Grimm Wolf - Julie Steimle (fantasy novels to read .txt) 📗

Boston Butcher who was caught and brought the same time as I.”

It was too weird. They would have to look it up on the net to verify if this were true, just to prevent nightmares and prove he was a kook.

“I didn’t even have my passport with me,” the professor added to make it clear. “It was back in my apartment at Kensington.”

“So because of that, you believe in werewolves?” Emory asked with renewed skepticism. It was entirely unrelated.

The professor gazed wanly at him. “No. I am a researcher. Because of that traumatizing event, I realized I didn’t know a thing about the world. I traveled back to England from California on a plane with two boys who had also been abducted—both from a New York City private school—which I researched later. Gulinger Private Academy.”

Hearing the name, Jordan jerked back. Emory and Rhett were puzzled, knowing less about Gulinger than Jordan did. But they had heard the name before.

“Which your friend had graduated from,” the professor said, pointing to him.

Jordan nodded. Though this was crazy, he asked, “What guys were with you on the plane?”

“Are you serious?” Emory hissed at him through is teeth. “This guy is nuts.”

But the professor said to Jordan, “I will never forget either boy. A psychic Italian boy about seventeen years of age. Brown hair. Tall. I think his name was Matthew Calamori. And this other guy who is… indescribable in normal terms. He’s half demon practically. His name was Tom Brown.”

All three from the US drew in a breath. They all knew Tom Brown of course. Tom never quite left Rick alone. He had the most manic grin they ever saw. He always wore sunglasses, whether dressed in a sloppy hoodie or in a three piece suit like James Bond. But they knew his eyes were orange.

The professor’s friend rolled his eyes as he hear him, but then he stopped, when he took in the stunned faces of the three Americans. “What? You know them?”

Jordan nodded, fighting off chills again. “Yeah… I met both of them on a ski trip. Matt’s normal—he’s an NYPD cop. And Tom—”

“He became a policeman?” The professor sounded shocked. Almost amused.

“Yeah.” Jordan nodded, still feeling uncomfortable about it. “He’s a detective now, I think.”

“And you know this Tom?” The professor nodded more, watching them carefully.

“Rick says he’s a CIA agent,” Emory said, his mouth going dry.

Rhett nodded. “Freaky dude. He’s the kind of guy who looks like he’s always up to no good.”

“CIA…” the professor murmured with chuckles, shaking his head. “I guess that agent got to him.”

“What agent?” the professor’s friend asked.

Nodding to him, the professor said, “I met a CIA agent on the trip back. He had fetched them home to New York. He was an undercover agent at their school, he said. He made me swear not to go public with what had happened to me. He said it would cause trouble for myself and others. I realized later that it was a veiled threat.”

His friend gazed sadly on him, though, clearly thinking the professor was insane. He then looked to Jordan and the rest, almost apologetic for allowing them to humor his friend’s ‘psychotic trip’. He said, “Yes. Now that I think about it, I have met the man.”

The professor shot him a dirty look. Apparently he wasn’t so entirely nuts to not see he was being humored.

“But what does this have to do with werewolves?” Emory murmured reading the professor’s friend’s body language. “You just suspect the Deacons because of rumors?”

The friend cringed, clearly wishing they would shut up.

But the professor shook his head. “No. Rumors or not, I am a researcher. I have been studying the validity of legends and myths since my experience. And currently I am researching werewolf lore. And though there is very little werewolf lore in the UK, there is a large amount in Europe, especially in Germany and France. I came here to investigate the tales told by locals here. I’ve already chronicled the tale of Peter Stube, and also the Morbac Monster—the werewolf Thomas Schwytzer.”

They stared blankly at him. He automatically went into professorial mode upon seeing those looks, feeling they needed to be educated.

“I think Thomas Johannes Baptist Schwytzer, who was a deserter from Napoleon’s army, was actually a true werewolf. But I had to find proof of it,” he explained.

They exchanged looks. Things were already way too weird.

“Have you never heard the tale?” the professor asked them.

They shook their heads, not sure they wanted to.

“Perhaps your friend H. Richard Deacon could clarify the truth for me,” the professor murmured in thought. “Werewolves tend to know the true stories about the wolves out there.”

Cringing, they exchanged more looks. The guy was definitely nuts.

“But anyway, the long and the short of it was that Thomas Johannes Baptist Schwytzer was cursed to be a wolf due to his excesses. That’s usually one sign of a werewolf. Excessive living.”

That did not match up with Rick at all, of course. They knew Rick to be a studious, often strict sort of guy with an impish sense of humor. The only excess he had was wealth, and he hardly used it. Whether he realized it or not, the professor was proving himself wrong to them. The creepiness of his speech was ebbing away. He was now sounding so profoundly delusional. Almost clownish.

“He escaped the disaster at Moscow with a few Russian deserters,” the professor continued his tale as if they had asked for it. “And as they raided a farmhouse, they killed the farmer and his sons. And the wife, before she was killed too, cursed him to be a wolf on every full moon ever after.”

They exchanged looks.

“And from then on Schwytzer became a man without inhibitions—robbing, raping, and murdering at his pleasure. His excesses troubled his Russian comrades, and even later disturbed his companions who were highway men and bandits. Eventually he had to flee to the forest for sanctuary.” He gazed at them darkly. “And the story goes, in that area the locals began to fear the beast that stalked the countryside, slaughtering men and cattle. But one night Schwytzer spied on a farmer’s daughter—an Elizabeth Beierle, and in his carnal lust he raped her. Days later, while at his campfire in the woods, Schwytzer is discovered by a group of villagers who immediately took him for the werewolf. They gave chase and cornered him near the village of Morbac where they promptly dispatched him and buried him at the crossing.”

“This is an actual place,” his friend added with a nod to them, a little grave about it. “We visited it.”

They stared at him. What he meant by this remark, they didn’t know. Was he trying to support it?

The professor nodded. “That’s right. We visited it—though as I said, the real shrine is at Wenigerath. But at the military base of Morbac is where the urban legends start. Because you see, the story continues where Elizabeth gave birth to a boy—whom she named Martin. Now no story about Martin becoming a wolf ever is told, and the family there is respected. So I had to investigate to find out the facts. But here’s the thing, in nineteen-eighty-eighty a werewolf was sighted just after the shrine candle was found to be blown out. Or at least that is the story. Nobody got bit, and there was no record of anybody or any animal being slaughtered. The shrine candle was also relit. But it is possible that the original Schwytzer could have been a werewolf, even though the rest is false.”

They stared at him. It was such a flat ending to a story. Really, it was like he was clawing for renewed proof of magic after he had had some kind of mental breakdown. They wondered if his job was in jeopardy. They peeked to his friend.

His friend patted the professor on the shoulder.

“The point is,” the professor said grimly, “I discount nothing. And neither should you. Investigate the truth.”

“I think we need to go,” Emory said, rising.

Rhett agreed. They called the waiter to pay the bill.

“Get out of this town,” the professor whispered. “For your own good.”

Jordan got up, nodding to him. He then nodded to the professor’s friend who shared a meaningful look and was grateful they were going.

They paid their bill and quickly got out of there.

Some eyes followed them.

The three friends went out toward the hiking trails, feeling subdued, unable to speak really. The chills seemed to have followed them. Once they felt comfortably distant from the place, Jordan finally murmured, “Do you think that guy with the professor was his shrink?”

Emory cringed, thinking over it. He shook his head.

“I’d say no,” Rhett said, glancing back. “More like a concerned friend. I mean, he had some facts. He knew people that we knew. So something real did happen to him. Possibly a real sort of abduction. A kidnapping maybe?”

Nodding, thinking of Tom Brown and Matthew Calamori, Jordan murmured, “Yeah. That’s what freaked me out. He could do more than name names. He knew them.”

“We could always ask Rick about that later,” Rhett said. “Confirm things and find out what really happened. He’d tell us if he knew, right?”

Jordan nodded. Rick would.

“I wonder, though,” Emory said as they ambled over the rough pathway back to Cochem. “Do you think Rick would be interested in going to see Morbac, or would he just roll his eyes and huff at visiting a werewolf shrine?”

Rhett busted into a laugh. Watching Jordan consider it with a lighter smirk, Rhett laughed more. Rick didn’t like being teased about the werewolf stuff. He considered it an annoying pain. Too stupid to talk about. It was funny too, because Rick was also a big fan of wolves. The Deacon family had a number of wolf reserves, and Rick actually had a tee shirt with a rust-haired wolf on it which a friend had bought for him at a convention. He wore it on days when he was in a quirky mood, and most often when he was doing his own laundry.

Jordan said, “I dunno. We’re going down to Berken-kastle later. That’s not far from Morbac. I’d think it would be funny to tease him with it.”

Rhett nodded, agreeing.

 

They were exhausted when they finally reached Cochem again, though they did not go back to their hotel yet. Their plans included visiting the Historische Senfmühle, which was an historical mustard making place where they got to watch German mustard being created the old fashioned way. They got to taste all sorts of mustards there. Emory ordered bratwurst for them, and Jordan bought two different jars of the mustard. They ate plenty of it. Rhett also purchased some honey mustard and held it up, saying aloud something else that had bugged him, “Do you think Rick really is allergic to honey or is it psychosomatic?”

“He’s really allergic,” Jordan replied, munching on his bratwurst at a table inside. “He sneezes when he smells it. But also, if it is on something and he touches it, he breaks out in a rash.”

“Have you tested it on him?” Rhett looked shocked.

Jordan shook his head. “No. It was an accident, actually. I had these honey wands… you know the type where they put honey in a straw with sealed ends? They were on my desk with my random stuff and he asked to borrow my mug. When he picked one up, it popped open, squirting onto his fingers. He dropped it like he had been burned and he rushed to the bathroom to wash his hand off. I’d never seen a guy go so fast. When he came back, it looked like his skin really had been burned.”

“No kidding…” Rhett stared.

Emory nodded. “I once saw him grab a silver spoon and then drop it as if it were on fire.”

Closing up his honey mustard jar, Rhett gingerly tucked it into his backpack. “Okaaay then. I won’t let him get near the stuff.”

“Or the