I am Wolf (The Wolfboy Chronicles) (5 page)

I began longing for the
big outdoors. Spring was still far away and we were absolutely forbidden to go
outside, except my father and oldest brother who would hunt in the forest and
bring back meat for the entire family. Oh, how I envied them watching from my
window as they rode away on the back of their horses. I wanted so badly to go
hunting with them. Not for the same reasons as they. They went to provide for their
family, to bring home food, for survival. I wanted the kill. I craved the raw,
fleshy, bloody meat of my prey. I wanted to sink my teeth into the salty raw
meat, to drink its blood. Every day I was deprived from it I grew more and more
irritated, restless, agonized. I was growling and hissing at everybody, even my
dear mother who told me she hardly recognized me; she hardly knew who I was.

I felt horrible for hurting her.

Then finally in mid-January 1941 when the snow fell
hard on the countryside and blocked all of the roads, it happened.

It began with thick grey hairs growing out everywhere
on my skin. It was after sunset, and I had already gone to my bedroom for the
night so luckily no one saw what was happening to me. I stared at my own
reflection in the mirror on the wall. What were those stiff hairs on the top of
my hands? I lifted them in the light to better see. They didn’t look anything
like my normal hair or the soft light hairs on my body. I lifted my shirt and
realized they were growing out everywhere. On my chest, my arms and legs. I
remember touching them, feeling their stiffness and wondering what was
happening to me? Could it be some sort of disease? Was something terribly
wrong?

Right there, in my room, in front of the mirror I was
suddenly struck by a horrifying, overwhelming fear that caused me to kneel on
the floor. It was followed by a horrendous pain in my hands and fingers as I
felt something grow out, almost burst out of me from my insides. It was like an
explosion inside of my body. I held my hands to my face as a tremendous
headache struck me, feeling like my face was about to shatter.

Seconds later, everything went completely black.

 
I
WOKE UP NOT
knowing where I was. I thought I had been
dreaming, a terrible nightmare. It was cold, I was freezing, and my entire body
was trembling. I soon realized I was lying outside in the snow, somewhere in
the forest, surrounded by trees in a clearing of some sort. It was no longer
dark. A heavy sky of grey clouds was hanging over my head.

My head, I thought and touched it. The pain, I
remembered having pain and then ... then nothing. I sat up and looked at
myself. I realized to my surprise that I was completely naked. My hair was wet,
my arms and legs sore and I felt exhausted, like I had been running all night.

It was dawn now. As I slowly woke up I realized there
was something next to me. I jumped upright with a gasp. Next to where I had
been sleeping lay a small dead rabbit, half-eaten. Next to it another one. The
blood had colored the snow red around them. I jumped at the sight of it then
turned and looked into the eyes of a deer, a dead deer also half-eaten, blood
smeared all over the snow surrounding it. With much difficulty I got up on my
two feet and looked at the place where I had been sleeping. The entire clearing
looked like a massacre. Deer, rabbits, even sheep. Killed, slaughtered and then
eaten.

I was startled. What had happened?

It was getting brighter now and I suddenly feared
getting exposed. I was shaking with cold and fear. Then I started running,
running through the forest and towards my father’s estate. As I ran I slowly
recognized parts of the forest and I knew I was far away from home, but still
on my father’s property. I kept wondering how on earth I had come all the way
out there, and on foot? The worst part was I remembered absolutely nothing from
the night before. I kept going over what I could recall. I remembered being in
my room, I remembered not feeling well, I remembered the hairs and then the
pain. After that was blank, like a dream. Small moments started coming back to
me, darkness that surrounded me, absorbed me, paws in the snow, running, the
sound of heavy breathing, animals fleeing, teeth gnarling, a snarling sound,
flesh being torn, ripped, blood spurting. I gasped for breath as I ran through
the icy wind on my naked body. I shivered with cold, my teeth clanking, my
fingers were turning purple. Could I have killed those animals?

Finally I reached my home and found the front door
open. Had I left it open? I sneaked in and up the stairs hoping and praying to
not be seen or heard by anyone. I reached my room and threw myself on the bed,
exhausted, completely drained.

Then I fell into a deep and heavy sleep.

My oldest brother Leon
woke me up. I was confused and startled. He wasn’t alone. He had o
ne
of my other brothers with him.

“Wake up, little brother,” Leon said poking me. “You
have slept all day.”

I sat up with a grunt. The light from outside hurt my
eyes. I felt horrible. Completely worn out. I had muscle pain in both legs and
arms.

“It’s almost evening,” my second brother Isaac said.
“Mom wants you to at least come down for dinner.”

I sighed and rubbed my head. It felt like I had
needles inside of me, my insides made of glass that had shattered overnight. “I
can’t,” I moaned. “I feel terrible. I’m not hungry at all.”

I knew it had to sound strange in those times when
everybody was starving and there wasn’t enough of anything. But I felt no
hunger whatsoever. Not even a little bit. Leon picked up my shirt and trousers
from the floor and threw it at me.

“Get dressed. You’re coming down for dinner. Father
and Mother want you to be there, so you better obey.”

My mind drifted while
thinking about Catalina during dinner. I recalled the look in her eyes as
she was taken away in the black car and felt a sadness grow inside. Even though
I had only known her for a few hours I felt so connected to her. I wondered
with fear what had happened to her afterwards. I had heard the stories that my
brothers told me about camps that no one ever returned from.
 

The war was the subject of this dinner conversation as
well, as usual. Ever since King Carol II had abdicated in September and gone
into exile in Mexico he had left this country in the hands of the pro-German
administration of Marshal Ion Antonescu and his brutal Iron Guard. That meant
very hard times for all minority groups in Romania, among them the Jews and the
Romani-people, often referred to as the gypsies. My brothers were discussing
this development during dinner with my father.

“We need to stand up for our rights,” my brother Isaac
said. “They are killing people all over the country in brutal massacres and no
one is doing a damn thing about it.”

“What do you want to do?” my father said. “It’s
happening all over Europe. The important thing is to stay safe.”

“And hide like cowards?” Isaac said. “When we should
be fighting? We should be helping these people, our people.”

My father sighed deeply while eating his soup slowly.
He had lost a lot of weight the past few months. His cheekbones were showing
and when he lifted his spoon I noticed his collarbone was a lot more apparent
than it used to be.

“We’re up against powerful forces here. I don’t think
there is much we can do,” he said. “You’ll only risk your life and the whole
family’s as well. If we stay here on our property and not bother anyone then
they’ll leave us alone. Then we will be safe.”

Isaac snorted. “We should wait for them to come for
us? Is that all you want? Cause they will come for us. They will throw us out
and deport us to one of these camps or they will just kill us here on the spot.
It’s only a matter of time, Father. We have to at least defend ourselves.”

I sighed and looked at my soup. Vegetables and water.
No meat, I thought disappointedly.

“Does anyone know where they take the Jews who are
deported?” I asked.

Everyone around the table stopped eating and stared at
me. I hardly ever spoke anymore and I never ever showed any interest in
politics or the war. I didn’t care much for their discussion, but I did care
about what happened to Catalina and where they had taken her.

Leon shook his head. “No one knows,” he said.

“Some have seen them on trains,” Isaac said. “I’ve
heard that they bring them to Germany to work.”

Leon nodded pensively. “Almost all Jews in Bucharest
have lost their jobs and been forced to work for the administration. They take
their properties, their businesses, their belongings and make them live in
ghettos where there are many diseases and not enough food or even clean water.”

I sighed and poked a potato in the soup. It fell to
pieces in the warm water. I was worried about Catalina and I desperately longed
to find her and protect her. I was also concerned about my family. We all knew
that Isaac was right. It was only a matter of time before they came for us as
well. If they did all those things to people in the city they would soon find
us in the countryside as well.

My two oldest brothers got up from the table. “It’s
getting dark,” Leon said. “It’s time to get going.”
 

“Be careful out there,” my father said.

I stared at them. “Where are they going?” I asked.

“A big wolf is loose in the forest,” my father said.
“Didn’t you hear its howling last night?”

I shook my head.

“Well, the rest of us did and this morning two of our
sheep were gone. We saw its paw print in the snow. It’s a huge one. We can’t
have it out there. We are used to wolves in the forest but not of this size and
not ones that dare to come this close to our house. Your brothers are going out
to kill it before it eats all of our food. We don’t have much anymore, so we
need to protect the little we have.”

I saw Leon lift up his rifle and load it. Then he
stared through the crosshairs. Isaac patted him on his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he
said. “I have a feeling we’ll shoot the bastard tonight.”

 
I
TOLD MY MOTHER
I wasn’t feeling well then ran to my
room and locked the door. I threw myself at my bed overcome with fear. I stared
out the window at the dark forest in the distance. A wolf? A huge wolf? I
stared at my hands in the fading light. The hair from yesterday was gone. It
had all been gone when I woke up in the morning in the snow. Those animals. Had
I killed them? Was that why I wasn’t hungry? Had I been in the forest all
night? Was that why I felt exhausted and slept all day?

I felt a small pain in my fingers that slowly grew
more powerful. It was like needles penetrating through the skin from the inside
and out. Hairs were poking out from my pores now. Thick, stiff, grey hairs. All
over my body it came creeping. It was extremely painful. As I watched the sun
set completely behind the forest it all came back. The hairs that soon covered
my body, then the pain in my fingers as something grew out of them. What were
those? Claws? The extreme headache I recognized from the day before followed
and I bent over in excruciating pain.

After that it all went black.

I woke up naked
in the snow
once again. I was confused, startled and rose to my feet at once. Then
I had to bend over. I was feeling sick. I had a pain in my shoulder. A huge
pain. I threw up in the snow, a strange yellow mass mixed with red blood and
pieces of raw meat. I fell onto the snow to gather my strength. My chest was
hurting badly. I touched it and had blood on my fingers. I was hurt. A small
round hole was on my shoulder, and around it blood was smeared on the skin. It
hurt when I touched it. Then I did something I had never thought possible. I
reached into the hole in my shoulder with two fingers. It was extremely painful
and I picked out a small metal bullet. I looked at it in the light from the
rising sun. The light hurt my eyes and I had to shield them from the sun. I
touched the wound again and realized that the hole in the skin was smaller. I
watched it for a few seconds while it slowly closed up. The wound was healing
rapidly. I moved my shoulder slowly, carefully. The pain was almost gone. Soon
the wound was nothing but a small dot on my skin that I only knew was there. I
probed it gently. Not even a bump or a scar. I looked around me and saw yet
again what looked like a true massacre of dead animals. A few steps away I
picked up a rabbit from the ground. It was dead, looked like something had
ripped it with its claws. I counted five straight lines across the back. But
other than the cuts it was intact. I picked it up and took it with me.