Night Freight

"Some women hate the idea of living alone."

Jerry's head waggled on its neck-stalk. "It isn't that," he said. "Verna doesn't believe in divorce. Never has, never will. Till death do us part—that's what she believes in."

"So what're you going to do?" I asked him.

"Man, I just don't know. I'm at my wits' end." He drank the rest of his beer in broody silence. Then he unfolded, wincing, to his feet. "Think I'll go back home now. Have a look in the attic."

"The attic?"

"See if I can find my old service pistol. A gun really is the best way to do it, you know."

After he was gone Mary Ellen said, "I don't like this, Frank. He's getting crazier all the time."

"Oh, come on."

"He'll go through with it one of these days. You mark my words."

"If that's the way you feel," I said, "why don't you try talking to Verna again? Warn her."

"I would if I thought she'd listen. But I know she won't."

"What else is there to do, then?"

"You could try talking to Jerry. Try to convince him to see a doctor."

"It wouldn't do any good. He doesn't think he needs help, any more than Verna does."

"At least try. Please, Frank."

"All right, I'll try. Tomorrow night, after work."

When I came home the next sweltering evening, one of the Macklins was sitting slumped on the front porch. But it wasn't Jerry, it was Verna. Head down, hands hanging between her knees. It surprised me so much I nearly swerved the car off onto our lawn. Verna almost never sat out on their front porch, alone or otherwise. She preferred the glassed-in back porch because it was air-conditioned.

The day had been another hundred-plus scorcher, and I was tired and soggy and I wanted a shower and a beer in the worst way. But I'd promised Mary Ellen I'd talk to Jerry—and it puzzled me about Verna sitting on the porch that way. So I went straight over there from the garage.

Verna looked up when I said hello. Her round, plain face was red with prickly heat and her colorless hair hung limp and sweat-plastered to her skin. There was a fu

"Frank," she said. "Lord, it's hot, isn't it?"

"And no relief in sight. Where's Jerry?"

"In the house."

"Busy? I'd like to talk to him."

"You can't."

"No? How come?"

"He's dead."

"What?"

"Dead," she said. "I killed him."

I wasn't hot anymore; it was as if I'd been doused with ice water. "Killed him? Jesus, Verna—"

"We had a fight and I went and got his service pistol and shot him in the back of the head while he was watching TV."

"When?" It was all I could think of to say.

"Little while ago."

"The police . . . have you called the police?"

"No.

"Then I'd better—"

The screen door popped open with a sudden creaking sound. I jerked my gaze that way, and Jerry was standing there big as life. "Hey, Frank," he said.

I gaped at him with my mouth hanging open.

"Look like you could use a cold one. You too, Verna."

Neither of us said anything.

Jerry said, "I'll get one for each of us," and the screen door banged shut.

I looked at Verna again. She was still sitting in the same posture, head down, staring at the steps with that fu

"I know about him killing me all the time," she said. "Did you think I didn't know, didn't hear him saying it?"

There were no words in my head. I closed my mouth.

"I wanted to see how it felt to kill him the same way," Verna said. "And you know what? It felt good."

I backed down the steps, started to turn away. But I was still looking at her and I saw her head come up, I saw the odd little smile that changed the shape of her mouth.

"Good," she said, "but not good enough."

I went home. Mary Ellen was upstairs, taking a shower. When she came out I told her what had just happened.

"My God, Frank. The heat's made her as crazy as he is. They're two of a kind."

"No," I said, "they're not. They're not the same at all."

"What do you mean?"

I didn't tell her what I meant. I didn't have to, because just then in the hot, dead stillness we both heard the crack of the pistol shot from next door.

I've always been fascinated by the werewolf legend. In the late seventies I edited an anthology of quality stories built around the theme, Werewolf!, but it wasn't until 1991 that I was able to work up a satisfactory plot for a lycanthropic tale of my own. The impetus was an invitation to contribute to an anthology called The Ultimate Werewolf, edited by Byron Preiss; "Ancient Evil" was the result of that and a considerable amount of head-scratching and brain-cudgeling.

Ancient Evil

L isten to me. You'd better listen.

You fools, you think you know so much. Spaceflight, computer technology, genetic engineering . . . you take them all for granted now. But once your kind scoffed at them, refused to believe in the possibility of their existence. You were proven wrong.

You no longer believe in Us. We will prove you wrong.

We exist. We have existed as long as you. We are not superstition, We are not folklore, We are not an imaginary terror. We are the real terror, the true terror. We are all your nightmares come true.

Believe it. Believe me. I am the proof.

We look like men. We walk and talk like men, in your presence. We act like men. But We are not men. Believe that too.

We are the ancient evil. . . .

They might never have found him if Hixon hadn't gone off to take a leak.

For three days they'd been searching the wooded mountain country above the valley where their sheep grazed. Tramping through heavy timber and muggy late-summer heat laden with stinging flies and mosquitoes; following the few man-made and animal trails, cutting new trails of their own. They'd flushed several deer, come across the rotting carcass of a young elk, spotted a brown bear and followed its spoor until they lost it at one of the network of streams. But that was all. No wolf or mountain lion sign. Hixon and DeVries kept saying it had to be a wolf or a mountain cat that had been killing the sheep; Larrabee wasn't so sure. And yet, what the hell else could it be?

Then, on the morning of the fourth day, while they were climbing among deadfall pine along the shoulder of a ridge, Hixon went to take his leak. And came back after a few minutes all red-faced and excited, with his fly still half-unzipped.

"I seen something back in there," he said. "God-damnedest thing, down a ravine."

"What'd you see?" Larrabee asked him. He'd made himself the leader; he had lost the most sheep and he was the angriest.

"Well, I think it was a man."

"You think?"

"He was gone before I could use the glasses."

"Hunter, maybe," DeVries said.

Hixon wagged his head. "Wasn't no hunter. No ordinary man, either."

"The hell you say. What was he then?"

"I don't know," Hixon said. "I never seen the like."