The Shadow of the Moon

by Michael Dunn

  The Shadow of the Moon

  By

  Michael Dunn

  Copyright © 2013 by Michael Dunn

  Cover art by Joseph Riggi

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  ISBN 978-0-9894129-0-2

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  The author would like to thank the following people for their contributions to this novel:

  Elizabeth Beetz, Kathleen Rose Szobar, Ashley Ryan, Peter O’Neill, Joseph Riggi, and Ernest McGeorge.

  Chapter One: Predators

  April 5th, 1971

  A predator regularly stalked American high schools, especially during times of war. It lurked from the distance, biding its time, watching, weighing its options, and like all good predators, it had a knack for knowing where to find the best prey. It was an eating machine that attacked and devoured its prey mind, body, and soul, and although often voracious in its pursuits, it sought out only the strong and the vigorous in body. Unlike most predators, it never pursued the sick or the lame. The poor and the uneducated were among its favorite prey.

  This predator always looked impressive in its polished and pressed uniforms, never appearing threatening. Sometimes it was a Marine dress-blue uniform, Navy whites, Air Force light blue, or Army fatigues. All boys within a year of turning eighteen were required to report to the school auditorium for a meeting about selective service. They were prime cuts for the military draft board, and it was always very hungry.

  Today, the predator came to Bestiavir (pronounced Bes-tee-ah-vir) High School and held an assembly for the upper classmen boys. Tony Brandner was one of those teenagers considered prey. Tony wasn’t academically inclined. He wasn’t dumb, and he certainly wasn’t one of those kids who needed to be coached through signing their enlistment papers. High school wasn’t much fun, save auto shop, and he couldn’t imagine actually paying for four more years of this.

  Leaning back in the bleachers of the sweltering auditorium, biting his fingernails, and nearly bored to tears, Tony was trying hard not to fall asleep. The speakers, a representative from each of the branches of the armed forces, spoke loudly and boldly into the microphone, causing the blaring acoustics of the auditorium to hurt his ears. It was so hot in the auditorium, he felt the sweat dripping down the back of his black T-shirt.

  Tony was only half listening, but he had heard enough about how the coming generation would be called upon to provide the manpower necessary to prevent the domino effect of communism from spreading throughout the Eastern World. However, the poor boy with the David Cassidy inspired coif was far more interested in catching up with his girlfriend after the assembly rather than dying for ideology.

  Tony’s friends and neighbors, Larry Wagner, Benecio “Benny” Naschy, and JP Grenier, sat next to him and were far more interested in the message of the honored guests. Larry and Benny were a great audience because they loved hearing the war stories, and Tony thought they were imagining themselves as heroes in war movies starring John Wayne or Gary Cooper.

  While some of the boys in the auditorium could probably get a deferment by going to college, not the boys from the trailer park. They, along with the other impoverished students in the class of 1971, believed there was no real choice, a damned-if-you-do-or-damned-if-you-don’t situation, and it really didn’t matter – enlisted or drafted, the military would get them and devour them. The predator salivated over the trailer park boys.

  Tony looked down the row toward JP, whom Tony suspected must’ve felt like a caged animal in this town, and enlisting was the best way out. Tony may belong in this town, but his friend JP didn’t.

  “Any questions?” The marine sergeant asked.

  No boy moved for several seconds until the brave and showy JP stood up with his devilish grin. Tony covered his face and groaned.

  Oh God, please don’t let him embarrass me, Tony silently prayed.

  “Yeah, do I get to kill anybody?” JP asked an army recruiter with all seriousness.

  Tony shook his head and wanted to hide while the male student body laughed.

  The army recruiter stated, “Son, there is a good chance you could see a combat situation if you are part of the infantry.”

  “Oh, I doubt I’d be part of the infantry.” JP said. The thin, platinum blond boy looked the recruiter straight in the eye, almost as if the teen was hunting the recruiter. “I may be almost eighteen, but I know you don’t put the smart kids in the infantry. The ones who are bright and have no problem killing, they are put in a higher place. Am I right?”

  JP earned another laugh and Tony needed some Pepto Bismol.

  “Instead,” JP said, with a wide, provocative smile, “Tell me what you have for the bright, interested, and special soldier.”

  A wry smile stretched across the recruiter’s face. “We should talk privately.”

  At that time, Principal Allan Nicholson, a short and nervous man with a generous spare tire around the middle, came to the microphone and spoke with an unusually deep voice for such a small man.

  “I’d like to thank these men from our valiant armed forces for coming by today and speaking to us.”

  The applause was sparse, and it was at that time dissent arose among the ranks. The other boys in the auditorium started chanting an off-key rendition of Edwin Starr’s “War,” stomping on the wooden bleachers keeping the beat, hoping the protest song would unnerve the predators. It didn’t. They stayed cool and composed.

  “Okay, boys,” Principal Nicholson said into the microphone. “Unless you have questions for these brave men here today, go back to class.”

  As the herd of young men made their way out of the auditorium, a few of the escaping were ensnared by the recruiters. Tony was one of them.

  “What about you, young man?” A naval recruiter asked Tony. “Interested in serving your country?”

  He was in no rush to hasten his death overseas, and would take his chances with the draft lottery in August. Hesitating a moment, Tony scratched the back of his neck and said, “You know I would, but you see, I have this asthmatic condition and I…”

  “I see,” the naval recruiter interrupted. “Maybe the military isn’t for you. It isn’t for everyone. You should get back to class.”

  Tony smiled and nodded. With his books under his arm, he left the auditorium, happy to break away and flee from those carnivores. As he fled the auditorium, Tony looked over his shoulder and saw his friends gathered around the recruiters like they were movie stars.

  Goddammit, he thought. They got’em.

  By sheer coincidence and luck, Tony met his girlfriend, Suzie Keaton, in the hallway after Tony escaped the auditorium alive and in one piece. The comely red-head had her hair parted down the middle the way Marsha Brady did on TV. Suzie looked stunning in her blue blouse and white bell bottoms pants that were practically painted on. She had the faux-silver key hall pass in her hand, the long leash of high school authority.

  “How was the assembly?” Suzie asked.

  Tony growled, sighed, and shook his head.

  Suzie laughed. “That bad?”

  “JP was being obnoxious again.”

  “That’s news?”

  “No,” Tony sighed. “I guess not.”

  “How seductive was the recruitment drive?”

  Tony said, “Some of the guys were devouring the speeches, others were being devoured up by them.”

  Suzie laughed, then asked playfully, with an undertone of seriousness and worry, “You didn’t get eaten up by their words, did you?”

  “No,” Tony said, laughing and shaking his head.

  Suzie smiled, relieved.

  Tony looked into her large, green eyes and
said, “I know my place is here with you.”

  Suzie gazed into his deep brown eyes and got lost in them.

  He put his hand on her shoulder and gently drew her closer to him. He wanted to take her into an empty classroom or janitor’s closet for a long, slow make out session that would eventually end with both of them naked, sweaty, and panting for breath. Sex was a regular occurrence since they began dating at the start of their senior year, staying out late, except for nights of the full moon. This was Bestiavir and they knew the rules, the secret territorial rules of this small town.

  Entranced, Suzie felt his gentle, but firm pull toward him and put up little resistance. She should be getting back to history class, but taking notes about how the Civil War compares to the current war in Vietnam, taught by some newly graduated hippie teacher, didn’t interest her as much as getting it on with Tony in his motel on wheels in the parking lot.

  Tony, the basketball star, and Suzie, the class treasurer, had fallen hard for each other not long after they started dating. Neither had much dating experience beforehand, but it wasn’t long before they both caught up.

  “Are we still on for tomorrow night?” Suzie asked.

  “Oh definitely,” Tony said, with great enthusiasm. “But, I have to go now.”

  “Me too,” Suzie sighed. She watched for a second as Tony walked away before heading back to class.

  “I’ll see you in a bit,” Tony called to Suzie.

  Tony left the school, crossed the parking lot, and got in his car, a personally rebuilt 1957 Chevy Bel-Air. Taken from a dead shell at the local auto graveyard, Tony’s car was not the prettiest on the road, but it was one of the fastest. He sped out of the parking lot heading toward auto shop thinking about how lucky he was.

  He didn’t get very far before he thought he heard a grinding noise he hadn’t heard before, which stopped as suddenly as it started. Tony listened carefully and drove slowly to auto shop trying to hear if that noise happened again, but it didn’t. There wasn’t any grinding noise as he entered the school’s garage.

  Tony was greeted warmly as he entered his home at school. He pulled the car into his usual station. After lifting the hood and turning on the radio, Tony went to work.

  Tony Brandner would graduate from high school in June, and then he would be a full-time mechanic at Tallfeather’s Garage, and thought about asking Suzie to marry the following year if all went well.

  Unless the predators got him first.

  Chapter Two: Things Overheard

  April 5th, 1971

  Benecio “Benny” Naschy headed for his locker from the auditorium after the last school bell rang. His head was still abuzz after the assembly. From what the recruiter said the Army sounded like a blast. He couldn’t stop smiling when he started imagining himself as a combat soldier. The words of valor still howled in his head as he knelt down and spun the dial of his three digit locker combination. He jerked the locker door open with a bit too much force, slamming it into the locker next to him, then gave a look of surprise for slamming it too hard.

  He stared at the books in his locker. Focusing on the books’ titles, he forced his eyes to concentrate on the words. After a few moments, the letters on the books’ covers began to warp. The letters seemed to merge and the onset of a headache was imminent. Cursing, Benny knew which books to take with him because he remembered the colors of the textbooks that went with each class. He grabbed the necessary books, stuffed them in his bag, and slammed the locker shut. He was in remedial English because dyslexia was not yet recognized by the school board as an impairment.

  Yep, it was definitely the Army for him. In the Army, he just had to be young and healthy. In the Army, he wouldn’t have to read much. In the Army, he just had to listen and follow orders.

  Immediately after he slammed his locker door shut, the older Mexican boys shoved him into his locker. They laughed as they walked passed him. Benny knew why they didn’t like him. They called him a ‘cocoa nut,’- someone who was brown on the outside, but acted white on the inside. They were convinced Benny should be one of them because he looked like one of them – dark skin, dark hair, and relatively short, but Benny chose to hang out with his white trash neighbors instead. They also thought Benny was a simpleton and could be picked on with impunity.

  He wanted to drop his bag and rip those boys apart, and that would make them leave him alone, but it would also cost him more trouble than he wanted.

  Benny heard someone behind him and didn’t have to look to know who it was.

  “Hey, Larry.”

  Larry Wagner had a weird habit of trying to sneak up on people, but it didn’t work on Benny. Add to the fact their lockers were very close, it seemed almost pointless for him to try anymore, but Larry took it as a challenge and not a deterrent.

  “I saw what those guys did. Wanna kick their ass?”

  Benny sighed. “No, we’d better not.” But he wanted to. He really did, but knew that would get him in the kind of trouble he couldn’t afford.

  Down the hall, but not too far from them, both Benny and Larry overheard a conversation that piqued their interest by two boys who were not friends of theirs. Albert Mullins and Peter Jordan were talking about having their camping trip postponed this weekend.

  “We can’t go camping on the first night of the full moon.” Albert said to Peter, while Peter was shoving his homework into his book bag.

  “Why not?” Peter asked. He was the new kid in school, new blood from Chicago, who moved because his father was offered the job of afternoon shift manager at the local Styrofoam peanut plant.

  “Haven’t you heard the stories about this place?” Albert asked, assuming everyone had heard about Bestiavir, or at least the Beast of Bestiavir.

  “No, what are you talking about?”

  “Well, Bestiavir isn’t like other towns. It has its own rules,” Albert said in a both proud and conspiratorial tone.

  “Rules?” Peter asked. “What rules? You mean, like, laws and stuff?”

  “Not really,” Albert said. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try me.” Peter leaned back against the wall of lockers, his arms crossed as he smiled to his self-proclaimed guide.

  Albert sighed, “Well, if you’re going to live here, I guess you’re gonna hafta know.”

  Leaning in, the large, curly-haired boy began the tale Benny and Larry had heard all too often.

  “Outside of the town, off Bray Road there, beyond the trailer park, lies this large patch of woods, so big it’s, like, almost a forest. A buncha animals live there – foxes, coyotes, wolves, even bears, from what my dad’s told me, but nothing compares to the Beast of Bestiavir.”

  “The what?” Peter asked.

  “The Beast of Bestiavir. You’ve never heard of it?”

  Peter shook his head. “Is it like Bigfoot or something?”

  “Kinda. Except Bigfoot hasn’t been known to kill or eat people. The Beast lives in the woods off Bray Road and eats anyone who goes in.”

  Peter stared at him for a moment before breaking out laughing. “Beast of Bestiavir? What are you trying to pull? I think you’ve been watching too many movies.”

  “It’s true! For generations, people have gone into those woods and never come out. Sometimes a body is found either mutilated or partially eaten.”

  “It’s probably a bear or something.” Peter rolled his eyes, while his smile spread from ear to ear. “This sounds like backwoods garbage to me.”

  “It’s not a bear. It’s too smart to be a bear. It makes Yogi look like one of those finger-painting kids. Hunters, like my dad and his friends, have gone into the woods to find it, but no one’s ever found nothing. Sometimes these hunters… they don’t come back.”

  Peter asked, “So if these stories are true, why is your dad going out there after it?”

  What? Benny and Larry looked at each other, both a little worried.

  “A couple of months ago, one of my dad’s friends saw the beast while he was
on a camping trip.”

  Another laugh was growing in the Midwestern boy’s gut. “He actually saw the beast?”

  Albert nodded. “Or so he said. So, my dad and his friends are going to that white trash trailer park to find it.”

  Benny had heard enough. Storming toward Albert, Benny shouted, “Stuff it, Mullins! Everyone knows Bruce Rivetts has more alcohol in his veins than blood.”

  Albert’s eyes widened, fearing the short Mexican kid might cut him, even though Benny had no such reputation, but he was a Mexican.

  “Get lost, retard.” Albert Mullins said.

  Larry stared at him menacingly, and then feigned to punch Albert. Albert cowered and Larry walked away.

  Peter stared blankly at the confrontation with detached interest, clapping his hand on Mullins’ shoulder. “Thanks for the warning, Albert, but it sounds like a crock of shit. I think I’ll take my chances.”

  Benny said to Larry, “We gotta find JP.”

  2

  John-Paul Grenier, ‘JP’ to anyone who didn’t want a black eye, was in the main foyer of the school staring up at the pictures of the past graduating classes, focused on the class of 1952. Face after smiling face stared back at him, but frozen in time, immortal for a moment. The picture that caught his attention was a young man named Johnny Naughton, whom JP would never meet since the former football star died in Korea the year after his graduation. JP had only heard of the legend of that boy – the quarterback who had taken the team to finals before a blow to the elbow had taken the local hero out of the game and destroyed their school’s only hope for a championship. Nine months later, Johnny received his draft notice, and three months after that, he had left Bestiavir for the army, never to return. JP was the same age now as the boy in the picture. The boy in the picture looked a lot like him.

  JP was a thin, platinum blond boy, who could have passed for an albino if not for his blue eyes. Although he hailed from the dreaded Paradise Trailer Park, JP preferred to dress like a preppy rich kid. His neat and pressed white shirt and tan slacks were the most expensive available in his mom’s Sears catalog. He dressed to impress.