The Werewolf Megapack

by Various Writers

  My father was bending over me, rubbing my hands. And Stella was chafing my feet, which stuck out beneath the blankets.

  And my father was changed as weirdly, as dreadfully, as the girl, Stella!

  His skin was a cold, bloodless white—white with the pallor of death. His hands, against my own, felt fearfully cold—as cold as those of a frozen corpse. And his eyes, watching me with a strange, terrible alertness, shone with a greenish light.

  His eyes were like Stella’s-and like those of the great gray wolf. They were agleam with the fire of cosmic evil, with the light of an alien, hellish intelligence!

  * * * *

  And the woma—the dread thing that had been lovely Stella—was unchanged. Her skin was still fearfully pallid, and her eyes strange and luminously green. The stain was still on her pale face, appearing black in the somber crimson light.

  There was no fire in the stove. But, despite the bitter cold of the room, the woman was still clad as she had been before, in a sheer slip of white silk, half torn from her white body. My father—or that which had once been my father—wore only a light cotton shirt, with the sleeves torn off, and a pair of ragged trousers. His feet and arms were bare.

  Another fearful thing I noticed. My breath, as I said, condensed in white clouds of frozen crystals, in the frigid air. But no white mists came from Stella’s nostrils, or from my father’s.

  From outside, I could hear the dismal, uncanny keening of the running pack. And from time to time the two looked uneasily toward the door, as if anxious to go to join them.

  I had been sitting up, staring confusedly and incredulously about, before my father spoke.

  “We are glad to see you, Clovis,” he said, rather stiffly, and without emotion, not at all in his usual jovial, affectionate manner. “You seem to be cold. But you will presently be normal again. We have surprising need of you, in the performance of an experiment, which we cannot accomplish without your assistance.”

  He spoke slowly, uncertainly, as a foreigner might who has attempted to learn English from a dictionary. I was at a loss to understand it, even if I assumed that he and Stella both suffered from a mental derangement.

  And his voice was somehow whining; it carried a note weirdly suggestive of the howling of the pack.

  “You will help us?” Stella demanded in the same dreadful tones.

  “Explain it! Please explain everything!” I burst out. “Or I’ll go crazy! Why were you running with the wolves? Why are your eyes so bright and green, your skins so deathly white? Why are you both so cold? Why the red light? Why don’t you have a fire?”

  I babbled my questions, while they stood there in the strange room, and silently stared at me with their horrible eyes.

  * * * *

  For minutes, perhaps, they were silent. Then an expression of crafty intelligence came into my father’s eyes, and he spoke again in those fearful tones, with their ring of the baying pack.

  “Clovis,” he said, “you know we came here for purposes of studying science. And a great discovery has been ours to make; a huge discovery relating to the means of life. Our bodies, they are changed, as you appear to see. Better machines they have become; stronger they are. Cold harms them not, as it does yours. Even our sight is better, so bright lights we no longer need.

  “But we are yet lacking of perfect success. Our minds were changed, so that we do not remember all that once it had been ours to accomplish. And it is you whom we desire to be our assistant in replacing a machine of ours, that has been broken. It is you that we wish to aid us, so that to all humanity we may bring the gift of the new life, that is ever strong, and knows not death. All people we would change with the new science that it has been ours to discover.”

  “You mean you want to make the human race into monsters like yourselves?” I cried.

  My father snarled ferociously, like a beast of prey.

  “All men will receive the gift of life like ours,” his strange voice said. “Death will be no more. And your aid is required by us—and it we will have!” There was intense, malefic menace in his tones. “It is yours to be our aid. You will refuse not!”

  He stood before me with bared teeth and with white fingers hooked like talons.

  “Sure, I’ll help you,” I contrived to utter, in a shaken voice. “I’m not a very brilliant experimenter, however.” It appeared that to refuse would be a means of committing very unpleasant suicide.

  * * * *

  Triumphant cunning shone in those menacing green eyes, the evil cunning of the maniac who has just perpetrated a clever trick. But it was even more than that; it was the crafty look of supreme evil in contemplation of further victory.

  “You can come now, in order to see the machine?” Stella demanded.

  “No,” I said hastily, and sought reasons for delay. “I am cold. I must light a fire and warm myself. Then I am hungry, and very tired. I must eat and sleep.” All of which was very true. My body had been chilled through, during my hours on the snow. My limbs were trembling with cold.

  The two looked at each other. Unearthly sounds passed between them, incoherent, animal whinings. Such, instead of words, seemed to be their natural speech; the English they spoke seemed only an inaccurately and recently learned tongue.

  “True,” my father said to me again, in a moment. He looked at the stove. “Start a fire if you must. What you need is there?” He pointed inquiringly toward coal and kindling, as if fire were something new and unfamiliar to him.

  “We must go without,” he added. “Light of fire is hurtful to us, as cold is to you. And in other room, called—” he hesitated perceptibly, “kitchen, will be food. There we will wait.”

  He and the white girl glided silently from the room.

  Shivering with cold, I hurried to the stove. All the coals in it were dead; there had been no fire in it for many hours, none, perhaps, for several days. I shook down the ashes, lit a ball of crumpled newspaper with a match I found in my pocket, dropped it on the grate, and filled the stove with pine and coal. In a few minutes I had a roaring fire, before which I crouched gratefully.

  * * * *

  In a few minutes the door was opened slowly. Stella, first peering carefully, apparently to see if there was light in the room, stepped cautiously inside. The stove was tightly closed, no light escaped from it.

  The pallid, green-eyed woman had her arms full of food, a curious assortment that had evidently been collected in the kitchen in a haphazard manner. There were two loaves of bread, a slab of raw bacon, an unopened can of coffee, a large sack of salt, a carton of oatmeal, a can of baking powder, a dozen tins of canned foods, and even a bottle of stove polish.

  “You eat this?” she inquired, in her strangely animal voice, dropping the articles on the table.

  It was almost ludicrous; and too, it was somehow terrible. She seemed to have no conception of human alimentary needs.

  Comfortably warm again, and feeling very hungry, the table, and examined the odd assortment. I selected a loaf of bread, a tin of salmon, and one of apricots, for my immediate use.

  “Some of these things are to be eaten as they are,” I ventured, wondering what her response would be. “And some of them have to be cooked.”

  “Cooked?” she demanded quickly. “What is that?”

  Then, while I was silent, dazed with astonishment, she added a terrible question.

  “Does it convey that they must be hot and bleeding from the animal?”

  “No!” I cried. “No. To cook a food one heats it. Usually adding seasonings, such as salt. A rather complicated process, requiring considerable skill.”

  “I see,” she said. “And you must consume such articles, to keep your body whole?”

  I admitted that I did, and then remarked that I needed a can cutter, to get at the food in the tins. First inquiring about the appearance of the implement, she hurried to the kitchen, and soon returned with one.

  Presently my father came back into the room. Both of them watched me
with their strange green eyes as I ate. My appetite failed somewhat, but I drew the meal out as long as possible, in order to defer whatever they might intend for me after I had finished.

  * * * *

  Both of them asked many questions. Questions similar to Stella’s query about cooking, touching subjects with which an ordinary child is familiar. But they were not stupid questions—no, indeed! Both of them evinced a cleverness that was almost preternatural. They never forgot, and I was astounded at their skill in piecing together the facts I gave them, to form others.

  Their green eyes watched me very curiously when, unable to drag out the pretense of eating any longer, I produced a cigarette and sought a match to light it. Both of them howled, as if in agony, when the feeble yellow flame of the match flared up. They covered their strange green eyes, and leaped back, cowering and trembling.

  “Kill it!” my father snarled ferociously.

  I flicked out the tiny flame, startled at its results.

  They uncovered their terrible green eyes, blinking. It was several minutes before they seemed completely recovered from their amazing fear of the light.

  “Make light no more when we are near,” my father growled at me. “We will tear your body if you forget! “His teeth were bared; his lips curled like those of a wolf; he snarled at me frightfully.

  Stella ran to an east window, raised the blind, peered nervously out. I saw that the dawn was coming. She whined strangely at my father. He seemed uneasy, like an animal at bay. His huge green eyes rolled from side to side. He turned anxiously to me.

  “Come,” he said. “The machine which we with your aid will repair is in the cellar beneath the house. The day comes. We must go.”

  “I can’t go,” I said. “I’m dog tired; been up all night. I’ve got to rest, before I work on any machine. I’m so sleepy I can’t think.”

  He whined curiously at Stella again, as if he were speaking in some strange wolf-tongue. She replied in kind, then spoke to me.

  “If rest is needful to the working of your body, you may sleep till the light is gone. Follow.”

  * * * *

  She opened the door at the end of the room, led me into a dark hall, and from it into a small bedroom. It contained a narrow bed, two chairs, a dresser, and wardrobe trunk.

  “Try not to go,” she snarled warningly, at the door, “or we will follow you over the snow!”

  The door closed and I was alone. A key grated ominously in the lock. The little room was cold and dark. I scrambled hastily into the bed, and for a time I lay there, listening.

  The dreadful howling of the wolf-pack, which had never stilled through all the night, seemed to be growing louder, drawing nearer. Presently it ceased, with a few sharp, whining yelps, apparently just outside the window. The pack had come here, with the dawn!

  As the increasing light of day filled the little room, I raised myself in the bed to scrutinize its contents again. It was a neat chamber, freshly papered. The dresser was covered with a gay silk scarf, and on it, in orderly array, were articles of the feminine toilet. A few dresses, a vivid beret, and a bright sweater were hanging under a curtain in the corner of the room. On the wall was a picture—of myself!

  It came to me that this must be Stella’s room, into which I had been locked to sleep until night had come again. But what weird and horrible thing had happened to the girl since I had seen her last?

  Presently I examined the windows with a view to escape. There were two of them, facing the east. Heavy wooden bars had been fastened across them, on the outside, so close together that I could not hope to squeeze between them. And a survey of the room revealed no object with which they could be easily sawed.

  But I was too sleepy and exhausted to attempt escape. At thought of the ten weary miles to Hebron, through the thick, soft snow, I abandoned the idea. I knew that, tired as I already was, I could never cover the distance in the short winter day. And I shuddered at the thought of being caught on the snow by the pack.

  I lay down again in Stella’s clean bed, about which a slight fragrance of perfume still lingered, and was soon asleep. My slumber, though deep, was troubled. But no nightmare could be as hideous as the reality from which I had found a few hours’ escape.

  CHAPTER V

  THE MACHINE IN THE CELLAR

  I slept through most of the short winter day. When I woke it was sunset. Gray light fell athwart the illimitable flat desert of snow outside my barred windows, and the pale disk of the moon, near the full, was rising in the darkening eastern sky. No human habitation was in view, in all the stretching miles of that white waste. I felt a sharp sense of utter loneliness.

  I could look for no outside aid in coping with the strange and alarming situation into which I had stumbled. If I were to escape from these dread monsters who wore the bodies of those dearest to me, it must be by my own efforts. And in my hands alone rested the task of finding from what evil malady they suffered, and how to restore them to their old, dear selves.

  Once more I examined the stout wooden bars across the windows. They seemed strongly nailed to the wall on either side. I found no tool that looked adequate to cutting them. My matches were still in my pocket, however, and it occurred to me that I might burn the bars. But there was no time for such an undertaking before the darkness would bring back my captors, nor did I relish the thought of attempting to escape with the pack on my trail.

  I was hungry again, and quite thirsty also.

  Darkness fell, as I lay there on the bed, among the intimate belongings of a lovely girl for whom I had owned tender feelings—waiting for her to come with the night, amid her terrible allies, to drag me to I knew not what dread fate.

  The gray light of the day faded imperceptibly into pale silvery moonlight.

  Abruptly, without warning, the key turned in the lock.

  * * * *

  Stella—or the alien entity that ruled the girl’s fair body—glided with sinister grace into the room. Her green eyes were shining, and her skin was ghastly white.

  “Immediately you will follow,” came her wolfish voice. “The machine below awaits the aid for you to give in the great experiment. Quickly come. Your weak body, it is rested?”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ve slept, of course. But now I’m hungry and thirsty again. I’ve got to have water and something to eat before I tinker with any machine.”

  I was determined to postpone whatever ordeal lay before me as long as possible.

  “Your body you may satisfy again,” the woman said. “But take not too long!” she snarled warningly.

  I followed her back to the dining room.

  “Get water,” she said, and glided out the door.

  The stove was still faintly warm. I opened it, stirred the coals, dropped in more fuel. Soon the fire was roaring again. I turned my attention to the food I had left. The remainder of the salmon and apricots had frozen on the plates, and I set them over the stove to warm.

  Soon Stella was back with a water bucket containing a bulging mass of ice. Apparently surprised that I could not consume water in a solid form, she allowed me to set it on the stove to thaw.

  While I waited, standing by the stove, she asked innumerable questions, many of them so simple they would have been laughable under less strange conditions, some of them concerning the latest and most recondite of scientific theories, her mastery of which seemed to exceed my own.

  My father appeared suddenly, his corpse-white arms full of books. He spread them on the table, curtly bid me come look with him. He had Einstein’s “The Meaning of Relativity,” Weyl’s “Gravitation and Elektricitaet,” and two of his own privately printed works. The latter were “Space-Time Tensors” and the volume of mathematical speculation entitled “Interlocking Universes” whose bizarre implications created such a sensation among those savants to whom he sent copies.

  * * * *

  My father began opening these books, and bombarding me with questions about them, questions which I was often unable
to answer. But the greater part of his queries related merely to grammar, or the meaning of words. The involved thought seemed easy for him to understand; it was the language which caused him difficulty.

  His questions were exactly such as might be asked by a super-intellectual being from Mars, if he were attempting to read a scientific library without having completely mastered the language in which its books were written.

  And his own books seemed as unfamiliar to him as those of the other scientists. But he ran through the pages with amazing speed, pausing only to ask an occasional question, and appeared to gain a complete mastery of the volume as he went.

  When he released me, the food and water were warm. I drank, and then ate bread and salmon and apricots, as deliberately as I dared. I invited the two to share the food with me, but they declined abruptly. The volley of questions continued.

  Then suddenly, evidently concluding that I had eaten enough, they started toward the door, commanding me to follow. I dared not do otherwise. My father paused at the end of the table and picked up the electric lantern, whose dimly glowing red bulb supplied the only light in the room.

  Again we traversed the dark hall, and went out through a door in the rear of the frame building. As we stepped out upon the moonlit snow, I shuddered to hear once more the distant, wailing ululation of the pack, still with that terrible note which suggested strained human vocal organs.

  A few feet from us was the door of a cellar. The basement had evidently been considerably enlarged, quite recently, for huge mounds of earth lay about us, filling the back yard. Some of them were covered with snow, some of them black and bare.

  * * * *

  The two led the way down the steps into the cellar, my father still carrying the electric lantern, which faintly illuminated the midnight space with its feeble, crimson glow.

  The cellar was large, neatly plastered. It had not been itself enlarged, but a dark passage sloped down beside the door, to deeper excavations.

  In the center of the floor stood the wreck of an intricate and unfamiliar mechanism. It had evidently been deliberately smashed—I saw an ax lying beside it, which must have been the means of the havoc. The concrete floor was littered with the broken glass of shattered electron tubes. The machine itself was a mass of tangled wires and twisted coils and bent magnets, oddly arranged outside a great copper ring, perhaps four feet in diameter.