Moondeath Read online

  RICK HAUTALA

  MOONDEATH

  MOONDEATH

  Copyright © 1980 by Rick Hautala

  First Evil Jester Press Edition: January 2012

  This work has been reprinted with permission from the author.

  All Rights Reserved

  No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any electronic system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover artwork: Copyright © 2012 by Glenn Chadbourne

  Introduction: Copyright © 2012 by Christopher Golden

  ISBN-10: 0615581021

  ISBN-13: 978-0615581026

  Former ISBN: 0-89083-702-3

  eBook Edition

  WELCOME TO COOPER FALLS

  An Introduction

  It might have been Caldor. Not Lechmere, of course, because that didn’t open until later. I honestly can’t remember in which of the pre-Walmart department stores I first discovered Rick Hautala, but I do remember the moment. The book was on a rack with dozens of others, displayed face out. Chances are that the author’s name was blocked by the top of the book below it, but for sure I saw the sweet blurb from Stephen King and the illustration—the face of a man merging into the face of a monster. I picked it up and read the back. Small New England town? Check. Full moon? Check. Part man, part beast? Check. Moaning howl? Check.

  Did I want to read that book? Oh, hell yes.

  Rick will cringe when he reads this, but I was thirteen years old on that fateful day. 1980. The copy I bought at my hometown Caldor (or whichever store it was) is on my desk in front of me right now. Yes, I still have it. Lots of my favorite books from that era have been boxed up and donated to charity or given away to friends or sold off. But Moondeath is right here, amigos, and I don’t intend to part with it.

  I read a lot of horror in those days—mostly horror, in fact. And a great deal of the horror that I wrote seemed to revolve around weird shit happening in small New England towns. In later years, that set-up—weird shit + small New England town—would become so overdone that I would usually turn my nose up at anything remotely similar. Too many less-talented writers had been to that well too many times, and kind of spoiled it for the rest of us. But from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, man, it was glorious. Stephen King blazed the trail, of course, but a cadre of fantastic writers went with him arm in arm, with Mr. Hautala chief among them.

  I brought Moondeath home with high hopes. My older brother, Jamie, and I shared a love of werewolf stories, and this one seemed so promising. I opened the book to read, and was rewarded with this opening line:

  “She was right! Dear God, she was right!”

  The few pages that form a sort of prologue are full of anguish and tragedy and pain. In later years, I would begin to realize that these are Hautala’s stock in trade. Had I been older than thirteen, the Shakespeare quote at the beginning of the book would have clued me in a bit earlier. Yes, Moondeath is a werewolf-terrorizes-small-New-England-town story, but because it’s by Rick Hautala, it’s more than that. The author insists that his tendency toward angst and rumination is part of his birthright as a person of Finnish descent, but it has informed his work for more than thirty years with a sense of dread that few can match.

  No one writes horror with as heavy a heart, or with as deep a sense of foreboding and sorrow, as Rick Hautala. His characters, even in this proto-Hautala novel, are ordinary people, so full of worry about mundane, human things that when the extraordinary begins first to invade and then to tear apart their simple lives, we feel the tragedy on a visceral level that so many who came after Hautala never achieved. Strangely enough, despite all of the 1980s horror novels using the weird-shit/small-town setup, what Moondeath makes me think of most is Steven Speilberg’s film of Peter Benchley’s Jaws. Our hero knows the monster is out there, but nobody will listen, and the powers that be are actively working against the truth being revealed. If we don’t believe in those ordinary people, on both sides, then Jaws is just another movie or, worse yet, a piece of crap like its sequels. Moondeath makes us believe in its people, makes us feel for them, including the tragic, cursed figure at its center.

  I worry, these many years later, that a couple of decades of weak imitations have caused too many to turn their noses up at weird-shit/small-town horror. I worry that writers like Charles L. Grant, Graham Masterton, T.E.D. Klein, John Coyne, Gary Brandner, Alan Ryan, Michael McDowell, Matthew Costello, and, of course, Rick Hautala (among many others) are in danger of having their legacy forgotten. Some are, sadly, no longer with us. Others, like Hautala, Costello, and Masterton, are still producing excellent work, but their past contributions seem tragically underappreciated.

  We can’t let that happen. We, who love a great horror story, can’t allow such classic works to be forgotten simply because so many imitators with lesser skills came afterward. That’s one of the many reasons I am grateful that Evil Jester Press is publishing this edition, and I hope many more will follow.

  That’s my intellectual argument for Moondeath.

  But the thirteen-year-old me? The one who spotted the book on the shelf at Caldor? He’s got an argument in favor of this novel to share with you as well.

  It’s a werewolf book, man. With witchcraft!

  How cool is that?

  Christopher Golden

  Bradford, Massachusetts

  December 13, 2011

  To Anthony Herbold, who will never read it—damn it!

  PART I:

  His Fell Soul

  Thy currish spirit

  Governed a wolf who, hanged for human slaughter,

  Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,

  And whilst thou layest in thy unhallowed dam,

  Infused itself in thee; for thy desires

  Are wolvish, bloody, starved, and ravenous.

  —W. Shakespeare

  The Merchant of Venice

  (IV, I, 133-138.)

  Prologue

  Thursday, May 13

  “She was right! Dear God, she was right!”

  A burning pain throbbed up his left arm, piercing his shoulder with a sharp stab. It made him cringe, hunching his shoulders, but he found no relief. He staggered across the kitchen floor and flung open the front door. Stepping out into the cool night air, he gripped the stair railing and looked up at the star-sprinkled night.

  “Help me! Help me!!” he shouted, throwing his head back. A violent tremor through his body intensified the pain that swept now along his spine. Stiffly, he vaulted the railing and ran across the lawn toward the lake. His voice rose and fell in wavering howls of pain.

  “No! No!” he whimpered, hugging himself as he ran. The pain suddenly intensified, doubling him over. He fell to the ground, locked in a fetal position. “Dear God! Please! No!”

  He looked around him, at the close-pressing night. Across the shimmering moonlit lake, he saw the distant shore. The dark forest seemed to spread around him like encircling arms. It reached for him, and he twisted in agony on the ground, pulling away from the grasp of the forest.

  He looked frantically for the hands, the dark hands of the forest that reached out to grasp him. Looking down, he saw his own hands, held clawlike as they twisted and dug into the loose soil.

  “No! No!”

  He tried to stand, but the pain wracking his body forced him to remain crouched. He raked at the ground, as if, on level ground, he was slipping, falling away. Large clots of earth tore away in his furious clawing. Dirt smeared the backs of his hands until he was almost unable to see them, pressed against the ground.
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  His breathing came in ragged gasps, fighting the constricting pressure he felt. His head rolled loosely on his shoulders, but when his eyes caught the gold disk of the moon, he froze, staring. He felt the embracing arms of the forest groping, reaching. Dark hands clawed at him. With one last, throat-tearing scream, he convulsed and then, lost in pain, found relief in unconsciousness.

  Chapter One

  .I.

  Saturday, August 23

  Another car sped down Main Street, a red Buick with New Jersey license plates. It was headed toward Route 43, from there to Route 16 and south. The light at the intersection of Turner Avenue and Main Street turned yellow as the Buick, taillights flickering, swung around the corner and left town.

  The afternoon was hot and sticky. The sky held a dull, almost pulsating blue. Summer visitors were beginning to nail down the shutters on their camps, stuff their cars and trailers with suitcases and kids, and head back home. There would be a few of them returning in October for apples and Halloween pumpkins, and maybe a few families would open up their cottages one or two weekends for skiing, but the locals of Cooper Falls were beginning to feel the relief they felt every late summer when their town was turned over, once again, to them.

  Bob Wentworth paused in his walk to watch as a blue Chevy station wagon jolted to a standstill at the light. When he noticed the young boy sitting in the back, staring curiously at him, he looked in the other direction up Main Street until he heard the car pull away when the light changed.

  Gritting his teeth, he reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes and shook one out. After lighting it, he watched as the smoke hung suspended in the muggy air. He stared vacantly at his lighter before putting it away, then, shaking his head, continued his walk down Main Street.

  How long had it been since Amy had given him that lighter, he wondered. He kept his hand on it and toyed with it in his pocket.

  He noticed that the blue Chevy had turned into Ernie’s Exxon station. Ernie was busy splashing sudsy water over the windshield. Bob, not wanting to chance another inquisitive glance from the kid in the back of the station wagon, crossed the street. He took one deep drag from the cigarette and dropped it down into an open drainpipe.

  The Chevy was filled now, and it rattled past Bob, down to the corner of Barker Avenue. It looked as though these people were just coming, rather than going, and it reminded Bob that he still had a little more time before school started and he began his new teaching assignment.

  The left turn signal on the Chevy began to wink, and Bob watched as the driver bolted across the street. He cut right in front of an oncoming pickup truck. Both horns blasted. The Chevy cut hard to the left and, fortunately, the pickup veered into the other lane. There was a loud scraping sound as the Chevy jolted over the curb. The driver of the pickup straightened out his wheels and continued up the street without slowing. He had his hand held high above the cab of the truck, his middle finger extended.

  When the driver of the pickup was beside Bob, he stopped the truck and stuck his head out the window. “D’you see that?” he shouted. His face was flushed. “The fuckin’ idiot!”

  “Just up from New Jersey,” Bob said with a shrug. “What do you expect?”

  The driver of the truck grimaced and then pulled away. The Chevy had already made its turn and gone.

  Bob’s walk had just about taken him the length of Main Street. The rest of the street, from Barker Avenue on down to the river, had only a few more stores and a couple of rundown apartment buildings. Bob turned around and started back.

  Bob enjoyed these walks through the town. It helped him in a number of ways. First of all, it gave him a sense of where he now lived and worked. As a new teacher in the high school, he wanted to have some idea of what country life was like. The only thing he was sure of was that it would be a lot different than living and teaching in Dorchester.

  The second thing Bob liked about his walks was that it gave him plenty of time to think, to think about how he was going to live and work in this town without Amy. They had separated in June, just after they decided to move to Cooper Falls. After Bob had learned that he had the job teaching English at the high school, he had been firm in wanting to follow through. Amy had hesitated but finally agreed to come with him, to give their lives a fresh start. That resolve had lasted about a week. His walks helped him sort out his thoughts and feelings; but still, beneath it all, he felt bitter, resentful—and scared; scared because, for the first time in a long time he had to prove something to himself—alone.

  Just as he was about to cross the street, another car pulled up to the curb beside him. It was Harry and Ellen Cushing. Bob went over to Harry’s window and bent down to talk. Through the open window, a blast of arctic air from the air conditioner hit him in the face.

  “Gonna miss you back home,” Harry said, leaning his head out the window. His puffy arm flattened against the side of the car. “You’ve been a good neighbor.”

  Bob smiled weakly and nodded. “Buy a place out at the pond, then,” he said. “Country living would do you some good. ’Sides, I could use a bit of company this winter.”

  Bob didn’t miss the sorrowful look Ellen gave him, and he felt bad that throughout the summer he had involved them so deeply in his personal problems.

  Harry chuckled, the flesh under his chin jiggling. “No, we’ve got to head back. Can’t retire just yet.”

  Bob glanced down at the pavement, then forced himself to look up brightly. “Well, when you do, just make sure you get a place out on the pond.” He paused, then said, “By the way, you didn’t happen to see Amy out at the cabin, did you?’

  Harry shook his head.

  “Ummm. She said she was going to be up some weekend soon to pick up the rest of her things. I thought maybe, well.”

  Harry looked at Bob intently. “Now one thing I want to say before we leave, Bob, and that’s that you’ve got to stop making things so hard on yourself.”

  Bob shifted his feet uncomfortably.

  “It’s not just your fault that—well, we’ve talked about it and I want to make sure you don’t let this get you down. You’ve got a good job, a nice place to live—a new start. Let your old life slip away behind you.”

  “Easy to say,” Bob muttered. He wasn’t sure whether or not Harry heard him.

  “We know it’s going to be hard on you, Bob,” Ellen said, leaning across the seat. “But you can hang in there.”

  Bob smiled at her use of slang; he knew she used it on purpose, trying to communicate with someone she felt was so much younger than she.

  “But you won’t catch me running around up here until next June,” Harry said, trying to lighten things up. “I’ve heard about these winters, and you can have them as far as I’m concerned.”

  “They can’t be that much worse that winters in Massachusetts,” Bob said, smiling. He shook Harry’s proffered hand. It was cold and clammy from the air conditioning. “I’ll set aside a bottle or two of Scotch, and I’ll see you next summer.”

  “Sure thing,” Harry said. “If you survive the winter.” They all laughed as Harry rolled up his window.

  “Keep in touch,” Ellen yelled as the window shut.

  “For sure.”

  The car pulled away from the curb, and Bob stood there silently waving as the Cushings drove down Main Street and slowly rounded the corner.

  As he watched them drive away, Bob felt an empty pit in his stomach when he realized that he would indeed miss the Cushings. He found that they were a nice couple, once he had gotten to know them. They had listened to him when he most needed someone to listen to him. And, as far as he knew, he was going to be the only person staying out on Pemaquid Pond for the winter.

  But winter is months away, he reminded himself, squaring his shoulders. He breathed deeply and crossed the street to the park. Even the shade from the maple trees that lined the sidewalk gave no relief from the heat, and Bob decided that he would head on back to the cabin and maybe take a quick
swim before supper.

  .II.

  Monday, June 23

  “She’s gonna be pissed,” Billy Sikes said, exhaling a lungful of smoke and snubbing his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray. He barely took his eyes off the dark road ahead. The twists and turns along Mountain Road, from North Conway to Cooper Falls, were dangerous for any driver, even a driver who knew the road as well as Billy Sikes did. Of course, two six-packs and numerous joints didn’t help.

  “Stop sweating it, will you?” the young woman beside him said laconically. Her eyelids were half-closed, and she had a dull, stoned smile that spread across her face. “Just tell her you had a flat tire or somethin’.”

  Billy snorted. “I’ve already had two flat tires this summer.”

  “You’ll think of somethin’,” his passenger mumbled, and then she seemed to doze off; her breathing became shallow.

  The wind whistled through the opened air-vent with a shrillness that set Billy’s teeth on edge. He considered putting the radio on, but he glanced at the sleeping woman and decided to let her sleep in peace.

  Her name was Joyce Brewer. She had graduated from Cooper Falls High School last June, and planned to start working full time at the local I.G.A. grocery as soon as there was an opening. Billy had been seeing her for almost a year, and he hoped that his wife, Julie, didn’t have any suspicions. She wasn’t much of a conversationalist; she wasn’t all that bright a girl; but she liked to party and she liked to screw, and that was all Billy really cared about.

  Billy shook another cigarette from the pack on the dashboard and lit it. The flash of light made Joyce stir, and he looked over at her again. The bright light of the full moon was shining through her window, and the shadows emphasized the fullness of Joyce’s breasts. He could see her nipples pressing against the soft fabric of her T-shirt. Billy felt a lump form in his throat and puffed nervously on the cigarette.