Lycanthropos

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  She hesitated for an instant before replying, "Well, that is the problem we are facing at the moment."

  "Yes, I know, one thing at a time, first things first," the Colonel said quickly. "We have twelve test subjects. I want you to prepare serums of varying compositions for testing this evening. I see no need to test the possible combinations one at a time..."

  "I agree, Herr Colonel," Petra broke in, "but if that is what you wish us to do we will have to do it this afternoon or tomorrow morning."

  "Why?"

  "Tonight is the second night of the full moon. Long before sunset I intend to be away from here and locked safely in my own lodgings."

  Schlacht’s lips grew narrow and tight as he said, "Fraülein Loewenstein, you have the most annoying habit of turning each simple discussion into an argument."

  She shook her head. "I am not arguing, Herr Colonel. But you know as well as I that this other werewolf is apparently somewhere in the vicinity of the city. Tonight will be the last time this moon cycle that she will be able to assume her wolf form, so I suggest that if she intends to free Kaldy, she will attempt to do so tonight." She paused, allowing the others present to realize significance of her words. "I do not intend to be in this palace when she comes here tonight, and I recommend that you move Kaldy to another location. I do not recommend doubling the guard, because we all know that the guards will be of no use when she attacks."

  "If she attacks," Schlacht said, "if she comes here tonight or any other night, if she is still somewhere near Budapest, Fräulein. We do not even know for a fact that this Claudia is aware of Kaldy’s capture. I am quite certain that she killed those three farmers in Grushia last night, but that may be coincidental."

  "Is it coincidental that my parents were killed in Germany twenty-five years ago and that this creature makes her appearance in Hungary just when we have captured her longtime companion?"

  Festhaller shook his head. "No, she’s right, Herr Colonel. Kaldy’s friend is here for a reason, and freeing him from our control is the most likely one."

  Schlacht disliked having logic interfere with his plans, and he tapped his fingers on the desktop impatiently. "Well then, we must wait until tomorrow," he muttered.

  "To run tests on all twelve subjects, yes," Petra said. "But I have been preparing different combinations of the serum all day. I have four which we can use right now, if you wish."

  "Four is better than none," Festhaller said. Then, looking down at his watch, he cried, "Oh my goodness! I have an appointment in fifteen minutes. I really must excuse myself." He stood up quickly, bowed curtly to Louisa and Petra, and rushed from the office.

  Festhaller’s sudden departure angered Schlacht, though he had done nothing to impede it. "Appointment!" he spat. "How conveniently he has pressing business elsewhere." He glanced at Petra and noted with amusement that the Professor’s absence seemed to have put her at ease. He smiled at her, understanding her relief, and she, blushing slightly and looking down, could not help but smile in return.

  Weyrauch knew what Schlacht was saying, knew that Festhaller was merely absenting himself from the RagoczyPalace in anticipation of that evening’s full moon, but he did not choose to protest his own presence in the light of Festhaller’s absence. He knew it would be futile, and Schlacht seemed to be in no mood for further irritations. Instead he said, "Helmuth, might we not be better advised to continue our tests on animal subjects? I mean, true animal subjects? Dogs, monkeys...?"

  "We need to approximate the human metabolism as closely as possible," Schlacht said in a tone which invited no further discussion. "The Jews we are using are as close to human as anything in the world of lower life forms." He moved Petra’s dossier to one side and took out a pile of reports. "Now get out of here and get to work. I have other matters to attend to." Petra rose and left the room, and Weyrauch followed her slowly. Louisa remained seated, staring at her cousin with undisguised contempt. He returned her gaze with a similar one of his own and after a few moments she too rose and left the office without saying a word. Schlacht watched her go and before returning to his paper work he muttered. "It will be the camp for that one soon enough, so help me."

  A moment later the door swung softly open and Schlacht looked up from his papers to see Petra Loewenstein walking tentatively back into his office. "Herr Colonel," she began just a bit delicately, "I would like to thank you for your understanding and your help."

  Schlacht chose to be generous and replied, "I was happy to have offered both to you, Fräulein." He smiled at her. "I hope that you do not think that Festhaller’s reprehensible behavior is characteristic of the men under my command. We aren’t all animals, you know."

  "Of course I know," she replied in a quiet, sweet tone. "And I hope you don’t think me...well, cold or unemotional. I hope you don’t think that I reject every man’s advances." She realized at once how forward her words seemed to be, and she blushed deeply. "I mean...that is to say..."

  "Yes, yes, Fräulein," Schlacht laughed, amused at her unease and thinking how lovely she looked when she was nervous and flushed, "I understand completely."

  "Well, good," she responded, laughing softly through her embarrassment. "If you will excuse me then..." and she backed out of his office. Schlacht watched her leave and then returned his attention to his work. Charming girl, he thought to himself. Such beautiful eyes.

  Three hours later Gottfried von Weyrauch was standing alone in the ad hoc autopsy room near the now empty laboratory. He had watched as Petra Loewenstein had injected four more concentration camp inmates with the different serums she had prepared, and as each and every one of them died he told himself that he was not responsible for any of this, that he was cog in a machine, an impotent, blameless bystander, as much a victim of the S.S. as these four corpses stretched out before him on the tables.

  He was lying to himself, and he knew that he was lying; but he reasoned that there was nothing he could to do that would not put his own life in jeopardy, and his life certainly was no less valuable than the lives of the dead men whose bodies he now had to slice up for examination. He sighed and shook his head. When will this all end? he asked himself. When can I just go back to Kappelburg and be left alone? Is that too much to ask, is that so unrealistic a desire in life? Just to be left alone?

  He looked out the window and saw the full moon shining bright and clear in the black sky of early spring. Sprigs of wolfsbane had been affixed to the windows and doors of the Palace, and though the presence of the protective plant afforded Weyrauch an intellectual, rational security, it did nothing to diminish his irrational, emotional fear of the night. He shook himself with determination and set about his ghoulish task.

  He performed an autopsy on each subject, one after the other, and for each one it was as before: death due to the introduction of a toxic substance into the bloodstreams of the subjects. All of the tell-tale signs of poisoning were present in the liver and the heart and the lungs. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing unusual, nothing of any value to the project, nothing...

  Nothing...

  His mouth fell open and his eyes went wide as he gazed down upon the dissected remains of Lev Bronsky, Auschwitzinmate 346730. Weyrauch knew the dead man’s number because it had been tattooed on his arm; and as he stared at the tattoo, so black against the sepulchral white of the dead skin, the number was obscured and then buried beneath the thick black hair that seemed to billow up from the dead roots as the moonlight poured through the window and fell upon the corpse.

  "GUARD!" he screamed.

  The dead man did not move, the heart now separated from his body did not begin to beat, the lungs which rested in a jar of formaldehyde did not strain to draw in air and no mad thoughts were generated by the dead brain which lay upon the medical scale; but the dead man continued to change. The face, petrified into a grotesque, agonized scream by the pain of death, elongated as the teeth grew and the eyes narrowed. For a moment Weyrauch thought that he saw the dead hands move, but it
was an illusion, a trick played upon his eyes by the small, blunt claws which broke through the skin of the fingertips and pushed out into the moonlight.

  "GUARD!" he screamed again.

  And then the changing ceased abruptly. When the two S.S. soldiers who had been stationed in the corridor burst into the room, their weapons drawn and their faces hard and tense in reaction to Weyrauch’s frenzied cries, they found the minister staring at the dissected, furry body and giggling idiotically. They lowered their weapons and one of them asked, "What is wrong, Herr Doctor?"

  "We’ve done it, we’ve done it!" Weyrauch giggled. "All we have to figure out is how to do it without killing them first." The guards exchanged looks which mingled amusement with annoyance, and then Weyrauch said, "Send for Colonel Schlacht immediately."

  "The Colonel is not here, Herr Doctor," the second guard said. "He has gone to a conference in Vienna."

  "Then get Professor Fest..." He stopped. Festhaller was also absent, and no one knew where he had gone. "Petra," he said aloud to himself, and then turned back to the guards. "I need to know Fräulein Loewenstein’s address. You can get it from Vogel, Colonel Schlacht’s adjutant. I believe that Professor Festhaller is also staying in private rooms somewhere in Budapest, and Vogel should have his address also. And fetch my wife. If she isn’t in our quarters she will be in the dungeon, visiting the Gypsy prisoners." He paused as he realized that at this moment Kaldy was himself in the throws of his lunar transformation, and he knew that Louisa would be nowhere near him. "No, no, not in the dungeon. She should be in our suite."

  The guards obeyed Weyrauch’s rather preemptory commands, even though he was a civilian and, in the general opinion of the S.S. stationed at the Palace, something of a buffoon. But they knew that an important genetic project was being conducted here, they knew that Weyrauch was somehow involved in it, and many of them had heard the minister address Colonel Schlacht by his first name. So they accepted Weyrauch’s importance as a given fact and went to carry out his orders.

  At that same moment, Ludwig Joachim Festhaller was disgruntledly finishing his fifth liter of beer in the tavern on the Kossouth Utca, just off the Felszabadulas Ter, on Kossouth Street by FelszabadulasPlaza. "Damn the little slut," he muttered to himself. "I’ll make her pay for this, I swear to God I will." He belched loudly and then rose from his seat and left the tavern to walk the four short blocks to his house, the house which he began using after expelling its owners.

  As Festhaller waddled unsteadily down the dark street he remarked to himself that these damned Magyars did not have street lights half as bright as those in Berlin. He stumbled a few times as a result of his drunkenness, and blamed his difficulty on the darkness. The sounds of Budapest were few, for the curfew had just begun and very few automobiles or people were in evidence. Festhaller did not fear being stopped by the Gestapo or the S.S. or the pitiful if self-important soldiers of the Horthy government, for he was a confidant of Reichsführer Himmler himself, and could go where he wanted, when he wanted.

  He heard the sound of a dog walking briskly along the pavement. Festhaller listened to the clicking of the dog’s nails, and he smiled, thinking how much it sounded like the clicking of a woman’s high heeled shoes. Then he realized that the clicking of the nails was growing faster and closer, and that he was hearing the sound made by two paws, not four, and then he heard the snarl which could not have come from the throat of a dog.

  Festhaller’s heart leaped up into his mouth, and he began to run.

  He was a scant ten yards from the stairs which led to the front door of the house when the sound of his pursuer stopped abruptly, and as his shaking hand tried to force the key into the lock, he looked behind him fearfully and saw nothing. He smiled with relief. Nerves, he thought, just nerves. Some damned dog, that’s all it was. He unlocked the door, opened it, entered the house and then, after locking the door behind him, leaned against it and wiped the sweat from his brow. He was breathing hard, and he listened to the rapid heartbeat which was pounding in his chest. Have to lose some weight, he thought to himself. And then he was thrown forcefully forward onto the floor as the door was thrust open by one powerful kick. He heard the hungry growl behind him, but did not have the opportunity to turn in its direction. He was still lying face-first on the floor a split second later as the jaws snapped shut on his neck.

  Festhaller had not even had time enough to scream.

  As Gottfried and Louisa von Weyrauch sped through the dark streets of Budapest in the black Mercedes limousine, Louisa demanded, "Gottfried, will you please tell me what you’re doing and where we’re going?!"

  "First, we are going to visit Professor Festhaller," he said gleefully, "and then we are going to visit Petra."

  "It’s after dark!" she exclaimed. "We should be in our quarters, protected by that plant, not wandering around the city!"

  "We aren’t wandering around, Louisa," he said, thrusting his hand into his pocket and pulling out some bent and shredded branches of wolfsbane. "And we are protected by the plant."

  "But what are we...?"

  "We’ve made a breakthrough," he said excitedly and then proceeded to explain to her what had happened in the hours since they parted company in Schlacht’s office. He concluded by saying. "So we’re on the right track. Oh, I know that we aren’t anywhere near the point of completion, but we’ve demonstrated that somehow, in some manner which we cannot explain as yet, the enzyme does indeed effect a fundamental alteration of the basic genetic structure of the cells. Hair and nails continue to grow after life functions have ceased, and it was in the hair and nails of the corpse that the changes were most dramatic." He paused. "Of course, the changes in the skull are a bit surprising, inasmuch as..."

  "Will you listen to yourself?!" she cried. "Will you just stop for a minute and listen to what you’re saying?! Helmuth has been killing people, innocent people, and you and Petra and that idiot Professor have been helping him do it, and now you’re telling me that you’re happy about the progress of the research?! My God, Gottfried! My God!"

  He became immediately defensive. "Of course I’m not happy with what’s been happening. You know that I didn’t want anything to do with this project. It’s just that...it’s just that…"

  She waited for him to finish his statement, but he could not. "It’s just what. Gottfried? It’s just exciting that today’s experiment was a success? It’s just exciting that you seem to be able to do something horrible and unholy to the corpse of someone whom you murdered? Is that it?"

  "Louisa, that isn’t fair," he said softly, turning his face away from hers and staring out at the passing buildings.

  "Oh, no, how terribly unfair I’m being!" she spat. "Poor Gottfried! How cruelly you’re being treated."

  "I’m doing what I have to do."

  "Yes, and apparently you’re beginning to enjoy it," she said coldly. "God, how I hate you! I think I hate you more than I hate Helmuth. At least he thinks that what he’s doing is right. You don’t have that excuse." They rode in silence for a few minutes, ignoring each other, and then Louisa asked, "Why did you send the soldiers to get me? Why did you want me to come with you to see Festhaller?"

  He shrugged, not looking at her. "I don’t know. I didn’t give it much thought, really. I just...I don’t know." He paused. "I suppose that I didn’t want to leave you alone in the Palace tonight, not with Claudia prowling about somewhere."

  She emitted a shrill, sardonic laugh. "You didn’t want to leave me alone! Do you think I need your protection?! Do you think you could protect me from a monster or from anything else? What a tragic joke you are, Gottfried, what a farce!"

  The S.S. private who had been driving the sedan, and who had been listening intently to every word and had been suppressing his laughter at the henpecked fool in the back seat, pulled up to a curb and turned around to his passengers. "This is the address, Herr Doctor. Professor Festhaller has appropriated this house for his residence while in Budapest."

  Weyr
auch climbed out of the back seat and then turned back to Louisa. "This shouldn’t take me long. You can wait here, if you wish..."

  "I most certainly do not wish," she snapped and then said to the driver, "Please take me back to the Palace at once."

  "Louisa, it isn’t safe at the Palace."

  "Gottfried, it isn’t safe anywhere in Europe!" She sat back in the seat and folded her arms angrily across her chest.

  The driver looked at Weyrauch who sighed and nodded. "Yes, take her back. I’ll return with Festhaller. I’m quite certain that he will want to see the...well, I’m sure he’ll want to go to the Palace at once."

  "Or at least at dawn," Louisa muttered. "Such brave men you Nazis are!"

  "I am not a..." Weyrauch began, but Louisa pulled the door shut before he could finish. He stood and watched the automobile pull away from the curb and then, cursing his wife inwardly and angry at the truthfulness of her words, he turned and walked up the steps to the nineteenth-century bourgeois townhouse which Festhaller had ‘appropriated.’ So delicate a term, Weyrauch said to himself, for evicting the inhabitants and stealing their home. And almost immediately he asked himself, Who am I to be critical of him? Louisa’s right, you know. She’s been right all along.

  Damn her!

  He reached the front door and grasped the handle of the brass door knocker. As he swung it down against the strike plate, the door itself creaked slightly open under the impact. Weyrauch frowned as he pushed the door open. Foolish thing to do, leaving the door unlocked like this. Just because he’s an important man in some circles in Germany doesn’t mean that he’s immune to burglary...

  Two thoughts found their ways into Weyrauch’s mind as he entered the foyer of the house. The first, more a peripheral impression than a concrete thought, was that the door was not merely unlocked, that the lock itself had been shattered.