Dark Corners

L.A. in L.A.

Lyle Bennet tried to hide his facial expression from Dr. Raeder by looking down at his notes. He needed a moment to think. Lyle had always envisioned himself as a future psychological explorer blazing new paths in the treatment of mental disorders. He had found himself, however, contemplating a master’s thesis comparing the performances of two breeds of lab rats running a slight modification of the Hauser Maze. After hearing a description of the project, his thesis advisor had suggested he look for something else. That’s what Lyle had thought even before the suggestion had been made, and that was what he was doing that morning in Dr. Raeder’s office. But Raeder had to be kidding.

Lyle looked up from his notes, stifled a giggle, and leveled his gaze at his thesis advisor. “Let me get this straight, Dr. Raeder. You’re telling me wolf men are real? Silver bullets, full moons, bad hair days, and all that?”

Janos Raeder returned the gaze and didn’t change expression as he tapped the tip of a freshly sharpened pencil against his desk blotter. Abruptly he tossed down the pencil, leaned forward in his chair, and clasped his hands in front of him, his wrists on the edge of his desk. “No, that is not what I said. What I said was that you should check out a meeting of that new twelve step program.” He glanced at a sheet of paper on the desk. “Let’s see. This is the thirty-first, right? Friday?”

“That’s right.”

Dr. Raeder moved a finger down the list. “Here it is. There’s an L.A. meeting tonight on Alameda. I think you should at least go and check it out.”

Lyle’s eyebrows went up. “L.A.? Lycanthropics Anonymous? Werewolves, right?”

“Look, Lyle, you were the one who came to me for suggestions regarding a new thesis topic.”

“Yeah, but werewolves? Give me a break.”

Dr. Raeder slowly shook his head. “I don’t know, Lyle. Perhaps I made a mistake. This is the kind of subject that, properly handled, could make your career take off from a standing start. Your mind seems a little too shut down, though, to take on a subject as radical and controversial as this.”

Lyle held up his hands. “Okay, look, I’m coming at this cold, Dr. Raeder. This is all new to me, as long as you ignore a bunch of bad Lon Chaney, Jr. movies that rotted out my mind years ago.” He lowered his hands to his lap and tried to hold his face expressionless. “Why not let me hear the whole thing and then I’ll decide.”

His advisor took a pained breath then continued. “First, Lyle, forget all about Lon Chaney, Jr., silver bullets, full moon freakouts, and Hollywood horrors. Lycanthropy is a very real, quite painful, condition. I’m not only referring to the well-known psychotic belief in being an animal. The variation of lycanthropy to which I refer also manifests itself in physical symptoms, such as measurable increases in body and facial hair, dentition, bone mass, musculature, and alterations in saliva and blood chemistry. Are you familiar with Kuchilan’s recent paper on hysteria?”

Lyle nodded. “Yes. Fanatics tapping into forces on the quantum level, miracle cures, religious freaks who go into a frenzy and begin squirting blood from their palms. But this—”

“This is the same sort of thing, Lyle,” interrupted his advisor. Dr. Raeder held up a finger, nodded, and said, “Hold on. There’s something I want you to see.”

He got up from his desk, went to an old wooden filing cabinet in the corner of his cluttered office, and opened the middle drawer. “It’s in here somewhere … here.” He pulled out a thick accordion file that had obviously seen a lot of wear. Almost reverently the doctor placed the file on his desk, opened it, and began thumbing through the contents. “Yes,” He pulled out a dog-eared eight by ten glossy print and handed it across the desk to Lyle. “Look at that.”

Lyle took the print and frowned as he examined it. It was a print of six different stages in the transformation of a man in his early twenties into something very much resembling a latter day Hollywood wolf man. In all six stages the man was clad in sixtyish hippie garb: headband, peasant shirt, patched flares, and sandals. In each stage there was a definite increase in body and facial hair, an elongation of the upper and lower mandibles into a shape resembling a muzzle, an incredible enlargement of the canine teeth, and a tongue that would be the envy of any Doberman. The increase in upper body mass had been sufficient to split open the baggy shirt’s seams. On the final frame the enlarged hairy toes sticking out of the sandals each carried what looked to be a two inch long claw. Similar armaments graced the fingertips. Time and date signatures appeared on each of the frames. The date on all of the frames was 4 May 1967. The elapsed time indicated that the subject had made the transformation from young adult to drooling beast in just under three minutes. Lyle raised an eyebrow and handed back the print. “Jack Nicholson did it better in Wolf .”

Ignoring the comment, Raeder took the glossy and tapped it with his finger. “The subject’s name was Roger Westlake. He was a psych student at Pepperdine working on his master’s. This series of shots was taken under faculty supervised laboratory conditions just before he was committed to Pescadero.”

“Was Roger Westlake?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You used the past tense, doctor.”

“Oh.” Dr. Raeder nodded, his expression quite wooden. “He was reported dead in October of ‘Sixty-nine. The story was that he attacked some other patients and in the process of subduing him, he was accidentally killed.” Raeder held out a photocopy of a newspaper clipping. The headline read: “Three killed, eleven mauled at Pescadero.”

Janos Raeder dropped the clipping back into the file. “Westlake’s body was cremated before anyone could get a look at it. The two patients and the guard who were killed, however, looked as through they had been savaged by timber wolves.” He looked up at nothing in particular. “They were all cremated, as well.” He faced Lyle. “It might be very interesting to find out what happened to all of the patients who survived. The belief among most lycanthropics is that a virus in the saliva is what transmits the disease.” Dr. Raeder tapped the glossy and said, “In any event, this is one of the most well documented modern cases of lycanthropic hysteria that exists.”

Lyle gestured at the photo with his hand. “Look at that increase in body mass, doctor. All that has to come from somewhere, doesn’t it? What’d he do, snack on an ox while they took the snapshots?”

Dr. Raeder looked up from the file and fixed Lyle with his eyes. “Here is a theory for you to consider: the quantum field is a universe-wide matrix of energy and information. We are all parts of this matrix and you cannot alter any part of it without altering every other part in some manner. Changing or reinforcing a thought pattern is just such an alteration. The upshot of this is that if you believe strongly enough, your body will use every power available to it within the field to fulfill that belief. Energy convertible into mass can be drawn from the field. Are you familiar with the works of Deepak Chopra?”

“No.”

“In just one of his works,Ageless Body, Timeless Mind , he shows how one’s intentions can affect the quantum field such that an individual can increase or even reverse aging. Imagine the physiological changes—”

“Is this the guy who was on Oprah Winfrey some time back? I’m supposed to take pop science seriously?”

“No. As a scientist, Lyle, I expect you to investigate first, and only then form your conclusions.”

“Sorry.”

Janos Raeder brushed away the apology and the question with a wave of his hand. “It doesn’t matter. Look, Lyle, there are the miracle cures from terminal diseases you mentioned, and the stigmata, what you called those freaks squirting blood from their palms. Think about the very real cases of stigmata we have on record. These cases are similar to lycanthropy in that they involve actual hysterical alteration of fluids and tissues simply on the basis of a very intense belief.” He tapped the print once more. “And this. It is a very real, very painful, and quite debilitating condition. It can’t be cured, as far as we know, but it can be arrested much like compulsive gambling or alcoholism.”

Lyle clasped his hands over his belly and slumped down in his chair. “I’m familiar with the cases. In fact, I’m pretty familiar with all of the literature on hysteria, and I’ve never run across anything like werewolves.”

Dr. Raeder pursed his lips, placed the glossy on top of his desk and dropped into his chair. “I’ll tell you why, Lyle. It’s for the same reason you’re dragging your anchor right now. Just as no one would take alcoholism and addiction seriously as diseases back in the thirties, lycanthropic hysteria has been passed off as a moral problem, or hoax, for almost eighty years. That’s why this study, almost thirty years old, wasn’t taken seriously. It was never published and little new work has been done in the field. There is simply no grant money available for research in this field. But just as those who wanted to recover from alcoholism back in the thirties put together their own therapy program in the form of Alcoholics Anonymous, thereby pioneering the treatments for a host of compulsive disorders, those who want to recover from lycanthropy are doing the same. I think the field is ready for a courageous new look at this problem.” He shrugged and held out his hands. “If you want a new thesis topic, it’s the best suggestion I’ve got in the shop. It will be new work and much more impressive than another herd of tired rats run through yet another maze.”

Lyle twiddled his thumbs for a moment, then leaned forward and held out a hand. “Could I look at that photo once more?”

Dr. Raeder allowed himself a slight smile. “By the way, Lyle, if you decide to go to the meeting, don’t make a point out of you being free of this condition. Also, don’t take any notes or bring a recorder. They are adamant about their anonymity, and for very good reasons. Finally, don’t call them wolf men or werewolves. Call them lycanthropics. They are quite touchy about that.”

“What time is the meeting?”

“Eleven thirty at night.”

“That late?”

Janos Raeder’s eyebrows went up. “You’re kidding. Midnight is the toughest time for lycanthropics. If nothing else, Lyle, this experience will be an excellent opportunity to raise your consciousness regarding the plight of a much neglected minority.”

There was plenty of time before the meeting, and, after an uninspired taco at the student center, Lyle put in a few hours at the university library. First he tackled the subject of stigmatization with examples beginning with Francis of Assisi in 1224 to Louise Lateau in 1868. The latter was a peasant girl whose case was investigated by Professor Lefebvre of Louvain. The girl’s “Christ wounds” began on April 24th, 1868 and bled regularly every Friday thereafter. The ability of the human organism to alter its tissues radically through intense belief was well established. What was not so well established was a degree of alteration sufficient to turn a human into a completely different species.

Search as he might, his pursuit of a work on quantum physics for dummies was fruitless. The only works available were either dripping with equations or too general to discuss the application in which he was interested. Reluctantly he resorted to pulling Chopra’s Ageless Body, Timeless Mind from the shelf and paged through it. The thesis seemed to be that every cell of an individual’s body is constantly listening to what that individual is telling it. If you tell yourself “I’m too old for that kind of stuff,” the cells listen and you become “too old for that kind of stuff.” By the same token, if you decide to become more youthful, the cells listen and can actually reverse the aging process. He wrote:

“You can control the informational content of the quantum field. Although there is a certain amount of fixed information in the atoms of food, air, and water that make up each cell, the power to transform that information is subject to free will.”

Lyle leaned back and scratched his head as he recalled the photograph Dr. Raeder had shown him. As scientists looked on, Roger Westlake supposedly just stood there, turned into a werewolf, and almost doubled his body mass in the process. All of that bone and tissue had to come from somewhere. By changing the informational content of the quantum field, would it be possible to convert that energy directly into mass? Several primitive cultures had shape-shifter traditions: men and women who turn themselves into snakes, eagles, bears, even wolves. Lyle leaned over the keyboard and began to tackle the subject of lycanthropy.

The computer subject search was not sympathetic to the term “lycanthropy.” The prompt insisted that if Lyle wanted to pursue the topic, “werewolves” was the term to use. The pickings seemed slim. Douglas’s The Beast Within , was filed under “Animals, mythical.” An 1865 work, Baring-Gould’s The Book of Werewolves , revealed its thesis in its subtitle: An account of a terrible superstition . Then Lyle’s eye was caught by another title: A Lycanthropy Reader: werewolves in western culture. Published in obscurity in 1986 by the Syracuse University Press, the work was described as “Medical cases, diagnoses, descriptions; trial records, historical accounts, sightings; philosophical and theological approaches to metamorphosis; critical essays on lycanthropy—” He looked up at the availability code and the Reader was out.

His eyes next turned to a 1937 work published in Paris by psychiatrist Jean Riendeau, English translation by Paul Norgren: The Hidden Face of Jeorg Brandt: a case study of a lycanthropic. The work was described as a three-year study of an unemployed Swiss laborer whose metamorphosis from man to werewolf was witnessed no less than nine times by Riendeau, four such times under confinement in laboratory conditions with corroborating witnesses. The volume was available.

It was a thin book, the embossed printing on its cover faded and gray, the pages inside edged with yellow. Lyle scanned the table of contents, skipped the background material, and turned to the first of the laboratory controlled observations of Jeorg Brandt’s changing. Riendeau wrote:

“Jeorg was caged at his own request. The metamorphosis began shortly after midnight with Jeorg coming ‘alive’ from his usual deep depression, his increased animation followed first by the change of his eye color from blue to reddish black. His chest, normally at 120cm, showed 151cm on the tape before Jeorg swatted Dr. Bresette away from the bars where my colleague was taking the measurement. I saw the front of Bresette’s laboratory coat slashed to ribbons and turned back to see that Jeorg’s claws were already half-formed, his muzzle filled with horrendous teeth….”

Here it was again: energy consuming transformation, incredible increase in body mass, with no apparent source. Or, as Riendeau put it, “He seemed to draw upon the thin air for material,” although when the change was complete, Jeorg Brandt wolfed down 24kg of raw beef before he exhausted himself trying to get out of his cage and fell asleep. Later, as himself, Jeorg was horrified after reading the reports and seeing the photographs. It was after one of these laboratory episodes that Riendeau’s subject committed suicide, unfortunately in full human form.

In the translator’s introduction, Paul Norgren described how the publication of The Hidden Face had destroyed Riendeau’s reputation as well as the reputations of the four colleagues of his who had participated in the study. Lyle checked his watch and realized that he had just enough time to make it to the meeting. He frowned as he realized that on some strange level he was just a little bit frightened.

“My name is Ted and Ah’m a gr-r-rateful recoverin’ lycanthropic.”

“Hi, Ted!” answered the twenty or so men and women seated in the conference room on the ground floor of an otherwise locked up office building. As Lyle examined the faces seated in the circle, he was uneasy. Everyone in there looked just like regular humans. Minority representation, old, young, male, female, neckties and tie-dyes. What made him uneasy was that everyone in the room, with the sole exception of himself, believed him or herself to be a werewolf.

The one called Ted cleared his throat, which sounded a bit like a growl to Lyle, then he smiled and said, “Welcome all tew the Hair of the Dog Group of Lycanthropics Anonymous.” Ted spoke with just a touch of Scottish brogue. “We’ll all open the meetin’ with a moment of silence followed by the Serenity Prayer.”

During the moment of silence Lyle swore that the young lady sitting to his right was panting while a young man sitting on the opposite side of the circle was scratching behind his ear, although only with a finger. Lyle started having an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh out loud. His defenses began crumbling when he heard someone to his far left sniffing. He didn’t look. Lyle believed that if he caught a glimpse of one of them sniffing the butt of another, he would lose it altogether. Just thinking about the possible flea problem made tears come to his eyes and he covered his face hoping that at the worst he might look like he was crying.

While they recited the Serenity Prayer (God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference), Lyle felt a friendly hand (paw?) petting the back of his head. He thought he would pop an artery and he decided that he would have to leave the meeting. Before he could go into action, however, the man chairing the meeting began speaking again.

“This is a special anniversary meetin’ tonight. Allyson is celebratin’ one whole year without turnin’.” Loud applause followed Ted’s remarks accompanied by some whistling and some rather distinct howling. The woman to Lyle’s right seemed to have increased her panting. Lyle noted that her tongue wasn’t hanging out. He wondered if her real problem was asthma.

“Allyson will be our speaker for the first part of the meetin’,” Ted announced, “then after the break we’ll have our sharin’ session. Before we get started, are there any newcomers to the group?”

One hand went up. It was a man of about thirty-five with wads of shaggy black chest hair showing above the neck of his faded red tee shirt. He had an under bite like a steam shovel. “I’m Waldo,” he almost growled. “I’m a recovering lycanthropic. I just got out of treatment and this is my first meeting.”

A round of welcomes greeted Waldo, then a few faces turned in Lyle’s direction. Lyle shrugged to hide his embarrassment and grinned as he held up his hand. “I’m Lyle and I’m just new here.”

“Hi, Lyle,” greeted the group. “Welcome.”

Red-faced, Lyle managed to nod in return as he lowered his hand to his lap and focused his gaze on the floor in the center of the circle of chairs. Two latecomers entered and took their places in the chairs to Lyle’s far left. As Ted resumed the program by having members of the circle read the Steps and Traditions of L.A., the woman to Lyle’s right whispered to him, “Too bad. It looks as though Ralph went out again.”

Lyle turned and looked at the two latecomers. One was a very normal looking business type dressed in a tan three-piece suit. The other one looked like a nightmare. He was built like a short power lifter with upper arms like thighs and thighs like sides of beef. His clothing consisted of a torn and dirty pair of triple extra large gray sweats and a pair of black shower clogs. His hands and feet both were knobby and twisted, while his lower jaw jutted out from his face so far that it appeared to be an effort for the man to keep his lips closed over his teeth. His hair was trimmed into a burr cut, and he appeared to have no body hair at all. Little bloody pieces of toilet paper on his face and the backs of his feet and hands were the aftermath of what appeared to have been a marathon encounter with a razor. His nose was sharply upturned and powdered to a light gray. Lyle watched Ralph until the man absentmindedly allowed his mouth to fall open revealing a set of tearing teeth that looked capable of biting through a picnic ham with a single snap. The expression on Ralph’s face was one of deep shame.

Just as Lyle turned to ask the woman to his right what she meant about Ralph going out, Ted called out from the podium, “Verra well, let’s hear from Allyson now. Come oop, lass!”

Accompanied by thunderous applause and howling, the woman who had been seated to Lyle’s right stood, and with a face glowing with excitement, her diminutive form replaced Ted at the podium. Ted took his place in a chair to her right. As the applause and howling died down to a few whimpers, Allyson looked down at Ted and said, “It’s okay to call me lass, Ted. Just don’t call me Lassie!”

From the subdued chuckle coming from the circle, Lyle presumed that it was a well worn joke in the group. It was new to him, however, and he laughed out loud. Allyson faced the circle, smiled, and said, “My name is Allyson. I’m a recovering lycantrhopic.”

“Hi, Allyson,” answered the circle, including Lyle.

She shrugged her small shoulders and looked down at the podium for a moment. “I guess I’m a little nervous,” she confessed. She pushed the bobbed blond hair back from her forehead and aimed her pale blue eyes at the faces in the circle. “I never thought I’d see this night,” she said quietly. “Fourteen months ago I was locked up in a mental ward with three charges of murder pending against me.” She fixed her gaze on the one called Ralph. “The medical records from there show I weighed three hundred and seven pounds, and not an ounce of it was fat. I was covered with coarse blond hair, I had teeth that could, and did, chew through a solid oak door, I had claws and paws, and I had ears like Mr. Spock.” A quick laugh ran around the circle.

Allyson’s eyes glistened as she said, “And now I am a free human being. I haven’t turned for a whole year. It is such a miracle.” As the woman paused to get control of her tears of gratitude, Lyle found himself curiously touched. Perhaps he looked upon the whole issue with skepticism, but he certainly believed that they believed.

Lyle glanced to his left at the one called Ralph and saw the huge man sobbing into his shaved paws. Taking a second look at those paws, Lyle noticed that the claws had been trimmed very short. From the thickness of the claws it must have been done with bolt cutters.

Now in control of herself, Allyson continued. “As it did for many of us, it began for me by being bitten by an infected family member.” She held up her hands. “Now, I know that some of you have therapists who say lycanthropy is not an infectious disease at all, but is, instead, a form of hysteria, and I respect that. Speaking just for myself, though, there are lots and lots of sisters in this world who are bitten by their younger brothers who don’t become beasts ravaging and terrorizing the countryside.”

Several spontaneous growls of enraged agreement erupted from the circle. Lyle noticed Ralph looking angrily at the floor between his feet as his massive head nodded. His lower fangs were visible. Lyle studied the man, trying to see if Ralph had made himself up to look that way, but all of the evidence suggested that he was almost a werewolf trying very much to look like a human. Suddenly Ralph glanced at Lyle and Lyle averted his eyes and concentrated his attention on the speaker.

“I was nine when my brother bit me,” said Allyson. “He was seven. He’d been a little strange ever since a huge dog bit him when our family was camping in Maine that one summer when he was five. He had the disease, of course, but I’d never seen him turn so I didn’t know what was going on. I just thought he was being a little brother.” After a sympathetic chuckle from the circle, Allyson bowed her head and became quite melancholy. “In fact I’d never seen him turn until I was brought in to identify his body four years ago. He had been killed while attacking someone who was armed. Until he died my brother hid his disease from all of us. Of course, it wasn’t any big accomplishment to hide it from me. By then I was, as we say in L.A., up to my own knees in fleas.

“It was about three months after my brother bit me, almost on my tenth birthday, when I turned for the first time. It was after fourth grade gym in the shower room. I’d been feeling sick all day and had been excused from gym early. While I was by myself in the shower, it happened. The bone pain, the stretching of my skin, all of the awful hair. It hurt and surprised me so much I screamed. The janitor heard me and came running in. By then I was fully turned and I-I mean, he was the first, you know, what for legal reasons we’re supposed to keep just between us and our sponsors.” Again Allyson paused to control her tears while Lyle struggled with what she had said. Did she mean she had offed the janitor? Her next words gave him chills.

“After I cleaned up the mess I looked at myself in the mirror, the taste still in my mouth. You all know how it felt.” Ralph and the newcomer, Waldo, grunted violently while the rest raised their eyebrows and nodded. “I had never felt so strong, so alive. I crawled in among the steam pipes down in the furnace room and slept off the first of many, many binges.”

Ted stood and whispered something to Allyson. She nodded in return and looked back at the circle, a note of embarrassment in her voice. “It’s just been pointed out to me that my words might cause some of you to want to go out again, and forgive me if I’ve called up any euphoric memories.”

Lyle glanced to his left and saw a string of drool dribbling from Ralph’s open mouth. The backs of his hands appeared to have gotten a shade darker. Waldo had his arms wrapped around himself and appeared to be holding on very tightly. When Allyson resumed her talk she concentrated on all of the horrors of a young girl, sensitive about her appearance and desperate to make friends and be popular, afflicted with a disease that would, without notice, turn her into a hideous creature that craved human flesh. She talked about when her parents found out and pulled her out of school. From then until she was seventeen she was kept under lock and key. Shortly after her seventeenth birthday the police found her parents dead, their throats torn out, the barred windowless room where she had been kept was empty.

By day she took classes and worked at odd jobs until she graduated into a well paying position as a paralegal. By night she moved through the shadows of the inner city, seeking prey. On one of her nightly prowls she was taken down by officers from the University Division, L.A.P.D. They were assisted by a wildlife expert with a tranquilizer gun.

“They didn’t know what to do with me at the mental hospital where I had been sent to assess if I was competent to stand trial. One of the orderlies there asked me if I wanted help, and when I said yes, he was the one who called Lycanthropics Anonymous.” She glanced at the fellow who chaired the meeting, then to her left at a smartly dressed woman in her sixties.

“Ted and Margie were the ones who showed up for me. They told me their stories and met with me almost every day, teaching me how to share and work the program. That was when I stopped turning for the first time. I’d go back after a few days, but my periods out were shorter and shorter. By the time experts on lycanthropy filed a brief with the court and the charges against me were dismissed, I hadn’t turned for six days and that was three hundred and fifty-nine days ago. This was the first meeting I went to after getting out of treatment, I asked Margie to be my sponsor, and she took me to meetings all over L.A. until I could trust myself out at night by myself. It’s been a miracle for me and I never want to go back to what I was before. Thank you for letting me share.”

Applause and howls erupted from the circle, Lyle clapping along with the others. As the applause continued, Margie stood, presented Allyson with something, then gave her a big hug. Allyson returned to her seat and Ted took over the podium. “Verra well, people, its time for our break. Coffee, donuts, and the rest are in the refreshment area and we’ll pick this up again at midnight.”

As some of the members headed for the kitchen and a few others headed outside for a smoke, Lyle leaned forward in his chair and rested his elbows on his knees. He couldn’t make up his mind. Should he be afraid or fascinated? This was certainly a great subject of study for a thesis, but Ralph frightened him. So did Waldo. Everyone else seemed all right, but it was such a bizarre affliction.

“Having a tough time making up your mind?” He turned to his right and Allyson was smiling at him.

Lyle shrugged and said, “Congratulations on the year.”

“Thanks.”

He nodded toward her hand. “What did you get?”

She opened her hand revealing a key chain. Hanging from the chain through a hole in its base was a silver bullet marked with the numeral 1. “The program group gives these things out for anniversaries. I guess it’s a bit of a joke.” She held out her hand. “I’m Allyson.”

“I know.” Lyle shook hands with her. “My name’s Lyle. Did that guy Ted say there’s coffee out there?”

Allyson nodded. “Coffee, tea, donuts, a little burger—”

“Burger?”

Allyson nodded and lowered her voice. “You know, ground beef. In case a newcomer starts freaking. A little raw burger can sometimes help bring them down.”

Lyle stared at her for a moment and was about to say “you’re kidding,” when there was a loud noise from the direction of the kitchen. He looked at the door leading to the kitchen as he got to his feet. “What in the hell was that?” One of the members peeked out of the kitchen door and said to all those left in the room, “Ralph’s in trouble. Get Ben. I think he’s out front getting a smoke.”

“I’ll do it,” said Lyle. Turning to Allyson, her back was toward him. He placed a hand on her shoulder and asked, “Is Ben the guy Ralph came in with?”

Before she could answer there was a crash from the kitchen, then a long mournful howl which was immediately followed by Ralph bellowing out, “To hell with the damned beef burger! Out there is live meat! He was staring at me like I was some kind of thing.Live meat! ”

“He’s right,” came Waldo’s voice. “That guy, Lyle! He’s not one of us! He’s meat!”

His hand still on Allyson’s shoulder, he looked at the back of her head and whispered, “What — what should I do?”

She turned her head to the right, looked down at Lyle’s fingers grasping her shoulder, and then bit them. “Ow!” He pulled back his arm, looked at his hand, and sucked on the side of his fingers where Allyson had bitten him. The skin wasn’t broken, but it hurt like the dickens. “What in the—”

She turned and looked at him with blood red eyes. She then smiled displaying gleaming white fangs that seemed to grow before his eyes. He bolted and ran screaming into the night.

“Allyson?”

She faced the kitchen door, removed her false fangs and faced Dr. Raeder. “You people were too slow. He ran before anyone could shout ‘April fool.’”

Janos Raeder dropped his Waldo mask and makeup on one of the chairs and said between gasps of laughter, “You mean he still doesn’t know? Hey, everybody, Lyle still doesn’t know. He’s probably calling the police right now.”

Ben and his two smoking companions came in from the front. “Hey, what gives? Lyle or someone was supposed to come and get me to sit on Ralph, right? I just saw Lyle going ninety plus across Alameda. He’s lucky he wasn’t killed.”

The laughter died down as Ben’s comment sobered them a bit. Allyson cocked her head to one side and said, “It’s my fault. I got a little deep into the part and bit his hand.”

“You bit his hand?” demanded Dr. Raeder.

“Just a little nip. I didn’t draw blood or anything with these rubber teeth.”

They all stood in silence for a moment, then one of them made a rude sound by letting the air out of his pneumatic muscles. They all broke down and laughed as they howled and began removing their makeup. It was the best psych department April fool’s prank ever.

Out of breath, Lyle leaned his back against the alley wall and gulped air. After only a few seconds, he looked around the corner and saw that the street was empty. “Oh, god,” he gasped. “Oh, god.”

There was a tightness in his chest and shoulders, and he pushed away from the wall to shake it out. As he crossed his arms in front of him, he could hear the seam on the back of his shirt split. He looked down and watched in horror as the hair on the backs of his arms lengthened.

“What? Oh, god! No! It couldn’t—”

He shook his head as he thought at panic speed. That woman, Allyson, had bitten him, but she hadn’t broken the skin. How—

He looked down at the hand that Allyson had bitten, hair already covering the spot, skin a darkening purple in the dim alley light, the nails already beginning their metamorphosis to claws. She hadn’t broken the skin, but he had sucked on his hand immediately afterward.

“The saliva! Omigod! The saliva!”

The sleeve seams split one after another and Lyle felt himself filled with savage power, physical strength beyond anything he could have ever imagined, cravings and lusts that seemed to blot out portions of his awareness. His chest expanded as his thighs and upper arms thickened. He lifted his clawed hands and felt the shape of a muzzle erupting from his face.

“Hey, who’s that? Look here, Pauly.”

A young man with a blue printed bandanna covering his curly black hair stood in the alley entrance, his face hidden by shadows cast by the street lights. Lyle saw him and felt an eerie heat fill his chest as his heart pumped energy to his growing musculature.

“What you got here?” said the one called Pauly. He carried a wicked looking stiletto in his hand.

As the pair advanced on him, Lyle could see his immediate future very clearly. It would involve a lot of late nights, demands, and sacrifices that would probably savage his grade point average, but there was the excitement, the high, the incredible thrill waiting for him. Now he knew why Ralph had been drooling as Allyson related her war stories at the meeting. It was, Lyle knew, the first step on a walk through hell. It was a journey, however, that would not be denied.

Deep within his soul there remained a tiny human spark that spoke to him with fear. Perhaps there would come a time when the pain of the night hunt would exceed the sick thrill and excitement. Possibly then, when enough was enough, he would want help from those people at Lycanthropics Anonymous. He nodded his shaggy head as he felt the drool fall on the backs of his bristly paws. As soon as he was finished with Pauly and his friend, he’d have to go to Dr. Raeder’s home and get his copy of the meeting list. He’d have to go to Dr. Raeder’s house in any event. He could already tell that the pair facing him in the alley would never be enough.