The Wolfman

by Jonathan Maberry

  He saw his mother lying sprawled in the arms of his father. They were in silhouette, Sir John’s back to him. There was a cry in the night and Lawrence turned to see his own younger self, a frail boy of nine years old, standing in the doorway of the glass house garden. In the continuous flash of lightning young Lawrence’s forehead was knitted in consternation and uncertainty.

  “Mother?” whispered the boy, taking a tentative step outside.

  A wail tore through the night, rising upward from the kneeling figure as Sir John raised his head and screamed to the storm. As he did so the body in his arms shifted and Lawrence—the child and the man—saw Solana’s arm fall limply down, her hand striking the wet ground. The black rain flowed from her, from her arm, from her body, from her skin. A river of darkness that washed from her and across the flagstones toward Lawrence.

  “Mother? . . .” young Lawrence said again, and this time his father heard his plaintive little voice. Sir John turned, still cradling Solana to his chest. As lightning flashed Lawrence could see the lines of terrible, impossible grief carved into his father’s face. His father’s eyes were dark, a red that was filled with grief and fury and rage and an impossible loss.

  But that was not how it was. Not really, and Lawrence the man, standing now in this grand theater of memory, saw a different version of the scene play out.

  Lightning flashed and Lawrence could see his mother’s body. He looked for the wounds where she had slashed her wrists, but even as he looked Lawrence knew that those wounds would not be there. Other wounds would.

  He stepped closer, standing right behind the boy, and as lightning flashed above them he saw his mother’s lovely face. So pale and still. And he saw her throat. It was a red, torn ruin. The wounds on her chest and arms and legs were not the pristine cuts of a razor. They were bites. Savage and brutal.

  Sir John threw his head back and screamed.

  Only it wasn’t a scream. It was a howl.

  And it wasn’t Sir John.

  It was a werewolf.

  The boy screamed.

  Lawrence screamed, too. . . .

  SIR JOHN PICKED up his coffee cup and took a sip, watching with icy interest as his son bent forward over the knot of pain in his heart and buried his face in his hands. The sound of his scream echoed off of the walls of the stone cell.

  “You bastard!” growled Lawrence. He raised his head and spat at Sir John, but his father wiped the spittle from his jacket. “You said you loved her! You knew what you were and yet you . . . you . . .” He shook his head, trying to dislodge the truth. “You should have killed yourself.”

  Sir John grunted. “I cannot tell you how often I have considered it. I suppose you would have been a happy little family, just you and your brother and your mother. . . . Ah, but life is far too glorious, Lawrence. Especially to the cursed, the damned. Every night of the full moon, for many years, I’ve been locked away in that crypt. Singh does it. My faithful servant for twenty-five years . . . but then she came, didn’t she?”

  “ ‘She’? . . .”

  Sir John’s voice trembled. “Hot, burning like the face of the moon. Like your mother. Like your mother. And out of reach.”

  Lawrence gasped. “Gwen . . .”

  “Yes,” said Sir John gently. “Gwen. She would have taken your brother away and they would both have vanished into the night. And, although I was resigned to it, the beast in me was not. You understand that now, Lawrence, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Lawrence. “You talk about the beast as if it’s not you.”

  “One can’t control what it wants. What it does.” Sir John paused. “The night Ben died we had a terrible quarrel. Terrible. It was a fight really. Ben, you understand, had come to tell me he was resolute in his decision to leave Talbot Hall for good. I got drunk and violent.” He sighed. “Extremely violent. I even struck out at Singh, who was trying to restrain me. I knocked him out cold.” He gave Lawrence a rueful smile. “Poor old Singh. I used to be a bare-knuckle prizefighter, back in the good old days . . . long time ago.”

  Sir John got up and walked across the cell and stared out of the tiny window.

  “Yes . . . poor old Singh.” He turned to face Lawrence. “Anyway, I knocked him unconscious, and as a consequence I waited too long . . . and by then I was unable to lock myself in the crypt that night.”

  “What did you do?” asked Lawrence, though he was dreadfully certain that he knew the next part of the tale.

  “In the morning . . . after I became . . . I found your brother in a ditch . . . not far from the house. He’d been torn to pieces.” He leaned one hand against the wall and hung his head.

  “God damn you to hell,” said Lawrence, but the grief was so sharp that the words came out as a weak whisper.

  Sir John slapped the wall and turned sharply to face Lawrence. His face was hard, his eyes ablaze and all traces of heartache and remorse were gone.

  “But now I understand!” he said triumphantly. “Now I know it was all a mistake, trying to lock up the beast. Twenty-five years, Lawrence. All those wasted years, all those years being ashamed of it . . . and I should not have been! I should have let nature run its course. Don’t you think so, Lawrence? I should have let it run free . . . kill or be killed.”

  Lawrence lunged at him but once more the collar stopped him short. He reeled back, clawing at his throat, cursing and gagging. With a jolt he realized that his father had played him, that he had come to lean on the wall near him to provoke a gesture that would prove Lawrence’s impotence. “If you dare touch Gwen . . .”

  Sir John smiled. “Don’t threaten me, boy. You don’t have the fiber for it. You have a ways to go, my young pup, before you can tell me what to do. But . . . your chance is coming.” He strolled over to the barred window. It was already late afternoon. “The Goddess will hunt the skies again . . . and she’s full tonight.”

  “No!”

  “Oh yes, Lawrence. But . . .” He dug into his coat pocket and removed a shaving razor. With a snap of his wrist he flicked out the blade. It was mirror bright and gleamed with argent fire.

  “This is a small gift for you, Lawrence, in the event you don’t find life as glorious as I find it to be . . . or ‘not to be.’ ” He gave him a wink and reached close to tuck the razor under the thin mattress of Lawrence’s cot. Lawrence did not move. And when his father bent and kissed him gently, lovingly on the head, tears broke from Lawrence’s eyes.

  “Sleep now, my boy,” murmured Sir John. “Rest. I do love you. If that can make sense after all this.”

  With that he called for the turnkey and left Lawrence alone with his despair and the horror of the truth. Lawrence curled into a ball against the wall and wept.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Ripler, the evil-faced orderly, came for him an hour later. He and two muscular goons forced him to dress in a crisp white shirt and clean britches, then they manhandled Lawrence into a straightjacket, then threw him down into a wheelchair and lashed him tight with leather bands.

  “What . . . what is this?”

  “Shut up,” growled Ripler.

  “I need to speak to Inspector Aberline,” Lawrence implored. “Please, if I could just—”

  Ripler cuffed him with a vicious backhand that rocked Lawrence’s head and sent the world into a sickening spin. Then the orderly grabbed a handful of Lawrence’s hair and bent so close that when he spoke the sour vapor of his breath was inescapable.

  “Listen to me, guv’nor,” hissed the orderly. “You mind your manners and ’old your tongue or me an’ the lads will ’ave a go with you before we take you to see the doctor. Lafferty there’s an old pro. ’E can bust your ribs without leaving a mark. And Strunk here is a right nasty lad. ’E should probably be in ’ere rather than working ’ere, ain’t that right, Strunk?”

  Strunk grinned to show a line of cracked and crooked teeth. “I’m a product of a troubled ’ousehold is what I am. Doctor ’Oenneger says so.” His leer was
an eloquent threat.

  Ripler gave Lawrence’s head a vicious shake and then released the handful of hair. He patted Lawrence on the cheek, and Lafferty stepped up to push the wheelchair as Ripler led the way through a series of long stone corridors. They passed dozens of barred doors through which Lawrence could see all manner of madness, from screaming lunatics who banged their heads on the walls to destroyed people who sat huddled in catatonic isolation. This was a familiar hell that he had thought himself permanently separated from, but Fate was more cruel than he had ever guessed.

  They came to a set of double doors and Ripler and Strunk held them open as Lafferty pushed Lawrence into a large room that was filled with people. In the center of the room was a reinforced chair fitted out with straps and buckles, and nearby were tables laden with medical instruments of such arcane design that to Lawrence they looked like tools of the torture trade. The rest of the room was given over to bleachers that rose like in a stadium—or, to Lawrence’s view—the seats at the Roman Coliseum. The seats were packed with scores of what Lawrence guessed to be medical doctors and scientists. He had heard about Hoenneger’s theatrics even when he’d been here as a boy.

  “What is this? . . .” Lawrence began, but before he could complete the question Ripler and his mates began unstrapping him from the wheelchair so they could wrestle him into the reinforced chair that was the centerpiece of the room. Lawrence struggled wildly but the men were much stronger, and when he opened his mouth to shout Ripler covertly punched him in the groin while Strunk simultaneously drove his knuckles into Lawrence’s kidneys. It was so fast and smooth that it had the feel of a tactic these men had used many a time before, and never for any wholesome reason.

  Voiceless with pain, Lawrence was helpless as they sat him down and fitted all of the restraints into place. When they were done all he could move was his head, and that lolled in a painful stupor for several minutes. Ripler bent toward Lawrence, ostensibly to make a last check of the restraints, but as he did so he gave Lawrence a final warning: “You behave yourself, mate, or you won’t like what ’appens when you get back to your cell. No, indeed, my buck, you won’t like that at all.”

  Lawrence raised his head and met the orderly’s eyes. “Damn you to hell.”

  “Probably already am.”

  Lawrence mustered the energy to sneer. “Tell you what, friend,” he whispered. “Wait until the moon rises and then come visit my cell.”

  Ripler just grinned and shook his head. “Bloody madmen,” he said to his mates. “Always entertaining.”

  The orderly rose and waved his two cronies away. Dr. Hoenneger appeared next to him.

  Ripler walked over to the double doors, locked them, and then returned to hand the keys to Hoenneger. “Everything’s secure, sir,” he said.

  The doctor nodded, gave Lawrence only a fleeting glance, and then turned to his audience. Lawrence could tell that this was a show to Hoenneger, a performance.

  “My friends and colleagues,” Hoenneger began, “gentlemen of the press, representatives of Scotland Yard, and esteemed members of the public, I welcome you to Lambeth Asylum.” His orator’s voice was deeper and louder than his speaking voice and it filled the surgical theater. “We are here tonight to illustrate conclusively that your fears are quite irrational.”

  Hoenneger nodded to a second doctor, who walked across the hall to the far wall, took hold of a braided cord and pulled on it to draw back the sets of heavy drapes that covered the windows. The windows looked out over the crooked skyline of London and revealed a large expanse of the night sky in which a few pale clouds drifted across the lush white expanse of the fully risen moon.

  Lawrence almost screamed.

  “What . . . what are you doing?” he stammered and wrenched at the leather bands that held him in place. “You’re insane. . . .”

  Hoenneger turned from the vista of the full moon to face Lawrence, but he still pitched his voice to be heard by all. “We are going to remain in this room together all night. And once you’ve witnessed that the full moon holds no sway over you . . . that you remain a perfectly ordinary human being . . .”

  “. . . My God . . .” breathed Lawrence.

  “. . . you will have taken your first small step down the long road to recovery.”

  Lawrence stared at him in shock, unable to believe the dangerous insanity of this. He looked at the crowd, hoping to see a familiar face, someone to whom he could appeal, and there, far up in the stands, was Inspector Aberline.

  “Aberline!” he cried. “You can’t do this . . . you can’t! Get everyone out!”

  The inspector said nothing, even when those around him turned to him and a buzz of conversation rippled through the audience. Aberline’s eyes were so hard and intense that Lawrence knew he had no ally there.

  “Lycanthropy,” pronounced Hoenneger, “is a disease of the mind, existing somewhere in the deep recesses of your thoughts. Yes, Mr. Talbot, I know that to you it seems very real.”

  “It is real! God in heaven, you have to believe me.”

  The doctor gave a small sad shake of his head. “You’ve suffered quite traumatic personal experiences, Mr. Talbot, we’re all aware. You hate your father. Your mother committed suicide. Therefore your father must be to blame for her death . . .”

  Once again Lawrence threw all of his weight and muscle against the leather straps, but though the leather creaked and the wooden chair rattled, escape was far beyond his powers.

  “You witnessed your mother’s self-mutilation. Your young mind, unable to accept it, created a fantastical truth: that your father is literally a monster.”

  Lawrence sagged against the straps, breathing hard, weakened by the chemicals, in pain from the abuse Ripler and his men had given him, defeated by his own human limitations.

  “But, your father is not a werewolf,” said Hoenneger, and there was a ripple of laughter from the audience. The doctor held up his hand to silence the crowd. “You were not bitten by a werewolf.”

  He turned dramatically toward the open window and the full moon.

  “And you will not become a werewolf any more than I will sprout wings and fly out of that window.”

  This time Hoenneger allowed the laughter from his audience.

  MILES AWAY, IN the old forest at the edge of the Talbot estate, moonlight bathed the circle of ancient standing stones. As the Goddess of the Hunt rode across the sky her pale light slid across the stones one by one until it caressed the heel stone. The light intensified as the moon swung toward the center point of the great celestial clock.

  “TONIGHT,” HOENNEGER SAID, “we will sit and watch the evening passing uneventfully.”

  “Damn you for a fool,” Lawrence snapped. “Tonight you will sit and watch me become a werewolf . . . and then I will kill all of you!”

  Hoenneger gave him a tolerant smile. “I believe we are all safe from you, Mr. Talbot . . . and you will see that you, too, are safe from demons that exist only in your mind.”

  “Please, Doctor,” Lawrence implored, “listen to me. Even if you don’t believe me then at least, for pity’s sake, sedate me. Lock me up.”

  “You are quite well secured—”

  “With chains and bars, damn it! Lock me up or . . . kill me. Please, that would be a mercy. Kill me!”

  “Be at peace, Mr. Talbot. Soon you’ll see that this is all in your mind.”

  Lawrence felt stabs of pain in his hands and he looked down to see the veins on the backs of his hands begin to throb as if huge amounts of blood were suddenly being forced through them. He watched in growing horror as his pores widened and black hairs began to sprout on his fingers and wrists.

  “God . . . no,” he said, and then to Hoenneger he cried: “It’s happening!”

  Hoenneger did not bother to look at him. He turned a knowing smile to the audience. Over his shoulder he said, “It’s your imagination, Mr. Talbot. All in your vivid imagina—”

  Lawrence screamed as a wave of pain hit him that
was so enormous that he felt like his body was exploding. His limbs trembled with the onset of convulsions and he threw his head back as screams were ripped from him.

  “Get . . . out! . . .”

  Hoenneger saw the front rank of the audience suddenly leap to its feet and he turned, still smiling . . . but the smile died on his face. As he stood there and watched, Lawrence Talbot’s eyes changed from brown to orange to a fiery yellow. Hoenneger’s brain seemed to freeze. He stood, openedmouthed, watching as the teeth in Lawrence’s screaming mouth lengthened and thickened, tearing the gums as they swelled to daggerlike points, and then the whole jaw shifted, expanding to allow more teeth to tear through. The flesh of Lawrence’s hands and feet rippled as the bones broke and reformed into new shapes. Blood spurted from each fingertip as black claws tore through the flesh.

  Hoenneger’s mind was spinning toward darkness. For a moment a detached part of him thought that this was a forced manifestation, like the stigmata appearing on the wrists and feet of religious fanatics, but even as he thought that, the horrible truth of what he was seeing smashed that fantasy to fragments. This was happening, and it was happening right here. Inches away.

  In the bleachers Inspector Aberline leaped to his feet, unable to see what was happening over the heads of the people in the rows ahead of him. He craned his neck for a better look and what he saw smashed into his mind like a bullet.

  Lawrence tried to warn them all to run, but his mouth was no longer made for human speech and his mind was losing its ability to frame cohesive thought. The room was becoming brighter and his last conscious thought was the realization that he could see the blood glowing in the bodies of everyone in the room. And then everything that defined Lawrence Talbot as a human being was torn apart by what he was becoming.

  The creature’s body began expanding as its muscles swelled and its chest grew more massive. The seams on the heavy canvas straightjacket burst apart. The strap across his chest was forced outward so sharply that the metal of the buckle twisted and snapped.