*In honour of the PDBrazill edited werewolf/noir anthology DRUNK ON THE MOON here's a werewolf story I did for the long lost anthology HOWL!*
Cold.
I
felt the cold and early morning dew on me.
On
my face, my lank hair, my back, my shrivelled old arse.
I
remember my first thought – Where am I? – that brought a sudden
flash of panicking electricity through my limbs and up my arched
back. My head was resting uncomfortably against something hard.
Granite. Then I realised – Oh … The graveyard – and I pulled my
head up to find that my curled up position had left a crick in my
neck. I rubbed the back of my head, twisting it until a click wracked
my tired brain like a slamming door. I closed my eyes then opened
them again.
The moon was
still shining through the clouds, her fine silvery glimmer giving
form to the shadows. The hard, solid shadow that I had been leaning
against was Lucy’s gravestone. I had come to her final resting
place again. Keeping her company. The worms below my feet wriggled
and writhed. I could hear plants slowly forcing their way into
coffins. Bacteria changing flesh to gas. They have all the time in
the world. The moonlight on the hills signalled their accord softly.
Using
gravity and leverage, I pushed myself into an upright squatting
position. Face-to-face with the words in front of me –
Lucille Pierce Appleby. 1970 – 2007. Loving Wife. Child Of Nature.
Safe Now In Odin’s Arms.
Memories
flashed behind my eyes. Teeth gnawing through meat and bone. Hot
blood splashing over my face, in my eyes. My tongue lapping at
screams.
The
granite stone still seemed new, despite being three years old.
Erosion had been held at bay by will. The dedication of a man who
could never forget her. A man who waits for the time when they shall
be reunited. Me. I can hear her always. She sings and laughs to me in
my quiet moments. I cooed loving and private things to her. Things
that I shall not tell you.
Claws
scratching and tearing in frenzy. A throat opens blossoming liquid.
Cries become guttural.
My
hands balled into fists that bring forgiving pain as I once more
remember that night and that policeman. Seeing that cunting pig shoot
Lucy brings a retching wave of anger still, though I know now that it
is over. He had put two and two together and used his mediocre
intelligence to figure it all out. To put the pieces together. Clever
little piggy. Doing puzzles. Read the family history in the library.
Learned the local legends. Saw that we Applebys had come over the sea
a long time ago. That we had maraudered our way through the country.
Shifted our shapes with the bloodlust. Then finally we had settled
here. In this brown valley. In this desolate part of the island. The
local people avoided our gaze and facts became legend. If a cow went
missing once in a while, or a hiker, nothing was spoken of louder
than a whisper. They knew better than to break the silent peace. Then
the policeman came. An educated man. A city dweller. A missing French
tourist had been reported. Things had begun to became tense. The
atmosphere around us clogged with the miasma brought by the copper.
Not since Christianity had tried to tame these islands had such a
distrust prevailed. Whispers became shouts.
The
policeman had cooked himself up some silver bullets melted from the
church candlesticks.
He
had waited for the full moon and hid himself in the woods. He then
followed us on our Wild Hunt as we ushered our victim from the
village. He waited until we had slaughtered the child of humanity.
Lucy and me. The sacrifice was sign to the villagers to keep their
pact. The night was gloriously bright and a chill blew at our fur as
we fucked and screeched amongst the blood and tender guts one last
time before death took her. It came with a bang and a flash and she
fell.
***
There
is a theory that stones can retain echoes of what happens close to
them. Echoes of scenes, of violence, of joy or pain. Like
photographic paper. A memory, if you will. Under certain magnetic
forces, these echoes are released from their prison. People see
ghosts. Feel shivers down their spines. Someone walks over your
grave.
I
knew Lucy heard what I brought for her last night because she tells
me so. She heard that pious fucking copper beg and grunt and howl and
bellow. Then silence. Silence is the relief. It is done. Remembered
forever in stone.
It
was my turn to whisper now. I crouched down and lay on the once
tilled earth. Placing my hands on the grass and turning my face I
began to speak.
I
told her how I had found his house in London. How I had seen his wife
and children through their windows. How happy they seemed as a
family. How the moon did not shine on me when I gutted them like
lambs in front of him with a kitchen knife, as the sky is orange and
not black. How I drugged him and drove like Odin rushing into battle
and was heralded by two ravens. How I parked in the centre of the
village where I roped him up good and screamed for any man to stop
me. How none did. How I went berserk. How I dragged him by my fangs
through the fields that sent a wind to give me speed and where I saw
a fox who nodded and licked his paws and through the woods where the
trees parted to let me pass and how they bowed when I did.
To
here, I told her, this place. Where I tore his limbs from him and
gouged out his eyes and ate his heart. The taste of blood filled with
the iron of a rich diet is still on my smiling lips. Lucy ‘s lips
are smiling too on this cold and pure morning.
My
wait is over.
It
is done.
***
The Drunk On the Moon stories:
Drunk On The Moon/ Before The Moon Falls - Paul D Brazill (UK/Poland)
The Darke Affair -Allan Leverone (USA)
It's A Curse -K A Laity (USA/Ireland)
Insatiable - B R Stateham (USA)
Fear The Night- Julia Madeleine (Canada)
Getting High On Daisy -Richard Godwin (UK)
Silver Tears - John Donald Carlucci (USA)
Blood & Alcohol - Frank Duffy (UK/Poland)
Back To Nature - Jason Michel (UK/France)
A Fire in the Blood -Katherine Tomlinson (USA)
