Low Red Moon

by Kiernan, Caitlin R.

  “Not for someone with a weak stomach, is it?” he asks and smiles his uncertain smile.

  “No,” Sadie replies, “I don’t guess it is,” wishing he’d go back to his desk, wondering if she has another pencil or if she’ll have to borrow one from him.

  “I was born in New Orleans,” he says. “My grandmother used to tell us stories about the Loup Garou. She used to say there’d once been a house in the Quarter where they all met when the moon was full.”

  Sadie finds another pencil in her purse, but it isn’t very sharp and doesn’t have much of an eraser left.

  “The house caught fire when she was just a little girl, on a night with a full moon, and her mother told her that it was God’s judgment on the werewolves for having killed a parish priest. She said the firemen heard animals howling inside the burning house, but all the bodies they ever found were human.”

  Sadie turns around so she’s facing the librarian, scooting her chair across the linoleum floor. “That’s a really creepy story,” she says. “You should write it down sometime.”

  “Oh, well, my grandmother, she knew a lot of creepy stories. Are you sure you have everything you need?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Sadie says. “But thanks, though,” and then the librarian returns to his desk and leaves her alone again with Lot Two. She turns back to Arminius Vambery and Deacon’s drawing, his rising or setting sun, sun or moon, if she’s right. Sadie finishes reading the account of the attacks in Orel Oblast, turns the page, and at last there’s the one she’s been looking for. She reaches for her notebook and prints ATTACKS BEGINNING 8 JANUARY 1874 on the top line of a blank piece of paper.

  A string of unexplained killings in Ireland, mostly attacks on sheep and other livestock, and Vambery quotes at length from an article titled “An unwelcome visitor” from the Cavan Weekly News, April 17, 1874. “A wolf or something like it” the reporter says, slaughtering sheep near Limerick, as many as thirty in a single night, and several people bitten by the animal were admitted to the Ennis Insane Asylum, “labouring under strange symptoms of insanity.” Another article from Land and Water dated March 28, describing footprints not unlike a dog’s, but long and narrow, with marks made by strong claws. The throats of the sheep had been neatly cut and most of the animals drained of their blood, but the bodies left uneaten.

  More newspaper accounts, the Clare Journal and London Daily Mail, a monotonous inventory of dogs shot and sheep mutilated, and then Vambery returns to the subject of the Ennis Asylum. One of the women from Limerick, Margaret Tierney, mauled by an animal she could only describe as a “great black beastie,” and “Following the incident, the inmate has been gripped with some peculiar specie of obsessive mania,” Vambery writes. “When given ink and pen to write her step-sister in Dublin, Margaret Tierney instead decorated the walls of her cell with the same symbol or design again and again. The symbol was described by the physician in attendance as a carefully executed ring or circular shape, underlined in each and every instance. It may be of interest to the reader and any future investigators that there still exists a tradition among the people of Co. Limerick of ‘raths’ or ‘hollow hills’ leading down into the subterranean realm of the Gaelic Daoine Sidhe. It is said the entrances to these ‘hollow hills’ are sometimes marked by ancient standing stones bearing graven emblems not entirely dissimilar from that drawn repeatedly by mad Margaret Tierney.”

  The story of the “Black Beast of Limerick” went on for several more pages, and Sadie made a few notes with the dull pencil, dates and names, Margaret Tierney’s insanity, the removed organs and surgical precision of the wounds. On April 27, an infant went missing from its cradle, and tracks found in the soft earth beneath an open window matched those discovered at the scene of many of the beast’s attacks. The mother was the last “victim” admitted to the Ennis Asylum during the incident, where she continued to insist that what had slipped out the bedroom window with her child wasn’t a wolf at all. After the disappearance of the baby, the attacks ceased as abruptly as they’d begun. “In early June,” Vambery continues, “a farmer in neighbouring Croom is said to have shot and killed a mongrel, which many believed to be the fiend. However, there are no records to tell us if the dog’s spoor compared favorably with the queer tracks seen two months previous in Limerick.”

  And then he goes on to recount other horrors, and Sadie closes the volume and sets it aside with the others. She copies Deacon’s drawing into her notebook, and writes “Not sun, but moon” and underlines “moon” three times. When she looks at the clock on the wall she’s surprised to see that it’s almost twelve, so two whole hours now since the librarian brought her the cardboard box labeled LOT 2, and my how time flies when you’re giving yourself the willies, she thinks. Sadie returns all the books to the box and then carries it back to the librarian’s desk.

  “Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” he says. “You should have asked. I’d have gotten it for you. That’s what they pay me for.”

  “That’s okay, I’m a big girl,” and she thanks him again for his help and goes back to the table for her notebook, her purse and the stubby pencil.

  “There’s a pay phone upstairs, right?” she asks, and the librarian points at the ceiling. “First floor,” he tells her. “Right there across from the big portrait of Washington,” and then he disappears into the stacks with the box of Charles Akeley’s books.

  The coffee and sandwich shop is only a block from the library, hurried lunch-hour crowd of businessmen and their secretaries, the murmur of indecipherable conversations, and when Sadie’s finished talking, she hands her notebook across the table for Deacon to see. As if there could be something there to back up the wild things she’s said, as if words on paper might be more convincing, but it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t even bother to look at it.

  “Werewolves and fairies,” he says again in the same doubtful tone and pushes the notebook back across the table to Sadie. She closes it and shrugs, looks down at the cover instead of looking at him.

  “You said see what I could find. That’s what I found.”

  “I’m looking for a murderer, Sadie, not a monster.”

  Deacon pours milk into his coffee from the little cow-shaped pitcher that the waitress brought, stirs at it with his spoon until it’s faded the color of roasted almonds.

  “What you told me you saw,” Sadie says, “it sounded pretty goddamned monstrous to me.”

  “Yeah, well, you know how that works. I know I’ve explained it all to you before. What I see isn’t always gospel, Sadie. Sometimes I only see people the way they see themselves.”

  “So what about the design, then?” Sadie asks and reaches for a pink packet of Sweet’N Low for her own coffee. “You don’t really think that’s just a coincidence?”

  “No, but I do think it’s possible this woman’s been reading some of the same books you have.”

  Sadie shakes the packet of saccharin three times and tears a corner of the paper, dumps the white powder into her cup, and most of it floats on the surface of the coffee like a tiny island.

  “‘The moon came down and scraped itself raw against the horizon,’” Sadie says, quoting lines from Deacon’s dream back to him. “‘When I was a girl, the moon bled for me.’ That’s what you told me she said to you.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Lycanthropy is often associated with menstruation, and menstruation is often associated with the moon. She kills people and then draws the moon in their blood.”

  “Hell, Detective Downs should have come straight to you in the first damn place,” Deacon says and blows on his steaming coffee.

  “But you do see that it makes sense, don’t you? That’s what she meant about the moon coming—”

  “Sadie, I think maybe it’s best if you forget all about this mess, let the cops deal with it. The truth is, I never should have come to your place last night.”

  Sadie glances quickly back down at her coffee, just in time to see the m
ound of Sweet’N Low collapse and sink into her cup like doomed Atlantis swallowed by the ocean. She picks up her spoon and stirs at the hot black liquid for a moment, counterclockwise swirl, a tiny whirlpool to drag down her thoughts, and when she releases the spoon, the momentum carries it three or four more times around the inner rim of the cup.

  “Mrs. Silvey wasn’t too thrilled when she answered the phone and it was me, was she?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Deacon says. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Chance.”

  “Sure. Whatever you say, Deke. But I think I have less trouble believing in those sheep-killing fairies.”

  Deacon sighs and takes a drink of his coffee, stares out the window at the street.

  “Hey, look, don’t worry about it,” Sadie says and reaches into her purse, digs around until she finds three crumpled one-dollar bills, and lays them on the table.

  “You’re not listening to me,” he says impatiently. “This thing’s a lot more complicated than I thought, and I shouldn’t have ever gotten you involved. It’s dangerous—”

  “Great. So next time you feel the need to fucking unburden yourself, try telling your spook stories to Chance. Tell her about your bad dreams.”

  “For shit’s sake, I don’t need this right now, Sadie.”

  “Well, you know what? Neither do I,” and she gathers her things, the notebook, her cigarettes and purse, and slides out of the booth. “I gotta run, anyway. Sheryl got me a few hours at the bar this afternoon, and I need the money.”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  “No you won’t, Deacon. But that’s okay, all right? It was fun pretending we were friends again,” and she walks quickly past the woman at the cash register and back out into the breezy October afternoon.

  Seven long hours at The Plaza tending bar for minimum wage and tips, two o’clock until nine to supplement the checks her parents send once or twice a month, seven hours before Bunky shows up and she can finally go home. Bunky Tolbert on time for once in his whole lazy life, and Sadie leaves the smoke-filled, clattery bar and steps out into the night. A chill in the air and her breath fogs, but there’s no point wishing she had a car, because she wouldn’t be able to afford the insurance, or even gas, for that matter; she walks along Highland Avenue, her quick, determined steps, arms folded and her hands tucked into her armpits to keep her fingers warm. Her streetlight-to-streetlight march, one halogen pool to the next, and Sadie tries not to think about Deacon Silvey or her empty apartment. She keeps her eyes on the sidewalk, step on a crack and maybe her mother has it coming.

  The wind makes lonely, snake-rattling sounds in the trees, and she doesn’t look at the windows of the apartments and condos she passes, other people’s comfort not meant for her. When she reaches the scruffy little hollow of Caldwell Park, Sadie stands there shivering, staring across the patch of grass already going brown from an early frost, a few scattered water oaks and pines, a swing set and picnic tables. A shortcut home she’s taken a hundred times after dark, but tonight there’s something in the air or under her skin, and she pauses and looks back the way she’s come. There are only the cars parked along the sidewalk and a few fallen leaves scuttling like giant insects along the road, and she steps off the concrete and descends sandstone and redbrick stairs leading down into the park. At the bottom, she stops again and looks back up towards the sidewalk.

  “What the fuck’s gotten into you?” she asks herself, wondering if it was the things Deacon told her the night before, or the stories she read that morning in Arminius Vambery’s old book. Either or both or something else altogether, and she listens to the random interplay of the sighing wind and dry branches, the human sounds of the traffic along Highland and a radio playing rap music somewhere.

  “Go home, Sadie,” she says, prompting, just something to get her moving again, and she imagines how good a hot bath will feel, Mr. Bubble and her vanilla- and lilac-scented candles, how much better bed will feel afterwards. She turns back to the park and takes a few more steps towards the other side, no streetlights down here, and so she walks faster than before. If Deacon were here, she thinks and then pushes the thought away, angry at him and more angry that she’s getting freaked out over nothing, scared of the dark and jumping at her own shadow like a five-year-old.

  “If Deacon were here,” she says out loud, talking to herself and the shadows gathered beneath the trees, “I could kick him in the nuts.” She laughs, but it isn’t really very funny and doesn’t make her feel any better, so she starts walking again. Sadie’s halfway across the park when she hears a noise from the trees on her right, a heavy footstep in pine straw or the creak of rusty chains from the swings, some perfectly ordinary park sound, so there’s no reason whatsoever for the way her heart has started racing or the tinfoil and ephedrine thrum of adrenaline in her veins. But a stray line remembered from Vambery’s book, “When twigs crack, don’t whistle,” warning from mothers to their children during the terror in Gévaudan, and “Fuck off!” she shouts at the dark places the noise might have come from. “I have pepper spray!”

  There’s no way to pretend the laughter that floats back to her is anything else, a woman’s soft, almost musical laugh, and Sadie reaches into her purse, hunting the tiny can of cayenne-pepper spray she keeps on her key chain.

  “I’m not joking with you, asshole,” she says, even though she can’t find her keys hidden somewhere in all the other purse crap.

  The woman laughs again, as Sadie’s hand closes at last around the cold and spiky bundle of keys. She drops her purse getting them out and spills everything in a pile onto the grass at her feet.

  “Oh my,” the woman says, her voice like ice cream and rose thorns. “What big, big eyes you have, Sadie.”

  Sadie aims the pepper spray at the darkness, at the useless streetlights shining dimly from the far side of the trees, but her hands are starting to shake.

  “What will it be, Little Red Cap? Which road will you choose?”

  Sadie doesn’t turn her back on the voice, but she does take another step nearer the edge of the park, another step towards home.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “This fork in the road, child,” the woman replies. “Which path will you choose? That of the needles, or the road of pins?”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Sadie lies, and there’s a rustle high in the trees, the flutter of frantic, startled wings, skitter of small, sharp claws. And she squints into the night for a glimpse of the face behind the voice, but there’s only black and a hundred thousand shifting shades of gray.

  “I’m not afraid of you, bitch. Come out where I can see you.”

  “Oh, child,” the woman says, and now she sounds almost kind, almost sorry for whatever’s coming next. “Run. Run away fast.”

  And that sudden shift in tone enough to make Sadie drop the badass act once and for all, any pretense that she isn’t scared all the way shitless and back again, and she does run. Never mind her spilled purse, never mind anything but the safety of lights and cars and people. She runs, and with her ears or only in her mind she can hear the thing following her fast across the grass and patches of dry, sandy earth, the thing that doesn’t need a face because it has that voice and the whole damn night for a mask.

  Sadie reaches the sidewalk and keeps running, out into the street and the deafening blare of a car horn, the squeal of brakes and tires hot against asphalt, the headlights like the dazzling eyes of God. The car misses her, but close enough that she can feel it rushing past, the gentle shove of air displaced, and then she trips on the curb and lands sprawling among the gnarled roots of an old poplar tree. She rolls over onto her back, the pepper spray still gripped tight in her right hand, and Please, just let it be over fast, let it be quick, but there’s only the empty park back there, only the mute darkness holding its ground beyond the garish streetlights and the road.

  All the way home from the park, past more apartment buildings, walking twice as fast throu
gh the long shadow cast by a freeway overpass, finally past The Nick and its rowdy parking-lot crowd, and every second Sadie listening for anything out of place, any incongruence, the most infinitesimal creak or shuffle or whisper that ought not be there. One knee and both her elbows bleeding badly from the fall, skin scraped raw and aching, and when someone calls her name from the crowd outside The Nick, she smiles and waves, but keeps walking. All she has to do is get inside and call Deacon, and he’ll come because he has to come, because somehow this is all his fault.

  “Yo, Sadie!” someone shouts. “Is something wrong? You look like shit,” but she doesn’t stop and try to explain, nothing she could say that would make sense, anyway, nothing that wouldn’t sound hysterical.

  Through the front entrance of the building and up the stairs to the second-floor landing, her keys all that she has left now, but all she needs, too, and it takes her a moment to find the one that fits her door. The pepper spray and the key to her parents’ house in Mobile, the key to a blue Volkswagen bug she had years and years ago, four or five keys to nothing at all, just bits of shaped and polished metal she carries around because they make her feel less disconnected from the world. Her hands still shaking badly enough to make even such a simple undertaking a chore, but when she finds the right one, the brass key slides smoothly into the lock and it clicks softly and the knob turns easily in her hand.

  “Hello, Little Red Cap,” the woman from the park says, and Sadie looks up to see her standing all the way at the other end of the hall. She smiles a wide white smile and reaches into her slick leather blazer the color of old motor oil. “I’ve been waiting here so long I thought maybe you weren’t coming.”

  “I’ll scream,” Sadie says and opens the apartment door.

  “And who do you think’s going to hear you, child? Who do you think’s going to care?”

  Sadie steps quickly over the threshold into the dark apartment and slams the door behind her, turns the dead bolt and slides the safety chain into place. Only a little light from the street getting in through the curtains, but the telephone isn’t far away, sitting in its cradle on a stack of books beside the television, and she grabs the receiver and dials 911.