Hallo-Weird 

The complete story, as transcribed

from Bill Russo's Short Story Theater

Season 3, Episode 2

Hallow-Weird

As presented on Bill Russo’s

Short Story Theater Podcast.

Season 3, Episode 2.

 

Each year as summer gives way to the first days of autumn, the thoughts of many people both young and old. turn to Halloween.  For them, the holiday is not a singular event to be celebrated on the last day of October by taking the sheet from the bed and cutting holes for the eyes and wearing it on a march through the neighborhood with a paper sack to pry treats from kind-hearted neighbors.

To the true celebrants, Halloween is not a single day or night but a whole season that starts around the first of September and continues until the jack-o'-lantern is replaced by a Christmas tree.

To these people, goblins and ghosts are celebrated friends  - but not so,  werewolves! Even the most ardent Halloween fans fear the werewolf - and rightly so!

Many so-called werewolves were actually serial killers. The tradition goes back exactly 600 years, to the autumnal season of the year 1521. That was when Peter Bergeo and Michael Verdun swore allegiance to the devil.

“The court of inquisition is now in session.  Peter Bergeo and Michael Verdun, the people charge you with witchcraft, murder and beastly unspeakable acts.

We have heard the testimony of the score of witnesses, and you are guilty beyond doubt.  Before i pass sentence upon you, you may speak. What say you Michael Verdun?”

 

“Nothin’. I  got nothin’.  Nothin’ to say. Nothin”

“Michael Verdun you are guilty of the brutal murders of at least 11 people and you are sentenced to be burned at the stake until nothing remains of your mortal person but ashes.”

 

“Now Peter Burgeo. what say you?”

“I say, 20 years before I was captured, I was a sheep herder, a humble sheep herder.  One night during a fierce thunderstorm three horrible demons riding black horses galloped into my field in the dark of night.

Their eyes blazed like a roaring fire and they spoke in a whisper that was louder than the thunder that boomed through the hills.

They said that if I would serve them as masters and renounce all things good and holy, I would have extraordinary abilities and power a massive flock of sheep and great wealth.

I agreed to their terms and became a vile practitioner of horrible filthy deeds of increasingly evil proportion. Things got even more perverse a few weeks later when Michael Verdun and I attended a witch's sabbath.

 Gruesome, gnarled witches and gaunt, wasted warlocks circled around us like hungry wolves. they removed our clothes and we stood silently while the misshapen witches and the warlocks spread some sort of an oil and ointment all over our bodies.

After a moment I had a tingling sensation all over me, that was followed by an intense itching which was so vivid I was ready to scratch myself to the bone.  But before I could do so, the itching subsided, and painful pimples sprung up all over my skin from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head.  Not long after that - coarse. thick hair sprang up through the pimples. The stiff, brutish hair was almost as strong as a sewing needle and just as sharp and pointy at the ends.

Michael Verdun also morphed into a hairy vicious creature. Our arms grew longer and our backs stretched out by a length of 20 inches or more, and our teeth her teeth became long, sharp and  pointed like daggers;.

We dropped to the ground on all fours and sprinted through the woods. No longer human, we now were wolves, though much larger than the natural beasts.

In our wolf forms for two decades we pursued attacked and killed adults, children, and a wide variety of domesticated pets, including, but not limited to cats, dogs, and small birds!

How's that for my statement?”

And So, Bergeo and Vurdon were finally caught, tried, and convicted.  The sentence was death at the burning stake. This was believed to be the only way to permanently extinguish the evil force that inhabited the bodies of the two killers. They did not die quickly or quietly but they did die, and not once in the last 600 years have they reappeared.

Sadly, others just as evil have come along. Giles Garnier, known as the Werewolf of Dole was another monster from about the same time period. He too claimed that he had an ointment that changed him into a wolf.  He too killed many people and was finally caught and burned at the stake. After being reduced to a pile of ashes,  Werewolf of Dole never returned.

Whether these three. Burgeo, Verdun, and Garnier were mentally ill, acted under the influence of a hallucinogenic substance, or were simply cold-blooded killers, is open to debate. The truth is, it did not matter to the people of past centuries, because it was their belief that such hateful crimes could only be committed by a horrific beast such as the werewolf.

The most notorious werewolf of all time is Peter Stubb. He was once a peaceful farmer in Bedburgh, a small town in Germany near the Belgian border.  After acquiring a certain magical device, he gained the power to transform into a nearly invincible, murderous, hairy creature.

During the night Peter Stubb became a sharp-toothed hairy wolf and attacked and killed many citizens of the town. After killing his victims he devoured them just as if they were juicy slabs of steak or ham.

A group of hunters reported seeing him as a wolf they spotted him as he attacked and killed a blacksmith. After consuming about half of the bloody remains, the hunters said, he shape-shifted back into his human form.  As a human, he was in his vulnerable state and they were able to capture him.  Before they executed Peter Stubb, the hunters tortured him and he admitted his crimes of killing household pets, men, women, and children - and then eating their remains.

Under the torture. He said that the secret of his powers to transform into a wolf, lay in a special belt that he owned. The belt was white with black stones attached to it at regular intervals.  Even in the darkest night, the belt glows with a cold light, just like a full moon. 

Anyone who wears the belt will possess the ability to morph into a wolf. When the hunters dragged Stubb to the stake to burn him to death, they tried to remove the mystical belt. However, they found that somehow the evil Peter Stubb had taken off the belt and disposed of it at some unknown location.

After they burned him to ashes at the stake, they looked for the belt but it was never found - or if it was recovered, whoever found it, is keeping it secret. No one knows who owns the belt today or exactly where it is. Yet rumor has it that it might be in an abandoned house in your town!

if you are out on Halloween night, or any night, while you are strolling on the sidewalk; if you happen to see someone wearing a glowing white belt: run away very fast or alternately have a burning stake handy and throw it at the white belt as hard as you can!

Well as Bugs Bunny used to say “that's all folks”. Thanks for checking in to Bill Russo's short story theater. Come back anytime. There's always a free ticket waiting for you at the box office in the little theater just off main street. One more thing. Come back again real soon - won't you?

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