فصل 28

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The grass was damp, so it bent beneath my feet and made no sound. When I reached the last van before the wolf-man’s cage, I stopped and listened.

There was a soft jangling sound, as though heavy chains were being lightly shaken.

I stepped out from under cover.

There were dim lights on either side of the wolf-man’s cage, so I was able to see everything in perfect detail. He’d been wheeled back here after his act, like he was every night. There was a slab of meat in his cage, which normally he’d be feasting on. But not tonight. Tonight he was focused on something different.

There was a big man in front of the wolf-man’s cage. He had a huge pair of pliers with him and had cut some of the chains that were holding the door shut.

The man was trying to unwrap the chains but wasn’t doing very well. He swore softly to himself and lifted the pliers to cut through another link.

“What are you doing?” I shouted.

The man jumped with shock, dropped the pliers, and spun around.

It was, as I had guessed, R.V.

He looked guilty and scared at first, but when he saw I was alone he grew in confidence.

“Stay back!” he warned.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Freeing this poor, abused creature,” he said. “I wouldn’t keep the wildest of animals in a cage like this. It’s inhumane. I’m letting him go. I called the police — they’ll be out here in the morning — but I decided to do a little work of my own beforehand.” “You can’t do that!” I shrieked. “Are you crazy? That guy’s savage. He’d kill everything within a five-mile radius if you let him out!” “So you say,” R.V. sneered. “I don’t believe that. It’s been my experience that animals react according to how they’re treated. If you treat them like crazy monsters, they’ll act that way. If, on the other hand, you treat them with respect, love, and humanity . . .” “You don’t know what you’re doing,” I told him.

“The wolf-man isn’t like other animals. Walk away from there before you do any real damage. We can talk it over. We can —” “No!” he screamed. “I’m through talking!”

He spun back to the chains and began struggling with them again. He reached into the cage and tugged the thickest chains through the bars. The wolf-man watched him silently.

“R.V., stop!” I shouted, and raced over to stop him from opening the door. I grabbed his shoulders and tried pulling him away, but I wasn’t strong enough. I punched him in the ribs a few times, but he only grunted and doubled his efforts.

I grabbed for his hands, to pry them off the chains, but the bars were in the way.

“Leave me alone!” R.V. yelled. He turned his head to speak to me directly. His eyes were wild. “You won’t stop me!” he screamed. “You won’t prevent me from doing my duty. I’ll free this victim. I’ll see justice done. I’ll —” He stopped ranting all of a sudden. His face turned deathly white and his body shuddered, then went stiff.

There was a crunching, munching, ripping sound, and when I looked inside the cage, I realized the wolf-man had made his move.

He’d sprung across the cage while we were arguing, grabbed both of R.V.’s arms, jammed them in his mouth, and bitten them off below the elbows!

R.V. fell away from the cage, shocked. He lifted his shortened arms and watched as blood pumped from the holes at the ends of his elbows.

I tried grabbing his lower arms back from the mouth of the wolf-man — if I could retrieve them, they could be stuck back on — but he moved too quickly for me, leaped back out of reach, and began chewing. Within seconds the arms were a mess, and I knew they’d never be any good again.

“Where are my hands?” R.V. cried.

I switched my attention back to him. He was staring at the stumps that were his arms, a funny look on his face, not yet feeling the pain.

“Where are my hands?” he cried again. “They’re gone. They were there a minute ago. Where did all this blood come from? Why can I see the bone inside my skin?

“Where are my hands?” He screamed this last question at the top of his lungs.

“You have to come with me,” I said frantically. “We have to take care of your arms before you bleed to death.” “Stay away from me!” R.V. yelled. He tried raising a hand to shove me back, then remembered he didn’t have hands anymore.

“You’re responsible for this!” he shouted. “You did this to me!” “No, R.V., it was the wolf-man,” I said, but he wasn’t listening.

“This is your fault,” he insisted. “You took my hands. You’re an evil little monster, and you stole my hands. My hands! My hands!” He began screaming again. I reached for him, but this time he brushed me aside, turned, and ran. He tore screaming through the camp, his blood-drenched half-arms raised high above his head, yelling as loudly as he could, until he vanished into the night.

“My hands! My hands! My hands!”

I wanted to run after him but was afraid he might attack me. I ran off to find Mr. Crepsley and Mr. Tall — they’d know what to do — but was stopped dead in my tracks by a worrying growl behind me.

I turned slowly. The wolf-man was at the door of the cage, which was swinging wide open! He’d somehow removed the last of the chains and freed himself.

I remained perfectly still as he stood and grinned viciously, his long, sharp teeth glinting in the dim light.

He looked to the left and to the right, stretched out his hands, and grabbed the bars on either side. Then he crouched down low and tensed his legs.

He sprang, propelling himself toward me.

I shut my eyes and waited for the end to come.

I heard and felt him land about a foot in front of me. I began to say my final prayers.

But then I heard him flying overhead and realized he’d bounced over me. For a couple of terrifying seconds I waited for his teeth to bite through the back of my neck and gnaw my head off.

But they didn’t.

Confused, I turned, blinking. He was racing away from me! I saw a figure ahead of him, running quickly between the trailers, and realized he was after somebody else. He’d passed me up for a tastier meal!

I took several stumbling steps after the wolf-man. I was smiling and silently thanking the gods. I couldn’t believe how close I’d just come to death. When he’d leaped through the air, I was sure — My feet struck something, and I stopped.

I looked down and saw a bag. The person the wolf-man was chasing must have dropped it, and for the first time I wondered who it was that the wild wolf-man was after.

I picked up the bag. It was the kind you carry over one shoulder. It was full of clothes, which I could feel through the cover. A small jar fell out as I turned the bag around. Retrieving it, I opened the lid and caught the bitter smell of . . . pickled onions!

My heart almost stopped. I began searching furiously for a name tag, praying the pickled onions didn’t mean what I feared.

My prayers went unanswered.

The handwriting, when I found it, was neat but un-joined. The writing of a child.

“This bag is the property of Sam Grest,” it said, and his address was just beneath. “Hands off!!” it warned at the end, which was pretty ironic given what had happened a minute or so earlier to R.V.

But I didn’t have time to laugh at my twisted, dark joke.

Sam! For some reason he snuck out here tonight — probably to stow away with the Cirque — and must have seen and followed me. It was Sam the wolf-man’s beady eyes had spotted, standing behind me. It was Sam running for his life through the camp.

The wolf-man was after Sam!