There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (82 page)

             
Bud caught up with Rusty and pulled him out of the room, back into the shaft of meager light, streaming dustily down the stairwell. He understood that the light was their sanctuary—just as he had as a child when the Boogeyman had come-a-calling.

             
Josie grabbed Ham’s high-powered flashlight, hanging from a hook in the stairwell, and pointed it into the dark berth. Illuminating a scene, surely straight out of Hell’s deepest depths. Two shining eyes peered out from within the reeking gloom. Sly and avaricious. The flashlight found Betty Anne, naked and slick with blood. Crouched over Emma Tolson’s body. Lying together in a viscous pool of gore. Betty Anne had all but severed Emma’s head from her shoulders and was currently feeding from the ragged hole. The blood-bedraggled head flopped backwards on a thin hinge of skin still holding it in place—no more than a band-aid’s width, really.

             
Emma’s silvery eyes seemed to look back into the light for some comprehension. Some explanation as to how all this was possible. Her head lolled from side-to-side, side-to-side, side-to-side. The infinitesimal strip of skin the only thing keeping it from rolling away. Terror too awesome to contemplate had frozen the woman’s face at the moment of her death. Her eyes bulging, her mouth gaping open in a silent, eternal shriek. 

             
The little strip of skin tore free, and Josie gave voice to the dead woman’s lonesome terror…

             
                            *******

Tubby found his dad right where he’d left him, on the bow of the
Betty Anne,
as she truddled ever closer to the island.

             
“Hey, Daddy. Have you seen mom around?”

             
Frank tore his gaze from the Carolina coastline. The somber look on Ralph’s face rocked him back on his heels a little. “Sure. She tried taking some soup down to Betty Anne, but Rusty said his mom didn’t want to be disturbed. I think Emma’s packing up our things right now. She’s eager to get home, you know.” Frank put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “What is it, Ralph? You look so troubled.”

             
“Maybe we should find mom first. I have something I need to tell y’all.”

             
“Let’s keep your mom out of it for now. She’s worried enough as it is. Tell me what’s on your mind, and then I’ll pass on the bad news when the time is right.”

             
Tubby sighed, relieved to pass on that burden. “That sounds fine. To be honest, I’d rather not tell her at all.”

             
“Okay, boy. Better shoot it to me straight.”

             
“It’s about this rabies business. It, seems that…” Tubby hemmed and hawed, unable to take it any further than that. He looked at his father helplessly.

             
“Come on, son, spit it out! What about the rabies?”

             
“Sorry, Dad. I just don’t know where to begin.”

             
“From the beginning. That’s always the best—”

             
A scream from below deck stole the words out of Frank’s mouth, and turned their whole world upside down.

             
                            *******                                      

Frank and his son rushed into the galley, nearly colliding into Ham Huggins. Hearing Josie’s terrible scream, he’d shut down the engines and dove down the gangway. With Ham in the lead, they flew down the next flight of steps, leading to the berths below, and straight into the backs of Josie and Bud, standing there by the Captain’s Cabin.

              An unintelligible chorus of curses, sobs, and shrieks added to the haze of confusion.

             
His son was struggling in Bud’s grasp, desperate to get loose. Ham shoved his way past them.

             
“What the hell is going on down—”

             
He slipped and fell into the slick tide of blood. A flashlight lay beside him. The one Josie had dropped. Rolling back and forth in the sticky fluid. Its blood-smeary lens briefly caught sight of the carnage before rolling away.

             
It seemed to chase after Emma’s severed head.

             
“W-what…Was…That…But…No…Em…Emma?” Frank babbled. It took a second pass of the rolling head for Frank to believe his own eyes. “EMMA?!?!
OH, GOD, NO!!!”
he screamed, running heedless into the dark room. “
EEEEEEEMMMMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
”

             
“Frank, don’t go in there!”
Ham called after him. He grabbed at the flashlight and Frank Tolson’s passing leg. He caught the light, but Frank slipped past him.

             
“NO!!!”
Tubby shrieked, realizing at last what was going on, that this wasn’t the world’s worst nightmare.
“NO DADDY! DON’T! DON’T GO IN THERE!”

             
Tubby tried running after his father, but by this time Ham had regained his footing. He grabbed Tubby and heaved the fat boy into Bud’s one free arm. 

             
“GET THEM OUTTA HERE, BUD!”

             
Rusty wailed like a lost child in the woods.
“MOMMMMEEEEE!!!”
His tiny fists beat impotently at the merciless arm holding him fast to Bud’s side.
“LETGOFME!YOUFUCKINGASSHOLE!LETGO!!!”

             
“DADDY!!”
Tubby sobbed. “
COME BACK, DADDY!! COME BACK HERE!!”
Like Rusty, he struggled wildly to free himself from Bud’s vise-like grip.

             
In the flailing shadows, Frank screamed. Betty Anne had attached herself to his skinny arm like a hungry animal. She roared around the mouthful of meat, letting the others know that this
too
was her kill.

             
“BUD, FOR GOD’S SAKE!”
Ham again implored the beleaguered boy behind him.
“GET THEM OUT OF HERE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!!!”

             
Ham skated across the slippery floor and found Frank Tolson and Betty Anne in the center of the room, in a twisting, growling embrace. Dancing across the cabin in a demonic sort of waltz. He tried to pull the grieving man from Betty Anne’s clutches, but it was like trying to snatch a scarecrow from the jaws of a Pit Bull. Helpless, he watched his once sweet wife tear a chunk out of Frank Tolson’s forearm. As if it was a turkey leg on Thanksgiving. Arterial blood sprayed the low ceiling over their heads, creating a surreal shower from up above, the hot hemoglobin trickling down Ham’s face. The salt from Frank’s veins stinging his eyes.

             
Ham stood there in the bloody rain, watching his wife attack Mr. Tolson with a primal rage so rivetingly
awesome
it took his breath away. Aroused like never before, his penis grew hard as a rail spike.

            
 
OOooohhh, the unbridled ferocity.
Like a tigress after the kill. So wild and beautiful! So…so…
sexual…

            
 
His eyes flickered on, red and bright, as if some internal light source in his skull had suddenly ignited. Ham was one o
f
The
m
now. But by God, he was fighting it!

             
Betty Anne ignored her awe-struck husband and went straight for Frank’s throat. Only Frank wasn’t ready to die just yet. He fought back savagely, landing heavy, desperate blows upon her face and head. Enraged by his wife’s murder, he was every bit the demon’s rival. His crushing blows quickly altered the landscape of Betty Anne’s once lovely countenance.

             
“STOPTHAT!!!”
Ham Huggins implored the heavens, his hands pulling away at his face, his fingernails leaving bloody ditches down his cheeks.
“AWWLORDNO!!!PLEASEMAKE‘EMSTOPTHAT!!!”

             
His to-the-marrow-despair was grief defined. It was a lonely lament Bud recognized all too well. One he’d voiced himself as a child eight years ago. It brought about a sluggish inertia in him that he found oddly comforting. To just close his eyes and give in to the insanity. It seemed so futile to fight it. He resisted the sleepy torpor, though, and struggled to do as Ham had bidden him—to get his friends out of the feeding lion’s den, so he could bolt the hatch closed. To quarantine that awful frenzy in there.

             
Yet strong as Bud was, Rusty and Tubby were more than he could handle together. Rusty flailed about like a lunatic without a straightjacket, determined to go to his father’s side. Tubby likewise had resolved to save his dad—he put all of his two-hundred-and-seventy-plus pounds to work, and had nearly torn free from Bud’s sweat-slicked grasp, when Big Red turned the tide by pushing all three of them up the gangway, like a blocking sled.

             
“LOCK THAT HATCH, JOE!”
Bud roared from the center of the writhing scrum. Realizing Rusty was about to bite his arm, Bud flexed his thick bicep around his friend’s neck, cutting off the blood flow to his brain. He let Gnat’s limp body slide to the stairs and turned his attention to Tubby Tolson, who had lapsed into a catatonic state, the terrible shock of seeing his dead mother at last draining him of his resolve. Bud carried him up the gangway so Josie could close and lock the hatch.

             
The primal screams within easily pierced the slats of the louvered door…

             
                            *******

The floor, walls, and ceiling of the Captain’s Cabin looked like the inside of an especially busy butcher shop turned upside down. The flashlight in Ham’s hand played wildly off this macabre scene, giving it the aspect of a Pollack painting come to life. Repeatedly, Ham tried pulling Betty Anne off Frank Tolson, but she was too damn slippery. He’d grab a hold of her bloody arm and she’d squirt free, like a bar of soap in the shower, barely looking his way, as she sidestepped him, again and again. She directed all of her rage and ferocity on the Tolsons’, biting and tearing at their bodies, then bounding away before Ham could corral her. Occasionally she’d shoot a hungry glance over at the cabin hatch, as if what she really wanted lay beyond that louvered doorway. Ham put himself between her and the hatch, knowing good and well what mortal mischief that demon had on her mind. He ignored the rising clamor in his own head to join in the madness, to take what he wanted from the girl in the stairwell.

            
 
To force her to my superior will
!

             
What stopped him was his love for the child.
Joe Rusty’s child!
For his
own
child as well! Rusty Huggins. For once that depraved course was chosen, nothing else would matter anymore, save his own animal desires and needs. The safety and well being of his only child would be of no consequence to such a mad dog beast.

             
Samuel J. Huggins still knew Right from Wrong, though! Sane from
In
sane. Although it was getting so hard now to discern the difference. If he was going to help Betty Anne, and in the process save his only child from his mother’s predations, it would have to be soon. Before that difference between Sane and Insane no longer seemed relevant. The question was, could he do it? Could he reach down and pull his wife from the bowels of Hell? And in the process maybe save
both
their souls…

             
He balled his fists and took a deep breath.
Yes!
He
could
still help his wife! Put her out of this vile misery. Set her
free
. And by the grace of God set himself free in the bargain. He opened his arms and called out to his beloved:

             
“Betty Anne…
Betty Anne!
Come here, baby! That’s right… I’ve got you now…
Shhh, baby girl.
Shhh
….
I’m right here, darlin’. Let me…let me help you...”

             
                            *******

As Josie bolted the hatch, something cracked inside the cabin. A sharp, bitter sound. Like a fresh bone snapping in two. “
Ham
?” she said, stumbling on the stairs, her hands flying to her mouth. Something on the other side cried out in pain. In
grief
. The sound of a body hitting the floor…and finally, mercifully, silence. No…Not quite.

             
Emma’s head kept rolling around in there. Sounding like a warped bowling ball, rumbling along until it hit one wall, clunking to a stop, and then taking off again on another uneven tangent. At the mercy of each pitch and yaw of the
Betty Anne
. 

             
Josie threw Rusty over her shoulder and carried him up the stairs, away from that horrible rolling thunder. Away from that ominous crack and thud. She shut and locked the galley hatch at the top of the stairs, putting two locked doors between them and Betty Anne—not that the wooden lattice doors were any real defense.