Lycanthropos

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This book is dedicated to the memory of my late friend, Kenneth Craigo, with whom I shared more cheap wine, watched more bad horror movies, engaged in more arcane conversations, than with anyone else I have ever known.

 

Resquiescat in pacem.

This book was originally written in 1988. At that time I was engaged in a multi-volume project which attempted to reprise some of the old themes of the classic horror films of the 1930s and 1940s, giving each of them a new twist, a new
"spin," to use a current term. Each book fell into the rather limited genre of
"historical horror fiction," and each also contained theological or philosophical elements. The first,
Stolen Souls,
dealt with resurrected Egyptian mummies; the second,
Candlemas Eve,
with witchcraft; the third,
Blood of the Impaler,
with vampires; and the fourth,
Lycanthropos,
with werewolves. (The project concluded two years later with
The Demon.
They were all published by Bantam Books.)

One of the twists that I chose to give to my werewolf tale was to set it against
the backdrop of the Second World War. As you may recall, the 1940 film
The
Wolf Man,
starring Lon Chancy Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Claude Rains, took place in
England
, where one member of a wandering group of Gypsies was a werewolf (Lugosi) who bit
the title character (Chaney). I liked the Gypsy element, but the Gypsy population of
England
is practically non-existent; it made more sense to me to set my plot in
Eastern Europe
, which is where most Gypsies actually live (or lived, until the
Holocaust). Europe was, of course, under the military occupation of Nazi Germany
during the War: the Gypsies were second only to the Jews as objects of Nazi hatred: S.S. doctors used concentration camp inmates as subjects in horrible "medical" experiments and if the S.S. got its hands on a werewolf...get the idea?

I was very excited by the plot as it developed, and I assumed that the folks at
Bantam would be as well. They were. They only asked me to make one slight change: don't set the story in Nazi-occupied
Eastern Europe
fifty years ago.

Well, that kind of subverted the whole idea of the story. But I knew I was writing pop horror fiction, not fine literature, so I agreed to rewrite the whole manuscript from start to finish.
Hungary
became North Dakota, 1943 became 1990, and the S.S. became a group of rural American neo-Nazi radicals. It wasn't my original concept, but it worked. The novel was published in 1990 under the title
Mark of the Werewolf
(Bantam didn't like the original title either). It sold reasonably
well. But still, it wasn't my original concept.

I was recently undertaking the mammoth task of cleaning out my garage when I came across a box containing numerous old manuscripts, including my old werewolf yarn. Decades have passed since
Mark
was published, and pop culture is currently experiencing a werewolf/vampire revival, so I figured, why not give
Lycanthropos
another try? So I am.

And here it is.

JS

The information I am about to convey may give the reader that the impression that this book concerns itself with Nazism, Ancient Near Eastern Religion, modern Protestantism, and other matters quite possibly not of interest. Let me assure you that this book is not really about any of those things. This is a novel about werewolves. If
you are not interested in anything other than werewolves, you can skip the rest of this author's note without suffering any great loss.

I am quite certain that the reader is familiar with the well-known nonsense
about an ancient Aryan master race which Hitler and the Nazis took so seriously, and
I feel no need either to summarize the idea or to point out its foolishness. However, it
may come as a surprise to some readers to learn that in the distant past there were
indeed a people who were called the Aryans. It was this people whose invasions and conquests laid the foundations of the subsequent civilizations of Doric Greece, Vedic India, and ancient
Persia
. ("
Iran
," of course, is a name derived from "Aryan.") About
the Aryans very little is known, though it is certain that the language group known
as Indo-European, and including most of the languages spoken from
Portugal
to
Bangladesh
, is descended from the ancient Aryan language. (These languages used to be called Aryan Languages, until the Nazis rendered the term unusable.)

The reader may also be surprised to learn that the swastika was indeed an ancient Aryan symbol (which is, of course, precisely why the Nazis used it.) The swastika can still be found carved on the walls of temples in
India
. In those parts of the "Aryan world" (using the term correctly, let me emphasize) which never fell under the sway of the Nazi empire, the swastika does not have the sinister connotations which it has for most of the rest of the world. In
India
, at least, it
remains the religious symbol it originally was.

My use of a Lutheran clergyman as a major and not particularly admirable
character may cause some readers to assume that I am attempting to be disrespectful to that Christian communion. Nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, I am a Lutheran myself (albeit a somewhat heterodox one). For another, I am well
aware of the great risks and sacrifices made by many of the Protestant clergy during
the time of the Third Reich, and, of course, by many Roman Catholic priests and nuns.
The fact remains, however, that most clergy, Protestant and Catholic alike, did not actively
oppose Hitler's regime. (Rabbis, of course, had neither opportunity nor option.)
Germany
was and is approximately 1/3 Catholic and 2/3 Protestant, the latter group
being the Evangelical (i.e., Lutheran and Calvinist) Church. Inasmuch as my plot
required a married clergyman, my choices were thus greatly circumscribed by fact.

The date of the prophet Zoroaster has never been agreed upon by scholars. The
dates proposed range from 700 B.C. to 5000 B.C. My choice for his historical period is therefore arbitrary.

I have in most instances chosen to use military rank designations which will be
recognizable to people from English-speaking backgrounds. I felt that the usage of
technically correct German ranks would be confusing, distracting, and rather ponderous. (An S.S. Colonel, for example, would be called a
Standartenf
ü
hrer.
Who
outside of the S.S. would know what that means? Who outside of the S.S. would
care
what that means?!) My only departure from this has been to use the word
Hauptmann
(Captain). I have done this for no logical reason, other than the fact that my brother Gary was a captain in the US Army while he was stationed in
West
Germany
, and everyone called him
Herr Hauptmann.
I always thought it sounded kind of neat.

Regarding foreign words and phrases, the convention in English is to italicize them. I have adhered to this as regards to most titles and sentences, but I have made exceptions for frequently appearing words. (e.g.,
Reichsf
ü
hrer,
but F
ü
hrer;
Sturmabteilung,
but
S.A.
,
Schutzstaffle,
but S.S., and Herr, Frau, and Fräulein. Those
readers conversant with contemporary German may object to the use of the word
Fräulein to mean "Miss," because (as I understand it) the word is used today only in
reference to very little girls; all adult German women, married or unmarried, are
addressed as "Frau" (Mrs.). But in the 1940s, unmarried women were still addressed as Fräulein.

The name of the main character, Janos, is pronounced "Yan
M
sh." It is a Hungarian form of the name John.

Some readers may not know that the Nazis' hatred of the Gypsies was as great as
their hatred of the Jews. In the mass murders which preoccupied the S.S. during the last half of World War II, 95% of the Gypsies of Europe perished. If you cannot
understand why Hitler and his minions were determined to wipe out people such as the Gypsies and the Jews, and ultimately the Africans and the American Indians, join the club. If you are really curious, I suggest you read the chapter in
Mein Kampf
entitled
"
Volk und Rasse
"
(
"
People and Race
"
)
someday. Now
there
is a horror story!

Of course, there are some people who deny that the atrocities at Auschwitz-Birekenau and Treblinka and Sorbibor and the other death camps ever happened at all. I do not
propose to waste paper and ink refuting such an absurd assertion, instead contenting
myself with reminding the reader that there are also people who believe that the pyramids at Giza were homing beacons built by intelligent lizards from Alpha
Centuri, that a Paul McCartney look-alike named Billy Shears has been impersonating the
dead Beatle since 1965
,
and that Elvis Presley is alive and well and working in a
convenience store in Des Moines, Iowa.

Weil es weder sicker noch geraten ist, etwas gegen sein Gewissen zu tun.

(For it is neither safe nor right to do anything against one's
conscience.)

-Martin Luther

 

I will speak thus of the two spirits at the first beginning of the
world, of whom the holier
spake
thus to the enemy, "Neither
thoughts nor teachings nor wills nor beliefs nor words nor deeds nor selves nor souls of us two agree." I will speak of
those who adhere to the enemy, of whom it is said that their
own souls and their own selves shall torment them when they come to the Bridge of the Separator. To all time shall they be
as prisoners in the House of the Lie.