Billy Calaway was the driver.  He was a frustrated stock car enthusiast.  Pennsylvania had hundreds of young men who challenged the roads.  Through the fields and forests, twisted thousands of miles of back lanes and minor highways.  These were easier than the real thing.  There wasn't some guy named Buzzy or Walthrup trying to cave you in at 200 miles an hour.  No fist fights after the race if you weren't polite in the last lap.  Like most of the young men, who couldn't make it doing the real thing, Calaway did it out there where normal innocent people drove on Sundays.  And they were always inferior, always going too slow. 
     He overshot the truth a little when he tried to look at himself.  He wasn't so tough.  He knew that now as he saw his girl vanish into the fog.  Billy was afraid to follow.  He wouldn't have gone up there for two bucks, and the fact was, he wouldn't go for two thousand.  But they couldn't see.  It would be bad as hell if they saw. 
     Too fast.
     He and Sandra hadn't been together very long.  He often thought of losing her, but she was convenient.  She was comfortable.  She was easy about sex.   He was caught.  Coward.
     The leather jacket, the fast car, the whole show was a put-on but nobody knew.  Most of the time, even Billy didn't know. He believed in himself, the way a man believes that the mortgage will get paid somehow and that his wife will never leave him.  He believed because he couldn't face not believing.

    He needed to buy time.  The flashlight was always in the glove box, but he looked for it in the trunk.  He looked under the seat, swore loud enough for them to hear.  It was in the glove box, but he couldn't face that either. 
     The bulb gave a weak, sallow light that was only effective for a few feet but it would make a good club.  The sky had cleared again.  The moon feebly radiated through the fast moving clouds, which were large and fleecy.  It lit up the top of the fog that hung like clumps of dust devils all through the woods and around the house.
     "They're having a fucking party in that old shack," Billy grumbled, snapping the flashlight into his left palm.  He hoped he would be heard.  Some of his authority cut its way up the walk of flagstones.  His voice carried to the steps, up on the porch, to the door.  He made a sweep of the area with the piss-colored light, which had a professional appearance, but for the fact that the light didn't work.  The hair on the back of his nick quivered.  The roof of his mouth felt like wool, dry, sticky.  His hands grew slick.  The flashlight felt like a buttered pipe.

    The first step gave way under his boot and he fell.  Splinters shot into his palms and the skin of his elbows came loose right through the leather.  His flashlight rolled up to the door with a clatter. 
     They should have come out. 
     He knew they were just inside the door, crouching down.  The moment he went in, they would jump out and scare the shit out of him.  He straightened and slowly reached for the light.  Then he heard something.  Someone was humming.  It was a tune he didn't know, something from Santana but it was all wrong, like a fuzz-box.  Like going through a radio on reverb.
     "Okay you guys!  Time to stop the fun and games.  Unless you want fifty shots in the arm, Hammond!"  He pushed open the front door.  It creaked and swung in easily.  The humming was faint.  He stared into the kitchen, then went to the next room where he could see a closet with the door open just a crack.  He whispered, "Hammond, you faggot.  I'll break your back."  He pushed the closet door open with the end of the light.  Empty. 
     "Upstairs," he muttered. 
     The game was starting to annoy him.  He was wearing down.  The knob on the stairway door was stuck.  It was also sticky.  Billy gave it a yank.  The door was tight against the floor and made a loud scraping noise as it opened.  On the stairs, on each step, was a constellation of black dots. Another door at the top, sealed off the entry to the second floor.  He could still hear the humming.  He was getting angry and his heart rate was racing.  His stomach was soaking up adrenaline like a sponge.   The door at the top opened easily and he almost wished that it was locked.  But it wasn't.  It opened easily with just a forefinger. 
     Again, he swept the room with his useless light.  The dying beam revealed a bed and some other furniture, a dresser with a large oval mirror.  Two pillows were on the bed, fluffed up against the rose covered wall- paper.  Reflected in the mirror, a ball swung like the pendulum of an old clock, its momentum fresh.  Calaway forgot Tim Hammond.  He forgot the fifty punches in the arm.  On the bed, the pillows were not pillows.  They were bodies.  The two girls, who, hours before had been the hopes of a great evening, drinking partners, sex objects, were propped like souvenirs.  He stood for what seemed an eternity, rooted in place. 
     "Just get up” he said to them, “and everything will be fine," 
     "'No one left alive in haunted house.  Man in leather found all ripped to pieces and just..."'
     They resembled pillows because both had had their legs broken at the hips.      They were doubled in half, heels pressed tightly to their heads.  Legs and feet were bound with bristly hemp rope and the arms smashed at the elbows at horrible angles.  Nude and swollen, the girls were covered with cruel blackish-purple marks that tattooed their shoulders.
     "All broken up and hog-tied," Billy whispered, his belief totally suspended.  Their clothing had been shredded and stripped away, fragments of blue, red, pink, fabric scattered around the room.  The floor looked like a cutting table.  It took a few moments for Billy to realize that they wouldn't be jumping up to surprise him.  The bed was splashed dark red. 
     "Blood, fucking blood, fucking blood."
 Calaway's nervous system was a whirlpool of fear and excitation.  He absorbed the scene slowly, taking in every detail.  A clicking sound came from his closed throat that had begun as a scream. 
     Grey-white eyes gaped at him.  The eyes were beginning to dry in their sockets, a death's head grimace splitting the face.   Tim Hammond's head hung rotating from a rope threaded through his ear. The twine was formed into a neat bloody bow. 
     The head was humming.
     It was a tune he didn't know.  Sad and expressive, Mexican or Spanish, it was like something from Santana.  All wrong.  Too fast.
     He fell down the steps, smearing the black sprayed drops on the flowered wallpaper. 
     Too fast for conditions.

    Kirk entered the glass doors of the hospital.  His reflection brought back the memories of a lean, athletic, policeman, but the image in the glass was a face with jowls bulging over the collar, a great waistline barely held up with belt and suspenders, short legs, suit and pants slightly out of fashion.  But he wasn't the body; he wasn't the jacket or even the badge.  He was the job.  Norman didn't linger with his reflection.  It was an image that could be useful. 
      The unmistakable smell of alcohol and illness washed over him.  Urine and unwashed clothes blew from air conditioners, down the hallway, the aroma of the ill.  Cries and insane shouts of the patients came from somewhere like retarded, unwanted children in hidden rooms.  An old woman yelled out," Maria?  Maria?"  He heard it the moment he entered the door and it continued as he walked toward the nurse's station.  He knew it probably went on as long as the woman was awake.  Like Chinese Water Torture. 
     They noticed him.  They were wary and suspicious and recognized him as the man who had gotten into the dead woman's room.   He was a free man, not part of their domain and so there was that stigma of wellness that followed him, even though he would pass their tests.   That feeling flowed throughout both inmates and staff.  Who was crazy? He thought, as he looked into his own infirmity.  They were cautious of the little man with the flattop haircut. 
     The reception desk was not a busy place.  He looked fatter as he walked up because of the gray pants and white shirt.  The thin black tie just increased his girth.  People had an attitude about weight.   Once again he had the uncontrollable thought that he looked like Oliver Hardy. 
     "Good morning ladies," he said, full of cheerful good will.  "And how might you be this lovely day?"
     This couldn't be the same man.  The young nurse remembered the little prick that had gotten past her.   He left an impression that was hard to forget. 
      He said, "I have an appointment with Dr. Irun...Iran--"
     "Oh yes, Dr. Iranio," the nurse said, embarrassed by the nasty thoughts she'd had. 
     "If you could direct me to his office..."
     "Just follow the yellow line, then the blue.  You'll see his name on the door."
     "The yellow, and then the blue," he repeated.

      An expensive brass plate adorned the door. 

     DR. ILLANO IRANIO, D.D.P.

     Norman entered the outer office.  The secretary didn't look up.  He understood that she knew he was there.  She had glimpsed him briefly as he came in and decided to be aloof.  She was on the phone and from the tone of the conversation, it was not business.  The fact that he was here in person meant nothing, apparently.   The person on the other end was obviously more important.   It had been a long ride and his patience was already thin.  There was no way to tell what was about to happen or why he was even here. 
     He coughed.  "I have a ten-thirty."
     "Be with you in just a moment," she said without looking up again.  Like most office personnel and bureaucracy clones, this child was in need of a slight adjustment.  The girl was tall, handsome, with an enormous head of glossy raven hair that fell to the middle of her back.  Iranio's reception area was plush with abstract black marble sculptures gracing each corner.  The works were anthropomorphic shapes in transformation, deep black like flowing onyx.
     "Just have a seat," she said with a bored sigh.
 Norman watched her eyes and pointed with his right forefinger.  He touched the button on her phone and disconnected her call.  Then she looked up.  Her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened.
     "I have an appointment and I intend to keep it with or without you," Norman said.
     "Who the hell do you think--"
     "I think you need to announce me."
     She poked the intercom hard enough to break a nail.  When she spoke it was with surprising control.  "A Mr.--"
     "Detective Kirk."
     "--Kirk to see you."  She smiled a stone grin and motioned toward the door.
     Illano Iranio was young.  Norman was stunned by his appearance.  The man was a troll.  He had thick, black hair on his arms and a squat misshapen body.  Some type of dwarfism, but not quite the characteristic large head and short limbs.  Despite his outward demeanor, the psychiatrist had warmth in his eyes that seemed to assure compassion and intelligence. 
     "Please come in Detective.  Sit, please," the troll said, professional, Ivy League.  Just a hint of Latin accent lay underneath the polished English. 
     "Thank you Doctor, " Norman said.  "And how may I help you."
 The troll frowned; a troubled expression broke over his brow.  It was almost comical, a cartoon of an intellectual, holding back an impending message of doom.  He reached for a pack of cigarettes on the desk and offered one.  Kirk declined with a wave and a shake of his head. 
     "Do you mind?" Iranio asked.
     "Not terribly," Norman answered.  He hated cigarette smoke, though secretly he had always wanted to smoke a pipe.  The Doctor lit one and blew white smoke into the thin bars of sunlight streaming through the blinds. 
     "As I implied last night on the phone, I can be of help to you."
 He continued:  "The circumstances of Marta De Falvo's death...  You must understand that the medical community is somewhat Philistine in its view of--shall we say--ancient cultures, alternatives...  Mrs. De Falvo was Portuguese, as I myself am.  And so, I was able to be of some comfort in her state of mind."
     "Which was?"
     "Well, she was brought here to be treated for hysteria and she was quite violent."
     "I was here.  I saw that."
     "Yes, you see, there is something that you should know."
     Kirk pulled his notebook.  More to prod the little man than to write.
     "She was literally frightened to death.  She was the victim of a severely escalated delusion.  In cases like this--which are quite uncommon--fright can effect the Pneumogastric Nerve or vagus, coming from the Latin.   It is a large group of fibers that pass through the neck and end about here.  The doctor touched himself along side the ear.  It gives the ability of speech and especially breathing.  At times of extreme sensory input, the nerve can become frozen, damaged.  The victim dies from suffocation and respiratory arrest.  But there is something else, and this part we must keep just between the two of us?  The troll had his hands under his chin, the cigarette burning low, smoke curling up around his sloping brow. 
     "Agreed," Norman said.
     "There was something that she was afraid of."
     "Of?"
     "I use the word simply to assure that the threat to her was real.  At least she thought it was."
     Kirk held up his right arm.  He spread his fingers and rotated the wrist.      "Broke my wrist.  That would be real enough, I would say."
     "It touched you?"  There was a thinly veiled look of alarm on the Doctor's face.
     "Close enough to breathe dead cats under the porch."
     "I--I'm sorry, I don't--"
     "Bad breath."
     "Oh yes," Iranio followed.
     "You said it,” Kirk continued.
    "I said what?"
    "You said it when you referred to my...killer."

    A stale blanket of annoying smoke filled the room.  Directly overhead, the sun threw no shadows and Norman began to tire, no light shed yet on his questions.  He had eight pages of notes, written in a scrawl that only he could translate. 
    Then a small voice came from an ornate wooden box on the desk.  Iranio opened the box and the voice became clear.  It was a remarkable illusion.  Kirk could actually see a tiny person inside the box. 
    "What do you think about all this?" The voice asked.  The troll smiled, a toothy grin revealing rotted  incisors.  Kirk found it odd that such a successful man wouldn't care for his teeth.  The smile was almost carnivorous, somewhat threatening.  The troll snapped the lid shut, pressing one finger to the top.  The tiny voice changed perfectly, now muffled.  It was clever but Norman found it to be a waste of taxpayer's money. 
     "Don't you hear me?  I'm calling you."  Iranio played with a photograph next to his phone.  It was a picture of him, surrounded by children, a hideous ventriloquist dummy on his lap. 
     "So, let's get to the point," Kirk said sharply.  "Why did you call me?  Why am I here?"
     "Before Mrs. De Falvo died, she said something--one word.  Lobesomen."
     "Lobe--zom..." Kirk struggled with the word.
    "She saw something."
    "I don't get it."  Norman looked at his watch.
    "I say that she was sure she should be afraid.  And you say that it was real enough to break your bones.  But what Mrs. De Falvo saw and what you think are two very different things.  This is why you are here.  You came because you have no answers to crimes and horrors that you have never seen before, because you know things that you cannot reveal to your peers. You have a hunch.  Isn't that how you say it?”
    "That's how we say it.”
    "I am Portuguese.  I grew up in a small village along the southern coast.  The word she spoke is not new to me.  It was old when men like you first set foot on this soil.  It was whispered before Christ was born, in the plains and mountains of South America.  As a child, it came to me in the legends and children's tales.  My parents, my father...they were terrified of it.  To this day, my father won't even speak of it.  Never.  He makes the sign of the cross.  But the cross won't help.  You cannot know how surprised I was to hear it from a nurse.  To be spoken in the land of the English."
     "Excuse me Doctor.  I'm starting to get a little pissed off.  I don't want to hear about legends and your childhood."
     "But you do."
     "This has been a waste of my time, I'm afraid--"
     "Can't remember--uncanny sounds that come from nowhere--dogs perhaps--and other more...personal things.  You do want to hear.  You will go to the ends of the earth, as will others.  You will."
     Kirk removed the shots of Frank Holtz's back, the pictures of Sherry Gardner, close-ups of the knot, of the barn.  He spread them on the desk. Watching for the reaction, he saw what he needed. 
     "God in heaven," the doctor said trembling.
     "I hope the child is in heaven," Norman said.  "We've managed to keep this away from the media so far, but it has to come out.  Before it does, what can you say that could help me."
     The troll seemed about to cry.  "I knew about the murder, but I had no idea.  That is what it--this is what it does.  The mutilation is unmistakable.  Only farmers in my country use that type of knot.  This is a long story.  Please bear with me.  You see...the Lobesomen is a brujo, a man who could do spells.  At some time, back, so far that no one has written of it, something went wrong and a man changed the very nature of life itself.  It was a cast off, a mistake of magic and the bodies changed."
     Kirk broke in, "The officers at the scene heard, or thought they heard, things that were not really possible.  I experienced the same type of phenomena myself."
     "The brujo could become an animal.  A bird, a cat, anything, but one of them wanted more, and it turned out very wrong.  The men would fight it with a stick.  In my home, we always had a pot full of sharp sticks.  There was a hole in the door.  It stayed away from the towns, but went to the farms.  As a boy, I remember my grandfather, on the farm, at the door, fighting with a stick.  He would look through the hole, just the size of a pea, and try to stick the creature with the point.  It he could draw blood, it would die, go back to the world of men.  But if the blood would get on you, you would become the Lobesomen.      The sickness would continue."
     "The Lobesomen," Kirk said, trying on the word, the name.
     "Unbelievably powerful," Iranio went on.  "You must realize what this is.  This is a sorcerer, which is no longer a human being.  It would have evolved, even as we speak."
     Before he realized it, the words came out.  "How do I stop it?" Kirk was committed to the dream.  It challenged him even before he spoke.
     "Beyond anything we can understand.  Far beyond the meager five senses, this is a being of terrible power and intelligence.  If it is here, then we have a very bad problem.  It can exert irresistible control over the perception of a normal human being.  My grandfather held it in awe."
     "Why?  Why does it do this?  What motivates it?  It ties a victim by the leg.  It tears a child to pieces.  Why?"
     "Sheep.  It comes from a culture that lived on sheep.  There are herds everywhere.  It thinks, Detective Norman Kirk, that they are sheep."
     "How do I stop it?"
    "Wait until it comes.  Then use the hole and the stick."
     "Until it comes.  What makes you think it won't run, hide itself?  Will it go against an entire police force?"
     "It has no fear.  Lesser creatures have stood against your police force.  When it wants, it comes.  It calls.  And now it calls you.  It has a weakness."
    "And what is that," Kirk said.
     The Doctor's eyes became distant.  "I've never been sure," he replied.
    "That's just great."

     Three hours had passed.  The phone rang in the outer office.  It was for Kirk. 
     "For you Detective, on line three," Iranio said.  "I can leave if you like."
     "Not necessary.  But I do have more things to ask you.  I'm sure I've taken up too much of your time."  Norman put the phone to his ear.  "Kirk here," he said.  "How may I help you?"  He stroked the stubble of his crewcut.  Sadness, then disbelief played over his face.  Slowly he leaned to one side as though a weight was pressing him down into the chair. 
     "What the hell were they doing there?"  He was shouting, a habit his wife tried to get him to stop.  He began to flex the left hand, fingers reaching.  He became acutely aware of the throbbing in his other, inside the cast. 
     "You listen to me, Ace!" he boomed.  "You keep those yo-yo's away from the place--dammit to hell!  They're not going to hop all over that evidence.  I don't want them anywhere near that house."  He stood up; the phone pressed tightly to his ear, and began pacing back and forth, as far as the cord would allow.  His short thick legs stomped on the rug.  The secretary stuck her head in the door.  Iranio waved her away.  She looked at Kirk as she would a homeless vagrant in her boss's office.   Norman glanced at the little man, reminded of where he was. 
     "Has anyone called my wife or her sister?"  He paused again, listening.      "Don't," he said.  "No, nobody.  I'll do it.  Listen Ace; just keep everybody out of there, like I said.  Yeah, I'm sorry to ream you like that.  Yes, yes you did.  Right, forget it.  I know you wouldn't.  Don't touch anything and for God's sake, if the newspaper guys show up, keep them away.  Push'em around.  Yeah, that's it young man.  You too."
     He had begun with a rude and loud tone, then softened to that of a weak old man.  It had worked.  It had always worked too well.  Get them on their toes, and then hit them with the way it is. His time on the force had always been spent trying the world at large, safe for kids.   It was one thing he could do that was for real.  It was the one thing a cop should do.  He'd been out on a limb a hundred times to stop speeders and drug dealers; gone on record, put the bad guys on notice--the children are a protected species. 
     Now three more were dead.
     Dead at a crime scene he had just cleaned up. 
     Billy Calaway had been there.  He'd have a talk with Calaway. 
     "Doctor, can I trouble you with this?  I would like you to come to a crime scene with me.  And it's not likely to be pleasant."
     "Is it--?"
    "Very likely."
    The troll reached forward, pressed a button and said, "Cancel all my appointments."
     As they headed for the car, Kirk noticed that Iranios's office faced an open field.  He looked into the trees, the top of the building, searched the expanse of rolling hillside and the sky.  A dead field mouse lay in the grass, a tiny trickle of blood streaking the area under its nose.  In all that open air, there wasn't a bird in sight.  He stared at the mouse for a moment. 
      "Can either of you dudes spare me a dollar?"  The man was tall, lean, needed a shave and had the odor of six or seven days without a bath.  Iranio smiled and reached for his wallet.  Neither of them had seen the man coming.  When the man saw the wallet, he reached for it and, in a flash, he had it.  Then, with he was on his back.  He thumped to the parking lot like a full hefty bag and something cracked.  Kirk squatted down over him.  "Don't get up, ace."  He tried to rise and an elbow grazed his nose.  Kirk gently took the wallet and handed it back to Dr. Iranio.  The little doctor stepped back with a grin on his face and emitted a hissing cough like an old sick tomcat. 
     "Nice clientele," Kirk said. 
 
 

Calaway was a suspect.  He had been there.  That was definite.  He had not called it in for a few hours.  Like most drunk drivers he waited till dawn to report the incident.  Old habits die-hard.  But he had left his car.  Billy had walked or run all the dark way down Sunday Road to 611, a trek that might kill a man.  He was a pathetic sight, dysfunctional and in shock, even though he was sober and it was the nest day.  They got the general picture a little at a time.  Because of his long dealings with the police, every part had to be chiseled from him.  Questions were evaded and answers were tailored to keep Calaway from harm.   He had been a suspect all his life.
     There had been no sign of a struggle.  What frightened him most was that there had been no sound, just a tune from Santana.  Three people killed and not a peep. 
      When they found that one of the girls was the old man's niece, they were outraged.  The enemy had taken one of their own this time. They had underestimated this guy.  Like kids that play with a viper.

    The ride from Huntington took an hour.  Kirk tried not to alienate his passenger, and again didn't protest the smoking.  It was early summer and the trees began to turn darker each day.  The bloom was all over the hills. 
     "I don't get the connection with the sheep." Kirk said, cracking his wing to get more air.  "You say he thinks of them as sheep."
 The doctor held his cigarette between his middle fingers.  He inhaled almost as if he were drinking the smoke.  He savored it like wine.  Seated in an automobile, his proportions were more defined.  The man was put together in a way that suggested haste, like God had better things to do. 
     "Try," he said, "to think of consciousness as a type of gas.  The steam that comes from the cook pot is quite harmless.  But radon or carbon monoxide can kill.  Both are nothing but gas.   What is it that makes a frog or a small bird live?  What is the difference between the rabbit and the fox?  It is consciousness.  My colleagues at university will seldom consider the existence, much less the effect of shall we say...levels of spirit.  They would prefer to call it I.Q.  How well a man thinks is the measure of who he is, to them.   But intelligence is finite, limited.  Consciousness has no limit.  The rabbit can become the fox and the fox a lion.  What then can the lion become?  Just as there is no limit to love, there is unlimited evil.  The Lobesomen has no capacity for mercy and by its very nature seeks to vanquish the food source.  Perhaps the first came simply from a small society of sheep herders."
     "The food source?"
     "It must carry the essence of the first.  The first brujo was a sheepherder and that essence is carried through to this day--to this one. When I was a boy, I saw the remains of the victims. They were in a quiet place always, a place that was lonely. Children and young adults always hung by the feet upside down, clothes sometimes neatly folded, the blood drained and the flesh used and consumed. We fought as a family to rid the countryside of this hideous thing and we were successful. The lobishom has not walked the plateau above the sea for many years. " 
     "What about the noises?  The dogs and screaming children."
    A small muffled scream came from the glove box.
     "That's cute Doc, but it makes me nervous," Norman said.  "You should be on TV."
     "Too ugly," replied the troll.
     "A face for radio, huh?"  Norman thought for a moment.  "Hey, no offence.  Look at me."
     "A face for radio...that's good.  I never heard that."  Illano Iranio laughed, a cackle that grated on the nerves.
     "I think you know where we're going.  I just want you to nod yes or no to what you see.  If this thing, this man, is involved, I'll see that you get a ride back.  Then I want you to provide me with a report. I can’t pay you but you could be a big help.  Can you do that?"
     "Most certainly."
     "I saw it.  I guess you understand that."
     "No, you will never see it.  No one has ever seen the Lobesomen.   Its form is inarticulate.  There is no core but what I have described.  Like the stalking panther, it hides.  Like the hunter seeking to lure, it calls.   You blow into a little piece of wood and the bird comes.  What is that?"
     "A duck call?  Like a bird call?"
     "Yes, calling; it is calling."
     "So," Kirk said, "I got the creature from the black lagoon.  I love the part in the movie where the hard-nosed modern man comes to grip with the supernatural creature.  I'm not coming fast enough." 
     "I've seen that movie.  He gets the girl."
     "Everybody has her for a little while.   Listen, I can’t form this thing in my mind. I just can’t remember what I saw.  I couldn't describe it and it squirms in my memory like a thousand little snapshots.”
     "It always will.  To look is to die somewhat.  That is what the hole is for.   Diminish the field of view and the effect is less.  The strange thing about this brujo is that he is not a mindless brute.  My grandfather said that there is a beauty, poetry to its behavior.  It will come to the door and beckon.  It will dance for you.  When the time is right, it will die for you.  That is perhaps, the weakness, the only one it can have."
     "So, what happens next?"
     Illano Iranio stared out the window at the Delaware canal, at the black-green river.  Thick dark brows knitted together and his ropy lips pursed.  He shook his misshapen head and flicked the last of his cigarette out the window. 
     "My grandfather killed one. I was there that day and tried to watch but the effect was too much. It still flickers in my mind but I couldn’t tell you what I saw.  The old man suffered, and all around him were made to suffer.  No one will believe you until it's too late.  That should be very apparent, even now. I wear the mark of that day and will until I die."
     They slowed as Sunday Road appeared in the middle of the hillside.  Tires crunched onto the dirt ruts.  As the forest wrapped around them, Kirk began to feel that urge to twist.  The spinning, whirling, urge to look over his shoulder.

 
"And even now I can hear the wolves howling in the mountains as they did that fateful night, and they call my name, and the names of Others.  I fear for my flesh, but I fear for my spirit more. --Abdul Alhazred,
    "The Mad Arab"
    Necronomicon

"I've done some bad things."

--Henry Lee Lucas

It was not a good summer.
     The children, out of school, knew the feel of curfew, though not enforced, and the blanket of paranoia, though not fully formed. 
     Business was bad.  The horrors of the dead kept people indoors.  Only put-off tasks and necessities brought them out.  Mercer had the feel of gang-torn Los Angeles, not lazy Bucks County, late January, not steamy July.   The dismay was the same. 
     Anger and sadness hung over the separate funerals.  Kirk held back the tears while others wept openly.  He was a private man in a public job.  Not many had turned out, even for Sandra's wake, but their sympathies were there. Humidity was in the air, causing clothing to stick.  The intense green and open space of the cemetery, with tall, thin cypress trees, and the gray stone monuments seemed to flow around Norman Kirk and the mourners.  Under the green canvas tent, looking into the rectangular hole into which his niece was lowered, he felt with each inch, as she went deeper, that it was his fault.  He should have done more.  He should have anticipated.  His legendary other sense had failed and this sweet child was dead. 
     He looked at the faces.  His eyes roamed the lawn and the long wall that surrounded the grounds.  The murderer was there too.  Are you?  As though he would reach out into the light of day and rip you to pieces.  They didn't realize the extent of their terror.  They never would.
     Private fear wore the face of the bogeyman and each face was different.  Each was a private dread, born of bad childhood and molested eight-year-olds; bar fight stabbings and unpaid debt.  Some felt, secretly, that they deserved to be mutilated.  The hysterical foundation was laid and trust was the first amenity to go.  Nobody talked over the back fence anymore.  Telephone bills all around were reduced by half. Traffic in the streets was diminished and nobody went out, because he might be out there and he might get them too.
 

     Uniform heaps of snow and slush covered the towns and forests by the second or third snow.  Norman was admitted one week before Christmas.  Such irony, he thought.  It was the same hospital, Huntington State; the same room in which Marta De Falvo had died.  Would he die here too?
 He did a lot of thinking.  He suffered doubts about his abilities.  They said he was ready for retirement, getting soft upstairs, and they always said that, and they just kept on saying it until a guy did retire.  Well, he was a cop and every hero with a TV set had an opinion about cops. 
     It had come close.  A creature, a thing that could be invisible, that could change the way it looked; that had the annoying habit of becoming bullet-proof; had come close.  It had come and hurt his family.  He had made the mistake of presenting the case as he saw it to the state commissioner. His report had included all the details that any set of homicides would demand. He had done it by the book and the book had closed on him. The repercussions were such that it was recommended that he volunteer for psychiatric evaluation. Like a fool, he had told doctors about his experience.  The troll was right.  All around him were starting to suffer. 
     He did most of his best work in the little john.  His calculator was always within reach, whether in the tub or in bed.   He liked to approach crime mathematically, algebraically.  But the numbers failed.  Procedure failed.  Nothing fit--no pat solutions.  Carefully, he considered dialogue, cross-referencing character peculiarities, always weighing data and organizing it in a daily log.  He had learned higher math at the paper mill, as a kid.  Those had been formative years and they made him one hell of a police officer.
     When he filed his report, it was truthful.   And he paid for it. Never, in thirty years had he falsified a report.  First there was the humiliation of the review board, many of whom had come to resent Norman Kirk long before this, then the I.A.D. guys had a field day, then the commissioner had suggested a long stay in a short room.  He couldn't hope for more people to be killed, but it might bear him out.  He had no proof, no hard evidence and for some reason, they concluded that a dog had bitten Frank Holtz.  Holtz didn't think it was a dog, but he didn't see anything either.
     You will never see it.
     Winter passed and spring began again.  But no matter how the world tried to look new, the emerging blossoms and leaves became sinister.  Every newspaper and broadcast picked up the story.  A serial killer was stalking small towns in Bucks County.  There had been a guy who rode around years before with a dummy in his car, trying to pick up young girls.  Had even gotten to one of them.  Kirk had gotten to him.  The media picked up that story to go along with the present murders.  Kirk had efficiently kept details to himself throughout the years and the news people held a grudge.  They didn't mention him in connection with the dummy kidnapper.  Only that he was in the nuthouse for a rest. 
     No one had a clear picture.  No one had as yet seen the Lobesomen.   And as far as Norman P. Kirk was concerned, no one ever would.