Silver moon: a prequel.

Everything comes to an end; one door closes, another one opens. At least, that’s what Ralph Bellamy’s father has spent much of his life saying, at any rate. And when that moment comes, as it invariably did, there was going to be one hell of a lot of trouble.

Thirteen year old Ralph Bellamy knew this to be true with as much certainty as any young man bellow a certain age could. Nobody actually came right out and told him this, not really, not directly, but he had been smart enough to work it out for himself.

Besides, truth be told, he had heard far too many hushed and hurried conversations behind closed doors of late, and had bore witness to far too many brooding (and sometimes pained) looks engraved on once delicate and untroubled faces to assume he was simply imagining things.

The realisation had been enough to make goosebumps run up and down his body, an ominous start, though exactly why he’d come to see those looks and hear those conversations, he did not know.

Still, he knew his parents had convinced themselves that by chatting behind closed doors and steeling their emotions that they had protected him from the very worst of it. And they thanked the good lord above that he’d spared even a single second of their torment.

But everything must come to an end, and, according to his father, family, above all else, must be preserved.

Yet ... and yet Thomas had seen the truth of the matter reflected at the back of his father’s eyes for a long time now. Not every little detail – it was not that kind of revelation – but slowly; over a long period of painful, untold, hours.

Time, his father told him, was running short, and it wouldn’t be long until they were ousted.

They’d had their time, relished in their fortunes. Yes, sir, indeed.

Then, one day, just like that, and without warning, he was taken to the attic; a dire square room with plaster cracked walls and an ominously angled ceiling that twisted and contorted shadow into impossible and improbable creatures. A bare bulb hung above the boarded porthole widow on the east wall through which no light, no matter how slight or bright, ever broke.

He had never seen the room before (it was the only room in the whole house he was excluded from), but understood on varying days of the month his mother, oddly, locked his father inside and concealed the brass key firmly in the cleft of her bosom until the next day. Or until the hullabaloo got so bad she couldn’t tolerate another minute of it. All in all it was a charmless hole without either bed or chair; rankly decorated and dimly lit.

 “They’re coming for us,” he said softly, in a tone of voice that was both dreamy and distant. “They’re marching as we speak. I’ve heard their talk of sedition; you know ... the beat of their panic stricken hearts.”

Ralph looked back at his mother, concerned. She smiled. It was the kind of smile that said: everything’s going to be ok.

“I’d like to say it’s just your mother and I who’re in trouble,” he continued, “but I’d be lying. But I suppose a smart boy like you has already worked that out, right?”

“I ... I guess so ... yeah.”

“I knew it,” his father beamed, proudly. “I’ve always known you were the smart one.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The serious kind,” he replied. “The kind that’d see me and your mother hung and burnt. Have us ... undone.”

“Oh?”

“It’s about blood, son. It always has been. Our lineage is a little more diverse than they’re used to. They’d call it a curse ... a sin ... an aberration ... maybe they’d even go so far to say we were unholy ... but only because they’re scared.” He liked his lips. They felt very dry. “And because of that they’d see us pulled apart despite all we’ve given them; the houses, the factories, the jobs ... they’d rather see it all burn.”

“Everything we own will be gone sooner or later.” His mother added. She wasn’t looking at him, but over and away from him. “There’ll be nothing left for us – for you – except cracked skulls in cold ashes. There’ll be nothing to show for the decades of diligent work we’ve ploughed into this little backwater community.”

 “What’s so bad that they’d –”

“Oh, they’d be apt to tell you a million things, none of which will hold even an ounce of truth. What we are – what we became because of them – is nothing short of a blessing. Handed down through the generations.”

“Blessing? I ... I ... I don’t understand.”

“You will,” he assured. “Tonight you’ll become a part of history. My heritage will become yours ... and that in turn will become yours to pass on.” He cackled rough laughter. Although in truth Ralph didn’t get the joke.

Outside a gust of icy wind blew through the eaves, whistling a haunting melody through the lower levels as it blew doors to a slamming close.

“I won’t lie to you, son ... it’s going to hurt.”

A moment later, having seized a sliver of metal, his father began prizing the boards free. Beyond them, Ralph saw, the outline of the oncoming winter storm highlighted by a sliver of moonlight.

“It has to be done in order to preserve everything,” he whispered, as much to himself as his son. “We have a legacy to uphold. On that exists beyond simple brick and mortar; blood, sweat, and tears.”

Ralph blinked hard.

“And it’s all yours to inherit.” He paused. “Who knows, maybe in time you’ll rebuild everything we’ll have lost.” He brought his hands sharply to his stomach; a grimace etched into his face. He bowed a little as if to ease his discomposure, but Thomas knew, simply by looking into his father’s eyes, that he’d done precious little to ease his increasing agony.

“Dad?” Ralph said. “Are you all right?”

“Your father’s going to be fine, Ralph,” his mother soothed, talking low and even. He guessed this wasn’t anything new to her. “You’ll see. He’ll be just fine and dandy.”

Beneath the sliver of moonlight, Ralph watched his father writhe. He was on his knees now, still clutching his stomach. Thick beads of perspiration peppered his forehead. The thickest beads of which, the size of tears, ran down the bridge of his nose, pooled, and dropped.

“Dad?” He tried desperately to hide the panic in his voice, and failed. “Mum? Dad’s sick, can’t you see? He’s coming down with a fever. He looks really sick.”

“Your father’s fine, Ralph. You just wait and see.”

Ralph took a step forward. A moment later, his mother’s hands clamped against his shoulders; her knuckles, he saw with a backwards glance, whitened beneath the strain.

“Dad?”

His father looked up. His mouth hung open slightly as if to speak, but no words came out. He groaned a little. It sounded both pained and ... god help him ... bestial.

He tried to move again in some kind of frenzied cluelessness. He could see his father was soaked from sweat, his eyes bloodshot, and nobody, least of all his mother, was breaking to help him. And for one awful, terrible, moment the idea his father maybe dying before his eyes flashed across his mind and he began bawling.

“No ... tears ... boy ...” his father gasped. His voice was horse and raw, the way it sometimes went when he got a chest infection or a cold. Usually his mother gave him medicine when he got this bad. She poured it out of a little brown bottle she kept in the bathroom cabinet, and the only thing Thomas knew about it at all was how bad it smelt.

Is he dying? Is this what dying looks like?

His mother’s hand stroked his brow slowly. He could feel it, but he wasn’t bothered about it this time. “He needs a doctor, Mum. He’s really sick.”

“That’s what they all say,” she muttered.

He craned his head backwards. A shadow of a smile graced the corners of her mouth that Ralph didn’t quite like. It was dark and twisted. The old man was sick, couldn’t she see that? Didn’t she care?

His father groaned. He curled himself beneath the freshly un-boarded window; still clenching his stomach, still sweating through his fever, muttering incomprehensible conversation through gritted teeth.

Then, unimaginably, his father’s face shimmered. No, no that was wrong. Not just shimmer, it actually moved.

Ralph turned, clinging to his mothers as apron as he wept. She looked down upon him, still stroking his head, and, with a little more force than he was used to, turned him back to his father.

Except what he saw now, what he was forced to see, was no longer an image of his father he cared to see. Through his agony his father’s complexion had taken on a sick, ashen colour. His features, unbelievably, transformed ... his flesh seeming pulled so tightly over his bones that Ralph, for an instant, truly believed his flesh would split over his aging bones.

Thin veins began spreading up from beneath the collar of his shirt, throbbing and raw looking. They spider webbed out, a roadmap of hideousness, criss-crossing his cheeks and forehead.

Ralph looked away, up towards the angled ceiling, desperately trying to reject himself the sight of his father reeling on his side.

“Open them,” his mother said. “You need to see this. You need to see your father reborn.”

Reborn? Reborn? What the hell did that even mean?

Ralph turned his head back again. As he did, he felt revolt turn in the pit of his stomach.

It was an appalling sight to behold; seeing his father tortured by fever that way. He was shaking through the worst of it, his legs trembling, his hands, though no longer clutching at his stomach, splayed ahead of him, helplessly clawing at the boards beneath him.

Cotton Bellamy, whose suffering had mostly been conveyed through a series of twisted, seemingly breathless, silent scream, now broke into sound. It was horse and dry and ... god help him ... bestial. He flip-flopped for a while, his legs darting back and forth at break neck speed before managing to roll onto his hands and knees. His head tilted back, his eyes pinched to a close. A second after that, his mouth open, he vomited and spilt bile and supper on his splayed fingers.

A dark thought suddenly occurred to Ralph, but he managed to dismiss it just as quickly as it had occurred.

Oh dear god!

But there was worse to be had yet.

His father’s fingers splayed wider apart, blindly mixing vomit and spittle. Above his father’s groaning – it actually sounded more like wailing now – Ralph heard the popping of his father’s knuckles as his fingers steadily began to extend. The tips of his fingers split. The nails split and pulled apart to reveal a much darker talon growing in place of the old.

His mouth fell wider still. There was another sound then, that of bone dislocating or breaking, as his face transformed. Bone, muscle, and sinew reformed. Flesh divided, blood flowed, and flesh knitted together again until ... until he was transformed.

Ralph watched his father’s teeth buckle; the top grinding against the bottom with such force that they fractured and reduced themselves to bloodied shards.  He also watched as his father’s gums (bore out of unknown realms of pain) shredded as new teeth evicted the roots of the old. And they in turn bucked forward. His upper jaw bore only one row of splayed teeth, while the bottom formed two; each razor sharp tooth glistening in the moonlight.

Suddenly Ralph understood everything.

And it’s all yours to inherit.

Yes, he understood everything just fine.

Tonight you’ll become a part of history. My heritage will become yours ...

Tonight you’ll become a wolf, some distant, certain, internal voice added.

His father’s head suddenly snapped round, as if the thought spoken somewhere at the back of his sons mind had somehow been shared telepathically. The wolf’s muzzle rose and fell. His father – the wolf – growled.

Ralph waited for what might happen next. He tried desperately to keep his eyes from wandering, to keep the horror from further entering his consciousness, and could not.

If Ralph had been able to put his hands to his eyes and ears at the same time, he would have done to block out the sounds. As it was he could only stand and watch and listen and wait for the transformation to finish.

His father let out the sound of fresh agony; a rudimentary sound that was neither human nor animal, as fresh pores opened and sprouted coarse grey and black hair from areas of his body where none previously existed. And the transformation was complete.

The wolf turned back to Thomas, its amber eyes reduced to little more than slits, and howled.

I’m never going to sleep again, he thought, and five seconds later passed out at his mother’s feet.

By the time Ralph awoke, thunder was rattling through the sky and he was on his back; his mother kneeling on both of his arms, steeling him against the thing, the wolf, the monster, whatever you wanted to call it, padding towards him. She smiled sharply. The kind of smile that attempted to say everything’s going to be all right.

Except Ralph knew nothing was never going to be all right again.

“This is only going to take a minute,” she said, breaking the smile.

“Let me go,” Ralph yelled. “Let me go. Let me go. LET ME GO!”

But mother only smiled.

Her face shimmered for a moment; the assurance gone, and this time turned into something stoic and ugly.

Ralph begged, Ralph cajoled, Ralph cried, and Ralph pleaded.

The wolf snarled as it crept up.

This time when Ralph closed his eyes, it wasn’t his eyelids that brought about darkness ... but teeth that would forge a legacy few would ever come to forget.