The Shadow of the Moon

by Michael Dunn

  “Well, I…”

  “Never mind, let’s just blow the house in.” Jack said. “Clyde, take a few pictures. We may need them someday.”

  Jack and Ty took a gas canister and splashed the gas on the north and east walls of the VFW. When they ran out of gas, they used the bottles of alcohol. It was only one room that was destroyed, but the rest of the building had to go too.

  Clyde went around the other side of the building and opened the locked front door, entered that way and started taking pictures of the grisly scene. He was most interested in the bite and claw marks on the bodies.

  Once he took enough pictures, Clyde poured gasoline on the walls of the rest of the building and when he was done came in to the bar where his friends were lying dead. He put his shirt up to his nose, and emptied some liquor bottles onto the bar and the floor. He jumped and screamed when the body of Elmer Geitz slid from the wall and onto his shoes. Jack and Ty looked at him curiously.

  “I found Elmer,” Clyde said.

  Jack nodded and when he and Ty saw Clyde was not hurt, they went back to dousing the place. They hurried, not only to get away from the grisly sight, but because the dead men were starting to reek horribly. Ty backed the bulldozer out of the lodge and drove it back to the Burger King construction site. Let them think it was vandals joyriding in their bulldozer who did the damage. Like everything else in this town, this too needed to hide in plain sight.

  Jack flicked his Zippo lighter and said, “Rest in peace, guys. You’ve earned it.”

  Then he set the place ablaze as the three of them watched the VFW/Moose Lodge burn from Jack’s car.

  There was no remorse over burning it. It was euthanasia, a mercy kill, like putting a wounded animal out of its misery. With most of their friends already dead and mutilated in the bloody ruins of the building, he could not, would not, let any outsider see them like that. He felt like the unfortunate fellow who will be the last man on earth, the one who has the unenviable task of cleaning up, and burning or burying the dead.

  As he watched it burn, Jack understood the VFW was more than a building or a place to meet with his friends. He was honored to join the VFW/Moose Lodge because those who had invited him were the once popular kids from his high school. Jack was not part of them growing up and was a considered a weakling because of his short, slender build and nerdy demeanor. Since he had gone to war, faced the same horrors as the popular boys had (albeit on a different continent) and survived, Jack was now invited into the same circle with Ralph Mullins and Terry Bolin.

  To Jack Keaton, the VFW/Moose Lodge symbolized acceptance for nearly twenty years. When he came back from Korea in 1952, Jack was lost. Disillusioned by the war, temporarily crippled, and with little direction in his life, he didn’t want to go on living. If it had not been for Dee, Jack might have found himself on the business end of a rope. With Dee’s love and the invitation to join the VFW/Moose Lodge, Jack’s life had purpose. In that same year of 1952-1953 Jack went to war, came back wounded, impregnated and married Dee Perkins, matriculated at the University of New Mexico on the G.I. Bill, and was invited to the VFW/Moose Lodge. All that excitement packed into one year didn’t make up for the boredom of years to come, but it had been a good, honest life.

  Now, things had changed.

  Jack was the last one left to finish what they had started and it was now up to him to cleanse the evil that plagued this town for the better part of the century by destroying the monster that hid behind the Paradise Trailer Park.

  He was the last of the knights from the VFW/Moose Lodge, saved by chance, and he knew he had to sacrifice everything, including his life, to stop it. The first part of the plan was to rescue his daughter from them and keep her safe, because that’s what a good father would do.

  Chapter Seven: The Shadow of the Moon

  April 10th, 1971

  Robert Bordeaux, the community leader of the Paradise Trailer Park (who pronounced his name in the traditional French: Roe-bare Bor-doe) retreated to his garden, the place he loved the most. He built this trailer park as a sanctuary, a safe haven for his people so they could survive in and through the twentieth century. He had witnessed firsthand a near genocide of his people and when he escaped his native France, and he was determined to never let that happen again. Throughout the century, Bordeaux did everything he could, including killing one of his own to save the rest of the residents nearly twenty years ago, and it was the wound that never healed. Robert felt the moon was finally waning on his life and that he wasn’t going to go quietly. He was going to go out howling with the oncoming storm.

  The sky was clear tonight, but to Robert Bordeaux, the oncoming storm was going to be a rough one. It was going to be was one of those cleansing kinds. The old man could smell the storm coming, even feeling it heavily in his bones and it was a long time coming. On stressful days, and there have been more of those than he would like to remember, Bordeaux retreated to his garden. After a long lifetime of protecting this community, even killing to keep it secret from the outside world, he felt old, tired, and ready for the end to come.

  He knew the end was stalking him, because he dreamt of Annabelle, and he never dreamt of her unless something bad was on the horizon like one of those early warning nuclear sirens. Although Annabelle was the love of his life and they spent too short a time together, he feared her as much in death as he did in life. She made a prediction a long time ago that still haunted him,

  “She will come to you during the year with a shadow of the moon, threaten your refuge, and looks no more menacing than a spring lamb.”

  He had no idea what that meant for a long time, because there were two lunar eclipses this year, like almost every year. The first one was in February when that dumb, drunk hunter stumbled upon them. The next one would be in August.

  The old man was dressed in a faded blue denim shirt and jeans, which he would remove before the change. A large, leather satchel slung over his shoulder and across his thin chest. Two large plastic watering jugs were in his hands as he walked out beyond the trailer park toward the woods where his garden grew.

  He enjoyed gardening. It kept him calm, relaxed, and focused; he took great personal pride in watching his crops grow. It kept him from letting the beast out and also kept him from briefly remembering who he was and from where he came.

  He left France in 1895, barely escaping with his life after his family and the people in his remote village were slaughtered because outsiders learned what they really were. After landing in New York City, the young Bordeaux struggled for a couple months before realizing if he stayed there his fate would be like the rest of his people.

  He could barely remember those early nights before he learned how to control the beast within, and did his best to forget them. It was the morning after that brought anguish – the blood in his mouth, his bloody hands, shredded clothes, and the horrible dreams. The vague, fleeting, but all too familiar feeling of the horrible, yet exhilarating transformation, and the frightening satisfaction from a fresh kill and a warm meal, and remembering it made him sick. He didn’t feel human those mornings. He felt like a raving lunatic, and wanted this madness to stop. Dying was often on his mind, and it wasn’t that he was afraid of the rope or the bullet, but that would make the genocide complete. As far as Robert knew, he was now unique, and he had to keep going.

  When he heard read the newspaper stories about the grisly murders, where people believed Jack the Ripper had immigrated to New York, it was time to leave the city.

  At first, joining the rundown circus appeared to be a good idea at the time, because the circus never stayed in one place. It would show up for a night or two, then it was on the move again, which seemed like the perfect job to get away in the night when he needed, even if the animals were terrified of him.

  The proprietor of the circus, Hamilton Dean, was a curious man. When Robert first shook the large, sharp hand of the man with the grayish complexion, it was the first time Bordeaux felt the wolf inside hi
m and the first time the wolf was aware of Bordeaux. It was too shocking and too quick for either side to be scared.

  Bordeaux’s life at the circus served his meager needs. He performed his menial tasks without question. He kept his head down and his mouth shut. For a small man, Robert Bordeaux was unusually strong and his job was pitching the tents and setting up the stages. The animals were afraid of him, and he avoided them as much as possible. The animals had their caretakers, who usually kept away from Robert and that was fine with him. It was in the circus where Robert became fluent in English, but he would always have remnants of an accent.

  While he made a living in the circus, being there did not make young Robert Bordeaux happy, his co-workers were some of the worst riff-raff and scum of the earth. He did not make many friends in the circus, except one, an equally laconic Indian named Joseph “Redman” Whitecloud of the Navajo in the New Mexico territory.

  To make life even more difficult, the terrified young Frenchman met the nineteen-year-old Annabelle, two years his junior, the fortuneteller and ward to Hamilton Dean. Ironically, it was because he was avoiding her that she took a liking to him, and like her foster father, the young immigrant was a mystery to her. She saw things, things she had no right of knowing, and he was afraid if he got too close, she would know his secret, which was exactly what happened.

  Annabelle was the one flower growing in a circus full of compost. Whenever Robert saw Annabelle coming, the young man disappeared. The young fortune teller was good at what she did and she could get secrets out of people just by looking at them, and Bordeaux couldn’t risk that. His secret was too dangerous.

  Young Bordeaux did his best to avoid the pretty, wispy blonde, but she was persistent in knowing the mystery behind the bashful Frenchman. Despite Robert’s valiant efforts, he could no longer resist her and rolled over to her charms.

  Over time, Bordeaux and Annabelle became closer, hiding their secret love from the rest of the lurking eyes of the circus, and although their time together was magical, her predictions about their future were dismal.

  “What’s wrong?” Robert asked, laying naked next to his young love.

  Annabelle, spooning next to him in post-coital bliss, looked worried and puzzled. “Every time we are together… for the briefest of seconds I see… a shadow of an animal following you, and sometimes, when I close my eyes when you kiss me, I see the moon, fat and bright above.”

  Robert did his best to keep his composure. “That, that is unusual.”

  Annabelle giggled.

  “What? What is it?” Robert asked.

  “The way you talk. I love the way it sounds.” Annabelle said. “You should talk more often. Why don’t you?”

  Robert shrugged. “I don’t have much to say.”

  Annabelle laughed. “I get this funny feeling that sometimes you’re hiding something from me.”

  Robert smiled, but said nothing.

  “Is that why you spent all those months avoiding me? You’re afraid I might find something, that I – I might see what you did or why you’re here. You don’t belong with these people. They’re awful. They would have done terrible, terrible things to me if I wasn’t Dean’s daughter. Like you, they’re all afraid of him and they should be. There is something… not right about him, something dark and sinister.” Annabelle shook her head and laughed. “But enough about him. I had a dream about you.”

  “Oh? Really?”

  “I saw you building a paradise for your people, and it will thrive for generations before a storm comes, until both love and hate will destroy it… and during the shadow of the moon, your paradise will fall someday. The oncoming storm will surround someone who lives in both the normal world and your paradise.”

  At the time, the young lover didn’t care for such things.

  “What about our future? What of your own future?” Bordeaux hoped the words ‘happily ever after’ accompanied her vision, but that was not meant to be.

  Instead Annabelle lay on her back, looking up at the stars above and whispered, “I have no future.”

  That came true too, for no secret can last forever.

  Bordeaux awoke in a meadow the next morning with his hands covered in blood. He was not certain which way pointed back to the circus. He picked the direction of the sun and ran toward it. He guessed right, but when he arrived, the troupe was waiting for him. Dean was front and center. Robert’s first thought was, Merde.

  “I know what you are, Mr. Bordeaux,” Hamilton Dean said. “It took me a little while to figure it out. I was not paying close attention to detail and you are very good at hiding your secret – almost too good.”

  “What secret is that?”

  “You are loup-garou, a lycanthrope.”

  The circus performers gathered around Dean didn’t know what he meant and asked in a uniform, “Huh?”

  “It means he’s a werewolf you, ignorant clods!”

  An altogether “Oh,” was uttered.

  Robert closed his eyes and looked away. He told him, “Mr. Dean, you are being silly.”

  “Am I? Since the moon is waning tonight, the change won’t be automatic. I’ve heard intense emotion can also cause the change.” Dean held out his hand and said, “Gun.”Someone instantly handed Hamilton Dean a revolver. Dean pointed the gun at Bordeaux, who tensed up ready to take a bullet. He was not certain a regular lead bullet would kill him. He heard the legends it was only silver that could kill his kind, and he was not willing to find out. Bordeaux closed one eye, but kept the left one open out of a morbid curiosity of seeing the bullet coming.

  Dean turned the gun away from Bordeaux to Annabelle and fired. The bullet hit her in the chest. Bordeaux screamed and ran to catch her as she fell. Dean handed the gun to Dieter, who was on his right.

  “If you bite her, you can save her.” Dean hovered over Robert and his dying daughter.

  “No! I could never do that to anybody!”

  The circus folk behind Dean watched Annabelle die and watched to see if Bordeaux really was what Mr. Dean suggested.

  Bordeaux held Annabelle and they both cried. “Dean says you can save me. If that is true…”

  “No, I would only be cursing you. I could only give you a life as a mindless killer who must hide from the world.”

  “I don’t care. Please help me. It hurts so badly.” Every breath was agonizing, but she kept going, because it was all she knew how to do.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry,” Bordeaux said, sobbing.

  Annabelle passed away moments later. Bordeaux cried some more then screamed in primal rage. His scream seemed to last forever. That scream let out all of Bordeaux’s rage and sorrow, but also let out an awful secret. His hands became claws, his face became feral, and his eyes became yellow. Everyone gasped and stepped back, except for Hamilton Dean, who was smiling. Redman stepped back also and whispered, “Manitou.”

  Bordeaux, as the wolf, leapt at Dean, who stayed where he stood and waited for the beast to attack. When Bordeaux was close enough, Dean smacked him on the side of the skull with his cane. The wolf was knocked down and hurt. Dean dropped the stick and lifted the bipedal wolf off the ground by the neck.

  “You are not the first lycanthrope I’ve had in my circus.” Hamilton Dean said to his new prize. Bordeaux, behind the wolf’s eyes, saw Dean’s eyes go completely white, and his face grayed and small horns protruded from Dean’s forehead. The wolf went limp and Dean threw him aside. “You’re not the only one here who needs to keep appearances.”

  When the wolf hit the ground, Bordeaux became human again.

  Dean turned to his employees with his human face. “Cage him and chain him.”

  From that point on, the grieving lover was locked in a cage as part of the circus’s attractions and stayed there until Joseph Whitecloud planned their escape.

  There never was a day that went by which Bordeaux didn’t wonder what would have happened if he had bitten Annabelle. True, he would have infected her with the curse that had plag
ued his bloodline for centuries, but it was not long after that Bordeaux learned how to control the wolf. As the decades passed, Bordeaux believed he might have been wrong.

  He remembered his life before learning to control of the beast. He was scared – scared of someone finding out what he was, scared of what he was, and scared of living. There were days when he thought about all the people he had killed, even though he couldn’t remember any of them or the act of actually killing them, only vague and fleeting images of people screaming in terror. He would wake up somewhere with blood crusted around his mouth, or maybe collect a couple of souvenirs such as a couple of fingers or a tongue, and always blood.

  The wolf gave him many gifts – enhancing his senses, made him faster, stronger, and more aware of his surroundings in the world in a way that would be considered almost spiritual.

  There were days when he would sit quietly, letting his thoughts drift away, feeling the world was talking to him in a dull, quiet voice, but if he concentrated too hard, he could almost see the yellow eyes of the beast inside him. The first time that happened, it scared the young man, but he wasn’t scared enough not to want to continue. Over time, Bordeaux managed to tame the beast inside.

  Bordeaux stopped in front of his impressive garden with all the crops that could be grown in New Mexico: corn, wheat, soybeans, alfalfa, barley, and onions. He set the jugs down, and pulled out a sharp spade from the satchel.

  He saw a rabbit in his garden, and his animal side wanted to kill and eat it, but his human side wanted to make it run away. Over time, his human side grew stronger, because he made his human side grow stronger. The old gardener sloshed water on the rabbit and it dashed away. Once upon a time, Bordeaux would have chased the rabbit just to prove he could catch it, but now he no longer needed to do that, because he knew he could catch the rabbit and chose to let the rabbit run.

  Bordeaux crouched down with his spade in hand, heard his knees creak, and shook his head. He was getting too old for this. There was a weed growing in his garden, threatening to destroy his crops, just like the rabbit he chased out, and if he didn’t get the weed quickly enough, more would grow. The old gardener had worked too hard to have his garden destroyed by weeds.