“That is terrifying,” Maria said, grimacing as she put a tray of roasted beets on the table. “I’ll pray for those children tonight.”
“Yeah, do that, but also tell your friends. Let people know there are kids missing and to keep a closer eye on their own kids and grandkids.”
“Lot of good that’ll do,” Herman grumbled. “Remember you boys at twelve, thirteen. It would have been easier to cage wolves.”
“Exactly,” Max agreed. “But that’s why kids need to be aware. If someone approaches them, they need to run like hell.”
ASHLEY SAT on her back porch and gazed at the sky.
“Werewolf moon,” she said to no one.
Her mom had picked up a second shift and wouldn’t be home until midnight.
Ashley had watched a show, eaten some cereal, and decided it was too warm out for bed.
It was actually only about sixty degrees, but the first summer nights enchanted her. The air hung with the fragrance of cut grass and the perfume of blossoming flowers. Their yard backed up to the woods, and already the foliage burst forth and trickled over the lawn.
In the peak of summer, she and her mother would tackle the overgrowth with huge gardening sheers, but for now it reigned free.
Fireflies began to prick the darkness, their yellow lights like fairytale glitter in the aromatic twilight.
She used to catch them with Grandma Patty. Her Grandma would supply the jar, and Ashley would run barefoot, giggling, as her grandmother yelled out, “ooh, that one, he looks like an all-night burner. Oh, jump high, little Pan, there’s one racing for the clouds.”
Grandma Patty chose Ashley’s nickname for her long pelt of glossy black hair. According to Grandma Patty, she knew Ashley was a panther even before her hair grew in. Only Grandma Patty used the nickname, and she continued to call Ashley Pan until the end of her life.
On her deathbed, a year and a half before, she’d clutched Ashley’s hands in her own, which were so frail and soft they felt like they might turn to dust and blow away.
“Pan, take care of your mama, okay? She will need your panther spirit in the years to come. It’s not an easy thing to lose a mother.”
Ashley had wanted to tell her it wasn’t an easy thing to lose a grandmother either, but she’d only nodded, tears pouring down her cheeks. She’d watched her grandma slip into the coma that would be the final sleep of her cancer-riddled body. Ashley’s mother wept from a chair in the corner of the room.
When the doctor came in, he told Ashley’s mother that perhaps the girl should leave, wait in the hall, and Ashley had shrieked and clung to her grandma’s hand.
“You’ll have to drag me out,” she’d snarled.
Her mother had waved the doctor away.
“Leave us in peace,” she’d told him, the irritation at his suggestion clear on her face.
Together, Ashley and Rebecca had stood, arms wrapped tightly around each other as if they, too, might slip away into the underworld. Given the choice, Ashley probably would have.
The thought of waking up all the days of the rest of her life without Grandma Patty made her stomach twist into a rubber band ball.
A firefly lit only inches from Ashley’s face, and she reached out a hand, catching it in the cup of her palm. She opened her hand and gazed at the dark little bug, his butt glowing fiercely and then extinguishing once more. He took flight, his wings tiny whirring blurs in the dusk.
Hopping from the porch, she got a running start and did a cartwheel, her long dark hair twirling through the grass and then fanning up high before settling back on her shoulders. She did another and then another until the darkness and the stars and the forest all blurred together.
She laughed and dropped onto her butt in the downy grass, lying back.
Wisps of pale cloud drifted in front of the bright moon.
“Werewolf Moon,” she said again, using Grandma Patty’s name for the full moon when the funny, almost see-through, clouds surrounded it.
She shuddered, glancing at the dense forest and remembering the werewolves from the movie The Howling she’d rented with Sid the previous summer. In particular, she thought of the serial killer who transformed into a werewolf, and left her creeped out for days afterward. She’d taken to locking her bedroom window each night when she went to bed.
Sid’s nightmares had lasted for weeks after the film, and his mother had refused to let him watch movies at Ashley’s house for a month.
The vision sucked the magic from the night, and she rolled over and stood up, brushing off the back of her shorts.
As she walked back to the house, a rustling sounded behind her.
She paused and squinted toward the trees.
“Kermit?” she asked.
Her neighbor, Mrs. Lincoln, owned a stout little bulldog named Kermit that frequented Ashley’s and every other neighbor’s yard despite its owners’ best efforts to keep him contained.
The rustling grew louder, as if Kermit were digging furiously at branches and bushes.
She made it halfway across the lawn before the hideous face of Eddie, the werewolf in The Howling, rose back to her mind like a song she couldn’t stop humming.
Ash paused and stared into the trees.
“Kermit?” she repeated, but the dog didn’t come trotting out to greet her, and that was unusual.
Kermit loved attention. If you so much as coughed near him, he hurried over and offered his backside for petting.
Backing up, she trained her eyes on the outline of trees. The rustling stopped, but a shadow momentarily blotted out the moon’s glow on the grass. She glanced up to find large birds, vultures she thought, soaring above her. They circled over the trees, making eerie figure eights in the moonlight.
She’d never seen vultures at night.
Curiosity still trumping fear, she stood in place and studied the trees.
Something white appeared briefly within the dense branches, a flash of a face that she couldn’t quite make out.
“Who’s there?” she yelled, expecting a kid from the neighborhood to jump out and yell, “Boo!”
Instead, silence greeted her.
The face had disappeared into the shadows, but a moment later, a branch cracked, closer to the edge of the yard.
She took a step back and then another, her eyes still focused on the dark foliage, unable to turn away because somehow her back toward the thing would make it worse.
Her heart hammered in her chest, and her mouth grew dry.
Another branch cracked, and again she saw the flash of something pale, a face, but it moved quickly, as if trying to stay concealed.
She backed up, and her legs hit the porch with force, sending her thumping hard to her butt on the edge of the wooden stairs.
The face stepped from the woods, crouched down as if he were not a person, but an animal.
Hollow black eyes stared from pale skin stretched over the sharp bones of its face.
Ashley tried to scream, but only a gasp sputtered from her lips.
The thing’s eyes locked on hers; its pale lips parted to reveal a yawning black hole.
It darted from the forest.
Ashley turned and scrambled on hands and knees, wincing as a splinter lodged in the flesh of her palm. Adrenaline coursed through her as she lunged to her feet, yanking open the back door and diving inside. Gasping for breath, she snapped the deadbolt into place, collapsing to the floor and heaving for breath against the door.
Just as her breath began to settle, something scratched at the door.
Ashley froze, eyes bulging from their sockets as she bit her teeth together and tried not to scream.