By the Light of the Blood Moon *updated*

Chapter 01: Homecoming

Returning home had never been one of Jess Hayes' priorities. Her fallout with her parents had hurt, and it was over a disliked boyfriend, no less. She had since broken up and severed all ties with him, and saw the whole ordeal as a mistake, but never had the guts to come back to her hometown to see her parents. When her grandmother died, however, she reluctantly got in her Jeep and drove back towards her hometown. She had never had any problems with her grandmother, and the two spent more time with each other than Jess had spent with her parents. She couldn't bring herself to not go to her grandmother's funeral over some petty argument with her parents.

Driving up the I-75, she quietly reflected on her birthplace. The place was so far up in Michigan that it was practically Canada South. The town was at a ripe population of 1,184 people, which was steadily declining as younger people, who used to be the lifeblood of the area, began to go toward the big cities. There were a few who remained because their parents did, and, frankly, because they couldn't hack the idea of living in the city, so far removed from the sticks.

Growing up there had been a good experience for her, and she developed distinctly tomboy-esque traits. Early on, she cut her sandy blonde hair short, like a boy's, and her smooth, pale skin was roughed with the scars of a childhood outdoors. She still loved getting out of the apartment complex she lived in back home to go for morning jogs in the woods on the weekends. During her schooling, the girly-girls always teased her when she went alone into the woods near the school playground, but she didn't care. Jess distinctly remembered skipping class to relax by the pond a couple hundred yards into the forest. The water there was always a balmy 20 degrees fahrenheit or so, and even though the water was still, it was perfectly drinkable.

Then she met Jed. He was nice at first, but he turned out to be a real bastard. She still today kicked herself for going out with him. Her parents were far more observant than her at that age, but all she could see was oppression. She had a huge argument with her parents at 17, on her 18th birthday, and it climaxed at leaving the family home to live with Jed in his van. This charade lasted for about a month, until she caught him cheating with some skinny, goth-looking thing, and left him to move on to bigger things, and she never looked back. That was, until her grandmother's death.

She looked at the dash. Shit, going to need to stop for gas soon, she thought. She pulled into a Marathon Gas station about 80 miles out of Argentine. After filling up, she had to go inside, because this station was a throwback from the 1970's, when Credit/debit cards were not usable on gas pumps. The man behind the counter was a forty something man with graying blonde hair. "Don't get many visitors up here, most people live down below the bridge in Petoskey or further south. What brings someone like you up here?", he asked. She replied, "I'm heading up to Argentine. My grandmother just died." "I'm sorry to hear that. Will the gas be all?" "I'll take a pack of the Marlboro Lights." "Better watch out, these things'll get you." he said, as she paid and left. Hmph. His words sounded disturbingly prophetic. She still couldn't believe that the bastard Jeb got her into these...

The rest of the drive was rather boring, and the trees became denser around her as she got closer to Argentine. Dilapidated houses could be seen around exhausted mines, now overgrown with ivy and inhabited by who-knows-what. The town got it's name because of the substantial silver deposit discovered here in the 1860's. Mining never really took off until the 1870's, due to the amount of men going off to war against the slaveholding south. Growing up, she heard horror stories of ghost miners still residing in the area's only collapsed mine, which killed 17 miners in the late 1890's. She knew these were bunk, because when she was 13, one of the high school Juniors dared her to go into the mine, all the way to the shaft and back. She did him one better. She went in, had lunch, and challenged him to do the same, which he declined.

Still reminiscing, she hardly saw the deer run out in front of her. "Agh!!" she cried, as she loudly thumped into the large buck. "Oh dammit, she said, fumbling for the door handle. She wasn't worried for the Jeep, the front had a large enough bumper that the deer hadn't really hurt the car. She was more concerned for the deer at this point, anyway. Well now this was odd. The deer was already close to death from exsanguination anyway. The places leaking the most blood were deep gashes which appeared to be caused by claws... Bear, she would guess, but no. Those were too big to be from the type of bear which was common around these parts... What scared her was that the wounds were still fresh! She suddenly clicked into high alert, scanning the forest from where the deer came. Holy Shit! , she thought. She saw a huge shape dart back into the woods, after it noticed she was watching. The thing could have killed her, if it had a mind to! It seemed to be watching her. She yanked open her door and got back into the driver seat, not caring what the speed limit was, only that she had to get out of there! She floored the gas and away she went. The remaining twenty miles to Argentine flew by.

Later that night, Jack Wilson, a biker of some infamy around the area, was having a drink at the local dive, dubbed "the hole" by most. The nights were getting colder, and the place didn't even have a toilet. He felt the sudden urge to relieve his bladder, and cursed under his breath. He finished his beer and threatened the bartender into having a full beer by the time he got back inside.

He could see his steamy breath coming out of his nose, which smelled of beer and bad tequila. Hmph. It was a good thing he had a full-on biker beard, otherwise he would freeze his chin off. Lately the ratio between the amount of beers he could down and how long he could hold it was becoming smaller and smaller, which was a point of anger in his mind. As he walked to the forests' edge to relieve himself, he heard a twig snap. Probably nothing, he thought. Then he heard a tree branch break with a loud crack. Now that was something bigger than your average raccoon, he thought. "Show yourself or fuck off!" he yelled into the forest. He found no response, and the noises stopped. Pussy, he thought, as he zipped up his fly and started walking back to the bar.

Nobody heard his scream as he was pulled back into the primal abyss of the forest.

Chapter 02: Old Friends

Ryan Olsson awoke with a start. He had another one of those damnable night terrors. The same dream every time... Him, running in the woods at night, beneath a sanguine moon, an unknown boogeyman galloping behind him. These started months ago, at the time of the last Lunar eclipse. No trauma triggered these, and he couldn't explain it. Recently, he lost so much sleep that he had to get himself prescribed a sleeping medication to keep himself under for long enough to achieve some level of rest, but these only succeeded in keeping him in his dreams longer. He never went to the doctor to get re-prescribed for this, and the pill bottle lay almost full in his medicine cabinet.

He shrugged. It was only a dream, he thought. He pulled on his Levi's and an old T-shirt, which was covered by his work uniform, a simple mechanic's jacket showing his employment. High School ended with him hoping to be accepted into a college and leaving Argentine, but Fate had been unkind. The college never accepted him, and as a result, he was stuck here. Dale, who happened to be both his father's best friend and the owner of the town's only body shop and car repair, gave him a job working there.

He was grateful, but was always looking for new opportunities.

Standing 6'3", he had strong arms, a well-defined face, and a head of light brown hair. His ice-blue eyes betrayed his Scandinavian ancestry, and he never had any problems getting a girlfriend in High School. He never managed to get the one girl which he thought he wanted a real, sustainable relationship with though. She unfortunately hooked up with an asshole and moved away...

One of his few comforts in his tiny house (which he shared with another man around his age) was his PC, which had been one of his few splurges. He never regretted buying it and he and the computer had been through a lot. This was his only link to anywhere outside Argentine, and he relished being able to link into Facebook and game on Call of Duty once in awhile.

He took time to say good morning to his roommate Mickey on the way out, but he doubted he heard him. Mickey had come home very late and sped into the driveway, nearly breaking one of the brake lights on Ryan's truck. He was very drunk, and when he stumbled into bed, he had muttered of strange things in his sleep. He shook his head. Would Mickey ever age out of that "i'm young and indestructible" phase?

"I think I need a change of scenery." Mickey said, not opening his eyes. "I'm gonna move to California. I have enough money saved up, maybe I can land a job as an actor there."

"Are you serious?" Ryan asked, skepticism showing in his face.

"Serious as a heart attack. I think this is it. I'll start packing today and I'll be gone before you're home."

"Well, all right, I guess... Don't have too much fun in the sun!" laughed Ryan.

-

Pulling his truck into his space at the repair shop, he saw a car he didn't recognize inside the shop. It was a 2010 Jeep Liberty. In such a small town, it became widely known news if someone broke a leg, let alone got such a new and nice car. Must be a tourist coming up for the lakes, he thought.

Dale called out to him. "Ryan, come into the office for a second! We got a job for ya! And I think you'll want to see who drove it here..." Oh no. Is it one of those people he went to school with? He'll never hear the end of it if one of the people he was friends with (who he told that he DEFINITELY would be going to college.) saw him at THIS job.

As he walked into the office, he saw the person in the guest's chair. Wait... he thought, is that...?

No way. It was her. The one who got away. Any doubt disappeared when she turned around to see who was coming. The green eyes gave her away immediately.

"So what's the job, boss?" Ryan said, not taking his eyes off of her.

"Well, if you didn't recognize her already, this is Jess. About twenty miles outside town she hit a deer. The damage isn't too terrible, but the bumper is pretty dented. I need you to fix the bumper and hose off some of the blood from the front." Dale said.

"Yeah, alright. I'll go do that right now." he replied.

He doubted that Jess even remembered him.

-

Jess knew the owner of the body shop, and he gave her a discount, which was quite appreciated on her shoestring budget. She had to spend all her willpower to keep her jaw from dropping when she saw Ryan walk into the office. Most of all, she was shocked, because he was blabbing about getting a college scholarship for his performance on the Football team.

She walked out to the shop floor, where she could watch as her car was being fixed. Not really knowing what to do with herself, she walked out to the back of the building, which jutted up against the forest. For the most part, the entire town touched the forest, unless of course you were smack in the town center.

She lit a cigarette. Her thoughts raced. Most of all, she wondered what the hell Ryan was doing still in Argentine.

-

After he finished with the job, which took him more or less around forty five minutes, he reported back to Dale.

"Well, I don't know where she went, but I can smell tobacco in the air. I'd wager that she's out back." he said.

After leaving, he definitely saw what Dale was talking about. Tobacco Smoke carried for him, and he could tell a smoker from a non-smoker on smell.

He found her sitting on a stump out back, smoking a cigarette.

"Hey." he said. "I finished fixing up your car."

"Oh, thanks. How much do I owe Dale?"

"He said he would round it down to thirty bucks."

They lingered there for a moment in awkward silence, before Ryan broke it.

"So what brings you back to Argentine?" he asked.

"My grandmother died. I have to be here for the funeral tomorrow. After that, I wasn't planning on staying."

"What did you do after graduation?"

"Moved down south. Relatively speaking, of course. I never left Michigan, just went down and got an apartment in Kalamazoo, with my very own dead-end job. Never went to college, I never could hope to pay off student loans."

He felt a little relieved already. He half expected to hear that she was a doctor or a lawyer or something. He immediately felt a kinship with her, that she had been put down by fate as well.

"Do you have somewhere to stay? My roommate's moving out today."

"I'm not planning on shacking up with my parents tonight. I don't know. Is it really OK if I stay at your place?" Jess asked.

"Yeah, it's fine. If you want, you could go there now in your car. There's a spare key taped to the underside of the porch. I'll be home after my shift's over." Ryan said, hoping he didn't sound too eager.

"All right then." Jess said with a smile. "I'll be there, and you don't have to worry about dinner, I can order a pizza. It's on me."

-

As it grew nearer and nearer to dusk, Jess couldn't help feeling a growing sense of unease. She didn't quite understand it, but she felt that that thing out on the road knew her. The way it watched her, where any normal animal would have either attacked or simply fled when it saw her Jeep hit the deer, it simply seemed unnatural.

She shrugged it off and looked around for a phonebook. There was a computer sitting out in the living room which looked slightly dated but still expensive nonetheless. Finally she found what she was looking for, a local phonebook sitting on the end table beside the couch. After a few minutes of flipping through the pages, she found a local Mom and Pop type of business she remembered and dialed the number through the wall phone in the kitchen.

"Luigi's Pizzeria, can I take your order?" answered a voice on the other end of the line.
"Yes, I'd like to order a large pepperoni pizza." she answered. "The total comes to $15.89, and you get a free two liter of your choice of soft drink." "That'll be fine, thanks." "Your order will be there shortly" "Wait, don't you need the address?" Jess asked. "Nah ma'am, your number calls here frequently. We know the place." "Well, alright then, goodbye"

About twenty minutes later, a knock on the front door shook her out of the hazy daydream she had been having on the couch, and she sprang up to answer the door. A teenager stood at the door, holding a large pizza box. She paid him and took the food into the house.

She elected to have a piece of 'za before Ryan got back from work. Wow. The pizza was really good. She found herself being happy that her little town hadn't gotten any bigger. These little hole in the wall restaurants were swiftly disappearing, replaced by the cookie cutter chain restaurants.

It was then she noticed that it had gotten very dark in the time she spent thinking and reminiscing. A flash of headlights coming into the driveway marked Ryan's arrival.

"Hey, I see you got dinner already." He said as he shut the door and locked it behind him.

"Yeah. Now I remember half the reason I wanted to come back, this pizza is amazing!"

"Hahaha, yeah, I can't stop eating it myself. Don't mind me asking, but did you really hit the deer on the way up here so hard that it sprayed blood all over your bumper?"

"Well, here's the strange thing, I thought I had killed the deer by running it down, but I don't think it would have lived much longer if I hadn't. The miserable creature was bleeding like it got attacked by some wild animal."

"You mean like a coyote? A bear?"

"No, If it was that mundane of an explanation, I wouldn't be calling it strange. The wounds were fresh, but they looked much bigger than a wound a bear could cause. When I looked back toward the woods to see what did it, the thing was sitting patiently on the roadside, like it was waiting for me to see it. Then, it dashed back into the woods, faster than the deer ran out of it."

"Okay, now I'm starting to think you're crazy." he laughed.

He grabbed a piece of pizza and poured himself a glass of Pepsi, then went out into the living room and flicked on the TV.

"Sounds like an episode of Monster Hunter, right?" Jess said. "Except I didn't see a man in a suit or a camera crew."

"Well, I wouldn't bother calling the police over it, they're more interested in watching for speeding teenage drivers or patrolling the market for shoplifters. I hate to say it, but you'd best forget about it." Ryan declared.

"Yeah, I suppose so..." she conceded.

-

Later on that night, TV became boring, and for the life of him, Ryan couldn't find a single interesting program to watch on his one hundred plus paid for channels. The discussion eventually migrated to discussing what happened after High School.

"Well, my last few months of High School were spent sleeping in Jed's smelly van and skipping classes, but once things became rocky between him and me, I straightened out my grades and managed to graduate. Finally we broke up and I didn't have the guts to come slinking back to my parents. I just decided to take my chances with the car I already owned and headed south."

"This Jed guy sounds like a real piece of work... wasn't he the one who always smoked marijuana at the old collapsed mine with those idiots from the next town over?" Ryan asked, thinking he had seen him before.

"That's him. God, I still kick myself over him. I haven't heard from or seen him since I looked at him in my rear view mirror driving away." She said, with no attempt to hide the disdain in her voice.

"Well, as you can see for yourself, I never left. I tried to get into a college for my sports merits, but apparently I wasn't good enough. Dale set me up with a job. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate what he's done for me, but I really wish I could leave this town. Something deep down just tells me I never will." He said, with a note of sadness.

"Don't say that, life always changes. I never thought I would be coming back up here, but --"

Just then, a roar was heard outside, and a horrible screeching sound pierced the air.

"What the hell was THAT?" Jess loudly whispered.

"I don't know, but I think that was the neighbors' cat screeching. Let me get something to swing in case I see something, and I'll go check it out." Ryan said, with a slight undertone of fear to his voice.

He grabbed a rather large knife from the kitchen, and flicked on the porch light. He looked outside, but saw nothing. Then he opened the door, and smelled the blood.

-

***This is a work in progress, I am continuing work outside the site. The story is NOT over***