Wolf Moon Rising (22 page)

“Unbelievable,” exclaimed David as they both crawled in.

He squeezed behind the varnished steering wheel, pumped the

gas pedal, and sighed with amazement. Th

ey stared at the bank

of round gauges.

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“What are those?” Jackie asked.

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Lara Parker

“Uh . . . I don’t even know,” he said, studying them. “Speed-

ometer, tachometer— I guess— and that one looks like a stop-

watch.” He leaned in to read the labels. “Brake pressure, barometer,
altimeter
! What did the car do,
fl y
? Look, even a
radio
!” As though he were driving, he leaned back, took hold of the big wooden bulb

of the gearshift, turned to her, and grinned.

“Isn’t it great?”

“Too bad you can’t get it going,” Jackie said.

An hour later, they were curled up on David’s bed with the

book of classic cars his father had given him spread out on

the quilt. Jackie had pulled a large blue volume of the
Encyclo-paedia Britannica
out of David’s bookcase.

She was disappointed that they had not found the painting,

but she had come back to his room— just for a while, she had

said— because she didn’t want to go home and get in a fi ght with

her mother.

She had looked up “mythology,” and she had been reading

about Artemis. Th

en she had come across the section on the

moon.

“Did you know a lunar month is 27.3 days?” she said. “Th

ere’s

the full moon . . . the waning gibbous . . . then the waning

crescent— doesn’t that have a beautiful sound,
waning crescent
?

And then the new moon— a tiny fi ngernail. See? With the old

moon in its arms.”

She held up the picture, but David was absorbed in turning

the pages in the book of early automobiles. Th

en he stopped

short.

“Th

ere it is! Just like the one in the stable!” His eyes were

racing down the page. “Can you believe that? I was right. It’s a

Doozie.”

Jackie looked over at the picture and said, “Oh, yeah, that’s

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it. You found it.” And then went back to her reading. “Th

en

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there is the
waxing
crescent, fi lling back up again . . . the fi rst

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Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising

quarter, like a slice of cantaloupe . . . then waxing
gibbous
—

sounds like some kind of monkey! Th

en the full moon again, in

all her glory.” She looked up. “What’s a Doozie?”

“Only the most famous car in the world. Dual Cowl Phaeton,

1929. It could go 135 miles an hour. Back then!”

“But wasn’t it all Model T’s barreling around?” she said,

teasing.

He looked at her and frowned. “Are you kidding? Th

ere

were lots of glamorous cars. Th

is one was the ultimate in luxury.

No other car came close! It was all aluminum. Th

at’s why it was

so fast!”

She shrugged and smiled. “I liked all the wood.” Th

ey both

had their books spread out on their laps and underneath their

knees were touching. It was warm there. Th

e rest of the world

was far away.

“Clark Gable had one, Rudolph Valentino, the King of

Spain— I just can’t believe we found it. It’s— it’s like buried trea-sure!”

“Maybe we were meant to fi nd it,” she said. “I wonder how

it got those bullet holes.”

“Model SJ. Th

e world’s fi nest motorcar. Dual cowl. Yeah,

look. See the two windshields, a separate one for the passengers

in the back seat? Just like ours!”

Jackie nodded. Th

en she turned over and lay on her stom-

ach, her attention back on her own reading. “Did you know,”

she said, “that the full moon last week was called a Wolf Moon?”

David was sorry she had moved, but he liked looking at the

small place where her back dipped before her hips. “What’s a

Wolf Moon?” he said, and in his mind he put his hand there.

“It was the Algonquian name for the January full moon.

When all the wolves howl.” She stopped for a second. “And the

coyotes.”

David felt a tremor of anxiety. He turned a page in his

book. “Did you see those bendy things that looked just like air

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conditioning hoses sticking out of the side panels?”

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“Uh- huh.” She was still reading. “Th

ere’s also a Blue Moon

this month, a second full moon in January.”

“Th

at was . . . that was to leave room for the supercharger.”

He kept reading, but now he was having trouble concentrating.

He could smell her fragrance, and hear the scraping sound of

her jeans on his spread.

“Th

e Wolf Moon is huge, bigger than the rest, and blood

orange because of where it lies in the orbit. It was the closest to the earth it will get all year, so it was super powerful.”

David was staring at the page but no longer seeing it, his

body trembling, his fi ngers aimlessly stroking the illustrations.

Jackie turned over and lay back on the bed. He stole a look at

her. Th

e swell of her small breasts and the place where her hip

bones protruded. He pretended to read further. But he could feel

her watching him.

“What?”

“You’ve forgotten all about me,” she said.

Awkwardly, he closed the book. “No, I haven’t.” He lay back

with his hands behind his head. “Tell me more.”

“Remember Artemis?”

“Goddess of the moon.”

“Trailing her gauzy wedding dress through the night sky.”

Th

ey both lay side by side looking up at the ceiling as if the

moon was up there.

“What’s weird is she ruled over childbirth,” Jackie said, “and

yet she had nothing but contempt for mortals in love.”

“Yeah, but just for fun she kept Cupid by her side in her

chariot.” He gave Jackie a nudge. “Arrows ready to fi re!”

“Th

at’s because she was a
huntress
. She was the only goddess

who wore a short skirt.” She reached up and trailed her fi ngers

in the air. “But she was a virgin.”

David felt a tightness in his throat. “I know. And . . . no man

was ever allowed to look at her.”

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Th

ey were both quiet for a minute.

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“I should go,” she said, sitting up and sliding her legs off the

bed.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll walk you downstairs.” She stood up and

he reached out. “Help me up,” he said.

When she touched his hand, he pulled her back down on

the bed, both laughing, his arm around her. He lay looking at

her, his hand on her hip. Th

ey gazed into each other’s eyes for a

long moment while he held his breath, and they both smiled and

then giggled, before he leaned in and brushed her lips with his.

“What did you say the car was called again?” she said.

“A
Duesenberg
.”

“No, the other thing.”

“Model J Duel Cowl Phaeton.”

She pushed a curl out of his eyes. “Phaeton?”

David thought a minute then said, “Aaah!” before he reached

for her and pulled her against him. “Phaethon, who drove the

chariot of the sun!”

“Serendipity,” she said. “Isle of silk.”

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T e n

Dark, a new dark, his veins streams of silver, his breath shal-

low, a whisper, a faint wind scattering invisible sun motes

from his lungs. He was coming back to the world; he could feel

it in his heartbeat and in his stiff and hesitant movements, but he was still covered in open wounds, and nightmarish visions disturbed his sleep. With no sense of whether he would to survive,

Barnabas was tormented by hallucinations, tortured by visions of

gnashing teeth that were the design of a malicious imagination,

and these were nothing compared to the pain. His body was fi rst

on fi re and then rigid with cold, and he would pass into a fi tful slumber only to be wakened by a fresh fl ood of guilt. He knew he

needed Julia now more than ever, but he had no way to reach her.

Th

e fi rst night Antoinette approached his casket and stared

down at him, she shook her head, and did nothing. He was

shocked again by her resemblance to Angelique. Her eyes were

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hard and her haughty expression steely with resentment. Even

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though he controlled her, and she could not ignore his summons,

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Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising

she showed neither pity nor compassion. Reaching out with

feeble fi ngers, he caught hold of her robe and pulled her to him.

As soon as she was in his arms and he leaned into her

throat, he felt a spasm of nausea. Coughing horribly he thrust

her away. She had ringed her neck with garlic cloves.

“What have you done?” he cried as he gagged on the smell.

“Take that hideous thing off !”

“But garlic is a natural healer,” she said, falsely coy. “It has

strong medicinal powers.” And she ripped off the necklace and

threw it at him, saying with scorn, “I hope you choke on it!”

Exasperated, he reached for her again, but this time she spun

away, fi re in her eyes and a sneer on her lips. Walking backward,

she reached under her skirt and produced a kitchen knife. Th

e

blade glinted in the dim light. Her voice was raw with anger.

“Stay away from me!”

Barnabas sighed wearily. “You cannot infl ict any wounds

worse than the ones I already have.”

She rocked back and forth on her feet, holding the knife

with both hands. “I know what you are. Monster! Don’t come

near me. Don’t ever touch me again.”

She was spitting out her words, but the pupils of her eyes

were huge and black and they gave her away. Barnabas could

tell she was high on the marijuana she smoked, as she swayed,

hunched over like a crone, leaning into the knife and waving it

about. “Stay away or I’ll kill you!”

With the speed of the wind, he lashed out and knocked the

blade from her hands, then rudely pulled her down as she strug-

gled. Pressing her to him he forced his teeth into her neck. She

moaned, then cried out in rage. But he held her and she stiff -

ened and stared with glazed eyes, as he rhymed his heartbeat to

hers.

Th

e second night she came again and sullenly changed his

wrappings, bathed him, and pressed cold compresses on his

swollen bruises. Her mood was surly, and her attentions were

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devoid of compassion. She brought salves and herbs for his

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dressings, and, although vampires heal quickly, the werewolf ’s

bites had festered, and they opened and bled again.

When she stretched out at his side as he forced her to do, she

was limp and unresponsive, and she seemed more like a bored

prostitute than an eager companion. Even though he had hun-

gered for her for so long, now that she was his, she was so distant he found he had no appetite for feeding or for love. Frustrated,

he even suspected that her ministrations had made him worse.

Th

at night she tried for the fi rst time to stake him. He woke

to fi nd her standing over him, a wild look in her eyes, and a

sharpened piece of wood pressed against his chest. She had no

hammer, only her hands encircling the wood, and she was lean-

ing over, poised to fall on it with her own strength. He rose up

and caught her by the throat, and as she screamed, he threw her

across the room. She lay curled on the fl oor weeping, “What

have you done to me?” and stared at him with eyes fi lled with

hate.

Because he insisted that she remain close by, the following

night she brought a guitar that she strummed to relieve her

boredom, and she sang sad folk songs or mountain ballads. She

had a voice that was wavy and often off key, but as Barnabas

slipped in and out of consciousness, he thought he caught

snatches of tragic tales, girls murdered by their lovers, youths

enslaved by love, or abandoned women who threw themselves

into the sea— subjects that seemed to appeal to her.

I met a fair maiden down by the seashore

Where the wind it did whistle and the waters did roar.

“
Oh the shells in the ocean will be my death bed

And the fi sh in deep waters swim over my head.

For I never will marry; I’ll be no man’s wife

I intend to live single all the days of my life.”

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He caught her looking at him when she thought he was

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asleep and deep chills ran through him when he saw the bitter-