by Terry Yates
Weak from loss of blood, I made my way out of the forest. My horse was still tied where I had left it. The game that I had killed still lay on the ground next to my packhorse. I struggled my way onto the horse and headed for home and my beloved Paullina.
I spent the night in a field behind a small farm. I slept fitfully. My body was burning up. It was as if my blood was boiling. I awoke well after sunup the next morning, and once again started for home. With each mile, I seemed to grow weaker and weaker, until two days later I reached my farm and Paullina. She immediately put me to bed where I lingered feverishly for another day. Although I was feverish, I knew that she hardly left my side.
I awoke early on the second day. I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t feel Paullina. I don’t mean physically…I mean…I couldn’t…”
Klefka stopped again, trying to find the right words to describe his feelings. Kyler watched him struggling with his thoughts. It looked to Kyler like he was in physical pain, but not from whatever it was that was making him rub his calf, but from some horrible memory.
“You couldn’t feel her presence,” Kyler threw in trying to relieve the man of his mental burden.
“Yes. I couldn’t feel her anywhere. I always felt her. I always knew where she was even if she was on the other side of the farm. I remember getting up and the first thing that I noticed was that I was completely naked which I didn’t think I had been the night before. I distinctly remember her putting me in my nightshirt. I’m positive about that.
As I walked through the house, I saw that everything was in disarray. The furniture was either broken or turned over. It was if a madman had walked in with murder in his heart. As I reached the front porch, I saw that it was covered in blood, not just the porch itself, but the door and the outside walls.
I began to panic. I called for Paullina again and again, whilst running around the front yard. I screamed her name till I was almost hoarse, but she never answered. I began to walk through the fields, continuing to call her name, but I knew by the stillness that she wasn’t going to answer me. I was about to give up when something caught my eye. It was her green dress…lying in a field. As I got closer, I saw that it wasn’t just her dress. It was her…or what was left of her. When I reached her, I saw that the lower half of her body was gone. Something or someone had attacked her. I fell on the ground beside her and began to wail loudly, the tears pouring down my face. I buried my face in her red hair as I held what was left of her in my lap. I must’ve cried for hours.”
Kyler wasn’t sure, but he thought that he saw Klefka’s eyes tearing up. If he had known that it would’ve affected the man so much, he would’ve never asked him how he had become a werewolf. Klefka seemed to realize this and smiled. Kyler guessed that it had been a long time since the man had smiled.
“I couldn’t believe,” he continued, “that I hadn’t heard the intruder, that I hadn’t heard her screaming, which she obviously would have done. I must’ve sat in that field holding her for half the day, just rocking back and forth. I would cry some, but then my tears would dry up, and I would just sit silently, still rocking her back and forth. Grief makes your mind do strange things. I thought of her and I thought of Gregore and the tale that he had told me, and what he had said about my brothers, and of his biting me. At first, one didn’t seem to have anything to do with the other, but the more my mind raced, the more all of my thoughts began to make sense together. And when I realized what had happened, I felt as if I’d been kicked by a horse. I…I had killed her. I had turned into the same thing that Gregore had become. I hadn’t heard her scream because I was the one that had made her scream. I wailed to the sky as I wondered what her last moments might’ve been like. Had she watched me turn? Had she tried to calm me down once I became the werewolf or had she perhaps taken off running, terrified for her life? Had she begged me not to hurt her? Had she pleaded for her life?”
Klefka quickly stood up, startling Kyler, who slid three feet back on his butt. Klefka didn’t seem to notice this, because he began to pace back and forth, limping as he did.
“Doctor, you don’t know…you can’t understand…the feeling of knowing that you’ve killed the most precious thing in the world to you…the one thing in the world that meant anything to you.”
“What did you do?” asked Kyler, matter of fact, secretly trying to calm the man down. He had almost shat a saddle when Klefka had jumped up.
“I buried Paullina, then went to find…oh!” With this, he stopped pacing and plopped back down onto the ground and began to weep.
Kyler didn’t know what to say. How do you comfort someone who involuntarily killed his wife? No man would ever believe that he could kill his wife, involuntarily or otherwise.
Klefka wiped his eyes. “Would you like to know the worse thing about all of this?”
Kyler wasn’t sure how to respond to the question. He could think of absolutely nothing worse than the tale he had just heard. On the fly, he shook his head no. Klefka smiled a sad smile.
“The worst thing is that I remember every single thing that I’ve told you as if it happened to me only yesterday, but the faces…” He paused for a moment.
“What about the faces?” Kyler asked.
“Living to be over five hundred years isn’t like it is in the movies. You see movies like “Highlander” or any number of movies where someone is immortal or has lived for many centuries. You can remember events…but the faces…”
Nicholas Klefka grew silent, his eyes closing once again.
“I can’t remember their faces. I can remember little bits about their features…their height, their hair color…things like that, but no matter how hard I try I can’t remember their faces. Not my parents, my sisters, my brothers, and even my Paullina’s face has started to blur when I think about her. The only face I can distinctly remember is Gregore.”
He continued to squeeze his eyes shut, as if by doing so, he would remember everything.
“I guess it’s sort of like trying to remember someone you haven’t seen since you were five years old,” Kyler said.
“Exactly,” Klefka answered, opening his eyes once again. “The more years that go by, the more memories are squeezed out by new memories. I close my eyes and I try and I try, but I can’t see them exactly as they were.”
“So, did you seek revenge on Gregore? Did you find your brothers? Were they werewolves?” Kyler had decided to go ahead and jump off of the high dive and just ask him flat out. He needed to know the rest of the story.
Klefka started to open his mouth, but then closed it again. “I’m spent for now, my friend. I don’t think that either one of us has the time to be reliving my history, if you know what I mean. Besides, it’s a little painful at the moment. Forgive me. Some days are better than others.”
“I understand, but…how did you get to here…to the island?” Kyler asked.
Klefka took a deep breath and sighed. “Well, needless to say, for almost half a millennia, I’ve been a werewolf. When I first realized the truth about myself, I didn’t know what to do. I tried to stick to the wooded areas, away from the general population. I figured that I wouldn’t kill what I wasn’t close to, and that’s exactly the way it was for awhile. I’d wake up and find myself naked, with dead animals all around me. Once I even found a dead bear with my…markings all over it. That’s when I realized exactly what I was capable of when I turned. But then, I began to find dead hunters, sometimes up to nine or ten of them, dead, torn to pieces, their throats torn out. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. Everywhere I ran, I would hear of a farmhouse where all of the inhabitants had been mauled to death by some crazed animal or…”
Klefka stopped speaking as if he’d forgotten something important, but continued.
“In the fifteenth century, people thought differently than today. They believed in werewolves, vampires, and all other harbingers of doom. Not like today. I know you’re already thinking of whether or not you’re going to talk about this w
hen you’re rescued, aren’t you?”
Kyler had to admit it. He had been constantly wondering if any of them would be believed if they told what had happened on the island.
“I’ve been wondering exactly that,” he answered. “If fifteen or twenty people give exactly the same story, I’m sure someone would have to take notice.”
“Of course someone would take notice,” Klefka replied. “The crypto zoologists, the ufologists, people who think they’re witches, people who call themselves lycanthropes, and those people who believe that wrestling is real and the moon shot was faked. Those are the people who will believe you. People who everyone thinks are crazy, and more often than not, they are, but not always. I have seen more manner of creature in my travels than could ever be believed.”
“What did the people in the fifteenth century believe?” Kyler asked, trying to get back to the subject.
“Most people…not all… believed in werewolves, demon, ghosts, and vampires. They went on hunting parties and would kill or attempt to kill anything resembling a wolf. So, I had to run…constantly. I just thank God that I suffered from something that didn’t affect me every single night. Fortunately, when the moon was not full, I was fine.”
“Wait a minute,” Kyler interrupted. “What about last night and the night before? We had a storm happening on both nights and there was no full moon to see. It was hidden behind the clouds.”
“You’ve watched too many movies, Doctor. When the moon is full the moon is full whether there are low hanging clouds or not. It’s still a full moon. An old wives tale doesn’t change anything. Needless to say, I became quite interested in astronomy, almanacs, and anything to do with where and when the moon would be full. I moved around, avoiding it whenever I could.”
“You basically ran away from the moon.”
“Exactly. I could technically run away from it forever, but in those days, travel could be slow, and I’d turn and kill more people. There were times when the moon wasn’t supposed to be full and it was, and I killed again.”
“How many people do you think you’ve killed?” Kyler asked, not sure if it was an appropriate question.
This seemed to take the wind out of Klefka. “I have no idea.” Hundreds…thousands…I’m not sure. That’s something that I’m sure only God keeps track of.”
Kyler hadn’t even wondered if the man was religious. “Do you think he does?”
Klefka paused, then nodded. “I’m guessing so. I’m guessing that God has big plans for me if I’m ever killed.”
“Have you ever thought of…killing yourself?”
“Many times,” he replied, chuckling. “At first.”
“At first?”
“Yes, I tried once in a fit of grief over murdering my Paullina, but I couldn’t go through with it.”
“Why not?”
Kyler figured out the answer halfway through the question.
“Self preservation.”
“Yes. Gregore had been right. Whatever disease he put into my blood, gave me the instincts of an animal and self-preservation is one of them. I tried different things. I once chained myself to a large rock and threw away the key.”
“Did you get out of the chains?”
“No,” Klefka answered, shaking his head. “There had been one thing that I had forgotten about. If the chains could hold me as a werewolf, they could hold me as a man.”
“Ah,” Kyler started. “You were stuck in the chains when you became human again.”
“Yes, and I was in the middle of nowhere and no one knew where I was, or where to even look for me, so there I stayed till I almost starved.”
This puzzled Kyler. “Almost starved? I thought you couldn’t be killed…other than beheading, of course.”
“I don’t know. I did know that I was hungry, and felt like I was starving, and without food, an animal grows weaker. I imagine that even when I turned, I was weaker each time from lack of food.”
“How did you get out of the chains?”
“I was on top of a mountain peak in Lithuania, and I’m guessing that once, when I turned, I must’ve rocked back and forth and thrown myself down the mountain. I just remember waking up one morning, lying across a valley floor with a massive headache. I had to have fallen several hundred feet down the mountainside. From then on, I just tried to stay away from populated places when I knew that the moon was going to be full. I could go several years at a time without turning, but eventually the curse would catch up with me, and I’d have more souls etched onto my already damned one.”
“How can your soul be damned if you can’t help it?”
“Could Hitler help it? Could Stalin help it? Could Ted Bundy help it?”
“Yes. I think they could help it. They just chose not to.”
“Those men weren’t insane, my friend, they were evil, and I’m not sure evil knows it’s evil and I ought to know what evil is, because I’ve had five centuries to experience it. It comes in all shapes and sizes and in all forms. All of the things that people in the modern age are told not to believe in, do exist, and not just in the way that folklore has presented it. For instance, there are werebats, werebears, werehyena’s, and I’ve even seen weredogs.”
“Weredogs?”
“Yes?”
“So what made you come to America?”
“It was the new world. I waited till it got settled, of course, but by 1827, the place was civilized, by 1827 standards anyway. I sailed from Italy, where I had been living for about thirty years, to try my luck in Virginia. It’s one of your original colonies, you know.”
“Yes, I’ve heard,” Kyler said sarcastically, feeling a bit insulted.
“I’m sorry,” Klefka said, smiling an apologetic smile. “I did manage to find a ship that sailed with no full moons between there and here.”
“Didn’t you still have to run away from the moon after you came here?”
“Of course, but there was more wide-open space here for me to hide in if I turned, and even then, I believe I killed mostly animals. I seldom heard of any deaths, although I sometimes wondered when I heard a story about a hunter being killed by a wild animal. By the 1830’s, the almanac was almost full proof. I went just under six years without turning. That stopped in the late 1840’s.”
“What happened?” Kyler asked.
“I got caught in the Colorado Rockies when bad weather struck. Well, let’s just say that I’m not sure Alferd Packer ate anyone.”
“Alferd Packer? Why does that sound familiar?”
“He came out of the Rockies several months after leading a group of men who were headed for California looking for gold. They all wound up dead, supposedly cannibalized by Mr. Packer.”
“And you think that you might’ve done it?”
“It’s possible. I remember seeing them at one point.”
“Jesus.”
Kyler stared at the man sitting across from him. He was a human being who had witnessed so many historical events, most of them unrecorded by the history books.
“What about sex?” he blurted out before he realized what he was saying.
“What about it?”
“Well, you know…did you…uh…you know…”
“Have other wives? Girlfriends? Could a werewolf have sex?”
“Basically, the third one, there.”
“I don’t know about when I turn, but yes, when I’m in this form, I can have sex, although, I did go almost two hundred years without it.”
Kyler knew exactly how the man felt. It had been a while for him, too.
“Two hundred years? Yikes. Why so long?”
“The obvious. I was afraid that I might transfer what I am to some other poor soul. Thank God for the invention of the condom.”
Now Kyler was embarrassed. He had never been one to hang around the locker room and talk about “scorin’ tang” like other men did. He found the stories humorous most of the time, but he guessed he just wasn’t a sharer.
“How did you co
me to end up on that jet?” Kyler asked him, not wanting to skip anymore centuries, but figured it was time to find out what happened.
Nicholas Klefka leaned back on his hands. As he did, Kyler got a better look at the ankle bite. It was still bloody.
“From century to century,” Klefka started, “I have tried to find work where I could travel, hoping to be able to stay away from the full moon. I was a trapper once. I was an antiques buyer another time. I was a sales representative for a travel company. I…”
“Why did you need money?” interrupted Kyler. “You’re a werewolf. You don’t really need money do you?”
“I’m a werewolf, not the Invisible Man, who can shed his clothes, walk into a bank, and take what he wants. As far as I know, I have to eat. Like I told you, I haven’t gone long enough without food to know if I can starve to death. I need clothes…”
“I’ll bet.”
“I need transport. I don’t want to live in the forests and mountains for the rest of my existence, however long that may be. Man and beast both long for company…for others of their kind. We’re not meant to live a solitary existence. It’s in our blood.”
“What was the occupation that put you on the jet?”
“I was a history professor.”
“A history professor?”
“Yes. After all that I had lived and seen, my knowledge of history is quite extensive. Of course, I had to get my degrees first. I went to college in both Europe and the United States, earning four degrees and a PhD in ancient folklore.”
“And having that job allows you to travel extensively…to run away from the moon.”
“Very good. I had managed to go the longest…nine years without turning.”
“What happened on the jet?”
“I was on my way from China. I was there to collect stories about dragons, and where better to go than China, right. I live in New York at the present.”
“You were going from China to New York and ended up in Florida?” Kyler exclaimed, astonished.