Harvest Moon

by James A. Moore

  Liz joined into the screams a second later, but she was looking at Will, who had stopped moving completely, his body as still as the air around them. His chest did not rise and fall, his eyes did not move. His body was more relaxed than she would have thought humanly possible, if he were still alive. Heather tried to look everywhere at once, and only managed to make herself feel dizzy.

  She finally managed to settle on Kimmie when the girl turned her way and ran as hard as she could, her legs pumping at the ground and her arms flailing. In the light coming from the lantern—which had, by some small miracle, not been knocked over or extinguished in the conflict—Heather saw something rising from the waters. Had she been a little less panicked by real life events, she might have thought about the legend of old Hattie and her demonic sons. Instead, she looked at the thing that lifted from the murk with absolutely no comprehension for several seconds.

  It moved, of that there was no doubt. As it stepped from the waters of the Hollow and placed one massive appendage on the ground, Heather looked at the foot of the thing, watched the bleached white and dull water-logged yellow bones that the foot was made of shift as the thing compensated for the change in pressure and weight. Mud sloughed away from the surface to reveal the ivory shades beneath. The bones were all small, and she was pretty certain that only a portion of them were from human beings, but the basic shape looked like it belonged on a man.

  The foot progressed naturally enough toward a shin. The shin was also made entirely out of bones, some of them tiny and others thick as her own forearm. Her eyes kept going up and up, to the massive thigh and hips, a weird puzzle of bones old and new that looked almost like they were held together by rubber bands. Each bone shifted and creaked as the weight changed, and where they slid across each other there were sounds like trees swaying in a heavy breeze. The moving bulk heaved itself completely out of the water, dwarfing Kimmie, who, wisely, had decided that running like hell seemed to be the best course of action.

  Heather stepped back as the thing moved completely from the waters and shook itself off, revealing a body made wholly of bones that came up on the dry land and looked around. The torso of the creature was built from what looked like half a dozen ribcages and spinal columns all fused together. There was no true method to the madness, just a fusion of ribcages that looked like they had been broken open and forced together before being set in place. One of them, that was particularly massive, looked far too large to belong to a human being. More likely, she thought through a growing numbness that refused to accept what stood before her, it belonged to a bear. The entire torso slumped forward at an awkward angle, leaving the head closer to the ground. Almost as if the thing was hunchbacked.

  She finally managed to look at the head of the monster and saw everything go gray. If the ribcage was a puzzle of bones, the head was a demented pile of skulls, broken and fused together to form a much larger head. At least three skulls faced her at the same time, but they had been sealed into one oversized unit, with eye sockets forming rough pits where they had been forced together. There was a light deep within those jagged holes, a faint glimmer of something inside the makeshift head that was looking around and seeing with a dark malevolence. Something wet and slithery, with far too many legs, ran from the open right eye socket down to the nasal cavity that looked like an open wound. The slimy thing skittered inside the cavernous passage. The entire head tilted slightly as the monster in front of Heather took notice of her for the first time. It reached for her with one of the shifting columns of bones it used as an arm, and several fingers wrapped around her left bicep.

  Too many fingers. It’s got at least seven. That’s not right. Heather looked at the bones wrapped around her flesh and felt them dig in for a better grip. She started pulling, trying to get away from the thing, but despite the lack of any muscles, the grip it had was far too strong.

  Kimmie tried to help. She ran straight up to the thing and started screaming, swinging her arms and striking at the hard collection of bones. It didn’t do much good, but at least she tried. Heather looked at her friend as if she’d gone mad, but at the same time she marveled to find that Kimmie would try to help her under the circumstances.

  Then the bone monster slapped Kimmie hard enough to shatter her jaw. Heather heard the wet crunch even through the sound of Kimmie’s scream. The chesty girl stumbled backward, her feet slipping on the muddy terrain and she hit the ground hard. She did not stir or try to stand back up.

  Heather looked around at her friends. They were not the popular crowd, but they were her friends, and they made her feel special. All three of the boys were sprawled on the ground, their faces pasty white and slightly swollen, looking like maybe they’d had a bad allergic reaction. Kimmie was on the ground, her face bloodied, and her only sign of life the steady rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. And Liz…she frowned. Where’s Liz? From off to her left, she heard the sound of someone struggling, a gasp of sudden pain and then silence. Despite her own predicament, she turned her head. She had to know what had happened to Liz.

  Whatever was happening was beyond the reach of the lantern’s light.

  The monster holding her moved its free arm and clacked the bony fingers together in a rapid tattoo. Heather had never really paid attention to the Girl Scouts lecture on Morse code, but the sounds produced almost sounded like they might be something akin to that language of dots and dashes.

  A low, raspy voice responded from the shadows, over where Liz was still being held. “No, I don’t think she would approve of that. Just hold them, or better still, feed them properly.”

  Again, in response, the clacking noises.

  The voice from the darkness replied, “There are three healthy young lads there. Take what you need from them instead, but leave the girls intact. She hasn’t chosen yet.”

  The sound of hollow sticks crashing against each other in a rapid series. It wasn’t Morse code, Heather was certain of that. But whatever it was, it was definitely communicating something. There was an exasperated sigh from the darkness, and a sudden flare of light. A jack-o-lantern’s features formed from the darkness at the height of a very, very tall man, and Heather could see Liz in the glow from the flame. Fingers of darkness held the lower half of her face, covering her mouth. Liz’s eyes were wide open, panicked and rolling in her head as she sought some means of escape.

  “The mushroom, the moss, the damned mud! Everything around us is hers! Now feed the wenches!” The flames roared higher, like a furnace lit from within the gaping mouth and nose and eyes. Heather swallowed hard and tried to pull away from her captor again. He squeezed her upper arm hard enough to make her cry out and shook her like a rag doll, her vision leaping about as she was rattled. The flames damped down in the pumpkin across the way and Liz let out a sudden moan that could have been pleasure or pain. Heather couldn’t tell, couldn’t see her friend anymore. Truth be told, she wasn’t overly worried about Liz anymore. She was far more worried about herself.

  The monster’s grip on her arm loosened just a bit, and she felt the squelch of mud running from the bones around her bicep to the rapidly bruising flesh on her arm. Then the force was back and tripled, and she fell to her knees in the wet filth of the hollow. Her face was shoved into the ground, the wet mud pressing across her eyes, filling her nose, and smearing over her lips. She struggled harder, and felt the mass of the calcified freak behind her press against her backside. Aside from suffocating she suddenly had a flash of what it might feel like to be raped with a gigantic bone member, and fought harder. The other hand of the creature gripped the back of her head and she let out a soft moan as the pain lanced into her skull.

  The hand on her arm let go and moved near her face. When it came back closer to her, she saw the black mushrooms held in the muddy collection of shifting skeletal remains. She barely managed a breath before the hard fingers were pinching at her jaw line, forcing her to open wide and then shoving the fungi into her mouth. The taste was acrid and electrify
ing, actually tingling on her tongue. The effect was not the same on her as it had been on Tim. She did not thrash or vomit or suddenly go into seizures. Instead, Heather was filled with a sudden rush of warmth, a sensual flow that started at her mouth and coursed through her entire body. Every cell of her body seemed to fill with a deep heat, a rich wave of energy that left her feeling euphoric.

  She closed her eyes, trying to remember what her name was or even why she’d been so afraid. It was a long, long time before she opened her eyes again.

  VI

  “I liked your story today.” Josh looked over at Melissa, where she sat on the railing of the front porch. The weather was nice and it was either talk out here, talk in front of their parents—well, his parents and her new parents—or in his bedroom, which was currently a disaster area. They decided without words that the porch was a good place.

  She smiled shyly and nodded. “Thanks. It was kinda fun. What are you telling your story on?”

  Josh shrugged. He hadn’t really given it too much thought. There were supposed to be ghosts out at the covered bridge and he figured that was as good a story as any. “Maybe the ghost of Rachel Carmichael.” The legends said that Rachel Carmichael had been another of Hattie’s victims, a young girl who made the mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and was sacrificed to appease the witch’s darker appetites. She would have been around their own age if he remembered, and he figured he could put a spin on that to make a decent grade. Besides, the story had scared the crap out of him when he was five, and he’d spent six months sleeping with the lights on before his father put a stop to it.

  Melissa arched one eyebrow at him and smiled in the darkness. It was after nine in the evening, but their folks were still having fun and no one had suggested leaving yet. “You’re gonna write your own?”

  “Probably. It won’t be as good as yours, but the only story I wanted to do was already done.” He shrugged and looked at her from the corner of his eye while trying to look nonchalant. That was a complete and total lie, but he wanted to impress Melissa. He was starting to like her, a lot. More than he thought he could like almost anyone except maybe Miss Holly.

  Heather was absent. Melissa had said something about her older sister going to the movies with her friends, and maybe that was a good thing. If Heather had been there, Melissa would have probably been overshadowed by the girl. Both of them had the same history with the hammer-happy dad, but Heather seemed to have bounced back from it better. Away from her sister and the school, Melissa was turning out to be a lot of fun.

  If she could stay that way all the time, he could see spending days on end with her and never getting bored. She stretched, her arms going over her head and her body arching out in ways that highlighted every curve of her developing body. Nights and nights, too, he decided.

  Melissa stood up and walked the length of the wraparound porch. There were fifteen pumpkins along the stretch, most of them decorated by Josh and his mom. They’d picked up one of the kits that had stencils and special tools, and most of them had turned out pretty well. He still wished he’d found the pumpkin that Jeremy took home, first. He hoped Jeremy kept his promise to deliver the finished jack-o-lantern on Halloween. Mister Sticks wouldn’t look nearly as cool with any other gourd.

  He smiled as the idea popped into his head. “What are you doing for Halloween?”

  Melissa looked at him, her eyes lost in the darkness, unreadable. “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Me and Jeremy are going as two of Hattie’s kids. Wanna be Hattie?”

  She blinked and smiled. “That could be cool.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded, her head bobbing emphatically. “That could be very cool.”

  “Excellent.” He smiled at her, his face feeling like it was the biggest smile he’d ever had. “Now I just gotta find someone to go as Patches and we’re all set.”

  When she spoke again, she was much closer. He imagined he could feel the heat of her body, even from a few feet away. He definitely smelled her perfume, a faint jasmine scent that made his blood seem to sing. “So when are we getting together? On Halloween, I mean.”

  “I don’t know. Around sunset?”

  “You think you could help me with my costume? Maybe we could get together a little earlier?”

  His head felt like someone had filled it with helium. But it was a nice sort of feeling. “Yeah, sure. We can do that.”

  Before she could respond, her parents stepped out of the front door, bathed in the light from the living room. “School tomorrow, hon. Time for us to get home.” Her Uncle Walter was a nice guy, but his timing sucked eggs.

  Melissa nodded, her eyes on Josh’s face. “Okay. Good night, Josh.”

  “Hey, Melissa?”

  “Yeah?” She looked back at him and he forced his mouth to open and function.

  “Want to walk to school together tomorrow? We could go over the costumes.” Lame. He sounded really amazingly lame and was grateful for the darkness to hide his sudden blush.

  “Yeah. Okay.” She smiled and he felt less like a complete loser. “See you around seven-thirty?”

  “Yeah. That’s perfect. See you then.”

  She waved and he waved back and suddenly he didn’t feel lame at all.

  He watched her walk away after returning the goodnight, and his eyes never left her body until she had faded into the darkness of the next house over.

  He stayed on the porch a little longer, before his parents told him it was time to get ready for bed. Almost the entire time, he contemplated the possibilities regarding helping Melissa with her costume.

  Chapter Three

  I

  Dawn came with a flow of amazing colors, most of them blood red and shades of orange, as the sun’s light bounced off the low, gray clouds. The air was cold and most of the people in the area were less than thrilled with the sudden bite that promised a nasty winter. The ones who had it worst—who had to get up well before dawn to start their days—grumbled to themselves and went about their business a little faster than usual in the hopes of staying warm.

  Denny Halloran was no exception. He grabbed the glass containers from the back of the milk truck and scurried as quickly as he could to the doors of each house, setting down the orders that they’d placed and picking up the empties. There are a lot of places where milk is no longer delivered: Beldam Woods is not one of them. Denny set down the bottles for the Montgomery family and grabbed the empties from the place where they were normally stashed. There were lights on already, which was a little strange, but not unheard of. Hell, they had a couple of kids and that almost guaranteed they never got a decent night’s rest. He thought about the body on their youngest girl, Kimberly, and wondered how it was that girls that age were developing so damned fast these days. Not all that long ago—well, a couple of months, but who was counting—he’d come by later in the day to drop off an extra half-gallon of yogurt for something Linda Montgomery was planning on making and had seen the girl in the side yard, wearing almost nothing as she tanned herself in the sunlight. It’d taken a lot of heartbeats before he stopped staring. Fourteen or not, the girl looked like a centerfold.

  He’d made the mistake of telling Patrick how built the girl was. Patrick Winter was not exactly a prude, but he took offense to the idea that a kid could be sexy. He and Patrick had been partnered on this run for the last seven years, and Patrick had taught him everything about the business, but that day they almost came to blows. He was glad they didn’t. He was pretty sure Patrick could tear his head off if he set his mind to it.

  With one last longing look at the window he figured belonged to the girl—he was wrong, it was the bathroom window—Denny ambled back toward the truck. Patrick looked at him, his pale face serene, his eyes shielded from the rising sun by the Mayflower Milk baseball cap he wore.

  Sometimes Patrick scared the shit out of him.

  “All set?” Patrick’s voice fit his demeanor and appearance, cold
and hard. The man wasn’t exactly a giant, but he carried himself like one and even if he was in his fifties, Denny would have bet money on him taking out almost anyone who bothered with him. Happily, Patrick wasn’t exactly known for his short fuse.

  “You bet. Where to next?”

  Patrick looked at him from under the brim of his cap and scowled. “Watersford.”

  “Well, I say we get it done.” Denny did his best to look noncommittal, but it wasn’t easy. It was a fetish, though not one he’d ever acted on. He liked his girls young, and Watersford was almost overflowing with girls that had been born and bred to look damned fine, no matter what their ages. They weren’t like most of the local girls, either. They were from all over the country and some of them were just plain exotic.

  Patrick made a noncommittal grunt and shifted the truck into gear, the rumble from the engine getting louder as the refrigerated behemoth groaned into action. Denny sat in the passenger’s seat and fidgeted. Patrick was in a mood. It’d be best not to tick him off.

  They managed to get through town without any semblance of traffic. The sky was finally lightening up, and Denny grew more alert as they reached the high stone wall around the academy.

  The wrought iron gate at the main entrance was wide open, and they drove over the cobblestone road slowly, the truck rocking back and forth on shock absorbers that were well past their prime. The academy had been there—in one form or another—for over one hundred and fifty years. Back in the last century it had been a small but prestigious legal college, right up until the scandal between the dean and three of the student bodies. After that it had floundered for almost two decades before sinking into financial ruin. Theodore Watersford had decided to save the buildings and start anew; only in his case the decision was to make it over as a school for the elite of society.