I am Wolf (The Wolfboy Chronicles) (8 page)

“By our sins we have opened a door for the devil to do
this,” the priest said shaking his head in disbelief. Then he began talking in
Latin spraying holy water on the dead man.

Suddenly the people in the crowd turned and looked at
each other. Next they began accusing each other for having sinned. Some told on
each other for infidelity, others for stealing, cheating, blasphemy. Meanwhile
I stared at the lifeless body with wide open eyes. I felt the entire village
was spinning around me. I was sweating and breathing heavily. Had I done this
to this poor man? I asked myself. Was that what I had become? The devil himself
taking the lives of innocent people? While the villagers disputed amongst each
other and therefore paid no attention to me I backed up with my heart pounding
in my throat. This was it, I thought. I could no longer be near people. I had
to hide somewhere, where there were no people I could hurt.

I stumbled and fell, got up again, then turned and
began to run. I felt tears streaming down my cheeks as I ran as fast as I
could, stumbling over rocks, slipping in the snow, but getting up again
fixating my eyes only on the forest in front of me. The forest that was going
to hide my sin, hide me and the evil growing inside of me.

B
ut I never made
it that far. As I
ran towards the forest a car drove up next to me on the old road.

“Going somewhere?” a voice said.

I turned my head and looked into the eyes of a man in
a green uniform. He was hanging his head out of the window in a black car. He
was smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke in my direction. My heart started
pounding faster. On the shoulder he bore the triple cross, the symbol of The
Iron Guard.

“Can’t answer, boy?” he said.

I turned my head and focused on the road ahead of me,
hoping, wishing they would eventually leave me alone. I was sweating heavily
despite the icy wind in my face. I looked in the direction of the haunted
forest. They would never follow me in there, I thought. No one ever dared to go
in the haunted forest. Everybody was afraid of it.

Quickly I took a turn and left the road. I speeded up
and ran as fast as I could across the fields covered in snow. Running became
sprinting when I suddenly heard the sound of the car engine behind me.

They had followed me across the field!

Their car was bumping and fighting to cross the piles
of snow, but they were getting closer to me. I panted and gasped forcing my
legs to run faster and faster, but still they came closer and soon they hit me
with the front of their car. My leg made a sound like it was breaking into a
thousand pieces before I was thrown into the air and landed in the snow. The
car stopped while I tried to get back up, but my leg was badly injured. I
couldn’t stand. I moaned and groaned in pain as I fought to get up, but again
and again my leg collapsed. Boots came closer and stopped next to my face. I
felt the soldier grab my hair and pull me up. Then he took his cigarette and
killed it on my cheek. I screamed in pain.

“Bastards!”

They laughed and the soldier threw me back into the
snow. It cooled the burn on my skin. I touched the cheek and felt a sore mark.
I groaned again and tried to stand, but my effort was in vain. Then he kicked
me in the stomach, in the face, and stepped on my back. I felt another man grab
me and lift me before I received a wave of punches in my face and on my body. I
could taste blood in my mouth. It was metallic.

“Throw him in the car,” someone said.

I felt hands on my body and I was lifted up from the
snow. I tried to fight them but it was too painful. My leg was hurting badly.
When they threw me in the back of the car and closed the door I spotted my sack
still lying in the snow.

Then we drove off.

They took me to their headquarters at the police station in the city of
Cluj-Napoca. They searched me and in my pocket they found my mother’s sack of
money that they confiscated. I was screaming when they carried me into the cell
and closed the heavy door. I banged on the iron door, screaming, yelling, but
no one came. Then I fell to the cold floor and started crying, sobbing. The
smell in the cell was horrible, the stench of urine from prisoners defecating
in the corners, mixed with the metallic smell of blood. It made me sick to my
stomach and I threw up on the floor.

I don’t know how long I lay on the floor, but I do
vividly remember the despair I felt at being completely alone in this world.
Maybe I deserved this? I thought. I was a monster who killed people. I deserved
to be locked up behind bars. I deserved to be beaten and maybe even killed. I
was evil. Pure evil.

The door was unlocked and boots entered the room. I
was picked up and dragged to an interrogation room. There was nothing but a
chair and a light bulb in the ceiling. No windows, no other furniture.

They placed me in the chair and I realized my leg
didn’t hurt anymore. I looked down and moved it carefully. It wasn’t even
hurting when I tried to move it. Even my face felt less sore and my chest and
stomach were better too. I lifted my hand and touched my cheek where I had been
burnt by the cigarette.

 
The mark
was gone!

I looked down at my fists. I closed and opened them.
They felt strong. I felt strong.

Someone entered the room. A pair of boots walked
across the floor. I lowered my head trying to seem weak and broken.

“So, Sami Margulies,” the man who had entered said.

He stood behind me lighting a cigarette. I remained
quiet.

“We have been looking for you,” he continued. He put a
gloved hand on my shoulder. Then he leaned over and whispered in my ear. As he
did I recognized his voice as the officer who had taken Catalina away that
morning at the farm. I lifted my head and felt my muscles tense in anger. They
seemed to grow along with my fury.

“Did you really think I wasn’t going to look for you?”
he whispered.

Then he walked in front of me so we were face to face.
He smiled.

“I knew you were still alive when I saw your body
wasn’t among the others on the farm,” he said. “How did you manage to escape
the bear?”

I stared into his grey eyes but never answered. The
officer slapped me across my face. It burned but not for long. Our eyes locked.
Then he smiled.

“My name is Officer Alexandru,” he said and smiled.
Then he slapped me across my face once again laughing like he was enjoying
himself. It burned yet again in my cheek, but I remained motionless.

“Don’t you ever forget that name.”

He took off his hat and touched his bald head. I felt
numb, completely emotionless. I knew he could beat me all he wanted to and it
would hurt, but only for a while. I would heal and become as good as new. It
made me dangerous to them because it made me fearless.

I lifted my head and smiled. Then he hit me again.
This time with his clenched fist. Blood spurted out from my nose and hit the
floor.

“Tell me how you escaped from that farm!” he yelled.

I lifted my head and smiled without answering. I
stared at Officer Alexandru. He punched me again, again and again. But as much
as he tried he was unable to break me. After several hard punches I still
showed no sign of fear. My jaw hurt but I could take it. I knew it would only
hurt for a little while. I wondered if they could even kill me.

After a while of taking the heavy beating there was a
small part of me that began to enjoy it. The part of me that thought I was evil
and deserved this treatment. I was mad at myself for not being able to control
myself, for not knowing what I did at night. I kept seeing pictures of the man
that I had seen dead earlier that day. I knew him. I had seen him before. At
night I had seen him in the village. I had met him. I knew I had. It was like a
nightmare that I could only remember fractions of and it was painful to think
about it. I was repulsed by myself for having done this, I loathed everything I
was, everything I had become, for hurting another human being. But it was in my
nature, wasn’t it? It was what I had become. A beast. A vicious creature
lurking in the darkness for its next victim. I stared at Officer Alexandru who
seemed to enjoy punching me. I wondered, if I was the devil, then what would
that make him?

Eventually Officer Alexandru wore himself out.
Panting, he stared at me and what I could imagine must have been a very bloody
face. He grabbed my chin and lifted my face and stared into my eyes. I stared
back. Something in my eyes caused him to let go of my chin immediately and
stumble backwards. Then I spotted something in his.

Fear.

N
ext thing they put
me on a train.
They told me they were sending me back to Bucharest to be further interrogated.
I believed them.

I was driven to the station and placed in a line with
several hundreds of people. They all had that intense look on their faces.
Their eyes filled with fear, their bodies smelled of anxiety. I was pushed from
behind till I lined up next to a woman who was holding on to her young daughter
tightly while soldiers yelled at us and pushed and shoved us into the wagons.

Once in the wagon we stood tightly packed and whenever
I thought they couldn’t fit any more people they pushed us yet again and made
room for more. I was lucky I was close to the barred window, so I could breathe
but I saw several fighting to catch their breath in the middle of the wagon.

The young mother and her child ended up close to me.
The young girl was gasping for air after a little while. I smiled at her to try
and comfort her. Our eyes locked for a second. She smiled back, her face torn
in restraint.

All my wounds were already healing and I began to feel
stronger and stronger as I realized the train was driving in the wrong
direction. It wasn’t going south as they had told me. It was going east. I felt
a slight panic rise in me. Where was it going? Where were they sending me? I
looked at the faces of the other travelers and realized they were as confused
as I was.

“This is not the way to Bucharest,” the young mother
with the girl said looking desperately out the window at the mountains. “Where
are we going?”

“Probably Transnistria,” a voice behind me said.

I turned and looked into the face of an elderly man.
He was pale, his eyes filled with despair.

“I heard they have camps there,” he continued.

I stared at the elderly man. “Camps? What do you mean?
What kind of camps?”

He didn’t answer. He just stared at me with anxious
eyes. “I heard they send people there,” he said. “They separate children from
their parents and kill them in gas chambers along with elderly people. The rest
they force to labor till they die from starvation or exhaustion.”

The young mother next to me shrieked. Her daughter
looked up at her. “What’s wrong Mommy?”

The mother shook her head. “Nothing darling. Nothing
my dear.”

“I can’t breathe,” the daughter said.

I looked down at her. She was too pale. Her lips were
almost purple from lack of air. I reached in between people and grabbed her.
Then I pulled her out of the crowd. I held her in my arms while she breathed in
the fresh air from the barred window.

“Thank you,” her mother whispered.

I smiled back. The girl put her arm around my neck.
Then she put her head on my chest and held me tight. It felt nice.

We drove for many hours before the train finally stopped. People were
screaming anxiously, some fainting from the lack of air, some screamed in panic
while others just prayed quietly and cried.

I held the little girl tight in my arms as the train
came to a stop at a station. Outside I spotted heavily armed soldiers waiting
for us. I wondered where they were going to take us. A work camp? I looked at
the sky above me. It was still about half an hour till sundown. What would
happen to me when they found out what I was?

The door was pulled aside and people started jumping
out of the train. Many were crying and sobbing, fear eating them up from the
inside. The armed soldiers were pushing them with their guns and yelling at
them telling them to line up. When we were on a line an officer walked down
along it telling people were to go. Some were told to go left, others to the
right. Some were separated from their families, crying, sulking, screaming, but
received no mercy from the soldiers, some were even beaten for crying too hard.
I felt the little girl’s hand in mine as the officer neared us. Her mother was
standing on the other side of her holding her other hand. The officer looked at
her. He told her to open her mouth then studied her teeth, then touched her
arms and legs before he told the mother to go right.