Loup-Garou

 

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Disappointed in love, weary of war, Goran von Hagen retreats to his idyllic alpine estate. He does not know the ancient secret of the looming mountain--or that it will change his life forever.

I first met this Being a very long time ago, back in my ninth or tenth year when our family was visiting Bermuda.  I was already in awe of this tropical place, because it was much warmer than our home during early April, which was, at that time, in upstate New York.

 Back in the 1950's  in NY, there was still plenty of snow on the ground, and it was still darn cold.  Bermuda was warm enough that you could swim, although the Atlantic was still cold, the sunlit coves and that crumbly brown and pink coral sand of the beaches was absolutely beautiful. I had that day just learned about the Moray eels who hung out in the coral outcrops in our swimming place and had been suitably alarmed. You could even see them in the clear water if you swam too close, peeking out of their lairs with gaping mouths filled with pointy teeth.

  So my nerves were already jangled when later a young Bermudian employed by the hotel, in the course of showing us where we were allowed to play, began telling a gang of us stories about Loup-Garou. As luck would have it, this was the night of the full moon. Soon, the worldly kids from NYC began to recount the plots of old horror movies, to show that although this Loup-Garou was a new monster to them, they already knew about lots of other creepy stuff. My imagination, never under control, went wild. 

In my little single room at the hotel that night, I had a lovely view of the ocean and the full moon shining on the water. As you can imagine, I didn't sleep much.

Then, a few years later, staying in Grenada for two months in a friendly little local hotel, I became good friends with the children of the owner. The owner's wife basically ran the place, cooking and riding herd on her staff and shopping, while her husband swanned about in the evenings, preparing drinks and playing host to the guests. He also kept the books and wrote letters to potential customers to confirm reservations. I remember peeking into his sanctum and seeing stacks of those blue Airmail letter forms atop his big desk. 

The kids were close to my age. The oldest was 15, and working hard to prepare for O Level exams. I played mostly with the second boy, Richard, and his younger sister, Lynette, who had been born just a year after me. They tried to scare me with Loup- Garou, but I scored points when I told them I had already been initiated into The Lore. They had a lot more to say on scary subjects, however, and started to explain zombies, of whom I hadn't yet heard. To their great satisfaction, zombies got under my white skin pretty thoroughly.  :)

The center of all things terrifying, these young West Indians told me, was Haiti. (Poor Haitians! Some things never change, only it's more terrible on that tragic island now than we "First World" people can begin to imagine, not just fantasy.)

This leads me to a book I just finished, which, sadly, has no zombies or werewolves, but is historical, about the early French colonists of Quebec. I was amused to discover, researching here and there, that the French of that province had brought their Loup-Garou with them, and so his "range" was not just limited to France and the West Indies. He also lived in the snowy North Country!

The French, apparently, had had "an epidemic" of werewolves since the 1400's. Of course, people suspected of having the affliction were regularly burned, hanged and so on. In Quebec, there were reports of such beasts from the earliest settlers. 

In 1767, the Gazette de Quebec reported just such a pernicious beast. After setting dogs on it, and much gunfire, the beast retreated. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief, but, like any good monster, one major attempt at extinguishing it wasn't sufficient. The second round of massed gunfire and ferocious dogs seems to have finally done for it, because, after that, although many have searched the remaining documents, we hear no more about it. No bullet-riddled human corpse left behind, not even a humongous dead wolf--nothing! 

Imagine that.   ;) 

~Juliet Waldron

Season's Greetings!