Blood Moon

by Chris Kreie

  “Let’s go!” shouted Priya. There were two exits to the overlook, the one Carl had taken and another one behind them. Priya ran away from the spirit, toward the other exit, and Kristy followed her. Mateo wasn’t sure running into the hills, away from the road and into the dense forest, was such a good idea. But he was happy to put some distance between himself and that spirit, or whatever it was. He took one last look at the creature and ran after his friends.

  CHAPTER 6

  Mateo lost track of Kristy and Priya almost immediately. The full moon helped guide his way up the hill, but there were just too many trees shading the moonlight—too many dark patches in the crowded woods to really see where he was going.

  Off to his left somewhere, Carl was doing a smart thing and constantly yelling into the night. Yeah, because the last thing he wants is to be alone in the forest with that thing coming after him! Mateo felt exactly the same way.

  “Over here!” yelled Carl. “Everyone! Over here!” His voice was getting louder. Mateo skirted a stand of giant redwood trees and ran up and over an outcropping of rocks. “Over here!” He had to be almost on top of Carl. He scurried up a steep ridge.

  “Hey everyone!” Carl was on the ridge, his back turned to Mateo. “Everyone, up . . .!”

  “I’m here,” said Mateo.

  Carl jumped a couple feet off the ground. “Aaaagh!” He turned toward Mateo, bending over and clutching his chest. “You scared me half to death.”

  “Sorry.”

  Suddenly Kristy crashed through a thicket of younger trees.

  “Thank God!” said Carl.

  She ran over to them, panting. “What the heck was that thing?” she shouted. “What the heck is happening?”

  “It was a spirit,” said Carl. “You heard Priya. It was one of those spirits she told us about. It was driving the truck, and clearly it wants our souls.”

  “Wait a minute.” Mateo looked behind her. “Where is Priya?”

  Kristy scanned the group. “Don’t say that. Don’t joke around.” She looked over her shoulder. “I thought she was with you.”

  “I’m not joking,” said Mateo. “I saw you following her. But I lost you guys the minute we hit the woods.”

  “Priya!” shouted Carl. “Over here!”

  “Priya!” Mateo and Kristy joined in. “Priya!”

  Then Mateo heard something. “Stop!” he yelled. “Guys. Quiet.”

  “What is it?” asked Carl.

  “Help!”

  They looked at one another. “That was Priya,” said Kristy. “Oh my gosh, that thing must have caught her. You guys!”

  “Help!” The shouts were definitely coming from Priya. She needed them. She was in trouble.

  “Let’s go!” yelled Mateo. He took off toward Priya’s voice, Kristy and Carl right behind him. “Priya, keep yelling!”

  “Priya!” shouted Kristy. “We’re coming!”

  Mateo led them lumbering blindly through the woods. Unfortunately, this was no wilderness hike on a well-worn trail. It was impossible to run straight in any direction. They dodged right around some redwoods, left past a large pocket of water. After about six or seven twists and turns they had no clue from which direction Priya’s yell for help had come.

  “Why are you stopping?” asked Carl.

  “I’m lost,” said Mateo. “Which way was she?”

  “Over there.” Kristy pointed left.

  “No.” Carl pointed straight down a ravine. “It was that way.”

  “Priya!” shouted Mateo. “Priya! Where are you?” Without another call from her, Mateo was pretty sure they’d be poking around in these woods all night.

  “Priya!” shouted Kristy.

  “What’s that?” In a clearing past some trees, about the length of a football field away, Mateo saw a beam of moonlight shining down, illuminating something in the grass. Could it be?

  “This way!” shouted Mateo, and they took off toward the clearing.

  As they got to the edge of the trees, it was clear. “It’s Priya!” said Kristy. “Thank goodness. Priya, we’re coming for you!”

  “Stop!” shouted Mateo. He put on the brakes. “Kristy, stop!” He flung his arms out to prevent the others from running into the grassy meadow. It was definitely Priya in the clearing, but there was something else there too. It floated in the air directly above her. “Wait,” said Mateo. He pointed at what he saw. “What is that?”

  Now the others could see what Mateo was seeing. Priya was lying on the ground, back to the tall grass, face toward the sky. She appeared to be asleep or in some kind of a trance. About ten feet above her hovered the other thing Mateo had seen. It was white, and it floated and billowed in the sea breeze.

  “It’s the spirit from the truck,” said Kristy, a little too loud.

  “Shh,” said Carl.

  “I don’t think so,” whispered Mateo. “It’s white.” Though it was the same shape and size as the spirit that had emerged from the pickup back at the overlook, he got the feeling it was a different spirit.

  Which means there’s more than one, he realized. Great.

  “We need to do something,” said Kristy.

  The spirit drifted, inching ever closer to Priya’s motionless body.

  Mateo couldn’t just sit back and let this creature do whatever it wanted to his friend. I have to try something. He took a couple steps into the clearing. Priya was still a good hundred feet away. He stopped and shouted, “Back off!” Mateo stood as tall and steady as he could, feeling the throbbing of blood in his veins. Relax and stay strong. Don’t show any weakness. “Back off, you freak!”

  The thing turned toward him. Mateo took an inadvertent step backward. The face was visible now, and it was awful, like something he’d seen in horror movies. The face was a white skull, but the outline of the bones shimmered and shifted behind the hood, like the face was made of fog or smoke. Then the skull morphed to reveal sharp, wolf-like fangs, and then it contorted into an abhorrent, screaming face with a misshapen, alien forehead.

  The spirit’s twisting, glowing eyes locked on Mateo, and a horrible shriek split the air. Mateo dropped to the ground, his open palms slapped around his ears. Kristy and Carl fell to the ground behind him. The creature shrieked once more, and the sound tore right through him, his eyes bulging behind his closed eyelids.

  As quickly as the horrific scream had pierced the silent evening, it stopped. Mateo got to his feet. The creature had focused again on Priya. Kristy and Carl stood up and sidled alongside Mateo.

  An eerie, haunting moan emanated from the spirit as it edged closer and closer to Priya’s body. “What’s going to happen to her?” asked Kristy. “Isn’t there something we can do?”

  Before Mateo or Carl could answer, the white spirit dropped to a mere inch above Priya and became a long, narrow plume of smoke. The smoke coiled into her nose and mouth, like a snake burrowing into a crevice, and then, like a snuffed candle, the white spirit was gone. Gone inside the body of their friend.

  They rushed to Priya.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Priya.” Mateo bent over her her unmoving form. “It’s okay. We’re here now.”

  “Priya. Wake up.” Kristy held Priya’s face in her hands. “Open your eyes. Please. Just open them. Come on, Priya. Please.”

  “She’s breathing, but she’s out,” said Carl. “She’s out cold.” He paced back and forth.

  “That thing’s inside her,” said Kristy. “You saw it. That thing went inside her! We need to get it out!” She shook Priya a little, her breath coming in panicky sobs.

  “I’ve got her.” Mateo reached down to lift Priya’s body. “We’ll carry her out of here and get her to the hospital. Let’s go.”

  Priya’s eyes flashed open. Mateo jerked backwards.

  “Priya,” said Kristy. “It’s me. Your best friend, Kristy. Can you see me? We’ve got you. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Priya didn’t seem to see anything at all. Carl looked over at Mateo. He shoo
k his head.

  “I’ll grab her,” said Mateo. “Let’s go.”

  Mateo took her shoulders, but then Priya’s body lurched up into him. He fell back as her body rose from the ground, slowly at first, then faster, out of his reach. Her arms and legs dangled from her torso as she levitated into the sky. “Grab her!” shouted Carl.

  Kristy jumped to her feet and flung both arms around Priya’s stomach. Priya’s body continued to rise. Kristy held on, but when her own feet began to leave the ground below her, her grip loosened and she let go, crashing to the dirt.

  Mateo was already moving. He jumped for her body several times, but she was completely out of reach, ten or fifteen feet up and still rising. Higher and higher, until she was above the trees.

  “Priya!” shouted Kristy. She looked at Mateo. “Do something!”

  Mateo was frozen. What can I do? he thought. Whatever had knocked Priya out was now taking her away, and he felt powerless to stop it. I can’t possibly reach her. Not even the tallest basketball player with the best vertical could jump that high. He watched Priya float farther and farther away from them.

  I’ve gotta think of something. Priya needs me, and Kristy is counting on me. We can’t just leave her to this fate. “Let’s go!” he shouted. Mateo took one step after her, then another, the others following as he broke into a run. The spirit was moving Priya fast above the trees, with nothing to hinder it, while they stumbled across and around a plethora of stumps and rocks and other barriers. Before they knew it, her body was gone, whisked away into the darkness.

  The three of them stopped, panting and heaving at the base of a hill. “It’s no use,” said Carl.

  Kristy was a mess. “She’s gone. My best friend’s gone.” She dropped to her knees, her face in her hands.

  Mateo wrapped his arms around her. He really had no idea what to say. Everything had happened so quickly, like a movie or a dream. Could this be a dream? Maybe that was it. Could it be possible that any minute he’d be woken up by his mom’s voice calling from the kitchen and find himself lying safely in his bed? He shook his head. No, this was no dream. He knew better. This was real, and this reality was something most people wouldn’t conjure up in their worst nightmares.

  “We’ll find her,” he finally said to Kristy, trying to reassure himself as much as her. “We’ll find a way to save her. We have to.”

  “How in the world do you propose we do that? Huh?” Carl railed. “How? Her body was just possessed by some white-robed, smoke-for-a-skull, undead beast! You saw that, right? What chance do we have of taking on that thing, not to mention its brother we left behind at the overlook? Now I’m sure you haven’t forgotten about him.” He seemed close to freaking out in a full-blown frenzy.

  “Where do you think it’s taking her?” asked Kristy. She was shivering in Mateo’s arms.

  “Remember Priya’s story?” asked Mateo. “She said there are places in these hills where spirits turn the living into one of them.”

  “You think her story is true?” asked Kristy.

  “I don’t think we have any other choice but to assume it is,” said Mateo. “We’ll keep going in the direction Priya’s body went. We’ll be smart this time and keep the moon in the same spot over our shoulders, to make sure we don’t lose our way. We’ll find her. And if Priya’s story is true, all we have to do is get to her before the light of the blood moon shines on her face.”

  “Yeah, that’s all,” said Carl. “That’s it. We’ll ‘get to her.’ That’s a well-conceived plan.”

  “You have a better one?” asked Mateo.

  “We go back to the road,” he said. “Find somebody to help us.”

  “Look!” Mateo pointed. Earth’s shadow had begun to pass in front of the moon. “The eclipse has begun. There’s no time to get help.”

  Kristy began walking away, into the woods, following the direction set by Priya’s floating body.

  “You can go back to the car if you want to, Carl,” she called over her shoulder. “Mateo and I are going to go save our friend.”

  Mateo looked at Carl and gave him a shrug. He turned to follow Kristy.

  Carl stood by himself for only a second. “Wait for me!” he yelled and ran after them.

  CHAPTER 8

  Mateo led the three of them through the woods. With the lunar eclipse well underway, the night was getting darker by the minute. The last glimmers of yellow light made a final effort to poke through narrow gaps in the tall redwoods. They had been walking for at least an hour with no luck finding Priya. Mateo looked back at the shrinking moon behind them. He didn’t need a watch to know that time was short and that the blood moon would be starting soon. If we don’t find Priya fast, we might never see her again. The thought was a little too much for him. He shook it from his head.

  “Are we still walking in the right direction?” Mateo asked.

  “The moon’s exactly where it was when we started,” said Kristy.

  “You know Earth rotates, right?” said Carl. “The moon is constantly changing position in the sky. We might be going in exactly the wrong direction.”

  “It’s our best shot,” said Mateo. He led them around a stump.

  “Can you be positive for one second?” said Kristy. “Our friend’s life depends on it.”

  “Sorry,” said Carl. “Just keepin’ it real.”

  “How about keepin’ it to yourself,” said Kristy.

  “You know, sailors used to navigate using the North Star,” said Carl. “Not the moon.”

  “Well, when you figure out where that is, you let us know,” said Mateo.

  “I have no idea where the North Star is,” said Carl.

  Kristy shook her head. “Exactly.”

  Mateo held back some branches from hitting the others.

  “The landscape is changing, wouldn’t you say?” asked Carl. “The higher we climb, the fewer trees there are. That could be a sign we’re getting close, right?”

  “Maybe,” said Mateo. He had noticed the same thing. They had been climbing a steep hill for at least ten minutes, and the trees had been thinning out. He crouched to shimmy his way under a bush. When he came up on the other side he was standing face-to-face with a sheer, fifteen-foot cliff. Up to this point, their climb had been constant but gradual. There would be nothing easy or gradual about this new hurdle.

  The others crowded in behind him. “Should we go back and find another way?” asked Carl.

  “No time,” said Mateo. The cliff was steep, but right away he spotted some footholds in the rocks. “We’re going up. Got your climbing shoes on?”

  “Out of my way.” Kristy pushed past them and, like a mountain goat, scrabbled up the rock face.

  “Impressive,” said Mateo. Kristy spent endless summer days climbing with her family. She might have been scared of spirits and ghosts and other things that go bump—or shriek—in the night, but she was hardly scared of a little cliff.

  “You should see me with my cams and slings,” she said. She reached her arm down from the top. “Need a hand?”

  Mateo smiled. He found some footholds and reached for her hand.

  As he hauled himself over the edge, Kristy looked down to Carl.

  “Let’s go, slowpoke,” she said.

  “Keep that hand to yourself,” he said. “I don’t need any help.” Carl took one step up, then another. He was almost to the top when one of his feet slipped, leaving him dangling on the wall.

  Kristy and Mateo couldn’t help but laugh. Carl was hardly in real danger. The fall wouldn’t do too much damage.

  “Take her hand, macho man,” said Mateo.

  Carl looked up at Kristy. She smiled down. “Take it,” she said.

  He scoffed, got his footing back, then reached his right arm toward hers. She snatched it and hauled him onto the ridge.

  “You need to come out climbing with me sometime,” Kristy said to Carl as he brushed off his pants. “I’ll have you hangdogging and jamming cracks in no time.”

>   “Sounds pleasant,” he said.

  “Um, guys,” said Mateo. “We found her.”

  Kristy and Carl ran over.

  “There.” Mateo pointed down into a meadow a couple hundred feet below them. Pointing was a little ridiculous, though. Priya was impossible to miss.

  Kristy gasped, her hands going to her mouth. “Oh, my.” She looked at Mateo. “It’s her.”

  “Unreal,” said Carl.

  A dozen flaming torches surrounded Priya’s limp form, now resting in the grass. Above her, eight spirits—some black, some white, and some a grayish color in between—circled in an eerie, rhythmic dance. They moved one way in the air, then another, then did a quick spin of two or three revolutions. Mateo thought he could hear them singing, a sort of wailing hum that vibrated a bit too high and a bit too low for human ears. And he could smell the torches, a scent that reminded him of the incense Priya burned at her house when she’d invite him over for study sessions. The spirits were oblivious to their arrival, keeping their entire focus on Priya.

  The ridge they stood on extended all the way around the grassy meadow in a near-perfect circle, rising above piles of rocky fragments at its base. Nothing broke the smooth, green surface below—no trees and no large rocks—giving it the appearance of a perfectly mowed lawn.

  “The moon is shining right on her face,” Carl pointed out.

  The clock was ticking. Soon that moonlight would turn red. Soon their chance to save Priya would slip through their fingers.

  “This isn’t good,” said Kristy. “It’s not good at all. Mateo, I don’t think we can save her. She’s going to turn into a spirit right before our eyes. There’s nothing we can do!”

  “Now who’s the negative one?” said Carl.

  “Shut it,” said Kristy.

  “Hey, I’m not the one who’s giving up,” said Carl. “I’m not the one who says there’s nothing we can do other than sit back and watch our best friend die.”

  Kristy lunged at Carl and tackled him, taking both of them to the ground. She effortlessly flipped him onto his back and jammed her knees into his shoulders.