I, Lycanthrope
The Curious Case Of The “Reverse Werewolf.”
I have accumulated a great many stories roaming this wide world over the last five centuries, but few are as strange as my encounter with the “Reverse Werewolf”. I say my encounter, although all of the salient communications with the bizarre and unfortunate fellow were carried out by my assistant at the time, Paulo Mancini.1
At the time I was en route with Paolo to the French countryside, Paolo eager to explore Europe beyond his well-trod homeland, and I desperate to evade capture at the hands of the Milanese Arch Bishop’s Swiss mercenaries. The men of arms had, if you will forgive the pun, hounded us all the way into the northern Alps, following even into the icy passes of the high mountains. Following in the footsteps of Hannibal, albeit in reverse, Paolo and I made creeping progress through the snowy caps, harried at every turn by the Bishop’s zealous forces.
It was on the twentieth night of our chase that the curse began to stir in my breast and the moon became full. The situation was quite dire, as I was not, at that time, capable of controlling my more vicious animal instincts while under the effect of the curse. My werewolf transformation was very much still a corruption of both the mind and the body. As a result, my great affection for Paolo notwithstanding, I was just as likely to tear him into small pieces when I transformed into Lycanthrope as I was any other unlucky interloper.
Given the tripartite risk the night exposed us to – the chill of the Alpine air, my own vicious beastly instincts, and the persistent encroaching of the Bishop’s soldiers – Paolo and I made a hasty choice. At the first sign of the stir in me, Paolo raced ahead over the mountainous path in search of a safe nook in which to bivouac for the evening. For my part, I sprinted back the way we came as fast as I was able, intent on both distancing myself from Paolo and, to be frank, good reader, on exposing our persistent enemies to my most destructive impulses.
As I’ve said, this period, near the end of the 18th century, was prior to both my greater meditative abilities and the current serums developed by the institute to maintain some semblance of human thought during the Lycanthropic transformation. As a result, my memory of the night’s events is blessedly limited. I remember standing over a great icy crevasse on an anomalously clear and frigid night when the final wisp of cloud passed across the full moon and the transformation began.
I do not, for the most part, remember the hunt. I can recount my terrible battle with the Bishop’s mercenary force only through my human recall of the frozen, bloody aftermath. The force had numbered about one dozen men, each well armed determined, and all well equipped to handle the mountain chase. I must have come upon them as they made camp, for in the cool light of the morning sun I saw the shredded canopies of several tents awash in blood, as well as several dismembered corpses beside a well constructed, still smoldering camp fire. I counted eleven dead that morning, and one, represented by a heavy trail of frozen blood which led to a cliffside, I deemed permanently missing.
All of this, however, is sidenote to the fabulously strange central player of this anecdote. At some point during the violent night – and this I remember well, as rarely but sometimes happens in the Lycanthropic form – I encountered a bizarre and unexpected creature. Although I cannot say for certain, I believe this must have been after my attack on the Swiss soldiers, when I roamed more slowly, sated in part by the hungry violence of that combat.
What I found out there in the cold passes of the Alps was a naked and desperate man, muscle bound and, despite his bare skin, unharmed by the unforgiving Alpine cold. He moved intermittently on both his two large feet and on all fours, hunched over and scampering. I believe his unique status must have been apparent to me by his scent, for I remember following the creature for some distance, both of us in a state of confusion, one over the nature of the other. Eventually, I tracked the naked, black-haired man to the mouth of a tight cave, the entrance of which was obscured from the primary trail. By that time the sun was beginning to rise and my curse to lift and, in that half-state of consciousness which comes upon the Lycanthrope as he begins his return to humanity, I had the wherewithal to sprint back to the scene of my massacre so as to better accoutre myself with winter gear in my more fragile human form.
After foraging through the packs of the dead Swiss, I hiked forward toward Paolo, who was waiting loyally about two miles ahead. During the forward hike, newly dressed in layered wool and carrying a large pack of profitable loot, I did spy on my trail a black furred mountain wolf. The sensitivity of Lycanthropic scent still upon my nostrils, I found the wolf’s odor remarkably familiar, though I could not place it with precision in my memory. As the creature appeared not to have violent intentions, I allowed it to follow at a distance of several hundred feet behind.
So it did, dear reader, not only for a few thousand feet, but for the next several weeks. Even as Paolo and I made our way out of the mountain passes and back onto flat and arable soil, still our strange friend followed on our tail. The behavior was very unlike any mountain wolf either of us had ever encountered or read about, and some instinct of mine told me that the strange travel companion held a secret worth waiting to discover.
The odd wolf followed even to the next full moon. By then we were able to find boarding in a well-constructed tavern with an offset cellar available for rent, one of those small and often unwanted basement rooms abutting an underground larder. Barred by a heavy wooden door, which as the only entrance in or out, the room was, however, perfect for our unique needs.
It was as I spent the evening manacled underground, awaiting the end of the spell, that Paolo finally unearthed the secret of our wolfen follower. By that time we had enamored the wolf to our company, feeding it scraps of meat and generally developing into full travel companions. As a result, the wolf tended to stay nearby camp during the night. It was while Paolo camped outside the entrance to my ersatz underground jail, the wolf pacing the ground nearby, that he witnessed the most unexpected and, to this day, unreplicated transformation.
No sooner had the full moon revealed itself in the sky, no sooner, from the basement apartment, did my own pathetic howling begin to emanate, than the odd wolf itself began to morph into a new and bizarre form. It’s hind legs grew straight and long, its front legs tapered and muscular, paws contorting into toes and fingers respectively. Its chest expanded in crunching fits and starts and the soft fur of its belly twisted and stretched until it rippled with the lightly haired abdominal muscles of a well-built hulk of a man.
Paolo watched in a state of mixed fear and amazement, as the wolf transformed into the very black haired man I had seen roaming the Alps on all fours.
Whereas the conventional Lycanthropic transformation results in a pointed loss of intelligence, the wolf’s curse – if it could be called a curse – was quite the opposite. Paolo found that he was able, in a halting and simple manner of course, to interact calmly with the wolf-man. Over the course of the evening, after dressing the man in several draped blankets, Paolo was even able to cajole a name from the odd fellow, who identified himself only as “Lon.”
As the night progressed, the man revealed a simple understanding of the Italian language. The man-wolf’s story was, I must admit, the strangest I have ever heard and absolutely biologically unique in the history of Lycanthropy. Apparently, while still in his natural wolfen form, Lon once encountered, several years earlier, a feral Lycanthrope – that is one of the unbridled killers who roam the wide world without restraint, freely wreaking havoc during their transformations. This errant werewolf assaulted Lon on a high mountain pass. The werewolf’s bite festered at first, as it often does, and it appeared to Lon that he would die. However, in time, this did not occur. Instead, the wound slowly healed and Lon, not yet having assumed that name of course, felt himself lucky.
It was only on the next full moon that Lon discovered the true effect of the bite. Whereas the Lycanthropic curse usually turns man into a mindless beast, somehow it had a reverse effect on Lon, turning beast into thoughtful and well-reasoned man. Over the next few years, Lon would come down from the mountains when the moon was full and interact with passing travelers, eager to soak up their knowledge of the world, only to recede into the wilds of the Alps after the rising of the sun.
This tale Paolo did accept wholeheartedly and with no small amount of excitement. There could be no doubt as to its veracity, seeing as Paolo did the transformation first hand. As the sun rose that evening and Lon transformed back into a placid but untamed wolf, Paolo breached the locked basement door and told me what had happened.
Over the next few weeks, we discussed how best to medically assess Lon, especially given my own inability to be involved, seeing as I and Lon would always be simultaneously in the throes of our relative afflictions. Sadly, our best-laid plans were never brought to fruition as, having followed us down into the low country, Lon had exposed himself to a more banal danger than either he, Paolo, or I had ever considered.
It was Paolo who encountered Lon’s skinned corpse roped to the carriage of a local sheep herder, Lon’s thin musculature revealed in its awful nakedness, his black satin fur splayed out beside him. The arrow in Lon’s haunch bespoke a slow, painful death, as often befell errant wolves who came down from the mountains and hunted men’s sheep. The herder, of course, was well within his rights as a landowner, and despite our outrage, neither Paolo nor I could say a word against him, let alone explain the true nature of the incredible beast he had slaughtered.
In the over two hundred years since encountering Lon, I have neither seen nor heard report of similar wolven transformations. It appears that Lon was a complete genetic anomaly and it pains me to no end that he was put down in such an untimely and unforgiving manner. As a result, we will never know what mysteries Lon may have revealed about the nature of the Lycanthropic curse, or whether he held in his blood a potential cure to this most invidious of plagues.
- At the risk of alienating my current staff at the institute, I must nonetheless admit that Paolo was the best assistant I ever had the pleasure of employing. We met in Milan in 1782, Paolo an over-eager young man of science, and I still wary to reveal my true nature to anyone at all. Paolo was the first human to win my total trust and, in time, beyond serving me with admirable loyalty, he also became one of my truest friends.
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