The Compleat Werewolf

by Anthony Boucher

  “Hold your hats, boys,” said the man in the costume. “Here I go again.”

  “Eka!” Fearing thundered. “Dva tri chatur! Pancha! Shas sapta! Ashta nava dasha ekadasha!” He paused. There was always the danger that at this moment some scholar in this university town might recognize that the invocation, though perfect Sanskrit, consisted solely of the numbers from one to eleven. But no one stirred, and he launched forth in more apposite Latin: “Per vota nostra ipse nunc surgat nobis dicatus Baal Zebub!”

  “Baal Zebub!” the congregation chorused.

  “Cue,” said the electrician, and pulled a switch.

  The lights flickered and went out. Lightning played across the sanctuary. Suddenly out of the darkness came a sharp bark, a yelp of pain, and a long-drawn howl of triumph.

  A blue light now began to glow dimly. In its faint reflection, the electrician was amazed to see his costumed friend at his side, nursing his bleeding hand.

  “What the hell—” the electrician whispered.

  “Hanged if I know. I go out there on cue, all ready to make my terrifying appearance, and what happens? Great big hell of a dog up and nips my hand. Why didn’t they tell me they’d switched the script?”

  In the glow of the blue light the congregation reverently contemplated the plump little man with the fringe of beard and the splendid gray wolf that stood beside him. “Hail, O Lower Lord!” resounded the chorus, drowning out one spinster’s murmur of “But my dear, I swear he was much handsomer last year.”

  “Colleagues!” said Ozymandias the Great, and there was utter silence, a dread hush awaiting the momentous words of the Lower Lord. Ozymandias took one step forward, placed his tongue carefully between his lips, uttered the ripest, juiciest raspberry of his career, and vanished, wolf and all.

  Wolfe Wolf opened his eyes and shut them again hastily. He had never expected the quiet and sedate Berkeley Inn to install centrifugal rooms. It wasn’t fair. He lay in darkness, waiting for the whirling to stop and trying to reconstruct the past night.

  He remembered the bar all right, and the zombies. And the bartender. Very sympathetic chap that, up until he suddenly changed into a little man with a fringe of beard. That was where things began getting strange. There was something about a cigarette and an Irish tenor and a werewolf. Fantastic idea, that. Any fool knows—

  Wolf sat up suddenly. He was the werewolf. He threw back the bedclothes and stared down at his legs. Then he sighed relief. They were long legs. They were hairy enough. They were brown from much tennis. But they were indisputably human.

  He got up, resolutely stifling his qualms, and began to pick up the clothing that was scattered nonchalantly about the floor. A crew of gnomes was excavating his skull, but he hoped they might go away if he didn’t pay too much attention to them. One thing was certain: he was going to be good from now on. Gloria or no Gloria, heartbreak or no heartbreak, drowning your sorrows wasn’t good enough. If you felt like this and could imagine you’d been a werewolf—

  But why should he have imagined it in such detail? So many fragmentary memories seemed to come back as he dressed. Going up Strawberry Canyon with the fringed beard, finding a desolate and isolated spot for magic, learning the words—

  Hell, he could even remember the words. The word that changed you and the one that changed you back.

  Had he made up those words, too, in his drunken imaginings? And had he made up what he could only barely recall—the wonderful, magical freedom of changing, the single, sharp pang of alteration and then the boundless happiness of being lithe and fleet and free?

  He surveyed himself in the mirror. Save for the unwonted wrinkles in his conservative single-breasted gray suit, he looked exactly what he was: a quiet academician; a little better built, a little more impulsive, a little more romantic than most, perhaps, but still just that—Professor Wolf.

  The rest was nonsense. But there was, that impulsive side of him suggested, only one way of proving the fact. And that was to say The Word.

  “All right,” said Wolfe Wolf to his reflection. “I’ll show you.” And he said it.

  The pang was sharper and stronger than he’d remembered. Alcohol numbs you to pain. It tore him for a moment with an anguish like the descriptions of childbirth. Then it was gone, and he flexed his limbs in happy amazement. But he was not a lithe, fleet, free beast. He was a helplessly trapped wolf, irrevocably entangled in a conservative single-breasted gray suit.

  He tried to rise and walk, but the long sleeves and legs tripped him over flat on his muzzle. He kicked with his paws, trying to tear his way out, and then stopped. Werewolf or no werewolf, he was likewise still Professor Wolf, and this suit had cost thirty-five dollars. There must be some cheaper way of securing freedom than tearing the suit to shreds.

  He used several good, round Low German expletives. This was a complication that wasn’t in any of the werewolf legends he’d ever read. There, people just—boom!—became wolves or—bang!—became men again. When they were men, they wore clothes; when they were wolves, they wore fur. Just like Hyperman becoming Bark Lent again on top of the Empire State Building and finding his street clothes right there. Most misleading. He began to remember now how Ozymandias the Great had made him strip before teaching him the words—

  The words! That was it. All he had to do was say the word that changed you back—Absarka!—and he’d be a man again, comfortably fitted inside his suit. Then he could strip and play what games he wished. You see? Reason solves all. “Absarka!” he said.

  Or thought he said. He went through all the proper mental processes for saying Absarka! but all that came out of his muzzle was a sort of clicking whine. And he was still a conservatively dressed and helpless wolf.

  This was worse than the clothes problem. If he could be released only by saying Absarka! and if, being a wolf, he could say nothing, why, there he was. Indefinitely. He could go find Ozzy and ask—but how could a wolf wrapped up in a gray suit get safely out of a hotel and set out hunting for an unknown address?

  He was trapped. He was lost. He was—

  “Absarka!”

  Professor Wolfe Wolf stood up in his grievously rumpled gray suit and beamed on the beard-fringed face of Ozymandias the Great.

  “You see, colleague,” the little magician explained, “I figured you’d want to try it again as soon as you got up, and I knew darned well you’d have your troubles. Thought I’d come over and straighten things out for you.”

  Wolf lit a cigarette in silence and handed the pack to Ozymandias. “When you came in just now,” he said at last, “what did you see?”

  “You as a wolf.”

  “Then it really— I actually—”

  “Sure. You’re a full-fledged werewolf, all right.”

  Wolf sat down on the rumpled bed. “I guess,” he ventured slowly, “I’ve got to believe it. And if I believe that—But it means I’ve got to believe everything I’ve always scorned. I’ve got to believe in gods and devils and hells and—”

  “You needn’t be so pluralistic. But there is a God.” Ozymandias said this as calmly and convincingly as he had stated last night that there were werewolves.

  “And if there’s a God, then I’ve got a soul?”

  “Sure.”

  “And if I’m a werewolf— Hey!”

  “What’s the trouble, colleague?”

  “All right, Ozzy. You know everything. Tell me this: Am I damned?”

  “For what? Just for being a werewolf? Shucks, no; let me explain. There’s two kinds of werewolves. There’s the cursed kind that can’t help themselves, that just go turning into wolves without any say in the matter; and there’s the voluntary kind like you. Now, most of the voluntary kind are damned, sure, because they’re wicked men who lust for blood and eat innocent people. But they aren’t damnably wicked because they’re werewolves; they became werewolves because they are damnably wicked. Now, you changed yourself just for the hell of it and because it looked like a good way to impress a gal; that
’s an innocent-enough motive, and being a werewolf doesn’t make it any less so. Werewolves don’t have to be monsters; it’s just that we hear about only the ones that are.”

  “But how can I be voluntary when you told me I was a werewolf before I ever changed?”

  “Not everybody can change. It’s like being able to roll your tongue or wiggle your ears. You can, or you can’t; and that’s that. And as with those abilities, there’s probably a genetic factor involved, though nobody’s done any serious research on it. You were a werewolf in posse; now you’re one in esse.”

  “Then it’s all right? I can be a werewolf just for having fun, and it’s safe?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Wolf chortled. “Will I show Gloria! Dull and unglamorous indeed! Anybody can marry an actor or a G-man; but a werewolf—”

  “Your children probably will be, too,” said Ozymandias cheerfully.

  Wolf shut his eyes dreamily, then opened them with a start. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t got a hangover anymore! This is marvelous. This is— Why, this is practical. At last the perfect hangover cure. Shuffle yourself into a wolf and back and— Oh, that reminds me. How do I get back?”

  “Absarka.”

  “I know. But when I’m a wolf I can’t say it.”

  “That,” said Ozymandias sadly, “is the curse of being a white magician. You keep having to use the second-best form of spells, because the best would be black. Sure, a black-magic werebeast can turn himself back whenever he wants to. I remember in Darjeeling—”

  “But how about me?”

  “That’s the trouble. You have to have somebody to say Absarka! for you. That’s what I did last night, or do you remember? After we broke up the party at your friend’s Temple— Tell you what. I’m retired now, and I’ve got enough to live on modestly because I can always magic up a little— Are you going to take up werewolfing seriously?”

  “For a while, anyway. Till I get Gloria.”

  “Then why shouldn’t I come and live here in your hotel? Then I’ll always be handy to Absarka! you. After you get the girl, you can teach her.”

  Wolf extended his hand. “Noble of you. Shake.” And then his eye caught his wrist watch. “Good Lord! I’ve missed two classes this morning. Werewolfing’s all very well, but a man’s got to work for his living.”

  “Most men.” Ozymandias calmly reached his hand into the air and plucked a coin. He looked at it ruefully; it was a gold moidore. “Hang these spirits; I simply cannot explain to them about gold being illegal.”

  From Los Angeles, Wolf thought, with the habitual contempt of the northern Californian, as he surveyed the careless sport coat and the bright-yellow shirt of his visitor.

  This young man rose politely as the professor entered the office. His green eyes gleamed cordially and his red hair glowed in the spring sunlight. “Professor Wolf?” he asked.

  Wolf glanced impatiently at his desk. “Yes.”

  “O’Breen’s the name. I’d like to talk to you a minute.”

  “My office hours are from three to four Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’m afraid I’m rather busy now.”

  “This isn’t faculty business. And it’s important.” The young man’s attitude was affable and casual, but he managed nonetheless to convey a sense of urgency that piqued Wolfs curiosity. The all-important letter to Gloria had waited while he took two classes; it could wait another five minutes.

  “Very well, Mr. O’Breen.”

  “And alone, if you please.”

  Wolf himself hadn’t noticed that Emily was in the room. He now turned to the secretary and said, “All right. If you don’t mind, Emily—”

  Emily shrugged and went out.

  “Now, sir. What it this important and secret business?”

  “Just a question or two. To start with, how well do you know Gloria Garton?”

  Wolf paused. You could hardly say, “Young man, I am about to repropose to her in view of my becoming a werewolf.” Instead he simply said—the truth, if not the whole truth—“She was a pupil of mine a few years ago.”

  “I said do, not did. How well do you know her now?”

  “And why should I bother to answer such a question?”

  The young man handed over a card. Wolf read:

  FERGUS O’BREEN

  Private Inquiry Agent

  Licensed by the State of California

  Wolf smiled. “And what does this mean? Divorce evidence? Isn’t that the usual field of private inquiry agents?”

  “Miss Garton isn’t married, as you probably know very well. I’m just asking if you’ve been in touch with her much lately.”

  “And I’m simply asking why you should want to know.”

  O’Breen rose and began to pace around the office. “We don’t seem to be getting very far, do we? I’m to take it that you refuse to state the nature of your relations with Gloria Garton?”

  “I see no reason why I should do otherwise.” Wolf was beginning to be annoyed.

  To his surprise, the detective relaxed into a broad grin. “OK. Let it ride. Tell me about your department. How long have the various faculty members been here?”

  “Instructors and all?”

  “Just the professors.”

  “I’ve been here for seven years. All the others at least a good ten, probably more. If you want exact figures, you can probably get them from the dean, unless, as I hope”— Wolf smiled cordially—“he throws you out flat on your red pate.”

  O’Breen laughed. “Professor, I think we could get on. One more question, and you can do some pate-tossing yourself. Are you an American citizen?”

  “Of course.”

  “And the rest of the department?”

  “All of them. And now would you have the common decency to give me some explanation of this fantastic farrago of questions?”

  “No,” said O’Breen casually. “Goodbye, professor.” His alert green eyes had been roaming about the room, sharply noticing everything. Now, as he left, they rested on Wolf’s long index finger, moved up to his heavy meeting eyebrows, and returned to the finger. There was a suspicion of a startled realization in those eyes as he left the office.

  But that was nonsense, Wolf told himself. A private detective, no matter how shrewd his eyes, no matter how apparently meaningless his inquiries, would surely be the last man on earth to notice the signs of lycanthropy.

  Funny. “Werewolf” was a word you could accept. You could say, “I’m a werewolf,” and it was all right. But say “I am a lycanthrope” and your flesh crawled. Odd. Possibly material for a paper on the influence of etymology on connotation for one of the learned periodicals.

  But, hell! Wolfe Wolf was no longer primarily a scholar. He was a werewolf now, a white-magic werewolf, a werewolf-for-fun; and fun he was going to have. He lit his pipe, stared at the blank paper on his desk, and tried desperately to draft a letter to Gloria. It should hint at just enough to fascinate her and hold her interest until he could go south when the term ended and reveal to her the whole wonderful new truth. It—

  Professor Oscar Fearing grunted his ponderous way into the office. “Good afternoon, Wolfe. Hard at it, my boy?”

  “Afternoon,” Wolf replied distractedly, and continued to stare at the paper.

  “Great events coming, eh? Are you looking forward to seeing the glorious Gloria?”

  Wolf started. “How— What do you mean?”

  Fearing handed him a folded newspaper. “You hadn’t heard?”

  Wolf read with growing amazement and delight:

  GLORIA GARTON TO ARRIVE FRIDAY

  Local Girl Returns to Berkeley

  As part of the most spectacular talent hunt since the search for Scarlett O’Hara, Gloria Garton, glamorous Metropolis starlet, will visit Berkeley Friday.

  Friday afternoon at the Campus Theater, Berkeley canines will have their chance to compete in the nation-wide quest for a dog to play Tookah the wolf dog in the great
Metropolis epic “Fangs of the Forest,” and Gloria Garton herself will be present at the auditions.

  “I owe so much to Berkeley,” Miss Garton said. “It will mean so much to me to see the campus and the city again.” Miss Garton has the starring human role in “Fangs of the Forest.”

  Miss Garton was a student at the University of California when she received her first chance in films. She is a member of Mask and Dagger, honorary dramatic society, and Rho Rho Rho Sorority.

  Wolfe Wolf glowed. This was perfect. No need now to wait till term was over. He could see Gloria now and claim her in all his wolfish vigor. Friday—today was Wednesday; that gave him two nights to practice and perfect the technique of werewolfry. And then—

  He noticed the dejected look on the older professor’s face, and a small remorse smote him. “How did things go last night, Oscar?” he asked sympathetically. “How were your big Walpurgis Night services?”

  Fearing regarded him oddly. “You know that now? Yesterday April thirtieth meant nothing to you.”

  “I got curious and looked it up. But how did it go?”

  “Well enough,” Fearing lied feebly. “Do you know, Wolfe,” he demanded after a moment’s silence, “what is the real curse of every man interested in the occult?”

  “No. What?”

  “That true power is never enough. Enough for yourself, perhaps, but never enough for others. So that no matter what your true abilities, you must forge on beyond them into charlatanry to convince the others. Look at St. Germain. Look at Francis Stuart. Look at Cagliostro. But the worst tragedy is the next stage: when you realize that your powers were greater than you supposed and that the charlatanry was needless. When you realize that you have no notion of the extent of your powers. Then—”

  “Then, Oscar?”

  “Then, my boy, you are a badly frightened man.”

  Wolf wanted to say something consoling. He wanted to say, “Look, Oscar. It was just me. Go back to your half-hearted charlatanry and be happy.” But he couldn’t do that. Only Ozzy could know the truth of that splendid gray wolf. Only Ozzy and Gloria.