Beneath a Winter Moon

by Shawson M Hebert

  Jenny strapped Daniel’s backpack on her shoulders, the first aid supplies, the flare gun, and a pair of night-vision goggles packed inside. They began their journey by making their way up the treacherous path to the top of the cliffs. By the time they reached the top, all three were exhausted and had to rest. Heavy snowfall and high winds soon pressed them onward.

  They had not counted on the near white-out conditions. The heavy snow and the frequent need to stop to adjust the litter exhausted them all. By the time they reached the same rocky shelter that had protected Thomas and Delmar during the night, the companions could barely stand. They decided to rest for two hours, and all four huddled together under the large rock outcropping. The snowstorm did not let up. Thomas thought that it might have actually worsened as the afternoon approached.

  Thomas looked around for Jack and saw that he had wandered off. Thomas cursed himself for letting him off of the leash while they rested. He called out for the Husky, and became worried as time passed without the dog’s return. Frustrated and refusing to listen to Delmar, who insisted he not move from the camp, Thomas took his rifle and tried to follow the dog’s quickly disappearing tracks. Thomas followed them until he came across a shallow opening in the side of a large cliff facing. He called out once more and felt a wave of relief to see Jack stick his face through the small opening.

  Thomas ran to Jack, leaned over and playfully cuffed the dog behind a furry ear while criticizing him in a tone he thought might suffice as stern. Jack replied by wooing and growling playfully as he backed deeper into the hole. Thomas cursed aloud but was not angry at Jack’s inquisitiveness, it was because knew that he would have to either bend over and crawl, which he did not want to do, or take the time to pull away the old vines, deadwood, and snow that blocked the entrance. He chose the latter and kicked and pulled and yanked the entrance was wide and tall enough for him to fit through by merely stooping over.

  Thomas was at once amazed by the cave. Calling it a cave was a disservice, as it was truly cavernous. The cavern was at least eighty or ninety meters front to back and the domed ceiling reached twenty feet or more in some places. Thomas thought it surprising that there were no animals, particularly that there was not a bear inside, bedded down for a long winter’s nap. Using his flashlight, he explored the cavern in greater detail and as he neared the rear wall, he came upon a large hole in the ground. The pit was perhaps ten feet across and was at least twenty-five feet deep, perhaps more.

  “Whoa,” he said to himself as he sat on his knees shining the beam of light into the pit. Jack came to stand beside his kneeling form and look down in the pit, his tongue lolling. To Thomas it was as if Jack were saying see what I have found for you. What other dog could lead you to such new and exciting wonders of the mountains? “Careful, boy. Wouldn’t want you to fall in there. But I guess if you did, you’d have bones to chew on for quite a while.”

  Thomas could see many animal bones on the pit’s floor and could not help but imagine the horror that the poor creatures must endured after falling into the massive pit. If they survived the fall without broken bones, they would have succumbed to starvation or thirst in that lonely, dark place. Freedom a mere thirty feet above them. He stood up and took one last look around. Stalactites and stalagmites covered the floor and ceiling and there were several pools of crystal clear water, but it was the constant mild temperature that impressed Thomas the most. Though he had only been inside perhaps five minutes, he had become so warm that he felt he would have had to remove a layer of clothing if he planned on staying any longer…but he had to go. He needed to get back before Delmar became concerned, so he commanded Jack to come with him and they both left the cavern, woefully stepping back out into the snow and gusting winds.

  “I am so sorry about Steven,” Delmar said, as soft as he could over the noise of the wind. He had seen Jenny slip away into herself, her eyes blank and staring. “I’m sorry we had to leave him…but you have my word that we will get him out of there as soon as we can. I promise you that.”

  Jenny lowered her head, pulling the poncho liner over her face, protecting from the icy cold as well as hiding her eyes. She was grateful to see Thomas step into view.

  “Look whose back,” Delmar said. “I was getting worried.”

  Thomas saddled up next to Jenny, scooting back so that he was as far under the outcropping as he could get. “Well, Jack’s been busy exploring a nice warm cavern not too far from here. It’s huge and it has all the trappings. Stalactites, stalagmites…and a constant temperature that is well above freezing. No one has claimed it…not even a mouse.” He looked over to Delmar, “It would be a great place to shelter from this storm.”

  Jenny sat upright. “You think that we may have to stay the night out here?”

  Thomas tried to steal a glance at Delmar, looking for some help from his friend, but Jenny caught the look. “That’s what you are saying, isn’t it?”

  “We don’t want to, Jenny,” Thomas said. “But there is no way that we can make it to Jeremiah’s cabin anytime before sundown.”

  Delmar had understood Thomas’s glance. Finding the cavern changed things for them. It had taken them all day to get to this point and the sun would go down long before the companions made it to Jeremiah’s cabin. They would have pressed on, he knew, had Thomas not retuned with the news of the cavern, but now with a perfect shelter from the incredible snowstorm, it made more sense to wait it out. He spoke up to voice his opinion. “This storm may very well be the end of all of us if we get caught in it during the night. Walking through this deep new snow is slowing us down as it is never mind that we can’t see more than fifteen feet in front of us. Try to imagine it in the dark during this storm, not even our night vision would help.”

  “You try to imagine what will happen if that creature comes calling in the night, Delmar.” Jenny paused, turning to look at both of the men. “You didn’t see it…”

  “Relax, Jen,” Thomas said. “There’s no indication at all that the…animal…has been anywhere near this cavern. In fact, the only signs of any animals at all were from long ago. The entrance has been pretty well covered up, I think.”

  “I’d rather take my chances.”

  Thomas sighed. “I would too, Jenny. Especially considering we need to get Daniel some real medical attention as fast as we can. But, at the same time, dragging Daniel through this storm is difficult enough…and if it gets dark on us…”

  “If it gets dark and that thing comes to attack us in the cavern…” Jenny started.

  Thomas saw an opening there, and pounced on it, interrupting her. “Exactly. If we are dragging Daniel’s litter, carrying our packs, the storm on us like it is now—and we are in the dark, out in the open…it would have the element of surprise and we’d be so encumbered we’d be lucky to defend ourselves. With the night we lose the advantage of having weapons if we are encumbered and can’t see a thing due to this storm.”

  Delmar saw where Thomas was going with this and knew that it was not only a good argument, but also as an honest assessment. If a rogue, or maybe even deranged, grizzly hit them while they were moving through the storm in the dark, it could be very bad, indeed.

  “Jen, we will be a lot safer in a warm shelter where we can unload our gear and set up a watch,” Delmar argued.

  Jenny shook her head but did not argue the point. The truth was that she could not stand the thought of the sun going down, no matter where they were so long as they were stuck on this mountain with…whatever it was. She closed her eyes tightly as a gust of wind hit the overhang just right, bringing a short burst of stinging snow with it.

  “It will be okay, Jenny.”

  They all turned at hearing the new voice over the howling winds. They had laid Daniel in a space farthest under the rocky overhang to have the most protection from the wind and snow. He managed a smile that didn’t quite hide his pain. “I’ll be okay and in the morning when this storm is over, we’ll get the hell out of here.”


  Jenny unzipped her sleeping back and threw down the poncho liner. She started kicking her way from the mummy-shaped bag and looked up to see her companion’s puzzled looks. “Let’s go then. Let’s get out of this snow.”

  They hurriedly repacked the gear just well enough to get it strapped on their shoulders and within minutes, they were inside the cavern. Thomas gathered up several of the snap-lights from their backpacks and placed them on the walls, snapping each one open and shaking it to mix the chemicals held in the small plastic tubes. The snap-lights glowed green, yellow, and orange, and produced enough light for the companions to see what they were doing.

  “Good idea, Hero,” Delmar said.

  “I do have one on occasion.”

  Jenny remained quiet as she went about making sure Daniel was comfortable and then laid out her sleeping bag…which Thomas had insisted she take for her own before they began their journey from the wreckage.

  It was decided that they would take turns on watch, two sleeping and one on watch, for two-hour intervals until morning. Thomas and Delmar quietly agreed that they would split up Jenny’s watch between them after succumbing to her insistence that she also be given a turn. “She has to get some rest,” Thomas had whispered. “Aside from Steven’s death, she is really shook up. Last night scared her pretty bad.”

  “Would’ve scared me, too…the way she and Daniel described what attacked them.”

  Thomas had shaken his head. “Let’s not go there right now.”

  Thomas and Delmar sawed off pine and fur branches until they had a large pile and then used some of the parachute cord that they always carried with them to tie the branches together until they had framed and filled a large covering for the cavern’s entrance. The cord was thin, lightweight, and tested to hold up to 550lbs and was forever known to soldiers as “five-fifty-cord.”

  “That should do it,” Delmar said as he tied down the final stray spruce limb on the large homemade door. The makeshift door would keep out the wind and snow and allow the cavern to hold whatever warmth they could glean from it.

  Inside the cabin, near the far wall was a large pile of deadfall that had accumulated through what had been a rather large hole in the cavern’s ceiling. The limbs and twigs were aged and dry, and would burn well in a fire. Delmar took one of the long poles from Daniel’s litter and prodded a small hole through the formerly large one in the ceiling, creating an outlet for smoke. They would experiment with a fire and see if the smoke would be drawn to the small hole. If it was, then they could build a fire to cook and keep the cavern warm.

  Jenny gathered stones from inside the cavern and formed a small hearth. She piled on wood for a small fire. She wanted to make the fire much larger, but Thomas convinced her that their small outlet for smoke would not be enough for a large blaze…if it worked at all.

  While they were outside gathering the spruce limbs in the dark, Thomas and Delmar had discussed Jenny and her state of mind. They had decided without much debate that she had every right to be angry, hurt, and mad at the whole world…or even mad at them for leaving her and her wounded husband with Daniel when they could have stayed. They also decided that the idea the animal that had attacked them in the helicopter might come back was not too far-fetched, and thus they had opted to keep watch through the night.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jeremiah cursed with rage as he walked through the snowstorm. He didn’t need a compass or the sunlight or even a flashlight in order to help him reach his destination. He had been there hundreds of times before. All I wanted to do was to pack my things and get away from here, the tall man who’d once been called Alastair thought, furious with himself. No, that wasn’t right. All he had wanted was to live out here in these magnificent mountains, away from populated areas, almost away from people altogether. Here he had been at peace and had used the silence and serenity of the cold, unpopulated mountains to calm the beast that was inside him. The beast that he was.

  It was that damned poaching sonofabitch, he thought to himself. No, that isn’t quite right either. Sure, Jeff Parker was indeed a poaching bastard, he and that rotgut businessman who fancied he could be a hunter if he had a few dollars to hand out…but it was not Jeff, or his poaching client who had made the real wrong decision. Jeremiah had offered Jeff Parker a chance to embrace or turn away virtual immortality…the only price being Jeff’s soul, of course. Jeremiah wasn’t even sure of that part, either. Surely, they had souls, still. Surely the man that he was…most of the time, anyway…had a soul. But still, Jeff Parker had lay there on the verge of death, albeit a temporary one as he would have risen to become a werewolf regardless…and Jeremiah had asked him to choose. To choose either death, which he would kindly give to him…a permanent death, a real death…or life as a two-hearted thing, a beast by the light of the full moon (and other nights if he so chose) and a healthy, radiant, vibrant, nearly immortal man by the light of day. Jeff had not answered, and so, Jeremiah had put away the silver dagger. He took the man and wolf in. That was my real fucking mistake, Jeremiah thought as he reached his destination and began pulling down the snow-covered tarpaulin from the massive set of steel bars.

  The bars were actually six-inch steel pipes, the steel being half an inch thick. The pipes jutted from the snow covered ground to tower ten feet high in the form of a giant “A.” The steel pipes were rooted in the ground, buried five feet deep with concrete anchors holding them forever in place. There were two sets—with bracing pipes that connected the two a-frames together in the shape of an upside down “V.” The thing reminded Jeremiah of the frames that shade-tree mechanics used to pull engines from automobiles but the resemblance was coincidental. He had an architect draw up the plans and build the contraption. The man had questioned what it was for…but Jeremiah had paid him well to close his mouth do the work. The end result was a huge apparatus strong enough to hold and elephant in place.

  Jeremiah was angry, and he held hatred in his heart for the weak and foolish Parker, wishing he had sliced the man’s head from his shoulders on the morning that he found him. Well, in a way, I finally did…did I not? He thought to himself. The werewolf had done that for Jeremiah, and since Jeremiah was the werewolf—it had indeed been by his own hand, relatively speaking of course. He could not recall everything that happened when he was in wolf form but through the long years, there were more and more residual images left over from a night’s adventure. The images were not unlike memories, allowing him to create a fairly accurate picture of what he had done.

  Jeremiah prided himself in his goodness. Though he could never truly answer as to whether he still had a soul, he could still be a good man. After all, he came here to these mountains as a means of protecting society more than anything else. Though deep inside he knew a big part of the reason he came here was that, sooner or later he would be caught, perhaps on a murderous rampage through the heart of a city, camcorders and photographs capturing his every horrible action. Which, of course, would ultimately lead a mob of angry villagers to his doorstep; silver bullets, axes, gasoline and matches abound, just like in the movies. He prided himself for his caring nature, but in the end, it was really a matter of self-preservation.

  If only I had one of these in the old days, he thought as he stepped up on the wooden platform, and began to take off his clothes. The platform was about six inches off the ground, built in the center of the two a-frames and v-bar. The platform was covered in a foot of snow, so he slid his feet back and forth like a broom. Once most of the snow was out of his way, he began to remove the shoes. On the nights of the full moon, (and if Jeremiah felt or knew that humans were anywhere near), he would use this framed contraption to hold the beast in check. Though for the past year it had mostly been used by Jeff. The damned uncontrollable Sasanak! Jeremiah laughed out loud at his use of the old Scottish word for stranger...or…an unwanted guest.

  It was completely dark now, and the moon was neither full nor visible in this snowstorm. Nevertheless, for the first time in a
century, Jeremiah knew that he would be unable stop the transformation. He also knew that there were other human souls out here. He knew because he felt them. Such a thing had never before happened to him, and he was almost tempted to let the wolf have its night just to learn why the wolfish senses were overtaking him in the very light of day. He felt the others presence, smelled them, and knew they were not so very far away. It’s not their fault, he thought to himself as he removed his socks and stood on the icy platform. Just one of them was causing this to happen, he knew. One wounded man among their group.

  In the evening, well before the sun began its downward spiral on the horizon, Jeremiah became aware of a nearby presence. He had tried to ignore the sensory overload that came with the feeling…he was preparing to leave. He must leave. Jeremiah packed for a long journey on foot…deciding what paperwork to pack, what weapons to carry…and he was finalizing the best route to the lake when he was overcome by a hunger that manifested itself along with the strong sense of presence of that one man. It was a feeling of incredible longing and need, an almost uncontrollable hunger that was so intense that later, he thought he would change into the beast during the light of day…something unheard of.

  Dizzy and drawn, he had left the cabin with nothing but the clothes on his back. The need had reached its zenith an hour later as he neared the group, and he was sure that he would change if he moved closer. He could not tell who the people on his land were, but he knew that his lupine senses were taking over because he was so close.

  He could breathe the man’s scent and it made Jeremiah swoon. He could smell blood from the man’s wounds and that made his saliva run and his teeth ache with longing. He had been so enamored that he had lost control and fallen to his knees in the snow. For a brief moment, he smelled another animal, a predator, and during that one moment of caution, Jeremiah found enough of himself to regain control. He must turn and leave, he knew. If he allowed this to happen, he might well wake up tomorrow to find that his land was swarming with authorities. He had to leave before the storm abated and rescue personnel could get to his land. Thankfully, his need for self-preservation had won the struggle and though he was weak, shaky, and dizzy, he fought back the urge to transform and hunt down this one man. He ran through the storm and back to his cabin.