The Moon Tells Secrets (22 page)

It was Luna, bringer of meals and mysticism, who finally gave her hope.

“It won't come out again until Friday night. Remember I told you that?” she'd said Wednesday night. “Wherever Davey is, he's safe until then. I know enough about the other world to say that.” They were sitting in the kitchen and Luna had brought over dinner. Not the veggie soup and healthy bread she was prone to make, but the kind Cade liked—chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, collard greens, flaky biscuits—and he was wolfing down the food like he wouldn't see tomorrow. Raine, nibbling timidly on a biscuit, touched nothing. Strong emotions always made Cade hungry, he'd known that since he was a kid; curiosity forced his fork back to his plate.

“Other world?”

“You know what I'm talking about,” Luna snapped with a glance in Raine's direction, who had looked up quickly as if she hadn't quite heard Luna's words.

“If anything happens, it will come then, so you'd best prepare yourself like I told you before. Remember I told you that.” Luna fixed her gaze on Raine, and she nodded as if she understood. “You're not going to be able to leave like you thought. You're going to have to stay until that moon comes out and wait for your boy to do what he's determined to do.”

“Will somebody tell me what the hell you two are talking about?” said Cade.

And Luna did, and as she explained, he remembered there was to be a full moon the night it had slaughtered Dennie. That was why he had brought the wine, that was why they had planned to make love that night, because the moon was full and Dennie loved to make love in moonlight.

Sorrow overtook him as he relived that night, and he could feel his heart drop deep into the place where it went sometimes, where he hadn't wanted to pull it out until he met Raine. He studied her now, her anguish as deeply etched in her face as it was in his heart.

A silence thick with dread overcame the three of them as Cade listened to the house, trying to identify any noise that didn't belong there, that might do them harm, but there were only the sounds he half heard every day: the septic tank pumping groundwater from the basement, a clock ticking in the hall, the hum of the air conditioner in his bedroom. And he listened to Raine breathing—holding her breath, then letting it out slowly in one long exhalation.

The thought came to Cade suddenly, and he held on to it, not sure how much good it would do to mention it now, though it had been on his mind since Monday after he read the passages in the book. That was why he'd called Raine, of course, to tell her he knew how to kill it. He'd looked for the chance to explain it, but every thought he'd had for the past three days concerned how best to comfort her. But this was something else entirely that had come to him last night, and he'd let the thought bloom in his mind.

You've got to lure him in, play him for a fool. Let him have your bishop so you can get his queen. You've got to see at least four moves in the future, four moves down the board, so you can win.

Those had been his father's words to him, and he'd told them to Davey, and he was sure that was what Davey was going to do. Davey would try to take whatever was stalking him by surprise. He would lure it away from his mother and Luna. Davey was comfortable here, and this was where he would try to kill it. Whatever she said about Davey “shifting,” as she called it, whether it was true or not, Davey knew the threat the creature posed to him and Raine, and he was ready to meet the challenge. Wasn't that how boys became men, the whole point of the rites of passage boys went through in indigenous cultures? Dennie had been an expert on that, too, when he told her about the risks he had taken at twelve and thirteen. How he sought out danger sometimes, just to spite his drunken father, his dead mother.

A rite of passage. Davey knew he was the bait, for whatever the reason, and he would try to be the killer. What Davey didn't know was that he couldn't do it alone. Raine would need to play a part, too, if they were going to defeat it. Cade sensed that Davey wouldn't go back to Luna's house; he would come here, where the creature had killed Dennie. It was just a matter of waiting.

He glanced at Raine's face—so dull and tight, it looked as if it were carved from stone. Best to wait for Davey to come, and he was certain he would now, as sure as he was of the chess moves Davey always played. If Davey came tonight or tomorrow, he would tell Raine what had happened, and the two of them could talk about what to do. At least she would know her son was safe—for the time being, anyway.

Luna picked up her head as if she had heard something odd, and Cade wondered if she had, if he'd miscalculated and things would happen sooner than he'd thought. But she nodded at him, as if acknowledging something he'd said. Luna always seemed to know what was on his mind.

“I could use some company tonight, Raine, if it's okay with you and Cade.” Raine's eyes were empty. “Might help just to sit in his room tonight. Be around his things. Might bring you some comfort.”

Raine simply nodded, saying nothing. They all stood up together, Cade studying Luna as he often did, as curious about her as ever.

“Come on, let's go, then. Cade, you can finish up this food, put it in the fridge, you can have it tomorrow.”

Cade nodding, walked them to the back door and through the bushes into Luna's backyard.

“I won't get any sleep tonight,” Raine said before she went inside.

“Yes, you will. Have Luna fix you one of her teas. We'll see what happens tomorrow.”

She managed a smile, but it was filled with woe, and Cade knew that she thought nothing would change; he hoped she was wrong. He went back to his own house, allowed himself the Bud Light he kept tucked in the back of the refrigerator away from Luna's watchful eyes, and sat on the couch in the living room, patiently waiting for the boy to show up.

*   *   *

Davey came through the back door as he always did. It was almost one. Cade had fallen asleep, a dreamless, restless sleep filled with anxiety. The sound of the screen door snapping shut shocked him awake. He sat up, wondering if it was Raine or Luna, and then suddenly afraid it might be something else. Fully awake, he sat up, his body stiff as he listened.

“Cade, you upstairs?” Davey's voice.

“Where the hell have you been?” Cade ran into the kitchen, stopping short at the sight of the naked eleven-year-old sitting at his kitchen table.

“Sorry about this,” said Davey.

“No problem. Let me get you some clothes, then I'm going to call your mama.”

“No! Not yet.” Davey's tone told Cade to wait, so he nodded reluctantly to show he would. Best to find out what the boy had to say. It was going on one in the morning, and if Raine wasn't asleep, she would be soon.

He found some clean sweatpants and a T-shirt at the bottom of his drawer and grabbed some socks on the way down. This would have to do for now. Davey pulled them on quickly, then settled back down at the table.

“You hungry? You been gone for damn near three days.”

“Yeah.”

“Here,” Cade said as he pulled Luna's leftovers from the refrigerator. “Eat this first, and then you got to tell me what's going on.”

Cade watched as Davey shoved food into his mouth, barely chewing. When he was finished, he pushed his plate away like any other hungry kid would. Cade could see the boy was tired, but he needed to get what he could out of him first before he went to sleep. To his surprise, Davey stood and headed for the door.

Cade jumped up to stop him. “Not yet.”

“But, Cade—”

“You owe me some kind of explanation. Showing up here butt-naked, sitting at my kitchen table.”

“It's coming for me. It got Mack and now it's coming for me, and Mom if she's around. That's why she can't be around.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I'm talking about.”

Cade paused, then acknowledged that he did; there was no sense denying it. “Where are your clothes?”

“At Luna's house.”

“So you've been running around the street naked?”

“No. It wasn't me.… I was … something else.”

“And what does that mean?”

“I can't tell you!” Davey's voice rose to an angry pitch that he'd never heard before.

“I need to know what is going on. All of it.”

“But I got to go—”

“Why?”

“Didn't Mom tell you about me? Didn't she tell you?”

The anguish in Davey's eyes tore at Cade's heart. It was clear he was going to cry. Boys his age didn't let themselves cry easily, especially around other men. If they were going to talk, it was going to be man to man. The way he never spoke to his father, the way he knew Davey would never be able to speak to his own.

“I need you to tell me exactly what happens to you. I need to know what you plan to do about it,” he said, almost adding “son,” surprised how easily it had nearly flowed off his tongue.

Davey sat back down at the table and Cade sat across from him, studying his face, carefully looking for any sign of what Raine said he could become. But he could see nothing except the boy he'd known all summer, the one he'd grown to care about.

“You sure you want to know?” That was Davey's wisecracking tone, covering up the tears that had come to his eyes, and it made Cade smile.

“Think I can't take it?”

Davey paused, searching Cade's face—for what, Cade wasn't sure—and he remembered the words Dennie had written about them not breaking the oath of silence that was bound within them. Davey had never told anyone his secrets, not even his mother.

Davey smirked. “Naw, I know you can take it. I don't think you'll believe me.”

“Try me,” Cade said, rocking back in his chair to listen.

“So my mom didn't tell you about me? About, you know—the shifting shit?” He was procrastinating.

“Some of it.”

“Can I have something to drink, first, like some water or juice or something?”

Cade got ice out of the freezer, put it in a tall glass, and topped it off with apple juice.

Davey gulped down half before he began. “It's easier now, even though I, you know, shift into bigger stuff, like my grandma said I would. I can do it now just by thinking about it, by seeing something that I want to be and making my body become it. Grandma said that when I get older, I can switch into people, like walk in their skin and shit, you know like—” He stopped suddenly, dropped his eyes, not wanting to go on.

“Don't you have to kill them first, though, to slip into them?” Cade took all feeling and judgment out of his voice, making himself look the boy in the face, remembering he was talking to Davey, the eleven-year-old he had taught to play chess, who liked to drink apple juice, whom he was sure he could love like a son if given half a chance.

“I don't know,” he said. “Mama Anna said that part would come, too, when I was ready. But I don't want that part to come, Cade. I don't want to be that.”

Cade sighed, not sure where to go from there, what to tell the boy except what sounded like boilerplate advice, the kind you gave anyone who didn't want to walk down the path they were headed. The kind he wished somebody had told him, the kind of things Dennie had said so many times to him that his voice sounded like hers.

“You always have a choice, Davey. You have what they call free will that—”

“That's bullshit, and you know it,” Davey said, not hiding his irritation. “I woke up this morning with blood on my hands, all over my body.”

“Blood!” Cade didn't try to hide his shock.

“Sure you want to hear this?”

“Yeah, I told you I did!”

“Okay, yeah, blood! Yeah. I must have killed something—a squirrel, a cat, something—and I didn't know I did it. That's what this thing is, Cade. I don't have any control over it. You want to know what it's like? It's like being in a fucking nightmare where you see yourself becoming something you don't want to be, where it's you but it's not. I'm scared I'm going to hurt my mom or Luna. Hurt you. Or even Pinto. He's little, and even though he can't talk, he knows what I am. I almost changed in front of him. What if I hurt him?”

Neither of them spoke awhile as Davey stared at the table, hiding what Cade knew was shame.

“So how does it stop?” he asked, going to the refrigerator and getting out another bottle of apple juice. He always kept two on ice for Davey. His hand was shaking when he gave it to him, and he hoped Davey hadn't noticed.

“It just does.”

“And so you just showed up here naked as a jaybird because whatever had taken over you just decided to let you go?”

“That's about it.” There was a glimmer of amusement in Davey's eyes. “Jaybird? What the fuck is a jaybird?”

“Watch your mouth. You been throwing around so many ‘fucks,' it's like you just learned the word. Jaybird? A crazy bird that shows up naked at somebody's house at one in the morning.”

Davey shrugged, and Cade, recognizing the universal preteen sign that nothing more was going to be said, let it go. He glanced at the clock—it was two-thirty now, and Cade knew that even if Raine had managed to fall asleep he had to wake her. “It's time for me to call your mom. She's worried sick about you.”

“Can I talk to her first?” Cade handed him the phone. “Alone?”

“Sure. Of course.”

Cade went into the living room and sat on the couch, but there was no door to close. He knew if he listened carefully, he could hear every word the boy said, and so he did.

 

16

raine

You've got to let me go, that's all, Mom, you've got to let me do what I need to do.

Davey …

There's nothing you can do about it. Why can't you just accept me for who I am, what I am? Mama Anna did, she knew—if my dad was alive, he would have. He would have told me like Mama Anna did, that this was my destiny.