The Confessions of Saint Christopher: Werewolf

By Wayne Miller

Millions of Christians the world over pray to him every day. Few of those, however, know the true history of the patron saint of travelers. Few know that this gentle, pious individual was, in fact, a Cynocephalus or “Doghead”—in other words, a Werewolf. The Confessions of Saint Christopher: Werewolf will, with its publication, change that. Written as an autobiography of the man, unearthed during a recent archaeological dig in Egypt and translated by the fictitious David Mayhew, PhD, who provides intermittent commentary, the manuscript sheds light on all the shadowed facets of Christopher’s life, chronicling his youth in Greece, where he is introduced to Christianity and first succumbs to his unholy curse; through his time spent as a pirate on the Berber coast; to his captivity in Rome, where he is forced to fight in the Coliseum against men, lions, crocodiles, and ultimately his own bloodthirsty nature; to his final martyrdom, facing down one of the dark gods of the old world, his own progenitor—Lycanon, the first Werewolf—with nothing less than the fate of all future children at stake.

The manuscript is something of a strange hybrid. It is at once an historical adventure, taking place in the bloody latter days of the Roman Empire; a Horror story, as Werewolf does battle with Vampire in the haunted depths of a primordial jungle; and a work of Dark Fantasy, as Christopher embarks on a trek in search of a lost temple defended by savage tribesmen, black magic and deathtraps. Swashbuckler, Sword-and-Sorcery epic, and Horror tale; the novel is all these things. Yet it is also inherently Christian. The protagonist is a man of deep faith, or rather he becomes such throughout the struggles of his life. At no point are the beliefs of the man who will become known as Saint Christopher offered up as an object for ridicule. Much the opposite, as Christopher’s faith is in the end the most necessary component of his heroism. (And lest any modern believers take offense, Dr. Mayhew is careful to explain that there were in fact two men know by the name “Christopher.” Both were noble and self-sacrificing. Only one was cursed with Lycanthropy.)

After two millennia, the true story will be told.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayne Miller
• Release date: Jul 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370675555

Wayne Miller

WAYNE MILLER, aka The Evil Cheezman, is the owner and chief creative director of EVIL CHEEZ PRODUCTIONS, specializing in providing the finest in entertainment for the stage, the page, and the screen. Miller has written, directed, and produced over a dozen independent stage plays and overseen numerous haunted attractions. He writes weekly content for the websites VAMPIRES.COM, WEREWOLVES.COM, ZOMBIES.ORG, TOPCOMICS.COM, and DARKNESS.COM and has been a featured film reviewer for Legless Corpse Films. A storyteller since before he learned the alphabet--he drew picture books--Miller is a devotee of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (“One is always considered mad when one perfects something that others cannot grasp.”) and William Castle. Think P.T. Barnum meets Edgar Allan Poe. That's him. DENN DIE TODTEN REITEN SCHNELL!

Book preview

The Confessions

Of

Saint Christopher—Werewolf

Translated by Dr. David Mayhew

A Novel by Wayne Miller

Introduction

By David Mayhew, PhD

The Confessions of St. Christopher: Werewolf

By

Wayne Miller

Copyright 2017 Wayne Miller

Smashwords Edition

Licensing Agreement: This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This property may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this work with another person or persons, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. All rights are reserved. Thank you for respecting the work of the author.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Section One: The Curse

Editor's Note

Section Two: The Quest and the Trial

Editor's Note

Section Three: The Confrontation

Afterword

About The Author

Follow The Breadcrumbs

The Confessions Of Saint Christopher: Werewolf

By Wayne Miller

Smashwords Edition

License Agreement: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Introduction

I am a man of two worlds. I am an academic, first and foremost. I also admit to being something of a dreamer. Sometimes it is hard for me to reconcile these two disparate halves of my nature, although I have discovered they need not each be exclusive of the other.

I have, as many of you doubtless already are aware, written a scholarly examination of The Confessions of Saint Christopher (as the diary has been unofficially titled). This work, already in publication, is exclusive in that it is intended for the scholar. It is laden with footnotes and all manner of specifics which would only be of interest to the historian or the ethnographer. This work you are holding in your hands is not that book. This account is stripped down, concise, and strictly for the layman. Here I offer no more than an introduction to the main event, as it were, the diary itself. This foreword is written by the dreamer, not the scientist.

Saint Christopher would have approved, I think. He too was a man of a divided nature.

Even the layman, however, will have an interest in certain pertinent facts, which I will endeavor to provide in a condensed version, beginning with those concerning the diary itself. Written in Greek, it purports to be a first-person account of the life of the man we know today as Saint Christopher. Critics have insisted, and continue to do so, that the work is pseudepigraphal; that is, written by someone other than Christopher, an imposter, if you will. This may be the case, but there is no more evidence to support this argument than the opposite; in point of fact there is scant evidence to support either. The primary, indeed the only basis for the opinion of the critics, i.e. that the diary was written by someone other than whom the author claimed to be, consists of the belief that no such person as Christopher ever really existed. (I make a strong argument to the contrary, I daresay, in my other book, the serious one.) The primary evidence for this latter position is, as the author of the diary claims therein to be a werewolf, and since werewolves do not exist, neither can the diary be authentic. They do not deny its value as an historic artifact. They maintain, though, that it is an historical work of fiction.

Werewolves do not exist, so then neither does Christopher. This is their conclusion. How do we know that such creatures don’t exist? Why, because they cannot exist. It is as simple as that.

You will perhaps agree that my critics are guilty of failing to examine all the possibilities. They have committed the great sin of assumption. Is it beyond reason to suggest that the diary was penned by a man who fully believed himself to transform on occasion into a wolf, or into a semi-human, wolf-like creature? Nor must we embrace without reservation the hypothesis (again, not substantiated fact) that such transformations are impossible. While it is true that Science has never in any respects confirmed that such physical transformations are possible, neither has it been able to prove conclusively that such a thing is not possible. Until it is proven that such a creature as the physical Lycanthrope, that is, a human being who undergoes a physical transformation into a bestial state, does not exist, it must remain accepted truth that such a being could exist.

The man who wrote the diary could have been who he claimed to be. He could have suffered from a mental delusion wherein he believed himself to transform at times into a monster. Or he could have, in literal truth, been a werewolf.

But this is all so much arbitrary wrangling. The diary exists. As such, let us examine it at face value.

Written on several parchment scrolls, these latter being sealed inside an iron cask, the manuscript was in remarkably good condition upon its discovery in 2002, when it was unearthed during construction of a highway near Nag Hammadi, Egypt. It was handed over by the Department of Antiquities to Professor Ibrahim Gyasi of the University of Cairo, an old friend and colleague of mine. Gyasi invited me to assist in the translation of the manuscript. Upon Gyasi’s untimely passing in 2007, the manuscript reverted back to the safekeeping of the Department of Antiquities; today it can be found, where it admittedly belongs, in the Cairo Museum. However, as Gyasi and I had finished our translating of the text by the time of his death, I took my notes and my translation, indeed as I had every right to do, with me back to the United States, whereupon I arranged for the publication of the manuscript. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Before I step aside, though, to allow the author of the diary to tell his own story, it is necessary to attempt to untangle a rather troublesome knot.

In his Mysterii Paschalis issued in 1969, Pope Paul VI reevaluated the dates set aside to honor numerous saints, Christopher among them. In fact it has been suggested, and more and more accepted, that Christopher may constitute one of those cases of a saint fabricated, a pastiche of various legendary or mythological entities, never a real, living person at all. I disagree with this assessment, but it is easy to see why skeptics might doubt Christopher’s existence. So much of his story is fantastical, and much of his biography is, or has been, fictitious. (If the diary is genuine, as I believe it is, then we can now say with certainty where the legend ends and the reality begins.)

As so often proves the case, fact is stranger than fiction. The fact is, Saint Christopher did exist as a real human being. In fact, there were two men who are now known to us by that name. Unfortunately for the scholar, the twain have become so intertwined, their personal histories so confused, that separating them requires no small effort. I shall, once again, offer a simplified explanation for the casual reader.

Saint Menas, recognized as a minor saint by Rome but highly regarded in the Eastern Orthodox and Coptic Churches, was martyred in Antioch during the reign of the Emperor Dacian (308-313 AD). Among the several titles lauded upon Menas was bearer of the Word (the Gospel). In the New Testament, the use of the term Logos, or Word, was a frequent synonym for Jesus Christ, thus an alternate interpretation of the title would be bearer of Christ. This latter translates as Christophoros or Christopher, the Christ-bearer. Thus we see one of the primary reasons for the confusion of the two men.

(I propose that many of today’s faithful Roman Catholics, who wear pendants of Saint Christopher or offer him their prayers, are in reality directing their tribute to Saint Menas, and not inappropriately so.)

Another reason for the confusion of the two Saints Christopher is the parallel confusion of two Roman Emperors, Dacian and Decius, this most likely due to the similar spelling and pronunciation of their names. The author of the diary appears to have lived during the reign of the latter (249-251 AD). To be clear, it is the man Reprobus, later called Christopher, who is the author of the diary, not Menas, later given the title of Christopher.

Lastly, I offer a note on the translation. I have endeavored to render the words into modern English as they would be written or spoken today. If, as some of my critics have claimed, I have inserted myself a bit too much into the translation; if, as they suggest, I have rewritten the account in my own words, I trust that the words of Christopher (and not my own) will nevertheless speak clearly enough through any translucence I have inadvertently created. I trust, and I hope so, for it is a story well worth the telling.

David Mayhew

Miskatonic University

Jan. 2017

1.

His disciples asked Him, saying, ‘Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that this has been visited upon him?’ The Lord answered them, saying, ‘neither this man hath sinned, nor his parents, but that through him the works of God should be made manifest.’

This passage is from the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John, yet the words might have been written in reference to me.

I bore an affliction from childhood, through no fault of my own, nor of my mother and father, and as with the case of the blind man healed by our Lord, referenced in this passage from the Scriptures, through my afflictions, the overcoming of those same, the might of God became revealed.

These verses, though not the most precious to me, are the ones I most often call into memory, for they are mine; they tell my story. In all respects save one, those verses define me. In that one, they ring false and hollow. No mention is made in John’s Gospel of any wrong committed by the blind man. He is depicted only as a victim of misfortune, and blameless.

Whereas I, oh, I, brothers and sisters, have sinned.

My story, then, is one both of transgression and redemption. Where to begin it? Let us begin it together, as if undertaking a journey, you and I, as pilgrims, if you will accompany me.

My story begins and ends with blood.

2.

There is beauty to be found in the corrupt, precious even in the midst of the unholy.

My homeland is beautiful. Arcadia, with its black peaks, its towering cedars too great in number to count, its meandering streams like silver ribbons draped between its hills, its thickets of wild ferns that grow taller than any man’s head. God grant that my homeland remain as lovely, and grow even moreso, freed now as it is from the taint of darkness it bore for so many years!

During my childhood, though, despite its beauty, Arcadia was a land blood-sodden, a place of horrors.

All had heard the legend of the way the curse had started. An ancient king, Lycanon by name, had sought to play a prank on Zeus, the king of the gods. The hurler of thunderbolts planned to dine with the king, the story goes, and Lycanon slew and butchered his own children, serving the meat to Zeus on a gilded plate. As punishment—of course Zeus knew what Lycanon had done—Lycanon was turned into a wolf.

It took no great thinkers of my day to realize the myth represented a metaphor for the practice of human sacrifice, the serving to the gods of human flesh; all knew the repugnant practice had taken place in the dimness of lost years. Had Lycanon ever truly existed? It did not matter. We, his supposed descendents, bore his curse, and the curse was this: each month, upon the swelling to fullness of the moon, the Devil held sway in Arcadia, held our very flesh in thrall. Each lunar cycle, a number of the men of my country were transformed in body into abominations, as wicked king Lycanon had been transformed in legend before us, transformed into beasts—even beasts that walked upon two legs, as men. Ravening, savage beats that no blade could kill. The Cynocephali, these were called, the dog-headed men. The condition seemed to strike its victims at random, though it always struck the men first as children.

I had seen eight years of life before the damnation claimed me.

My name is Christopher. It is the new name I received upon my conversion to the holy Faith. Once I bore another name: Reprobus. I still use it sometimes, because it is a reminder to me of how far I have come.

Reprobus—that name was not always reviled. There was a time, fleeting, precious, when I was innocent. I remember far too little of that time.

But we must begin, and those faint memories are useless prologue, of value only to the one who owns them. The beginning, my first taste of blood; as I have told you, my tale begins with a spilling of blood.

The Christ-men had already come to our land by that time, but I had never seen one. Fools, they were called, or madmen, driven by persecution from the Romans, or by zealotry, or both, into even greater danger.

I should add here an explanation: my people fretted little over the Romans, as we had paid little concern to the kings who had ruled over us before them. Some monarch or power had always existed to exact taxes or tribute from us, but our true masters from time immemorial had been hunger, and the need to bring in a good harvest, the health of our livestock, the fear of the Dogheads and the need to secure safety from them. As with the gods of our ancestors—whether men called the almighty Zeus or Jupiter, it mattered not at all to us—we gave little thought to the Empire; we offered each a token fealty, but had more important things to worry about.

The Christians, some of them, went about, even at night, unarmed, trusting in prayers or trinkets to protect them. In the cities of the Empire they may have suffered under threat of death, but in Arcadia they encountered it even more frequently.

All children were forbidden the forests. Looking back upon it, did my disobedience on that day, choosing to sneak away into the woods to play, all the while knowing that my parents had warned me, and ordered me, never to do so, did that instant, that decision bring about my fall from innocence? Or perhaps what happened next would have happened in any case? Once more, it does not truly matter. The result remains the same.

I tarried too late, and the shadows were growing darker amidst the trees. My stomach told me suppertime had come. I started for home; then I came upon the rabbit among the ferns. It fled. I gave chase.

I remember no conscious decision to do so. My act sprang as much from instinct as did that of the hare. I caught it. Among the ferns, with gnats buzzing in my ears and the ground damp beneath my knees, I tore it apart. The blood tasted hot and salty. I pulled out the creature’s entrails and tossed them aside; I ripped off the little brute’s pelt while it kicked at me with its hind legs, trying to fight, to escape, the hopeless, stubborn refusal of life to yield to death.

I had never tasted anything as delicious as the rabbit’s raw flesh.

I do not remember my transformation as it happened. I do remember everything that came after. Such is the nature of the curse, and perhaps its greatest torment. The man always remembers to some degree his actions while in the form of the beast.

I clawed off my clothing, my shoes from my feet. I rolled around on the ground, atop the ferns and the bloody patches of rabbit fur, hearing its bones snapping beneath my weight. I ran. For no sense of pleasure did I run, no sensation of freedom. Not hunger, even. I recall the hottest, most insensate rage driving me to find something else, anything else, to kill. Such rabid hatred must of a surety be the constant state of the Devil.

All night I roamed the forest, killing anything I chanced upon and could catch, vermin for the most part. I never slept.

As the first gray light began to filter through the woods, signifying the dawn, I came upon the Christians, down by the river where it flows its most narrow and its most shallow, the place we of my village called the Stag’s Ford. A number of the Christians, men and women, stood in the water, their tunics hitched up to their knees. One man was kneeling in the water so that it came up to his chest. Another stood above him, speaking, but in my state the words meant nothing. I know now that I witnessed a baptism.

There were some women and a few children standing back from the rest, in the shallow water or on the bank. I recall—God help me, I can see it so clear!—the smallest child, a little girl, her hair a mass of curls the color of honey. I remember thinking how pretty she was; yes, even as a beast I could appreciate this. It was for that reason, for her prettiness, for her sex, that I chose her. I bolted from the trees to snatch her and had disappeared with her back into the forest before the first screams of the mothers and other children had shattered the tranquil sanctity of the holy rite.

I had undergone my first transformation. I had taken my first human life.

It would be far from the last.

3.

I came home in the mid-morning, a boy again, naked and sodden with blood and filth. I could not make myself speak, other than to shriek Mother’s name. Father, out looking for me with my two older brothers, was not there to hear me. I think God showed him a kindness, that he did not hear, did not have to see the thing Mother witnessed as she came rushing out of the cabin. When she saw me, she knew what had happened. She knew the blood I wore did not come from me. She could not speak either. She could only wail. In the depths of the night, if I listen, I can still hear the echoes of that wail.

Her love proved stronger than her horror as she clasped