“I can’t stay. I have some unfinished business elsewhere.”
On the television in the background, the late news had come on. Stavros had the sound down because it was in Greek and he was the only person within fifty feet of it—other than me—who could understand what they were saying.
After having spent most of the twentieth century in America, I’d grown accustomed to the high-quality nature of TV broadcasts there, so it was something of a shock the first time I witnessed a European news program. It reminded me of the way the news looked in the sixties, just in terms of technological expertise.
Stavros looked curious. “Where might that be?”
“It’s just business.”
There was an inset behind the anchors that showed an artistic rendition of something that could have been either Bigfoot or a very hairy wrestler.
“So this is a vacation?” Stavros asked. Unlike Mike, he was never going to get enough information to figure me out.
I ignored his question and pointed to the screen. “Can you turn that up?”
He looked over his shoulder. “Ah. You want to know about the wolf-man?”
“Pardon?”
He reached up and manually adjusted the sound just in time for me to get the end of the report, which consisted of a phone number and a warning not to approach whatever was being depicted in the background. “Too late.”
“What’s a ‘wolf-man’?” I asked.
“It’s nonsense. You’ve heard of El Chupacabra?”
I had. Supposedly it was a goat-man sort of monster that mauls cows and small animals in South America. I took note when I first heard of it because when you know there is such a thing as a satyr, anything described as a man looking like a goat gets your attention. Not that actual satyrs are half-goat; it’s just how they’ve always been depicted. “Is this the same thing?”
“No. . . and yes. The wolf-man is supposed to be half wolf or dog, not goat. And yes, because there is no such thing. It is people getting carried away. Urban legend, as the Americans call it.”
“A werewolf?”
He smiled. “Are you going to tell me now that wolf-men are real? Perhaps they, too, were at Eleusis in the old days, yes?”
“No, of course not,” I lied, because they were. “But I find this interesting.”
“Ah, but you have pressing business elsewhere.”
“It might not be all that pressing.” I slapped the empty cup down for another refill.
* * *
The next morning, after purging a significant portion of the ouzo I’d drunk the night before in an explosive manner that I don’t need to recount, I picked up a copy of the latest edition of the English language Athens News. I hunted through until I found a story about the local wolf-man, whom they were calling (appropriately enough) the Lykanthropos. It was buried near the back of the paper, which made some sense as one didn’t want to alarm the tourists with local legends. And the story itself was almost entirely useless; it presented a brief recap with hardly any details, and concluded that there was nothing to it. So go out and spend money, you Americans, you.
But the gift shop had a selection of Greek language newspapers, including a few of the less reputable tabloids. I grabbed a bunch and returned to my room.
Stavros was right; it did sound like an urban legend, one that was being given far too much play by a credulous team of reporters. The roots of the story went back as far as six months, when a local woman claimed she was attacked by a wolf-man, and the reports popped up again every time there was a full moon. Of course, there was no hard information to be found. What eyewitness quotes they had, came from people who didn’t want to be identified in the press. And the statements from people who did want their names mentioned all heard from a so-called friend about it, and didn’t witness anything personally.
Worse, the abilities of the Lykanthropos far exceeded anything moderately rational. He was supposed to be eight feet tall and capable of leaping ten stories. He had an enormous jaw and wild eyes, was covered in hair, and either scampered on all fours or walked upright depending on who was describing him. His claws were five or six centimeters long, and his howl could cause small dogs and other pets to drop dead on the spot. He was bulletproof and fireproof, and the only reason nobody had been killed yet, was either incredible good luck or the direct providence of God, depending again on who was being asked. When I compared artistic renditions from four different newspapers—all supposedly based on eyewitnesses—I got four entirely different images.
The police were doing everything they could to keep the locals from overreacting, insisting repeatedly that there was no wolf-man. This just fed into the conspiracy-minded media frenzy. One of the tabloids went so far as to conclude that the Lykanthropos was a member of the police force, or a government experiment gone wrong.
Either this was a mass panic (fairly normal) or there was an unschooled werewolf out there (extremely rare) that was very confused. If I was very lucky, it was the latter.
I spent the next few hours pairing the reported sightings with my handy tourist map and came to an interesting conclusion. More than half of them had taken place in or around the National Gardens.
There was only one night of full moon left. If I was going to catch up with him, it was going to have to be soon.
* * *
I arrived at the National Gardens later that afternoon on what was turning out to be an extraordinarily hot day. Mingling in with a group of tourists, I entered from Amalias Street behind the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and followed the crowd, trying to reconcile what I was seeing with what the little park direction signs said about where I was. (Every time I look at one of those You-Are-Here maps, I think how many times in my life I could have used a sign like that. Like when I was avoiding the Inquisition.)
It was still a few hours before sunset, so I familiarized myself with the gardens, which didn’t exist in my day. That in itself was a reassuring thing. I did come across a few ruins in my first circuit around the place, but I couldn’t even tell what they were ruins of, so it didn’t bother me all that much.
What did bother me was the ducks. There were hundreds of them, and they thought I was under some sort of obligation to feed them something. I also saw enough cats to make me think this was more than simply a case of somebody letting a house cat run free. It looked like the cats lived in the park along with the ducks. Maybe they even ate the ducks. If so, they weren’t doing a very good job of it.
I had to decide where I would go if I were a confused kid who thought he was turning into a monster. After much consideration, I settled on the zoo. Specifically—the wolf paddock. According to the placard, the wolves were Bulgarian, which would have had an added appeal to the Lykanthropos if he was a student of his own myth history, since werewolves, like vampires, purportedly hailed from Eastern Europe. Bulgaria would do nicely in that regard. (In truth, werewolves aren’t anything like vampires. They’re far less common and the condition is hereditary, not acquired.)
I bought a soft drink and settled down on a bench across from the wolves, and spent the afternoon trying to remember what it was that had stood on that spot. This was a daily ritual, and not at all healthy; it typically led me to drink, which only made the nostalgia worse. Hence, the soda. My other option was a lemonade-type beverage whose principle ingredient was ouzo. It looked tempting, but I had to stay sharp.
I people-watched. When the objects of my attention are female I call it voyeurism, or if I’m drunk, ogling. On this day, I was checking out everybody, so it was just people-watching. With a little voyeurism mixed in, but not much. All the pretty tourists were probably at the Parthenon.
After a couple of hours, with the sun starting to set and my deciding the spot upon which I was sitting used to be a farm, I spied a likely suspect. He looked about fourteen years old, very muscular and pretty hairy. In Greece, this is not at all unusual, as body hair was always commonplace. What was unusual was that he was alone, he was definit
ely not a tourist, and he stared at the wolves for a quarter of an hour without moving. I got up and stepped beside him.
“Nice afternoon,” I said, in Greek.
He looked surprised to have been addressed, and I realized he hadn’t just been staring at the wolves; he’d been speaking to them.
“Yes.” He edged away slightly.
“I don’t think they can hear you from here,” I said. The wolves didn’t give a damn that either one of us were there. They were too busy sleeping in the shade, which is what sane animals do when it’s very hot. Unlike people.
“They know I am here.”
I smiled. “Come here a lot?”
He stared hard at me, and the hairs on the back of my neck decided to do a little dance. “You should leave me alone.”
“Okay,” I replied pleasantly, trying very hard to pretend he didn’t scare me. “Just making conversation. I don’t find many other people here who think the wolves are as fascinating as I do. You seem to like them a lot.”
“I hate them,” he grunted.
“Oh. My mistake.”
My new friend stared at the sky with significant trepidation; the sun had just set.
“You have someplace to be?” I asked.
“Yes.” He stepped away and started down the path, trying to get some distance between us, which wouldn’t do. I caught up with him and put my hand on his shoulder. He reacted as someone might if touched by a hot pan.
“What is the matter with you?” he shouted. “Leave me alone!”
I offered him a handshake. “Take my hand. My name is Greg.”
“I am not your friend! Now get away from me!”
“I think you should shake my hand,” I repeated. “It will help you get the scent.”
“What?”
“For later. When the moon comes up, you’ll want to look for me.”
“You are insane.”
“One of us is. Might be me. We’ll find out in an hour, won’t we?”
He stared at me, and for a change he looked more frightened than intimidating. Then he turned and ran.
I watched him up until he hit the trees and disappeared into the brush and the twilight. Definitely much faster than he should have been. And he never shook my hand. That was okay, though; that’s why I’d touched his shoulder. In a little while, he’d realize I knew he was the legendary Lykanthropos and decide he had to protect himself.
* * *
I drifted through the gardens as dusk begat nighttime and the attendant darkness that wasn’t really all that dark. There were streetlights, of course, but there was also the full moon to contend with.
Moonlight used to be considered a source of madness. I remember not so long ago seeing grown women walk around with parasols at night to prevent moonlight from striking them on the head. People are weird. But it’s easy to see how the werewolf mythos ended up conflated with the supposed power of moonlight. (That and the whole howling at the moon thing, which real wolves don’t actually do.) I always thought it was terribly inconvenient. I mean, if you’re going to be a monster, wouldn’t you rather be one during the new moon? It’s a whole lot easier to sneak up on somebody without the gigantic source of illumination in the sky. What a hassle.
Anyway, real werewolves don’t transform by the light of the full moon. They simply are. It’s a genetic condition.
For the first hour, I made a point of sticking close to the zoo, but it was so well lit, I decided I’d make much better bait somewhere more secluded. So I wandered down the path until I found a nice clearing a decent enough distance away from the streetlamps to allow my night vision to return, and also so I could be overwhelmed by a large community of aggressive ducks near a small pond. Never mind that I was there waiting for a werewolf; the ducks were frightening enough.
Soon, I heard a growl coming from the trees about twenty feet away. “There you are,” I said. “Thank goodness; maybe you can help me with these damn ducks.”
He didn’t answer, but it would have gone a lot easier for everybody if he had. Instead, he charged forward, scampering at me on all fours. I didn’t have much time to register anything about him other than that he was the same kid I’d spoken to in the zoo, and that he’d managed to tear off all of his clothing. The ducks scattered before him, which I appreciated.
At the last second he leapt at me, arms outstretched and mouth open intending to rip out my throat. And if I were too afraid to move, or perhaps were I some sort of exotic statue, he would have succeeded. But it was a simple attack to counter.
I don’t care how big and strong and fast you are; unless you’re a bird, the minute you leave the ground you’re vulnerable. Your nastier creatures—like, say, real wolves—don’t do it until they’re right in front of you, when their large teeth can latch on before you have an opportunity to evade them. But this boy had a normal-sized mouth and it was a few feet behind his outstretched arms. I swatted the arms aside with a sweep of my own right arm, punched him in the exposed kidneys with my left fist, and let his momentum do the business of carrying him away from me. He landed clumsily on his side with a couple of the slower ducks trapped beneath him.
“There, see what a bad idea that was?” I called out.
He rolled to his feet and howled, while the injured ducks limped off and quacked angrily.
“C’mon, cut that out.”
He wasn’t listening. He lunged forward again, and I reminded myself that even though this was just a kid, he was still faster and stronger than a normal human and I should maybe take him a little seriously.
He swung hard with his left arm, showing off a nasty set of claws. (Or rather, unreasonably long fingernails.) Instead of jumping away—which would have put me off balance and made me a nice target for the right arm—I stepped forward, blocked him with my elbow, and punched him as hard as I could in the nose.
The boy staggered backward, covering his face and emitting a little whimper.
I kept my fist up, ready to hit him again. “Are you ready to talk yet? Because I could beat you up all night.”
But no; we weren’t in our reasoning place yet. He pounced. The move was so surprising I had time only to catch his arms with my hands. His superior strength propelled me backward so I went with it, falling onto the ground and in one neat move flipping him over my head. I was up again before he even hit the ground.
“Okay, that does it. You want me to beat the crap out of you? Fine. I’ll beat the crap out of you. Just remember; this wasn’t my idea.”
He clambered to his feet as I took off the light jacket I was wearing in anticipation of the cool evening that never arrived. Holding it by the sleeves, I stood still and waited for the new attack.
It came in the form of a half-crazed charge, both arms reaching out to me in just about the stupidest attack he could have possibly devised. One thing was pretty obvious—whatever this child had done before puberty, fighter had not been one of them.
I waited until he was close enough, flipped the jacket up and around, and before he realized exactly what was happening, I had his arms tied up in a nice little knot. I jerked them up over his head and punched him in the stomach with my free hand. When he crumpled forward, I elbowed him in the back of the head.
He tried to fall down, but I was still holding him securely by his bound wrists, so he just sort of sagged to the side, trying hard to keep his feet under him.
“Tell me to stop,” I said, slapping him with my open palm in his already broken nose. The trick was to keep him staggering. If he got his feet under him properly, he’d be able to overpower me pretty quickly.
He made a muffled noise, but didn’t offer anything else. So I kicked a particular part of his leg in such a way that it probably felt like I’d broken it.
“A naked man has an awful lot of good targets to hit,” I threatened. “Tell me to stop.” Still nothing. I stabbed two fingers into a tender spot between his ribs. Hurts like hell. He howled.
“Tell me to stop,” I repeated. I
was about to do something really terrible to his free-hanging testicles when he finally spoke.
“S-stop . . .”
“What?”
“Stop!”
I did. With a quick yank, his arms were free of my jacket, and he sagged to the ground. I slipped the jacket back on and sat down beside him.
After a time, he asked, “Have you cured me?”
“There was nothing wrong with you to cure.”
He sat up, and I saw how badly I screwed up his nose. I’d have felt bad about it, but he was trying to kill me at the time.
“Then how?”
“How come you can sit here and talk to me under the light of a full moon when you should be peeing on a tree or something?” I finished the thought.
“Y-yes.”
“What’s your name, son?”
“Piotr.”
“Piotr, do you know what you are?”
“I am a monster.” He looked at the ground in shame. “Lykanthropos.”
“Very true. And do you know what that is?”
He looked confused. “I am cursed. A tool of the devil.”
I laughed. “Tell me, since you started having these little moonlight jaunts, did you ever look in a mirror?”
“No, I was . . .”
“. . . too busy wreaking havoc on the countryside, I know. Well, Piotr, I looked at you a few hours ago, and aside from the broken nose, you look about the same. Except for the nudity. Speaking of which, I hope you didn’t rip your clothes apart.”
“I removed them before the moon rose,” he explained. “I’ve learned this much.”
“Good. Otherwise, the bus ride home is going to be pretty awkward.”
He managed a smile. “Why are you not afraid of me?”
“You’re just a scared kid, Piotr. And there are people other than myself who can help you understand what you are without resorting to silver bullets and torches. That’s where our needs come together nicely.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“I’d like you to introduce me to your family.”
* * *
Three hours later, I was sitting in the kitchen of a small apartment on the third story of a private residence in the Plaka, not at all far from my hotel and even closer to the Acropolis, which loomed seemingly just overhead. The smell of all of Greece wafted through the open windows every few minutes, and I realized that as much as I longed for the Athens of yore, the present-day version was pretty pleasant, too.
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