The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men

by Stephen Jones

  June 4

  I have just finished patching this book together. I had to use tape where it was torn. I must have ripped it last night, during the sickness. I don’t remember doing it. I don’t think that it was deliberate, it is just that anything within reach is destroyed in the blind fury. The book was not methodically torn in half or quarters, but just mutilated at random. The front cover was torn to shreds, but the pages are all still readable. My fountain pen had been snapped in two, like a twig. It is hard to imagine such unleashed energy and power. I have always been a strong man, and I have always kept myself in perfect fitness through exercise and moderation, but the strength that comes with the change is beyond comprehension. It seems that the very muscles and sinews of my body must change, that it must be internal as well as external. Perhaps we do not share the same body, but the same small part of the brain that remembers. That would be encouraging, to be able to think of the thing as a different entity. And yet my own body bears the bruises and the marks of the tortured flesh. The two bodies cannot exist at the same time. It is very confusing, it is beyond my powers of reasoning, and I am as rational as any man and more so than most. How many other men could face this thing that I struggle with and retain their sanity? I am proud of that. I am not a vain man, but of that strength of mind I am proud.

  I didn’t write about the change. I remember feeling it start, and it seems that I was writing, but somehow it is not recorded. The last few lines of what I wrote are scribbled and blurred and do not look at all like my handwriting, and I suppose that was a symptom. I was writing about how strong the thing’s hands were and then it just seems to come to an end, in the middle of a sentence. I imagine that my fingers had started to contract while I wrote, and that would account for the different style. But there is nothing there about the change.

  The change seemed different last night. Not greater, but different somehow. I think that I have reached a new stage in the disease, and that the disease is changing . . . perhaps modifying.

  The thing is beginning to think more. Or else I am beginning to remember more. Whichever it is, I can distinctly recall certain thoughts along with the impressions this time. I remember all that frustration and need and hatred, but I also remember snatches of vague thought. Not my thoughts. Its thoughts. They are closer to the human thoughts in that they would be. It is hard to envisage human thoughts in that monstrous body. Disturbing. I do not want to share my mind with it. But I remember that it was reasoning, trying to figure some way to get out of the cell. I remember a pause in the violence while it crouched and rolled its white eyes around, seeking some weak point in the walls, the door. Perhaps it was seeking some deception to get Helen to open the door. There was no escape, of course. We have taken all necessary precautions. Even if it were able to reason as well as I, it could figure no way to get out of the cell.

  But that is the change in the disease, that reasoning power. It is possible that the thing is becoming more normal, more human. It is possible that I and the thing that I become are drawing closer together. But it is impossible to say which of us is moving towards that closer relationship, whether the disease is conquering me, or I am beginning to cure myself, I cannot decide if this new development is a good thing or a bad thing . . . It makes me tremble. I am sweating profusely and my stomach is knotted with fright.

  I am calmer now. I lay down for a few minutes. I can still taste the blood and foam on my lips, although I have brushed my teeth several times. I bit my lip last night. It is swollen and painful. I cannot get the taste from my mouth – I suppose that it is all in my mind. It was nauseating to awaken this morning and swallow and know that I could not brush my teeth and rinse my mouth until Helen came and let me out. It seemed as if I waited a very long time, but there was no way to tell. Time seems to stand still when it is enclosed in that cell. Time is surely a concrete dimension, and relative to the other dimensions. Perhaps it is affected by my disease. It would be interesting if there were some way to measure it.

  I am sure that it lasted longer last night. It certainly seemed to. It may be that it seemed longer because there were more impressions and memories, but my wife said that when she knocked at the usual time this morning there was no answer from the cell. I always call out that everything is all right before she opens the door, and this morning I did not call at the usual hour. She said that she heard . . . certain sounds . . . but that there was no answer. She did not say what the sounds were like.

  So she went back upstairs and waited another hour. I can imagine how frightened and worried she must have been during that time, wondering what had happened. Poor woman. She loves me so, and she cannot really understand. She did not know about the illness when she married me, and it was a terrible shock. I am grateful that she has stood up under the strain so well. She must worry and suffer as much as I, in a different, woman’s way.

  After another hour had elapsed she came down and knocked at the cell door again. I answered this time, and she opened the door. She opened it very slowly, and I could hear her intake of breath when she first looked in. She must have been half mad with fear for me. I don’t think she would be afraid of me.

  I don’t remember her knocking the first time. I was surprised when she told me. I do have an indistinct impression of crouching beside the door with my thighs tensed and taut and my hands open in front of me, as though I were waiting for something to open that door. But it is very vague. It could have been at any time. I know that I would never wait that way for my wife.

  June 6

  I have been very worried, thinking about how it lasted longer than usual this month. Longer than it ever did before, I think. I am trying to get the history of my illness in context, from the beginning, so that I can follow the progress and the process. I feel that there is definitely a change coming, and pray that it may be the first step towards recovery. Up until now it has merely become worse time after time. It would seem that since it lasted longer the last time it is just another step in the same direction, but there was also the fact that I remembered the thing’s thoughts this time. That has never happened before, not since I really began to change. That is much closer to how it was when it first began. It may be the first sign that I am on the way back, that a cure has begun. It may have taken longer this time because it was less intense. I don’t really see how it can get any worse than it is now . . .

  Thinking back on my life, I find that I cannot tell when it first began. It must have been very gradual. I surely would remember if it came on me suddenly, all at once. A weaker mind might block the memory out to save itself from the knowledge, but I am sure that I would have faced it.

  Had I only known the truth in those days there might have been some way to prevent it. I doubt it, but there might have been. But how was I to know? I was never a superstitious child. I did not even believe in . . . the thing that I become. I did not believe in Santa Claus, or fairies, or witches, or the elves that leave money under a pillow and take away the baby teeth. My parents would have none of that nonsense, and told me the truth from the first. So how was I to believe in the existence of . . . I will not write the word. I know what I am doing, that I have a block about admitting what I know to be true, as though the admission would condemn me more than the fact. But I cannot help that, and it is not the mental block of a weak man whose mind denies the truth, it is just that I rebel at putting the word on paper. I know the word. I think it. It dances in my thoughts, and I am strong enough to recognize it there, and make no effort to deny it. I live with the knowledge as best I can. I know that, all along, through all my life, the inherited sickness was there inside my blood, being carried to every capillary of my body, taking hold and growing stronger as I myself grew, waiting, lurking . . . I know that now, but how could anyone have predicted it? It was no fault of mine.

  I was always a rather tempestuous child. I used to get angry, to throw tantrums. But many children do. It is common enough. There was never any physical change in me. No warnings.
And yet . . . my bursts of violence, when I would fight with other children or break my favourite playthings . . . those outbursts did not seem to stem from any recognizable fact. They were not the result of something that angered or frustrated me; they seemed to come on for no reason, at any time, whether I was happy or unhappy at the moment they began. I can remember one time when a neighbour, a boy my own age but smaller, threw a rock and hit me over the eye. It hurt awfully. It broke the skin and a trickle of blood ran down the side of my face. The boy was frightened then, because he had hit me for no reason, and because I was much stronger and could have easily punished him. But I did not. I did not even get angry, which amazed him, because he knew my reputation for flaring up. I simply looked at him with the blood running down and I felt no anger at all. I can remember licking the blood from the corner of my mouth where it had gathered. I felt a bit dizzy, from the blow I suppose, and I just stood there and licked the blood away and did nothing. The other boy must have thought that I was afraid of him because I did not retaliate, because after that he persecuted me. He would wait for me after school and throw stones at me and push me and sometimes he would hit me with his fist. I never became angry with him. I never wanted to punish him or hurt him and I took his abuse without any resentment. He used to boast about how I was terrorized and all the other children used to make fun of me about this, but I didn’t care. I have never cared what other people thought. This was an example of how my temper was not aroused at times when it would have been fully justified.

  And at other times . . . for no apparent reason . . . I can recall one evening, towards dusk, when I was playing with my favourite toy, a clockwork train. I had been playing with it for some time and was quite happy. And then, suddenly, I picked it up from the tracks and smashed it against the floor until it was broken to pieces. I continued to smash it, over and over again. My mother came into my room and was very angry that I had broken it, and threatened never to buy me another toy, but I didn’t seem to care. Even later, the next day, I did not regret the loss of my train. When I thought of it I merely felt as though it had been a good thing to break it. I felt glad that I had done it. It seemed satisfying.

  It was inconsistencies like those two that made me different from other temperamental children. I realize, now, that the outbursts must have followed the same cycle as the illness follows now, but at that time I had no reason to think about any regularity, or detect any rhythm. Neither did my parents. They must have supposed it was merely the storms of adolescence, and I don’t think that it worried them unduly.

  I don’t remember very much about my mother. I suppose that she was overshadowed by my father. He was a big man, straight and broad-shouldered and strict. He was religious and very moral, and I have him to thank for the fact that I was brought up right, and that I have always avoided all vices and corruption. Many a time he lectured me, in his deep voice, one forefinger pointing towards my heart, giving me the benefit of his age and experience and, more vital, of the experiences that he had avoided. I was overawed by him, by his knowledge and his goodness and his strength and I always tried to live a life of which he would have been proud. And I believe that I have done that, except for the disease. It is almost impossible to realize that my father himself must have carried the disease in his blood – that that good and strict man had passed the curse on, unknowingly, to his son. It is further proof that it is no fault of my own, that even such a fine man as my father did not know, that he could have been the one whom it affected as it does me.

  Only once can I remember my father being unjust and unreasonable. It was the only time that he was ever angry with me. That was when I had to kill the neighbours’ dog and I have never been able to understand why my father did not see that it was necessary.

  The dog belonged to my enemy, the boy who constantly persecuted me. I do not remember his name. He was an insignificant creature and hardly worth remembering. But I remember his dog. It was a large and vicious brute, a mongrel with a great deal of Alsatian in it. It was often with the boy when he tormented me, and it added its snarls to its master’s jibes. It would watch with its yellow eyes while the boy plagued me. Its tongue hung out and its muzzle twitched as though it were very satisfied that I was being tormented. I never paid any attention to the dog at those times. I ignored it and its master, but of the two I believe I hated the dog more. I know it a fallacy to believe that dog is man’s best friend. It is a stupid statement made by sentimental and ignorant people, who have been deceived by the brutes. And this dog was a particularly foul beast, with a filthy mottled hide and yellow teeth. It had never attacked me, but I could tell that it would have liked to.

  One evening I was coming home from town rather late. Our house was in the country, a few miles from the town. I forget what I was doing out at that hour, but at any rate it was dark as I walked towards our house. It must have been a moonlit night, because everything was very clear. It was necessary to pass our neighbours’ house on the way to my own, for we lived on the same road. To avoid passing their house I would have had to go through the woods, and I saw no reason for this.

  Well, I was passing their house, minding my own business, when my enemy suddenly appeared. He began to throw stones at me as usual, and I ignored him. I walked on. He hit me in the back with one stone, and it hurt. I knew that it would leave a bruise. I walked on a little way and then I must have sat down beside the road. I know that I thought about the boy, and wondered why he hated me so, and after a while I began to hate him. I had never felt that way towards him before, and it must have been the sum total of all his injustices and attacks that finally added up to the whole of hatred. The longer I sat there the more I hated him. I remembered everything that he had done to me. I remembered the first time, when he had cut my head and I had tasted my own blood. For some reason the taste of that blood came back to me more strongly then than it had seemed when it happened. I knew that he would torment me for ever, unless I put a stop to it, and I got up and walked back towards his house.

  He was in the yard, by the woodshed. He saw me coming and picked up a stone and began to yell tauntingly, calling me unmentionable names. It enraged me to hear him use those foul words, and I knew for the first time how truly evil he was. I didn’t understand why I had tolerated him before, how I could have let such a wicked person annoy me. I wanted to punish him for annoying me but, more strongly, I wanted to punish him for being a deplorable creature, a foul-mouthed and evil-minded creature. He had to be taught a lesson.

  I walked right up to him. He continued to taunt me until I was quite close, and then he must have realized with his slow, dim mind that this was not the same as the other times, because he began to back away. I went after him, walking slowly. When he threw the stone it struck me in the face, but I hardly felt it. He ran backwards to the woodshed and I moved between him and the house. I remember how his eyes darted around as he looked for help, for a path to escape. I was much bigger and stronger than him – I was bigger than anyone else of my age at school – and he became very frightened. His fear did not satisfy me; for some reason it made me all the more anxious to punish him . . . I felt he realized that he must be punished, that he knew he was evil and, if he were not punished, he would think that it was all right to do as he did. I would not have that. I went at him and he tried to run, but I am very fast and nimble even now, and in those days I could move like a cat. I caught him with both hands. I caught him by the neck and threw him down on the ground. He tried to kick me but I brushed his feet aside and fell over him. He hit me in the face with his small fists but it was less than an insect sting. I got my hands very firmly around his neck and began to punish him. I intended to punish him greatly, in proportion to his sins. I squeezed, and his eyes got very large and that made me feel satisfied. Or almost satisfied – as if satisfaction were on the way, and the harder I squeezed the more rapidly it came. It seemed to run up from my fingertips to my shoulders, and then diffuse throughout my body. He stopped hitting me. His sm
all hands were wrapped around my wrists, but they could do nothing. I put all my weight into my arms and pressed.

  It was then that the savage brute attacked me.

  I had not seen it sneak up behind me. It was sly and vicious and the first that I was aware of it was when it pounced at me.

  I had to release the boy, and the dog and I rolled over. It was a powerful creature, but it was no match for me in an equal struggle. I got over it and got my hands under its collar and twisted. I turned the collar right round, choking the brute. It had torn my forearm with its teeth and the blood ran down my arm and splattered over the dog. The sight of the blood drove me in a frenzy. I realized then how dangerous that animal was, and how necessary it was that it should be destroyed. I twisted the collar around again and it bit into the hairy throat. The tongue slid from its muzzle and I banged its head against the ground so that its own teeth buried themselves in that laughing tongue that was no longer laughing so slyly. The look in the creature’s eyes was delightful! It knew that it was going to die then. It knew that it was going to pay for its viciousness, and the eyes rolled and bulged out like two yellowish hard boiled eggs. It made me laugh to see that, but I did not laugh so much that I had to release my grip. I did not let the dog go until it was very dead.

  When I stood up finally I saw that the boy had recovered and run away. He must have gone into his house. I would have followed him, but for some reason I no longer hated him. Perhaps I felt that he had been punished enough. I was sure that he would torment me no more. The dog was like a limp and oil-stained rag in the moonlight and I felt very good. A good job well done. I felt warm and satisfied and I turned and walked home. My arm did not begin to hurt until later.