Full Wolf Moon

32

The group made the long trip back down through the rambling house in silence. Gradually, the sounds from behind the locked door grew more remote. Exiting the building, the five returned to the fire pit and sat down once again. Here, Logan could once again hear, faintly, Zephraim’s growling and baying, through the boarded window that he had torn open.

The three elders looked at each other, then at Logan and Albright. They seemed both abashed and relieved — abashed at the display of such a strange and embarrassing phenomenon; relieved that the display was over.

“This ‘moon-sickness’ Zephraim suffers from,” Logan asked. “It runs in your family, doesn’t it?”

Nahum nodded. “From what my grandpappy told me, there’s always been one or two of the clan been touched, more or less. But none like Zephraim.”

So with Zephraim, the syndrome — or condition — has found full flower. Logan thought of what Fred the bartender had said of the Blakeneys: his reference to “tainted blood.” “What form does it usually take, then?”

Nahum thought a moment. “Folks get agitated. Skin turns dark in spots. Boils come out, like them you saw on Zephraim.”

“And you say it lasts until the moon goes down?”

Nahum nodded.

“But only during a full moon — right?”

“That’s right.”

So it was the intensity of the moonlight, the light of the full moon, that was necessary to trigger the effect. In that way, it was not unlike the experiment with the shrews that Feverbridge had demonstrated to him.

“What if it’s a cloudy or a rainy night?” Albright asked. “If the moon is obscured, say?”

“Nothing happens,” said Aaron.

Logan thought for a minute. “The effects sound uncomfortable. Zephraim certainly seemed to be suffering from them. And yet he sought out the moonlight — he ripped the boards off the window. Why?”

“Don’t rightly know,” Nahum said. “Zephraim, he don’t like to talk about it much. Best as I can make out, you’re drawn to it — drawn despite yourself. It’s a craving, like. And… I think it gives a feeling of — well, some kind of power.”

“Like a wolf,” Albright said.

Nahum nodded. His eyes had been cast downward, but now he looked up, directly at Logan, and the moonlight reflected brightly on the corneas. “But no matter how bad he gits, he never hurts anyone. He never gits violent.”

The other two nodded vigorously.

“Has anybody but us ever seen the… the changing time?” Albright asked. “Besides Dr. Feverbridge, I mean?”

“Many years back,” said the patriarch, Esau. “Uncle Levi, he used to get the moon-sickness pretty bad. One time he done scaled the wall. I think one or two folks from Pike Hollow saw him running toward the woods.”

Logan and Albright exchanged glances. That, perhaps, explained where the rumors came from.

“Ever since,” Esau went on, “we’ve always kept kinfolk with the moon-sickness locked up on full moon nights.”

“Dr. Feverbridge,” Logan said, turning to Nahum. “Did he want anything else from Zephraim — other than the swab from his cheek, I mean?”

Nahum hesitated once again. “Yes. He wanted…” He pantomimed drawing blood from the cubital vein. “Paid us two hundred fifty dollar to do it. I done told you — Rebekah had the chest fever real bad.” He repeated this as if to explain away a lingering guilt.

“I understand,” Logan said. He was still trying to process what he had just witnessed in the garret room: the bizarre transformation — no other word was sufficient — of Zephraim Blakeney. It was like the change the short-tailed shrews had exhibited: except this went beyond mere behavior; there were actual morphological changes, subtle but undeniable. Although he had no idea of what, exactly, the underlying biologic cause was, it was evident there was a genetic trait in the Blakeney clan — perhaps because of inbreeding, perhaps just due to a fluke in their particular genome — that rendered them hypersensitive to moonlight. And Zephraim was the most sensitive of all. No wonder Dr. Feverbridge had sought him out, paid handsomely for samples of blood and DNA. It seemed to dovetail with the lines of research mentioned in both articles Logan had seen on Jessup’s computer screen: the re-creation of moonlight and morphological change.

He realized Nahum was asking him a question and, with effort, pushed these speculations aside. “I’m sorry?”

“I said: can you help us?”

Logan took a deep breath. “I’m not sure. I hope so. I’ll do my best. There are a few things I need to look into — and the sooner the better.”

The group fell silent. Zephraim’s distant howlings became audible once again. The three elders shifted on the rough wooden seat, clearly agitated.

“I have one last question,” Logan said. “Ever since I entered your compound, I’ve sensed fear — fear from all of you. What, exactly, is it that you’re afraid of?”

The three looked at him in disbelief. “What you think, mister?” Nahum said. “If there’s some monster out there — something killing people, tearing ’em up — don’t you think we feared of it, too?”

“And with the moon-sickness running in our kinfolk,” Aaron said, “that critter just might try and seek us out on purpose.”

“That’s enough to frighten anybody,” said Albright. “And if that wasn’t sufficient, there’s the hatred and distrust of all the locals — not to mention the plans Krenshaw is putting together.” He stood up. “Thank you all — for letting us on your land, for trusting us… and for letting us see Zephraim. We’ll be going now.”

They walked back down the path to the massive wall of twigs. Nahum undid a spool of coiled wire, opened the carefully hidden door, then nodded solemnly to both of them in turn. They ducked out through the opening and the door was immediately closed behind them. With no light at all now save for that of the full moon, filtering down through the branches, the surrounding forest was a woven braid of almost unrelieved black. Albright reached into his pocket, pulled out a flashlight, and turned it on.

“Do you really think you’re going to be able to follow that path?” Logan asked. “Even with a flashlight? I could barely make it out in daylight.”

“Are you trying to be insulting?” Albright replied. “That’s the second time today you’ve questioned my woodcraft. Watch this.” He snapped off the light and returned it to his pocket. “I’ll take us back to the road using nothing but the moonlight. Not as impressive perhaps as what you just witnessed in there, but I think it’ll stop you from asking a third time. Put your hand on my shoulder now — wouldn’t want you getting lost. And for God’s sake, move as quietly as you can: it’s a full moon, remember, and whatever killed Jessup and the others is out there — somewhere.”