The Wolves Of West Virginia Part 1: A Wizard In West Virginia

Shep­herd­stown is overrun with werewolves.

That’s Shep­herd­stown, West Virginia for those of you who are wondering. Most of you prob­ably. It’s a small univer­sity town in the eastern panhandle of the state. The bit that’s really more like an annex of Northern Virginia.

And if you’re just passing through (lovely tourist spot as it happens) you certainly wouldn’t notice were­wolf activity. Dig under the surface though and all sorts of things are going on.

How do I know this? Well I spent one partic­u­larly memo­rable night being chased by a whole pack of were­wolves. If I’d both­ered to do some proper research, which I finally got round to after­wards, I’d have known that this is actu­ally an open secret amongst the locals. But I’m not a local, I didn’t see any mention of giant hairy man wolves in the university’s brochure and besides I’m too lazy for research. Who reads the manual anyway?

It does make perfect sense when you stop and think about it though, which I had plenty of time do while I was hiding from those very angry wolves. Shep­herd­stown combines both the obscu­rity of small town America with the regular influxes of fresh blood that are provided by a univer­sity and a tourist trade. Nobody really stands out in that town. Well… not unless they actu­ally grow fangs anyway.

I’m getting a bit ahead of myself though. After all the were­wolves wouldn’t have chased me in the first place if I hadn’t stuck my nose into their busi­ness. I wouldn’t call them civi­lized precisely, but they do have their rules. It all started off quite inno­cently, but I have a bad habit of getting involved in things.

My name is Douglas Brodie and I’m a wizard. Okay lets get the stan­dard ques­tions out of the way first. No I don’t wear a pointy hat. I don’t have a long white beard. I do have a walking stick some­where round here, but it is neither a magic wand or a staff. I’ve also never had the oppor­tu­nity to yell “You Shall Not Pass!”, but I keep hoping.

I live in Charles Town, West Virginia. How I ended up there is a long story in its own right, but let’s just say I’m not from round these parts. In fact I’m not a native of the United States at all. I was born and raised in Scot­land. If you’d asked me when I was growing up, I’m sure I would have told you I had no interest in trav­el­ling anywhere. But life likes to play tricks on you, or at least on me.

Anyway, there I was, recently relo­cated to America and since city living is more than a little expen­sive, I ended up some­where close enough to Wash­ington DC to have access to all the city ameni­ties I could want, but far enough away to offer me rents I could afford.

America is the land of oppor­tu­nity. Or at least that’s what everyone feels obliged to tell each other on a regular basis. Somehow I don’t think they were talking about Wizards when they came up with that partic­ular slogan though. There’s not a lot of paying work. The problem is that while lots of people believe in magic, most of what they believe is actu­ally wrong. And they really don’t like you telling them that.

Magic is very, very real. And it’s powerful too, but it’s not showy. People expect to see fire­balls and explo­sions. That’s not how it works. For a start there are rules and there’s also physics. Magic is a lot more than just slight of hand, but you simply cannot ignore the law of conser­va­tion of energy.

Along with magic comes lots of other things, like were­wolves. All those other things are why people need wizards. Even if they don’t know it. And of course, that’s where I come in. Or at least, it’s where life inter­venes and I am gener­ally standing in the wrong spot at the time. People in need of assis­tance have a way of bumping into me. Like I said, magic is subtle.

Geas is really just a fancy word for sugges­tion. In my case the geas is a partic­u­larly clever bit of magic. It’s a compul­sion that oper­ates below the level of conscious thought. I find myself compelled to offer assis­tance and somehow the world conspired to put me in situ­a­tions where people need the sort of assis­tance I can offer.

Ask me another time about how I ended up with that geas in the first place. It’s an inter­esting story. But it has nothing to do with were­wolves. Or even West Virginia for that matter. Now, where was I?

Oh yes, chased by were­wolves. Of course it was the geas that got me into that partic­ular mess. But I should back up a bit if I want this to make sense.

There was a young man standing on my deck when I pulled the car into the driveway of my house. After working an eight hour shift at Wal-mart I really wasn’t in the mood for a Jehovah’s Witness. I sat in the car for a minute, seri­ously contem­plating just driving off again. But of course he had seen me and I was brought up well, so I’m still far too polite for my own damn good. Sighing heavily and mainly for my own benefit, I got out of the car, showing just a hint of frus­tra­tion in the way I slammed the door shut.

The young man slouched, nervously straight­ening the collar of his shirt as he watched me walk towards him. He seemed too well dressed to be anything but a Jehova’s Witness, but he lacked their usual calm certainty. Feeling suddenly sorry for the boy, I nodded in his direc­tion and tried to force a smile on my face. I’m not sure it was really very reassuring.

“Are you the… ah that is… the um… wizard?” The boy’s tone was almost apolo­getic for asking such an absurd ques­tion. Though clearly fully grown I had now defi­nitely clas­si­fied him as a boy rather than a man.

I nodded again, keeping my face neutral as I wondered just who this young stranger was. I don’t adver­tise. Well, would you? Even so, word of mouth is a remark­ably powerful thing and I suppose it was just possible that I’d started to make a name for myself. That couldn’t possibly be a good thing.

“I was told you could help me. That you would know what to do about were­wolves.” The boy rushed through the words as though desperate to get the request out.

I paused, trying to come up with an appro­priate response. In point of fact I had no idea what to do about were­wolves of any sort. With a little time I would prob­ably be able to find out. But what exactly was I about to get myself into?

“You’d better come in.” This time I hoped my sigh was inaudible. I could stall for a while longer, but I was just going to end up agreeing to this anyway. Besides it was over 90 degrees so I might as well take advan­tage of the air condi­tioning while the geas screwed up my life one more time.

Turning my back on the boy, I unlocked the door and with a prac­ticed kick pushed it open to let him in. Now you might wonder what on earth I was thinking letting a stranger into my house, but trust me when I tell you that there is nothing worth stealing. I call it a house, but it is in fact what is collo­qui­ally referred to as a double-wide.

Hey, I work at Wal-mart, what do you expect, a mansion?

Inside was messy, but not embar­rass­ingly so. I briefly consid­ered offering my visitor a drink, but decided I wasn’t in that good a mood. Turning to face the boy I looked him up and down, just to make him squirm a little. Yeah, I can be an ass.

“So. Were­wolves.” I said.

*****

It turns out that Steven’s girl­friend was missing and the local author­i­ties had little to no leads to work on. Sadly that’s not really as uncommon as it ought to be. Young women go missing. You’ve all seen it on the news. And it really doesn’t explain why Steven was convinced that were­wolves had his girl­friend Naomi.

In fact as far as I could tell from his stam­mered and barely coherent story, the only connec­tion at all was that Naomi had appar­ently mentioned them in some recent emails to him. Some­thing he hadn’t taken very seri­ously up to now.

So a missing student who talked about were­wolves. The more cynical amongst you may be wondering what sort of drugs young Naomi was sampling. I had a strong suspi­cion that I wasn’t being told every­thing, but it as I’ve already told you magic exists, and so do were­wolves. Plus Steven clearly wasn’t going to leave my house until he at least got a promise of assis­tance out of me.

And I really wanted him to leave my house so I could have some peace and quiet.

Do you know what wizards hate about promises? They’re binding. Every­thing in life has conse­quences. Every action a re-action. The closer you are to the ethe­real web (don’t blame me, the name wasn’t my choice), the tighter you are bound to its effects. The conse­quences can be hard to measure, but the short version is… don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep!

“Let me do a little research.” I told him in what I hoped was a reas­suring voice. “Come back and see me tomorrow evening and I’ll see what I can find out for you.” He seemed to buy it and I was able to usher him out of the door with only another fifteen minutes worth of assurances.

He wasn’t a bad kid, but people in their late teens are so dramatic about everything!

I closed the door with a sigh of relief and headed for the fridge. It was a little early for anything heavy so I grabbed a soda. Magic and alcohol is a risky combi­na­tion. Slumping down on my rather battered sofa I rubbed my eyes. Now all I had to do was find out the connec­tion, if any, between were­wolves, a student named Naomi and the local univer­sity. All before I started my next shift. Easy!

I sat there and pitied myself for a little longer before deciding I’d better do what everyone does when they need infor­ma­tion. I headed straight onto the internet. More specif­i­cally in my case I sent a message to Mercedes begging for help.

It’s not that I can’t use Google you under­stand. I’m young enough to be more than func­tional on the web. But Mercedes is excep­tional. That woman has sources. Lots of sources. Or some­thing. Actu­ally I really don’t know how she does what she does exactly. She’s a secre­tive sort. I don’t even know her last name. Some­times it’s best not to ask too many ques­tions and just appre­ciate the assis­tance when you get it.

Unfor­tu­nately for me, Mercedes wasn’t responding right now. So I went to my best source. The Wikipedia entry on were­wolves offered up a number of theo­ret­ical expla­na­tions for the phenom­enon (without actu­ally admit­ting they exist mind you), but was annoy­ingly short on specifics.

Sadly while there’s a good body of research into the magical world, no one has got round to digi­tizing it yet. And there isn’t exactly a local mystical library in Charles Town.

Perhaps a more pedes­trian approach was required. Time to visit the Shep­herd­stown Police Depart­ment and find out what they did know about this Naomi.

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Originally published at www.eoghann.com on October 2, 2014.

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