One Night Under the Moon

CHAPTER 5

Tom Carson locks himself in his study every day studying about werewolves and other supposedly mythical creatures, he has volumes and volumes of encyclopedias and other ancient books that deal with mythology and lycanthropy opened all over his reading table, only coming out to have breakfast and sometimes even eating inside his study.

Martha Carson has been having a hard time acting. like he does not suspect that her grandson is a Werewolf, when she is around him, she ver-scrutinizes every little thing he does now, she goes to all his baseball games and makes sure there is no suspicious person following or watching him or her.

She often wonders if anybody else suspects what she suspects about Jake. If anybody else thinks the strength and speed that her fourteen years old grandson has is not natural, she also tries to give herself a little bit of hope and says to herself maybe he is just s very gifted child, I mean Wilt. Chamberlain was quite as fast and stronger than everybody his age, as a teenager, maybe this is the case with Jake.

"Have you witnessed anything strange or weird about your kid?" Martha Carson asks Kelly as they sit on the patio looking into the horizon under the evening sun, they are both drinking very salty margaritas, Kelly's father is not home from work yet and Jake is out playing baseball with friends

Kelly has come to visit during spring break, it's only a few months to Jake's birthday and so she was discussing with her mother how she may extend her stay at home so she can be around for her son's fifteenth birthday party. She hasn't had time to be around him since she went away to study in Berkeley, California.

They were talking about birthday plans for Jake's fifteenth when Martha suddenly asks her daughter the question, and it takes Kelly by surprise as she stops for a few minutes and says nothing, just looking her mother in the eyes and trying to figure out where the hell the question came from.

"I mean asides from his excess sleepwalking, I don't think there's anything wrong with Jake, is he ill or does he fall ill easily, is it the flu oh my god they told me that missing that one vaccination would not hurt him, that's what the nurse at the hospital told me..." Kelly would have gone all day on and on if her mother did not stop her.

"How about the excess hair after he showers?" Martha asks, cutting off Kelly halfway as she spoke.

"I have told you and Dad before, Jacob was a very hairy person, he had hair everywhere," Kelly replies.

"..and what else you know about this Jacob guy, who has still not contacted you after fifteen years, fifteen long years..." Martha shoots at Kelly, she pauses, she had no response, and she doesn't know what to say.

She lifts her glass of margarita and places her lips on the glass and gulps the green liquid down, squinting her eyes as the salt hits her tongue, then she averts her eyes from meeting her mom's.

"You and I both know it is possible that it's not just about being a hairy person, tell me you don't know that whenever the month is about to end, there is usually more hair and usual, and maybe you don't know the moon becomes full during the ending days of the month," Martha pauses, searched her daughter's eyes, sips her margarita, Kelly does the same by instinct and Martha continues speaking.

"The hair is like a German shepherd or two made use of your bathtub..."

"So what are you saying in essence, Mom?" Kelly begins to feel attacked like maybe her mistake fifteen years ago at Camp Logan in Florida had brought a curse upon their family, and maybe that's the angle her mother is coming from.

"I mean I was young and dumb back then, and of course, I never even wanted to go to that stupid camp anyway, you and Dad made me do it even after telling him I didn't feel like I belonged there, countless times, he still made me stay and now you want to blame me for what..."

Martha cuts her off, "That's not what I'm saying my dear, I am trying to say, we need to protect him, if the government finds out there's something strange about him, they will take him away, kill him, lock him up or maybe torture him in the name of experiments in some lab in Alaska...who knows what they will do to him..."

"So you are saying my son, your grandson is what Yeti, or Chewbacca?" Kelly asks, one would mistake the questions for sarcasm if not for the tone of her voice, it was stern, a bit shaky but still stern nonetheless.

"Kelly, your father thinks that Jacob, the boy from Camp Logan must have been...a ... Uh," Martha struggles to complete her sentence, Kelly searches her mother's face as if she could find the rest of the statement written on it, but end up finding nothing and has to wait for her mother to say the rest of the sentence herself, with her mouth.

"A what, mom?" Kelly prompts.

" Well dear, your dad thinks Jacob must have been a werewolf and passed the genes down to Jake," Martha whispers as if she was mindful of the proverbial ears that walls are said to have.

"But wouldn't I have been affected, if I had s*x with a werewolf, won't I have turned into one myself, isn't that how it works in the movies?

"This is not the movie Kelly," says Martha. " This is real life, and I'm very serious about this..."

"Exactly Mom, this is not the movies and so my son cannot be a werewolf, because they do not exist," Kelly reiterates.