“You don’t see at all,” Karyn told him. “You don’t believe Drago actually happened any more than my husband does. Any more than all the other people I’ve told about it.”
After his customary wait the doctor said. “Karyn, whether I believe or not isn’t important. What happened in the past or didn’t happen really doesn’t concern us. Our bag is the here and now. All that matters to us is how you feel about it.”
Karyn met the doctor’s sincere gaze. He was having a difficult time making the transition from the traditional Freudian to the trendy transactional school of analysis. Everybody’s got problems, she thought.
“What it makes me feel is scared shitless,” she said.
Pause.
“Why?”
“Because I know they aren’t all dead.”
“When you say ‘they’ you mean—”
“I mean the wolves,” Karyn supplied. “The werewolves.”
She watched closely for a reaction—the narrowing of the eyes, or the little quirk, which she had seen so often at the corner of his mouth. Dr. Goetz held his expression of friendly concern. He was good.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” he said.
“Doctor, I have told you about it.”
“Tell me again, if you think it would help.”
Hell, why not, Karyn thought. There was no pain in the telling any more, and that, at least, was an improvement. Maybe if she heard the story often enough herself it would become meaningless, the way a familiar word repeated over and over eventually becomes a nonsense sound.
She stood up again and walked back to the window. There, watching the peaceful scene down on the lake, she repeated the story of the damned village of Drago, and the six months she spent there with Roy Beatty.
She described the way it began, with the howling in the night. Then there had been the cruel killing of her little dog. She told of the strange people who had lived in the village, and the huge, unnatural wolves that had roamed the woods at night. In a quiet, controlled voice she spoke of the black-haired Marcia Lura, who had bewitched Karyn’s husband and finally taken him forever with the virulent bite of the werewolf. Finally she told of the escape from Drago as she and Chris Halloran had fled the burning village.
Dr. Goetz waited, then spoke. “You said they aren’t all dead. The wolves.”
“As we drove out of the valley with everything behind us in flames, I heard it again from off in the forest. The howling.”
Abruptly Karyn stopped talking and went back to her chair across from the doctor. “Telling the story doesn’t make it any better or any worse,” she said. “All it does is keep the memory fresh. What I want to do is put Drago out of my mind, now and forever.”
“I can understand that,” Dr. Goetz said reasonably. “And that’s what we’re working toward, isn’t it? But, Karyn, before we can finally put this idea out of your mind, we have to find out what put it in.
Karyn stared at him. She spaced out her words carefully. “What put this idea into my mind, God-dammit, is that it happened.”
“Yes, of course,” the doctor went on. “Maybe when you were a little girl there was some experience, something ugly, with wolves or large dogs.”
Karyn shook her head wearily. “No, Doctor, not when I was a little girl. My only traumatic experience with wolves came when I was a full-grown woman. Three years ago. In Drago. You’re telling me the same old thing, aren’t you, that it’s a delusion?”
“Delusion is a term we don’t use much any more. We understand now that things that happen in the mind are every bit as vivid, and often more damaging than what we call reality. I’m sure your experience in Drago is as real to you today as this room we are sitting in. The important thing, as I said—”
Karyn only half-listened as Dr. Goetz droned on in his silky, reassuring voice. He was saying the thing everyone else did. Namely, that she had imagined the whole Drago episode. Maybe in time he could convince her of that. If he could, he would be well worth whatever David was paying him. In the meantime, it did help a little to be able to talk.
There was a subtle change in the doctor’s tone, and Karyn saw his eyes flick over at the discreet little clock on his desk. Her hour was up.
3
Karyn drove slowly north over the Aurora Bridge toward Mountlake Terrace, where she and David had their home. Her thoughts, as usual when she left Dr. Goetz, were on Drago and what happened afterward.
There had been one moment of triumph at the very end when she had fired the deadly silver bullet into the head of the black she-wolf. But that small victory, like the escape with Chris Halloran, had lacked a ring of finality. Even as she and Chris had paused to look back on the valley in flames, neither of them had really believed it was over.
For six tempestuous months they had tried to pretend it was, and that they were just another ordinary couple. After sharing the horror of Drago, it had seemed a natural thing to stay together. How wrong they were.
For a time they had traveled aimlessly from place to place, living on pills and nervous energy. Before long their pent-up emotions were turned against each other. At the end of six months these two people, who had shared more in a day than many couples do in a lifetime, were living on the edge of violence. The most insignificant squabble could erupt in an ugly word battle. They were staying in a Las Vegas hotel when the final blowup came.
Karyn had spent the morning in their room. She had the air conditioner turned up full and wore a sweater buttoned to the throat as protection against the dry cold. Chris had gone down to the swimming pool early, after making only a half-hearted attempt at persuading her to come with him.
At noon Chris returned. He glanced briefly at Karyn and went into the bathroom. Not until he had showered, shaved, and dressed, did he speak to her.
“Do you want to go down and get some lunch?”
“Can’t we have something sent up?”
“Why?”
“I’d rather not leave the room, that’s all.”
“For God’s sake, Karyn, you can’t just sit up here and hide from the world like a frightened child.”
His words cut into her like a dull knife. She fired back, “I can do anything I want. Who are you to tell me what I can’t do? Nobody asked you to run my life.”
Chris’s eyes had turned dark and dangerous for a moment, then he whirled and stormed out the door. Karyn fought down the angry impulse to throw something after him.
The rush of blood through the veins made a roaring in her ears. She walked over to the window, parted the draperies, and blinked at the bright white Las Vegas sunlight. Twelve stories down, she could see people in the pool and on the deck around it. Everyone seemed to be laughing and having a fine time. Was she the only one in the world, Karyn wondered, who was miserable?
She let the draperies fall back across the window, and returned to the chair where she had sat all morning. She was still there, shivering with the cold, an hour later when Chris returned.
He closed the door firmly behind him and stood looking at her. “Why the hell don’t you turn the air conditioning down?”
“I like it this way.”
She could see him start to get angry, then, with an effort, relax.
“Karyn, we have to talk.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re destroying each other.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Cut it out, damn it. I’ve had all of this I can take.”
“Poor you.”
“This continual picking at each other is tearing me apart. It isn’t doing you any good, either. Have you looked at yourself closely in the mirror lately?”
“Well, thank you very much.”