Cycle of the Werewolf December By Stephen King

Cycle of the Werewolf By Stephen King In the Stinking Darkness under the barn, he raised his Shaggy head. His yellow, stupid eyes gleamed. I hunger, he whispered. Henry Ellender The Wolf   Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, all the rest but the Second have thirty-one, Rains and snow and jolly sun, and the moon grows fast in every one. Childs Rime   "Even a man, who is pure in heart and say his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms and the Autumn Moon is bright. Laurence Talbot-1941 The Wolf-Man   The Full Cold Moon; or the Full Long Nights Moon - December During this month the winter cold fastens its grip, and nights are at their longest and darkest. It is also sometimes called the Moon before Yule. The term Long Night Moon is a doubly appropriate name because the midwinter night is indeed long, and because the Moon is above the horizon for a long time. The midwinter full Moon has a high trajectory across the sky because it is opposite a low Sun.   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 it close, and in Tarkers Mills as in the rest of the world, the yeas brought changes.   Milt Sturmfuller is dead and his wife Donna Lee, at last free of her bondage, has moved out of town. Gone to Boston, some say; gone to Los Angeles, other say. Another woman has tried to make a go of the Corner Bookshop and failed, but the Barber shop, The Market Basket, and The Pub are doing business at the same old places, thank you very much. Clyde Corliss is dead, but his two good for nothing brothers, Alden and Errol, are still alive and well and cashing in their food stamps A&P two town over they don't quite have the nerve to do it right here in the Mills. Gramma Hague, who used to make the best pies in Tarkers Mills, has died of a heart attack, Willie Harrington, who is ninety-two, slipped on the ice in front of his little house on Ball Street late in November and broke his hip, but the library has received a nice bequest in the will of a wealthy summer resident, and next year construction will being on the children's wing that had been talked about in town meeting since time out of mind. Ollie Parker, the school principal, had a nosebleed that just wouldn't quite in October and is diagnosed as an acute hypertensive. Lucky you didn't blow your brains out, he doctor grunted, unwrapping the blood pressure cuff, and told Ollie to lose forty pounds. For a wonder, Ollie loses twenty of those pounds by Christmas. He looks and feel like new man. Acts like a new man, too, his wife tells her close friend Delia Burney, with a lecherous little grin. Brady Kincaid, killed by the Beast in kite-flying season, is still dead. An Marty Coslaw, who used to sit right behind Brady in school, is still a cripple.   Things change, things don't change, and, in Tarkers 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 gonna kill, Al? A werewolf or a Vampire?    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 Tarkers 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 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 connection in his ear. His sister is stubborn; when she doesn't want to hear something, she won't.   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.   Marty began by telling Al again about the night of the wonderful bag of fireworks, and how he had blown out the creature's left eye with the Black Cat firecrackers. Then he told him about Halloween, and the Rev. Lowe. Then he told Uncle Al that he had begun sending the Rev. Lowe anonymous notes anonymous, that is, until the last two, following the murder of Milt Sturmfuller in Portland. Those he signed just as he had been taught in English class: Yours Truly, Martin Coslaw.   You shouldn't have sent the man notes, anonymous or otherwise!  Uncle Al said sharply. Christ, Marty! Did it ever occur to you that you could be wrong?  Sure it did, Marty said. That's why I signed my name to the last two. Aren't you going to ask me what happened? Aren't you going to ask me if he called up my father and told him I'd sent him a note saying why don't you kill yourself and another one saying we're closing in on you? He didn't do that, did he? Al asked, knowing the answer already.   No, Marty said quietly. He hasn't talked to my dad, and he hasn't talked to my mom, and he hasn't talked to me. Marty, there could be a hundred reasons for that   No. There's only one. He's the werewolf, he's the Beast, it's him, and he's waiting for the full moon. As the Reverend Lowe, he can't do anything. But as the werewolf, he can do plenty. He can shut me up.  And Marty spoke with such chilling simplicity that Al was almost convinced. So what do you want from me? Al asked.   Marty told him. He wanted two silver bullets, and a gun to shoot them with, and he wanted Uncle Al to come over on New Year's Eve, the night of the Full Moon. I'll do no such thing, Uncle Al said. Marty, you're a good kid, but you're going loopy. I think you've come down with a good case of Wheelchair Fever. If you think it over, you'll know it.   Maybe, Marty said. But think how you'll feel if you get a call on New Year's Day saying I'm dead in my bed, chewed to pieces? Do you want that on your conscience, Uncle Al?    Al started to speak, then closed his mouth with a snap. He turned into a driveway, hearing the Mercedes front wheels crunch in the new snow. He reversed and started back. He fought in Viet Nam and won a couple of medals there; he had successfully avoided lengthy entanglements with several lusty young ladies; and now he felt caught and trapped by his ten-year-old nephew. His crippled ten-year-old nephew. Of course he didn't want such a thing. And Marty knew it. As Marty knew that if Uncle Al thought there was even one chance in a thousand that he might be right   Four days later, on December 10th, Uncle AL called. Great news! Marty announced to his family, wheeling his chair back into the family room. Uncle Al's coming over for New Year's Eve!    He certainly is not, his mother says in her coldest, brusquest tone.   Marty was not daunted, Gee, sorry I already invited him, he said. He said he'd bring party-powder for the fireplace.   His mother had spent the rest of the day glaring at Marty every time she looked in his direction or he in hers but she didn't call her brother back and tell him to stay away, and that was most important thing.   At supper that night Katie whispered hissingly in his ear: You always get what you want! Just because you're a cripple!    Grinning, Marty whispered back: I love you too, sis. You little booger!    She flounced away.   And here it is, New Year's Eve. Marty's mother was sure Al wouldn't show up as the storm intensified, the wild howling and moaning and driving snow before it. Truth to tell, Marty has had a few bad moments himself but Uncle Al arrived up around eight, driving not his Mercedes sports car but a borrowed four-wheel drive.   By eleven-thirty, everyone in the family has gone to bed except for the two of them, which is pretty much as Marty had foreseen things. And although Uncle Al is still pooh-poohing the whole things, he has brought not one but two handguns concealed under his heavy CPO coat. The one with the two silver bullets he hand wordlessly to Marty after the family has gone to bed (as if to complete making the point, Marty's mother slammed the door of the bedroom she shares with Marty's dad when she went to bed slammed it hard). The other is filled with more conventional lead-loads but Al reckons that if a crazy man going to break in here tonight ( and as time passes and nothing happens, he comes to doubt that more and more), the .45 magnum will stop him.   Now, on the TV, they are switching the cameras more and more often to the big-lighted ball on top of the Allied Chemical Building in Times Square. The last few minutes of the year are running out. The Crowd cheers. In the corner opposite the TV, the Coslaw Christmas tree still stands, drying out now, getting a little brown, looking sadly denuded of its presents.   Marty, nothing Uncle Al begins, and then the big picture window in the family room blows inward in a twinkle of glass, letting in the howling black wind from outside, twisting skirls of white snow and the Beast.   Al is frozen for a moment, utterly frozen with horror and disbelief. It is huge, this Beast, perhaps seven feet tall, although it is hunched over so that its front hand-paws almost drag on the rug. Its one green eye (just like Marty said, he thinks numbly, all of it, just like Marty said) glares around with a terrible, rolling sentience and fixes upon Marty, sitting in his wheelchair. It leaps at the boy, a rolling howl of triumph exploding out of its chest and past its huge yellow-white teeth.   Calmly, his face hardly changing, Marty raises the .38 pistol. He looks very small in his wheelchair, his legs like sticks inside his soft and faded jeans, his fur-lined slippers on feet that have been numb and senseless all of his life. And, incredibly, over the werewolf's mad howling, over the wind's screaming, over the clap and clash o his own tottering thoughts about how this can possibly be in a world of real people and real things, over all his Al hears his nephews say: Poor old Reverend Lowe. I'm gonna try to set you free.   And as the werewolf leaps, its shadow a blob on the carpet, its claw-tipped hands outstretched, Marty fires. Because of the lower powder-load, the gun makes an almost absurdly insignificant pop. It sounds like a Daisy air rifle.   But the werewolf's roar of rage spirals up into an even higher register, a lunatic screech of pain now. It crashes into the wall and its shoulder punches a hole right through to the other side. A Currier and Ives painting falls onto its head, skates down the thick pelt of its back and shatters as the werewolf turns. Blood is pouring down the savage, hairy mask of its face, and its green eyes seems rolling and confused. It staggers toward Marty, growling, its claw-hands opening and closing, its snapping jaws cutting off wads of blood-streaked foam. Marty holds the gun in both hands, as a small child holds his drinking cup. He waits, waits and as the werewolf lunges again, he fires. Magically, the beast's other eye blows out like a candle in a storm wind! It screams again and staggers, now blind, toward the window. The blizzard riffles the curtains and twists them around its head Al can see flowers of blood begin to bloom on the white cloth as, on the TV, the big-lighted ball begins to descend its pole.   The werewolf collapse to its knees as Marty's dad, wild eyed and dressed in bright yellow pajamas, dashes into the room. The .45 Magnum is still in Al's lap. He has never so much as raised it.   Now the beast collapses shudders once and dies. Mr. Coslaw stares at it, open-mouthed.   Marty turns to Uncle Al, the smoking gun in his hands. His face looks tired but at peace. Happy New Years, Uncle Al, he says, it's dead. The Beast is dead.  And then he begins to weep.   On the floor, under the mesh of Mrs. Coslaw's best white curtains, the werewolf had begun to change. The hair, which has shagged its face and body, seems to be pulling in somehow. The lips, drawn back in a snarl of pain and fury, relax and cover the shrinking teeth. The claws melt magically away to fingernails, fingernails that have been almost pathetically gnawed and bitten.   The Reverend Lester Lowe lies there; wrapped in a bloody shroud of curtain, snow blowing around him in a random pattern.   Uncle Al goes to Marty and comforts him as Marty's dad gawks down at the naked body on the floor and as Marty's mother, clutches the neck of her robe, creeps into the room. Al hugs Marty tight, tight, tight.   You done good kid, he whispers. I love you. Outside, the wind howls and screams against the snow-filled sky, and in Tarkers Mills, the first minute of the New Year becomes history. NOTE from the Author.   Any dedicated moon-watcher will know that, regardless of the year, I have taken a good many liberties with the lunar cycle usually to take advantage of days (Valentine's July 4th, ect.) which mark certain months in our minds. To those readers who feel that I didn't know any better, I assert that I did but the temptation was simply too great to resist. Stephen King August 4, 1983   This Story is from the Book "Cycle of the Werewolf" by Stephen King. You can find a copy at www.Barnes&Noble.com   Carl Ray Louk Not racist, not violent, just not silent anymore Fighting for lower taxes, less government, and more freedom. I am Carl Ray Louk and unlike the President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, I stand with Israel FreedomWorks We are a community of over 2 million grassroots activists We recruit, educate & mobilize across the country Fighting for lower taxes, less government, and more freedom. http://www.freedomworks.org/ "Friendship Never Ends" SG-1996 "Let Love Lead The Way" SG-2000 "The Phoenix Shall Rise" Count Carl Ray Louk 2003 "Even A Man Who Is Pure In Heart And Says His Prayer By Nigh, May Become A Wolf When the Wolf bane Blooms And The Autumn Moon Is Bright." LT-1941 "Flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin when I say come to you, you shall cross land or sea to do my bidding!" CVTD-1895 "From Hell's Heart I stab at thee, for hate sake I spit my last breath at thee" CA-1895 "I have been, and always shall be your friend" Spock "Trick or Treat, Trick or Treat candy is dandy but murder, oh murder, is so sweet" Count Carl Ray Louk-2003 "Eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog adder's fork, blind worm's sting, lizard's leg, and owlet's wing. For a charm of powerful trouble, like Hell broth boils and babble. Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn, and caldron bubble" WS Facebook: www.facebook.com/CarlRayLouk Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarlRayLouk MySpace: www.myspace.com/carlraylouk Yahoo Group: Yahoo! Groups : LouksHauntedGraveyardhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/LouksHauntedGraveyard/ Yahoo Group: Yahoo! Groups : TheWorldAccordingtoCarlRayLouk http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheWorldAccordingtoCarlRayLouk/