The Werewolf HowlsBY CLIFFORD BALLThe men who were waiting for that wolf had silver bullets in their muskets.
Twilight had come upon the slopes of die vineyards, and a gentle, caressing breeze drifted through the open casement to stir into further disorder the papers upon the desk where Monsieur Etienne Delacroix was diligently applying himself. He raised his leonine bead, the hair of which had in his later years turned to gray, and stared vacantly from beneath bushy brows at the formation of a wind-driven cloud as if he thought that the passive elements of the heavens could, if they so desired, aid him in some momentous decision.
There was a light but firm tap on the door which led to the hall of the château. Monsieur Delacroix blinked as his thoughts were dispersed and, in some haste, gathered various documents together and thrust them into the maw of a large envelope before bidding the knocker to enter.
Pierre, his eldest son, came quietly into the room. The father felt a touch of the pride he could never quite subdue when Pierre approached, for he had a great faith in his son’s probity, as well as an admiration for the straight carriage and clear eye he, at his own age, could no longer achieve. Of late he had been resting a great many matters pertaining to the management of the Château Doré and the business of its vineyards, which supported the estate, on the broad shoulders poised before him.
But Etienne Delacroix had been born in a strict household and his habits fashioned in a stern school, and was the lineal descendant of ancestors who had planted their peasant’s feet, reverently but independently, deep into the soil of France; so visible emotions were to him a betrayal of weakness. There was no trace of the deep regard he felt for his son evident when he addressed the younger man.
“Where are your brothers? Did I not ask you to return with them?”
“They are here, Father. I entered first, to be certain that you were ready to receive us.”
“Bid them enter.”
Jacques and François came in to stand with their elder brother and were careful to remain a few inches in his tear; he was the acknowledged spokesman. Their greetings were spoken simultaneously; Jacques’ voice breaking off on a high note which caused him obvious embarrassment, for he was adolescent. Together, thought Monsieur Delacroix, they represented three important steps in his life, three payments on account to posterity. He was glad his issue had all been males; since the early death of his wife he had neither cared for any woman nor taken interest in anything feminine.
“I have here, my son, some papers of importance,” he announced, addressing Pierre. “As you observe, I am placing them here where you may easily obtain them in the event of my absence.” Suiting the action to the word, he removed the bulky envelope to a drawer in the desk and turned its key, allowing the tiny piece of metal to remain in its lock. “I am growing older”—his fierce, challenging eyes swept the trio as if he dared a possible contradiction—”and it is best that you are aware of these accounts, which are relative to the business of the château,”
“He flung back his head—whimpering,”
“Non, non!” chorused all three. “You are as young as ever, papa!”
“Sacre blue! Do you name me a liar, my children? Attend, Pierre!”
“Yes, papa.”
“I have work for you this night.”
The elder son’s forehead wrinkled. “But the work, it is over. Our tasks are completed. The workers have been checked, the last cart is in the shed——”
“This is a special task, one which requires the utmost diligence of you all. It is of the wolf.”
“The werewolf!” exclaimed Jacques, crossing himself.
The other brothers remained silent, but mingled expressions of wonder and dislike passed across their features. Ever since the coming of the wolf the topic of its depredations had been an unwelcome one in the household of the Château Doré.
“Mon Dieu, Jacques!” exploded the head of the house. “Have you, too, been listening to the old wives’ tales? Must you be such an imbecile, and I your father? Rubbish! There can be no werewolves; has not the most excellent Father Cromecq flouted such stones ten thousand times? It is a common wolf; a large one, true, but nevertheless a common mongrel, a beast from the distant mountain. Of its ferocity we are unfortunately well aware; so it must be dispatched with the utmost alacrity.”
“But, the workers say, papa, that there have been no wolves in the fields for more than a hundred——”
“Peste! The ever verbose workers! The animal is patently a vagrant, a stray beast driven from the mountains by the lash of its hunger. And I, Etienne Delacroix, have pronounced that it must die!”
The father passed a heavy hand across his forehead, for he was weary from his unaccustomed labor over the accounts. His hands trembled slightly, the result of an old nervous disorder. The fingers were thick, and blunt from the hardy toil of earlier years; the blue veins were still corded from the strength which he had once possessed.
“It is well,” said Pierre in his own level tones. “Since the wolf came upon and destroyed poor little Marguerite D’Estourie, tearing her throat to shreds, and the gendarmes who almost cornered it were unable to slap it because they could not shoot straight, and it persists in——”
“It slashed the shoulder of old Gavroche who is so feeble he cannot walk without two canes!” interrupted François, excitedly.
“——ravaging our ewes,” concluded the single-minded Pierre, who was not to be side-tracked once he had chosen his way, whether in speech or action. “The damage to our flocks has been great, papa. It is just that we should take action, since the police have failed. I have thought this wolf strange, too, although I place no faith in demons. If it but seeks food, why must it slay so wantonly and feed so little? It is indeed like a great, gray demon in appearance. Twice have I viewed it, leaping across the meadows in the moonlight, its long, gray legs hurling it an unbelievable distance at every bound. And Marie Polydore, of the kitchens, found its tracks only yesterday at the very gates of the château!”
“I have been told,” revealed Jacques, flinging his hands about in adolescent earnestness, “that the wolf is the beast-soul of one who has been stricken by the moon-demons. By day he is as other men, but by night, though he has the qualities of a saint he cannot help himself. Perhaps he is one with whom we walk and talk, little guessing his dreadful affliction.”
“Silence!” roared Monsieur Delacroix. One of his clenched fists struck the desk a powerful blow and the sons were immediately quieted. “Must I listen to the ranting and raving and driveling of fools and imbeciles? Am I not still the master of the Château Doré? I will tend to the accursed matter as I have always, will I not? I have always seen to the welfare of the dwellers in the shadow of the Château Doré! And with the help of the good God I shall continue to do so, until the last drop of my blood has dried away from my bones. You comprehend?”
In a quieter tone, after the enforced silence, he continued: “I have given orders to both the foreman and Monsieur the mayor that this night, the night of the full moon by which we may detect the marauder, all the people of the vineyards and of the town beyond must remain behind locked windows and barred doors. If they have obeyed my orders—and may the good God look after those who have not—they are even now secure in the safety of their respective homes. Let me discover but one demented idiot peeking from behind his shutter and I promise you he shall have cause to remember his disobedience!”
Pierre nodded without speaking, knowing he was being instructed to punish a possible, but improbable, offender. “Now, we are four intelligent men, I trust,” said Monsieur Delacroix, pretending not to notice the glow of pleasure which suffused Jacques’ features at being included in their number. “We are the Delacroix’s, which is sufficient. And as leaders we must, from time to time, grant certain concessions to the inferior mentalities of the unfortunate who dwell in ignorance; so I have this day promised the good foremen, who petitioned me regarding the activities of this wolf, to perform certain things. They firmly believe the gray wolf is a demon, an inhuman atrocity visited upon us by the Evil One. And also, according to their ancient but childish witchlore, that it may only be destroyed by a silver weapon.”
Monsieur Delacroix reached beneath his chair and drew forth a small, but apparently heavy, sack. Upending it on the surface of the desk, he scattered in every direction a double dozen glittering cylindrical objects.
“Bullets!” exclaimed Jacques.
“Silver bullets!” amended Pierre.
“Yes, my son. Bullets of silver which I molded myself in the cellars, and which I have shown to the men, with the promise that they will be put to use.”
“Expensive weapons,” commented the thrifty François.
“It is the poor peasant’s belief. If we slew tills wolf with mere lead or iron they would still be frightened of their own shadows and consequently worthless at their work, as they have been for the past month. Here are the guns. Tonight you will go forth, my sons, and slay this fabulous werewolf, and cast its carcass upon the cart-load of dry wood I have had piled by the vineyard road, and burn it until there is nothing left but the ash, for all to see and know.”
“Yes, papa,” Assented Pierre and François as one, but the boy Jacques cried: “What? So fine a skin? I would like it for the wall of my room! These who have seen the wolf say its pelt is like silver shaded into gray ”
“Jacques!”‘ Etienne Delacroix’s anger flooded his face with a great surge of red and bulging veins, and Pierre and François were stricken with awe at the sight of their father’s wrath.
“If you do not burn this beast as I say, immediately after slaying it, I will forget you are my son, and almost a man! I will ”
His own temper choked him into incoherency.
“I crave your pardon, father,” begged Jacques, humbled and alarmed. “I forgot myself.”
“We will obey, papa, as always,” said François, quickly, and Pierre gravely nodded.
“The moon will soon be up,” said Monsieur Delacroix, after a short silence. The room had grown dark while they talked; receiving a wordless signal from his father, Pierre struck a match and lit the blackened lamp on the desk. With the startling transition, as light leaped forth to dispel the murky shadows of the room, Pierre came near to exclaiming aloud at sight of the haggard lines in his father’s face. For the first time in his life he realized that what his parent had said earlier in the evening about aging was not spoken jocularly, not the repeated jest Monsieur Delacroix had always allowed himself, but the truth. His father was old.
“You had better go,” said Etienne Delacroix, as his keen eyes caught the fleeting expression on his son’s face. His fingers drummed a muffled tattoo upon the fine edge of his desk, the only sign of his nervous condition that he could not entirely control. “Monsieur the Mayor’s opinion is that the wolf is stronger when the moon is full. But it is mine that tonight it will be easier to discover.”
The three turned to the door, but as they reached the threshold Monsieur Delacroix beckoned to the eldest. “An instant, Pierre. I speak to you alone.”
The young man closed the door on his brothers’ backs and returned to the desk, his steady eyes directed at his father.
Monsieur Delacroix, for the moment, seemed to have forgotten what he intended to say. His head was bowed on his chest and the long locks of his ashen hair had fallen forward over his brow. Suddenly he sat erect, as if it took an immense effort of his will to perform the simple action, and again Pierre was startled to perceive the emotions which twisted his father’s features.
It was the first time he had ever seen tenderness there, or beheld love in the eyes he had sometimes, in secret, thought a little cruel.
“Have you a pocket crucifix, my son?”
“In my room.”
“Take it with you tonight. And—you will stay close to Jacques, will you not?” His voice was hoarse with unaccustomed anxiety. “He is young, confident, and—careless. I would not wish to endanger your good mother’s last child.”
Pierre was amazed. It had been fifteen years since he had last heard his father mention his mother.
“You have been a good son, Pierre. Obey me now. Do not let the three of you separate, for I hear this beast is a savage one and unafraid even of armed men. Take care of yourself, and see to your brothers.”
“Will you remain in the château for safety, papa? You are not armed.”
“I am armed by my faith in the good God and the walls of Château Doré. When you have lit the fire under the wolf’s body—I will be there.”
He lowered the leonine head once more, and Pierre, not without another curious look, departed.
For a long while Monsieur Delacroix sat immobile, his elbows resting on the padded arras of the chair, the palms of his hands pressing into his cheeks. Then he abruptly arose and, approaching the open casement, drew the curtains wide. Outside, the long, rolling slopes fell away toward a dim horizon already blanketed by the dragons of night, whose tiny, flickering eyes were winking into view one by one in the dark void above. Hurrying cloudlets scurried in little groups across the sky.
Lamps were being lit in the jumble of cottages that were the abodes of Monsieur Delacroix’s workmen, but at the moment the sky was illuminated better than the earth; for the gathering darkness seemed to ding like an animate thing to the fields and meadows, and stretch ebony claws across the ribbon of the roadway.
It was time for the moon to rise.
Monsieur Delacroix turned away from the casement and with swift, certain steps went to the door, opening it. The hall was still, but from the direction of the dining room there came a clatter of dishes as the servants cleared the table. Quickly, with an unusual alacrity for a man of his years, he silently traversed the floor of the huge hall and passed through its outer portals. A narrow gravel lane led him along the side of the château until he reached the building’s extreme corner, where he abandoned it to strike off across the closely clipped sward in the direction of a small clump of beech trees.
The night was warm and peaceful, with no threat of rain. A teasing zephyr tugged at the thick locks on his uncovered head; from somewhere near his feet came the chirp of a cricket.
In the grove it was darker until he came to its center, wending through and past the entangled thickets like one who had traveled the same path many times, and found the small glade that opened beneath the stars. Here there was more light again but no breeze at all. In the center of the glade was an oblong, grassy mound, and at one end of it a white stone, and on the stone the name of his wife.
Monsieur Delacroix stood for an instant beside the grave with lowered head, and then he sank to his knees and began to pray.
In the east the sky began to brighten as though some torch-bearing giant drew near, walking with great strides beyond the edge of the earth. The stars struggled feebly against the superior illumination, but their strength diminished as a narrow band of encroaching yellow fire appeared on the rim of the world.
With its arrival the low monotone of prayer was checked, to continue afterward with what seemed to be some difficulty. Monsieur Delacroix’s throat was choked, either with grief for the unchangeable past or an indefinable apprehension for the inevitable future. His breath came in struggling gasps and tiny beads of perspiration formed on his face and hands. His prayers became mumbled, jerky utterances, holding no recognizable phrases of speech. Whispers, and they ceased altogether.
A small dark cloud danced across a far-off mountain-top, slid furtively over the border of the land, and for a minute erased the yellow gleam from the horizon. Then, as if in terror, shaken by its own temerity, it fled frantically into oblivion, and the great golden platter of the full moon issued from behind the darkness it had left to deluge the landscape with a ceaseless shower of illusive atoms; tiny motes that danced the pathways of space.
Monsieur Delacroix gave a low cry like a child in pain. His agonized eyes were fixed on the backs of his two hands as he held them pressed against the dew-dampened sward. His fingers had begun to stiffen and curl at their tips; he could see the long, coarse hairs sprouting from the pores of his flesh — as he had many times within the past month since the night he had fallen asleep by the grave of his wife and slept throughout the night under the baleful beams of the moon.
He flung back his head, whimpering because of the terrible pressure he could feel upon his skull, and its shape appeared to alter so that it seemed curiously elongated. His eyes were bloodshot, and as they sank into their sockets his lips began to twitch over the fangs in his mouth.
The three brothers, crouching nervously in the shadows of the vineyards, started violently.
Jacques, the younger, almost lost his grasp on the gun with the silver bullets which his father had given him.
From somewhere nearby there had arisen a great volume of sound, swirling and twisting and climbing to shatter itself into a hundred echoes against the vault of the heavens, rushing and dipping and sinking into the cores of all living hearts and the very souls of men—the hunting-cry of the werewolf.
