Cry for the Moon: The Last Werewolf Hunter, Book 1

  Chapter Eight

  I’d like to be able to say things turned out the way I expected them to, but maybe that was too much to ask for.

  I made it to the road just as it was getting dark outside, and I saw that it was a short street with several little white houses that were all pretty much the same. They weren’t bad looking, but not particularly nice either. The ones near the highway were pretty close together, but the farther I went down the road the more straggled out they got, with big gaps and lots of trees in between them.

  There were lights on in most of them, but nobody was outside. Just as well, I thought to myself. Number 392 was the last one on the street, where it petered out into a narrow dirt track that went on into the woods somewhere. It was a long way from the other houses, set way back in the thickets where you wouldn’t have guessed it was even there unless you just knew.

  I didn’t see any lights on, but that was okay. I was ready to knock until I woke somebody up, or wait on the doorstep half the night if I had to, if nobody was home. I headed for it eagerly, just as fast as my sore feet would take me. It had a longish dirt driveway that cut back from the street, and the yard was kinda weedy and grown up, but I didn’t pay much attention to that.

  I finally came to the house itself, and when I did I got a nasty surprise. Tacked up on the front porch was a nice big red and white “For Sale” sign.

  When I saw that, all my hopes suddenly came crashing down faster than a cat could lick its tail. I didn’t realize till then how much faith I’d put in this one place, and having the rug yanked out from under my feet so fast like that was more than I knew how to take.

  I sat down on the porch steps and cried for awhile. I know it was babyish and it didn’t help, but I couldn’t keep from it that night. I think that was the first time I ever cried since I broke my big toe playing football last summer.

  After a little bit I shut off the waterworks and thought about what I should do next. There are times when you just don’t feel like going on, but you still know you have to, and that was one of those times for me. The first thing I had to do was get back to Sulphur Springs and rest a few days at the shed and try to save up a little money if I could. There were still those other places to go check, New Boston and Daingerfield and so on.

  I knew in my mind that there was no reason to give up just yet, but I was so tired, and so cold, and so grubby and broke and uncomfortable in other ways, the disappointment was hard to take right then.

  I’d have to start out tomorrow and get back to the shed as fast as I could, but the most immediate thing to think about was what to do that very night. I could tell it was going to be a bitter cold one, because I could already see my breath in the air even that early. It wasn’t the kind of night I needed to spend outside with no shelter, not even wrapped in a sleeping bag. I had nowhere to go and no money, and December is a cruel time of year to find yourself in that position.

  I went up to the front door of the house and tried the knob. It was locked, like I halfway expected it would be. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I walked around to the back door and tried that one too. It was also locked, and I really wasn’t in the mood to break in. I looked under the mat to see if there might be a key under there cause that’s where we always kept our key at home, but there wasn’t one.

  There was a deck built on top of the garage with a door leading out onto it from the second floor of the house, and I wondered if that was locked too.

  A rose trellis was built up against the side of the house and the corner of it barely butted up against the edge of the deck. I thought I might possibly be able to climb it, but I wasn’t sure.

  There might have been a ladder or something in the garage if I’d thought to look for one, but at the time I didn’t. I was too tired to think of anything like that.

  Instead I went to the rose trellis and started climbing. It was tricky, because the holes were just barely big enough for my shoes to fit inside, and some of them had big rose branches growing through them. The thorns tore holes in my jeans and stuck me in the hands and arms more than once on the way up, and that trellis was none too sturdy either. It swayed and creaked every time I made a move, making me think it was about to fall over any second. It’s probably a thousand wonders it didn’t.

  I made it up there without falling, though, and then I had to grab hold of the edge of the deck and pull myself the rest of the way up. That was hard because I couldn’t get any leverage with my feet except on that rickety trellis, so I had to pull up my whole weight with just my arms. As exhausted as I was right then, it took almost more strength than I had left.

  I managed it finally, and left a big scrape on the side of my ribs when I dragged myself up over the splintery lip of the deck. It trickled a few little beads of blood. No worse than the thorn pricks on my hands and arms, but it stung.

  I picked myself up and crossed the deck. There wasn’t much up there except a wooden picnic table and a barbecue grill that somebody had made by cutting an oil barrel in half and putting hinges and handles on it. I thought that was pretty cool, actually, but it wasn’t the time for idle curiosity.

  I got up to the door and found it locked just like all the others. At least that’s what I thought at first when I tried the knob and it wouldn’t open. The knob turned, but when I pushed on the door it wouldn’t move. I shoved harder, thinking maybe it was just stuck, but it was stubborn as a drunk mule no matter how hard I pushed.

  I guess that shows how tired I was, because as soon as I tried pulling, the door opened without a hitch.

  I stood there feeling really stupid for a minute or two, then I decided I better go on inside if I was going to. I was a little scared to go through with it, to tell the truth, but I didn’t know what else to do at that point.

  I buttered up my conscience by telling myself I wasn’t going to steal anything or hurt anything, just sleep there for the night and then move on as soon as I could the next day. I still didn’t like it, but if the place was for sale then at least I wouldn’t be bothering anybody, I hoped.

  I went inside and shut the door, which opened into a dark upstairs hallway. I tried the lights for a second just on the chance that they were still turned on, and I was surprised when they were. I turned them off again right away cause I didn’t want anybody outside to see the light, but it was on long enough for me to see that there were three doors opening off the hall and some stairs leading down to other parts of the house.

  I waited for a little while till my eyes adjusted to the dark, then I felt my way along the wall to the first door. It turned out to be a bathroom, and when I turned on the faucet I discovered the water was still running too.

  I started to have a wild hope that I might actually get to take a shower, because goodness knows I needed one worse than I ever have in my whole life. But before I could get too excited I was disappointed to find out there was no hot water, just cold. I figured the water heater was probably turned off or something.

  I went back out into the hall and continued with my exploring. Both of the other doors upstairs led into bedrooms, which was what I expected.

  The first one looked like an old lady’s room. There was enough moonlight coming through the window for me to make out a handmade quilt on the bed, and some powder boxes and perfume sprayers and pill bottles on top of the dresser, and some little whatnots of various kinds scattered here and there on shelves. It smelled like cinnamon potpourri, and it had that dusty, unused look of a room that nobody really lives in.

  The other room looked like a guy’s room, and it didn’t have that empty unlived-in feel, either. It was darker in there because that side of the house faced away from the moon, but I could still see a little bit. There was a big bookshelf with a lot of paperback books on it. There were about six or seven baseball caps hung up on nails by the window, a computer on a desk, several pictures that I couldn’t make out in the dim light, a rebel flag hung on the wall, some posters I couldn’t read, and some other
unidentifiable stuff.

  I went downstairs and came out into a living room where there was a huge brown overstuffed couch and a big screen TV, and not really a whole lot else. The people didn’t seem to believe in having a lot of furniture or knick-knacks, that’s for sure.

  The kitchen was blue and white tile, and there was a table in there in one corner. No dining room. I opened the refrigerator and found it stocked with food, even milk and eggs and stuff like that which doesn’t keep too long. That made me a little bit uneasy cause it made me think maybe somebody lived there after all and it might not be a good idea for me to stay. I decided I couldn’t worry about it right then, though. I just made up my mind to leave as soon as possible the next morning.

  I did notice that the milk had been expired for almost a week, even though it didn’t seem to have gone sour yet. I wondered if maybe the people had just not bothered to clean out the refrigerator when they left.

  There were only two other rooms downstairs. One of them was for laundry and such, and the other one looked like a workshop. There was a countertop that ran all along one wall and a bunch of tools hung up above it and some pieces of equipment sitting here and there. I recognized a drill press and an air compressor with a hose coiled up beside it, but the other stuff it was too dark to see. I still didn’t quite dare turn the lights on, not even down there.

  There was a thermostat in the downstairs hallway and I did risk turning that light on, since it couldn’t be seen from outside. The heat was turned down to 50 degrees, and that made me feel better about things. If anybody was staying there they would have had the heat turned up higher than that.

  I turned it up to 70 and heard the furnace come on. I found the water heater in a closet in the hall and saw that it had been turned down real low too, so I turned it back up. There was a little wheel you had to turn, just like on the thermostat.

  It didn’t take long before the house was warm and cozy, and the water was running hot. That was just exactly what I wanted.

  I stripped off my clothes and threw them in the washer and turned it on, then I went in the bathroom and had a long hot shower. I couldn’t get enough of it. It felt so good I didn’t get out till the water started to run cool again and my fingers were all wrinkled up. It was wonderful to be really clean again, especially after almost three weeks of barely washing at all. I even washed between my toes and inside my ears.

  I didn’t get out till there wasn’t a drop of hot water left. I dried off and hung up my towel so it would dry, then stood and looked at myself in the mirror for a minute. I was pretty sure I looked a little thinner than I used to be, but other than that I didn’t seem much the worse for wear. Same old sand-colored hair, same old bright blue eyes, same old snub nose with the pale little freckles scattered across it. You couldn’t really even see them unless you looked close, but I knew they were there. I flexed my muscles a few times and pretended I was the Incredible Hulk, and made a horrible face at myself. Mirrors always make me laugh.

  I finally got tired of being silly and put on my last pair of boxer shorts. I didn’t have anything else to wear because all my clothes were still wet in the washer. It was done washing by the time I came out of the bathroom, but I still had to put them in the dryer, and I wasn’t going to wait an hour for them to get dry. I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. That hike from Commerce had just about killed me.

  I went back upstairs to the guy’s bedroom and fell onto the bed. It seemed like a better choice than the old lady’s room, if only because I don’t particularly like the smell of cinnamon. He also had a softer bed than she did. It felt like it was made out of one huge marshmallow under the sheets, just the way I like it.

  I curled up under the comforter and I think I was asleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillow. I don’t think I’ve ever slept so sweet in my life as I did that night.

  When I woke up in the morning I could tell it was late. There was light shining in my face from the sun, and I moved my hand in front of my eyes to block it. I felt pretty good. I moved my legs and I could tell they were still a little stiff, but not too bad. Nothing like yesterday.

  I stretched and yawned real deep, feeling soreness in every muscle, then I got up and padded down to the dryer in my bare feet to get my clothes. They were dry, so I put on some jeans and the Poison t-shirt, not bothering with socks and shoes right then. I folded the rest of the clothes and set them on top of the dryer so I could come back and stuff them in my pack before I left. They all fit in there pretty well now since I wasn’t carrying all that bulky food around like I was when I left Tennessee.

  I wanted to wash my jacket and my sleeping bag too, and so I threw those in the washer together and started it up. I decided I could wait that much longer before I left the house. Neither one of them would take long to drip dry.

  After that I wandered into the kitchen to see if there was anything I wanted to eat. I felt bad about using all this stuff without asking, but what else could I do?

  I drank some of the expired milk (which was still okay), and had a bowl of cereal. It was the cheap generic froot loops that come in a huge plastic bag from Wal-Mart, but that was okay. I didn’t care about that cause they taste just the same anyway. I know, cause Jonathan’s mom used to buy that kind and then use them to refill her empty box of real Froot Loops so everybody would think she bought the expensive kind. She was weird like that sometimes, like anybody would go snooping through the kitchen to see what kind of cereal she bought anyway. I smiled a little, remembering that.

  I finished my breakfast and washed my bowl and spoon and glass and put them on the dish drainer to dry. Then I went back upstairs to get my shoes and make the bed while I was waiting on the washer to finish doing its thing. The least I could do for the guy whose house I’d slept in was to make sure I left it the way I found it.

  It didn’t take long to shoe my feet or finish the bed, and then I was left with nothing in particular to do for a while. I satisfied my curiosity by looking around in the guy’s room a little more. I was too tired and I hadn’t been able to see much last night.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been so nosy, but I just think people are interesting, you know. I like to know what they’re like and what they think about, deep down. People are all so different, and you can learn a lot about somebody from the things he puts in his room. This dude was no exception, and after a while I decided I liked him, whoever he was.

  There were a couple of posters with Bible verses on them. One was about thinking about true and noble things, and the other one was about not giving up when things were hard. I could definitely relate to that one.

  His baseball cap collection was interesting too. There was one from Texas A&M, and a camouflage one, and one from the Hard Rock Café in Dallas, and several others. I wondered if he really liked to play ball or if he was just a cap collector.

  There was a picture of an old lady in a blue dress on the wall, and several pictures of a young woman with long brown hair. She was kinda pretty, except in one where she was sticking her tongue out at whoever was taking the picture.

  It appealed to my curiosity, I guess, but by itself there was probably nothing in that room that I would have remembered a month later.

  But that’s when I hit the bombshell, and after that nothing was ever the same.

  It was the last picture I looked at, way back on a corner of the bookshelf. I let my eyes fall on it carelessly, not expecting anything, and in a split second I recognized my mother.

  She was a lot younger in that picture, but there was no mistaking it. She was standing next to Justin with a pine tree in the background, with the old lady in the blue dress from the other picture sitting down on a stool in front of them. It was the right house after all, and I’d found Justin at last.