Steve Tem - Ubo

Daniel decided to try a different tactic. “You hold an innocent man inside you.” He wasn’t sure if this was exactly true, but he had no proof otherwise. “His name is Henry. You have no right to keep him prisoner. Please, won’t you release him?”

But the werewolf acted as if Daniel hadn’t spoken at all. “Eventually, of course, they had their way. They appealed to the king and I was allowed to sell no more of my property in order to finance such magnificence. Never mind that it was no business of theirs. Never mind that I had created something that had never existed before!”

Suddenly he stopped speaking. “My mouth is like a desert cave. Could I have some water, please?”

Daniel looked questioningly at the others. “There’s no water here.” Lenin shrugged.

“I’m sorry,” Danielsaid. “We have none.”

The werewolf winced, and there was movement along the inside of the cheek. When he next opened his mouth blood spilled from the corners. “I needed moisture, to speak.

“Still, I attempted to find my satisfaction in religion. I became creative in my devotion. I constructed my Chapel of the Holy Innocents where I officiated in robes of my own design.

“But it was not enough. Nothing is ever enough!”

The werewolf sobbed. But when he lifted his head it was clearly Henry who was crying. “He’s not going to let me go.” Then the face distorted again and the werewolf shook his head and flashed his teeth.

“I turned my back on my religion and set out to pursue my own demons, the demon Barron, specifically. My learned accomplices assisted me in my alchemical and demon-summoning activities at my castle at Tiffauges. Am I to blame that the ceremony required the parts of a child?

“I loved my beautiful children! They were my angels! They were poor, they had never had anything to speak of, and I dressed them in the finest clothing they had ever known. And then when we led them upstairs, we told them what was going to happen to them. I am not ashamed to say that that was the initial part of my pleasure. Their reactions. Have you never wanted to tell someone some terrible truth and then observe the drama of their reaction? It is an experience far better than any play by the greatest of our playwrights! It is a creative act! As the children cried and screamed, as they begged to be returned to their parents, I am not embarrassed to say that I wept with them. And when finally I broke their necks and removed their parts I kissed their flesh and I wept!

“I loved my children, my babies! I just wasn’t capable of taking care of them! Is that so difficult to understand? I wondered, I… speculated, if I killed them, and killed my wife, I could be a good human being again. I know that sounds insane. But think, who could be more sympathetic, more admired than a grieving husband and father?”

He was panting, hot and raw.

“I have no idea how many I killed—I may have exaggerated. I wanted it to be a very large number in my final confession, because if I had to play the monster, I wanted to be the greatest monster who had ever lived!

“I burned the bodies whenever possible in my fireplace. It was a large and grand fireplace, I must say. And I made a grand play about doing so.”

Daniel stepped away from the door, unable to stand there anymore, not wanting to listen to one more word and yet not wanting to miss any piece of this confession.

Gandhi came forward. “There, there. We understand. It has been difficult for all of us.”

“The children, they were as beautiful as angels. My two, my twins, when they weren’t crying, I could imagine them as angels. I could almost imagine myself happy with that life, that wife and those children, with nothing more to show for all my remaining years. No pageantry, no spectacle, no special accomplishment, simply an ordinary life. Why couldn’t that be enough? Why couldn’t I make myself feel that would be enough?”

“You’re talking of your real life now? Not the one you played as de Rais? What was your name? Henry, wasn’t it? Try to hold onto your name.” Gandhi kept pressing. Daniel waited for some kind of explosion.

“Again, should I apologize because I was driven by my superior imagination?

“I should be ashamed to say that I have eaten a variety of human flesh and that I know that babies taste the best of all. I understand there are some things a human being should never know, but there is the fact of it and should I deny it now?”

“Wait, wait, are you the werewolf now? Are you de Rais?” Gandhi cried. “I don’t want to hear this story anymore! I really can’t!”

Gandhi stepped away and Daniel gestured for Lenin to step up to the door. But Lenin shook his head. Reluctantly, Daniel returned to the window.

“But those are the facts of it!” the werewolf shouted. “What kind of man is it who cannot or will not deal with the facts?”

The werewolf stopped speaking suddenly and stared into Daniel’s face. “Am I frightening you, Sir?”

“No, not really,” Daniel lied.

“Well, there’s no need for armor, so why do you wear it?”

“I don’t understand…”

“I cannot abide a metal face during polite conversation. I show you who I am, so please, Sir, permit me to see your eyes!”

Daniel didn’t know what to say. The werewolf blinked a few times, then his body convulsed in a series of muscle spasms. His arms suddenly looked crooked. His eyes swayed in their sockets. He jutted his chin forward and his ears appeared to flow back against his skull.

The werewolf rambled on for another ten minutes or so. The more Daniel listened to the man’s confession the more his vicious acts sounded like those of a young boy prodding and pulling the guts from a frog. Except these frogs had been children. And this creature seemed unable to tell the difference between the two. In the end pure evil was a banal and stupid thing.

“He’s crazy, but it’s not right that he is locked up like this,” Gandhi said. “Obviously this only makes him worse. We have to get him out of there.”

Lenin stepped between Gandhi and the door. “Are you sure that is wise—look what he’s done to himself!”

“To himself—that is the point. I did not hear him threaten any of us, however paranoid he might be. It is himself he damages. This isn’t right, to hold him like this. We’ve got to get him out of there!”

“I suppose. What more can they do to us? He is right, Daniel—now and then you must stand up for what is right, if you want to call yourself a decent human being.”

Daniel knew he’d feel unsafe with this monster running about, but he didn’t want to make any important decisions out of fear. He helped the others hunt for anything that could be used as a pry bar.

Lenin came up with a two-foot piece of ridged metal rod under a pile of crumbling concrete at one end of the corridor. It was rusted brown but still appeared strong. Daniel recognized it as what they called rebar, or reinforcing bar used to support concrete. Where have they brought us?

Lenin jabbed into the door frame with the end of the bar. The werewolf bobbed back and forth inside the cell making a high yipping sound, like a dog overly excited that its owner has come home. Finally Lenin managed to get the bar wedged into the frame and wiggled the bar back and forth; it chewed into the frame. He stopped and put his weight onto the bar, trying to pry the door open. Gandhi ran over and pressed his own small shoulder against the bar, his feet slipping futilely on the tile as he pushed. Although Daniel was conflicted, it embarrassed him to see Gandhi applying so much pointless effort. He came up behind the small man and placed his hands on either side of his trembling shoulder and pushed.