The Werewolf of Transmigration Island

-1-

There’s an island near my beach house in Portugal where a werewolf once lived. His name was Grugrão, and according to legend, he was immortal. This is not entirely true.

As for the island itself, Ilha da Transmigracão, it is located off the tip of a peninsula, across from a cozy fishing village. Many moons ago, one of these fishermen, João do Mar, was caught in stormy seas, and his boat was smashed on the rocks. He was lucky he wasn’t killed and managed to climb the island’s steep cliffs.

Though it was not far to the peninsula, a few hundred meters, João was effectively trapped there, as the current was strong between the island and the mainland, and he would have been swept away and drowned if he had attempted to swim across. 

It also happened that there was no way to land a boat safely anywhere on the island, due to the waves and current, so that when the other fishermen from his village sailed by and saw him jumping up and down manically on the cliff and hailing them, they had to keep going. But there was another more important reason they did not rescue João.  

Fishermen are superstitious people. Some paint eyes on their boats to ward off bad luck, while others name them after women, to bring good luck. On larger ships, figureheads of always busty women adorn the prow to lead the way safely through inclement weather. 

But in the case of João do Mar, he had had the misfortune of setting foot on Transmigration Island, which meant he was forever cursed. To be “transmigrated” had even become a local expression for going crazy.

For it was said that the devil inhabited the island. When the fishermen sailed past, they always crossed themselves protectively for fear of dying in a storm of the devil’s making. The devil had chosen the form of a wolf-man, or what is otherwise known as a werewolf. 

At night during the full moon, one could hear him panting and gasping, growling and howling, as he yearned for human flesh. This was the reason no one fished on the full moon, as it was said that the flesh of the fish would turn to human flesh and in eating it, you would be possessed.

In this way the devil transmigrated into and lived in the bodies of men. He was in essence a spirit, and he needed a vessel. Long ago the first fisherman shipwrecked on the island and the devil drove him mad with hunger and despair until the castaway agreed to give over his body. Under the first full moon after submitting, he transmigrated and became a beast; however, the devil could only live in a man’s body for a mortal’s lifetime before needing another host.

After several carafes of wine and numerous shots of spirits in the local tavern, the fishermen concluded that João do Mar’s unfortunate shipwreck was the work of fate, as the last man to be shipwreck there, Danilo Costa, must have died, and the devil was harvesting a new soul.
 

During a full moon not long after John’s disappearance the fishermen had seen him hopping and about, ranting and raving like a lunatic from the cliffs, which confirmed their suspicions. This continued for nearly a week, and they had ignored him, until one day he was gone.

On the night of the next full moon, they heard the growling and panting of the werewolf from his island home. Legend had it there was a cave to the underworld there from whence the devil had come. They crossed themselves as they imagined João transforming in the pale moonlight, his teeth growing sharp and his body hirsute.

It was also said that after the transformation, the devil’s incarnation, colloquially known as Grugrão, would be able to swim to the peninsula, where he would devour dogs and cats, and even cattle and horses, while also impregnating men’s wives with bastard children who caused much evil in the world. Danilo had never made it to the mainland to feed and mate; they had made sure of that.

Since the Great Disappearance, it had been custom for a local man to act as nightwatchman on the full moon to guard against the devil who forever sought to migrate to the mainland and ravage the village. It was also said that the souls of dead fishermen returned from the sea to visit their families on such nights, and that they would appear as ghosts in human form.

-2-

The curse of Transmigration Island dated back to the disappearance of a local ship several decades ago when eleven men had drowned at sea. As the village’s only major whaling ship, its crew were the backbone of the village’s economy and modest prosperity.

When the men were lost, the village also sank into an economic and social malaise. Many children became orphans, including João. Some were sent to live at a nearby monastery where they were raised by the priests. Other villagers left to work on inland farms or migrated to the slums of the capital to work as maids, stevedores, or errand boys.

One Sunday, a year or so after Danilo disappeared, the local priest, Father Diogo Souza, gave an inspired sermon where he sought to expiate the grief and shame the villagers felt at having lost their family, friends, and neighbours in what was known as the Great Disappearance.

Father Souza said, “Look to the ocean and what do you see? It is an infinite expanse much like God’s kingdom of heaven. There is Adam, who creates, and Adamastor from our beloved Lusiadas, who destroys. Adamastor is the transmigration of the devil into a human soul. He is the storm of evil that can consume us all, and the unseen shoal on which men founder and sink to the depths of darkness."

“Between us and the sea and our livelihood, is Transmigration Island, where no one has ever set foot and returned alive. It is the devil’s island from which he conjures his mischief and manifests his evil in the form of a . . . wolf-man, yes, a werewolf. He must have a soul and any man who shipwrecks or sets foot there will become this werewolf until his mortal body expires. So long as he remains there, in that form, the devil cannot harm the village or manifest Adamastor in the sea to drown our fishermen,” the priest concluded.

Father Souza had always fancied himself a bit of a storyteller (you had to be in the service of God), and he was pleased with this bit of divine inspiration. For the village was dying, you could see it in their faces, and before long he wouldn’t have a parish, so some imagination was necessary, or he would lose his comfortable lifestyle and all its benefits.

The superstitious fishermen considered his words in silence. They began to murmur amongst themselves and soon they were nodding. Yes, it was a strange island. Good for nothing. Uninhabitable. Strong currents. Several boats had indeed sunk colliding with the rocks in its vicinity or crushed on its cliffs with a strong swell, and all their owners had drowned and washing up on shore or disappeared entirely. Consequently, they all feared going through the channel to and from Sanctuary Cove and crossed themselves compulsively every time. 

Of course, it was cursed. Home of the devil. Why hadn’t they seen the connect before? The island panted and hissed and growled like beast in the storms. They swore they had seen shapes moving on it in the moonlight. Danilo hadn’t drowned; he had shipwrecked on the evil island, and his body and soul had been captured by the devil.

Following their unspoken train of thought, Father Souza continued, “You’ve seen the devil there, haven’t you? He caused the Great Disappearance when he didn’t have a soul to capture. But now he has Danilo. Yes, Danilo, who sank there some months ago. While he lives, we are free of the curse. When he dies another will and must take his place.”
 

At this the Danilo’s widow, Amalia, began to weep. The priest had in that instant effectively made her an outcast, and almost immediately the rest of the room visibly recoiled from her, with those seated closest sliding away from her on the pews. But as far as Father Souza was concerned, the greater good must prevail. He would take care of her of course . . . in exchange for certain favours. He had always liked Danilo’s wife. In his last parish he had liked many of the local farmers wives.
 

-3-
 

For many years since the Great Disappearance, the village had been almost a ghost town with some artisanal fishermen in small boats making a subsistence living, a local café, a small grocery store and butchers, a fishing tackle and supplies shop, a boat builder / coffin maker (business was down for the former, up for the latter), a village church with its lone priest, and the one bus a day from the inland market town that was the county’s administrative center.

João had been the only orphan not sent to the monastery. He had hid when the bus had come to collect them, and when he appeared again, the remaining elder fishermen pitied him and took him under their wing; in exchange for hauling their lines and nets, he was given room and board in the communal boathouse of Sanctuary Cove.
 

With time some of the boys came home as young men. They had fishing in their blood, having gone out regularly with their fathers before the tragedy, and could not stay away from the sea. After a hard life at the monastery, the farm or in the city, they had become hardened, not like fishermen made hale by nature, but cynical from dealing with men and the stubborn earth. When they saw João with his own modest boat, living on his own in the loft of the boat house, it seemed comparatively an idyllic life, and they resented him for it. He was supposed to have gone with them.

In particular, one man, Pedro, developed a particular hate for João, his childhood best friend.

To add injury to unfairness in Pedro’s eye’s, João had also in the meantime become close with the village beauty Maria. When João was not out in his boat, they were seen walking the cliffs together hand in hand, or sitting in the local tavern, talking in low voices with eyes only for each other.

Pedro had tried to stave off the inevitable by flirting with Maria every spare chance he got when João was at sea, but to no avail. A boatless young man who worked as hired hand and did odd jobs to help care for his mother, was no match for the humble success of João who had his own boat and sold his own catch. Pedro felt that João had taken his life.
 

It was only a matter of time before João and Maria were married, and she became Maria do Mar, while Pedro remained a bachelor. As expected, they had one child, a boy named João Jr., and then a girl, Marta. Seeing his time running out, Pedro eventually married an ugly, unpleasant girl named Valentina, who was forever nagging him about his trips to the bar and about finding a way to make more money.

They also had two children: one son, unsurprisingly sullen and disagreeable like his father; and a daughter, demanding and stubborn like her mother. Their only fortune was that they hadn’t taken after their mother in appearance; however, they were so thoroughly unremarkable that they will remain unnamed like so many other people that live and die in anonymity whether in the stormy sea or in their beds at night.
 

-4-
 

That his peers had refused to rescue him made João angry and then bitter and vengeful. He had fished with these men, drank and joked with them in the tavern, and after the first sighting of him on the island, they simply ignored him as they motored by on their way out to sea, wilfully stony-faced.

Of course, it was Father Souza, an outsider who had arrived in the village with no past, who had put them up to it with his sermon. João had attended that Sunday mass several months ago, and he, too, had been taken by the story. It had made him feel better about losing his father. It was an evil beyond their control that had drowned them all, and not just bad luck.
 

But now it seemed utterly ridiculous. His peers were men filled with fear and ignorance who had resorted to superstition as a talisman to ward off future calamity and to avoid moving on. So many had drowned on that rocky and inhospitable coast that anything that gave a sense of security was a welcome companion, even if it was a fantasy.

Before becoming trapped on the island himself, João had though the same way about it: that it was cursed, and any contact with it meant a watery grave. He was ashamed to think that he, too, would have looked the other way if one of the others had been trapped there. But not now.
 

It was understandable that the longer they lived, the more the old-timers clung to life by any means possible including superstition, though there was less to live for; while his contemporaries’ betrayal was fuelled by the misguided resentment of him daring to stay home and tempt fate and the ocean and living to see tomorrow.
 

As it turned out, it was just an ordinary island like the others. With more dangerous currents to be sure, and almost completely inaccessible and without any economic value, and therefor uninhabited. But now he had explored the island for himself, and it was no longer possible to have superstitions about it; on the contrary, he needed to learn how to survive there for the time being.

If the others knew what he knew, that it was just an ordinary rock in the sea, unknown and mysterious and therefore misunderstood and feared, but not home to a devil, they would have thrown him a rope and rescued him. But he was tainted now. If he did manage to navigate the currents and swim back to the mainland, a tantalizing three hundred meters away through the narrow strait, they would likely kill him.
 

Yet he would have to risk it, as he had a family to care for. And now that he wasn’t fishing, they weren’t eating. His family would furthermore be treated like outcasts for being associated with him and acting as lure to bring him back to the mainland, just as Danilo’s widow had been and her children were.

It was even said and oft repeated that Amalia had given birth to a devil child, from one of Danilo’s surreptitious visits when he had gotten past the full moon guard. On pressure from the village, or so he had convinced them, Father Souza had sent the boy away to the monastery to be exorcized and rehabilitated. Amalia had thrown herself off a cliff shortly thereafter.
 

As for João’s wife, Maria, the extra money she made sewing and knitting thick socks, hats, and sweaters and mending nets for the fishermen would also dry up, as these would now be considered vestments and implements of the devil. A devil’s net would only bring devil fish.
 

-5-
 

Being trapped on the island had given João time to think, something he’d had little time for in his daily labours. He had a revelation that his small community was built on jealousy and resentment and that these were its source of evil. When the economy dried up, it came to the surface like a dead body for all to see.

Where before fishing had given them a sense of pride, his former fellow villagers had grown resentful for their lot in life, jealous and envious of those who had more: be it a better catch, a nicer boat, or more money to spend at the tavern. The comradery in the tavern was increasingly fuelled by alcohol and spiteful gossip, insults, and occasional fights.

Instead of enjoying the innocence of youth, the fishermen’s sons began to adopt the resentful, superstitious drunken ways of their fathers, who fished less and idled more.

Meanwhile, their wives carried on adapting to the fortunes of the catch, making resources stretch in the winter when it was often too dangerous to go out to sea in the massive surf, and setting money aside in the good times to create a little decorative good cheer in their homes and to dress within decorum so as not to incur the jealousy of the other wives, who were forever comparing themselves to each other.

For this same reason, the handful of beautiful women in the village, of which João’s wife, Mary, was the most salient example, and Flavia in her time, made a point of hiding their beauty under unkempt hair, plain garments, stooped posture and downturned gazes.
 

Beauty was to be appreciated only in private, be it that of one’s wife, or some precious religious artifacts, handmade furniture or decorative ceramic kitchenware. While the village was otherwise well-kept with a nice public square paved in paralepidid stone with ocean motifs and adorned with a handsome monument to the dead from the Great Disappearance, it now lived on in a permanent state of mourning despite the planters full of tenacious flowers planted long ago that bloomed every spring.

Similarly, the men could be cheerful, boastful and teasing in the tavern with wine as an excuse, but in public they and everyone else had to observe all the rituals and decorum of grief. You could talk about the weather or the catch or the church service, but nothing personal, because the personal was shame and grief.
 

João also hadn’t dealt with the grief. His father had died in the Great Disappearance, and he had been taken under the wing of the other fisherman and put to work and taught to be a man about it, which meant never mentioning his father or the tragedy again.

It was ironic to be trapped on the same island where the devil had supposedly manifested Adamastor to kill his father. For some reason providence had dictated that he should survive the fate of his father only to suffer as a scapegoat for the village’s great loss.
 

It didn’t take many days sucking on barnacles and eating seaweed for João to start losing his mind from hunger and thirst. It was then his father arose from the sea, an illuminated apparition in the darkness. João rubbed his eyes, but the spirit did not disappear.
 

His father said, “João, you must cure the village of its pain. You must make a sacrifice and speak the truth, so that they will let us go and live for a brighter future. You must be the werewolf of transmigration island to become the avenging angel.”
 

The apparition of his father descended back into the sea where he now resided in eternity. João broke down and wept. Why had fate dealt him this hand? One thing was sure, he desperately needed to eat.

After raving at the moon in hunger and despair, he eventually passed out staring at the sky. His raving carried on the night air to the village and the villagers shuddered, closed their shutters and checked the locks on their doors.

-6-

João was delirious with hunger to the point that he was eating the sparse grass that grew in the small patches of dirt between the rocks and drinking the fresh water that had accumulate in dirty puddles from the seasonal rains.

He was getting weaker by the day and knew that if he didn’t find some food he would die on the island, like that human skeleton he had discovered in a grotto on the far side of the island. A handful of men had never come home from fishing over the past few years, and it could have been any of them, but it was likely Danilo.
 

The grotto had a narrow opening that expanded into a deep pool that ended at a small stoney beach. This was where he had found the skeleton in its decomposing, shredded clothing, and it was where he also began to sleep at night. Into the cavern wall, the unknown man had scratched, “Hello Grugrão!”

There was gap in the rocks of the ceiling where a patch of sky could be glimpsed. It was covered in soot from when the man had lit fires there. How many fires he did not know.
 

João had noticed that during high tide fish swam into the grotto and congregated there. He had found a fragment of net that had either washed into the cave or been scavenged by the man. This small piece of mercy allowed him to encircle and trap the fish.

Despite being a fisherman all his life, he had never eaten raw fish. But that didn’t bother him now. Taking one of the fish from the net, he beat its head on a rock until it was dead and then bit into it. He gnawed at and swallowed the raw flesh and discarded the guts and the head. Moving the net to the entrance he weighted it with some rocks to keep the remaining fish trapped until he was hungry again.
 

He needed to build up his strength so that he could attempt a swim to the mainland when the tide and weather were favourable. In the meantime, he would continue his exploration of the island. He had discovered a few places besides the grotto where it was possible to reach the water line. One such place was situated so that flotsam and jetsam collected there.

In this case, the spoils were an approximately ten-meter length of rope for sinking octopus pots, which still held two pots and one handle and pot fragment, some mooring floats, assorted wood, some fishing line and hooks, several plastic bottles, and a fish crate.
 

After much trial and error, he had managed to find a way to swim with the current. The bottles he found he strung together to make a sort of life vest which he coiled around his body. He would use the fish crate as a raft to hang onto and store his clothes and other belongings during his journey.

He knew he could only attempt the swim at night, and that he must time it to avoid the night watchman. To aide his attempt, he secured the length of rope around a boulder below the cliff and swam with it out to sea where he left the other end tied to a buoy anchored by a stone.
 

If they want the devil that’s what they are going to get, he thought. He knew, as many did without saying, that the priest had exploited Fatima for sex, and further that he was an abusive man, as evinced by the bruises they had all seen on her arms and neck. The priest would be his first stop.
 

-7-
 

Nearly two weeks into his stay on the island, João was now well-fed on fish and the odd bird, octopus, and lobster. He was also cooking his food over a fire of driftwood of which there was nearly an endless supply. He had gathered water in his bottles during the intermittent rains and was no longer thirsty. He was unshaven but otherwise clean, fishing as he did in the grotto pool. It was now time to make his traverse.

He did not choose a full moon, but instead a dark, moonless night on a high tide when the water was calm and inky black and blended with the night horizon, as he wanted the advantage of surprise.
 

He removed his clothes and packed them in the fish crate, along with a stone knife he had made, and some fishing line and hooks. Wrapping his life vest around his body, he grabbed hold of the crate and pushed out to sea, kicking his legs in the water for propulsion. On the grotto side of the island, facing the open ocean, the currents were manageable and not a hindrance and in a short time he made it to the near end of the island facing land.

Here the currents were stronger, but less so at high tide. This was where he had placed his rope, and now he grabbed hold of it and followed it out toward the channel between the mainland and the island to its end at the buoy. Beyond this was the channel and danger.

Breathing deeply, he calmed his nerves and began to kick furiously toward land. He would have to beat the current before it drove him into the rocks of the cliffs on either side. But the current was as calm as could be and, though driven off course, he managed to get around the headland and into Tranquillity Cove.

Seeing the light in the window of the boathouse where he had lived since he was a boy, and which was now his own home, and seeing a shape there that was his wife, tears welled up in his eyes and João almost forgot to keep kicking to make sure he was home safe. Making it to the shore of the beach in the darkness, he lay on the sand gasping from exertion. He did not think anyone had seen him.

Though no longer suffering from hunger, João had been weakened by his island exile. But he could not delay for fear of a late-night passerby seeing him from the cobbled street above. Hiding in the rocks, he put on his clothes and hastened over to and climbed the stairs from the beach to his patio and front door.

Though he had only been gone shy of two weeks, and had only been three hundred meters away, he felt as if he had been gone an eternity on the other side of the world.
 

João knocked at his door and after a moment his wife asked, “who is it?”

“João.”

“That can’t be.”

He waited and his wife opened the door cautiously a crack and her eye inspected him in the shaft of light that fell on him in the darkness.

He was bearded, wild-looking and wet, but she recognized him.

Throwing the door open, she fell into his arms with tears in her eyes.

“Children, Junior, Marta, it’s your father. He’s alive!”

João caught her in his arms and held her tight and stroked her black silken hair.

“We thought you were dead, that the sea had taken you.”
“I’m fine,” he said, though he wasn’t.

His son and daughter came into the room sleepily and upon seeing their dad, let out shouts of joy as they ran to embrace him. There they stood in the doorway, a whole family embracing in the playful, orange glow of the firelight.

“Where have you been, daddy? Did your boat sink?”
 
“Kids, go to sleep now. I tell you all about it later. I need to speak to your mother.”
He gave the children a hug and kiss and they ran off back into their bedroom, casting a glance backwards to confirm that he was real and still there.
 

João sat down at the table and his wife heated up the leftover fish stew from dinner and cut him some bread, and he ate as if he had never eaten before, washing it down with several glasses of table wine.

When his hunger had abated and he felt warm and easy from the wine, João told his wife what had happened, and she told him what he already suspected, that the villagers thought he had been possessed by the devil on the island and become a werewolf. She said that the other women no longer spoke to her and that the fishermen no longer asked her to mend their nets, nor did they buy her sweaters, scarves and mittens. As a result, she had had no money.

Bursting into tears, Maria explained that Father Souza had been by to console her and had offered her some foodstuffs. When she had thanked him, he tried to force himself on her, saying that he wanted his compensation, especially if she wished to remain in good standing with the church and the village. She had rebuffed him with a slap and chased him out of the house with a hot poker.

“You’ll be sorry for this, Maria,” he had told her. “I’ll make you into the devil’s whore and the village will turn their back on you forever, like they did with Flavia.”

She had not been to church since and the other wives spit in the street when they saw her, while the men looked the other way.
 

Prior to her being ostracized, Pedro had also been by with his condolences. He had brough her fish, bread and wine, and when she thanked him, he had grasped her hand and professed his love and tried to kiss her and when she resisted, he too had tried to force himself on her. She had hit him in the head with a wine bottle and menaced him out the door with a kitchen knife.

Pedro had told the other men in the village that she had offered herself and her feminine wares for his support and even asked him to leave his wife to come live with her.

“To behave like this. It’s a shame. She is a pretty woman.” the other men said, shaking their heads, even as they imagined taking up her offer.
 

João was generally even-tempered, but men assaulting, propositioning and defaming his wife, and the village looking away, was an indignity he could not tolerate. The cowardly village always looking away was the source of all their problems.

“I am going to deal with that priest once and for all, and I will confront Pedro, too. We should have all dealt with the priest when he killed Flavia. Everyone knows he killed her. They are just too afraid to say it. Since I have been on the island, I now understand that the village is sick and must be cured. If there is a devil, it’s that damned priest.”

His wife was scared but did not argue his point.
“What will you do?”

“You will see. First, I will need some supplies.”
 

-8-
 

When João went back out into the night, he was unrecognizable. He crept like a shadow around the buildings of the town until he arrived at the priest’s house, the largest of the village with an impressive view from the cliffs overlooking the sea. In the moonlight, João could see the waves crashing violently against the rocks below sending white spray high into the air.
 

The house was dark. João knocked aggressively on the door, and a light came on. The door opened and the priest’s somnolent but irritated face appeared, and presently contorted with fear, as he found himself face to face with the devil himself with the skull of a bull.

“I’ve come for you Father Souza for you have sinned,” the devil said in a deep, hollow voice.

While Father Souza was a charlatan, he did believe in God and the devil, and the shock of seeing this minotaur with a pitchfork in his hand, and hearing its judgement sent a chill down his spine.

“Confess your sins to me,” the devil demanded, grabbing the priest by his nightshirt and forcing him into the house.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you want from me? I serve God,” Souza pleaded, knowing full well what the beast wanted.

“Admit you killed Flavia. You threw her off the cliff after you raped and impregnated her.”

This statement struck Souza like a death blow and he nearly collapsed into a nearby chair, with which he braced himself.

“That isn’t true,” he stammered.

“And you tried to force yourself on João do Mar’s wife.”

“You’ve demonized João himself in order to keep the village in fear and maintain your authority.”

“You’ve had sexual relations with many of the fisherman’s wives and use intimidation and threats of the devil to keep them quiet.”

“You use a tragedy and superstition to manipulate the villagers into serving and supporting you and keeping quiet about your sins against them.”

“Even as everyone struggles to survive, you travel regularly to the capital to live the good life.”

“Confess your sins, Souza, for the true devils are those who invent a devil to deflect from their own evil.”

Diogo Souza knew he had been found it, but he would not let some lowly fisherman intimidate him into losing everything he had.

“It’s you, isn’t it, João?”

João hesitated and took off the skull mask. “And what if it is?”

“I understand how you must be bitter at being deserted on the island. But can’t you see how the villager needed to believe in the myth? It gave meaning to the lives lost. It helped them with their guilt and grief.”

“It doesn’t give any meaning. I won’t tolerate any more of your forked tongue. It is scapegoating that prevents them from facing the truth. You want to keep everyone in ignorance so you can exploit them for alms and abuse their wives with your sinful desires. You will confess to the village.”

Diogo stared at his adversary.

“I will publicly rehabilitate you in my next sermon, allow and celebrate you return and exorcism, and pay you a reasonable sum as compensation for my trespass against you, and so you forget this and never mention it to anyone.”

Even João was surprised at the cynicism and opportunism of the man. Clearly, he did not appreciate the danger of his situation.

“ I can pay you something now. I have some valuable gold artifacts you can give to Mari . . . your wife.”

Diogo got up from the table and began to walk into the adjacent study as if to procure the items. It was an opulent abode with the walls covered in religious art, fine furniture, a bookcase of valuable leatherbound tomes, a glass case replete with objets d’art, and a large antique desk piled with high papers.

“Not so fast,” João said, grabbing him by the arm.

Diogo reached for a lead paperweight in the form of angel from the desk and swung it at João’s head, who blocked the blow with his arm. He was much stronger than the priest and he quickly twisted Diogo’s arm behind his back and pinned his head to the desk.

“No more treachery now. Just confess to what you’ve done.”

“Stop, stop, you’re hurting me,” the priest implored, his bravado now dissipated with pain.

“Confess,” João repeated, twisting the Diogo’s arm a little closer to dislocation.

The priest cried out.

“Yes, yes, I killed her. I killed Flavia. I didn’t want to, but the child . . . and it’s true I’ve had relations with many of the village women through force and intimidation. I did everything you said I did. Please forgive me. Let God forgive me. I am a weak, sinful man,” he said, tears running down his face, whether in pain or repentance João could not be sure.

“I cannot forgive you. A confession to me is not enough. You must confess in writing to the village and beg their forgiveness,” João said. “You must also be held to account for murder.”

And so, he sat the priest down to pen a confession and apology for his sins, admit to the hoax of the werewolf, and also write a letter of resignation from the church which he would send to the national diocese, and sign off on both. João then pocketed these letters.

The resignation letter was of no account, as Diogo Oliveira had never been an ordained priest (something an increasingly sceptical João had begun to suspect), nor was that his God-given name. These secrets “Diogo” kept to himself, in hopes he could reinvent himself again. 

“Now come with me,” Joao said. “You are going to leave this village tonight never to return. You will also return all the money you have stolen from us as false alms to the church. We will sell your possessions and redistribute the money equally to the village."

“But I have nowhere to go. Where can I go without money?” 
 
"I’ll show you the way. We'll leave the authorities to deal with your case."

João put on his bull mask again, shrouded himself in his animal hide and marched the priest out the door toward the cliff. In the light of the moon, he cast a fearsome silhouette with his horns pointing to the heavens and the pitchfork with which he spurred the priest on.

“We are all accountable to each other and ultimately to God,” João told the priest. “Now walk off the cliff. Perhaps if you’re lucky the currents will carry you to Transmigration Island. It is time for you to be reborn through suicide.”

Diogo screamed and made a desperate effort to escape, but João corralled him and kept prodding him closer to the edge until there was nowhere else to go but down. As the so-called priest tried to fight his way back, João resolutely jammed the fork into his chest and pushed him wailing into the dark waters below.
 

-9-

The next day, Sunday, the villagers awoke to Father Souza’s letter posted to the church door. Some knew more than others, but they all had suspected he was responsible for Flavia’s death, as well as they knew he had been abusing her.

Most of the sexually exploited wives had kept the truth to themselves, though some had confessed to their husbands, who had had to bit it down, while some would confess now that the truth was out, to relieve the crushing weigh they had lived with for so long.

The villagers read Souza’s confession each in turn and drifted off to contemplate this airing of village dirty laundry and to deal with their particular degree and version of the collective shame.

Though the priest had exploited their grief, they had gone along with it and allowed the abuses. No one had challenged the priest, stood up for themselves or for others out of fear, though there were men who had wanted to punish and even kill him for some time but worried at the consquences.

Their biggest shame was Flavia’s murder. They were not at fault for what had happened during the Great Disappearance, but they were all culpable for Flavia’s death.
 

Later in the day, João appeared in the town square and walked into the church and sat alone in the back pew. The villagers watched on in silence and first one then another followed him in and walked by nodded in greeting or put a hand on his shoulder, or gave a short, gruff, "hi" before sitting down all around him.

Once the church was full, João stood up, went to the front of the room, and said, “I had a talk with Father Souza last night. He is no longer a priest; indeed, he never was a man of God, and he will never return to our village. That I can promise you.

"I can also tell you that when I was on Transmigration Island I had a vision of my father, and he said that we need to let go of the past to have a better future. That doesn’t mean we forget the Great Disappearance but that we don’t let it rule our lives or allow us to believe in illusions and lies, or permit injustice. Let us live as we once did, in cooperation and support of each other.”
 

João’s brief, humble sermon was well-received. His fellow fishermen were ashamed at how they had treated him, and it showed in their eyes. On their way out of the church, many apologized in one way or another. One man made a particular effort to make amends. It was Pedro, João’s childhood friend.

“I’m sorry that we had a falling out, and I’d like us to be friends again like we once were,” he said.

João did not doubt his sincerity.

“That’s fine, Pedro. But you proposition my wife again and I’ll make you disappear like Father Souza. Understood?”

“Yes,” Pedro agreed without hesitation, his eyes flashing with fear.

After his fantastic return and intervention with Father Souza, João’s status was elevated. With time the shame of how they had treated faded and the villagers insisted on buying him drinks at the tavern and even tentatively began to ask him how it had been on Transmigration Island. João decided to be generous and tell them exaggerated stories he knew they wanted to hear.

Eventually everyone was able to joke about it, asking how it was to be a werewolf and saying “here comes the werewolf,” in greeting, though they were careful to not overdo it, because as Pedro had intimated, João had done away with Father Souza like Souza had done away with Flavia, and they all agreed that that was justice.

Such was the trust the villagers had with João’s judgement that he became first the informal, then official first mayor of the village, guiding it into a period of prosperity to the present day. That was how God chose to transmigrate João do Mar and make him a messenger for a brighter future.
 

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