Village of the Full Moon Curse

by Daniel Griffin

  “Nooooooooo! Please, nooooooooooo!” screamed Phyllis, losing all of her self-control now, weeping, wailing, and visibly shaking from what had just transpired before her eyes. “What are you?! Why did you have to kill him?!” she shouted him with frustration and anger. “Noooooooo, Ron!” She continued on bawling and shaking her head from side to side from despair. “How did your face change like that?” she desperately asked Dietrich. She couldn’t stop crying and sobbing as she knelt over Ron’s dead body, shaking him in a futile attempt to find life in his body, unable to accept the fact that he was dead.

  “I am not just a normal stranger, Phyllis, but a stranger who also happens to be a vampire, a very old vampire, and I’ve been alive for many centuries,” answered Dietrich, who then pulled the knife’s blade out from his ribcage and tossed it on the floor beside her. “I am very powerful. I cannot be stopped, let alone by measly jackknife blades, and usually get what I want, even if by force when necessary. And I will kill anyone, like your friend here tonight, who would be foolish enough to stand against me or in my way! And tonight, with the help of the full moon, I will transform you into a vampire also, and you will become my special eternal minion and mate, and will be fully under my control forever, if I desire! And after I do so, you’ll also gladly drink the blood of humans, even family and friends as well, if need be, because that is what vampires do!”

  “What?” responded the stunned Phyllis with tear-filled eyes. “You’re a vampire? And I will be also, and drink blood? What are you saying? I could never hurt my friends or anyone, ever!” She had never heard such repulsive words spoken to her ever before, which sounded so evil, sick, and wicked.

  “Oh, I beg to differ, my dear Phyllis,” he answered her. “You will drink human blood and not only enjoy it, but find it necessary to feed on blood to survive, and will have no choice! The humans will no longer be friends to you, but instead, will be considered as an essential part of your diet, who you will desire to feed upon! But unfortunately, I cannot turn you until the full moon, or else, I would have done so by force already!”

  Phyllis shook her from head side to side in disbelief at the nightmare violently unfolding in her life. She remained over Ron, cradling his body, crying and mourning for him, as Dietrich seemingly vanished into thin air.

  Carl and Brian drove into the yard of the store, deciding to comeback from the bed and breakfast to ask Phyllis if they could meet Buck. No sooner had they exited their truck when they heard the disturbing sobbing and crying sounds of a girl coming from inside the store.

  “Phyllis!” exclaimed Brian as he turned to Carl with a look of worry and uneasiness. Both he and Carl ran full speed through the front door of the store to see what was wrong. Neither man was prepared for what they saw! It was Phyllis, kneeling down on her knees and crying over the lifeless body of a young native man lying dead on the floor of the store, with a small puddle of blood under his neck and head. “Are you okay, Phyllis?” asked the very concerned and shocked Carl. “What happened? Who did this?”

  Both men somberly walked over to her, trying to hold and console her as she slowly stood up.

  “The stranger who walked by you this morning as you left the store did this! He did this!” she said, while trying to regain control over her despair, and recollect herself and her emotions again.

  “Damn bastard!” responded the furious Carl. “Where did he go? I’m going to find him and kick his ass, if not more!”

  “Please, can one of you try to wake Buck up at his cabin for me and tell him to come to the store, please?” asked the despondent Phyllis. “Tell him that I urgently need him. I have to tell him what happened, and what’s going to happen. Please don’t try to confront this stranger Dietrich if you see him, please don’t! I can’t handle the thought of you two getting badly hurt too or something worse!”

  “Are you trying to say that you don’t think the two of us can overtake him?” asked Carl with curiosity.

  “He’s powerful, like Buck, but maybe even more. He lifted Ron up by one arm with the simplest of ease, as if he were a small fish he just caught, and killed him with just a twist of his wrist! He drank Ron’s blood, too! I even stabbed him with my knife, and it had no effect on him! Even when normal, and not transformed, Buck is stronger than any human, but not as strong as that! Maybe after Buck has turned into his wolf man creature, he could fight against him, but Buck can’t even control it anyways!” cried Phyllis.

  Carl and Brian looked at each other in stunned silence, feeling nauseated, afraid, and barely able to digest what they heard.

  “I wonder if he’s another werewolf like Buck,” Brian said. “If there’s already one, maybe there’s another one.”

  “No,” replied Phyllis. “He told me that he is a vampire, a very old one, and he plans on returning tonight to turn me into one of those evil things under the full moon! And he also wants to make me his eternal minion and mate, and take me away, too! He seems infatuated with me, and wouldn’t accept no for an answer! I won’t lie, though. At first sight, I was infatuated with him also, for he was so elegant, handsome, mysterious, and wanted to show me the world, but that was before he turned into a devil!”

  Carl and Brian were speechless, wondering if they would wake up in their beds at home if they pinched themselves, discovering this all to be just a really bad dream.

  “He also said that if I tried to run or hide, call for help, or leave the store, he would kill everyone in Circa, and I believe him! I’ll even be forced to feed on the blood of humans, even my friends, too, after I’m turned into a vampire, for survival, and enjoyment, according to what he told me. I’m scared, and I feel trapped with no hope!” cried Phyllis. “Buck doesn’t have a phone, and I can’t leave the store to alert him. Can you help me?”

  Brian and Carl gave Phyllis another hug of sympathy, hoping to comfort her through her grueling ordeal, and trying to calm her worries with some words of hope.

  “Were sorry about the loss of your friend,” Brian told her.

  “Werewolves and vampires, who knew?!” asked Carl, shaking his head from side to side in disbelief. “And I’ll be damned if am going to let any vampire, or whoever he says he is, or whatever he intends to do, come in here and take you away!” exclaimed Carl very angrily. “He’ll have to do this over my dead body!”

  “Carl and I will do everything in our power to avenge your friend’s death and protect you, and I promise to do everything we can to help you,” said Brian. “This Dietrich will have to go through us first to get to you!”

  “I don’t know how to thank you two enough for wanting to help me,” replied Phyllis while she dried her red, wet eyes with tissue paper. “I just don’t know what I would do without you both here. You don’t know how much you have helped me in dealing with everything so far. You’re such a godsend!”

  “If this stranger really is a vampire, I think we need to recruit Buck’s help to try and stop him, despite the danger he would present to us,” said Carl. “From what you told us, it sounds like Dietrich might be too much for us to handle alone. But from what I saw of Buck’s werewolf last night, and how he took an adult caribou down with one bite, I’d put my money on him! I just hope that if or when bullets are needed, they have more of an impact on Dietrich than what they had on Buck!”

  “Carl?” Brian said after thinking of a plan. “Phyllis can tell you where Buck’s cabin is, and you can go wake him up and introduce yourself to him while filling him in on Phyllis’s ordeal, and tell him that we all need his help tonight. I’ll take Ron’s body over to the clinic and properly put him in a body bag, and prepare him for an autopsy for sometime in the near future. Unfortunately, I have some training in body preparation, and have had to put it to use a few times over the years.” He turned to the distraught woman and said, “Phyllis? I know my request that I’m about to ask of you will be very difficult and hard on you, but I wouldn’t ask you unless I thought it was important in helping us to stop Dietrich. We need to find some way
to get him back here to the store again, about an hour from now would work well, so you can do a long interview with him. If you could pretend that you thought about his plan, and had a change of heart and will willingly go with him, or let him turn you into a vampire tonight if he desires, then hopefully, he’ll trust you enough to tell you all about himself if you do some digging and ask him.”

  “What should I try to ask him that would help?” asked Phyllis.

  “We really need to know his weaknesses and if there’s any way to kill him, if he truly is a vampire and not just a really strong psycho who drinks blood,” replied Brian.

  “Oh, trust me, Buzz,” said Carl. “When I see him, I’ll find out really quickly what he is after I put several rounds from my rifle into him!”

  Brian smirked at Carl’s enthusiasm and bravado. “Phyllis, you’re not going to be able to just ask him straight up for his vulnerabilities and weaknesses, or even if he can die. You’re going to have to play him deceitfully really, really well, like a spy would in trying to discover top secret information,” he told her. “For example, you could ask him how he is able to walk in daylight. How old he is, or how he came into existence. Is he the only one of his kind? And why does he need a full moon to turn you? Any info that we can learn might help us stop him. Do you think that you can do this? If you can’t do this for us, then at least do it for yourself and for your friend Ron. I’m positive that he won’t harm you, because it sounds like he desperately desires you too much.”

  Phyllis paused for a brief moment, and then responded, “Yes! I will help! Not only myself, but for Ron also, and for every one of the victims and their ruined lives that evil, repulsive creep Dietrich had hurt or destroyed in his past already! I’m not going to be afraid anymore, but fight back anyway that I can! I would even choose suicide over being turned into a vampire!”

  “I’m proud of you, Phyllis,” responded Brian. “But please don’t think about suicide. Everything will be okay, I promise you!”

  Carl nodded his head up and down in agreement with Brian.

  “But how are we going to lure him back here?” she asked “Dietrich just seemed to vanish before you guys arrived, and he said he wouldn’t be back until 9:00 PM. He could be anywhere.”

  “After I take Ron’s body to the clinic, I will try to find an inventive way to find him, if that’s possible. Circa isn’t that big, and even if I have to walk or drive around the village, yelling his name from the rooftops, I will,” answered Brian. “Hopefully, he’ll find me and not kill me, but listen to me when he does, and I’ll try to convince him that you want to see him immediately. Carl and I will meet up later, when you have him distracted here at this store, and we’ll begin our strategy preparation for a possible showdown! Hopefully, Buck will have nearly recovered physically at that time also.”

  Carl chimed in, “We’ll be loading our rifles to the max also, along with carving out three or four wooden stakes, too, just in case those vampire movies are accurate, when they are killed with wooden stakes.”

  “We’ll drop by the store after we think that Dietrich left, to hear what valuable intel you were able to come up with,” added Brian.

  Phyllis agreed, and instructed Carl as to the location of Buck’s cabin. “It’s a small trail on the right, just before crossing over the wooden bridge when entering into the village. Once there, walk down about 200 yards and you’ll find a small log cabin at the very end. Knock loudly on his door, but if he doesn’t answer, open the door and go inside, and announce your presence loudly. He never locks his door, and he could be still sleeping deeply. You might have to wake him.”

  “I won’t get shot, will I?” asked Carl with concern. “Or even worse, get bitten or eaten?”

  “No, I promise,” answered Phyllis, slightly giggling. “He’s kind of harmless without a full moon actually.”

  “Before you leave, help me load Ron into the back of your truck first, so I can drive him to the clinic,” instructed Brian to Carl. As Brian bent over to begin lifting up Ron’s upper body, while Carl was lifting his legs, he paused to observe and inspect the puncture wounds on Ron’s neck and jugular area.

  “What’s wrong, Buzz?” asked Carl.

  “Hmm, very interesting,” he replied. “These two puncture wounds on his neck where Dietrich bit him.” He paused, still thinking. “Phyllis?” he suddenly asked. “Didn’t you mention that the wolf that attacked and bit Buck was found to have two puncture wounds on its back also, maybe like these ones on Ron’s neck?”

  “Yes, that’s true,” she answered. “I remember the doctor talking about it, and describing them. I also now recall him saying that he needed to fly north to the village of Hublick and autopsy a fifteen-year-old girl’s body, which was found dead three days earlier, with two puncture wounds in her neck, too, and drained of all her blood! Her death went unsolved.”

  “Fascinating,” said Carl. “Could Dietrich have killed that girl, and then also have bitten and infected the wolf with something, too, which traveled south to Circa after and bit and infected Buck a few days later? If so, I wonder how the wolf managed to escape Dietrich. Crazy!”

  “I will try and ask him when I talk to him,” replied Phyllis. “But Doctor Jones couldn’t find any sign of infections through any blood test, and even large doses of antibiotics didn’t help Buck, leaving him to speculate that Buck had been left with some unknown, supernatural curse after he was bitten. Also, the village of Hublick, where the poor teenage girl was killed, is also another village along the upper Yukon River, and Dietrich told me that he traveled here to Circa from north on the Yukon River.”

  “It sounds as if he’s been traveling from village to village along the Yukon River, and Circa is presently his next stop. We’re figuring out valuable intelligence information on him already,” Brian said excitedly.

  “We better get rolling and get this plan in action,” added Carl eagerly.

  Together, they loaded Ron’s lifeless body into the back of the truck and left the store, leaving Phyllis with a small feeling of hope.

  CHAPTER 8

  5:00 PM

  Brian backed Carl’s truck up to the loading dock behind the clinic, and knocked loudly five times on the building’s metal freight door after exiting the vehicle. He quickly glanced down and noticed the ashtray that had been placed on the dock, beside the freight door, was filled up and nearly overflowing with burnt cigarette butts.

  “Just a minute,” a muffled female voice yelled at him from behind the door. Thirty seconds later, the freight door slowly opened up and a native lady, who looked to be in her mid-forties and who was the clinic’s nurse, casually walked outside and onto the dock. “Oh my,” gasped the startled nurse as she noticed the body of a lifeless male lying on the bed of the truck’s body. “That’s Ron! Please, no! It can’t be possible!”

  “I’m sorry,” replied Brian. “I don’t intend to be pushy or sound unsympathetic right now, but we need to hurry up, get him inside, and put him in a body bag and in storage until an autopsy can be done at a later date. I’ll explain everything to you once inside.”

  “Okay,” the nurse hesitantly replied as she helped Brian lift Ron’s limp body from the back of the truck, helping to carry him inside the clinic and closing the freight door again before laying his body on a table. “What happened to him? Please tell me that Buck didn’t have anything to do with his death last night, please tell me!”

  “No, not at all,” he answered, leaving the nurse breathing a sigh of relief at his answer. “A very bad man, a stranger with supernatural abilities similar to those of Buck’s, was responsible for his death.” He paused and added, “Let me introduce myself. My name is Brian Griffith, and I’m a pharmacist from Fairville. I knew your former boss and the physician here, Doctor Jones, for our relationship goes back many years. I used to fill a lot of his patients’ prescriptions in the past, and we had a good business relationship.”

  “Doctor Jones was more than just my boss, he was my friend al
so,” she responded. “Have you heard about what happened to him?”

  “Yes, sadly I have. Phyllis told me everything about the doctor, and about Buck, too.” Brian noticed her name from the tag attached to the white blouse of her nurse’s uniform, which read, “Shirley.”

  “We need to call the Fairville authorities and notify them of Ron and his killer, who still is on the loose,” said Shirley with concern. “It’s the standard procedure, although it could take them a while to respond with the avalanche on Hawk Summit.”

  “Please, Shirley, promise me that you’ll wait two days before calling them in Fairville,” pleaded Brian. “I know it sounds odd, and it’s risky for you to not follow procedure, but I’m asking you to trust me on this. I don’t have time to explain at this time, but please believe me when I tell you that it’s crucial for you to wait! I’ll take full responsibility for this, I promise.”

  “Okay,” replied Shirley reluctantly. “Since you knew Doctor Jones, I believe that I can trust you. I’ll put Ron in a body bag and hide him in the freezer in the back for now. But in two days, I’ll have to make that phone call.”

  “Fair enough. And thank you very much. It’s going to become dark in around forty-five minutes, so I need to leave now,” he told her as he slipped back out of the freight door. Brian knew that he had to somehow find Dietrich, and quickly, but wasn’t sure how successful he would be. The sun would set at 6:00 PM, making it twice as difficult, risky, and dangerous to contact or see him then.

  “Dietrich! Dietrich! Dietrich! Dietrich!” Brian called his name as loud as he could yell from the top of his lungs, over and over again in different directions, while standing in the back of Carl’s truck, which was still parked behind the clinic. “Dietrich!” he yelled his name one last time, with his hands cuffed to his mouth this time, hoping to enhance his volume and distance slightly more. But he decided to move and try again in a different location when he heard or noticed no response. “Who knows where he could be?” mumbled Brian to himself, almost ready to give up.