There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (61 page)

While he drank his fill, Lester’s fingers tenderly opened and closed against his father’s slack face. The rasping sound his dirty fingernails made, scratching against his father’s stubbled cheek, nearly drove Shayna mad.

              By the time she realized what she was seeing was real, and not some alcohol-induced vision of impending insanity, the boy finally noticed her standing there in his open doorway. Blood dripped like a biblical plague from his mouth and hands. His lips twitched spasmodically, lifting away from his bared teeth in strange undulating waves. Saliva foamed continually at the corners of his mouth, giving Lester the appearance of a rabid dog. A ragged piece of Andy’s flesh still clung to Lester’s gnashing teeth, reminding Shayna of that movie
Jaws,
when the shark’s fangs rippled with the torn flesh of the fisherman, Quint. It was a scene, sure enough, straight from one of her daughter’s horror books.

            
 
“Josie?”

The croaking voice was full of angry desire…wet, rough and knowing. The gargle/speak penetrated through Shayna’s selfish exterior and throttled her subconscious awake. The following epiphany was as cruel as the monster’s crimson eyes.
Josie! This thing wants my Josie! Oh, my babies! MY BABIES! What have I done to you! What furious Hell have my iniquities wrought?

             
It was sad it took a moment like this for Shayna to realize she still loved her children—enough even to die for them. They would never know that now. For the first time since that chill October night, Shayna lifted up a prayer to God. An earnest entreaty that this thing would
never
find her daughter.
Oh, God, please!

“
Josie O’Hara?”

“That’s right, sugar britches,” Shayna cooed sweetly. “Come to Mama.” Having no hope of escaping, she urged the monster closer. Her only chance was in somehow satisfying its dark needs. Maybe then this rough beast would forget all about her baby girl. Her back came up against a wall and Shayna made no further move to retreat. The boy was yanking away at his pud like some manic monkey.
Maybe Lester’ll shoot his wad before he can rape me. If he does, will he kill me outright, or leave me alone? Lord, please hear my prayer…

He crossed over the threshold of his bedroom, his shadow falling on her, his teeth chattering a cold lament. Shayna barely noticed. She couldn’t look away from those shining red eyes. It was like looking into the fires of Hell, those eyes. To a hungry place she was destined to attend… 

                            *******

Bud made a left at Town Hall Lane and drove the Jeep right over the curb at the completion of the dead-end road. Bouncing right onto the sands of the South Side Beach. It was low tide so there was more shore to choose from than usual. Because it sat lower than the rest of the island, and was more prone to erosion, the south side of Moon was largely undeveloped. Just a few tourist cottages further up the shore, and usually empty this time of year. There wasn’t much in the way of vegetation, either. A scruffy collection of scrub pines, palmetto trees, saw grass and the wheat-like sea oats, barely subsisting on a wildly undulating landscape of fine white sugar sand. The stunted trees leaned forever sideways, buffeted nonstop as they were by the crosswinds.

              At least on the South Side you didn’t have to contend with the sand burrs. They’d inexplicably spared most of the island’s southern exposure.

             
Because of its isolation much of the year, the South Side Beach was a popular hangout among the older kids. They could play their music loud, drink their ill-gotten beer and wine, maybe smoke some weed if they were lucky enough to have scored any. And fuck like randy little rabbits in the sand dunes. Rupert Henderson let them be for the most part. Rousting them was too much work anyway for the always sleepy sheriff. Besides, at least out here they weren’t bothering anyone. It being Sunday, a school night, the beach was deserted. Not so much as a sea gull in sight. 

             
“See?” Josie said, smirking. “I
told
you we’d have the shore to ourselves.”

             
Bud was about to remark that he didn’t recall arguing the point, then realized Josie wasn’t the kind of girl who lost many arguments.  “Yes, dear,” he said, smiling to himself. He pointed ahead at the Circle Jerk, coming up on their left. “No one’s hanging out there, either. Look. Their fire from last night is still smoldering.” A large ring of blackened stones designated the spot at the high-tide mark, where most weekend parties took place. The charred husks within the fire ring were still smoking. “They must’ve been out here all night.”

             
Not for the first time he wondered what kind of parent lets their kids’ party all night long. In his opinion, that kind of  so-called Freedom was just a parents’ way of saying:
“Do what you want. I don’t give a shit.”
The only reason his dad and Rusty’s folks gave them so much slack was because they never abused it. Never gave them a reason to restrict their liberties. In Josie’s case, she just had a damn good head on her shoulders. Otherwise, with her boozy mother, she could’ve easily ended up like Tansy Wilky. Besides, th
e
Creep
s
had never even been to one of these late night debaucheries! They’d heard the stories, though. The booze, drugs, and supposedly wild sex.

              Three years ago, Debra Washowski drowned on her own puke out here. Her friends, thinking she was sleeping one off, partied around her as if she was part of the scenery. Laughing and carrying on, they covered her prostrate body with a pyramid of beer cans—not realizing anything was amiss until several hours later, when the tottering pile of aluminum empties still stood there undisturbed. Six months ago, Henry Carnicky knocked up 15-year-old Lily Bascomb, while
his
girlfriend, and Lily’s
best
friend, Tasha Teese lay passed out beside them in the sand dunes.

             
The stories seemed endless, really. Skeevy and scandalous. Teenagers trying to one-up each other in their outrageous behavior. Bud found the whole thing tedious. He supposed that’s what was important, though, to someone trying to escape their youth. To rush headlong into adulthood. As if there was a pot of gold at the beginning of that drab rainbow.

             
For someone like Bud or Josie, who’d had their childhoods ripped away, that sort of impatience was a mystery. Sure, not everyone’s childhood is happy, but there damn well wasn’t a pot of gold waiting for them when they grew up, either! As the world had taught them a long time ago, life is no merry-go-round. It’s a mean, fire breathing, freight train, all too eager to run over the weak and aimless. And even though it isn’t particularly fast, the damn thing never stops rolling. If you wanted to survive its hungry wheels, then you’d best prepare yourself while you were still young and strong. That way, through some hard work and diligence, you could at least put some distance between it and you. He looked over at Josie and could tell her thoughts were running the same way, that she too couldn’t comprehended their contemporaries mindset.

             
She shrugged. “You can’t save the whole world, boyo. Besides, they’re not all bad, you know.”

             
Bud made a noncommittal grunt as they drew alongside the Circle Jerk, both of them craning their necks to peer out curiously at the one spot on the island that wasn’t instantly familiar to them. The trunks of several palm trees framed the large fire-pit in an octagon, the denuded logs worn smooth over the years by a steady stream of roosting rear ends. Cigarette butts peppered the sand, as if the area was one big nasty ashtray.

             
A pair of rusty steel drums stood close to hand, to catch the empty beer cans and bottles.

             
Ham had laid the law down on that count—trash his beach with their empties and he’d kick their candy asses out of here faster than a Noonan could say the “N” word.

             
Josie and Bud glanced over at the notorious sand dunes, rolling right up to the edge of the Circle Jerk. The hidden valleys tucked within were ideal for horny kids looking to get laid. Rusty had once searched the nefarious dunes with his metal detector, certain he’d find a mint in lost coins and jewelry. All he’d gotten for his troubles, though, were some nasty underwear and countless crusty condoms underfoot. Needless to say, he hadn’t been back.

Josie sighed in relief as the Circle Jerk and its hilly environs receded in her rear view mirror. That place had always creeped her out a little. Maybe because that’s exactly where her mother claimed she and Joe Rusty had conceived both their children.
In the feckin’ sand dunes!

It was a bit of nauseating information she’d never even shared with Rusty Huggins.

Humiliating, is what it is! Dune babies!
That’s what Joel and I are.
A couple of groddy dune babies. Too poor to be conceived in a proper bed!

They continued up the beach until Bud reached the safest waters between the East and the South Side. They could now make out the lighthouse beacon sweeping across the ocean, warning boaters away from the hidden sandbars of Crater Cove, just a bit further up the coast. The summer cottages, all in a row on a sandy bluff off to their left, stood watch over a beach that was the nicest on the island, and thus off-limits to any rowdy teenagers. Bud parked the Jeep at the high tide mark, and he and Josie jumped out.

It was only five-thirty but the shadows were already growing long, the air a bit cooler now. Winter was waiting in the wings, impatient for its cue to take center stage. This far south, its yearly run was all too brief.

Josie pulled her picnic basket out the back of the Jeep, while Bud retrieved a blanket and a pair of beach towels. They’d stopped by Peg Leg’s for some gyros, salt & vinegar chips, spicy pickles, and a quart of Pete’s sweet-iced-tea. Bud laid the blanket out and was getting ready to sit down when Josie tugged on his arm. “Nuh, uh. I can’t eat until I wash off this stink. Come on, Bud. I’ll race ya!”

He grinned and raced her to the gently lapping shore. The South Side had the only really safe beach to go swimming on Moon. The maze of sandbars on the East End tended to create killer rip tides, while the West Side shore barely existed at all. The land there rose straight up from the sea, the ocean shelf far beneath ones feet. The North Side beach was actually quite nice, but that’s where the Research Center was located. And unless the mad scientists took the occasional dip, no one was doing any laps out there. Bud had asked Josie if she’d wanted to stop off for her bikini but she claimed it didn’t fit her anymore; she’d just go swimming in the clothes she had on.

“Get some shorts and a shirt for me to put on later,” she’d told him back at the museum.

He easily beat her into the surf and dove in with a rebel yell. After swimming several yards out, he came to a wading stop and shook the water from his hair, laughing at Josie, who was only now catching up to him. It wasn’t often he could out-swim her like that. “What a slow poke!” he taunted her. She was silently floating beside him, her head the only thing above water. “What took you so—”

Bud could only wade there with his mouth hanging open, struck speechless by the sight of Josie’s gym clothes, left in a heap on the beach. In the falling light, her white panties seemed to glow on top of the discarded garments.

Josie’s green eyes flashed. “What’s the matter, tiger? Crab got your tongue?”

             
              *******

Afterwards, Bud watched Josie swim leisurely for shore, emerging from the sea like some mythical goddess, her skin shiny, slick, and wet. This was a new angle for him and Bud reveled in Big Red’s astonishing beauty. She toweled off slowly for his benefit, glancing at him over her shoulder, completely secure in her healthy naked body. Just as slowly, she shimmied into the fresh pair of shorts and shirt he’d brought along inside the Jeep.

              Bud knew it was just a big old joke to Joe, a parody of what she thought a strip tease might be, but he doubted if the real thing could have possibly been any more erotic.

             
The floorshow regrettably over now, Bud looked for his T-shirt, hoping it was still floating nearby, but the claret reflection on the surface of the water was the same color as his shirt, and his search proved fruitless. He sighed and left the ocean, hoping Josie wouldn’t tease him for being aroused so soon, after their latest bout of groping.

             
With a knowing smirk on her pretty face, Josie greeted him with a towel, roughly scrubbing his hair, chest, and arms, drying him off in a manner that wasn’t at
all
maternal. Bud snatched the towel away from her when she lingered too long on his wet shorts. 

             
“What are you? A troublemaker or something?” Despite another mind-blowing orgasm, Bud was already feeling frustrated and provoked. How long would hand-jobs and heavy petting suffice their needs?

             
What was that she said last night at the Drive-In? A year or two before having sex?

             
Can we really wait that long?