The Complete Idiot's Guide to Werewolves (20 page)

The king’s advisor, well familiar with the always gentle nature of the wolf, pointed out that the animal had never attacked anyone. He then went on to point out that this woman was once the wife of Bisclavret, who had vanished one year before. The king considered this and decided to “question” the wife (which means he has her tortured). Almost immediately, the woman admitted to her crimes. She confessed to the plot and to convincing the knight to help her and revealed where she had been hiding the clothing Bisclavret needed to return to human form.

 

The king retrieved the clothing and brought it before the wolf, who turned away from it. The king was puzzled until his wise advisor suggested that they take the clothes and wolf into his chambers so he could change in privacy. The king gave this a try, and a few moments later, the newly restored Baron Bisclavret emerged from the room.

The king returned to Bisclavret all that had been taken from him. The knight and Bisclavret’s now noseless ex-wife were permanently exiled from the land under the penalty of death. According to the story, the female descendants of Bisclavret’s ex-wife were from that day on born without noses.

George W. M. Reynolds’s
Wagner the Werewolf
(originally published with the spelling
Wagner the Wehr-wolf
) was published in 1847 as a
penny dreadful.
The story was one of the first English stories to offer a depiction of the fictional werewolf figure. It is a story of one man’s tragic struggle to redeem the lost glory of his wasted youth.

The main character of the story is Fernand Wagner, who found himself alone in the latter years of his life. He was soon approached by a dark figure by the name of John Faust, who made Wagner an offer he couldn’t refuse. If Wagner would serve him during what should be the final year of Faust’s life, then he would reward Wagner with youth, power, riches, and beauty. There was, however, a far more terrible price for these rewards than just his year of servitude to Faust. Wagner would also have to endure the life of a werewolf for the rest of his days. On the day that marked the end of Wagner’s year of servitude, Faust died and left everything promised to Wagner. However, you know what they say … be careful what you wish for … you just might get it.

Wagner soon fell in love with a cold yet beautiful woman named Nisida, who came from a familial lineage that carried with it some (originally unspecified) dark and mysterious secret. Nisida and Wagner both lived in constant fear of being discovered, which formed a strong bond between them. They knew they couldn’t remain in the Italian city of Florence for long. The pair planned to book passage to an island in the Mediterranean, where both of them could live out their lives with their secrets intact. However, Wagner’s life was soon plagued by misfortune. Only days before Wagner would again transform into a werewolf, he was arrested and taken into the custody of Inquisition authorities. Nisida, out of fear that her lover was now lost to the gallows, left without him on a ship out of Florence.

 

Wagner learned that he was standing trial under the suspicion of being Faust’s murderer, and some of the judges even thought him to be a werewolf. The court found him guilty and tossed him into the Florence prison called
Palazzo del Podesto.
The lead judge, wanting to put an end to all talk of him being a werewolf, scheduled Wagner’s execution for the very night that he was to transform. As he was rolled before the gallows in a wagon-cell, however, Wagner transformed and broke out, shattering his iron and wood cage to pieces. Now free and under the savage influence of his wolf form, he went on a bloody nocturnal rampage through the city.

 

Wagner managed to get onto a ship out of the city and began searching for the vessel that Nisida left on in the hopes of finding her. In his travels, he encountered some members of the mystic
Rosicrucian Order.
They explained to Wagner that only death could release him from his werewolf curse, but that (since werewolves are immortal and invulnerable) death would only come for him if he saw the bleached skeletons of two innocents that were hung from the same beam. He eventually reunited with Nisida.

Later, Wagner and Nisida were forced to journey to the land of her family when Ottoman soldiers took them prisoner. There they were brought to the house of Nisida’s brother, Francisco, where they were released. Francisco had sent the soldiers to retrieve Nisida so as to ensure that his sister would be present for his wedding (to a woman Nisida hated). Family law required that all siblings be present on that day so that a certain manuscript could be removed from its secret chamber and read aloud in order to reveal to all present the truth of that family’s dark secret.

 

When they all entered the secret chamber, however, on the wall were two bleached skeletons hung from the same beam. Apparently, the bones once belonged to innocents because Wagner immediately recoiled and fell to the floor in convulsions. His darling Nisida rushed to him, and moments later he died in her arms.

Most people are more familiar with Rudyard Kipling from his 1894 work
The Jungle Book,
which was set in the jungles of India. Previously, however, Kipling published another story that was also set in India but involved one man’s curse of lycanthropy. Kipling titled the story
The Mark of the Beast,
and it was first published in a periodical called
The Pioneer
in July 1890. At the same time, it also received publication in
The New York Journal.

 

The Mark of the Beast
tells the story of a westerner named Fleete Strickland, who came to India with a high level of ignorance regarding the customs, dialects, and people. Shortly after arriving, Fleete celebrated New Year’s Eve at a nearby western-styled nightspot called “The Club” and had a few too many drinks. As Fleete stumbled home in a drunken stupor, he came across a shrine to the revered Hindu Monkey God, Hanuman. Seeing that his cigar has burned down too far, he extinguished it on the Hanuman’s statue. A nearby Hindu holy man, who was also a leper, witnessed Fleete’s act of shrine desecration and lunged at him. During the struggle, the enraged holy man bit Fleete on the chest. Fleete broke free and began to run home. As the westerner disappeared down the road, another priest arrived and commented that Hanuman had not yet even begun to punish him for what he’d done.

 

Soon enough, Fleete started to feel the effects of the holy man’s curse. He was overcome by strange and powerful urges. He had an uncontrollable craving for raw meat. At times, he found himself walking in his garden on all fours and howling into the night sky. When Fleete sought out a medical diagnosis, the doctor told him that he was suffering from rabies. Fleete, however, believed that he had been cursed.

Fleete and another man eventually tracked down the leprous Hindu sage who initially gave him the bite that was causing Fleete’s strange behavior. They then tortured the ailing holy man until he agreed to remove Fleete’s lycanthropic curse, the “Mark of the Beast.” The holy man lifted the curse, and Fleete was able to return to his normal human self.

The Werewolf of Paris
was written by New York author Samuel Guy Endore (also known as Guy Endore) and was published in 1933. The story was inspired when Endore learned of the details surrounding the case of Francois Bertrand, a corpse-obsessed maniac who was dubbed by some as the “Werewolf of Paris.”

 

The Werewolf of Paris
tells the story of Bertrand Caillet, who was born on the most auspicious day of Christmas Eve. His mother was a servant girl who was raped by a rogue priest. As a result of the scandal surrounding the child’s conception, his mother brought him to the home of his step-uncle, Aymar Gaillez, in order to raise him.

 

From a very young age, Bertrand experienced unusual desires. These desires, many of which were somewhat sexually sadistic, remained only in his dreams for much of his life. However, Bertrand later discovered that many of these disturbing nocturnal visions were not dreams at all but memories of his experiences as a werewolf.

 

Soon enough, his uncle Aymar discovered that Bertrand was a werewolf. After Bertrand committed a number of crimes—attacking a prostitute, murdering a local villager, and raping his own mother—he had no choice but to leave the village. Bertrand went to start a new life in Paris, where again he resumed his savagely sadistic crimes of rape and murder.