The Howling

Chapter Fifteen

Karyn stood gazing down at Roy as he slept. He had been so exhausted when he came in last night that she decided not to wake him. His sleep was restless. He wore a troubled frown, and his body twitched in rhythm to some vivid dream.

Karen only left him when Inez Polk arrived. Her arms were laden with books and folders that contained old newspaper clippings. Karyn met her at the door and helped carry the books inside and set them on the table. She turned then and took Inez' hands in her own.

"I'm glad you're here," she said. "So many things have happened."

Inez' long homely face broke into a smile. "I'm glad I'm here too. Now, let's sit down and you can tell me what's been going on."

Karyn poured out what remained of the coffee, and they sat down at the table. Inez listened attentively as Karyn related the events of the past few days. She told of finding Lady's remains in the woods, and about the young backpackers who had spent the day with her, then walked away to an unknown fate. She described Anton Gadak's evasiveness when she asked about the van. Finally she told of the huge wolf that had sat outside the house last night, how she had fired at it and wounded it, and how Roy had gone looking for it afterward but found no trace.

"What's your feeling now?" Inez asked when Karyn had finished her story. "Are you ready to talk about a werewolf?"

Karyn took a moment before she replied. "I'm ready to accept the possibility, yes. Every logical bone in my body rejects the idea, but I can't forget the look of that… that thing in front of my house last night. It was much too big and too, well, malevolent to be a natural wolf. Altogether too many unexplained things have been happening. If you tell me there is a werewolf, I'll listen."

Inez arranged the books and papers neatly in front of her and adjusted her glasses. "The first thing we must be sure of is that we understand what we're dealing with. How much do you know about werewolves, Karyn?"

"Not an awful lot. They're something like vampires, aren't they?"

"Not at all," Inez said briskly. "The vampire is a dead creature that sustains a form of life by subsisting on human blood. A vampire may continue in this undead state for hundreds of years. The werewolf, on the other hand, is as much alive as you or me. Its lifespan is no greater than normal, and when once they die, they are dead forever. There are, of course, certain similarities. When he assumes the wolf form, the werewolf, like the vampire, has a strength far beyond normal, and ordinary weapons cannot destroy him."

"Is there no defense against them?" Karyn asked. "Garlic at the windows? A cross?"

"No, those are weapons against the vampire. Only two things can destroy the werewolf — one is fire, the other silver."

"Oh, yes, the silver bullet."

Inez permitted herself a thin smile. "I guess that's the one everybody knows."

"One thing here doesn't fit with what I've heard of werewolves. During the past weeks I've either heard or seen something almost every night. Aren't they supposed to come out only during the full moon?"

"Oh, no, they can change any night once the sun has gone down. But let me start at the beginning."

Speaking with quiet intensity, Inez related the history and the nature of werewolves. Frequently she referred to the stack of books she had brought. Among them were The Book of Were-Wolves by Sabine Baring-Gould, Lycanthropy in London by Dudley Costello, The Cult of the Werewolf in Europe by Lewis Spence, and The Werewolf by Montague Summers. There were books in French — Le Loup-Garou de Provence; German — Volkssagen aus Pommern und Rugen; and Latin — Malleus Maleficarum. And other books in languages Karyn did not recognize.

Inez showed Karyn passages dealing with cases of werewolfism over the years, some documented, some legendary. There was the notorious Peter Stubbe, tried and executed in 1590 for a series of bloody killings near Cologne while in the form of a wolf. There was the doomed crew of the Spanish vessel Louisa that met a ghastly fate on the Aegean island of Skiathos, said to be infested with werewolves. There was the lost Bulgarian village of Dradja where the crudest torture by an avenging mob could not force the villagers to give up the killer beast that dwelt among them.

Most of the stories dated from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but there were reports of werewolves as early as the writings of Herodotus in 450 B.C., and as recently as the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1959.

"The local newspaper clippings you can go over yourself," Inez said. "The earliest I could find was in 1919. Altogether, there have been sixteen reported deaths or disappearances in this valley with no logical explanation. Your two young friends with the van would make eighteen."

"Still," Karyn said, "that's more than fifty years, and this is a wilderness area where a lot of things can happen to people."

"Those are only the reported cases. I know of at least two that never made the papers."

"Oh?"

"Has anyone told you what happened to the people who lived in this house before you?"

"The Fennos? No."

"It was just over four years ago. The old people hadn't been seen in town for a week or so, and there were inquiries. Your friend Anton Gadak came out to investigate. He found the two of them dead. Supposedly, natural causes."

"That's not so strange. The Fennos were quite old, weren't they?"

"There's more. About a week later one of my pupils, a little boy whom I've never known to lie, told me that he and a friend had sneaked into the house to look around. They found it all torn up, with dried blood everywhere, and bits of flesh and bone scattered about. The boys hadn't said anything at first for fear of getting into trouble."

"Did you report it?"

"I told the boy to tell his parents. He did, and they reported it to the county sheriff. The sheriff sent a couple of men out to look the house over, but they found nothing unusual. They put it down to the child's active imagination."

"But you don't think so," Karyn put in.

"No. I think somebody came in here after the boys saw it and cleaned up."

The women sat without speaking for several minutes. Finally Karyn said, "All right, what do we do now? Try to convince someone in authority that there's a werewolf loose in Drago?"

Inez smiled wryly. "What do you think our chances would be?"

"Pretty slim," Karyn admitted. "But there must be something we can do."

"Wait a minute, maybe there is." Inez was suddenly sitting on the edge of her chair. "You wounded the wolf last night?"

"That's right. I hit him — it — in the face with the shotgun. It tore off an ear, I think."

"Good. You see, when a werewolf is wounded, it can change back to human form, but it will have an identical injury. Their wounds heal unnaturally fast, but if you can find them soon enough it's a giveaway."

When Karyn looked doubtful, Inez referred again to her books. She quoted the story of a traveler through Wales who was attacked by a wolf, but managed to hack off one of the beast's paws and escape. The next morning he was horrified to see his landlady at the inn with fresh bandages covering the stump of her right hand. And the notorious Parenette Gandillon, after villagers with clubs had driven off a wolf, was found moaning in her bed covered with bruises.

"Assuming these old reports are accurate," Inez concluded, "what we must do is look for someone in Drago with a missing ear."

"And suppose we find him," Karyn said. "What then?"

Inez started to answer, but hesitated at the sound of someone moving around in the bedroom.

"It's Roy," Karyn said. "Do you think we should tell him?"

Inez shrugged noncommittally as Roy came into the room pulling a sweater on over his head. "Hullo, Inez," he said. Then, to Karyn, "Is there any coffee?"

"I can make a new pot."

"Never mind. Fresh air is what I really need."

"Roy, can we talk to you about something?"

"Will it keep? I'm still groggy from last night. If I jog down the road and back it might wake me up."

Karyn hesitated a moment. "Go ahead. It's not important."

"I'll see you later." He went out the door, and they heard him trot off across the clearing and down the road.

"I just couldn't tell him," Karyn said. "Not yet."

"All right," said Inez.

Karyn clapped her hands together and stood up. "I guess it's you and me, pal. Let's head for town and find the guy with only one ear."