FULL MOON ISLAND

by Terry Yates

  “In the elevator,” Samantha answered, pointing down the hallway, her breath finally returning.

  “Show us!” he told her.

  Gringo and Kyler helped Samantha to her feet, as did Zack Olsen, Locklear O’Hearley, and Burt Burns while Ariella, Nurse Walling, and Sgt. Cohen helped Sylvia to hers.

  “Wait here,” Kyler told Nurse Walling and anyone else who would listen, but it was no use. As he sprinted toward the elevators, he saw that Gringo, Zack Olsen, and Sgt. Cohen were in front of him and he heard several sets of footsteps behind him. As he reached the elevator bank, Gringo and Cohen already had their ears to the elevator doors. Kyler turned to see that Zora, the O’Hearley’s, Nurse Walling, Burt Burns, and Samantha were bringing up the rear.

  “Hey!” Gringo yelled at the top of his lungs while slapping the palm of his hand against the door. “Anybody there! Come on! Hey!” He continued to beat his palms across the door. Kyler and Sgt. Cohen looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Cohen put his hand on Gringo’s.

  “Why don’t we give them a chance to answer us?” He said softly.

  Gringo shrugged and stepped away from the door. Cohen put his face to the elevator door and tried to open the doors a crack.

  “Hello!” he yelled through the crack. He then put his ear to it and listened.

  “Up here!” The voice was very faint but understandable.

  “Where?” yelled Cohen, once again putting his ear to the door.

  “Top floor!” The voice yelled again a little louder this time.

  “We’re on the way!”

  It was nightfall and Michael Blum’s leg was throbbing. The pain medication that the nurse had given him was wearing off. He sat up and looked out the window. Lightning was flashing across the now blackened sky every few seconds immediately followed by loud claps of thunder. The storm was coming. The lights began to flicker on and off in short, quick intervals. He saw the Olsen’s nervously looking out the large window. They both looked like frightened mice cowering against each other. The photographer lady was looking for something in her purse. She would always look up whenever a lightning bolt flashed, and then go back to her purse. Martin Burns and Mrs. Rogerson remained asleep, of course. Shelly Dixon hugged her babies tight as she tried to close her eyes to the oncoming storm. Michael could see that she was near tears. Opal Munn was lying on her side looking out the big window. To Michael, she looked like a kid who’d just seen their first firecracker go off. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was half turned up in a smile and half open in wonder.

  He was becoming more worried about his parents. Where were they? Why weren’t they here? The Olsen’s were with the old lady, Gringo was here with Samantha, Burt was here with his brother, and the O’Hearley’s were here. Even the kook had a family standing by her. Speaking of the Kook, he wondered how she was getting along. She had begun to look worse in the last couple of hours.

  He sat up and put the pillow under his back. Another flash of lightning streaked across the sky followed by a thunderclap that rattled the windows and caused the lights to go out. He turned to see if Lauren was sleeping. Her bed was only a few feet from his. He could see the outline of her head but couldn’t see her face in the darkness. He leaned in to get a better look. At that moment, another lightning bolt flashed causing the room to light up for a moment. As the room lit up, Michael could see that not only was Lauren not asleep, but she was looking at him…and smiling, the strobe light effect giving her an extra creepy expression. He could not look away. First light! Then dark! Then light! Then dark! One second he could see her face, the next, he couldn’t. Through it all, her smile got bigger and bigger. She looked like something out of one of those scary Japanese movies that he’d seen on cable when his parents thought that he was asleep. The ones where the ghost moves with a fast walk but their upper body doesn’t move at all. He wished that she would speak or else close her eyes, but she just continued to smile at him. All he wanted to do at that moment was to duck under the covers, but he obviously couldn’t do it with an eleven-year old girl watching him. Even though he knew she didn’t have many friends, he didn’t want those few she did have to find out that he cowered under the covers during thunderstorms.

  Michael looked away from Lauren for a moment, his “creeped out” meter at ten and moving up. The lights were completely out now but the lightning continued to flash on and off, giving the same eerie strobe light effect. He knew that Lauren wasn’t a monster nor a ghost nor any sort of scary thing, but seeing her smiling at him through the strobe effect scared him to death. The photographer lady had found what she was looking in her purse for. It was a camera. She turned it over and over in her hands trying to find the lens. Jeez, he thought his eyes were bad. This lady must be completely blind. He wanted to laugh when he saw the camera flash right in front of her face. She waved her hands blindly in front of her eyes, knowing full well that it wasn’t going to make the little flashbulb tracers go away. He leaned back against his pillow and looked at the ceiling. He was going to remain calm, because no one was going to tell his father that he had been afraid of a little storm. No way. He was going to show both of his parents that he hadn’t needed them. The more he thought this way, the braver he became until, at last, he had no fear of the storm. Just a storm. Just a little storm…that’s all…big deal…you’ve seen a million of them. You’re cool. He began to smile and decided to look at Lauren one more time just to prove to himself that she was just a girl and not a monster. He sat up again and turned toward her bed. He screamed as he turned, for Lauren’s face was now just inches from his. She was sitting up and her eyes were wide and her mouth was open, but she was not looking at him. She was looking past him…at the John Doe.

  CHAPTER 9

  “I really would appreciate it if you could get me out of here,” Sam Fong said through the steel doors. He was nervous and beginning to sweat profusely. He had been stuck in the elevator for three and a half hours. He had never been claustrophobic before, but now he was about to come unglued. He had to pee and he was hungry. The darkness wasn’t helping at all either. When the elevator had gotten stuck the first time, he simply picked up the emergency phone, which didn’t work, then he pushed the alarm button, which rang so faintly, he was surprised that even he could hear it, and then he started banging on the doors for all he was worth. After the hour mark, he had become extremely worried about any sort of rescue. Sam Fong was one of three nonmilitary hospital maintenance men. He had been helping shut down the hospital when he had gotten stuck in the elevator. His supervisor had warned him several times not to get into the elevator during hurricane conditions, but he hadn’t listened. He had gone down it at least ten times during the evacuation. What were the odds of getting stuck the eleventh time?

  For over three hours, he had shouted and gotten no response, until these people just outside the elevator door had heard him from the bottom floor.

  “We’re almost there, Son” he heard a man yell through the door. “We found an elevator key. Won’t be but a second.”

  “Thank God,” he called back grimacing. He hated being called son. He didn’t know if it was because he was Asian…well technically Chinese/Hawaiian, or the fact that he was twenty-six years old. That was too old to be referred to as “son”. He had never even been off the Hawaiian Islands until he was ten years old. His father had been a sales representative for “Big Kahuna’s Seafood,” a company that basically sold expensive fish to expensive restaurants. Everywhere they went, they would always hear that there was some Chinaman at the door selling fish. He never heard anything like that at home. Sam was nearing the end of his tether, when he heard a click and then the outer doors of the elevator opening.

  “Almost there!” called the voice again.

  A few more clicks and the inner doors opened and Sam fell into the arms of Kyler, Cohen, and Gringo. He took a deep breath through his mouth and gulped the fresh air into his lungs.

  “Thank you,” he stammered. He closed his eyes,
put his hands on his hips and arched his back taking in even more air, an unseen hand patting him on the back as he did. When he had gotten all of the oxygen that he needed, he opened his eyes and was met by Sgt. Cohen and Kyler smiling at him.

  “How are you, Son?” The MP had been the one calling him son.

  “Fine, sir,” Sam answered. “I really need to use a restroom.”

  He recognized the doctor, the nurse, and the MP from around the hospital. He didn’t know them well. Usually it was a nod here and a hello there. The old man looked familiar…probably had a relative in the hospital, but he didn’t recognize the rest of them. He would remember having met the dark, exotic looking lady, and he would never forget…for the rest of his life and even further…the nurse who’s buttons were quivering from the responsibility of holding those boobs in her blouse.

  “The power went out a few minutes ago, but I guess you don’t really need to see too much while peeing,” Kyler told him.

  “I guess not,” was the only reply Sam could think of.

  “What’s you’re name, Son?” Cohen asked him.

  Before he could answer, they heard a faint scream.

  Lauren had scared Michael shitless, but it hadn’t been him that she’d been staring at. She had been looking at the burn victim. Between the lightning flashes, Michael saw the patients outline through the partition. His body was shaking and he had started to convulse. His chest and thighs would rise up as if electricity was running through his whole body. The wrist and ankle restraints that Dr. Kyler had put on him were the only things that seemed to be keeping the man from completely coming off the table. His head began to move left and right. Every few seconds, he could see the man’s mouth opening and closing as if he were in great pain. He looked back at Lauren who now seemed be intrigued with the man’s situation.

  “What the hell’s going on?” screamed Rob Olsen over the din. He and Leanne were leaning against a large window.

  “He’s…changing…” answered Lauren still mesmerized.

  Opal Munn and Shelley Dixon had both sat up in their beds and were also watching the event.

  “What’s happening?” Sylvia Morrison screamed loudly, trying to see what was going on but having no luck. The strobe light effect was making her vision worse.

  They continued to watch as the man convulsed up and down. His every muscle seemed to spasm. Up and down! Up and down! He shook so violently that the oxygen tent fell away from his head and hit the floor. Harder and harder the silhouetted body slammed against the table, the head banging against the gurney. For a moment, Michael thought that the man was going to literally tear himself apart. Through the loud thunderclaps, they could hear the metal clanging through the John Doe’s mattress.

  The lightning stopped for a moment leaving the room completely dark. They could still hear the clanging of the metal above the wind. Another lightning bolt lit up the room and this time the silhouette was sitting straight up, its hands on its thighs. He had broken his wrist restraints. For a moment, the man seemed calm. His body had stopped convulsing. Michael and Lauren looked at one another, but before either one could say a word, the silhouette started shaking again, but this time there was something different about it. There was a bump on his back….and it was moving….and pulsating.

  The room went dark again, then light, then dark again, until finally the lightning was flashing every few seconds. The thunderclaps that followed made the whole hospital shake. The Olsen’s had moved away from the window. The wind was now blowing God knew what against them. Two of the larger windows had long, jagged cracks in them. The Dixon twins were wailing now. Shelley was trying to calm them but was having no luck. She lay back down and pulled them both tightly to her. The silhouette’s body was not only shaking and pulsating but now it seemed to be changing. Lauren had been right. The man’s body was morphing into something else. The pulsating hump on his back began to tear through the skin. The man’s head went back and he let out a loud scream. Whatever was happening to him was very painful. As he screamed, his profile began to change. The shadowed face was beginning to pulsate now. The forehead seemed to recede as the nose began to elongate. The mouth, chin, and nose were melding together into one large shadow. The man let out another scream, but this one was different. Before, he had sounded like a man in excruciating pain, now the scream sounded animalistic. There was a gruffness to it. The body continued to morph rapidly now with what looked to be like two prongs growing through each side of his head

  “What’re those?” Michael yelled.

  “They look like…ears!” Lauren yelled back. They were barely a foot and half apart but were having more trouble hearing each other than before. The wind, the thunder, the babies crying, the objects hitting the building, and now the man’s strange screaming had all come together as one giant cacophony of noise.

  “We should get out of here!” Rob Olsen screamed in his wife’s ear. “We need to find the others!”

  “We can’t leave mother!” she hollered back at him.

  “Look at her! She and the old man haven’t stirred at all! Come on!”

  As the two began to move out of the lobby, the silhouette let out its loudest scream yet, stopping the Olsen’s in their tracks. The scream had lost all human semblance. It was completely guttural now. The silhouette was howling. And it’s legs were growing bigger and longer. Its growing calves tore against the ankle restraints until they were completely free of their leather bonds. He remained on the table for a moment, doubled over letting out howl after howl.

  “Oh God,” Leanne Olsen whimpered.

  Still holding her camera, Sylvia Morrison began to move towards the rest of the group. “Please somebody tell me what’s going on!” She blindly bumped against the bed that Martin Burns lay on, still fast asleep from his medication. “I can’t see!”

  None of the others heard Sylvia, because their eyes and ears were fixed on the scene before them. The silhouette had stood up, it’s IV drip falling from its hand and the oxygen tube coming off its nose. Through the partition, it looked as if hair were growing out of its body. Long hair.

  In Michael Blum’s mind, he had been watching the John Doe change from his human form to whatever he was becoming for fifteen or twenty minutes, but he knew that it only been probably two or three. He was terrified. Whatever this man was morphing into, he was sure it wasn’t going to be a cuddly little thing. Over the last couple of seconds, he had seen claws grow out of what had been the man’s hands…claws that looked like they could’ve belonged to a grizzly bear.

  Whatever the creature was, it was now fully formed. They could see the silhouette well enough to know that it had its back to them. It had become massive in size. It was at least a foot taller now with ears that stuck straight up. From the back it looked like a large dog standing on its hind legs, but none of them had ever seen a dog seven feet tall, much less one that tall that could stand on its hind legs.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Rob Olsen yelled grabbing Leanne by the shoulders. He began to move them toward the hallway again. But she was too petrified to move. She had still been looking at the John Doe when Rob had yelled and tried to move them away. When Rob had screamed, the silhouette had stopped moving. It had heard him. The creature began to slowly turn around. Through the lightning, they could see its profile as it turned. They saw the elongated nose, the ridged forehead. It’s mouth was opened and even though he couldn’t see it, Michael Blum knew that its lips…if a thing like that had lips…were formed into a snarl for he saw two very large fangs coming down from the top of its mouth and two very large fangs coming up from the bottom of its mouth as if the four of them were about to have a conference. He also saw that its ears were now laid back as if it were really pissed about something it had just overheard.

  The thing was now completely turned around and facing them. For a moment, it looked human again. Its ears were still laid back and its shoulders were square. After what seemed an eternity, it reached its arm…or its forele
g…across its body as if it were going to gently open the partition and reveal itself. But it did not open the partition gently. Before anyone had a chance to think, the thing had thrown the divider into a wall twenty feet away causing it to smash into dozens of pieces, chips of wood from the frame flying all over the room.

  The beast put its head back and howled, then sent the gurney that just minutes before, it had been lying peacefully on, straight toward the group. It was coming right toward Michael and Lauren’s beds, which were positioned sideways to the monster. As the metal gurney flew toward them, Michael rolled away onto Lauren’s bed landing on top of her, his elbow landing hard into her stomach causing her to scream out in pain. The bed flew no more than a foot above their beds and straight through the window that the Olsen’s had been standing in front of. Glass was flying everywhere as the wind and rain began to pour through the opening sending anything made of paper around the room, forming a funnel of flying debris. The beast howled again and began to move toward them. Martin Burns’ bed was the only thing that stood between it at the rest of them.

  Because of the gaping hole where the window had once been, the thunderclaps from the continuous lightning flashes sounded ten times louder than they had before and they continued to shake the building with such ferocity, that Michael Blum thought that the building would crash down around them. He was still lying on top of Lauren, her face soaking wet now from the rain. He could see that she was in agony. Her eyes were shut tight and her mouth was wide open. It looked like she was trying to scream but couldn’t because she was in such pain or the fact that he was crushing down on her stomach and blocking her diaphragm. He rolled off of her and onto his side, looking back at the monster.

  The beast was now at Martin Burns’ bed, but Martin Burns didn’t know it. Through it all, neither he nor Mrs. Rogerson awoke. Michael couldn’t get a clear picture of what the beast looked like other than it was black or brown in color. He was still having trouble adjusting his eyes to the strobe effect. His glasses had come off when he had rolled onto Lauren’s bed. He groped around on his own bed, found them, and put them on again. Before he got a chance to see anything, the lightning stopped flashing for a moment once again making everything dark…everything except a pair of yellow eyes that glowed ominously in the dark. He heard the sound of ripping and tearing. Another lightning flash…the biggest yet…and Michael could see that the monster was tearing Martin Burns apart, clawing at him with both sets of claws. It was slashing at his body with such ferocity that Michael knew that the warm, wet debris that he was feeling now were bits of Martin Burns. He watched as the thing picked up what was left of the patient, opened its mouth even further and tore into the man’s throat, gnashing its fangs and pulling away skin, muscle, and even part of the trachea which it tore away before gorging on the neck, which it feasted upon as if it had been a stray dog that had just found a t-bone steak that someone had thrown out. After it was through with Martin Burns, it threw what was left aside, the head hitting the wall with a loud thud as if the thing had thrown a coconut against it.