The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men

by Stephen Jones

  Nugent’s physician examined him thoroughly, took a series of X-rays, asked a number of personal and pertinent questions. At the end of the session, the doctor was not sure that his patient was telling him the truth, that the man had vomited so much blood. Mr Nugent might have thought that he had done so, but the doctor doubted it.

  “I can find nothing wrong physically. It’s possibly some kind of psychosomatic illness. I’d like to refer you to a colleague of mine who understands more about these things.”)

  Interlude: Dreamplace

  Nugent loped at a steady pace through the darkness, instinct carrying him over the lumpy and rock-strewn terrain without stumbling, helping him to avoid colliding with the tall trees which forested his habitat. All around and behind him he could sense his fellow pack members, companions whose loyalty and love were almost tangible in his new awareness. As he ran, he slitted his eyes against the light breeze blowing into his face, the breeze which carried the scent of fleeing prey ahead.

  Nugent was in no great hurry to catch up with the prey. While the pack was driven by hunger to hunt, there remained a certain thrill in the chase which became anticlimactic when the quarry was eventually brought down.

  He threw back his head and howled, howled to communicate with his mate, to communicate with the pack, howled as an expression of the sheer joy of living. Answering cries came from the pack, cries which were pitched at differing tones and levels to acknowledge position in the hierarchy.

  Nugent came to a break in the tree-line, saw that the slope shallowed as it swept down to the valley far below. The moon-goddess dominated the crystal sky, her frosty light a welcome beacon for the pursuers.

  Ahead, four or five hundred metres down the hillside, Nugent could see the victims, two of them, both man-creatures. He stopped momentarily and belled his triumph to the mountains. The other pack members, too, had stopped, their baying cries echoing his.

  They stood awaiting his command, fierce grey animals with tongues lolling, panting breath steaming the night air. Nugent felt a rush of emotion such as he had never experienced in his life. He cried out again and leapt onwards, the other wolves close at his heels.

  The man-things, male and female, must have realized that they were beaten, for they turned at bay, naked and helpless against the power of the ancient enemy, terror-riven faces illuminated by the icy and uncaring moon.

  The man’s face was that of Nugent himself, the woman’s Marianna.

  Nugent sprang at his alter ego, massive jaws clashing to tear away jugular and carotid. The rush of hot blood was wine to the beast, rich, intoxicating, life-giving.

  Nugent stepped back, signalling to the pack that they could feast. As they jumped in to rend the helpless flesh, Nugent turned to stalk the woman . . .

  (Previously, Nugent would have emerged from these nightmares in a state of gibbering terror. But after some weeks of therapy he was beginning to grasp why his sleeping mind played such dreadful pranks. He could understand the deep guilt of his subconscious.

  There was something else, something he had not, probably would not, admit to Doctor Cudlipp. The dreams were becoming pleasurable, the chase, the kill, the piquancy of fresh warm blood, all were becoming things to be savoured. And Nugent was waking up with other lusts, renewed lusts . . .)

  Item: Bloodlust

  Doctor Cudlipp could well have afforded a suite of offices in one of the new blocks uptown, all glass and chrome, modern art and spindly, uncomfortable furniture. But he clung doggedly to a two-room office in the tired precinct where he had started out years before. The building was a gloomy old brownstone, shared with a sleazy gumshoe, two fortune tellers and a pornographer. It was as if Cudlipp was making a statement. “Hey, I’m successful and rich and so are my patients. I just don’t need to prove it.”

  Many employees would have refused to work overtime in such a place. After dark, the streets outside became ill-lit, decaying canyons shunned by the wary. But Nancy Rhys lacked both imagination and a sense of caution. Besides, the returns for working late were worthwhile.

  Only at one point during the evening had Nancy Rhys felt any apprehension. She was working in Doctor Cudlipp’s office, which was dark save for an aura of light spilling onto the desk from his green-shaded banker’s lamp. The door between the outer office and reception area, badly illuminated by an ancient lighting system, was ajar. Nancy had jumped when the thin bar of dull yellow extending across Cudlipp’s floor was suddenly extinguished.

  “Holy shit!” Calming herself with several deep breaths, she had gone into the outer office, had worked the switch several times. Either the damned bulb had gone or the old wiring was giving out. Even the stolid Nancy felt something oppressive in the impenetrable darkness. She also had a strange feeling that maybe she was no longer alone. Nancy was glad to get back to the doctor’s desk and the friendly lamp-light.

  Scattered on the desk were a large number of buff-coloured files marked “Confidential”. Many of them were open, revealing dark, dark secrets. Nancy Rhys had been having a great time and now she picked up the doctor’s telephone to share the fun with her friend Shirleen.

  Nancy Rhys’s presence in that place was a bad mistake. In fact, that whole day in Doctor Cudlipp’s office had been a small series of misadventures which became one huge, tragic error.

  Nancy Rhys should not have been placed in a position like this and normally the agency knew it. Unfortunately, the agency was using a stand-in day supervisor that morning. When the psychiatrist had telephoned asking for an emergency receptionist, only Nancy was available.

  There was nothing wrong with Nancy’s work, she was an efficient administrator. But she was a pry and a gossip.

  Letitia, the doctor’s regular nurse, had come into work determined not to let the incipient influenza beat her. For much of the morning she had worked in a desultory manner before giving in to her sickness. Almost her last action of the day was to answer a telephone call from a fairly new patient, Mr Smith.

  Smith had asked for an evening appointment, his usual practice. Letitia had acknowledged the appointment but had failed to make a note of it. By the time she asked Cudlipp to excuse her, she was very ill and had forgotten all about Mr Smith.

  When Nancy Rhys had arrived, the day’s paperwork was well behind. Doctor Cudlipp had asked Nancy if she would mind staying on to finish up.

  “I don’t mind how late,” he had instructed, “I’ll clear it with your supervisor and pay for your over-time. Do a good job and I’ll throw in a bonus, just between you and me.”

  Nancy Rhys needed the money and so she had jumped at the chance. The doctor gave her his keys, saying that they should be handed to the janitor when Nancy departed for the night.

  Doctor Cudlipp left happily, unaware that he would never have to pay the bonus.

  Recovering from her mild shock when the outer light had popped, Nancy became so engrossed with the files – “. . . such fun reading about this bunch of loonies . . .” she told Shirleen – that she failed to notice the passing of time. She continued to read the secrets of human despair and misery to Shirleen.

  After a while, an odd noise distracted her.

  “Anything wrong, honey?” asked Shirleen.

  “I don’t know, I thought I heard something out there . . . Hold the line, Shirleen.” Nancy laid the handset aside, peered into the dark shadows surrounding her, futilely tried to see through the partly-open door into the outer office. She called out, “Hello, is anybody there?” The responding silence was stifling. Nancy tried again, more loudly, then shivered.

  After a moment, she returned to her friend. “Hi, guess I’m imagining things. Shouldn’t have read so many of these files. Now I’ve saved the best one for last, kid. Get this, the doctor’s got a patient who thinks he’s a wolf. Calls himself Smith, like who does he think he’s kidding?” She listened with delight to Shirleen’s shrieking laughter and tumbling words of disbelief. Nancy chuckled. “Yeah, that’s right, a wolf.”

  S
hirleen asked something. “Guess maybe he runs round howling at the moon, things like that,” mused Nancy. Shirleen said something else and Nancy tittered. “I suppose he carries a poop-scoop.”

  Then, “Hey, I think I heard that noise again. Maybe there is somebody there. Could be the janitor. Better hang up, after all, the doctor’s paying good rates. Call you later, honey.

  “And hey, Shirleen, don’t let the wolfman get you!” Still sniggering, she hung up.

  And as she did so, Mr Smith partly stepped from the shadows. “Jesus! You scared me!” cried Nancy. And then she took a good look and realized she might have plenty of reason to be scared. There was something wrong with the man’s indistinct shape. Maybe it was the odd fuzziness of his outline, or perhaps the way his shoulders hunched. And then there was the peculiar way his head thrust forward, as if he intended to sniff at her.

  Nancy’s breath caught in her throat. Then she tried to rationalize the situation. Maybe this guy wasn’t a threat. Maybe this was some kind of sick joke. Yeah, that could be it, some kind of initiation prank to test the new girl on the block.

  But there was something else very wrong, something about the man’s eyes. In the dim light, those eyes were shining bright red. Nancy crammed knuckles into her mouth. People’s eyes don’t reflect light . . . do they?

  Then the man smiled at her as he took a step forward, and Nancy began to weep. The smile was knowing, hungry, and marred by a thin line of drool depending from the bottom lip.

  (The office door was jammed closed so tightly that Doctor Cudlipp had to summon the janitor to help him get it open. And when they had forced their way in, both men wished that the day hadn’t even started.

  The first thing they noticed was the charred smell, as if there had been a burning in the suite. In the middle of the floor was a metal waste-bin filled with burnt papers and the stiffer remnants of file covers.

  Then their senses were assailed by the sight and slaughterhouse odour of the blood splashed all around the office, great gouts and pools on walls and floor and ceiling.

  And finally, in Doctor Cudlipp’s sanctum, they saw the human shambles which had been Nancy Rhys, a once-living being reduced to the slops of a butcher’s tray. The very worst thing was the head, glued to the desk’s top by a puddle of congealing blood. The face had been almost totally torn away, but the eyes were intact and they stared, mockingly, at the two men.

  The janitor fainted and silent tears of anguish poured down Doctor Cudlipp’s face.)

  Item: Confession

  Father Gálvez came through from the sacristy, being careful to secure the door behind him. Not even a church was safe now. The bad ones, they had no respect. He crossed the church, his progress making little noise save for the slight swish of his cassock’s hem brushing against the stone flags. He paused in the presbytery to genuflect before the altar and make the sign of the cross.

  Rising, the priest turned and looked down the nave towards the distant entrance which was barely visible in the dim illumination cast by the few low-powered light bulbs high in the vaulted ceiling. The air in the old church was thick with the mingled smell of candle-wax and polish and incense. Father Gálvez took a deep breath, enjoying the heady odours, to him a rich, olfactory wine.

  As was common, the pews were empty, lending a hollowness to the church. Gálvez sighed. So few attended in this Godless age. Whereas once, in dead years past, the church was never quite empty, now it rarely saw a worshipper except for a handful of elderly parishioners on Sundays.

  And yet despite this paucity, Gálvez was of the old school. The younger priests, the “moderns”, would be out there with the street people, preaching their radical ideas and openly defying the Vatican. But he, Gálvez, maintained a punctilious adherence to the old and honoured routines.

  Each evening at seven, he would occupy his stall in the confessional and wait for two full hours, reading his breviary with difficulty in the feeble glow of a small wall-lamp. When penitents did come, he heard the same so-called sins over and over in a variety of voices. Small, meaningless sins, petty tales of spite and jealousy and lust and weakness. How he wearied of them at times.

  The priest smiled, a small, self-deprecating twitch of the lips. “Charity, Gálvez,” he reminded himself as he walked to the far transept and took his seat in the confessional. Kissing his stole, he placed it around his shoulders and opened his prayer book. He prepared for a long, probably fruitless wait.

  He must have dozed momentarily, for he was suddenly jerked awake by sounds of the other door closing and someone settling on the far side of the screen. Gálvez reached up and snapped out the light. The poor illumination from outside of the confessional revealed a black shadow pressing near to the screen.

  “Father . . . are you there, Father?” A man’s voice, well-educated by the sound of it – odd in this neighbourhood – but low and hoarse. “I need help . . .”

  “Yes, my son, I’m here,” Gálvez replied. The priest’s appearance, stocky, swarthy, almond eyes and black hair heavily greyed at the temples, all proclaimed his Hispanic origins. But his voice, even when lowered and gentle, spoke harshly of the Lower East Side. “What is it you wish to tell me?”

  “Father, I’ve done something so dreadful . . .” The other’s voice trailed off, only to start again with hesitant words, as if the ritual was half-forgotten. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned . . .

  “It has been so many years since I last confessed, so many long years . . . years in which I thought I didn’t need you. But now . . .” Gálvez heard a noise like a sob.

  “Easy, my son,” he soothed, “I have all the time that you need.”

  “I have sinned through the years, Father, many sins, some of them utterly vile sins.” There was despair in the voice, and Gálvez felt a strong surge of pity. “I have no time to go through those sins,” the hidden visitor continued, “Dammit, I’ve forgotten many of them, for my conscience is long dead. I guess that God will know of them, though. But now I carry a burden which I can’t shed. I have taken a soul, and I’ve condemned that soul to restless wandering. And it’s haunting me, Father, it’s haunting me to the point of insanity . . .”

  Father Gálvez made a small sign, an insignificant little gesture of the hand, as if the other could see him. “You have killed?”

  “I . . . I think so. More than once, I think . . . but it’s the soul, I cannot rid myself of the soul . . .”

  “Whose was the soul which haunts you, my son?” the priest asked.

  “The Indian warned me, he warned me . . . Whose soul, Father? Why, the wolf, the great, wonderful timber wolf which I destroyed in my lust for trophy.”

  “What is this you’re saying?” demanded Gálvez. His voice was suddenly cold, compassion gone. “You are telling me that you are haunted by the soul of a wolf? Are you mocking me, man?”

  “No!” Gálvez recognized the genuine anguish in the shouted protest. “I’m not mocking you. I need your help to rid me of this thing!”

  “But animals do not have souls, my son.”

  “They do, Father, God knows that they do!”

  The priest’s voice became icy once more. “If you are Catholic, you will know Holy Mother Church’s stance on this, that animals do not have souls. If you persist with this delusion, then I cannot help you.”

  “You must help me . . . ” The other’s voice now held a pleading note, almost a whine. “I tell you, Father, that the wolf has a soul and the soul cries for vengeance.”

  Gálvez frowned. “Have you considered seeking psychiatric help, my son?”

  “I’ve tried that, damn you priest! It didn’t work. And any way, I’m not mad. I may have said this thing is driving me to madness, but I’m not mad!”

  “I didn’t say you are mad. Disturbed, perhaps. Whatever is wrong with you, it seems to me to be a problem more for a doctor than a priest. If you have genuine sins to confess, I will hear you and give absolution if you are truly penitent. Other than that I can do nothing f
or you.”

  A stertorous breathing came from behind the screen, and below it another noise, like the grinding of teeth. And an unsure Father Gálvez thought that he heard a low growling sound.

  “Go to a psychiatrist, my son,” he urged, “My advice is offered in your best interests. I will pray for you, and God will help you.”

  “You fool, you holy idiot!” growled the other. There was a crashing noise as he kicked his way out of the confessional and then the priest’s door was wrenched open. Father Gálvez started up, then gasped with shock as he saw what confronted him.

  The priest’s last thought – ironic in its certainty – was that God would not, could not help him . . .

  (An old woman came down the sidewalk towards All Souls, tottering slightly on chunky, varicosed legs. Mrs Jablonsky was ashamed, for that very afternoon she had reviled a neighbour, a poor silly woman of low intelligence who had meant no harm.

  Mrs Jablonsky had a soft heart and knew it would do her good to made reparation before Our Lord. It would be so comforting to see the good Father Gálvez . . .)

  Item: Mating

  The central heating in the apartment was kept high during the fall and winter, so high that Marianna habitually slept naked.

  For some weeks now she had fallen out of the practice of locking her door at night, ever since noticing that Nugent was no longer behaving oddly, was no longer having the terrible dreams which made him cry out so hideously in the night.

  Marianna’s unclad form was sprawled face down on the counterpane on the midnight that Nugent came to her after such a long period of neglect. She was awakened by the weight of his body crushing down on top of her.

  “Nugent, what the hell—”