Authors: Robert Ryan
He cast an uneasy glance around the Garden to see if they might suddenly emerge from the shadows and come after him. Nothing moved. Wherever they were, there was nothing he could do. They could have disappeared into the woods, or be wandering the castle. Instead of increasing his concern, that thought calmed him.
More monsters for the rally.
Feeling very much like he was in a horror film, he went to check on his chosen six.
All their eyes were open and alert. All gave him a knowing eager look when he approached.
They weren’t strong enough to rise yet. But they would be. Soon.
He would come back to round them up after he checked on the movements of his betrayers.
Quinn stood in the porte-cochère, giving Johnny her head start so they wouldn’t be seen together.
He watched her quickly receding into the distance along the lane that led to the barn. As soon as she was out of sight, he headed down the lane in the same direction. A minute later he reached the rear of the castle and veered onto the perpendicular footpath that led to the lagoon. He looked up at the darkening sky.
A half hour of daylight at most.
“Do not venture too far into the woods,” Markov had said, warning him about four-legged predators that may or may not be nocturnal. Quinn had no intention of venturing into the woods. He would be scanning them as he went for possible escape routes, but he didn’t have much time, and his priority was getting a closer look at the lagoon. He wanted to see if there was any evidence of the shape he thought he’d seen rising up from the water last night. The more he knew about his battleground before he and Johnny went to war against Markov, the better.
About thirty yards along the footpath, it cut through a dense stand of trees before opening onto a swath, roughly ten yards wide, that had been cleared around Markov’s version of Usher’s tarn. Quinn kept going until he reached the thicket of reeds and aquatic plant life that shielded the lagoon. He stood perfectly still for a moment, acclimating his senses to this new environment.
Last night’s storm had moved through, and though he could see another one blackening the sky in the distance, at the moment the grounds were utterly still and silent as the evening turned gray in the dying light. No birds sang. No breeze stirred the trees. The spreading cloak of darkness was turning the flat surface of the water black.
The calm before the storm
, he thought.
Whatever he’d seen had been at the far end of the lagoon, about fifty yards from where he stood. He walked along the water’s edge, scanning the dark surface and the tangle of brush for signs of anything unusual.
A few insects left tiny ripples as they skimmed the surface. The mouth of a large fish broke through the water to snag a bug, but the fish wasn’t big enough to have been the thing Quinn thought he’d seen. The ripple caused by the disturbance quickly disappeared. By the time he reached the end of the lagoon, the water was glassy calm again. No underwater rocks created any swells, no plants protruded through, no debris of any sort floated on the smooth surface. Whatever he’d seen from his window last night could easily have been a trick of the light, the wind, or an overheated imagination. He walked along the edge of the woods that surrounded the lagoon, looking for anything unusual or possible escape routes. He saw only dense, untouched forest.
“I’m beating a dead humanoid,” he muttered to himself. Wanting to cover as much ground as he could, he picked up his pace as he circled the end of the lagoon.
He didn’t get far before something else caught his eye. Several yards from the water’s edge, a small cluster of bubbles appeared on the surface, lingered briefly, then disappeared. Another cluster bubbled up a few seconds later, then another. He stared at the spot for another minute, but no more came up. His first thought had been that something was down there breathing, but if that was the case, why would the bubbles stop?
Maybe whatever it was had swam away. Or maybe it was gas escaping from an underground deposit. Or maybe—
He cut the thought short. Standing there speculating was a waste of time. Diving was the only way to know for sure if anything lurked in the lagoon. As far as he could tell, nothing did.
“Give it up,” he muttered to himself, and got back onto the footpath to return to the castle. Halfway there he saw something he hadn’t noticed on the way to the lagoon. A few yards to the right of the path, partially covered by weeds, a large rectangular panel was embedded in the ground. The padlocked handle made it obvious that it was the entrance to some underground space.
Johnny had mentioned an underground passage from the lagoon to the Garden. This might be a hatch for moving equipment in and out. She’d also said there were no cameras in the underground passages. Having access to it if they ended up outside might come in handy.
He looked at his watch. 5:37. He could spare a few minutes and still make his 5:45 meeting with Johnny. He pulled out his multitool and began sawing the u-shaped shackle of the padlock with the six-inch hacksaw blade. He made quick progress and was almost through when a large shadow gliding over the panel made him look up.
The pterodactyl.
With its enormous wings spread, it circled lazily overhead, like a buzzard homing in on prey. Quinn eyed the creature warily, wondering if Markov was just toying with him or if the pterodactyl had taken on a life of its own.
He quickly considered his options.
He could try to finish cutting the padlock and getting into the underground passage, but that could take another couple minutes, and it would leave him completely vulnerable with his back turned to the monster. It made no difference whether the pterodactyl or Markov was in control. Either way it could be on him in seconds.
The pterodactyl was getting closer. Too close to finish the padlock. He quelled the urge to run. It might look like he was trying to escape and trigger the pterodactyl’s predatory instincts. Walking quickly he could reach the castle in a few minutes.
He’d have to take his chances.
He got onto the footpath, frequently looking up to make sure the prehistoric beast wasn’t swooping down.
In the thick forest that bordered the footpath, a light wind whispered through the trees. Ahead, high on the castle wall, a single light glowed through the rectangular window of Markov’s apartment. Quinn thought he saw a shadow glide past it. From this distance it was impossible to tell if it was inside or outside the window. Wondering if he was somehow being watched, and if Markov had sent the pterodactyl to let him know there was no escape, Quinn moved as quickly as he could without breaking into a run.
The whisper of the wind had become a steady moan, emanating from deeper in the woods. Hidden by the darkness, there was something of suffering and despair in the sound, as though the trees themselves were crying out to be rescued from a realm where evil ruled. Somewhere in that impenetrable gloom, another sound began fluttering through the moan of the wind.
Quinn froze, listening.
Invisible in its world of shadow, something skittered across fallen leaves.
An animal.
Four-legged.
Running. Fast. Parallel to the footpath.
The racing footsteps started from far behind him, in the darkness beyond the tree line. In a matter of seconds they streaked ahead—as though whatever it was meant to cut him off, maybe confront him. Moving fast, the sound quickly died out. Quinn remained still, listening to hear if the animal might be closing in, or if there were any others. Where there was one there might be a pack.
The darkness seemed to be holding its breath. Quinn thought he saw a hulking shadow streak across the clearing around the castle. At length, a sound coming from the general direction of the porte-cochère pierced the night.
A howl.
Markov’s
troublesome
wolf? Or was it just him showing off again?
Quinn pulled the pepper spray from his waistband. He had to get back into the castle, and the only way he knew to do that was through the front door. There had to be other ways in, but there was no time to look for them.
Just before he stepped from the footpath onto the main access road, he heard what sounded like a motorized vehicle zipping along underground. It had to be Johnny, driving the ATV with the supplies into the castle. He pressed the button on his watch that illuminated the dial.
5:43. He was supposed to meet Johnny in her chambers in two minutes. If Markov or one of his creatures was waiting for him at the front door, the plan to overtake him in the Chamber of Horrors at six would obviously be off. Quinn would have to have to improvise, and hope Johnny would figure things out and do the same.
Finger poised over the trigger button of the bear spray, flashlight in his other hand, Quinn hurried up the access road toward the porte-cochère.
This morning when Max had been at his mother’s grave and seen the thunderstorm coming, he had thought it would be fitting for the Gothic movie of his life to end on a dark and stormy night.
But this was no movie, and now his piece-of-crap car with its worn-out tires was slipping and sliding all over the place in the rain and mud. He was a bundle of raw nerves as he bounced through another section of potholes in the old logging road that led through the woods to the castle. Living there all those years, he’d made this trip many times, but that had always been in a sturdy four-wheel drive vehicle built to handle rough terrain. In his crapmobile, every time he hit a severe bump, or his wheels got caught in old tracks left by logging skids, he expected an axle to break or something bad to happen.
The thunderstorm that had been brewing in the distance had finally caught up to him, and was rapidly turning the pitted dirt road into a quagmire. The combination of heavy downpour and nightfall had reduced visibility to less than ten feet. Every severe bump or encounter with the logging tracks made him have to fight his way out of a fishtail, forcing him to slow to a crawl.
He tightened his grip on the wheel as he approached the narrow ridge through the quarry. Even in ideal conditions and a sturdy vehicle, the deep man-made gorge was intimidating. The ridge the excavators had left standing in the center for Markov to use as his Borgo Pass was only several feet wider than a car on either side—which made staying in the middle essential.
As Max eased his way onto the ridge, the poor visibility made it almost impossible to tell how close he was to the edge. He couldn’t go much slower or he might get stuck in the mud, but the car was still fishtailing, even on the fairly smooth stretches. If he went over, the fall to the bottom would almost certainly kill him. Max was fighting back panic as it became harder and harder to keep from skidding out of control.
He was about two-thirds of the way across the muddy ridge when his tires fell into ruts left by an old logging vehicle. Sliding into ruts left by other vehicles on slippery unpaved roads was common in Vermont, and drivers quickly learned to ride them out. If you fought it, you could either damage your vehicle or come out of the rut suddenly, forcing you to make a quick correction that could lead to oversteering yourself into a tree or ditch.
Max knew all this. But unable to tell if he was in the middle of the ridge, and worried that, in these slippery conditions, the ruts might take him over the edge, panic finally overtook him. The wheel was pulling to the right, so he turned hard to the left.
The car lurched out of the ruts and went into a skid to the right. Max tried to correct by whipping the wheel all the way to the right, to no avail. The car kept sliding to the right, and even in this poor visibility, he saw the edge of the steep precipice fast approaching.
His heart almost exploded when he felt the rear wheels thump over the edge.
Following the powerful beam of his flashlight as it pierced the darkness, Quinn neared the oasis of light in the porte-cochère.
Several feet short of the sheltered entryway, at the farthest dim reach of the light, he stopped to remain hidden from whatever might be waiting there. He clicked off his flashlight and shoved it into a rear pocket. He already had two magnetic bracelets on each wrist and ankle, but from another pocket he pulled out two more to use as projectiles if necessary. He also pulled out a canister of bear spray, then began walking silently along the path until he reached the edge of the porte-cochère. He eased his head just far enough in to see if anything lurked.
A man-shaped beast crouched in the shadows. It must have heard or smelled him, because it froze and whipped its head in Quinn’s direction.
Its burning gaze locked onto him.
The lips receded, exposing rows of ferocious teeth. Deep in the beast’s throat, a low savage growl began to rumble.
The things Quinn had seen and been warned about had conditioned him to be ready for anything, but still he wasn’t prepared for this.
The portable control panel clipped to the waist told Quinn this was Markov. He was strangely dressed in the torn remnants of formal wear, but there was no doubt that he was now the Wolf Man. As in the movie, the forelegs were partially covered by the sleeves of a shirt, torn at the shoulders and open in front. The hind legs were covered by shredded trousers that barely reached below the knees.
Something was happening to the face.
It blurred exactly as Lon Chaney’s had in the movie, when a series of dissolves showed the transition from wolf to human. But as Quinn continued to stare, different faces appeared in rapid succession, as though forces within were fighting for dominance.
Chaney.
Markov.
Chaney.
Markov.
As the fur and other werewolf features slowly disappeared, Lon Chaney as Lawrence Talbot gradually regained control. That face lasted only a few seconds before dissolving into Markov again.
Every instinct told Quinn to run, but this was the confrontation he and Johnny had wanted. They had planned on handling it together, but that hadn’t worked out. If he ran, it would be a betrayal of Johnny, and Markov would have won.