But Stella’s exquisite form grew warm again; the soft flush of life came to it. She breathed and her heart beat slowly.
I carried her up to the old cellar, and laid her on its floor, with two lanterns blazing near her, to prevent any return of that forbidden life, while I finished the ghastly work left for me below.
* * * *
I need not go into details.…
But when I had used half my supply of dynamite, no recognizable fragments were left, either of the accursed machine, or of the dead bodies that had been animated with such monstrous life. I planted the other dozen sticks of dynamite beside the great black pillars, and in the walls of the tunnel.…
The subterranean hall that I have called a temple will never be entered again.
When that work was done, I carried Stella up to her room, and put her very gently to bed. Through the night I watched her anxiously, keeping a bright light in the room. But there was no sign of what I feared. She slept deeply, but normally, apparently free from any taint of the monstrous life that had possessed her.
Dawn came after a weary night, and there was a rosy gleam upon the snow.
The sleeping girl stirred. Fathomless blue eyes opened, stared into mine. Startled eyes, eager, questioning. Not clouded with dream as when she had awakened before.
“Clovis!” Stella cried, in her natural, softly golden voice. “Clovis, what are you doing here? Where’s Father? Dr. McLaurin?”
“You are all right?” I demanded eagerly. “You are well?”
“Well?” she asked, raising her exquisite head in surprise. “Of course I’m well. What could be the matter with me? Dr. McLaurin is going to try his great experiment to-day. Did you come to help?”
Then I knew—and a great gladness came with the knowledge—that all memory of the horror had been swept from her mind. She recalled nothing that had happened since the eve of the experiment that had brought such a train of terrors.
She looked suddenly past me—at the picture of myself upon the wall. There was a curious expression on her face; she flushed a little, looking very beautiful with heightened color.
“I didn’t give you that picture,” I accused her. I wished to avoid answering any questions, for the time being, about her father or mine, or any experiments.
“I got it from your father,” she confessed.
* * * *
I have written this narrative in the home of Dr. Friedrichs, the noted New York psychiatrist, who is a close friend of mine. I came to him as soon as Stella and I reached New York, and he has since had me stay at his home, under his constant observation.
He assures me that, within a few weeks, I shall be completely recovered. But sometimes I doubt that I will ever be entirely sane. The horrors of that invasion from another universe are graven too deeply upon my mind. I cannot bear to be alone in darkness, or even in moonlight. And I tremble when I hear the howling of a dog, and hastily seek bright lights and the company of human beings.
I have told Dr. Friedrichs my story, and he believes. It is because of his urging that I have written it down. It is an historical truism, my friend says, that all legend, myth, and folklore has a basis in fact. And no legends are wider spread than those of lycanthropy. It is remarkable that not only wolves are subjects of these legends, but the most ferocious wild animals of each country. In Scandinavia, for instance, the legends concern bears; on the continent of Europe, wolves; in South America, jaguars; in Asia and Africa, leopards and tigers. It is also remarkable that belief in possession by evil spirits, and belief in vampires, is associated with the widespread belief in werewolves.
Dr. Friedrichs thinks that through some cosmic accident, these monsters of the Black Dimension have been let into our world before; and that those curiously widespread legends and beliefs are folk-memories of horrors visited upon earth when those unthinkable monstrosities stole the bodies of men and of savage beasts, and hunted through the darkness.
Much might be said in support of the theory, but I shall let my experience speak for itself.
Stella comes often to see me, and she is more exquisitely lovely than I had ever realized. My friend assures me that her mind is quite normal. Her lapse of memory is quite natural, he says, since her mind was sleeping while the alien entity ruled her body. And he says there is no possibility that she will be possessed again.
We are planning to be married within a few weeks, as soon as Dr. Friedrichs says that my horror-seared mind is sufficiently healed.
THE MAN WHO WAS CHANGED INTO A CROW, by P’u Sung-ling
Mr. Yü Jung was a Hunan man. The person who told me his story did not recollect from what department or district he came. His family was very poor; and once, when returning home after failure at the examination, he ran quite out of funds. Being ashamed to beg, and feeling uncomfortably hungry, he turned to rest awhile in the Wu Wang temple, where he poured out all his sorrows at the feet of the God.
His prayers over, he was about to lie down in the outer porch, when suddenly a man took him and led him into the presence of Wu Wang; and then, falling on his knees, said, “Your Majesty, there is a vacancy among the black-robes; the appointment might be bestowed on this man.”
Wu Wang assented, and Yü received a suit of black clothes; and when he had put these on he was changed into a crow, and flew away. Outside he saw a number of fellow-crows collected together, and immediately joined them, settling with them on the masts of the boats, and imitating them in catching and eating the meat or cakes which the passengers and boatmen on board threw up to them in the air. In a little while he was no longer hungry, and, soaring aloft, alighted on the top of a tree, quite satisfied with his change of condition.
Two or three days passed, and Wu Wang, now pitying his solitary state, provided him with a very elegant mate, whose name was Chu-ch’ing, and who took every opportunity of warning him when he exposed himself too much in search of food. However, he did not pay much attention to this, and one day a soldier shot him in the breast with a crossbow; but luckily Chu-ch’ing got away with him in her beak, and he was not captured.
This enraged the other crows very much, and with their wings they flapped the water into such big waves that all the boats were upset. Chu-ch’ing now procured food and fed her husband; but his wound was a severe one, and by the end of the day he was dead—at which moment he waked, as it were, from a dream, and found himself lying in the temple.
The people of the place had found Mr. Yü to all appearance dead; and not knowing how he had come by his death, and finding that his body was not quite cold, had set someone to watch him. They now learnt what had happened to him, and, making up a purse between them, sent him away home.
* * * *
Three years afterwards he was passing by the same spot, and went in to worship at the temple; also preparing a quantity of food, and inviting the crows to come down and eat it. He then prayed, saying, “If Chu-ch’ing is among you, let her remain.”
When the crows had eaten the food they all flew away; and the following year Yü returned again, this time having succeeded in obtaining his master’s degree. Again he visited Wu Wang’s temple, and sacrificed a sheep as a feast for the crows; and again he prayed as on the previous occasion.
That night he slept on the lake, and, just as the candles were lighted and he had sat down, suddenly there was a noise as of birds settling, and lo! a beautiful young lady about twenty years of age stood before him.
“Have you been quite well since we parted?” asked she; to which Yu replied that he should like to know whom he had the honour of addressing.
“Don’t you remember Chu-ch’ing?” said the young lady; and then Yü was overjoyed, and inquired how she had come. “I am now,” replied Chu-ch’ing, “a spirit of the Han river, and seldom gç back to my old home; but in consequence of what you did on two occasions, I have come to see you once more.
They then sat talking together like husband and wife reunited after long absence, and Yü proposed that she should retur
n with him on his way south. Chu-ch’ing, however, said she must go west again, and upon this point they could not come to any agreement.
Next morning, when Yü awakened, he found himself in a lofty room with two large candles burning brightly, and no longer in his own boat. In utter amazement he arose and asked where he was.
“At Han-yang,” replied Chu-ch’ing; “my home is your home; why need you go south?”
By-and-by, when it got lighter, in came a number of serving women with wine, which they placed on a low table on the top of a broad couch; and then husband and wife sat down to drink together.
“Where are all my servants?” asked Yü; and when he heard they were still on the boat, he said he was afraid the boat people would not be able to wait.
“Never mind,” replied Chu-ch’ing; “I have plenty of money, and I’ll help you to make it up to them.”
Yü therefore remained with her, feasting and enjoying himself, and forgetting all about going home.
As for the boatmen, when they awakened and found themselves at Han-yang, they were greatly astonished; and, seeing that the servants could find no trace of their missing master, they wished to go about their own business. They were unable, however, to undo the cable, and so they all remained there together for more than a couple of months, by the end of which time Mr. Yü became anxious to return home, and said to Chu-ch’ing, “If I stay here, my family connections will be completely severed. Besides, as we are husband and wife, it is only right that you should pay a visit to my home.”
“That,” replied Chu-ch’ing, “I cannot do; and even were I able to go, you have a wife there already, and where would you put me? It is better for me to stop where I am, and thus you will have a second family.”
Yü said she would be so far off that he could not always be dropping in; whereupon Chu-ch’ing produced a black suit, and replied, “Here are your old clothes. Whenever you want to see me, put these on and come, and on your arrival I will take them off for you.” She then prepared a parting feast for her husband, at which he got very tipsy; and when he waked up he was on board his boat again, and at his old anchorage on the lake.
The boatmen and his servants were all there, and they looked at one another in mutual amazement; and when they asked Yü where he had been, he hardly knew what to say. By the side of his pillow he discovered a bundle in which were some new clothes Chu-ch’ing had given him, as well as shoes and stockings, and and folded up with them was the suit of black. In addition to these he found an embroidered belt for tying round the waist, which was stuffed full of gold. He now started on his way south, and, when he reached the end of his journey, dismissed the boatmen with a handsome present.
* * * *
After being at home for some months, his thoughts returned to Chu-ch’ing; and, taking out the black clothes, he put them on, when wings immediately grew from his ribs, and with a flap he was gone. In about four hours he arrived at Han-yang, and, wheeling round and round in the air, espied below him a solitary islet, on which stood a house, and there he proceeded to alight.
A maid-servant had already seen him coming, and cried out, “Here’s master!” and in a few moments out came Chu-ch’ing, and bade the attendants take off Mr. Yü’s feathers. They were not long in setting him free, and then, hand in hand, he and Chu-ch’ing went into the house together.
“You have come at a happy moment,” said his wife, as they sat down to tell each other all the news; and in three days’ time she gave birth to a boy, whom they called Han-ch’an, which means “born on the Han river.”
Three days after the event all the river-nymphs came to congratulate them, and brought many handsome presents. They were a charming band, not one being over thirty years of age; and, going into the bedroom and approaching the bed, each one pressed her thumb on the baby’s nose, saying, “Long life to thee, little one!”
Yü asked who they all were, and Chu-ch’ing told him they belonged to the same family of spirits as herself; “And the two last of all,” said she, “dressed in pale lilac, are the nymphs who gave away their girdles at Hankow.”
* * * *
A few months passed away, and then Chu-ch’ing sent her husband back in a boat to his old home. No sails or oars were used, but the boat sped along itself; and at the end of the river journey there were men waiting with horses to convey him to his own door.
After this he went backwards and forwards very frequently; and in time Han-ch’an grew up to be a fine boy, the apple of his father’s eye. Unhappily his first wife had no children, and she was extremely anxious to see Han-ch’an; so Yü communicated this to Chu-ch’ing, who at once packed up a box and sent him back with his father, on the understanding that he was to return in three months.
However, the other wife became quite as fond of him as if he had been her own child, and ten months passed without her being able to bear the thought of parting with him. But one day Han-ch’an was taken violently ill, and died; upon which Yü’s wife was overwhelmed with grief, and wished to die too. Yü then set off for Han-yang, to carry the tidings to Chu-ch’ing; and when he arrived, lo! there was Han-ch’an, with his shoes and socks off, lying on the bed. He was greatly rejoiced at this, and asked Chu-ch’ing what it all meant.
“Why,” replied she, “the term agreed upon by us had long expired, and, as I wanted my boy, I sent for him.”
Yü then told her how much his other wife loved Han-ch’an, but Chu-ch’ing said she must wait until there was another child, and then she should have him.
Later on Chu-ch’ing had twins, a boy and a girl, the former named Han-shêng and the latter Yü p’ei; whereupon Han-ch’an went back again, with his father, who, finding it inconvenient to be travelling backwards and forwards three or four times in a year, removed with his family to the city of Han-yang.
At twelve years of age Han-ch’an took his bachelor’s degree; and his mother, thinking there was no girl among mortals good enough for her son, sent for him to come home, that she herself might find a wife for him, which she did in the person of a Miss Chih-niang, who was the daughter of a spirit like herself.
Yü’s first wife then died, and the three children all went to mourn her loss, Han-ch’an remaining in Hu-nan after the funeral, but the other two returning with their father, and not leaving their mother again.
HUGUES, THE WER-WOLF, by Sutherland Menzies
I
On the confines of that extensive forest-tract formerly spreading over so large a portion of the county of Kent, a remnant of which, to this day, is known as the weald1 of Kent, and where it stretched its almost impervious covert midway between Ashford and Canterbury during the prolonged reign of our second Henry, a family of Norman extraction by name Hugues (or Wulfric, as they were commonly called by the Saxon inhabitants of that district) had, under protection of the ancient forest laws, furtively erected for themselves alone and miserable habitation. And amidst those sylvan fastnesses, ostensibly following the occupation of woodcutters, the wretched outcasts, for such, from some cause or other, they evidently were, had for many years maintained a secluded and precarious existence. Whether from the rooted antipathy still actively cherished against all of that usurping nation from which they derived their origin, or from recorded malpractice by their superstitious Anglo-Saxon neighbours, they had long been looked upon as belonging to the accursed race of wer-wolves, and as such churlishly refused work on the domains of the surrounding franklins or proprietors, so thoroughly was accredited the descent of the original lycanthropic stain transmitted from father to son through several generations. That the Hugues Wulfric reckoned not a single friend among the adjacent homesteads of serf or freedman was not to be wondered at, possessing as they did so unenviable a reputation; for to them was invariably attributed even the misfortunes which chance alone might seem to have given birth. Did midnight fire consume the grange;—did the time-decayed barn, over-stored with an abundant harvest, tumble into ruins;—were the shocks of wheat lain prostrate over the fields by a t
empest;—did the smut destroy the grain;—or the cattle perish, decimated by a murrain;—a child sink under some wasting malady;—or a woman give premature birth to her offspring, it was ever the Hugues Wulfric who were openly accused, eyed askance with mingled fear and detestation, the finger of young and old pointing them out with bitter execrations—in fine, they were almost as nearly classed feroe natura as their fabled prototype, and dealt with accordingly.2
Terrible, indeed, were the tales told of them round the glowing hearth at eventide, whilst spinning the flax, or plucking the geese; equally affirmed too, in broad daylight, whilst driving the cows to pasturage, and most circumstantially discussed on Sundays between mass and vespers, by the gossip groups collected within Ashford parvyse, with most seasonable admixture of anathema and devout crossings. Witchcraft, larceny, murther, and sacrilege, formed prominent features in the bloody and mysterious scenes of which the Hugues Wulfric were the alleged actors: sometimes they were ascribed to the father, at others to the mother, and even the sister escaped not her share of vilification; fair would they have attributed an atrocious disposition to the unweaned babe, so great, so universal was the horror in which they held that race of Cain! The churchyard at Ashford, and the stone cross, from whence diverged the several roads to London, Canterbury, and Ashford, situated midway between the two latter places, served, so tradition avouched, as nocturnal theatres for the unhallowed deeds of the Wulfrics, who thither prowled by moonlight, it was said, to batten on the freshly-buried dead, or drain the blood of any living wight who might be rash enough to venture among those solitary spots. True it was that the wolves had, during some of the severe winters, emerged from their forest lairs, and, entering the cemetery by a breach in its walls, goaded by famine, had actually disinterred the dead; true was it, also, that the Wolf’s Cross, as the hinds commonly designated it, had been stained with gore on one occasion through the fall of a drunken mendicant, who chanced to fracture his skull against a pointed angle of its basement. But these accidents, as well as a multitude of others, were attributed to the guilty intervention of the Wulfrics, under their fiendish guise of wer-wolves.
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