On Viewing the Subject
Loraine Powell was a confident woman in a world that was not nearly so antipathetic toward her sex as it had once been; or so she saw herself. She was rather openly proud of having made her place in the rough and tumble field of journalism before having a woman on the staff had become the chic thing to do. She was fond of pointing out that she had been born liberated. And she was a damned fine writer.
She had known Douglas Morgan for nearly a decade and held some affection for him. But she really viewed him as an excellent foil for her sharp wit and inbred skepticism because, no matter how hard he tried, he could never resist falling into a heated, if civilized, argument with her. Because she dealt with cold, documented facts and he with the wildest of speculation, she always won these arguments, at least in her opinion.
“Doug and Fergie,” she greeted them while the two slid into chairs at her side. “I was wondering if we’d have to send the Mounties after you, or if maybe this exhibition weren’t enthralling enough to draw you this far out in the country.”
“You jest, madam,” replied Brad in an exhalation of breath as he squeezed into the seat. “Morgan the Merciless would have committed suicide rather than miss this little party.”
“And yet you were late,” Loraine added in pained confusion.
“Blame him,” Morgan said, pointing to Ferguson. “It took me most of the day just to herd him into a box canyon.”
The photographer adopted a theatrically pained expression. “Would you chastise a person for taking pride in his personal appearance? I was experiencing a haircut.”
“The world forgives you,” she assured him. Turning to Doug, she asked, “So how’s the wife?”
“Fine, just fine. She wanted to come along and see this thing, but I couldn’t swing a pass for her, and being the incredible chauvinist I am, I didn’t try very hard. She says to invite you for dinner if you ever get off of that freaky macronutrient-seaweed diet of yours.”
Powell involuntarily glanced down at her trim body, proud of its tautness in spite of the forty-six years it carried. “Then you tell her that the macronutrient diet is what gives me my svelte figure and blushing good health—”
“Mine, too,” interrupted Ferguson, his fingers around a last cupcake.
“… but I’m allowed to backslide now and again, especially for some of her brilliant beef bourguignon.” She looked at the empty, heavily-constructed wooden chair on the lighted stage at the front of the auditorium. “I wish they’d bring that psycho out so we could be done with it all.”
“Maybe he’s not a psycho,” Morgan said.
Loraine smiled to herself; the bell had been rung. “No? What do you call a man who kills fifteen people with his hands and teeth?”
“A werewolf.”
She laughed aloud, drawing the attention of the Governor. “Oh, come on, Doug, we’re not talking comic books and ‘B’ movies here. Don’t even try to convince me that he’s going to fall on all fours and grow fur at midnight.”
Morgan realized that he had blundered into yet another set-up, but he was in too deeply to consider backing away. “Some pretty reputable people have believed in the disease.”
“Such as?”
He dipped into all of the research that had become a part of his daily routine since the beginning of this quest. “Montague Summers, scholar, author—”
“Priest. Doug, he had to believe in it, occupationally speaking. And that was about sixty years ago. How about some more recent examples?”
“Okay, how about between February 27th, 1971 and May 1st of that year in Texas—which is a part of the U.S., you’ll recall—when at least twenty people sighted a kind of human/wolf hybrid wearing the remains of clothing? Nobody was attacked, but one thirty-five year old man had a heart attack when he saw it drinking in dog fashion from a fish pond.”
Loraine looked slowly up to the ceiling. “And I’m supposed to be convinced that a living, solid adult male can metamorphose into a legendary beast by listening in on the testimonies of a group of bumpkins who were probably drunk on moonshine when they made their alleged sightings?”
Ferguson folded his hands and turned his eyes skyward. “Dear Lord, spare me, an innocent peasant, during this coming conflagration.”
Predictably, Morgan sprang to the offensive. “Now, tell me, is that a typical reflex response or not? The ‘liberal scientific mind’ first attacks the observer rather than examines the observation.” He took a deep breath for another assault, but was interrupted by a jingling commotion from the curtains at the left side of the stage.
After a couple of seconds of waiting, the object of the long search walked slowly into the light, accompanied by four grim-faced state policemen, and sat in the single chair on the stage. Gerald Cummings looked like almost anything other than a mass murderer, Blake Corbett decided, while he automatically took stock of the man for future depiction in the book that would develop from all of this.
Standing about 6’1”, Cummings weighed perhaps one hundred and sixty-five pounds, had thick brown hair, and possessed grayish eyes set above a rather long, thin nose. It was easy to believe that this man had been a college professor, probably one involved in teaching English or philosophy, but it was almost impossible to believe that there was any reason for him to be chained at the wrists and ankles, with another length connecting those heavy metal restraints. He appeared to have some teeth missing.
Meg Tally—for just a moment—thought that she was going to faint, in spite of the fact that it was still nearly two hours until he would be actively dangerous. Her abrupt intake of air whistled through her clenched teeth, and Blake patted her shoulder reassuringly. She tried to grin. “Well, at least they’re not taking any chances with our safety, are they? He’s so trussed up that I’m surprised that those cops didn’t have to carry him out.”
“Don’t believe that they’re worried about us,” answered Nick. “They just don’t want him to have the slightest opportunity to get away.”
“Thank you, Mr. Optimism.”
One of the policemen, a broad shouldered, dark-eyed man, stepped before the chair and addressed the gathering through a microphone which had been secured on a metal stand, “Ladies and gentlemen, please remain in your seats, as we would prefer that no one approach closer than six feet to the stage. If you photographers need to come down front for closer pictures, we ask that you remain to either side of the center so as not to interfere with the film cameras which have been set up to record this interview.” The brilliant lamps of the TV crews had burst into radiance at the moment of Cummings’ arrival. Their glare only served to cultivate a sort of sympathy for the quiet man in the chair.
The policeman continued, “Mr. Cummings will answer your questions for the next half hour, after which he will be returned to his room for further medical observation and preparations. His lawyer, Mr. Daniel Arcari, is in the front row,” he pointed downward, and a balding, nervous-looking man nodded hesitantly, “and he will be advising his client throughout these rather unusual proceedings. Mr. Cummings has personally requested this opportunity to meet the press prior to any official hearing concerning the charges which have been brought against him and has freely waived his right to silence, but I must caution you that this interview will be monitored with all discretion concerning the subject’s rights and can be terminated at any time if so determined by Mr. Arcari, Mr. Cummings, or myself. My name is Darrow, Sergeant Michael Darrow, and my partners are Officers Henry Nestor, Robert Nozaka, and R.L. Malory. As soon as I adjust this microphone to the proper level, the questions may begin.”
Not surprisingly, most of the assembled newspeople came to their feet with hands waving, but Doug Morgan simply turned up the receiving power on his portable tape recorder (which would register the entire interview for the use of himself and his associates) and Brad Ferguson slipped to his knees before the stage to film the proceedings.
Tall and loud Max Coslo ignored protocol and thrust his voice above the dull roar caused by the others, “To get this meeting off the ground, Cummings, let’s begin with the assertion which you have allegedly made to the authorities and find out if you still stand by it: do you, indeed, claim to be responsible in actuality, though not in the legal sense, for all of the crimes which have been attributed over the months to the so-called ‘Animal Man Killer’?”
Cummings responded with a slightly intimidated smile. “Well, we aren’t wasting any time on the preliminaries, are we? To answer, I have to say yes, I am the murderer of those unfortunate people.” In contrast to the chilling admission, his voice was well-modulated and resonant.
Corbett cut his eyes over to where Arcari the lawyer sat, squirming and sweating. He looked as if he were being tortured, but said nothing. Probably working out some grounds for a mistrial if his client is ever brought before a judge, the writer thought.
“Ah, I see, you admit culpability and yet ask for our belief in your underlying innocence,” Coslo continued, melodramatically holding control and playing about the edges of the real story. “In what way can you hope to convince anyone of this?”
“By demonstration, later.” Cummings shifted uneasily. “You see, I committed those terrible crimes while I was not … myself, in the strictest definition of that term. I am a werewolf, and when I killed them, I had no control over my actions.”
As expected, his open admission set the entire room shouting with questions and exclamations. Coslo was only barely able to override the CBS correspondent with his next question. “Do you seriously believe that the American public is made up of superstitious idiots, Cummings?”
“No, I don’t,” the man replied. “Collectively speaking, I’d say that the American I.Q. is quite high. I just represent a victim of an extremely rare physical disorder that—”
“You turn into an animal!” Coslo supplied derisively.
The buzz of questioning subsided as Cummings paused and then nodded. “In a fashion. On the first night of each full moon, at midnight, my physical structure is altered. I’m sure you’ve all read the paper I did earlier this year which speculated on the bacterial cause for such—”
Coslo had opened his mouth to interrupt another answer, but Loraine Powell beat him to the punch. “We’ve seen it, Mr. Cummings, but the most important question right now is how—and when—did you become infected with this exotic disease?”
The chained man sighed. “All right, with your indulgence, I’ll tell the whole story. I’ve been fascinated with what I call ‘the Hyde Effect,’ the unleashing of the most savagely powerful intents and emotions of a human being through the peeling away of all layers of inhibition and the corresponding alteration of the physical form through the introduction of some external stimulus—hence the descriptive appellation adapted from Stevenson’s famous literary character—since my earliest days as a viewer of films and television, so my favorite tales have always involved werewolves and other transformed beings. Of course, I thought of them as nothing more than fantasy creations, just like any other educated human, until I began to do some serious investigation of my own into the area. It was then that some strange accounts began to reach me, and I was forced to reassess my beliefs.”
“I knew that there was something convincing about his writing,” whispered Corbett to Meg.
“Last year,” the man went on, “I uncovered an account of a terrible beast that had been periodically raiding the wandering Indian tribes of the Baja Peninsula, the lower portion of California, some dozen or so years ago. As an instructor at Blythe Springs Junior College in cinema arts, among other courses, I had done plenty of research into the films and antecedent legends of creatures such as those portrayed by Chaney, Hull, Reed, Cameron, and the rest. While digging as deeply as possible into the literature of the genre, I came across the traditional werewolf of Spain and, later, Mexico.”
“Lobo hombre,” Corbett said, almost involuntarily.
Cummings smiled. “Or lobombre, as they sometimes call it, ‘wolf man.’ Last March, I decided to take the spring break to undertake a sort of ‘field study’ on the subject and get the story from the source, if possible. In the manner of Carlos Casteneda and Don Juan, I suppose you’d say.” His voice had the flow and leadership of a professional speaker, and most of the assembly was engrossed in the unfolding story. But, unfortunately, Coslo wasn’t.
“Why werewolves, Cummings? Why not vampires or purple armadillos with blue death rays shooting from their eyes?” The reporter’s words were so violently sarcastic and hostile that Meg. momentarily sympathized with the shackled subject … until she recalled that the man was a brutal mass murderer. Coslo felt himself to be representing a wronged nation, and maybe he was, in a way.
But Cummings seemed unfazed by the undisguised hatred. “I’ve already explained that my fascination has always been pointed that way, so, naturally, most of my research has dealt with lycanthropy—and ailuranthropy, cynanthropy, boanthropy, and all of the related conditions. You see, practically every nation in the world has its legends of were-animals, and surprisingly often they parallel one another with incredible precision. So I decided early on that where there was that much smoke … well, I found some of the fire.”
Les Tominsky, feature writer for the Chicago Star, quickly took the floor. “Why Mexican Indians, then, instead of Gypsies or other Europeans?”
“I had a couple of reasons. To begin with, I wanted to interview the people in their own backyard, so to speak, unremoved from the territory that gave them their legends. In addition to that, I’m somewhat fluent in Spanish and its Mexican dialects, so I felt that I would be able to delve into the story without resorting to the uncertainties of a translator.” For the first time during the interview, a shadow of despondency flowed over Cummings’ face. “At the outset, I saw the entire trip as an interesting and informative interlude, with perhaps the possibility of a paper in it.”
“Where did you come across these Indians?” asked the man from ABC.
The shadow passed from Cumming’s face, and he brightened perceptibly. “Oh yes, in the mountains just north of Santa Rosalia. Actually, they were a curious but not uncommon mixture of ancient Amerindian and Spanish cultures, with a religious structure that combines Catholicism with pre-Columbian nature worship. I rented a land rover in San Diego and drove south to Santa Rosalia, where I took a room at a hotel and spent the early part of the week searching the mountains around it for any wandering groups of locals, just like a regular anthropologist. It was on the 23rd of March, a Wednesday, I think, that I came across a small, highly nomadic tribe and found that I could communicate with them satisfactorily.”
Cummings turned and asked his guards for a drink of water from an offstage stand, and while Malory walked over to get it for him, Ferguson decided to get a few clearer close-ups. He scrambled about on the floor like some science fictional crustacean looking for the perfect angle. He wound up half-lying on the stage. Darrow then stopped his approach with polite but firm words. Brad moved away from the captive on the stage grumbling audibly about the First Amendment and the rights of the camera.
“To continue,” Cummings said in a clearer voice, “I don’t know exactly how I wrangled an overnight invitation with the Indians, but it came about. They allowed me to question their elders and even to sleep within the perimeters of their camp on the promise that I wouldn’t follow and bother them when they left the next morning.
“That night, when their equivalent of a medicine man was slightly drunk on my ‘Estados’ brandy, I was able to elicit some response to my questions concerning the lobombre and was told that the creature did exist. The lobombre was a cursed being and not a victim of a rabid animal, as I had half-concluded; the last one known to have existed in the area had attacked their tribe on two occasions a month apart twelve years before. Unlike other storied unfortunates who contracted this disease, this creature did not commit the ritual suicide suicide caldaru, which has something to do with explosives, I believe. So, after he had killed sixteen people in the raids, it was decided to destroy him. The medicine man, Ugalde was his name, communed with the gods and came up with the proper method by which to accomplish the task.”
“And what was that?” asked someone.
“He wouldn’t tell me. I wish to God that he had. Ugalde’s tale claimed that after killing the monster he took a sample of its saliva and mixed it with traditional potion that consisted of, among other ingredients, cactus heart, hawk’s blood, goat’s brains, and the urine from a pregnant woman. It had dehydrated over the intervening years, of course, but he still had the dry material in a pouch he carried about his neck. He allowed me to look at it. I was intrigued, but not convinced, so I tried to get a sample of the material for analysis, but the request was refused.”
“Naturally,” Loraine whispered to Morgan with the cynicism dripping from her words.
Cummings failed to hear her. “The old man was totally unpredictable, at least to me, with my ingrained Anglo expectations. He poured a little of the compound into a bottle of whiskey.”
“Yuk,” said Meg.
“Did you get to examine any of that?” asked Tominsky.
Cummings laughed abruptly and with a chilling ferocity. “Yes, I certainly did! Ugalde put a knife to my throat and told me to drink the whiskey or he would slash me open.”
There was a swift, widespread intake of breath that was even more startling when it was realized that these were hardened newshawks who had been caught unprepared by the statement. The electric shock secretly pleased Morgan, and Grundel had to agree that if this sane-appearing man with the sincere manner of speech was only another raving maniac, he certainly told a hell of a good story.
“Did you?” someone asked to resume the telling of the account.
“Of course. I had no choice. I’ve never doubted since that night that the old man could have killed me, buried my corpse, and never had a second thought about the whole matter for the rest of his life. I drank it, and it had an acidic taste, very unpleasant. But I thought that I could swallow for the medicine man’s benefit and then vomit up the mixture before it could do any damage to me. Unfortunately, the elixir had some highly potent natural hallucinogens in it. In my youth, I experimented with many of the substances available on modern college campuses, but that drug, whatever it was, made common dope look like baby food in comparison. Before I could manage to lose the swallow, I was tripping out like a first time user on pure LSD.”
“Still are,” Loraine added.
“I eventually awoke completely at about dawn the next day, but the tribe had already moved on. Since there didn’t seem to be any aftereffects from the concoction, I looked for traces of the Indians with my rover for around half a day before giving up and heading back to Santa Rosalia. I had come to the conclusion that this ‘wold disease’ of my conjecture was nothing more than regular sessions of drug dreams that led to homicidal outbursts. I wasn’t really worried about myself until that night at the hotel.”
A reporter next to Nick started to ask a question, but the young man hastily waved him silent, so that Cummings could continue.
“That was the night of the 24th.” The captive’s voice faltered for one of the few times during the interview. “I, uh … this is hard, even now … it’s embarrassing, that’s what it really is. The 24th was a full moon, so I stood on the hotel balcony at nightfall … just to see … I didn’t really believe it at all, and I felt so stupid, especially when nothing happened. That put me at ease, so I went back to my room and began to dictate my notes on the paper, using my phone, until midnight, when I became violently nauseous.”
“Whereupon you stood before the nearest mirror and watched yourself change into Lon Chaney,” Coslo interjected.
One of the other reporters was so involved with the story that he either forgot or disregarded the dozens of live microphones about him and said, “Will you shut up, asshole?” to Max.
Cummings smiled wanly. “No, no Chaney; I ran into the bathroom, threw up, and passed out even before I could phone the desk for help. When I awoke, it was dawn and I was lying in an untilled field, wearing nothing but my pants. I had to walk two miles to the nearest highway and hitch back to the hotel. My room was wrecked—though not so badly that I couldn’t put it back together—and the dictaphone was still in workable shape, so I rewound it and listened. It was graphic, and … what can I say?
“There was a murder, an old widower farmer, in the afternoon paper.” His former even delivery became somewhat jumbled. “I checked out, took the rover, and went into the mountains again, but I couldn’t find them … I looked for two weeks. Christ, I never dreamed that any bacteria could survive for twelve years in such an anhydrous state. Finally, I came back to the States, left the rover somewhere, and slipped back into my apartment building at night to pick up some clothes and my car. Um,” he drew in a deep breath, “let’s see, what happened next? I realized that something was very wrong with me, and I half-remembered that godawful night and the things I did in it, including killing that old man.”
Arcari, the lawyer, twisted even more uncomfortably and hissed, “Gerald! You must not go into—”
“Daniel, they have a right!”
“You are providing incriminating—”
“Do you think I care what happens to me now, after all that’s been confessed to?”
Darrow was looking concerned enough to stop the entire session, an almost unthinkable action at this point to Corbett and the others, when Arcari began shaking his head in surrender, waving his right hand in the air, and nearly shouting, “Go, go, talk! I’m trying to do my job here, and the man rambles on … talk!”
“I intend to!” Cummings replied. “There were some people, friends of mine in San Francisco, Herb and Lucille Godfrey, who I knew that I could count on for help, but they advised me to seek psychiatric help, just as most of you would do if asked, in spite of everything that … what’s gone before. Anyway, I decided to wait for one more cycle, to make certain that it hadn’t all been a self-constructed dream incited by the unusual circumstances surrounding that night. I convinced them to lock me in their basement on the night of April 23rd. It was a good, solid, block basement, and I was sure that it would hold anything, but I hadn’t understood just how powerful … the disease gives me unbelievable physical strength. I …” He coughed. “I broke out and killed them both.”
“Sergeant, I cannot allow this to continue!” shouted Arcari. “Gerald has just confessed to three murders with which he has not even been connected!”
“Paul, what does it matter?” Cummings asked. “Fifteen, eighteen, is there a difference? Or does it all become equally reprehensible after a certain number? Following tonight’s observations, I’ll have either the perfect insanity defense or an automatic death sentence.”
“He’s right, you know,” said the NBC commenter. “You are driving the nails in your own coffin.”
Darrow raised his hands. “Perhaps it would be best if this was wrapped up until the legalities are straightened out.”
From his front row center enthronement, it was easy for Governor Druitt to catch the policeman’s attention. “Sergeant,” he said quietly, with the calm power of authority, “we’ll allow the interview to go for its scheduled length, with no blame falling on you or Mr. Arcari.”
“Whatever you say, sir,” Darrow answered, shrugging. “Go ahead, Mr. Cummings.”
“The police in San Francisco have since discovered the bodies, but from what I’ve been able to learn, they’re treating the deaths as drug-related homicides. Herb and Lucille did … well, they had contacts in that business.” The man tried to wipe a film of perspiration from his brow with a clumsy motion, and Malory stepped up with a handkerchief to assist him.
“Why didn’t you give yourself up to the authorities when you realized what you had done?” asked Clyde Tullamore of Cable News Network.
“I don’t know … I’m a human being, and I was scared, just as any of you would be in the same situation. I actually called the police in San Francisco, but I was pretty drunk at the time, and I suppose they regarded me as a crank. I even considered suicide, as Ugalde said that most other victims of the disease perform upon themselves, but I knew that this condition had to be studied, investigated … I decided to get away from that area before any connection was made with the deaths of the Godfreys. I wound up driving literally aimlessly, more or less. May and June are blurs, and I don’t believe I killed anyone during the seizures, but I can’t really be sure. I was afraid to contact any other friends, after what had happened, and I used what money i had left to rent a small place outside of Lynnview in July.
“The attacks seemed to get stronger as the months passed. The abandonment of all psychological restraint was progressive, and I even began remembering a little more after each. So the Gretlers and the Mitchells are … they’re with me, almost to the last detail.”
Does he remember me? Meg Talley asked herself. Are my screams trapped inside that mad skull, and will he ever try to finish the job he began?
“I ran after those murders, no planning, no rational debate within myself; I was living in the valley between the nights of the full moon, and it was almost as if I were more of an animal in many ways than when I was under the influence of the disease. In September, I scored what I saw as a definite triumph. I drove north and on the night of the transformation found myself on a highway far removed from any visible habitations. I didn’t kill anyone that time, I’m certain, unless,” here, he laughed shortly, “unless you want to count a fully grown cow which I slaughtered for some reason and draped across the hood of my car.
“So, that gave me new hope, however tenuous, and I decided to proceed further north into Washington state, where Carl Resnavoir lived. He was a writer on subjects related to my situation, and I must admit that I got much of my bacterial theory from his speculations, though, like most everyone else who knew of his work, I had regarded him as an advanced kook, to put it mildly, because he seemed to have complete belief in everything that he wrote. By then, however, I had started to think that he might know enough about it to help me. I found where he had lived, but I was about a year too late. He’d been dead from a heart attack for that long. After that setback, I guess I collapsed, emotionally, anyway, and began wandering again.
“In Montana, I didn’t get off of the highway before the change started, and when I attacked the diner, I also lost my car and what little I had left in the way of possessions. I broke into a church warehouse for clothes and began hopping freights for transportation. I stole some, worked some, and got by. Those hobos outside of Charleston came next—I think that they were trying to rob me, but I can’t be sure because I had just been thrown off of a train and I had hit my head pretty hard. Then your ever-vigilant police force caught up to me in Kansas City.
“And here I am, chained, guarded, and listed as a psychotic mass murderer with delusions of supernatural metamorphosis.”
“And tonight’s the night,” Blake said in some awe.
“Yes. In a couple of hours, all of you people will be privileged to peer into whatever cage they choose to confine me and see nightmares come true. Unless I am totally mad, of course.”
“Phew,” whispered someone behind Doug, releasing a long-held breath.
Darrow glanced to his watch. “Are there any other questions?”
A dozen voices answered him, but once again Max Coslo’s hearty lungs served him well. “What do you expect to do now, Cummings, in regards to your upcoming trial?”
The man shrugged. “If I’m found fit to stand trial, I guess a plea of insanity will best serve me. And if I’m not a werewolf, that’s the only logical defense.”
Coslo snorted derisively.
“Mr. Cummings, in what way do you presently regard the death penalty, and, specifically, do you believe that it should be applicable in this prospective trial?” asked a woman from the British Broadcasting Corporation. Daniel Arcari cursed under his breath.
“To be honest,” Cummings responded, “I don’t think that it matters one way or the other, simply because I’ve come to believe that I can’t die.”
Again, a low combination of disbelieving laughter and surprise swept through the assembly.
“I realize that sounds melodramatic, ludicrous, and probably like an obvious attempt to establish my mental incompetence, but it seems to be the truth so far as I can tell. Getting back to the bacteria theory as an explanation for my condition, I believe that this amazing microbiological lifeform has spread throughout my system and entrenched itself permanently. Now, since I have accepted its existence, it’s not so hard to agree that, while the bacteria itself has no real form of intelligence, it responds to my own mental patterns in such a way as to adapt its effects on me to my previously held prejudices. It ‘knows’ how a physically fit human being is supposed to react to various stimuli, and with some primal ability to protect the health of its host, it has taken a ‘set,’ as it were, on my biological blueprints and holds me static in a state of perfect health.”
“Perfect health,” repeated Coslo.
“That’s right. I know for sure that my resistance to normal diseases is many times as powerful as it formerly was. When I injure myself now, the healing process is distinctly faster and more efficient. So if I were to be executed, I don’t know whether or not my symbiotic second life would allow me to die so long as the directing portion of my body—my brain—and the engine—my heart—were in effective connection. Perhaps I could be drowned or literally blasted apart, the way the Indian suicides were supposed to have resolved the situation, but as the infection grows stronger with time, permeating every living cell of my form, I have to begin to doubt that I will ever age or deteriorate or even die.”
“Good god, what a story if it were true,” someone whispered.
“This sounds as if it is much more a blessing than a curse,” the Reuters man commented. “Doesn’t it exact some sort of fee for all of this physical benefit?”
“Ohh,” sighed Cummings, “why are we here? In this building? Why am I weighted down under all of this metal and with these armed men surrounding me? Once a month, due either to some preconceived idea that I possess or, more likely, due to a physical peculiarity of the disease, I explode with a savage rage that completely overwhelms me, accelerates the growth of my body hair, expels these pitiful nails to replace them with hard claws—”
“You’re trying to tell us that you really, physically change into an animal,” Coslo interrupted with a sneer.
“No, I didn’t say that! Personally, I doubt whether anyone in history has ever undergone such a total transformation as from human to animal, tales of sorcery and witchcraft notwithstanding. But this disease does regularly cause an extensive alteration in my makeup. It—it, imbues me with an extraordinary strength and ferocity that will not be satiated until the passage of the seizure! It sets me afire with a great, insane passion to attack humans and rip them apart! It magnifies my natural negative emotions beyond any semblance of control and provides me with a real invincibility in that it speeds up cellular regeneration to fantastic rates! I have been shot a number of times, I can remember it, and even once with a shotgun! And the healing time is seconds—fractions of seconds!”
“I can testify to that,” said Meg, growing more uneasy as the minutes passed. What if he could work himself into a state of metamorphosis ninety minutes ahead of schedule?
“I know you don’t believe me; as rational adults, you can’t be expected to, but … look, look at this!” He opened his mouth wide and tried to curl his lips away from his gums. “I had two wisdom teeth removed several years ago and one other molar; you can check it against my dental records. And on the first night in March, I was endowed with a new, more powerful set of teeth, see?” From the position of the spectators, it was difficult to make out anything other than the fact that his upper and lower incisors were missing, and this left four prominent spaces in his jaws. He probed the holes with his tongue. “These … incisors are replaced as I change by true fangs, and I lose them at daybreak, as a sort of camouflage, no doubt.”
“Your memories of these episodes,” Loraine prompted.
“Much in the fashion of recalled dreams. Disjointed and nightmarish on some occasions, as clear as any thoughts on others. The primary motivation of pure fury colors each memory, and usually, the most striking moments of the seizure—the murder of a human being or a number of people—are generally quite clear. My initial experiences in March, April, and May were often no more than disjointed flashes and impressions, like a cubist vision, but since that time things seem to have been becoming steadily clarified, though my self-control hasn’t asserted any influence on my actions so far as I am able to tell.” He shifted a little uncomfortably in the hard chair.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I must ask you to hurry with any more questions that you have to ask. We must get the prisoner back to his room,” Sergeant Darrow advised them.
“Have you the power of transmitting this disease?” a woman with a French accent asked quickly.
“I don’t doubt it. That’s the most terrifying part. Biting is the traditional method of passing along the bacteria. But I’ve been ‘lucky,’ if you’ll permit me to use that word, in that I have killed all of the victims whom I have attacked, and thus I have not infected anyone else. I’m told that two uninjured witnesses have been located, but if they’re telling the truth or not is—”
Several more voices interrupted his speculation at this point, but the loudest and most insistent of them came from Douglas Morgan, “Cummings, what if nothing happens tonight? What if you’re monitored, filmed, and then given scientific proof that these attacks have all been delusions?” He was asking the question that had to be broached for the sake of his possible defeat once again at the hands of accepted logic.
“If I’ve been lost in some … pit of insanity since last March, you mean?” Cummings smiled patronizingly. “Then, I hope that I will be locked away for the rest of my life and never given the opportunity to hurt anyone.”
“And if it is real, all of it?” Morgan asked that question for himself.
The chained man quietly considered this. “Perhaps there can be a cure or, better yet, a harnessing of this incredible condition. Lord, I hope so. I could revolutionize mankind’s existence or doom it. If there is no way of bringing about the cure or the control, I guess that those in charge will have to start thinking along the lines of eternal incarceration or my execution, whether by staking, burning, dismemberment, whatever it takes.”
“That’s all,” stated Darrow, and his statement drew immediate cries from the audience. He waved them down. “Mr. Cummings will be returned to his room until approximately fifteen minutes before twelve, when he will be placed under the care and observation of the doctors in charge of this case. This will be in observation room number three. You will be free until that time to further examine the Institute under the supervision of your respective tour guides. Thank you.”
Morgan watched in tense silence as the policemen led Cummings from the room in that shuffling gait enforced by the chains on his ankles. Am I convinced? Doug asked himself. Hell, he was ready to clutch crosses and silver bullets right now, though, of course, the frisking at the door had insured that no werewolf blunderbusses had been smuggled inside. Even if, by some unthinkable quirk, Cummings didn’t shift his shape into that of a raging half-beast at midnight, he was a werewolf mentally. At least, he was enough of one to have slaughtered eighteen human beings or more.
“Wow,” breathed Loraine after the group had left the auditorium, “he may not be the genuine article, but I’ll grant you this, Doug, he scared the bejesus out of me.”
Morgan tried to smile in a satisfied manner. Ferguson laughed and took another roll of film from his shoulder-bag.
They had been a mixed audience, he decided.
Some, like that … was his name Coslo? … would remain unconvinced if locked in the same room with him during an attack. But there were others whose faces spoke much more eloquently than any words of a belief lodged deeply within their souls, even if all sophisticated thought processes told them that it was patently ridiculous. Most appeared to have retained their professional curiosity balanced against their skepticism.
Well, they’ll all see, and very soon. They will each experience the mind-warping terror of a new reality. At midnight.
Oh god, he thought, am I looking forward to it now?