Cycle of the Werewolf   ::   Кинг Стивен

Lowe's knowledge of what he is has come in two distinct stages: Following his nightmare in May, the dream in which everyone in the Old Home Sunday congregation turned into a werewolf, and following his terrible discovery of Clyde Corliss's gutted body, he hasbegun to realize that something is… well, wrong with him. He knows no other way to put it. Something wrong. But he also knows that on some mornings, usually during the period when the moon is full, he awakes feeling amazingly good, amazingly well, amazingly strong. This feeling ebbs with the moon, and then grows again with the next moon.

Following the dream and Corliss's death, he has been forced to acknowledge other things, which he had, up until then, been able to ignore. Clothes that are muddy and torn. Scratches and bruises he cannot account for (but since they never hurt or ache, as ordinary scratches and bruises do, they have been easy to dismiss, to simply… not think about). He has even been able to ignore the traces of blood he has sometimes found on his hands… and lips.

Then, on July 5th, the second stage. Simply described: he had awakened blind in one eye. As with the cuts and scratches, there had been no pain; simply a gored, blasted socket where his left eye had been. At that point the knowledge had become too great for denial: he is the werewolf; he is the Beast.

For the last three days he has felt familiar sensations: a great restlessness, an impatience that is almost joyful, a sense of tension in his body. It is coming again-the change is almost here again. Tonight the moon will rise full, and the hunters will be out with their dogs. Well, no matter. He is smarter than they give him credit for. They speak of a man-wolf, but think only in terms of the wolf, not the man. They can drive in their pickups, and he can drive in his small Volare sedan. And this afternoon he will drive down Portland way, he thinks, and stay at some motel on the outskirts of town. And if the change comes, there will be no hunters, no dogs. They are not the ones who frighten him.

Why don't you kill yourself?

The first note came early this month. It said simply:

I know who you are.

The second said:

If you are a man of God, get out of town. Go someplace where there are animals for you to kill but no people.

The third said:

End it.

That was all; just End it. And now

Why don't you kill yourself?

Because I don't want to, the Rev. Lowe thinks petulantly. This whatever it is—is nothing I asked for. I wasn't bitten by a wolf or cursed by a gypsy. It just… happened. I picked some flowers for the vases in the church vestry one day last November. Up by that pretty little cemetery on Sunshine Hill. I never saw such flowers before… and they were dead before I could get back to town. They turned black, every one.