Under the Wicked Moon: A Novel

by Abe Moss

  “You want to fuck him tonight.”

  She hesitated. An uneasy tension creeped in, stiffening her fingers. Quickly, she flushed and turned to the door, but faltered a second time. As intent on escaping as she was, she feared stepping out. It almost seemed… safer, to wait. To let this tactless woman finish her business first and go.

  Shaking her head—perhaps the woman was drunk—Maria opened her stall door at last and approached the row of sinks, the dirty mirrors above them. She was surprised to see her own blushing reflection as she turned on the faucet. Her hands were shaking. Behind her, there came the sounds of the woman standing. Maria waited, the water running, listening.

  “You don’t want to die before experiencing the touch of a man, do you?”

  Leaning over the running faucet, she gripped the sides of the sink with white-knuckles, and as the stall behind her opened, she turned to face the woman coming out of it, her muscles bunched and ready to spring in case of confrontation. The door swung. The woman stepped out.

  “Girl pretty as you…” the woman said, coming toward her in her long, black dress, skin pale as milk, lips red as an innocent’s blood. And her eyes…

  —her eye—

  “…be a shame to waste it.”

  With her back to the sink, Maria pushed against it in fear of the woman, who continued to approach. Slow. Deliberate.

  “We met in a bathroom, didn’t we?”

  The woman stepped close as could be without touching. She leaned over Maria as Maria leaned back, hands braced behind her on the sink. Unlike the first time they met, the woman had one eye now. Her other eye was nothing but scar tissue, mangled as the flesh on Maria’s throat. With the eye she had left—a beautiful, chocolate brown—the woman looked over Maria’s face, then to her neck, and a smile formed on her plump lips.

  “Did I do that?” the woman asked. Maria said nothing. A moment later, the smile on the woman’s face dissolved like a mirage, and she snarled. “Well, you did this to me.”

  She turned her face to emphasize that missing eye. Maria leaned back farther, turned her own face away to avoid her. She released a small, pathetic moan.

  “We’re not even yet,” the woman added. “You took something from me, pretty girl. And I’m here to warn you—because a warning’s only fair—that I’m going to take everything from you. Everything.”

  The woman’s single eye warmed, blazed into a sour yellow. For just an instant. Maria looked away, desperate not to be so close, though she didn’t dare move. The woman scoffed.

  “You thought you’d escaped, didn’t you?” Her lips curled insidiously. “A strong little survivor. Is that what you thought? As if we wouldn’t look? As if we would just let you get away so easily?” Quick as a serpent, the woman seized Maria by the chin. “It’s far from over… Maria.” The woman stepped back finally. Maria remained as she was. “Enjoy the rest of your night. It just might be your last.”

  With a flourish of her black dress and dark hair, the woman spun on her heel and stormed from the bathroom.

  Only when the door swung shut did Maria breathe again, though not comfortably. The world came crashing down on top of her. Her shoulders slackened under the weight of it. She turned to the bathroom mirror, head bent over the sink. She gasped for air. She allowed herself a minute of that before she straightened, doing her damnedest to compose herself. She leaned forward and inspected her mouth in the mirror, her chin where the woman had touched her. She washed her hands and pulled paper towels from the dispenser to dry them, which she also used to blot her eyes. She waited another minute. Just to catch her breath. Then, working her posture into something halfway ordinary, she returned to Jessup.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  They stepped outside in a flurry of footsteps, a cold night breeze from the west, a dreadful silence between them as Jessup followed frantically behind her through the parking lot, feet kicking the pavement, wracking his brain trying to think of what might have gone wrong in the few minutes she’d been gone.

  “Are you sure you’re all right? You don’t want to talk? Did something happen?”

  “I just need to go back to my apartment.” She hugged herself in the bitter chill. They reached the car and she stood by her door waiting for Jessup to unlock it. “I’m sorry. I’m just… not feeling well.”

  He fumbled his keys in his hands on the other side, going as quickly as he could. She hadn’t specified she was in a hurry, but the mood lent itself to that. The locks clicked and she opened her door and climbed in. Once Jessup was seated behind the wheel and the doors were shut and the car was quiet—the sounds of the parking lot muffled outside—he turned to her and asked one last time.

  “Was it something I did?”

  “No.” She watched out her window, at the dark sky above. She looked to the rooftop of the nearby strip mall, spotted nothing perched there in the gloom. “I know I’m coming off really strange right now, it’s just…” She paused. Jessup waited patiently. “I have some family stuff going on, is all, and…”

  Lies, lies, lies.

  She thought briefly about their earlier conversation over dinner, about ghosts and the like, and she wondered again if now wasn’t the time to spill everything. Not that she thought Jessup was owed the truth, but rather she was attracted to the idea that he might believe it. Maybe. Just maybe…

  “I got a text while I was in the bathroom about some family stuff, and I just need to be alone, is all.”

  “You can tell me about it, if you’d like. I’ll listen. If it would help—”

  “It wouldn’t,” she said abruptly. She pulled her seatbelt across herself, buckling in. “I just really want to be alone right now. I’m sorry.”

  She felt sick saying it. It was the biggest lie of all. Being alone was the last thing she wanted. She couldn’t have been more afraid. More lonely. Surely it’s what they would want. For her to be alone. Defenseless.

  This occurred to her on the drive back to her apartment, and when she climbed out from the passenger seat and reached for her purse on the floor, she noticed the tremors in her hands. They were exceptionally bad lately.

  “I really enjoyed our date,” she said. If not for the circumstances, she might have been amused by the look of horrified confusion on Jessup’s face as she spoke those words. “I’m really sorry about all this.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he said. “I just hope everything’s okay…”

  She nodded. Aggressively. “It is. Thank you.”

  “Can I text you in the morning?” he asked. “Or… do you just want space? That’s cool, too, of course…”

  She continued nodding, slowly standing, anything to get away quicker, to have him gone and to flee into her apartment like a gopher into its hole…

  Before the owl in the sky noticed the gopher scurrying…

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said. “How about that?”

  “Okay—”

  “Goodnight, Jessup. Drive safe.”

  She shut the door. Her legs whispered angrily off each other toward her dormitory. Approaching the front doors, in their reflection she saw herself, hugging her middle, walking so hurriedly that her hair flounced side to side behind her head. Jessup’s car waited at the curb behind her, waiting to see her disappear safely inside, and she appreciated that, at least. Sure, getting inside didn’t mean she was safe, but it was a nice gesture all the same.

  Through the doors, the tiny lobby was warm and quiet. Empty. She jogged to the stairs, holding her purse tight over her shoulder, hand reaching to the handrail. Her feet stomped loudly as she chased her way to the third floor. In the hallway, she made a final run toward her apartment door, fishing her keys out of her purse as she went.

  What do I do? What do I do?

  “I don’t know… I don’t know…” she answered aloud.

  She unlocked her door and stepped inside. She sat her purse on the table, shut the door behind her and, with an exhausted sigh, slouched with her back against it. In the dark,
she put her hand to her throat, to the scars there. She found the necklace and pulled it out from underneath her sweater, clutched the leather pendant in her shaking hand. She put it to her lips, whispering her agitated thoughts against it.

  “Fuck… fuck… fuck…”

  She flipped the lamp on beside the sofa—a dim, comfortable light.

  “Harvey?” she called softly, moving from the front room toward her bedroom. She scanned the apartment, seeing no sight of him. “Harvey, are you here?”

  Standing in her bedroom doorway, she saw him finally. At her bedroom window, just his shape against the blinds.

  On the brink of tears, she said, “They’re here, Harvey. They know where I am. What do I do?”

  Maria waited for an answer, but it didn’t come. The figure by the window shifted. A rustle of clothing. She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a jarring premonition—a feeling of trickling dread over the room. Her skin started to crawl as she stood in the doorway, watching the figure at the window. Her animal brain was trying to tell her something—delivering a message which she felt up her spine, the back of her neck.

  Get out. Get out.

  “Harvey?” the figure at the window asked. “I think you’re mistaken.”

  Maria reached for the light switch. As her hand felt along the wall, another sound reached her ears, moving behind her, something approaching. Footsteps. She turned as the second intruder’s breath landed upon her face, the wheezing cackle rising from their chest.

  “Remember me?”

  Maria screamed as the woman shoved her against the doorframe. Maria coughed, a pain between her shoulder blades. The woman grabbed her by the biceps, pinning her there. Fighting, trying to get her hands up between them, Maria stepped clumsily over her own feet, and they turned together in the doorway. Stepping away from her bedroom door, she glimpsed the dark figure by the window approaching them, coming to join in their skirmish. Maria kicked and swatted, just as the woman’s pinching claws threw her backward into the kitchen. With a grunt, she landed on her ass, slid across the floor. Wincing—there would be definite bruises—she attempted to stand just as the witch fell upon her.

  “Get off!” Maria screamed. “Get the—”

  The witch grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the floor. One hand. Two hands. Throttling her, she called to the woman in the bedroom.

  “Annora! What are you doing? Help me!”

  Annora stood in the doorway behind them, illuminated by the lamplight in the living room, watching with her one good eye. The look she wore was a cross between amusement and sadistic vindication.

  As the witch continued to strangle her—Hiltrude, Maria recalled distantly, though in her much less horrifying human form—Maria reached into the pocket of her jeans and found something useful there. She grabbed hold of it, struggled to pull it free. Hiltrude, with her long-fingered hands clamped around her throat, lifted Maria’s head from the floor and forced her back down against it. Maria faded slightly, a dizzying ache through her skull. She pulled the bottle out from her pocket. She fumbled it in her fingers, turning it correctly in her hand. Annora came closer behind them, reveling in their quarrel. Maria brought the bottle between hers and Hiltrude’s faces and compressed the cap, releasing a thick squirt into the witch’s eyes.

  Hiltrude howled. Her hands released Maria’s throat. Catching the peripheral mist of the spray, Maria turned onto her stomach, coughing and gasping, and crawled out from under her. She scrambled toward the kitchen on her hands and knees. Footsteps followed. With her vision blurred, eyes watering, she pointed the pepper spray over her shoulder and fired aimlessly. She reached for the kitchen counter above her head, pulled herself onto her feet. She found the cutlery block there, an assortment of knives to choose from. She claimed the handle of the largest blade, was about to pull it free, when Annora crashed against her, knocked her forward against the countertop. She wrapped her fingers in Maria’s hair and pulled her back. They stumbled together. Still grasping the handle of the knife, Maria dragged the entire block off the counter. With the knife held in her fist, the cutlery block fell to the floor with a loud crash.

  “Let go of me!”

  She brandished the knife behind her head. Pulling her hair in one hand, Annora seized her by the wrist with her other, the knife pointed toward the ceiling. Maria opened her mouth in a silent scream as Annora pierced the thick fleshy pad of her palm with her jagged thumbnail, deeper and deeper until she opened her hand from around the knife and it clattered to the floor. Annora forced her forward again, jerking Maria’s head side to side, back and forth. The witch quickly bent toward the floor, jerking Maria down with her, and Maria listened to the scrape of the knife off the ground. A moment later and its cold steel touched the side of her neck.

  “Let’s get this junk off you, hmm?” Annora breathed in her ear.

  With a snap, her necklace was cut loose. In that same instant, Annora whispered something to her, something foreign, a musical chant, and Maria abruptly lost all control. Like a bundle of wet towels, she collapsed into the witch’s arms. They stood that way for a minute. She listened to Annora’s tired wheezing, deciding on what to do with her now.

  Meanwhile, behind them, Hiltrude continued to writhe on the floor, hands over her face, her eyes, moaning profanities.

  “Oh, Hiltrude,” Annora said scornfully. “Quit your bellyaching and help me.”

  “Help you?” Hiltrude cried. “Help you?”

  Maria could do little else but roll her eyes around in their sockets, could only watch as Annora dragged her through the kitchen, through the dark doorway into her bedroom. Annora grunted as she hoisted Maria’s dead weight upon the bed. The mattress squealed. Annora turned on the light.

  “Get off the floor and come in here,” Annora ordered her sister. “Hurry up.”

  Maria lay on her back. She looked side to side, to the ceiling, hearing their chatter and their footsteps in the kitchen outside, and the sound of her own quick, shallow breaths through her teeth. She willed herself to move but felt nothing, only the tender wound in the palm of her hand, the throbbing ache of her skull. She was floating, just her eyes, suspended above her bed, nothing but air and consciousness and pain…

  The witches entered the room. Annora, with her missing eye, stood beside the bed with her arms folded beneath her breasts, proudly savoring Maria’s sorry state. Hiltrude continued to cough and whine out of sight. Annora, her pleasure faltering for an instant, glanced in her sister’s direction, agitated.

  “Are you going to moan all night?”

  “You don’t know what this feels like,” Hiltrude complained. “We shouldn’t have come here… why did we have to come here? We should have just… killed her. Gotten it over with quickly…”

  “No…” Annora set her cold, calculating eyes upon Maria. It was one thing to be thankful for, Maria thought, that however frightened she was, it wouldn’t be apparent on her numbed face. “We’ve always made it a point to make those who have wronged us regret it.” She bowed over Maria, close enough that Maria sniffed the deathly stench of witch’s breath from her otherwise seductive mouth. “Oh, and how you’ve wronged me.”

  “I could be blind,” Hiltrude said, wheezing. “Because of this, I could be—”

  “Oh, enough!” Annora exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. She puffed from her pursed lips, irritated her moment was being ruined. She wore a belt around her waist, from which she unsheathed a long, thin blade. She put it to Maria’s throat. Maria couldn’t even whimper, though she might have. “If all I wanted was to kill you, I would. Right now. Or earlier, in the toilets. Or before that, when I first found you… watched you…”

  She pressed the tip of the knife beneath Maria’s jaw. She traced it, gentle and dangerous, down the length of her already-scarred throat, down her collarbone, her chest. Maria watched as Annora’s eyes followed the knife, and her performative smile sank into a dull, ugly frown, lips parted, tongue dancing behind her teet
h as she pondered whatever sick ideas she had.

  “I could cut you open now like we did your baby brother. Empty you on your bed here. Watch you soak in it. You think I can’t see the fear on you now, but I can. It’s in your eyes. I could slit you…” She drew the tip of the blade between Maria’s breasts, down her belly toward her navel. “…all the way down like a zippered suit. And pull out your insides. I could make you taste them. Eat them…”

  A tear rolled down Maria’s cheek. Annora’s eyes snapped to it like lightning to a rod. She pouted her lips sympathetically.

  “It is scary. I know.”

  She brought the blade to Maria’s face, touched it to her cheek where the teardrop sat. Then, with a look of increasing fascination, Annora put the blade to Maria’s mouth and parted her lips with it. She pushed the blade in. Maria felt its cold, sharp steel on her tongue. Tasted it. Salty with her tears. Annora’s singular eye grew distant, a perverse daydream within it. Once she noticed Maria observing her, she pulled the blade from her mouth and slid it safely back into its sheath.

  “But I don’t want to kill you, Maria.” She smiled fondly. “I want you to suffer first. For thinking you were ever clever enough to get away from me, to get away with what you did.” Annora turned her face so that Maria could get another good look at the wound she’d inflicted on her the previous year. “You see it? With both those pretty eyes of yours?” She straightened. “I can grant myself youth. I can grant myself power. I can mend a broken heart or crush one just as easily. But I can’t mend this. I’m stuck this way, because of you. No spell or tonic can fix this. And at the hands of someone so… so… wretched. I’m going to make you suffer for thinking you ever stood a chance. Pathetic.”

  She spat on her. Hot and runny across the bridge of her nose. Just as she couldn’t express fear, nor could Maria express disgust. But she felt both in their extremes.

  “I’m going to take everything from you. I’ll show you the depths of loss, and only when you have nothing left to lose, then I’ll finish it. I’ll come back to you, on a night like this, after you’ve been broken in all ways but physical… and I’ll put you out of your misery. Perhaps I’ll save a part of you. Add you to our collection. Essence of virgin brat is harder to come by these days, after all…”