Cry for the Moon
The Last Werewolf Hunter, Book One
By William Woodall
© 2009 by William Woodall
www.williamwoodall.org
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When my mother and father forsake me,
Then the Lord will take me up.
- Psalms 27:10
Chapter One
I didn’t know anything special was going on when Nana Maralyn asked me to go walking with her in the apple orchard that day.
It was late one evening after supper was over, and we walked on tiptoes so we could listen to the crickets. Nana always used to tell me they were like people, and sang their prettiest songs whenever they were saddest, when they knew that winter was coming. She used to say stuff like that all the time. It was late October in Tennessee, so I guess they didn’t have much time left.
Nana kept quiet, but I could feel the soft crease in her palm where she rested her hand on my bare shoulder. Her claws were really sharp that night, digging into my skin like tacks, and I shifted my weight uncomfortably.
“Be still, Zach,” she commanded. I quit squirming; Nana had a way of pinching the very blood out of you when you didn’t mind her.
I was only twelve then, and I remember I went barefooted, knowing it might be for the last time that year. I liked the feel of the grass tickling between my toes, and felt sorry for Nana Maralyn in her big black boots.
By and by we came to the little clearing with the big flat rock sticking up out of the ground. Nana smiled, and went ahead of me so she could go sit on the rock. She closed her eyes at first and took a deep breath, then opened them and looked at me.
“Come here, Zach,” she said, holding out her arms to me. I went to her and sat down, wondering what she wanted. She took a little flute from her purse and began to play a song I thought I might have heard before, but I wasn’t sure. It made me sleepy, and when Nana Maralyn got up and nudged me down flat on my back on the rock, I didn’t resist her very much. I could hardly keep my eyes open.
She went on playing that tune for a long time, and I wasn’t exactly sure when it finished. I think I might have gone to sleep, because the next thing I remember was Nana painting something cool and wet on my chest. It felt kind of nice, but when she tried to put something in my mouth I opened my eyes to see what she was doing.
Moonlight flooded down all around us from the fat full moon. Nana had the sparkly perfume bottle in her hand, and held my mouth open while she shook a few drops of blood on my tongue.
“Oh, yuck, Nana, you know I hate blood,” I murmured feebly, trying to spit and sputter. Nana wouldn’t let me, and finally I swallowed it just to get rid of the nasty taste. She started playing her flute again after that and I drifted back to sleep.
The next time I woke up it was morning, and I was still lying cold and stiff on that darned rock. Nana Maralyn was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t believe she’d left me to sleep outside all night.
I sat up and looked at my bare chest, which was covered with symbols painted on with some kind of gritty white paint. It flaked off when I touched it and smelled like old cough drops or Mentholatum. I scraped it off me and stood up, shivering a little. I knew what had happened, then. Nana Maralyn had done the Ceremony on me.
I was suddenly furious at her for tricking me like that, and I walked back to the house fuming.
They were all waiting for me, of course, happy and pleased as punch. They always were, the morning after going hunting under a full moon, but today they seemed extra specially jolly. Mama had baked a cake like it was my birthday or something, and Nana Maralyn smiled and kissed me. Daddy picked me up with a huge bear-hug and said, “My boy’s all grown up today!” like it was the proudest day of his life. Even my little sister Lola was grinning at me with that gap-toothed grille of hers.
I’d been getting into a blacker mood with every passing second, and finally I couldn’t hold back any longer.
“I don’t want to be a monster!” I screamed, about to cry and even more furious at them because of that.
The smile faded from Nana Maralyn’s lips, and Daddy looked like somebody had suddenly stuck a lemon in his mouth. There was dead silence in the kitchen.
“Yes, well, I guess we all felt that way at first, Zach,” Daddy finally said, with a forced laugh. He clearly had never felt that way, but his comment broke the ice and let everybody go back to joking and bustling around. He put me down and I stalked off to the corner, pretending I was headed for the cookie jar back there, but really I just wanted to be left alone. I was still madder than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. But of course I couldn’t get away that easily.
“Once you get used to it I know you’ll change your mind, Zach. It’s not nice to be so nasty and make everybody unhappy, is it?” Mama whispered to me. I couldn’t help feeling guilty when she put it like that, so I tried to smile and let on like I was convinced. I wasn’t happy though, and I think they could tell. I slipped away as soon as I could and went up to my room.
It was Saturday, but since there was nothing else to do I tried to work on my math homework. It was easy stuff, so that didn’t last too long. I cupped my chin in my hands and wondered how long it would be before my claws would start growing, and what rabbit guts really tasted like. Would I like them better with salt, or ketchup, or maybe cheese? I laughed, even though it wasn’t really all that funny. I pushed my tongue around my canine teeth, imagining that they already felt sharper.
Maybe I ought to explain a few things. Everybody in my family except me and Lola is a monster. They get mad at me when I use that word, but it’s the truth, isn’t it? Daddy says the right name for what we are is loup-garou, but I don’t care; as far as I’m concerned a monster is a monster. Lola’s not old enough to be one yet, cause she’s only six. It’s not that you have to be any certain age; it’s just that they couldn’t trust her to behave herself.
But anyway, whenever they decide she’s old enough, they’ll take her out to a flat rock somewhere, and put her to sleep, and paint the right symbols on her chest with peppermint and henbane, and put a little blood in her mouth, and leave her to sleep all night under the Hunter’s Moon. I never used to know that every full moon in the year has its own special name, but they do, and none of the others will work except that one. I don’t know why, but that’s what Nana Maralyn told me.
I had known for a long time that I would probably have to be a monster when I grew up. I was never very happy about it, and they all knew how I felt. I’m not sure why I hated the idea so much. I just never could get excited over the thought of killing something and tearing it to pieces with my bare hands just for the fun of it; not even a rabbit or a deer. It didn’t seem right, somehow, and the older I got the less I liked it.
They always used to tell me I’d grow out of feeling that way. I never did, though, and the fact that all of them had gotten in cahoots together to trick me into it anyway, whether I liked it or not. . . I was pretty steamed, let me tell you. That was the last straw, as far as I was concerned. They could go out and eat rabbits and toads and rats all day long if they felt like it, but I wasn’t having any part of it.
If I could only think how.
Almost a month went by and I never felt any different, so I started to get curious. I wolfed down my lunch at school and spent every second I could spare in the library, reading books about monsters and werewolves and things like that
. The other kids started to notice it after a while, but I said I was doing a special report for the young authors’ fair. That got me off the hook; everybody knows how much I like to write.
Most of the books were stupid, but I finally hit paydirt with a book about monsters that mentioned loup-garous on one page, even though it only had a little blurb about them that didn’t tell me much. It said they were produced by a special kind of curse on ordinary people, and that silver was poisonous to a loup-garou, but only if they got scratched with it or it got in their blood some kind of way. I didn’t see how that part could really help me much, though. I didn’t want to fight one, I just wanted to keep from having to become one myself.
On the other hand, the idea that you had to be cursed before you could become a loup-garou gave me an awful lot to think about. Nobody ever told me about that part of it before. I knew what a curse was, and when I found out that’s what was really happening it kinda scared me, to tell the truth. It made me wonder what all else I didn’t know.
So then I started looking up stuff about curses and ways to cure them. They only mentioned one cure in the loup-garou book, and I didn’t like it. It said that you had to take the cursed person and strip him naked, and then have twelve girls beat him with switches from an alder tree by the light of a full moon until he fainted. I decided to pass that one up unless I absolutely had no other choice. I wasn’t sure what alder was, anyway, and how would I ever live such a thing down? I’d never be able to show my face at school again for the rest of my life.
I got my act together at home, too. I convinced everybody that I was thrilled about becoming a loup-garou, and I got them to tell me stories and answer questions. Daddy seemed especially pleased with all this interest, so he was the one I worked on the hardest. Oh, I laid it on thick.
Me and my dad had never really talked much or been close, but this was something he cared about. We had several long discussions, and one day I mentioned, like it didn’t interest me much, that I’d read somewhere that it was possible to “cure” a loup-garou and turn him back into a regular person. He looked instantly suspicious for a minute.
“What have you been reading, Zach?” he demanded, scowling.
“It was only a story,” I said smoothly, and told him about the ceremony with the switches and the twelve girls. He laughed until his face turned red and tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes.
“I’d give my eyeteeth to see it, Zach, but I’m afraid when it was over you’d simply have a very sore young loup-garou the next day,” he said. I tried to show how relieved I was to hear that, and I think it must have encouraged him to trust me.
“No, Zach, you don’t have to worry about anybody trying to cure you. It can’t be done. The only way to cure a loup-garou is not to ever become one at all. After next week you’ve got nothing to worry about,” he promised me.
I pounced on that.
“Really? What’s next week?” I asked innocently, already plotting how I might avoid it.
“Well, next week’s the full moon again, and of course you can’t really be a full-fledged loup-garou until you make your first kill that night,” he said.
That was a very interesting little tidbit of information, and I filed it away for more thought later. In the meantime, I put on my best worried look.
“But what if I’m sick that night or something?” I asked anxiously. Daddy thought about that awhile.
“Hmm, well, now, that’s a good question, Zach. I can’t remember a time when it ever happened before, but if it did then I guess it would mean you’d have to wait another year and redo everything next October,” he said. He paused a few seconds, and looked at me with his brow wrinkled up, like he was trying to guess what I was thinking.
“I wouldn’t worry about it though; I’m sure everything will be fine,” he finally said. He smiled a toothy grin because he knew it would make me laugh, and that was all we said about it.
I laid in bed that night with my eyes open for a long time, just thinking about stuff. I had my answer now about how to keep from becoming a monster (or loup-garou, or werewolf, or whatever the heck you wanted to call it), but the problem was, I didn’t like the answer much. I would have rather just stripped naked and let the girls beat me with switches than what I was going to have to do instead. That would have been over in one night, but this was forever. I was going to have to run away.
Oh, I know what you’re thinking. It was a crazy idea, and surely there must have been an easier way if I’d only thought about it awhile longer. But see, I didn’t have the time to think very long, and I knew my family real well. This was a really big deal to them.
I could maybe do something to botch up this year’s hunt and make them have to wait and curse me again next fall, but even that wasn’t a sure thing. Even if I pretended to be deathly sick, they could probably still bring a mouse in my room and make me kill it, and after that it would all be over. But suppose I did manage to mess it up? What then?
They’d be suspicious then, that’s what. They’d keep me locked up in the attic all year if they had to, and then I really wouldn’t have any way to escape. There wouldn’t be any room to talk about it and they wouldn’t take no for an answer, ever. They were so convinced that being a monster was the best thing since sliced bread, it was hopeless to try to change their minds. If I wanted to stay myself and not be cursed, then the only choice I had was to leave. It was that simple. I knew that just as sure as God made little green apples.
Knowing all that, it didn’t take much thought before I decided I had to get away now, while they still thought I loved the idea of being a monster.
The really hard part was, I knew I could never come back. Some people talk like making choices is easy as long as you know what you want, but that’s just something stupid people say. I know better.
I looked over at my window, where the moon was pouring in through the curtains, bright and big and almost full. There wasn’t much time left.