The Eye of the Moon Read online

  ‘There’s somebody at the door,’ she hissed.

  ‘What?’

  Before the other could reply, there came a loud knock at the door of the trailer.

  ‘That’s for you, Beth,’ Annabel said quietly.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘By all accounts, I think the wicked witch has found you. You should answer the door.’

  Beth felt a cloak of fear fall over her. ‘My stepmother is here?’

  Annabel nodded. ‘She has come to take you home.’

  ‘Oh no. I promised JD I’d wait for him. Can’t we pretend I’m not here?’

  Three more booming knocks were heard over the roar of the rain as a fist pounded on the door. Then Beth heard the voice that had always chilled every nerve in her body.

  ‘Beth! By God, I know you’re in there! I saw you through the window. You’re coming home with me right now. You just wait ‘til I get my fuckin’ hands on you, you little bitch …’

  Beth stood up and walked over to the door, readying herself for the mental and physical assault she was about to receive from her irate stepmother.

  As she reached out for the doorknob, an action that would undoubtedly initiate the torrent of abuse that was to follow, Annabel quietly made one last comment.

  ‘Beth, you have blood on your hands.’

  It was strange thing to say, even by the fortune teller’s standards, but it brought the desired reaction. Beth looked down at her palms. There was no blood. So she turned her hands over. Still no sign of a single drop. She turned back to look quizzically at the strange, ugly woman.

  ‘I can’t see any,’ she said.

  ‘But you will, my dear. You will.’

  Nine

  JD and Casper fought their way through the torrential rain for twenty minutes before they finally made it home. The rented accommodation in which they lived with their mother, Maria, a small house in a rackety row of two-storeys, was in Santa Mondega’s red-light district. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, it was all they could afford. And secondly, their mother was a whore. By reputation and by trade. JD knew it, although Casper had really no idea. One day it might sink in and leave him with some bad mental scars, but that day seemed quite a way off for now.

  JD had never expressed any disapproval at his mother’s trade. From the moment he had realized what she did for a living he had also understood the reasons why. This wasn’t a career she had chosen for herself. She was a single mother trying to provide for two growing sons. JD’s own father had run off when he was a small child, without offering up even a half-decent explanation. Things had picked up briefly when his mother had lived with another man, named Russo, who had fathered Casper, but all too soon he too had run off. Russo had returned to his ex-wife by whom he had another child, a son named Bull, who was of a similar age to JD. They still lived near by.

  Their front door was hidden away down a dark alleyway, and to get to it they would normally have had to walk past a number of hookers, pimps and drug dealers. It wasn’t scary for them because everyone knew who they were. They were Maria’s kids, and pretty much everyone who hung in the alleyway either worked with, behind, underneath or on top of their mother at some time or another. Nice folks, though, really. Tonight, with the wind and rain as hard as they were, no one was around, so they made it to their front door without the usual meet-and-greet session.

  JD turned his key in the lock and pushed the door open to let Casper run on in. He pulled down the hood of his new robe and allowed it to rest around his shoulders, and then followed his younger brother inside. They stepped into the small entrance hall, its dirty red carpet already muddied, no doubt by a few clients who had dropped by earlier. The mud was barely noticed by either boy though, for what greeted them inside was carnage. Casper became instantly distressed and confused. One look round was all it needed for JD to make a snap decision for his younger brother’s benefit.

  ‘Casper, get outside,’ he snapped, with uncharacteristic sharpness.

  Their house wasn’t big, and it would not take long to find more signs of whatever unpleasantness had recently taken place, so JD wanted Casper out of the way before his innocent eyes lit on anything that might give him nightmares. Even as he was speaking JD’s own eyes were taking in more and more disturbing signs. And Casper looked utterly bewildered. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

  JD grabbed his little brother’s head and turned it to face him. ‘Listen carefully,’ he said. ‘I want you to run down the road to your father’s house. When you get there, tell him something has happened and he needs to come down here right away. But you stay there with Bull, okay? Don’t you come back, just send your dad over here. I think we’ve been burgled.’

  ‘What about you?’ There was a catch in the younger boy’s voice as fears threatened to overwhelm him.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, y’hear. I’m goin’ to help Mom clean up here.’

  ‘Where is Mom?’

  ‘She’s probably gone to police headquarters. Casper! Look at me!’

  The kid had momentarily fixed his gaze on the wall behind JD. At his brother’s sharp call he looked back into his eyes. ‘Is that … ? Is that blood on the wall?’ he asked.

  ‘No. It’s probably red paint. Burglars often paint houses red when they rob them so they know not to come back.’

  ‘I wanna stay here with you.’ Caspar’s lower lip was trembling now, and he swallowed hard.

  ‘I know you do, kid, but you gotta go. I’ll be along to pick you up again later. I always come and get you, don’t I? I know I’m always late, but I always turn up in the end, don’t I?’

  Casper looked sad. ‘Not always.’

  ‘Well, I will from now on. Now hurry up. Quickly. I want you to run as fast as you can, and don’t look back until you get to your dad’s house. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ Casper reached out and hugged JD tightly. JD knew his brother was scared so he hugged him back for a few seconds and stroked his thick brown hair, before ushering him out of the door.

  In the blood-drenched hall, despite his terror and alarm, JD felt thankful that Casper had only seen the blood on the wall. He had not noticed the vampire standing in the kitchen over to their left, grinning evilly at them with his bloodied fangs on display.

  Ten

  ‘I swear you’re gonna be sorry for making me come out here and get you,’ Olivia Jane hissed at Beth as she tugged her by her long brown hair up the winding path that led up to their home atop the hill. Beth noticed that her stepmother looked a terrible mess, which was extremely unusual, to say the least. She put it down to the wind and the rain, and no doubt to the fact that she was extremely agitated.

  ‘But, Mother, I met a boy,’ she pleaded. ‘I promised I’d meet him at the pier at one o’clock. Can’t I just go back till then and then come straight home?’

  ‘Don’t you dare talk back to me, missy. You’re coming home and that’s the end of it. I didn’t spend fifteen years raising you just for you to go and mess things up for me at the last minute.’

  The storm saw to it that both women were drenched and exhausted by the time they made it to the front door. Beth’s blue-and-white dress was stuck to her after its soaking in the rain. She was glad that no one was around, because it had become almost transparent, leaving little to the imagination. Her stepmother was wearing a long red robe that Beth had never seen her in before. It too was stuck to her like a second skin.

  When they reached the front door of their enormous home, Olivia Jane pulled a large key from a pocket on her robe and turned it in the lock, before pushing the door open. She pulled her desperate, stumbling daughter inside with her and pushed her roughly on to the floor. Beth skidded face first on the red carpet and felt it burn the skin of her nose and chin.

  Rolling over on to her side she was alarmed to see that they had visitors. Through the doorway to her left that led into the sitting room she saw a group of men and women wearing masks and long robes, white for the men, red for the wom
en. One of the men, wearing an ornate ram’s-head mask, stepped through the doorway and into the hall to stand next to Olivia Jane.

  ‘So this is our sacrificial virgin?’ a deep voice asked from behind the mask. ‘Isn’t she pretty!’

  ‘Not for much longer.’ Beth saw her stepmother’s lips move, and heard her voice, but could not quite believe what she was hearing. She watched as the masked man handed a small golden dagger to her stepmother. Olivia Jane accepted it willingly, and looked down at her terrified stepdaughter with a face of pure evil.

  ‘Fifteen years I’ve put up with your whining,’ she hissed. ‘Fifteen years I’ve fed you, clothed you, taught you, listened to your stupidities. Now it’s time for you to repay me, to prove your value – and for me to take my place as High Priestess.’ She glanced up at the masked man by her side and allowed herself a smile. In response, he squeezed her thigh playfully.

  ‘Go on. Do it,’ he urged. ‘The witching hour is almost over.’

  As if to confirm what he had said, the bells of a clock on a church in the city below began to chime. From her place on the floor Beth saw the smile disappear from her mother’s face and the look of evil return. Then the man spoke out again from beneath his mask.

  ‘Quickly, Olivia Jane. She must be sacrificed before the bells stop ringing.’

  Beth watched in horror as the bedraggled, almost unrecognizable woman lunged down at her, thrusting out the sharp golden dagger, ready to end her stepdaughter’s life.

  Eleven

  ‘What the fuck have you done?’ JD demanded.

  Kione grinned back at him so broadly that his bloodied gums were exposed, revealing pieces of gristle stuck in the gaps between his teeth. His raggy brown clothes were spattered with blood and clumps of matted hair, more of which was visible beneath his long fingernails. He was leaning back against the kitchen worktop looking insufferably smug and contented, a complete reversal of how he had felt after his recent encounter with JD.

  ‘You should have killed me when you had the chance,’ he sniggered. ‘Now look at what you’ve lost.’ He gestured at something to his left, inside the kitchen. Although JD knew he was about to see something horrific he stepped into the kitchen and looked around the doorway at what the vampire was indicating.

  Then he vomited. He doubled over as the hot liquid flew up through his body and out of his mouth, spattering the white tiles on the kitchen floor.

  And Kione laughed. Kione cackled.

  JD’s mother Maria was lying in a pool of blood on the tiled floor, a gaping hole visible in her neck, blood pumping out of it at an alarming rate. She wasn’t dead, but she was staring up at the ceiling in a clear state of shock, her mouth working feebly as she struggled to take in air. Her white blouse was soaked in claret, and her short skirt had been forced up above her waist. It was all too obvious that she had been violated in every way possible by the perverted creature in her kitchen. Although JD had no wish to know the exact details, it was obvious that she had suffered indescribable physical, sexual and mental tortures at the hands of this beast. The physical signs certainly indicated as much, and the look on her face was one that would haunt him for ever, etched into his memory like words carved in stone. His instinctive reaction was to rush to her side. Kione expected as much and in the blink of an eye slammed him backwards into the cupboards that lined the wall behind him, pinning him up against them, preventing him from reaching her.

  ‘See what you get?’ the vampire hissed. ‘You fuck with me, and I fuck your mother. And when I’m done with you and your whore of a mother, I’ll have your fuckin’ brother for afters. What do you think about that – Scarecrow?’

  The long bony fingers on the vampire’s left hand were wrapped around JD’s neck, keeping the air from his lungs. With his other hand he had the boy’s left arm pinned down on the kitchen worktop to prevent him from pushing him back. Frantically, JD reached out behind him with his right hand, hoping to find a weapon of sorts on the sideboard which was pressing hard into his back. His hand scoured blindly along the surface, searching for the kitchen knives that Maria used so often when preparing meals. They were never easily accessible, for the boys’ mother was careful not to let Casper get his hands on them in case he injured himself.

  Kione squeezed harder, then harder still, watching in glee as his young opponent’s face began to drain of colour. Then he leaned in, hungry for a bite of the white flesh of JD’s neck.

  As the vampire’s jaws opened to their widest and he prepared to gorge on one of the bulging veins, he was suddenly struck by an agonizing pain. Kione had felt terrible pain before, but this was about as bad as he had ever known. He screamed in shock and pain and confusion. JD’s right hand had caught hold of a sharp chopping knife that had lain concealed behind a rusty old chrome-plated toaster. With one violent stab he had succeeded in thrusting it deep into Kione’s left eye. Right through the pupil. Blood in all directions, followed by a disgusting popping sound. The vampire’s left eye was plucked from its socket as JD heaved back on the knife. It was now stuck firmly to the end of the blade, a short length of severed optic nerve still attached.

  In his agony, the vampire released his grip on JD’s throat and staggered back. He was visibly distressed, his face a tormented mask of utter shock. His legs seemed to have become like those of a baby giraffe trying to take its first steps, wobbling under the strain of holding itself up. Again Kione screamed aloud, like a small child suddenly denied its favourite toy. One of his hands was pressed over the gaping hole where his eye had once been, trying in vain to stem the flow of blood seeping through his fingers.

  JD was unable to take immediate advantage of the bloodsucker’s predicament, for he was bent double trying desperately to get his breath back. It took three or four huge, sucking attempts before his windpipe opened sufficiently for a great gulp of oxygen to storm in and fill his lungs. Hauling himself back upright he took one look at Kione and then at the knife in his hand. He had no time to formulate much of a sophisticated plan, but instinct took over. He grabbed the eyeball on the end of the knife, ripped it off and tossed it on to the floor. Before it could bounce or roll away he stamped on it, squelching it into the tiles. Then, holding the knife low in front of him, he readied himself for any fresh lunge from the vampire, who was screaming hysterically and making a godawful racket as he swung wildly around, smashing or knocking down anything in the kitchen that wasn’t nailed down.

  This was not a situation the sixteen-year-old was familiar with. He’d never held a knife aggressively before. He’d never stabbed anyone before. He’d never plucked anyone’s eyeball out and stamped it into the floor before. But then, nor had he ever been confronted in his own home by a vampire that had just raped his mother and bitten large chunks of flesh out of her.

  Kione turned towards him, preparing to make another attack, although he now had a good deal less stomach for the fight. This fuckin’ kid had bested him twice now, and his confidence was waning fast. In response, JD threw the knife at him in the manner of a knife thrower in a circus. Holding the blade by its tip, he raised the knife above his shoulder and threw it handle first. It spun over once in the air before embedding itself in the vampire’s remaining eye. Once again blood spurted out and Kione let out a high-pitched scream of fury, terror and despair, as his world turned to total darkness in an instant. The next thing he felt was his head hitting the kitchen floor as he fell backwards. This was followed by JD’s knee pushing down into his chest to prevent him from climbing to his feet. Last of all, he suffered the unpleasant agitation that came with the vile popping sound, indicating that his right eye, too, had been pulled from its socket.

  The next fleeting sensation he experienced was a savage blow to the head that rendered him unconscious. A feeling he would get used to.

  Twelve

  From her position of subjugation on the red carpet in the entrance hall, Beth threw her hands up to defend herself, turning her head away and closing her eyes as she did so. The bell on t
he church clock was still chiming in the city below, the sound climbing above the roar of the wind and rain. The young girl who had already endured such a rollercoaster of an evening was now on the downward track again. She screamed aloud as she felt the blade of the golden dagger slice through the soft skin of her right cheek, cutting right through until she felt the tip of it scrape against the teeth inside. The blade ripped through three inches of her face before it was withdrawn, just before it reached the corner of her mouth. She opened her eyes, but they were now filling up with tears of pain, so that it was almost impossible to make out where the dagger was. With her hands flailing desperately, she hoped she might grab hold of her stepmother’s arm before she was stabbed again.

  She saw the flash of bright gold as the dagger swung at her face a second time and instinctively used her right arm to try to bat it away. At the same time, and quite by chance, she managed to seize a handful of the red robe her stepmother was wearing. She pulled on it as hard as she could, and felt the older woman lose her footing as a result. Olivia Jane fell forward on to her terrified stepdaughter, and the struggle between them came to an end.

  The chiming of the church bell stopped, and for a moment all that could be heard was the pattering of the rain outside. Then the leader of the cult, the tall man in the ram’s-head mask, spoke on behalf of his clan members who had gathered in the hall behind him to watch the sacrifice.

  ‘Olivia Jane?’ he intoned solemnly into the sudden silence. ‘You okay?’

  Slowly, Olivia Jane Lansbury rolled soggily off the body of her stepdaughter, to lie on her back on the red carpet. She did not move again. The golden dagger was lodged in the side of her neck, blood seeping out over her shoulder into her hair. From beside her, Beth’s panic-stricken, blood-soaked face stared up at the masked devil worshippers in her home. One further glance sideways at her stepmother’s bloodied, dying form was enough for her. With a speed born of sheer terror, she leapt to her feet and rushed out through the front door, which had remained partly open throughout the ordeal. Back out in to the rain she went, covered in her stepmother’s blood and also her own, from the horrific face wound inflicted upon her. Her only thought was to head for the pier, hoping to find comfort in the arms of JD, the only person in the world she felt she could trust.