”Werewolf Overwatch”

by Cosimo Greco

The platform was sturdy enough to last for years, and we had built it with the environment in mind. Fallen trees—all victims of the many storms that swept the Carpathians every year—were lashed with rope made from hemp. No living tree trunk felt our saws, no nails were brought to penetrate any bark. Ours was a mere four meters up—a triangle between three Scots pines. The others had found silver firs and had worked past dark to get theirs at a comfortable seven meters. This had meant that we had to do their cooking. It also meant that they did not have rain cover.

The knowledge of whose idea the trip had been had long since been lost. At the hotel, the wolves had woken us at five in the morning. We had stirred, and I found myself gazing at the glass of horrendous Romanian wine that still lingered in the glass by the bedside table. It had tasted like liquefied fish. Out here, in the mountain forest, the wolves had so far been silent. The werewolves had failed to materialize as well. The bears, however, were more open with their presence. At least three of them had taken a passing interest in the five foreigners up in the trees, but had not yet decided that we merited the status of a meal.

John woke me up with his usual grin and let out a small chuckle as he said my name. No one knew why he did that, but after so many years of friendship the oddity was more comforting than concerning. Danny slept peacefully behind me and was letting us know it audibly, while the other platform was eerily quiet. John swung his feet over the edge and started to rummage through his pack. I rubbed my eyelids and stared in wonder. The full moon was shining directly down on us, and the steep mountainside was covered in white paint. It was as if it was daylight in an old black and white film. I wanted to climb down and touch it, to see if it was indeed only moonlight and not some alien spray paint. As if my intentions were sliding along that glowing tarp towards it, one of the bears benevolently stepped on a thick twig further up the slope, and I had a change of heart. John giggled:

“Bear.”

“Yeah,” I said and reached for the bow.

The silver that we had grinded and then glued to the arrowheads were sparkling like tiny fireworks. He continued his search while I cupped my hands behind my ears—mouth open, eyes closed.

Nothing.

Whatever it was, it was either motionless, gone, or too stealthy to give any more warnings.

John found his intended target: the bottle of whisky with which we meant to bribe any park rangers that happened to find us—and our illegal weapons. It was our last night in the closed park. I handed him my folded up cup.

The whisky seared marvelously and I ceased my tired and furtive glances at the rickety ladder positioned at the entrance at the back of our shelter. He did not seem intent on going to sleep, even though it was my watch by now, so we chatted while we listened for surreptitiously snapping twigs below us.

Some distance away, a pack of wolves finally revealed their presence. It seemed as if though they had cornered a hapless dog. The growls of the killers and the victim bounced from slope to slope, twirling around the white trees and rocks—disharmoniously accompanied by our comrade’s serene snoring.

Years later, John would tell me that on that night, before we listened to the killing toghether, he had thought that my eyebrows had started to grow under the brightening moonlight as I slept before my watch. A suspicion arouse in him that—unbeknownst to the others and perhaps even to me—I myself was a werewolf. Instead of keeping watch around us, he had leaned over me, silver dust-glued knife in hand, until the apparent transformation had failed to surface. And that was the reason why our platform never saw what occured at the other.