But I must stand with my love...
* * *
Narrative of John Amos Gridley, as told to Alvin Crooker
The proceeding was related to me in my office at the Sorefoot Picayune on September the first, by Mister John Adams Gridley, owner and proprietor of Gridley’s Eatery. It is a true and factual account of the events of the night of August the thirtieth, year of our Lord, eighteen hundred and ninety eight. –Alvin Crooker, esq.
On the night of August the thirtieth, I was engaged in the siege of the Skoll house [formerly the Judson house], having volunteered to go along with a posse commandeered by Marshal Dan Ruddles of Bastrop to arrest the Scandinavians for the burning of Coleman Morris’ house and the murder of Sheriff Michael Turlough, Early Searls, and Sean [‘Ranny’] Brogan. Sig Skoll and his entire gang were fortified in the house with Mrs. Skoll [presumed captive] and had been firing on us throughout the day. Ray Bixby and Tom Koots of the Q&M Cattle Company were killed by bullets before nightfall, along with two of Marshal Ruddles’ deputies [Tyler Freed and William Cannon] and three horses. Besides killing some of us, they ignored all demands by Marshal Ruddles and others for the safe release of Mrs. Skoll, and made a number of threats against our livelihood.
At this time I was engaged with walking the party’s horses out of range of the shooting, for a rifleman inside the house had taken to killing the animals at extreme range, possibly with a Sharps or other long hunter’s rifle, I would say of forty four, maybe fifty caliber. Being the least able to fight [due to a recent, sensitive affliction], I was elected to bring the horses back to a low ridge on the southeast corner of the property which overlooked the scene, and I had a pretty good view of all that went on.
When night came Mr. Aurelius [Alkali] Firebaugh hit upon a plan to smoke the gang out, and two of the Q&M boys [Way Parker and Bob Erb] set about breaking up the corral, which had been emptied of its horses, for burning.
There was a good lot of shouting coming from within the Skoll house at this point, but I was not close enough to hear clearly if anything was being said.
Alkali Firebaugh was in a position facing the rear of the house, along with Paul Murtaugh, Cole Morris [both of the Q&M], and a man called Van Helsing [Abe Van Helsing], while Marshal Ruddles and his deputies [Melvin Theiss, Sy Morant, Buster James] and Parker and Erb were out front. The plan was to light the front of the house and drive the gang out the back, where our best marksman would arrest or shoot them.
There was fear that the men would not be able to get close enough to the house to pile on the fuel, but whether it was the cover of dark or something else, Erb and Parker got it lit. As soon as the fire got up though, there was a hell of a commotion from the house, which I am hard pressed to describe. Some kind of call like a rebel’s yell or a Comanche war whoop.
Parker and Erb had barely got away from the fire and back to Ruddles’ line when the front door burst open The window shutters on the ground floor were flung apart and four large men came rushing out, jumping right through the flames and running across the front yard. With the fire in the front I could see pretty well that they were dressed all in furs, and were a frightening sight, like wild men. They ran on all fours, swinging along almost like apes.
This was against the plan and must have thrown Marshal Ruddles and the other men for a loop, or else they were afraid to shoot lest they hit Parker and Erb, for they did not fire. Two of the wild men singled out the two cowboys, and Parker and Erb both were dragged down and pounced upon. Ruddles and his men began firing then, for the two remaining men who were not otherwise engaged came right at them, though they appeared to be unarmed. I could hear them bellowing as they charged, and it was less like a man’s war cry and more like the call of crazed beasts.
I did not fully see what happened next, for my attention was drawn to the back yard by the sound of a door slamming open. While the fighting continued in front, and the fire ran up the wall of the house, I could see and hear everything that went on in the back, thanks to the bright big moon that was out and the direction of the wind, which blew their voices up to me.
Two men came rushing out the back door, and Mr. Morris’ group did not waste time but let fly with a good storm of lead that sounded like a brick of Chinese firecrackers. The two men kept coming, though it seemed they were taking hits all over, and actually reached their position before they fell, crashing into the very rain barrels Mr. Morris and his men crouched behind.
I heard a scream, high and long, and saw that one of the men had managed to wound Paul Murtaugh. Aurelius Firebaugh shot Murtaugh’s attacker in the head. Then, leaning heavy on a spare [a makeshift crutch - his famous artificial leg had been lost], he dragged Murtaugh away from the barrels, as the water from them was spilt and wetting the ground where he lay.
Thinking the fight in the back had ended, I almost turned my attention back to the fray in the front yard, when I caught movement as another figure stepped out of the house and onto the porch. This one was dressed in the same weird way as his fellows, but he moved slowly and upright, in full command of his faculties. He wore a kind of wolf’s head cowl, with eyes cut out for him to see through. This was Sig Skoll himself.
“Morris!” Skoll shouted, in his thick tongue. “You have defeated my pack. Stand aside now, and let me go, or at least my wife!”
“It’s your wife we’re here for, Skoll, you devil,” Morris said back. “Lay down that long knife,”[he had some kind of sword in his hands, but no firearm], “and come peaceful. I’d like nothing better than to burn you down along with your house, you son of a bitch.”
At this point, Van Helsing stepped up and called to Skoll, asking him again to let his wife out of the house before it burned to the ground, for the fire was on the wood roof now and blazing.
“Get back, old man!” shouted Skoll. “I don’t want your blood this night. Callisto would never forgive me. But I’ll have your head, Morris, if you do not let us pass.”
Aurelius took aim with a rifle, making it three guns against Skoll now.
“Last chance, Skoll!” Aurelius warned.
Skoll waved his sword and charged off the porch, hollering.
Two shots struck him as he ran [one of the men did not fire], and like the others, though he was wounded, he kept on. The distance was so short from the porch to their position, that there wasn’t time for another volley. Skoll chopped right at Morris with his sword and knocked his pistol from his hand.
I heard Aurelius call for Van Helsing to shoot as he himself had run shy of cartridges, but the Dutchman missed. Paul got up from the ground and pulled away from Firebaugh. He ran over and tried to tackle Skoll, but that sword came around and took the cowboy’s head off his neck. Morris fought back, and I decided to lend a hand, and began working my way down the slope with the horses. I saw that Aurelius was fiddling with his rifle, while Van Helsing had turned toward the house, perhaps having it in mind to go after the woman still inside.
I saw a flash of metal, and realized Morris had got a big bowie knife from his scabbard and was wrestling to put it into Skoll, while Skoll had got rid of his sword and had his hands around Morris’ throat.
I was running by this time, though in great pain from my sensitive affliction, and hollering all the way along with Aurelius for the Dutchman Van Helsing to do something to intervene. Aurelius had his rifle loaded, but couldn’t find the right target among the two men, who were so tangled up in their combat on the ground as to be indistinguishable.
I reached the foot of the rise, but had to pause to allow for the pain. That was when I saw her [Mrs. Skoll] open the window on the upper floor and climb out onto the roof. I thought at first she would cry for help. She was in a white shift of some kind, and her long black hair was loose and blowing. The fire was close all around her, and she looked very bright among all that black smoke. In addition, there was a noticeable swell to her, which made it look to me like she was due for a baby.
I shouted for her to keep calm, and let go of t
he horses to get there faster, as I was afraid she meant to jump.
She called out her husband by name, and then pressed her face into her hands.
As I reached the back yard finally, I saw that Mr. Morris was standing up and Sig Skoll had rolled over with the big bowie knife stuck to the handle under his left arm. And that was how he finished.
Morris and Aurelius had not seen Mrs. Skoll yet, and I hollered for them to look as I joined up with them.
Mrs. Skoll was three ways distraught. When she took her hands away her eyes were red and running, and she opened her mouth and screamed. It wasn’t a regular scream that came out. It started off as a womanly moan, but as it got louder, it seemed to break in sound and become like a dog’s baying. It was so loud and unnatural I had to cover my ears.
She crouched there on the roof, and it seemed she was cursing us through her teeth, but I couldn’t understand her words. Her hair was wild and flying and the ends seemed to spark from the closeness of the fire eating up the roof around her. Her shift caught, and she reached up with both hands and, taking hold of the sleeves, she tore it in half, flinging the blackening shreds both ways into the fire. It was plain then by her aspect that she was with child.
Aurelius Firebaugh reached us at that instant, and I saw him grab hold of Morris and shove him away.
A big twisting column of black smoke poured out from under the eaves just then, and Mrs. Skoll jumped off the roof, passing into it.
But it wasn’t Mrs. Skoll that came out the other end.
It was a big black wolf with shining yellow eyes, and from where I stood I could see that its heavy paws were out in front of it like a bobcat pouncing on a javelina. Its long teeth were bared and its big sharp ears were flat against its huge head.
It would have flattened Coleman Morris if Aurelius Firebaugh hadn’t been standing there in his place. As it was, the wolf knocked Firebaugh on his back and went running off across the back yard. In a minute it was gone in the dark.
Van Helsing regained himself and fired his pistol at the fleeing animal. We all just sort of stood there for a minute, not sure what had happened. There was a big hole in the middle of Aurelius’ chest, and we saw right away that the wound was mortal. His heart could be seen pumping, and the blood was fleeing his body in every direction.
Aurelius cursed a great deal. He cursed me for not getting there in time, and he cursed Van Helsing for not doing anything while he was there. When Morris came to his side, Aurelius cursed him for not getting out of the way.
Then he shuddered, and it was as if he felt his spirit trying to escape. He grabbed hold of my sleeve, but he spoke to Morris, and there were tears running from his good eye.
“Take care of my place, Cole. Take care of Bernice’s [a mare which had just dropped a colt] colt. You can sell off all them others if you can catch ‘em, but keep them two. Will you?”
Coleman answered that he would abide the old man’s request, and added, “And we’ll get her for you, Alkali. We’ll get her.”
Whether he heard this or not, there is no telling. Having no more affairs to put in order, the old man gave up the ghost directly.
Marshal Ruddles joined us, with the news that Parker and Erb had been lost, but the rest of the Skoll gang had been wiped out. The house was burning spectacularly, but Van Helsing got up of a sudden and ran inside.
We all yelled after him, but after five or ten minutes, we decided he had been taken up by some kind of madness and had burned. He emerged a couple minutes later though, with a box bundled in his coat.
Though we demanded to know what was so important that he had risked his life in the burning house, Van Helsing would not answer. Marshal Ruddles did not ask what happened to Firebaugh, assuming it was one of the gang. I was excited over all I’d seen, and made to tell him and the others, but Van Helsing and Morris both stopped me.
We tied our dead over their saddles, having no wagon, and Marshal Ruddles declared his intent to take the dead and the living back to town and return to bury the Skolls. Morris said he would head out to Firebaugh’s place, though it was very late, and Van Helsing volunteered to go with him.
That was two days ago now.
CHAPTER 20
From the Journal of Professor Van Helsing
August 31st
Day is risen, but the light of the morning brings Coleman and I no comfort. The prairie seems gray and dull and the sun is not to be seen. My friend Alvin may well have succumbed by now to the claws of the ulfheonir. Sigmund Skoll, our feared enemy, is dead by Quincey’s knife, the same that slew Dracula. And Aurelius Firebaugh, that consummate frontiersman, is dead too at the hand of Callisto. She and her unnatural offspring live, but only until we find her.
Signs that meant nothing to me or were neglected in light of my fascination with her beauty are now as apparent as a rain of blood from a clear, bright sky. Her nearly joined eyebrows, her interest in Baring-Gould (what woman of her sort has ever heard of Baring-Gould ?), her sympathy towards Fenris in the old tale, and her incredible confession to me of being with child. All of these things seem to me now like shrill whistles of alarm. Was I deaf or blind to them all, or did I simply not trust my own mind?
The gestation period of the wolf is vastly accelerated when compared to the normal human pregnancy. It must be assumed that the term of the lycanthrope, the true lycanthrope, is at some halfway point. When I saw Callisto days ago I could barely discern her state. But on the roof last night...she will give birth any day now, it seems.
I told Coleman this.
He said nothing in reply.
It is his intent to avenge Aurelius, and mine to pursue the same course, both for the edification of science and the greater good. Plenty Skins was correct in his supposition that Skoll wanted the rangeland for game and for the cattle to rear his ghastly litter. But how long can a truculent predator such as a werewolf sustain itself on tame, stupid cattle? The tales of their ferocity and propensity for murder and cannibalism are legend. How long before Sorefoot itself becomes her hunting ground, and its citizens the innocent commissary of her hellish brood?
Thus is my failure compounded, as I see now that Skoll was not the greatest threat. He was but the deluded shepherd to her Ishtar, the Actaeon to her Diana. Skoll, or perhaps one of his pagan cult, found her in the forests of Arcadia and built (or solidified) their religion around her. What more evidence of the veracity of their doctrine would a society of ulfheonir need than the central figure of an actual shapeshifter?
As to her origins, who can say? If she comes from Arcadia as she told me, maybe she is descended of that ancient line of Lykos, who was cursed by Zeus (or so the mythology says) with the shape of the wolf for setting a dinner table of child flesh for the visiting god. More likely she is of some peculiar human subspecies originating in that region, whose existence was acknowledged in that ancient fable. There is the remote possibility that she is a victim of some curse or spell (or a willing participant), or perhaps an infection, like the vampire. Yet the fact remains undeniable in the gloomy light of this day.
Callisto Terovolas is a werewolf.
Whatever fondness I felt for her must be put aside in lieu of the dread business ahead. She has killed, and not only in defense. The tracks Coleman found outside of Buckner Tyree’s shack, the queer fingerprint like paw marks, are that same as the ones we follow now. She will kill again.
Perhaps my infatuation with her is the product of some hormonal ability of hers. Do not the wolves of the forest communicate through scent manipulation and sensual reaction on some level imperceptible to human awareness? What if her power over me is deliberate, like the hypnotic power of Dracula’s brides? Last night I hardly reacted to her brutal attack, even though I might have saved Aurelius’ life. Of course, I may be seeking to salve my guilt, but what if the abhorrent stirrings of my imagination and the recent reeling of my subconscious mind in regards to her have been triggered by some recognition by my ego of the similarity between the bewitchments of the
vampiress and the primal attraction of the were-bitch?
God, I ramble. Why has this been brought before me? Why must I consistently be the instrument through which evil is confronted and purged from the mortal world? It seems my lot in life is to confront what the greater number of humanity cannot know, to be faced with the darkest dwellers of deep imagination, and to feel the executioner’s burden of terrible responsibility forever upon my old shoulders.
Why must it be Callisto this time?
I have been tested against hellish fires. If I have not dealt the final triumphant blow in all my battles, I have taken the commander’s position whenever possible. I have put the sword into the hands of those more able. I have identified the Adversary wherever he has been, and made clear his foul intent. I have led men sometimes to death if it meant his eradication. Shall I forever be hounded by the denizens of the Beast in their many twisted forms? Must they now assume the shape of that which in my mind and heart has come to be so deserving of affection? An inestimable marriage of intelligence and purity and beauty in womanly form, which I have not known since before the departure of my own wife’s sanity?
I see now that in Callisto, if it be not some unnatural symptom of a werewolf’s guile, that she reminds me so very much of Mina Harker, as Mina reminded me of my wife, Diana. Strong, beautiful, and sensible. But so did the dark beauty of Dracula’s bride strike me when I pried open her crypt. Must I stain my hands with another woman’s blood?
Coleman and I are alone in this hunt. We dared not tell the others what we had seen, and we bade Mr. Gridley not to speak of it while we lived. I can only hope Alvin, if he lives, has not pried his eyewitness account from him. If he has I hope he has the wisdom not to publish it.
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