Al is frozen for a moment, utterly frozen with horror and disbelief. It is huge,
this Beast, perhaps seven feet tall, although it is hunched over so that its front
hand-paws almost drag on the rug. Its one green eye (just like Marty said, he
thinks numbly, all of it, just like Marty said) glares around with a terrible,
rolling sentience ... and fixes upon Marty, sitting in his wheelchair, it leaps at
the boy, a rolling howl of triumph exploding out of its chest and past its huge
yellow-white teeth.

Calmly, his face hardly changing, Marty raises the .38 pistol. He looks very small
in his wheelchair, his legs like sticks inside his soft and faded jeans, his fur-
lined slippers on feet that have been numb and senseless all of his life. And,
incredibly, over the werewolf's mad howling, over the wind's screaming, over the
clap and clash of his own tottering thoughts about how this can possibly be in a
world of real people and real things, over all of this Al hears his nephew say:
"Poor old Reverend Lowe. I'm gonna try to set you free."

And as the werewolf leaps, its shadow a blob on the carpet, its claw-tipped hands
outstretched, Marty fires. Because of the lower powder-load, the gun makes an
almost absurdly insignificant pop. It sounds like a Daisy air-rifle.

But the werewolf's roar of rage spirals up into an even higher register, a lunatic
screech of pain now. It crashes into the wall and its shoulder punches a hole right
through to the other side. A Currier and Ives painting falls onto its head, skates
down the thick pelt of its back and shatters as the werewolf turns. Blood is
pouring down the savage, hairy mask of its face, and its green eye seems rolling
and confused. It staggers toward Marty, growling, its claw-hands opening and
closing, its snapping jaws cutting off wads of blood-streaked foam. Marty holds the
gun in both hands, as a small child holds his drinking cup.

He waits, waits ... and as the werewolf lunges again, he fires. Magically, the
beast's other eye blows out like a candle in a stormwind! It screams again and
staggers, now blind, toward the window. The blizzard riffles the curtains and
twists them around its head - Al can see flowers of blood begin to bloom on the
white cloth-as, on the TV, the big lighted ball begins to descend its pole.
The werewolf collapses to its knees as Marty's dad, wildeyed and dressed in bright
yellow pajamas, dashes into the room. The .45 Magnum is still in Al ' s lap. He has
never so much as raised it.

Now the beast collapses . . . shudders once . . . and dies.

December