the beast

"THERE was once a witch who desired to know everything. But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. She cared for nothing in itself -- only for knowing it." - George MacDonald, The Day Boy and the Night Girl

I used to have a recurring nightmare. In every variation of it, I am being chased by a vicious yet strangely intelligent wild animal. In the last version of it that I remember having - which was many years ago - I was in my grandmother's house. It had originally belonged to my mother's mother, and is now the home of my sister.

In the dream, I was being pursued through the house by what was essentially an enormous werewolf. He was a supernaturally large human/lupus hybrid with powerfully muscled broad shoulders and the body, strength and nature of a wolf; but he stood on two legs and possessed the height and intellect of a man. As I ran for my life up the attic stairs, I felt the hot, moist exhalation of his breath through bared teeth on the nape of my neck. He held nothing back as he stayed on my heels, and at the extremity of my ability I was just barely ahead of him. He roared in fury his intent to kill me. But more disturbingly I could sense his thoughts, as I felt that he could read mine. We almost seemed to share one mind. And I sensed no pause, no relenting, in his irrational, single-minded intent to devour me.

I took the top of the stairs a hairs breadth out of his reach, and as he bellowed with hatred and rage at me I managed to fling the last door closed in his face, enclosing myself in a small upper bathroom with no other exit.

Barricaded inside and with no other way out, I turned to watch the door shudder and rattle, almost leaving it's frame as he hurled his body heedlessly against it, refusing to accept that it could come between him and his prey. I was struck by how unlikely it was that the thin, antique wooden door should be able to withstand such a supernatural onslaught. But it was built, indirectly at least, by the loving hands of my grandmother, eventually coming to us through our mother. And for the moment, it seemed to be just enough to stand between me and my enemy.