Lycanthropos (9 page)

The guard finished lighting the cell and making certain
that the camera was ready, and then nothing remained to be done but wait. Schlacht considered sending one of the guards for more schnapps, but then decided against it. He smoked a few cigarettes and took a perverse delight in blowing the smoke in Weyrauch's direction so as to make him cough. No one spoke as the minutes crawled by. One guard stood beside the
door, his Schmeisser MP 40 submachine gun held at the ready,
while the other stood behind the tripod, waiting for
Schlacht to tell him to begin filming. Schlacht stood on one
side of the tripod and Weyrauch, much against his wishes,
stood on the other. They both were watching Kaldy carefully. Louisa sat upon a wooden chair near the door, not wishing at
all to be present, but refusing to give her cousin the
satisfaction of hearing her make a request of him
permission to leave.

At five forty-one the sun set, and the full moon,
partially hidden by clouds, was visible through the small
window near the ceiling of the cell.

At six o'clock, Janos
Kaldy began to scream.

"Begin," Schlacht said softly, and the S.S. guard began
to turn the camera crank,

Kaldy's face contorted in agony and his body began to
shake and tremble as if waves of pain were washing over it. His screams continued incessantly, and Louisa held her hands
over her ears to block them out. The Gypsy fell from the
stool onto the cold stone floor, doubled over into a
fetal position, and then emitted another shriek of agony as
his arms and legs thrashed wildly about. The sound of crunching bone mingled with his screams, and both Schlacht and Weyrauch leaned forward, openmouthed, disbelieving the
evidence of their own eyes.

Kaldy was changing.

The change was at first very subtle, an almost imperceptible elongation of his arms attended by the same sound of bone scraping against bone. His shoulders swelled as if they were being filled with liquid, but then rippling muscles pushed out on his arms and back and chest. His black eyes grew yellow and luminescent, and the
agonized, painfully human look of desperation in them began
to flicker and weaken, began to be replaced by something unearthly, hellish. Kaldy's legs seemed to pull
upward slightly as if compensating for the elongation of his
arms, and then thick brown hair burst from
every inch of his skin. Kaldy threw himself up onto his
knees and faced his captors, but his face did not long
remain his own. Blood poured from his mouth as long fangs
thrust upward from his lower jaw and down from his
upper; his lips disappeared beneath the hairy muzzle which grew downward from the squat, moist nostrils; and a long,
canine tongue flicked out over the fangs.

Kaldy screamed once more; and then, as the last spark of human intelligence in his eyes died, he began to growl.

The creature...for Kaldy it was no longer...stood and gazed at the humans on the other side of the cell bars with undisguised, aggressive, hate-filled appetite. For
a moment, no one moved. Weyrauch, Schlacht and the guards stared at the creature, their only movement being that of
the one guard cranking the camera. Behind them Louisa
whispered, "God have mercy!"

Her words seemed the catalyst to action. The creature
threw itself against the bars, once, twice, and then the entire iron frame tore free from its casing and crashed loudly on the stones. The guard with the camera stopped cranking it and jumped back as both Louisa and Weyrauch screamed and the other guard leveled his weapon at the creature and opened fire. The bullets might as well have been made of paper, for they thudded audibly against the monster's chest but did not impede its attack. The creature ignored the gun, lashing out at the face of the
guard. The sharp talons ripped through the guard's flesh and
tore his jaw from his face. The creature slashed at him again, shearing through his throat and sending his severed
head cascading away from his body to bounce absurdly along
the floor of the corridor.

Louisa ran from the corridor out into the anteroom. Her husband and cousin followed. The second guard made an attempt to do the same, but the creature knocked him to the ground and then snapped its fanged jaws shut on his arm. The guard shrieked as it tore off a
thick chunk of flesh, swallowed it, and then ripped what was
left of his arm from its socket. The creature ran from the corridor into the anteroom, leaving the shuddering body of the guard lying in a pool of his own blood.

The escape of the creature and its attack upon the guards had happened so quickly that neither Schlacht nor Weyrauch nor Louisa had been able to get to the still-locked door of the anteroom. As the beast rushed in from the corridor, Schlacht, unwilling to attract its attention by
moving, froze motionless in one corner while his cousin and
her husband whimpered in another.

In the anteroom the creature stopped and looked around in what appeared to be confusion, as if perplexed by the
fact that its escape from the cell and the corridor had left it still confined within a room, as if it had expected to be
outside beneath the stars. It seemed to forget the presence
of the three remaining humans as it searched the walls and
ceiling of the anteroom for a pathway to freedom. Its limited intelligence was not able to comprehend the nature and purpose of the doorway against the far wall. Schlacht watched the creature as its eyes scanned the walls, and
he began slowly to inch his hand toward the revolver
hanging unfired in its holster; then he stopped, thinking the better of it. If the guard had been unable to stop this monstrosity with a machine gun, of what use would a handgun be against it? He remained motionless, hoping that the beast would ignore him, would go for Weyrauch or Louisa first and allow him to get to the door.

Weyrauch and Louisa huddled together in the corner, silent and trembling, tears streaming down their faces, certain that they were not destined to emerge alive from the room; then the creature turned and ran back
into the corridor, back into the cell from which it had just
escaped. It looked up at the small window near the ceiling of
the room and through the bars saw the bright moon and the few stars struggling to shine through the clouds. It tried to leap the twenty-five feet from the floor to the window, but fell short on the first attempt. It leaped again and this time it managed to grab hold of the bars. The creature
looked down at the empty cell and snarled, and then, holding
on to one bar with one hand it tore the other bars from their encasements. In an instant the creature crawled through the gaping hole, fled into the night and was gone.

Schlacht, Weyrauch and Louisa did not move at first, did
not display any emotion, did not react to what had just
occurred. Then Weyrauch fainted and Louisa began to weep hysterically. A moment later she joined her husband in
slipping into unconsciousness.

And S.S. Colonel Helmuth Schlacht, relieved at being alive and largely unaffected by the familiar sights and
smells of death, was smiling, astounding himself with the audaciousness of the plan which was even now taking shape in
his mind.

When Schlacht had been seven years old, he and another child had been caught in some silly childhood misbehavior by their teacher and had been sent to the school's headmaster for punishment. He remembered the feeling of being a small boy
standing nervously in the presence of absolute authority; he
recalled quite clearly the way his small heart had pounded in his chest, and he remembered the almost audible churning in his stomach, the sick, sinking feeling; he recalled the way his legs had shaken inside his
Lederhosen
as he waited
for the omnipotent headmaster to speak.

These thoughts occurred to him because he was experiencing the same sensations at this very moment. He had submitted his report and had urgently requested an interview. He was standing, not at attention but not quite
at ease, listening to the pounding of his heart, feeling his stomach churn, trying to keep his legs from shaking.

There were differences, of course. What he feared now was not punishment but disbelief of his report and rejection of his proposal. He was not wearing
Lederhosen
, but the uniform of a colonel in the
Schutzstaffel;
and unlike his childish perception of the school's headmaster, he now truly
was
in the presence of absolute authority, of omnipotence.
There was only one person in
Europe
more powerful than the m
an before whose desk Schlacht was standing; and even that one person, Adolf Hitler, deferred to
Reichsführer
Heinrich Himmler in all matters of concern to Himmler's two arms, the
S.S. and the Gestapo.

Heinrich Himmler did not look like a demigod, and no outward appearance or trapping of office testified to the enormous power this man wielded over millions, the power over life and, more commonly, death. The chief of the somewhat ponderously named
Reichsicherheitdiensthauptamt,
Main Office of the Reich Security Service, whose black-shirted minions had instituted a reign of terror over a conquered continent, resembled nothing so much as a pedant or a bureaucrat or the postmaster of a small village. The file folders which lay strewn atop Himmler's desk might have been the daily traffic reports being reviewed by a local
Bürgermeister
, for Himmler looked suited for that role as well, with his small, round glasses, his balding head, his slightly paunchy stomach, his incipient double chin, his pursed lips and small, delicate hands. Only the labels on the folders indicated that they were statistical reports sent to him from the commandants of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka, of Sorbibor and
Bergen-Belsen, of Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald; and only a man like Schlacht,
whose career in the S.S. had begun when he served as a staff officer at the Third Reich's first concentration camp at Dachau, could fully know and understand what information those
files contained.

Himmler finished reading Schlacht's report on the events
which had transpired in the
Ragoczy
Palace
the previous week, and he then placed the typewritten pages down upon the desk with a meticulous, almost gentle gesture. Then he
looked up at Schlacht and appraised him with his small, inscrutable, reptilian eyes. Schlacht waited for his chief
to respond to what he had just read. He wondered if Himmler
could hear his heart pounding.

After a few moments of silence Himmler spoke. His voice was soft and even, but subtly incredulous. "A werewolf, Schlacht? You are telling me that that you captured a werewolf?"

This was the moment upon which everything else hinged, Schlacht thought as he replied, "I know,
Reichsführer
, I know. The entire notion is so ridiculous that I too at first refused to believe it
,
until I saw it with my own eyes. The prisoner Blasko told us about it through an interpreter,
and of course we regarded the story as an example of the ignorant superstitions of an inferior race. But even though
I am quite certain that neither Blasko nor the Gypsy Kaldy
understands what really happens when this change occurs, the
fact remains that in some way which we do not yet fully
comprehend, this man Kaldy..."

"I have watched your progress with interest, Schlacht," Himmler interrupted, quite obviously dismissing what the colonel had just been saying. "After your great success in removing the Jews from
Slovenia
to the ghetto in
Lodz
, I personally decided to promote you and put you in charge of solving the Hungarian Gypsy problem. I cannot believe that the strain of this responsibility has had such an effect upon your nerves in so short a period of time." He paused and his brow furrowed with concern. "Perhaps I have misjudged you."

Schlacht chose his words carefully. He knew that he was
about to offer Himmler evidence which was irrefutable, and he did not wish to put his chief in the position of having either to apologize or admit that he was wrong. "I know,
Reichsführer,
that you have every reason to doubt my
sanity. On the surface, this seems insane. But I have a roll
of film, a record of some of the events referred to in my report. Before you respond to this, I beg you for the
opportunity to show it to you."

Himmler paused before saying, "And how did this film
come to be made?"

"My initial idea," Schlacht explained, "was that this Gypsy was some sort of homicidal maniac whose madness could somehow be turned to our purposes." He had decided not to mention the Churchill plan; he did not wish to appear to be an inveterate schemer. "With that in mind I arranged to film his behavior when the seizure came upon him, and I also invited my cousin's husband, a medical doctor with some knowledge of psychology, to be present as an observer."

"Has this man been cleared?"

"I did not feel there to be a need,
Reichsführer
,"
Schlacht said quickly. "He is a relative, and I have known him for years."