No, no hair, no fur, nothing like that. They,d collected some fibers, or thought they had, but then they came up with nothing.
His heart was pounding when he put down the phone. So he,d become something other than human, without a doubt. It all got back to the hormones, didn,t it? But that was as far as he could understand.
What he did understand was that he had to be locked in his room before it got dark.
And it was fall now, almost winter, and this was one of those damp gray days with no real sky at all, just a wet roof over San Francisco.
By five o,clock, he was finished with his story.
He,d checked in covertly with Celeste, who verified the Chronicle account of the woman,s bruises and torn clothes. He,d checked in with San Francisco General but no one would say anything and Grace was in surgery.
He,d also checked out all the main versions of the mystery animal attack online. The story was galloping around the globe, all right, and almost all accounts mentioned the "mysterious" attack on him in Mendocino. Only now as he tracked the news of Marchent,s murder did he realize this had traveled the globe as well. "Mystery Beast Strikes Again?" "Bigfoot Intervenes to Save Lives."
He,d also checked out the YouTubes of reporters in North Beach describing the "back-alley beast."
Then he hit the computer keyboard with the woman,s words.
"It had a face, I tell you. It spoke to me. It moved like a man. A man wolf. [She,d used that very term, his term, "man wolf."] I heard its voice. Dear God, I wish I hadn,t run from it. It saved my life, and I ran from it as if it was a monster."
He made the story personal, yes, but only in tone. Following her own vivid descriptions, a review of the forensic evidence and the inevitable questions, he wrote in conclusion:
Was it some sort of "Man Wolf" that saved the victim from her assailant? Was it a beast of intelligence that so recently spared the life of this reporter in the darkened hallway of a Mendocino house?
We have no answers now to these questions. But there can be no doubt as to the intentions of the North Beach ra**st - already connected to a string of unsolved rapes - or the drug-crazed killers who took the life of Marchent Nideck on the Mendocino coast.
If science cannot yet explain the forensic evidence found at both sites, or the emotional testimony of the survivors, there is no reason to believe that it won,t in time be able to explain all. For now, we must, as so often happens, live with unanswered questions. If a Man Wolf -
the Man Wolf
- is stalking the alleyways of San Francisco, to whom exactly is this beast a threat?
Last, he added the title:
San Francisco,s
Man Wolf:
Moral Certainty in the Middle of a Mystery
Before he filed the story, he Googled the words "man wolf." Just as he suspected, the name had been used - for a minor character in the Spider-Man comics, and for another minor character in the manga-anime series Dragon Ball. But he also noted a book called The Man-Wolf and Other Tales by Emile Erckmann and Louis-Alexandre Chatrian, first translated into English in 1876. Good enough. It was in the public domain as far as he was concerned.
He hit the SEND button to file the story with Billie, and walked out.
Chapter Seven
THE RAIN STARTED before Reuben ever got home, and by the time he locked himself in his room, it was coming down hard in that dreary windless way it so often did in Northern California, slowly, relentlessly drenching everything, and quenching the light of the dying sun, the moon, and the stars completely. He was sorry to see it. This rain meant that "the rainy season" had begun and there might not be another clear day until next April.
Reuben hated the rain, and immediately lighted his fireplace, turning down the lamps so the flickering of the fire could provide some tangible comfort.
But it tantalized him to think about how it might not matter one whit to him once he was transformed, if indeed the transformation was coming.
What is hating rain to me now, he thought. He thought of Nideck Point and wondered how the redwood forest would be in the rain. Somewhere on his desk was a map of the property sent to him by Simon Oliver. On that map for the first time he,d seen the actual layout of the land. The point of land where the house stood was just south of a huge bluff and jutting cliffs that obviously protected the redwood forest to the east and behind the east side of the house. The beach itself was small, with access uncertain, but whoever had built the house had certainly chosen a blessed location, as it overlooked both sea and forest.
Well, there was time to think about all that. Now he had to barricade himself in and go to work.
He,d bought a hot sandwich and soda on the way home, and he devoured these impatiently, Googling "werewolves," "werewolf legends," "werewolf movies," and a host of other such subjects with his right hand.
Unfortunately he was fully capable of hearing the entire discussion going on downstairs at the dining table.
Celeste was still personally outraged that the Observer had taken Reuben off the Goldenwood kidnap for this crazy wolf man story, and Grace was positively disgusted, or so she said, that her son could never stand up for himself. This monstrous attack in Mendocino was the last thing her baby needed. Phil was mumbling that Reuben might become a writer after all and writers had a way of "redeeming everything that ever happens to them."
Reuben perked up at that thought, and even jotted it down on the pad next to his keyboard. Good old Dad.
But the Committee on Reuben and Reuben,s Life now included new members.
Rosy, the darling and deeply beloved housekeeper who,d returned this morning from her yearly trip to Mexico, was weighing in that she could never forgive herself for being "gone" when Reuben most needed her. She said flat out it was the "loup garoo" who had gotten him.
Reuben,s best friend, Mort Keller, was also there, apparently having been drafted for the meeting before anybody realized that Reuben was going to lock himself in his room and refuse to talk to anyone. This made Reuben furious. Mort Keller was finishing his Ph.D. at Berkeley and didn,t have time for nonsense like this. He,d come to the hospital twice, and that had been heroic, as far as Reuben was concerned, considering Mort was getting maybe four hours of sleep a night, and having a hell of a time with preparing for his oral examination.
Now Mort had to listen - and so did Reuben - to the "whole story" of how Reuben had changed since the tragic night in Mendocino, and Grace,s theory that he,d caught something from that rabid animal that bit him.
Caught something! Understatement. And what was up there in the Mendocino forest? Did he talk? Did it walk? Or was it - ? He stopped.