by Zoë Fox
Under A Blood Moon
A Novel
By Zoë C. Fox
Copyright © 2020 Brandy Nicole Fox
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
ISBN: 978-1-64826-847-2
Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.
Front cover image by Clark C. Fox
Book design by Jacob D. Smith
For my grandmother, my giving tree. It is from her branches all the pages I fill are born.
For my mother, who never once brought home a man as bad as the one in this book. I'm sure she wants you to know that. She always let me read whatever I wanted, no matter how age inappropriate. As always mom, it's all your fault.
For Kayla, Hannah, Aubrey, and all the young women who've more 'spice' than 'sugar' in their 'everything nice'. Never believe anyone who says you're too much.
Additional Thanks:
The author would like to thank Clark C. Fox for use of his photography for the cover and his unending support, Jacob D. Smith for designing this book from cover to cover, and Kathleen Trigg and Dr. J. E. Sumerau for assistance in editing.
Prologue
Lighting the candle on his desk, Lucas readied himself to write the letter he’d deliberated over for months. He’d wrestled with the subject, considering first his duty and then, the tired feeling in his bones of late. Yes, his job was important, but how could he possibly perform it to the Council’s satisfaction if he could barely force himself to venture out into the world, much less record his observations. People had ceased to make sense to him. Melancholia had taken over.
He dipped his pen in the inkwell and sighed. No, this was for the best. If the Council cared, they could always send someone else to continue the project. It wasn’t his problem now.
Dear Esteemed Council Members,
I regret to inform you that upon your receipt of this correspondence I will have already taken to the long rest. I apologize that I will be unable to respond, should this be to your collective disliking, but, as I have always been most dedicated, I expect your judgement will be fair and considerate. All precautions have been taken care of, as is customary in these situations. In my absence, please allow Roderick Grier to undertake the responsibilities of my vote in all matters. Upon awakening, I will write immediately for your directions.
Your Loyal Servant,
Lucas Anthony Beinnhard
August 12th, 1912
He glanced over the document once more before folding it carefully and putting it in an envelope. He pressed his personal seal downward and took a deep breath. Turning in his chair, he directed his attention to the young boy who stood ready, waiting for the letter.
Lucas studied him for a moment; an occupational hazard. The child seemed frightened being inside the mausoleum after dark. He searched deep inside himself, looking for any sense of empathy, but found none. Lately, he seemed to lack all semblance of human emotion. All of it, everything had been replaced by a dull ache, a tired feeling of nothing. None of it affected him anymore.
“Do you remember where you are supposed to take this?”
The boy nodded as Lucas handed him the note.
“Good.” He reached deep into his pocket, pulling out the promised dollar and passed it to the child, hoping such a hefty payment would ensure speedy delivery. “Now go.”
The boy turned and ran up the flight of stairs. Lucas waited to hear the sound of the door closing behind him before leaning down to blow out the candle. Darkness encompassed him, a black, inky nothingness. It seemed fitting. All that was left was to sleep the long rest of the dead
Chapter One
“Alex, I’m serious. I don’t want to go out there again,” Sean watched his friend rummage around her mother’s pocketbook, looking for something.
“Then don’t come,” she rolled her eyes. They had the same conversation every time. Some days she wondered why she invited him at all.
“That place gives me the creeps!”
“It’s supposed to, genius. It’s a graveyard.” She continued to push around the bottom of the bag.
Across the kitchen, her younger brother sat at the table eating dinner.
“Ah! Got it,” She said, pulling out her mother’s silver cigarette case. “Want one?”
Sean shook his head as she carefully extracted one long, white menthol.
“Don’t you ever wonder about him telling on you?” Sean gestured to the blond boy.
Alex smiled at her brother. “Toad, are you going to tell Mama I took one of her cigarettes?”
“Nope.” He grinned back at her.
“Why not?”
“Because you only ever take one…” He paused for a moment. “And it would make her go all red here.” He gestured to his head. “Toad doesn’t like it when she goes red.”
Alex turned her attention back to her best friend. “Happy now? Toad isn’t a rat.” She shrugged her shoulders into her black leather jacket. “Besides, he’s right. I only take one when we go to the cemetery.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave him alone here, all by himself.” Sean knew he was only delaying the inevitable. When Alex got something into her head, she was impossible to distract. “He’s like, what? Five years old?”
“Six!” Toad corrected, glaring at Sean. Alex secretly expected that her brother’s least favorite thing about her friend was his tendency to talk as if the kid wasn’t present.
“Toad, do you want to come with us to the graveyard?”
He shook his head emphatically. “No way, José. It’s crowded! Too many people there.”
“There’s not going to be anyone but us there. I promise.” She wasn’t opposed to him coming along. Most of the time he didn’t speak unless someone asked him a direct question. She just wanted to get out of the house. Take some time to clear her head.
“No,” Toad said as he added more ketchup to his bowl of Frosted Flakes. “Graveyards are always full of people that can’t leave.”
She turned back to Sean “See? He’ll be fine.”
“I mean it, Alex. We can’t leave him. Look at what he’s doing now!”
Toad had retrieved the maple syrup from the bottom cabinet and proceeded to pour himself a glass. Taking a big gulp, he smiled up at his sister.
“So, what? A little sugar never killed anyone. It’s not like he’s a diabetic. Now get your coat. I’m leaving.” She grabbed her brush and pulled her long, auburn hair into a quick ponytail before opening the front door.
“Bye Toad. If mom calls, tell her I’m in the shower.”
Slamming the door behind her, she paused on the front stoop and counted to five. Sean was always five seconds behind her.
“Ok, fine, but I’m only going so that nothing happens to you.”
“Like that’ll do me a lot of good,” she laughed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He asked, brushing his black locks out of his eyes.
“Look, no offense, buddy, but I’ve got a better chance of being the head of the cheerleading squad than you do of playing hero.”
He didn’t say anything. The idea of her showing off her school spirit by flashing her underwear to bleachers full of people was almost unimaginable. And, if she’d known he�
��d managed even a hazy image, she probably would have broken his arm.
The cool autumn breeze felt good on Alex’s face as it tossed loose strands of her hair against her cheek. This had been her favorite season for as long as she could remember, but it always made the tension inside her worsen. Sometimes she thought her skin would burst from the feeling that she was waiting for something, anything, to happen. She always felt like that, but the crispness of the air, the darkening skies and dying leaves pulled it into the forefront of her mind, causing a tightness in her chest. It drew it out of her somehow.
Glancing behind, she slowed down, forcing herself to walk at a pace Sean would be more comfortable with. She knew he had trouble keeping up with her and it bothered him. As much as she picked on him, the last thing she wanted to do was cause him to have an asthmatic attack.
“So, what do you think you got on Mrs. McNeal’s test?” He asked as he caught up.
She shrugged. “I didn’t take it.”
“Didn’t you go to class?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Jesus, what’s with all the questions? You sound like my grandmother.” She wasn’t trying to be mean. She was just on edge today for some reason.
Sea was undeterred. He was used to her moods. “You’ve got to start going to class or you’re going to fail, Alex. Didn’t you read the book?”
“Yeah, like twice. In middle school. I like Shakespeare.”
“Then why skip the test?”
She sighed. “I really doubt the entire course of my future is going to be determined by the results of some stupid multiple choice test from the 11th grade. Besides, I’m a conscientious objector of forced education and Mrs. Mc-No-Neck is ruining the play.”
“I don’t know. I kind of liked those classes.”
“You would.”
“She made it easier to understand!”
It was pretty simple to begin with.” She pulled her jacket tighter as the cemetery came into view.
“Maybe for you, but I don’t get all that stuff. Why didn’t he just write it in plain English?”
She resisted the urge to laugh. “He did.”
Staring at the wrought iron entry gate, she made sure the caretaker had once again forgotten to lock it. Most people were too weirded out to come to the cemetery this late, so what did it matter?
But not Alex. She liked the quiet, the peacefulness, of the place. Her father was buried there so she couldn’t be afraid. If he had to stay there, then the least she could do was visit.
She’d been seven when a drunk driver slammed into his car on his way home from work, leaving just her mother and her. For weeks, it seemed, she had sat at the front door, waiting for him. No matter how many times her mother had told her he wasn’t coming home, she couldn’t force herself to believe it. Finally, after over a month of watching Alex sit by the door, her mother had walked her down to the graveyard. Pointing out her father’s name on the newly placed tombstone, she’d said. “Daddy has to stay here now.”
Alex hadn’t cried. She’d just nodded. That was when she’d started taking regular trips to the cemetery. She didn’t feel alone there.
Things had gotten easier when Toad had come along, at least for her. Her mother’s then-boyfriend had refused to marry her and cut out, leaving just her and Alex to raise the kid. Alex watched as her mother slowly became more desperate for love and approval, one man after another leaving her.
She pulled the single cigarette out from inside her jacket and lit it with the white lighter from her pocket.
“You know those things are going to kill you, right?” Sean asked as he moved downwind.
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because one or two a week is so bad.”
“I read a study that said—“
“Wait! You can read?”
Although he’d been her best friend since second grade, she’d never felt comfortable telling him that she didn’t even like cigarettes. It was just that her father had always smoked them. When she was twelve, she’d woken up in a panic one night, realizing she could no longer remember what he’d smelled like. That was when she started stealing her mother’s cigarettes.
“Do you know how many carcinogens there are in that thing?”
“Yum, cancer,” Alex said, taking a small puff. “What I want to know is why you’re so scared of something happening to me? Afraid you won’t have anyone left to nag?” She took a seat on her father’s grave, using the headstone as a backrest.
“You know, you’re not supposed to do that right?” Sean asked, keeping a respectful distance.
“Oh, what now? Breathe?”
“No, sit on a grave. It’s rude.”
Bending her knees so that they touched her chest, she stared up at him. “It’s my dead dad. I can sit on him if I want to.”
“But Alex—“
“Sean,” She interrupted.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
They fell into a comfortable silence. Alex leaned her back against the tombstone, staring up at the sky. Usually the cemetery calmed her, but it wasn’t working tonight. She was anxious, restless. The wind blowing through the nearby pine trees softly whistled. It sounded like loneliness to her.
Scanning her mind, she tried to put a finger on what was bothering her. Nothing about her day had been any different than countless other hundreds before it. She’d gotten up, barely on time, and hurried through getting dressed so that she could get Toad ready for school, before catching the bus. She’d skipped second period Literature to hang out in the library, preferring to read the books for herself than have to learn about them by listening to the overweight, middle age woman summarize the plotlines.
Third period had been in-house detention for getting caught skipping second, which meant she got to miss Biology, too. She wondered if the principal realized the lack of logic in this, or if he was secretly afraid that she’d hurt someone with the scalpel intended for frog dissections, were he to allow her to participate. She’d never hurt anyone, but Alex wasn’t about to correct him if it meant she got to sit in a quiet room and read while the in-house teacher watched on, making sure no one was fashioning crude prison weapons from the lunchroom’s plastic cutlery.
After school, she’d helped Toad with his homework, completely ignoring her own, and waited for Sean to get out of piano practice so she wouldn’t have to listen to a week’s worth of lectures for leaving him behind.
“What are you thinking about?” He asked, watching her face, trying to determine if she was going to get frustrated at him for talking. He never understood how she could go from talking a mile a minute to completely silent, all in the span of half an hour. His mother liked to complain about his odd choice of friends, calling Alex a sullen delinquent, but since no one else ever asked him to hang out, she never stopped him from going. Personally, he found Alex fascinating.
“I was wondering when the curse was going to wear off and you’d be able to quit talking only in questions.” She smiled at him as she playfully tossed a clod of grass from the grave at him.
“Yeah, well, I was wondering when you’re going to stop being difficult and just answer them.”
“Most likely, never. Being difficult suits me.” She flicked the tip of the cigarette, sending askes fluttering in the wind.
He snorted.
“I’m serious. It’s good for my complexion. The freckles on my nose are a lot less noticeable when I’m being difficult.”
“That’s because nobody can see past your horrible personality.”
Her grin widened. She was always encouraging him to come back at her, hoping that if he could learn to pick on her a little bit, then maybe he’d start smarting off to the guys at school that gave him hell. Sean was like a turtle, at the first sign of danger he retreated back inside his shell. She worried about what would happen to him when he went off to some expensive university and she was taking night classes at the local community college, too far away for
her to protect him. She just hoped they didn’t send him home in a body bag.
Standing up, she brushed the dirt off her backside and stretched. Her black t-shirt crawled up slightly, displaying a sliver of her slender abdomen.
“I’m bored,” She said, tossing the cigarette butt to the side.
“You’re always bored.”
“It’s not my fault I process information and experiences at a superhuman speed. People ought to try harder to keep up with me.” She had the look on her face that usually meant she wanted to do something she knew he’d rather not. Inwardly, Sean cringed, afraid one of those days she might enlist his help to dig up one of the bodies—just so she could “have a look”. It wasn’t like he could tell her no. The sound of her voice inside his head was saying ‘Oh, come on. I’ll put it back after I figure out what killed them.’ He hoped to avoid that moment, if he could.
“I’m going to the back.” With that she started walking in the opposite direction, not waiting for Sean. She knew he hated that part of the cemetery the most. Older graves and forgotten mausoleums resided there, under the dark expanse of tree limbs no one bothered to prune any more. When there weren’t any living relations, what did it matter if the plots fell into disrepair?
Alex thought the crumbling headstones and eroded angels were beautiful. She had this whole speech about how life wasn’t perfect so death shouldn’t be either she’d have given him if he complained, referring to the graves as more realistic. She’d say the constantly cleared grounds of the newer plots weren’t as “real” …that only the living needed such a pristine image, all of which was wasted on the dead. Sean thought they were depressing, but arguing with her was about as fruitful as debating with a corpse and he knew it.
“Alex, wait up.” He called after her leather clad back. He had this horrible image of her falling into a grave and breaking a leg, or worse, her neck.