laughed even more contemptuously, because in that hot, still August of 1984, there
was only one townsperson sporting an eyepatch, and it was simply impossible to
think of that person, of all persons, being the killer. Neary would have believed
his mother the killer before he would have believed that.
“There’s only one thing that’ll solve this case,” Constable Neary says, jabbing his
finger at the four or five men sitting against the wall and waiting for their
Saturday morning haircuts, “and that’s good police work. And I intend to be the guy
who does it. Those state Smokies are going to be laughing on the other side of
their faces when I bring the guy in.” Neary’s face turns dreamy. “Anyone,” he says.
“A bank teller … gas jockey … just some guy you drink with down there at the
bar. But good police-work will solve it. You mark my words.”
But Constable Lander Neary’s good police work comes to an end that night when a
hairy, moon-silvered arm reaches through the open window of his Dodge pickup as he
sits parked at the crossing-point of two dirt roads out in West Tarker’s Mills.
There is a low, snorting grunt, and a wild, terrifying smelllike something you
would smell in the lion-house of a zoo.
His head is snapped around and he stares into one green eye. He sees the fur, the
black, damp-looking snout. And when the snout wrinkles back, he sees the teeth. The
beast claws at him almost playfully, and one of his cheeks is ripped away in a
flap, exposing his teeth on the right side. Blood spouts everywhere. He can feel it
running down over the shoulder of his shirt, sinking in warmly. He screams; he
screams out of his mouth and out of his cheek. Over the beast’s working shoulders,
he can see the moon, flooding down white light.
He forgets all about his .30-.30 and the .45 strapped on his belt. He forgets all
about how this thing is psycho-fuckin-logical. He forgets all about good police
work. Instead his mind fixes on something Kenny Franklin said in the barber-shop
that morning. Maybe it’s some kind of disguise this fella puts on. Like a mask and
all, you know.
And so, as the werewolf reaches for Neary’s throat, Neary reaches for its face,
grabs double-handfuls of coarse, wiry fur and pulls, hoping madly that the mask
will shift and then pull off-there will be the snap of an elastic, the liquid
ripping sound of latex, and he will see the killer.
But nothing happens-nothing except a roar of pain and rage from the beast. It
swipes at him with one clawed handyes, he can see it is a hand, however hideously
misshapen, a hand, the boy was right-and lays his throat wide open. Blood jets over
the truck’s windshield and dashboard; it drips into the bottle of Busch that has
been sitting tilted against Constable Neary’s crotch.
The werewolf’s other hand snags in Neary’s freshly cut hair and yanks him half out
of the Ford pick-up’s cab. It howls once, in triumph, and then it buries its face
and snout in Neary’s neck. It feeds while the beer gurgles out of the spilled
bottle and foams on the floor by the truck’s brake and clutch pedals.
So much for psychology.
So much for good police work.
SEPTEMBER
As the month wears on and the night of the full moon approaches again, the
frightened people of Tarker’s Mills wait for a break in the heat, but no such break
comes. Elsewhere, in the wider world, the baseball divisional races are decided one
by one and the football exhibition season has begun; in the Canadian Rockies, jolly
old Willard Scott informs the people of Tarker’s Mills, a foot of snow falls on the
twenty-first of September. But in this corner of the world summer hangs right in
there. Temperatures linger in the eighties during the days; kids, three weeks back
in school and not happy to be there sit and swelter in droning classrooms where the
clocks seem to have been set to click only one minute forward for each hour which
passes in real time. Husbands and wives argue viciously for no reason, and at