Best New Werewolf Tales (Vol. 1) (11 page)

Several of the camp counselors joined Pastor Jerrod at the lectern, telling tales of doomed heathen boys and girls gone astray and the excruciating eternal hellfire that surely awaited them. A crude drawing of the crucified Nazarene was drawn on a large blackboard, and one of the younger counselors used chalk to illustrate how every time you sinned, no matter how minor the transgression or white lie, long pins where pushed into Jesus’ pale flesh. The chalk squeaked until His thin body looked like a porcupine. By this time many of the younger boys and girls were sniffling. The warm air crackling with emotion and fear, we bowed our heads and Pastor Jerrod called all those who wished to be saved, or saved again for good measure, to come forth. Nate, thinking we were all meant to come forth, started to move toward the center aisle before I clutched his arm and gently pulled him back with a frown and slight shake of my head.

Plenty of the other kids left their pews and the counselors swarmed over them like furniture salesmen.

Every day we hiked and swam and worked on crafts, knowing what waited for us as the sun dropped below the hills.

On the fifth night, Wiles’ cot squeaked again well after lights-out, and this time I waited a minute and followed him into the moonlight. If he saw me or someone else asked what I was doing out after curfew I would say I had to use the bathroom and had gotten turned around in the dark.

It was a cloudless night and his broad cotton T-shirt was easy to spot under the nearly full moon. I watched him walk briskly to the far side of the camp toward the girls’ cabins. He’d left his glasses behind and I wondered how he could see where he was going. Well, well! We all liked Mr. Wiles, though everyone called him Mr. Toad from “The Wind in The Willows” —but it was hard to imagine him romancing one of the women chaperones.

Wiles walked right past their cabins and struck off into the woods.

I almost turned back, told myself how embarrassing it would be if I startled him taking a leak behind a tree. The bathrooms were on the other side of the camp and there were plenty of trees near our cabins. Curiosity won out.

I moved quickly across the open space and slipped into the trees, trying to avoid making any sound and praying I wouldn’t step barefoot on a nail-spiked old plank. I had done just that my first day on our farm, driving a rusty nail into my left heel to the bone. When my father used a razor blade to cut an X into the wound I’d screeched loud enough to be heard in St. Louis.

I glimpsed Wiles’ shimmering T-shirt ahead, moving through the black columns of tree trunks. He was heading deeper into the woods. I slowed, imagining what might happen if I got lost in these unfamiliar woods at night. The thought of having to shout for rescue and seeing the blazing fury in Coach Sanders’ eyes—and the disappointed expression on my father’s face after being expelled—was like a dash of cold lake water. Until he arrived I would probably be hung inverted from the tetherball pole or dropped off the preaching bluff.

At that point I lost sight of Wiles’ T-shirt moving like a Halloween ghost through the forest. I looked back the way I had come and could barely make out the roofline of the outmost girls’ cabin.

I was still hemming and hawing when a scream sliced through the night air from the deeper forest where Wiles had vanished. It rose to a shriek and then dropped to a guttural roar before echoing away. My blood actually froze in my veins and I damned near wet myself. That unearthly cry didn’t sound like a coyote or bobcat. A den of black bear in those hills was a possibility, but that sound—

I stood there, heart drumming inside my ribs, straining to listen. I didn’t hear the cry repeated, but I thought I heard something large grunting and moving fast through the woods. I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like the crashing sounds were getting closer.

I turned and raced back to my cabin, not feeling the stones, rough twigs and pine needles under my tenderfoot soles.

* * *

In the morning we made our bunks and assembled outside for bullhorn revile and prayers. Wiles looked and acted normal. I’d peeked at his cot, expecting to see muddy footprints, coarse black hairs and pine needles like in a Stephen King novel, but the threadbare sheets were unmarked. No scratches or welts I could see on his pale arms and legs. He seemed hale and happy, and gave Nate and me a dollar for fetching him a Hostess bear claw from the snack bar before lunch. Wiles was an insatiable junk-food snacker, and because Nate and I always read a complete chapter from the Book of Acts around the campfire when asked, we became his favorites for errands. We were sitting pretty on money and made sure our poorer friends had a dime or quarter when their own funds began to run low.

That afternoon one of the older boys kicked a soccer ball high into the woods. Several of us joined the search. Fifteen minutes later as we were about to give up I heard a thin wail and shouts. When I arrived at the circle of kids I saw Calvin Bray sprawled in a dead faint on the forest floor. Nate stood over his friend, holding the lost ball, face white as a sheet.

“Nate, are you okay? Did a snake bite Cal?” Dad hated snakes and he had infected us with his fear of copperheads and black water moccasins.

Nate shook his head slowly like a somnambulist. He tucked the ball under his left arm and pointed. I followed his finger to the large white and red shape lying in the weeds: the decapitated head of a cow, tongue half torn from its gaping pale mouth, cream coat clotted with dried black blood, milky eyes bulging and crawling with bluebottle flies. My stomach did a slow air-show roll. When I finally dragged my eyes away I looked in a wide circle. No matching headless cow carcass. No blood trail.

It was like the mutilated cow head had fallen from the sky.

* * *

We all became masters of camp pranks, learning to short-sheet beds, apply Vaseline to toilet seats and set diabolical traps. The first day or so you carefully watched and recorded your cabin-mates’ behavior. Did they dive into bed at night? Hide a spade shovel under their blanket. What frightened them? Daddy long-legs, toads and grass snakes found their way into pillowcases and suitcases. How about a dead perch under your mattress? Preparation H in your Colgate? In retaliation a few fellows pulled on fresh underwear treated with Bengay (“flaming balls revenge”).

The day after the gruesome discovery in the woods Danny and I were plotting payback against the camp bully, one Harold Manry. If the county schools could have afforded football programs, Harold would have been a star defensive lineman. He played basketball as a guard, but he was too large and slow to excel. He’d spent most of his time terrorizing the younger campers and gave Ricky Wilson—Chief Half-Moon—a bloody nose playing tetherball.

Danny argued for Flaming Balls with Wood Ticks, but I wanted something grander. While we devised and discarded convoluted Rube Goldberg ideas, I decided to tell him about Wiles’ nocturnal treks. We agreed to wake each other the next time it happened and get to the bottom of the mystery. Encyclopedia Brown deduced all of his two-minute mysteries sitting down with his twelve-year-old eyes closed, but we were rugged Outdoor types.

* * *

The next night after tabernacle, while around a small campfire, we burned marshmallows at the stake, and read New Testament Bible verses (the shortest ones like “Jesus wept” —John 11:35—had long been exhausted). Then we climbed into our bunks and joined Wiles in calling goodnight to the girls.

Sometime later Danny shook me awake. He held a finger to his lips and beckoned me to follow. I slipped on my jeans and my bare feet into my sneakers and followed Danny outside. There were gauze-thin ribbons of clouds, but the campground was washed in cold moonlight. The full pock-bellied moon was rising above the trees against the Milky Way. It looked bloated and tinged; a Blood Moon, or what they call the Strawberry Moon in the Deep South. Legend—and the Scholastic paperback
Strange Superstitions!
—soberly proclaimed that a Strawberry Moon focuses and concentrates supernatural forces. Those who dare walk under its bloodshot eye are more apt to encounter a bobbing will-o’-the-wisp, Manitou spirit or flesh-craving Wendigo.

Wiles’ glimmering T-shirt was disappearing into the brush and forest’s edge.

We followed at a good distance for a hundred yards and then Danny stopped and handed me what felt like a small roll of tape. He pulled out the metal flashlight he’d taken from our cabin and clicked it on so I could see, hooding its beam with his left hand. The reflective tape glowed fluorescent yellow. The same type of tape that was wrapped around the tree trunks that lined the narrow twisting graveled drive from the camp’s entry gates to the main grounds.

“I filched it from the work shed,” Danny said. “Tear off small pieces every so often and mark our way on the bigger trees.”

I was impressed; I wouldn’t have thought of that. Typical city kid. I told myself that Encyclopedia Brown might not have, either.

Feeling more confident, we walked deeper into the woods, trying not to lose sight of Wiles. Danny kept one hand over the flashlight’s lens to provide just enough light to navigate, and I marked off trees every thirty yards or so. We heard owls and saw a great grey and brown hawk with glowing eyes perched on a dead storm-damaged tree limb, waiting for its next mouse-meal.

Wiles dipped through a ravine and disappeared over its rim. A flickering light glowed beyond. Before we crested the top we heard voices and dropped to the forest floor. Danny dowsed the flashlight and signaled to me silently. We belly-crawled to the top like G.I. Joe and peered over to the other side.

We saw Wiles join several men who were standing around a crude Druidic circle of stones. A small brazier sat in the center filled with burning deadwood. One of the men took off his orange jumpsuit and I realized with a nasty shock that it was Pastor Jerrod. He wasn’t wearing anything else. Except for his face, neck, wrists and ankles he was fish-belly white. The other three men already stood buck-ass naked in the flickering orange light; two potbellied middle-aged counselors from Pine Bluff, and Coach Sanders. As we watched, paralyzed, Mr. Wiles cast off his cut-off shorts, T-shirt and boxers and joined the others inside the stone ring as they began circling the fire. They chanted in unison in a glottal, throaty language I couldn’t understand. The sight of them twirling and half-skipping around that pagan fire filled me with a pure superstitious dread. Their faces contorted like devils, they gnashed their teeth and I noticed with an ashamed horror that all five were sporting erections, though Wiles’ was mainly obscured by his ponderous gut.

And that was when two large hands clamped down our shirts and a nasty voice spoke in our ears.

“So what exactly are you two maggots up to?”

Danny and I both jumped and I couldn’t completely stifle a small cry. We twisted around to see our nemesis, Harold, recent recipient of the Burning Balls award. The bastard had followed us into the woods.

“Boy, wait until I drag your sorry asses back to Coach,” he said with satisfaction. “Maybe I should give you both black eyes and tell Coach you tripped on some rocks.”

“Shhhhh!” Danny said with a scowl. He grabbed Harold’s thick forearm and tried to pull him down.

“Shut up!” I hissed at the big moron. “
Get down!
”

“What are you two queers doing out here? Wait until I tell the other guys.”

The chanting in the clearing below us stopped. Danny and I pulled free from Harold and peered back over the ravine rim.

The five sweat-bathed men stared up at us, only they weren’t men anymore. Pastor Jerrod was a large silver-maned wolf. Coach was a huge tawny mountain lion. The two Pine Bluff counselors were stocky, long-eared lynxes. Wiles was a dopey, shaggy-assed black bear. He looked at us with comical eyes, flattened his broad ears, and grunted.

For a brief moment I entertained a fantasy: I was asleep in my cabin bunk, dreaming. This was a nightmare spun together from exhaustion, fiery tabernacle sermons, undercooked hot dogs and too many issues of
Famous Monsters
and
Eerie
.

The Jerrod-Wolf creature howled; the same terrible cry I’d heard the night I watched Wiles slip into the woods, and I knew I wasn’t dreaming. Coach, now a huge cougar sporting four-inch fangs, glared at us with eyes glowing green in the firelight.

The lynxes both began padding toward us, splitting up to either side of the clearing.

“Peter, run!” Danny shouted.

Harold stood transfixed as the creatures began ascending the side of the ravine.

The werewolf’s silver muzzle contracted to reveal rows of sharp white teeth and four dagger canines; the shape-shifted cougar snarled.

I struggled to my feet and we ran. It took Harold a little longer to make up his mind, but he turned and lumbered after us.

“Faster, Peter!”

Danny grabbed my hand and we flew past the darkened trees, the flashlight’s beam searching for the glowing yellow strips.

I heard Harold fall and grunt as the air left his lungs.

“Hey guys!” he called, gasping. “I hurt my ankle.”

God help us, Danny cranked his pistoning legs into sixth gear.

I knew he was right; if we turned back to help big, clumsy Harold they would fall on all three of us. We heard growls and the cougar’s scream, and Harold shrieked in terror. Over the intervening years, I’ve relived that race through the darkened woods many times in dreams, my lungs searing and heart galloping, the flashlight’s beam stuttering and jumping from the ground into the witchy tree boughs.

We passed a huge oak tree marked with a strip of reflective tape and saw two glowing eyes in the flashlight’s beam; one of the giant lynxes stood directly in our path. Danny slid to a stop and flung the metal flashlight, striking the animal squarely on its hairy skull. It yelped and backed away.

We ran. We ran, now without the light, sure that at any moment that huge white wolf would bring one of us down like a yearling buck. Or the mountain lion would spring from a tree and sink its powerful jaws into my throat. It occurred to me that this was the dream-shape I had seen floating down from a nearby cabin roof through our cottage window.