Midville USA--The Town That Cried (Were)Wolf Emmet Kelley   © Copyright 2018 by Emmet Kelley

        The  four men were killed with the same grisly  M.O.: in their dens at home, multiple stab wounds  in their backs, and the killers leaving  scrawled in pigs’ blood on a nearby wall helter-skelter style “Wolf- children/4th Reich” with a gore-limned pentagram crudely etched  to the side . Though apparently the perps were, unofficially, a  neo-Nazi cult located in hiding near Midville, the police could find no clues other than the abovementioned blood-scrawlings, and were bowled over that such heinous crimes could happen in Midville to begin with, since it was a Mayberry R.F.D.-style  town, relatively crime-free.

      Police Lieutenant Jock Tracy, weighed under by the mounting pressures of the public and the press to solve, and resolve, these mysterious hate crimes against leading  Semitic  citizenry, contacted a friend and ex-colleague, Franklin Kinsolving, for assistance.   Kinsolving was a Sherlock Holmsian icon in various fields—private investigator, mystery writer, adjunct college professor, foundation executive, criminal consultant—well regarded for his keenly perceptive  Holmesian  ratiocination in the areas of clue-sifting  and  crime solution.

      Sitting in Lieutenant Tracy’s office over a take-out dinner, Kinsolving___who even bore resemblance to the Rathbone character with his Edwardian tweediness and elaborate pipe___  having mastered all the details of the murders, scribbled a diagram of the murder-site scrawlings on a cloth napkin, mentally puzzle-piecing .”So—is this ‘wolfchildren’ group some kind of neo-Nazi  kopykat outfit? And what does the pentagram etched on all victims’  walls signify?”Tracy queried.

        Kinsolving declared,”No, these aren’t neo-Naziis, I’m afraid,  but REAL Naziis, or  rather descendants of actual Nazi parentage.”

      “I’ll  be damned. That’s incredible.”

     “I surmise this is a very symbolism-driven cabal, and their symbolic acts__the back stabbing modus operandi being derivative of the Naziis declaring that the Jews stabbed Germany in the back in  World War One as their political  rallying point__is a mix of German folklore and American popular culture.”

      ‘I’m afraid you lost me after the word ‘ cabal’ ,” Tracy sighed.

       “Let’s   start over, with the pentagram. In the old Lon Chaney wolfman movies, the pentagram appearing on the wolfman’s victim’s hand foreshadows the wolfman killing the victim. Thus the pentagram symbolizes the murdered Jewish victims. Also that, I presume, silver-forged weapons were used, as was the  means of killing  the wolfman, a  popcult Volkish  tie-in with their presumably silver  murder weapons.”

          “Yeah, I remember—in the first wolfman movie, Chaney kills a wolf___which turns into Bela Lugosi—after the wolf bites him, with a cane with a silver wolf’s head attached, and the bite turns Chaney into the wolfman . The movie climaxes with Claude Rains, Chaney’s father, killing  Chaney  the wolfman with the same silver wolf- headed cane. I remember Chaney’s joke that, as the pre-lycanthropic  Lawrence Talbot, he bought the cane because it looked like a great golf putter. And in sequels it takes a silver bullet to off the wolfman.”

      “Very true. But this silver weaponry motif aside, the idea of the wolfman __either a man shapeshifting into a wolf, or becoming a hybrid man and wolf__is a myth of antiquity, in particular German antiquity. The wolf is the Hun’s symbol of animalistic power and  terror. Even Hitler codenamed himself as ‘wolf’.  Another example is Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler’s successor,  who designed the nefarious wolfpack strategy for U-Boat battleship attacks. Which brings me to my deducing another piece of the puzzle__the repeated blood-scrawled phrase  ‘Wolfchildren/4^th Reich’. It’s my conclusion that these  ‘wolfchildren’ murder conspirators  are, symbolism-driven again, related to a much-forgotten fragment of World War Two history—namely, the 1945-50 Werewolf movement.”

       “Never heard of it,” Tracy observed.

     “  It’s largely neglected history. In 1945, Gestapo chief  Herman Himmler, in a last ditch attempt to slow down the oncoming Allies, organized rogue elements of the German army__guerrilla fighters,  gangs of desperados, war-crazed  veterans with  S.S.  backgrounds__to act as commando units, or more properly, like the insurgency  units  which the Germans encountered___such as the Free French resistance fighters. Himmler’s goal was to utilize the Werewolf movement__so- called because they were named after a 1910 novel by author Herman Lons titled ‘Der Wehrwulf’, about a mythical Prussian superhero much like Neitzche’s  superman__to  commit such acts as sniping attacks, arson, sabotage, assassinations of German Allied sympathizers, and other terrorist activities as a  subversive force against the Allies.  Supposedly  Eisenhower,  Patton, Bradley and other Allied commanders were ‘targeted for termination’. Historians debate the Werewolves’ significance, but one eminent war scholar, Perry Biddescombe, in his treatise’ the Last Naziis-S.S. Guerilla Resistance’, claims ‘ that they were no bit players__causing  tens of millions of dollars of property damage and responsible for the killings of thousands of people.’”

        “So what happened to them?” Tracy queried.

   “There was conjecture that by 1950, with diminished resources and no government support from denazified Germany, they effectively disappeared. However,  my sources in various intelligence  agencies inform me they went not only  ‘south’ underground in Europe but migrated north to America.”

             “But this was generations ago. Granted, one generation was begat by a previous generation, not like the Boys from Brazil from a petrie dish but real live offspring. But what were they doing in hiding all this time?” Tracy asked.

        “Biding their time, waiting for the advent of Armageddon__their Armageddon.  I.e., their self-prophesied time to fulfill the  rise of the 4^th Reich. They share the old dream held by  cults ranging from the derelict Manson clique to the eminent but  secretive Black Muslims__to incite a global war of the races from whose ashes arise Phoenix-like  the new order, in this case the ‘4^th Reich’.  And the Midville  murders are a precursor of  their self-designated  Armageddon.”

       “But why have their pre-apocalyptic murders here in Midville?” Tracy asked.

        “Why Midville?  The symbolism-driving   forces surfacing again.  Midville is directly in the center of the country, the heart of Middle America, and, metaphorically, the setting for  symbolic killing with a silver dagger to the heart___thus, a great symbolic pivot point .”

        “OK, so where are they hiding? Their hideout must be near Midville.”

       “I understand before the Great Recession, Midville used to sponsor sports tournaments__everything from soccer to track to baseball teams , with players from all over the U.S. and Europe__England, France—and Germany. Where were these players housed in Midville?”

      Tracy, mulling, replied, ”Townspeople’s homes, motels, the old unused youth hostel outside town—“

     “There you have it—the new Werewolves came here disguised as athletes, and using the now-unused youth hostel building as their hideaway headquarters.”

        Without another word, Tracy picked up the phone and said,”Sgt. Ryker, round up  SWAT --and see if you can find any silver bullets.”

     The police squad, led by Tracy and  Kinsolving, converged on the back entrance of the deserted hostel. Peering through a musty window they could see a group of Nazi-uniformed persons, seven in all__four  men, three women, varying in  age__seated around a table hand-in-hand séance-style, chanting   a German-worded mantra, obviously a rite they practiced as a  prelude to yet another ritual murder.  On the wall besides them were a lifesize portrait of Hitler, and beside that a rack of bladed weapons__stilettos, swords, machetes __apparently  the silver-girded murder weapons.  Nice assortment of silverware, Kinsolving mused, or, more appropriately, “were-silver.” And a reminder of the “Night of the Long Knives” as well.  Symbolism abounded everywhere with Werewolves.

      On Tracy’s signal the police crashed down the back door and surrounded the were-Naziis. An older greyhaired man, the group leader, stood with hands up, the other six following suit. “Better to surrender now and await for other warriors to take over what we’ve started , comrades, “ the arch-commander  militaristically ordered, adding “We are but the iceberg’s tip,  Jew-loving guttersnipe .”  Kinsolving retorted, “You may be the iceberg’s tip, but your berg will become  a rapidly melting  ice floe, with our intelligence agencies   monitoring your cadres nationally, and with police  roundup imminent, Jew-hating guttersnipe.”

  After Tracey Mirandized them, they were hauled off in handcuffs to the police wagon, whisked away to jail to face probable  Nuremberg-style harsh judgment and punishment. Kinsolving  said to Tracy,”Well, so much for this hateful virus of the ‘4^th Reich-order’ and resulting dystopia.”

  “More  like back to today’s New Normal,” Tracy commented woefully, about another contemporary world virus.

     Meeting with Tracy for dinner at an inn, Kinsolving  brandished a newly-purchased walking stick with a silver wolf’s head. “To keep the werewolves at bay?” Tracy inquired. “No, I thought it’d be a great  golf putter,’ Kinsolving  drolly responded.