Return of the Wolf Man

by Jeff Rovin

  The man fell silent. He did not attempt to introduce himself, nor did he ask anything about the man he’d just slaughtered. Except for his one shamed outburst, everything he’d said was about the monsters. His manner only added to the surrealness of what had transpired in here. Waves crashed in the distance. Somewhere off the Florida coast a foghorn sounded. They were Joan’s only contact with the familiar and she concentrated hard on them.

  “Who are you?” Joan asked. “And what—what in God’s name did I just see happen to you?”

  “You don’t know?” the man asked.

  Joan shook her head.

  “But you know about Count Dracula and the Monster.”

  “Not very much,” she said. “And what I know and what I believe are two very different things.”

  “Believe,” the man admonished. “You’ll live longer.”

  The flat conviction in his voice startled her. He wasn’t like the liars and con artists she’d encountered over the years. He wasn’t trying to defend himself. He was trying to protect her.

  The man started walking away from the body. As he circled around, Joan stole a quick look into the foyer—just to make sure she knew where the front door was.

  “Don’t worry,” the man said softly. “I’m not like the creature I become. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Then why don’t you just stay where you are and talk?”

  “I wanted to get away from—from what I’ve done,” he said. “So you wouldn’t have to look at it.”

  Joan flushed. “Oh,” she said. “I see. I’m sorry.”

  When the man stopped he was standing to her left, the same distance from her as he was before. He drew his shoulders back and bowed his head slighty. “My name is Lawrence Stewart Talbot. As for what happened to me—” He opened the top buttons of his shirt and exposed the left side of his chest. “Do you see this scar?”

  Joan looked at his pale, beefy, hairless breast. There was a ruddy cross-hatching of scars over the heart. “I see it.”

  “That’s the sign of the pentagram,” said Talbot. “Six years ago I was bitten by a wolf. Only he wasn’t an ordinary wolf. He was a werewolf, a man who becomes a wolf whenever the moon is full. Now there’s a curse upon me. During every full moon I become a wolf. I’m forced to kill.”

  “Forced? By whom?”

  “By some inner beast,” Talbot said. “Yet killing my victims is a mercy.”

  Joan glanced at Professor Stevens then looked away with disgust.

  “I know that sounds horrible,” Talbot admitted. “But if I bite someone who doesn’t die, then they become a werewolf.”

  “I see,” she said. “Just like catching a cold.”

  “Please,” Talbot said. “Don’t make light of the curse, Miss Raymond.”

  “How did you know my name?”

  “Professor Stevens told me. You’re an insurance investigator. He and I were searching for you before the full moon caused my hideous transformation.” He lowered his head. “I didn’t want it to end this way. I’d hoped the two of you could get safely away before I changed. But my hopes don’t matter.” His voice began to rise. “You’d think I was the greatest sinner since Cain. But do you know the irony of it? When my older brother John died in a hunting accident, I wasn’t even there. I had nothing to do with it!”

  Talbot’s growing passion frightened Joan and she finally began backing away. She stepped into the towering entrance hall with its great spiral staircase and baroque furnishings. Though she had watched the man transform she didn’t believe what she’d seen. He had to be insane. He wasn’t bitten by a werewolf and Count Dracula wasn’t a vampire. This man Talbot had to have willed the change in a way she didn’t understand. Or maybe she was insane. Or delirious. Maybe she’d eaten spoiled pâté at the ball and was imagining all of this. Or perhaps this castle was the real McDougal’s House of Horrors and no one had bothered to tell her. Her boss or McDougal or someone else was testing her. This was all a sinister joke.

  Whatever it was, she had to get out of the house and back to civilization. The world was mad; it had just proved that in a second World War. But at least that was a madness she understood.

  “Mr. Talbot,” she said, “have you ever tried to get help? There are doctors, psychiatrists—”

  “I’ve tried doctors!” Talbot lamented. He started walking toward her. “Dr. Mannering, Dr. Niemann, Dr. Edelmann. Some of the most revered and notorious scientists in Europe have attempted to cure me. Dr. Edelmann—he came close.” Talbot smiled faintly. “I was so confident, so sure that he’d succeeded, I even married his assistant, Miliza. Poor, sweet Miliza. We had two beautiful months together before my brain rejected the surgery. Before I . . . I—” Talbot thrust his tortured face into his open palms. “The werewolf seeks to kill the one it loves. She’s dead and Edelmann is dead and whatever he did to me died with him. They all tried to help with science or love and they all failed.”

  “There are sanitariums,” Joan said softly.

  “I’ve been caged and shackled and straitjacketed over and over!” Talbot said. He shook his fists violently. “I tell you, nothing can hold me. Nothing except—” Talbot looked at her.

  “Except?” she prodded.

  “Except death.” A gentleness and an almost boyish anticipation suddenly came over him. “Miss Raymond, please don’t back away. Don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she lied. But she stopped moving. She was standing in the center of the vast hall, just outside a sharp shaft of moonlight that shone through the open door. A cold breeze swept past her, stirring a tapestry that hung along the winding staircase to her right. The wind whistled up the stairs for a moment and then died. When it did, the front door squeaked on its hinges. It shut solidly, snapping off the moonlight. The hall was dark and quiet.

  Talbot was standing in the laboratory doorway. His hulking form filled the door, dark and ominous against the lighted room.

  “I want . . . I need your help,” Talbot said. His voice echoed through the hall.

  “If you want to turn yourself in to the authorities,” Joan replied, “I’ll be happy to help.”

  “No,” Talbot said emphatically. “That won’t do any good. I only want to die. I don’t want to live through another one of my spells. When I was back in London, I thought I could use my animal cunning for good by hunting down Count Dracula. I wanted to try to atone for all the suffering I’ve caused. That’s why I followed him here. But at best I’ve only delayed him. At worst I’ve strengthened his resolve.”

  “You don’t know that Count Dracula has survived.”

  “And you don’t know Count Dracula,” Talbot replied. “His coffin was probably hidden nearby. By now he’s had enough time to return to it. When the sun goes down he’ll move it. It will take me days or weeks or maybe even months to find him. And all the while, during every full moon, I’ll kill. Don’t you see, Miss Raymond? There’s no choice. I must be destroyed.”

  “Destroyed?” she said. “You’re not a rabid dog—”

  “I know that,” Talbot said sadly. “A rabid dog doesn’t wake up in the morning and wonder where he is or who he’s killed. A rabid dog can’t ask to die. A rabid dog can’t cry. I can, Miss Raymond. And I do.”

  Joan could see the pain in his eyes. She forced herself to look at Professor Stevens. Just a few minutes before, the scientist had been alive—a man with a conscience, emotions, memories, and passion. Now he was raw meat already drawing flies. Whether Talbot was cursed or insane, he was a killer. Perhaps he deserved death. But that wasn’t for her to decide. And for some reason she felt sorry for him.

  “In order to die,” Talbot went on, “I need your help. A werewolf can only be destroyed by someone who feels passionately about him. Someone who wants him to die out of love or pity or even hate.”

  “No,” Joan said. “I’m not a killer.”

  “Destroying me isn’t murder,” he insisted. “It’s mercy to me and to those I might attack.”r />
  “But if love can kill you then maybe it can cure you,” she said.

  “I tell you it’s been tried!”

  “You’re in America now, Mr. Talbot. I’ve visited clinics, modern facilities where there are many different ways of treating people. Things are different from how they are in Europe.”

  “Are they?” Talbot asked. “I lived with my mother in California for eighteen years. Do you know what will happen if I go to the police? The courts will say I’m insane. Psychiatrists and physicians will study me. They’ll try to discover what causes the transformation.”

  “It’s possible they will,” said Joan. “And maybe they’ll succeed. Maybe they’ll find a cure.”

  Talbot shook his head. “I’ll escape before that happens. I always do. After being deprived of a kill for just one night the will to attack becomes overpowering. I can bend metal bars, Miss Raymond. I can snap chains. Nothing can hold me. Besides, even if medical science were able to cure me, I dare not put the secret of my curse into anyone’s hands.”

  “Why?”

  Talbot walked toward her slowly. “Does the name Frank Griffin mean anything to you?”

  Joan shook her head.

  “His grandfather was Dr. Jack Griffin. Surely you’ve heard of him—the Invisible Man.”

  Joan began to wonder if she had slipped down the rabbit hole into Wonderland without realizing it. She raised her hands and waved them in front of her. “Don’t,” she warned and began backing away again. “I’m leaving.”

  “But you must listen—”

  “No! Don’t try to tell me that he was real too!”

  “But he was,” Talbot insisted, his voice calm. “Hear me out. When the military learned that Frank possessed his grandfather’s invisibility formula, they insisted that he use it to fight the Axis. He became the Invisible Agent. After four or five successful missions he was wounded by German spies in London. But before he was sent home, Allied doctors took samples of his blood. They used it to re-create the formula and turned other men invisible—”

  “Stop it, Mr. Talbot!” Joan cried. “I don’t believe that there are squads of invisible spies and G.I.’s!”

  “There are records,” he assured her. “Does your firm have contacts in London?”

  “Yes—”

  “Call them.” He pointed toward an old wooden desk to the right of the front door. “There’s a telephone, Miss Raymond. Get the long distance operator and call. Ask them about an American Army medic, Dr. Peter Drury, who was stationed in Cardiff. He worked with Griffin’s blood. He also came across my case in the files of the old Queen’s Hospital. That was the first place I’d gone to for help. Dr. Drury contacted me at my flat in London and I met with him. He said he wanted to try to cure me.” Talbot’s eyes grew moist and he looked down. He rubbed his hands together. “What he really wanted were samples of my blood for the military. He planned to make soldiers more ferocious and able to hunt at night.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Joan asked.

  Talbot fired her a look. “What’s wrong—with spreading this curse?”

  “If you are what you say you are, your affliction could have saved American lives on the battlefield.”

  “To what end?” Talbot asked. “So that when they returned from the war they could endure night after night of torment, as I do? So they could butcher their wives and sweethearts? And what of the enemy soldiers they attacked? Those men would have become werewolves too.”

  “Not if the doctors had been able to work with your blood, find a cure.”

  “What if they couldn’t? What if other governments weren’t as charitable with their monster-soldiers? No, Miss Raymond,” Talbot said. “I couldn’t be a party to that. And I never will be. That’s why you must help me. My body must be destroyed or hidden. The curse of the werewolf must die with me.”

  Joan stopped moving and Talbot stood where he was. Joan was just a few steps from the closed front door. Talbot was in the center of the hall. Standing in the middle of that enormous chamber, blanketed in darkness, he sounded very much alone. But Joan was neither a defeatist nor a coward. Even if what he was telling her was true, she wouldn’t help him flee his troubles . . . or the responsibility for his crimes.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Talbot,” she said, “but I can’t help you. I don’t know if I can live with helping a man kill himself.”

  “Even a man who murders?”

  “Yes, even a man who murders.”

  “And yet,” Talbot said, “I vaguely remember watching you earlier. You didn’t stop Professor Stevens from destroying the Frankenstein Monster.”

  “That was different,” she said. “You said it yourself, that poor creature was already dead. Every part of him, every cell. Besides, he was trying to kill those two baggage clerks.”

  “Won’t anything I say convince you?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll help you seek counseling or medical care—that’s all.”

  Talbot’s shoulders sunk. Joan couldn’t believe that she actually felt compassion for this man who had just torn away Professor Stevens’s throat and drank his blood.

  But had it been this man? she asked herself.

  Talbot sighed. “Perhaps I am asking too much of you,” he said. “You’ve been through so much tonight.” He walked over to one of the candelabra. There was a wooden match in a dish beside it. He used it to light the candles. “Maleva once told me that if I tried to take my own life, the wolf in me would resist. She said that if I tried to kill myself he would emerge and fight me.”

  “Mr. Talbot, don’t talk like that.”

  “Why not? It’s the only way I know of ending the curse.” He looked at the candelabrum and shook his head. “Brass,” he muttered. He began looking around the room.

  “But there’s still hope!” Joan said.

  “Hope? Miss Raymond—forgive me, but I can still taste Professor Stevens’s blood in the back of my throat!”

  “He’s dead. You’re alive—”

  “Only until I find something made of silver.”

  That took her aback. “Silver?”

  “Its purity will break the curse of my immortality,” Talbot said. “Anything will work. A silver cross, a silver-tipped cane”—Talbot’s eyes locked on something—“or that.”

  Joan turned as Talbot ran to the right. He stopped by the wall where there was a long Louis XVI console table with more brass candlestick holders on either side. There was also a large mirror above it. Talbot looked into the mirror. He seemed startled by what he saw. He touched the deep lines along his nose, the loose flesh under his eyes, the creases and long scar on his forehead.

  “Hope.” Talbot snickered. “Do you know, Miss Raymond, I’m only forty-seven years old. Evil ages a man.”

  “You aren’t evil,” Joan said. “You’re afflicted.”

  “There’s evil in all of us. This thing you call an affliction lets it come out.” He touched the glass. “Today I will find a way to kill that evil before anyone else can be killed . . . or cursed, as I am.”

  A part of Joan understood the man’s self-pity. A part of her also found it weak and objectionable. And a part of her didn’t want Talbot to die for purely selfish reasons. Joan Raymond had spent her entire life solving mysteries. She had to know if what he’d told her was true. Because if his condition were supernatural rather than biological, it would be very difficult for her to go back to the real world, hunting down missing art, jewelry, and people.

  “Mr. Talbot,” she said patiently, “you were in England during the war. Weren’t there times when the struggle against the Axis seemed hopeless?”

  “There were.”

  “But we pressed on. We found ways to win. We invented new weapons. I believe in hoping for the best, not the worst.”

  “You’re young,” Talbot said. “When you’ve experienced what I have you become weary. You have to fight to hold on to hope.” With easy grace Talbot leaned toward the mirror and removed it from the wall. Dust fle
w from the frame and flickered as it caught the candlelight. Talbot raised the mirror above his head then stepped back and dropped it to the floor. Joan winced as the glass shattered in large chunks. Then Talbot lifted the frame and threw it aside. He bent and picked up a large, jagged piece of the mirror. He looked at it longingly.

  “This should do.”

  “Don’t,” Joan said. “Come with me. We’ll find help. And if that doesn’t work out then I’ll help you end your life.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Talbot said. His eyes on the piece of glass, he dropped to his knees, turned the silvered side up, and placed the point against the pentagram on his chest. He put both hands around the glass then looked at Joan. “I ask only one thing. If you truly believe that I am not like the Frankenstein Monster or Count Dracula, tell that to people. Tell them that Lawrence Talbot had a conscience . . . that he was not entirely inhuman.”

  “I do believe that,” Joan said as she looked at him. “Which is why it’s wrong to do what you’re doing.”

  He looked over at her. “Thank you,” he said. As sad as his face appeared, it seemed more at peace right now than it had all night. “But the greater wrong is to keep on living.” He looked from the woman to his chest. As he pressed the point into his skin, his hands began to shake. His cheeks and jowls began to darken. “Oh, God!” he moaned. “No!”

  “What is it?” Joan asked. But even as she asked she knew the answer. Talbot had said that the wolf would emerge if he tried to take his life.

  “Help . . . me!” Talbot cried as his lips pulled back from his teeth. Thick spittle began to roll along his upper and lower teeth. His hands trembled violently. “God . . . help me!”

  Joan shook her head and stepped back. She bumped into the front door and watched as Talbot struggled to put the glass through his chest.

  “Please!” Talbot wailed. “He’s resisting—trying to get out!”

  “No! Whatever it is, you’ve got to fight it!”

  Talbot’s nails began to grow. His nose seemed to tighten and grow darker. “Don’t you understand?” Talbot cried. “I won’t be able to control him! He’ll stop me and then he’ll hunt you down!”