Cycle of the Werewolf
MAY
It is Saturday night. It is the last weekend before the end of the school year. Summer is finally here. That night, Reverend Lester Lowe has a terrible dream. He wakes up and he is shaking.
He is sweating and terrified. He looks out his window, and across the street he can see his church. Moonlight comes in through his window. The light is silver and bright.
For one moment he expects to see the werewolf all the townspeople are talking about. Then he closes his eyes and asks God for forgiveness. He is a reverend. He feels silly for being so superstitious. He finishes his prayer, “For Jesus’ sake, amen.” That is what his mother taught him to say to end all his prayers.
Oh, but the dream… In his dream it was tomorrow, Sunday. Church day. He had been preaching at his church in his dream. The church is always full on this weekend before the end of school. And in his dream, every bench in his church is full of churchgoers.
In his dream he is preaching with a fire and a force. He is usually quite boring in reality. He tends to talk on and on. That is probably why fewer people are coming to his church on Sundays. But this Sunday morning in his dream his tongue seems to be touched by religious fire!
In his dream he is preaching the greatest sermon of his life, and the subject is: THE BEAST WALKS AMONG US. He speaks with a powerful voice. The Beast, he tells his listeners, is everywhere! At a high school dance. Buying a pack of cigarettes and a lighter at the convenience store. Or waiting for the bus to arrive.
The Beast might be sitting next to you at the hair salon, or eating a cheeseburger at the local diner on Main Street. The Beast, he tells them. His voice is a whisper now, and it captures them all.
Watch for the Beast, because he may smile and say he is your neighbor. But he has many sharp teeth, and his eyes might be evil. He is the Beast, and he is here now, in Tarker’s Mills. He…
But suddenly he stops talking in his dream. Something terrible is happening in his church. The people sitting in the chairs, his congregation, are beginning to change. And he realizes with horror that they are turning into werewolves. All of them, all three hundred of them.
Their eyes are turning green, their faces become long, and their teeth become sharp. Their fingernails become claws and their ears grow and become pointed. Their skin turns dark and fur begins to grow. They jump from the seats and begin to come towards Reverend Lowe. They are biting and screaming in voices that sound almost like human voices.
It sounds like a zoo at feeding time. And Reverend Lowe screams out to his congregation, in a kind of ecstasy, “The Beast! The Beast is everywhere! Everywhere! Every-...” But his voice is not his voice now. His voice has become a growl. He looks down at his hands and he sees they are now paws - the paws of a wolf. And then he wakes up.
It is only a dream, he thinks. Only a dream, thank God. But when he opens the church doors that morning, the last Sunday morning before school ends, the morning after the full moon, it is no dream that he sees. He sees the dead body of Clyde Corliss, the janitor of the church. His body is torn to pieces. His broom is leaning against the wall.
None of this is a dream. The Reverend Lowe wishes it was a dream. He opens his mouth, but he cannot speak. He begins to scream. Spring is here again in Tarker’s Mills this year, and the Beast has come with it.
MAY
