Moonweavers (16 page)

“
It was bound to happen, I suppose.  She is a pretty girl,”  Tab replies.  “And I’m not really there to stop you, am I?  But I can find you no matter where you run, so you just remember that, boy.”

“
You’re here because the people are missing,”  Frank says.

“
What people missing?”  Tab asks.

“
The ones in the news report.  Just down the road there was a car accident and a whole suburb ended up missing.  You don’t know anything about it?  I figured, you being a ghost, you would know all kinds of crap.”

“
When did all this occur?” Tab asks.

“
This morning, I guess, real early.  Still dark out.”

“
Where did they go, Tab?”  the Indian says in a calm deep dry voice.

“
I don’t know.  I have never met any of them.  I have to know them for my power to work.  Its just one of the slight defects I have, I suppose.  They must have been new to the town, like after I died.”
“They were, I think,”  Frank replies.  “They come from that new suburb is all they kept saying on the news report.”

“
Some new suburb?  Must be the one before town.  I haven’t been around that area lately.  I just stick around the ranch,”  Tab says as she calmly pulls a cigarette out of a pack within her jean jacket pocket then proceeds to light it with her other hand. 

“
I even told Patty where I was from.  I don’t think she believes me, but she had to know.”

“
Yea, if I was human, I probably wouldn’t believe that shit either, but the fact is I’m not and I know you’re telling the truth.”

The Indian stands and says,
“We should check on these people.  They could be in trouble.”

“
I think we should go back to the cabin and report it before we go looking,”  Tab replied.  “We should only interfere if need be.”

“
Yes, lets do that,” the Indian said.

“
Frank where did Patty go?”  Tab asks as she stands up from the chair.

“
She’s working for your sister Shirley.”

“
Frank, these are dangerous times you have entered.  You have to take care of my daughter and my ranch.  Got that?”

“
Yes,” Frank answers.

“
And don’t forget I am always watching you.”

“
Yes, ma’am.”

“
Okay chief, I’m ready.”  As soon as Tab says this, the two dematerialize right in front of Frank.  He watches as they lose substance and disappear from the kitchen completely.  He walks out the kitchen door and around the house and looks and scans all of the bluff for any signs of activity.  Other than birds flying in the air, he sees nothing at all, but wind brushing in and out of the trees making them give a voice to every wind and breeze that blew through it.  He now looks toward the barn where the animals are kept just to be safe then returns into the kitchen.  He pours himself a cup of coffee out of the pot and walks into the living room to watch for any news bulletins, comfortably on the couch.  The news reports go on throughout the day.  They are now showing the woman and her kids talk about wolf noises, like howls before all the people vanished in the suburb.  The questions are riddled with times and if they got to see any of the wolf invaders.  The lady stated they were all in the basement at the time.  They never saw anything.  It seemed like the story just got more strange as more evidence came in.  They knew that the people had to be hurt because there was blood scattered all over in the suburbs and the accident area, but no bodies.  When they went out to look, they found all kinds of carcasses of dead animals just beyond the scene of the incident making the story take an eerie twist Frank thought as he processed all the information. 

“
How can that many people just vanish?”  Frank then thought about Patty’s mom, the lady in the blue jean jacket.  She seemed scared when I mentioned the people disappearing.  Her and the Indian left real quick after that.  But she has Patty’s best interest at heart.  It seems like she might not like me much, but she does need me for some reason.  Even not trusting me, but maybe it’s just because I am from a different planet.  I mean, if they came up to us in our world, would we trust them?  We might I suppose.  We have been studying earth for a long time.”  Frank quickly gets the thought out of his head.  He thought he better take a walk around the perimeter and check things out.  It’s hard telling what is going on out there.  He takes the shotgun by the door on the way out, knowing he is not as powerful in daylight as he is in the moonlight.  In the moonlight, he knew he could out run a bullet, but he wasn’t so sure during the day.  Jaws and the other dogs seem pretty calm, ready to play with Frank as he walked out the door.  He refills the dog bowls quickly, next to the porch and heads over to the barn to check on all the animals.  He keeps a good eye toward the bluff, just in case, but he sees nothing out of place in the barn or on the bluff.  He couldn’t help but think that some of those wolves from the other night had something to do with it.  That strange howl from right there on top of that bluff.  He don’t know why, but if some of them people were hurt, why would they follow them?  Why wouldn’t they stay put and get help?  They would have to be bleeding to death up there, if that is where they went.  He then puts the shotgun next to the barn door and walks toward a red handle pump coming out of the ground with a pail over the spout.  He proceeds to pump the red handle up and down and the water comes gushing out on the third pull.  He pushes down and the water comes out faster, quickly filling the pail.  He stops and grabs it off the pumps spout and carries it toward the water bowl next to the dog food and pours it into the massive bowl.  He goes back to the pump to place the bucket back on the slot of the spout where it will hang until he uses it again tomorrow.  He really enjoyed the old pump and old farm equipment around the ranch.  Some of it looking like it hadn’t been touched for decades in the barn.  He never had something so tangible on the moon.  This was true American craftsmanship everywhere around him.  No plastic on these old machines.  He imagined the belts and pulleys would have been made of rubber or maybe even leather.  He would love to see them all in work, with their open pulleys turning and gears winding, whining with sounds.  They were like works of art and moving art if the motors weren’t locked up.  This planet had a lot to offer Frank he realized.  Patty and her ranch had a lot to do with that.  These strange new emotions and smells, they overwhelmed him and he is going to experience them all.  Who better to share it with than none other than the first human he met.  It will be the journey of a life time.  ‘But would she really leave with me to explore this big new world?’  Frank sighed, thinking not.  But he didn’t want to think on that.  Not now.  He could stay here with her, but everything was so new, he just didn’t know.  Even being here, he still might be somehow dangerous to her and he wouldn’t want that.  He would never want to hurt Patty.  No, if she didn’t want to go, he would stay.  He was amazed at how fast he changed his mind on that.  Just being apart this long made his heart heavy.  What would he do?  Frank relaxes a little bit as he sits on the front porch, petting the dogs.  “Yea, I could stay here,” he says directly to Jaws, who stares back at him enjoying the attention Frank is giving him.  “I’ve come a long way with you too, haven’t I, Jaws?  Why would I take off on you, bud.  When we first met, you wouldn’t even come this close to me unless you were going to bite me in the butt.”  Jaws acts different when Frank starts to talk to him.  He sits up a little higher, a little straighter and he pants with his tongue sticking out of his mouth with a weird looking grin on his face, like he really enjoyed what Frank just said.  Frank spies the red ball on the ground and gives it a quick toss.  Jaws goes jetting after it along with four other dogs.  Jaws quickly forgets all about Frank as the dogs play in the yard under the clothesline where the sundress and some jeans flap in the wind.  Frank can’t help but laugh as he sees the dogs kick the ball like they are playing soccer.  He quickly starts to miss Patty again as he pictures how beautiful she would look in that pretty flowered dress hanging on the clothesline.  It was hard to deal with these new emotions, but Frank really enjoyed every moment of it.  He guesses it was what merrily made humans human.  He figured there had to be these struggles. Where he came from there were no struggles and people just weren’t as dedicated to their projects.  It’s a big part of it, he realizes.  Without these eternal struggles, you cease to exist.  But being from a world so self absorbed, would they even realize it?  Some would probably snap out.  It’s too much at once.  Baby steps.  He realizes he is a newborn to this planet.  But he will learn and he will grow, he insists.  That’s all part of it.  He now walks back to the barn to retrieve the shotgun that he left there as he glances at the terrain once more.  He gets to the gun quickly and picks it up and then walks calmly back to the house.  He liked the feeling he got as he returned to the porch, the sun blazing down now.  It was really refreshing when he finally made it to the shade.  The sky was a clear blue.  There wasn’t going to be any shade today.  Not a cloud in sight.  “Yep, it’s gonna be a hot one,”  Franks says.  The old wooden steps moan in response as he steps down onto them, like they just answered one of his questions.  Jaws gives a glance to Frank when he hears the creaks, then quickly returns to play with the other dogs under the hot afternoon sun.  The air gets cooler as he walks in the front door.  He can hear and feel the cool air from the central air unit with its electric hum that cooled the house.

                                                       
12

The new formed pack made quick drying mud out of the dirt within the cave that was inside the crevice of the bluff hiding it completely.  Before one of the humans barricaded it , he yelled outside the hole for the others to get in before he capped it up.  They made sure there was no trace of their entrance inside the crevice.  If Zoth happened to go into a hiding area like this before his attack, he is going to make sure there is no evidence of their hiding place, for only a fool lets his guard down.  Zoth inspected the crevice thoroughly before entering into the cap.  When he goes inside, one of the workers quickly fills in the gap.  He says,
“That will do it, boss.”

He continues to fill the hole until the last twinkle of light can no longer be seen, leaving the cave pitch black.  The three wolves and some of the other nocturnal animals can see the walls of the cave just fine, but the humans, however, and some of the other animals, weren
’t as lucky and were quite disadvantaged in the darkness.  Some though, thought ahead enough to grab a flashlight, so there were bits and pieces but out of the little entrance only bits and spots of the massive line of people and animals trotting together in small openings had no light at all.  But when they did finally reach big openings within the cave, it illuminated something totally different.  The room was massive, going up as high as the eye could see, but yet still not breaking through the earths barrier above.  All the humans huddled together with the light in the middle.  There were two good floodlights.  The other one was a small d battery mag type light.  They murmured nothing but good things about their new leader, Zoth.  How Zoth is going to save the earth and Zoth is going to cleanse the land of all the evils that will go against him because he is true leader.  He is one with me, they would say, in a sick trance from the transformation from the previous night.  They all shared the contaminated blood from the foreign mooner.  Cursed of their own freedom of thought, the very essence that makes us human and replacing it with something totally false.  Something that is interpreted from a whole different mind.  The mind of a mutated moon made creation to protect now in its craziness wants to destroy.  Zoth is filled with nothing but blood lust.  His mouth drools over war.  Zoth resents them all.  They are all different from him.  He was created, he wasn’t born.  He feels inferior, so he destroys everything that he thinks despises him.  It’s not truly his fault.  He just acts defensive.  It’s not who is he, it’s who he  created.  He figures if he is the first of his kind that he will make his own rules.  He has always considered himself the leader since the day he was created.  He has proven it.  With his newfound army, they will never touch him again.  He tells the other three wolves which he tells all the other people, humans and animals that joined his pack, that they are the leaders of them as well as him.  One of the human woman rub a brush through the back of Zoth’s head and down his back.  Some more women quickly retrieve their brushes out of their purses and run toward the other three wolves.  Some letting them brush their manes, while others don’t.   Doing nothing more than pleasing the leaders is all that they want to do.  It only makes them happy to serve.  They hate themselves if they don’t serve.  They don’t know what to do with themselves.  Its torture to them without it.  They feel like they are disappointing the wolves greatly if they do not serve them.   The rat stays right beside Zoth.  Zoth highly suspects it of being the one that gave them all the conclusion that they could transform animals into their slaves.  He has never named any of the wolves or humans by name, but he does call the rat Uno, for he was the first one to change on the earths surface.  Uno didn’t leave the cave much, but when Zoth returned to the cave, he would be the first one Zoth would meet.  The little rat made sure of that, fighting off other rats just to get in front.  But Zoth was cursed at the same time for having such a big army.  They all served the same collective thought.  He could hear their murmurs of worship towards him and it flooded his mind in the big room.  He frequently had to exit it to gain back any sense of sanity, but it was a small price to pay for the wolf to fulfill his goals and the waves of thought would come and go like a gust of wind.  In an instant it could disappear.  He could control it though towards a single individual if he concentrated hard enough, but in a sea of murmurs it would take a tad longer to find in a sea of thought.  But he constantly worked the waves of thought and picked one out from another.  After the thoughts would slowly dissolve into nothing but thoughts of him.  They were his.  He could only control them by bits and pieces until he broke them of that last grasps of themselves. After that he could manipulate his own waves.  He has done it with the pack of wolves before they died on the bluff.  He can do it with these.  It just took a little longer to break them.