Harvest Moon

by James A. Moore

  She didn’t bother to look. She could still feel his eyes on her. Of course the milkman was watching the front end, and just for kicks she looked up at him and licked her lips slow and sensual, looking into his eyes the entire time. His face got flushed with excitement. Before he could get the nerve up to flirt or anything else, she turned to the matronly customer behind him and asked if she could get her anything. Her voice was deliberately sweet and innocent as she asked.

  Just behind the rotund woman, a figure walked past in full Halloween regalia. There were several people in costume who were supposed to be for the festival, and there were plenty more who were just doing it to do it. This one was dressed like a freaky looking scarecrow and had the most convincing mask she’d ever seen. There was something about him that seemed almost familiar, like the costume should mean something to her, but she couldn’t place it.

  The man looked her way, his mask glowing in the distance, and then he looked at the milk guy who was still staring at her. She felt the hand on her shoulder and almost jumped out of her skin. Burgess looked at her, his face drawn and tired and his hand lingering on her shoulder. “That’s it for tonight, Erika. Go have some fun.”

  She nodded, not speaking. His hand on her made her skin try to crawl. She took off the apron that protected her school uniform and beat a hasty retreat before he could change his mind.

  Once outside of the nearly claustrophobic booth—with George on her heels for a few seconds before he moved away—she made a beeline for the gaming booths where everyone from school that she wanted to see would be hanging out. It was Friday night and there would be few chances for anyone to actually enjoy themselves after the festival was done with.

  She hadn’t made it all the way through the crowd before she realized she was being followed. Erika maneuvered around a family with more screaming kids than common sense as far as she was concerned. A quick look over her shoulder told Erika it was the milkman who was trailing her. Now she had to deal with him, too.

  She wasn’t stupid, though she knew several boys around town and not a few teachers would have argued that point with her. Erika just didn’t like to flaunt her intelligence. But she also wasn’t naïve. She’d seen the man watching her damned near every time he ran across her and she knew exactly what he had in mind. She didn’t think he’d really be a problem—didn’t get that vibe off him—but she had been flirting a bit heavily. Best not to take chances.

  She weaved through some of the worst parts of the crowd, surprised again by how many townies actually showed up at this thing, and ran right into the costumed guy with the pumpkin head. She ran into him hard and staggered a bit as her body bounced off his considerably larger form. Before she could take more than one step back, his hands were on her biceps, steadying her. And an instant after that she felt the warmth flow into her body like sunlight, spreading from where he touched to every part of her, infusing her with a powerful glow so overwhelming she expected to see the light of it spilling from her every pore.

  “Careful there,” he cautioned. “A girl could get hurt that way.” His head looked away from her and craned slowly toward where she had last seen the creepy milk guy. “If you don’t mind, I have some business matters to attend to.”

  He walked away before she could respond.

  Erika watched him move through the crowd, the large hat on his head bobbing and weaving through the people. Slightly dazed, she walked to where her friends should be waiting. Somewhere between the time she actually saw her friends and the time she reached them over near the ring toss booth, she felt it in her head when the man in the costume reached the creep from the delivery company.

  Her whole body shivered with a cold pleasure when his hands reached out and grabbed the pervert. She couldn’t actually see him touch the guy, but she felt it as if it were her hands that clutched his skin and pulled him to the side in the crowd. She did not hear his screams, but it felt as if hers was the hand that cut them short and squeezed at his neck until several vertebrae popped in his neck. She did not see the way his chest stopped moving or hear the sound of his death rattle, but she felt the last weakening breath as it faded away against her face.

  Erika let out an involuntary moan of pleasure and felt her knees go weak. She stood still for several moments and experienced, however vicariously, the distinct pleasure of feeling the creep’s body dragged into the darkness, moved far away from the festival and into the deep, deep woods, and then quickly, efficiently, dismembered. By the time she had regained her strength the deed was done and the odd man in the costume was on the move again, leaving behind little that would be recognizable as human, let alone as the milkman.

  When Erika started moving again, she did so with renewed confidence. It was nice to have a guardian angel, no matter how unusual he might look.

  IV

  The night died down to the sounds of slowly fading revelry. It’s not every weekend when there’s a holiday and a good excuse to party, but when it happens, you may rest assured it will be taken advantage of. At midnight the bells of the Wooded Hills Lutheran Church tolled exactly twelve times. Not far away the Catholic Church tolled seven times before the bell in the tower let out a raucous, explosive knell and collapsed as the boy fell from the sky and landed on the tower. David Reyes did his best to scream all the way down, but frankly there wasn’t enough air left in his one remaining lung. His portly body hit the bell tower at terminal velocity and tore through the ancient wooden structure, rebounding off the bronze bell in its tower and dropping—along with the aforementioned bell—to the ground forty feet below. A moment later, the remains of the tower itself collapsed inward and buried both the boy and the ruined bell under half a ton of ancient brick and wood.

  The noise was enough to wake half the people in Beldam Woods, but it was the sound of the second church tower being destroyed in like fashion that got people running. Alex Reyes was considerably smaller than his older brother, but he too hit his target at speeds that would make most race car drivers envious. Alex never screamed. He was unconscious when he hit, though he was still alive, if just barely.

  By the time anyone looked to the sky to see what had caused the devastation, there was little to see save for a distant spot in the air. It could have been a kite for all anyone knew, though it was no kite ever made by human hands.

  Patrick Winter sailed high in the night sky, carried partially by the air currents, but mostly by the sheer strength of his brother Robert’s massive body. They had never really tried a trick like this before but it worked remarkably well. Just as Patrick had suspected it would. Robert made a perfect frame for spreading himself over, and with the two of them working in conjunction they had become something entirely new. Flesh and bone gathered together to make a massive winged nightmare.

  Still, it was an effort for Robert, even with his prodigious strength, and as soon as they had cleared the area and made their way back to the Witch’s Hollow, they separated themselves.

  Patrick stretched his new flesh and felt the tears that the extra strain had caused. He would need to take more flesh for himself soon, or he would start to decay again. He sighed; disappointed that Jack couldn’t be there to see what they had accomplished. Jack was always on the go and though the two of them seldom agreed on anything, he would have liked the chance to dazzle his brother for a change of pace.

  Jack was probably all the way back in Colorado by now, preparing for the sacrifice that would be made in his honor. Patrick snorted. “Harvest God indeed.”

  Robert signed and clacked with his own speech again. “Let it go, Patrick. Jack has always needed to feel important.”

  “Well, I mean, really! So he can make a few plants fruitful. How does that make him a god?”

  “It doesn’t. But there are always ignorant people willing to kill their own for prosperity.”

  “True enough, Robert.” He heard the sound of police sirens in the distance and sighed. “She’ll be back with us by this time tomorrow, brother.” His eyes
grew wistful. It had been so very long since he had seen his mother, truly seen her or been able to touch her. “So you suppose she’ll be pretty?”

  “She has always been beautiful to me.” The sound of bones colliding and Robert’s massive body moving was almost musical, a counterpoint to the wailing sound of the sirens growing more and more distant. Throughout the town a dozen or more dogs joined in on the song of the emergency vehicles.

  Patrick grinned and looked at his brother with eyes that were heavily hooded by their decaying flesh. “You always were a mommy’s boy.”

  “Yes. True. But then, which of us aren’t?”

  “We’re going to be a family again, Robert. I can feel it. We’re going to be happy again.”

  “Do you suppose mother will want to stay here?”

  Patrick frowned. “Hard to say. I hope so. I like Beldam Woods.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Patrick thought about that for awhile and Robert, knowing his brother’s ways, waited patiently for an answer. “I suppose it’s because it’s all I’ve ever known. It’s enough for me. That’s what matters.”

  Robert shuffled closer, his forearms, hands, and face still dripping warm blood. Chuckling softly he held out one of his prizes for the night. David Reyes’s heart slipped between massive fingers and fell to the rich soil of the Hollow. It fell amid the dead and dying mushrooms that had, at long last, served their purpose and were no longer needed. “Home is where the heart is, brother. Isn’t that true?”

  Patrick picked up the heart and contemplated it a moment before sinking his teeth into the red meaty prize. He smacked his lips appreciatively and nodded his thanks to his brother. “Very true, Robert. Very true. We should rest. Tomorrow will be here before we know it.”

  Chapter Eight

  I

  How long had she slept? It didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered much in her current state, save once again gaining a body of flesh.

  She had not been idle through the long decades. Truth be told, she had not really slept at all. She had drifted. Her consciousness had scattered itself across the Heavens and Earth alike, and she had learned much more about reality than she could ever have known while stuck in a corporeal form.

  Still, there comes a time when the idea of learning takes second fiddle to the idea of doing. She had reached that point and so she had called her sons.

  It was time.

  There were few prerequisites for the powerful spells she had used to permit herself the luxury of reincarnation. The first was a new body. Her boys had taken care of that. The second was the proper ingredients used to make the body right for her possession, and that had long since been taken care of. The third requirement was the cauldron she had used throughout her time among the living, and she knew exactly where that was. She had, in fact, made certain that it would be in the right place at the right time.

  And last? Well, that was a double-edged sword. She required that it be a sacred day, a day of power, and she required a harvest moon to ensure the proper transition of her soul into the vessel that would become her body. All Hallow’s Eve, Halloween, Samhain…the name was not important, but the day was. This of all days was one of the few when a spirit could come back from the dead and actually affect the world around her. The veil between the worlds was thin, and made thinner still by the people who celebrated the event in any form. What passed these days for Samhain was hardly as pure as she would have expected, but then, the world had changed more than she would have imagined since her unfortunate demise.

  That, too, was to the betterment of her situation. Few would expect what was going to happen in the town of Beldam Woods.

  She felt when the holy places were made impure. The deaths of the wretches had seen to that. Her boy, Robert, had spent hours preparing the bodies with the correct markings, just as she’d instructed when he held her skull in his hands. He was a good boy, even if he had his eccentricities. Two unbaptized children were hard enough to find, but two caught in the act of a sin? Well, that was surely a gift from the dark gods she had long since served. Their deaths had destroyed the sanctity and purity of the Houses of the Lord, and that was a good thing. Not required, but preferred.

  Still, it was a shame to waste all that fine, sweet child flesh.

  The sun broke past the earth, the first rays of light touching the sky long before they came in contact with the ground of the Witch’s Hollow, and the witch began to draw together her power. Throughout the town the animals got nervous, edgy, and irritable to the point where several of them nipped at or growled at their masters.

  In the Witch’s Hollow the Victim Trees withered and died, crumbling into so much rotten wood in a matter of minutes. The mushrooms that had grown only in that one area exploded, releasing hundreds and thousands of spores into the early morning light. The spores were dark red in color, not all that different from dried blood, really. The wind did as she bid it and carried the flaking red substance in a wide, gentle arc that spread the seeds as far as the eye could see and, more importantly, in a circle around the town of Beldam Woods.

  In the trees around the area, the fine white moss that had grown for as long as anyone could remember dissolved into a bone white powder and mated with the bloody red spores, misting all of Beldam Woods in a spray too delicate for most to notice.

  The sun finished rising and burned away the faint morning fog as the waters within the hollow evaporated into a cloud that caught the same wind and drifted across the entire area.

  All that had lived within the Witch’s Hollow died in less than an hour. The purpose for which she had grown them and cultivated them had been served, and that was what mattered. The witch’s consciousness drifted with the winds and searched throughout the entire town and the surrounding woods. Her plans were ready to bear a bitter fruit and she felt the need to check every detail one last time.

  II

  Allyson Winston poured the last of the Halloween candy into the massive black pot she’d claimed was Hattie’s cauldron for as long as she’d had it, and smiled. Allyson’s Antique Boutique was ready for the night. Though trick or treating took place in most of the neighborhoods, it was also a tradition in town for a few of the shopkeepers to welcome very young children in the earlier part of the day. Allyson had set that up a few years back when she heard a toddler crying about wanting to go out with her siblings. A little community support goes a long way, and Allyson believed in making sure that her store was a part of the community. It had saved her business and several others, too, when Wal-Mart came around two years earlier. Beldam Woods didn’t need a massive superstore, but Wal-Mart tried anyway. The people in town faced off against the city council and shot down the idea with a vengeance, and while there were certainly other reasons for the decision, she had no doubt that the local businesses being mostly open, friendly, and involved in the community as a whole was a decent part of the final vote going the way it did.

  So, yes, a little candy at Halloween and a few treats the rest of the year seemed like a fine idea to her. The usual soft classical music had been replaced by a collection of spooky songs from the Fifties and Sixties. Bright orange and black streamers ran across the windows and adorned every available spot, along with half a dozen or so cut-out monsters. She was as ready as she was going to get.

  Ellen McCoy came through the doors and smiled brightly. Allyson watched her walk her way and returned the smile. The Windwood Super Emporium was supposed to be open already, but Ellen almost never actually opened on time. Today she was dressed as a witch, ala Morticia Addams, and Allyson nodded her approval. The woman had the body to get away with the outfit and would probably find a few dozen extra men window shopping throughout the day.

  Allyson looked around, made sure that no customers had snuck in, and kissed Ellen deeply, but quickly. Ellen responded in kind, purring deep in her throat. Let the men look, just so long as she comes home to me.

  Allyson felt her knees go weak when Ellen quickly touched her breasts wit
h black lacquered nails. Then her longtime lover broke the kiss and stepped back, smiling with a decidedly wicked twist to her full, perfect lips. “That’s enough treats for now. Just wanted to say hi before it gets busy.”

  Before Allyson could respond with a properly off-beat comment, Ellen was gone again. Only a moment later her first customer of the day came through the door, his broad shoulders almost as wide as the entrance to the shop.

  She hadn’t seen Patrick Winter in over two weeks, and for him that was something of a rarity. She’d never known a milkman to collect antiques with the same passion as the gruff-looking man in front of her. His hair was short and bristled, his face worn and weathered, and his smile warm and gentle. She’d always felt if she hadn’t long ago decided to stick with the fairer sex, she could have fallen for Patrick.

  “Well, hello, stranger! I haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays!” Her greeting was genuine. Patrick seldom bought much, but he was always a pleasure to discuss antiques with. He had an eye for rare and truly amazing pieces and had actually sold her a few over the years.

  “How have you been, Allyson?” His eyes were as gentle as ever, his voice as rough.

  “I’m good. Just getting ready for the rugrats to come tromping in for candy tonight.”

  He nodded and looked at the display, complete with massive iron kettle. “That’s why I’m here, actually. I need to get back the cauldron from you.”

  Her heart sank. “Oh, no…today?”

  “I’m afraid so. It can wait until you close if you like, but it has to be today.”

  She wanted to protest. She’d come to love the oversized monster of a cauldron as it had sat crouching in the corner of her shop for the last ten years. But she remembered well enough their conversation from when he loaned it to her and his admonition that he would need it back one day.

  “But I can keep it until the end of the day?”