by Paul Kane
Worried about all this, he’d visited a psychiatrist, who said it was just the mind’s way of telling him he needed to get out in the fresh air more, connect with nature.
“Twaddle,” he’d whispered under his breath as he’d left the office.
So he’d done a little digging into the subject himself, got a few books out of the library – he knew where he was with books. I saw him looking up from the page he was reading, eyes wide, realising what he’d got; what the wolf in the underground had given him. The curse… That often a sufferer of lycanthropy will feel like they’re dreaming when they change. That there were things you could do to prevent the change coming on. He’d visited one occult shop and bought a bracelet that was said to help – sporting a silver pentagram, the sign of the wolf, to keep the spirit of it at bay. But all that had done was make him feel restless…
And so to be sure that he didn’t maim or even kill anyone during his ‘dreams’ he’d come up with the plan of the island, the cottage. Somewhere he and his lover could live in peace. They could both work easily from there with minimal trips to the mainland, and it would ensure the outside world left them alone – and that they left it alone…
Until the soldiers arrived, that was.
But what of the wolf in the underground, where had he come from? I was shown this as well, the blood-line, the bite & scratch-line going back into his life too. Going into that tunnel system, vast and endless, where he had made his home. He had once lived there with a woman, or at least she had visited him frequently. A nurse, a great beauty to balance out the beast he had become. They’d been in love, or that’s what he had believed, but she hadn’t been able to handle what he was. Especially after his lust for her grew too much that one time and–
He hadn’t seen her after that, hadn’t gone looking for her either; what could he possibly say? I knew, though. I saw what had happened to the woman – now pregnant with his baby; it was still a part of all this. I saw the child she’d given birth to, dying in the process because it had taken so much out of her. Saw a little of his future, too, adopted by parents who didn’t have a clue who – what – he was. A child called Neil, who would learn about his own affliction, in time, and would create his own tales…
But it was the father I was more concerned with, living out his days in those tunnels as a lone wolf, feasting on the odd traveller here and there, especially after his anchor to the human world was gone. Especially after she was gone. He’d come from a long way away, ended up in the capital and been forced to remain – to hide. He often thought about those early days, how much fun they’d been. How he’d thought it would be a good idea to come over here on holiday, along with a group of his fellow Americans. To journey around the island and see the sights: the castle at Edinburgh; the Snowdonia mountain range; York Minster. And how it had been his call to go out walking on the moors that day with his best friend, how he’d got them hopelessly lost trying to find the way back to their hotel.
“I’m sure it’s this direction,” he’d said.
“It all looks the same to me,” his friend had admitted, looking up and swallowing dryly as he saw darkness falling – the only light coming from the huge, full moon above, when it didn’t have clouds passing in front of it.
Then the sense of being watched, being stalked on those rolling hills. Christ, what had they been thinking? They’d been told the ghost stories, the legends about beasts roaming around – like that one at Bodmin. This looked exactly like the kind of location you saw in those old British horror movies, where you always got the monster’s POV before they attacked the victim. It looked exactly like that kind of location, probably because it was that kind of location – and his friend was the first to find that out.
The first either of them knew about it was when he was having his throat torn out. I watched all this, helpless again to do anything about it. What had happened, had happened; I was just Scrooge being taken on a tour of savages past. Redness jetted from his neck, from the wound, the young man’s face whitening by the second as he lost his lifeblood. The remaining friend didn’t know what else to do but run; his buddy was done for, but his sacrifice would not be in vain. He’d survive, live on to tell people about all this. But the creature had caught up with him, too, slashing first at his backpack – which he shrugged off and let the beast have – then at him, sending the man rolling down one of the hills, over and over, out of reach. He’d passed out, only waking when he was found by a couple of shepherds the next day and rushed to hospital. There’d been a massive loss of blood from the clawing he’d received, but after being flown to the capital for treatment he’d recovered more speedily than anyone expected. Mainly, it had to be said, because of the attentions of the nurse he fell in love with.
He was plagued by hallucinations, and strange nightmares about Nazis; the reason why would all be made clear to me as I ventured further down the line of the curse. He remembered the pain of that initial transformation, the night of the next full moon, staring in disbelief as his hands elongated, his body with it. Face pushing outwards, teeth pushing through gum – growing and growing. Then out on the prowl for more victims, a hunter on the streets that night which didn’t go unnoticed.
The newspapers had been full of it the next morning, full of the deaths caused by him. ‘A RAMPAGE’ they’d called it. More than enough reason to end it all, but he didn’t have the courage. So the nurse suggested he tuck himself away underground, she could even chain him up if things got too bad – they hadn’t been averse to a little kinky stuff even before all this came to light. There were pockets of the tube system that hardly anyone even knew about, and she could visit him all the time, they could make it work...
Except they hadn’t. It had just been another bad dream. One which ended with him crawling away to die from an injury inflicted by the tip of an umbrella years later, before being hit by a train.
But already I was being hurled back to that initial encounter on the moors, being shown the origins of the beast that had attacked this man when he was much younger. Another member of that party who’d flown over here for the holiday, quite a well known member at one time of day: an investigative reporter, before she’d retired from the limelight. She’d come over to the UK seeking a cure on these shores, and thought that out in the wilderness during a full moon she’d be away from people, that she wouldn’t cause any harm...maybe only to a few sheep. She’d been wrong, the tragedy of the curse striking again.
Her own infection had occurred when she was still on the TV. A journalist plucked from obscurity and thrust into the limelight to present stories in front of millions. Pretty, and with brains to match, she was a deadly proposition even before the bite. She was looking into reports of a strange commune at the time, a cult even, which professed to offer true tranquillity to those who joined. Its leader, who had once been a doctor known for his unorthodox treatment of psychopathic patients, welcomed her with open arms – as long as she kept her cameras out of the place.
“We are a private people,” he’d told her. And she soon discovered why. The ceremonies on the beach, the meditation sessions, it was all a cover for something much more sinister. An attempt to free the human mind from its modern trappings and regress it back to a more primitive state, one which revelled in orgies and pain. I was as stunned as her to witness what transpired, the shifting into wolf state during such sessions – and just as terrified when they tried to indoctrinate her into the fold. She’d only just managed to escape, setting fire to the buildings in the commune, but not before one of the older wolves had bitten her.
She considered exposing them live on air, transforming herself now that she knew she carried the curse. But they were everywhere, even in the police force – a special branch of werecops, she discovered, if you could believe such a thing – watching her every move. So she’d retired and moved on, the world had forgotten about her and she devoted her life to trying to fight them – and to finding a cure for her ailment. It was a quest that ha
d eventually led her to England that fateful year...
But the wolf who had bitten her, I discovered, at the commune, had been a priest back in the day in a sleepy American town. He’d joined them because he revelled in who he was, saw himself as some kind of servant of God punishing the unclean – little realising he was the one who fitted that description more than most. His activities during the cycle had drawn the attentions of a local disabled lad who’d taken it upon himself to try and stop this man. Something which he hadn’t taken kindly to.
“The time of the beast shall never pass!” the priest warned him.
The kid managed to persuade his family though, at the very least that something funny was going on with the local priest…which in turn drew too much local and police attention to him, and that had been enough to make him flee.
Ironically, it had been while hunting exactly the kind of monster he’d turned into, that the priest had been dosed himself. I saw him next, much younger and before he’d turned to religion, as part of a posse in the 1950s. They were tracking down a teenager who, according to eyewitness accounts, had simply gone crazy and started attacking people at his school. It wasn’t until they caught up with him in the woods, saw the fur poking out from the sleeves of his football jacket, saw his face covered in the stuff, that they realised something else was going on. Something much more chilling (something perhaps connected with events in his childhood?). By then it was too late, and the ‘priest-to-be’ was set upon, bitten on the calf before the rest of his group could make it to him and fire at the teen. The man had covered up his wound, hiding it because some part of him knew what had been passed on – perhaps in the same way I was being ‘told’. And he would leave the next day, lose himself on the highway in search of another place to call home. Somewhere smaller, tucked away…
The teen himself had become infected when he was only small. Out playing with friends, he’d lost his way in those same woods. It had grown dark – the only light again coming from that fat moon above – and started to rain, so he’d sought shelter, stumbling across what looked like a makeshift hut. Afraid, but drenched, he knocked on the door.
“Anybody home?” he’d called out, voice cracking.
When no-one answered, he opened the door and stepped inside, rubbing his shoulders. There were empty tin cans inside, old newspapers, but no sign that anyone was in the shack now. The boy decided to risk it until the rain abated, but fell asleep on the floor while he was trying to stay warm.
A loud growl woke him, and when his eyes snapped open he was looking into the face of a huge white-grey wolf. The boy tried to scramble backwards, but it was on him before he could escape. Its attentions pushed the lad out through the back of the hut, into the night air once more. If it hadn’t been for the lightning that struck the wolf, setting it on fire, the boy would never have survived. As it was, he managed to crawl away and stagger around until he came upon the roadside, where a passing motorist saw him and stopped to help.
His injuries were extensive, but again he recovered more quickly than he had any right to – a consequence of what was now racing through his body. In this instance, however, the signs of lycanthropy did not emerge until much later when he’d gone through puberty; were oddly twinned with the changes he underwent, in fact…especially the irrational mood swings and temper tantrums. This was one of the reasons why he was able to change in the daytime. It culminated in the attacks at the school he was attending, which left several teachers and students dead.
Now I was shown how the wolf had ended up in the woods – at the shack – in the first place, and it was an even sadder tale. Another soldier, this time a veteran of the Second World War, who’d returned home only to find he no longer had a place in the new society that was being built in the US. Particularly as it stated on his records that his treatment as a POW at the hands of the Germans had left him psychologically unstable. In truth, he’d undergone heinous experiments at the hands of the Nazis in the camp where he was held (and I flashed back then to those nightmares the American backpacker had experienced).
Hitler’s interest in the occult extended to lycanthropy, it seemed, and this wayward soldier was a means to an end. This time, I witnessed, it was an injection that spread the curse rather than a bite or scratch. I was shown a dungeon prison where a transformed wolf was kept chained up and was drained of its blood. The resultant serum was then refined and tested on British and US troops. Some perished, others were killed by the transformation it brought on, but still others – like the soldier who ended up eventually living like a hermit in that hut – embraced the beast. The scientists were so pleased with these results that they began giving the serum to German officers – men and women alike (one in particular gaining the nickname ‘She-Wolf of the SS’ because of her viciousness). What happened to them after the war was unclear to me, the serum diluted too much for me to tell, but somehow I knew they were no longer active – hunted by a secret arm of the government that had its own weapons and fought an occult war long after the one everyone knew about was over.
The curse, the line, took me back to show me how the Nazis had come by that wolf they held captive. A Jew they’d taken prisoner before realising his worth, he’d lived out his life in Germany since the First World War, making quite a name for himself in the textiles industry. He had recognised what he was early on and made provisions, a cage in the basement of his house that he could lock himself inside – scarily similar to the one the Nazis would contain him in later on – until the full moon had burnt itself out. His parents had told him tales about such mythical things when he was just a boy, creatures that defied description and had been hunted, ironically, by one of his ancestors: a man of Dutch and German descent.
He had not wanted to fight in the Great War, did not believe that the cause was worth fighting for, and yet he found himself in the trenches nevertheless. Along with another who had chosen to be there – but only because he thought it would be the end of him, something he had long-since sought. Someone from the other side, a Britisher who had once been an artist and poet. Now I was presented with the next piece of the puzzle – someone who had ‘shifted’ as he’d gone out into No Man’s Land, ending up in one German trench in particular. As I looked on, I saw the men’s faces when the wolf leapt in and began ripping them to bits.
“Nein, nein!” came their cries.
The Jew managed to crawl away, but not before being bitten himself, and then came the explosion that threw him clear of the trench and granted the creature that had been attacking them its merciful end. Found by medics, the Jew’s story carried on from there, but once more I was being carried back – into the life of the werewolf who had stumbled upon his trench.
The son of a landowner from England, that man had returned to the family home in the late 1800s at the behest of his uncle, who was sick and feeble. The artist had gone off to make his mark in the world after his father had died, but now his uncle told him it was time to take his place as head of the household – and take up residence at the massive estate that was his birthright. Once there, he learned about the attacks on livestock that had been taking place over the last few months, and always when the moon was high. Some blamed the gypsies who were camped out on the edges of the estate, but when he went to see them they tried to fob him off with some fairytale nonsense.
“The culprit is one who has been cursed by a wolf,” said the old fortune-teller woman he spoke to. “Doomed to be a werewolf until his dying breath, no matter whether his heart is pure or no!”
Dismissing this, he returned to the house – though he hastened his horse to ride faster, for it was a full moon that night too. When he got back, he found his uncle was not as he had left him: no longer feeble, but nevertheless still sick.
“A sickness that was passed on to me during my days travelling abroad,” the man explained to him, even as he was transforming. “Take...take the gun.” He nodded to a pistol he had left on a nearby table. “It...it is loaded with silver bulle
ts. It...it is the only way. You have to finish this!”
Then he was a man no more: he was a thing. A furry creature that rose up on its back legs and launched itself, landing on the artist before he could even grab the pistol. It bit into his side, but the artist pushed it off long enough to reach up for the weapon. When the wolf came for him again, he was ready and he fired – shooting it twice in the chest.
The body of the wolf lay still, then slowly morphed back into his uncle. It was then that the artist realised it wasn’t just the house and estate he had inherited, but this damned curse as well. He went to find the gypsies for advice but they had moved on, leaving him alone with his land – to lock himself away in the house whenever the moon was full. And though he placed the pistol in his mouth many times, he either lacked the strength to take his own life, or there was a survival instinct inside him which came with the wolf. Little wonder, I thought, he chose to join the army when the ‘war to end all wars’ came along. To put him out of his misery, to put himself deliberately in harm’s way...
The uncle, as he’d said, came by his own curse during his younger days, travelling around the world. But, as I learned now, there had been many adventures between being bitten and being shot by his nephew in the family home. Adventures where he had roamed, safe in the knowledge that his brother was running the estate – and where he had actually encountered that descendent of the Jewish textiles merchant. A professor who made it his lifetime’s work to track and kill creatures like him, though his most deadly adversary would belong to that other party the wolves were at odds with; the greatest of their number in fact, who had been a warrior himself centuries ago, known to many as Vlad.
But that was another story, one already told and retold countless times. This one, my story now, continued to unfold backwards and traced the origins of the wolf who had infected the uncle. A native of Mexico, a bandit on the run, who had been travelling across America to get back over the border and who’d crossed paths with the uncle on the prairies one night during a full moon. What was left of the Englishman after the attack had been discovered by a Native American tribe, who nursed him back to health. The shaman there told him that he now carried his guide with him, that they had merged, become one, and named him: ‘The Wolf-spirit’. On the night of the next full moon, the uncle killed that entire tribe, eating all the men, women and children…
