Bad Moon

By Anita Dawes

Young Annie’s life was perfect until she uncovers a nasty family secret, something her parents have been doing for years.
Now she knows about it, she cannot continue to live like this, but her protests fall on deaf ears.
How can she hope to change what has become a way of life for her family?
Her struggle to change everything only makes her life so much worse, forcing her to try to escape, but how far must she run to escape the truth?
Can Annie make a new life for herself, or will they hunt her down and bring her back?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anita Dawes
• Release date: Sep 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005328665

Anita Dawes

I write my books with a lot of help from my sister Jaye. We are both 'silver surfers' which proves you are never too old to have fun! We will have more books for Smashwords soon.

Book preview

Bad Moon

Family or Freedom; which would you choose?

A disturbing family horror story

by

©Anita Dawes

This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Smashwords Edition Licence Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchase for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

# # #

This book is dedicated to my family, and to James Herbert, for all his helpful advice many moons ago…

# # #

Anita Dawes loves all things magical and other worldly and would prefer to live in a fairy tale.

She has written six fiction novels in various genres, Bad Moon, Simple, Secrets, The Scarlet Ribbon; Let it Go and Not My Life. Presently working on a sequel to her popular supernatural romance, The Scarlet Ribbon.

She hates computers with a passion and prefers to write longhand, sharing a website http://jenanita01.com with Jaye Marie, who transcribes and edits her work...

Website: http://www.anitajaydawes.net

Email: [e-mail]

Chapter one

During those long hot summer months, Ma’s clothes would appear to shrink. She would cut and alter them until they were more my size than hers. She loved the sun on her body and had the best figure of any female around. She knew it too and used it like a weapon.

Most of the men in town paid Ma more attention than they should, and Pa got real mad at the way they looked her up and down. But Ma gloried in it all. Life in Richmond County, Virginia, was a whole lot better than her previous existence up in the hills when she was a child.

Her long hair was thick and dark, Pa said it was black as the devil. Ma would laugh and shake her head, making her hair dance wild and free like a horse’s tail, even when there were no flies to swat. Like he was annoyed at something; annoyed at being tied. Maybe Ma did the same thing when a thought didn’t sit right.

I wanted to be just like her and spent hours brushing my hair, it wasn’t quite as dark as Ma’s, but I wanted it to shine the same. I’d look at myself and wish I had curves like hers too, but I was all flat and straight, but when I looked at my face in the mirror, Ma’s face looked back at me. My eyes were every bit as black as hers, one day I would learn to use them the way she did.

She’d catch me looking at myself sometimes and say, ‘Don’t worry honey, one day soon your body will change. You won’t always look like a stick insect.’

Pa and my brother Nathan worked away from home a lot of the time. There wasn’t much work in town, so they went wherever they found it. Ma liked having the cabin to herself, to entertain the men from town while Pa was away.

Pa caught one of them one time and dragged the young man out to the barn where he used to work on his wood carvings. It was the extra money he got from these carvings that kept the food on our table. Ma told me the young man only got a good thumping and I wasn’t to listen to any of the gossip I heard in town. Some of the kids at school were saying that my Pa fed the body to the hogs.

I knew it was a lie. Pa was a big man, but he was gentle and only ever got angry when there was good reason. Ma gave him that most of the time, but she could always calm him down real quick. She’d take him to their room, and I’d wait a few minutes before going to my room to listen.

Pa built the cabin when Nathan was a baby. The inside walls were so thin, you couldn’t help hearing things. I’d lie on my bed and wait for the soft moaning that always followed, and then Pa would say, ‘Ruby, why do you do it, why do you need other men?’

‘Now Papa Bear, don’t fuss so, you know I got a big appetite. One man aint never been enough to fill the need in me.’

One time I heard Pa slap her real hard and he told her there must have been a bad moon rising the night she was born. Ma laughed the way she always did, a low sound like singing. I had the feeling Pa would snap one day and do some of the things the folk in town accused him of.

There were times when Ma didn’t care if the door to her room was wide open for all to see. I knew most of the men she entertained. Some would tell her to shut the door, but most were like Ma and didn’t care if I was watching. I didn’t like the way they looked at me, like they wanted to do to me what they were doing to her.

I lost count of the times Ma only just got her clothes on before Pa and Nathan came home, and I heard the man she’d been entertaining climb out of the window. Pa must have heard it too, but he did nothing, even seeing some man from town running across our field wouldn’t make him angry, only if he caught them face to face would he lose his temper.

Nathan didn’t feel the same way about Ma as I did, he hardly spoke to her at all and when he did it was always nasty. But I’d seen him looking at her like the men from town. Nathan was nineteen and Ma teased him all the time about girls. I didn’t think she should, as he’d get real mad. Sometimes she’d go too far and run her hands over her body, letting her hands linger on certain parts. She’d say, ‘Want some of what Ma’s got? I’ve seen you looking boy ...’

His face would go all red, like a tomato about to burst. But Ma kept going. ‘There are plenty of good-looking girls in town, you practise on them first, and then come back to Ma when you’re a big boy and know how to use it. Right now your head’s so full of shit your body can’t do nothing with.’

Nathan always took Pa’s rifle and stormed off into the woods whenever he got too mad for words. Ma would laugh and laugh, and the sound always made me think that she knew things that no one else ever would.

That day Pa was working on his carvings in the barn and didn’t take too kindly to being watched. He said it stopped the thoughts coming in his head. I’d sneak a peek through the window, he’d always let me take a good look before. It was a kind of game we had. Ma didn’t take any interest in Pa’s work; Nathan neither, but I liked the stuff Pa made.

He’d carve the wood all shapes and sizes, some of it real spooky. Sometimes I’d look at a piece for hours and still not know what it was meant to be.

The first time I told Pa I couldn’t figure it, he told me it was anything I wanted it to be. He reckoned no two people would see the same thing. The piece he was working on looked real scary. It was dark, like an old tree and bigger than anything he’d done before, and I wanted to take a closer look. I thought I could see little black faces, but I wasn’t sure, and I knew Pa wouldn’t let me inside to see it yet.

It was a real hot day and Pa had his shirt off. His skin glowed and his muscles stood out, the hair on his chest all wet and shiny like the grass in the field before the sun came up. I asked him once why he liked to make weird looking things. He said there were a lot of crazy people all over the county with more money than sense. When I listened to Pa, I knew he liked making this stuff better than working for other people. I asked him why he didn’t work the fields no more and he said it didn’t pay good. He told me about the man in Summerville who had an antique shop and took a lot of his pieces.

I stayed at the barn a while longer, watching Pa work. He handled the chisels and small knives real slow, stepping back every now and then to look at what he’d done. I couldn’t make out why he hadn’t shooed me away, it never took this long before. I didn’t hear Nathan coming up behind me and fell off the old oil drum I’d been standing on, making enough noise for Pa to come out and give me a ticking off, but he didn’t.

Dusting myself off, I saw Nathan trying not to laugh. While he was doubled over holding his belly, I gave him a mighty kick on the shin. He rolled on the floor and made enough noise to wake the dead, but still Pa didn’t come out to see what was going on.

‘I almost jumped clean out of my skin! If you ever do that again, I’ll kick more than your shin next time.’

He said it wouldn’t matter if I lost my skin, ‘You’d just grow another one, like a snake. You’re always sneaking around like one.’

I kicked my foot against the ground, spraying dirt all over him and left him sitting there like a hog in the middle of a drought.

If anyone was a snake around here, it was him. Always sneaking around behind Ma when he thought no one was looking. You can’t be looking through the bathroom window by mistake, not for ten minutes any way. I didn’t think it healthy for a boy to spy on his Ma, especially when it made his thing grow so big, he’d have to go and play with it.

Ma said all boys did that. She said it was like practising until they could have the real thing and I knew she meant girls.

‘It won’t be long now, Annie, you’ll be wanting the same thing he does. You’re almost fifteen and there are plenty girls your age with a young’un on their hip.’

I remembered when Ma took us up into the hills to see her folks; I’d seen the kind of girls she was talking about. Some of them were younger than me but looked twice Ma’s age. No way was that going to happen to me, I was glad Pa had moved to the valley. I didn’t like the hill folk; most of them looked like Pa’s wood carvings, all old and wrinkled, their skin polished and shiny like they’d been varnished. Even the young’uns, as Ma called them, could do with a good scrub.

Everything around that place was filthy, but it didn’t seem to bother Ma none, she made herself right at home. There were far too many cousins for my liking and most of them had bad breath as well as bad manners. I couldn’t understand why Ma wanted to go up there, I tried to tell myself they couldn’t possibly be Ma’s people. They spoke funny and I couldn’t understand half of what they were saying, but Ma slipped into it real easy.

When it came time to eat, I thought I would throw up right in front of them. There was nothing I could recognise on the plate. Ma told me to eat up or they’d be offended. How could she ask me to eat it? Better they be offended than for me to die of God knows what.

Nathan was already eating, but it was no more than I expected. He was as weird as them and probably belonged up there. I looked at the hog swill on the cracked plate in front of me and could feel the tears pushing at the back of my eyes. The room was dark and smoky; there was no knowing what I might be eating. I couldn’t do it.

Ma shoved a stained spoon in my hand, ‘Go on honey, try it. Do it for me.’

I slowly shook my head and the tears fell on the table, disturbing the dust that lay there. Didn’t they ever clean anything? They were all waiting, waiting for me to take a mouthful like it meant something special. I looked up at their faces. Seth and Samuel, the older ones, were ignoring me but the two younger boys, Billy and Daniel were grinning at me with their blackened teeth. Just when I thought I couldn’t bear it a minute longer; Nathan pulled the plate away from me and scraped the mess onto his plate.

‘She don’t eat more than a sparrow’s worth anyhow.’ he said, dark eyes smiling at me.

Ma tucked into the food on her plate like it was best Sunday dinner and it was like a signal for all the others to start eating. I decided Nathan wasn’t so bad after all, that was the nicest thing he’d ever done for me.

Remembering all those things made me know why I didn’t like Pa’s new piece of work. It was because it looked like dry skin, all wrinkled and dark, like Ma’s folks.

I felt real funny, like Pa was doing something bad in the barn. But he couldn’t be, could he? We don’t have any black skinned folk around these parts. I figured Pa must have stained it already, but I wanted to know how he got it to look like skin.

Ma made some fresh lemonade and I asked if I could take some over for Pa, ‘He must be as dry as a wart on a camel’s behind by now.’ She reminded me that he didn’t like being disturbed, but he’d been working on this piece for almost a week now, so I figured he wouldn’t mind me coming in. I was the only one who ever saw his work before he was done with it. I think Ma sometimes got a bit jealous.

This time she was right. As I got near the door of the barn Pa yelled so loud the pitcher fell from my hand. I turned on my heels, looked over at Ma then ran to the woods. I kept running until I could run no more and fell to the ground and let the tears come. What was wrong with Pa? He’d never yelled at me that way before.

I turned over on my back and the grass felt cold beneath me. Long fingers of sunlight reached through the canopy of leaves and tried their best to warm the ground where I lay. I wished I could stay there forever with the brook whispering its secrets to me as it washed across the pebbles on its way to the river. The tall trees danced in the breeze, spreading their branches so I could see patches of blue sky and fluffy white clouds that changed the rays of sunlight each time they swam past my eyes. I’d heard the town folk say it was too quiet here in the woods, but they must have their ears on back to front. If you lay real still you could hear all the animals going about their business.

I remembered being here with Pa when I was younger; he taught me things most folk don’t even think about. He’d tease me sometimes and tell me that if I held my breath, I could even hear the grass grow. I’d hold it until my head felt it would burst, but I never did hear it. I tried many times before I gave up; figuring Pa was just making fun.

He’d bring me here in the dead of night and Ma would say she wanted me to be a lady, that I didn’t need the kind of stuff he put in my head. Pa swung me up on his shoulders and Ma would pull the kind of face that said she wished she was strong enough to wallop him.

His shoulders were strong and made me feel like nothing in the whole world could ever hurt me. Pa would smile at Ma and tell her, ‘It don’t do no harm her knowing about the world she lives in, Ruby. We each gotta get along and that means the animals too. There aint no better way to do that, than know how they live.’

If only Ma had come with us, she’d know how good he was with the animals. They would come right up for us to touch. Once I got real close to a fawn before its mama came looking for it. He told me to keep real still.

‘She’ll know that you mean her young’un no harm.’

I did like he said, and the mama deer came so close I could feel her breath on my face. It was real hot and smelled kinda funny. Ma missed all the magic, but I didn’t care, I liked having Pa all to myself. He made the woods a special place, especially at night when the moon was the only light and you could see all the animals that hid from the sun. Most folk think it’s only the bats that come out at night, but it’s not so. There’s skunks and racoons, all kinds of critters.

I held my breath one last time, hoping it was like Pa said and you really could hear the grass grow, then I’d know the magic was still there. My ears buzzed and my head swam but I couldn’t hear it. I let my breath out and it echoed in my ears. Maybe I didn’t believe, but it didn’t matter anymore. I felt different about a lot of things. Ma said it was because I was getting older.

I wanted everything to stay the same, but it didn’t. Pa didn’t take me to the woods anymore and Ma was too busy entertaining to notice me most times. When Pa was busy in his barn there wasn’t much for Nathan to do and he’d take off some place and never let on what he’d been up to. Looking in someone’s window, I shouldn’t wonder.

I walked home thinking about Pa and his new carving. I’d heard the gossip in town about the missing man. They said his wife came looking for him, he was a salesman or something and hadn’t been home now in over ten days. Some folk were saying that Ma fancied herself a piece of black skin and Mrs Jenkins said, ‘If Jed caught him up there with Ruby, you can bet that’s the last she’s gonna see of her man. And her with three young’uns too.’

It sure did rile me some, them talking about my folks like I wasn’t even there. Did they think I was deaf or something?

Ma often told me they thought folk like us were stupid, but if they thought my Pa was doing something bad, why didn’t they send the sheriff to talk to him? He’d soon put them straight. But he never came, so I figured Ma was right. They were a lot of dried up old fossils with nothing better to do than make up stories about folk.

All the same, I was feeling real funny about the thing Pa was working on and the way he yelled at me got me to thinking. I had to get me a better look at it.

It didn’t help the feeling low in my belly when I went home, and Pa told me I was never to go in the barn. He looked real mean when he said it and I backed away from him. Ma said later that Pa reckoned there were too many sharp things for me to hurt myself on.

This time I didn’t believe her, Pa always let me in before. Ma had preserves in there and often sent me for pickles or something. What was so different now? Maybe what they said about Pa in town was true and he had done something bad to the folk that had gone missing.

I remember lying on my bed that night, wondering if Pa was gonna take his new carving with him come morning. I waited until I thought Pa was asleep. The full moon lit the way to the barn, a better light than you get from them fancy lamps they sell in town. I had to get a good look at the carving. I figured if Pa had it covered up; he was gonna take it with him.

I climbed up on the oil drum, but it was too dark inside to see much, even with the moon shining through the window. I could hardly make it out, but it wasn’t wrapped up. There was a good chance that Pa hadn’t finished with it yet…

Chapter Two

Pa was gone by the time I got up next morning and I ate my breakfast real slow, trying to figure out how I could get in the barn without breaking the lock Pa put on the door. Ma told me to stop daydreaming or I’d be late for school.

I wasn’t going to school, but I didn’t tell her that. She didn’t seem so sunny today, there was no light in her eyes, and she didn’t hear me when I asked for my lunch box. She must have something on her mind, but I didn’t want to worry about that right now. Ma couldn’t see where the road passed the southern end of our field, so she wouldn’t notice me cut off to the woods. With any luck she’d be entertaining and too busy to see me sneaking around the barn, looking for a loose board. I’d already figured that would be my best chance of getting a closer look at what I had convinced myself was part of the missing black man.

The hot sun had been up for hours, but it wouldn’t be able to reach me in the woods. I climbed my favourite tree, hanging my legs each side of the flattened branch. It cradled my backside like a home-made chair.

I made myself real comfy, had to give Ma plenty of time to go to town. I got to wondering who Ma hadn’t brought home yet.

I got to thinking what it might be like to have a boy do those things to me, but there weren’t no boys around I liked enough. When I talked to Ma about it, she said you don’t have to like them, so long as they don’t look like a wart hog. She said liking them would come later, but I figured I got to like a boy first before I let him touch me that way.

I could feel the sun reaching through the cool edge of the woods, thinking it must be about mid-day. The rumbling of my belly told me it was time for lunch. Pa was right, things were connected. The sun would always be high in the sky at lunchtime so there was no need for clocks, but remembering what Pa said didn’t make me feel good today, I figured it was because I was going behind his back. That wasn’t a nice thing to do, not to Pa.

By the time I walked back to the cabin, Ma should have had enough time to have found someone to entertain her and her needs. As I reached the edge of the woods, I could see across our field and someone was sitting with his back against our barn.

I felt my heart skip a beat but kept on walking. Halfway across the field I could see it was Nathan. Why hadn’t he gone with Pa? Surely Pa wouldn’t have left him there like old Blue when we had him to keep unwelcome guests from getting too nosey? I guessed he’d seen me by now so there was no use trying to hide. I marched right up to where he was sitting and stood in front of him, but he didn’t bother looking up.

‘Why didn’t you go with Pa, Nathan?’

‘He didn’t need me today.’

As I went to walk away, he caught my ankle and I fell flat on my face. He held on to me. ‘And why aint you at school?’

I didn't answer right away, I was taken aback by the way he was looking up my dress like he’d lost something and thought I’d hidden it where he was looking.

I kicked his hand away with my free foot and picked myself up. ‘I want a closer look at what Pa’s working on.’

‘He’ll whop your ass if he finds out you been poking around in there!’

‘Well he won’t find out, less you’re fixing to tell him. That wouldn’t be too smart, I’d tell him how you been spying on Ma and about the way you been looking up my dress. What do you reckon he’d do about that?’

I didn’t have to say no more. Nathan knew the kind of hidings Pa could dish out.

‘All right, I won’t say nothing but how you gonna get in there? Pa’s locked it.’

‘Maybe I can find a loose board or two. You could help me, better than just sitting there. Where’s Ma?’

‘Where you think?’

‘You seen her then?’

‘Yeah, she’s got Tommy Jenkins in there. That’s five times he’s been here.’

‘One of these days Ma’s gonna catch you red handed spying on her. What you reckon she’d do then?’

Nathan looked real mean for a second, the way Pa did. ‘She wouldn’t do nothing, she’s a tramp. Most likely let me join in.’

I slapped him across the face as hard as I could. ‘Don’t you bad mouth Ma again, she aint never done nothing to hurt you.’ He rubbed his face and it was the first time I’d seen tears in his eyes. ‘She’s a tramp, Annie. She hurts Pa real bad, bringing those men here.’

I wanted to slap him again, but I couldn’t, he was right. ‘Maybe so, but Pa loves her and wouldn’t like to hear you talk like that about her.’

Right then I felt real sorry for Nathan. He wanted so much to be like Pa, but Ma already told him enough times he weren’t gonna grow no more. He was a good foot or shorter than Pa and Mother Nature hadn’t given him the kind of muscles that Pa’s got.

Sometimes he’d eat enough to fill the hog pen twice over and he worked hard to keep the wood chopped for Ma, but he always looked the same, like a strong wind would blow him away.

Then there was the other thing. I’d see it in his face when he looked at Ma, and I knew he wished he was someone else so he could do to her what Tommy Jenkins was doing right now. I knew he’d been watching them before I got there.

Poor Nathan, half of him hated Ma and the other half wanted her in a way that weren’t right. Not now that we lived down here in the valley. That kind of thing still went on where Ma’s folk lived, and I reckon Ma should have sent him to live with Gran as he didn’t belong down here.

I’d seen the way he was when Ma took us to see her folks. After a few hours he’d be talking like the rest of them. He’d act the way they did, touching the girls like he’d been doing it all his life.

Ma had a brother up there and Nathan took a liking to him right off. He followed him around, doing whatever Uncle Samuel did. I told Ma once she should