Harvest Moon

by James A. Moore

  III

  They watched their brother in silence as he walked away from the young boy and moved toward them. Of what Robert saw or felt, who can say? He had always been the stoic one among the brothers. But Patrick merely shook his head and scowled.

  Jack came back up to them, his face smiling warmly with what could perhaps have been brotherly affection. Neither of his siblings were foolish enough to believe that, however. Jack was their relative, but hardly ever what one could honestly call affectionate.

  Patrick shifted his body, felt his limbs adjust in a hundred small ways to the change in his weight distribution. Jack raised an eyebrow as he approached, his withered face leering into a lopsided grin.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said. “When did you get so good at holding a shape? When we were kids you could barely even stand up.”

  Patrick shook his head. “That was, what? Maybe a couple hundred years ago? You trying to tell me you haven’t gotten any better at being you?”

  Jack nodded and looked around. “So how good have you gotten?”

  “You’d be surprised, brother.” Patrick’s grin spread across his face. “I’m not a toddler anymore.”

  Robert interrupted the conversation before things could get tense between his siblings. That was probably for the best. Something about Jack grated on Patrick, and if the truth should be known, he was close to doing everything he could to put his estranged brother in his place.

  As always, Robert spoke without words, making his clattering racket and moving his impossible limbs in ways that no one unrelated to him could understand. “Now is not the time, brothers. We have much to do in preparation. The town is still too well guarded. The sentinels must be destroyed.” The tone was both impatient and archaic, but neither of his siblings was foolish enough to point out these flaws. Robert had spent a long, long time recovering from his injuries in the past, but he had come back with a powerful form and a willingness to do injury to anything that crossed his path, as evidenced by what he had done to the six youths they’d found to serve as surrogates.

  The fact that he was so bloodthirsty made his next words all the more puzzling.

  “Jack,” he signed. “The boy you were just with is not to be harmed. You may use him, as you most certainly must, but you may not have him. He is under my protection.”

  Jack lifted one eyebrow and studied his brother in silence. After half a minute, he nodded. “As you wish, Robert.” His expression said he wanted answers, but was willing to wait.

  Patrick watched the two of them and wondered what was going on. Like Jack, he could wait for an answer. It was not significant in the greater scheme of things, but the explanation would surely be interesting.

  “Very well, brothers.” Robert continued, his signing quick and almost impatient. “Who of us shall be accomplishing which tasks?”

  Patrick shrugged. “What do you suggest, Robert?”

  Robert turned his head, the lights of his eyes glowing pale green in the early morning sun. “I will take care of the sentinels. The two of you can handle the amusement rides and creating an appropriate distraction.”

  “Do you think that wise, brother? You alone handling the sentinels?”

  Robert did not answer. Instead he stared hard at his brother, until Jack looked away, an expression of discomfort on his face.

  IV

  Barry Foster was feeling a mite bit nervous, to say the least. After the police chief grabbed him outside of his home, he was sure he could weasel his way out of the worst of the trouble by pointing his finger at Erika. So far, it wasn’t working.

  To make matters worse, the guy in the cell with him was scary as all hell. Oh, he knew him. Hard not to know damned near everyone in a town the size of Beldam Woods. But he’d never seen Alan Treacher looking the way he was looking right now. The short, thin man was usually a good study in how to be a nerd. He’d actually seen him come out of his house to pick up his newspaper a few times on his day off, no less, and the man had always been dressed in pressed pants and a button-up shirt. His longish dark brown hair had been impeccable and Barry would have guessed that dirt was too wigged out by him to consider sticking to his body.

  That last part? Not a problem anymore. The man looked like he’d been tossed into a gristmill and just barely made it out alive. His clothes were disheveled, his hair was a mess, and his face was almost blank. But what really made him stand out was the look in his eyes. His father had called that look the thousand-yard-stare. There was no one inside that he could see. The man stared, he blinked from time to time, but whatever he was looking at was not in front of him. It was, maybe, something inside that he saw.

  Whatever the case, he was scaring the crap out of Barry, and it wasn’t really a sensation Barry liked very much. Of course, it would do for a little longer. The idea of being scared beat all hell out of the idea of what his father was going to do to him after he bailed Barry out. If he bailed Barry out.

  “They’re coming, you know.”

  Barry snapped his head around fast when he heard Alan speak. They’d been in the same cell for almost four hours and there hadn’t been a word from the man in the entire time.

  “What? I-What did you say?”

  “I said they’re coming.” Treacher’s eyes never moved. His lips just barely shifted as he spoke softly. “The monsters. They’re coming tonight and they’re going to ruin us all.”

  Barry felt a deep chill crawl along his neck and spine, but suppressed it and forced the proper attitude into his voice when he replied. “Yeah. Sure. And the moon is made of cheese, Gromit.”

  He might have hoped for a further response, but instead the older man simply went back to staring at the wall.

  “Okay, so which monsters are coming? I mean, Halloween and all, right?” He wasn’t sure if he really wanted an answer, but it had to beat the silence.

  “The witch’s children. The boys they killed so long ago.” Treacher’s voice sounded almost hollowed out.

  “Boys?”

  “Patrick, Robert, and Jack.” He was silent for a moment and then added, “Patches, Old Bones, and Sticks. They’re all real. I’ve met them.” For the first time, the man looked at him, really looked at him and saw him. Barry wanted his mommy. “I’ve seen them, and they’ve seen us and they don’t like what they see. They’re bringing her back. The witch. I think she’s going to kill us all.”

  He stood up and backed away from the man, shaking his head and balling his hands into fists. Normally that was enough to make whoever was giving him shit back away. Not this time. “Dude, you need to get over the stories and maybe get a clue.”

  “Stay in the corner. She’s coming for me soon.” He looked back at the wall for a moment and then Alan Treacher closed his eyes and began swaying softly, as if to the beat of music only he could hear.

  Despite his fear, or maybe because of it—fear can be very exhausting—Barry managed to drift off into a light sleep shortly after the sun went down and Mischief Night had officially begun. Somewhere along the way his anxieties about how his father was going to take the news of his arrest mingled with the fears he had about the witch and her demonic children and twisted his dreams into something darker.

  In his sleep Barry rested in his cell, and the freaky guy in the bunk across the room from him was still sitting in the same place, but he was speaking with the voice of Barry’s father. “The witch, Barry. The witch is coming for us all. But she’s got a special place for you, you dirty boy.”

  Barry looked over, his body refusing to move, and blinked with slow desperation at his father. And now it really was his father in front of him. The steel-gray hair, the dark blue eyes, and the thick neck that always made Barry think of a bull. The man’s face was set in his usual scowl of disapproval. Seemed like nothing he ever did was enough to please his father. Hadn’t been able to do anything right in the old man’s eyes since he started playing football.

  “The thing is, Barry, you’ve gone and hurt her
feelings. You tried to blame Erika for what you did.” His father’s face now spoke with Treacher’s voice, and despite the scowl on the heavyset jowls, there was a tone like a school lecture coming from him. Barry half-expected to see a chalkboard appear behind him. “The witch doesn’t like it when people try to hurt what belongs to her.”

  “I was only telling the truth, Dad! All I ever do is tell the truth!”

  “And look what it got you. The truth will not set you free, Barry. It will only cause you more troubles in the long run. I’m a lawyer. If there’s anything I ever taught you, it’s that the truth is merely an obstacle to overcome.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do?” He hated that he was whining, but part of him remembered that this was just a dream, so he guessed it was okay. “Am I supposed to take the fall for what she made me do?”

  His father’s voice was back, but his face was all wrong. Now he looked like an old, withered man. His vulpine features glowered under heavy brows, and he pointed an angry finger at Barry. “She didn’t make you do anything! You just wanted her to play with your dirty parts, because you’re a nasty little boy!”

  Dream Barry stepped back from the withered, wicked old man and shook his head, words escaping him for the moment. He wanted to deny the claim—even though there was a seed of truth in the matter—but he couldn’t get his mouth to cooperate.

  The old man who spoke with his father’s voice moved toward him, oversized head weaving between bony shoulders. One nearly skeletal index finger jabbed at Barry accusingly. “Liar! You little liar! You’d do anything at all for simple pleasures!” The voice was different again: Treacher’s tones replaced his father’s. “I know! Because I was like you! I’d do anything at all for my own selfish gain, but not anymore!” Somewhere along the way the angry accusing sounds became the smooth, cultured sounds of a professional salesman. The decrepit looking old man stepped to the side, revealing a darkness that had been hiding behind him. Though he could not see what that darkness hid clearly, he could almost sense that the presence within it was female. “I was a fool, Barry. Don’t make the same mistakes that I did. Don’t worry about yourself, not when you can bring her back to life.”

  The man came closer, his steps oddly disjointed, as if he were being pulled forward instead of walking. Each motion he made was jerky, uncoordinated, and unsettling to watch. His voice was calm, soothing, but the look on his face was demented to the point of homicidal insanity. The pale blue eyes glittered wetly in their darkened sockets. “Don’t walk away from this, Barry. There are only a few times in your life you can embrace greatness and expect it to hug you back and this, my friend, is one of them.” The salesman of the week stepped farther to the side and gestured back to the shadowy figure now standing in the darkness he’d been hiding previously.

  Despite himself, Barry looked to the form that breathed softly in the shadowy recesses of a jail cell that had grown as large as a football stadium. She was undefined, but he sensed a powerful attraction to the mystery woman. Her form was unseen, but seemed to draw him in without effort. He felt his erection blooming and did not care. It only seemed appropriate in front his mystery woman.

  “Kiss her, Barry. Show her how much she means to you.” Dream Barry nodded and licked his lips. In the dim recesses of his mind another part of him screamed for the rest to be careful. The bulge in his jeans pretty much guaranteed that he wouldn’t listen to his common sense. Hardly a first for Barry, who lived up to his reputation. He had, in fact, forced himself on several girls in the past. His father’s money ensured that charges weren’t pressed, or that if they were, they were quickly dismissed.

  He slid forward. His lips moving with nervous energy at the thought of kissing the woman in front of him. His hands were sweating like he was a freshman again. He reached out his hands and placed them gently on her hips, trying to see her in the darkness. He trembled when his mouth finally touched hers, and a moan escaped past his lips in a soft, warm sigh.

  “She can be yours, Barry. Yours forever, if you take what she offers you.” The voice was his father’s again, but sly, promising rewards for doing the right thing, instead of offering only punishment. The shadow-woman in front of him moved her dark hands up to the neckline of the even darker garment she wore and he heard the sound of a zipper sliding down. He could almost see the swell of her breasts as the dress fell to the ground in a pile around her feet.

  Barry watched, standing perfectly still, almost unable to move in any event. He wanted her. Never seeing her face, he wanted her. Her body was a mystery, and a part of him wanted to see her before anything else happened, but still, he wanted her.

  And then the old man leaned forward and brushed Barry aside, placing his withered face between the mystery woman’s breasts and sucking noisily at the shadowy cleft there. Barry felt his blood pressure rise dangerously as he watched and tried to reach for the man’s head with the sole intent of crushing it.

  The man held her body in his arms, his lips smacking, dragging at the darkness between barely seen breasts, his arms around the woman like a lover. And he moaned in pleasure as he drank deeply at whatever he was suckling. Then he turned and faced Barry again, his eyes ablaze, a thin trail of red spilling past his grinning lips. He cackled, a delirious noise like a crow mocking a farmer.

  The voice that came from the old man was his father’s again and as Barry watched, the withered form changed into that of his father again, almost as heavily buried in shadows now as the mystery woman he still held in his arms. “Did I make you angry, Barry?” He stepped away from the dark, graceful form of the woman—her face still hidden in shadows, her body a smudge in the darkness, Barry had painted her beauty into his mind’s eye—and gestured magnanimously in her direction. “She is right there, Barry. I can share. I can be generous, and you can know the pleasures of her. Go to her, kiss her. Taste her mother’s milk.”

  The idea of drinking from a woman’s lactating breast was not exactly one that normally appealed to Barry, but at that moment, in his dream, he wanted nothing more in the universe. He gripped her much as his father—or the thing wearing his father’s face—had, his hands on her shoulders, feeling the cold, dark flesh firm beneath his fingers. His lips brushed the shadows across her neck, her shoulder, her clavicle as he descended, trembling with lust at the idea of tasting her breasts’ milk.

  For her part, the woman let out a soft cooing noise and her hands slid into his hair, long fingers caressing through his short locks. His hands gripped her shoulders harder as he touched the flesh of her left breast, felt the soft, sweet swell of the slope leading to her nipple below. His heart felt like it would explode, the pulse jack-hammering in his chest like a caged tiger. His erection burned with need and he knew he would have her before this was all over. He would take her and make her his. And she would like it. The thought made him grin as his tongue finally found her thick nipple and his lips began to pull, drawing hardened flesh into his mouth.

  Behind him the old man—still speaking with his father’s voice and like as not wearing his father’s face—laughed gently. The hands on his head gripped his scalp lightly and drew him toward the center of her chest.

  “No, boy, that’s not the breast you want. That’s not the teat that will feed you what you want and need.”

  The old man’s breath, hot and rancid, was against the back of his neck, washing across his skin where his lover’s hands didn’t keep him chilled. His mouth reluctantly left the pleasure of sucking on her nipple and was drawn to the spot just above her heart. And there he found another nipple, this one harder, with a thick aureole and a hardened tip that was hot against his lips, his flesh, and his tongue. He clamped his teeth down hard on the edge of the darkened flesh and sucked hard, and was rewarded with a warm flow of liquid into his mouth. The taste was a blend of sweet, salty, and coppery that he found intoxicating. His body shivered as if with a fever and Barry heard himself moan, felt himself achieve the most powerful orgasm he ever had, as the heavy mil
k from the witch’s teat spilled into his mouth and down his throat. His hands held her shoulders tightly, and her hands stroked him gently, caressing his hair as she held him to her small nipple and nurtured him. He never wanted to stop, never wanted the feeding to end.

  “That’s it, boy. That’s exactly right. Drink deep and savor this. You may never know this nectar again in your short, miserable life.”

  Barry woke up, his eyes flying wide and his heart doing its absolute best to escape from his ribcage. His skin felt like he’d been lying in a sauna for the last few hours and the sun was mostly set. He sat up, gasping, embarrassed to feel his own discharge against his underwear. If that was a wet dream, he never wanted to experience a nightmare again.

  On the bunk across from his, Treacher was sitting perched on his feet, his knees drawn to his chest, and his chin resting on his knees. He wouldn’t have figured the small man could sit that way, but somehow he managed. His eyes were closed and he was smiling.

  When Treacher opened his eyes, he looked directly at Barry. When he spoke again, his voice was raspy enough to sound like the old man from the dream. “It’s done, Barry. You’re hers now. We both are. Now we only have to wait.”

  Barry felt a flood of ice spill into his stomach and shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  Treacher bared his teeth in a wide, feral sneer and winked lewdly. “Alvina Bathory. You fed from her. You’re hers now.”

  Barry blinked and shook his head. “You’re fucking crazy. That was just a dream.”

  “Wipe your mouth, Barry. You’ve still got some milk on your lip.”

  Barry reached up and brushed the back of his hand across his mouth, drawing a thick red line of crimson and white from his lower lip as he did so. He sniffed the stain and then sampled it with the tip of his tongue. Almost instantly the powerful flow of pleasure that the fluid brought pulsed through his body again.

  Treacher smiled and nodded. “The world is about to change, Barry. You and me, we’re in the right place at the right time. All we have to do is wait and help her when the time is right.”