Cycle of the Werewolf
AUGUST
"Sure, I think it's a werewolf," Police Sheriff Neary says. He is speaking very loudly, and everyone in Stan’s Barber Shop stops talking and looks at him. August is almost over. It has been the hottest August anyone can remember in Tarker’s Mills.
Tonight the moon will be only one day past full. So everyone in the town is waiting, terrified, expecting the worst. Sheriff Neary continues speaking. He is speaking with authority about the subject. He is speaking as if he understands the situation. Sheriff Neary has only a high school education.
Neary is a large, fat man. And in high school the only thing he was really good at was scoring touchdowns for the high school football team, the Tarker’s Mills Tigers. His grades were terrible, in general - a few C’s and mostly D’s.
“There are some guys,” Neary tells the people in the barber shop, “who are like two people. They have two personalities, you know. I call them fucking schizos. Schizo - frenics. It’s all psychological.”
He pauses and enjoys how the people are looking at him, as if he knew what he was talking about. He continues, “Now this guy, that’s what I think he’s like - two people. I don’t think he knows what he’s doing when the moon gets full and he goes out and kills somebody. He could be anybody in town.”
“Anybody. He could be a teller in a bank. He could work at a gas station on the highway. Maybe he’s someone here right now. Maybe he’s just an animal on the inside, and he looks perfectly normal on the outside. Yeah, that’s what I think.”
“But, do I think there’s a guy who grows a tail and howls at the moon…no. That shit is for kids.” “What about the Coslaw boy, Neary? Marty Coslaw?” Stan asks, as he carefully cuts Sheriff Neary’s hair off his fat head. His scissors go snip… snip… snip.
“That just proves what I said,” Neary answers impatiently. “That shit’s for kids.” In fact, he feels impatient about what happened with Marty Coslaw. Marty is the first person to actually see the freak who has killed six people in his town, including Neary’s good friend Alfie Knopfler.
But is Neary allowed to interview the boy? No. Does Neary even know where the boy is? No! Police Sheriff Neary has to use the information the State Police have on the case. And he had to almost beg them, plead with them, to get that information.
Neary thinks the State Police treat him with disrespect because he is only a small town cop, and that he is not able to “tie his own shoes”. And the report he received from the State Police! He should just use that to clean his own ass after taking a shit.
According to what the Coslaw kid said, this “beast” was about two and a half meters tall. It was naked. It was covered with dark hair all over its body. It had big teeth and green eyes. And it smelled terrible. It had claws, but the claws looked like hands. He thought it had a tail. A tail! Bullshit, thought Neary.
“Maybe,” Kenny Franklin says. He is sitting in a chair next to the wall waiting for his turn to get his haircut. “Maybe it’s some kind of disguise or costume the guy puts on. Like a mask, maybe, you know.” “I don’t believe it,” Neary says with force. He shakes his head from side to side to emphasize his point.
Stan, the barber, has to pull his scissors away from the back of Neary’s head. He almost stabs Neary’s fat neck with the scissors when he shakes his head. “No way! I don’t believe it one bit! The kid heard a lot of stories about werewolves at school.”
“That’s what he said. You know how kids can invent things in their heads. Especially the Coslaw boy who has plenty of time just sitting in that chair of his. The idea just grows in his mind. It’s all psycho-fuckin’-logical, you see.”
“If it had been you, Kenny, who came out of the bushes that night, the boy would have thought you were a wolf!” Kenny laughs a little, but he does not think it is very funny. “Nope,” Neary continues. “The kid’s story is just not believable at all.”
Neary had read the report from the State Police (they had spoken to Marty at his aunt and uncle’s house in the north of the state). He was disappointed with it, and did not believe any of it. But when Neary had read the report, he ignored a very important line that Marty had said:
“Four firecrackers exploded on the side of his face - I guess you can call it a face. They exploded right next to his eye and I think his eye was hurt badly. It was his left eye.”
If Sheriff Neary had used his high school intellect to analyze that line (and no, he had not analyzed that important line), he would have understood why the State Police treated him like an amateur cop. Because in that hot August, there was only one person in the whole town who was using a patch over their eye.
And it was impossible to think that that person was the killer. Of all the people in the town, it was impossible. Neary would have believed his own mother was the killer before he would have believed the person wearing the eyepatch was the killer.
"There's only one thing that'll solve this case," Neary says. He points his finger at the four or five men waiting for their Sunday morning haircuts. “The one thing that will solve this case is good police work. And I intend to be the guy who does that good police work.”
“When I arrest that lunatic, those State Police pukes are going to think again about us small town cops.” Neary imagined the scene in his mind. He smiled. “It could be anyone,” he says. “It could be a bank teller… a gas station worker… just some guy you have beers with at the bar.”
“But good police work will solve this case. You just watch!” But Police Sheriff Neary’s good police work comes to an end that night when a hairy, moon-silvered arm reaches through the open window of his car. He is parked out on a dirt road at the end of town. It is a road where young people come to race their cars.
The arm takes him under his chin. There is a low, snorting growl. And there is a terrible smell, like something you would smell at the lion house in a zoo. His head is pulled towards the car window and he looks into one green eye.
He sees the fur. He sees the face that is long and furry, like a wolf’s face. And then the lips on the face move back and Neary sees the teeth. The beast runs a claw along Neary’s face, almost playfully, and one of his cheeks is ripped away, like a slice of meat.
Neary’s teeth are exposed through the hole in his cheek. Blood flies everywhere. He can feel it running down the front of his shirt. It is warm. He screams. He screams out of his mouth and out of his cheek.
Over the beast’s massive shoulders, he can see the moon. It is full, fat and white. Neary forgets all about the gun he keeps in his car. And he forgets about the gun he keeps on his belt. He forgets all about how this thing is schizo-frenic, psychological. He forgets all about good police work.
Instead, he remembers something Kenny Franklin said in the barber shop that morning. Maybe it’s some kind of disguise or costume this guy puts on. Like a mask or something. You know.
And so, as the werewolf closes its claws on Neary’s throat, Neary reaches for its face. With both hands he pulls on the fur of the wolf’s face. He hopes desperately that the mask will come off, and the elastic band holding it in place will break. Then he will see the killer.
But nothing happens except for a roar of pain and anger from the beast. It swings one of its hands with its claws and yes, Neary can see it is a hand. It is not human and it is not animal, but it is a hand. The boy was right. The claw-hand opens Neary’s throat to the bone.
Blood jets over the car’s front window. The blood falls into a bottle of beer that is sitting between Police Sheriff Neary’s legs. The werewolf’s other claw-hand takes Neary’s recently cut hair and pulls him out of the car window.
The werewolf howls once, in victory and triumph, and then it sticks its long, furry face into Neary’s open neck. It feeds while the beer spills out of the bottle and makes a puddle on the floor of the car. So much for schizo-frenics. So much for psychology. So much for good police work.
AUGUST
