The Mayfair Moon (The Darkwoods Trilogy 1)

“Sounded like a bear,” I said.

We began walking faster. I could see one lone streetlight glowing far off in the distance.

Alex stopped and grabbed my arm, smiling. “This reminds me of the time we saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre over at Liz’s; remember?”

I guess her sudden relaxed attitude helped calm my nerves because I wasn’t as edgy anymore. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Like freaked out little girls,” Alex added.

We cupped our hands over our mouths to muffle the laughter, but then the wild flapping of wings sucked the calm right out of us again. Birds, hundreds of them it seemed like, burst out of the trees.

“Alex,” I whispered harshly, “let’s go.” I took her by the arm.

As we hurried down the path, squirrels bounced from tree to tree, all moving in the same direction. There were so many of them I couldn’t help but notice.

“What’s going on?” Alex said.

The growl now sounded more like a roar. It filled the space all around us, making me doubt which way if any, that we could run away from it. Whatever it was. Instinctively, Alex and I stood back to back, moving distractedly in a circle to keep each other safe.

A figure crashed through the bushes then.

My lungs hardened like cement as a nak*d man stumbled out and fell onto the path ahead. Alex shrieked and gripped my forearm so tight that it hurt. I was too...everything, to scream. I think I forgot how.

The man reached out a hand toward us. I could hear the disturbing sound of his flesh scraping against the asphalt as he dragged his body forward with his arms. Alex and I started backing away, both of us trying to gauge the situation before making any stupid sudden movements. We should have just run for it.

“Omigod,” Alex gasped. “Omigod!”

“Please...” the man said in a raspy, growling voice, “...run away from here! Go! Now!”

I had to shake my thoughts sensible, literally. The sound of his voice held an echoing, demonic undertone and it stunned me. Alex grabbed my arm tighter and jerked me toward her. Her fingernails seared my skin. A perplexing force, like hot wind, blindsided me and I felt my face crush into the side of a tree. Furious white spots dotted my vision, shattering my focus. Blood came up in my mouth. I couldn’t tell if I was still standing, or if that tree pressed against my face was really the ground. There was some kind of struggle, but the demonic undertone stood out over everything.

“Alex? Alex!” I had to know where she was, if she was all right.

I looked up and realized then that I was on the ground. My vision was blurred. A canopy of limbs and leaves and stars spun around in my gaze, making me feel drunk. I wondered if I was losing my mind...I couldn’t really be seeing what I thought I was seeing. An enormous beast, bluish-black in the moonlit darkness, stood on two legs several feet away. Its head was like a wolf...no, it wasn’t like any wolf I had ever seen. It was a monster. Towering at least seven feet, its almost human-like legs and arms were covered in mangy, black fur. Its fingers were long with thick razor-sharp nails on the ends.

The beast lunged at the nak*d man, burying its massive teeth in his shoulder. An agonizing scream pierced the air and then became a menacing, guttural growl.

I backed my way to wherever I could, gripping the ground with my hands, feeling the tips of my fingers pick up grains of rock and shove them underneath the bed of my nails. My body jerked forward and I fell face down on the asphalt. Blood pooled behind my lips; the warm, disgusting thickness coating my teeth and slipping down into the back of my throat. Something was pulling me backward, fingers digging into my ankle so aggressively. I struggled to kick my way free, but it dragged me slowly off the pathway and onto the dirt. Tiny pieces of rock and grit stung my elbows and ribs.

“Shhh!” demanded Alex. “It’s me!”

Relief washed over me, but we were far from being safe. We crawled further away and crouched low behind a tree, paralyzed and out of breath. Blood smeared in Alex’s hairline, I noticed momentarily.

I watched wide-eyed, my heart banging violently against my chest. My legs quivered uncontrollably; I thought I would faint at any moment.

The nak*d man stood from the ground, pushing the beast off him and sent it crashing through the forest; tree limbs whipped violently around its body. And then the man began to change. His skin began to ripple grotesquely as though something seethed beneath it. He craned his head and pulled back his arms, his fists balled tightly behind him, his stance battle-ready and terrifying. His face began to protrude; a snout with terrifying fangs jutted out; the cracking and crushing of bone sent what was left of my nerves completely over the edge. His human skin changed color and long, black hair grew within seconds covering most of his massive body.

I think I did finally faint at that moment.

I couldn’t recall what happened immediately afterwards. I couldn’t guess how I did finally get to my feet and begin running through the woods. I couldn’t say how Alex and I made it to the freeway, or how the cars swerved to miss us, or even if maybe we had been hit because when I did ultimately ‘wake up’, I was in a litter-filled ditch with Alex on top of me. A crumpled soda can and an empty plastic water bottle jabbed me in the small of my back. Cars buzzed by on the freeway above, the booming echo of wheels going over a nearby exit bridge. Clu-clump! Clu-clump! Clu-clump! I welcomed the repetitive nuisance. It was strangely comforting, as if it helped me believe that the nightmare in which made the frightening sounds before it was somehow not real.

“Alex?” I said, squeezing myself out from under her carefully. “Are you alright? Alex!”

She didn’t respond and I panicked, putting her bloodied face in my hands, feeling for her pulse and listening for the sound of her breath. More blood. The collar of her shirt had soaked it up like a sponge, the ends of her hair clumped together in a sticky mess. Finally, I saw her breathe as bubbles of red formed in her nostrils—her nose had been busted—and I noticed a gash on the side of her head as she began to stir, groaning.

“Alex!” I hugged her close to me.

She opened her eyes in a jolt. “Where is it?” she screamed. “It’s going to kill us!” She had never looked so distraught. The whites of her eyes seemed whiter; the skin stretched over her forehead tight like plastic. She dug her nails deeply into my shoulders and would’ve broken the skin had they not been protected by the fabric of my shirt.

“No, no, calm down!” I tried to get her to relax and finally held her still.

“It’s gone, Alex.” I hugged her tighter. “It’s okay; we’re going to be okay.”

A part of me felt like I was lying to her….

Getting home that night proved mentally and physically exhausting. Alex and I hardly spoke; too traumatized to talk about what happened.

I cleaned up; taking the longest shower I think I’d ever taken in my life, watching fragments of dirt and rock and blood disappear hauntingly down into the drain. Lifting my gaze to the mirror, at first I was relieved that a thick layer of moisture prevented my reflection. Tiny bubbles of liquid gray covered the glass in a sheet of delicate humidity, threatening to evaporate at any moment and reveal the devastating truth. The truth I had already begun trying to twist into something it wasn’t. My hands were propped solidly against the edge of the counter. My whole body throbbed, stung, ached. I had to see. And so I swallowed hard and wiped away the veil with the palm of my hand. A girl with a busted lip and a heavily bruised face stared back at me. I didn’t look like I’d been punched in the eye; I looked like...well, like my face had been bashed against a tree.

I was so tired, but too afraid to sleep. I laid in bed for hours, taking greater notice to every little sound around me, every movement. Mrs. Willis’ headlights shining directly on my Supernatural poster above my desk as she pulled back into the drive. The every-other-night Bentley Family cat fights underneath our house. The summer song of crickets and frogs. The remote control hitting the floor in the living room after Jeff had passed out on the couch.

I knew all of these sights and sounds intimately, yet they still managed to put me on edge as though completely new. But this was nothing like the night we saw the horror movie; this time the horror was real.

I know what I saw.

I know what attacked us, but to say it aloud was like verifying it, sealing the deal, confirming that I believed in something so insane. I wasn’t ready yet to admit it to myself. There had to be an explanation. There’s always an explanation, right? I just didn’t know which I wanted more: to find it, or forget about it all completely.

Two days came and went and we didn’t go to school. Alex never went further than the restroom or her bedroom. She still wasn’t speaking, at least not about what happened. She hardly said two random sentences to me, like how the heat was too much for her (our air conditioner was broken) and something about a fly in her room that was driving her ‘bat shit'. But as far as I know, she never made any effort to plug the fan back behind her dresser, or get the fly swatter and smack the insect into oblivion.

On Wednesday, there was an unfamiliar knock at the door, which made me alert in my room just down the hall. I knew it was someone I’d never met before, someone important, or maybe a delivery driver.

“They’re both in their rooms,” my mother said. “They haven’t been feeling well.”

My mom was never the type to invade our privacy. We could get away with playing the sick card.

I couldn’t let her see my face.

“Yes ma’am, I called the school yesterday and told them my daughters were sick.” I could easily detect the offense in her voice, the same way she sounded when our neighbor, Mrs. Willis, would show up at our door after a Jeff and Rhonda Bradley fight.

I heard a woman’s voice say, “If you don’t mind, we’d like to speak with your daughters. It will only take a minute and if everything is fine we’ll be on our way.”

I knew exactly where this was heading....

Child Protective Services took me away that day. I protested futilely—shockingly, Alex said and did nothing. I even made up an elaborate story about how Alex and I were attacked by a group of girls in the park. Useless. They didn’t believe that our bruises were not the work of Jeff Bradley.

“Would you like to file a police report?” the social worker said to Alex as she sat impassively with her back pressed against the wall of the Child Protective Services building.

“No,” Alex said simply.

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something in her eyes haunted me. Her face held no emotion. A single strand of hair lay stretched across her nose in a way that even made me want to move it out of the way and scratch the area it had been. She did nothing.

She was eighteen and free to go if she wanted, but not me. I was officially a ward of the State of Georgia.

I overheard them talking in the sterile-white hall of the building, something about a witness and a written statement. I knew then that Mrs. Willis probably had everything to do with it. She was who called the police many times before. I was sure she told the police that Jeff beat us.