In the morning the boy’s father came to our house and talked with my father. After he had gone my father spoke to me. He seemed angry. I explained to him that it had been self-defence, and that the beast had tried to kill me, but he had the strange idea that I had attacked the boy first, and that the dog had died protecting its master. Even my father was fooled by that common lie about dogs being faithful and true, and I could not make him understand. I showed him the slash in my forearm, but it made no difference. He seemed to really believe that I had tried to kill the boy, ridiculous though it seems. But that was the only time that my father was ever unjust, and he forgot about it after a while.
And no one ever taunted me or threw rocks at me again.
June 7
I am up early today and intend to work on this journal until lunchtime. I read what I wrote yesterday, about the dog. I don’t think that it is really relevant to the disease. I was, after all, forced into killing it to save myself, and any man would have done the same. But it does show a bit of the violence of which I am capable, and also the tolerant attitude that I take at normal times, so I will leave it in the record, for what it is worth, and continue with my efforts to get the beginnings of the illness sorted out clearly in my mind, in sequence and intensity, so that they can help me to foresee what the next change will be.
My strongest impression of those early years concerns the woods. We lived in a large old house in the country and the woods were behind it. The house was draughty and chilly and damp and I did not like it, but I was always happy in the woods – except when those feelings took possession of me. I liked to go into the woods alone. I always felt safer when there were no other people about. I can still picture just how it looked there. I always seem to picture it in the moonlight, however. The impression of it in the day is not strong. But this may be because there were more distractions in the daylight, and fixed memories yielded to immediate sensations. But at night! Is it one night that I remember, or many nights so similar that they have blended into the same memory?
I was standing in a small clearing with the tall pine trees on every side. It was on a slight hill, and at the bottom of the hill our house nestled in the shadows. I could just see the top of the roof and the chimney against the sky because the land rose a little to the far side as well. It was dark in the clearing but the tops of the trees were white in the moonlight; silver needles under the wind. It was very quiet. A few fluffy cotton clouds avoided the moon. Standing in this place I felt a great yearning, a vague and indistinct need. It was very much the same as spring fever when one had to sit in school and could look out of the window at the flowers and grass, but it was much, much stronger. I had to do something, and there was nothing to do. I suppose that I thought it was a sexual need, at the time. That must have been why I took my clothing off. I took everything off, even my shoes and socks, and stood there completely naked in the trees. It wasn’t cold, but I was shivering. One shaft of light penetrated straight down the side of a tree, and it seemed to give off a cold glow that turned me to ice. And I just stood there, with my head thrown back and my mouth wide open, staring up at the sky and trembling as though every vein and every nerve of my body had become charged with electric current. I don’t know how long I stood like that. It must have been some time because the heavens had shifted position. And then, suddenly, it was over. Suddenly the need had left me, and I realized that I was shouting. Not shouting . . . it was more like a howl, a bay. I stopped. Everything was silent and dark and I felt very strange, very naked, and very much alone and slightly ashamed at what I had done. I still supposed that it had been sexual, I imagine. But I also felt a great relief. I dressed and walked back to the house and everything was all right for the rest of that month. Everything was fine. I was very much at peace. As I say, I don’t know if this was a single memory or a combination of many months and many nights. I must have been quite young . . .
I have been pondering for a while over what I have just written. I think that it must have happened more than once. I have glimpses of myself running through the woods naked, and crouching and hiding behind trees and rocks. These are very objective memories. They come back to me in the same way as the actions of the thing in the cell, as opposed to the impressions and emotions. I don’t think that I was running from anyone, or hiding from anyone, however. I am sure that I was all alone in the woods. I am also sure that there was no physical change. Quite sure. And, strangely enough, I cannot remember the first time that I did change, or the first time that I became aware of changing. It must have come very gradually, so that there was no shock that would remain in my memory.
The first recollection that I have of changing took place in my own bedroom, not in the woods. This must have been later. I was sitting on my bed, bent over and watching my hands. The bed was beside the window and the moon was right there so that the bedroom was all black and white. My hands were in my lap, and a shaft of light passed over them. I was naked. My backbone felt more naked than the rest of me, as though even the skin had been peeled away. I watched my hands. This couldn’t have been the first time, because I seemed to know exactly what I was looking for. And I remember how my fingernails began to grow, and my hands trembled and drew up . . . I don’t remember what I did after that.
June 8
Helen is a good wife.
Few women would have put up with what she has. I must be honest, she is not a good-looking woman. Perhaps she married me as a last resort, but I don’t think so. I believe that she loves me. Sometimes it annoys me when she cannot seem to understand about my sickness, but apart from that she is a good wife. And she must know that I would never hurt her. I don’t think that I would ever hurt anyone. I go out of my way not to hurt anyone. I am basically a shy and gentle person, and that is what makes the contrast so hard to imagine when one doesn’t realize that it is a physical disease, and that I actually become something different, something dangerous. But I have managed to control it, and so I have never hurt anyone.
I have promised Helen that I will take her out for dinner this evening. She is very happy about it. We do not go out much, I do not care for a frivolous social life and prefer to stay at home, but once in a while it does no harm. Helen enjoys it, although she agrees that I am right in limiting such evenings to two or three times a year. She is dressing now. I may write more when we get home, if it is not too late.
Well, what a fiasco this night has been!
We have just returned and Helen has gone directly to her room. She appears to be annoyed with me. I should have known better than to go out, than to cater to the whims of a woman. Women do not understand much of life.
To begin with, to start the evening off on the wrong foot, Helen put on a dress that she knows I hate. It is an immodest dress that leaves her shoulders bare and makes her look like a tart. I tried to be pleasant about it, but she got annoyed when I told her the simple truth. Why do women get annoyed at the truth and not at deceptions? It is beyond me. Surely her own mirror would have told her the same thing that I did. She can’t really think, after all this time, that I am a man who can be flattering without reason, or that I would care to have my wife dress like a tramp? But she put the dress on and we had a little argument even before we left the house. I finally let her wear it, but I should have known better; I should have known what an ill temper I would be in all night because of it.
When we got to the restaurant and got a table I could see several of the other patrons looking at Helen. She didn’t seem to be aware of it. She sat, smiling happily and looking around the room. I’m sure that everyone thought that she was looking for someone to flirt with. What else would they think, the way she was dressed? I was mortified. I could just imagine their thoughts. She looked like some strumpet that I had just picked up off the street. She had too much lipstick on, and her knees were uncovered when she was seated. I would have got up and walked out right then if I had not been too embarrassed to leave my seat. I determined to destroy that dress as soon
as we were home, so it would never disgrace me again. And, unbelievably, poor Helen seemed to have no idea what a stir she was causing. She is so innocent and inexperienced. She looked around as though she were really enjoying herself and I tried to pretend I did not notice anyone else. I did, though. Some of the other women in the room were dressed as bad, or worse, than my wife, and I realized then that it was not the proper place for us to be. We had never eaten there before, and it had a good reputation, and so I had been deceived. It was one of those gaudy places with plush walls and candles that pretend to be European and overcharge their customers for bad food. I hate any place or any person that pretends to be something other than they are.
When the waiter came he leaned over the table a little, from behind Helen. I’m sure that he was attempting to look down the front of her dress! It enrages me, even now, as I recall that greasy smile. He had a little moustache and wavy hair and he was some sort of foreigner, an Italian perhaps. He had an accent, or affected one. I was angry and miserable and it is little wonder that I lost my temper when he brought me the wrong order.
I hate fancy, foreign foods. I had ordered a plain steak with boiled potatoes and no salad. When my order arrived the steak was ruined with some slimy sauce and there were creamed potatoes and an oily salad. It was revolting. On top of all the other annoyances it was simply too much to take. Perhaps I should have controlled my temper, even though it was justified. Perhaps, as Helen says, I should not have thrown the plate at the waiter. But I don’t regret it. These foreigners have to learn that they can’t push everyone around. I acted on the spur of the moment, before I even thought about what I was doing. I lifted the plate on one open hand. The waiter was leaning towards me with that nasty smile, and I hurled the plate, food-first, directly into his face. I believe that I was as gentlemanly as possible under the circumstances. I did not shout or cause a scene or speak to him. I simply threw it in his face.
Well, we left after that. We weren’t asked to leave, and I suppose that I was respected for sticking up for my rights, but we left anyway. Helen cried as we walked out and I kept my head up and looked about and saw that everyone in the place was looking at us. Or, more precisely, they were looking at that lewd dress that she wore. Some of them were snickering and some looked angry. But I didn’t let it bother me. I kept my dignity through the whole affair.
Helen doesn’t seem to realize that it was all her fault, and she has gone directly to her room and locked the door. I heard her lock it. She made sure of that. It was just a bit of feminine dramatics, of course. I never go to her room.
Anyway, perhaps this evening will serve one good cause. It may convince my wife that it is not a good thing to go out so often.
June 9
Helen was still angry this morning. For a while she did not speak to me. That was all right with me, I was still thinking about the wasted evening and that horrible restaurant that charged far too much and brought the wrong food. But then she mentioned how I had flared up for no reason! For no reason! She even suggested that it had been a symptom of my sickness! In the middle of the month! It shows that she still has no idea what it is. I had to grip the edge of the table to keep from shouting at her and I must have looked very angry because she went away without another word. She looked rather chastened.
I shall try to be more tolerant of her stupidity. It is, after all, a hard thing for a normal person to comprehend. And it was such a shock to her when I had to tell her about it. I often wonder if the shock did not unbalance her slightly? Not much, but enough to account for some of the things that she does that aren’t reasonable . . . such as thinking that harlot’s dress that she wore last night was attractive, and wanting to go out in the evenings like a teenager, and mistaking genuine and justified anger for a symptom of my disease. Yes, I must be more tolerant of her, poor thing.
It wasn’t really bad when we were first married. It wasn’t until afterwards that it got really bad, and the increase was slow enough so that I could see it coming and make plans to prevent any accidents. I didn’t have the cell then – I didn’t need it. There was plenty of time to have it made when I saw the need.
Oh, I changed. I changed, all right, but not nearly as much as now. Never completely. I still looked human. I remember how I looked in those early stages, before I was afraid to look in a mirror. My face looked unshaven, nothing more. As if I had gone a week without a shave. My teeth were long, but I was able to keep them covered with my lips so that they looked as though they protruded. It was the eyes that were the worst. They were definitely animal eyes; at least they were definitely not human eyes. But there was nothing that was really out of the ordinary to the extent that anyone who did not know what I normally looked like would have noticed. They would simply have thought that I was a singularly ugly person.
I never lost control in those days. The disease never took over, it just raged in me like a fever, and I was always at least partly myself. That was before we needed the cell, and before I told Helen about it. I suppose that it was wrong to marry her without telling her, but I did not expect it to get worse. And I am sure that it would have made no difference; she would have married me regardless.
On those nights when it happened I would go to bed early and turn the lights out. We had separate rooms, of course. I would tell Helen that I did not feel well and she would not bother me. She must have eventually noticed the regularity of the attacks, because once she made a very crude joke about monthly sickness, and I had to give her a stern lecture on what women did, and did not, mention, even to their husbands.
But then it continued to get worse, and finally I decided it was better to take no chances. I began to go out of town once a month. I told her that it was a business trip, and I suppose she believed me. She didn’t act suspiciously, and she made no vulgar jests about it. She knew that I was not the type of creature who would keep a mistress, or go away for a gay night once a month, and so she trusted me and asked no questions.
I would go to some small town thirty or forty miles away. I went to a different town each month. I would check into some cheap little hotel (cheap, because no one would notice an unshaven man in a cheap hotel) and spend the long night in a dingy room. I would never leave that room, no matter how unpleasant it became through that night. And it certainly became unpleasant. I wanted so badly to go out. I needed . . . something. Perhaps it was the urge to run naked through the woods again. But I fought against it and conquered it and remained in the room. I always locked the door on the inside. It would have been better to have someone else lock me in, but I couldn’t very well ask the clerk to do that. That would have been suspicious. So I had to rely on my willpower. Luckily I am a strong-minded man, and I managed. Although it was often very very bad, I managed.
Later, when I knew that it was getting progressively worse, it was necessary to have the cell constructed. It was a plan that I had long been considering. I had to tell my wife about the sickness then. That was the hardest part. Helen is not the most intelligent woman in the world, and at first she would not take me seriously. She would not believe me. She thought that I was joking. But then, when I had the contractor come in and build the cell and she realized that I was serious about it, she thought that I was losing my mind. Oh, she never said that, but I could tell by the way she looked at me. When we were putting the pads on the wall she kept shaking her head as though we were both being ridiculous and wasting our time. It is understandable; I cannot blame her for being dubious at first. She knows better now. She is beginning to realize, although she still makes stupid mistakes and cannot differentiate between the physical and the mental, the normal and the abnormal. It takes time.
We have had the cell for six months now. I have gone there every month and Helen has done her part without question. She is a good wife, all in all, and if she annoys me occasionally by her lack of intelligence and inability to grasp the facts, I suppose that that is only normal in most marriages when one partner is so vastly superior in mind.
I am satisfied with my wife. I shall try to be more tolerant of her faults. I would never hurt her in any way. I would never hurt anyone . . .
June 9 (evening)
I have not been honest. It bothers me. I did not write anything untruthful, but I omitted writing about the drunkard in the hotel. I have to tell everything or else there is no point in keeping this journal, and so I must write about him. Anyway, nothing happened which I was to blame for.
It happened on the last night that I went out of town, before the cell was built. I had been thinking about making a cell, but had put it off because of Helen, because that would mean telling her all about my disease. I suppose that the episode with the drunkard was the thing that finally decided me about it. It did show me that I was liable to be dangerous, and that my control was weakening. All in all, it was just as well that it happened, since it turned out all right, as far as I was concerned. I was innocent and what happened to the drunkard was his own fault completely.
It was a very poor hotel. I remember it well, it was as poor as any I had stayed at. The entrance was just a narrow doorway on the street with a sign hanging over it. The sign was crooked. There was a maroon carpet in the corridor with all the threads showing, leading to the staircase. The reception desk was just an alcove in the hall. I had to ring a bell there and wait for the clerk to come out of a room under the stairs. It took him a long time and when he came he was rubbing his eyes, and his shirt was hanging out of his trousers. He went behind the desk and shoved the book at me and yawned right in my face. He was a horrid fellow. I tell these things to show what kind of a hotel it was, and what the people who stayed there must have been like; especially the drunkard. People like that are better off dead than alive.
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 49