Evelyn Waugh: The Complete Stories Of Evelyn Waugh

On the threshold, blinking in the light, was the strange man.

“So you’re here, too, Barnes,” he said slowly; “but that is excellent. What I wish to say is for you as well as Legge. I want to apologize for being so rude that evening when you two came up to see me. I was very nervous. But where is Legge?”

And from the bedroom came a sound of hysterical sobbing, the wild, hideous sobbing of a mad man.

After half an hour I said what I had been pondering ever since we started.

“Billy, this is a crazy business. I’m willing to call the bet off if you are.”

But he answered gravely.

“I’m sorry, my friend, but I’m not going to lose the opportunity of making a fiver.”

Then there was silence again until Anderson looked back from the wheel and said:

“Look here, Billy, let’s stop at this pub and then go home. I can lend you a fiver or more if you want it. You needn’t pay me until you want to.”

But Billy was resolute:

“No, Dick, I owe enough already. I should like to earn an honest meal for once.”

So Anderson drove on and soon we came into sight of the grim place which Craine had chosen for our experiment. I saw that Billy was beginning to lose his nerve for he was shivering in his big overcoat and his feet were very still, pressed down with all his might.

“Billy,” I said, “I don’t think we need go any further; we should only be wasting time. You’ve obviously won the bet.”

And I think he would have yielded—for he was rather a child—when Craine’s voice answered for him.

“What damned nonsense. The thing isn’t begun yet. Donne’s bet that he has the nerve to go through the whole werewolf ceremony. Just getting to the place is nothing. He doesn’t yet know what he has to do. I’ve got as far as this twice before—once in Nigeria with a man of forty, but he hadn’t the nerve to go through with it, and once in Wales with the bravest thing in the world, a devoted woman; but she couldn’t do it. Donne may, because he’s young and hasn’t seen enough to make him easily frightened.”

But Billy was frightened, badly, and so were Anderson and I and for this reason we let ourselves be overborne by Craine because he knew that we were; and he smiled triumphant as a stage Satan in the moonlight.

It was strange being beaten like this by Craine who in College was always regarded as a rather unsavoury joke. But then this whole expedition was strange and Craine was an old man—thirty-three—an age incalculable to the inexperience of twenty-one; and Billy was only just nineteen.

We had started off merrily enough down St. Aldate’s; Billy had said:

“I wonder what human flesh tastes like; what d’you suppose one should drink with it?” and when I had answered with utter futility, “Spirits, of course,” they had all laughed; which shows that we were in high good humour.

But once in Anderson’s car and under that vast moon, a deep unquiet had settled upon us and when Craine said in his sinister way:

“By the way, Donne, you ought to know in case you lose us; if you want to regain your manhood all you have to do is to draw some of your own blood and take off the girdle.”

Anderson and I shuddered. He said it with a slight sneer on “manhood” and we resented it that he should speak to Billy in this way, but more than this we were shocked at the way in which the joke was suddenly plunged into reality. This was the first time that evening on which I had felt fear and all through the drive it had grown more and more insistent, until on the heath, bleak and brilliantly moonlit, I was sickeningly afraid and said:

“Billy, for God’s sake let’s get back.”

But Craine said quietly:

“Are you ready, Donne? The first thing you have to do is to take off your clothes; yes, all of them.”

And Billy without looking at us, began with slightly trembling hands to undress. When he stood, white beside his heap of clothes under the moon, he shivered and said: “I hope I get a wolf skin soon; it’s damned cold.” But the pathetic little joke faltered and failed and left us all shivering; all except Craine who was pouring something out into the cup of his flask.

“You have to drink this—all right it isn’t poisonous. I brewed it myself out of roots and things.”

So the rites began. Billy was told to draw a circle about himself in the ground and he obeyed silently. Another potion was given to him.

“Put this on your hands, eyelids, navel and feet. Just a drop or two. That’s right.”

I was trembling unrestrainedly and I dared not look at Anderson because I knew that he was too. Craine went on evenly:

“And now comes a less pleasant part. I am afraid that you have to taste human blood,” and then to us, like a conjuror borrowing a watch, “will either of you two volunteer to lend some?”

Anderson and I started, thoroughly alarmed.

“Look here, Craine, this is beastly.”

“You can’t go on, Craine.”

But Craine said:

“Well, Donne, what are we going to do?” and Billy answered evenly, “Go on with it, Craine.”

It was the first time he had spoken since he drew the circle and he stood now quite calm and looking incredibly defenceless.

“Well, if neither of you two friends of his are willing, I suppose I must offer my blood.”

But by a sudden intuition, we both of us knew that this thing must be averted at all costs; I was conscious of the most immediate and overpowering danger and dreamlike stood unmoving; Anderson had started forward.

“If Billy wants to go on with this, he had better have mine.”

And Craine answered easily:

“As you like, my friend. Do not step inside the circle and cut deeply because he will need a good deal. That is all I ask you,” but he and Anderson and I knew that he had been in some strange way checked.

So Anderson rolled up his sleeve and cut his arm and Billy without hesitation put his lips to the wound. After a few moments, Craine said, “That should be enough”; so Anderson bound up his arm roughly with a handkerchief and Billy straightened himself; there was a small trickle of blood running down his chin. He was made to repeat some jumbled sentences in a foreign tongue and then Craine produced a strip of fur.

“The girdle,” he said, “put it on Donne.”

“And now you have to kneel down and say a paternoster backwards. You had better repeat it after me.”

And then there occurred something of which, I think, I shall never lose the memory. Billy did not kneel down; he crouched back on his haunches like an animal and threw his head right back; his fair hair stirred in the moonlight, but on his face there came a look of awakening and of savagery, his lips drawn back and showing his teeth. I stood there in wild horror and saw this happen.

“Amen, Saeculorum Saecula in gloria.”

And the Thing in the circle drew in its breath. I dare not now think what that sound might have been. I refuse resolutely to let myself consider the possibility that it might not have been Billy’s voice; that the Thing in the circle was not Billy, his face contorted by some trick of the moonlight. Even then, in that moment of terror, I would not let myself consider this but I knew by an animal apprehension of the Unknown that that sound must be stopped if we were to keep our sanity; that from the moment we heard it our lives must be wholly altered. Anderson knew this, too; and, always quicker to act than I, he was in the circle while I stood numb with horror. He was a strong man and he flung Billy across the scratched circumference, tearing the girdle from him; he fell in a heap and his elbow struck on a stone; a drop of blood oozed through the earth. Then he raised himself, and, holding his elbow said, “Dick, are you mad? Why on earth did you do that? You’ve hurt me damnably.” And then suddenly turning on to his face he burst into a fit of hysterical crying and lay there shaking from head to foot and we three watching him. Craine, of course, spoke first.*