Wolf Moon Rising (13 page)

kept under the seat and undid the four bolts that held the recoil

in place. Th

ere it was, the rope swallowed up inside the plastic.

While he was working he heard the sound of boys’ voices

shouting— raucous cries like the calls of crows— and he won-

dered who they could be. No other boys lived around here any-

more. With a few dexterous maneuvers, he extracted the rope

and fed it back in around the wheel, being careful not to dis-

lodge the spring and leaving enough for the handle. Th

is time

he double- tied the knot.

Clambering to his feet and feeling pleased with himself— at

least he could keep his one contraption running— he righted the

snowmobile and was about to reattach the cover when he caught

sight of a statue that adorned one of the graves deep inside the

cemetery. It was an angel with her wings outstretched, and her

long cloak caressed by folds of snow. He drew closer, curious as

to whose grave it might be, but the stone was obscured. Th

e

snow had formed a canopy over her hair and her almost human

eyes peered down at him as if in supplication.

Something about her gave him a creepy feeling, and he was

about to look at her more closely when he saw something even

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more inexplicable— specters, gray and dog- like, circling the

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tombstones. One stopped and looked at him. It was a coyote,

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Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising

skinny and ner vous, its eyes burning and its tongue hanging

out. It watched him for a long moment, before it turned and

galloped off , becoming a shadow again.

Th

en deep in the woods a wolf howled with a forlorn and

menacing wail, Th

e lonely sound made the hair stand up on his

neck, and for the fi rst time David thought perhaps he should go

on home. Th

ere were never wolves in the Collinsport woods,

and he had never heard one call.

After he mounted the sled, he pulled up on the throttle and

yanked the cord, and the engine rattled, then throbbed to life.

He eased the sled forward, thinking there were still traces of

Phaethon’s wild ride, the ends of earth covered with ice at the

poles, and volcanoes still trying to spit fi re out of their bellies.

Clearly, the lesson was never to steal your father’s chariot— or

your cousin’s automobile. Still . . . the Bentley was so elegant, so quiet, and black as a thief in the night, sure to go undetected

if he were to take it out after dark.

As he drove the snowmobile, a little more carefully now,

over the tops of drifts and down into dips, David was imagining

the painting, one he had never seen, a portrait of Quentin in

what Jackie had described as an army uniform with medals, in a

gilded frame. David saw it clearly, leaning against a stone, or

possibly a brick wall, in a deserted building.

He decided he would search them all: the pool house, the

stables, the bowling alley, the laundry shed, Rose Cottage, even

the shattered green house, until he found it, and he was certain

he would fi nd it. In exchange, there would be her smile, a grate-

ful hug— both infi nitely desirable— but more than that, a mo-

ment when her melancholy would lift, and to give her that he

would suff er the world.

But Willie had been so adamant, exhorting a promise that

David go only in the daytime, a promise he was breaking at this

very moment as dusk was falling. “Th

ere ain’t anything out there,

Mr. David, and you don’t have no need to go traipsin’ around

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those dilapidated sheds and stuff .”

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Lara Parker

Willie had grown more agitated and, in his ner vous, whiny

voice, practically begged him to stay away.

“Th

ose buildings are dangerous, Master David. Th

e ceilings

could fall in at any moment. Remember there was a fi re, and the

fl oors are rotted, no telling what kind of varmints, snakes even

and poisonous spiders, live there.”

David had laughed at such simplistic reasoning but he was

becoming more and more aware of the pall that lay over his

family— a pervading gloom. Secrets hovered in the air, and in the

face of accusations there were only the same averted eyes and the

same denials. Crazy things happened and everyone pretended

not to notice, and if certain subjects were brought up, Roger

would abruptly end the conversation. Someday, if things went as

planned, David would inherit the estate. Would he receive as his

covenant all the misfortunes and indiscretions that plagued the

family?

With its Grecian colonnade and tall casement windows, the

pool house rising out of the snow could have been a small rep-

lica of the Old House, even though the Doric columns were not

so grand. Drifts thickened the portico roof as though it were

thatched with pale white straw.

He wouldn’t have much time. Th

e family would be wonder-

ing where he was and he had homework to do, two pages of

math and an overdue book report on
Les Misérables
. He wanted to write on the subject of loyalty, and sacrifi ce as a life choice, but he had gotten bogged down in the po liti cal ramifi cations of the

Revolution.

When he could steer the snowmobile no longer through the

drifts, he killed the engine and dug out the fl ashlight he kept in the seat to use as a torch. Th

e rising moon caught the windows

of the facade and fl ashed in the row of upper panes, as though

something moved inside.

“What’s the matter with you,” he said under his breath. “You

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trying to spook yourself?” He approached the door, certain now

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that he was going to fi nd the painting inside. He could picture it

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Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising

leaning against a wall, wrapped in its blanket, and he imagined

Jackie’s bright look when he presented it to her. She would be

able to make her mother happy and their arguments would end.

Th

e wind was whistling and the snow was as high as his

knees as he climbed the stair to the porch, glancing around at the

lonely expanse of white lawn. Th

e falling fl akes obscured even the

shadow of Collinwood, although a few lights from the dining

room and kitchen winked through the haze like golden sequins

stitched in the air.

Th

e door, as he had been warned, although shaky in the

jam, was securely locked, meaning that the key must be one of

the seven on the tarnished brass ring Willie had fi nally given

him. His hands were chilled now and his fi ngers clumsy as he

tried the keys one by one.

When the largest key found the lock, David jiggled it back

and forth, and tantalizingly, but with some rusty re sis tance, the bolt drew. David pushed open the door but leapt back with a cry

when several large clumps of snow fell from the top of the jam

and on his head.

He peered into the cavernous pool house. It was gloomy and

silent, except for the sound of dripping water. Moving the light

around, David remembered that it had been built in the style of a

Roman bath, with arches darkening the mullioned glass, and a

tiled apron that surrounded the yawning rectangle in the center

of the room. Th

ere was a sickening odor, of old fi replaces where

the ashes had frozen and decayed, and as David searched the

ceiling, he could see that the entire interior of the pool house was charred, just as he remembered it. Th

e overhead beams were

blackened like the timbers in a burned- down house, and dark

columns, like those of the portico, but scorched with smoke, held

an enormous skylight of shattered glass.

He took a step inside and heard a strange sound like cello-

phane being crushed in a giant’s fi st. Looking up he saw a burst of fl uttering near the ceiling, where a colony of bats exploded with

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jerky screeches up and out of the broken opening into the sky.

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Lara Parker

David walked to the edge of the pool, and the putrid odor

of rotting compost pricked at his nostrils. Sheets of glass lay like slabs of ice amid decaying sludge, and weeds had grown up

through the cracks in the bottom, gone to seed, and died.

Th

ere were sounds of dripping from several openings in the

skylight, like an out- of- tune guitar being plucked on separate

strings. Snow had fallen through the roof and melted before freez-

ing again, adding an inch or so of ice to the bottom of the pool,

where broken rods of a stair led down into the deep end.

He saw a discarded jacket on a carpet of decay, looking like

a corpse with its arms thrown out, and he shivered a little as he

cast his beam into the corners of the deck.

His heart sank when he saw there was no storage area or

collection of old furniture, only the wide apron and the looming

expanse of the ceiling with its triangular opening.

Shining his torch into the pool, David glimpsed an enor-

mous rat fl oating on the leaves, its teeth exposed from under its

gums and its long tail curled on the water. It was shrunken in

death, but a single eye caught the glare as though it were still

alive. David shuddered. He could not help remembering play-

ing in the pool as a boy after it had been drained.

Th

at’s what Willie had been talking about— the accident.

Th

ere had been a curve at each end perfect for skateboarding,

his obsession when he was twelve years old. How many times

had he dropped in from the edge, skimmed across the pool fl oor

and up the other side? He could feel in his muscles the memory

of pumping into the deep end, and up to the coping and out,

grabbing the nose of his skateboard with one hand.

Th

en something had happened. One of the kids had fallen

backwards— he was fl ying up and out, tried to turn his board,

and lost it. He could hear the boy’s cry and see him lying there, so still, while the other boys stood around not knowing what to do.

A sour taste came into his mouth when he remembered that

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he had been the most skilled at catching air, and that he had

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taunted the kid who was something of a weakling, jeered him

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on as boys will do in a mean way, and that the boy had been

panicky and misjudged the slant of reentry.

When David lay in bed that night, he could still see the boy

curled at the bottom of the pool, his neck at a weird angle. No

one had blamed David, but he had never been allowed to skate

the pool again. And why hadn’t they asked him what happened?

It became one more secret of the family, never to be mentioned

again.

Th

e pool seemed ugly and decayed, a dark cavern fi lled with

frozen scum. Still, there must have been partying many years

before and, in his imagination, he could hear the sound of

splashing and laughter, and his vision blurred as he saw waver-

ing lights shining down on the warmed and greasy water.

Th

e dripping persisted, growing louder and more repetitive,

ping, plop, blip,
and the rising moon slid fractured beams through the pieces of broken glass in the roof.

Vague fi gures gathered in the corners of the room. Music

from a jazz orchestra with a clarinet solo wafted across the

grounds. A boy cried out, and a girl shrieked before she struck the surface of the pool with a splash. Th

e laughing voices were seduc-

tive, and David walked closer to the edge and looked down with

the light, half expecting to see swimmers.

But there was nothing there.

Chills crept over his body. Th

at’s when he knew his imagi-

nation was getting ahead of him and he had better get the hell

out of there before something weird happened. Willie was right;

the place was spooked.

Out of the edge of his eye he thought he saw something

move in the shadows. His fl ashlight fl ickered, and he shook and

smacked it to bring it back to life, before shining it once again

into the far corners. He heard a crash, and there was another

sound, a scratching, and footsteps scampering. What was it? It

might be an animal, locked inside the building, a raccoon, maybe,

or a squirrel, but all he could see were the changing shadows cast

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by the moon above the skylight shining through falling snow.

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Lara Parker

When he turned to go, he thought he heard gunshots and a

rasping sob, as of someone in pain, and once more David walked

to the edge of the pool and looked down, shining the beam of