Immortal Lycanthropes

by Hal Johnson

  The men began to untie Myron’s boots. Sukumarika stood in front of him, her lips pursed with displeasure. “I killed him,” Myron said. His eyes were tearing up.

  Sukumarika silently pointed behind him. Myron looked over his shoulder and saw that the man he had fought was caught in a net that had sprung up, halfway down the pit and well above the spikes. He was clambering across the net like a spider.

  Myron was relieved. “Will you tell me where Arthur is?” he asked.

  “We don’t have to tell you anything. You’re lucky to be alive.” She was walking him back to the elevator.

  “Will you tell me why I’m a dead branch?”

  “Like the Illuminati?”

  “Yeah, like the Illuminati.”

  They walked down one flight of stairs and up another flight of stairs, over a catwalk (below, men in white coats could be seen carving with lasers enormous gems), and through a room shaped like a natural cavern, along which flowed sluggishly a stream of what appeared to be honey.

  “You’re a dead branch,” Sukumarika said at last, as they reached a dead end to the corridor, “because your original purpose no longer applies. The Illuminati were formed to stop World War One. This was long before most people could have thought World War One was coming, or even possible, this was the eighteenth century, but the Illuminati had acquired through their parent organization, the Freemasons, certain documents, and they were able to extrapolate that a great war would come and end civilization as we knew it. So, for more than a hundred years, they tried meddling in world affairs, on every level. They started revolutions, and they suppressed revolutions. They signed treaties, and they broke treaties. And then, after all that labor and skullduggery, World War One happened anyway, and ended civilization as we knew it, and then what were the Illuminati to do? They still exist, and they’re major property holders in some cities, such as Munich, but there’s no reason for them to be around. They’re a dead branch, withered and sere, but still attached to the trunk. They’re jokes, frankly. Look at the hats they wear! The Nine Unknown Men, and the members of their subsidiaries and affiliates, would never wear such hats!”

  “Okay, but why am I a dead branch?”

  “I don’t mean to be cruel. There was a time when primitive men worshiped totem animals, and then it was needful for some to be halfway between man and animal, with a foot in both worlds.”

  “Most have four feet, not two,” Myron objected, but even he knew he was picking at nits.

  “One by one, peoples dragged themselves up from this animism, embracing newer religions. Under the tutelage of the many forms of Hinduism, the Abrahamic religions, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, or what have you, people abandoned the old ways. With the exception of a few tribes, the animal gods have been forgotten, and these tribes will not last long as they are. And yet you live on. The world has outgrown you, as it has outgrown the Illuminati. The civilization they were formed to preserve, one of progress and innovation, noblesse oblige and grand narratives, no longer exists. And the world you existed for has been dead much longer than that.” She fiddled with her earring, and a door hissed open in the dead-end wall. She pushed Myron inside, not ungently. “I guess you could go look for an animist, or maybe even a stoned neopagan. But, really, you have no purpose. Sorry.” She handed Myron the garbage bag he’d been carrying; it was more full than before; the door slid shut and all was black.

  “You cheated,” a voice said, there in the darkness.

  Myron’s ears were popping, so he had trouble hearing things. “What?” he said.

  “You cheated, and I’m going to remember this. I’d watch your back if I were you.”

  The door opened into the familiar lobby, and Myron could see, in the dim fluorescent light that spilled in, that there in the elevator with him was the young man he had fought.

  Myron stepped backwards out of the elevator. “I apologize,” he said as the door closed. The young man was saying something, too, but Myron missed it, his voice was so low and ominous.

  And then once again the wall was blank.

  “Careful of the plant,” said the man behind the desk. He still had the accent.

  Myron looked around. The floor-waxing machine stood unattended against a wall. The floor shone slickly, and it was cold against Myron’s bare feet.

  “Did I tell any more lies?” Myron asked.

  “I don’t think so you did.”

  “But they told a lie to me. They said I would fall on the spikes, and you know what? There was a net. So they lied about that.” Myron turned and walked out the door. As he did, he heard faintly behind him the man saying:

  “Why are you sure we would spring the net for you?”

  3.

  Myron was hardly out the door when the janitor he had seen polishing the floor earlier slipped out of a doorway and fell in step behind him. “Hey, Jackson. Remember me?” he said.

  “Sure,” Myron said, confused.

  “No, I mean, remember me?” And he tipped his painter’s cap back, revealing the face of the man Myron had met in the library.

  “Hey!” Myron said, and then turned to run. He took one step and bumped into the man with the battered fedora and seersucker suit he’d gotten bum directions from. The man was very tall, although old and a little stooped.

  “Don’t get in a lather, fella, we’re on your side,” the fedora said. “Come on, let’s ankle.” Ankle meant walk. Each man grabbed one of Myron’s arms, and dragged him across a street and down a block to a set of benches. On one bench were two other old men, a chessboard between them. They were wearing straw hats and had canes.

  “Are you the Illuminati?” Myron asked.

  The two men dragging him were rather out of breath, but one of the chess players said, “Pipe the professor here! You really know your onions.”

  “They said you always wore hats. They said it was ridiculous,” Myron said.

  The fake janitor let go of Myron’s arm, and unzipped his coveralls. Underneath he was wearing the same painted tie. “It’s just like them, you’ll see, to take every opportunity to get their little digs in. They think they’re so smart for going bareheaded.” He wiggled the tie.

  Myron was looking around for an avenue of escape. Surely he could run faster than any of these four. “What does it matter?” he asked.

  “It’s true, if you summon the demon Asmodeus while wearing a hat, he can possess your body. But that’s screwy! How often do you summon Asmodeus? And if I were going to, I’d simply remove my topper. It’s not a big deal.”

  The chess player moved a bishop. “I can’t say I care for the Unknown Men,” he said.

  “I don’t like them, either,” Myron said. “They said I was a dead branch, when really I’m more like the chosen one.”

  All four men threw their hands in the air in disgust. “Faugh! The dead-branch theory! What else did they say?”

  “They said you failed to prevent World War One.”

  “We put it off for a hundred years. If your doctor keeps you alive for a century and then you die, do you call this man a failure?”

  “I guess not,” Myron said.

  The janitor, A. Weishaupt, if that was indeed his real name, put his arm on Myron’s shoulder. “Old boy, you can’t trust those saps. They’re stuck in their antiquated ways, and their forbidden rituals. We just want to help you.”

  “I sometimes think no one wants to help me,” Myron said.

  “Well, at the very least, we’re not deliberately trying to hurt you. You’re the most interesting thing we’ve seen in years, Jackson. We might be able to help, you know, if you let us know what you want. You didn’t mention what you wanted when you were in the lobby.”

  “I just want to find my parents and have no one trying to kill me,” Myron said.

  The Illuminati murmured appreciatively. “If someone’s trying to kill you, it can be—mate.” The chess players looked up from their game. “It can be a real pill to prevent. The Lord knows we’ve failed a time or tw
o. Archduke Ferdinand, of course.”

  “Prince Rudolf at Mayerling,” another said.

  “Yes, and Robespierre.”

  “John Keats.”

  “General Gordon.”

  “Caroline of Brunswick.”

  “Alex Raymond.”

  “Nietzsche.”

  “But the point is,” A. Weishaupt, if that was indeed his real name, interrupted, “that we have succeeded far more often then we have failed.”

  “Jean Jaurès.”

  “Hush! Experience, old boy, has taught us that the best way to avoid being killed is to go on the offensive. With our help, you will simply have to take your assailant out before he has a chance to futz you up.”

  “With your help?”

  “Knowledge is power, fella,” one of the chess players said. “And we have the knowledge. The history you have learned of, the history of Washington, of Edison and Churchill, is but a tiny spring welling up from the vast underground stream. Madame Blavatsky, Jack the Ripper, and William Henry Ireland didn’t get their portraits hung in your history class, but it is their knowledge that flows underground, enriching the soil above.”

  “And you,” Myron said, “have this knowledge?”

  “Only a small part, but we know who knows more. This is an entire new world you’re moving into, fella, and we can be your guides. What other hope do you have?”

  “Well, I do have this doomsday device.”

  A hush fell over the four men. Very slowly, and with deliberate nonchalance, one said, “Did you say a doomsday device?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got it right here.” Myron rooted around in the bag, which he now noticed contained his old street clothes, laundered and folded, plus sneakers—and came out with the cylinder. Its duct tape was still in place. “I don’t even know how to open it, though,” he said with a fake, dismissive laugh. He began to put it back in the bag.

  There was a snapping sound, and the fedora held in front of him a switchblade knife. He flipped it around, catching the blade, and handed it pearl-handle first to Myron. Myron felt awkward. He hadn’t really intended to open the package, but it felt like everyone expected him to, and he was too embarrassed to stop what he’d accidentally started.

  “I don’t know . . .” was the best he could get out.

  Do you really think, everyone’s eyes seemed to be saying, you should be carrying around something called a doomsday device and not know exactly what it is?

  The silent argument was persuasive. In absolute stillness, except for the cars passing by, some distant sirens, and the cacophony of the Manhattan crowds, Myron sawed clumsily at the tape. With a little help from his teeth, he managed to cut the top off the cylinder. It was just a cardboard tube under all that tape, the kind inside a roll of wrapping paper. Inside was something wrapped in many layers of tinfoil. He gingerly probed the tinfoil, spreading it out at the top. It extended over the edges of the cylinder like the petals of a flower.

  Suddenly the back of Myron’s neck erupted in goose flesh. He’d never felt anything quite like this before. He looked over both shoulders, but there was no one suspicious around except some toothless junkies, a pair of blind and deaf drag queens arguing into each other’s hands, and a homeless man who had built a three-story castle out of refrigerator boxes. Myron began to feel dizzy. “Is your name really A. Weishaupt?” he said, groggily.

  “Myron, you’re killing me.”

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  “My name is Fred Meyers. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I think I’ve been drugged. Did you drug me?”

  The Illuminati rolled up their sleeves and shook their fists. “The Nine Unknown Men!” they cried. “They must’ve done this to you!”

  “The cads!” one added.

  Very slowly, “No, maybe I’m not drugged, maybe it’s something else,” Myron said. Just then a moose came thundering down the avenue. Cars swerved onto the sidewalk, and people were screaming in its wake. It charged right up to Myron, who dropped the tube. The moose turned into a wild-haired naked man, and he caught it before it hit the ground.

  “By the deer on Mora’s brow!” the moose-man exclaimed through his long blond beard. “What the de’il is that thing?” He was stuffing, as he spoke, the tinfoil back into place.

  “Excuse me,” said Fred Meyers. In his hand was a small pistol. “A silver bullet is in the chamber. I suggest you drop the doomsday device.”

  “You daft son of a whore, do you ken how foul this smells? Silver bullets are naught but a nuisance, and if I cared two pins for your device I’d gore you afore your finger half crooked.” He had a strong accent. Ye daft soon o’ a hewer.

  “You have stated your opinion, but the fact of the gun remains,” said Fred Meyers. And they all stood there.

  “’Tis frightful cold,” said the moose-man, who was, after all, completely naked. His hair was so long, it would have come down to his thighs had it not been sticking out in every direction. And to Myron, he said, “These’ll be friends of yours?”

  “Maybe,” said Myron.

  Then: With a whistling sound, a disk, like a Frisbee, cut through the air. It passed by fedora’s head, slicing a strip off the brim of his hat before embedding itself with a thock in the bench. Immediately Fred Meyers spun around, but a second disk cut into his gun, and he dropped it. His hand was scattered and bleeding.

  “Get aboard,” the moose-man said to Myron, and dropped the tube. Myron half expected it to explode when it hit the ground, but nothing of the sort happened; it just struck the pavement and rolled six inches, brought up short by a kneeling moose. The Illuminati were scrambling for cover. From across the street was running the young man Myron had fought upside down. In his hand was a long dagger, and his eyes were blazing. He was screaming, and it was hard to catch, but it sounded something like, “I’m good enough to give you a head start, and you stop and talk to the janitor?” The rest was obscenity.

  One of the Illuminati tugged on his cane, and out slid a long blade. “Call the Rosicrucians!” he cried. “Call the Knights of Columbus!”

  Myron grabbed the doomsday device and jumped on the moose’s back. The moose unwound its legs and began to run. Myron looked over his shoulder and saw the young man was chasing him down the sidewalk, slowly losing ground. Then, when he was a block behind, he fell over and disappeared from sight. There was the sound of gunfire. But the moose kept on running. Myron held on tight as it moved across the jammed traffic. It leapt onto a car hood, caving it in, and ran faster and faster over sidewalk and street. Myron was so high up, he was looking down on the pedestrians scattering before him. Soon they reached a tunnel, part of which was blocked off by orange cones; the moose ran through the cones, through the echoing of the tunnel, and out into more city streets on the other side. There were sirens, and the sound of a policeman’s voice through a bullhorn. Myron closed his eyes, but he remembered falling out of the truck, and he held on as tight as he could. After what seemed forever, the moose stopped in some woods. He shook Myron onto the ground, and then he was a naked man again.

  He said to call him Spenser. He said Myron owed him a set of clothes and some cheese.

  V. Flodden Field

  They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever.

  Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

  1.

  Upstate New York is cold and overcast in November. There in the woods, the trees were bare, and the leaves crunched beneath their feet.

  “See, these all look like dead branches, but in the spring they’ll be leafy again,” Myron said.

  Spenser said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, I don’t know if you knew this about me—”

  “I’m turning back into an elk before I freeze. Hurry up and build the shelter.”

  Spenser called a moose an elk. He called an elk a wapiti. When he got angry, he started to develop that accent. It
took a while, but Myron had managed to summon the accent from him several times over the last day and a half, which had mostly been spent on the move, anyway, Myron riding on mooseback and heading north. There had been a brief stop at a gas station for supplies, where Myron had bought with the last of his money toilet paper, pretzels and a six-pack of orange soda, a T-shirt for Spenser, and toothpaste; but otherwise they had avoided civilization. Now, as night fell, Myron was busy following Spenser’s hasty instructions on building a lean-to.

  “How come I have to do all the work?” he asked, but the moose just lay there and snorted. Myron knew the answer, anyway. Moose didn’t need shelter, but he might. He had put his clothes on under the white pajamas he’d gotten from the Unknown Men, but it was still chilly.

  “I’ve survived plenty of nights in the woods without a lean-to anyway. It’s not my fault you’ve been heading north, and it’s been getting colder,” Myron said as he jammed leaves into the remaining holes in his frame of sticks. “I could totally survive the night,” he said. But that night, which he spent lying beneath the shelter he had made, his head pillowed on the enormous warmth of the moose, was the pleasantest he had spent since leaving home.

  In the morning, Spenser, human again, took the toothpaste, squirted some in his mouth, then squirted some more on the toilet paper, and began to polish the bottom of an orange-soda can. He was wearing a T-shirt that said MY PARENTS WENT TO NEW YORK, AND ALL I GOT WAS FETAL ALCOHOL SYNDROME, the only one they’d had in his size.

  “Can I have some, too?” Myron asked. “I haven’t brushed my teeth in forever.”

  Spenser spat out the toothpaste. “You don’t need to brush your teeth,” he said, still polishing. “You can’t get cavities.” When the toilet paper shredded, he took another piece, and he kept using more toothpaste. But he let Myron have a shot, too, to swish out his mouth. It felt much better afterward, and then they both drank some orange soda.