“Many years back,” said the patriarch, Esau. “Uncle Levi, he used to get the moon-sickness pretty bad. One time he done scaled the wall. I think one or two folks from Pike Hollow saw him running toward the woods.”
Logan and Albright exchanged glances. That, perhaps, explained where the rumors came from.
“Ever since,” Esau went on, “we’ve always kept kinfolk with the moon-sickness locked up on full moon nights.”
“Dr. Feverbridge,” Logan said, turning to Nahum. “Did he want anything else from Zephraim—other than the swab from his cheek, I mean?”
Nahum hesitated once again. “Yes. He wanted…” He pantomimed drawing blood from the cubital vein. “Paid us two hundred fifty dollar to do it. I done told you—Rebekah had the chest fever real bad.” He repeated this as if to explain away a lingering guilt.
“I understand,” Logan said. He was still trying to process what he had just witnessed in the garret room: the bizarre transformation—no other word was sufficient—of Zephraim Blakeney. It was like the change the short-tailed shrews had exhibited: except this went beyond mere behavior; there were actual morphological changes, subtle but undeniable. Although he had no idea of what, exactly, the underlying biologic cause was, it was evident there was a genetic trait in the Blakeney clan—perhaps because of inbreeding, perhaps just due to a fluke in their particular genome—that rendered them hypersensitive to moonlight. And Zephraim was the most sensitive of all. No wonder Dr. Feverbridge had sought him out, paid handsomely for samples of blood and DNA. It seemed to dovetail with the lines of research mentioned in both articles Logan had seen on Jessup’s computer screen: the re-creation of moonlight and morphological change.
He realized Nahum was asking him a question and, with effort, pushed these speculations aside. “I’m sorry?”
“I said: can you help us?”
Logan took a deep breath. “I’m not sure. I hope so. I’ll do my best. There are a few things I need to look into—and the sooner the better.”
The group fell silent. Zephraim’s distant howlings became audible once again. The three elders shifted on the rough wooden seat, clearly agitated.
“I have one last question,” Logan said. “Ever since I entered your compound, I’ve sensed fear—fear from all of you. What, exactly, is it that you’re afraid of?”
The three looked at him in disbelief. “What you think, mister?” Nahum said. “If there’s some monster out there—something killing people, tearing ’em up—don’t you think we feared of it, too?”
“And with the moon-sickness running in our kinfolk,” Aaron said, “that critter just might try and seek us out on purpose.”
“That’s enough to frighten anybody,” said Albright. “And if that wasn’t sufficient, there’s the hatred and distrust of all the locals—not to mention the plans Krenshaw is putting together.” He stood up. “Thank you all—for letting us on your land, for trusting us…and for letting us see Zephraim. We’ll be going now.”
They walked back down the path to the massive wall of twigs. Nahum undid a spool of coiled wire, opened the carefully hidden door, then nodded solemnly to both of them in turn. They ducked out through the opening and the door was immediately closed behind them. With no light at all now save for that of the full moon, filtering down through the branches, the surrounding forest was a woven braid of almost unrelieved black. Albright reached into his pocket, pulled out a flashlight, and turned it on.
“Do you really think you’re going to be able to follow that path?” Logan asked. “Even with a flashlight? I could barely make it out in daylight.”
“Are you trying to be insulting?” Albright replied. “That’s the second time today you’ve questioned my woodcraft. Watch this.” He snapped off the light and returned it to his pocket. “I’ll take us back to the road using nothing but the moonlight. Not as impressive perhaps as what you just witnessed in there, but I think it’ll stop you from asking a third time. Put your hand on my shoulder now—wouldn’t want you getting lost. And for God’s sake, move as quietly as you can: it’s a full moon, remember, and whatever killed Jessup and the others is out there—somewhere.”
33
They walked all the way back to Albright’s pickup and drove the short distance down 3A to his house, without speaking. When Albright got out, Logan did the same, automatically following him inside.
“Well, what do you think?” Albright said, breaking the silence at last. “I’ll bet even you’ve never seen anything like that before. I know I haven’t.”
Logan just shook his head. “I guess I’ve got some work to do.”
“Well, I suggest that you hurry it up.” Albright took the rifle off the wall, grabbed a box of bullets from the mantelpiece, and loaded it. Then he leaned the rifle up against the fireplace. “Because tomorrow’s the last night of the full moon—and it sounds like our friend Krenshaw has a real hard-on to prosecute some, ah, justice.”
Logan thanked him for his time and effort, then left the house and drove back to his own cabin at Cloudwater. He had a great deal to think about—and not much time to do it in.
First, he accessed the Internet and looked into possible inherited conditions that might explain what was afflicting Zephraim. The darkening of the skin, he suspected, might be connected to melanin—perhaps a hyperpigmentation of brown eumelanin that was—bizarrely—produced by reflected moonlight instead of direct sunlight. If this was the case, then the phenomenon of photoprotection—suites of molecular mechanisms designed to protect humans from damaging sunlight—might be working in reverse, so to speak, endowing him with actual physical benefits from the moon’s beams. If a sudden and dramatic spike in melanin production was responsible, then neuromelanin—a strange and little-understood polymer that was found in the brain—might also be responsible for his marked change in behavior, especially if it could be linked to a spike in the secretion of a hormone like adrenaline.
Along the same lines, the distended nails that Logan had thought he’d seen emerge from the ends of Zephraim’s fingers could be attributed to hyperkeratosis—which, since it was also known to produce skin irritations such as acne and keratosis pilaris, could account for the weals he’d seen appear on Zephraim’s skin.
And then of course there was Ambras syndrome, or hypertrichosis—the “werewolf syndrome”—that caused abnormal hair growth over the entire body. The bearded ladies of the freak shows of elder days were frequently sufferers of this affliction.