Unnatural Creatures

by Neil Gaiman

  From Los Angeles, Wolf thought, with the habitual contempt of the Northern Californian as he surveyed the careless sport coat and the bright-yellow shirt of his visitor.

  This young man rose politely as the professor entered the office. His green eyes gleamed cordially and his red hair glowed in the spring sunlight. “Professor Wolf?” he asked.

  Wolf glanced impatiently at his desk. “Yes.”

  “O’Breen’s the name. I’d like to talk to you a minute.”

  “My office hours are from three to four Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’m afraid I’m rather busy now.”

  “This isn’t faculty business. And it’s important.” The young man’s attitude was affable and casual, but he managed nonetheless to convey a sense of urgency that piqued Wolf’s curiosity. The all-important letter to Gloria had waited while he took two classes; it could wait another five minutes.

  “Very well, Mr. O’Breen.”

  “And alone, if you please.”

  Wolf himself hadn’t noticed that Emily was in the room. He now turned to the secretary and said, “All right. If you don’t mind, Emily—”

  Emily shrugged and went out.

  “Now, sir. What is this important and secret business?”

  “Just a question or two. To start with, how well do you know Gloria Garton?”

  Wolf paused. You could hardly say, “Young man, I am about to repropose to her in view of my becoming a werewolf.” Instead he simply said—the truth, if not the whole truth—“She was a pupil of mine a few years ago.”

  “I said do, not did. How well do you know her now?”

  “And why should I bother to answer such a question?”

  The young man handed over a card. Wolf read:

  FERGUS O’BREEN

  PRIVATE INQUIRY AGENT

  LICENSED BY THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

  Wolf smiled. “And what does this mean? Divorce evidence? Isn’t that the usual field of private inquiry agents?”

  “Miss Garton isn’t married, as you probably know very well. I’m just asking if you’ve been in touch with her much lately.”

  “And I’m simply asking why you should want to know.”

  O’Breen rose and began to pace around the office. “We don’t seem to be getting very far, do we? I’m to take it that you refuse to state the nature of your relations with Gloria Garton?”

  “I see no reason why I should do otherwise.” Wolf was beginning to be annoyed.

  To his surprise, the detective relaxed into a broad grin. “Okay. Let it ride. Tell me about your department. How long have the various faculty members been here?”

  “Instructors and all?”

  “Just the professors.”

  “I’ve been here for seven years. All the others at least a good ten, probably more. If you want exact figures, you can probably get them from the dean, unless, as I hope”—Wolf smiled cordially—“he throws you out flat on your red pate.”

  O’Breen laughed. “Professor, I think we could get on. One more question, and you can do some pate-tossing yourself. Are you an American citizen?”

  “Of course.”

  “And the rest of the department?”

  “All of them. And now would you have the common decency to give me some explanation of this fantastic farrago of questions?”

  “No,” said O’Breen casually. “Goodbye, professor.” His alert green eyes had been roaming about the room, sharply noticing everything. Now, as he left, they rested on Wolf’s long index finger, moved up to his heavy meeting eyebrows, and returned to the finger. There was a suspicion of a startled realization in those eyes as he left the office.

  But that was nonsense, Wolf told himself. A private detective, no matter how shrewd his eyes, no matter how apparently meaningless his inquiries, would surely be the last man on earth to notice the signs of lycanthropy. Funny. “Werewolf” was a word you could accept. You could say, “I’m a werewolf,” and it was all right. But say “I am a lycanthrope” and your flesh crawled. Odd. Possibly material for a paper on the influence of etymology on connotation for one of the learned periodicals.

  But, hell! Wolfe Wolf was no longer primarily a scholar.

  He was a werewolf now, a white-magic werewolf, a werewolf-for-fun; and fun he was going to have. He lit his pipe, stared at the blank paper on his desk, and tried desperately to draft a letter to Gloria. It should hint at just enough to fascinate her and hold her interest until he could go south when the term ended and reveal to her the whole wonderful new truth. It—

  Professor Oscar Fearing grunted his ponderous way into the office. “Good afternoon, Wolfe. Hard at it, my boy?”

  “Afternoon,” Wolf replied distractedly, and continued to stare at the paper.

  “Great events coming, eh? Are you looking forward to seeing the glorious Gloria?”

  Wolf started. “How—what do you mean?”

  Fearing handed him a folded newspaper. “You hadn’t heard?”

  Wolf read with growing amazement and delight:

  GLORIA GARTON TO ARRIVE FRIDAY

  Local Girl Returns to Berkeley

  As part of the most spectacular talent hunt since the search for Scarlett O’Hara, Gloria Garton, glamorous Metropolis starlet, will visit Berkeley Friday. Friday afternoon at the Campus Theater, Berkeley canines will have their chance to compete in the nationwide quest for a dog to play Tookah the wolf dog in the great Metropolis epic “Fangs of the Forest,” and Gloria Garton herself will be present at the auditions.

  “I owe so much to Berkeley,” Miss Garton said. “It will mean so much to me to see the campus and the city again.” Miss Garton has the starring human role in “Fangs of the Forest.”

  Miss Garton was a student at the University of California when she received her first chance in films. She is a member of Mask and Dagger, honorary dramatic society, and Rho Rho Rho sorority.

  Wolfe Wolf glowed. This was perfect. No need now to wait till term was over. He could see Gloria now and claim her in all his wolfish vigor. Friday—today was Wednesday; that gave him two nights to practice and perfect the technique of werewolfry. And then—

  He noticed the dejected look on the older professor’s face, and a small remorse smote him. “How did things go last night, Oscar?” he asked sympathetically. “How were your big Walpurgis Night services?”

  Fearing regarded him oddly. “You know that now? Yesterday April thirtieth meant nothing to you.”

  “I got curious and looked it up. But how did it go?”

  “Well enough,” Fearing lied feebly. “Do you know, Wolfe,” he demanded after a moment’s silence, “what is the real curse of every man interested in the occult?”

  “No. What?”

  “That true power is never enough. Enough for yourself, perhaps, but never enough for others. So that no matter what your true abilities, you must forge on beyond them into charlatanry to convince the others. Look at St. Germain. Look at Francis Stuart. Look at Cagliostro. But the worst tragedy is the next stage: when you realize that your powers were greater than you supposed and that the charlatanry was needless. When you realize that you have no notion of the extent of your powers. Then—”

  “Then, Oscar?”

  “Then, my boy, you are a badly frightened man.”

  Wolf wanted to say something consoling. He wanted to say, “Look, Oscar. It was just me. Go back to your halfhearted charlatanry and be happy.” But he couldn’t do that. Only Ozzy could know the truth of that splendid gray wolf. Only Ozzy and Gloria.

  The moon was bright on that hidden spot in the canyon. The night was still. And Wolfe Wolf had a severe case of stage fright. Now that it came to the real thing—for this morning’s clothes-complicated fiasco hardly counted and last night he could not truly remember—he was afraid to plunge cleanly into wolfdom and anxious to stall and talk as long as possible.

  “Do you think,” he asked the magician nervously, “that I could teach Gloria to change, too?”

  Ozymandias pondered. “Maybe,
colleague. It’d depend. She might have the natural ability, and she might not. And, of course, there’s no telling what she might change into.”

  “You mean she wouldn’t necessarily be a wolf?”

  “Of course not. The people who can change, change into all sorts of things. And every folk knows best the kind that most interests it. We’ve got an English and Central European tradition, so we know mostly about werewolves. But take Scandinavia and you’ll hear chiefly about werebears, only they call ’em berserkers. And Orientals, now, they’re apt to know about weretigers. Trouble is, we’ve thought so much about werewolves that that’s all we know the signs for; I wouldn’t know how to spot a weretiger just offhand.”

  “Then there’s no telling what might happen if I taught her The Word?”

  “Not the least. Of course, there’s some werethings that just aren’t much use being. Take like being a wereant. You change and somebody steps on you and that’s that. Or like a fella I knew once in Madagascar. Taught him The Word, and know what? Hanged if he wasn’t a werediplodocus. Shattered the whole house into little pieces when he changed and damned near trampled me under hoof before I could say Absarka! He decided not to make a career of it. Or then there was that time in Darjeeling…but, look, colleague, are you going to stand around here naked all night?”

  “No,” said Wolf. “I’m going to change now. You’ll take my clothes back to the hotel?”

  “Sure. They’ll be there for you. And I’ve put a very small spell on the night clerk, just enough for him not to notice wolves wandering in. Oh, and by the way—anything missing from your room?”

  “Not that I noticed. Why?”

  “Because I thought I saw somebody come out of it this afternoon. Couldn’t be sure, but I think he came from there. Young fella with red hair and Hollywood clothes.”

  Wolfe Wolf frowned. That didn’t make sense. Pointless questions from a detective were bad enough, but searching your hotel room…But what were detectives to a full-fledged werewolf? He grinned, nodded a friendly goodbye to Ozymandias the Great, and said The Word.

  The pain wasn’t so sharp as this morning, though still quite bad enough. But it passed almost at once, and his whole body filled with a sense of limitless freedom. He lifted his snout and sniffed deep at the keen freshness of this night air. A whole new realm of pleasure opened up for him through this acute new nose alone. He wagged his tail amicably at Ozzy and set off up the canyon on a long, easy lope.

  For hours, loping was enough—simply and purely enjoying one’s wolfness was the finest pleasure one could ask. Wolf left the canyon and turned up into the hills, past the Big C and on into noble wildness that seemed far remote from all campus civilization. His brave new legs were stanch and tireless, his wind seemingly inexhaustible. Every turning brought fresh and vivid scents of soil and leaves and air, and life was shimmering and beautiful.

  But a few hours of this, and Wolf realized that he was damned lonely. All this grand exhilaration was very well, but if his mate Gloria were loping by his side…And what fun was it to be something as splendid as a wolf if no one admired you? He began to want people, and he turned back to the city.

  Berkeley goes to bed early. The streets were deserted. Here and there a light burned in a rooming house where some solid grind was plodding on his almost-due term paper. Wolf had done that himself. He couldn’t laugh in this shape, but his tail twitched with amusement at the thought.

  He paused along the tree-lined street. There was a fresh human scent here, though the street seemed empty. Then he heard a soft whimpering, and trotted off toward the noise.

  Behind the shrubbery fronting an apartment house sat a disconsolate two-year-old, shivering in his sunsuit and obviously lost for hours on hours. Wolf put a paw on the child’s shoulder and shook him gently.

  The boy looked around and was not in the least afraid. “He’o,” he said, brightening up.

  Wolf growled a cordial greeting, and wagged his tail and pawed at the ground to indicate that he’d take the lost infant wherever it wanted to go.

  The child stood up and wiped away its tears with a dirty fist which left wide black smudges. “Tootootootoo!” he said.

  Games, thought Wolf. He wants to play choo-choo. He took the child by the sleeve and tugged gently.

  “Tootootootoo!” the boy repeated firmly. “Die way.”

  The sound of a railway whistle, to be sure, does die away; but this seemed a poetic expression for such a toddler, Wolf thought, and then abruptly would have snapped his fingers if he’d had them. The child was saying “2222 Dwight Way,” having been carefully brought up to tell his address when lost. Wolf glanced up at the street sign. Bowditch and Hillegas; 2222 Dwight would be just a couple of blocks.

  Wolf tried to nod his head, but the muscles didn’t seem to work that way. Instead he wagged his tail in what he hoped indicated comprehension, and started off leading the child.

  The infant beamed and said, “Nice woof-woof.”

  For an instant Wolf felt like a spy suddenly addressed by his right name, then realized that if some say “bow-wow” others might well say “woof-woof.”

  He led the child for two blocks without event. It felt good, having an innocent human being like this. There was something about children; he hoped Gloria felt the same. He wondered what would happen if he could teach this confiding infant The Word. It would be swell to have a pup that would—

  He paused. His nose twitched and the hair on the back of his neck rose. Ahead of them stood a dog: a huge mongrel, seemingly a mixture of St. Bernard and husky. But the growl that issued from his throat indicated that carrying brandy kegs or rushing serum was not for him. He was a bandit, an outlaw, an enemy of man and dog. And they had to pass him.

  Wolf had no desire to fight. He was as big as this monster and certainly, with his human brain, much cleverer; but scars from a dogfight would not look well on the human body of Professor Wolf, and there was, moreover, the danger of hurting the toddler in the fracas. It would be wiser to cross the street. But before he could steer the child that way, the mongrel brute had charged at them, yapping and snarling.

  Wolf placed himself in front of the boy, poised and ready to leap in defense. The scar problem was secondary to the fact that this baby had trusted him. He was ready to face this cur and teach him a lesson, at whatever cost to his own human body. But halfway to him the huge dog stopped. His growls died away to a piteous whimper. His great flanks trembled in the moonlight. His tail curled craven between his legs. And abruptly he turned and fled.

  The child crowed delightedly. “Bad woof-woof go away.” He put his little arms around Wolf’s neck. “Nice woof-woof.” Then he straightened up and said insistently, “Tootootootoo. Die way,” and Wolf led on, his strong wolf’s heart pounding as it had never pounded at the embrace of a woman.

  “Tootootootoo” was a small frame house set back from the street in a large yard. The lights were still on, and even from the sidewalk Wolf could hear a woman’s shrill voice.

  “—since five o’clock this afternoon, and you’ve got to find him, Officer. You simply must. We’ve hunted all over the neighborhood and—”

  Wolf stood up against the wall on his hind legs and rang the doorbell with his front right paw.

  “Oh! Maybe that’s somebody now. The neighbors said they’d— Come, Officer, and let’s see—Oh!”

  At the same moment Wolf barked politely, the toddler yelled “Mamma!” and his thin and worn-looking young mother let out a scream—half delight at finding her child and half terror of this large gray canine shape that loomed behind him. She snatched up the infant protectively and turned to the large man in uniform. “Officer! Look! That big dreadful thing! It stole my Robby!”

  “No,” Robby protested firmly. “Nice woof-woof.”

  The officer laughed. “The lad’s probably right, ma’am. It is a nice woof-woof. Found your boy wandering around and helped him home. You haven’t maybe got a bone for him?”

  “Le
t that big, nasty brute into my home? Never! Come on, Robby.”

  “Want my nice woof-woof.”

  “I’ll woof-woof you, staying out till all hours and giving your father and me the fright of our lives. Just wait till your father sees you, young man; he’ll— Oh, good night, Officer!”

  And she shut the door on the yowls of Robby.

  The policeman patted Wolf’s head. “Never mind about the bone, Rover. She didn’t so much as offer me a glass of beer, either. My, you’re a husky specimen, aren’t you, boy?

  “Look almost like a wolf. Who do you belong to, and what are you doing wandering about alone? Huh?” He turned on his flash and bent over to look at the nonexistent collar.

  He straightened up and whistled. “No license. Rover, that’s bad. You know what I ought to do? I ought to turn you in. If you weren’t a hero that just got cheated out of his bone, I’d— Hell, I ought to do it, anyway. Laws are laws, even for heroes. Come on, Rover. We’re going for a walk.”

  Wolf thought quickly. The pound was the last place on earth he wanted to wind up. Even Ozzy would never think of looking for him there. Nobody’d claim him, nobody’d say Absarka! and in the end a dose of chloroform…He wrenched loose from the officer’s grasp on his hair and with one prodigious leap cleared the yard, landed on the sidewalk, and started hell for leather up the street. But the instant he was out of the officer’s sight he stopped dead and slipped behind a hedge.

  He scented the policeman’s approach even before he heard it. The man was running with the lumbering haste of two hundred pounds. But opposite the hedge, he too stopped. For a moment Wolf wondered if his ruse had failed; but the officer had paused only to scratch his head and mutter, “Say! There’s something screwy here. Who rang that doorbell? The kid couldn’t reach it, and the dog— Oh, well,” he concluded. “Nuts,” and seemed to find in that monosyllabic summation the solution to all his problems.

  As his footsteps and smell died away, Wolf became aware of another scent. He had only just identified it as cat when someone said, “You’re were, aren’t you?”