Moon Bitten

by Angharad Thompson Rees

  Blaxton pinches the bridge of his nose.

  I shoot a sudden glare at Woolsey. He saw it, I know he did. It was he who grabbed at my arm after the funeral causing me to pass out. He knows. He saw it. I’m not mad.

  I break away from Blaxton, and charge towards Woolsey. The doctor and his wife scatter.

  “Red,” the doctor warns.

  I grip Woolsey, fingers digging into his firm golden skin.

  “You see it? You saw it—the wound?” I’m screaming now, and I know that makes me look manic but why can’t anyone see what I can? The wounds, the wolves. The curse that seems to linger over the land?

  Woolsey remains statue-strong, despite my best efforts to move him. He glares ahead at Blaxton and refuses to look down at me. “Please,” I beg, tears prickling the back of my eyes, anger cursing through my veins. If he tells them he sees it too, maybe they will believe the other things only I have seen.

  Blood stained paw prints morphing in the snow.

  The wolf I killed outside.

  The wolf that killed Grandma.

  The wound, God curse it…

  Woolsey continues to glare ahead, refusing to meet my eye. He snarls, a growl-like sound full of anger and threats. And I remember his own threat to me ‘Be careful, be very careful.’ What does he know that he refuses to say?

  “Red, please,” Blaxton says softly, but his face is stern. He opens his arms, gesturing for me to return to his safety. Does he too sense the threats behind his friend’s hostile eyes? Can he feel the danger?

  Be very careful.

  Woolsey grips my arms to push me away, his fingers brush against the phases of the moon wound. As he does, I scream out and we both stagger backwards as if electrified. Now he looks at me, wild eyed. I don’t know what happened but I’m breathless and heady and feint. Does he feel it too?

  “Get away from her,” Blaxton yells.

  Lightning strikes the cabin, a crackling welt as a storm descends. A roar of thunder rips across the canvas of the greying sky. The ground shudders. Outside, a wolf howls and we all turn to the open door, following the sound.

  A pack of wolves, six, perhaps seven or more, trot to the bulk of the dead body under the darkening shadow of storm clouds. They sniff the red snow, one wolf pushes the body with its snout. Kaya’s body. For one terrified moment, I am convinced the beasts will start feasting on the dead girl. My innards tighten in response. But they don’t feast. They howl, a chorus of mourning and sadness echoes in the air. And the largest wolf, perhaps the pack leader, picks Kaya up in its mouth as if a young pup and carries her away into the woods, her arms and legs trailing the ground.

  “My goodness,” Renee says, her tiny bird like hand to her unhinged jaw. “They’re taking her body to the den to feed the pack.” She gags and runs to the bathroom.

  Woolsey watches Blaxton, then he turns to me, then outside. “I can’t stay here,” he says, giving me a disdainful glare. “Kaya’s brothers deserve an explanation,” he says before sprinting out into the wilderness.

  Does he know something I do not? Is he not somehow connected to all of this?

  Think

  Think

  Think

  Blooded paw prints morphing from Grandma’s cabin to Blaxton’s homestead. Woolsey turning up when the wolves attacked Blaxton’s horse. He turns up now when I attacked a wolf. He’s seen my wound no matter his denial. His warning. His hungry, hungry liquid-gold eyes. I start to sweat but words and thoughts and meaning swim around my head.

  He knows something.

  He knows something.

  He knows something.

  Tick tock tick tock.

  The phases of the moon expanding.

  Fur and fang.

  “Red?” Blaxton shouts, urgent. I hear him but I can’t shake my thoughts. I can’t stop the rocking in my mind.

  He knows something.

  “Red?” He calls again. “Doctor, what is wrong with her? Do something.”

  And my hands are restrained, but I don’t fight it. I’m far away.

  I’m somewhere else.

  I’m someone else.

  Falling…

  12

  There is only one thing I need, and that is the answer to my question;

  Am I really losing my mind?

  I feel a rope wrap around my wrists.

  “Doctor, I don’t think you need to—” Blaxton is cut off.

  “––The girl is clearly not in her right mind. We need to restrain her so I can administer the sedation—she has already killed that poor innocent child under her delusions, perhaps her own kin too.”

  “She would never have killed her grandmother,” Blaxton spits, but I wonder, would I? Wouldn’t I? Wasn’t she the only person stopping Blaxton and I from being together?

  Fangs and flesh, the taste of blood splattered on my lips. I think back to the attack at my house. The wolf was already there, wasn’t it? I heard it howl.

  Or did the howling come from within.

  I’m falling deep into my thoughts.

  “The girl is catatonic. Quick, Renee, the tranquilliser,” calls Doctor Revel. He has to call twice and somewhere in the back of my logical mind, I assume it is because Renee is still throwing up her breakfast in the toilet. There is shuffling and shouting and arguing and I can only think of the bloody paw prints morphing in the snow.

  The trembling starts, a fear, a terror.

  “No. No. No. No,” I begin, faster and faster until the words are connected and only one—like the images in my head.

  The footprints—were they… mine?

  “It’s okay, Red, it’s okay,” the doctor soothes. “This won’t hurt but it will help calm your nerves.”

  “Doctor, are you sure this is necessary?” Blaxton asks.

  But I am not sure. I’m not sure at all. Not sure of anything or anyone… except Woolsey.

  He saw the wound.

  He grabbed at it after the funeral making me pass out.

  If he saw the wound then none of this, none of these so-called delusions are false. All I need to do is find a way to make everyone else believe me.

  “You’ll just feel a small scratch,’ Doctor Revel says.

  Blaxton holds me upright, stopping me from falling to my knees.

  Renee looks on, her fingers covering her open mouth.

  “No!” I roar this time. “Get off me, get off me. I can prove it. I can prove everything if you just let me go.”

  I wriggle and writhe but the men’s hold is strong.

  “Please, Red,” Blaxton begs. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You cannot reason with her, she is not in her right mind,” the doctor says, breathless, his grip tightening as I try to lose his hold. “The mad of mind are prone to violence when their delusions are called out. I’ll tell you more when she—” he grunts as I stamp on his foot and smash my head backwards into his nose. I hear a soft crack of cartilage as he swears. “Hold still, you bloody savage.”

  I feel a power from within, like the cosmic universe sparkling from my wound around my body. If I let the doctor convince Blaxton I am mad, then what hope do I have? I have to get the evidence. I have to find some truth. I burst free like a comet.

  “Let me go!” I scream, wide-eyed and breathless. And I can only imagine how I look in their eyes—my night slip wet and translucent with sweat. My hair wild and stuck to my clammy forehead. My desperate eyes darting from memory to imaginations and back to the people in the room, searching for even a hint of belief from their astonished eyes. All the while, they stare back, wearing their doubtful and fearful thoughts on their faces.

  And like some wild and untamed beast, I turn and run barefoot, yet determined, into the wilderness and the brewing storm outside.

  13

  I have to find Woolsey. I have to make him tell me all he knows. I have to prove I am not some wild monster, a killer. A murderer. A mad woman. Yet galloping through the storm away from the safety of the doctor’s cabin, I realise
I am at least one version of crazy. I know running barefoot and barelegged knee deep in snow, wearing only a shift is madness. And surely, my awareness of that means I can’t be completely insane. Though it is insane to keep going.

  But keep going I will.

  The strange storm brings snowflakes as big as overripe apples to blizzard this way and that, obscuring my sight as I run. Though they do not obscure the bloody patch left by the wolf or Kaya, depending on what side of madness my mind rests.

  I stop, my bare feet in the crimson stain slowly disappearing—like my sanity—with the covering of fresh snow. No, not a covering, but a concealing. A concealing of truth and I feel my own mind doing the very same thing. Concealing things of which it does not want to see or remember.

  The blackouts.

  There is no telling from the shape left on the ground if this was girl or beast I killed. Blood is blood, no matter from where it comes. But it is my knife. The pewter hilt dim in the overcast light.

  I bend to retrieve it.

  To conceal the evidence.

  More snow falls.

  If only Woolsey would admit to what he saw—my wound, his warning.

  I reach the woods and their barren branches, making my way to the higher ground where magnificent firs call to me. Like some primal instinct I run like a wild thing, seeking protection from the coldness of land and thoughts. I cannot go home. I cannot bear to see what I fear I might. Fractured memories—different to the ones already in my mind.

  And I have a feeling, an urge, a sense I might find Woolsey here.

  I stumble to a halt, gasping and grasping at my heaving chest with hands that tremble with sudden realisation.

  Woolsey did not see my wound.

  He saw my bandage.

  My heart sinks to the frigid white ground, and my body follows as I collapse to my knees. My breath catches and rasps at the back of my dry throat as I stare at my arm. The wounds—the marks, they are pale and gaunt, as if they are sinking into my skin. Sinking into my soul.

  They are hardly there at all.

  And I can’t help but wonder what happens during my blackouts. Are these fractured moments memories or ideas of memories? Do I imagine what happens in my mind as I create an entirely different reality?

  Am I… am I a monster? A murderer?

  I howl. I howl in the relentless snow falling from darkened thunderclouds, watching as lightning crackles across the sky, illuminating the black clouds with gold. Rumbles near and far charge across the land.

  I don’t know who I am.

  Another growl stops my sinister thoughts. And another. Another. And another. A pack of amber eyes coalesce through the thick blizzard. Yapping and spitting between bared teeth as the wolves circle close. I’m surrounded. They stalk ever closer. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again. This isn’t a dream, is it? This isn’t another blackout? These aren’t just my thoughts stalking me? Or are they?

  I clamber to my feet with movements so slow I barely seem to move at all.

  My heart pounds.

  This is all in my head. This is all in my head. This is all in my head.

  But still, the beasts encroach.

  Yapping, snapping, snarling. They keep coming. My thoughts or monsters, I cannot tell which.

  A flash of white fur to my right, swift as lightning. Loud as thunder as it growls and roars and yelps.

  A white wolf. The white wolf?

  A memory flickers; bared teeth crunching down on bone and sinew.

  Eyes wide, I have nowhere to go. The beast has me in its sights, again, and it’s galloping towards me with impossible speed. Snow flickers up from its paws, saliva spits from its mouth. The surrounding wolves draw ever closer, my world ever smaller.

  If I am mad, none of this matters.

  If I am not, then I am as good as dead.

  The majestic white wolf launches through the air, over the circling wolves, pounding into my body.

  I scream as we tumble. The world spins, faster and faster as we plunge down the hill. Out of control in a fall that would have killed us both if not for the snow-laden slope. Pounding bodies and white fur and flesh. The paws grip me as we continue our plunge. The beast is no longer snarling. Instead, our faces lock as we plummet. It’s golden eyes, hungry. I’ve seen this look before. And nothing else matters now as the white world blurs.

  In my right hand, Grandma’s gutting knife. My fingers close around the handle tight. But my mind pauses.

  What if this is not a wolf?

  What if this is another, saving me from the beasts within my mind, saving me from my beastly thoughts? What if, in attempting to save myself from this fate—these thoughts—I kill again?

  But I feel the wolf’s musky breath on my face. Its fur in my clutches. My wound tingles beneath my skin. The knife feels ready. Surely this cannot be all in my mind? The fear grows. Survival instinct kicks in. The white wolf stares.

  I roar, and plunge the knife into its side.

  14

  It howls, short and sharp. Eyes staring into mine, the beast’s face, its fur, its shape is changing. Morphing. Reforming.

  I pull the knife from its side, and the blade sucks as if not wanting to let go of flesh. Warm blood trickles down the blade to cover my fingertips. I unfurl my fingers; the blade slips from my grip and I fear I have killed another as I did poor Kaya.

  The tumbling ceases with an abrupt thud as my back crashes into the plateau. I let out a groan, and although we are both motionless, the world still somehow spins on its axis. I can barely breathe, as if a single sound will break this spell. His face is so close to mine I can smell his spicy breath hot against my own. His hungry honey-amber eyes bore into my soul. He’s trembling, the entire weight of his quivering body warm against my own. I no longer feel fur in my hands but warm, soft skin.

  Did I ever feel the fur?

  “Are you okay?” Woolsey asks.

  My eyes widen. “Am I okay?” I ask, incredulous. “I just stabbed you and you’re asking if I’m okay?”

  My heart pounds on the verge of breaking. My mind swirls. I can barely breathe with the mass of confusion and craziness.

  “Shhh,” Woolsey whispers. “I’m okay, I promise, look.”

  With his warm hand atop of mine, he guides my touch across the contours of his lean, muscular body, and although covered in warm blood, there is no wound. I grasp at his exposed torso, feeling for something I know is not there—it reminds me of may own wound.

  “Shhh,” he whispers again. He takes exaggerated slow breaths, encouraging me with a nod to do the same.

  I watch his perfect lips move but cannot speak. Instead, I copy his breathing, trying to make sense of the insensible world playing in my mind. His arms are wrapped around me, and mine around him, where I once clutched white fur. Snow has caught on his long black eyelashes, a flush of red raised to his cheeks. He trails his fingers gently down my face, fingertips burning against my skin. They stop, and trace the contour of my lips, that I open, hungrily.

  He leans into me, I feel his lips brush against my own and I can’t fight the opposing desires from within. Breathless, I raise my hips and my lips to his own and…

  The curdling of Grandma’s blood stuck in her ravaged throat as she dies.

  The ice white fur of the attacking wolf. Hungry, amber eyes.

  The pieces of the puzzle begin to fit together.

  “You?” I growl. “It was you who killed Grandma, you bastard.”

  My hand fumbles in the snow as I grapple for the knife once more. It takes only half a breath to find it and plunge it into his body.

  He yelps, grabbing my hand on the knife and pulling it out of his sliced skin. He snarls, and morphs, and growls, changing back into a wolf. And as he does, I watch the wound. I watch how it closes as his body changes. Watch how the skin knits together with the metamorphosis.

  And it makes sense.

  That’s why Woolsey had no wound after I stabbed him when attacking Grandma.


  They don’t take their wounds with them when they change.

  I think of Kaya. She was a wolf, no matter what the doctor believes. I can only assume I just didn’t give her the time to morph into a healthy new skin with my frenzied attack. And at this point, I don’t know if this fact makes me sad or glad.

  But Woolsey.

  I now know his secrets. His warnings. His appearances at strange time and places. He did know about my wound, regardless of the bandage. He knew because he made it.

  “I’ll kill you, you bastard, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  But he turns and gallops away into the firs and snow.

  I think back to the gun used to put Blaxton’s poor horse out of her misery—by a wolf attack probably carried out by Woolsey himself.

  Another fear creeps into my mind as I relive the animosity between Blaxton and Woolsey at Doctor Revel’s cabin. The loaded looks. The heavier silence. And I don’t know which I need more; to warn Blaxton of Woolsey’s wolfish ways, or to grab Blaxton’s gun and kill the beast myself.

  15

  By the time I reach the pathway to Blaxton’s cabin, all my fight has gone.

  My legs burn with fatigue, my body convulses with a coldness seeping deeper into my bones, and my lungs rasp in retaliation of the icy air. Though I am thankful the storm has ceased, the storm within still rages—all jagged edges grating upon my soul. I’m just too exhausted to allow it to surface.

  I clamber up the steps to his veranda, almost on hands and knees, and push at the door with what little strength I have left in my body. The door swings open with a squeal, the innards of his dwelling blue and cold in the hostile light.

  “Blaxton?” I call, my voice weak. “Blaxton?”

  Everything goes black.

  I must have fallen asleep—a beautiful dreamless sleep, for Blaxton has set me down by the empty hearth, smoothing my hair.

  “You’re freezing, my love.” He pulls off his wolf-skin jacket and places it over me, tucking it around my body so the fur tickles my chin.