Under the Wicked Moon: A Novel

by Abe Moss

  “Who was she?”

  She reached for another glass jar. There weren’t many more to break. She grabbed the next, an icy blue, and held it thoughtfully.

  “She was a friend of my mother’s…” She turned the blue jar over in her hands, thinking.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing, really. It just… explains a lot.”

  She broke the blue jar. Then another green one. A violet one. A smoky gray one. Before much longer, she was down to the very last. The jar on the table, red and swirling.

  “That’s a sinner’s jar if I ever saw one,” Harvey said.

  Maria held it in both hands under her face, getting a good look into its mist. Her face contorted, she couldn’t help it, and she couldn’t believe after everything that had happened that she still possessed the capacity for these emotions.

  “Thank you,” Harvey said.

  She turned to him. He smiled, and her stupid mouth quivered as she tried returning it.

  “Are you scared?” she asked, tears spilling down her face. “Do you know what happens once I break this?”

  He shrugged. “No, but I’m looking forward to it.”

  She tried to laugh. A pitiful sound. She didn’t know Harvey. Barely more than a stranger. And yet she hated the idea of not seeing him again. Even if it was always in the privacy of a bathroom…

  “I’d be inside one of these, too, if it wasn’t for you,” Maria said, reflecting on that horrid night. If not for Harvey and his warning, she’d never have made it beyond the trapdoor and its enchantment, she thought.

  “I think we’re even.”

  She cleared her throat. She held the jar up, ready to smash it. She looked to him, his handsome, ghostly face lighting up with anticipation—unprepared but hopeful.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  “Bye, Harvey.”

  “Goodbye, Maria.”

  She hurled the jar and set him free.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Maria climbed into the passenger seat. Jessup sat naked behind the wheel of the SUV, exhausted but motivated to put this place behind them. The sun was peeking over the hills and its vivid, orange rays gleamed off the hood of the car, over the dash. He started the engine. Slowly, each of their bodies sinking exhaustedly into their seats, he pulled the car around and they headed back in the direction of the highway, however many miles off.

  “Let’s get us both to a hospital,” Jessup said. “As soon as we get service again, we can find the nearest one…”

  Maria looked out her window. She bent a little, enough to see part of the sky behind them. The moon, where she’d seen it last, must have sank fully into the daylight as it wasn’t visible to her anymore.

  “What are you looking at?” Jessup asked.

  She faced forward in her seat and felt Jessup’s attention as he repeatedly turned to look at her.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “We made it.”

  She offered him a brief smile. She was grateful for his help. But there were thoughts chasing chaotically across her scrambled mind now, which she couldn’t begin sorting through. Not as tired as she was. As beaten as she was. It was difficult to focus. She wanted to melt into her seat and sleep for a decade.

  “I’m sure our parents are worried to death about us,” Jessup said.

  That was an… oddly nice sentiment, Maria thought. Not that her parents were worried, but that she could now put them at ease. They were safe and sound, wherever they were. Possibly at her apartment, even. Her mom could tell something wasn’t right. It would be just like her to come to the rescue regardless of how fine Maria said she was.

  And she was fine, she thought. For the most part.

  Daring to look against her better judgement, Maria pulled down the visor and observed herself in the mirror. Just like in her grandmother’s bathroom, her heart lurched at the sight of herself. Her deflated, empty eye socket was swollen and angry and red. She also glimpsed the oozing wound in her shoulder, and the nasty bites surrounding it along her neck. Was there any part of her, she wondered, that wasn’t scarred?

  Flipping the visor up, she settled back into her seat with a laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Jessup asked, torn between morbid doubt and longing for something to lighten the mood.

  She shrugged. “I was just thinking…” She laughed again. She was crazy to laugh. With her head back against the headrest, she turned to face him, smiling genuinely this time. “They have to believe me now, don’t they?”

  EPILOGUE

  SCARS

  Your eye’s gone a bit wonky.”

  Straightening her sweater, having just gotten dressed, Maria paused. “Really?”

  Judging by the look on Jessup’s face—he tried so dearly not to laugh when this happened, he really did—she knew he told the truth.

  “Shit.”

  She hurried into her apartment bathroom and flipped on the light. She examined herself in the mirror. Jessup, the adorably honest man that he was, was right. Quickly, Maria popped out the prosthetic. She gave it a brief rinse. Before she had a chance to pop it back in, Jessup swung around the doorframe next to her, watching.

  “Oh,” Maria said, “you know I hate it when you watch…”

  “I know,” he answered. “That’s why I’m desensitizing you. You know it makes no difference to me.”

  Maria sighed, holding the prosthetic in her palm. Jessup sighed, too.

  “I’m only disappointed it’s not round,” he said. “Until I met you, I always thought the artificial ones were round.”

  Pulling her eyelid open in the mirror, Maria gently inserted the half-dome of the prosthetic into her empty socket. Carefully, she blinked it into place. She grabbed her bottle of eyedrops from the counter and added a few for good measure.

  “I’m sorry it’s not everything you hoped it would be,” she said, examining herself one last time. She turned to Jessup so he could see. “Better?”

  “Perfect either way,” he said, grinning. He put his hands on her hips, swaying side to side. Such a dork. As often as Maria wanted to roll her eyes at the things he said, she did much less of that now. She settled for a peck on the lips instead.

  “I need to finish getting dressed. My mom will be here any minute.”

  Reluctantly, with one more kiss on the cheek, he let her go. “I know, I know…”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The sky was overcast, dark with the promise of rain but none as of yet. Maria stood beside her mother at the foot of the burial plot—there but not really there. Somewhere else. Her mind wandered a lot these days.

  “Maria, I have something I need to say to you…”

  Maria twitched. The silence that followed was uncomfortably prolonged.

  “Is it my eye?” She turned to face her mother, who looked at her as if she didn’t know what she was talking about. “Which one of them isn’t looking at you right now? Tell me.”

  “No. Your eyes are lovely…”

  “Oh…”

  “I need to tell you how sorry I am.”

  Maria was surprised, lost for words. “Oh, I… um… for what?”

  “I should have listened to you. After everything that happened, how insistent you were on what happened, I should have listened. I should have believed you…”

  “Oh,” Maria said, realizing what her mother meant. “Mom, it’s fine. I understand why you didn’t.”

  “No.” Her mom stopped her. “I keep thinking about how irresponsible it was—to convince you that you needed us when we weren’t really there for you… I get frustrated thinking about it, it makes me sick…”

  “Mom…”

  “Out of anyone else in your life, we should have supported you from the beginning—”

  “Mom.” She put a hand on her mother’s shoulder to finally silence her. “I know why you couldn’t say it.”

  Now it was her mother who appeared surprised. “Say what?”

/>   “That you believed me all along.”

  Maria watched her mother intently. She noticed the way her eyes widened very briefly, quick enough that Maria could have missed it in a heartbeat. Her mother parted and closed her lips several times, stuck on what she could possibly say.

  “I saw your friend,” Maria went on. “When I was there last, in the cave. The little girl from Wellwyn who went missing. She was still in that cave, trapped with so many others like her. Not her, but part of her. I wanted to tell you eventually. I wanted you to know she’s free now.”

  Her mother didn’t become emotional, but she was visibly shaken. It had been a long time, no doubt. She looked away, staring vacantly as her thoughts chased each other in circles.

  “Hannah…” her mother said. She looked at Maria. “I never forgot her name, I just hated saying it.”

  “You knew what happened to her, didn’t you?”

  Her mother blinked idly as she remembered.

  “I was only little myself…” She swallowed. “She told me she was visited by three women. I didn’t believe her at the time. I thought… I thought she was making up stories, because that was something she liked to do. She told me she was visited by angels. That’s what she called them. She said they were ‘flying’ outside her bedroom window. They told her to come outside, and she wouldn’t. Not that night, at least… It was a week after she told me, when she went missing.”

  “When I told the police my story, it reminded you of her, didn’t it?”

  Maria watched as her mother visibly filled with shame again. Guilt. Heartache.

  “It terrified me. I don’t know why I ignored your story, I just… accepted what the doctors said, what the police said…”

  “Yeah, well… their denial won’t end any time soon. Even with Jessup confirming everything, they shrugged off those more fantastical parts of our story, didn’t they…”

  “It was too similar to be a coincidence,” her mother said, those same thoughts still chasing, still circling, barely hearing what Maria had just said. “And yet I just… put it out of my mind.”

  “I understand, mom. I really do.”

  Her mother took her hand and squeezed it uncomfortably hard. “I hope you know I’ll never doubt you again. You can tell me anything. I really hope you know that…”

  “I do.”

  They stood together in silence for a time, hand in hand, enjoying the calm before the storm. Cemeteries were great that way, Maria thought. It was always quiet. And no matter how many strangers might be there with you, it never felt crowded, and their presence rarely felt unwelcome. It was likely anyone there was there for the same reasons. There was something to appreciate in that. Almost a comfort. People visiting the cemetery all had something in common, didn’t they? An understanding.

  Maria wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable about visiting as she’d been. Death wasn’t such a foreign concept to her anymore. Neither was grief, nor acceptance, nor letting go. Most of all, sharing herself with those whom she cared for was getting easier. She recalled just how alone she’d felt, and it was so freeing to know it didn’t need to be that way. She had her parents, and likewise they had her. For anything and everything. She had Jessup, too. She had her friends, the few there were. Her therapist insisted she surround herself with the people who love her, and suggested that she never hesitate to lean on them. She thought she was getting better at that as well.

  She felt a raindrop on the tip of her nose. She looked up at the clouds, and her mother did the same. A few seconds later there were more, and even more after that.

  “Let’s get back to the car,” her mother said. “I didn’t bring an umbrella.”

  As her mom started off, Maria paused. She looked at the headstone, observed it briefly, read the words on its face with a gentle tug inside her chest. She looked around the surrounding cemetery, noting how pretty it looked in the rain, and smiled to herself. She read the headstone one last time, shiny and wet.

  MICHAEL JENKINS

  LOVING SON AND BROTHER

  “I miss you,” she whispered.

  On their way back to the car, she was privately glad for the rain. Without an umbrella, raindrops or tears—there was no difference.

  JOIN MY MAILING LIST FOR A FREE SHORT STORY DOWNLOAD AND FOR FUTURE AUTHOR UPDATES.

  SUBSCRIBE HERE TO GET YOUR COPY OF

  A SPECIAL THANKS

  Dear brave, adventurous reader,

  I must say thank you. Without readers like you, authors like me wouldn’t be allowed a paddle in this violent, everchanging sea—otherwise known as the publishing world.

  I was just a scrawny eighteen-year-old when I wrote my first novel, The Writhing. A bit nervous and unsure of myself, I held onto it for TEN YEARS, writing a couple more novels in the meantime which I was equally unsure about. It took me a decade to realize my stories weren’t doing anyone any good just sitting on my laptop, and in 2019 I decided it was finally time to take the plunge. All I can say now is thank you. I only write this disturbing filth with the utmost love and sincerity. To be granted your curiosity means more than you can ever know. You are truly the best.

  If you have a moment, let me know your thoughts by leaving an honest review. It’s a simple gesture that means the world to us indie publishers and helps other curious readers such as yourself find books like mine. I’d greatly appreciate it.

  Thanks again! There’s plenty more horror to come!

  Visit www.abemoss.com and sign up to receive a FREE SHORT STORY download and announcements on future releases, or to message me personally via the “Message The Author” page. I’d love to hear from you! Let’s talk horror!

  MORE DISTURBING FILTH BY ABE MOSS

  THE WRITHING

  BATHWATER BLUES

  BY THE LIGHT OF HIS LANTERN

  LITTLE EMMETT