Full Wolf Moon

by K. L. Nappier

  Several times, the weight of the beast brought one or the other of them to their knees, leaving them sucking desperately at the cold, night air. Upon the final collapse, Doris rasped out, "We can't go much farther, David. Our lungs will burst. Or our hearts. Either one."

  But before the healer could reply, a sound stifled them both: Distant, floating toward them on the breeze, an eerie, mournful baying. Bloodhounds. Doris was the first to struggle upward, but David followed quickly.

  "They're still far away," David said. "We can make it. We have to make it. Look up."

  Doris did. The moon was below the treetops now, well on its way to setting.

  "Just a little further," David urged, "and you'll turn right."

  They shuffled onward for an impossibly long time, surely longer than Doris thought she could bear, until at last David panted out, "Off to the right ... here..."

  Doris heaved in that direction, pleading like a child, "How much farther?"

  "Just go. Just keep going..." But it was David who collapsed. The sudden loss of support dragged Doris with him beneath the beast.

  She wriggled free, gaging on revulsion, then moved back to help David pull away. They both sat panting until the deep, throaty baying of the hounds jolted them again. Were they closer? Or was it Doris's exhaustion that made them seem so?

  "This will have to do," David said, mopping his brow on the only clean patch of sleeve he had left. "We've done all we can."

  He looked up at the moon, then at the dead beast. "Help me shove the wound into that patch of light."

  The light David spoke of lay against the beast's barrel chest. Together, they pushed and hauled until the beast's belly and groin were exposed to the pale glow.

  "All right," the healer said. "Listen carefully. The silver must be pulled out just before the moon sinks below the horizon. Just then. Too early, too late, and we've come this far for nothing. When the searchers happen upon this place, they'll find the remains of an enormous animal they'll probably identify as wolf."

  He stopped talking and gazed at Doris wearily. "If they do, that would probably save those boys, you know. It will back up what the Tamura twins said. They'll easily match the beast to the dead child's wounds. The rest won't be hard to piece together."

  Doris shook her head. "I know what you're saying. Not on your life, not now." Her palms were sweating and she rubbed them together before looking at her pentagram again, still dark as a bloodstain. "I want the honors. I want to pull out the silver."

  David didn't answer right away.

  "Please."

  "Are you certain?" he asked her.

  Doris nodded.

  The baying seeped through the conifers again. Definitely louder. And now Doris could hear the reedy echo of human voices behind the hounds.

  David looked up at the moon. "Damnit all," he said, "the moon's still too high."

  Even so, the healer moved toward the beast's head and wrestled its bulk into his lap. He nodded toward the arrows.

  "When I give the word, one, smooth motion," he said. "Every piece at once. But, for now, wait. All we can do is wait."

  Wait. An eternity. The moon seemed to deliberately hover over the hill tops, cruel in its reluctance to sink. Doris moved toward the belly, but realized that she was blocking the light from the wound when she did. She would have to position behind the beast's back and reach over to grasp the arrows. She knelt in place, arching over the beast, so tense she could barely breathe. She steeled herself, nodding to David's instruction, listening intently for the hounds.

  She wasn't prepared for the human voices, so close it was if they s were speaking over her shoulder.

  David's own voice came as a hiss. "Down!"

  Doris collapsed on her side, the beast's spine pressed against her belly. David was flat on his back, having sprawled with the cumbersome head still in his lap. God, the voices! They sounded like they were everywhere!

  Doris's chest ached with the wild thrashing of her heartbeat. She could hear a soft, shuffling noise, like multiple boots scuffing through the pine needle carpet. And, always, the voices. She rolled her eyes toward her forehead, in the direction of it all, but the search was taking place just beyond her range of vision. Then a torch beam swept above her, off to her left, grazing trees midway up the trunks.

  Doris stiffened, her mind stiffened, as the watch went on insufferably. When David at last tapped at her hand, it was all she could do not to cry out. But she realized who it was and turned to see him motioning skyward, moving only his wrist and index finger. The moon was at the horizon.

  Doris heard voices past her head. She saw dark shadows against the misty gray background of forest in the moonlight, moving slowly beyond the bulk of the beast, perhaps thirty feet away. People were everywhere. Their search beams blazed out ahead of them in harsh, yellow shafts, stabbing into the night, striking against the trees, skittering across the ground.

  The moon, now, seemed all in a hurry to set.

  Two beams, from opposite directions, flashed directly over Doris, almost catching the beast's silvery fur. She looked down toward the wound, and could tell that the moonbeams had mercifully shrunk so that the fur's shimmer was reduced to a dull gray.

  She looked to the moon once more. It was halfway past the horizon. David tapped her hand again, mouthed out carefully, "On ... my ... word."

  She understood, scooted carefully lower, toward the arrows. She could see some of their shafts where the belly was lax and sunken, but couldn't tell if the moonlight still touched them. The voices ebbed and flowed around her, surged so close at one point she could not suppress a whimper. She squeezed her eyes shut her as though she expected to be struck. David tapped at her head. When she looked up at him, he motioned toward his eyes as if to say, watch me.

  She nodded, glanced once more at the moon. Three quarters set. Her eyes flew wide toward David who was looking skyward, his fingers touching Doris's hairline...

  Someone shouted.

  David jerked his face toward Doris and as he stabbed his fingers against her head as he hissed out, "Now!"

  Doris rose over the beast. Through the thunder of her heart, throbbing even in her eyes, she saw the last of the moonlight fading off the wound. She clasped her hands, vice-like, around the arrows and pulled.

  She fell backward with her own momentum, but she knew she had them all, she knew it! The bloody arrows scattered around her like tinder sticks. She heard a great, wet sucking, like someone long buried and struggling upward for air.

  She heard the shouting again and picked up some of the words ... "This way ... girl ... hurry!" There was a great scuffling all around, but it was clearly moving away from them, the attention of the searchers being drawn toward the other side of the hill, toward Joy and the scrub field.

  The beast's carcass was quaking, the wound throwing flecks of thickened blood everywhere. His expression awestruck, David sat upright again with the beast's head still in his lap. The creature's jaws opened wide for another long, moist gasp of air.

  The spine hunched upward, the great tail whipped between the beast's haunches and the forelegs contorted inward. The carcass shivered and jerked as though it was freezing as its fur began to cluster. It was sweating below the pelt. The silver hair began dripping off in large, wet clumps.

  Bones popped, Doris saw the head round off, almost shrink away from the fur. The ears curled inward and the muzzle shrank, its tough, black skin peeling away. She looked at David, his teeth clenched as he wiped at the disintegrating fur, pulling it away from the emerging face.

  As the fur dropped off, Doris saw fresh, pink skin, the flex of human shoulders. Forelegs were now arms. Black-clawed toes now fingers with tender, new quick. The hindquarters stretched out into human legs and buttocks.

  All in a matter of minutes. A matter of minutes! Just like at moon rise, when Max had contorted into the beast, he was transforming so quickly Doris could hardly tell where the metamorphosis began or ended. In the blink of an eye, t
he human can become monster. Or find his way back.

  It was Maxwell Pierce who lay before her now. Sluggish, naked. Completely bald, completely hairless. His abdomen still bore the wound, a raw, reddened saucer where Doris had pulled the arrows free. Watery blood seeped from it, but it was already virtually closed, quivering against the cold air.

  After a moment, his eyes fluttered open. David rested his hand against Max's fresh, pink scalp, near the old scar.

  "Over?"Max rasped.

  Doris knelt beside him and picked up his hand. "Over," she said.

  Chapter 40

  David Alma Curar's Shack

  Dawn. Second Night of the Full Moon.

  The ropes again. His arms, that seemed so angry and wrenching before, now wrap her from behind in embrace. Doris sighs and leans into his strength. She leans her head back and does not even look at the straining ropes as she opens her hands to let them whip off into the darkness. Arthur's lips are against her ear, and she lets him pull her upward toward the light.

  Doris blinked awake, amazed that she had fallen so heavily asleep in the bath water, head bent, arms curled around her knees. Bath water, hot and steamy. All the blood gone.

  Max was so deeply asleep on the cot, Doris bathed without concern in the oblong washtub. Outside, she could hear David puttering around, keeping himself busy until she was done and they could change places.

  She wanted to linger. She could sit in that tub for hours, as long as the hot water kept coming. But she knew David would be eager to bathe, too. Like Doris, he'd want to wash the blood away like afterbirth. She rose, shivering in the contrasting cold, toweled off and dressed in her familiar skirt and jacket, tucking her hair into the snood. Somehow they all felt new.

  Doris checked once more on Max before leaving the shack. He had been so weak that she and David had to bathe him like doting parents. But the weakness was only exhaustion, his eyes clear, the awe of being alive burning beneath heavy lids. Now she looked at her palm -fresh, clean, without a trace of the pentagram- and gave Max's bare head a little pat before walking out the open doorway.

  She followed the scent of smoke around the north corner of the shack and found David. In fresh clothing even before bathing, he was burning their blood soaked garb, including her half-vest and arm brace.

  "I'll help you change the water before I go," she said.

  He turned to her. "Thanks. It'll feel good. Are you sure you don't want to rest, just an hour, before going back?"

  "I can't."

  "Are you sure there's something to go back to?"

  "Yes. Not like before. But, yes, there's something to go back to. I've got to find a way to help those boys."

  David smiled. "I think you're making a wise choice. But if something happens to change your mind, you can always come with us."

  "When will you be leaving?"

  "Max needs to rest until the moon passes, and I think we'll be safe until then. So you have a couple of nights' grace."

  Doris smiled. "Old Baldy. Will his hair grow back?"

  David shrugged. "Mine did."

  "Do you think he's serious? Does he really wants to remain as presumed dead?"

  "Yes, he's serious. But I'm glad he has a little time to think it through." David lost his smile, but the affection in his eyes never wavered. "Go on, I can get my own bath water. Those boys need you."

  Epilogue

  Tulenar Internment Camp

  Dawn. Second Night of the Full Moon.

  The Report: At approximately 0100 hours, 23 November 1942, internee Joy M. Haku, daughter of Jesse L. and Harriet K. Haku (Family Number 5727), was abducted from Dormitory Two, Block Eight. The assailant broke through the Haku unit window and kidnapped Miss Haku while Mrs. Haku -contrary to curfew regulation- stood outside the dormitory.

  Mrs. Haku states she was awakened by the sound of scratching at the door and, armed with an ax handle (since confiscated), left the quarters to investigate. Alerted by the sound of breaking glass, Mrs. Haku re-entered the unit to find the window damaged and her daughter missing.

  Mr. Haku was serving his shift with the internee police during this time, and was therefore exempt from the curfew regulation.

  At approximately 0500 hours, 23 November 1942, Joy Haku's remains were located one-quarter mile south of the camp on the east face of the hill locally known as Junction's Peak. Cause of death: Massive internal bleeding produced by severe trauma to heart, lungs and liver.

  / / / /

  The pounding on the Takeis' dormitory door began barely an hour after Andrew and his mother had finally fallen asleep. Opening his eyes Andrew's only movement while his mother threw on a robe. She wasn't a very big woman and he could easily see around her, see the M.P.'s hands gripping their rifles as though they thought his mother might leap at them. Behind them, a Jeep trundled by. A disheveled, frightened teenager -Andrew knew him! He was Endo!- was stuffed in the back seat between another pair of soldiers.

  His mother understood what was happening before Andrew. He could hear it in her voice, iced over with dread. "No. You can't have him. You can't have him!"

  The soldiers shoved upward, shoved past her, and were heading toward Andrew even as he rushed to sit up. Startled, he forgot about his bandaged arm and set his weight against the stitches before yelping with pain. The soldiers stiffened as though he had threatened them, and pointed their guns at his chest.

  "What are you doing, are you crazy!" Mrs. Takei screamed.

  With one soldier keeping aim, the other jerked Andrew to his feet and ordered, "Hands up."

  Dazed, Andrew obeyed as the soldier patted down his sides and inner thighs.

  "Stop it, you'll hurt him, can't you see he's injured! Stop it!"

  The soldier who had searched Andrew clasped him by his pajama collar and glared at Mrs. Takei. "Injured as he slaughtered a five-year-old girl." He brought his face near the boy's. "Come on, asshole. Your ride leaves in fifteen minutes."

  Terrified, Andrew could barely think. "Ma!"

  Mrs. Takei leapt, but the M.P.'s partner pulled her back. The soldier began wrestling Andrew toward the door.

  "Ma!"

  "That's crazy!" she kept screaming. "That's insane! He was at the hospital when it happened! Something attacked him last night, he wasn't anywhere near the Haku's block! Please!! I was with him myself! Listen to me! Listen to reason!"

  But the soldiers made it clear they were listening only to orders. They wrestled Andrew into the waiting Jeep and carted him off to the cargo truck where most of the other Inu Hunters were already handcuffed inside.

  An F.B.I. official with a clipboard checked off Andrew's name, then pinned a stiff paper tag, stamped with his family number, on his pajama shirt. The soldiers pushed him over the tailgate and forced him onto the bench. His arm was too swollen and bandaged to handcuff, so they secured his good wrist to the bench instead.

  Dazed, he looked at his friends, already lining the two benches. Only last night, every one of them had been proud and arrogant. Even now, two of the boy spat epitaphs at the milling officials outside the truck, but the other five were as pale and stunned as Andrew. Endo was shivering, his face bent low, but Andrew could still see tears. He caught the smell of turpentine and wondered in the disjointed way of trauma when his friends had the time to scrub last night's paint from their hands.

  He couldn't remember that much from last night. Mostly, only the eyes of ...that...thing ... and his pals' whoops of victory clipped short by mute terror. Andrew couldn't even remember how he had gotten away. One more handcuffed boy was hoisted over the tailgate.

  Through his daze and the growing clamor of parents only now catching up on foot, Andrew made out a voice he recognized, growing nearer, on the other side of the truck's heavy green canvas cover. A woman's voice:

  "Mrs. Murato, try to stay calm. You have allies, and I'm one of them. Mr. Sata? Mr. Sata, you're an attorney, aren't you? You can be a big help to your son, to all the boys... Hey, someone watch that man over there
, he's about to faint..."

  The woman came around to the tailgate and Andrew turned his unfocused gaze toward her. It was Mrs. Tebbe.

  "Listen, boys," she was saying, "has anyone let you know what's happening?"

  Even Andrew's angry pals quieted. Something in her voice was comforting. Endo managed hoarsely, "We didn't kill anybody."

  "I know you didn't."

  The conviction in her voice seemed to lift Andrew's heavy veil of shock, if only a little.

  "We're going to prison," Endo said, panic lacing his words.

  "I know I can't tell you not to worry, boys, but I'm asking you to stay calm. People are already working to turn this truck right back around as soon as it makes the prison gates..."