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He begins to walk faster and faster, bent low, unaware that his beard, usually scant (he can get away with only shaving once every three days… at the right time of the month, that is), has now sprung out thick and scruffy and wiry, and that his one brown eye has gone a hazel shade that is deepening moment by moment toward the emerald green it will become later this night. He is hunching forward as he walks, and he has begun to talk to himself… but the words are growing lower and lower, more and more like growls.
At last, as the gray November afternoon tightens down toward an early anvil-colored dusk, he bounds into the kitchen, snatches the Volare's keys from the peg by the door, and almost runs toward the car. He drives toward Portland fast, smiling, and he does not slow when the season's first snow starts to skirl into the beams of his headlights, dancers from the iron sky. He senses the moon somewhere above the clouds; he senses its power; his chest expands, straining the seams of his white shirt.
He tunes the radio to a rock and roll station, and he feels just… great!
And what happens later that night might be a judgment from God, or a jest of those older gods that men worshipped from the safety of stone circles on moonlit nights—oh, it's fu
The Rev. Lowe has checked into a motel called The Driftwood near the Portland-Westbrook line, and this is the same motel that Milt Sturmfuller and Rita Te
Milt steps out at quarter past ten to retrieve a bottle of bourbon he's left in the car, and he is in fact congratulating himself on being far from Tarker's Mills on the night of the full moon when the one-eyed Beast leaps on him from the roof of a snowshrouded Peterbilt ten-wheeler and takes his head off with one gigantic swipe. The last sound Milt Sturmfuller hears in his life is the werewolf's rising snarl of triumph; his head rolls under the Peterbilt, the eyes wide, the neck spraying blood, and the bottle of bourbon drops from his jittering hand as the Beast buries its snout in his neck and begins to feed.
And the next day, back in the Baptist parsonage in Tarker's Mills and feeling just… great, the Rev. Lowe will read the account of the murder in the newspaper and think piously: He was not a good man. All things serve the Lord.
And following this, he will think: Who is the kid sending the notes? Who was it in July? It's time to find out. It's time to listen to some gossip.
The Rev. Lester Lowe readjusts his eyepatch, shakes out a new section of the newspaper and thinks: All things serve the Lord, if it's the Lord's will, I'll find him. And silence him. Forever.
DECEMBER
It is fifteen minutes of midnight on New Year's Eve. In Tarker's Mills, as in the rest of the world, the year is drawing to its close, and in Tarker's Mills as in the rest of the world, the year has brought changes.
Milt Sturmfuller is dead and his wife Do
Things change, things don't change, and, in Tarker's Mills, the year is ending as the year came in—a howling blizzard is roaring outside, and the Beast is around. Somewhere.
Sitting in the living room of the Coslaw home and watching Dick Clark's Rockin New Year's Eve are Marty Coslaw and his
Uncle Al. Uncle Al is on the couch. Marty is sitting in his wheelchair in front of the TV. There is a gun in Marty's lap, a. 38 Colt Woodsman. Two bullets are chambered in the — gun, and both of them are pure silver. Uncle Al has gotten a friend of his from Hampden, Mac McCutcheon, to make them in a bullet-loader. This Mac McCutcheon, after some protests, has melted Marty's silver confirmation spoon down with a propane torch, and calibrated the weight of powder needed to propel the bullets without sending them into a wild spin. “I don't guarantee they'll work,” this Mac McCutcheon has told Uncle Al, “but they probably will. What you go
“One of each,” Uncle Al says, giving him his grin right back. “That's why I got you to make two. There was a banshee hanging around as well, but his father died in North Dakota and he had to catch a plane to Fargo.” They have a laugh over that, and then Al says: “They're for a nephew of mine. He's crazy over movie monsters, and I thought they'd make an interesting Christmas present for him.”
“Well, if he fires one into a batten, bring it back to the shop,” Mac tells him. “I'd like to see what happens.”
In truth, Uncle Al doesn't know what to think. He hadn't seen Marty or been to Tarker's Mills since July 3rd; as he could have predicted, his sister, Marty's mother, is furious with him about the fireworks. He could have been killed, you stupid asshole! What in the name of God did you think you were doing? she shouts down the telephone wire at him.
Sounds like it was the fireworks that saved his—Al begins, but there is the sharp click of a broken co
Then, early this month, a call came from Marty. “I have to see you, Uncle Al,” Marty said. “You're the only one I can talk to.”
“I'm in the doghouse with our mom, kid,” Al answered.
“It's important,” Marty said. “Please. Please.”
So he came, and he braved his sister's icy, disapproving silence, and on a cold, clear early December day, Al took Marty for a ride in his sports car, loading him carefully into the passenger bucket. Only this day there was no speeding and no wild laughter; only Uncle Al listening as Marty talked. Uncle Al listened with growing disquiet as the tale is told.