Moondeath

by Rick Hautala

  “It ain’t been the best thing goin’, you know,” Seavey said. “I mean, it’s been over six months since that Stillman girl was killed. We’ve had a lot of sightings and lot of evidence since. But, Christ! I don’t know one man who’s got off a clear shot at that bastard and lived.”

  “All you can do is keep trying,” Bob said grimly. “Maybe his time has come.”

  “Let’s just hope to God it has,” Seavey said. He moved toward the door. “Sorry to bother you. I had to check, you know.”

  Bob nodded.

  “I’ll, I’ll probably be by later for a statement,” Seavey said at the doorway.

  “Sure,” Bob said. He swung the door shut behind the deputy and watched him drive away.

  .II.

  The sky was darkening as Bob and Lisa pulled into the church parking-lot. The snowman some children had built on the front lawn had melted and was now little more than a shapeless slushball.

  Bob looked at the melting snowman and felt glad that at least not all life in the town had stopped. He noticed, though, that now that it was dark there were no children out playing. Bob looked up at the church, at the dim light of the candles filtering through the stained-glass windows.

  “Please? Won’t you come in with me?” Lisa asked, her voice edged with worry. “Reverend Alder will understand.”

  Bob lit a cigarette and exhaled noisily. “You know I can’t, Lisa.”

  “Even after what happened to Thurston? No one’s safe out there.” She looked at him intently. “There must be someone who could go with you. Bob, you could get killed!” Tears glistened in her eyes. “Please, don’t go.”

  “It’s already too late. I have to go tonight!’ He was surprised by the intensity in his voice. Reaching across in front of her, he snapped open her car door. “The time for talking is over.”

  With a wrenching sigh, Lisa swung her legs out of the car. Before she stood up, though, she leaned close to Bob and said, “I’ll be praying for you.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  “Stop worrying.”

  Bob started the car, put it into reverse, and slowly backed up. Lisa stood in the glare of the headlights, shoulders slumped, her head cocked to one side. She looked defeated. She raised one hand and waved.

  Bob stuck his head out the window and shouted, “I’ll stop by later tonight when I get back.” Then he shifted the car into gear and slipped out onto the road. He hit his horn one quick beep and drove away.

  As he drove down the road, something within him made him want to scream, to shout, to cry out. His emotions were twisted and confused. He reached into the back seat and picked up the rifle he had there. Laying it across his lap, he gripped the stock, and the ruggedness of the rifle helped steady him to his purpose. He drove up Railroad Avenue, heading toward the Simmons house.

  “We’ve all suffered enough,” he whispered, glancing at his pale reflection in the rearview mirror. His voice sounded like gravel to him.

  .III.

  When Lisa stepped out of the car in the church parking-lot and watched Bob drive away, she was surprised that her mind was functioning along clear and precise lines.

  The man she loves is driving away from her.

  In his backseat is a rifle.

  In his pocket are three silver bullets.

  He is going out to kill a werewolf.

  She had to talk to Reverend Alder again. That was why she had Bob drop her off at the church.

  Her feet crunched the ice on the sidewalk as she made her way to the front door of the church. At the top of the steps, she paused and looked out over the quiet street. Everything looked dead. The earth was covered with a layer of ice that the warming spring sun had not yet penetrated. She wondered if it ever would.

  She swung the heavy door open and quickly stepped inside. The church was dark except for the glow of the candles on the altar. Lisa inhaled slowly, deeply, letting the quiet emptiness of the church calm her nerves. She could hear the blood rushing through her ears. She flicked the light switch and the church filled with light.

  “Hello,” she called softly. She stood with her hand resting on one of the pews. “Reverend Alder?”

  Her call echoed dully from the front of the church. Cautiously, she walked up the aisle, aware of the floorboards creaking underfoot. Her attuned hearing magnified the sound, making her feel uneasy.

  At the front of the church, she paused. Looking over at the door to the reverend’s office, she could see that the room was dark. He had said he’d meet her but had probably forgotten, she figured.

  She was about to turn and leave when the lights overhead suddenly blinked out, plunging the church into darkness. Slowly, Lisa’s eyes adjusted to the faint candlelight. She stood beside the altar railing, both hands covering her mouth to hold back the scream that threatened.

  Then, from the stairway leading to the basement, she heard heavy footsteps.

  Could that beast have gotten in here? she wondered frantically. No! It could never enter a church. Could it?

  Her throat closed with a gagging spasm.

  This is a holy place! she thought. It should be safe!

  The footsteps came to the head of the stairs and paused. Lisa’s lungs began to hurt as she held her breath, waiting.

  It could never enter a church!

  She wondered if she should cry out for help. Would anyone hear her? Her eyes widened with fear as a shapeless shadow moved across the far wall.

  Run! Get out of here! her mind screamed, but her body remained tense, unable to move. Her throat made a clicking sound as she inhaled deeply. She looked longingly at the reverend’s office door. She knew she could get out that way, if only her body would obey the commands of her mind.

  Suddenly, there was a loud crash from the back of the church. Lisa let loose a shattering scream that filled the church. Overhead, the lights flashed on. Around the corner, Lisa saw the startled face of Reverend Alder peering at her.

  “Lisa? Lisa,” he said, striding rapidly toward her with his arms open wide.

  “Oh my God!” she muttered weakly, feeling her knees buckle. She caught herself on the altar railing.

  “I’m so sorry,” the reverend said as he came up to her and gripped her by the shoulders. “I had no idea you were waiting for me up here. I saw the lights on and thought I had absentmindedly left them on.”

  Lisa whimpered softly as she brushed her hair back from her face and tried to compose herself.

  “I’m sorry I gave you such a start. Clumsy me, I dropped my briefcase when I stumbled in the dark.”

  “I was—Bob dropped me off. I wanted to talk,” she said, and then she began to cry.

  .IV.

  Bob stood in the darkness at the foot of the steps, looking up at the Simmons front door. He felt a sudden tightening in his stomach. The haunting, death-still face of Julie Sikes floated through his mind. He imagined her standing there, ghostly, in the open doorway, beckoning to him.

  Right down there! he thought, glancing at the black cellar window set in the stone foundation. She’s waiting. Right down there!

  He shook his head and took several steps backward, but the feeling was strong; it was as if there was something pulling him toward the house.

  Should I go down there and check? he wondered.

  He wanted to convince himself that he had imagined seeing her corpse there. Perhaps his overwrought imagination had fabricated it that night from a discarded burlap bag or pile of trash or something. She wasn’t really down there. She couldn’t be! But he knew better.

  She’s right down there, waiting.

  “She’s dead. She’s dead,” he whispered softly, rubbing the length of his rifle with his gloved hand. But that thought gave him no comfort as he scanned the moon-washed side of the house.

  Raising his gun to his shoulder, he walked gingerly over to the ground-level cellar-window. Bending down low, he squinted, trying to pierce the night-washed pane of glass. His heart almost choked him. At any second he expected t
o see Julie’s white, desiccated face press against the glass, staring at him, beckoning him.

  Right down there!

  The grip of his rifle tightened until his hands began to hurt.

  “There’s nothing there,” he said firmly. But he was bothered by the feeling that it was more wishful thinking than fact. Cautiously, his eyes riveted to the cellar window, he backpedaled away from the house. When he was about fifty feet away from the house, he turned and trotted across the field toward the distant woods.

  As he entered the forest, he was surprised to find that he felt more secure in the closeness of the trees. The wind whistled in the pines. The full moon flooded the woods with a soft, blue light. Before he plunged too far into the woods, he took one last look at the Simmons house, standing alone and silent and waiting.

  .V.

  Tonight he had intended to climb the ridge behind the Simmons house, hike out to the falls, and from there cut north along the river up to Martin’s Lake. Now that he had the Simmons house between himself and the falls, Bob decided to follow the fire roads west, instead. He would walk out by the old Cushing place, loop-around until he hit Old Jepson’s Road, and then call it a night.

  Tomorrow night, he decided, would be time enough to go out by the falls.

  Hefting his rifle to his shoulder, he bent low to avoid the low-hanging tree-branches and started walking west. He felt great relief to leave the Simmons house behind.

  The deeper he got into the woods, the deeper the snow got. Quite a few times in the next hour he wished he had taken Lisa’s advice and brought snowshoes. He kept sinking, up to his knees in spots, sometimes with every other step. It slowed him down considerably. He knew that if the beast came after him in the deep woods, he would have to count on the silver bullets to stop it; there would be no other escape.

  Sweat formed on his forehead and ran down his face from the effort of hiking, but he had to laugh at the picture he must be presenting. He must look like he was drunk on his ass.

  The silence of the night was broken only by the sounds of his labored breathing and walking. He paused now and then to catch his breath and listen intently. At any moment, he expected to hear a long, wavering howling in the distance. But if the animal was out hunting, it was keeping its presence a secret so far. Bob kept remembering a line from countless adventure movies: “It’s too quiet out there. It makes me nervous.”

  Puffing for breath, he pushed on, making a wide arc that would eventually bring him out of the forest.

  At last, he came to a wide clearing; there Bob decided to take a moment to rest. He checked, making sure there was at least twenty feet clear all the way around, before he hunkered down on his heels and lit a cigarette. He kept his rifle across his lap as he smoked, thinking that was just how a frontiersman would do it.

  As the smoke from his cigarette wafted away on the night breeze, he kept turning his head, trying to watch the forest edge. He didn’t want to be surprised and taken. He kept reminding himself that it wasn’t just him hunting the werewolf. Like last night, it would be out hunting too!

  With a sudden flick of his wrist, he sent the cigarette butt tailspinning off into the darkness. He rose, scanned the circumference of the forest clearing again, and headed off into the woods.

  He plunged deep into the woods. The thick, crowded trees blocked out most of the moonlight, and the going got increasingly difficult. Thick, inky shadows shifted gently in the wind. Every sense was on edge, hair-triggered to spring at the slightest sign of anything. Bob felt confident that he would react in time if he was attacked.

  After another hour of wandering through the woods, the trees began to thin out and, distantly, Bob could hear the hiss of traffic. He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that he had been out for over two hours. He was exhausted and grateful that he had come to the road. He was also a bit irritated that he hadn’t had even a sign of the werewolf.

  As he came out onto the road, Bob realized that he had wandered quite far off track. He was up too far north on Route 43. He figured he was about three or four miles from Old Jepson’s Road. He decided not to hitchhike, figuring he’d have trouble explaining what he was doing out at night with a gun when it wasn’t hunting season. He struck off into the woods again, hoping that with any luck he would come out at his house. He had covered a lot of ground and was extremely tired.

  After walking for another half hour, he saw the silver surface of Pemaquid Pond through a break in the trees. His house was still on the far shore of his approach, but he felt relieved that he was almost through for the night. Lisa said she would be home. He figured that once he got to his house he’d give her a call and ask her if she would drive him out to the Simmons place to pick up his car. After that, all he wanted was a hot shower and some sleep.

  .VI.

  Friday, April 16 (Good Friday)

  “No one died last night?” Bob asked, amazed. It had been late afternoon before he got out of bed and came over to Lisa’s apartment. They sat together on the couch drinking coffee.

  Lisa looked over his shoulder at the darkening sky. “No, thank God,” she whispered. Her apartment filled with silence as she and Bob stared at each other. Between them on the floor was Bob’s cleaned out and oiled rifle. Lisa wondered if it was loaded now.

  “I’ve been reading in this,” she said, indicating the new, whole copy of Witchcraft: Its Forms and Functions. “The one I ordered for the library came in and I thought I’d glance through it.”

  “I half-read it,” Bob said smiling. Lisa chuckled at his attempted joke.

  “It’s interesting, but cripes, it all sounds so, so wacky,” Lisa said. “I mean, if you really believe in this—”

  “Julie Sikes believed in it,” Bob said sharply.

  “And look what it got her!”

  Bob shivered as the mental image of Julie’s corpse rose in his mind.

  Lisa said nothing as she fixed her gaze on the open book on the coffee table. Still, deep inside, she rebelled at the idea that a werewolf was killing people of the town. But she had also seen enough that night at Bob’s house to convince herself that the cause of so many deaths in town was not entirely natural, either. Her talk last night with Reverend Alder had done nothing to settle her mind. Still, there was no denying that the cross, her silver cross, had glowed with blue light and had exploded when it touched the animal. She had wondered, briefly, if maybe the whole episode that night had been fabricated by Bob as a practical joke or something, but she dismissed it.

  “You know,” she said weakly, “it says in here that if someone is just bitten by the werewolf that he too will become a werewolf.”

  “I didn’t read that part, I guess,” Bob said. He leaned over and picked up his rifle.

  “Yeah. It’s like with vampires. One can make another.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s getting dark,” Bob said, standing up and putting on his coat. “I’ve got to get going.”

  “So you want the snowshoes tonight?” Lisa asked. She made a move toward the closet.

  “No. Not tonight. This is the last chance I’ll have this month. If I have to go out next month, the snow will be out of the woods. I was planning on staying pretty much on the roads. I figure the animal has to come pretty close to town now. It must realize that people are scared now and staying close.”

  “Take them, just in case,” Lisa said.

  “No, really,” Bob said, hefting his rifle. “I’m just going to drive out to the falls, look around, and then swing around by Martin’s Lake, where Julie’s house used to be.”

  “Bob, please be careful.”

  “Don’t worry, OK?” he said smiling. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure it’s him, not me, that gets it. Well, I guess I’m ready.”

  He turned and walked to the door. With one last glance, he winked at Lisa, then shut the door firmly behind him. Lisa sat on the couch and listened until she heard his car start and drive away, then she let her held breath out slowly.

  Sh
e picked up the witchcraft book from the coffee table and idly flipped through it. She paused to read the titles at the top of the chapters, then opened the book and began to read in the chapter titled, “Destroying the Werewolf.”

  After several minutes of silent reading, Lisa gave a startled gasp and sat bolt-upright on the couch. The book was clamped shut on her index finger, which still marked the paragraph she had just read.

  “No,” she said softly, intensely. She looked about herself strangely, as if unsure she had spoken aloud. Her face flushed, and she felt a terrible twisting in her stomach.

  Her hands trembled as she slowly opened the book again and read the page out loud.

  “‘There are, as would be expected, many ways of getting rid of a werewolf, both religious and quasi-magical. The most common way, of course, is to shoot the animal with a silver bullet; but this has not always been effective. A person can be cured of lycanthropy if he is addressed by his Christian name three times. In order to prevent the return of the werewolf, most folk customs require that the fur be burned entirely. Otherwise, there is the possibility that the werewolf will return as a vampire.’”

  Her eyes were stinging as she closed the book and put it down on the coffee table.

  Does Bob know this? she wondered, feeling her panic rising.

  According to the book, the werewolf can’t be killed—completely—unless the fur is burned!

  The silver bullets won’t end it! her mind screamed.

  “Most folk customs,” she whispered hoarsely, her eyes darting out at the darkening evening sky. It might not be important; it might not matter; but this was the book Julie used! And if Julie used the book to create the magic, wouldn’t the remedies in the book be required to stop it?

  She stopped before getting into the car, a sudden thought slowing her down.

  “If you need fire to kill it—gasoline!” She raced back into the apartment building to the workroom where the apartment-building manager kept his tools. Maybe there would be gasoline there.