Lycanthropos (26 page)

 

Three hours later Gottfried von Weyrauch was standing alone in the ad hoc autopsy room near the now empty
laboratory. He had watched as Petra Loewenstein had injected
four more concentration camp inmates with the different serums she had prepared, and as each and every one of them died he told himself that he was not responsible for any of this, that he was cog in a machine, an impotent, blameless bystander, as much a victim of the S.S. as these four corpses stretched out before him on the tables.

He was lying to himself, and he knew that he was lying;
but he reasoned that there was nothing he could to do that would not put his own life in jeopardy, and his life certainly was no less valuable than the lives of the dead men whose bodies he now had to slice up for examination. He
sighed and shook his head.
When will this all end?
he asked
himself.
When can I just go back to Kappelburg and be left alone? Is that too much to ask, is that so unrealistic a desire in life? Just to be left alone?

He looked out the window and saw the full moon shining bright and clear in the black sky of early spring. Sprigs of wolfsbane had been affixed to the windows and doors of the Palace, and though the presence of the protective plant afforded Weyrauch an intellectual, rational security, it did nothing to diminish his irrational, emotional fear of the
night. He shook himself with determination and set about his
ghoulish task.

He performed an autopsy on each subject, one after the other, and for each one it was as before: death due to the introduction of a toxic substance into the bloodstreams of the subjects. All of the tell-tale signs of poisoning were present in the liver and the heart and the lungs. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing unusual, nothing of any value to
the project, nothing...

Nothing...

His mouth fell open and his eyes went wide as he gazed down upon the dissected remains of Lev Bronsky,
Auschwitz
inmate 346730. Weyrauch knew the dead man's number because
it had been tattooed on his arm; and as he stared at the tattoo, so black against the sepulchral white of the dead skin, the number was obscured and then buried beneath the thick black hair that seemed to billow up from the dead roots as the moonlight poured through the window and fell upon the corpse.

"GUARD!" he screamed.

The dead man did not move, the heart now separated from his body did not begin to beat, the lungs which rested in a
jar of formaldehyde did not strain to draw in air and no mad
thoughts were generated by the dead brain which lay upon the medical scale; but the dead man continued to change. The face, petrified into a grotesque, agonized scream by the pain of death, elongated as the teeth grew and the eyes narrowed. For a moment Weyrauch thought that he saw the dead hands move, but it was an illusion, a trick played upon his eyes by the small, blunt claws which broke through the skin
of the fingertips and pushed out into the moonlight.

"GUARD!" he screamed again.

And then the changing ceased abruptly. When the two S.S.
soldiers who had been stationed in the corridor burst into
the room, their weapons drawn and their faces hard and tense
in reaction to Weyrauch's frenzied cries, they found the minister staring at the dissected, furry body and giggling idiotically. They lowered their weapons and one of them asked, "What is wrong, Herr Doctor?"

"We've done
it,
we've done it!" Weyrauch giggled. "All we have to figure out is how to do it without killing them
first."
The guards exchanged looks which mingled amusement
with annoyance, and then Weyrauch said, "Send for Colonel Schlacht immediately."

"The Colonel is not here, Herr Doctor," the second guard said. "He has gone to a conference in
Vienna
."

"Then get Professor Fest..." He stopped. Festhaller was
also absent, and no one knew where he had gone. "Petra," he said aloud to himself, and then turned back to the guards.
"I need to know Fräulein Loewenstein's address. You can get
it from Vogel, Colonel Schlacht's adjutant. I believe that Professor Festhaller is also staying in private rooms somewhere in
Budapest
, and Vogel should have his address also. And fetch my wife. If she isn't in our quarters she will be in the dungeon, visiting the Gypsy prisoners." He
paused as he realized that at this moment Kaldy was himself
in the throws of his lunar transformation, and he knew that Louisa would be nowhere near him. "No, no, not in the dungeon. She should be in our
suite."

The guards obeyed Weyrauch's rather preemptory commands, even though he was a civilian and, in the general opinion of the S.S. stationed at the Palace, something of a
buffoon. But they knew that an important genetic project was
being conducted here, they knew that Weyrauch was somehow
involved in
it,
and many of them had heard the minister
address Colonel Schlacht by his first name. So they accepted Weyrauch's importance as a given fact and went to carry out
his orders.

At that same moment, Ludwig Joachim Festhaller was disgruntledly finishing his fifth liter of beer in the
tavern on the Kossouth Utca, just off the Felszabadulas Ter,
on
Kossouth Street
by
Felszabadulas
Plaza
. "Damn the little
slut,"
he muttered to himself.
"I'll
make her pay for this,
I swear to God I
will."
He belched loudly and then rose from
his seat and left the tavern to walk the four short blocks to his house, the house which he began using after expelling
its owners.

As Festhaller waddled unsteadily down the dark street he remarked to himself that these damned Magyars did not have
street lights half as bright as those in
Berlin
. He stumbled
a few times as a result of his drunkenness, and blamed his
difficulty on the darkness. The sounds of
Budapest
were few,
for the curfew had just begun and very few automobiles or people were in evidence. Festhaller did not fear being stopped by the Gestapo or the S.S. or the pitiful if
self-important soldiers of the Horthy government, for he was
a confidant of
Reichsführer
Himmler himself, and could go
where he wanted, when he wanted.

He heard the sound of a dog walking briskly along the pavement. Festhaller listened to the clicking of the dog's nails, and he smiled, thinking how much it sounded like the
clicking of a woman's high heeled shoes. Then he realized that the
clicking of the nails was growing faster and closer, and that he was hearing the sound made by two paws, not four, and then he heard the snarl which could not have come from the throat of a dog.

Festhaller's heart leaped up into his mouth, and he
began to run.

He was a scant ten yards from the stairs which led to the front door of the house when the sound of his pursuer
stopped abruptly, and as his shaking hand tried to force the
key into the lock, he looked behind him fearfully and saw nothing. He smiled with relief.
Nerves
, he thought,
just nerves. Some damned dog, that's all it was
. He unlocked the door, opened it, entered the house and then, after locking the door behind him, leaned against it and wiped the sweat
from his brow. He was breathing hard, and he listened to the
rapid heartbeat which was pounding in his chest.
Have to lose some weight
, he thought to himself. And then he was thrown forcefully forward onto the floor as the door was thrust open by one powerful kick. He heard the hungry growl behind him, but did not have the opportunity to turn in its direction. He was still lying face-first on the floor a split second later as the jaws snapped shut on his neck.

Festhaller had not even had time enough to scream.

 

As Gottfried and Louisa von Weyrauch sped through the dark streets of
Budapest
in the black Mercedes limousine,
Louisa demanded, "Gottfried, will you
please
tell me what
you're doing and where we're going?!"

"First, we are going to visit Professor Festhaller," he said gleefully, "and then we are going to visit
Petra
."

"It's after dark!" she exclaimed. "We should be in our
quarters, protected by that plant, not wandering around
the city!"

"We aren't wandering around, Louisa," he said, thrusting his hand into his pocket and pulling out some bent and shredded branches of wolfsbane. "And we
are
protected by the
plant."

"But what are we...?"

"We've made a breakthrough," he said excitedly and then proceeded to explain to her what had happened in the hours since they parted company in Schlacht's office. He concluded by saying. "So we're on the right track. Oh, I know that we
aren't anywhere near the point of completion, but we've
demonstrated that somehow, in some manner which we cannot explain as yet, the enzyme does indeed effect a fundamental alteration of the basic genetic structure of the cells. Hair
and nails continue to grow after life functions have ceased,
and it was in the hair and nails of the corpse that the changes were most dramatic." He paused. "Of course, the changes in the skull are a bit surprising, inasmuch as..."

"Will you listen to yourself?!" she cried. "Will you just stop for a minute and listen to what you're saying?! Helmuth has been
killing
people, innocent people, and you
and
Petra
and that idiot Professor have been helping him do
it, and now you're telling me that you're happy about the progress of the research?! My God, Gottfried! My God!"

He became immediately defensive. "Of course I'm not happy with what's been happening. You know that I didn't
want anything to do with this project.
It's
just that...it's
just that…"

She waited for him to finish his statement, but he could
not.
"It's
just what. Gottfried?
It's
just exciting that
today's experiment was a success?
It's
just exciting that
you seem to be able to do something horrible and unholy to the corpse of someone whom you murdered? Is that it?"

"Louisa, that isn't fair," he said softly, turning his face away from hers and staring out at the passing
buildings.

"Oh, no, how terribly unfair I'm being!" she spat. "Poor Gottfried! How cruelly you're being treated."

"I'm doing what I have to do."

"Yes, and apparently you're beginning to enjoy
it,"
she said coldly. "God, how I hate you! I think I hate you more than I hate Helmuth. At least he thinks that what he's doing is right. You don't have that excuse." They rode in silence for a few minutes, ignoring each other, and then Louisa asked, "Why did you send the soldiers to get me? Why did you want me to come with you to see Festhaller?"

He shrugged, not looking at her. "I don't know. I didn't
give it much thought, really. I just...I don't know." He
paused. "I suppose that I didn't want to leave you alone in
the Palace tonight, n
ot
with Claudia prowling about
somewhere."

She emitted a shrill, sardonic laugh. "You didn't want to leave me alone! Do you think I need your protection?! Do you think you could protect me from a monster or from anything else? What a tragic joke you are, Gottfried, what a
farce!"

The S.S. private who had been driving the sedan, and who had been listening intently to every word and had been suppressing his laughter at the henpecked fool in the back seat, pulled up to a curb and turned around to his passengers. "This is the address, Herr Doctor. Professor Festhaller has appropriated this house for his residence
while in
Budapest
."

Weyrauch climbed out of the back seat and then turned back to Louisa. "This shouldn't take me long. You can wait here, if you wish..."

"I most certainly do
not
wish," she snapped and then said to the driver, "Please take me back to the Palace at once."

"Louisa, it isn't safe at the Palace."

"Gottfried, it isn't safe anywhere in
Europe
!" She sat
back in the seat and folded her arms angrily across her chest.

The driver looked at Weyrauch who sighed and nodded.
"Yes, take her back. I'll return with Festhaller. I'm quite
certain that he will want to see the...well, I'm sure
he'll
want to go to the Palace at once."

"Or at least at dawn," Louisa muttered. "Such brave men
you Nazis are!"

"I am not a..." Weyrauch began, but Louisa pulled the door shut before he could finish. He stood and watched the automobile pull away from the curb and then, cursing his wife inwardly and angry at the truthfulness of her words, he turned and walked up the steps to the nineteenth-century bourgeois townhouse which Festhaller had ‘appropriated.'
So
delicate a term
, Weyrauch said to himself,
for evicting the
inhabitants and stealing their home
. And almost immediately he asked himself,
Who am I to be critical of him? Louisa's right, you know. She's been right all along
.