Chapter 28 Theo
THEO
Iwatch it all happen through my telescope, sitting there on the lakeshore surrounded by the deep green shadows of the woods.
I watch the woman arrive in her dark car.
I watch her leave. I watch Oliver’s blonde mother stroll across the yard and disappear into the front of Chloe’s house, and then reappear as she walks back home.
And through it all, I feel Chloe. Her anger. Her despair. Her fear. It’s faint, at this distance, but undeniable. And when I catch on to it, I breathe it into myself, and I feel it inside me, fueling my own hot rage.
Fueling the killing moon.
There’s no denying it now. The sun has dropped below the horizon, and the killing moon is rising, making its slow and unmistakable arc over the trees of my peninsula. And I keep staring through the telescope, watching the houses on the other side of the lake.
Watching my prey.
My heartbeat is slow and steady. I don’t usually watch them beforehand.
I certainly didn’t do it that first time, after I woke up from five years in the ground.
I was driven by rage then. Rage at the death of my mother; rage at my own death.
The killing moon was the thing that told me what I needed to do to cool my rage:
Just follow the moonlight until all it illuminates is spilled blood.
The other times weren’t that different. I’d hear the whispers as the moon swelled, but when it hit, it hit fast. Twenty years ago, I even thought it was a normal moon at first. But its light kept burning my skin, and all I could think about was the slipperiness of entrails between my fingers.
I didn’t stop until I crossed the water. Until that woman shot me in the chest.
Because that’s what the killing moon wants. What it always wants. Not just human death, but mine, too. It wants me in the ground to start the cycle over.
I blink. Something hot and wet drips down my cheek.
I promised Chloe I would never hurt her or Oliver.
And that’s a promise I know I won’t break.
When the frenzy of a killing moon starts, I don’t lose sense of myself, not in that way.
And there are always people left alive. There are enough beating hearts over there to give it all the blood it wants without me having to break my word.
There are three beating hearts in particular that I want to end, all of them in Oliver’s house.
But it’s my death that makes my eyes feel wet and heavy. It doesn’t matter that my deaths aren’t permanent, that I’ll claw my way out of the dirt again.
She’ll be gone once I do. I’m sure of it. And so will Oliver.
But maybe—maybe they can run away together. He’ll have someone who will take care of him, who won’t hurt him. Maybe that’s enough, knowing the two of them will be safe, even without me.
I squeeze the telescope and slide it sideways on its mount, pausing on each house. It’s easy to tell the ones that have people inside, and my body shudders with the need to crack the houses open one by one, dragging my victims out to the shore of Hanging Lake so the killing moon can see my prizes.
The wind stirs, and I can see the moonlight on the water, and it reminds me of the first time I did this. The screams. The begging. The orgasmic rush of pleasure as I cut down the people who hurt me the most.
I wrench myself away from the telescope and scramble back into the woods, my gaze still fixed on the lake houses. Five of them are lit up, marking the humans inside.
My breaths are thick and heavy as I slide backward into the woods, where the moonlight can’t quite reach me through the trees.
The darkness is a comfort, and I wrap my arms around myself and try to focus on Chloe, on the memories of fucking her, like I can convince myself that’s all this is, this terrible tugging in my chest. It helped before.
It doesn’t help tonight.
I lash out, slamming my fist into a nearby tree so that the branches rattle.
Then I stalk through the underbrush, swinging my arms out in a wide path of destruction.
It’s not the right kind of destruction, though, and I know it.
Broken branches and shredded leaves aren’t what the killing moon wants.
They aren’t what you want.
The forest expels me into the little graveyard, and I hiss at the moonlight falling across the overgrown grass. This was where the first one started. This was where I was reborn as a monster, where I first felt the killing moon’s silver light on my skin, the way I feel it now.
I didn’t deny it then. I’ve never tried to deny the call of the killing moon, because why would I? As my father told me, over and over as we stalked the streets of Schenectady, that this is what my people are designed to do.
Don’t deny it, my father told me one night, the two of us still drenched in the blood of our victims. I don’t remember anything about them.
Just the conversation afterward, the two of us sitting in a dusty old barn, my muscles aching from the kill.
You had control tonight, but when you deny it, you lose that control. And the wrong people might die.
Now, dozens of years and hundreds of miles away, I roar out my frustration, the sound echoing up into the silvered night. The wrong people might die.
Like Chloe. Or Oliver.
I can’t deny this. It will hurt them, what I’m going to do, even if it’s not physically. But after I die, they’ll be free to go far away from here, and Chloe can take care of Oliver, and that’s what really matters.
I stalk out of the cemetery, blood pumping furiously through my body. The night seems tinged red at the edges. Red and silver. Over the roar of the wind, I swear I can hear the human heartbeats across the water, and the same cold whispering I always hear under a killing moon.
They aren’t supposed to be there this is YOUR territory.
My cabin looms up ahead, a dark silhouette against the blazing moonlight. Has it gotten brighter? It feels brighter. Almost blinding.
I stalk inside, slamming the door open so heavily that the walls shudder. My weapons are still in storage, where I placed them after the campout. That night feels distant now. Or really, not like a memory at all, but a dream. Like I dreamed of being human one night, and that’s what it looked like.
I pry the bricks of the fireplace away, their edges crumbling in my heavy grip.
My box of weapons greets me, and I drag it out, muscles tightening at the metal clanking inside.
Flip the lid open. Everything shines in the moonlight spilling in through the window, sharp as the blades sitting in their loose pile in the box.
I knew this was coming, deep down. That’s why I cleaned them in the same slow and methodical way I always clean my blades before a killing moon. I tried to lie to myself, tried to convince myself that it was Chloe who kept pulling my attention across the lake. And she certainly did.
But it was also the killing moon. It was the poison in my blood that drives me to kill.
I pull out the axe, the largest of the weapons, and hold it with both hands, staring down at the dull grey of the blade. It looks like moonlight.
I don’t want to do this. I want everything to be like it was the night of the campout, Chloe and Oliver laughing beside the fire and me feeling this strange, unfamiliar warmth deep in my chest. But if I don’t do this now, then it’ll be worse when I finally do.
I can feel that truth deep in the marrow of bones.
At least this way, if I go across the river, I know I can keep control. I know I won’t let them die.
And when I’m in the ground, maybe both of them can finally be free.