Unnatural Creatures

by Neil Gaiman

  Mr. Manders stifled a grin. “Of course! Yoggoth!”

  Fergus picked himself up and dusted from his clothes the grime of the stage, which is the most clinging grime on earth. “I’d swear,” he muttered, “that beast of yours enjoyed that.”

  “No hard feelings, I trust, Mr.—”

  “O’Breen. None at all. In fact, I’d suggest a little celebration in honor of this great event. I know you can’t buy a drink this near the campus, so I brought along a bottle just in case.”

  “Oh,” said Gloria Garton, implying that carousals were ordinarily beneath her; that this, however, was a special occasion; and that possibly there was something to be said for the green-eyed detective after all.

  This was all too easy, Wolfe Wolf-Yoggoth kept thinking. There was a catch to it somewhere. This was certainly the ideal solution to the problem of how to earn money as a werewolf. Bring an understanding of human speech and instructions into a fine animal body, and you are the answer to a director’s prayer. It was perfect as long as it lasted; and if Fangs of the Forest was a smash hit, there were bound to be other Yoggoth pictures. Look at Rin-Tin-Tin. But it was too easy….

  His ears caught a familiar “Oh,” and his attention reverted to Gloria. This “Oh” had meant that she really shouldn’t have another drink, but since liquor didn’t affect her anyway and this was a special occasion, she might as well.

  She was even more beautiful than he had remembered. Her golden hair was shoulder-length now, and flowed with such rippling perfection that it was all he could do to keep from reaching out a paw to it. Her body had ripened, too; was even more warm and promising than his memories of her. And in his new shape he found her greatest charm in something he had not been able to appreciate fully as a human being: the deep, heady scent of her flesh.

  “To Fangs of the Forest!” Fergus O’Breen was toasting. “And may that pretty-boy hero of yours get a worse mauling than I did.”

  Wolf-Yoggoth grinned to himself. That had been fun. That’d teach the detective to go crawling around hotel rooms.

  “And while we’re celebrating, colleagues,” said Ozymandias the Great, “why should we neglect our star? Here, Yoggoth.”

  And he held out the bottle.

  “He drinks, yet!” the casting director exclaimed delightedly.

  “Sure. He was weaned on it.”

  Wolf took a sizable gulp. It felt good. Warm and rich—almost the way Gloria smelled.

  “But how about you, Mr. Manders?” the detective insisted for the fifth time. “It’s your celebration really. The poor beast won’t get the four-figure checks from Metropolis. And you’ve taken only one drink.”

  “Never take two, colleague. I know my danger point. Two drinks in me and things start happening.”

  “More should happen yet than training miracle dogs? Go on, O’Breen. Make him drink. We should see what happens.”

  Fergus took another long drink himself. “Go on. There’s another bottle in the car, and I’ve gone far enough to be resolved not to leave here sober. And I don’t want sober companions, either.” His green eyes were already beginning to glow with a new wildness.

  “No, thank you, colleague.”

  Gloria Garton left her throne, walked over to the plump man, and stood close, her soft hand resting on his arm. “Oh,” she said, implying that dogs were dogs, but still that the party was unquestionably in her honor and his refusal to drink was a personal insult.

  Ozymandias the Great looked at Gloria, sighed, shrugged, resigned himself to fate, and drank.

  “Have you trained many dogs?” the casting director asked.

  “Sorry, colleague. This is my first.”

  “All the more wonderful! But what’s your profession otherwise?”

  “Well, you see, I’m a magician.”

  “Oh,” said Gloria Garton, implying delight, and went so far as to add, “I have a friend who does black magic.”

  “I’m afraid, ma’am, mine’s simply white. That’s tricky enough. With the black you’re in for some real dangers.”

  “Hold on!” Fergus interposed. “You mean really a magician? Not just presti…sleight of hand?”

  “Of course, colleague.”

  “Good theater,” said the casting director. “Never let ’em see the mirrors.”

  “Uh-huh,” Fergus nodded. “But look, Mr. Manders. What can you do, for instance?”

  “Well, I can change—”

  Yoggoth barked loudly.

  “Oh, no,” Ozymandias covered hastily, “that’s really a little beyond me. But I can—”

  “Can you do the Indian rope trick?” Gloria asked languidly. “My friend says that’s terribly hard.”

  “Hard? Why, ma’am, there’s nothing to it. I can remember that time in Darjeeling—”

  Fergus took another long drink. “I,” he announced defiantly, “want to see the Indian rope trick. I have met people who’ve met people who’ve met people who’ve seen it, but that’s as close as I ever get. And I don’t believe it.”

  “But, colleague, it’s so simple.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Ozymandias the Great drew himself up to his full lack of height. “Colleague, you are about to see it!” Yoggoth tugged warningly at his coattails. “Leave me alone, Wolf. An aspersion has been cast!”

  Fergus returned from the wings dragging a soiled length of rope. “This do?”

  “Admirably.”

  “What goes?” the casting director demanded.

  “Shh!” said Gloria. “Oh—”

  She beamed worshipfully on Ozymandias, whose chest swelled to the point of threatening the security of his buttons. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he announced, in the manner of one prepared to fill a vast amphitheater with his voice. “You are about to behold Ozymandias the Great in the Indian Rope Trick! Of course,” he added conversationally, “I haven’t got a small boy to chop into mincemeat, unless perhaps one of you— No? Well, we’ll try it without. Not quite so impressive, though. And will you stop yapping, Wolf?”

  “I thought his name was Yogi,” said Fergus.

  “Yoggoth. But since he’s part wolf on his mother’s side—Now, quiet, all of you!”

  He had been coiling the rope as he spoke. Now he placed the coil in the center of the stage, where it lurked like a threatening rattler. He stood beside it and deftly, professionally, went through a series of passes and mumblings so rapidly that even the superhumanly sharp eyes and ears of Wolf-Yoggoth could not follow them.

  The end of the rope detached itself from the coil, reared in the air, turned for a moment like a head uncertain where to strike, then shot straight up until all the rope was uncoiled. The lower end rested a good inch above the stage.

  Gloria gasped. The casting director drank hurriedly. Fergus, for some reason, stared curiously at the wolf.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen—oh, hang it, I do wish I had a boy to carve—Ozymandias the Great will ascend this rope into that land which only the users of the rope may know. Onward and upward! Be right back,” he added reassuringly to Wolf.

  His plump hands grasped the rope above his head and gave a little jerk. His knees swung up and clasped about the hempen pillar. And up he went, like a monkey on a stick, up and up and up—until suddenly he was gone.

  Just gone. That was all there was to it. Gloria was beyond even saying “Oh.” The casting director sat his beautiful flannels down on the filthy floor and gaped. Fergus swore softly and melodiously. And Wolf felt a premonitory prickling in his spine.

  The stage door opened, admitting two men in denim pants and work shirts. “Hey!” said the first. “Where do you think you are?”

  “We’re from Metropolis Pictures,” the casting director started to explain, scrambling to his feet.

  “I don’t care if you’re from Washington, we gotta clear this stage. There’s movies here tonight. Come on, Joe, help me get ’em out. And that pooch, too.”

  “You can’t, Fred,” said Joe reverentl
y, and pointed. His voice sank to an awed whisper. “That’s Gloria Garton—”

  “So it is. Hi, Miss Garton. Cripes, wasn’t that last one of yours a stinkeroo!”

  “Your public, darling,” Fergus murmured.

  “Come on!” Fred shouted. “Out of here. We gotta clean up. And you, Joe! Strike that rope!”

  Before Fergus could move, before Wolf could leap to the rescue, the efficient stagehand had struck the rope and was coiling it up.

  Wolf stared up into the flies. There was nothing up there. Nothing at all. Someplace beyond the end of that rope was the only man on earth he could trust to say Absarka! for him; and the way down was cut off forever.

  Wolfe Wolf sprawled on the floor of Gloria Garton’s boudoir and watched that vision of volupty change into her most fetching negligee.

  The situation was perfect. It was the fulfillment of all his dearest dreams. The only flaw was that he was still in a wolf’s body.

  Gloria turned, leaned over, and chucked him under the snout. “Wuzzum a cute wolf dog, wuzzum?”

  Wolf could not restrain a snarl.

  “Doesn’t um like Gloria to talk baby talk? Um was a naughty wolf, yes, um was.”

  It was torture. Here you are in your best-beloved’s hotel room, all her beauty revealed to your hungry eyes, and she talks baby talk to you! Wolf had been happy at first when Gloria suggested that she might take over the care of her costar pending the reappearance of his trainer—for none of them was quite willing to admit that “Mr. O. Z. Manders” might truly and definitely have vanished—but he was beginning to realize that the situation might bring on more torment than pleasure.

  “Wolves are funny,” Gloria observed. She was more talkative when alone, with no need to be cryptically fascinating. “I knew a Wolfe once, only that was his name. He was a man. And he was a funny one.”

  Wolf felt his heart beating fast under his gray fur. To hear his own name on Gloria’s warm lips…but before she could go on to tell her pet how funny Wolfe was, her maid rapped on the door.

  “A Mr. O’Breen to see you, madam.”

  “Tell him to go ’way.”

  “He says it’s important, and he does look, madam, as though he might make trouble.”

  “Oh, all right.” Gloria rose and wrapped her negligee more respectably about her. “Come on, Yog— No, that’s a silly name. I’m going to call you Wolfie. That’s cute. Come on, Wolfie, and protect me from the big, bad detective.”

  Fergus O’Breen was pacing the sitting room with a certain vicious deliberateness in his strides. He broke off and stood still as Gloria and the wolf entered.

  “So?” he observed tersely. “Reinforcements?”

  “Will I need them?” Gloria cooed.

  “Look, light of my love life.” The glint in the green eyes was cold and deadly. “You’ve been playing games, and whatever their nature, there’s one thing they’re not. And that’s cricket.”

  Gloria gave him a languid smile. “You’re amusing, Fergus.”

  “Thanks. I doubt, however, if your activities are.”

  “You’re still a little boy playing cops and robbers. And what boogeyman are you after now?”

  “Ha-ha,” said Fergus politely. “And you know the answer to that question better than I do. That’s why I’m here.”

  Wolf was puzzled. This conversation meant nothing to him. And yet he sensed a tension of danger in the air as clearly as though he could smell it.

  “Go on,” Gloria snapped impatiently. “And remember how dearly Metropolis Pictures will thank you for annoying one of its best box-office attractions.”

  “Some things, my sweeting, are more important than pictures, though you mightn’t think it where you come from. One of them is a certain federation of forty-eight units. Another is an abstract concept called democracy.”

  “And so?”

  “And so I want to ask you one question: Why did you come to Berkeley?”

  “For publicity on Fangs, of course. It was your sister’s idea.”

  “You’ve gone temperamental and turned down better ones. Why leap at this?”

  “You don’t haunt publicity stunts yourself, Fergus. Why are you here?”

  Fergus was pacing again. “And why was your first act in Berkeley a visit to the office of the German department?”

  “Isn’t that natural enough? I used to be a student here.”

  “Majoring in dramatics, and you didn’t go near the Little Theater. Why the German department?” He paused and stood straight in front of her, fixing her with his green gaze.

  Gloria assumed the attitude of a captured queen defying the barbarian conqueror. “Very well. If you must know—I went to the German department to see the man I love.”

  Wolf held his breath, and tried to keep his tail from thrashing.

  “Yes,” she went on impassionedly, “you strip the last veil from me, and force me to confess to you what he alone should have heard first. This man proposed to me by mail. I foolishly rejected his proposal. But I thought and thought—and at last I knew. When I came to Berkeley I had to see him—”

  “And did you?”

  “The little mouse of a secretary told me he wasn’t there. But I shall see him yet. And when I do—”

  Fergus bowed stiffly. “My congratulations to you both, my sweeting. And the name of this more than fortunate gentleman?”

  “Professor Wolfe Wolf.”

  “Who is doubtless the individual referred to in this?” He whipped a piece of paper from his sport coat and thrust it at Gloria. She paled and was silent. But Wolfe Wolf did not wait for her to reply. He did not care. He knew the solution to his problem now, and he was streaking unobserved for her boudoir.

  Gloria Garton entered the boudoir a minute later, a shaken and wretched woman. She unstoppered one of the delicate perfume bottles on her dresser and poured herself a stiff tot of whiskey. Then her eyebrows lifted in surprise as she stared at her mirror. Scrawlingly lettered across the glass in her own deep-crimson lipstick was the mysterious word

  ABSARKA

  Frowning, she said it aloud. “Absarka—”

  From behind a screen stepped Professor Wolfe Wolf, incongruously wrapped in one of Gloria’s lushest dressing robes.

  “Gloria dearest—” he cried.

  “Wolfe!” she exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing here in my room?”

  “I love you. I’ve always loved you since you couldn’t tell a strong from a weak verb. And now that I know that you love me—”

  “This is terrible. Please get out of here!”

  “Gloria—”

  “Get out of here, or I’ll sic my dog on you. Wolfie— Here, nice Wolfie!”

  “I’m sorry, Gloria. But Wolfie won’t answer you.”

  “Oh, you beast! Have you hurt Wolfie? Have you—”

  “I wouldn’t touch a hair on his pelt. Because, you see, Gloria darling, I am Wolfie.”

  “What on earth do you—” Gloria stared around the room. It was undeniable that there was no trace of the presence of a wolf dog. And here was a man dressed only in one of her robes and no sign of his own clothes. And after that funny little man and the rope…

  “You thought I was drab and dull,” Wolf went on. “You thought I’d sunk into an academic rut. You’d sooner have an actor or a G-man. But I, Gloria, am something more exciting than you’ve ever dreamed of. There’s not another soul on earth I’d tell this to, but I, Gloria, am a werewolf.”

  Gloria gasped. “That isn’t possible! But it does all fit in. What I heard about you on campus, and your friend with the funny beard and how he vanished, and, of course, it explains how you did tricks that any real dog couldn’t possibly do—”

  “Don’t you believe me, darling?”

  Gloria rose from the dresser chair and went into his arms. “I believe you, dear. And it’s wonderful! I’ll bet there’s not another woman in all Hollywood that was ever married to a werewolf!”

  “Then you will—”

>   “But of course, dear. We can work it out beautifully. We’ll hire a stooge to be your trainer on the lot. You can work daytimes, and come home at night and I’ll say that word for you. It’ll be perfect.”

  “Gloria…” Wolf murmured with tender reverence.

  “One thing, dear. Just a little thing. Would you do Gloria a favor?”

  “Anything!”

  “Show me how you change. Change for me now. Then I’ll change you back right away.”

  Wolf said The Word. He was in such ecstatic bliss that he hardly felt the pang this time. He capered about the room with all the litheness of his fine wolfish legs, and ended up before Gloria, wagging his tail and looking for approval.

  Gloria patted his head. “Good boy, Wolfie. And now, darling, you can just damned well stay that way.”

  Wolf let out a yelp of amazement.

  “You heard me, Wolfie. You’re staying that way. You didn’t happen to believe any of that guff I was feeding the detective, did you? Love you? I should waste my time! But this way you can be very useful to me. With your trainer gone, I can take charge of you and pick up an extra thousand a week or so. I won’t mind that. And Professor Wolfe Wolf will have vanished forever, which fits right in with my plans.”

  Wolf snarled.

  “Now, don’t try to get nasty, Wolfie darling. Um wouldn’t threaten ums darling Gloria, would ums? Remember what I can do for you. I’m the only person that can turn you into a man again. You wouldn’t dare teach anyone else that. You wouldn’t dare let people know what you really are. An ignorant person would kill you. A smart one would have you locked up as a lunatic.”

  Wolf still advanced threateningly.

  “Oh, no. You can’t hurt me. Because all I’d have to do would be to say the word on the mirror. Then you wouldn’t be a dangerous wolf anymore. You’d just be a man here in my room, and I’d scream. And after what happened on the campus yesterday, how long do you think you’d stay out of the madhouse?”

  Wolf backed away and let his tail droop.

  “You see, Wolfie darling? Gloria has ums just where she wants ums. And ums is damned well going to be a good boy.”

  There was a rap on the boudoir door, and Gloria called, “Come in.”

  “A gentleman to see you, madam,” the maid announced. “A Professor Fearing.”