The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men

by Stephen Jones

  “There you are, Wills,” Judge Pursuivant was crying. “Notice that it happened in Warsaw, close to the heart of the werewolf country. Hmmm, reading that passage made you sweat a bit – remembering what you saw in the Devil’s Croft, eh?”

  I flung down the book.

  “You’ve done much toward convincing me,” I admitted. “I’d rather have the superstitious peasant’s belief, though, the one I’ve always scoffed at.”

  “Rationalizing the business didn’t help, then? It did when I explained the Devil’s Croft and the springs.”

  “But the springs don’t chase you with sharp teeth. And, as I was saying, the peasant had a protection that the scientist lacks – trust in his crucifix and his Bible.”

  “Why shouldn’t he have that trust, and why shouldn’t you?” Again the judge was rummaging in his book-case. “Those symbols of faith gave him what is needed, a strong heart to drive back the menace, whether it be wolf-demon or ectoplasmic bogy. Here, my friend.”

  He laid a third book on the desk. It was a Bible, red-edged and leather-backed, worn from much use.

  “Have a read at that while you finish your drink,” he advised me. “The Gospel According to St John is good, and it’s already marked. Play you’re a peasant, hunting for comfort.”

  Like a dutiful child I opened the Bible to where a faded purple ribbon lay between the pages. But already Judge Pursuivant was quoting from memory:

  “ ’In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made . . .’ ”

  X “Blood-lust and compassion.”

  It may seem incredible that later in the night I slept like a dead pig; yet I had reason.

  First of all there was the weariness that had followed my dangers and exertions; then Judge Pursuivant’s whisky and logic combined to reassure me; finally, the leather couch in his study, its surface comfortably hollowed by much reclining thereon, was a sedative in itself. He gave me two quilts, very warm and very light, and left me alone. I did not stir until a rattle of breakfast dishes awakened me.

  William, the judge’s servant, had carefully brushed my clothes. My shoes also showed free of mud, though they still felt damp and clammy. The judge himself furnished me with a clean shirt and socks, both items very loose upon me, and lent me his razor.

  “Some friends of yours called during the night,” he told me dryly.

  “Friends?”

  “Yes, from the town. Five of them, with ropes and guns. They announced very definitely that they intended to decorate the flagpole in the public square with your corpse. There was also some informal talk about drinking your blood. We may have vampires as well as werewolves hereabouts.”

  I almost cut my lip with the razor. “How did you get rid of them?” I asked quickly. “They must have followed my tracks.”

  “Lucky there was more snow after we got in,” he replied, “and they came here only as a routine check-up. They must have visited every house within miles. Oh, turning them away was easy. I feigned wild enthusiasm for the man-hunt, and asked if I couldn’t come along.”

  He smiled reminiscently, his mustache stirring like a rather genial blond snake.

  “Then what?” I prompted him, dabbing on more lather.

  “Why, they were delighted. I took a rifle and spent a few hours on the trail. You weren’t to be found at all, so we returned to town. Excitement reigns there, you can believe.”

  “What kind of excitement?”

  “Blood-lust and compassion. Since Constable O’Bryant is wounded, his younger brother, a strong advocate of your immediate capture and execution, is serving as a volunteer guardian of the peace. He’s acting on an old appointment by his brother as deputy, to serve without pay. He told the council – a badly scared group – that he has sent for help to the county seat, but I am sure he did nothing of the kind. Meanwhile, the Croft is surrounded by scouts, who hope to catch you sneaking out of it. And the women of the town are looking after Susan Gird and your friend, the Herr Doktor.”

  I had finished shaving. “How is Doctor Zoberg?” I inquired through the towel.

  “Still pretty badly shaken up. I tried to get in and see him, but it was impossible. I understand he went out for a while, early in the evening, but almost collapsed. Just now he is completely surrounded by cooing old ladies with soup and herb tea. Miss Gird was feeling much better, and talked to me for a while. I’m not really on warm terms with the town, you know; people think it’s indecent for me to live out here alone and not give them a chance to gossip about me. So I was pleasurably surprised to get a kind word from Miss Susan. She told me, very softly for fear someone might overhear, that she hopes you aren’t caught. She is sure that you did not kill her father.”

  We went into his dining room, where William offered pancakes, fried bacon and the strongest black coffee I ever tasted. In the midst of it all, I put down my fork and faced the judge suddenly. He grinned above his cup.

  “Well, Mr Wills? ‘Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought’ – all you need is a sensitive hand clasped to your inspired brow.”

  “You said,” I reminded him, “that Susan Gird is sure that I didn’t kill her father.”

  “So I did.”

  “She told you that herself. She also seemed calm, self-contained, instead of in mourning for—”

  “Oh, come, come!” He paused to shift a full half-dozen cakes to his plate and skilfully drenched them with syrup. “That’s rather ungrateful of you, Mr Wills, suspecting her of patricide.”

  “Did I say that?” I protested, feeling my ears turning bright red.

  “You would have if I hadn’t broken your sentence in the middle,” he accused, and put a generous portion of pancake into his mouth. As he chewed he twinkled at me through his pince-nez, and I felt unaccountably foolish.

  “If Susan Gird had truly killed her father,” he resumed, after swallowing, “she would be more adroitly theatrical. She would weep, swear vengeance on his murderer, and be glad to hear that someone else had been accused of the crime. She would even invent details to help incriminate that someone else.”

  “Perhaps she doesn’t know that she killed him,” I offered.

  “Perhaps not. You mean that a new mind, as well as a new body, may invest the werewolf – or ectoplasmic medium – at time of change.”

  I jerked my head in agreement.

  “Then Susan Gird, as she is normally, must be innocent. Come, Mr Wills! Would you blame poor old Doctor Jekyll for the crimes of his alter ego, Mr Hyde?”

  “I wouldn’t want to live in the same house with Doctor Jekyll.”

  Judge Pursuivant burst into a roar of laughter, at which William, bringing fresh supplies from the kitchen, almost dropped his tray. “So romance enters the field of psychic research!” the judge crowed at me.

  I stiffened, outraged. “Judge Pursuivant, I certainly did not—”

  “I know, you didn’t say it, but again I anticipated you. So it’s not the thought of her possible unconscious crime, but the chance of comfortable companionship that perplexes you.” He stopped laughing suddenly. “I’m sorry, Wills. Forgive me. I shouldn’t laugh at this, or indeed at any aspect of the whole very serious business.”

  I could hardly take real offense at the man who had rescued and sheltered me, and I said so. We finished breakfast, and he sought his overcoat and wide hat.

  “I’m off for town again,” he announced. “There are one or two points to be settled there, for your safety and my satisfaction. Do you mind being left alone? There’s an interesting lot of books in my study. You might like to look at a copy of Dom Calmet’s Dissertations, if you read French; also a rather slovenly Wicked Bible, signed by Pierre De Lancre. J. W. Wickwar, the witchcraft authority, thinks that such a thing does not exist, but I know of two others. Or, if you feel that you’re having enough of demonology in real life, you will find a whole row o
f light novels, including most of P. G. Wodehouse.” He held out his hand in farewell. “William will get you anything you want. There’s tobacco and a choice of pipes on my desk. Whisky, too, though you don’t look like the sort that drinks before noon.”

  With that he was gone, and I watched him from the window. He moved sturdily across the bright snow to a shed, slid open its door and entered. Soon there emerged a sedan, old but well-kept, with the judge at the wheel. He drove away down a snow-filled road toward town.

  I did not know what to envy most in him, his learning, his assurance or his good-nature. The assurance, I decided once; then it occurred to me that he was in nothing like the awkward position I held. He was only a sympathetic ally – but why was he that, even? I tried to analyze his motives, and could not.

  Sitting down in his study, I saw on the desk the Montague Summers book on werewolves. It lay open at page 111, and my eyes lighted at once upon a passage underscored in ink – apparently some time ago, for the mark was beginning to rust a trifle. It included a quotation from Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, written by Richard Rowlands in 1605:

  . . . were-wolves are certaine sorcerers, who hauvin annoynted their bodyes, with an oyntment which they make by the instinct of the deuil; and putting on a certain inchanted girdel, do not only unto the view of others seeme as wolues[??290], but to their own thinking have both the shape and the nature of wolues, so long as they weare the said girdel. And they do dispose theselves as uery wolues, in wurrying and killing, and moste of humaine creatures.

  This came to the bottom of the page, where someone, undoubtedly Pursuivant, had written: “Ointment and girdle sound as if they might have a scientific explanation,” And, in the same script, but smaller, the following notes filled the margin beside:

  Possible Werewolf Motivations

  I. Involuntary lycanthropy.

  1. Must have blood to drink (connection with vampirism?).

  2. Must have secrecy.

  3. Driven to desperation by contemplating horror of own position.

  II. Voluntary lycanthropy.

  1. Will to do evil.

  2. Will to exert power through fear.

  III. Contributing factors to becoming werewolf.

  1. Loneliness and dissatisfaction.

  2. Hunger for forbidden foods (human flesh, etc.).

  3. Scorn and hate of fellow men, general or specific.

  4. Occult curiosity.

  5. Simon-pure insanity (Satanist complex).

  Are any or all of these traits to be found in werewolf? Find one and ask it.

  That was quite enough lycanthropy for the present, so far as I was concerned. I drew a book of Mark Twain from the shelf – I seem to remember it as Tom Sawyer Abroad – and read all the morning. Noon came, and I was about to ask the judge’s negro servant for some lunch, when he appeared in the door of the study.

  “Someone with a message, sah,” he announced, and drew aside to admit Susan Gird.

  I fairly sprang to my feet, dropping my book upon the desk. She advanced slowly into the room, her pale face grave but friendly. I saw that her eyes were darkly circled, and that her cheeks showed gaunt, as if with strain and weariness. She put out a hand, and I took it.

  “A message?” I repeated William’s words.

  “Why, yes.” She achieved a smile, and I was glad to see it, for both our sakes. “Judge Pursuivant got me to one side and said for me to come here. You and I are to talk the thing over.”

  “You mean, last night?” She nodded, and I asked further, “How did you get here?”

  “Your car. I don’t drive very well, but I managed.”

  I asked her to sit down and talk.

  She told me that she remembered being in the parlor, with Constable O’Bryant questioning me. At the time she had had difficulty remembering even the beginning of the séance, and it was not until I had been taken away that she came to realize what had happened to her father. That, of course, distressed and distracted her further, and even now the whole experience was wretchedly hazy to her.

  “I do recall sitting down with you,” she said finally, after I had urged her for the twentieth time to think hard. “You chained me, yes, and Doctor Zoberg. Then yourself. Finally I seemed to float away, as if in a dream. I’m not even sure about how long it was.”

  “Had the light been out very long?” I asked craftily.

  “The light out?” she echoed, patently mystified. “Oh, of course. The light was turned out, naturally. I don’t remember, but I suppose you attended to that.”

  “I asked to try you,” I confessed. “I didn’t touch the lamp until after you had seemed to drop off to sleep.”

  She did recall to memory her father’s protest at his manacles, and Doctor Zoberg’s gentle inquiry if she were ready. That was all.

  “How is Doctor Zoberg?” I asked her.

  “Not very well, I’m afraid. He was exhausted by the experience, of course, and for a time seemed ready to break down. When the trouble began about you – the crowd gathered at the town hall – he gathered his strength and went out, to see if he could help defend or rescue you. He was gone about an hour and then he returned, bruised about the face. Somebody of the mob had handled him roughly, I think. He’s resting at our place now, with a hot compress on his eye.”

  “Good man!” I applauded. “At least he did his best for me.”

  She was not finding much pleasure in her memories, however, and I suggested a change of the subject. We had lunch together, egg sandwiches and coffee, then played several hands of casino. Tiring of that, we turned to the books and she read aloud to me from Keats. Never has The Eve of St. Agnes sounded better to me. Evening fell, and we were preparing to take yet another meal – a meat pie, which William assured us was one of his culinary triumphs – when the door burst open and Judge Pursuivant came in.

  “You’ve been together all the time?” he asked us at once.

  “Why, yes,” I said.

  “Is that correct, Miss Susan? You’ve been in the house, every minute?”

  “That is right,” she seconded me.

  “Then,” said the judge. “You two are cleared, at last.”

  He paused, looking from Susan’s questioning face to mine, then went on:

  “That rending beast-thing in the Croft got another victim, not more than half an hour ago. O’Bryant was feeling better, ready to get back on duty. His deputy-brother, anxious to get hold of Wills first, for glory or vengeance, ventured into the place, just at dusk. He came out in a little while, torn and bitten almost to pieces, and died as he broke clear of the cedar hedge.”

  XI “To meet that monster face to face!”

  I think that both Susan and I fairly reeled before this news, like actors registering surprise in an old-fashioned melodrama. As for Judge Pursuivant, he turned to the table, cut a generous wedge of the meat pie and set it, all savory and steaming, on a plate for himself. His calm zest for the good food gave us others steadiness again, so that we sat down and even ate a little as he described his day in town.

  He had found opportunity to talk to Susan in private, confiding in her about me and finally sending her to me; this, as he said, so that we would convince each other of our respective innocences. It was purely an inspiration, for he had had no idea, of course, that such conviction would turn out so final. Thereafter he made shift to enter the Gird house and talk to Doctor Zoberg.

  That worthy he found sitting somewhat limply in the parlor, with John Gird’s coffin in the next room. Zoberg, the judge reported, was mystified about the murder and anxious to bring to justice the townsfolk – there were more than one, it seemed – who had beaten him. Most of all, however, he was concerned about the charges against me.

  “His greatest anxiety is to prove you innocent,” Judge Pursuivant informed me. “He intends to bring the best lawyer possible for your defense, is willing even to assist in paying the fee. He also swears that character witnesses can be brought to testify that you are the mo
st peaceable and law-abiding man in the country.”

  “That’s mighty decent of him,” I said. “According to your reasoning of this morning, his attitude proves him innocent, too.”

  “What reasoning was that?” asked Susan, and I was glad that the judge continued without answering her.

  “I was glad that I had sent Miss Susan on. If your car had remained there, Mr Wills, Doctor Zoberg might have driven off in it to rally your defenses.”

  “Not if I know him,” I objected. “The whole business, what of the mystery and occult significances, will hold him right on the spot. He’s relentlessly curious and, despite his temporary collapse, he’s no coward.”

  “I agree with that,” chimed in Susan.

  As for my pursuers of the previous night, the judge went on, they had been roaming the snow-covered streets in twos and threes, heavily armed for the most part and still determined to punish me for killing their neighbor. The council was too frightened or too perplexed to deal with the situation, and the constable was still in bed, with his brother assuming authority, when Judge Pursuivant made his inquiries. The judge went to see the wounded man, who very pluckily determined to rise and take up his duties again.

  “I’ll arrest the man who plugged me,” O’Bryant had promised grimly, “and that kid brother of mine can quit playing policeman.”

  The judge applauded these sentiments, and brought him hot food and whisky, which further braced his spirits. In the evening came the invasion by the younger O’Bryant of the Devil’s Croft, and his resultant death at the claws and teeth of what prowled there.

  “His throat was so torn open and filled with blood that he could not speak,” the judge concluded, “but he pointed back into the timber, and then tried to trace something in the snow with his finger. It looked like a wolf’s head, with pointed nose and ears. He died before he finished.”

  “You saw him come out?” I asked.

  “No. I’d gone back to town, but later I saw the body, and the sketch in the snow.”