Demon Child

combat?”
        Richard glared at the older man, then stalked into the house. They watched the door close behind him. And as they were ready to look away, he opened the door and stepped onto the veranda.
        “Traps,” Richard said. “I'll use a thousand traps, if I have to, before I'll give up on it.”
        With that, he went back into the house and slammed the door so hard that the windows adjacent to it rattled in their frames.
        By now, the hunters had been an hour and a half at their meal. The sun was beginning to pull down the traces of light that it had left behind when it had first set earlier. Darkness stained the eastern horizon like spilled ink on a tablecloth. A few of the men were already preparing to leave, making the rounds with goodbyes.
        At this moment, with the scene so pastoral and Richard's recent unpleasantness beginning to fade from their minds, everything changed in the instant. They were all, quite suddenly, transfixed, rooted to the earth by one, impossible, cold and maddening sound that swept down on them like the first icy wind of winter.
        It was the howl of an angry wolf…

----

    13
        
        That same Tuesday night, Freya slipped quietly into another of her comas. She had entered it, in fact, only minutes before the lone wolf had cried in the deeps of the forest and startled everyone on the lawn. On Wednesday afternoon, according to Walter, Freya again recounted her experiences as a werewolf. Walt made no attempt to use the situation for the sake of humor. This most recent gruesome account had dealt with the murder of Lee Symington rather than with the demise of Hollycross.
        Freya remembered-or pretended that she did-attacking the veterinarian, going for his throat, tasting him…
        That evening, Cora returned from a trip to town in her old Cadillac. She brought back to the house all the books on the occult which were carried by the local bookstore and which she did not already own. Immediately after supper, she secluded herself in her room. Light seeped under the door, sent grasping fingers across the dimly lighted upstairs hallway. It burned until the early hours of the morning as she perused the books.
        Thursday morning, she was hollow-eyed, gaunt. She moved with a strange, manic hurriedness. Her hands trembled; her eyes seemed never to come to rest on any single object for long.
        She harangued them with anecdote after anecdote that she had gleaned from the new books. She told them about Jennie Soriee, the French girl who had been mauled by an invisible beast, before witnesses, time and again, taking bloody wounds without ever seeing her attacker. She told them about Robert Lundquist, the British civil servant of the early 1950s who had been caught robbing graves to taste the flesh of the newly buried. These were stories, Jenny felt, best left unpublished-and certainly best left unspoken at the breakfast table!
        It was terrible to watch Cora growing more and more agitated through the day. It was inevitable, Jenny supposed, that the older woman's nerves would get the best of her in such a hideous atmosphere as this. But, though she loved Cora, she felt a bit ashamed for the woman. It was obvious that not much of Grandmother Leona Brighton's courage had rubbed off on this daughter.
        When Cora collapsed of nervous exhaustion immediately after dinner that evening, Jenny was not surprised. Dr. Malmont was sent for, arrived, and sedated the woman. He ordered Anna to take the occult volumes from Cora's room and dispose of them before morning.
        “I don't mind what anyone reads or believes,” he said in way of explanation. “But when your beliefs begin to interfere with your good health, it's tune to draw the line.”
        He and Walter conferred in the library for some fifteen minutes. When Malmont had gone, Walter told her what they had discussed.
        “I'm going to persuade Cora to talk with me tomorrow. Before the session with Freya.”
        “You're going to treat her?” Jenny asked. “She's going to argue about that. She won't believe she needs a psychiatrist. I'm not sure she does, in fact.”
        “Everyone needs a psychiatrist,” Hobarth said.
        “Everyone?”
        “Yes.”
        “Even you?”
        Walter laughed, took her hand and squeezed it affectionately. “Yes, in fact, even me. None of us escape societal pressures as we grow up. And it's some of those