The Werewolf of Mariahilf am Inn II.10
A Gothic Horror Novel
Book II, Chapter 10: A Cat Called Mürrisch
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Although the number of guests at the Eltzbacher Coach Inn continued to mount over the coming days, the additional help from the village afforded Benedikt and Hermann time to rest and devote themselves to the care of the horses. To everyone’s surprise, Walter had become quite fond of Abner, Elischewa’s husband. The old man, usually so reclusive, was now seen at all hours of the day in the coach inn.
Frau Eltzbacher was touched by the bond that had developed between the two. She had not seen her husband so animated and happy in years. The situation also benefited her in that she no longer needed to visit the cottage every hour to make sure Abner had not fallen or wandered off alone into the snowy woods.
Meanwhile Walter was relishing this respite from the strenuous duties he had been assigned in the stable. He had volunteered to work with the horses, but was beginning to realize that tending to them was not to his taste. Speaking of taste, he thought to himself, one of the damned things bit me. He contemplated the welt on his wrist. At least the skin didn’t break.
Ever since the discovery of the murdered men in the mail coach four days prior, hardly any of the inn’s employees had had a moment’s rest. But on the morning of Sunday, December 18, 1870, all that changed. Bürgermeister Schuster showed up to present the affidavit for Elischewa to sign on behalf of Herr Eltzbacher. But Abner, whose favorite spot in the common room was the winged chair by the hearth—the one facing the kitchen—overheard the discussion and insisted on signing it himself. This done, Herr Schuster touched the brim of his hat and departed to begin his journey to Kohlendorf to deliver the affidavit to the Prussian King’s representative there.
By noon, Abner was still in the chimney nook, entertaining Walter, who was sitting in the armchair opposite. Two large families (unrelated) were gathered at the massive table that dominated the center of the room, eating lunch together. A separate table was occupied by a stout woman from Krefeld, who was a dressmaker and wore a gown “cut up and put back together in the French fashion.” The unusual dress was her way of advertising her trade. All of the guests in were in unusually good cheer (what with it being the holiday season) and they hung on Herr Eltzbacher’s every word, which surprised Elischewa who had always found her husband’s stories tedious.
Abner was describing the sites and sounds of London as he recalled them from the four years he and Frau Eltzbacher lived off Drury Lane. He seasoned his talk with illustrative snatches of English Restoration and Augustan poetry (to the utter mystification of his auditors, none of whom knew that language). But the dressmaker from Krefeld was so moved by the sound of the rhymed couplets that she pounded the table and emphatically proclaimed that an Englishman who had courted her in her youth “a couple years back” had told her that Shakespeare was magnificent, but it was only now on hearing the Bard’s words spoken “in the tongue his parents scolded him in” that she understood what this aspirant to her affections had meant.
Abner, who had not quoted a line of Shakespeare, smiled and nodded in approbation, but decided to change the subject. He moved on to another favorite topic of his, the life and works of the Great Cham of Literature, Dr. Samuel Johnson. But since his mind was decaying, he found himself often pausing mid-sentence as he tried to recall where he was (both in his narrative and in the journey of his life). At one point he looked at Walter without recognition.
“Are you Joseph?” he asked.
Walter, who knew that Joseph was the name of Abner’s son who had died long ago, replied. “No, Herr Eltzbacher. Remember? I’m Florian.”
—Florian, that was the name Hermann had told Walter that he would have to go by while they remained at the coach inn. The orphan had never come across anyone with the name Florian in all his years as a pickpocket in Berlin and later as an employee at the workhouse in Cronenberg. A few nights after they had settled in, Hermann explained to him that it was a fairly common name among Catholics in the south.
“Great,” Walter mumbled. “So now I’m named after some guy in the Bible.”
Hermann sighed. “He’s not in the Bible. He’s the patron saint of firefighters.”
“Jesus Christ,” the boy had mumbled irritably as he put out the fire in the grate for the night.
Elischewa was in the kitchen helping Monika peel and slice onions to mix with salt and vinegar for Hermann and Benedikt to snack on when they returned from exercising the two company horses.
“I had no idea,” Monika remarked, “that you and Abner lived in London.”
“We’ve never been to London.”
Suddenly, one of the girl’s from the village screamed as she entered the kitchen because something that looked like a fur collar had sprinted past her legs and out into the common room. “It’s a rat!” she shrieked.
“No,” Elischewa replied. “That was a cat!”
The tomcat sped across the room and leapt onto the stool next to Walter.
“How did that thing get inside?” Elischewa exclaimed in bewilderment.
“I found him hiding in one of the empty stalls of the stable yesterday,” Walter said. “I was afraid he would freeze to death so I put him in the root cellar, since it’s warmer.”
Monika slapped her forehead because she had forgotten to close the hatch after bringing the bag of onions up the ladder. Behind the coach inn was a separate flight of steps leading down into the cellar; and she now recalled seeing Florian coming up those steps last night with nothing in his hand and a sly look on his face.
Elischewa was beside herself. “You can’t keep it here, Florian. The last thing my guests want to see is a cat in the common room.”
But the children had left the table and were moving in Walter’s direction. “Let me see the cat!” they shouted.
“Can I pet her?” a little girl asked.
“It’s a he,” Walter explained, lifting the cat off the stool so that the younger kids would not mishandle him.
“What’s his name?” a plump redheaded girl asked.
“I haven’t thought of a name for him yet,” the orphan said.
The cat was missing an eye and had a disfigured muzzle. There were scratches on its coat.
“I think something attacked him,” a boy said.
“Florian,” exclaimed, “what if it was attacked by one of the dogs from the other night?” She cast a sidelong glance at Elischewa, because no one had told Frau Eltzbacher about the three rabid mastiffs in the stable.
“I don’t think it was a dog,” Walter said. “And these wounds are old.”
“Why don’t you call him Hodge?” Abner proposed. “Dr. Johnson’s cat was named Hodge.”
“Abner,” Elischewa groaned, “don’t encourage him.”
“I don’t like the name Hotsch,” Walter said (stumbling on the ‘DG’ consonant cluster).
The boy held the cat close to his body, but magnanimously permitted the children to pet him, so long as they did it in an orderly fashion. Then the cat meowed but it came out of the twisted jaws sounding like “mürrrrrisch.”
“That’s what I’ll call him,” Walter said. “Mürrisch (Grumpy).”
Abner nodded his head. “He does look like a sullen cat.”
“Mürrrrrisch,” the cat repeated, as if weighing the merits of the name.
“Florian,” Elischewa said, “you cannot keep that animal in the coach inn.” To lend force to her argument the parents (recovering from their astonishment) began to admonish the children for touching the filthy beast.
Walter leaned around the armchair and appealed to Monika. “What about the carriage house? Can I keep him there?”
“Forian, I don’t know,” she replied. “You will need to discuss it with Benedikt and your father. But you heard Frau Eltzbacher. You must take it outside at once.”
Walter rose from the chair and looked at Abner, who shrugged his shoulders. The boy carried the cat toward the kitchen but Elischewa snapped her fingers. “No, Florian. Not through the kitchen. The front door.”
Another boy in the room (sympathetic to Walter’s plight) opened the door for him in mute solidarity, so that the grumpy orphan could carry the grumpy cat out of the inn and away from the (now grumpy) children.
The air was crisp as Hermann and Benedikt guided their horses up the rugged path that led to the ruins of Haus Löringhof. There was not a rent in the gray sky through which the sun’s sickly beams could penetrate. The crumbling masonry of the ancient edifice loomed into view. Dismounting, they tethered the horses to a tree and fed them turnips from their saddlebags. Then they walked away from each other to piss in the snow before moseying inside the roofless castle’s precincts. The midday shadows were already lengthening and creeping up the medieval walls.
Benedikt leaned against an archway and folded his arms across his chest. “I will tell you some of the story now. But because there is much to relate, and because I know you will be troubled—even shocked—by these revelations, I shall lift the veil in a gradual fashion.”
“Go on,” Hermann said.
“My father and his brother ran a stud farm in Mariahilf am Inn. My uncle could read German and calculate sums. He taught me these skills and saw that I had an aptitude for learning. There were no schoolmasters in the village. But my father and mother took me to Father Reuss and asked if he would instruct me in Latin and the rudiments of theology, so that I might one day honor them by entering into the priesthood. Father Reuss agreed. I was Walter’s age when this happened. . .”
Hermann glanced up at Benedikt from under his eyebrows.
“I know the boy’s name is Walter and that he is not your son. I shall explain all in due time. But it is my nature to arrange my thoughts in categories and express them in a consequential fashion. The story I am telling you now concludes with your fateful arrival at the Eltzbacher Coach Inn.”
Benedikt’s attention was drawn to a wind-weathered carving in the wall, a rude depiction of Christ on the cross. His countenance softened. He seemed wistful, almost sad. “Father Reuss was a good man. You may have been too young to recall him. His intellectual powers were formidable. It was he who gave me the Latin primer that I have with me still. As a young man he had served as a scribe and confessor to the imperial family in Vienna. He had amassed a private fortune and modest library that filled two bookcases in his residence.”
Hermann’s memories of Father Reuss were not so fond and misty-eyed. He would never forget that it was the village priest who had commanded that Oma Ingrid be buried in a shallow grave at the crossroads outside of town with an iron stake driven through her heart.
“Your mother ,” Benedikt resumed, “was the most beautiful woman in the Tyrol. I was seventeen when she married your father. She could not have been much older than I. Your father loved her tremendously; and she was devoted to him. Within months of their marriage it was announced that Ilse was with child and would likely give birth sometime around All Saints’ Day.
“Shortly after this, the man whom everyone would come to know as the cannibal of Mariahilf am Inn arrived to take control of the imperial toll house. He appeared on foot with neither horse nor carriage. He presented a writ (signed and sealed by the authorities in Innsbruck), and accepted the keys of the toll house from a notary who had been its caretaker for some years. We were given to understand that the new toll master was a nobleman from Krems by the name of Baron Eckhart.
“He was middle-aged, powerfully built, aloof, cold and entirely unprepossessing. He ordered that no one in the village was to disturb his privacy; and that anyone who presumed to enter the toll house uninvited would be killed outright—irrespective of age or sex. This was his prerogative, he affirmed, as official representative of the Emperor. No one tempted him at his word.
“It was a mystery how the man subsisted. We presumed he hunted in the mountains for meat or gathered wild berries and mushrooms in the woods. It was reasoned that, if it was his prerogative to murder peasants on a whim, there was nothing to prevent him from stealing food from travelers passing through who could not pay the toll. But when we asked wayfarers about their treatment at his hand, they praised the man’s conviviality and fairness.
“It was only later that we realized that these people were the lucky few who had escaped his clutches. For he never attacked large parties, soldiers, families or those traveling by cart or horse, because they left traces far too abundant and conspicuous for him to conceal. He preserved the bones of those he preyed upon—as trophies (one might say). And when at last he was exposed, the ogre’s lair was found to be morbidly decorated with his victims’ remains.”
Benedikt paused, his features worn by anxiety.
“Please,” Hermann remarked. “Go on. There is something you are reluctant to tell me.”
“In the early autumn of that year,” the ostler said, “a small band of Italian artisans, having left the toll house, crossed the bridge over the Inn and delivered a handwritten note to Father Reuss, who stood with me in the town square. Ilse was nearing the end of her term. But she was outside the hut with your father and grandmother (whom we all called Mother Ingrid) chinking the walls hut for the winter.
“The note was from Baron Eckhart. He conveyed his congratulations to the carpenter and his wife, adding that, as a nobleman, he was in a position to grant them a life of perpetual security and prosperity. He claimed that the toll house had been far dirtier than he had expected it to be when he arrived, and that, if young Ilse were to agree to clean it, he would present to the happy couple as a gift two boxes of salt worth more than five villagers earned within the span of a year.
“Your father was suspicious of the Baron’s intentions. But your Aunt Magda, being apprised of the situation, told Moritz that it would be folly to reject the nobleman’s proposal, adding that her sister was shrewd and resourceful, and that Baron Eckhart (despite his bluff manners) was bounden to the mores and customs of the land and dared not risk committing an unspeakable act for which the town might collectively band together and stand witness against him in a court of law. Moritz relented; and the next day, Ilse went to the toll house as Baron Eckhart had urged her to do. She took with her Mother Ingrid’s pail and scrub brush.
“Many hours later, she returned empty handed. Father Reuss asked her if the Baron had been satisfied with her work. Ilse’s face was downcast. She seemed infinitely sad, although at times the ghost of a smile hovered on her lips.
“‘Where are mother’s pail and brush?’ Moritz asked. ‘And where is the salt he promised?’ Ilse said that, in lieu of salt, he had given her something far more valuable. She withdrew from her dirndl a chain on which hung a medallion forged of electrum upon which was engraved the image of a wolf; crude, barbaric, even pre-Christian. Father Reuss crossed himself and called the pendant obscene. He sensed that it harbored an ancient curse. But Moritz was ecstatic, because by this treasure they would be able to move abroad, perhaps to Bavaria.
“‘And if we have a daughter,’ Moritz said, ‘she will now have a great dowry.’
“‘I shall give birth to a boy, my love,’ was all that Ilse said.
“Father Reuss frowned. ‘How do you know this? Such knowledge is vouchsafed only to God.’
“‘The Baron told me,’ was your mother’s enigmatic reply.
“A few nights later the gates of hell were opened. I lived at the time with Father Reuss in the priest’s residence behind the church. A full moon hung over the mountains as I read to him from a jewel-encrusted Book of Hours. We heard someone cry out in alarm. ‘Help! Please!’ I recognized it to be the voice of your father.
“Hastily, we donned our mantels and headed out. I carried with me the same lantern by which I had been reading. A crowd was gathering in the square. ‘What is wrong?’ Father Reuss inquired. ‘Ilse is gone!’ Moritz shouted, tearing at his hair and falling to his knees.
“‘Look!’ Someone exclaimed, pointing in the direction of the mountain valley. We raised our eyes to the brow of Shephard’s Hill, on top of which stood the chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Mercy. Clad in a white shift, Ilse could be seen ascending the grassy acclivity where Mariahilf’s former priests were laid to rest.
“Quickly, we made our way in her direction, many of the villagers bearing torches, others lanterns. Father Reuss allowed me to guide his steps through the rolling fog that blanketed the floor of the valley. We heard the baying of wolves, which spurred Moritz to sprint ahead, fearing for the safety of his wife and unborn child.
“But as we neared the chapel, we were surprised to see him loitering tremulously at the threshold, peering warily into the unlit vacancy. A primal growl came from within. The villagers turned to one another in amaze. My eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, and I could apprehend the lineaments of Ilse, hands on her womb, standing beneath the baroque painting of the Holy Mother.
“In a gravelly masculine voice, Ilse was repeating her husband’s name: ‘Moritz, Moritz.’ Father Reuss directed me to follow him into the chapel, so that he could see by the light of my lantern. We approached the poor girl. I saw by a metallic glint that she wore around her neck the vulpine medallion. Her mouth was unnaturally distended and from between her canine fangs came the wailing of tormented souls. Her eyes were white because her pupils had rolled up into the back of her head.
“Father Reuss confronted her. ‘Tell me, child, who is your God?’ — ‘My Lord is the Light.’ was her agonized response. And now it was the voice we knew to be Ilse’s. ‘Praise God!’ Father Reuss replied, touching her shoulder. But now, she began to howl. Her body bent backwards until her spine was parallel to the floor. Then her shoulders touched the stones. Her knees moved up as the legs parted. There was an issue of blood pouring from between her legs. Moritz saw this and fainted away.
“Father Reuss knelt down. ‘Magda! Mother Ingrid!—Come quickly! She is giving birth!’
“I raised the lantern so the two women could see. Something happened to me at that moment, which I still cannot comprehend. As the midwives began their work, it seemed to me in the wavering light as though Ilse had sprouted a second pair of legs, which she flexed and moved lasciviously in the air. Then she turned her sightless eyes in my direction and moaned in ecstasy between those clenched fangs until my throat ran dry and my loins began to stir.
“‘Do not look at her!’ Father Reuss shouted in a frenzy, as he tore the silver medallion from her neck and handed it to me to safeguard until he could find a way to dispose of it.
“At once your mother’s eyes closed and she sighed.
“You were born in the chapel that night, but you breathed only once. ‘I was there when you drew your first breath,’ Ilse whimpered. ‘And I shall be there when you draw your last.’ She closed her eyes and fell again into that somnambulistic trance.
“Mother Ingrid pronounced you dead. . .
“Moritz wept as he bore your lifeless form out of the chapel and down the slope that led through the cemetery. Several men carried your mother’s blood-drenched body into the valley. Father Reuss and I followed. That night, your father laid you out in the crib that he had built for you. Then, overcome by grief, he slept beneath the crib with your mother cradled in his arms.
“But the next morning, we were roused by a sound of tremendous jubilation. ‘The curse has been lifted!’ Moritz shouted. ‘My son is alive!’ He brought you before the steps of the Mariahilf Church. And Father Reuss praised God and affirmed that the Devil had been thwarted through the intercession of the Holy Virgin. Your mother leaned tremblingly against the doorframe of the hut. The expression on her face was one of infinite scorn.”
On hearing the story of his nativity, Hermann swooned. He leaned forward and vomited on the shattered flagstones beneath his boots. When he was done, both he and Benedikt left to avoid the warm stench rising from the snow.
Outside, Hermann stood in bewilderment, listening to the wind. “I know some of what follows,” he muttered. “My condition was still in doubt. Aunt Magda nursed me back from the brink. She had recently given birth and my mother’s milk had turned to bile. . .”
Benedikt talked as he untethered his horse. “I was not privy to the facts you speak of. My own memories from that time are beginning to fade. I recall that your mother disappeared under mysterious circumstances shortly after you were born; and that your father’s behavior caused Magda to suspect that he might have been involved in her disappearance.
“A decade later, when the cannibal’s crimes were discovered, and when we learned that this Baron had been an imposter all along, there were some, including my father and mother, who wondered if the horrors in the toll house had been on full display when Ilse stepped inside of it that day. It gives me no pleasure, Hermann son of Moritz, to tell you that your mother’s reputation and your own would forever be clouded by accusations that you were the child of the Devil.”
When Hermann and Benedikt had both mounted their horses and the ruins of Haus Löringhof had receded far behind them, Benedikt resumed his narrative. “Father Reuss and I buried the silver medallion in a perpetually scorched depression in the valley that lay within full view of the Chapel of Our Lady of Mercy. Incidentally, this would be where the villagers would dump the remains of the cannibal on the night he was hanged. . .
“But there is a curious story from your infancy that I think I should share with you. During that first winter, your Aunt Magda, whose husband had died of consumption before his own son had been born, moved in with your father and Mother Ingrid, so that Magda could nurse you alongside her own son. Your grandmother and father were outside fetching firewood to bring inside when they heard Magda shrieking.
“They sprinted into the hut and found your aunt standing near the fire with her son in her arms, pointing to your crib. They could hear you cooing inside of it. But, in addition to that, there was a masculine voice—the same gravelly voice that had issued from Ilse’s lips on the night you were born. And the voice was saying, ‘Moritz, Moritz.’ Your father ran to the crib and looked down inside it.
“Curled up next to you and licking your ruddy face, was a one-eyed tomcat whose meows of ‘mürrrrrisch, mürrrrrisch’ was the sound they had heard. Moritz seized the animal by the nape of its neck, stepped outside into the snow, and, with the knife he always wore at his hip, gutted the creature and cast its carcass into the road.
“There was something in your father’s behavior that caused Magda to bridle. ‘Was that how you murdered my sister?’ she asked. ‘Get out, you bitch!’ Moritz replied—At least, this was the story as Magda recounted it to everyone who would listen to her thereafter. It was a story she embellished through the years, claiming that she and her son had been cast out ‘like Hagar and Ishmael,’ when, in fact, she merely walked down the road and back into her father’s house.
“Magda believed that the cat had been sent to torment Moritz for a crime, which only she seemed to think that he had committed. But Father Reuss believed otherwise. He suspected that the cat had been Ilse’s famulus.”
“What is that?” Hermann asked.
“The familiar spirit of a witch.”
When Benedikt had finished his story, the two rode on in silence, returning the way they had come. When they reached the coach inn, they dismounted and led the steeds to their stalls. They threw a horse rug over each and secured these with surcingles. Then they returned to the carriage house because they needed food and knew that Monika would have something to snack on until supper.
But in the living room upstairs they were met by both Monika and Walter. The orphan held in arms a one-eyed tomcat. Hermann and Bendikt froze. Monika briefly explained the story to them. She asked Benedikt if he would mind terribly if Florian kept as a pet.
“It seems docile enough,” she remarked.
“I leave that decision to Brother Moritz,” was the ostler’s hollow reply. He and Monika drew away, so that Walter and Hermann could step into the corridor and discuss the matter in private.
“Papa,” Walter said. “Please? He’s a good cat.”
The animal purred in his arms.
Hermann felt as if his heart had been seized by an iron fist. “It’s vermin. I would prefer not to have it in the carriage house.”
“It’ll die in the cold.”
“I can’t promise that it won’t die if it stays inside.”
Walter’s eyes narrowed. He approached Hermann, so that neither Monika nor Benedikt would overhear. “I’ve never asked you for anything. When we left the workhouse, you cradled me in your arms each night because you thought I had some ability to keep that thing haunting you at bay. And I knew how much that meant to you—and that you wanted in turn to protect me and keep me safe. I feel the same way toward this cat. I want to protect him. I want him to feel safe.”
Hermann exhaled and shook his head. “Walter. . .”
“Can I keep him?”
Hermann looked on. The orphan returned to the living room. “Papa said I can keep him.”
“Aww,” Monika said. “Congratulations, Florian.”
The boy put the cat down. It clawed the carpet, and then walked around in a circle thrice before wrapping its tail around its body and sitting in the middle of the room, staring at Hermann (alone in the corridor) with its one good eye.
“Mürrrrrisch, mürrrrrisch.”
“He likes you,” Monika chuckled. “It almost sounds as if he’s calling your name and saying ‘Moritz, Moritz.’”
Brilliant chapter! My mind is churning with all of this new information. . .
Fantastic chapter, Daniel. From the supposed light hearted antics of Walter with the cat, the story turns to the darkness of Hermann’s birth and home, only to return back to the cat and the foreboding he feels after the story he’s just heard
Really brilliantly done 👍🏼