The Howling III (4 page)

Then the lost time was over and he was back. Back in the forest. Back in Drago. But it was not the same. The days were troubled, and the nights full of danger. Malcolm was apart from the others of the village. They possessed some secret knowledge that had been withheld from him. Knowledge wondrous and terrible; knowledge he must have. This much he learned when he was brought before Derak, the leader of the village.

Malcolm could not even guess at the age of Derak. Not old, certainly. Not in years. Yet it seemed he had always been there. Derak was strong and vigorous, but there was in his eyes something older than time.

The house where Derak lived was small. It was his alone. The other people of Drago lived in groups - four, or six, or eight of them to a house. Derak lived alone because he was the leader.

Sometimes a woman stayed there with him. Malcolm seemed to remember a woman from before. When he was little. The woman was dark and lithe, and smelled of warm wild flowers. Her eyes were the same deep shade of green as Malcolm’s. She was gone now. He wondered about her, but he was too timid to ask.

Malcolm felt ill at ease sitting alone with Derak on a sofa in the small house. He perspired, and he did not know what to do with his hands. Derak smiled. When he spoke his voice was soft, but Malcolm could sense the strength within the man. A strength that could have broken Malcolm like a dry twig had he wanted to do so.

“Relax, boy,” said Derak, as though he had read Malcolm’s thoughts. “I’m not going to hurt you. No one here will hurt you. This is your home. Do you understand that?”

“Y-yes.”

“Good. I suppose you want to know why you have been brought back.”

“I don’t even know why I was sent away.”

“It is the way of our life. You have seen, I suppose, that there are no children in Drago, except the very young.”

“Yes.”

“You too were here when you were very young.”

“I remember. A little bit.”

“A child reaches an age where he asks questions.

Questions with answers he is not ready for. When that time comes we have to send him away. To the outside, where he can learn about the world out there. When he is ready to know about us and about Drago, we bring him back.”

“Am I ready now to know those things?”

Derak smiled at him. A strange, sad smile. “You are more than ready, Malcolm.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Have things been happening to you? To your body? Things you can’t explain?”

“Y-yes. Sometimes… in the night.”

“It is usually in the night at first. Or when you are afraid. Or hurt. Or very angry. We always try to bring the child back and explain these things to him before the changes occur. Because of troubles here, we could not bring you back at your proper time. So you are late, Malcolm, through no fault of your own. You have already experienced some of the things that will happen to you, things which you cannot understand.”

“Will there be more?”

“Oh, yes. Much, much more.”

The boy’s throat constricted with the rush of emotions. Finally he got out, “Why?”

“It will all be explained to you, Malcolm. Who you are, what you are. What we all are, and what our lives must be.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. There is a ceremony. Nothing big, just our people - your people - gathering around you to show you our secrets, and teach you our ways. You will spend tonight alone. After tomorrow, you will know who you are, and you will never be alone again.”

“Why do I have to wait? Why can’t we do it now?”

Derak looked out the window at the deepening shadows. “Tonight there is something else we have to do. After tomorrow all of our lives will be changed. You will join us then.”

There was a finality in Derak’s tone that would permit no further discussion. Malcolm was taken to a small cabin at the edge of the village. There was a low cot of wood and canvas with a woollen blanket, a single candle for illumination, and nothing more. The door closed behind Malcolm, and he was alone.

*****

He could hear them outside, the people of Drago, as they walked toward the big building at the centre of the village. The big building was sometimes a barn, and sometimes a meeting hall. And there were times of celebration when the people danced and the music was something to hear. Tonight there was no music. The voices of the people as they walked were sombre and subdued. Malcolm lay awake, shivering, on the stretched canvas of the cot and waited.

*****

Inside the building Derak stood in the centre of the wooden floor. The others entered and took their places in a circle around the leader. The quiet talk among them faded and finally died as they waited for Derak to speak.

“My friends… my family. We have lived in Drago without trouble for many years. Longer than our people might have hoped when first they settled here. Our history is not one of places, it is one of movement. From the Carpathians to the Urals to the Andes. From the icy lands of the far north to the steaming jungles of the equator. Always there comes a time when we are forced to move on. Here in Drago we have lived well, but it is over. Now we must move again. There are people, outsiders, who suspect what we are. They fear us, and in their fear they will try to destroy us. As always before, that means we must go.” Derak turned slowly and looked at the people ranged around him in a circle. Shadows from the flickering lanterns danced and skittered over their faces.

“But before we go,” Derak said, “we will give them something to remember.”

And he began to change.

Derak tore the shirt from his back and flexed the powerful muscles of his shoulders. His chest swelled and cracked as the bony structure within reshaped itself. His lips drew back to show the strong yellow teeth. The killing teeth.

Around him the others followed the lead of Derak. They threw off their clothes while their bodies twisted and stretched in a jerking dance of metamorphosis. The faces, human a moment before, thinned and lengthened. The ears grew, the noses pushed forward into muzzles. Short, coarse hair sprouted on their bodies. The hair spread, thickened into fur. The human voices became low, muttering growls. And there was the howling.

Malcolm sat suddenly upright on his cot in the small cabin. The candle flame guttered and died in a whisper of the night wind that seeped through cracks in the walls. The voices howling in the night were strange and frightening, yet they touched something deep within the boy. They spoke to him in a language he did not know. They called him. He longed to go to them.

Then there were other sounds. The scrape of heavy-booted feet, a crunch of brush, muttered curses. Malcolm began to sweat. He stared into the darkness, fearful of something he could hot define.

Inside the barn of a building, they heard the other sounds too late. There was a heavy scrape and a thud as the door was barred from the outside. Those within froze for a moment in wild attitudes of change… half-human, half-beast. They sniffed the air and caught the scent of men outside, then the biting odour of raw gasoline. An instant later, in a blast of heat and light, the barn was afire.

Panic.

Three ways a werewolf can die. By a weapon of silver. By fire. And a third way that was never spoken of. The fire was all around them, and the fire was death.

Inside the barn was hell. Humans, wolves, creatures in all stages between stumbled into the beams and crashed against the blistering walls searching for an escape. Their voices mingled in an outcry of agony and rage. Twisted muzzles pushed through the boards of the walls for air, but were seared and sizzled by the flames outside. Claws scratched frantically at the wood. The men with the torches had done their work well. The building was surrounded by a wall of flame.

Some of the creatures in the barn broke through to the outside, their misshapen bodies ablaze, and ran till they dropped in a blazing, screaming heap. The men with the torches watched grimly as they died.

Most stayed inside the building. They huddled together as the flames leapt up the walls and across the roof. Their terrible jaws gaped in helpless rage. The blazing roof fell, and the screaming stopped.

But not all of them died. A few got away. A few always get away.

*****

At the sound of the agonized howling and the furnace blast of the burning barn, Malcolm bolted from his cot and stumbled out into the inferno that had been his village. Men ran from house to house with cans of gasoline and blazing torches. One after another they were set on fire.

For some time Malcolm stood in frozen horror. The shrieks of the dying were all around him. The smell of the dead made him retch. His body twitched and jumped of its own volition. The smells around him were keener, his night vision sharper than ever in his life. The message was clear in his mind.

Run!

And Malcolm ran. Away from the carnage of Drago. He was faster and stronger than ever he dreamed he could be. The forest was his as he loped through the brush, darting among the trees, leaping easily over any obstruction. Faster and faster he ran, putting the night and the forest between him and the blazing ruin of Drago. He ran in a deep crouch, his hands sometimes clutching at the ground, helping to pull him along. In the midst of his grief at the loss of his village and his people, Malcolm felt something else. Freedom. Freedom and power.

*****

On the other side of the burned-out village, on the crest of a hill, a huge, wolflike figure looked down on the dying flames. Its fur was singed, and a ragged gash from a splintered board ran the length of the animal’s side. The wound would soon heal; the anger would remain.

If he had escaped, there would be others, too. To help them survive he must find them and bring them together. He was the leader.

Derak pointed his muzzle to the sky. The cruel teeth gleamed in the moonlight. He tested the air. There was the acrid smell of burning flesh and fur. The bite of gasoline. The sweaty stink of the men. And there was the familiar scent of the others, those who had escaped… and somewhere in the night forest… his son.

Miles away, moving swiftly in the other direction, Malcolm paused and raised his head to listen to the howling.

The forest took him in. It sheltered him from the night and hid him from the men who shouted and cursed as they crashed through the brush searching out the few survivors of Drago. In the morning the shouts were farther away. The smell of smoke still hung in the air. The sun was a pale disk behind a curtain of cloud. Malcolm rested and realized he was terribly thirsty. His instinct was to cry, but he did not. Instead he set out to find water, and the forest showed him where to look. There were shallow pools from the last rain, hollowed-out stumps that held enough to drink, and half-hidden streams that a man could miss if he did not stop to look.

Food was easier. Pine-nuts were plentiful, and there were wild blackberries and grapes. The leaves and stalks of goosefoot, and the fleshy green purslaine were tough and chewy, but they gave him nourishment. Sometimes he ate things that cramped his stomach and doubled him up in pain, but soon he learned which foods to avoid and which would give him the strength to go on.

But to go where? Everything that he had known was behind him, burned. Destroyed. Gone. He had no destination. The days passed. And the nights. He stopped counting. Sometimes Malcolm could hear the men in the woods. They were still out there stalking him. And he could smell them. Smell the acrid sweat of the hunter. The men were clumsy in the woods, and slow-moving compared to the boy. Still, he could not risk discovery. The men had guns. Malcolm well remembered what the men had done to his village. To his people.

By night he moved, restlessly and without destination, sustained only by the conviction that he must keep moving. During the day, when he would be more easily seen by the searchers, he rested under a simple lean-to constructed of boughs. It was an aimless existence, and a gnawing ache grew in Malcolm’s heart. Somewhere, he felt, there was a place for him, could he but find it.

The growing ache was not only in his heart. For the first time in his life Malcolm knew hunger. Real hunger. The edible plants he found in the forest, the berries, the roots, the bark stripped from tender saplings, these were enough to keep him alive, but he was never completely free from hunger. Hunger for meat. It was a pain that never left him. A pain that grew worse every day.

Then one morning in desperation he snatched at a squirrel that sat on a stump regarding him curiously, Malcolm was surprised at the ease with which he caught the little creature. He killed it quickly, tore away the fur as best he could with his hands, and devoured it. He ripped the raw flesh from the tiny bones with his teeth. The meat was rank and tough, but it was better than bark.

Soon Malcolm discovered he was quick enough to run down and catch other small animals with his hands. Opossums, raccoons, once even a small deer. The streams were not deep enough to provide fish, but there were frogs to be taken. Malcolm’s muscles grew lean and hard in his hunting exertions. His teeth white, his jaw strong enough to crack a bone.

There was no question of making a fire to cook the meat once he had caught it. Malcolm carried no matches, and a fire would surely attract the men. At first he had to force himself to gag down the raw meat, still warm from the living blood, but he learned. Before long, to his surprise, he liked it best that way.

The days stretched out, one indistinguishable from the next. During the nights he continued his aimless travels. Once he circled back to where the village of Drago had been. Nothing was left but ashes. Everything gone. Everyone dead. Malcolm never went back again.

And yet Malcolm sensed he was not alone. They were out there somewhere, others of his kind, running and hiding just as he was. He longed to find them, join them, but he did not know how. Sometimes in the night he could hear the howling. And he cried.

The nights grew colder. During the days it rained often. Malcolm learned to make a more sturdy shelter of evergreen boughs, overlapping them so the needles pointed downward and formed a run-off for the rainwater. He sat cramped for long cold hours in his shelters, hugging his knees and shivering.