PART II: HARD BOILED
Just like that, the seemingly quiet town of Clearview was quiet no more.
Things changed dramatically in the wake of the attack. Officer Dirkdale and his team began conducting careful searches of the surrounding forest without much luck, asking anyone with further information to boldly come forward. More witnesses were interviewed. New suspects were cross-examined. But alas, not even an ephemeral whiff of the mystery attacker could be found. It was what we call in the trade; a loose-end.
And a real stinker of one at that…
Rumours of this so-called Wolfman had already surfaced some time prior to my arrival in Clearview, truth be told. There had been murmurings of an apparent wild-man roaming the forest at night, scaring off local drunks and young lovers alike as they sought refuge beneath the creepy canopies on the outskirts of town. Such stories were treated as little more than hearsay, at first. They sounded just like the kind of cock-and-bull crap plucked straight from a children’s fairytale. A fantastical falsehood designed to fool local kids into falling in line...
But of course, things didn’t stay that way for long. A man had been killed…an innocent man, no less. And now, the whole scenario was becoming more serious by the day. Suddenly all the local papers were filled with salacious stories on the anonymous wolf-like assailant, stoking the fires of panic stricken tittle-tattle all across town. It was all anyone could talk about. But I, even in light of everything that had just transpired, had other…more pressing matters to attend to.
It was Saturday night after all. And that only meant one thing.
My date with the lovely Lucy Labelle was just around the corner…
*
Looking back I must have appeared pretty naive to anyone peering in at the lone wolf confined behind the wheel of his car. There I sat in my little blue convertible. Parked up in a small alley overlooking Town Square, with a handful of evening passers-by making their way home for the night, and a thousand more wild thoughts rushing through my mind.
I had arrived early on the scene, equipped with a double tray set of expensive luxury chocolates, a bouquet of purple freesias mixed with white roses, and the best bottle of wine purchased from the all-night convenience store just across from my office. And to think they said that romance is dead! Dressed in my best second-hand suit and frantically running my fingers across the steering-wheel, I thought over the plan one final time in my head. You know, just to make sure nothing could go wrong with Lucy…
Everything was prepared to perfection. At first I would maintain a certain air of self-control, remaining classy and composed whilst I watched her gorgeous curls dazzle beneath the candle-lit moonlight. Such an act would only be for show, of course. For after our second…maybe third glass of wine, Lucy would surely see straight through my disguise and wrap her hands around me. She would tell me how much she hated the enduring distance put between us, and how her little heart jumped for joy at the thought of no longer being tied down to another man.
It would be foolproof. We would smile, laugh and converse within the heat of the night, unable to take our eyes off one another. Then, just as the waiters cleared their tables and sought to close the doors for the evening, we would throw our glasses to the floor in a fit of red-blooded passion, seeking only to lose ourselves within one another’s loving embrace…
…a man as desperate as I could never ask for more.
Yet time was moving briskly, too briskly. It was already 7:15pm and I was still shuffling restlessly in the seat of my car with soft raindrops now falling down around me. I sought to reassure myself that no one turns up on time these days. Not your postman, your dinner date, nor even the urgent heart transplant your doctor ordered six months ago. I needn’t have panicked. My eyes would be all over Lucy once she finally showed up.
Surely, there was no way I could miss her…
The next time I checked my watch it read 7:40…no, 7:45pm in-fact. My stomach suddenly let out an almighty growl, forcing me to curse the fact that I had rather absentmindedly skipped lunch that day. I subsequently turned on the radio in an attempt to pass the time. Meanwhile, a wandering hand of mine reached for the box of chocolates still sitting innocently upon my lap…
“…this awful, awful business is becoming more inconceivable by the minute. The police are running around the clock trying to find out who did this. They’ve placed the entire forest under their careful watch, prohibiting anyone without the required authorisation from entering! There are watch-posts set up all over the place…and what’s more Derek, I can’t even begin to imagine how terrible this must be for the family of that poor man…”
“The family!? What about the rest of us? The whole town is almost too scared to leave their homes after what happened! This whole affair with the Wolfman, or whatever the hell they’re calling him…I never for one second believed that anything like this would ever occur…it’s just…well, it’s absolutely crazy!”
I stayed hunkered down in the car, staring out wistfully as the bleak radio voices continued to fill the void…
“I know, but that poor man…when I saw his body in the papers I almost, well…it doesn’t bear thinking about. I for one trust Officer Dirkdale and his team to get to the bottom of this mess. If there’s one man capable of sorting out this mystery, it’s him! Don’t you agree, Derek? Tell me, who do you think could be behind this vicious attack?”
“Pfft. Who cares!? Personally…I don't give a damn. Whoever did this is pure evil, plain and simple. I just want to see that deranged nutcase rot in the nearest godforsaken hellhole they can find after what he’s done!”
“Please Derek, mind your language…”
“I’m sorry, but the sooner they find the attacker…the sooner they get their hands on the good for nothin' son of a bitch, the better! Listen to Officer Dirkdale’s orders, people…stay the hell away from that forest if you know what’s good for you! That’s all I have to say on the matter…”
"...but, Derek, why do they call him the 'Wolfman' in the first place?"
"Come on, isn't it obvious? He's big, built like an ox apparently! He's hairy too, they say...and get this, Shiela, he's got eyes like a goddamn werewolf! What more is there to know!?"
Enough with that, I told myself. I already had plenty to think about without those incessant radio news anchors bleating on as such.
It was time I found Lucy...
The movement inside Town Square had started to die down significantly as the evening drew on. To the point where each individual face could be spotted shuffling across the tiles, and each individual voice could be heard cawing drunkenly in the distance. Yet, there was still no sign of Lucy. It was already close to 8pm. Where the hell was she!?
For a while I just sat there, twiddling my thumbs and slowly making my way through the rather palatable box of treats intended for my date. One chocolate became two. Two became four. And four, well…soon enough the whole damn box became consumed in a fit of tireless frenzy. I was left with nothing to show for myself except a racing heartbeat and a minor bout of sugar-rush. My evening had hardly gone according to plan, and my hopes were starting to fade…
A series of wide-eyed couples soon waltzed by walking hand-in-hand. As if to mock me. As if to say; '...look at that lonely idiot in his car over there! Doesn't he look sad?'. I attempted to pay them as little mind as possible, but it was difficult. Instead, I wondered what Coburn would have done. Thinking back to his marvellous acting debut, Looking for Mable...
Back then, Coburn played the role of a young police officer tasked with finding 'the most beautiful girl in the state'. Officer Tucker was his name. His character searched high and low for the runaway suspect after being given the task by a sweet, elderly neighbour friend. It was romp, from what I remember. A real, happy-go-lucky affair! In the end, however, the girl turns out to be none other than a little border collie dog, called Mable. And the whole crew go on to live happily ever after in their idyllic suburban homestead, like nothing ever happened.
Of all the movies, and of all the moments, I don't know why I happened to think of that one. But still, it served to clear my mind somewhat.
If only for a short while...
Like the box of chocolates now succumbed to the weary pit of my stomach, soon the entire bottle of red wine had also been emptied out and rudimentary disposed of on the passenger’s seat of the car. I could not wait any longer to wind up in Lucy’s loving arms. The thought of those pretty round eyes glistening beneath the blaze of yellow street lights was one of heavenly proportions. But yet, so are most fancy delusions when inebriated with a full bottle of cheap booze flowing through your veins. I was drunk. And I was alone.
Pretty soon I stopped looking at my watch. It only made my heart beat faster. A horrible sinking feeling then made itself known from the depths of my gut, as a flurry of questions proceeded to prance around my brain and fill up my thoughts. Had I shown up on the wrong day somehow? Did something terrible happen to Lucy on her way to see me? I began to swat the doubts away with my hands, picking them off one by one like a man plagued by an onslaught of imaginary flies. Yet, it didn’t stop them from coming. Maybe the girl had forgotten all about our date? Or worse still…maybe she had found someone else?
Slowly but surely, the cold hard reality of rejection began to rain down on me. The thought of Lucy sauntering around town with another man on her arm soon rose to the forefront of my battered mind and stayed there, making me feel truly sick to my stomach. Suddenly all became clear. The penny had finally dropped, as it were. And it dropped with all the force of a bowling ball right down upon my head.
I remained slumped behind the wheel of my car, bemoaning my fortunes.
It was over, dear reader.
My night with Lucy had never truly begun…
*
As more time passed it only served to remind me what a miserable chump I must have been. I had played the role of the brokenhearted fool believing in his own happy-ending. The kind of happy-ending that even in our dreams, appears but a distant blip on the horizon.
In reality, I was nothing but a loser you see. A jumped up little clown lamenting in his own sorrow. For just like that poor mixed-up circus clown dressed in his painted smile and succumbed by his silly ways, the joke was on me that night. Lucy had made sure of it.
With a few choice words and several slammed fists down upon the dashboard, I subsequently cursed myself for ever winding up in this sorry dump of a town…
…but that’s when I felt it.
In search of my trusty pack of cigarettes, my old friends who had never let me down, I reached inside my inner-jacket pocket and found something altogether different. I pulled the paper out with what I can only assume must have been a rather bemused look on my face, as the words ‘Helping Hand Society’ jumped straight back at me.
It was the strange pamphlet given to me by the smiley-faced survey girl just a few days prior, detailing the events of their so-called self-help meeting due to take place that very evening...
The Helping Hand Society
by Dr Roman Reynard
In conjunction with the Movement of Healthy Minds and Happy Faces
Town Hall, Upper Floor
8pm-10pm
There I was. In the right place...at exactly the right time…with the prospect of saving my night from more hours spent languishing within the heartache of my own plummeting sense of self-worth. It was as if the whole thing had worked out like magic. A cruel, senseless kind of magic. Lucy had deserted me. Love had deserted me. And now, I had no place else to escape to on account of being far too intoxicated to drive.
What were the chances, eh?
After another twenty minutes of hopelessly waiting around for my reluctant angel to arrive, my usually reliable supply of cigarettes eventually ran out on me. I swiftly concluded that someone at the ‘Helping Hand Society’ would have surely been able to hook me up with more. And with that simple twist of fate, dear reader, my mind was made up for good.
If there was any poor soul down on his luck and in need of a helping hand that night…
…it was surely a man as desperate as I.
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