Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 20 Two days before Halloween

(1)

Newton sat for over an hour on the hard bench at the Warminster train station, chewing butter-rum Life Savers and drumming his fingers. A paperback book on vampire folklore was open on his lap, but he was too jittery to read. Commuters looked at him with his rumpled outdoor clothes and his razor-stubbled face and assumed he was homeless and gave him a wide berth. Newton was aware of their stares, but didn’t care. In the three weeks since Little Halloween and the trip down into Dark Hollow he hadn’t slept more than three hours at a stretch. Insomnia kept him up, too much coffee jangled his nerves, and when he did drift off the dreams kicked in. It was better to be sort of awake and wasted than to be asleep and at the mercy of his overactive imagination.

For the hundredth time he looked up at the wall clock above the ticket booth. Just shy of three o’clock. Jonatha Corbiel was nearly half an hour late. As each northbound train pulled into the station he stood up and searched the faces of the debarking passengers. Jonatha had given him only a vague and sketchy idea of what she looked like. “I’m tall, dark, and top-heavy.” Amused and intrigued by her description, he conjured images of a leggy beauty with a deep-water tan and a grad-student’s wire-framed glasses. Something like a brainy Jennifer Tilly or a scholarly Jennifer Connelly with olive skin. Maybe someone with the delicacy of a Maggie Gyllenhaal but with lots of wild curling black hair, dressed in the jeans, flannel lumberjack shirt, and Dr. Martens that comprised the dress code of the understipened Ph.D. candidate.

Thus self-conditioned, he was totally unprepared for the woman who suddenly loomed over him like a skyscraper. He had seen her get off the train, but had not even thought that she might be Jonatha despite the fact that she did, indeed, fit the description of tall, dark, and top-heavy. She smiled down at him and in a thick Louisiana accent said, “Let me guess. Willard Fowler Newton, or what’s left of him?”

He stared up at her. “Uh…Jonatha…?” he stammered, rising.

“In the flesh.”

He goggled. Jonatha Corbiel was certainly tall, and at six-one she towered over Newton’s five-seven. She was certainly dark: her skin was an exquisite and flawless blue-black, as richly dark as that of her Ashanti ancestors. And she was certainly top-heavy, with large breasts straining at the fabric of her faded gray U of P sweatshirt, distorting both letters. Standing at his full height his eyes came to just above her chest and try as he might, he could not help but stare.

“Might as well get it over with,” Jonatha said with tolerant amusement.

“Er…what?”

“I have really big boobs. Take a good look and get it out of your system.”

His eyes leapt immediately away from her chest and up to meet hers, which were filled with humor. He felt his skin ignite to a fiery red.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “You must hate that.”

“I’ve been used to it since I was fourteen.” She looked around. “Where are your friends?”

“We’re meeting them at the diner. Couple blocks from here. My car’s over there…” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the parking lot and reached for the small suitcase that stood next to her. She let him carry it, but opted to hold on to her laptop case, which she wore slung over one shoulder.

“Let’s go, then.” Her tone was on the affable side of matter of fact, and he turned and led the way to the lot, trying not to cut looks at her as they walked. Jonatha Corbiel was a knockout and Newton had no experience at all around women of that level of beauty. None at all. In the thirty yards between the bench and his car he managed to bang his knee into the Intelligencer news box and trip down two of the three steps from the platform. When they were in the car, Newton drove slowly and badly and tried not to study her face in the rearview mirror. She wore seven earrings in her right ear and four in her left and silver rings flashed on each of her long fingers; she wore no makeup, and he thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

“I…really want to thank you for coming up here. I know it’s a lot to ask.”

She shrugged. “I’ve had it on my list to visit Pine Deep at some point.” She smiled and held her hands out like she was reading a movie marquee. “Pine Deep, Pennsylvania: The Most Haunted Town in America. To a folklorist that’s like the mothership calling me home.”

“The charm wears off once you live here for a while.”

“Maybe,” she said. “I’m interested in this book you’re writing on vampire and werewolf legends in Pennsylvania. I don’t think anyone’s ever done a folklore book as specific as that for this area.”

“Seems to be a theme with us,” Newton said dryly.

“In the last ten years I’ve done over fifty field investigations of reported vampirism in eleven states, and fourteen of werewolfism. You’d be amazed how often these things are reported. All of them were duds, dead ends. It always turns out that the witnesses were untrustworthy, or the evidence faked or simply misidentified.”

Instead of replying to that, he said, “We’re here.” He pulled into the lot of the Red Lion, a Greek diner on the corner of County Line Road and Route 611, and parked next to Val’s two-year-old Dodge Viper. Inside, Gus, the owner, gave him a friendly grin.

“You looking for Val and Crow? They’re in the back.” He picked up two menus and ushered them into a nearly empty dining room. Newton made introductions and everyone shook hands.

“Thanks for agreeing to come up here,” Val said after they’d ordered coffees.

“Well, Mr. Newton piqued my interest with his book. A mass-market trade paperback deal is something we academics only dream of, so being extensively quoted and footnoted in one is actually a good career move.”

Newton’s cover story was only partly a lie because Newton did plan to write a book, leveraging his celebrity as the reporter who broke the Karl Ruger/Cape May Killer story. Even his editor, Dick Hangood—who was not Newton’s biggest fan—thought a book deal would be a no-brainer, but no actual deal yet existed.

Crow sipped his coffee. “Newt’s been tapping me for info since he started on the project. Up till now I’ve been the local spook expert.”

“I know,” Jonatha said. “I Googled you and saw how many times you’ve been quoted.”

“Then you’ll know that most of it has been related to hauntings and such,” he said, nodding.

“You’ve been quoted a few times in articles about werewolf legends, but just in passing. Do you have a folklore background?”

“Not really. I’ve read a lot of books and when you live in Pine Deep you tend to pick up on things.”

Newton watched Jonatha as she studied Crow. She had shrewd eyes and didn’t blink until after Crow finished talking. Newton recognized that as an interviewer’s trick. She was looking for a “tell.” If you blink you can miss small changes in the other person’s expression, pupilary dilation, nostril flaring, thinning of the lips, angle of gaze—all of which could reveal a lot more about the subject than words or tone of voice. Newton had seen cops use the same tricks. So far Crow seemed to be doing pretty good.

Newton said, “I’ve been collecting some oral stories—things that have not yet been recorded and some weird things have come up that are outside of my own experience.”

“Outside mine, too,” Crow said.

The waitress came and they ordered. Cheese omelets for Crow and Jonatha, a stack of French toast for Newton, and a bagel with whitefish for Val. Everyone had second coffees.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Ms. Guthrie,” Jonatha said, “what’s your involvement in this?”

“Val, please, and I’m an interested observer.”

“Crow and Val are engaged,” Newton explained.

Jonatha stirred Splenda into her coffee. Her eyes lingered on Val’s. “I read the last few week’s worth of papers. Please accept my condolences.”

“Thanks.”

“I read that the mayor of the town is in a coma.”

Val paused. “Yes.”

“Unrelated events?”

“Yes.”

“But on the same day as the attacks on your brother and his wife.”

Val said nothing.

“Which is the same day you shot and killed that criminal, I believe?”

“Are you going somewhere with this, Dr. Corbiel?”

“Jonatha. No, I’m just trying to put the pieces together. You’ve all been through a terrible series of events. It’s pretty amazing that you can find the peace of mind to work together on a pop-culture book.”

The food arrived, which gave Newton, Crow, and Val time to share some brief eye contact. All of them were hustling to reevaluate Jonatha Corbiel. When the waitress left, Crow said, “Distraction is useful under stress, don’t you think?”

“Distraction? That’s a funny word to put on the pursuit of a book on vampires. I would have thought you’d have had enough of monsters by now. Human monsters, I mean, which I think we can all agree are much worse than anything we find in film, fiction, or folklore.”

Val tore off a piece of bagel and put it in her mouth as she leaned back in her chair and assessed Jonatha. “Is this going to be a problem? Would you rather not help us out with this?”

Jonatha gave them all a big smile that was pure charm and about a molecule deep. “Not at all. I’m rather interested to hear what you have to say.”

They all digested that as they ate, but it was Jonatha who again broke the silence. “So…who wants to start?”

“Why don’t I give it a shot?” Crow said.

She waggled a corner of toast. “Fire away.”

“Okay, if you’ve been reading about Pine Deep, then you’ve read about the Massacre of 1976.”

“The Black Harvest and the Reaper murders, yes.”

“Um…right. Well, since the seventies there have been a lot of urban myths built up around what happened. Have you heard of the Bone Man?”

“Sure. That’s the nickname given to Oren Morse, the migrant worker who was falsely accused of the crimes.”

That threw Crow. “Falsely…?”

“I have copies of the news stories, Crow,” she said. “When Newton told me that the records from the Pine Deep newspapers had been destroyed in a fire I just probed a little deeper. Crimes of that kind are widely reported, and I have photocopies of the stories as reported by the Doylestown Intelligencer and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Some Daily News and Bulletin articles as well. Prior to his own murder, Morse was quoted in an Intelligencer article. It was just after your brother was murdered.”

If she had tossed a hand grenade onto the table she could not have hit Crow harder.

“What?” Val and Newton both exclaimed.

“Your father was also quoted in four separate articles, Val,” Jonatha said, “beginning with the murder of your uncle.”

The three of them sat in stunned silence, gawking at her.

Jonatha finished her toast and cut a piece of omelet. “Mmm, good food here,” she said as she chewed. The silence persisted and finally Jonatha put down her fork. “You didn’t know your father was in the papers, did you?”

“No,” Val said. Her face had gone pale.

Jonatha folded her hands in her lap and looked at them in turn. Some of her smile had faded. “Okay, let’s cut the bullshit, shall we? Val, you and Crow lost family to the Reaper. According to the news stories you were friends with Morse, who worked for some time for your father. Your town’s mayor, Terry Wolfe, lost a sister to the killer and was himself hospitalized. All through this there was a terrible blight…the Black Harvest in question. Now, thirty years later we have another blight, another series of brutal murders, and violence again hitting the same three families. Even some of the dimmer news affiliates have remarked on the coincidence, but they left it as coincidence.” She pursed her lips. “I don’t much believe in coincidence.”

Crow opened his mouth to say something, but Jonatha held up a hand. “Let me finish. After Newton contacted me about this…about his book, I started reading up. I read everything I could find, including everything about Ruger and Boyd. That makes for some interesting reading.” Her dark eyes glittered. “The news stories say that Crow and a Philly cop named Jerry Head both shot Ruger—and this is after Crow kicked the stuffing out of him—but the guy not only manages to flee the scene and elude a concentrated manhunt but then shows up a couple of days later and attacks again. Stronger than ever. How many bullets did it take to bring him down the second time?”

Instead of answering, Val just said, “Go on.”

“Then Boyd attacks and kills two police officers on your farm. The news report—Mr. Newton’s own news report—states that one of the officers emptied his gun, apparently during the struggle. All those shots without hitting the suspect? A week or so later he attacks your brother and sister-in-law, kills one of your employees, and almost kills you and you have to empty an entire clip into him to bring him down.”

None of them said a word.

“Then Newton here contacts me for backstory on the folklore of vampires and werewolves, wanting specifically to know how to identify a vampire after it has been killed.” She drained her coffee cup and set it down on the saucer. “Folks…how stupid do you really think I am?”

After almost half a minute of silence, Val said, “Well, well.”

To which Crow added, “Holy shit.”

“Okay,” Val said softly, “then what do you think is going on?”

Jonatha shrugged. “It seems pretty clear to me that you all think you have, or possibly had, a vampire here in Pine Deep.” She arched her eyebrows. “Am I right, Val? Crow?” They said nothing. “And very probably a werewolf, too.”

Crow opened his mouth to reply, but Val touched his arm. Her eyes bored into Jonatha’s. “What if we were to agree? What would you do if we said that we thought that we were dealing with something supernatural here in Pine Deep?”

“Then,” Jonatha said, “I’d say that you’d better tell me absolutely everything. Everything that’s happened, everything you suspect.”

“And if we do?”

“First,” she said, “I’d have to believe you. Meaning I’d have to believe that you are telling me all of it and telling me what you believe.”

“Okay,” Newton said.

“Then I’ll tell you if I think this is over or not.”

“From the way you’re talking,” Crow said, “it almost sounds like you believe in this stuff.”

Jonatha didn’t answer. She cut another piece of omelet, speared a piece of grilled potato, dipped it in ketchup, and ate it while staring him right in the eye.

“Tell me first,” she said.

(2)

“Well…that’s kind of weird.”

Nurse Emma Childs looked up from the chart on which she had been recording the doctor’s notes. Pen poised above the paper she said, “Excuse me, doctor?”

The young resident, Dr. Pankrit, was bending over Terry Wolfe, gently moving aside bandages in order to examine the man’s lacerations and surgical wounds. “Look at this. I’ve never seen a surgical scar heal that fast.”

Childs leaned past Pankrit’s shoulder. “Wow. I changed that dressing yesterday. This is wonderful!”

Pankrit turned and gave her an enigmatic stare for a moment, then bent lower to peer at the sides of Terry’s face. “I…guess.” He sounded dubious. “It’s just so fast…and look, see that? That was a deep incision and the scar should be livid. This scar looks like it’s six months old. That’s just…weird.” He put the bandages back in place. “Let’s run this by Dr. Weinstock. He said he wanted to be notified of any changes to the mayor’s condition.”

“Well, surely if the mayor is healing fast it must be a good sign. His system must be getting stronger.”

Pankrit gave her another of those odd looks. “Let’s run it by Dr. Weinstock.”

(3)

Bentley Kingsman, known to everyone as BK, walked the whole route of the Haunted Hayride, pausing every once in a while to make notes on a map of the attraction he carried on a clipboard. He and his friend, Billy Christmas, had driven into town the previous night, stayed at the Harvestman Inn on the town’s dime, and were out at the Hayride by seven in the morning. Crow had met them, introduced them to Coop and a few of the management staff, then left for another meeting.

BK was set to handle security for Mischief Night and Halloween at the Hayride, the Dead-End Drive-In, the College Campus, the movie theater in town, and the main Festival that covered three full blocks in the center of town. BK had a lot of muscle coming in that afternoon and by then he wanted to view every site himself and make decisions on who should go where.

They stopped at a slope that led down to a man-made swamp in which the silvery disk of a spaceship appeared to rise from the muddy water. BK read from the clipboard. “Alien Attack. Five staff as aliens, two as victims, plus mannequins as deceased victims.”

“Cute,” Billy said, sipping from a Venti Starbucks triple espresso. “What happens here?”

“The flatbed stops up there on the road and a lightshow kicks in. Blue and white lights plus a strobe over behind the saucer. The aliens chase the two actors up the slope and shoot them down with ray guns right about where we’re standing, then they start coming after the kids on the flatbed. The driver guns the engine and the flatbed slips away just in the nick of time.”

Billy grunted. “Kids buy that shit?”

“By the busload, apparently. Crow said this is the biggest one of these in the country. Place makes a ton of cash.”

“We’re in the wrong business, Kemo Sabe.” Billy was tall and wiry, with lean hips and long ropey arms. He looked more like a dancer than a bouncer, and two nights a week he did climb onto the stage for ladies’ night male stripper revues. He was tanned and handsome, with white-blond hair, cat-green eyes, and a smile that BK had seem him use to melt just about any woman who crossed his path.

BK was taller, broader, heavier, and darker. Brown hair and eyes, a short beard, and forty more pounds than he would have liked to carry. He was built on a huge frame, though, and carried the extra weight lightly. He did look like a bouncer.

The two of them worked at Strip-Search, the biggest of Philly’s go-go bars. BK was the cooler and Billy was his main backup. Like Crow they were old hands in the Middle Atlantic States martial arts scene. BK studied the same art as Crow, traditional Japanese jujutsu; Billy had years invested in a number of systems, including Muay Thai kickboxing and Wing Chun kung-fu.

“How many guys you figure for this spot?” Billy asked.

“This is the most remote spot, but I think we can get away with three guys for this scene and the next two. One here, one a quarter mile along the path, and one walking the line between the two.”

“That’ll work.”

There was a lot of activity around the saucer. Attractions consultant John West and his team were involved in a thorough wiring safety check, so BK didn’t bother them. He and Billy moved on, strolling past the Graveyard of the Ghouls, through the Corn Maze, and into the final trap, the Grotto of the Living Dead. “This is where one of the kids gets pulled out of the flatbed. He pretends to be a tourist and an actress plays his girlfriend. Some zombies sneak up and drag him off into the bushes and tear him up. The girl screams her lungs out and the zombies attack the flatbed, almost catching it as the tractor pulls away. Then it swings around the big bend in the road and back to the starting point where they offload the kids.

BK consulted the clipboard. “I figure it’ll take fifteen guys to secure this entire attraction.”

Billy whistled. “I hope somebody around here’s got some deep-ass pockets.”

“From what Crow says, they do.”

“It’d piss me off if the check bounces.”

“Amen, brother.”

(4)

They took turns telling her the story. Crow started and told her everything about the Massacre, everything about Griswold and the Bone Man. Val picked it up with what happened at her farm, first when Ruger invaded her house and took her family hostage—and mercilessly gunned down her father—to Boyd’s murderous attack. Newton filled in the backstory of the Cape May Killer, the police handling of the case, and what he had found out through Internet searches. It took well over an hour and they were so wired from caffeine that they’d switched to decaf. The owner, Gus, came by several times to see if they needed anything, but the seriousness of their faces and the fact that they immediately stopped talking as soon as he came into the back room finally convinced him that they were involved in something private and important. He stopped seating customers in that part of the diner.

Throughout the discourse Jonatha said very little except to clarify a point, a name, or a date. She made no notes, offered no opinions. When Newton finished his part of it, she leaned her elbows on the table and steepled her long fingers. “Wow,” she said. “And the only other person who knows about this is this Dr. Weinstock?”

“Yes,” Val said, “and we’d like to keep it that way.”

“Have you seen Dr. Weinstock’s evidence? The tapes, the lab reports?”

Crow nodded. “He said that each single element could probably be disproved, or at least discredited if someone wanted to work hard enough at it, but taken en masse it’s pretty damned compelling.”

To Val, Jonatha said, “So, as far I can tell, you three brought me here because of what happened to your brother and his wife, is that correct?”

“Not entirely,” Val said. “Mark is the most important reason to me, of course. I need to know that he’s going to be at rest. That he isn’t infected…but we also need to know if the town itself is safe. We think this is over, but how can we ever tell? I don’t want to have to live in fear every day and night for the rest of my life. Crow and I are expecting a baby…we need to know that this town is going to be a safe place for our baby to grow up.” Crow reached over and gave her hand a squeeze.

“Wow,” Jonatha said again.

“We’ve been pretty candid with you, Jonatha,” Val said. “Now it’s your turn. You seem remarkably calm after hearing the story we’ve just told. Frankly, I expected you to laugh in our faces and storm out. But here you are.”

“Here I am.”

“So what does that mean?” Crow asked.

“It means, Crow,” Jonatha said, “that it’s a good thing Newton here didn’t contact my thesis advisor first. Or the department chair.”

“Why’s that?” Newton asked.

“Because neither of those gentlemen believes in vampires.”

“And you do?”

Jonatha paused. “Yes,” she said. “I do.” She shook her head. “Before you ask, though…no, it doesn’t mean that I’ve ever met a vampire. I’m not Van Helsing’s illegitimate daughter. I have never in my life encountered the supernatural. Not once.”

“So…why?”

She shrugged. “Not everyone gets into folklore because of an academic drive. Some of us—quite a lot of us, actually—pursue folklore because we do believe in some kind of larger world. I’m from Louisiana…from the real backwoods Louisiana. Before starting college I had a Cajun accent so thick you couldn’t cut it with a knife, but thanks to some undergraduate theater classes I learned to get rid of that. Where I grew up everyone believes in something, even those who swear up and down that they don’t. My grandmother and mother were as much vodoun as Catholic. In Louisiana we have plenty of legends of the loup-garou. I believed those stories as a kid, and still believe some of them.”

“Some?”

“Sure, most of these stories are fake, or tall tales whose origins got lost over time and drifted into pop culture and folklore.”

Val said, “What’s a loup-garou?”

“It’s French for werewolf,” Crow explained.

“Right,” Jonatha agreed, “and it’s because of that part of your story that I’m here. You see, after Newton here contacted me and I started reading up on Pine Deep’s history, I saw the name of the last known victim of the Massacre. Or, at least the person most of your town believes was the last victim.” She paused. “Ubel Griswold is why I’m here.”

Crow winced at the name.

“I’m not following this,” Newton admitted.

“Ubel Griswold is a fake name. It’s one of several false identities used by the most famous werewolf in European history.”

“Peeter Stubbe,” Crow and Newton both said together.

“Bonus points to you for knowing that. Most of the pop-culture books on werewolves mention Peeter Stubbe, though often the accounts are missing many details that can, however, be found in the scholarly literature, among which is Stubbe’s probable birthplace.”

“I thought he was German,” Crow said.

She shook her head. “No, and that’s part of the problem. He started using the name Peeter Stubbe when he moved to Germany, but he had already committed a series of murders in several countries before that. The earliest accounts of Stubbe’s crimes date back to fourteenth century, and that and other historical details suggest that Serbia, or possibly what is now know as Belarus, is where he was born.”

“I’m sorry,” Val said, “but isn’t this all rather beside the point?”

“Oh, no, Val…it’s not. It’s the reason I believe so much of your story.”

“Then you’ll have to explain, because I haven’t read many of these books.”

“Okay, the short version is that there are hundreds of different werewolf and vampire legends. They occur in every country, and except in the case of folklore following population migrations, these creatures are all different. The Japanese vampire and the Chilean vampire bear almost no similarities. You with me? Well, the werewolf legends of Belarus and Serbia are different from those of Germany, and if Stubbe was born in one of those countries, and if he was actually a werewolf, then he would have very likely possessed the qualities of the Vlkodlak of Serbia or the Mjertovjec of Belarus. Those are the dominant species of werewolflike creature from those nations. Now, the thing is that even though most of the qualities of those two monsters are different, they share one really dreadful thing in common.”

“And what is that?” Val asked. Tension etched lines in her face.

“In both countries, when either a Vlkodlak or a Mjertovjec werewolf dies and is not properly buried, it comes back to life…as a vampire.”

Val’s face lost all color and she gripped Crow’s hand with desperate force.

“Holy mother of God,” Crow whispered.

“That,” Jonatha said, “is why I believe you.”