by Bryn Roar
There’s Blood On The Moon Tonight
By Bryn F. Roar
Copyright © 2013 by Bryn Roar All rights reserved.
The following text is an original work of fiction. There’s Blood on the Moon Tonight is not sponsored by, affiliated with, or endorsed by any author or product mentioned within. Inspirations aside, the central characters in this novel, as well as the main plot, are all of my own imagination. Any similarities to any living or dead persons are completely coincidental. B.F.R.
For Mr. Smee. And all those childish things I refuse to put away. Also, to Wilton Robert. To whom I failed to say Goodbye. See you later, Alligator…
Author’s Note: Moon Island, S.C. exists solely in my overwrought imagination. Yet exists there, it surely does. For I’ve made a nightly pilgrimage there since I was nine-years-old. As many are apt to point out, however, it’s an unlikely geographical and geological oddity, sitting off the coast of South Carolina as I have it. Yet to place this island anywhere else in the world would be the real fabrication. B.F.R.
“Everyone is a Moon and has a Dark Side, which he never shows to anybody.”
--Mark Twain
5/30/04
Transcribed notes from therapy session.
Patient: Bud William Brown
Case File #3562
The dreams always start out the same…
One scene bleeding into the next. A linear progression, if I’m not mistaken, although the closer they get to the end. To the Bunker. I’m not so sure, seeing as how those events haven’t happened yet. But the beginning…yeah, that bitch is always the same, Doc…
And I know her by heart.
October 13, 1996. I’m nine years old. Waiting for my mother to return home from her Sunday night PTA meeting at the Moon River Academy. Where I attend school in Miss Ashford’s third grade class. Mom’s late. It’s half-past where–the-heck-is-she and I’m starting to freak out a little. The meetings are usually over by eight-thirty. Mom is always home by nine o’clock, latest. It’s just half-an-hour past that, though, and I tell myself I’m overreacting. Chill out, dude! She’s probably just clucking with the other biddies…
Nuh-uh. Not this time, Buddy boy. As plausible as that sales pitch sounds, my gut just won’t buy it.
Earlier I could have sworn I heard keys in the front door. Mom’s keys, with their distinctive merry jingling, but when I called out to her she didn’t answer.
Wishful thinking, I tell my troubled mind.
The house is likewise uneasy this evening. It creaks as if someone is creeping along the halls. Groans, as if it has something to say. A picture emerges in my head, an intruder stealing softly towards my room…
The shining eyes of a rat, the drooling fangs of a dog, the mind of a monster…
I shake the morbid imagery from my mind. That’s just the house “settling,” as my pop likes to say, the floorboards and joists talking to one another.
Nothing to wet the bed over, Buddy boy!
It’s funny, though, how you only hear that stuff in the dead of night. I close my eyes, willing myself to calm down… No! Something is wrong here!
My eyelids snap open like old-fashioned window shades. The house is suddenly still. No more creaks. No more groans. Even the boisterous crickets outside are giving their evening jam session a rest. Maybe they feel it, too. In the darkness I barely breathe. My eyes are as open as far as they’ll go, my ears attuned to the slightest sound. I’m so focused I could hear an ant burp in the next room. Except for the Tick-Tock of my Mickey Mouse alarm clock, sitting atop my bedside table, the silence is complete.
I hold my breath, listening to what the silence has to say. An occasional car driving by on the newly paved street outside our front yard breaks this silence now and again, giving me an opportunity to take a breath. Unfortunately, none of the cars turn into our driveway. Their departure down the road makes the returning silence all the more deafening. Mickey, that smiling rat, ticks inexorably on. His gloved finger marches mercilessly across the face of the clock; marking the minutes my mother is late. Each tick-tock is a question mark: Where’s Mom? Where’s Mom? Where’s Mom? Where’s Mom?
I pull my X-Files bedcovers up to my chin, hoping some of Mulder and Scully’s courage will rub off on me. A full moon filters through the gauzy curtains above my bed. The pale lunar rays come to rest on my glow-in-the-dark monster models, lined up Just So on top of my dresser. The backdrop is a cemetery I made myself out of household items. Papier-mâché, Styrofoam, Popsicle sticks, and gobs of Elmer Glue. Pretty impressive, if I say so myself. The only model missing from the lineup is Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Like the monsters that paper my walls, the Aurora models say a lot about who I am. My heroes aren’t Michael Jordan, John Elway or Bruce Willis—contemporary idols of the day. No, sir. My idols are Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s misunderstood creation, as well as the men who played them in their black-and-white glory days. The Universal Triumvirate: Boris, Bela, and Lon Chaney Jr.
When my teacher, Miss Ashford, went around the classroom, asking what we wanted to be when we grew up, she got the usual ‘ho-hum’ responses: Firemen, cops, doctors and nurses. Morgan Lee said he wanted to be the next Harrison Ford, and received admiring looks for his audacity. When she got to me, I said I wanted to be the next Ray Harryhausen and got nothing back but a whole lot of blinking eyes and blank stares.
Who’s that, Bud?
Ray Harryhausen? C’mon, Doc! Not you, too! You mean to tell me an educated man like yourself has never heard of Harryhausen, the stop-motion magician? Well, don’t feel bad; neither did Miss Ashford. Ray Harryhausen was the special effects wizard behind such classics as Jason and the Argonauts and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. Both of which, by the way, are prominently featured on what my mother likes to call my “Wall of Shame.”
Wall of shame? Remind me again, Bud.
Aww, that’s just mom’s cute name for the pictures on my bedroom wall. 8x10 stills for the most part. From ceiling to floor they take up the whole damn wall. Some framed, most not. All from the same source. Back issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland. A bi-monthly periodical, for the most part, that was popular back when my dad was a creep like me. Back in the ’60’s and 70’s. The coolest thing he ever gave me was his entire collection of the magazine. Luckily I never have to sacrifice those near-mint issues for the pictures taped to my wall. Moon Mans’ sales coverless copies of Famous Monsters for two bucks apiece.
Moon mans?
Moon Mans, yeah. That’s my local comic book store, Doc. Anyway, my Wall of Shame has put me at odds with mom on many occasions. She just can’t understand my ghoulish obsession. Come to think of it, neither can I. Just revs my engine, if you know what I mean.
Everyone needs a hobby, Bud.
Hobby? Heh, heh. Sure thing, Doc. Anyway, that night, like any other, really, I found myself looking at the pictures on my wall. Sometimes it helps me to fall asleep.
Not this night, right, Bud?
No, Sir. Not this night. My eyes linger on a still of Lon Chaney Jr. The Wolfman, of course. Except for that hairy role, he never did quite fill his daddy’s shoes. Stare long enough and they begin to move. The subjects in the pictures, I mean. Stare hard enough and the once faded picture no longer seems inanimate at all. It glows with a three-dimensional clarity that makes me wonder if my imagination is a blessing or a curse. Vivid as it is…
Patent’s eyes glaze over as the recurrent dream once again takes him over...
I swear I can see the werewolf’s coarse hair flutter under the breeze of a long ago moon, the wet, dark eyes blinking. The moist nose twitching. Look long enough and I can actually smell its rank fur. Hear and feel the rumble of its hungry
growl. As always, I avert my gaze before things can get out of hand. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I never looked away. It’s not the Wolfman I need to fear, of course. My imagination. It’s like a werewolf, too. Feed it, and it only grows stronger. Moving out of the shadows of my mind. Deprive it and it weakens, shuffling back into the sleepy depths of my id…Don’t look at me like that, Doc! I read too, you know!
All right, Bud. All right.
Now, as I was saying…
From the corner of my eye, I can plainly see the wolfman is once again no more than a torn page out of a now defunct magazine. Yet unlike most nights, this knowledge doesn’t lend me any peace. My imagination is left on High Alert. My eyes light upon a picture that never fails to give me the chills. It’s the War of the Worlds. The George Pal version. In this photo a bulbous headed Martian is stretching out its moist, rubbery hand…three-fingers, no less…towards a screaming damsel. Shit, lady, I’d scream too, I think, as I seek out other less frightening images…
You know, Doc, I’ve often wondered why certain things scare some people. Spiders, snakes, you know. My friend back home, Rusty Huggins, is a perfect example. He’s got more phobias than this hospital has nut jobs!
Me? What scares me? Damn, that’s easy. Losing someone I love. But that’s now. Now that I know better. I mean, why be scared of a spider, when you’ve got a can of Raid underneath the fucking sink? If you ask me People are always scared of the wrong things. Especially when they’re little kids. When I was nine…before…you know…the thing that scared me most was Aliens. Creatures from outer space come to evict us from our planet. War of the Worlds scared the bejeezuz out of me back then.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot! The Mummy gave me a few sleepless nights, too. There once was a very nice picture of The Mummy on my wall. Boris Karloff, naturally. Mom took care of that. She stripped it from its place of honor when I woke her in the middle of the night with a blood-curdling scream. Or so she claimed. Frankly, I don’t remember. She ran to my side, reeking of her nightly slathering of Noxzema, and without thinking, I told her all about my bad dream. Criminy, what a doofus I was.
I don’t believe I’ve head you mention this dream, Bud. Is it…is it like the others?
Nah, it’s not like the others, Doc. Just your typical, run-of-the-mill night terror. But sure, I’ll tell you about it. It’s my dad’s dime after all.
The mummy, its dusty wrappings trailing behind it, stalks me through the dream, and despite its stumbling gait I can’t outrun it. You know the type of dream.
The treadmill, I say. Yes, it’s a common nightmare.
Sure. Well, finally in desperation, I duck into my closet, see? Hiding behind the hanging clothes. Just like Jamie Lee in Halloween. Through the slats of the closet door I watch the mummy enter my room. I can smell the dry rot of its desiccated flesh and the over-powering scent of the ancient whatchamacallits used in the embalming process. It stands there in the soft glow of the moonlight, searching me out. It turns to face the closet, and I back up in horror when I see what’s in place of its fucking eyes. Insects jostle over one another in the lower half of those vast endless sockets; some tumble out, falling on the floor, where they skitter and squeak. I bump into a wire hanger and it jostles tellingly amongst its neighbors above me…
The mummy throws open the closet doors, and…well…that’s when I woke up screaming. Like Fay Wray when old King Kong made her acquaintance. Mom wanted to rip down all of my pictures, but my father talked her out of this rash course of action. After all, he was the one who got me into this junk in the first place.
The compromise: Down came the mummy.
I made a half-hearted protest, but to be honest I was happy to see it gone. I replaced it with a color still from The Planet of the Apes.Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!
Not sure, but I think that was the patient’s attempt at an impersonation. Seeing my confusion, Bud sighs and gets back to the business at hand…
As you know, Doc, I’ve been plagued by bad dreams my whole life. Even before…you know. They were just a coming attraction, though, to what my sub-conscious really had in store for me. If only I had known back then, I wouldn’t have been so fucking scared.
Well, back to that fun night in October…
I find no comfort in my monsters this evening. By the light of day, my hobby seems innocent, the monsters benign. But by the light of the moon…
A noise from the bathroom intrudes upon my thoughts. It is the beginning of the nightmare. I can’t make that clear enough, you understand, Doc?
It’s only the beginning.
Plip. Plip. PLOP.
Simple leak, right? At first I think it’s a faucet dripping in the bathroom, directly across from my bedroom. But the sound is too viscous, like oil or—
A shadow flickers across the tiled floor of the bathroom, causing me to sit up straight in bed. A shadow that doesn’t belong in there.
My heart is hammering inside my ribs like a crazed rat flinging itself against the bars of its cage. It’s so loud it nearly blocks out the sound of the dripping…
Plip. Plip. PLOP.
The last drop is obese, more ponderous than its predecessors, swelling like a water balloon before falling free. I imagine it hitting the tile floor in slow motion, sending out hundreds of identical, tinier droplets in a concentric pattern. There’s something so foreboding about it. So freaking ominous. That every drop makes me want to jump right out of my skin…
A tree branch scrapes across the frosted window of the bathroom. Scaring, then relieving me all at once.
I fall back on my pillow, laughing.
The wind! Shit on a stick! It was just the wind!
My anxiety, though, still holds me in its sweaty grip. It returns to the subject of my missing mother.
Where on earth can she be?
If I wasn’t all alone, I wouldn’t be so damned scared. Dad is on the mainland, a cop for the Beaufort County Sheriff’s dept., and Dottie, my older sister, is spending the night with a friend. It’s not like mom to leave me by myself for so long, either. I was such a wuss back then! For a moment, I consider walking down the road to find Dottie, to tell her mom hasn’t come home yet.
I can hear her snarky response as clear as if she was in the room with me: What do you want me to do about it, you little creepo? Hold your hand till she tucks you in?
The laughter following this is also quite clear. My sister is a heartless bitch.
Plip. Plip. PLOP.
Okay, I’ve had about enough of that!
Intending to tighten down the faucet handle, I swing my legs from underneath the covers. I reach out in the darkness and fumble around for the lamp beside my bed. Finding the pull chain, I tug it twice. Nothing.
“Stupid bulb burned out,” I grumble aloud, just to hear myself talk. Anything to break this silence.
In the bathroom, another flickering shadow.
This is how it always begins in the movies, I think, squatting there on my bed, wondering what I should do. First an unidentified noise, and then the lights go out…
“The lights didn’t go out,” I scold myself. “It’s a burnt out bulb, is all it is.”
My voice is a hollow husk, though, unconvinced of my own rationale. Another sound from the bathroom, louder this time. It echoes crisply off the cold tiles. A cold finger of dread spreads throughout my body. Like feathers of frost on a windowpane, it grows and grows…
Plip. Plip. PLOP.
Screw that old faucet! I’m not going in there!
I pull my unprotected legs back under the covers and hug them tight. I find a measure of security there as only a dumb little kid can. I stare into the dappled shadows of the bathroom, trying to find a harmless cause for the dank echo, to set my mind at ease.