over the town. Gramma Hague bakes pies and sets them out on the kitchen windowsill
to cool. On Sunday, at the Grace Baptist Church, the Reverend Lester Lowe reads
from The Song of Solomon and preaches a sermon titled “The Spring of the Lord’s
Love.” On a more secular note, Chris Wrightson, the biggest drunk in Tarker’s
Mills, throws his Great Spring Drunk and staggers off in the silvery, unreal light
of a nearly full April moon. Billy Robertson, bartender and proprietor of the pub,
Tarker’s Mills’ only saloon, watches him go and mutters to the barmaid, “If that
wolf takes someone tonight, I guess it’ll be Chris.”
“Don’t talk about it,” the barmaid replies, shuddering. Her name is Elise Fournier,
she is twenty-four, and she attends the Grace Baptist and sings in the choir
because she has a crush on the Rev. Lowe. But she plans to leave the Mills by
summer; crush or no crush, this wolf business has begun to scare her. She has begun
to think that the tips might be better in Portsmouth … and the only wolves there
wore sailors’ uniforms.
Nights in Tarker’s Mills as the moon grows fat for the third time that year are
uncomfortable times … the days are better. On the town common, there is suddenly
a skyful of kites each afternoon.
Brady Kincaid, eleven years old, has gotten a Vulture for his birthday and has lost
all track of time in his pleasure at feeling the kite tug in his hands like a live
thing, watching it dip and swoop through the blue sky above the bandstand. He has
forgotten about going home for supper, he is unaware that the other kite-fliers
have left one by one, with their box-kites and tent-kites and Aluminum Fliers
tucked securely under their arms, unaware that he is alone.
It is the fading daylight and advancing blue shadows which finally make him realize
he has lingered too long-that, and the moon just rising over the woods at the edge
of the park. For the first time it is a warm-weather moon, bloated and orange
instead of a cold white, but Brady doesn’t notice this; he is only aware that he
has stayed too long, his father is probably going to whup him … and dark is
coming.
At school, he has laughed at his schoolmates’ fanciful tales of the werewolf they
say killed the drifter last month, Stella Randolph the month before, Arnie Westrum
the month before that. But he doesn’t laugh now. As the moon turns April dusk into
a bloody furnace-glow, the stories seem all too real.
He begins to wind twine onto his ball as fast as he can, dragging the Vulture with
its two bloodshot eyes out of the darkening sky. He brings it in too fast, and the
breeze suddenly dies. As a result, the kite dives behind the bandstand.
He starts toward it, winding up string as he goes, glancing nervously back over his
shoulder … and suddenly the string begins to twitch and move in his hands, sawing
back and forth. It reminds him of the way his fishing pole feels when he’s hooked a
big one in Tarker’s Stream, above the Mills. He looks at it, frowning, and the line
goes slack.
A shattering roar suddenly fills the night and Brady Kincaid screams. He believes
now, Yes, he believes now, all right, but it’s too late and his scream is lost
under that snarling roar that rises in a sudden, chilling glissade to a howl.
The wolf is running toward him, running on two legs, its shaggy pelt painted orange
with moonfire, its eyes glaring green lamps, and in one paw
– a paw with human
fingers and claws where the nails should be-is Brady’s Vulture kite. It is
fluttering madly.
Brady turns to run and dry arms suddenly encircle him; he can smell something like
blood and cinnamon, and he is found the next day propped against the War Memorial,
headless and disembowelled, the Vulture kite in one stiffening hand.
The kite flutters, as if trying for the sky, as the search-party turn away,
horrified and sick. It flutters because the breeze has already come up. It flutters