And the next day, back in the Baptist parsonage in Tarker's Mills and feeling just… great, the Rev. Lowe will read the account of the murder in the newspaper and think piously: He was not a good man. All things serve the Lord.
And following this, he will think: Who is the kid sending the notes? Who was it in July? It's time to find out. It's time to listen to some gossip.
The Rev. Lester Lowe readjusts his eyepatch, shakes out a new section of the newspaper and thinks: All things serve the Lord, if it's the Lord's will, I'll find him. And silence him. Forever.
DECEMBER
It is fifteen minutes of midnight on New Year's Eve. In Tarker's Mills, as in the rest of the world, the year is drawing to its close, and in Tarker's Mills as in the rest of the world, the year has brought changes.
Milt Sturmfuller is dead and his wife Donna Lee, at last free of her bondage, has moved out of town. Gone to Boston, some say; gone to Los Angeles, other say. Another woman has tried to make a go of the Corner Bookshop and failed, but the barber shop, The Market Basket, and The Pub are doing business at the same old places, thank you very much. Clyde Corliss is dead, but his two goodfornothing brothers, Alden and Errol, are still alive and well and cashing in their foodstamps at the A&P two towns over-they don't quite have the nerve to do it right here in the Mills. Gramma Hague, who used to make the best pies in Tarker's Mills, has died of a heart attack, Willie Harrington, who is ninety-two, slipped on the ice in front of his little house on Ball Street late in November and broke his hip, but the library has received a nice bequest in the will of a wealthy summer resident, and next year construction will begin on the children's wing that has been talked about in town meeting since time out of mind. Ollie Parker, the school principal, had a nosebleed that just wouldn't quit in October and is diagnosed as an acute hypertensive. Lucky you didn't blow your brains out, the doctor grunted, unwrapping the bloodpressure cuff, and told Ollie to lose forty pounds. For a wonder, Ollie loses twenty of those pounds by Christmas. He looks and feels like a new man. “Acts like a new man, too,” his wife tells her close friend Delia Burney, with a lecherous little grin. Brady Kincaid, killed by the Beast in kite-flying season, is still dead. And Marty Coslaw, who used to sit right behind Brady in school, is still a cripple.
Things change, things don't change, and, in Tarker's Mills, the year is ending as the year came in—a howling blizzard is roaring outside, and the Beast is around. Somewhere.
Sitting in the living room of the Coslaw home and watching Dick Clark's Rockin New Year's Eve are Marty Coslaw and his
Uncle Al. Uncle Al is on the couch. Marty is sitting in his wheelchair in front of the TV. There is a gun in Marty's lap, a. 38 Colt Woodsman. Two bullets are chambered in the — gun, and both of them are pure silver. Uncle Al has gotten a friend of his from Hampden, Mac McCutcheon, to make them in a bullet-loader. This Mac McCutcheon, after some protests, has melted Marty's silver confirmation spoon down with a propane torch, and calibrated the weight of powder needed to propel the bullets without sending them into a wild spin. “I don't guarantee they'll work,” this Mac McCutcheon has told Uncle Al, “but they probably will. What you gonna kill, Al? A werewolf or a vampire?”
“One of each,” Uncle Al says, giving him his grin right back. “That's why I got you to make two. There was a banshee hanging around as well, but his father died in North Dakota and he had to catch a plane to Fargo.” They have a laugh over that, and then Al says: “They're for a nephew of mine. He's crazy over movie monsters, and I thought they'd make an interesting Christmas present for him.”
“Well, if he fires one into a batten, bring it back to the shop,” Mac tells him. “I'd like to see what happens.”
In truth, Uncle Al doesn't know what to think. He hadn't seen Marty or been to Tarker's Mills since July 3rd; as he could have predicted, his sister, Marty's mother, is furious with him about the fireworks. He could have been killed, you stupid asshole! What in the name of God did you think you were doing? she shouts down the telephone wire at him.
Sounds like it was the fireworks that saved his—Al begins, but there is the sharp click of a broken connection in his ear. His sister is stubborn; when she doesn't want to hear something, she won't.
Then, early this month, a call came from Marty. “I have to see you, Uncle Al,” Marty said. “You're the only one I can talk to.”
“I'm in the doghouse with our mom, kid,” Al answered.
“It's important,” Marty said. “Please. Please.”
So he came, and he braved his sister's icy, disapproving silence, and on a cold, clear early December day, Al took Marty for a ride in his sports car, loading him carefully into the passenger bucket. Only this day there was no speeding and no wild laughter; only Uncle Al listening as Marty talked. Uncle Al listened with growing disquiet as the tale is told.
Marty began by telling Al again about the night of the wonderful bag of fireworks, and how he had blown out the creature's left eye with the Black Cat firecrackers. Then he told him about Halloween, and the Rev. Lowe. Then he told Uncle Al that he had begun sending the Rev. Lowe anonymous notes.. anonymous, that is, until the last two, following the murder of Milt Sturmfuller in Portland. Those he signed just as he had been taught in English class: Yours truly, Martin Coslaw.
“You shouldn't have sent the man notes, anonymous or otherwise!” Uncle Al said sharply. “Christ, Marty! Did it ever occur to you that you could be wrong?”
“Sure it did,” Marty said. “That's why I signed my name to the last two. Aren't you going to ask me what happened? Aren't you going to ask me if he called up my father and told him I'd sent him a note saying why don't you kill yourself and another one saying we're closing in on you?”
“He didn't do that, did he?” Al asked, knowing the answer already.
“No,” Marty said quietly. “He hasn't talked to my dad, and he hasn't talked to my mom, and he hasn't talked to me.”
“Marty, there could be a hundred reasons for th-”
“No. There's only one. He's the werewolf, he's the Beast, it's him, and he's waiting for the full moon. As the Reverend Lowe, he can't do anything. But as the werewolf, he can do plenty. He can shut me up.”
And Marty spoke with such chilling simplicity that Al was almost convinced. “So what do you want from me?” Al asked.
Marty told him. He wanted two silver bullets, and a gun to shoot them with, and he wanted Uncle Al to come over on New Year's Eve, the night of the full moon.
“I'll do no such thing,” Uncle Al said. “Marty, you're a good kid, but you're going loopy. I think you've come down with a good case of Wheelchair Fever. If you think it over, you'll know it.”
“Maybe,” Marty said. “But think how you'll feel if you get a call on New Year's Day saying I'm dead in my bed, chewed to pieces? Do you want that on your conscience, Uncle Al?”