RED LIGHT MOONLIGHT

Keeping to the shadows, the man walked the streets, crossing the canals, his eyes scanning back and forth, making sure nobody noticed him. Noiseless, even in his movements, and sweating like a desperate animal, he didn’t dare let panic take over. Finally, he came to his destination. Staying very still in the early fog, the light rain wet his clothes. Crowds of people milled about, and for a second or two it felt like being at a carnival or a circus, but the red neon lights flickered brighter as the hours of dusk slowly disappeared. Soon night would come with the promise of a full moon and there would be no escape from its penetrating rays. There before him was Amsterdam’s notorious Red Light district with its Turkish drug dealers mixing in with American senior citizens sightseeing on their special X-rated tours - gaunt junkies with sunken-in faces waiting, always waiting. Couples went into smoke shops with names like the Bob Marley Café or bars like the Red Dog with its pseudo-hippy or dreadlocks-Rasta atmosphere, where, for a few gilders or American dollars, you could score some nice blonde hashish, Colombian cannabis cakes, or drink any brand of beer brewed in Europe. There were the girls, of course, partitioned off in small separate storefronts, sitting on stools, wearing — as you might expect — the most amazing, exotic outfits. Through the windows, horny men of every nationality and age group gazed at them - fantasizing, judging, and haggling with their dream-girl.

The man spots the authorities and, like that pop song from long ago, he ‘watches the detectives.’ They seem to be very low-profile in this district, but then that’s probably what they want criminals to think. Show yourself in a bar or a café, get spotted by one of their undercover agents and before you know it, like a predatory hawk that swoops down on a little mouse, you could be seized within its claws. That, he couldn’t afford, not now or ever. He had heard from a corrupt ex-Interpol agent that Scotland Yard and the other international law enforcement agencies had put his case-file on the back burner because of his age. He would be one-hundred and two years old, and whoever heard of a century-old man killing people? Yet wherever there were horrible murders, there lurked someone who looked a lot like Lawrence Talbot, and occasionally he would spot his old wanted poster being put back up again.

Unfortunately, he has no time to dwell on the authorities. “Go on with your plan, stay calm—and above all—don’t panic,” he told himself. Just then, a group of men went by him; they were heading to patronize the ‘window’ girls. He emerged from the fog and joined their group. They took no notice of him. Their minds seemed to be on otherworldly problems. In less than two minutes, he found what he wanted. It wasn’t the young woman that drew him in—rather it was her public compartment. Handcuffs!

Her place looked like a mini-medieval torture den. Larry pivots quickly just to make sure nobody is watching him as he enters. Before he could bring himself to speak, the young temptress looks him in the eye and says, “Fifteen minutes, you know - standard. One Hundred gilders.” His wild greasy hair barely covered the map of wrinkles that etched his face, his red swollen eyes betray the fact that he hasn’t slept for a long time. With his broad shoulders and dirty torn overcoat, he slumped on her stool.

He gives her a weary smile, then says gruffly, “All I can think of is time. You don’t have to remind me. I’ll give you three hundred British pounds—that’s equal to six-hundred dollars in American money and about twelve-hundred gilders give or take. All I want you to do is handcuff me in the shackles over there, gag me, and then leave. You don’t return until morning. You tell no one I’m here. My pounds are buying your silence, that’s my deal. Just say yes. Ya get me?”

With her Mediterranean features and hard body, she eyed him intensely. “I don’t do freaks.” He wondered if she was Indonesian with her dark looks and coal-black hair. Maybe she’s Arabic or gypsy, now that would be interesting. “No kinky stuff. This is Marlene’s equipment; she works the day shift.”

“She doesn’t seem to understand!” he thinks to himself, but somehow, he must make her realize the stakes. “Look, if it’s the money I’ll double it! But we must hurry.” Slightly under his breath he continues, “for soon it’ll be dark and then I change into…” He pauses and then speaks loudly while his hands are covering his face, “Oh, it’s so horrible!” He is close to breaking down.

Reluctantly she chants. “Even he who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night can become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

Stunned silence follows.

“How did you…?” Confusion trails his voice.

My great-grandmother recited the poem to me when I was just a child. Maleva was her name. Dead a long time now, my gypsy clan honored her; said she had fought against the supernatural, but some great horror had befallen her in Vasaria. I am a nomad at heart – the gypsy blood raging inside of me. Funny. Seeing you sitting there, reminded me of her. I hardly think of her anymore, and as for the poem, well I’m as surprised as you that I remembered it. Who..are you?”

Larry nods his head back and forth. “It’s unbelievable, simply unbelievable. I’ve come full circle. How?” He trails off in disbelief then says, “Bela the gypsy was your grandfather! Then you must have heard of the curse, but it wasn’t Maleva, rather her son upon whom the horror preyed.”

Fear had spread upon her young face, yet she did not try to leave, exclaiming, “Bela’s son Herman was my father! At the time of Bela’s murder, no one in his clan had any knowledge that he was a young parent. Herman always said his father was killed by a rich Englishman. The murderer’s name was Lawrence Talbot. Now I’ll ask you again. Tell me who you are!” she demanded.

With that question hanging from her lips, Larry got up from the stool, quietly approached her, and said gently, “I’m Lawrence Talbot. I was that fine British gentleman who killed your grandfather,” He fully expected her to scream or to make a run for it, but she did neither.

Softly, she said, “Our meeting is of divine providence foretold by my Gypsy ancestors. I want to hear everything.”

Larry looked ahead of her, apprehension on his face. “Time is running out for words, I tell ya, but I’ll say this. Since the day of your grandfather’s death, I have been a fugitive, always on the run, scattering slaughtered men, women and even children in my wake. But Bela I killed, I did not murder! Do ya hear me child? I did this awful deed to defend myself when the mark of the beast was upon him and with his death, I inherited your grandfather’s curse. Never to die - to live in eternal damnation — and every full moon to butcher another innocent human being! Good old Maleva. Stood by her son and then later me. Only, she glimpsed into our hell and understood what it must have been like for us. And now the curse has come full circle, to deliver me to you, of all people, the great-granddaughter of the man who gave me the blasted curse of the Werewolf!”

With those last words screaming upon his lips, Larry crumpled up and fell to his knees, moaning, crying, shrieking the words “Why me God, why me?” His listener came to him with compassion on her face, lightly stroking his unkempt hair. It was as if he was a small child and she the Earth Mother, the goddess, the all-knowing spiritual teacher. As she caressed him, Larry grabbed her hand and saw there scarred in the middle of her palm the sign of the pentagram. This was a certain sign of his next victim! With utter shock he jumped up. “Too late!” he cried out.

Through the cheap curtains, as moonlight flooded the room, he instantly felt the changes coursing through his body. Gobs of drool dripped from his mouth; his teeth enlarged, bigger and sharper, and became fangs that grew down to his chin. Each body hair stood up, growing at a super-accelerated rate, transforming him from human to beast. Larry’s last memory was of a wolf howling at the moon, then of attacking, ripping, tearing, biting—trapped in a total bloodlust until darkness is ushered in by the sunrise.

He woke with a start, the sunlight dancing before him. The birds were singing, but not to him. He threw himself from the bed, naked, in a panic, exactly like a hundred times before. The small room was in disarray, cold cream on the floor, the shackles torn down—handcuffs torn into pieces of useless metal. As he moved, he felt pain across his body. There in front of the smashed mirror, he examined his naked torso. To his great astonishment, there were huge welts and scratches all over his body. The poor girl, she must have put up an awful fight, he thought, but where is her body? Within his horror of finding his hideous handiwork, he examined the room for her torn-up corpse. Nobody! Not even small amounts of blood! Impossible, could she have escaped me? No, it can’t be! Once I see the symbol of the pentagram, my victims are as good as dead. No one has ever escaped my attack. No one!

Then came a knock on the door. A bewildered Larry stood transfixed as he heard her husky voice. “Oh Larry, it’s me. I’m coming in. I have coffee. I didn’t know how you like it so I got…” The gypsy girl casually walked in.

Seeing her, Larry stared and said in total amazement and the thought of his tormenting ‘hallucinations.’ “But...but…you’re alive?!” She walked over to him slowly, put the coffee down on the broken dresser, and kissed him long and hard on the mouth. He jumped away from her in fear. He was startled, nearly out of his mind.

She looked at him seductively and said, “Lawrence, you didn’t kill anybody last night. Sit down, Larry, we have to talk.”

He was dumbfounded. “What happened last night?” he asked. Was it possible that for the first time he had not killed a victim chosen for him by the vision of the pentagram? “Shocking, simply shocking,” he mused, as the thought hit him like a sledgehammer.

She woke him from this daydream. “Mating, that’s your answer. That’s what will stop the needless killing. It can be quite as violent as murdering someone, lovemaking at its most furious and primitive! It’s our solution, Larry. Yours and mine together.” Confused by her remarks, he was at a loss for words.

“Oh Lawrence,” she said, her voice as shy as a little girl. “I turn just like you do. Did you think only men bear the curse of the wolf? I know very well the feeling of waking in a sticky, bloody pool of an evening’s unlucky prey.” She stopped speaking. There was no further need of words. They looked at each other, as two fierce animals, wildly sniffing a compatible creature’s scent. “Your clothes are on the chair, over there where you hung from the shackles last night. That is before you tore them down.” Wordlessly, he dressed as fast as possible. He was numb with this new awareness. Had he found the solution at last? Finally he was ready to leave.

As he departed, her last words were reflected in her piercing gypsy eyes. “Lawrence, my love, stay hidden, but don’t go too far. Come back to me before the next full moon. Remember Larry, mating. It’s our way now, our beautiful way. You will not only keep yourself free of the killing, but myself as well.”

* * *