The Shadow of the Moon

by Michael Dunn

  The wolf whimpered. The shovel had cut the wolf on the mouth, but the wolf was hardly swayed.

  The wolf circled Peter, teeth bared and growling. Peter circled with the wolf. The wolf made a feint and Peter leaned toward the wolf.

  The wolf circled again and instead of feinting again, the wolf attacked. Peter swung his shovel and it went over the wolf’s head before the wolf dug its claw into Peter’s right cheek and tore it off.

  Peter screamed, dropped the shovel, and clutched his bloody face.

  The red wolf looked at Peter for one long moment then pounced on his chest, knocking Peter to the ground.

  Peter tried to scream, but couldn’t. His sternum was shattered, his ribs splintered, and crumbled under her mighty paws as she ripped him open and buried her snout into his open cavity where his lungs and heart were exposed. The blood splattered up like an erupting geyser, dyeing her underbelly a darker red than the rest of her fur. The fledgling wolf experienced the pure, euphoric animalistic bloodlust.

  The red wolf pulled its head out of Peter’s chest, then looked at Peter for a moment before it clamped its jaws around his throat.

  The other wolves emerged from the woods and began circling around the red wolf waiting for their turn to feast. The wolves gave the red wolf and her dinner a wide berth allowing the fledgling to enjoy her first human kill.

  The gray wolf, Robert Bordeaux, stood on a rock overlooking the scene below, and then wailed at the moon, followed by a cacophony of howling from the other wolves.

  4

  The next morning, Suzie felt great, better than she ever felt before, except her mouth was a bit sore. The night before, after the change, was a blur. She woke up naked next to Tony in his bed. It was like she fell asleep, had a hazy dream, and then she woke up next to him. Unlike the previous change, Suzie was able to recall bits and pieces of her hazy dream. In it, she was hunting, and then ultimately killing someone, she didn’t remember who, but she felt it was someone who deserved to die.

  Suzie bounced out of bed, showered, dressed, and then woke up Tony.

  “Wake up, sleepy-head.” Suzie said with a wide, happy smile. “We have school today.”

  Tony opened his eyes, groggily, and wiping the sleep out of his eyes.

  “How you feeling?”

  “Great,” Tony said, smiled, and then yawned as he sat up. “You?”

  “Fantastic,” Suzie smiled. “I have to go home and get ready for school. See you there, honey.”

  5

  At the school, while Suzie was getting ready for classes to start, she heard some disturbing news.

  “Did you hear about Peter Jordan? He was found half-eaten outside the woods.”

  Suzie felt nervous and terrified hearing this. “What?”

  “Apparently, he was the dog killer. They found a shovel and a buried dog by his body.”

  Suzie went cold even on the ninety-plus degree day.

  “Suzie, what happened to your mouth?”

  Suzie unconsciously touched the cut on her lips. “I don’t know. I might’ve bit my lip.”

  Pulling Tony off the side, Suzie whispered. “Tony, did you hear Peter Jordan was killed last night?”

  He nodded and whispered back, “Yes, I know. You killed him.”

  Suzie’s eyes went wide and her mouth dropped. All of a sudden, she felt like she was freezing. “I-I-I killed him?”

  Tony nodded. “Sure did. Ate his heart too. That’s why you feel so fantastic today.”

  Suzie felt nauseous. “I ate a human heart?”

  “Yeah, well, actually, the wolf you became ate the heart of a truly sick individual. Don’t be sad. It’s who you are now and you got rid of a menace.”

  When Suzie couldn’t fight it any longer, she ran to the bathroom and threw up.

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Jack and the Wolfman

  May 21st, 1971

  Jack Keaton had seen the Universal Pictures’ The Wolfman at the Silverdust Drive-In when he was ten-years-old with Bruce Rivetts and Johnny Naughton and remembered how terrified they had been watching the movie. (Jack and Bruce reluctantly invited Johnny because sometimes he got obnoxious and liked to get into fights.) Their young minds believed Lon Chaney Jr. actually did turn into a hairy, mindless killer on the nights of the full moon. They went camping with a few friends a couple days later during the full moon and the boys were terrified to the point of trembling. When they heard a wolf howling at the moon many miles away in the New Mexico desert, neither Jack nor Bruce nor Johnny left the tent that night.

  He had seen that movie thirty years ago and it had put a simple notion in his head – the werewolf was an insane and indiscriminate killing machine that must be stopped. When Bruce told his tale months earlier, the same fear arose in Jack, just as fresh as the ten-year-old boy camping with his friends after seeing the movie.

  Truth be told, since growing up, Jack had never believed any of those monster stories of local legend up until a month ago. Oh, he knew of Bestiavir’s silent rules, like everyone else growing up in this town, and as a kid he thought all towns had that rule. The army had taught him otherwise, and when he came back to Bestiavir, he knew something was wrong with his hometown.

  He couldn’t explain it to his wife, not that he would want to, that he sobbed like a baby watching the VFW/Moose Lodge burn, even though he set it ablaze. There was no remorse over burning it. It was the mercy kill, putting it out of its misery. With his 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 it like the unfortunate fellow who will be the last man on earth, the one who has the unenviable task of cleaning up.

  Ty was called for a few reasons. First, he was one of them, even if he was deployed at the ass-end of the Korean Conflict. Secondly, Ty was not the brightest guy and could be easily manipulated, and thirdly, and most importantly, Ty knew how to keep his mouth shut. Clyde, being the coroner, was well-versed in keeping the secrets of the dead.

  As he watched it burn in a lachrymal state, Jack understood the VFW was more than a building or a place to meet with his friends, who now had become community leaders in their time. To Jack Keaton, the VFW/Moose Lodge symbolized acceptance for nearly twenty years. When he came back from Korea, he was lost. He was disillusioned by the war, temporarily crippled, and with little direction in his life. If it had not been for Dorothy “Dee” Perkins, Jack might have ended it once and for all. With Dee’s love and the invitation to join the Moose Lodge, Jack’s life had purpose.

  He was honored to join the Moose Lodge at the VFW because it was where the once popular kids from his high school hung out. Jack was not part of that crowd growing up and was 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 their circle with Ralph Mullins and Terry Bolin. It was what he always wanted in high school, even though it was after high school. It was in that same year of 1952 through 1953 Jack went to war, came back wounded, married Dee Perkins with their baby already on the way, started college on the G.I. Bill, and became part of the VFW/Moose Lodge. All that excitement packed into one year made up for the boredom of years to come, and for the most part, it had been a good, honest life so far.

  Now, things were different.

  He was the last one left to finish what they had started, now it was up to him to cleanse the evil that plagued this town for the better part of the century — the residents of the Paradise Trailer Park.

  Jack believed the Good Lord above had saved him and was testing Jack’s resolve in this matter by first letting those monsters take his friends, then by letting his only daughter become one of them. Jack would do his best to get Suzie back and see if there was some way to change her back, but if he could not save Suzie, maybe he could save the baby he believed was growing inside her.

  Sleep wasn’t much of a friend to Jack sin
ce torching the VFW, spending more nights than he would have liked to remember unable to sleep, and on those nights when he did get some sleep, it wasn’t restful. Jack had nightmares about his new family.

  He dreamt he was invited to Tony and Suzie’s house (he wasn’t sure how they got a house, but they had one in his dreams). The young married couple each had bright, yellow eyes and long, sharp teeth, but aside from that they looked pretty normal. Tony and Suzie stood around a white bassinette.

  “Daddy, I’m glad you could make it,” Suzie said. Her voice was simultaneously cheerful and menacing. Even her giggle was chilling. “I wanted you to meet our son, Scott.”

  Jack was compelled to look into the bassinette. Slowly, cautiously, and against his better judgment, he just had to look. The cutest baby was in the bassinette, had Suzie’s thin, short nose, and a full head of brown hair like Tony’s. The baby definitely had its parents’ eyes, bright and yellow, with two triangular fangs protruding from the infant’s mouth.

  “I thought you’d like to see him here and now, because you’re never going to see him grow up.”

  “What?” Jack was confused.

  “It’s time for his feeding.” Suzie said, staring hungrily at Jack, leering at him.

  Both Tony and Suzie advanced toward Jack with their heads down and their eyes looking up. They bared their long, sharp teeth to Jack and growled. Jack tried to run, but the kids were faster, and on him in a heartbeat.

  “Don’t you want your grandson to grow up big and strong?” Suzie asked, as she pounced on him.

  Then Jack woke up.

  It was a recurring dream, not happening every night, but often enough for him to believe it was a sign from above he needed to do something to stop that probable future, if it wasn’t occurring already. He was the last of the knights from the VFW/Moose Lodge saved by chance and knew he had to sacrifice everything, including his life, to stop them. He was not certain if Suzie was part of the intended sacrifice, but she probably was. The first part of the plan was to rescue her from them and keep her safe, because that’s what a good father would do.

  His job was spinning in a downward spiral since the fire. At first, it was a missed deadline here, and an error filled balance sheet there, before his subordinates had to pick up the slack for him. Then he started missing days, two or three days a week and before long, he stopped showing up altogether. He would have been fired except his boss who was also his friend, Eddie Post, was sympathetic. Eddie was not a vet, because his mild asthma condition kept him from being drafted. Instead of going to war, Eddie went to work for his dad in the tool and die company, and twenty years later, Eddie was a millionaire.

  Eddie suggested Jack take some time off (which Jack thought was a good idea) and suggested maybe he see a psychiatrist (which Jack thought was not a good idea and an insult). Jack took a leave of absence.

  Jack lied awake next to his wife, who was now more of a roommate than a wife, staring at the ceiling thinking a psychiatrist might actually help, but he didn’t want to be seen as a lunatic. If it got out he was seeing a psychiatrist, he would be shunned.

  “See Jack Keaton over there? He goes to a psychiatrist, because he’s howling mad.”

  Seeing a psychiatrist was just a neon sign he could no longer be trusted; one minute he was fine, but he could snap at any time like a real Richard Speck-type, and he couldn’t live with that.

  He tried to sleep, but as he slowly drifted off, he kept seeing seemingly unrelated images. He saw Suzie’s bite mark in the hospital after the accident. Then, he remembered the claw and bite marks on the bodies of his friends at the VFW, and telling Suzie about not seeing Tony during a full moon. Bruce’s not so outrageous story popped in his head next, along with his nightmares about his future grandchild and The Wolfman movie of his youth.

  When the images all clicked together in Jack’s cracked mind, he sat up in bed with a gasp, heart pounding, and sweating, just as if he were experiencing another nightmare. Jack unknowingly spoke aloud and stuttering.

  “I-it’s Tony. I-it’s Suzie. It’s all of them. Monsters. They’re all monsters.”

  “Wha?” A very sleepy Dee asked.

  “Huh? Nothing. Bad dream. Go back to bed.”

  Dee was already asleep before Jack said so.

  Jack got out of bed and quietly headed down the stairs to the garage, now too scared to sleep.

  Jack cleaned the gun alone in his garage listing to old Rat Pack records, singing “Strangers in the Night” to himself. It was one of the guns he collected from the scene, a silver-coated .357 magnum with two silver bullets in the cylinder crafted by the late, great Tank Bolin.

  The gun felt heavy in his hand. Maybe it was the heavier silver bullets Tank had made that day. Whatever you had to say about Tank, it was hard to argue the world lost a master artisan when he died.

  The premise was simple in those old Universal movies Jack had seen as a kid. The monster is evil, and, therefore, must be destroyed. However, as an adult, things were never as black and white as those movies.

  Now, he feared his daughter had become like them and he did not care if they had to lock her up on every full moon to keep her safe, he would do it because that was what a good father would do. Then Jack Keaton did something he rarely did — he wept for his daughter.

  Would it be better to end her life to free her soul from the madness like she was Old Yeller instead of letting her go on as monster? That was the rationale of those dumb movies he was drawn to from childhood through adolescence. Even one of his first dates with Dee had been to see ‘The Thing From Another World,’ which ironically, was about people dealing with a shape-shifting monster, but never once thought something like this would happen to him.

  His plan was simple, almost Biblical. As a good father, Jack’s duty was to save his daughter, to release Suzie from her curse so her soul could be freed from a life of becoming some mindless killer every month of the year. It was better that way.

  How could he explain this to Dee? Could Dee understand why he had to do it? Would it be enough for Dee to understand he was doing this because he loved Suzie and did not want her to suffer? The gunshot would undoubtedly wake Dee and then he would have to tell this crazy story and it was crazy, because - Jack could no more prove Suzie was a werewolf any more than he could prove she was a Martian. The police wouldn’t believe it, and this would be too big for even Ty or any of the others to help cover up.

  Jack stumbled into the house with the gun to his side, and it felt like he was carrying an anvil. He stopped at the stairs and looked up, which looked like it was a thousand miles away to the top.

  He sighed, and thought, Even the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single…

  Jack stepped on the bottom step on the stairs and it creaked loudly, echoing through the house, causing Jack to stop and cringe. He waited and listened for any movement, and when he didn’t hear anything, he climbed up the stairs slowly and softly.

  With each step, he had to breathe deeply and had to stop a couple times up the stairs so he would not hyperventilate, because lining the wall up the stairs was his family album thanks to Dee’s love of photography. It wasn’t just a staircase. It was a time machine that showcased his life. At the bottom of the stairs was Suzie’s senior picture. She looked so pretty. As he climbed further up the stairs, his little girl was 17, 16, 15, and so on, as if he was on his own memory carousel. He also saw pictures of him and Dee together, smiling in happier days in pictures that were black and white while others were a fading yellow.

  He had to remind himself he was not killing Suzie, but only the monster inside of her, the monster she had become. How many people would he be saving by ending Suzie’s reign of terror early on? After Suzie, maybe he and the remaining others would go after the rest of those vile creatures in the trailer park.

  As Jack drew closer to the top of the stairs, the weight of the gun was starting to make his arm go numb. On the wall, he saw a young family at the carnival in 1959. It
was a color photo aging yellow over the years, showing Jack with his arm around Dee and little Suzie was behind them, holding onto a rotating plastic horse. The carousel was spinning backwards in Jack’s mind.

  A couple steps higher, desperately trying to get off the stairs, he stumbled, but he caught himself from falling. When he caught himself, and stared at the wall. It was 1955 again and a young Jack and Dee were holding their toddler daughter, who had just learned how to walk.

  It was hard to believe they were ever that young, Jack thought. They grow up so fast.

  He made it to the top of the stairs holding onto the banister as tightly as he could, his body was trembling so much he really was afraid of falling now. On the wall, eye level to him, were newlyweds smiling at him from long ago and far away in 1953. The boy groom in that picture was so thin he looked like he was wearing his father’s army uniform, and the bride was so young she looked like she was only playing dress up in her mother’s wedding dress and not her own.

  Jack took a long moment to look at that picture. Those kids, and they were just kids, looked so happy, so innocent, so much in love as they looked forward with merriment to their impending life together. They were a family, since Suzie was growing inside Dee. Jack’s sigh was remorseful, because those kids were long gone, and he was not sure what had happened to them along the way.

  Down the hall was Suzie’s room, and Jack’s legs were stiff, his movements mechanical, and it was through sheer will that he was able to drag his legs down the hall.

  Jack gently opened Suzie’s bedroom door, peaked inside, and raised the gun. His little girl was sleeping softly, and he could hear her slow, rhythmic breathing. She looked much as she did when she was a little girl, just as precious to him then as she was now. His arms began to shake and he put the gun to his side. That was not the monster in his house. That was his little girl. How could he even think about shooting her? He was supposed to protect her, and couldn’t believe what he was about to do.

  Terrified at what he had become, Jack raced down the stairs and back into the garage, sobbing until the sun came up.