Sjá nánar

16.7.2006

Wolfjackal

http://www.netsaga.is/media/files/remix-leaving.mp3

I'm going to central Europe to see if I can trace the ancestral history of the Wolfjackal family.

If anything should happen to me while I'm there I want this record of the events of the last twenty-four hours to go to the police.

- - - - -

My name's Sarah.

I'm eighteen years old and like most teenagers I thought I was going to have a long and pleasant life.

But a single telephone call put an end to all that.

I was at home when the phone rang.

It was Magda, my best friend.

She wanted to see me and said it was urgent.

I said I would come right away but she insisted,

"No. Wait till your parents go to bed then meet me at the beggar's tomb."

Before I could ask why she had put down the phone.

I felt apprehensive: the beggar's tomb was the last place I wanted to go for a conversation, especially after dark.

The tomb was situated in the old cemetery.

The bodies had been stolen years ago so the council had declared the tomb derelict and boarded it up.

Magda and I had discovered it as children while walking through the old cemetery after school.

We liked it so much we said we'd always use it as our secret meeting place.

My parents were watching television.

Feeling a bit sheepish, I entered the living room and announced that I was going to bed early.

They were surprised of course and my father jokingly asked if I was ill or something.

"No, just tired", I said and left it at that.

I sat on my bed upstairs.

I decided I'd be better off climbing out of my window than creeping downstairs to the front door.

As I waited for my parents to retire to bed, I thought about Magda, how we had met and how we grew up together.

Magda is the adopted daughter of Klaus and Luba Hoffmann.

The Hoffmanns came to England and our village when Magda was about two.

I met her in infant school - or kindergarten as Magda always called it.

We didn't get on very well at first.

We were often fighting and arguing but soon we became inseparable.

Her parents were elderly.

My family knew they came from somewhere in central Europe but that was about it.

Even I couldn't get anything out of Magda about her relatives and I was her best friend.

Magda is the adopted daughter of Klaus and Luba Hoffmann.

The Hoffmanns came to England and our village when Magda was about two.

I met her in infant school - or kindergarten as Magda always called it.

We didn't get on very well at first.

We were often fighting and arguing but soon we became inseparable.

Her parents were elderly.

My family knew they came from somewhere in central Europe but that was about it.

Even I couldn't get anything out of Magda about her relatives and I was her best friend.

In all the years I've known Magda, I've only ever met her parents about five times on the rare occasions when I'd been specially invited to their house.

I can remember my mother telling me about a series of gruesome murders that had been committed in and around our village just after their arrival.

There were hostile rumours at the time about the Hoffmanns but the police dismissed them as muck-spreading.

My mother explained to me that being foreigners with strange accents didn't make people murderers.

All this thinking about murder was beginning to scare me.

I glanced up at the clock.

It was about eleven-thirty.

My parents must have gone to bed by now, I thought.

I opened the bedroom door and checked that all the lights were all out.

I climbed out of my bedroom window and down the drainpipe.

It was only when I reached the ground that I realised I'd forgotten to bring my torch.

Too late now, I thought.

The quicker I get there the quicker I'll get back, I kept telling myself.

Without a torch, going through the woods was out of the question so I headed for the old mill, jumped over the gate and ran alongside the river bank.

As I approached the cemetery I expected to see Magda waiting for me.

She wasn't there.

She must be at the tomb, I thought.

There was a shaft of light emanating from the tomb.

I pulled the planks of wood aside and stepped in.

There was a shadow at the bottom of the steps:

someone was pacing up and down.

"Hey! It's me, Sarah", I shouted but there was no answer.

When I got to the bottom of the steps there was Magda, wearing her nightgown and looking very frightened.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Why are you wearing your nightgown?"

She grabbed me by the shoulders and cried,

"I'm so glad you came Sarah.

I know you must be wondering why I called you.

All I can say for now is that it's very important that you be here tonight.

Come and sit down and I'll explain."

As we moved towards the bench I looked around the old tomb. It seemed different.

Magda had put candles all around the walls and there was a large crucifix at the far end.

Magda handed me a medallion and said,

"Look closely at this!"

It was about three centimetres wide with an engraving of two animals, one of a wolf, the other a dog of some kind.

Their necks were joined together as if they were struggling to break free from one another.

It was horrible.

Around the edge were some letters.

I spelled them out aloud.

"W-O-L-F-J-A-C-K-A-L.

Wolfjackal.

What does it mean?"

"It's my ancestral name", Magda replied.

"But I thought your name was Hoffmann.

And besides, these pictures are of animals, not human beings", I insisted.

Magda gave me a resigned look and said quietly,

"Yes, I know".

I didn't understand her reply, only the sorrow in it.

"I was looking for something in my parents' bedroom," she went on, "when I came across the medallion and some papers.

There was my birth certificate and some newspaper clippings.

One was a story about a family being hounded out of their village because of some unexplained deaths."

"But why would that have anything to do with your parents?" I asked in alarm.

Magda handed me the clipping.

Above the article was a picture of Mr and Mrs Hoffmann, a teenage girl and a baby.

The caption said that they were the Wolfjackal family.

I looked around the old tomb.

It seemed different.

Magda had put candles all around

"That baby", said Magda, "is me and these people you know as the Hoffmanns are my real flesh and blood parents.

I'm not adopted.

The older girl in that photo is my sister".

Magda faltered, then continued,

"Or was - she was killed by the townspeople who blamed her for the deaths."

"How do you know all this?" I asked in horrified amazement.

"About a couple of days ago", Magda replied,

"I started feeling moody and irritable, as though I didn't belong.

I'd become full of violent rage and I couldn't stand the feel of clothes next to my skin.

I'd try to rip them off and then for no reason at all I'd black out and wake up a couple of hours later as though nothing had happened.

Then I'd look at myself in the mirror and see scratch marks, scars and bruises I couldn't explain.

"So I confronted my parents.

They said I must have dreamed or imagined it all but when I forced the issue and showed them the marks on my arms and legs they finally gave in.

That's when they told me what I was, how it only affected the women in our family and why they had tried to keep it from me.

"I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't believe I would turn into a mixture of those hideous creatures on the medallion.

I just went crazy, Sarah.

I ran out of the house crying.

I don't know where I went.

I just ran and ran until I ended up at the old tomb.

I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up in the morning I thought it was all a bad dream.

But then I noticed I had blood all over my hands and no clothes on.

I knew something terrible must have happened so I ran back up to my house.

"The front door was still open.

I called out but there was no sound so I went up to my parents bedroom and there they were .... dead.

Their bodies had been ripped apart."

As Magda spoke these last words her face became gaunt, dark circles appeared around her eyes and her voice deepened.

She grabbed me by the arms and pleaded with me to kill her before it was too late.

I should have got up and ran out of there straight away.

But I couldn't.

I was transfixed by this image of something becoming evil in front of me.

I shouted at her,

"No! No!

This is stupid, ridiculous.

How can you believe that this medallion could affect your life?"

Magda took off her nightgown and made me look at the scars and bruises.

As I realised that what she had said must be true, I saw that her body was beginning to change.

I asked her what was happening but she just fell to her knees, her head rocking back and forth.

She started to foam at the mouth.

She howled with rage and as her chest expanded her ribs protruded so much I thought they were going to break.

I sat paralysed with fear watching my friend turn into a creature with rough mangled hair and rigid sinews.

the walls and there was a large crucifix at the far end.

Suddenly I knew I had to act, for Magda's sake as well as my own.

I noticed a rusty length of railing in the corner of the tomb.

But as I rose to get it, the creature grabbed hold of my legs, pulled me down and started lashing out at me, ripping my jeans and drawing blood.

I kicked furiously at its head then I picked up a handful of dirt and threw it in its face.

That seemed to stun it momentarily.

I scrambled up and flung myself over to the corner and grabbed the railing.

The candles flared and the crucifix cast a sharp shadow on the ground in front of me as I swung round.

At the same moment, the creature threw itself at me and was impaled on the railing.

The vicious beast crumpled.

Its hair and claws seemed to be swallowed by a vortex.

It had become Magda again and she was dead.

Exhaustion overtook my terror and my horror.

I dragged myself towards the bench and saw a letter underneath, addressed to me from Magda.

The first part detailed what I should do if anything should have happened to her before I got here.

But it was the last bit that really shook me.

Magda reminded me of the time we played an innocent game when we were young.

Because we were the only children in our respective families we felt a special sense of closeness.

To cement that relationship we cut our fingers and held them together so that the blood flowed between us.

From that day onwards we called ourselves blood sisters.