The Shadow of the Moon

by Michael Dunn

  Dee let out a soft groan before turning to her daughter, her eyes soft as she looped her arm around her shoulders. “Suzie, don’t listen to him. He’s just been… different lately. Now, let’s see that beautiful smile of yours, my college student.” Mrs. Keaton grinned widely, forcing her husband’s outburst from her mind as she hugged Suzie tightly.

  The eighteen-year-old forced a smile that would be enough to fool her mom. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  Behind her painted smile, though, a new worry crept up on Suzie, because her father had been closer to the truth than he realized in calling her an ‘animal.’ Although Suzie was elated she had been accepted to UNM, her father had forced her to come to the realization she would not be able to go. She’d have to live in a dormitory, which was mandatory at the university for newly incoming, unmarried students, was now impossible for her. She could only imagine losing control of all the new abilities Mrs. Roulet was hastily teaching her under the stress of final exams or even the simple, predictable full moon transformation, which would undoubtedly lead to the slaughter and feasting of her floor-mates, and that thought made her blood and her temper boil.

  Suzie marched past her mother and stormed toward the garage, catching up with her father. “What the hell is your problem?”

  Once she couldn’t have imagined screaming at her father, now it had become reflex.

  “Why are you still with that boy, even after what he did to you?” Jack yelled at Suzie when they both met in the garage. Suzie slammed the door behind her.

  “Why do you hate him so much?” Suzie screamed back.

  “You know damn well why!” Jack snapped back. “I tried to tell you what he was, but you chose to mock me instead, thinking your dad was full of shit! Hell, if your mother hadn’t kept me from the VFW that night, your Mr. Wonderful would’ve…” Jack went quiet as he realized what he was about to say.

  Suzie’s eyes went wide. “What do you mean that night at the VFW? It caught fire, killing all your friends, right?” Suzie asked in a leading, inquisitive voice.

  Jack looked like a guilty man on trial who just made one of those courtroom confessions that happened often on “Perry Mason.”

  Jack stopped himself. He didn’t want Dee to hear what he wanted to tell his daughter.

  “Follow me,” Jack seethed through gritted teeth.

  Still boiling, and working hard to keep her temper in check, Suzie nodded and followed her dad into his garage. He closed the door behind her.

  “What does the burning VFW and Tony have to do with each other? Do you think Tony torched the VFW?”

  “No, I torched the VFW.”

  “What?” Suzie’s blood ran cold and she had to sit down on her dad’s work stool.

  “Tony and his friends arrived before I did and made a mess of the place. All of my friends, Tank, Bruce, Ralph, they were all dead before I got there. They were ripped apart by animals… and I think you know what kind of animals could do that. If I hadn’t been late, your boyfriend would’ve killed me too.”

  “Why… why would they do that?”

  “Because we were coming for them! It was a full moon, and we knew what they are, or we thought we did.” Jack walked toward his daughter, looming over her. “I know what he did to you and I know what you have become or will become.”

  Suzie was visibly shaking.

  “Your mother doesn’t know, and we should keep it that way, but I can’t help wondering, if you were what you are now on the night they attacked the VFW, would you have done to me what they did to my friends?”

  Jack stared down at her with all the fear and hatred his face could reflect.

  “You’re not my daughter anymore! You should go live in that zoo with the other animals. On the next full moon, if you come here for your mother and me, I’ll be ready.”

  Suzie ran through the house crying, hopped in her mother’s car, and drove like a bat out of hell for the trailer park.

  As Suzie drove through Bestiavir, then onto Bray Road, and finally their trailer park, she was still furious with her father, and it seemed like he was getting worse.

  Before long, the trailer park’s decrepit outer buildings came into view, a ruse, she was now aware, and Suzie put a little more pressure on the pedal, kicking up a cloud of dirt as she sped past them and into the residential area. Even from forty yards away, she could clearly see Tony, Larry, JP, and Jenny Roulet playing basketball.

  JP and Jenny’s eyes looked up for a moment, Tony’s back was turned, though he turned only a moment later, as Suzie stepped out of her mother’s Comet, too angry now too tell Tony about her good news about getting accepted to UNM.

  “Hi Suzie, I wasn’t expecting you…”

  Suzie slugged Tony square in the nose and he fell hard. Suzie, the petite, little red-headed girl, who used to hate getting dirty and had never been in a fight in her life, stood over her boyfriend with her fists clenched loving every moment, the feeling of aggression, and the power it came with, the feeling anything was possible, and the feeling nothing was beyond her grasp. The power was intoxicating. With force or not, she could have anything. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as she imagined.

  “It was you! Wasn’t it? You, and JP, and Benny, and Larry! It was you guys at the VFW a few months ago! My dad was supposed to be there! You would have killed him too, wouldn’t you?”

  Tony nodded and answered matter-of-factly, “Probably.”

  “If I was with you that night, would have made me kill my father?”

  “No,” Tony said, getting to his feet. “You didn’t have to go if you didn’t want to. Benny and Larry heard Albert Mullins talking to Peter Jordan about this hunting trip his dad and his VFW pals were taking… and they were coming here.

  “When JP and I heard it, we were scared and JP came up with this plan to hit them before they hit us. They were armed with silver. Silver, just like the movies say hurts our kind, and they were very well armed. Hell, I bet Terry Bolin armed them all. I bet Blades and Bullets had its most profitable week.”

  Suzie gritted her teeth and yelled, “You made me into a killer!”

  “You don’t have to be.”

  “I hate you!” Suzie got back in the car and raced home, skipping her training that night, which was unfortunate, because the first thing Suzie needed to learn to control was her temper.

  Chapter Twenty: Werewolf 101

  April 26st, 1971

  Tony borrowed his mother’s station wagon that morning, a boxy 1958 AMC Ambassador, definitely a ‘mom’s car’ and was almost too embarrassed to drive it, but he needed it until he received the check from his insurance company. This time he would not get a junker, but a used truck he could fix up like new.

  JP and Larry took their usual spot in the car, as Tony was headed toward Suzie’s house.

  Larry asked, “Why are we going this way?”

  “We’re still picking up Suzie.” Tony said.

  “Do we… um, do we have to?”

  Tony whipped his head around and gave Larry a sharp glare, the facial equivalent of a growl, which made Larry slink back into his seat.

  Suzie walked out to the station wagon as Tony pulled into the driveway. JP got out of the passenger side and into the backseat (with a motion for Larry to move over) without a word. Suzie got in, shut the door, and they were off. The ride was a quiet one, even the radio was off.

  After hearing how lucky she was to be alive dozens of times, Suzie smiled and thanked them all for their concern all the while feeling like a scorned politician’s wife, who was forced to smile when she really wanted to scream.

  This would have been a normal, boring day without her new abilities, but her first day of school day with her new hearing and enhanced sense of smell, she learned more than a few of the students didn’t shower before school, and some had very poor hygiene. She learned who was sneaking around with whom, teachers and students alike. She learned which teachers were functional alcoholics, and that Mr. David Richardson preferred a good
‘wake and bake’ in the parking lot before his first class.

  After shutting her locker door, Suzie smelled something she had never smelled before. She looked up and saw Howard Jones and the other Navajo boys giving her a wide berth and staring at her wide-eyed and apprehensive. They whispered to each other in their native language as they passed by her. Then she understood. She was smelling their fear.

  School went well for her that day and people noticed and commented on how radiant she looked. Suzie felt like she could conquer the world, until Tony showed up at her locker after lunch. Suzie’s friends scattered like terrified birds when Tony arrived.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Suzie said, rolling her eyes.

  “I wanted to talk to you about last night.”

  “What about?” Suzie asked, slamming her locker.

  “I was just wondering if you are doing okay… or not.”

  “No, I’m not fine,” she almost growled.

  Instead, she walked briskly away from Tony toward her class.

  “Hey, wait!” Tony grabbed her arm.

  “Don’t touch me!” Suzie dropped her books and pushed Tony.

  The boy went flying down the hall, passing astonished students, and then crashing shoulders first into a set of lockers. His face contorted in a grimace of pain as he slid down the lockers onto the floor, leaving a noticeable dent where he hit. The onlookers knew that had to hurt and winced. They had looks of surprise for Suzie. Apparently, the little girl did not know her own strength.

  Suzie, just as stunned, picked up her books and walked to class before any questions were asked.

  2

  After school, Suzie got a ride home from her friend, Melissa Delpy, because she wanted nothing to do with the trailer park boys until later that night.

  “Hi mom, sorry I’m late. I was quite the popular girl today,” Suzie said as she came through the front door and unconsciously rubbed her forehead. She needed to change clothes before heading to the trailer park.

  “Hungry?” Dee asked.

  “Starved,” Suzie said as she raced upstairs. “Be down in a minute.”

  She ate quickly and excused herself from the table.

  “Where are you going?” Jack asked, and from his look, expecting her to say, “Tony’s.”

  “I’m going to see Melissa. Gotta project due before I graduate. Be back later. Bye.”

  Dee looked at her daughter, giving her a knowing look she didn’t believe her.

  3

  Suzie felt demeaned to be in a class with four ten and eleven-year-old girls – Jenny Roulet, Lori Wagner, Julie Stockwell, and Lisa Knox. Since she had been in accelerated classes all her life, this was demoralizing, but the alternative was worse.

  The class was informal and taught by Constance in the living room of the Roulet home. It was a nice place, but not as nicely decorated as the Brandner residence. The students sat on pillows on the floor and were taught concentration, meditation, and visualization at a fifth grade level. These daily lessons were intended to help them remember what they did while they were werewolves.

  Suzie couldn’t believe how hard meditation was to master. It was so stupidly simple and yet so infuriatingly difficult. Constance had Suzie practice with something simple such as count a number for every breath she took, and think of nothing but the numbers. Simple enough, but after the count of one, her thoughts would rebel and go in their own direction. Her mind would wander from school to Tony to an episode of ‘The Mod Squad,’ then she counted to two and the process would begin again thinking about food, sex, and back to Tony. When she thought she had been practicing for at least twenty minutes, it turned out to be only seven. It was so irritating, yet she had to learn it quickly, but like everything else, mastery came with practice, practice, practice.

  After a while, the class did get better. Constance treated Suzie like an adult and gave her special attention. To three of the four girls in the class, she was their hero. They would ask her all kinds of questions they would never dare ask their mothers or each other.

  How do you know if a boy likes you? What does a good kiss feel like? Do your breasts hurt when they come in? Do you really lose a gallon of blood every month?

  Most of the questions made Suzie laugh, and she answered them all with a minimum of blushing, because these were the same questions she had only a few years ago. All the girls loved her, except Jenny Roulet, who disliked Suzie because Suzie had Tony’s heart. The younger girl wanted to tell Suzie she would take Tony if Suzie did not want him.

  Suzie went to the library during her study halls and read everything she could about her new condition. She had heard she was going to be in horrible pain during the change, and when the change ceased, she was going to do horrible things. Although accounts varied from book to book, much of it was the same: the full moon would cause her to grow claws, hair, and fangs, and hunger for human flesh. What she read made her feel less reassuring.

  The books had a lot wrong, such as how to tell a werewolf in human form. Her eyebrows didn’t meet at the ridge. She didn’t have pointy, “Star Trek” ears, nor was her index finger the same size as her middle finger, and there wasn’t any demonic magic potion or enchanted clothing that made her what she was. It was an infection, no more miraculous than the cold or flu, or more appropriately, rabies, and a boyfriend too scared to lose her. Suzie began to think maybe underneath it all, this had been his plan all along. Some boyfriends intentionally knock up their girlfriends so they wouldn’t leave. Tony Brandner put a unique twist to keeping his girlfriend on a permanent leash.

  4

  She dutifully went to the trailer park after school as instructed, ignoring Tony and JP as she arrived and practically ran to the Roulet trailer. When her training was over for the evening, she got in her mother’s car and drove straight home. The mental training was exhausting and Suzie warmed up her cold dinner in the oven and went straight to bed.

  5

  Suzie woke up to the smell of bacon cooking and feeling the best she had ever felt in her life. She bounced downstairs, and was instantly hungry.

  “Mom, can you take me to school today?” She asked her mother while she was eating breakfast.

  Dee stopped clearing the table and asked, “Isn’t Tony picking you up?”

  “Tony and I are… not getting along.”

  “Oh honey, are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” Suzie sighed and nodded. “It’s like… it’s like we’re changing into different people.”

  “Is it because of the accident?”

  “You could say that.”

  Chapter Twenty-One: Training

  May 7th 1971

  Before school ended the next day, Suzie shut her locker door to find JP leaning with his arms crossed and relaxed. She was hardly surprised to see him there since she smelled him coming.

  “What do you want, JP?” Suzie asked, without looking up, and picking up her books.

  “Nothing. Nothing really. I just came by to ask you how your day was.” He looked aloof and hardly looked at Suzie as he spoke.

  “Look, JP, if you are here to plead with me to get back with Tony, don’t waste your time!”

  “I’m not here to talk about Tony. I’m here to ask you how your day went.”

  “It went fine,” Suzie answered, but mistrustful of what he really wanted.

  “That’s good. Anything spectacular happen?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Come on, there had to be highlights.”

  “Of course, there were.” Suzie said, changing out her biology textbook for her typing textbook.

  “Like what?”

  Suzie was getting annoyed with this inquisition, but being polite, she answered. “If you must know, I got an ‘A’ on my chemistry test, and later found out Tanya Harmon thought she was in trouble, but it turned out she was just a couple of days late.”

  “Hmm,” JP said, and by the way he said it, Suzie could tell JP was more interested to know Tanya Harmon
put out than the rest of her daily highlights, pretending to be in deep thought.

  Suzie let out a sigh of disgust and asked, “What are you getting at, JP?”

  “Just think about all the things you would’ve missed if you weren’t around. You wouldn’t have gotten an ‘A’ on your test nor would have heard all the school gossip. As much as you hate Tony’s guts right now, you still have air in your lungs, you have a regular heartbeat, and you can walk. If Tony had been a regular, average boy, like every other guy in this place, you’d be dead.” He emphasized the word ‘dead.’

  “According to some people in my community, he should have let you die. Some of my neighbors are waiting for you to screw up so they have an excuse to kill the both of you. It would have been easier on all of us, but the truth is Tony couldn’t do it, so he risked his own life and all of ours to save yours. I don’t exactly know what was going through his head that night, but I’m sure he thought about what Bordeaux would do to him, and he did it anyway. Normally, the punishment for such a thing is usually death, but because Bordeaux has this soft spot for Tony, you got a second chance at life. Maybe it came with a price tag, but you are still alive, and well. And you’re treating your hero like shit.”

  The class bell rang.

  “Think about that in your typing class.” JP walked away. “See you tonight.”

  Throughout her typing class, she thought about what JP had told her and his alternate point of view was refreshing, she believed she had taken this the wrong way, she was alive and whole. She didn’t break her neck, or lose a leg in the crash, or sentenced to spend the rest of her life as a paraplegic. If Tony hadn’t been, well, different, she would be dead or worse. Tony was her hero and she was treating him like dirt and felt horrible. She wouldn’t see him again until later that evening at the trailer park and wanted to make things right again.

  After school, instead of celebrating the final days of high school with her friends, Suzie returned to the trailer park for classes, hiding her true motives from her family and friends. She tried not to think about it, because when she did, she started to cry.