamed this Christmas would be.
"Tonight is Christmas Eve." She was still curled on the floor
with her head in his lap, but turned to face the tree now, as he was.
"I wanted you to see it for the first time with the lights
on."
"I'm glad you did." He fought to keep the tremor out of his
voice. "All my life, I've thought of Christmas as symbolizing the
coming victory of light over darkness. Humanity's faith that light will always
triumph over darkness."
"That's been my view too," she said softly. "The view I
learned from my...family."
He stayed in the wheelchair, her warm body nestled against his legs, to
await the dawn.
But as the sun rose on Christmas Day, a chill came over him. What peace
could Christmas offer a man whose only hope for "salvation"
lay in a night of killing?
When Betty half-lifted him back into his bed, he knew he would not leave
it again.
He slipped into a coma three days after Christmas.
Betty knew no sleep after that.
She tended him constantly. Turning him, bathing him, rubbing his hands
and feet, moistening the inside and outside of his parched mouth. Tried
desperately to give him liquids, and was rewarded when he swallowed a
little juice and kept it down.
And she talked to him. Babbled for hours on end, about everything from
Kennedy's Cabinet selections to the encouraging sales of his own recent
novels. Several times a day she experimented with calling him
"Quentin"--hoping, to no avail, that the sound of his real
name would rouse him.
Once she even resorted to pleading, "Wake up, Quentin! It's me,
Amanda!"
And hated herself.
I don't even know what her voice sounded like. But after all these
years, he probably isn't sure either.
On New Year's Day he was tossing fitfully, burning with fever. His
labored, wheezing breath told her he had developed the dreaded
pneumonia.
"Can you hear me, darling? Try to lie still." But he continued
rolling from side to side, displacing the cool, damp cloth she had just
laid across his forehead. "Please, Rick...Quentin. Lie still
and save your strength. I know you're hot. But you must rest. You only
have to hang on for a few hours now, just a few hours!"
His eyes fluttered open. But she saw no spark of understanding, no sign
that he either saw or heard her.
An hour later he stopped breathing.
She threw herself on the bed, put her mouth to his, and began forcing
her own breath into and out of him.
After what seemed an eternity she sensed a stirring of life, a feeble
attempt to breathe on his own. She kept up her efforts until he had
matched his rhythm, weakly, to hers. When she pulled back, his
respiration was shallow, rasping...but probably adequate.
For now.
She sagged to the floor and let the tears come...briefly. Two minutes
later she was bathing him.
As the day dragged on, his temperature soared again. But this time he
lay too still. Frighteningly still.
She restarted his breathing a total of four times.
As shadows began to fall she sat numbly on the edge of the bed, eyes
fixed on the window. He won't make it. He can't possibly make it. I
tried, I tried!
She reached inside her collar and drew out the pentagram. Pressed it to
her lips.
Then she looked down at the ravaged form of Quentin Collins.
Oh Father, Father...thank God you aren't alive to see this.
It would break your heart.
The moon's disk filled the window. Tendrils of unholy light searched the
room.
Betty took a deep breath, and pulled her gaze away. She tightened her
grip on the man who lay across her lap. Cold and clammy now. But he
still had a pulse and respiration, barely detectable though they were.
I should be talking to you, my darling. Urging you to keep fighting.
But I know you can't hear me.
And I don't have the strength to speak another word.
The questing rays found his head, silvered the ancient face.
The limp body went suddenly rigid.
Then it began to convulse.
He never regained consciousness this time, never cried out. A puppet,
she thought insanely as she clung to him. A lifeless puppet being
shaken and thrown about by an invisible puppet-master. Why, for God's
sake, why? He's past suffering. Whoever, whatever you are, why can't you
leave him alone?
But the shaking continued. She heard bones crack...yet his face
seemed chiseled in marble, showing no response. He's dead. He's dead,
damn you, he's already dead!
Why can't I scream? Why can't I make a sound? Is some new rule in
effect, that all this blasphemous abuse of a corpse has to go on in a
universe where sound no longer exists?
Am I dead, too?
The shaking stopped, and the broken puppet fell heavily across her
knees.
Incredibly, he sucked in a breath.
"R-Rick?" She could make a sound.
He took another breath, and another. Faint, reedy breaths, but he was
alive.
Is this all? But he hasn't...
And then she remembered. Last month. It stopped, and began all over
again...
As it did now, before the thought was fully formed in her mind. The
first spasm jerked him out of her arms. But she clutched him again, and
held him through bouts of ever more violent shaking.
He's alive! her mind screamed at the invisible puppeteer. He's
alive, just barely...be careful with him!
But the entity--if entity it was--hurled them out of bed and onto the
floor. Sent them hurtling into walls, furniture. A bookcase toppled
over, and the books came tumbling down on them.
At that point someone let out a single, thin scream.
She would never be sure who it was.
Abruptly, the tumult came to an end.
The moon had moved beyond the window.
And on the floor, amid the jumble of books, lay Quentin Collins.
Still a man. Very old. Very dead.
She tried to revive him again. Gave up, and collapsed in a sobbing heap.
It can't be, it can't... I failed him somehow. What didn't I do?
Can't think...too tired to think. Father, I'm sorry! I tried. I loved
him, I loved him! Her hand groped for the pentagram, the sense it
gave of a link with her father. Clung to it as to life itself...
Then she heard a low growl.
She jerked her head up. And found herself looking into the glowing eyes
of an oversized, luminous black wolf.
Her hand fell from the pentagram, and a smile spread slowly across her
face.
She had no fear of this wolf.
She had seen it before.
Last month.
She reached out to stroke its shimmering fur. "You're alive! You
made it after all!" Smiling foolishly, even as tears ran down her
cheeks. "Go with God, my love... and come safely home to me!"
The animal turned and plunged through the window.
The exhausted woman fell in a faint.
But throughout the night, the pentagram sparkled on her breast.
The pentagram Jamison Collins had retrieved, long ago, from the watery
grave of Beth Chavez.
The End
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