Lee Harper Oswald

Dawn broke blue over the trees and gradually illuminated the farmstead. Louis woke as Modestine slept on, and he stumbled outside and stretched, breathing in the clean morning air. He roused himself by walking around the barn, investigating its stone and its climbing vegetation, then standing back to observe its wide red-tile roof. It looked suitable to live in and he envied the cows, sheep, and goats.

As the sky grew lighter and the air began to lose its dewy quality, the door to the cottage opened and out came Father Secours. He’d begun to walk toward the stable, but upon seeing Louis, he stopped and waved him over. Louis, in turn, signed a negative and for the priest to come to him. When Father Secours approached, Louis motioned for him to come into the stable.

Modestine shifted and snorted in her sleep.

“The clawed thing,” Louis said, pointing to his effects. “The cloaked man’s weapon; it’s gone.”

Father Secours nodded and thought.

“It is what it is,” he said.

“No!” Louis exclaimed, kicking his sack of belongings for emphasis. “Not everything simply is, some things canbe!”

“What could this be, Louis?” Father Secours asked, his eyes calm, but searching. “Will you snap your fingers and bring the thing back? Will you speak the magic words and bring this to an end?”

Louis hung his head.

“There is nothing we can do. Come, wash up inside. Sylvie is making breakfast.”

Louis followed the priest back to the house. Inside was warmed cozily by a healthy fire in the hearth.

Bonjours and smiles were exchanged; a breakfast of eggs, potato, onion, and bread was laid out. Coffee was abundant.

“Now is as good a time as any,” Father Secours said before he stuck a forkful of egg into his mouth. He looked at Louis, and Louis—his fork poised to do the same—looked back. The priest chewed and tried to gesture with his eyebrows what Louis should be doing.

It finally occurred to Louis that he needed to tell his story, again. He looked longingly at his breakfast. Gilles laughed and took a bite of his meal.

“Eat and speak, monsieur Stevenson,” he said. “These are special circumstances; we won’t stand on propriety.” He chewed and grinned to make Louis more comfortable.

Louis laughed. Decorum be damned. He stuffed his mouth with egg and followed it with a bite of warm bread. Distracted for a moment at how good it was, he nodded emphatically to Sylvie and pointed at the remaining slice on his plate.

“Bien, je vous remercie beaucoup, monsieur Stevenson,” she said, smiling.[1]

“Please,” he said cautiously around his chewing. “Please call me Louis.”

Everyone around the table nodded, including the children as they beamed at the strange Scotsman, amused at his relative discomfort.

Louis began his story, and paused at the most violent elements, looking from the parents to the children, but the couple insisted he go on.

“Violence, in some form, is an ordinary part of our lives,” said Father Secours. “Although the children are not susceptible to the change, it is good they learn what it means. And it gives these good young people the practice of teaching what it takes to raise that one there.” He pointed to Sylvie’s belly and smiled.

No one seemed upset or particularly bothered that this—changing from a man to a wolf-like creature—may or may not be in store for their unborn child. Just weeks ago, Louis wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of werewolves at all, but here this morning, at the table of this fine family, he’d accepted the concept so completely that he had to remind himself to be disconcerted at the strangeness of their reaction. Of course they would have to wait and see, but it made little difference either way. One way meant one thing, and another only meant some extra guidance. They’d been doing this for generations.

As Louis brought his story to a close, and began to focus more on eating—although he’d already cleared half of his plate—they heard footsteps padding unhurriedly down the stairs. He’d forgotten that there was another occupant of the house that he hadn’t yet made the acquaintance of.

The first thing he saw were the yellow corkscrew curls, and then he was gazing onto the countenance of a younger Clarisse, a face of about fifteen years old. Clémence displayed the same fairness of skin, the same ruddy blush of the cheeks, and the same small blue eyes that penetrated one so thoroughly. She was lovely, but for the fire.

One half of her face and head was bandaged, leaving her cyclopsed, and her hair seemed to explode from where the bandage ended, so stark was the contrast between that and the hair clearly lost. It would likely never grow back. The arm on that side was also wrapped and slung with a clean piece of cotton sheeting.

“Victor,” she said quietly, but surprised, to Father Secours as she approached the table.

He stood and rounded the table to embrace her carefully.

“Are you hungry, mon petit oiseau?” Sylvie asked, getting up.[2]

“Un peu,” Clémence responded.

“Well, a little is better than not at all,” Sylvie said and moved Clémence into her own chair. She cleared her plate and went to fetch a clean one for her cousin.

Father Secours returned to his place at the table. The girl sat down gently as she was fussed over, and then fixed Louis with her one eye. Louis nodded a greeting to her and shifted uncomfortably.

Gilles sensed his uneasiness.

“Clémence, this is—” he began.

“Monsieur Stevenson,” she finished. “Clarisse mentioned you.”

At the sound of Clarisse’s name from the lips of her poor, disfigured surviving sister, Louis almost burst into tears.

“Please, call me Louis,” he managed, his voice quivering.

It was then that Louis noticed a small lump beneath her blouse, just at the sternum. By the shape, he already knew what it was the foal’s bell. And with that, he fought to keep his emotions in check.

“Please let me extend my deepest condolences, mademoiselle Clémence,” he said. “I met your sister only briefly, though she displayed to me all the strength and honor that reads across your own face.”

“What is left of my face,” she said.

Louis was speechless and ashamed. As he searched vainly for a response, Sylvie placed a plate before Clémence and then shooed the children from the table and sat down herself.

“Monsieur Stevenson was there,” Father Secours said. “He saw what happened.”

“There was nothing I could do,” Louis pleaded to the girl.

She simply looked at him, mildly surprised at his sentiment.

“I know that,” she said, and then began to eat, daintily but evenly.

“Did you hear what we were discussing, cousin?” Gilles asked the girl but looked at Father Secours.

“Oui,” she said, and ate.

A collective sigh spread quietly over the table.

“Well, it is probably better,” said Father Secours. “If it was Clarisse, we wouldn’t get away with a single secret. This one is even worse.”

He smiled at Clémence, who didn’t smile back but didn’t seem angry or agitated either. Louis assumed that, on some level, though she was walking, speaking, eating, the girl was still in shock.

“You could,” Father Secours said to her, “maybe be of some assistance, actually.”

Clémence tilted her head up, chewing.

“Your sister rode home that night,” the priest began. “She must have arrived well before the mob, but she was unsuccessful in convincing your parents to flee.”

“Father did not understand,” she said. “Mother even less so.”

“You understood,” Father Secours said.

“I trusted Clarisse.”

She had finished her small breakfast, and she dabbed her mouth with her napkin and pushed her plate forward a little.

“You were right to trust her,” Father Secours said. “Would that your father—”

“I thought he would, but it was just so absurd,” said Clémence. “We both tried to persuade them. But it was too late.”

“Clémence, did Clarisse say anything that you think might help us to . . . deal with this beast?” Louis interjected, only slightly worried of butting in, and very aware of the irony of discussing another human being as a “beast” with a family of werewolves.

Her gaze turned from her cousin to him and he felt chilled by the evidence of the atrocity that he had witnessed just a few days ago. She then looked at the table, thinking. Involuntarily, her hand fetched the foal’s bell from beneath her chemise. Louis winced, for it was now charred black. The remaining loose soot stained her small fingers.

“Non,” she said, finally, and everyone around the table slouched a little in defeat. “But, when our parents refused to leave, she entreated me to run myself. To take Voila and ride her as far as I could get. But I could not leave them.”

Heads nodded around the table.

“She told me to ride out and find monsieur Stevenson. She said he would protect me.”

Louis looked at her quick and firm, the tears gathering and threatening to spill. Everyone was silent.

“I could not save you, girl,” he said quietly. “I don’t know that I could have had you run.” And then he cast his eyes down, ashamed to look at this fragile, injured child.

“If Clarisse thought you could,” she replied, “you could have. It wasn’t your fault. I should have listened to her.” She reached across the table to Louis and patted his hand with hers. He took it into his and pressed it, and then let it go, feeling unworthy.

Who was this young woman? And where had she found such stamina? Louis thought of her father, braving the flames and enduring the unthinkable burn, just to attempt to save his wife. He thought of Clarisse’s quick thinking in action, flying out of Pont de Montvert on Voila just to attempt to save her family. This strength was not simply discovered, it was innate. This young woman in front of him might bear these terrible scars for the rest of her days, but Louis took some comfort in that she would never allow them to defeat her. Of that, he felt sure.

“Here, you should rest,” Sylvie said to Clémence, placing her hands on the girl’s shoulders to guide her to a quieter area of the cottage. “Victor and Louis have much to discuss.” She looked to her husband, “and you and Thierry should be in the fields.”

Gilles nodded and pushed himself from the table. Thierry, who had been listening from the open attached family area leapt to his feet.

As Sylvie led her away and toward the stairs, Clémence paused and turned to Louis and Father Secours.

“You will kill him, won’t you?”

There was a spate of silence.

“We don’t know what we will do with him, cousin,” Father Secours finally answered. “If we can get a hold of him, that is.”

“You will,” she said. “You will get him. And he must be killed.” She turned to Louis. “Victor cannot; he is a holy man. But you can. You must.”

Louis thought for an instant, but then nodded to her.

“I will.”

She looked at him a moment longer, then turned slowly to the stairs, and disappeared into the rooms above.

[1] “Well, thank you very much…”

[2] “ . . . my little bird?”

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The farm where Father Secours had been raised, and which was now occupied and operated by his cousin with his wife, daughter, and son, consisted of a two-story stone cottage and a one-story low, wide barn and attached stable. Louis did not pay much attention to the layout, as it was dark and late. The priest instructed him to tie Modestine near to the door of the home, which he did, and they both knocked.

It opened slowly to a young, pale face. This was Gilles. He had dark eyes and hair, and his lip bore the determined efforts of cultivation, though the mustache was a little thin. Louis sympathized and pulled at his own painstakingly established facial hair.

“Victor!” shouted Gilles. “Sylvie! It is Victor!” He yelled back into the home while swinging the door wide to let the travelers inside.

His wife, round in belly with what looked like several months of gestation, swept through the room and embraced Father Secours. The priest made the introductions, and the couple brought forth their children—or, Sylvie’s children from a previous marriage—Martine, her twelve-year-old daughter, and Thierry, her nine-year-old son. Louis smiled and greeted them both, who, like all children, regarded him with some naïve suspicion.

Sylvie insisted on making them coffee, so she and Martine disappeared into the kitchen, while Gilles and Thierry excused themselves for a few moments to make sure the barn and stable were secure.

“Thierry can take care of your ass, Monsieur Stevenson,” said Gilles.

“Merci, mais non,” Louis replied, then looked at Father Secours.

“We have some things to discuss, cousin,” said the priest. “I’m afraid we need to keep a close eye on the donkey.”

Gilles nodded and smiled, and then hurried with his stepson out into the night.

“It is an uncommon arrangement,” Father Secours explained. “But he loves them like his own, and she is a good woman.”

“There is nothing to explain,” Louis said, thinking of Fanny and realizing that he could have, indeed, told Father Secours of her—their—predicament. “I am charmed.”

The priest smiled gratefully. Soon, the women of the house brought out a pot of coffee and a plate of digestive biscuits. Sylvie glowed with joy.

“Victor, it is so good to see your face,” she said as she served the beverage. “It has been too long, and, as I’m sure you know, in recent days, every good turn is a blessing.”

“I’m afraid that is why we are here,” Father Secours said. “But it is late. When Gilles returns, you will tell me your news, and tomorrow, after we’ve slept, we will tell you why we are here.”

* * *

With Clémence occupying the family’s extra guest bed, Father Secours assembled a cot in the family room, and Louis insisted he sleep in the stable to better watch Modestine. There were some protestations from the couple, but Father Secours saw Louis’s reasoning and asserted that it would likely be best as well.

Gilles accompanied Louis to the barn to stable Modestine, and set down a bale of fresh, clean hay for him to make his bed on. Then, making sure there was nothing else that Louis might need, the farmer disappeared into the house again, and Louis watched the windows go dark.

The barn was constructed of stone and inside contained a number sheep, plus some goats and two cows for milk and cheese making. The stable in which Modestine and Louis lodged was a wooden structure built onto the side of the main stone building. She nibbled on some of Louis’s bed, and he left her to graze and then sleep while he updated his chronicle. He took and lit a small lamp outside the structure, leaning his back against the wood and, placing his inkpot where he could see it, he scribbled with his journal propped against his knees.

Now and then, he would look up and out over the property. The house stood black against a dark, but starry sky. The gravel yard between the house and the barn was a sheet of grey under the small moon, and the shadowy trees beyond—in the direction from whence they came—swayed gently. The only sounds were the soft wind through the distant leaves and the haunting duet of two barn owls murmuring to one another.

Much to his surprise, Louis felt calm. He supposed he should be nervous, perhaps even a little afraid, but despite that things were at last coming to a head, he was rather relaxed. The night was tranquil, and spending the late evening with a family, who could—in another country, with another woman—be his own, gave him hope. The hope was, obviously, for his future with Fanny, but also the potential of being a father to her young son, Lloyd—a prospect he hadn’t fully considered. He and Lloyd had gotten along like mates, but to be a father? The last couple of hours certainly made the idea seem quite welcome.

Gilles and his adopted children interacted as if the same blood flowed through their veins, and although Louis could not picture Fanny being quite the pleasant hostess as Sylvie—she was suspicious of his friends and often too coarse for polite company—he believed there was a sliver of hope that something like this picture could be painted. If she’d let him.

This hope spilled over into his more immediate and dismal situation, not that it had much right to. Logically, Louis knew this, but he let it sweep over him anyway, feeling his spine loosen and his chest relax. He didn’t believe that the cloaked man would come this close to the farm, to their home base. Sleeping out here with Modestine was just a safety precaution, but he fully expected to sleep full and long until dawn.

Louis tossed down his pen and almost upset his inkpot, as he jumped up and threw himself into the stable, startling Modestine as he did. She had lain down in the hay and snorted at Louis while he rummaged through his sleeping sack. Not finding what he was looking for, he dumped everything out onto the dirt stable floor, just beside hay and the quizzical donkey.

After moving everything about and making sure he wasn’t overlooking anything, he sat down hard beside Modestine and sighed deeply. He knew there had to be something to the molestation of the donkey’s pack while they were on the cattle path.

The cloaked man’s weapon was gone.

Louis went back outside, lidded his inkpot, gathered his journal and pen, and put out his lamp. Then, in the dark, he arranged his effects in some reasonable manner and spread his sleeping sack over what remained of the hay. Modestine—lying on her side like a dog—had taken up half of it, so he crawled inside the sack at her back and laid his head upon her neck.

With one ear, he listened to all the muffled, internal donkey noises that muttered up through Modestine’s fur, and with the other ear, he listened to the owls hoot poignantly their hollow, wooden calls. As he drifted into sleep, to the rhythm of the dueling sounds, his thoughts flowed back and forth between the pleasant image of his potential future family and the decidedly unpleasant business closer at hand.

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Cocurès, Florac

He moved about the world, through time, from body to body of every age. He was in Edinburgh during his college days giving a paper at The Spec—Two Questions on the Relationship Between Christ’s Teachings and Modern Christianity—only all the faces in the audience were that of his father, looking pained and annoyed. Next, he was but a boy, coughing and coughing, his small frame shaking with every sputter that tore at his lungs, his nursemaid, Cummy, at his bedside, holding his hand, but in fact, it was not Cummy but his mother, who in reality had never been there. She shocked him into a new body and time with the words, “Smoutie, what’s that burning?”

Then, he was as he is now, twenty-eight years old, but naked amongst an eternity of trees. He heard a dog bark and he ran, but as he did he realized that he didn’t just appear there, he’d woken up there. Every part of his body ached and when he looked down, his hands were blood covered. Finally, he was older than he is now, much older, and barefoot on the bowsprit of a schooner. He could smell the ocean and taste the salt on his teeth, the wind yanking at his hair as they traveled full speed ahead, until the wood beneath his feet gave way and he plunged down into the sea.

He came to at Grez, awash in a salty ocean of sweat in his sickbed. Fanny looked to him from a chair across the room and simply shook her head.

*

He awoke exhausted to a melancholy morning and the sound of footsteps. His heart in his throat, he stretched to peer around the tree’s trunk only to find, much nearer than he’d expected, a peasant. The man trudged up a hard footpath that Louis had not noticed the previous day and passed without seeing him. Once the man was gone, Louis leapt from his sleeping sack and readied himself as quickly as possible. The workers were out to harvest and trim back the trees.

As he did, a man and a boy made their way down the incline, heading straight towards his encampment. They called to him, and he tried to respond cheerfully as he rushed around dressing. By the time they’d reached him, he had his boots on and was pulling on his gaiters when the man spoke.

“You have slept here,” the man stated rather than asked. The boy stood a little behind him, looking at Louis suspiciously.

“Yes,” answered Louis. “As you see.”

The man’s eyes scanned Louis’s camp and fell upon the revolver that lay upon the sack, in the open.

“Why?”

“My faith,” Louis sighed. “I was tired.”

“Where are you going?”

Louis pointed down to the road in the direction of Florac.

“What have you eaten?”

“Pardon?”

The man repeated his question, undeterred. Louis realized he was keeping track of his crop.

“Oh, I ate a meal from my pack.”

“C’est bien,” the man said, more to the boy than to Louis. And, without another word or gesture, the pair walked two trees away from where Louis had camped and began to prune.

Louis stowed the revolver into the waist of his trousers and after collecting Modestine and packing up, they were once again on the road. The morning light played prettily across the valley and the road dipped gradually to become level with the river. Here Louis made his toilet and Modestine slurped upstream from Louis’s sudsy ritual. As he shaved, he determined that he would ask every soul he met between here and Florac if they’d seen his cloaked man. Surely, he left the scene at Pont de Montvert before Louis, for he could no longer find him there.

When they were finished at the river, they continued on while Louis snacked on a piece of chocolate with one hand, and fed the donkey bits of black bread with the other. He’d passed several working men and boys heading up the road to where he’d slept the night before, all moving to their day’s work. Louis made his inquiry to each of them, but they’d either never seen such a person, or they’d seen far too many to discern the man he was looking for.

As he came around a bend, Modestine trotting briskly along, Louis stopped cold in his tracks. Ahead along the road, nearest the cliff side, was a hooded figure.

Louis stared at the form, whose head was lowered and whose feet shuffled along the edge of the road. He stuffed the chocolate he’d been carrying into a fold in Modestine’s pack and rested his now-empty hand on the butt of the pistol in his belt.        They started forward again slowly, Louis pulling the donkey to the riverside, giving the stranger—who still didn’t seem to see him—a wide berth. But suddenly, as if operating with an additional sense, the person lurched toward Louis.

He gripped the handle of the gun and was about to pull it when the figure’s hood fell back just enough for him to see that it wasn’t a man at all, but a woman. She was a beggar, her clothes shabby and her hair knotted.

She said nothing, but motioned for alms. Louis let out a heavy breath and unhanded the gun quickly, happy to not have to use it. Then he dug around in a breast pocket and fished out a few coins for the woman. Before he handed them over, he spoke.

“Pardon me,” he began. “Have you seen a man—maybe your age—wearing a cloak of a dark grey color? Heading this way?” He pointed in the direction she was coming from.

The woman shook her head and held out her hand.

“Are you sure? He came this way.”

Still the woman shook her head, her eyes on the coins in his hand.

Then it struck him.

“His cloak was probably stained with blood.”

Her eyes met his and grew wide. Then she pointed back down the road, in the direction Louis was heading.

“Florac?”

The woman nodded and Louis gave her the coins, which sent her shuffling along her way, perhaps a little faster than she had been before.

Had Louis asked every peasant along the way if they’d seen a man in a bloody cloak, he suspected he’d have gotten a few affirmations. He and Modestine moved on, only to be overtaken a few minutes later by an older man, followed by a little girl driving a goat and two sheep. For a few steps, Louis was in line with the girl and feeling a little awkward, but the man slowed his pace a bit and positioned himself beside Louis.

Louis saw that the man’s face betrayed a mature age beyond what he initially thought, and he wore a tea-colored nightcap as a hat.

“You are going to Cocurès?” the man asked, smiling.

“I will get breakfast there, but then I will move on to Florac,” Louis answered, returning the smile. It was good to see a warm, welcoming face.

“Ah,” the man said as his eyes darkened. “There are bad things afoot.”

“Oh?”

“Two nights ago, a family was killed, horribly, by a crazed mob, and last night, from what I’ve heard, mysterious murders have begun at Florac.”

Louis stopped and everyone almost went on without him—Modestine, the man, the girl and her wards. But the man also stopped and came back to him, and so they all stopped.

“What do you mean, in Florac?” Louis asked the man, and they slowly began walking again, eventually regaining their pace.

“A traveler told me early this morning that they had found the bodies of three villagers past the outskirts of the town. All unrelated.”

Louis listened. Somehow, the cloaked man had made it to Florac, perhaps before Louis had even bedded down in the chestnut orchard last night.

“Terrible. People torn limb from limb.”

“Wolves?” Louis asked quietly, not knowing what sort of answer he might get.

“We in this region know wolves. This was no wolf. Nor was it the family of la Bête.”

“But how do you know?” Louis stunned himself by falling so comfortably into this conversation, as if he were a local peasant, as if he believed in werewolves. But he did. He must. He saw what he saw. And this man didn’t lose a breath.

“We know because the people of Florac are different. La Famille de la Bête live peaceably, side by side with their neighbors.”

Louis eyed the man, reluctant to ask what he felt compelled to ask.

“The members of,” he paused, “la Bête family; they manage their condition?”

“The families of this area who are cursed with the change, they raise their children, before they even begin to show the signs, that to kill is wrong. And if they begin to make the change, they get a special education.”

“And you are not of this family.”

“Non, I am not, but I have many friends of that family. All good men and women.”

They walked without speaking for a moment, listening to the bleating of the girl’s flock and the tiny tinkling of their little bells.

“I know that, in the north of the mountains, the feelings for this family are very different. And the family also recognizes that not all members have adopted their way of living.” The man shrugged. “It is what it is. There is a priest in Cocurès that I will introduce you to. He knows more about this than anyone.”

Louis winced and nodded. He thought to ask about the cloaked man, but then remembered that this fellow had come from behind, from the direction Louis had come, and so wouldn’t have seen him.

“Tragedy, what happened at Pont de Montvert,” the man thought he was changing the subject, when in fact, he was not.

“I was there.”

This time the old man stopped, but then, catching himself, started up again and trotted to regain his place.

“You were there?”

“A boy was killed. A man riled up the townspeople,” Louis explained. “It didn’t take much and once they were going, there was nothing anyone could do. I know; I tried.”

The old man patted Louis on the back and nodded.

“You were good to try,” he said.

“I’m afraid that does little to console me,” Louis replied. “But tell me, did no one survive?”

The old man sucked on his teeth and watched the ground move under his spritely feet.

“At first, both daughters had somehow made it out. The older was badly burned, and she died later that night.”

“Clarisse,” Louis said softly.

“I am sorry.” The old man’s eyes teared up at the realization that Louis knew the dead girl in some capacity.

“Her sister?”

“Alive.”

Louis nodded. That was, at least, one small saving grace, but his heart still broke when he thought of how she might go on without her mother and father, without the kinship of her sister. And had Louis not passed through? Had he not led the cloaked man straight to them? They would be having breakfast right now.

The group walked on in silence, save the sheep and goat, the rest of the way to Cocurès, where Louis ordered breakfast after stabling Modestine for her own, and the old man went off in search of the priest.

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The woman alternately hugged the boy close to her chest and then shook him feverishly, wailing all the while. Her clothes, like his, were soaked with blood. The crowd formed around her, but Clarisse hung back. So did Louis.

“Where did he come from?” Louis asked. “The boy. I saw him in the fields today. Who brought his body in?”

Clarisse stood on her toes to look over the crowd.

“If you’re looking for your cloaked man,” she said, “he’ll be hard to find.”

It was night and the air was chilled—many members of the crowd wore hooded cloaks. Louis stood on his toes as well.

“Blasted!” he said, and the mourning mother’s cries seemed to take on a new life, hoarse as they were.

“What’s happened?” The mustachioed Norman was at his side, still in his day clothes. Louis assumed he’d meant to sleep in them.

“Boy’s dead,” Louis answered.

“Oh dear, that’s horrible,” the man said. “How?”

But Louis’s mind was elsewhere. He turned to ask Clarisse what the cloaked man’s name was, but she was gone. He craned his neck around, trying to see behind him, and then in front of him, amongst the assembly of gawkers. There were a number of lanterns carried, and even a few torches, but the light they threw only carried a few feet from the source and Clarisse didn’t seem to be near any of them.

The people mumbled to each other in hushed tones, the mother still wept, and a few women pulled close to her, wrapping their arms around her in the solidarity of grief.

“This boy is dead!” a cry went up.

The crowd’s murmurs fell silent and everyone looked around to see where the voice had come from, to see to whom they were supposed to be listening.

“Nothing can bring him back!” the call went again.

On the other side of the throng—which was at least thirty-to-forty head by now—someone had jumped upon the edge of the community well. Louis stood again on his toes, but so did everyone else, and it helped little.

“And I know who perpetrated this terrible crime!” the voice rang again. The entire crowd had turned toward the man clinging to the well. Louis tried to position himself better to see, first left, then right, and finally, his eyes locked on the cloaked man. Many of the peasants had now pushed back their hoods to better see within such close quarters, but this man—who perched with one foot along the edge of the well and clutched the beam that held aloft the roped bucket with one hand, while the other waved in the air above him—this man wore his hood and wore it low, and still Louis could not see his face. His cloak was bloody, for it was he who had brought the boy in from the field.

“And I believe that you also know who perpetrated this unthinkable crime!” he yelled.

Louis attempted to push his way through the crowd to the front, but it was locked tight, and his shame would not allow him to too roughly jostle the women therein. There was no going around, as the mass filled the narrow street.

“La Famille de Loups!”

And with that, fists flew into the air and yells erupted all around Louis. Lanterns waved and torches were swung about above the heads of the people as the cloaked man continued to stir their frenzy.

Then, to their left, the stable door flung open and the chestnut mare came bolting out, Clarisse astride and whipping the horse into a firm gallop past the mob and out of the village. All heads turned and watched while the cloaked man’s waving hand pointed to her and he yelled.

“And she is one of them! This must be stopped, tonight!”

As he signaled after the escaping Clarisse, his cloak opened at the breast, and though his face was still hidden in his cavernous hood, Louis glimpsed—for but a brief moment—a wooden handle protruding from his peasant’s belt. From this handle sprung four steel claws. And just like that, the cloak closed and it was gone.

Louis had been right; it had been a pair.

Suddenly, the crowd lurched forward and Louis could hear the yells of the people, crying out for blood and for vengeance. The cloaked man had come down from his position on the well and Louis could see the stricken mother close to him, cradling her small boy, whose limbs sagged like wilted flowers. She had stopped crying, stopped wailing, and now her face set grimly, her eyes filled with crimson murder.

The mustachioed Norman beside him moved ahead to join the rabble, and Louis grabbed at his sleeve.

“What on earth are you doing, man?”

“They say they know who the murderer is,” the man said. “There is justice to be had tonight.” And he shook free of Louis’s grasp and disappeared into the mass of fury.

“For God’s sake,” Louis said out loud, but only to himself. “It’s a damned mob.” Being a Scot and a historian from that bloody city of Edinburgh, Louis knew well the ravages of an angry mob. He watched the crowd as it moved away, and in it, he recognized the hairstyles of the two literature-loving sisters, and nearby, their cousin, all raging against something they had no idea of. This he half-expected. But when he located the good face of his modest luncheon neighbor, her neat hair covered in a simple nightcap, her once mousey voice raised against a foe she could not name, Louis wept.

He sat on the stoop of the inn with his face in his hands, knowing there was nothing he could do. Once the mob had disappeared, though their yells could still be heard, he went upstairs and grabbed his fur cap. In the stable, Modestine slept, and he woke her with the saddle on her back. He was glad they both had rested that afternoon, for tonight they wouldn’t.

Once she was ready, he led her out and down the street, toward the faint sound of the bloodthirsty horde. He knew there was no measure he could take to prevent what was going to happen, whatever that tragedy would be. He only hoped that Clarisse had convinced her family to run, flee the region for their very lives.

The night was dark, but Louis could see a faint path, recently tread by dozens of angry feet, by the slim light of a crescent moon. Ahead, he could see the glow of the lanterns and torches, and he nudged Modestine forward, if only to be a witness.

When Louis found the mob, they were closing in on and surrounding a two-story farmhouse about a mile out of the village. Some people were already busying themselves letting the livestock loose. Their faces twisted with their shouting, made all the more grotesque by the light and shadow thrown about their features by the wavering flames of the torches.

Louis tied Modestine far back from the house and small outbuildings, to avoid some mob member mistaking her as belonging to this family and making off with her and his effects. He walked slowly around the jeering bodies, as close to the house as he could safely get. People yelled terrible things to the occupants—for much to Louis’s horror, there wereoccupants. Clarisse, perhaps, had come too late, or maybe could not convince them of the danger. They were a good family; they didn’t kill their fellow citizens. Why, he could almost hear her old mother ask, would they want to harm us?

A faint light glowed in the upstairs windows, where he presumed the family had retreated. A group of men attempted to batter down the front door with a fence rail they’d pulled from the ground, and with every slam of wood on wood, there came the screams of two women from upstairs. Louis imagined them to be Clarisse’s mother and sister. Clarisse, he suspected, was holding her own, as she’d struck him as rather sturdy for her age.

Finally, a window upstairs opened and a man stuck his head out—he was an older man, perhaps the father of the family.

“Qu’avons-nous fait?” he yelled down. He repeated this question—What had they done?—but there was no way for his voice to break through the cacophony of the bloodthirsty people below. They pelted him with stones until he pulled the shutters back over the window and withdrew with his family.

Louis caught site of the mustachioed Norman at the edge of the crowd, and he went to him.

“Sir, please,” Louis tried to yell above the din. He pulled at the man’s sleeve, but it was yanked out of his grip and he was duly ignored as the man put up his own shouts.

“You don’t even know these people,” Louis tried again. “They are strangers to you, all of them!”

The man turned to Louis with a withering glare and Louis took a step back. The man’s eyes blazed with murder. Again, Louis was horrified—not just for this poor, innocent family, but for all of humanity. If all it took was one life and the instigation of a madman to rouse peoples’ blood to killing, then the species itself was rotten from the core.

Louis turned away and headed towards Modestine, when he heard another voice—this one sailing above the noise of the people, or, more precisely, the people quieted enough to hear the voice speak. He looked back to see the cloaked man standing on the front stoop of the house, elevated slightly over the mass of maniacs he’d produced.

“Children of God,” he cried, “hold your hands. Let us burn this house and its wild dogs!”

With that, a clamor of approval rose up into the night joined by a single panicked scream from the house. The people moved as one, parting to allow torchbearers access to the corners of the house. In no time, it was on fire, burning from the bottom up. A few people managed to get inside the first floor, but made no attempt to climb to the second, for their only mission now was to help the house burn faster. They set fire to the things inside and then ran out victoriously to the cheers of their accomplices.

Louis could not seem to move. As much as he dreaded watching what was unfolding before him, he could not tear his eyes away.

The flames licked ever higher, eating away at the planks and beams. The autumn blooms that hung in pretty baskets from above the windows wilted and curled. The terrified whinnies of the now-loose horses combined with the whine of the inferno peeled in Louis’s ears, and still he could not move. And then, another scream.

From a side window of the second floor, someone leapt. A woman, the mother or sister, perhaps even Clarisse. The screaming continued and Louis realized she was injured. Adrenaline finally pushed him to run toward the sound, but he was too late. The crowd had, upon seeing the woman fall and hearing her scream, shifted to engulf her and were now in the process of beating her. Another scream from the open window—the young sister. Louis saw Clarisse pull her back, and so it must have been the mother this mob was now beating to death.

Louis considered for a moment his pistol, though he knew it would be next to useless with a mad crowd such as this and would likely only end with his own murder. He wanted merely to end her searing misery.

Now, a man burst from the front door, his limbs all in flames. He managed to rush around the side where his wife had fallen, and the crowd parted easily for him. They either recoiled in horror or for self-preservation; Louis guessed the latter. As the man reached his wife he was a ball of flame, but the anguish of his cries were those of grief and not pain. He fell to his knees beside the unmoving woman and then toppled to her side, wrapping his burning arms around her. Then, he stopped moving. They both did.

A cheer rose up in the crowd.

Louis paced back and forth, tears streaming, wiping his eyes, and looking to the house, trying to craft some sort of saving plan, but there was nothing. The first story was engulfed, as the poor father had proven in his effort to get through it to save his wife. There couldn’t have been another access from the second floor, or the woman would not have felt compelled to jump. And now, all there was to do was watch these two women—girls, really—die an agonizing, terrible death.

Knowing there was nothing he could do, he suddenly remembered the cloaked man and looked desperately for him amongst the swarm of fanatics, but he was nowhere to be found. Gone, again.

Louis turned and staggered back to Modestine, untied her, and pulled her back along the faint path, back to Pont de Montvert. When he got to town, he spared no time looking about; he stopped for nothing but just walked through to the other side and away.

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After lunch, Louis claimed a bed upstairs by tossing his fur cap upon it. He’d waited until Clarisse made to serve one of his fellow travelers and took the opportunity to run up. Similarly, he waited until he couldn’t see her golden corkscrew ringlets below before making his getaway. He took his sack out to the stable where he hunkered down beside Modestine with his journal. She was paired with a chestnut mare, who chewed oats in a sack. He was only passing the time, but he might as well keep an eye on his companion, as he was feeling more vigilant than usual here in Pont de Montvert, despite nothing seeming particularly out of the ordinary.

The donkey chomped on some hay and gazed languidly at her driver as he scribbled away, catching up on his entries in as much detail as memory would allow. Then, Louis lidded his inkpot and stowed his materials. From his vantage point, he could see the comings and goings of the inn, and now he watched the two sisters and their cousin exit laughing and make their way into the street, going off to see whatever sights the village offered. He thought he should be doing the same, but felt that if he made one wrong move, it would result in some horrific, irreversible tragedy, and so he opted to make a few moves as possible.

Soon after, his modest neighbor from the table also left the inn; she walked directly over to the church, and Louis smiled. Then, to fill the space of time, he produced his sketchpad and proceeded to make a study of Modestine.

Throughout the afternoon, Louis lay in the hay beside his donkey, drowsing, as the inn occupants came and went. Eventually, he fell asleep, and when he came to, it was coming on twilight. He woke with a start, unsure of where he was, and only aware that he was supposed to be on guard. It took a few moments to return fully to the present but when he did, he put his things back into his sack and scratched Modestine’s ears.

“You were supposed to wake me,” he said.

She looked at him.

“Go to sleep.” He left the stable and returned to the inn, just in time for yet another meal.

It was almost an exact repeat of the mid-day meal, with the noted difference of the absence of his modest neighbor. That seat was now filled with a mustachioed Norman, who spent the duration charming the sisters and annoying the cousin. Though Louis was glad to have the attention taken away from his book writing, he found it difficult to eat being situated as such, in the middle of a raucous conversation that often bordered on sizzling debate. He was still full from lunch, and he ate little, but drank more wine than he knew he should. And the sisters still fussed about him, though a little more tamely—perhaps their cousin had had words with them. All the while, Clarisse hustled around the diners, replacing this and that, refilling that and this. She was particularly attentive to Louis’s glass and kept it full at all times.

The more Louis drank, the more he talked. The more he drank and talked, the easier it was to lose track of time. Soon, it was late and most of the diners had gone to bed, save the two sisters, who seemed about as drunk as Louis, the cousin, the Norman, and a few more additions to the boisterous group. They laughed and talked loudly, occasionally hushing themselves so as not to keep awake the other patrons, only to then laugh themselves louder, until . . . there was no more wine. And Clarisse had gone.

“Allow me,” Louis said, dramatically pushing his chair out and rising, which prompted a smattering of applause, presumably for not falling over. And he disappeared into the kitchen to see if he could find either another bottle of wine, or Clarisse, whichever came first.

The kitchen was confined, compared to the dining area, and it didn’t seem like the amount of food that came out of it could have fit in the first place. There was a stove, a basin, a table, and a large wooden cupboard. Louis looked around, but the place seemed bare. As he was about to open the cupboard and investigate, he heard a noise behind him.

“Vous êtes ivre,” said a woman’s voice.

“I am not drunk,” Louis said as he turned around.

It was Clarisse. She had not gone to bed like he’d suspected, and was in fact still wholly dressed.

“You are,” she argued, and then walked around him and stood in front of the cupboard. Though she looked nothing like Fanny—she was taller, her hair yellow, her eyes blue—her plumpness reminded Louis of his American love, and all of a sudden, he found this girl attractive. Or, it might have been the wine, but he was in no condition to make such a call.

Clarisse crossed her arms and leaned against the cupboard. It took Louis a moment to understand he was being blocked from the last of the wine, so crossed his own arms and half-sat on the edge of the table.

“Come,” he said. “Just one more.” The sound of laughter spilled in from the dining area, and he motioned to the door, as if to say, see?

“Non,” she said. “And shouldn’t you be more careful?”

“Careful? Careful of what?” He was seized with an almost uncontrollable urge to wind a finger through one of her curls.

“Aren’t you hunted, as we are?”

“Hunted?” His hip slipped from the table and he barely caught himself, reseating once again on the table’s edge.

Clarisse made a claw of her hand and thrust it at him.

“Hunted,” she said again.

The blood washed from Louis’s face.

“My cousin is dead,” she said and looked at her feet.

“What? I’m sorry, how?” Though his body wasn’t necessarily following, his mind was sobering rather quickly.

“You shot him; you killed him.”

Louis stared at the girl in disbelief as she reached into the collar of her blouse and pulled from it a small bell. She clinked it once or twice and looked at Louis knowingly.

It was the slaughtered foal’s bell.

Louis gasped and was about to back away when Clarisse swiftly moved around him and now blocked the door to the dining area. Another wave of laughter came from the next room.

“Maybe you didn’t,” she said. “But you surely did not help.”

Louis struggled with a response. The drunken attraction had dissipated quickly and he now wanted to be anywhere than alone with this girl.

“Fouzilhac,” he stuttered. “The man from Fouzilhac.”

“His name was Alphonse.”

“He was a beast when I made the shot.”

Clarisse sighed.

“I know.” She continued to toy with the bell and its clapper ticked dully against its sides. “He gave this to me.”

“He may well have murdered the wearer of that bell,” Louis said.

“He may well have, if you can call killing a horse murder.”

“Some might.”

“It doesn’t matter. He didn’t do that either. And by ‘either’ I mean, he didn’t kill your priest.”

“I know,” Louis said. “I found the weapon wielded for that definite case of murder.”

As if confident he wouldn’t now go running from the room, Clarisse walked to the table he leaned against and poured a glass of water from a pitcher. She handed it to him and he drank.

“You can’t say, though,” he continued, “that your family hasn’t killed.”

“I won’t say that then,” she rejoined. She leaned against the table next to him and crossed her arms. “Oui, my family has killed. But not all of us. We are not all loup-garou.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Some are, and some are not. Alphonse was; I am not.”

“But the killing is wrong,” he said.

“I didn’t say it was right.” Clarisse fidgeted with her sleeve. “But it is not . . .” She searched for the right words. “It is not always in one’s control. Not when the change happens.”

“Some,” she went on, “with much practice have trained themselves. They’ve mastered their animal time, like becoming conscious while inside a dream. And they’ve satisfied the hunger with deer, or other animals. But others, like poor Alphonse, could never manage it.”

“But you are not one,” Louis said.

“I am not.” She shook her head and her curls bounced. “My father is. And he does not kill. Nor does my sister. We have been taught right from wrong. Still, we mourn our poor cousin.”

“I am sorry,” Louis offered, for he truly felt it, and he felt his fear of her retreating slowly into the seemingly bottomless well of sympathy he carried inside himself. Again, she shrugged.

The laughter had died down in the next room and the sound of chairs sliding indicated that the party was breaking up, probably leaving Louis for drunk on the kitchen floor.

“How do you know about the cloaked man? ” he asked.

“Is that what you call him? We know him. We know his family. Do you know the story of la Bête du Gévaudan?” she asked.

Louis nodded and she continued.

The cloaked man, she said, was a descendent of the first hired hunters of la Bête, just as she, and Alphonse, were the descendants of la Bête himself. Jean Charles Marc Antoine Vaumesle d’Enneval and his son Jean-François had been hired to hunt the monster, to stop the killing, but they had only turned their hounds loose in the wood, and fired their guns at anything with a pelt. Many wolves were killed, but no beast was caught.

“They were being paid by the day,” Clarisse said. “They had no incentive whatsoever to actually do what the villagers hoped. And, of course, my ancestors could not stop the killing. The change was new to us then.”

In the end, the father and son were replaced by the King’s man who took down one beast, and then another local hunter took down the second. Then the politicians became embarrassed, everything was hushed, and Clarisse’s ancestors continued to kill.

“But don’t think we did so without conscience,” she said sternly. “Our curse has many faces, guilt not being the least.”

Louis nodded and tried to understand.

“All this time,” she continued, “we have tried to be good members of our communities. And while not all of us have been successful, many of us have been. That does not, though, stop this family from hunting us.”

“Why?”

“This man that follows you—he’s not the first. His father hunted us, and his father’s father, but there seems to be a difference with this generation. While the men before him seemed to hunt us because they wanted to stop the killing, this man doesn’t seem to care. This man also kills. And unlike my cousin—who had his faults, I will not argue—this man has no conscience.”

“But if he didn’t want to stop the killing, what does he want?”

“Are you asking me?” She asked him, as if doubting her own opinion on the matter.

“I am,” he said.

“You are a writer?”

“Oui.”

“You are famous.”

“Oh, well, non,” he said, and found himself blushing and a little flustered as to how to respond. “No. I have a book. I’ve written some articles and essays, some histories, but really . . .”

“It is only my opinion,” she said. “Kill a peasant and no one cares but the peasant’s family and friends, however, kill a famous writer—”

“But, really,” Louis held up his hands. “I am not a famous writer.”

Louis wanted very much to be a famous writer, but he was glad, at this moment, that he was not one.

This time Clarisse waved her hand.

“Whatever the case,” she said. “You should truly stay your guard.” She tipped the glass of water he was holding to his mouth. “And don’t get drunk.”

Louis laughed and took several long gulps.

“Is there more bread?”

With that, Clarisse disappeared into the dining room for a moment and returned with a small basket of rolls. Louis grabbed one and piece by piece swallowed it. As he worked to soak away what wine was left sloshing around in his belly, and Clarisse went to clear the dining table, he thought.

This man—the cloaked man—could not possibly want to use Louis’s fame as a writer, for he had none. But he was killing: first the poor foal and then poor Father Apollinaris. But were they the first? The man had fashioned himself a specialized weapon, in the form of a massive wolf’s claw. Louis thought about the carnage wreaked upon the friar’s body and tried to imagine a man inflicting that level of damage. Indeed, Louis thought, he may have fashioned at least two, one for each hand—all the more to imitate that of a wolf-man. He only lacked teeth, and for that he made up in tenacity.

Louis tried to form an image of the man—in those glimpses he’d had of him—and he could not remember him being exceptionally large. Average, at best. Even a little stooped. In trying to understand and fully command the facts Clarisse had given him through the drunken haze that was already dissipating, it hadn’t occurred until now to ask the girl what the man’s name was.

He slapped his forehead and made to leave the kitchen and join Clarisse in the dining room, when there came from the street a blood-chilling scream. It was a woman’s scream, throaty and anguished, and it repeated itself over and over, with hardly a pause for breath.

Louis ran through the kitchen door. Clarisse was already moving through the front door of the inn and some of the male patrons were making their sleepy way down the stairs. He ran ahead of them, behind Clarisse. On the street, people gathered slowly about a young woman, in whose lap laid the limp body of a small boy. Louis recognized him as the boy who waved at him this morning from the fields before the village.

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