Free The Werewolf of Bamberg by Oliver Pötzsch

gossip?”
    “But the monster was here, I swear! I just was about to take a little nap here at the well when I saw the thing come running out of the alleyway. It stopped and stared at me, as if trying to decide if I’d be a good meal. And then, after what seemed like an eternity, it kept on running, that way, down the other alley.” Matthias gestured wildly as he spoke and walked back and forth, wavering slightly. Now he stopped and looked quizzically at the two hangmen.
    “You don’t believe me, do you?” he asked in a soft voice. “You just think I’m drunk.”
    “This . . . this monster—what did it look like?” Jakob knew from experience that drunks often had wild visions, especially when tormented by their fears.
    “It was hairy, with gray—no, silver—fur,” Matthias declared, casting a quick glance at Jakob for not understanding what he’d been trying to say. “It had a terrifying set of teeth, long and sharp. At first it ran along on all fours, but then suddenly stood up on its hind legs.” The watchman put his hands to his face. “It ran like a human, I swear, like a furry human. Like a werewolf!”
    “Be careful of what you say,” Bartholomäus snapped at him. “Don’t be too quick to use words like that. Or do you want to—”
    He stopped short when he heard the scream again. At first Jakob thought it was Matthias, but the scream this time was sharper and higher pitched. It came from an alleyway leading to the square and was clearly the voice of a young woman.
    The Schongau hangman didn’t hesitate for a moment. He ran past the astonished Matthias and, without even turning to look at either of them, disappeared into the dark alleyway. Without the lantern he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, but somewhere he heard a window slam shut and someone shouting in an upper story as the contents of a chamber pot poured down onto the street. Kuisl groped his way along the row of houses, stumbling into a rotten beer barrel that fell over and went clattering down a cellar stairway. As the hangman cursed and tried to run ahead, he slipped on the top step and fell into a slimy puddle of water. As he scrambled to his feet, he could feel a sticky liquid on his hands whose odor was all too familiar to him.
    It was blood.
    Somewhere he heard footsteps running away into the darkness. He looked around, squinting, and could just make out the vague outline of something lying at the bottom of the stairs.
    “Whatever you are,” he gasped, “man or monster, come out!”
    When nothing stirred, he carefully descended a few steps, where he found a body.
    It was a young woman lying in her own blood.
    “Jakob? Is that you?” a voice called. It was his brother, who had followed him and was now standing at the top of the stairs holding the lantern in his hand, swinging it back and forth. “What did you find down there?”
    Jakob held the girl’s hand, trying in vain to feel a pulse.
    “A corpse,” he whispered. “Still fresh. It looks like the poor woman’s throat has been slashed. There’s blood all over.”
    “Damn. That’s all I need.” Slowly, climbing over the staves of the smashed beer barrel, Bartholomäus came down the steps. “Matthias, the old drunk, just took off. Now the two of us will have to report the matter in order not to look guilty ourselves, and I’ll have to explain to the city guards what I was doing out here in the middle of the night. Good God!” He stamped his foot angrily. “There are enough people already in the city council who are opposed to my engagement to Katharina and just waiting for a chance to get me. Why didn’t this drunken john find somewhere else to knock off his woman?”
    “A drunken john? What makes you think he’s one of those?”
    “Just come and have a look.” Bartholomäus was now standing alongside his brother on the narrow, slimy, moss-covered stairway. The entrance to the cellar was blocked by some roughhewn boards nailed together. Like