The Wolfman Read Online Free PDF Page A

dunes in the cobbled turnaround. Even the stone hounds and wolves that stood like gargoyles on marble pedestals along the drive were gray with dust and strangled by vines.
    The carriage stopped and Lawrence hesitated before turning the door handle. Even though he knew that much would have changed since his boyhood, he had never expected this total descent into squalor and dissolution. The house itself had an abandoned air about it. Most of the windows were dark, a few had cracked panes, and from one empty frame on a top floor Lawrence could see finches flutter in, one after another, carrying twigs and worms.
    “ ’Ere you go, sir,” said the driver, hopping nimbly down. He cast an appraising eye at the hall but kept his own counsel as he pulled Lawrence’s expensive steamer trunk out of the boot. He carried it to the top of a flight of heavy stone stairs and left it standing on one end beside the door, then retreated hastily to the carriage. His charge had not yet emerged, so the driver folded down the wrought-iron step and opened the door. “Talbot ’all, sir.”
    Lawrence debated telling the driver to fetch back the trunk and get the hell out of this place. He tasted the words and how clean they would feel on his tongue, but then an old memory stole like a thief into his mind. Lawrence and Ben, a pair of boys playing at being pirates, running from the portico to the shelter of thetrees. Ben with a wooden cutlass, Lawrence with a tree root shaped like a boarding pistol.
    Where are you, Benjamin,
he wondered for the thousandth time since he had first read Gwen Conliffe’s desperate letter.
Come out, come out wherever you are.
He sighed and unfolded himself from the carriage and stepped down on the same flagstones across which those boys had run a thousand times. But that was before Hell came to Talbot Hall and all things merry and light had been torn away. Now he and his brother were grown men who had never once met face to face. Lawrence wondered if there would ever be a chance to walk these grounds with Ben, just a couple of young men sharing brandy and cigars and chatting about the separate worlds in which they lived. Lawrence feared that it would never happen, even if Ben was found hale and healthy. This place seemed drained of all of its potential for comfort.
    The driver, no lout, caught something of Lawrence’s air. “Shall I wait, sir?”
    Lawrence looked at him for a moment, lips pursed, but then he shook his head. “No, thank you. This’ll do.”
    He handed over a fistful of uncounted coins and the driver beamed a great smile and climbed back onto his carriage. The horses moved off sprightly as if happy to be quit of such a dreary place and soon even their echo had vanished away down the lane, through the arch, and out through the iron gates. Lawrence stood as still as the ancient trees until only silence rolled back toward him.
    “Ben? . . .” Lawrence called lightly, but not even the birds in the trees answered him. Lawrence sighed again and began the long climb up to the front door.
    The door was closed and Lawrence had neverpossessed a key. As a boy he hadn’t needed one, and he had never been here as a man. He knocked on the heavy wood.
    A chill wind sent dry leaves skittering across the steps as if even the moistureless debris of autumn wanted to flee this place. He turned and looked around, saw nothing, and knocked again.
    No one and nothing answered his knock.
    On a whim Lawrence tried the doorknob and was surprised when it turned under his hand, the heavy lock clicking, the oak panel yielding to a little pressure. Lawrence grunted and pushed it open and stepped in, leaving his trunk behind. Even though the carriage had gone, just knowing that the trunk was still outside made him feel that he still had the option of flight.
    He stepped inside, his eyes adjusting from the dappled sunlight to the gloom of the enormous entry parlor. Rich wood paneling covered the walls, paintings of old relatives