What I am about to tell you is the truth. It isn’t my story, but that of someone I met a month ago; he entrusted me with it and so here it is. This is how he told me his story…
“So you want to know how this is possible, how this can happen. I can’t answer you because I do not know. All I know is that it does happen. It will happen tonight as it happens for the three nights of every full moon. Tonight I will become … something unholy. I will become Beast. I will become Wolf. And you will keep me company.”
“Why me?” I asked him.
“Why not?”
“Do you think I’m afraid?”
“No. I think you are different.”
“How different?”
“Because you understand. You accept that these things are ‘out there’. That is what you say is it not?” That such things as I are ‘out there’? In your dark moments, when you write your stories of horror, when your words fall onto virgin paper, taking away its innocence, deflowering the whiteness with tales that chill the soul, that is what you believe. It is what drives you. It is what you want from me, is it not? A story to tell. A story to sell. Well, here is my story. A true story. You will be my scribe. You will write it as I tell it and I have no doubt that you will be acknowledged as the author, and only you and I will know the truth.”
“The truth?”
“Don’t toy with me scribe. You know what I am. You know it to the core of your being. Must I say it? Or shall I simply show you? Ah, you go pale at the thought. Then I am right and you do know. Perhaps it is too high a price for a story.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but this has been done. And the sequel. And the movie.”
“Then you will do it again. Only this time Nosferatu has no place in it. This time, it is I, Wolf.”
“Publishers won’t go for it. There’s a possible law suit in there somewhere.”
“Ha! Then to quote the Duke of Wellington, ‘Publish and be damned!”
“Damnation wasn’t my intention,” I replied.
“I am tired of this. Either you write my story or damnation will seem like a pleasant alternative.”
“So now you threaten me. Or is it rather that in some way, I threaten you? Because I’m not afraid.”
“But you are afraid. I can sense it. I can smell it. And unless you are very stupid, and I doubt that, I will be disappointed. Will I be disappointed, Scribe?”
“No. Will I be food for your appetite?”
“Enough of this playing with words. My time is short. Soon I will lose my grip on sanity. Already I can feel the pull of the moon. Already I can feel the subtle changes that will soon rage through my body until ‘I’ am no longer. Until there is only Wolf.”
“Will there be nothing left of you at all? Will there be no spark of humanity left? How can you be sure? Perhaps wanting to tell your story means that somewhere inside this thing you become there is still the flickering of a human soul?”
“Perhaps. You can be the judge. Are you ready? Or shall we carry on this way until it is too late?”
“Can I ask questions, or shall I just listen?”
“As long as your questions are relevant and they do not provoke me.”
“I will try and remember that, though as we speak I can see something happening to your eyes, every now and then they glint of burnished amber.”
“It is the first sign. It begins and so must we. My name isPierre. I was born just outsideToulouseforty five years ago. I do not remember much of my childhood. Suffice it to say, it was unremarkable. It was as a teenager that things happened that would shape my life forever. And I apologise for the dreadful pun, it was unintended. There is nothing funny about what happened to me then, or since then.”
“I was a raw and innocent youth, desperately seeking my first encounter with love, or sex, whichever came first. I would like to believe it was love that drew me to her, but if I am honest, it was sex. She knew I was looking at her, I couldn’t help it. She was beautiful.
She knew I was an innocent and it seemed to amuse her to be the one to change that, and I … I simply wanted her. I didn’t know then that I would regret the price I was to pay. She took me to her apartment on the outskirts of the city and gave me wine. We stood on her balcony looking at the fullest moon that I had ever seen. I could see it reflected in her eyes. Amber orbs that permitted me nothing yet denied me nothing.
She loved me with an animal intensity that drove my will and my reason from me. Remember I had never before been with a woman, I had no reason to fear her then. Afterwards, when I was calmer and we lay still in each others embrace with the moonlight bathing her perfect body I realised with my returning sanity that it wasn’t over.
She looked at me with her amber eyes, and without warning she began to change. Her silky hair seemed coarse and heavy, and before my eyes began sprouting all over her body, her arms, her face.”
“Why didn’t you run?” Why stay?” I asked, breathless.
“Why don’t you run? Like you, I had to know. I needed to see. I watched as her fine aquiline nose pushed outwards above her jaw becoming the snout of a beast. I watched as her mouth revealed to me the slavering jaws of a wolf. I listened to her screams as her muscles contracted violently in spasm, changing her shape until she could no longer stand.”
“And still you stayed there? Were you insane?”
“Insane. Yes. I believe it was insanity. I was mad with fear as moments before I had been mad with lust. They seemed one and the same at the time. And I didn’t believe she would harm me.”
I was emboldened to ask him, “Was that the arrogance of youth or its ignorance?”
His face was stern and there was a fire in his eyes. “You tread a fine line, Scribe. Have some respect for me, or I may forget that I want you to live, to tell my story.”
I was chastened but had to continue my questions. “I’m sorry, but why did you think that she wouldn’t harm you? I know that I would have been out of there long before then.”
“Would you? We shall wait and see. She looked at me with her wolf eyes, unable to communicate in any other way. I felt a responsibility for her somehow, she wanted something from me.”
“Dinner, perhaps?”
“I am here telling you my story am I not? She had no intention of killing me, and she could have done so in an instant. No, she wanted compassion and understanding. And she wanted a companion. You see the passion of the wolf is enough; one doesn’t need to be savaged by them. I tried to tell her that I did understand but my words would not come out and in that moment I failed her. Will you fail me, Scribe? Many have done so.”
“I’m not the first then that you have told your story to?”
“Now who walks between arrogance and ignorance, hmm? Of course you are not the first. I have entrusted my story to better writers than you, but their fear outweighed their eloquence. So I have chosen one whose writing skills are mediocre but whose acceptance is unconditional.”
“Your hair is changing, growing longer and more coarse.”
“Yes, see how it grows on my hands and arms, and beneath these clothes it covers my body too. Now look, do you see my face changing?”
“Then the legend is true and the were-beast is fact. You are a were-wolf. You can no longer speak through your mouth but I see your need in your eyes. You were right, I can’t leave. I have to see, but please remember, if you can, that I am to be the instrument. I can’t tell your story if I’m chopped liver. Do you need to feed? Shall I come with you? Why are you looking at me that way? I don’t believe you mean to harm me, but why do your eyes burn like that?”
“I don’t know if you can still understand me, if there is still a part of you that remains human inside the body of the wolf, I want you to now that I do understand. Now, I understand.”
… I met Pierre exactly one month ago today. I have to go now his story is written, the moon is rising and I feel a burning deep inside and the night is calling me. The moon is calling me. I am hungry.
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