The Thing in the Forest by Bernard Capes. Raven speaks into the snow locked
forests of Upper Hungary steel wolves in winter, but there is a footfall worse
than theirs to knock upon the heart of the lonely traveler. One December evening,
Elsbet, the young, newly wetted wife of the woodman Stefan, came
hurrying over the lower slopes of the White Mountains from the town, where she
had been all day marketing. She carried a basket with provisions on her arm.
Her plump cheeks were like a couple of cold apples. Her breath spoke
short, but more from nervousness than exhaustion. It was nearing dusk, and
she was glad to see the little lonely church in the hollow below the hub,
as it were of many radiating paths through the trees, one of which
was the road to her own warm cottage, yet a half mile away.
She paused a moment at the foot of the slope, undecided about entering the
little, chill, silent building and making her plea for protection to the great
battered stone image of our Lady of Succor, which stood within by the confessional
box. But the stillness and the growing darkness decided her, and she went
on. A spark of fire glowing through the presbytery window seemed to repel rather
than attract her, and she was glad when the convolutions of the path hid
it from her sight. Being new to the district, she had seen very
little of father rule as yet, and somehow the penetrating knowledge and burning eyes
of the pastor made her feel uncomfortable. The soft drift, the lane of
tall, motionless pines stretched on in a quiet like death. Somewhere, the
sun, like a dead fire, had fallen into opalescent embers. Faintly luminous,
they were enough only to touch the shadows with a ghastlier pallor. It
was so still that the light crunch in the snow of the girl's own footfalls
trod on her heart like a desecration. Suddenly there was something near her that
had not been before. It had come like a shadow, without more sound
or warning. It was here there behind her. She turned in mortal panic
and saw a wolf with a strangled cry and trembling limbs. She strove to
hurry on her way, and always she knew, though there was no whisper
of pursuit that the gliding shadow followed in her wake. Desperate in her terror,
she stopped once more and faced it. A wolf? Was it a
wolf? Oh? Who could doubt it? Yet the wild expression in those
famished eyes, so lost, so pitiful, so mingled of insatiable hunger and
human need, condemned for its unspeakable sins to take this form with sunset and
so howl and snuffle about the doors of men until the blessed day released it.
A werewolf, not a wolf. That terrific realization of the truth smote
the girl as with a knife out of darkness. For an instant she came
near fainting, And then a low moan broke into her heart and flood at
it with pity, so lost, so infinitely hopeless, and so pitiful.
Yes, in spite of all, so pitiful, it had sinned, beyond
any sinning that her innocence knew or her experience could gauge. But she was
a woman, very blest, very happy in her store of comforts and her
surety of love. She knew that it was forbidden to succor these damned and
nameless outcasts, to help or sympathize with them in any way, But there
was a good store of meat in her basket, and who need ever know
tell? With shaking hands she found and threw a sop to the desolate brute,
then, turning, sped upon her way. But at home, her
secret sin stood up before her, and, interposing between her husband and herself,
threw its shadow upon both their faces. What had she dared? What
done by her own act, forfeited her birthright of innocence, by her own
act, placed herself in the power of the evil to which she had ministered.
All that night she lay in shame and horror, and all the next
day until Fan had come about his dinner and gone again. She moved in
a dumb agony, then driven unendurably by the memory of his troubled, bewildered
face. As twilight threatened, she put on her cloak and went down to
the little church in the hollow to confess her sin. Mother, forgive and
save me, she whispered as she passed the statue after ringing the bell for
the confessor. She had not knelt long at the confessional box in the dim
chapel, cold and empty as a waiting vault. When the chancel rail clicked
and the footsteps of Father Rule were heard rustling over the stones, he came.
He took his seat behind the grating, and with many sighs and falterings,
elspet avowed her guilt, and as with bowed head she ended. A
strange sound answered her. It was like a little laugh, and yet not
so much like a laugh as a snarl, with a shock, as of
death. She raised her face. It was Father Rule who sat there,
And yet it was not Father Rule. In that time of twilight. His
face was already changing, narrowing, becoming wolfish, the eyes rounded, and
the jaw slavered. She gasped and shrunk back, and at that, barking
and snapping at the grating with a wicked look, he dropped, and she
heard him coming. Sheer horror, lent her wings with a scream. She
sprang to her feet and fled her cloak caught in something. There was a
wrench and crash, and like a flood, oblivion overswept her. It was
the old, deaf and near senile Sacristan who found them lying there, the
woman unhurt but insensible, the priest crushed out of life by the fall of
the ancient statue, long tottering to its collapse, she recovered for her part.
For his No one knows where he lies buried, but there were dark
stories of a baying pack that night, and of an empty, blood stained
pavement when they came to seek it for the body, and of the thing
in the forest.