Immortal Lycanthropes

by Hal Johnson

  1.

  I have written under a great host of pseudonyms in my day. Plentygood van Dutchhook, “Fortitude,” A. Frederick Smith, G. A. Henty, Lawrence Christopher Niffen, Frank Richards, Vivian Bloodmark, and, briefly, Wen Piao, are just a few of my more popular noms de plume; but I hit my greatest circulation ghostwriting for the Stratameyer syndicate. There I, or rather we, for I was one of a stable of anonymous ghostwriters, churned out a great many stories of young men and women solving mysteries, sometimes inventing things, and always, always triumphing over mild to severe adversity. For Stratameyer alone I must have written a dozen scenes of urchins forced to spend the night on the forbidding pavements of New York. But frankly, I was whitewashing the experience.

  Myron, who may have read a dozen such scenes, had no way of knowing that. He had of late spent many nights sleeping outside, and had thought he had become inured to its hardships. But that night in New York, huddled amid the steam oozing through a grating, was the longest, the coldest, and the most terrible night of his life. Gripping tightly the garbage bag he’d stashed the doomsday device in, he waited for doomsday. “I cannot die, I cannot die,” he muttered to himself, as he rocked back and forth. And then people came out of the dark and tried to prove him wrong.

  But the streetlight turned around and shone itself dead on Myron’s face. And so the people, their attempts were desultory.

  There is an old Islamic folktale about a man who, having burned in hell for what feels like a thousand years, is given a chance to speak to the living. “How many thousand years have I been dead?” he asks them; and they answer, “A day, and part of a day.” That was Myron’s night, it was a day and part of a day.

  The first thing he did when he woke up was eat three hot dogs, courtesy of Gloria’s money and a nearby street vendor, and the second thing was ask a dozen people for increasingly circuitous directions to the public library. There he looked up and read through several books of riddles. He wanted to take them out, but he didn’t think his tattered Pennsylvania library card would work. He wanted to stop and maybe read an adventure novel, but he knew he didn’t have time. He had work to do. He tried looking up, on the computer catalog, the Nine Unknown Men. Nothing came up, but Myron wasn’t sure he was doing it right—was nine spelled out or should it be a numeral? Finally he gave up and headed over to the dusty, disrepaired card catalog, kept in ancient wooden drawers in a strange corner of the third floor. He opened up the N drawer and flipped through. Sure enough, Nine Unknown Men had its own card, and when he touched it, he heard a tinkling sound. A tiny bell had been threaded through a hole punched in the card, and it sounded when the card moved.

  Suddenly an old man in a plaid suit and a porkpie hat appeared behind Myron. “You probably don’t want to mess around with those reprobates,” he said.

  Myron stared at him. His hackles were still. The man was not one of them, not a lycanthrope.

  “Here’s a card,” the man said, flipping one out from inside his plaid sleeve. The card read A. WEISHAUPT & CO., ILLUMINATIONS. “These guys are pretty swell. Would you like a bowl of soup?”

  Myron said he would not.

  “So anyway, if you don’t mind my asking, why were you interested in the Nine Unknown Men?”

  “I wasn’t,” Myron lied. “I was just flipping around. I’m really looking for information on John Dillinger.”

  “Ah,” said the man, nodding his head. His tie was very wide, and a hula girl was painted on it. Myron looked closely to make certain, as he didn’t want to make a mistake after Gloria’s lecture, but he could see the streaks of paint. The tie had been hand painted. “Dillinger,” the man continued, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses, “is quite the berries.”

  “Quite the berries?”

  “I merely mean that he is a fascinating subject. Some say he killed JFK, but I think we can agree that’s an exaggeration, eh?” He chuckled, and looked expectantly at Myron. He looked him right in the face, which most people, on the first day, cannot do.

  “I have to go now,” Myron said. And he went to the corner of Fifth Street and Sixth Avenue. The walk took him over an hour, and he got lost for part of it, when a man in a battered fedora and a seersucker suit talked him into walking six blocks and one mysterious flight of stairs in the wrong direction, but at last he found himself at his destination. On one of the four corners was a deli; on two others, pornography stores. The fourth corner had a plain brick building with a small bronze plaque that read 9UM. There was no bell, so Myron pulled the marbled glass door open. The small lobby contained a dying, beribboned potted plant; a slouched-over janitor, his cap pulled low, polishing the floor with a huge buzzing machine; and a high white marbled desk, behind which sat a smartly dressed man. The man had a little mustache and a headphone over one ear. There was very little room for Myron in the lobby.

  Myron figured he might as well just cut right to the chase. “I’m here to see the Nine Unknown Men,” he said.

  “If they are unknown, this may prove difficult,” the man behind the desk said. He had an Indian accent.

  “It’s cool, Gloria sent me,” Myron said, loudly to be heard over the floor polisher.

  He paused a moment, and seemed to be listening on his earpiece. “You have told one lie today, Myron Horowitz,” the man said inexplicably. “Tell another and you must face the web of silver.”

  “No, no.” Myron could barely see over the lip of the white desk. “I’m one of those . . . I don’t even know what to call them.” He tried to lean forward for a conspiratorial whisper, but he was too short. “I’m an immortal lycanthrope.”

  “That will get you through the door,” the man said, and he moved his hands around behind the desk, where Myron couldn’t see. Perhaps he pressed a button, because a panel in the wall, behind the dying plant, slid open, and he tilted his head toward it.

  Myron had to clamber over the plant to enter. He found himself, as the door slid shut behind him, in a small pitch-black room. Suddenly his ears were popping, and he realized he was in an elevator, descending rapidly. He was blinded momentarily when the door opened again. Here was a larger, brighter lobby. People were walking quickly back and forth, carrying clipboards and pocket calculators. Most of them looked Indian. A woman, wrapped in a brightly colored dress, gestured for Myron to follow her. She was wearing a security badge, with her photo and the name Sukumarika on it. The two walked down a long white corridor that reminded Myron of the hospital.

  “Listen carefully,” said the woman, Sukumarika, “because what you are about to hear is non-negotiable, and I will not repeat it. The Nine Unknown Men have been around since before your great-grandmother’s great-grandmother was born, and don’t think just because you got through the door that we’ll change for you.”

  “If I’m immortal, aren’t I older than the Nine Unknown Men?” Myron asked. The woman stopped dead in her tracks.

  “I suppose that’s correct,” she said after a moment, and began walking again. Her lips were pursed disapprovingly, probably because Myron had said aren’t I instead of am I not.

  “Actually, I’m not that old,” Myron said. “I’m only thirteen.”

  “You can’t be thirteen,” Sukumarika said. “None of your kind has been born in millennia.”

  “Maybe I was just born, maybe I’m the first of a whole new set. Did you ever think of that?”

  “This is impossible. The lycanthropes are a dead branch; a dead branch, like the Illuminati.”

  Myron said, “I don’t know what you mean. I was thinking maybe I was more like the chosen one.”

  At that moment Sukumarika threw a bag over Myron’s head. Myron was small enough, and the bag was large enough, that it went down to his waist. He tried struggling, but several pairs of hands had seized him, and, mostly from fear, he lost consciousness.

  2.

  Myron finally found himself in front of a giant metal head, about eight feet tall. It was a woman’s head, the color of bronze. The eyes glowed, and the mouth was on
a hinge, so it moved, laboriously, when she spoke. She was speaking.

  “Myron Horowitz, you have already told one lie today,” thundered the brazen head.

  “What’s happening?” asked Myron, who vaguely assumed, incorrectly, that he was hallucinating.

  “Tell another,” the voice echoed as it spoke, “and you will face the web of silver.”

  “I didn’t lie, Gloria really sent me.”

  “This is not the incident to which we refer. Earlier today, in a library, you told one lie. Above all else the Nine Unknown Men demand absolute truth.”

  “What’s the web of silver? Are you one of the Nine Unknown Men? Am I wearing ice skates?”

  Myron felt a hand on his shoulder. Only then did he realize that Sukumarika was standing behind him. He had been looking down at his feet. He was wearing not his normal clothes but rather what appeared to be white pajamas, belted at the waist. On his feet were strange boots that looked like skates: to the sole was attached a hook of metal shaped like a sideways U. As soon as he realized how precariously he was balanced on them, he began to wobble.

  Sukumarika was whispering in his ear, “Don’t be disrespectful. The web of silver is a monofilament mesh at the bottom of a deep pit. The monofilament wire is invisible, except when moistened with dew, whereupon it glistens silver in the light. Anyone who disobeys is dropped in the pit, and at the bottom, he passes through the slicing of the web . . .”

  “The experience can be quite straining,” the head thundered again. Myron turned toward it, but it gave no indication, by smirk or wink, that it was joking.

  “O puissant Meridiana,” Sukumarika said, addressing the head for the first time. “Lord Hanusa, whose name is Wrath, is far from us, on secret tasks. Give us your council, most revered one, for before you stands one who claims to be an ancient representative of the lycanthropes.”

  “Actually, I’m not so ancient, I’m only thirteen. My thesis is that I am some kind of chosen one, the first to be born in a thousand thousand years.” Myron, unsteady on his skates, was just the right height to look directly into the head’s glowing eyes, and they seemed to him to blaze dangerously as he talked.

  “Speak of what you want,” Sukumarika hissed in Myron’s ear.

  “I’m looking for Arthur the binturong, and Alice the red panda,” Myron said. “Or even just what to do. Someone wants to kill me and I’m so confused.”

  “First, you must give the test of the riddle!” intoned the brazen head.

  “I must what now?” Myron asked.

  “It means,” Sukumarika hissed again, “you must face the test.”

  “If I lose, do I get the web?”

  “No,” said Sukumarika. “Something worse.”

  “I’m ready,” said Myron, mentally preparing himself.

  A faint whirring sound issued from the brazen head. “Which is lighter,” spoke the head, its bronze lips opening and closing upon the hinge, “a pound of alabaster or a pound of raven feathers?”

  Myron puffed himself up. This was easier than he’d feared. “No problem. They’re both the same weight: a pound is always a pound.”

  “Incorrect. Alabaster is white; raven feathers are black. Alabaster is therefore lighter. He has failed the first test. Now he struggles for his life in the Upside-down Chamber. Take him away.”

  “What? No fair!” Sukumarika was bringing out her bag. “Don’t I get to ask you one? You have to answer my riddle, smarty.”

  From the head came a puff of air that might have been a sigh. “Very well,” it boomed. “Ask your question also.”

  Myron cleared his throat. He began: “Thirty white horses upon a red—”

  “Teeth,” said the head. “Take him away.” And the bag went on him.

  Myron kept shouting riddles from inside the bag as unseen hands bore him away. “I don’t bite a man unless he bites me—”

  “An onion,” Sukumarika said.

  “The longer I stand, the shorter—”

  “A candle.”

  “Um. What have I got in my pocket?”

  “Nineteen dollars and a card from the Illuminati. We went through your pants.”

  “Oh. What kind of animal am I?”

  “Trivia facts are not riddles.”

  “But I just wanted to know,” said Myron.

  When he was unbagged he was in yet another white room. From the ceiling hung dozens of metal rings. He was on a small platform in front of a wide, yawning pit.

  Maybe the web of silver won’t kill me, Myron thought. Maybe I’m a starfish. He had forgotten that starfish are not mammals, and that he was not bound for the silver web. Out loud, Myron said, “I don’t want to face the silver web”; but of course he was not going to. For this was the Upside-down Chamber. And so he was hoisted up, turned topsy-turvy, and the U-shaped hooks on his feet slid into the ceiling’s metal rings. For the first time Myron saw the men who had been carrying him; huge, burly men with angry faces. Sukumarika was right underneath him, and he grabbed her head for balance. She disentangled herself from him and stepped away, but now her hair stuck out at crazy angles.

  “Stop that,” she said, trying to smooth her ’do.

  “Why are you doing this?” Myron said. He was willing himself vainly to turn into an orangutan, so that he could swing away across the rings.

  “Every time I tried to explain, you kept interrupting with questions.” Sukumarika handed him a stout stick, about five feet long.

  “I won’t interrupt now. I’m really scared.”

  “Our ways are ancient, passed down from the times of the Emperor Asoka. We do not need to explain them to you.”

  “So I might as well interrupt, then. Who’s Hanusa?”

  “Look before you, Myron.” Sukumarika pointed across the room. Some thirty yards away, across the pit, on another small platform, a young man wearing identical skates was standing. He was probably only seventeen or eighteen, but to a high school freshman he looked like a grownup. He turned his back on Myron, reached up, grabbed two rings, and pulled himself up so he could hook his feet in the rings. When he let go with his hands, he was hanging upside down, facing forward. He reached down and picked up a staff that had been lying there. The U on the skates was shaped with the mouth forward, toward the toe, so he had to slide his skate backwards, out of the ring, and then forward, to the next ring, in order to advance. He was now out from over the platform, above the pit.

  “The pit is filled with spikes,” said Sukumarika.

  “I’m getting a headache, I think I should get down now,” Myron said. Just then, the young man started to run forward. Running must have been very difficult, since he was hanging upside down by hooks on his feet over a spiked pit, but he was good at it. Myron was so startled by the sudden advance, he instinctively flinched backwards. Of course, the skates slipped from the rings, and Myron fell down on the platform with a terrific clatter. His stick rolled into the pit. Everything had to stop while the men came from behind various trapdoors and arras and hoisted Myron up again. They gave him a new stick. After a brief discussion, they started to poke Myron with goads. When, tentatively, he unhooked one skate and stepped forward, it was not from the prodding; it was simply that he felt too ridiculous hanging upside down and doing nothing. So he took another step away from the platform, and he was looking down into the pit.

  It was maybe twenty feet deep, and the bottom was bristling with long, cruel spikes.

  “This is stupid,” Myron announced. “If I fall in, I won’t even die. It’ll just hurt a lot.”

  “We have in our employ,” Sukumarika said from the platform, “an immortal vole who will come while you are pinned by spikes and eat your jugular.”

  The young man began to advance again, more slowly now. Myron tried sidestepping, to circle around him, perhaps, and reach the far platform. He brandished his stick, he hoped threateningly, although waving it affected his balance, and he almost went over backwards again.

  “What,” said Myron, “has a hund
red eyes but cannot see?”

  “A potato,” said Sukumarika.

  “What,” said Myron, “is a vole?”

  “A field mouse,” said Sukumarika.

  Myron groaned. He’d thought he’d catch her with that one. The young man came closer, ring by ring. Myron realized he’d need to do something clever, or he was going to die. Or if he couldn’t do something clever, he should at least do something different.

  “Try this one. Off to see—”

  “Stop riddling, Myron,” Sukumarika shouted from behind him. “It doesn’t matter if you stump me now. It’s too late; the riddling is over.”

  “I’m not talking to you, lady.” In his fear and adrenaline, he could not remember her name. “I’m talking to this guy.” He pointed his stick at the young man, who batted it away with his own. They were close enough that their staves could touch. “Hey you, you never bested me in a riddle contest. So riddle me this:

  Off to see what I could find

  Through heather and hollow I roam;

  All that I found I left behind,

  What I found not, I brought home.”

  The young man was busy twirling his staff around in a complicated and frankly intimidating pattern.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you,” Myron called. “‘All that I found I left behind, what I found not I brought home.’ What is it?”

  The other stopped. “Wait. Say it again,” he said.

  Myron repeated the rhyme, while stepping forward a ring.

  “‘What I found not I brought home,’” the young man muttered to himself. “I know I know this one.”

  Myron then wrapped his legs around each other, such that both feet were in the same ring, facing different ways.

  “Oh, I know! Ticks! The answer is ticks.”

  But holding his stick like a baseball bat, Myron hit the fellow in the shins. A scraping noise, and the man’s boots slid back, free of the rings, and he fell through the air. Myron looked away before he hit the spikes. There was no sound. Slowly and very carefully, Myron turned back to the platform. Those same men helped him down. His heart was beating very fast, and he was more terrified than he cared to let on.