Cycle of the Werewolf   ::   Кинг Стивен

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“Kid's testimony is just no damn good 'tall.”

In his disgust and disappointment over the deposition taken from Marty Coslaw at the home of Marty's aunt and uncle in Stowe, Constable Neary has also overlooked this line: “Four of them went off at the side of his face—I guess you'd call it a face-all at once, and I guess maybe it put his eye out. His left eye.”

If Constable Neary had chewed this over in his mind-and he hadn't-he would have laughed even more contemptuously, because in that hot, still August of 1984, there was only one townsperson sporting an eyepatch, and it was simply impossible to think of that person, of all persons, being the killer. Neary would have believed his mother the killer before he would have believed that.

“There's only one thing that'll solve this case,” Constable Neary says, jabbing his finger at the four or five men sitting against the wall and waiting for their Saturday morning haircuts, “and that's good police work. And I intend to be the guy who does it. Those state Smokies are going to be laughing on the other side of their faces when I bring the guy in.” Neary's face turns dreamy. “Anyone,” he says. “A bank teller… gas jockey… just some guy you drink with down there at the bar. But good police-work will solve it. You mark my words.”

But Constable Lander Neary's good police work comes to an end that night when a hairy, moon-silvered arm reaches through the open window of his Dodge pickup as he sits parked at the crossing-point of two dirt roads out in West Tarker's Mills. There is a low, snorting grunt, and a wild, terrifying smelllike something you would smell in the lion-house of a zoo.

His head is snapped around and he stares into one green eye. He sees the fur, the black, damp-looking snout. And when the snout wrinkles back, he sees the teeth. The beast claws at him almost playfully, and one of his cheeks is ripped away in a flap, exposing his teeth on the right side. Blood spouts everywhere. He can feel it running down over the shoulder of his shirt, sinking in warmly. He screams; he screams out of his mouth and out of his cheek. Over the beast's working shoulders, he can see the moon, flooding down white light.

He forgets all about his. 30-. 30 and the. 45 strapped on his belt. He forgets all about how this thing is psycho-fuckin-logical. He forgets all about good police work. Instead his mind fixes on something Kenny Franklin said in the barber-shop that morning. Maybe it's some kind of disguise this fella puts on. Like a mask and all, you know.

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