The Loup-Garou of Bourriquet

[Content Warning: violence, gore, questionable language*, French**]

[Misc. Tags: Creature Feature, folk horror]

In the south of Louisiana, among marshes, bayous, prairies, and woods, live the Cajuns, French-speaking country folk**. Most lived off the land, and it wasn't until after the Civil War that many commercial farms popped up, farming rice and sugarcane, eventually adding soy and crawfish over the years. Dotted between pastures and farmland, there were many little towns and villages. There's of course the Big City, New Orleans, but then the other hubs like Lafayette, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, and smaller towns like Eunice, Crowley, Rayne, and Basile. Then, there's always going to be tiny communities that go unnoticed - they have a church, a schoolhouse, maybe a post office, but too small to be incorporated. Eventually, these towns get smaller and smaller, people leave, and they get swallowed up by the bigger towns growing around them, so all that remains of some of these towns are cemeteries bearing their name and a name on an old map, if they're lucky. One of these such places was the little village of Bourriquet, or "Little Donkey".

*The word "Indian" is used in reference to the Native Americans of the area. Though a questionable term nowadays, that's what they called them back then, and that's what they call themselves today. No offense is intended.

**Please note in this story that, while being in English, this story is set in a time when French was the dominant language (to the dismay of many Americans at the time) in south Louisiana. Phonetic spellings will be given for difficult words, and direct usage of French will be in italics. A tilde (~) will be used for nasalized vowels. Thank you for understanding.

The village of Bourriquet was a small farming town, maybe 120 people at any given time. We lived close to the unofficial town square (le moyeu in French), 7 miles southeast of the town of Elton, resting on the Bayou Nezpique (neh-pi-kay). There was a little chapel, St. Andrew the Apostle Mission, and a general store. Around the time I grew into manhood, there were some 7 families represented in our small town. My family and our neighbors, the Trahans (Trah-hõ), co-ran a rice farm, selling our excess for profit. The Thibodeauxs (Tib-o-do) were cattle farmers, they'd haul them up to the railroad to sell them to bigger cities. The Ardoin (Ar-do-wã) family ran the general store (with post office inside), but also owned land for growing sugarcane. The other families, the Ortegos (Ar-dih-go), Deshotels (Deh-zo-tel), and the Laughlins, each grew solely to feed themselves.

All of us in Bourriquet, shoot, most people back then, were a supersticious group. The life I've lived is enough to warrant those beliefs. My name is Clarence LeBleu, born 1892 in the 'ti village of Bourriquet, LA.

My mama told be about the Feu-follets (fuh-fo-lay) when I was a kid. The souls of unbaptised children would stick around after death, leading travellers off their path. You could stick a nail or a pocketknife in a fence to distract it, it would go and dance around it. As I walked through the deep, dark wood, a little ball of fire led me along. This one felt different, it felt familiar. He tried to help me.

Life was simpler, and we liked it that way. We did our own thing, and were content keeping it going. Outsiders would have to assimilate quick or they'd be left in the dust, most didn't like us and we weren't entirely fond of them. Only reason the Laughlins fell in line so quick, they moved here from nearby Jennings, was that they were Catholic, too. Around this time, I lived with my wife, my gorgeous Josephine, née Deshotels, in a 2-room house on my family's land. Tall, but not too thin, with hair black as ebony and a way of holding herself as if she were royalty. We had been married about 3 years, with no children. I tended the rice fields with my uncles, brothers, cousins, and neighbors every day, making time to tend to our horses and the milk-cow, and Jos'phine would do the housework - cooking meals, sewing clothes, and maintaining her own little garden of various fruits and vegetables (one can't survive on rice alone!)

Around January 1911, a Jeff Davis Parish official rode into town escorting a husband and wife hauling a wagon. He explained that the woman, Mrs. Harriet Edwards, was to be the new schoolteacher. A lanky woman, bearing a shallow face with a pointed nose and bony cheeks, she looked 60 when she was 30. Word had apparently gotten out that the previous schoolteacher, one of the elder Deshotels women, had passed away some five years ago. We had a Catechism teacher, but she didn't have time to teach grammar school. Sometime recently, some politicians a hundred miles away thought it was important for schooling to be mandatory for every single child. Of course, now, I don't think anybody'd be against it, but, back then, everybody's children worked the land and contributed their part, they couldn't lose half their workforce, even if it were for only, say, 3 hours a day. Mr. and Mrs. Edwards were Yankees, from the north side of the state, they only spoke English and didn't get out much, not like they could. Mrs. Edwards spent her days at the schoolhouse, next door to St. Andrew's, and Mr. Edwards built their little lean-to in a clearing across the dirt road and planted a humble little cornfield.

A week later, all the children from about 6 years to 15 were told to make their way to the schoolhouse. I think the thought crossed everyone's minds that most of the little ones couldn't speak a lick of English and had to go to be schooled by an English-speaking teacher, but I don't think anyone acted upon it. The older ones we thought were alright, they'd gone into town with their fathers before to sell their wares, they probably knew "yes, ma'am", "no ma'am", things like that. I was at my 'Nonc (uncle) Alphonse's house that evening when his little girl, Edmée, came in, sulking.

"How was school, little lady?" asked 'Nonc Alphonse.

"It was alright..." said Edmée.

Something about her face, kids aren't that good at hiding their emotions, and Alphonse knew it. Her chin twitched and nose sniffled. "What's wrong, lil one?"

She walked up to her daddy and tried to hold on. "Teacher yelled at me, Papa."

"What for?"

"I dunno, Papa." Edmée started to tear up at this point. As her uncle (of sorts, I was a cousin as old as her papa), I couldn't stand to see a child upset. I could only imagine at that time what her father felt.

Trying to keep the situation cool, Alphonse asks, "Well, what did she say to you?"

She couldn't understand anything that woman said. She tried to approximate. "Yew mus spake Anglish, littul gull." All across the village, families had to hear the same cries from their children. Edmée was luckier than others, Mrs. Edwards was not afraid to use her ruler on any who talked back (or what she thought sounded like talking back). How it must've felt for them, punished with no idea of their infraction and no way of learning what crime they committed, like getting spanked just for breathing.

After a week and a half of this, some of the parents got fed up. One of Ortego's kids wouldn't speak at all, for fear of punishment. They'd hope she'd calm down, but no. Infractions cut down, but punishments didn't weaken. Once Vincent Trahan's son came home with a swollen purple pinky finger, he rounded up the men, knifes at their hips, and rode out to visit the Edwards. I didn't ride with them, I was caught up later.

Vincent and the mob rode up to the Edwards' shack. It sat in a narrow 4-acre clearing across the road from the schoolhouse, completely surrounded by trees except for the entrance, a little bridge over a small ditch. The air was cold that night. The cloudy sky and setting sun basked everything in a firey orange. Outside came Jedidiah Edwards, the teacher's husband. A large, burly man, who, even for the time, was not particularly well-groomed, matching the trashy appearance of their shack. His hair was an oily, dark, dark brown. "What do you want?"

Vincent replies in broken English. "We wanna talk wit' cho' wife, the schoolmaster."

"She's busy cooking supper. You can tell me."

"You ain't the one who did it, Mister..."

"Jedidiah Edwards."

"Mr. Jedididiah, we come to complain about how yo' wife has been disciplining our children."

"If your chil'ren have been bad, she's gonna discipline them, same as if you cought your kid eatin' straight outer the honeypot." Jedidiah had a way of speaking, like that smug guy at a bar everybody wants to beat up. "What'd my Harriet do?"

"She broke my boy's finger!" says Vincent. "She made my daughter cry," hollers 'Nonc Alphonse. Everybody in the small horseback mob tossed in their two cents. "Don't help the lil ones don't understand a damn word she say."

Jedidiah took in these responses. "She's doing y'all a favor, your chil'ren will become civilized. They'll stop speaking that low-class French." Jed stood there, arms cross, stubborn as a mule and immovable as a mountain. Jed kept muttering vague obscenities towards the possey, riling them up more with words they don't know.

Vincent finally yells back, "Well, tell yo' wife t' stop beatin' up our children, or we gon' stop it fo' ya."

Jed stays standing, a smug look on his face, probably thinking that we, poor farmers, wouldn't do jack-squat. Vincent turns his horse at an angle, showing off his holstered knife. The other men follow suit. Jed stays standing, arms folded, still smirking as his eyes widen and his legs stiffen. "I'll let the missus know, fellers." He runs inside, and quickly closes the door.

Eventually, the teacher walked outside to meet the calvary. They talked, and they parted. I was never told much else, other than that, when you walk by, through the trees you'll see a half-flattened cornfield and a house with no husband.

In late February came Mardi Gras. Excess food needs to be used up before the solemnity of Lent, so we used it as an opportunity to have fun. Out in the country, whereas in the Big City they'd have extravagant parades, we'd have ourselves a Courir (coo-reer). In every community, they would elect a Capitaine, a good, Christian man active in the community, to lead a group of rowdy, anonymous, masked men to everybody's house. They'd act afool until the Capitaine whips them into shape, and they'd sing a song asking for donations (la charité) to make a gumbo that night. This could be anything from corn to cracklins (fried pig skin) to a whole chicken that they'd usually have to chase down. As long as you donated something, your household was invited to the ball that night, where they'd dance 'til midnight, when they'd have to go home and attend Ash Wednesday service in the morning. Every town does it different, and, in Bourriquet, we had the tradition of stealing a house's clothes and playing jumprope with the clothesline!

Probably since my father was a boy, the Capitaine for Bourriquet was "Old Man" Ulise Ardoin, who built the general store. He went to church every Sunday, he was generous with his clientele, and everybody knew him. So, for the Mardi Gras festivities, he built a little covered pavillion at his house, where he'd throw the evening's ball. No ball was complete without music, and, this year, we had little Octave (Ok-tahv) Thibodeaux, at 9 years old, make his debut playing fiddle with his father. People would swap in and out whenever they wanted to go dance, thankfully every family had at least one good musician to contribute.

As the music played, people danced and ate, and the children ran around playing tag or Cowboys-'n'-Indians, me and Josephine slipped away to the edge of the pavilion and sat to watch the stars. In those days, there was no electricity up where we were, and, boy, the night sky back then! Stars so numerous and bright, it was like beach sand, speckled with little dots of different size and color. The sky still showed it's colors after sunset. The cool February night air blew past, that nice, refreshing, cool air. It could lift you off your feet and you wouldn't feel a thing. We sat there, enjoying each other's company, watching the children play in a small field where, at the eastern corner, lay the entrance to the woods. Not a farmer himself, Old Man Ardoin didn't have need to clear lots of land right by his house. The moon shone bright over the landscape.

"Do you remember when we played games like that, Jos'phine?" I asked.

"Yes, cher (sha, meaning 'dear')." She sat there a bit, gathering her thoughts. "I know I liked playing with my toys more than I did running around, though... You remember when you and your brothers were messing around with firecrackers that one time?"

"Oh, shoot, yeah! Whenever Gill almost lost his eye? That was funny, zoomed by barely an inch off his head!" We continued chattering about the games we played as kids, laughing as we watched the little kids fall down playing tag.

"Didn't I get you firecrackers for our first New Year's together?" Before modern American Christmas came here, New Year's was more associated with gift-giving.

"Pretty sure, haha! I think the first thing I ever gave you was a voom-voom on your birthday, wasn't it? Think we were both, what, 7 years old?" I was talking about a whirligig, a string and a button that you spun around. I don't think anybody knew the real name so we called it a voom-voom.

"Yes, I think so. I don't think I realized you liked me until you proposed, I was so absent-minded! That's my excuse for waiting that long to get you something." We laughed, then it wound down to silence for a minute. "What do you think would be a good name?"

"Not sure, Jos'phine. A little too soon, right now." We only learned about a week ago. "When should we announce it?"

"Before it starts becoming gossip. Maybe Easter." We sat around, caught between the stars above, the children frolicking below, and our own company right there.

After a while we got up to join the party in dancing. We drank, we ate, we danced, we chatted with our neighbors like we hadn't seen each other in years (it'd been a few days at most). Many a song was danced to that night, waltzes, two-steps, even a mazurka. We made sure to get the most out of every ball we went to.

At about 10 o'clock, the music stopped for just a moment, Alton Thibodeaux took a break to talk to one of the Laughlin's kids about how to play the accordion. We sat in the eery silence, that kind that makes every sound feel intentional, that you needed to hear it. A long, high, collective scream came from the east side, and children started flooding the pavilion, running for their mamas. All the mamas asked their children "What's going on?", and all the little ones could do nothing but cry. The older kids came back up. "There's something at the edge of the forest!" Uncle Alphonse and another man, Richard Laughlin, ran to investigate, while Old Man ran inside to grab a shotgun, just in case.

Within about half a minute, every man at that party from about 16 to 70 gathered at the eastern edge of the property. About three paces from the edge of the woods lay a raccoon. The skin and pelt were intact, but, as they flipped it over onto it's back, they saw its innards were a jumbled up, bloody mess. Distinction between muscle, intestine, bone and bile was barely present. And such a clean killing it was for how messy the results, maybe one or two small splatters of blood outside of it. Man or beast, we did not know. The only people nearby who weren't there were the Yankee couple and some Indians that lived a little further west of us, neither would've had a reason. There were known to be coyotes in the area, and maybe one wolf sighting every 10 years, but we didn't hear anything of the sort. Not until a moment later.

As we stood around, wondering what to do with the mauled raccoon and how this could've happened, we heard a lonesome howl in the distance. Too deep to be a coyote, and sounded far away, maybe too far to have done this just now. None of the older kids knew anything, but none of the younger kids would say a word. They shouldn't have been afraid of a dead animal, their fathers went hunting all the time, and had to clean their catch themselves. Maybe they saw what did it. But, then again, this was just one animal, nature doing it's thing, and nothing else. As midnight rang and the folks left, starting their fasts for Lent, nobody thought more of the incident, the children had calmed down and gotten back to playing for the rest of the party. In the cool breeze and dawn's dew-covered grass, we would make our way to the chapel for Ash Wednesday and continue with our lives.

One day, around 2 weeks into March, I was out collecting crawfish for our Friday dinner (they are abundant in rice fields), when my cousin Eugène Ortego rode over to talk to me.

"Clarence! Clarence!"

"How goes it, Eugène?"

"Not too well. You seen any coyotes around here lately?"

"Don't think so. Maybe a howl the other night. Why?"

"Something's been killing some of our livestock past few nights. Thought it might've been coyotes but... I dunno, it's strange, I tell you what."

Nobody wanted to lose livestock, but it wasn't quite a death sentence. When I was a kid, my family survived a year without chicken or eggs and we were fine. "Well, I'm sorry to hear that. I bet my Pap's got a calf he would readily give you."

"I don't know if that'd help any. Come see, tell me what you think."

I brought what I had to Josephine, I hopped on my horse, and went rode with Eugène.

On the east side of the village was the Ortego family's farm. It was a small collection of shacks in a small clearing, with little dirt paths and ditches dividing the fields of various crops like the spokes of a wheel. In the back, where a little fenced-in pasture area was, a number of men stood around trying to figure something out. I hop off my horse and look. The dirt was soaked to make a deep vermillion. On the ground were some splatters of blood, with an occasional clump of hair or feathers. In a little fenced-in area of pasture was the donkey, lying down on its side. It's eyes wide yet directionless, it's mouth slung open, bearing its teeth. It's belly was slashed open, it's ribcage remaining as to prop it up. No bones were broken, but, inside, nothing distinguishable. Just a blob of flesh spilling out the cavity, flies and larva making use of it.

Eugène stood there, looking down at the ground. "That donkey fought off a pair of coyotes last year with barely a scratch."

"What else's been getting picked off, Eugène?" I ask.

Eugène stood there, hands at his hips, taking a moment to process. "Last night was the donkey and two chickens. The night before, maybe another chicken. Night before that, I think it was a calf, but that just straight-up went missing, maybe it ran away. Had it just been the chickens, I would've thought it was a fox or coyote, but the donkey, that's what's stumping all of us."

The rest of the men were standing there, chatting amongst themselves. A moment of realization came to me. "If this happened last night, why haven't y'all buried the thing already? It'll be sunset in a couple hours."

One of the men, Eugène's 'Nonc Hazard (ah-zar) leaned over. "We're as stumped as you are, what did it. The other reason being how to move a 600-pound carcass when it could all spill out, it's like carrying a trough full of water, y'know?"

I looked over to the donkey carcass. How would you move that thing anyways, at least without getting bile all over yourself. "Any ideas as to what did it?"

All 9 of us men put in their few cents, but nothing we could think of fit the bill perfectly. Couldn't be coyotes, there'd been maybe one wolf spotted here in 50 years, and mountain lions were just as rare. We finished talking and we buried the carcasses, burying a hole right next to it and flipping it in. Over the next few months, maybe 1 to 5 animals got picked off every night across the village. We lost a milk-cow, our horse, and a mule, my parents lost their cow and horses, so did Josephine's folks, so did everybody's. Some of the men used to head north to Elton or south to Jennings to try and bring some horses back but, every time, they'd only last a week. By Easter, we had barely any livestock left in Bourriquet. No beasts for burden nor nourishment. All summer working all by ourselves, pulling wagons and plows in the oppressive heat and humidity. The only remaining livestock were a she-goat at the schoolteacher's shanty and the Thibodeauxs' large herd of cattle, which they protected as if they were their babies. They could've given some away, but that meant money, and no telling if whatever protection they had would be rescinded as soon as it left the property.

"You think we can find what's been doing this?" Every time something happened, the men asked themselves this question. Whenever the preachers came around, we asked. When a policeman came through, we asked. Nobody had an answer, nobody knew what was killing the livestock. What kind of plague had we been cursed with? Some, sick-and-tired and drunk, would abandon their families in a rage, armed with guns, knifes, and whatever else they could carry, and march into the forest. Their wives and children sat on their porches, listening, but no gunshot would sound. They would lose their husbands to whatever took their cattle, horses, pigs, chickens, goats, donkeys, sheep, and mules. We lost 10 brave souls too soon to the plague hiding in the woods. A distinctive smell came out of the woods, putrid and rancid. Vincent Trahan went to investigate once, making sure to stay within the sight of his son, waiting at the edge of the forest, and reported back that, in the woods by our property, there was a deer carcass, on it's side, ribs split open and gutted. He didn't dare go further.

In those days, out in the middle of nowhere, a lot of our churches were missions, the priest couldn't be there every day, so, for up to a month and a half at a time, we had a lay preacher give a simplified mass. Anything needing priest had to wait or be handed by the laity. When Father Hébert (ay-bear) came by for Pentecost, we made sure he blessed all the livestock remaining to keep them from harm's way. Unfortunately, this would not last

By August, again, only the Thomases and the Thibodeauxs had any livestock. At the end of it all, we went about half a year without any kind of fresh meat and without any work animals, not a favorable circumstance for a hard-working farming village, but we made do. Occasionally, we tried to reintroduce chickens to our abandoned coops, but they'd barely survive a day. We continued with what we had, with rice, vegetables, fruits, and what little preserved meat we had left. We made much less money off our harvests than usual, we had to eat more of our crop to survive. We were lucky that nobody else had left us due to all this. We held on hope that those cattle, the Thibodeauxs' 40 head, would survive the winter. Sell 'em, milk 'em, cook 'em, let 'em pull, anything. One can't survive on rice alone.

December of 1911. We had come to accept that we would have no livestock. Ardoin's General Store got some bicycles over the months, so, in terms of transportation, that was our replacement for our horses. They also kept a supply of beer, lucky for us. The heat and oppressive days were long gone, and so was most of the hard maintenance of the field, until spring comes along. Soon would also come various holidays, Christmas, New Year's, and, in February, Mardi Gras. Christmas was much more a strictly church holiday than it would become, the main thing being going to Midnight Mass, but, a few years ago, our neighbors, the Laughlins, started having a big feast and a gift exchange, and we would slowly start adopting more of that.

By that time, there was no remaining meat in Bourriquet, but, I bet, because of our little stash of cold-smoked sausage and bacon, Josephine stayed healthy and, on November 20th, our firstborn son, Auguste, came into the world, healthy as a mule. We awaited a priest to come by, sooner or later, to baptise him and protect his immortal soul.

There had been no further killings for about a month, as most of the town's livestock had been taken. Still, the Thibodeauxs, lucky to stay in business, kept day-and-night watch over their cattle, they were healthy and ready to be brought to the big cities in the spring. They were ready to indulge and pick one off for Christmas dinner. At night, they sat on the roofs of the barn and house to keep their vigil. One cloudy night, the lanterns would burn out, and, in the pitch black, it would strike. Cows bellow and scatter as, even in the dark of night, they felt the giant, dark shape lunge and tear. Amos, one of the sons, in his despiration, fired into the air. The flash and bang scared off the assailant. In the morning, 40 had gone down to 36. The next night, it would strike, the gun would fire, and it would run off. From 36 to 31. The next night, it struck again. In the light of the moon, the father, Adam, could see it, just barely. It walked on all fours and had dark fur. It'd always run too fast for their bullets, shooting from so far away and, in just over a week, 40 had gone to 0. Every morning, when they went to check on the cows, they would find many laying down. They tip them over. It was a hollowed out ribcage, holding up the pelt like a tent. No flesh remained. For all 30 adults, their carcass lay there. For the calves and juveniles, they were devoured outright, maybe a hoof or bone here and there. Our bastion was no more.

On the last day, all the families in town made visits to the Thibodeaux farm, offering rice or some peppers or whatever we had to give for the family. The men helped bury the carcasses and parted ways. We prayed for deliverance from this beast, that this town might have animals once again. That we might have more to eat than rice, peppers, onions, and figs, that we'd have something to aid us when it came time for planting. Often I would think of the toil of Adam and Eve, after they left the garden. I wouldn't think they'd have had oxen or horses to aid them, at least not 'til they figured out how to break 'em. Having to learn everything about farming by themselves. I think we all should've been more thankful than we were for, even in poverty, having these beasts of burden.

On the evening of December 15, the last day spent burying the dead cattle, I rode my bike the few miles back to the house. It was dusk. I thought on the idea that we may never have any livestock again. Maybe it would leave, there was no more to eat. I was exhausted, but the cold breeze continued to lift me up. The sun was fixing to set, filling the sky with it's oranges, pinks, blues, and reds. I make it home, and leave my bike on the ground. I walk up onto our porch. The door is knocked off it's hinges. My father walks out. "Come see."

Through our two-room house, I walk through the living room and into the bedroom. It was disheveled. All my family, my mother, my brothers, my sisters, huddled around something on the floor. I look over them. My wife, my darling Josephine, lay on the bed, pale as a ghost, covered in bandages, clothes ripped to shreds, barely hanging together, and a makeshift tourniquet around her left calf, to which my sister Téophine (tay-o-feen) was tending. It bit off her ankle. Her eyes opened for me. Those kind of big, wet, sad eyes that you read in a split-second. I turn my head towards the window. The cradle was broken into a hundred pieces of wood in front of a gaping hole in the wall where the window once was. Auguste was gone. The priest hadn't come by yet. I walk up to Josephine and squeeze her hand. She squeezes back. Without a single word, I grab my shotgun and run to the woods.

Even in the red glow of sunset, the woods remained in a cool dark. By the marshes and bayous, cypress trees were more common, but, everywhere else, it was pine trees, some up to 4 stories tall. I walked through those deep, dark woods, double-barrel shotgun in my hand. I had two bullets in the barrel and an extra in my pocket. As I marched in, the sun finished setting. What was shaded from the moonlight lay basked in blue. In the gaps between the trees, you could look up and see the stars again, swirling between the clouds. It was cold.

I made my way through, careful to be quiet. I started hearing the howls. Too deep for a coyote, and all too familiar from the past 10 months. As I was looking down, watching my step, a warm light suddenly shone in front of me. I looked up and saw a small ball of fire, maybe the size of an apple. A feu-follet. I heard of them before, that they led people away from their path and you could distract them by sticking a nail in your fence. Most never got close to man. I could feel the warmth of this one. It felt almost familiar, warm like Mama's hugs, or the bed I shared with my wife, my dear Josephine. I heard the howl again, and, without thinking, I followed the feu-follet as it danced and hopped. We walked by a tree, some 20 feet off my original path, and it extinguishes. A soft gallop approaches, and I take cover behind the tree. Where I stood just a minute ago passed the mass of black fur, disappearing before I could blink again.

I walk out with my shotgun, ready to shoot. It was long gone. The feu-follet reignites and regains my attention. We continue walking through the woods. I keep guard. Half a mile in, it extinguishes again. I take cover. It runs by. I feel the breeze it leaves in it's wake. It smells rancid, like after you clean a deer. My friend rejoins me and we continue our walk. Does this flame mean to do this? Is it better to survive the beast or to fight it? To end it?

We walk another mile until we get into a large, square clearing, maybe 4 acres long. On the opposite side of the property lay a small house, a small plot of tilled land, and a gap in the trees. Peeking out above them was a steeple. This was the schoolteacher's house. The grass was waist-high, the majority of the property wasn't used or maintained much. The moonlight on the wooded back property line cast a shadow on the field. The feu-follet led me out to the middle, dancing and hopping. It spun, as if turning behind it, and extinguishes. In the cool dead of night, I stand in the middle of someone else's property. The wind whistles past the trees, the leaves and grass brustle. It's quiet. I take the shotgun, keeping my eyes straight down the barrel. I look around.

It felt like an hour I stood in that spot, circling, waiting. A feint howl rings from where I came from. I turn my head back to look. From the corner of my eye, on the edge of the woods, I see two bright eyes. A massive, animalistic frame approaches. It looks like a wolf, with rusty black fur all over its body. As it came closer, it dawned on me this beast was as big as a two-story house. We stood in still silence, waiting for one of us to move. The wind whistles. The leaves shake. My feet start getting cold and my legs get stiff, but the racing of my heart hides it away. I stare into its bright, white eyes. It's mouth twitches. It bears its fangs.

The beast starts running towards me, faster than a speeding train. My arms tense up as I reaim my slackened shotgun. I aim at the beast. Ba-bang! I run out of its way as it collapses and tumbles to the ground. I got it twice in the leg. It bleeds out as it spasms and squirms. Those two bullets each made a hole the size of my fist. It's hair falls out, its paws tense up, and its eyes bulge. The skin on its face pulls back and its upright ears melt downwards. The tensing of its muscles makes it bear its gums, much more than would be expected, like they stretched to where its nose met its face. The tail withers away, the whole body tenses up. Its body contorts and reconfigures, bones breaking and rearranging, flesh just disappearing until it has shrunk to a fraction of its size, from that of a house to that of a man. Naked, on the ground, lays a large, burly, ungroomed man. A wolf-man. A loup-garou.

I kneel down and look closer at the man. His right leg is almost detached, his ankle is barely kept attached only by two thin strips of skin on either side. He is bleeding profusely. In shock, he breathes out, in perfect English, "Who are you?"

"Quoi?" I said 'what' to myself. "Mo' nom c'est (say) Clarence LeBleu. What a' you?"

"I've been cursed! Vile, damned woman!" He's squirming around, losing blood at a fast rate.

I reiterate. "Who are you?" I shouted. I know I shouldn't have, if somebody wasn't woken up by the gunshots, they'd definitely hear my delirious, angry yelling.

"Jedidiah... Edwards. The schoolmaster's husband," he grunted out.

"Huh." Dozens of thoughts raced through my head. This fat, ugly Yankee ate all our livestock, ate my Auguste, my sweet baby boy, tore off my wife's foot, and caused untold torment for this village of, now, 110. "What's all dis fo'? Why'd you do dis?"

In an exhausted whisper, Jedidiah eeks out his tale. "There was some Cajins that came by back in March, wanting to talk to my wife. I told them no, and they brandished their knives. I go inside and tell my wife. She goes out and settles it. When she came back in, she started fussin' and beatin' me up about bein' a coward, that I should'er stood my ground. Then, she changes her mood, gave me my supper. That witch, she cursed me, poured in chicken's blood and God knows what else." I look over at the house of Mrs. Harriet Edwards. "She cursed me to the body of a wolf. Instinct consumed me, I needed to eat. Whatever was easiest, what wouldn't fight back."

"What 'bout ma baby?" I sat there, pale as a ghost. "What about my wife?" I took the shotgun and clenched it in my hand.

"I didn't want to be like this either, boy. Blood got me here, maybe it would get me out. I was desperate."

I look down at the pool of blood. In the middle was a section of blood darker than the rest, pooling together like oil in water. I raised the gun over my head. "Seigneur, prends pitié." (Si-nyeur, prõ pih-tee-yay). Lord, have mercy. I swing down, the stock smashes into his face, his bones crunch. The beast is no more.

I toss the gun aside and drag the man across the property to the front of the house. His ankle disappeared. Out in the field, it caught against the grass and snapped off. I grab my pocket-knife and stick it in a tree stump in front of the house. A memorial. As I left, cold and clothes covered in blood, I look behind. That ball of fire, dancing around the knife in the stump. I made my way to the road and walked back.

At midnight, I walked into my beat-up house. Nobody to be found, I saw a light on at my parents' house, just a little down the road. I head inside and find Josephine, asleep in bed, my mother and sister keeping watch. I pull up a chair and sit down next to her. I hold her hand, and she clenches back. "Tomorrow," I say, "I'll go to town and get us a hog for supper."