Moon Regardless

by Nick Manzolillo

  “I wanted to be presentable.” The regular guy laughs, and it’s then that Paul recognizes a sticky trail of dark fluid leading away from that first table toward the shadows clinging to the rest of the basement. Beside a stack of crates, just off in the darkness, is a heaping pile of dead cats.

  The bell rings once more as Lacy clasps Paul’s arm, waving to the men at the table. One of the women in the shadows hollers out Lacy’s name in a craggy, smoke-throttled voice, and Lacy calls back, “We’re going for the swim! Then the party!”

  A number of the basement dwellers cheer at the mention of a party. Paul hears something stomping around off in the shadows by the crates. He catches a brief glimpse of a man lurking around there. Cat killing is a great many steps in the wrong direction for tonight, but is that really where Paul is going to draw the line?

  “Why the animal killing?” Paul asks Lacy as she leads him up the steps.

  “I’ve recently learned that cats, like other imposters, would like you to believe that just because they kill mice, they are somehow lesser vermin themselves. Cats are worshipped for all the wrong reasons, and I have since quit having any problem seeing them get what they deserve. Plus, I’m a dog person.” Lacy’s smiling his way, and there’s a familiar sickness reemerging in Paul’s stomach. Good thing he didn’t have a bite of anything. Animal sacrifice wouldn’t surprise him, but that pile of dead things in the basement is something else entirely. It’s as if those mongoloids sitting at the pool tables enjoy the killing.

  Emerging back into the main room, there’s a crowd of silver-robed men and women marching toward the back deck. Some of the people in robes look bewildered, and Paul remembers what that Taylor guy with the young blue eyes said about “dates.” The bewildered ones are mostly young girls, though there are a few confused looking guys being ushered along by grinning older women with large teeth. The robes are hoodless and appear more like gowns.

  “Here you are, Lacy.” Johan’s creeping behind them with the books from the display case stacked under his arm, handing Lacy a silver robe. So they were bibles of some sort? Paul wonders if they sum up the Moon Shack any better than Lacy did. “Thank you for showing him around.” Lacy’s nodding, running a hand along Paul’s shoulder. Before she runs off to join the rest of the silver crowd, she tells him to let her know if he needs anything.

  Johan adjusts the books in his arms and catches Paul looking. “These are blasphemous texts, full of lies.”

  “So, nothing about the Moon Shack, then?” Paul doesn’t mean to sound condescending, and he’s immediately concerned for how Johan will interpret his words.

  “No,” Johan smiles, and of course, Paul can’t read him. “There’s only a poem by a man called Charles McKinley; he’d sing it to his special guests. I’ll show it to you sometime, or maybe I’ll recite it for you if you won’t consider such a thing cheesy. There’s only one copy.”

  “Listen…ah…,” and Paul wants to mention the cats in the basement, but what kind of answer would he even want? “Do you live here?” he asks instead.

  “Not here.” Johan looks up and smiles, then points to an older man wearing black glasses that appears to be blind. “Elliot Sampson is the keeper of the komodo. I was just about to introduce you two. Come with me.” They follow after the last of the robed Candle Lighters. Paul finds it funny that Lacy told him she’d answer all his questions. He still knows nothing.

  “I move around a lot. Sometimes the Shack has me; other times, I reside with friends.” Johan grins at Paul, reshuffling the books. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever ask to sleep on your couch.” Except for in Paul’s dreams, maybe. “Not a bad place, overlooking the bay.”

  The blind Elliot Sampson steps out onto the porch ahead of them; he takes off his black glasses in the moonlight, letting loose a throaty cheer. He must have been wearing them for some sort of stylish reason; he doesn’t seem to be blind at all anymore.

  “How come I don’t get a robe?” Paul asks, not liking the idea of standing out more from everyone than he already does.

  “I’ll clear things up when I address everybody, but I’m going to have to ask something of you, Paul. After I formally introduce you, and this had to wait until now—you’ll see why—but after I introduce you, these people will see you in a new light. You’re our symbol of humanity, and in many ways, our virtue,” Johan says.

  “Lacy called me a virgin,” Paul says.

  Johan adjusts his glasses. “Figuratively, she meant. Because everyone else here has, ah, done what you haven’t. It’ll become clear in time; don’t worry. There’s no need to overwhelm you. I am going to have to ask that you watch us perform our ceremony when we go into the sea. Just stand by and watch, and so you know, this is new for everybody. You are the first person to have a position such as yours, so forgive me for how coarse and alienating this presentation may seem. There are other guests here, as you may have noticed. It’s customary for a select few to join us in the ceremony you’re about to witness.” Johan’s not waiting for Paul to respond as he leads him to the back porch.

  Elliot Sampson is swaying and staring up at the moon. He’s a trim and proper looking guy with neat hair and a clean face. He’s probably the same age as Paul, which makes it slightly frustrating that he owns a place this nice. It’s probably not even his main house. Johan introduces them, and when Elliot takes Paul’s hand, he nearly rips it off.

  “He’ll be nothing like that fuckup Harrelson, eh?” Elliot says to Johan in the midst of wrenching Paul’s arm up and down before releasing his grip. “Oh, what a night.” Elliot turns away from Paul and Johan as he makes his way down the porch steps, following the throng of silver men and women streaming along the beach in a gleaming line. Just before the water’s edge, a bonfire cackles, throwing up dancing columns of flame that Paul could stare at for hours on end.

  The citizens of the Moon Shack stand up to their waists in the gently rolling sea as if the moon can pacify the ocean. Johan tosses his armful of ancient books into the fire, and it immediately surges upwards with renewed strength. “Ladies and gentleman, may I just say, fuck all that comes from the night sky save for our mother moon.” Johan raises his arms, his curse still sounding so strange in Paul’s head. The clouds have been completely banished, as have the stars. The moonlight drowns everything.

  “For those of you who do not know, this man…,” Johan begins, thrusting a finger toward Paul as he steps toward the sea. The Candle Lighters spread out in the water as Johan comes to a stop with the heaving tide coming up just over his shoes. This feels like some sort of baptism. Are the politicians still shackled up in the dining room?

  “He stands for what we will never lose! He is the decency we have not lost nor will ever lose! The Moon Shack is our haven, but Paul will lead us! Paul will stand clean from our sin! And so sin we shall!” There are sudden thrashes in the sea as the Candle Lighters seem to turn inwards on one another for a moment, and quickly, there’s a thrashing of silver shapes in the water and faint, strangled screaming. Johan jogs, wading into the tide, joining the squirming fray, and Paul’s unsure of what he’s watching, as the books cackle and crisp into ash beside him.

  The angle of the moonlight illuminates a man pulling back a woman’s hair and biting her throat, nibbling down her neck. Are there people fucking? Men and women are shouting in thrilled unison. Something deeper, almost whale-like, seems to be crying out from the distant sea beyond the splashing crowd of partygoers, but Paul can’t be sure. The smoke from the fire is making him dizzy, and just as he turns away, someone comes running out of the water.

  It’s Lacy. Her robe is gone, and her body, more boney than Paul imagined, is naked, dripping, and vaguely tinged red. Some kind of scar or tattoo is slashed above her hip. Emerging from the sea, she offers her arms as an embrace. “Don’t be afraid; only the outsiders get hurt,” she says. “You’re not a guest like them. Don’t worry. Don’t worry about a t
hing.” She’s resting her head against his shoulder. Those drugged guests, tripping on the worms, oblivious, with those songs in their head, what’s going on in the water looks like a ballet. It hardly seems violent. People are swinging and splashing, dancing.

  Someone else is running out of the water as Lacy slips out of Paul’s arms. A naked old man is the next to hug him. “You are so good. Don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you, you are no lamb.” Paul doesn’t know who the man is, as his clothes are becoming soaked and someone else is hugging him as the man moves away. One by one, the Candle Lighters slink from the sea to squeeze him.

  “We will be your knife,” a man whispers in Paul’s ear after he’s squeezed so hard he’s afraid a rib will burst.

  A woman slips into his arms and grabs his crotch, and says, “We can make our apathy burn.”

  Paul wants to cry out when Johan replaces the woman’s embrace. He would keel over if it weren’t for the endless parade of hugs.

  “You have nothing to worry about. Our appetites are stayed.” Johan’s leaning against Paul, and there is much worse than hugging a naked man. “You’ll never have to watch again.” Paul’s aware of things, or maybe people, left behind, floating in the water. The fire beside him begins to die, having gorged itself to death on unknowable tomes. Dripping from the sea, he is left shivering in the moonlight before the Candle Lighters usher him back to the big house, the Palace of the Komodo.

  Chapter 7: The Mid-Summer Ritual

  There is a killer in Providence, and there are no such things as coincidences. Hap is going to need a scrub brush to get all the blood out of his fingernails.

  A car in the city means all sorts of bullshit, from the two-hundred-dollar-a-year overnight parking pass to the nightmarish one-way, back-and-forth streets. Since moving to the city with his car, key scratches appeared along the sides of Hap’s doors, presumably from jealous, nocturnal homeless men. Now, accompanying those scratches are splotches of blood and tufts of hair. The deer came for him, dipping out from beside a crumbling stoop and charging toward the right side of his Ford. His windshield shattered, his airbag gave him a solid punch, and Hap now wears a fine badge of scratches across his face.

  Hap is on autopilot when he engages the parking brake and howls into the night, wiping blood from his eyes and picking glass from his body. The upper half of the deer’s head is practically in his lap, its antlers tearing into the fabric of the passenger seat. If that thing had come in from the right instead of the left, he would be in pieces. What the hell’s a deer even doing out of the country? Providence is surrounded by strip malls and suburbs. It’s a long walk from the woods.

  Somebody driving past calls the cops. At least that’s what Hap figures when the blue flashing lights break through the orange streetlight-slashed shadows behind him. There forms a small gathering of humanity’s finest good Samaritans, alongside its most perverse auditors, who surround the wreckage. When Hap emerges in one piece, there is a collective gasp of relief and also a quieter sigh of disappointment, as if some wanted the crash to be as dramatic and deadly as possible. Hap wanders over to sit on a stoop, which is the same cracked set of stairs from which the deer leapt. The approaching sirens make the city seem as though it is alive and squealing in anticipation of wrapping its lips around him. Casting his eyes down, he notes long, syrupy lines of blood on the pavement. From him? He’s not bleeding that profusely.

  Mosquitos pick at Hap’s raw flesh as the golden sky of dusk becomes rotten with shadow. Some of the people remaining on the street utter meaningless questions at him, while others eye his wreckage and their flashing, clicking phones remind him of insects rubbing their mandibles and chirping away. Hap feels a nostalgic ache for his own camera and that peaceful sense of completion just as he lines up a shot.

  The post-accident headache throbs onward. Once the ambulance attendees get tired of Hap reaffirming that he is fine and doesn’t need to go to the hospital, they take off. The cluster of citizens along the sidewalk disperses, leaving only a cop, a tow truck driver, and an animal control officer whose job it is to mop up the mess. What looks like a couple of news guys in a white van show up, but the one officer on the scene jogs over to them, and they are almost immediately nodding with grave frowns before driving off with hardly a glance Hap’s way. In order to get Hap’s car back, there will be another bill for his parents to cover. He almost lets the tow truck take the car before he remembers the prize in his trunk.

  A cop approaches him, asking if it’s okay to get Hap’s statement, but Hap has to raise a finger for him to wait as Hap frantically clicks his keys at the trunk of his Ford before running to the open hatch to peer at his treasure. During his lunch break, hours earlier, Hap had seen that someone on Craigslist was selling a telescope reminiscent of the one Tiff had. Hap immediately told the guy, who lived over the bridge in East Providence, that he’d pick it up after his shift. Taking the mercifully undented telescope from his trunk, Hap approaches the patiently waiting cop with it cradled in his arms, trying to act as though it doesn’t weigh nearly sixty pounds.

  “Least you didn’t buckle that up front with you, yeah?” The cop is friendly and confident; he’s taking control of the situation, which helps break away the shock of the accident a little. The cop looks at Hap knowingly, and Hap feels his heart skip a beat. “Hey, aren’t you the kid that said a dog was trapped in that house on America Street? I bet you saw a rat instead.” Hap had forgotten just how small Providence is.

  Hap notes “Dylan” on the cop’s little golden nametag. Cops are not your friends, Hap vows to try and remember.

  Officer Dylan takes Hap’s information and then keeps waving around the clipboard containing Hap’s information like it’s a fan as he eyes the wreckage of the Ford and watches Animal Control haul the deer carcass out of Hap’s windshield. “Ya hear about coyotes on rooftops in Manhattan, so I guess this is believable, huh? Least you didn’t run into that fucking lunatic who’s running around.”

  Hap flinches. All day long he has been thinking about the actual, reality-stopping serial killer who’s allegedly roaming the streets. Providence has its first serial killer in as long as anyone can remember, and Hap doesn’t even want to consider what that might have to do with Tiffany. There is a thing about coincidences.

  “If only this could’ve happened on my way to work instead,” Hap says, halfheartedly trying to make the cop laugh as they stand side by side watching a rough-looking tow truck driver in a Boston Red Sox hat begin hooking chains around the front of the Ford. This guy’s not a racist, at least. There’s something satisfying about the idea of making a stern-looking cop or grumpy professor laugh. Hell, for Hap’s own assurance, it’s worth the effort.

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky tomorrow. Where you work?” Officer Dylan tucks his clipboard into his glove box and crosses his arms. Is it because Hap has watched too many movies, or is there really something to how penetrating a cop’s eyes are? Standing in front of Officer Dylan suddenly feels worse than giving a presentation to a room full of snobby philosophy students.

  Officer Dylan’s eyes flash with recognition when Hap tells him about the Miskatonic. “The haunted one, huh?” he says with a grin, and Hap eyes the handle of the man’s gun for a moment. It seems like it’s such a part of his uniform that it isn’t capable of detaching.

  In the brief silence that follows, Hap decides to do something that may just make this all worth it. Shuffling the telescope so that it leans against his knee on the sidewalk, he tries to take advantage of having a Providence cop’s ear. “My girlfriend, Tiffany Lorice, disappeared while attending a party there a little over a month and a half ago.” Hap doesn’t know what he expects the cop to tell him.

  “Well, shit,” Officer Dylan says, and Hap shrugs off a guilty tingle over making the guy feel awkward. He’s a cop; awkward is probably in the job description. “Some stretch of luck you’re having, huh? I heard about her….” He nods, a
nd maybe he remembers hearing about Hap being given a break by that one cop outside the Miskatonic, who gave him a ride to the bus station instead of arresting him. That day didn’t happen. His girlfriend disappeared, and now he’s undercover, searching for her. There is nothing sloppy about this.

  Hap accepts a ride home, only a three-minute drive to the other side of the hill. Officer Dylan tells him about his wife while Hap eyes the strange controls along the cruiser’s dashboard. Dylan mentions how he and his wife have been together since high school before he joined the service and went overseas. Dylan’s somber for a moment. “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to her.”

  Hap nods in agreement. He still doesn’t know how he himself will inevitably act now that Tiff is gone. “Nobody’s doing anything about Tiff. Nobody’s told me anything.” The ensuing shrug Officer Dylan gives him is at least honest. There is only so much that can be done. When Hap sees discomfort on a cop’s face, instead of that mask of authority, well, nothing could make him feel less safe.

  “You know, missing girl just over a month ago…I’ll see what’s going on for you. And hey….” The squad car pulls up to Hap’s, and his chance to pitch his case to somebody in charge is over. Officer Dylan smacks a business card with his contact information into Hap’s palm. “Now, don’t fall asleep for a few hours, in case you have a concussion, you know?”

  And Hap does sort of know. He’s planning something, and sleep has got nothing to do with it.

  In his apartment, Hap secures the telescope, splashes some water on his face, and decides he is going to get very drunk. Thumbing through the fresh bills in his wallet, he realizes he’s been using that damn credit card so much he’s forgotten what cash from a recently deposited paycheck even feels like. It’s been nearly two weeks, which seems hard for him to believe. Two full months since Tiff disappeared. Hah, money, how useless. Could he really sit at a bar right now, full of people his own age, laughing and smiling with their friends?