The power of the moon on animals and people is well known. Passing over the parallel between a woman’s monthly cycle and the phases of the moon, we note the predominance of industrial accidents when the moon is at its fullest, the tendency of dogs and other canine animals to bay at it, of lunatics to do the same. Perpetuating ancient myth, we link the moon with love and with fertility. We speak of harvest moon. We speak of someone’s being moonstruck. The very motion of the earth, its tides and shifting subzones, are related to the moon. We even set aside one day in worship of it, Monday, what in ancient times was Moon day.

Jacob Steiger,
The Pathology of Madness

INTRODUCTION

The Totem, my fourth novel, was published in 1979. These days, I’m known for my thrillers about international intrigue and suspense (The Brotherhood of the Rose, The Fifth Profession, Assumed Identity, and Desperate Measures, for example), but in the early stages of my career I experimented with a variety of formats, all linked by action. My first two novels, First Blood (1972) and Testament (1975), were hunter-hunted chase stories. My third, Last Reveille (1977), was a historical western. For The Totem, I decided to work within another action format—horror.

Why was I attracted to horror? Well, there’s an adage among novelists—”write what you like to read.” I’ve always been a fan of horror. Some readers, I know, steer away from the genre because horror stories are often based upon supernatural premises that are patently unbelievable. But horror doesn’t have to be about ghosts, zombies, and children of the devil. To me, the main requirements are that it engage a dark side of my imagination and that its tone be ominous and brooding. Thomas Harris’s realistic horror in The Silence of the Lambs (1988) fits into the category just as effectively as does Oscar Wilde’s fantasy-based The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). As a youth, I made no distinction between supernatural and nonsupernatural horror, however. Some of my happiest boyhood nights were spent chewing my fingernails while watching “creature features” on television. My favorite teenage bedtime reading was Poe, Lovecraft, Bradbury, etc. In college, I continued my interest and learned the traditions of the form, especially the psychological horror contributed by Henry James.

In the decade before I started writing The Totem, there had been a surge of critical and popular interest in horror, largely due to such influential bestselling novels as Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby (1967), William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971), Thomas Tryon’s Harvest Home (1973), and Stephen King’s ’Salem’s Lot (1975). The latter book, in particular, struck me as being so fresh and exciting that I wished it would never end. An intriguing cross between Dracula and Peyton Place, King’s novel dealt so innovatively with the subject of vampires that I wondered if a parallel topic, werewolves, might be worth exploring in the hope that I could find a new approach.

As is my custom, I went to my local library and began extensive research. But to my frustration, after dozens of books, I discovered nothing about lycanthropy that I hadn’t already known. Silver bullets. Mysterious gypsies. Ominous curses. All tediously familiar. The last thing I wanted was to repeat what had already been done. Discouraged, about to give up, I chanced upon two items that made the difference.

The first was in my morning newspaper, a bizarre account of animals, especially cattle, that had been found inexplicably eviscerated in alarming quantity and frequency throughout the American West. (These reports have continued to this day. In 1994, as I write this introduction, my local newspaper has been printing a long series about mysteriously eviscerated cattle found near where I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.) The second item was in the last research book that I studied. On the final pages of that dusty, tattered volume, I found myself staring in fascination at an article by an anthropologist with a medical background who proposed a unique explanation for the origins of both the vampire and werewolf myths. I don’t want to ruin the suspense of my novel, so I won’t tell you what that explanation was. It’s enough to say that I immediately sat at my typewriter and that my topic had changed, no longer werewolves but an all-too-real terror. (These days, it’s even more terrifying because it is timely.)

Because of those eviscerated animals in the American West, my choice of locale became obvious. A few years earlier, doing research for Testament, I had traveled west to attend a wilderness-survival school in the mountains of Wyoming. That state with its colorful towns surrounded by rugged peaks seemed ideal for my purposes, a chance to depict a seldom-used setting in this type of fiction and avoid the familiar creaky-stair traditions of New England horror.

As in Testament, I made considerable use of Jungian archetypes, trying to evoke the mythic power of mountains, forests, and caves. I was also able to indulge my obsessive interest in prehistoric cave art (I had collected numerous books on the subject and would later return to it in 1991 in The Covenant of the Flame). The nightmare—“part man, part cat, part wide-antlered elk”—that afflicts The Totem’s alcohol-ravaged reporter is based upon an actual Ice Age image known as the Sorcerer, located in the Trois Frères cave in France.

Nathan Slaughter, my main character, struggles with a problem that dramatizes the novel’s theme—the value of being a professional, the need to maintain control in every aspect of his life. Having endured an excruciating real-life nightmare, the worst he could imagine when he was a policeman in Detroit, Slaughter suffered an eventual nervous breakdown and retreated to what he desperately hoped would be security and peace in the remote town of Potter’s Field in Wyoming. But now, after having reconstructed his defenses, he suddenly confronts a horror far beyond any that Detroit had taught him to expect. Fear struggling with pride—that is Slaughter’s burden. The triumph of the human spirit is what he eventually exemplifies. Other characters—the veterinarian, the reporter, and the medical examiner—share the same turmoil and react in contrasting ways.

The textual history of this novel is a drama in itself. One of the first things I learned as a writer was when in doubt don’t throw any pages away. That rule has frequently been of help, especially when due to overfamiliarity with a manuscript I edited a book too stringently, taking out scenes that shouldn’t have been omitted, needing to go back and reinsert them, grateful that I had saved the original versions. My filing cabinets are crammed with material that I eliminated from various works. No matter how long ago those works were published, I continue to save the files.

As a consequence, what you are about to read is, in a sense, “a found book.” In 1991, the British publisher Headline decided to reissue The Totem, which had first been released in hardback by the American publisher M. Evans in 1979 and had subsequently been reprinted by Fawcett in paperback one year later. The hardback was eventually discontinued. By the end of the eighties, so was the paperback. My memory of the story dimmed.

Thus when Headline suggested that it might be interesting for me to write an introduction to its new edition, I decided that I had better reacquaint myself with the text in order to be accurate about what I was introducing. But when I pulled The Totem off the shelf and studied it, I discovered to my dismay that the book I remembered was not the book that had been published. So much was different. So much was missing. Where was this scene, and where was that? I asked myself with increasing shock.

Abruptly a barrier in my memory fractured. I suddenly recalled that when I had submitted The Totem in the late seventies, my editor had not been pleased. “It’s too big, too sprawling,” he had said. “Where’s the love interest? How come it takes so long to introduce your main character? Why are there so many other characters?” Given the ultimatum that if the novel wasn’t changed it wouldn’t be accepted, I reluctantly produced an alternate version of The Totem, half as long, twice as fast, with my main character appearing on the first page, and yes, with a love interest.

Not that I feel uncomfortable about that version. I think it’s effective, and I’m gratified that it has acquired a reputation among horror fans. Critics have described it as one of the best horror novels of the seventies. It has been cited in Horror: 100 Best Books. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News in 1989 placed it on that newspaper’s Halloween list of “10 Scariest Books.” But it’s not the book that I wanted published, and after I reread The Totem in preparation for writing the Headline introduction, I couldn’t resist the impulse to search through my files. With delight, I discovered the original version that the turmoil of my negotiations with the book’s 1979 publisher had forced me to forget.

The manuscript was dusty, dog-eared, and yellowed, written on a typewriter, not a word processor. I felt as if I had opened one of those metal boxes that are sometimes placed in the cornerstones of buildings so that historians from a later age can open them and study the once-contemporary objects sealed within them. I can’t emphasize how much I had repressed my memory of the first version of The Totem. It is no exaggeration to say that I truly could not remember having written it. As I said, a found book. A time capsule from and about the sixties and the seventies. And having found it, I couldn’t help smiling. There were the scenes that I had subconsciously been missing. There were the length and scope and texture that I had wanted. An expansive style. A new beginning. A quite different ending. And as for the middle … Well, let’s put it this way—the story is twice as long and two-thirds dissimilar. There isn’t just more plot—the extra material gives the plot a different twist. So what you’re about to read is the intended version of this novel. If you’re familiar with The Totem in its previously published form, you are about to enter its alternate universe. I think you’ll find some pleasantly scary surprises.

David Morrell
Santa Fe, 1994

PART ONE

POTTER’S FIELD

1

A SOLITARY RIDER on a ridge. That was the beginning. He’d been out for half a day now, checking the borders of his ranch, and coming from the high ground, he stopped to look down past the pine trees toward the sweeping grassland.

It was something that he never failed to marvel at. Sitting up here at the farthest reach of what he owned, staring down at all that rich wide ground, the abundant grass, the dots of sagebrush, he remembered how his father had used to take him here and point to it and tell him how his father’s father had to fight for it and how the land would one day soon be his. He hadn’t known that his father was then dying. He wasn’t sure that his father even knew. But six months later he had seen his father buried—death had been both quick and painful—and then all the land was his.

That had happened twenty years ago. Now at thirty-eight he still came out here on the anniversary of when his father had died, and looked down at the valley from where his father once had pointed to it, and was proud. Pride of ownership. And something else: of knowing who his father had been. No, not who but what. The kindest, gentlest, and yet strongest man he’d ever met. Still after all these years he loved the man. And loved the land because of him.

He sat there, his reins tight on his horse, and stared out at the pasture stretching off as far as he could see and rubbed his weathered face and shook his head. He knew that he should go. The sun was fierce upon his back, his head protected by his cowman’s hat. The horse would need some water soon; he still had lots of range to check. All the same, he didn’t want to leave. He waited, his boots pressed into the stirrups, leather creaking, admiring the land his father had shown to him, and then the moment passed. He loosened the reins, nudging with his heels, and he was leaving.

The ridge led to a game trail that wound down through shade beneath the pine trees. There was water at the bottom, and he felt the horse increase its gait, the cool smell evidently reaching it. He held back on the reins, working past a sharp turn in the trail, then easing farther down, the angle so steep now that he was forced to lean back. In the shade, his sweat-soaked shirt was cool against his sticky back. He reached behind to tug at it. Then he was working past another sharp turn, angling farther down, and he could see the stream below him glinting in the sunlight. His horse’s hoofs plodded on the fallen pine needles.

He looked and saw another carcass, this one wedged between two trees. Another deer. Or possibly an antelope. From this far away, he couldn’t tell. He likely couldn’t tell regardless. The winter had been so severe, the snow so deep, the storms so frequent and intense, that many animals who normally survived up in the mountains had come down here for food. But the winter had been just as bad down here, so they had wandered, becoming thin and weak and cold until they dropped and maybe tried to stand up once or twice and dropped again and died. Sometimes scavengers would find them and, when finished, would leave only bits of bone and skin. Other times, like this, the carcass hadn’t been discovered; it had dried and shrunk till just the empty husk remained. The positions they assumed were on occasion fascinating. Like this one that was wedged between the two trees. An outsider might think that it had tried to squeeze between the trees, had gotten stuck, and there had died. But then of course the ground had not been visible in the winter. The animal had walked upon a floor of ice-impacted snow. The snow had been deep, at least ten feet and likely more. The two trees veered apart at that height. The animal had lots of room. It walked between, and died, and with the thaw, it settled toward the ground and wedged.

He rode down near it, passing it, and he was right. Deer or antelope. He couldn’t tell. It was the fifth such carcass he had seen today, and he was sure that if he looked around more intently, he’d find several others. He couldn’t take the time. It didn’t matter anyhow. He wasn’t out here just to admire the land, to commemorate an anniversary; he was checking on his stock. He heard the low of cattle off to his right now, and he stopped beside the stream, sunlight angling through the trees and glinting off it, long enough to let the horse lean its head down and take a drink. Just enough to give it strength, but not enough to make it sick. Then he was pulling on the reins and angling off, emerging from the trees to the grassland, turning right.

The low of cattle was louder now. He guessed that they were just below the coming rise. He reached the top and saw them spread out across from him, a gully between, and he was riding toward the gully, looking for an easy place to dip down, up, and then across to them. At first he thought the carcass in the gully was another deer. It had the same tawny color. But then he saw that it was one of his stock, and frowning, he was pulling up and getting off. He looked around to tie the horse but couldn’t find a place, holding tightly to its reins as he walked slowly down among the open earth and rocks. The steer was lying on an angle with the slope, its back to him, and he was thinking that it had fallen and snapped its neck. But coming toward it, he saw nothing strange about the neck, and none of the legs looked broken, and he was thinking, afraid now, of disease. He shifted toward its head, peering at its mouth, but there wasn’t any froth on its lips, and he was thinking of a dozen diseases that could kill a steer and leave no trace when suddenly he came around and saw its midriff and was nearly sick. He stumbled back and dropped the reins. The horse began to bolt.

2

THE OLD MAN in the chair was tired. He’d been out and making rounds all day, from just after dawn till well past suppertime, checking on some newborn calves, giving shots, a dozen other things, once even coming on a case of founder. Odd how people who had worked with horses all their lives could still forget the basic rules and get their stock in trouble. He had needed just one look to know that the case was classic. Take a hot day and a tired, hungry, thirsty horse. Give it too much grain and water. Something happened to the horse’s blood. The veins within the hoofs swelled. The horse went lame. He’d helped to get the horse to stand in water. That would cool the veins and possibly reduce the swelling. But not much. The horse would never be the same. The swelling would leave scars and, more, would change the horse’s gait. He’d cut away part of the outside crusted nails, had given purgatives to get the horse’s stomach and its bloodstream back to normal. But he didn’t have much confidence. Most cases like this ended with the horse dead on its own or else destroyed. On rare occasions when the horse recovered, it almost never worked well after that and ended as a family pet. If the rancher had the tolerance. Livestock out here was a business after all, and anything that didn’t earn its way was hardly welcome.

The old man sat in the rocking chair and glanced out at the setting sun. Its stark, red, swollen disc was very close now to the mountains. Shortly it would touch and disappear behind them. From the kitchen he heard cupboards being opened, dishes rattled, knives and forks selected. Supper had been heated and reheated, he’d been told. His wife had been mad about it. Not because she’d had to do more work. God knows, she never let that bother her. But she’d been mad that he had let himself go on so long. A man his age should be retired. At the very least he ought to cut back on his hours. But at a time when he should take things easy, he was working more than ever, more than any other vet in town, and she was angry, claiming that his system couldn’t take it.

“I’m a doctor. I know what I’m doing.”

“Sure. Of animals. Not people.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Don’t be smart,” she said. “A doctor doesn’t treat himself.”

“You’ve got me there. I’d best sit down and take it easy.”

He’d smiled then as he left her in the kitchen, sitting, glancing out the window, hearing pot lids being lifted and replaced. No point in telling her that she had not slowed down much either, going out to see the sick, the orphaned, and the poor, cooking for them, mending clothes or making them. There was a phrase they used to have for that. What was it called? The corporal works of mercy. The truth was that he was more tired than she guessed, short of breath and feeling dizzy. There had been a time when he would come in after making rounds all day and smoke and make a drink and sip it, eat, and go out with her for a walk or maybe to a movie. Then he’d read till one or two o’clock. Now he couldn’t stay awake. The cigarettes and whiskey were long gone. The walk was too much, the movie something on the TV while he slept. It was more than feeling tired. He was feeling sick. His appetite was less each day, his stomach faintly queasy. He told himself it was the heat, but he knew better. It was something with his heart. No pains yet in his chest or down his arm. Just a vague discomfort that would shortly be much worse.

All the same, he didn’t know what he could do. It was in his nature to deny himself, to make of weakness strength. Besides, he didn’t know how he would fill the time. He’d been a vet now forty years. He couldn’t just forget all that and sit around the house. He joked about that to his wife. “You wouldn’t want me underfoot all day. Be grateful.” But the joke was very poor. A man whose occupation was his life, he didn’t have much choice. He had to work.

And one thing more: the ranchers who depended on him. He had worked with many of them all their lives, all his own life. He had seen their fortunes rise and fall, or fall and rise, their families grow, their ranches go through all the good times and the bad. He had measured out the seasons with them. Now they were a part of him, the rhythm of his life. He couldn’t any more restrain himself from going out to work with them than he could stop the racing in his blood each April when the warm winds first began the long slow thawing of the snow. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe they didn’t depend on him so much as he depended on them. Or maybe it was both together. There were vets enough to go around. That was sure. But he was part of their lives too. They’d had him with them through so many times that maybe they felt incomplete without his presence in their common rituals. Maybe. It was hard to say. He’d never ask. But ranchers had their superstitions. They had patience only with what worked, and what worked best was often very old.

Like himself, he thought. But really, he knew what the truth was. He was getting older than he liked to think, and he was damned if he would sit around and let death come to him. What was the greatest disappointment in the world? That of feeling useless. If he didn’t work, he didn’t see that he was justified. Still, he guessed his wife was right. He didn’t have a reason to put in this kind of day. Maybe he would cut back, work just mornings, spend some time around the house. His wife was aging too, and maybe they should find out more about each other. While they still had the opportunity.

He sat and thought, his breath now coming easier, glancing out the window while he listened to his wife reheating supper, and the phone rang.

“Don’t get up,” she told him, and he understood. This likely would be business. Most calls at this hour were, and she was bound to see he wasn’t bothered. He sat, waiting while it rang. He heard her put a lid down on a pot, then saw her walk across the entrance to the kitchen, disappearing toward the phone that hung against the cupboard wall. She got there halfway through another ring.

“Hello…. No, I’m sorry he’s not in right now. I’ll take a message…. What? How are you, Sam? I didn’t recognize your voice. How’s the … ? No, I don’t know where he is…. Well, is it serious? If you’ll tell me what it is, I’ll have him call…. You’re sure? All right, then, Sam, I’ll have him call you first thing he comes in…. No, I won’t forget…. Right, Sam. Yes, I will…. Right. Goodbye.”

And that was that. He heard her hang the phone up and then saw her walk across the doorway toward the stove. He knew three Sams, but he didn’t dare ask which it was. If she wanted to, she’d tell him, but he knew that if he asked her he would only make her mad. So he waited. He sat, smelling supper as it cooked. Then she told him it was ready. He went in and ate. Slowly as she wanted him. Pork chops, string beans, and potatoes, boiled, then stirred with butter and crushed parsley, as he liked them. Then she had a pie for him, apple with brown sugar and no upper crust. Again, the way he liked it. Then there was some tea, Chinese black, light and smooth and mellow. And he waited. He sat back and looked at her and tapped his fingers on the table.

And she told him. “That was Sam Bodine.”

He nodded.

“Best get over there.”

He had to laugh. “I thought you didn’t want me to.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“What is it?”

“That’s the point. He wouldn’t say.”

The old man looked at her.

“You should have heard his voice. I think you’d better go.”

He looked at her a moment longer and then stood to get his bag.

3

THE OLD MAN’S house was on the edge of town, the side that faced the western mountains. He got in the car and backed out of the driveway, aiming toward the setting sun. It was almost down behind the mountains now. Its topmost swollen rim was barely showing.

Rocky Mountains. Tall and jagged, capped with snow although June was oddly warm. In August, some would be rock bare, but most would be snow-covered all year round. That was one nice thing about this kind of country: the difference in the weather. In the valley, it might be one hundred, but five hours’ drive up there and you could dig snow caves and wear a jacket. Plus, the sun did strange things with its color. It might be white with heat from nine to five, but after that, as it came closer to the mountains, dipping down behind them, the sun changed first to red and then to orange, bathing everything in alpenglow, a rich warm golden tone that made the countryside seem magical. It was like that now, everything the same calm soothing color. Even trees were tinted by it, the green of leaves now more like yellow, the range grass all around reminding him of grain and honey.

The old man drove down the road past fence posts stretching off as far as he could see, past ranch homes nestled in their hollows, cattle feeding, windmills turning in the evening breeze. The supper had been very good. He had eaten more than was his custom. Indeed he felt much better now, his breath more easy, his legs more steady. That was why he drove the kind of car he did: to help him with his legs. The effort of a clutch had lately been too much for him, and he had traded to an automatic, which was bad for hills and snow, but he was forced to pace himself. In little ways he had to compensate. He sat back in the seat, his foot relaxed on the pedal, his hand light on the steering wheel, and glanced at all the country as he passed, the isolated trees, the sweep of rangeland stretching off, the fences, and the cattle, and he thought of Sam Bodine. No, of Bodine’s father. At one time, the old man had been just about his closest friend, although they hadn’t been old back then, thirty, forty years ago, hunting, fishing, working. No, not just about his closest friend. His only friend. They had been like brothers. He had loved the man, and still he missed him dearly. After twenty years, he marveled at how constant was his grief. He had seen the son grow to a man and seen him marry and have children. He had helped him every bit as much as he was able. But the son was not the father. He had different interests and concerns, and things were never quite the same.

Now he drove out toward the ranch as he had done so many times before. He passed the tree that he had seen grow from a seedling to a giant and then start to crumble. He passed the ditches he had helped to dig, the fences he had helped to set. He came around the curve that led down toward the entrance, slowing, turning left to rattle across the grate that lay over a gully and that kept the cattle off the highway, its metal gaps so wide that cattle couldn’t walk across them. Next he was on gravel, gaining speed again, spinning up a swirl of dust behind him as he drove on toward the house and barn, their structures now in dusk, the alpenglow abruptly gone, the sun behind the mountains.

Then he saw him standing by the gravel parking space beside the house, big and tall, dressed in denim shirt and jeans, cowman’s hat and boots, hands gripped on his thighs. His face was strong and solid, leathered, at the same time almost chiseled. He was walking forward even as the old man pulled in on the gravel.

“Thanks for coming.”

The old man nodded. “What’s the trouble?”

“I don’t want to say. I’d rather have you look.”

The old man glanced at him a moment and then got out with his bag. In all his years he’d never heard a rancher talk that way. They almost always had a thought of what the problem was and told him right away. Whatever was the matter out here surely wasn’t ordinary.

Bodine was already walking. “How you feeling?”

“Pretty good,” the old man said.

“We’re going to be a while.” Bodine said that with his head turned as he walked, angling toward the big garage.

“It isn’t in the barn?”

Bodine shook his head and pointed. “Out there on the edge of the foothills. My boy’s there watching now. We’d best take the truck.”

And that was that. Bodine was already climbing into the truck to start the engine.

The old man climbed in the other side and set his bag between his legs. “But what’s the mystery?”

“I don’t want to say. A thing like this, if I tell you, you’ll get preconceptions. Have a look, then you tell me.”

And they were driving out the open doorway, turning west beside the barn, and heading off across the range.

4

THEY HEADED TOWARD the spot of light. The darkness was all around them now, the truck’s lights on, and they were jouncing across the open bumpy ground, the old man with his hands braced on the dashboard. Bodine glanced at him and then ahead. The spot of light was flickering. A fire, and Bodine had to smile. He hadn’t thought to tell his boy to build one, but then he had talked to him when it was day, and clearly they would need a thing to aim for.

Bodine saw a patch of smooth ground up ahead and gathered speed, but then he hit a bump he hadn’t seen that jounced the old man very hard, and had to slow. The headlights showed the rangeland stretching off beneath them. Up ahead, a rabbit was paralyzed by them. Bodine veered to miss it. Then he picked up speed again.

The light was now distinctly flames, growing as he neared. He saw his boy stand up and walk in front of the fire, his body silhouetted by it. He saw the motorcycle parked beside the fire. The fire was very close before him as he pulled up and he stopped.

He kept the lights on, then stepped down onto the ground. The old man was already out.

The boy walked toward them.

“Anything?” Bodine asked.

The boy just shook his head.

“No animals? No tearing at the carcass?”

“It’s been pretty quiet.”

“Well, that’s something anyhow. You stayed up here the way I told you? You didn’t go down, messing any tracks?”

The boy just shook his head again.

“Okay, then. Doc, it’s down there in the gully. Careful of the slope.”

The old man walked across the glare of the headlights, standing at the edge of the gully. “I can’t see much without more light.”

Bodine reached beneath the seat to get a high-powered flashlight. He held it, long and heavy, walking toward the old man as he flicked the switch. The light shot out across the range. He dipped it toward the gully, sweeping back and forth until he found the carcass.

“There.”

Its back was toward them, just the way it had been when Bodine had come upon it. As much as he could tell, it looked the same.

The old man started down, and Bodine stopped him.

“I don’t know. I think the way to do this is to walk up here a ways, then cut across and come down looking on the other side. I want to keep from messing any tracks.”

The old man hesitated, looked at him, and nodded. They went where the gully was more narrow, climbing down, the old man needing help to get up on the other side. The ground was hard and rocky. The old man’s breath was forced as he got up and straightened.

“You all right?”

“It’s nothing. I’m not used to this.”

“You sure?”

“I said I’ll be all right.”

“Okay then.”

And they waited. Then the old man had his breath back, and they walked along the top until they stood across from where the headlights and the fire were. Bodine aimed the flashlight into the ditch. The old man didn’t speak.

He didn’t speak for quite a while.

“All right, now tell me what the hell it was that did that,” Bodine said.

“I don’t know.” The old man cleared his throat. “Right now I couldn’t say.”

It wasn’t that the sight was shocking. He’d seen worse too many times. But the thing just didn’t make much sense. Whatever had disemboweled this steer had done so from below and ravaged at the guts. But nothing seemed to have been eaten. The guts were mashed together, chewed and mangled, but the point was they were here. Whatever did this hadn’t eaten at the flesh, had only chewed at organs and then left them. He had never seen this—he had never heard about a thing like this before.

The old man saw the flies that crawled upon the guts, smelled the stench that was coming from the gully, shook his head, and turned away. “I just don’t get it.”

“You’re the expert,” Bodine said. “Take a guess.”

“Well, process of elimination. What would prey upon a steer?”

“I already thought of that. Bobcats. But they don’t come down here. Wolves, the same. Coyotes maybe. I even thought it was a cougar. They don’t single out the guts, though. Not when they’ve got flesh to eat.”

“And one thing more. It doesn’t look like anything’s been eaten,” the old man said. “What about those tracks you mentioned? Were they any help?”

“I never found them. If they were around, I didn’t want them messed before somebody good came out to have a look.”

The old man turned again toward the gully, and he pointed. “Well, I don’t know if I’d mess the tracks, but I should go down and have a look.”

“You’re the expert.”

So the old man slowly worked his way down into the gully, Bodine close behind. But there was nothing he could tell.

“The only thing I notice is the blood.”

“Or lack of it.”

“That’s what I mean. A thing like this, there should be lots of blood.” The old man thought a moment. “Could be something spooked whatever did this, and it didn’t get a chance to eat. It just licked all the blood.”

“Could be. I don’t know.”

The old man looked around. “Well, I can’t tell out here. I’d like to get this into town where I can have it on a table and dissect it. If there’s a way for us to move it. What about your herd? There’s nothing strange about it?”

“You were out two weeks ago. You said that it was fine.”

“Well, something might have happened in the meantime. What I’m getting at is if this steer was sick, whatever tried to eat it might have felt the taste was off and left it.”

“Maybe. But I hardly think it’s likely,” Bodine said.

“I don’t think so, either. What about the truck? Can we get this in there?” the old man asked.

“That’s no problem. We’ll rig a line.”

So they climbed up from the ditch, the old man breathing hard, and Bodine got a rope and tied it around the head of the carcass and hitched the rope to the truck and used the truck to drag the steer up onto the level. Then he opened the back and pulled out a ramp and this time hitched the rope around the motorcycle. His boy was working with the bike while Bodine pulled and guided on the rope, and slowly, motorcycle revving hard, the steer was dragged up onto the ramp and then pulled into the back. They stood and frowned at the carcass.

“Well, the guts stayed pretty much the same,” the old man said, and Bodine flashed the light around to see if any had been left behind.

The old man walked back toward the gully. “Nothing down there either. But the swath the steer made sure played hell on any tracks.”

Bodine turned and studied the old man. “There’s one other thing I’d like to show you.” He walked toward the woods, the flashlight in his hand, its wide beam sweeping through the trees.

They came to where the stream flowed through the trees, and found a narrow spot to step across and walked up onto the game trail. Bodine led the way about a hundred yards, then stopped to let the old man come up close to him. He shone the flashlight in among the trees.

The carcass of a deer.

“All right. So what’s the point?” the old man asked.

“Well, I saw a lot of these when I came through here just before I saw the steer. I figured, what the hell, the winter was a bad one. Then I didn’t know. I came back up and checked on this one.” Bodine poked with a stick where he had pushed the carcass from between the trees. “There. See where all the stomach skin’s been eaten. Otherwise it isn’t touched.”

“But it’s been dead for several months. Hell, anything could have caused that. Maybe insects.”

“Even so.”

The old man looked at Bodine and wondered what he must be thinking.

5

THE OLD MAN drove while Bodine followed in the truck. The boy stayed back at home. They rattled across the grate and then turned right and headed toward town. It was after midnight, the car and truck the only traffic on the road. All around, the countryside was dark, no lights on in ranches, the stars clear, a few clouds across the moon. Isolated trees were black against the murky gray of night. The old man heard a coyote howling in the hills.

He was tired. This was late for him, and he was worn out from climbing into the ditch, then walking through the woods. He was feeling sick again as well, the good meal he had eaten now gone bad on him and rising in his stomach. He could taste the undigested pork. What did he expect? He knew he shouldn’t eat so large a meal and one that was so heavy. But then he had been hungrier than was common for him, and besides his wife had gone to so much trouble that he couldn’t very well refuse.

Now he paid. He squirmed in his seat, wishing he would throw up and be done with it. His foot was heavy on the pedal, not because he wanted to get quickly into town, but he was so tired now that he could hardly move his feet. They were like a separate part of him. He felt that they were swollen. Water filling up, he thought. He’d have to take another pill for that.

He suffered, glancing at the darkened country as the car sped down the road. One curve, then another, and he almost missed the third. Better take things easy, better get control, he told himself, and gripped the wheel more tightly, tensing muscles in his leg to get life in his foot. He glanced at Bodine’s headlights in his rearview mirror. He looked ahead and saw a car approach him, its headlights growing larger as it neared. He glanced away as it flashed past, the headlights hurting his eyes, and then the car was gone, and he was staring at his own lights and the dark. Up ahead the carcass of a badger had been flattened on the road. At least he thought it was a badger. He had only one quick look before he was upon it and had passed. He thought about it and then had to concentrate on going around another curve. He shook his head to clear it and then squinted down the headlight-flooded road.

Twenty miles. In terms of effort, they felt more like eighty. He was thinking he was getting closer, thinking of his bed. He blinked his eyes to clear them now, staring down the road. And then he saw the first light in a house, another one close by, and he was at the outskirts, coming around another bend and starting down the hill, and there the town was spread out wide before him, its streetlights sending up a glow that in the cool of night was like a yellow mist. Traffic lights and lights on in some houses, lights on in the diner and the first bar that he passed and then the all-night service station. After staying up so late, climbing in that ditch, walking through those woods, after this long drive, tired as he was, the warmth of all these lights, he felt that he was home.

The town was Potter’s Field, so-called not because of any graveyard that was near it, although there were a lot of those from the old days. Farmers passing through. Trappers, ranchers, sheepmen, range wars. And the miners. At one time the hills around had all been rich with gold. But that was ninety years ago, and the gold had soon been gone. There had been two towns back then, one high in the hills that they’d called Motherlode, the other down here where the miners came from work to get supplies and drink and rest and often die. Like the farmers, trappers, ranchers, and the sheepmen. All passed on and laid to rest in graveyards that were like a page from history.

The town up there had long since gone to ruin, but the one down here had grown and prospered, twenty thousand people in it now and growing bigger, better, all the time. There were rumors about oil, ski resorts, and breweries, but the main trade here was cattle, and a lot of people didn’t want those other things. The town was in a rich wide valley, mountains all around it, and the first man who’d come through here, back in 1850, was named Potter. He had been a farmer, and he’d liked the country so much that he’d tried to work it. But the soil was wrong for farming, and at last he’d given up, staying on nonetheless, hunting, fishing, living out his days here just because he liked the place. His shack had been rebuilt several times since then, set apart beside the courthouse with a plaque explaining who Potter had been and telling all about his field.

The field was where he’d tried to farm, about the size of what was now the city limits. The town was built exactly where he’d lived. It was the property he’d still retained after all the farmers and the cattlemen had come through here and bought up any land he’d sell them. At first he didn’t want to sell, but Potter had anticipated what was coming, and he didn’t see much point in holding out. Either he would sell or else they’d take it, and so he’d sold and seen the farmers leave, the ranchers stay, had seen the cattle business grow around him. Then he had a store, and then a bar, a hotel and a restaurant, and soon the town was on its way.

Still Potter had tried a bit of farming, marking off a plot of ground beside his shack which he refused to leave and where he died, growing corn and lettuce and potatoes. The ranchers thought him funny, but he prospered, and he still was going out to plant his corn the day he died that spring in 1890. So the field was both the city limits and that plot of ground he tended, the latter set aside behind the shack, a little park and flower garden.

POTTER’S FIELD. A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN GROW. So the sign said as the old man passed it, heading down the hill and driving farther into town. Below him, he could see the main street cutting through from right to left, one long row of double-story buildings, feed stores, hardware stores, bars and shops and restaurants, a movie theater, the police station, and the courthouse. The last two were beside each other, surrounded by great elms, sent in from the east donated by a rancher. Indeed the other trees through town were all sent in from other places too, maple, ash and oak, a dozen others, the color of their leaves in autumn stark against the fir green of the mountains.

Down the hill now, farther into town, he reached the stoplight where the two main roads intersected, waiting until the red changed to green and angling right, driving down two blocks and turning left to pull in at the wide two-story building made of cinder blocks and painted white that was his office. Not just his, but everybody’s. Every vet in town. There were eight of them, and they had long ago decided that instead of each one having a separate office it was better, at least cheaper, more efficient, if they all combined to build a place that would be better equipped than each could ever manage alone. In addition to the offices, there were operating rooms, a storehouse, and a kennel. It had been expensive, but the ranchers out here paid to keep their livestock healthy, and besides there hadn’t been much choice. To operate on bulls and stallions, you just had to have the space.

Headlights arcing, the old man went down the driveway toward the back, stopping by the double doors that led in to one operating room. The parking lot was walled with concrete, and he sat there, cut his motor and his lights, waiting in the dark, flexing his hands and kneading his legs to get more life back into them. He wondered how long it would be before he got to bed. He’d never felt so tired.

Then he heard the motor, saw the headlights flashing up the drive, and stepped from the car as Bodine’s truck pulled into view. The old man lost his balance, put his hands against the car, then waited, took his keys, and opened the double door. He went inside and switched on all the lights. The room was suddenly like day, brighter, like the starkest hottest day he’d ever seen, fierce overhead lights stabbing down at him. He had to turn away, barely glancing at the long wide metal table in the middle, at the white walls and the cabinets and rows of medical supplies. He sought out comfort in the darkness, waiting for Bodine to back the truck up to the entrance. Bodine came up almost into the room, then shut off his lights and motor, and stepped down onto the concrete parking lot.

The old man didn’t move.

“What is it? Something wrong?” Bodine asked.

The old man shook his head. “You’ll have to help me.”

Bodine nodded, walking past him toward the glare that spilled from the entrance to the room. He’d helped with this before, heading toward the pulley that was on a bar up on the ceiling, grabbing at the straps that hung down from it, tugging at them so the pulley rolled along the bar up there and stopped above the back bin of the truck. He climbed up into the back and hitched the straps around the midriff of the carcass, just inside the legs. It was heavy work. Even though the steer was not full-sized, he still had lots of trouble heaving at its bulk so he could slip the straps beneath and slide them into position. Once the stench of all those open guts, left out in the sun all day, became too much for him, and he was forced to turn away. Then he had the straps in place, and he secured them, pulling downward on the chain to work the pulley until the steer was slowly rising, its hoofs dangling above the floor of the truck. A hunk of guts dropped out and plopped near Bodine. He didn’t even look at them, just climbed down from the truck, tugging at the straps to slide the carcass from the truck, across the room and then above the table. Another hunk of guts dropped. He grabbed the chain and yanked down on it in the opposite direction, the pulley in reverse so the steer was slowly setting onto the table. Next Bodine slid the straps from beneath it, heaving at the carcass, and he moved the pulley toward the entrance to the room.

The old man was inside, his hand above his eyes to shield them from the light.

“You’re sure that you’re okay?” Bodine asked.

“I’m fine.”

“All right then. Guess it’s up to you now. What about those guts that fell?”

The old man looked around. “Take these forceps and that plastic bag. Put them in it.”

Bodine did what he was told. He set the bag on the table. “How soon till I hear?”

“I don’t know yet. I can’t tell yet what I’m looking for. Tomorrow afternoon.”

Bodine nodded, walking toward the truck. “I’ll be waiting.”

“Yes, I know you will.”

6

THEN, TRUCK GONE, it was quiet. No, the lights up in the ceiling made a buzz. Funny how he’d never noticed that before. But then he hadn’t been here this late in some while. In the daytime, there were always sounds and people. He just wasn’t used to being here alone.

The old man kept his hand near his eyes to shield them from the light, staring at the carcass on the table. What to do? What he’d said was true. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He needed rest, a chance to think and sleep. He needed to sit. And then he realized. He hadn’t even thought to ask Bodine to help him slide the carcass into the cooler. He didn’t have the strength to do it on his own. He could put the bag of guts in there. But not the carcass. It would simply be too much for him. He wondered what to do.

The phone rang. He almost didn’t answer. But he thought about it, and he guessed it would be his wife, and so he walked with effort toward the door that led down to his office, reaching for the phone beside the counter by the door.

“Dr. Markle here…. Hi. How are you? … I’m just about to leave…. I don’t know yet. Something got a steer…. We’re not sure. We brought the carcass in to see. Listen, don’t wait up. I might be half an hour or so. Go to bed. I’ll tell you all about it in a while…. No, I won’t be long. I promise…. Right. Goodbye.”

And he hung up. She’d told him that she loved him, and he’d smiled. With his hand above his eyes again, he turned to face the carcass, and he realized that he had lied. He would not go home directly. He would stay and work a little on the steer. Either that or let it stay out all night decomposing more until he couldn’t do the proper tests. A few slides for the microscope. Maybe take a portion of the brain and cool it for tomorrow. Test the feces. Take a sample of the blood, the little that there was and in such poor condition. He winced from the sickness in his stomach, and he almost changed his mind. Then he braced himself. Nothing for it but to go ahead. His legs heavy, he went over to the sink and washed his hands and put on rubber gloves, a gown and face mask, out of habit really, and to keep his clothes clean, and to bear the stench. He didn’t think his samples would be clean. All the same he liked to do things right and not contaminate anything.

So be stumbled toward the carcass, and he wondered what he’d tripped on and then realized it was himself. His legs weren’t working properly; he’d have to do this soon and rest. There were three facts that he needed to learn right away. Whether the steer had been dead before the animal had gotten at it. Whether the organs were all there. Whether the predator had left some sign of what it was. The first he thought he knew. If the steer had been dead, especially for some time, the blood would not have flowed. No matter that they hadn’t found the blood, it clearly wasn’t here. The predator had maybe drunk it, but that still meant that the steer was freshly killed. The only sure test was to open up the heart. A lot of blood would mean the steer was long dead when the animal had gotten at it. Little meant the steer had still been living when attacked. The point was that a dead steer meant a scavenger, and that would help identify the animal that had picked at it.

The fact about the organs, whether all of them were present, was related to the first. If some of them were missing, the assumption was that they’d been eaten, and that would help eliminate a good deal of the mystery. The steer had been attacked for food. On the other hand, if all the organs were still present, he’d have to figure why. The extensive damage meant that the animal had lots of time to eat. Even if it had been scared away, there had to be a reason why it didn’t take advantage and eat something at the start. Could be that the steer was dead, and something, not a scavenger, instead an animal that preferred fresh kills, had tried to eat and given up. Could be too the steer was dead, and something, a disease perhaps, had made the meat taste bad. Could be, but the only way to tell that was by checking on the cause and time of death.

The other fact he needed, a sign to help identify what kind of animal had done this, he was hoping he would find as he examined the organs. Something like a piece of fur, a tooth mark, anything. But that would come as he went through the process. First he’d get a sample of the heart, the brain, the feces. Since the carcass was already open, he would start in on the heart.

But as he went around the table, looking at the open guts, at first he couldn’t find the heart. Then he did, mashed in with the lungs and upper stomach. It was more complete than he had hoped, and he was cutting carefully around it, reaching in to pull it out and slice it into quarters. He was taken up with interest now, breathing fast and hard, staring at the sectioned heart. It was almost empty. That was that. The steer had died from the attack. Of course it might have been diseased as well, and he would tell that as he checked the other organs. But at least he knew that what had done this was no scavenger. It had been a full-scale hunter, on the prowl for food.

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EPUB Ebooks: Free ebook sample of "The Totem" by David Morrell

THE

TOTEM

For Geoffrey Household,

1900–1988,

the thriller writer beyond compare.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE

POTTER’S FIELD

1

2

3

4

5

6