Feverish, at times incoherent, Stuart was not only surviving but thriving, Grace said, exhibiting all the same symptoms Reuben had exhibited, bruises vanishing, ribs completely healed, skin glistening with health, and the boy’s body experiencing the baffling growth spurt, as Dr. Cutler had described.
“It’s all happening faster with him,” Grace said. “Much faster. But then he’s so damned young. Just a few years makes such a remarkable difference.”
Stuart had broken out in a terrible rash from the antibiotics and then the rash had simply vanished. Not to worry, Grace said. The fever and delirium were frightening but there was no infection and the boy came out of it for hours every day, long enough to demand to see people, to threaten to break out of the window if he didn’t get his cell phone and computer, and to fight with his mother who wanted him to exonerate his stepfather completely. He claimed to be hearing voices, to know things about what was going on in buildings surrounding the hospital, to be agitated, eager to get out of bed, uncooperative. He was afraid of his stepfather, afraid of him hurting his mother. Invariably the staff sedated him.
“She’s an awful woman, this mother,” Grace confided. “She’s jealous of her son. She blames him for the stepfather’s rages. She treats him like a pesky little brother who’s ruining her life with her new boyfriend. And the boy doesn’t get how childish she really is, and it makes me sick.”
“I remember her,” Reuben murmured.
But Grace was as adamant as everyone else that Reuben couldn’t see Stuart. No visitors were allowed just now. It was all they could do to hold off the sheriff and the police, and the attorney general’s office. So how could she make an exception for Reuben?
“They upset him with their questions,” she said.
Reuben understood.
They came to Nideck Point four times during the week, pressing for information, as Reuben sat patiently on the couch by the big fireplace explaining again and again that he had seen nothing of “the beast” that attacked him. Over and over again, he led them to the hallway where the attack had taken place. He showed them the windows that had been bashed out. They seemed satisfied. Then they came back twenty-four hours later.
He hated it, struggling to sound sincere, helpless in the face of their curiosity, eager to please, when inwardly he was trembling. They were honest enough, but they were a nuisance.
The press was camped on the Santa Rosa hospital door. A fan club had sprung up among Stuart’s old high school friends, and they picketed daily demanding that the murderer be brought to justice. Two radical nuns joined the group. They told the world that the San Francisco Man Wolf cared more about cruelty to gay youth than the people of California.
In the early evenings, Reuben, in his hoodie and glasses, faithfully wandered the pavements outside the hospital, circling the block, listening, pondering, brooding. He could have sworn once that he saw Stuart at the window. Could Stuart hear him? He whispered that he was there, that he wasn’t leaving Stuart alone, that he was waiting.
“This kid is in no danger of death,” Grace averred. “You can forget that. But I have to get to the root of these symptoms. I have to figure out what this syndrome signifies. And this is becoming a consuming passion.”
Yeah, and a dangerous one too, thought Reuben, but he cared more than anything else that Stuart live, and he trusted Grace to care more about that than anything else.
Meantime there had been a falling-out between Grace and the mysterious Dr. Jaska, though Grace obviously didn’t want to tell Reuben why. Suffice it to say the doctor was making suggestions Grace didn’t like.
“Reuben, the guy believes in things, unusual things,” Grace said. “It’s a veritable obsession. There are other red flags. If he contacts you, cut him off.”
“Will do,” said Reuben.
But Jaska was buzzing around Stuart and engaging his mother in long conversations as to the boy’s mysterious encounter with the Man Wolf, and Grace was leery of it. He was suggesting that mysterious hospital in Sausalito that had no documentation and was licensed only as a private rehabilitation center.
“He’s not getting anywhere for one good reason,” said Grace. “That woman doesn’t give a damn.”
Reuben was frantic with worry. He drove south and sought out Stuart’s mother at her sprawling modern redwood-and-glass palace east of Santa Rosa on Plum Ranch Road.
Yes, she remembered him from the hospital, he was the handsome one. Come on in. No, she wasn’t worried about Stuart. Seems like he had more doctors than she knew what to do with. Some weirdo from Russia, a Dr. Jaska, wanted to see him but Dr. Golding and Dr. Cutler said no. This Dr. Jaska thought he should go into some kind of sanitarium, but she couldn’t figure why.
Sometime during the interview, which wasn’t much of an interview, the stepfather, Herman Buckler, sauntered in. He was a short, wiry man with exaggerated features and dark eyes. He had crew-cut platinum hair and a dark tan. He didn’t want his wife talking to reporters. In fact, he was furious. Reuben eyed him coldly. He was picking up the scent of malice clearly, much more clearly than he’d picked it up from Dr. Jaska, and he remained in the man’s presence as long as he could, though he was being ordered ever more violently to leave, just so he could study the guy.
The guy was poisoned with resentment and rage. He’d had enough of Stuart turning his life upside down. His wife was terrified of him, doing everything she could to placate him, apologizing for what had happened, and asking Reuben to go ahead and go.
The spasms were churning in Reuben. And it was daylight, the first time they’d ever come to him in daylight except for a very mild visitation when he’d seen Dr. Jaska. He kept his eyes on the man even as he walked out of the big glass and redwood house.
For a long time, he sat in the Porsche, looking at the surrounding forest and hills, just letting the spasms wane. The sky was blue overhead. This had the beauty of the wine country here, this lovely sunny weather. What a great place for Stuart to have grown up.
The change hadn’t really threatened. Could Reuben bring it about in daylight? He wasn’t sure. Not at all. But he was sure that Herman Buckler was capable of trying to kill his stepson, Stuart. And the wife knew it but she didn’t know it. In the midst of all this she was involved in a choice between her husband and her son.
As for the nights, Reuben felt certain that he now had the Wolf Gift entirely under his control.
For the first three nights after he last saw Stuart, he held off the change altogether, and gratifying as this was, it soon resulted in a kind of agony. It was like fasting, when one finds out how much more food and drink are than mere sustenance.
After that, when the change came, he confined himself to the woods near Nideck Point, hunting, roaming, discovering the creeks of his property, and climbing the tallest of the old-growth trees to heights not attempted in the past. There was a bear hibernating in his little forest, some sixty feet up an old fire-scarred tree; and a big cat, most likely the male cub of the mother he’d killed, was roaming Reuben’s part of the woods as well. There were deer he did not want to slay. But the sleek plump furry squirrel, wood rat, beaver, shrew, shrew mole—he fed on them all, and on cold, surprisingly tender reptiles—salamanders, garter snakes, frogs. Fishing in the creek was heavenly, his giant paws soon capable of snaring any sleek darting prey he chose. High up in the canopy, he could snatch the hapless scrub jays and wrens right out of the air, and devour them feathers and all while their little hearts still pumped vainly against their tiny narrow breasts. He feasted on the woodpecker and on junco and an endless supply of thrushes.
The utter “rightness” of devouring what one killed fascinated him, as did the desire to kill in the first place. He longed to wake the hibernating bear. He wanted to know if he could best it.
Far to the north where the forest grew as thick as it did on his own land, he caught the scent of the bull elk and longed for it, but didn’t go after it. He dreamed of fields of sheep, of scattering them with a
roar, and chasing down the biggest to rip into its woolly neck with his fangs, and gorge himself on the hot breathing mutton.
But he wanted to remain unseen, unnoticed in his own territory, and was never too far away from Laura, in her bower of white lace and flannel in the big master bed, whom he would awaken on his return with beast paws and beast kisses.
But was it enough, these blissful nights in the enchanted woodland that was his own? It was the pale shadow of the raucous urban wilderness that lay to the south, beckoning with its promises of thousands of mingled voices. Garden of Pain, I need you. What were the songs of beasts to the cries of sentient souls? How long could he keep this up?
In a way, the days were easier, even with the police coming and going.
He studied all the werewolf literature, the books, the “reports” of man wolf sightings the world over, from the Yeti of Tibet to the Bigfoot of California. He combed the records of the world for mentions of the distinguished gentlemen over the mantel and found nothing.
He learned the house in all its different ways, thinking all the while that it might well be turned over to Felix in the days to come, but for now it was his, and he would continue to love it and know it. He searched now and then for yet undiscovered rooms and doors and so did Laura.
A band of local Nideck people came to the door. Nina, the little high school girl he’d met on his very first night here with Marchent, was used to hiking the forest behind the house, and Galton had warned them away. In tears, she explained what it meant to the locals to roam the property.
Laura invited the hikers in for tea, and a compromise was worked out. Anyone could hike the paths by day, but no camping at night. Reuben agreed to it.
Later on, Laura confessed that she knew what it meant to those people to be able to hike these woods, she really did. And sometimes she wished there were more of them around. There were times when she felt so utterly alone here.
“I’ve never been afraid anywhere ever in my life,” she said, “least of all in the California forests. But I could have sworn yesterday there was somebody out there in the trees, somebody watching.”
“Probably one of those hikers,” said Reuben with a shrug.
She shook her head. “Not like that,” she said. “But you’re probably right. And I have to get used to it here. It’s as safe as Mill Valley.”
They agreed it might well have been one of the reporters.
He didn’t like her being worried by anything. He was confident he would hear and scent anyone of malevolent intent. But she couldn’t. And he resolved not to leave her alone unless it was absolutely necessary.
He moved heaven and earth to have a big mechanical gate installed on the private road that led to the property, just to stop the vehicles of the reporters who were now revisiting the site of the original Man Wolf attack in light of Stuart’s growing fame. Of course the reporters and cameramen came on up the road on foot, but at least they couldn’t drive to the front doors.
Galton said over and over the story would die down like it had before, not to worry. He had a small crew coming and going to renovate the bedrooms on the front of the house, with new wiring, fresh paint, and all the appropriate electrical and cable connections.
This is what it means to live in such a house, Reuben thought, or what it would mean for a while. The quiet would come again. And so might Felix.
Laura took the conservatory in hand and made of it a splendid paradise, with giant weeping ficus encircling the smaller orange and lemon trees, while she brought flowering vines of all sorts—honeysuckle, jasmine, morning glory—to climb the iron-ribbed walls with the aid of delicate trellises. There were potted rose trees now with picture-perfect blooms. And the orchid trees were fully recovered from their long journey and heavy with spectacular blossoms. Laura slipped small virtual-sunlight lamps into nooks and crannies to supplement the pale northern sun. And a handsome Victorian white enameled woodstove was found to take the chill out of the room and provide a warmth the plants would welcome, as well as Reuben and Laura dining every night before the fountain on the white marble table.
Halfway into the week, Reuben astonished himself.
He did not know quite why he did what he did. But he found a small secondhand computer shop in Petaluma that did not have video camera surveillance and, dressing in his hoodie and sunglasses, he purchased there two laptop Apple computers for cash.
He was angry with Felix for vanishing without a word. He was sick with worry about Stuart. He was ravenous for the succulent evil of the southern cities.
And so he created an e-mail account under the name Vera Lupus exclusively for one of these computers, and wrote on it a long letter from the Man Wolf to the San Francisco Observer.
This letter was a great sprawling uncontrolled document and it was really an angry appeal to Felix Nideck to please come back and help him!
All he had to do to send it anonymously was drive into any city, park somewhere near a hotel or motel, beyond camera reach, and hook up to its Wi-Fi network, and hit SEND.
No way could the e-mail be traced back to him or to anyone.
But he didn’t send the letter. It was too full of pleading and rage and admissions of not knowing what he was doing. It was too full of self-pity that “there was no wise guardian of secrets” to guide him. It was his own fault, wasn’t it, that Stuart’s life was at risk? How could he blame Felix for this? One moment he wanted absolution and understanding. The next he was wanting to hit Felix.
He held on to the Man Wolf’s letter. He hid the computer in the old steamer trunk in the cellar. And he waited.
There were long dark times when he thought, If that boy dies, I will kill myself. But Laura cautioned him that he could not leave her, or leave himself, or leave the mystery—that if he meant to do something so brutal and terrible to himself, then he might as well give himself over to his mother and to the authorities. And when he thought of what that might mean to Felix, well, he backed off from all such ideas entirely.
“Wait for Felix,” she said. “Keep that in your mind. When you become like this, think: I will not do anything until Felix comes. Promise me.”
Jim called more than once, but Reuben could not bear the thought of telling him about Stuart. He got off the phone as quickly as possible.
As for Laura, she was battling her own demons. Every morning, she went down the long steep perilous trail to the beach and walked for hours near the cold banging surf. (Reuben found the path just about impossible. And the ocean wind turned him into a block of mean-spirited uncooperative ice.)
And for hours as well she walked in the woods, with or without Reuben, determined to conquer her new fear. Once, from the beach, she saw someone high on the cliffs, but that was to be expected.
Reuben was on edge whenever she went out, listening with the inner ear of the wolf to the world that surrounded her.
It crossed his mind more than once that there could be some other Morphenkind out there, some vagrant being of which Felix knew nothing, but he had no real evidence of such a thing. And he trusted that had it been possible, Felix would have warned him. Maybe he was romanticizing Felix. Maybe he had to romanticize him.
Laura brought back tender little sword ferns for the conservatory and nursed them in specially prepared pots, and collected beautiful rocks and pebbles for the basin of the fountain. She found interesting fossils in the gravel driveway beneath the kitchen windows. Then she pitched herself into work on the house, restoring the historic William Morris wallpaper in the old bedrooms, or directing the workmen who were repainting the crown molding and other woodwork. She ordered curtains and draperies, and began an inventory of the china and silver.
She also found a magnificent Fazioli grand piano for the music room.
She began to document the Nideck forest with her camera. By her calculation there were some seventy-five old-growth redwoods on Reuben’s land. She estimated their height at over two hundred fifty feet; there were Douglas firs that were almost
as high, and countless young redwoods, western hemlock, and Sitka spruce.
She taught Reuben the names of all the trees, how to recognize the California bay tree, and the maple, and how to tell the fir from the redwood, and how to recognize a host of other plants and ferns.
In the evenings, she read Teilhard de Chardin, just as Reuben did. And other works of theology and philosophy, and sometimes poetry. She confessed that she did not believe in God. But she believed in the world, and she understood Teilhard’s love of the world and faith in the world. She wished she could believe in a personal God, a loving God who understood all this, but she didn’t.
One night she burst into tears as they talked of these things. She asked Reuben to bring about the change, and to take her out and up into the forest canopy again. He did. For hours, they roamed the upper branches. She was fearless of the heights, and gloved and dressed in tight-fitting black campers’ clothes that kept her insulated against the wind, and likely invisible in the dark to any prying eyes, as Reuben was. She cried against his chest, inconsolably. She said she would risk dying to have the Wolf Gift, there was no doubt of it. When Felix comes, if Felix has the answers, if Felix can somehow direct, if Felix knows how … they speculated for hours. Finally when she was drowsy and calm, he carried her down to the forest floor, and brought her to the creek where he so often fed alone. She bathed her face in the icy water. They sat among the moss-covered rocks as he told her all the things he could hear, about the bear that slept not far off, about the deer moving in the dark enfolding shadows.
Finally, he brought her home and once again they made love in the dining room before a raging fire in the old grim medieval black fireplace.
In the main, she was not unhappy. Far from it.
The western-facing bedroom chosen for her office had been refurnished with a glass-top desk, several attractive wooden filing cabinets, and a large easy chair with an ottoman for reading, the beautiful old antique furniture relegated to the cellar.
Marchent’s old room no one touched. Someone, likely the law firm, had packed up all Marchent’s personal things before Reuben had ever come back to the house, and now it was a lovely spacious bedroom done in pink chintz and white ruffled curtains, with a white marble fireplace.