But Jackson, unable to answer, could only gaze up at the sky.
Basil Copper
CRY WOLF
Basil Cooper: A Life in Books was published in 2008 by PS Publishing. The biblio/biography includes listings of all the author’s macabre and supernatural novels, collections and short stories, his “Solar Pons” series of Sherlock Holmes pastiches and other works, along with various essays and the complete script of his adaptation of M.R. James‘ Count Magnus. Richard Dalby also contributed a detailed overview of the author’s life and career.
Copper’s first story in the horror field was “The Spider” in The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1964), and he became a fulltime writer in 1970. His short fiction has been collected in Not After Nightfall, From Evil’s Pillow, When Footsteps Echo and Afterward the Dark, while recent anthology appearances include The Mammoth Books of Vampires, The Mammoth Book of Zombies, Dark Voices 3, Shadows Over Innsmouth and Horror for Christmas.
He has written more than fifty hard-boiled thrillers about Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday, and his other novels include The Great White Space, The Curse of the Fleers, Necropolis and the werewolf chiller, The House of the Wolf. In 1977 he published the non-fiction study, The Werewolf: in Legend, Fact and Art.
The village is very quiet. But then that is to be expected at this time of year. It stands in a notch of the frowning mountains far from the nearest town. And after all, it is the main reason we bought the house. In summer the meadows are carpeted with red and yellow flowers while in the winter the majesty of the snow and the unearthly beauty of the mountains against those changing skies more than compensates for the cold and the lack of modern amenities.
The wolf came early in November. That in itself was curious because the weather had been mild until then. It was first reported by Jaeckel, the frontier guard. He had seen the trace of its paws down by the stream in the moonlight, he said. Even an outsider like myself could not resist chaffing him. Wolves had not been known in these mountains for generations, said the older heads of the village. Now if it had been much higher up or on the Italian side and January as well, and one of the hardest winters on record. But a mild November! They flung up their hands with laughter and continued smoking their long pipes.
Jaeckel just smiled and said he knew what he knew and he trusted the evidence of his own eyes. A big dog, perhaps, said Jean Piotr, who owns the largest general store in the village. Jaeckel derided the suggestion. Quite impossible, he said firmly. It was a wolf’s print, coming down a path from the village to the stream. In fact he’d seen the animal, or at least its shadow passing over the snow, a few seconds before. Even allowing for the moonlight and the elongation of the shadow it had been too big for a dog. And the pads were enormous.
Jaeckel said that, to settle it, why didn’t we all come down to have a look at the prints ourselves. We were gathered in the auberge at the time and it was warm and friendly and the vintage was uncommonly good that year. So only a few of the less comfort-addicted spirits said they would go along. I went too, together with my son Andrew, who was eager to see the track of this fabulous beast.
We had a disappointing afternoon. The village children were using the path as a toboggan slide after the new snowfall and nothing remained by then.
“Let us try by the stream,” said Jean LeCoutre, who apart from owning a logging company, was also maire of the village. So aside from his natural authority, coupled with that of his office, it was also his duty to look into the matter. We drew a blank there too. Jaeckel was puzzled and humiliated. He looked at the turned-up snow in disgust and scratched his head. He spat thoughtfully.
LeCoutre remained on his knees for a moment, staring at the ground.
“You are certain this is the place?” he asked the frontier guard.
The latter turned and surveyed the length of the stream.
“As you can see, the remainder of the banks are covered in virgin snow,” he said simply.
The maire got to his feet and brushed down his trousers.
“It seems as though someone has obliterated the tracks with a rough broom,” he said in a puzzled voice.
There was a general laugh among the men who had accompanied us but I noticed we all went back to the village in a thoughtful frame of mind. That was the simple beginning and nothing else happened for more than two weeks.
Then a frightened child came running into the hamlet one evening to say he’d been chased by a big dog. The child was obviously terrified and his clothes had been torn by something sharp and jagged so his family were forced to take the story seriously. They sent for the maire and the doctor and within half an hour a search party was organised. I joined it, naturally and though Andrew was anxious to go, I told him to stay behind. He was only fifteen and I knew that he might do something foolish in his excitement.
We all got lanterns and big electric torches and thoroughly searched the track along which the boy had been coming. Sure enough, there were large paw marks right behind the half-impressions of the boy’s running feet. There was no joking that night and a noticeable tremulousness in the voices of some of those who made suggestions.
LeCoutre sent back to the village for his rifle and a message summoning the best shots in the community. We left two men to guide them down. After the attack on the boy, the paw marks circled aimlessly and then started to go downhill. They followed the path the village children used as a slide and then went into the stream and disappeared. This was strange in itself, as wolves avoid water, except for drinking purposes.
We were circling up and down when there was the crack of a rifle.
“The opposite bank,” shouted Jaeckel, his eyes bright with excitement. Smoke curled thinly from the barrel of his rifle. He pointed into the thicket on the opposite bank. We all distinctly heard a crackling noise following the shot.
“Now perhaps you’ll believe me,” said Jaeckel with quiet triumph.
“If it satisfies you, this is serious enough,” the maire agreed.
By now the riflemen from the village had arrived, alarmed by the shot and disappointed at being cheated of a chance at getting the animal.
The maire led the way back in, having decided that it was too dark and dangerous to attempt to ford the stream and seek the beast out that night. He consulted with the doctor over the boy, who was found to have only minor scratches and then telephoned the civil authorities to put them on their guard. The auberge was packed that evening, while we all debated the events of the day.
When we got back to the house I found the door locked. Andrew’s voice, shaken and hushed, sounded from inside. He opened up when I called to him.
“I was frightened, father,” he said. “I think the wolf was here about half an hour ago. I heard something padding round the house and a snarl like a dog so I locked the door quickly.”
“You were very wise, son,” I comforted him.
“Shall we go and look for it?” said Andrew.
I got angry then. After all, Andrew was the only thing I had left in the world, now that his mother had gone.
“That is what we won’t do,” I said. “If you’ve had your supper, get off to bed. The authorities will handle this.”
I telephoned the maire and presently another party arrived. We went over the ground minutely. We found the wolf tracks outside the main balcony windows of the house. LeCoutre looked grave.
“We’ll have to keep the young people indoors after dark until this is over,” he said. “I’ll see if we can get some extra rifles up from the militia until the beast is shot.”
We followed the tracks half-heartedly for a few hundred yards. We saw they went in the general direction of the village path before we turned back.
A party sat up at my house drinking cognac into the small hours discussing the affair.
Nothing happened for a week. Then there were further scares. Two little girls had looked from their window one night and had seen the wolf – as big as a cow, they said, though everyone
allowed for their childish imagination – running across the meadow near their house. When their mother had come, alarmed by their screams, all she could see was a thin man running across the field, probably in pursuit of the wolf.
Then two goats, which were kept under cover at Papa Gremillon’s, one of the last farms at the edge of the village, were found half-eaten and with their throats torn out. A minor wave of panic swept the district. One of the most alarming aspects of the business was that the outhouse in which the goats were kept had been padlocked and the key left in the lock.
Whoever had killed the goats – and the prints and evidence of the fierce struggle among the beasts pointed unmistakably to a wolf – had first unlocked the padlock and then turned the key again on leaving. When these facts became generally known the unease became tinged with terror. LeCoutre and I and some of the more undaunted members of the community talked the affair over for long hours in the auberge. It was while we were there one bitter afternoon shortly after Christmas, that the rumour of “le loup-garou” first came to be mentioned.
“A lot of superstitious nonsense among the hill people,” snapped LeCoutre. “The legend of a man-wolf is as old as these mountains,” he added, turning to me.
“There may be something in it,” said someone farther down the table. “The story of a man who can change into a wolf to kill his prey and then turn back into a man again, has come from classical times.”
“So have many things,” said LeCoutre, his face purple with outraged indignation. “But that doesn’t mean we have to believe minotaurs are still running about.”
“But how do you account for this beast’s cleverness?” said Jaeckel disarmingly. “And what about that padlock at Papa Gremillon’s?”
The maire stroked his chin before downing his glass of water spirit. “I don’t doubt we’ve got something serious here and something fiendishly clever,” he said. “But I exclude the supernatural. We’ve enough to think about at the moment.”
There was not one of us who disagreed with him on dispersing. But after that things gradually got worse. Some soldiers on winter manoeuvres in the mountains came for a bit, boosted the custom in the cafes and escorted the children to and from their various errands. Nothing happened of note. Some of the younger national servicemen fired off their rifles at shadows, alarming the countryside. And when the weather closed in, blocking the pass, the militia were, of course, withdrawn. We were left to our own resources.
The first deaths occurred in March, with the warmer weather. There was little Rene Fosse, a 12-year-old schoolboy who was found with his throat torn out one night only a few yards from his back door. He had been on his way to the barn to see that the stock were all right. With the deaths of two small sisters later the same week then truly began the reign of terror. Pawprints of the wolf were found on each occasion but the creature was fiendishly cunning, as the maire had hinted. Despite the combing of the foothills by massive search-parties, aided by militia, the prints always ceased at the stream.
And searches up and down the banks always failed to find the place where the beast had once again regained the ground. During all this time hardly anyone had spotted the animal which fed the legend of the werewolf; a legend which was seized on first by the regional and then the national press. Hordes of journalists came with their cameramen, everyone was interviewed, old griefs disinterred and any clues there might have been of the beast’s whereabouts were soon obliterated by the boots of hundreds of sightseers.
Then, at the end of March or early April, just before the snow was due to disperse, we had a report that an adult this time had been attacked. He was a man named Charles Badoit, a mechanic at the village’s only garage, who lived in one of the smaller houses at the end of the settlement. The beast had jumped on his back from an embankment as he was returning on foot from work and had torn a piece out of his neck. With great courage Badoit had fought it off; fortunately for him he was still carrying a box of tools and as he was a big man and made such a threatening sight as he whirled the box around his head with the strength of despair, the wolf had given up the attack and slunk off.
Swathed in bandages and fortified by cognac, Badoit reclined on a sofa at the doctor’s house and told his story. LeCoutre swiftly organised one of his biggest search parties and this time I allowed Andrew to join it on condition that he kept close to me and didn’t handle any firearms. Two burly gendarmes from the police de la route had been left in the village and they added a useful stiffening to our party. The wolf had torn away a piece of flesh from the neck of Badoit and had apparently stopped to eat this no more than a few yards away from the scene of the attack for we found bloodstains and an area of disturbed snow in a nearby thicket.
“This is an audacious brute, all right,” gritted LeCoutre grimly as we pressed on, following the clear trail in the snow. But after going in the familiar direction, the paw marks diverted from the track and started up a nearby hill. The wolf may have had its appetite whetted and might be trying for another victim the other side of the village, I said. LeCoutre nodded assent.
We plunged uphill for twenty minutes, through quite thick snow, following the clearly defined trail. We all heard the cracking branch at the same time. Andrew gave an excited cry and the wolf bounded out from behind a clump of fir trees about fifty metres ahead. Several rifles cracked out in a ragged volley and puffs of disturbed snow made plumes in the air around the big grey animal. One of the shots had apparently connected for the brute gave a whimpering cry and limped off back into the trees.
Encouraged, we plunged after it. I told LeCoutre and the gendarmes I thought one of us had hit it on the front offside paw and they were inclined to agree. But half an hour later, with the bloodstains growing fainter and dying out before the trail ended at the stream, we had to give up once more.
Next morning Andrew was pale with shock. I had been out for a talk in the village and on my return found him lying on his bed, immobile with pain. There was a bandage on his right hand.
“Don’t be angry, father,” he said. “I cut my fingers chopping wood. It’s not serious.”
“Have you been to see Dr Lemaire?” I said, alarmed.
“Yes,” Andrew assured me. “And he says it’s nothing to be concerned about. More painful than anything else.”
“I’m glad to hear it, my boy,” I said. “But you really must be more careful.”
Truth to tell, I was more worried than I cared to admit, but at suppertime the colour had come back into Andrew’s cheeks and he was eating with all his old appetite. The matter slipped my mind as the jangled state of nerves of the villagers gradually came to crisis point. Not that I blamed them, because I was by now almost as nervous at night-time as anyone, despite the heavy Mauser pistol I kept by my bedside. The maire had issued a ration of ammunition to every responsible male adult. Like him I had no patience with the werewolf theories which many of the villagers were quite openly advocating, but I had to admit that there were many terrible and unexplainable things about this horrifying series of events.
Poor Badoit’s neck was taking a long time to heal and he had to be removed to hospital in a major town fifty kilometres away. But for a miracle we would have been following his cortège to the local cemetery as the latest in that series of pathetic funerals of earlier victims. We were hoping that the wolf had had the fight knocked out of it by the flesh wound inflicted by our shots and had retired to the higher mountains. But it was not to be.
It was only two nights later when the beast struck. In some way known only to itself it had secreted itself in a locked woodshed almost in the heart of the village. Its audacity was such that it had apparently stayed there all day. In the early evening the unfortunate old woman who owned the nearby house had run short of fuel for her stove. Opening the door in the semi-darkness of the courtyard she had her throat torn out in the first onrush of the wolf and had died immediately. The beast, not at all incommoded by its wound of three nights earlier, had dragged her off to anoth
er backyard nearby and had commenced its meal. This delay had enabled the hurriedly summoned shooting party to come up while the beast was still in the vicinity. LeCoutre was arguing with some of the more superstitious villagers as Andrew and I got there.
“I tell you, could an animal have done this?” said a stolid, elderly villager with a walrus moustache, after the problems of the locked shed had been explained. “C’est le loup-garou!”
“Werewolf be damned!” said LeCoutre, choking with rage. “Bullets will put paid to it, the same as any other wolf.”
I had just pointed out that the missing woman might still be alive and that we ought to be following up the trail when the most dreadful growl came from the shadows. This was followed by a worrying noise mixed with the sound of snapping bone which made several members of the party feel sick. We all set off through the maze of courtyards. Someone wheeled a motor cycle with a bright headlamp on to the scene.
A grey shadow leaped over a wall as a gun flamed, leaving a scene of Goyaesque horror behind it. While some of the party remained to take charge and to cover the mangled remains with a tarpaulin a dozen of us rushed forward to take revenge on this devilish animal. LeCoutre and I pressed shead of the two gendarmes. I had brought Andrew with me, to spare him the scenes behind us, and he was well up with the maire and myself. We heard a snarl from the thicket in front and Andrew dashed ahead with a torch and a thick stick, despite my shouts. I called to him to come back but the party was now widely spread out. My main fear was flying bullets from excitable trigger fingers as I didn’t imagine that the wolf would stop.
It suddenly appeared, eyes blazing, and several shots rang out but the animal ran off. When we got to the spot there were no blood marks. Then Jaeckel appeared behind me, his eyes inflamed with excitement. His chest heaved with his exertions.
“There,” he said excitedly. “There!”
I followed his pointing finger, saw the branches of the thicket moving and undulating.
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 19