Night Creatures

by Seabury Quinn

  With a movement of his eyes he bade me leave the room, following closely on my heels and closing the door behind him. ‘If we must separate them the least which we can do is give them twenty little minutes for good night,’ he murmured as we donned our mackintoshes.

  ‘Twenty minutes?’ I expostulated. ‘Why, he could say good night to twenty girls in twenty minutes!’

  ‘Oui-da, certainement; or a hundred,’ he agreed, ‘but not to the one girl, my good friend. Ah bah, Friend Trowbridge, did you never love; did you never worship at the small, white feet of some beloved woman? Did you never feel your breath come faster and your blood pound wildly at your temples as you took her in your arms and put your lips against her mouth? If not—grand Dieu des porcs—then you have never lived at all, though you be older than Methuselah!’

  Running our quarry to earth proved a harder task than we had anticipated. Daylight had scarcely come when de Grandin visited the police, but for all he discovered he might have stayed at home. Only four cases of gunshot wounds had been reported during the preceding night, and two of the injured men were negroes, a third a voluble but undoubtedly Italian laborer who had quarreled with some fellow countrymen over a card game, while the fourth was a thin-faced, tight-lipped gangster who eyed us saturninely and murmured, ‘Never mind who done it; I’ll be seein’ ’im,’ evidently under the misapprehension that we were emissaries of the police.

  The next day and the next produced no more results. Gunshot wounds there were, but none in the hand, where de Grandin declared he had wounded the nocturnal visitant, and though he followed every lead assiduously, in every case he drew a blank.

  He was almost beside himself on the fourth day of fruitless search; by evening I was on the point of prescribing triple bromides, for he paced the study restlessly, snapping his fingers, tweaking the waxed ends of his mustache till I made sure he would pull the hairs loose from his lip, and murmuring appalling blasphemies in mingled French and English.

  At length, when I thought that I could stand his restless striding no longer, diversion came in the form of a telephone call. He seized the instrument peevishly, but no sooner had he barked a sharp ‘Allo?’ than his whole expression changed and a quick smile ran across his face, like sunshine breaking through a cloud.

  ‘But certainly; of course, assuredly!’ he cried delightedly. Then, to me:

  ‘Your hat and coat, Friend Trowbridge, and hurry, pour l’amour d’un têtard—they are marrying!’

  ‘Marrying?’ I echoed wonderingly. ‘Who——’

  ‘Who but Mademoiselle Sarah and Monsieur Jean, parbleu?’ he answered with a grin. ‘Oh, la, la, at last they show some sense, those ones. He has broken her resistance down, and she consents, werewolf or no werewolf. Now we shall surely make the long nose at that sacré singe who howled beneath her window when we called upon her!’

  The ceremony was to be performed in the sacristy of St Barnabas’ Church, for John and Sarah, shocked and saddened by the death of young Fred Suffrige, who was to have been their best man, had recalled the invitations and decided on a private wedding with only her aunt and his mother present in addition to de Grandin and me.

  ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of this company to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony,’ began the rector, Doctor Higginbotham, who, despite the informality of the occasion, was attired in all the panoply of a high church priest and accompanied by two gorgeously accoutered and greatly interested choir-boys who served as acolytes. ‘Into this holy estate these two persons come now to be joined. If any man can show just cause why they should not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace——’

  ‘Jeez!’ exclaimed the choir youth who stood upon the rector’s left, letting fall the censer from his hands and dodging nimbly back, as from a threatened blow.

  The interruption fell upon the solemn scene like a bombshell at a funeral, and one and all of us looked at the cowering youngster, whose eyes were fairly bulging from his face and whose ruddy countenance had gone a sickly, pasty gray, so that the thick-strewn freckles started out in contrast, like spots of rouge upon a corpse’s pallid cheeks.

  ‘Why, William——’ Doctor Higginbotham began in a shocked voice; but:

  Rat, tat-tat! sounded the sudden sharp clatter of knuckles against the window-pane, and for the first time we realized it had been toward this window the boy had looked when his sacrilegious exclamation broke in on the service.

  Staring at us through the glass we saw a great, gray wolf! Yet it was not a wolf, for about the lupine jaws and jowls was something hideously reminiscent of a human face, and the greenish, phosphorescent glow of those great, glaring eyes had surely never shone in any face, animal or human. As I looked, breathless, the monster raised its head, and strangling horror gripped my throat with fiery fingers as I saw a human-seeming neck beneath it. Long and grisly-thin it was, corded and sinewed like the desiccated gula of a lich, and, like the face, covered with a coat of gray-brown fur. Then a hand, hair-covered like the throat and face, slim as a woman’s—or a mummy’s—but terribly misshapen, fingers tipped with blood-red talon nails, rose up and struck the glass again. My scalp was fairly crawling with sheer terror, and my breath came hot and sulphurous in my throat as I wondered how much longer the frail glass could stand against the impact of those bony, hair-gloved hands.

  A strangled scream behind me sounded from Sarah’s aunt, Miss Leigh, and I heard the muffled thud as she toppled to the floor in a dead faint, but I could no more turn my gaze from the horror at the window than the fascinated bird can tear its eyes from the serpent’s numbing stare.

  Another sighing exclamation and another thudding impact. John Maxwell’s mother was unconscious on the floor beside Miss Leigh, but still I stood and stared in frozen terror at the thing beyond the window.

  Doctor Higginbotham’s teeth were chattering, and his ruddy, plethoric countenance was death-gray as he faced the staring horror, but he held fast to his faith.

  ‘Conjuro te, sceleratissime, abire ad tuum locum’—he began the sonorous Latin exorcism, signing himself with his right hand and advancing his pectoral cross toward the thing at the window with his left—‘I exorcise thee, most foul spirit, creature of darkness——’

  The corners of the wolf-thing’s devilish eyes contracted in a smile of malevolent amusement, and a rim of scarlet tongue flicked its black muzzle. Doctor Higginbotham’s exorcism, bravely begun, ended on a wheezing, stifled syllable, and he stared in round-eyed fascination, his thick lips, blue with terror, opening and closing, but emitting no sound.

  ‘Sang d’un cochon, not that way, Monsieur—this!’ cried Jules de Grandin, and the roar of his revolver split the paralysis of quiet which had gripped the little chapel. A thin, silvery tinkle of glass sounded as the bullet tore through the window, and the grisly face abruptly disappeared, but from somewhere in the outside dark there echoed back a braying howl which seemed to hold a sort of obscene laughter in its quavering notes.

  ‘Sapristi! Have I missed him?’ de Grandin asked incredulously. ‘No matter; he is gone. On with the service, Monsieur le Curé. I do not think we shall be interrupted further.’

  ‘No!’ Doctor Higginbotham backed away from Sarah Leigh as though her breath polluted him. ‘I can perform no marriage until that thing has been explained. Some one here is haunted by a devil—a malign entity from hell which will not heed the exorcism of the Church—and until I’m satisfied concerning it, and that you’re all good Christians, there’ll be no ceremony in this church!’

  ‘Eh bien, Monsieur, who can say what constitutes a good Christian?’ de Grandin smiled unpleasantly at Doctor Higginbotham. ‘Certainly one who lacks in charity as you do can not be competent to judge. Have it as you wish. As soon as we have recovered these fainting ladies, we shall leave, and may the Devil grill me on the grates of hell if ever we come back until you have apologized.’

&nbs
p; Two hours later, as we sat in the Leigh library, Sarah dried her eyes and faced her lover with an air of final resolution: ‘You see, my dear, it’s utterly impossible for me to marry you, or any one,’ she said. ‘That awful thing will dog my steps, and——’

  ‘My poor, sweet girl, I’m more determined than ever to marry you!’ John broke in. ‘If you’re to be haunted by a thing like that, you need me every minute, and——’

  ‘Bravo!’ applauded Jules de Grandin. ‘Well said, mon vieux, but we waste precious time. Come, let us go.’

  ‘Where?’ asked John Maxwell, but the little Frenchman only smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘To Maidstone Crossing, quickly, if you please, my friend,’ he whispered when he had led the lovers to my car and seen solicitously to their comfortable seating in the tonneau. ‘I know a certain justice of the peace there who would marry the Witch of Endor to the Emperor Nero though all the wolves which ever plagued Red Riding-Hood forbade the banns, provided only we supply him with sufficient fee.’

  Two hours’ drive brought us to the little hamlet of Maidstone Crossing, and de Grandin’s furious knocking on the door of a small cottage evoked the presence of a lank, lean man attired in a pair of corduroy trousers drawn hastily above the folds of a canton-flannel nightshirt.

  A whispered colloquy between the rustic and the slim, elegant little Parisian; then, ‘O.K., Doc,’ the justice of the peace conceded. ‘Bring ’em in; I’ll marry ’em an’—hey, Sam’l!’ he called up the stairs. ‘C’mon down, an’ bring yer shotgun. There’s a weddin’ goin’ to be pulled off, an’ they tell me some fresh guys may try to interfere!’

  ‘Sam’l’, a lank, lean youth whose costume duplicated that of his father, descended the stairway grinning, an automatic shotgun cradled in the hollow of his arm. ‘D’ye expect any real rough stuff?’ he asked.

  ‘Seems like they’re apt to try an’ set a dawg on ’em,’ his father answered, and the younger man grinned cheerfully.

  ‘Dawgs, is it?’ he replied. ‘Dawgs is my dish. Go on, Pap, do yer stuff. Good luck, folks,’ he winked encouragingly at John and Sarah and stepped out on the porch, his gun in readiness.

  ‘Do you take this here woman fer yer lawful, wedded wife?’ the justice inquired of John Maxwell, and when the latter answered that he did:

  ‘An’ do you take this here now man to be yer wedded husband?’ he asked Sarah.

  ‘I do,’ the girl responded in a trembling whisper, and the roaring bellow of a shotgun punctuated the brief pause before the squire concluded:

  ‘Then by virtue of th’ authority vested in me by th’ law an’ constitootion of this state, I do declare ye man an’ wife—an’ whoever says that ye ain’t married lawfully ’s a danged liar,’ he added as a sort of afterthought.

  ‘What wuz it that ye shot at, Sam’l?’ asked the justice as, enriched by fifty dollars, and grinning appreciatively at the evening’s profitable business, he ushered us from the house.

  ‘Durned if I know, Pap,’ the other answered. ‘Looked kind o’ funny to me. He wuz about a head taller’n me—an’ I’m six foot two—an’ thin as Job’s turkey-hen, to boot. His clothes looked skin-tight on ’im, an’ he had on a cap, or sumpin with a peak that stuck out over his face. I first seen ’im comin’ up th’ road, kind o’ lookin’ this way an’ that, like as if he warn’t quite certain o’ his way. Then, all of a suddent, he kind o’ stopped an’ threw his head back, like a dawg sniffin’ th’ air, an’ started to go down on his all-fours, like he wuz goin’ to sneak up on th’ house. So I hauls off an’ lets ’im have a tickle o’ buckshot. Don’t know whether I hit ’im or not, an’ I’ll bet he don’t, neether; he sure didn’t waste no time stoppin’ to find out. Could he run! I’m tellin’ ye, that feller must be in Harrisonville by now, if he kep’ on goin’ like he started!’

  Two days of feverish activity ensued. Last-minute traveling arrangements had to be made, and passports for ‘John Maxwell and wife, Harrisonville, New Jersey, U.S.A.’, obtained. De Grandin spent every waking hour with the newly married couple and even insisted on occupying a room in the Leigh house at night; but his precautions seemed unnecessary, for not so much as a whimper sounded under Sarah’s window, and though the little Frenchman searched the garden every morning, there was no trace of unfamiliar footprints, either brute or human, to be found.

  ‘Looks as if Sallie’s Greek boyfriend knows when he’s licked and has decided to quit following her about,’ John Maxwell grinned as he and Sarah, radiant with happiness, stood upon the deck of the Ile de France.

  ‘One hopes so,’ de Grandin answered with a smile. ‘Good luck, mes amis, and may your lune de miel shine as brightly throughout all your lives as it does this night.

  ‘La lune—ha?’ he repeated half musingly, half with surprise, as though he just remembered some important thing which had inadvertently slipped his memory. ‘May I speak a private warning in your ear, Friend Jean?’ He drew the bridegroom aside and whispered earnestly a moment.

  ‘Oh, bosh!’ the other laughed as they rejoined us. ‘That’s all behind us, Doctor; you’ll see; we’ll never hear a sound from him. He’s got me to deal with now, not just poor Sarah.’

  ‘Bravely spoken, little cabbage!’ the Frenchman applauded. ‘Bon voyage.’ But there was a serious expression on his face as we went down the gangway.

  ‘What was the private warning you gave John?’ I asked as we left the French Line piers. ‘He didn’t seem to take it very seriously.’

  ‘No,’ he conceded. ‘I wish he had. But youth is always brave and reckless in its own conceit. It was about the moon. She has a strange influence on lycanthropy. The werewolf metamorphoses more easily in the full of the moon than at any other time, and those who may have been affected with his virus, though even faintly, are most apt to feel its spell when the moon is at the full. I warned him to be particularly careful of his lady on moonlit nights, and on no account to go anywhere after dark unless he were armed.

  ‘The werewolf is really an inferior demon,’ he continued as we boarded the Hoboken ferry. ‘Just what he is we do not know with certainty, though we know he has existed from the earliest times; for many writers of antiquity mention him. Sometimes he is said to be a magical wolf who has the power to become a man. More often he is said to be a man who can become a wolf at times, sometimes of his own volition, sometimes at stated seasons, even against his will. He has dreadful powers of destructiveness; for the man who is also a wolf is ten times more deadly than the wolf who is only a wolf. He has the wolf’s great strength and savagery, but human cunning with it. At night he quests and kills his prey, which is most often his fellow man, but sometimes sheep or hares, or his ancient enemy, the dog. By day he hides his villainy—and the location of his lair—under human guise.

  ‘However, he has this weakness: strong and ferocious, cunning and malicious as he is, he can be killed as easily as any natural wolf. A sharp sword will slay him, a well-aimed bullet puts an end to his career; the wood of the thorn-bush and the mountain ash are so repugnant to him that he will slink away if beaten or merely threatened with a switch of either. Weapons efficacious against an ordinary physical foe are potent against him, while charms and exorcisms which would put a true demon to flight are powerless.

  ‘You saw how he mocked at Monsieur Higginbotham in the sacristy the other night, by example. But he did not stop to bandy words with me. Oh, no. He knows that I shoot straight and quick, and he had already felt my lead on one occasion. If young Friend Jean will always go well-armed, he has no need to fear; but if he be taken off his guard—eh bien, we can not always be on hand to rescue him as we did the night when we first met him. No, certainly.’

  ‘But why do you fear for Sarah?’ I persisted.

  ‘I hardly know,’ he answered. ‘Perhaps it is that I have what you Americans so drolly call the hunch. Werewolves sometimes become werewolves by the aid of Satan, that they may kill their enemies while in lupine form, or satisfy their natural lust for
blood and cruelty while disguised as beasts. Some are transformed as the result of a curse upon themselves or their families, a few are metamorphosed by accident. These are the most unfortunate of all. In certain parts of Europe, notably in Greece, Russia, and the Balkan states, the very soil seems cursed with lycanthropic power. There are certain places where, if the unwary traveler lies down to sleep, he is apt to wake up with the curse of werewolfism on him. Certain streams and springs there are which, if drunk from, will render the drinker liable to transformation at the next full moon, and regularly thereafter. You will recall that in the dream, or vision, which Madame Sarah had while in the Smyrna garden so long ago, she beheld herself drinking from a woodland pool? I do not surely know, my friend, I have not even good grounds for suspicion, but something—something which I can not name—tells me that in some way this poor one, who is so wholly innocent, has been branded with the taint of lycanthropy. How it came about I can not say, but——’

  My mind had been busily engaged with other problems, and I had listened to his disquisition on lycanthropy with something less than full attention. Now, suddenly aware of the thing which puzzled me, I interrupted:

  ‘Can you explain the form that werewolf—if that’s what it was—took on different occasions? The night we met John Maxwell he was fighting for his life with as true a wolf as any there are in the zoological gardens. O’Brien, the policeman, saw it, too, and shot at it, after it had killed Fred Suffrige. It was a sure-enough wolf when it howled under Sarah’s window and you wounded it; yet when it interrupted the wedding it was an awful combination of wolf and man, or man and wolf, and the thing the justice’s son drove off with his shotgun was the same, according to his description.’

  Surprisingly, he did not take offense at my interruption. Instead, he frowned in thoughtful silence at the dashboard lights a moment; then: ‘Sometimes the werewolf is completely transformed from man to beast,’ he answered; ‘sometimes he is a hideous combination of the two, but always he is a fiend incarnate. My own belief is that this one was only partly transformed when we last saw him because he had not time to wait complete metamorphosis. It is possible he could not change completely, too, because——’ he broke off and pointed at the sky significantly.