David Morrell - The Totem

"Hello," a sleepy voice said. "Who, uh-"

"Rettig, this is Slaughter. Get Hammel and get out here."

"Chief? Is that you? I uh-"

"Rettig, don't ask questions. Just get out here."

"To the station? What time is it?"

"My place. Fast. I need you."

Slaughter repeated his instructions and set down the phone, hearing how the horses whinnied beyond tolerance. He started toward the windows on that side, reaching for a blind to pull it up and see why they were sounding like that. But the phone rang, and he stood immobile, one hand on the blind while he stared toward the phone. That god-damned Rettig. What's the matter with him? When Slaughter crossed the room and grabbed the phone, there wasn't anyone, however, just that same dead silence. "Tell me what you want!" he shouted to the mouthpiece, but the silence continued. Then he heard the dial tone again and scratching on the porch and only one horse out there now was whinnying. He faced the front door, his handgun ready, glancing at the window on the side that faced the horses. But he couldn't hear even one horse now, and as he scrambled toward the front blind, the scratching stopped. The night became terribly soundless.

Dunlap set down the phone. He was in his room, the camera and the tape recorder on the desk where he was sitting, his notes spread out before him. He was almost out of cigarettes. He frowned at the pint of whisky that he'd left here in the morning. Even though his body was in agony, he held firm to his promise to himself not to take a drink. The promise was a recent one, although there'd been others like it many times before, but this time he was absolute in his determination not to break it. He had walked back to his hotel from the park. He'd seen the mother and the father leave, had seen the medical examiner go with the body, and he'd known that Slaughter shortly would be turning on him. After all, he'd seen too much. He'd even taken pictures-of the grieving parents, of the body, of the medical examiner who looked so guilty that an image of him would be damning. Dunlap didn't know if Slaughter was as good a man as he appeared to be, but he'd seen even good men try a coverup if they were threatened, and the way those parents had reacted, Slaughter would feel threatened all right. Dunlap wasn't going to take a chance on him. He hadn't come across a story this strong in too many years, six of them at least, about the time that his drinking had gotten out of hand and the magazine had shifted him to minor stories. Now, though, he'd been lucky. What had seemed little more than a routine story had developed into something that would surely get his reputation back. Indeed if this situation got much worse-and he was positive it would-it might turn out to be among the ten best stories of the year, and he was not about to jeopardize his comeback. Actually he hadn't walked back to the hotel; he had run. He'd slowed on occasion, fighting for his breath, but mostly he had run the ten blocks to his hotel, knowing from the vantage point that the hill provided which way he had to go to reach the downtown section, and he'd often looked behind him just in case a cruiser might be coming, but there hadn't been one, and when he at last had reached the hotel and his room, the desk clerk downstairs frowning at him as he hurried up, he'd fumbled to unload his camera, looking for a place to hide the film. His room would be too obvious. He went out in the corridor and braced the cartridge behind a picture on the wall. He hid the tape from his recorder behind another picture. He had all their voices from the moment they had reached the ballroom to the instant when the grieving parents had accused the medical examiner of negligence. Oh, it was all there, every blessed detail, and he meant to keep it. Slaughter might come after it, but Slaughter wasn't going to get it.

Back inside his room, Dunlap had locked the door, and that was when his glance had settled on the pint of bourbon. He was moving toward it, even twisting at the cap, before he stopped himself. No, that was how he'd ended in this dump. He'd ruined every piece of luck he'd ever had by drinking, had nearly lost his wife and almost screwed up his career. If he got drunk now, he'd do something stupid, maybe talk too much when Slaughter came or even draw attention to those pictures in the corridor. For sure, he'd need his senses to keep up with what was happening. The time lost from a drunken stupor would fit the pattern, though. Like gamblers who kept losing, maybe that was what he wanted. To keep losing. Maybe something in him was determined to seek failure. Well, not this time. This time he was going to be a winner. He had lasted since the morning without booze, the first day he had managed that in years, and if he'd suffered this long, he could suffer just a little longer. Make it through the night. The melody to those words occurred to him, and he was laughing. Face this one hour, then the next. That was how the A. A. people were successful, wasn't it? Sure, take this one hour at a time.

But although Dunlap had laughed, his hands were shaking. He suspected he would throw up, and he set the bottle by the television, went into the bathroom, and drank some water. Hell, you're hungry, that's all. A little sick from all that running. But no matter the reason, he was close to throwing up. He stripped and showered, and that helped, the hot sting of the water flooding all the sweat and dust and tension from him, but he nonetheless was sick and wishing for a drink. The drink might make him even sicker, but he wanted it. Attraction and repulsion. So he put on fresh clothes. Why, he didn't know. He ought to go to bed, but he was thinking maybe he would take a walk. Instead he sat down at the desk and tried a first draft of some notes, just to flesh out what was on the tape and film. He smoked and scribbled his impressions, in no special order, just to get the words down, staring at the way his hand was shaking, and the sentences were scrawled so poorly that he almost couldn't read them. Why not just one drink? To brace you, get you through this. No, and glancing from the pint of bourbon, he kept smoking, writing.

Then he knew he had to get some sleep. He flicked the lights off, stretched out on the bed, and concentrated to relax his stiff, tense body. Hard, it trembled, and he eased the muscles in his feet, his legs, his torso, slowly moving toward his head. It might have been that he was even more fatigued than he suspected, or that slowly moving up his body was like counting numbers backward or repeating nonsense phrases, but his consciousness gave in before he ever reached his head. He woke in what he later learned was half an hour, almost screamed in the darkness but stopped himself. He found that he was sitting in the bed, that he was sweating, and he wavered to his feet, switching on the light. He saw numerous insects clinging to his window. He leaned against the wall and rubbed his forehead. He had seen that image once again, that strange, half-human, antlered figure. But he always had associated it with nights of too much drinking. DTs, bourbon, nightmares. This time, though, he'd dreamed it even though he'd been sober. When the dream had first happened to him, almost three years ago, he hadn't thought much about it. Just another crazy nightmare. But the dream had come back in a month, and then another month, and he'd been slightly bothered by it. After all, his dreams before were always varied, and although he reacted to them as he dreamed, they never lingered after he wakened. This dream, though, was like an imprint, always vaguely with him, haunting. It was never different, an upright antlered figure standing with its back to him, and then the figure turning slowly, its body twisted, its head aimed past its shoulder, staring at him. That was all. But once a month became twice and then three times, and lately he had dreamed it almost every night. He had thought of going to a doctor, but he knew that the doctor would advise him to stop drinking, and he wasn't ready for that. Hell, if all the drinking did was cause a few bad dreams, so what? He willed himself to keep from dreaming it, and for a month, the tactic worked, but soon the dream was back again, and maybe its persistence, not its nature, was what bothered him. A repetition like that wasn't normal, but the image on its own was hardly normal either, part man, part deer, part cat, God knows what all, and that grotesque beard and that upright body turning sideways, its paws up, its round eyes staring at him. It was horrifying, monstrous. More than that, it was hypnotic, powerful, like magic, as if it were waiting for him, drawing him, and one day he would see it. He was frightened by it, by the riddle that it represented. What was happening to him? If he kept seeing this thing, he would end up in an institution. Never mind an institution. He'd be in the crazy house. He couldn't stand this anymore.