Beneath a Winter Moon

  Beneath a Winter Moon

  Winter Moon Publishing □ West Monroe, LA

  Copyright © 2007 by Winter Moon Publishing and Shawson M Hebert. All rights reserved.

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Winter Moon Publishing and/or Shawson M Hebert, unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. Address any inquiries to: Reference Permissions, Winter Moon Publishing, 201 Revere Rd, West Monroe, LA 71291-9471.

  ISBN: 978-0-615-39298-1

  Everything and everyone in this novel is fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  For Lori

  Thank You!

  Preface

  About writing:

  I started writing when I was eight years old. My first story was a book based on Star Trek. It was twelve pages, written with a number two pencil on college ruled sheets of paper, twenty-eight lines per page, (I believe). I created the cover for the book from white poster board, and am sure that the cover was much better than the story. Anyway, I was hooked from the moment I realized I could make the characters do and say anything that I wanted. They were mine, and they were fun! By 1979 I had switched to typeface by way of my sister’s typewriter. I spent afternoons and evenings banging away at the keys…producing everything from short stories to a, (colossal, at the time), 143-page novel based (again) on Star Trek.

  I had not written anything in decades when I decided to give it another go. Something clicked in me a few years ago and I decided that it was time.

  About the story:

  When I was a kid, I was fascinated by werewolf lore. The half man, half wolf monsters were my favorite among the fabled creatures of the night...and the most terrifying, (as far as I was concerned). Come to think of it, in those childhood days I believed werewolves were absolutely real.

  One of my sisters married when I was ten years old and after meeting my new brother-in-law, I was convinced he was a werewolf. As far as I was concerned, he met the criteria perfectly. He had all the symptoms, of which I had memorized after purchasing a book titled, Meet the Werewolf. His eyebrows met to a point above his nose. His middle and third fingers were very nearly the same length, he liked rare steak, wore dark sunglasses, and he was hairy.

  I was quite the coward about it all, though. I didn’t have the courage to try to convince my parents. After all, I knew they would not believe me...and I figured that my mom would likely break out her infamous “red belt” and tan my hide.

  My poor sister had married a werewolf and although he seemed nice enough, I just knew we must all certainly be doomed before the end of their visit.

  Well, we survived...and it turned out that he was not a werewolf after all, for which I was glad, as I found that I really liked him...(and I had no idea where to find any silver bullets for my pellet gun).

  I joke with my wife and kids about belief in werewolves, (okay, I joke with everyone about it), and I still, on occasion, have some terrifying werewolf nightmares—leftovers from an obviously, (as you have just seen), over-zealous imagination as a child. But, I understand that the Rou Garou and/or Loup Garou are purely mythical. Of course, I do.

  Sure, there have been thousands burned at the stake after having been found guilty of lycanthropy. Sure, it is widely accepted that God made King Nebuchadnezzar into a wolf as recounted in the book of Daniel. Sure, there are hundreds of reports throughout the world of sightings of these creatures…

  But we know they aren’t real. Right?

  Right.

  Werewolf lore has taken such drastic turns in my lifetime that when I started this book, I knew that I would want to do an about face from what I feel is an unnecessary expansion of the basics...and return lycanthropy back to the ugly, uncontrollable curse that it truly is.

  I have had enough of the silly werewolves of Hollywood, for example. With the exception of a very short list of films, most have been—well—silly. I speak of werewolves who flip the bird to its would-be victims, werewolves who form armies to fight for social justice with the hopes that they can get their fair share of representation and station among the ‘elite’ ruling class of the night, and werewolves who morph, day or night, in order to protect certain northwestern American clans from elitist, day-walking vampires who seem to have better lives than mortals could ever hope for. I prefer the werewolf stories of old.

  Since I was a teenager, I have had a specific story in mind. That story has changed over the years and indeed, I changed it three or four times just during the two-year effort to put it to paper. What is left of the original story is more complicated than my original, but also more widely inclusive and more involved with the back-story of the evil antagonist(s).

  I hope that you enjoy it.

  Note: This book has been edited by the author, only.

  Shawson M Hebert

  Prologue

  Scotland 1852

  Alastair McLeod awoke with a start at the myriad of loud voices. He squinted. The early morning sun was blinding. Indeed, the harsh rays were painful as his eyes tried to adjust to the bright intrusion. He squinted again and looked into a bright, blue sky bordered by the heads of men whose scowling faces stared down at him.

  What is all of this, he wondered. Where was he? What the bloody hell had happened to him? He propped himself up on his elbows, and the scowling faces moved back a bit, but still hovered. The talking heads spoke in a language he did not understand, but one that he realized he should indeed know.

  The language was Gaelic and was Alastair’s own native tongue. Had he been raised as a Scot, Alastair would have learned both English and his own language. As it was, he could not understand anything they said. He brushed aside the pang of guilt. He was His Majesty’s man, by God, and he spoke His Majesty’s language—as well as French and Latin. He needn’t feel embarrassed for not knowing the language of peasants.

  But…what was happening? He slowly stood up—his bones creaking in protest. The crowd of men parted and a lone voice interrupted a brief moment of silence.

  “A bit of ale, for you, then, sir?”

  Finally, a language he could understand. The man behind the voice, a scruffy, brown-toothed peasant, held out a wooden bowl. Ordinarily, Alastair, one of the king’s taxmen, would have slapped the bowl away with impudence—he did not drink from the bowls of mere peasants. However, this was different. He snatched up the bowl without so much as a word and drained its warm, gritty contents. Only then could he summon words from his own parched and sore throat.

  “What…what is going on? What has happened and where am I?”

  The crowd, now standing some distance away, lowered their voices at the sound of Alastair’s questions, but their unintelligible speech quickened and took on a more serious tone.

  “You don’t kin what happened to you of the night past? Nay a thing?” the brown-toothed peasant asked.

  “Of course not, you bloody fool!” Alastair snapped. “If I remembered…if I knew why I woke up here,” he stopped and looked around. “Wait—where am I, man? What is happening, here?” He paused and then shouted so that the huddled crowd would be sure to hear and know his anger, “Have I been waylaid?”

  The murmurs grew more intense. One of the peasants pointed at Alastair. Alastair looked at the peasant and saw that the man was motioning to his shirt. Alastair looked down at the left side of the blouse to find it completely covered in blood and ripped open. He fainted.

  He awoke—and again found that he was in an unfamiliar setting—lying on a straw mattress covered by a stinking wo
ol blanket. He saw his clothes hanging on rafters above him. His shirt had been stitched, washed and hung, free of the gruesome bloodstains, from a rafter over the bed. A woman stoked a fire in a stone hearth, while a man—the same brown-toothed peasant from earlier, rocked back and forth in an ugly rocking chair made from knotted wood. The man stopped rocking and poked the woman’s hip.

  She scowled at him, and then noticed that Alastair was awake. She quickly snatched the shirt from the rafters, and then a set of breeches—Alastair’s breeches. “Good God, woman…” Alastair muttered, realizing that he had been fully undressed. He liked the way the woman looked. She was tall, slender, and not at all ugly. In fact, he had to admit to himself, as he felt a slight tug at his loins…she was quite beautiful. Her jet black hair was striking, the length of it past her lower back. He suddenly longed to press his face into that hair...

  “My apologies, sir’” the woman spoke in a soft, Scottish brogue. “I was told to wash and repair your things, and so I did.” She made a shooing motion at the man in the rocking chair, who nodded and opened the door to the small home. “We will step out now, so you can make yourself proper.” She lifted her tattered dress so that it would not drag the dirt floor as she hurried outside. She glanced back at Alastair and bowed her head as she closed the door behind her.

  Alastair dressed in a hurry, putting the woman out of his mind while trying to recall anything that would help put the pieces of this puzzle together. He had been at the Inn, sitting across from the three village elders. They were short on the taxes that were due, and had been begging Alastair to give them another season to make up the debt.

  Then, memories became blurry, and some were missing. As he pulled on his breeches, he stopped and looked down at his shirt. He took his right index finger and ran it along the stitching where a large, misshapen, ugly tear had once been. Then he stripped off the shirt, letting his breeches fall back to the floor, and checked his shoulder for injury. There was none. The blood he saw earlier must have been from someone else…and his shirt must have been torn during some event that took place in the Inn’s tavern—perhaps a brawl. God knew that these people were a wild, untamed bunch, as likely to go at one another, as they were to get along.

  Something about the pattern of the new stitching bothered him. He stared at the shirt in his hands. The largest tear, which was shaped like that of an upside down horseshoe, seemed ordinary enough—but he looked in puzzlement at a series of holes below the horseshoe shape, six or seven in all. The woman had simply pinched each hole together and stitched them—but the pattern made his skin crawl. It resembled teeth marks.

  Then, recollection lit up his mind like the flash of a musket. By God, he had been attacked by something…perhaps a large dog? He replayed the memory over and over, and each time recalled a bit more. The people in the Inn’s tavern began screaming and running about in a panic, some trying to get to the door behind Alastair’s table and some diving behind the small bar in the center of the room.

  Alastair had stood up to protest and to see what was happening—no—that wasn’t right. He’d stood up to make for the door when something—some massive, foul breathed thing, had slammed into his back with a huge snarl, forcing him to the floor. He recalled hot, foul breath and thick fur at his throat. He had felt the huge jaws of…the creature clamp down on his shoulder. Was it a wolf? Good Christ! There hasn’t been a wolf in the Highlands for a century! Still, that was his impression.

  His mind was wiped clean of any memory short of waking up outside at dawn. He thought that he must have ran outside the Inn to get away from the beast, but then why had he not been taken back inside? And, why was he here in this man’s hovel when he should be in the comforts of his own room at the Inn?

  He finished putting on his clothes and shoes and stepped outside into the cool morning to find the man and woman waiting. The young man looked at Alastair, and then at the ground. The woman, obviously his wife, never looked up. She avoided his gaze as she walked back into the house. Alastair waited for the man, who was still standing outside with him, to say something, but the peasant merely continued to stare at the ground. This annoyed Alastair, greatly, and so he said so. He wanted answers.

  “What is your name, sir?” Alastair demanded.

  The man finally looked up, trying not meet Alastair’s gaze. “I am Camran Shaw, sir.”

  The peasant’s piercing blue eyes startled Alastair. He had never seen such blue eyes. “Ah, good. Well, then, Camran—can you tell me why I am here? I am grateful for your hospitality,” he coughed. “Such as it is…but why am I not in my room at the Inn? Where are my belongings? What of my servant and the officer assigned to me? Surely, he should be standing now, outside this very door.” Alastair paused, red-faced when Camran made no effort to answer. “I must insist that you tell me exactly what happened last night.” He paused, and when no answer came, demanded, “At once!”

  “It weren’t last night, sir. It were the past night before.”

  This revelation stunned Alastair. “Do you mean to say that I have been incapacitated for more than a day?”

  “Inca…incapas…?” Camran stammered.

  “Unconscious, asleep,” Alastair said gruffly.

  “Yes, sir. That’s it sir, exactly. We took you in after you collapsed the past day’s morning. You’ve been here, sleeping, ever since.” He paused, looking frightened. “We took nothing from you, sir…and we made you to drink when you would, and we kept you warm.” He pointed at the closed door. “My wife stitched up your clothing and then boiled and cleaned them.”

  Alastair settled a bit, looking back down at the repaired blouse, and then straightening it. “Yes, yes. I thank you, Camran, and I do not accuse you. I am merely looking for answers. I recall being attacked by a mongrel of some sort, though it must have been another poor soul that was injured…for I am healthy as an ox.” He didn’t give Camran time to answer, “Though I admit I cannot understand why I would have slept so soundly and for so long.” He looked around, trying to get his bearings and determine just where ‘this place’ was. “Now, tell me…what about my servant and my officer?”

  “As for the sleeping, sir—it were a fever. It’s gone now, but it were bad this past day and night.” He lowered his eyes. “I should not be the one to tell you of your servant and officer, but I cannot deny your insistence, sir.” He hesitated, but saw that Alastair would not wait, so he continued. “They are dead, sir—killed by the same beast that attacked you.”

  Alastair’s mouth dropped open. He did not know how to respond. He had known that something was amiss, else his officer would be here, and his servant as well, though undoubtedly the servant was less dependable.

  “Killed? By an animal? In the Highlands?” Alastair was astonished. The nearest things to animal-related deaths up here in these lands were being trampled by cattle or perhaps falling off a horse. Could he take this man at his word? No, no. of course not. He would get to that Inn and learn just what was what. Now, however, he needed to keep calm and deal with what was currently in front of him.

  “I see.” He paused. “Well, truly I do not, but I will come to understand, and so will His Majesty, of that I am certain.” He patted Camran on the shoulder. He believed the best course of action at the moment was to keep calm and remain in charge. “Your countrymen killed the animal, then?”

  Camran looked at the ground. “Old Thomas McRae put some holes in it just after it finished with your two officers—but no sire, it weren’t killed.”

  “I see. How did I come to wake up outside the Inn and not inside—in the tavern where I recall being attacked?

  “It drug you outside. It were as if it wanted you, especially. By then, your officers were doin their best to get it off you.”

  “The beast killed no one else? Wounded no one else?”

  Camran shook his head.

  “I see. Well, it almost appears as though someone purposely sent that thing to meet me.” He thought about that for a moment. If
someone wanted him dead, then the sooner he got out of here, the better. “Well, then, Camran…can you escort me back to the Inn, where I can ask the Keep what the devil is going on with my property?”

  “Aye, sir. I can.” He looked down at the ground again, and shuffled some dirt around with his foot. Alastair balked at the homemade leather shoe, and then saw Camran’s reluctance.

  “Good Lord, man! What is it, now? What have you not told me? What more could there be?”

  “Well, sir. I know you are His majesty’s man, and of a higher station than any man here…”

  “I should say so…” Alastair interrupted.

  “Aye. Well, the thing is…sir, the Innkeeper will not let you come in. Your belongings have been placed outside the Inn,” he held up his hands at Alastair’s once more open mouth. “…under constant guard, sir. I would not let them bring the property to my home because if anything were missing, I would surely be blamed. I cannot hang, sir. My wife and my young one would starve.” He put his hands together as if her were praying to Alastair. “I have only done right by you when no one else would. I have taken not a stitch from you. Not a stitch.”

  Alastair thought that was amusing. Indeed this man had not taken a stitch. In truth, his wife had added a great many stitches.

  The amusement quickly passed, however, and now was the time to demand more. “Camran, you will tell me everything, and I do mean everything. I don’t care what you believe or why you believe it. If you do not know the answers, then tell me who does, but I want to know everything that you know.” He snapped his fingers.