SOURCE: "In the Forest of Villefere" (Weird Tales, August 1925) by Robert E. Howard

DESCRIPTION: "...I jerked off the mask. A shriek of horror broke from my lips. Beast eyes glittered beneath that mask, white fangs flashed in the moonlight. The face was that of a wolf!"

PLOT: De Montour is on an important mission but he needs to cross the haunted woods near Villefere. In the woods he meets a man named Loup who offers to show him the way. The man wears a mask because of an oath he has taken. Loup talks about strange subjects like werewolves, and how if a man slays a werewolf as a wolf, nothing happens. But if he is in man form then he will be cursed with lycanthropy. Once deep in the forest, he prances around like a mad man, finally pulling off his mask, revealing he is a werewolf. De Montour kills him with a sword and flees, knowing he has brought the curse on himself.

WEREWOLF FACTS: This tale is scant and hinges solely upon what form a werewolf is in when it dies. If a wolf then the killer is safe, but if the werewolf is in man-form then the curse is passed onto the killer.

INTERESTING FACTS: This fragment of a story does little more than set up the sequel "Wolfhead". These two stories are important because they use a "wolfman" as opposed to a wolf-shaped werewolf before they were common after the Hollywood movies. It was adapted by Marvel Comics (Kull and the Barbarians #2, July 1975) as a Red Sonja story by Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin.