Oliver Pötzsch: The Werewolf of Bamberg

“Forget it,” Bartholomäus interrupted gruffly. “I don’t need your thanks. Georg is a big help to me. He does the work of three or four men and will be a good hangman himself someday.” He turned to Jakob and sneered. “Perhaps even here in Bamberg.”

“Here in. .” Jakob looked at his brother, astonished. “You’re going to retire and give him your job? That wasn’t our arrangement. I need Georg in Schongau. When his apprenticeship is over and he can finally return home, then-”

“Ask him yourself what he wants to do,” Bartholomäus cut in. “Maybe he’s had enough of his lying father.”

“What did you tell him about me? God, did you-”

A scream from a nearby house interrupted their conversation. Jakob stopped and looked at his brother, listening.

“Who could that be?” he asked. “It’s hardly your dead horse.”

After some hesitation, Bartholomäus dropped the shaft of his cart and ran toward the place the shouting was coming from, but turned around once to Jakob as he ran. “Before I fight with my brother, I’m going to beat up a few gallows birds. Come on!”

Jakob followed quickly. After a few hurried steps, the brothers arrived in a little square surrounded by small cottages, with a weathered fountain in the middle. A guard was crouched at the base of the fountain with a halberd alongside him on the ground; a lantern at the fountain’s edge cast a dim light. The guard was holding his hand to his mouth and looking around in all directions, horrified. Finally he pulled a clay jug out from under his ragged overcoat and took a long slug.

“Ah, it’s just Matthias, the drunken old night watchman,” Bartholomäus panted with disappointment, and stopped running. “We could have spared ourselves the trip. He’s probably had one too many and is about to throw up into the fountain. He used to be a common foot soldier, but now he drinks so much he can hardly stand up anymore.” Bartholomäus shook his head. “It’s really a shame, the people they have to hire as city watchmen. But the job of a night watchman now is dishonorable, like that of an executioner, and there aren’t many people willing to do it.”

When Matthias discovered the two men entering the square, he sighed with relief. His face was flushed, full of thick veins, and Jakob thought he could smell brandy on his breath.

The watchman staggered to his feet and stood beside the fountain. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see the Bamberg hangman!”

“You scared the hell out of us, Matthias,” Bartholomäus replied. “We could hear you shouting clear down at the hangman’s house. My brother and I took off right away to see what was going on. And now it’s just you and your damned cheap booze. So get moving before I have to put you in the stocks tomorrow morning at the Green Market.”

It didn’t seem to bother Matthias that the hangman’s house was much too far away and what Bartholomäus was telling him had to be wrong. He tried to keep his composure, which was clearly difficult to do in his condition.

“By all the saints, I swear. . I’m not drunk,” he declared, holding up his hand. “At least not so drunk that I don’t know what I saw. And I swear I. . I saw the monster.”

“What monster?” Bartholomäus asked.

“Well. . the man-eating monster. It was standing here, right before me!”

The Bamberg hangman rolled his eyes. “Now you’re starting in with that, too. Isn’t it enough that the superstitious women are spreading such foolish gossip?”

“But the monster was here, I swear! I just was about to take a little nap here at the well when I saw the thing come running out of the alleyway. It stopped and stared at me, as if trying to decide if I’d be a good meal. And then, after what seemed like an eternity, it kept on running, that way, down the other alley.” Matthias gestured wildly as he spoke and walked back and forth, wavering slightly. Now he stopped and looked quizzically at the two hangmen.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” he asked in a soft voice. “You just think I’m drunk.”

“This. . this monster-what did it look like?” Jakob knew from experience that drunks often had wild visions, especially when tormented by their fears.

“It was hairy, with gray-no, silver-fur,” Matthias declared, casting a quick glance at Jakob for not understanding what he’d been trying to say. “It had a terrifying set of teeth, long and sharp. At first it ran along on all fours, but then suddenly stood up on its hind legs.” The watchman put his hands to his face. “It ran like a human, I swear, like a furry human. Like a werewolf!”

“Be careful of what you say,” Bartholomäus snapped at him. “Don’t be too quick to use words like that. Or do you want to-”

He stopped short when he heard the scream again. At first Jakob thought it was Matthias, but the scream this time was sharper and higher pitched. It came from an alleyway leading to the square and was clearly the voice of a young woman.

The Schongau hangman didn’t hesitate for a moment. He ran past the astonished Matthias and, without even turning to look at either of them, disappeared into the dark alleyway. Without the lantern he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, but somewhere he heard a window slam shut and someone shouting in an upper story as the contents of a chamber pot poured down onto the street. Kuisl groped his way along the row of houses, stumbling into a rotten beer barrel that fell over and went clattering down a cellar stairway. As the hangman cursed and tried to run ahead, he slipped on the top step and fell into a slimy puddle of water. As he scrambled to his feet, he could feel a sticky liquid on his hands whose odor was all too familiar to him.

It was blood.

Somewhere he heard footsteps running away into the darkness. He looked around, squinting, and could just make out the vague outline of something lying at the bottom of the stairs.

“Whatever you are,” he gasped, “man or monster, come out!”

When nothing stirred, he carefully descended a few steps, where he found a body.

It was a young woman lying in her own blood.

“Jakob? Is that you?” a voice called. It was his brother, who had followed him and was now standing at the top of the stairs holding the lantern in his hand, swinging it back and forth. “What did you find down there?”

Jakob held the girl’s hand, trying in vain to feel a pulse.

“A corpse,” he whispered. “Still fresh. It looks like the poor woman’s throat has been slashed. There’s blood all over.”

“Damn. That’s all I need.” Slowly, climbing over the staves of the smashed beer barrel, Bartholomäus came down the steps. “Matthias, the old drunk, just took off. Now the two of us will have to report the matter in order not to look guilty ourselves, and I’ll have to explain to the city guards what I was doing out here in the middle of the night. Good God!” He stamped his foot angrily. “There are enough people already in the city council who are opposed to my engagement to Katharina and just waiting for a chance to get me. Why didn’t this drunken john find somewhere else to knock off his woman?”

“A drunken john? What makes you think he’s one of those?”

“Just come and have a look.” Bartholomäus was now standing alongside his brother on the narrow, slimy, moss-covered stairway. The entrance to the cellar was blocked by some roughhewn boards nailed together. Like many other buildings in the lane, the house seemed no longer occupied. Its windows were nothing but dark, gaping holes. The dead girl didn’t look more than sixteen or seventeen, with long red hair that encircled her head like a flame. She was wearing nothing but a simple, close-fitting linen dress, now torn and soaked with blood. Her throat was slit wide open and her eyes stared blankly into the night sky.