Night of the Beast

"Cursed is the man whose evil outlives him."

-Abu Bakr

***

Christy's voice rose as she read, and although Robert knew every word of the book by heart, he grimaced to hear them:

"'There are few more strange and frightening corners of this Earth than the desolate hills and vales of the ancestral Hammond estate-especially by the merciless and ill-fated light of the full moon that has shone on so many tragedies in that grim but storied family's history. The moon was the only witness to the mysterious death of Arthur Hammond in 1666, after which misfortune has visited each new generation of the family in the form of-"

"For God's sake, stop that, will you-stop creeping me the hell out," Robert said. He drew an embroidered handkerchief from his suit jacket and, although it was quite temperate inside the town car and downright chilly outside, wiped sweat from the back of his neck.

Christy peered from over the top of the manuscript, its pages illuminated by the car's interior lamps; her eyebrows looked like judgmental black punctuation marks above her elegant but pale face.

"I'm only trying to be thorough," she said. "If you don't like how it sounds, why did you write it?"

Robert made a noncommittal noise. "I didn't say I didn't like it, I said I don't want to hear it right now. Not while we're..." His voice faltered for a moment. "Anyway, I let you read it for fact-checking purposes, not so that you could be vile about it-or so that you could drag me all the way out here for another of the morbid adventures of the Hammond clan."

"You 'let' me read it to make sure I don't sue you for defaming the family after you publish-and I've half a mind to anyway," Christy said, snapping the manuscript shut and setting it on the seat next to her; a red leather binder with gilt edges held its pages together. "All it would take is one phone call and our solicitors would bury you so deep in litigation you'd never see daylight again."

Robert tried to rise up in his seat to add force to his words, but the car hit a rough patch and he had to sit back down to avoid losing his balance. "But there can't be any defamation, everything I've written is rooted in historical fact. You can't sue me just because you don't like the truth about the family name-about your legacy."

"Factuality is one thing, but it remains salacious gossip-mongering of the cheapest variety," Christy replied. The lacquered tips of her nails rested on the leather portfolio's cover still, as if at any moment she might fling it at him. "Even your title is hackneyed," she continued. "Lost Secrets of the Tragic Hammond Line-I should throw you out of this car for that alone."

"I wish you would," Robert said, but there was little sting in his voice. One look outside the windows at the black and rocky landscape-and the startling white illumination of the heavy moon overhead-was enough to make him shrink into the safety of the car's upholstery; nothing his cousin could say would be venomous enough to drive him out into that terrain alone-not on this of all nights.

The car slowed a bit as the tires crunched over loose gravel; the driver, Walton, coaxed the big old vehicle along and, as always, faced resolutely forward, never acknowledging that he could hear them.

Reaching out, Christy patted Robert once on the knee (he jumped) and said, "You know I'm only teasing you-mostly teasing, anyway. Nobody is going to sue over your flirtation with publishing; and aren't I taking you on this little field expedition precisely for the sake of helping you finish?"

Grimacing, Robert said, "Don't treat me like a fool-this is a revenge trip."

"But you ASKED to see Great Grandfather Reginald's tomb."

"Not in the dead of night. And it's not just any night, as you well know. Tonight is..." But his voice failed again, and this time it didn't pick back up for some time.

Smiling and crossing her legs, Christy opened the red leather folder again and began reading Robert's own neatly typewritten pages out loud:

"'As for the infamous Beast of Hammond Hall, its depredations are well-recorded: Beginning in 1666, some still-unidentified predatory animal began a gruesome campaign of terror on the tenants of the Hammond estate, with attacks claiming the lives of at least 30 in the end.

"But what manner of predator was this? History has not left us with a neat and tidy record. Rather, we've inherited a melange-' really, Robert, 'melange?'--'of competing accounts, speculations not necessarily the product of history but more often the stepchildren of Dame Folklore, that ever-chattering gossip whose wagging tongue haunts nearly every family of breeding."

Pausing, Christy turned a page sharply, making sure that it was audible.

"'The first and least implausible possibility is that the Beast was in fact a wolf. It would be a remarkable creature indeed who could claim responsibility for such a gruesome campaign, as most wolves are possessed of a natural timidity; nevertheless, this is the explanation most naturalists continue to favor.

"'More exotic suggestions have encompassed a wolf-hybrid of some sort, or even the last holdouts of a now-extinct lupine ancestor, some throwback to the earliest canis specimen. Others guess that perhaps a more exotic animal not native to the region-a hyena, or perhaps even one of the Australian thylacines-somehow eloped from a menagerie and was misidentified by the superstitious peasants as some mysterious monster.

"'Least likely of all-but nevertheless a persistent rumor right up until the present day-is that the Beast of Hammond Hall was in fact a mortal man, some particularly vile breed of lunatic who indulged in a series of murders and disguised them as the work of an animal, or whose viciousness was such that anyone discovering his handiwork could only assume it was an animal.

"'On these matters we can offer no decisive conclusion. History records only that the Beast appeared, that it killed tenants of the Hammond's ancestral lands, and that the founder of the modern Hammond line eventually killed it at the cost of his own life, and thus linked his family's reputation with the legend of the mysterious monster forever thereafter.''

Closing the binder again, Christy said, "Or for at least as long as this pet project of yours remains in print, hmm?"

Robert said, "Everyone knows the legend of the Beast-you can't pin that on me."

"Knowing about it is one thing, but digging up the family skeletons and putting them on display for common readers is another. Still, we can't stop you-and maybe this will finally cure you of that old agitation that you've carried ever since Father died."

As she expected, Robert lapsed into silence. It was an old bone of contention: Although he was such a distant cousin that the line between their boughs corners of the family tree could barely be mapped, Robert was nevertheless the oldest living male of Hammond descent, and he'd expected a significant inheritance.

When Christy came into almost the entirety of the Hammond fortune-including all of the relevant business enterprises, and Hammond Hall itself-Robert felt humiliated. Thus, she perceived his book not necessarily as revenge for what he imagined as the slights of the family, but rather as his latent attempt to reclaim some of what he imagined to be his lost inheritance. And for the most part Christy didn't really begrudge him the opportunity; after all, she was never going to entertain another one of his marriage proposals, so how many paths to potential fortune did that leave him?

The car lurched, bumped, and rolled to a stop, and Walton turned his head just a fraction of an inch to say, "Pardon me, Ma'am, but the road gives out up ahead, and the hillside is too steep for the car to make it."

"Robert and I are happy to walk from here," Christy said.

Robert looked as if he'd be happier to dive into the ocean with his pockets full of pebbles, but at the very least he did follow her out of the car. As promised, the old road was reduced to just a line in the dirt as the black and scraggly landscape rose up along the cliffs.

Hundreds of years ago-before the days of the Beast-this had been the best and most beautiful part of the estate, where the richest vineyards grew. Now almost nothing would grow here at all after the soil turned black; one particularly heroic landscaper had tried for decades to make something-anything-take root in the rocky abode, without avail. Even the trunks of the ancient trees were twisted into hunched things, neither alive nor dead by the look of them.

There was no reason to visit this benighted corner of the estate except for the low stone structure at the top of the bluff, its marble facade weathered over the years but still intact: Great Grandfather Reginald had hoped when he commissioned this mausoleum that every future Hammond would be laid to rest here, but there was too much superstition attached to this place; after all, this was the spot where the Beast died. And where, family legend had it, it returned...

Unbidden, a memory stirred in the recesses of Robert's mind, a time decades earlier when he and Christy-only children then-had snuck out onto the moors at night, and when she first regaled him with the history of the bloody Beast, and of the supposed family curse that brought the monster back from the dead every generation for revenge.

That night, much like this one, he'd stumbled and tripped along the dark and rocky embankments, struggling to keep up with Christy and struggling equally as much to keep up a show of childlike courage and not let her see that the story was frightening them. Now, as a grown man, it seemed as if his past and present selves were synchronized across the years, and he couldn't hide his fear, even through gritted teeth and reddened cheeks. The fear felt too unwieldy for his body to contain...

"But you don't really believe that old story, do you Robert?" Christy said suddenly; she was wearing a fur-lined parka to protect against the cold, and fur-lined boots that dug deep into the loose soil of the embankment as they hiked the last few hundred feet from the car up to the mausoleum entrance, making good time. Overhead, dark clouds swaddled the full yellow moon.

Robert, who was dressed too lightly and whose expensive shoes slipped with nearly every third step, trudged after her, his breath clouding the night air as he huffed and puffed along. "The killings are a matter of record-at least 30, over three years. Some of the upper estimates put it at high as 100-but 30 at least."

"Not that," Christy replied. "I mean the other story-the Hammond Curse. Do you believe that the Beast returned and killed Archibald Hammond right here on the moors?"

"Certainly not-although the fact that the story is so widely believed tells us a lot about-"

"And that it came back again to kill Great Grandfather Reginald, and that he always carried a gun loaded with silver bullets waiting for the day that it would finally come for him?"

"Of course I don't-nor has any credible source ever claimed he said so. In all likelihood what really killed him was-"

"So if you don't believe in the curse, then why are you so afraid now?" She rounded on her heels. "You've been trembling like a leaf ever since we left Hammond Hall: Tonight's the Night of the Beast, and the moon is full-so if you're not afraid of the curse, then what?"

Scowling, Robert stopped to catch his breath; despite the cold, the shirt beneath his jacket had dark stains from sweat. "You know how much I hate flying," he said after some time.

"I don't think I do."

"Well, I do: It's nerve-wracking. The entire time all I can think about is the entire great aluminum tube just tumbling out of the air. I know academically-intellectually-that the chances of such an accident are so low as to be almost meaningless, that otherwise nobody would ever travel this way. But it's one thing to say that while I'm standing on solid land-it's quite another while we're in the air."

Standing, he reached for his kerchief again and, finding it missing, settled for unbuttoning his collar instead.

"This place is the same way: I know, like any educated man of the 20th century, that there are no monsters that prowl around and bark at the moon, and that there's no such thing as a familial curse, and that the real Beast died centuries ago, and whatever killed Great Grandfather wasn't-couldn't be-the same thing.

"But when you're standing here on the spot itself, and the land is so cold and empty, and the damn moon is like a big pale eye that can see right through you...well, admit it, Christine, even you must have trouble completely disbelieving. Play the ice queen all you want-you've always been good at it-but you're as flesh and blood as everyone else, and that blood is Hammond blood, so I know you feel it too. Just a little."

They stood rooted for a moment, her with the high ground and silhouetted against the full moon, him standing below and in the cold shadow of the old mausoleum. It would have been a good time for something particularly dramatic to happen-some far-off peal of thunder, or for some animal cry to emphasize the ragged edge of the fear hanging in the still night air...

But nothing happened. When she turned to continue climbing, all Christy said was, "Howl."

Blinking, Robert scurried after her. "What's that?"

"Monsters in old stories don't bark at the moon-they howl."

When they reached the tomb, the old iron gate was open-it had rusted in place decades ago, and nobody bothered to fix or replace it. The silent stone figures of two great mastiff dogs-modeled, they say, on the ones that Great Grandfather Reginald raised in life-stood a silent watch at the door, as they always had. Christy patted one on the head as she went by; Robert, feeling that their blank stone eyes were watching him somehow, tried to slip by without giving them too much mind.

The thin blue beam of a flashlight-Christy's-flickered to life. As always, Robert braced himself for some sort of indescribably ghoulish scene in the vault interior-but there was nothing except the marble of the old standing cairns, all of them empty except for one, inscribed with Reginald Hammond's name and date of death in gold lettering.

One round window in the back of the chamber allowed the light of the full moon in, just above the head of a staring angel figure that Robert had always considered a particularly judgmental addition; other than that, they were alone. Unexpectedly, Christy took off her shawl and parka and hung them quite casually from the angel statue's outstretched arms. Blinking, Robert said, "Good gods woman, it's as cold as death tonight."

"Is it?" Christy said, her voice suddenly sounding somehow faraway. "I thought so too-but now for some reason I feel warm all over. Don't you?"

Amazingly, Robert did feel it-a kind of fast rush in his blood that warmed his skin in spite of the chilliness of the night air. Even the interior of the old tomb looked a little brighter somehow, as if the heat were casting some mysterious new light of its own.

So distracted was he with this quaint phenomena that it took him several minutes to notice anything unusual about Christy; midway through one of her usual arch comments she had fallen silent, and now she stood, her mouth still open the smallest degree, as if some enchantment had come along to suddenly freeze her in place. The effect was so disturbing that Robert almost sighed audibly when she finally moved again.

But her overall demeanor did not change; approaching the alcove, Christy traced the lettering of the Hammond family name in the surface of the marble. "And here it is: The perfect ending for your book," she said. "How do you feel now that you're here on the fated spot, tonight of all nights?"

"I..." Robert said, but that was all he managed; his tongue felt heavy, and it stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Not looking at him but instead staring at some indeterminate point, as if transfixed, Christy said, "Now that we're here, I admit I do have the strangest feeling. No, it's more than that: The feeling has been with me all day, but until now it was mild enough that I could ignore it or-or pretend that it was something else. But now, since we've come here, that's impossible..."

"What kind of feeling do you mean?" Robert said. He lingered still somewhat in the doorway. The far-off sound in Christy's voice disturbed him; he had never heard her speak this way.

"I don't know what the words are for it," she said. "It's as if, all of a sudden, I really can believe all of those old family legends in your book. But they're not frightening to me; in fact, they seem almost wonderful. Do you ever think about the real meaning of that word: wonderful? To be truly full of a sense of wonder..."

"Christy, are you...all right?"

"Oh yes," she said, although her voice had a slightly flat quality that Robert was not sure he trusted. "I was only thinking about how remarkable it is-that so many things should have happened in just such a way as to bring us both to this place at this moment: history, our family, the Night of the Beast, everything..."

Robert was fairly confident that the feeling creeping up his spine just now wasn't wonder. He couldn't quite call it fear either-fear he'd been feeling all night. Instead, it was the sudden realization just how isolated both of them were-in more ways than he'd ever previously stopped to consider.

As he fumbled with how to say, as gently as possible, that perhaps they should go back to the car before she somehow hurt herself, Robert was shocked to see Christy begin stripping her clothes, as if she didn't even realize what she was doing. "Dear gods, it's hot in here..." she said, and as soon as she said it, it was: The chill of the evening air evaporated. Despite this, Robert felt all of his hairs stand on end.

He couldn't even react when Christy wrapped her arms around him, pulled him very close, and whispered in a barely audible voice..."Robert...love me. I don't know why, but all of a sudden I have this feeling...you feel it too, don't you? I know you do; you must..."

Opening his mouth, Robert could only stammer: "The moon..." He got just those words out, but they were enough: Yes, it was the moonlight doing this to her-to them-somehow; even through the small window above, it was filling up this space, heating their blood, turning them into people-things-they weren't meant to be.

"We have to get out of here," he mumbled.

"We will," Christy said. "But kiss me first." Up close, he could see that her pupils had grown round and dark; she was almost naked now, her clothes strewn around the interior of the crypt, and the heat radiating off her body ensnared and drew him close.

His lips trembled as hers found them, but he didn't resist; twining her arms around him, Christy pulled Robert backwards, deeper into the tomb, until they fell against and were almost embraced by the outstretched arms of the angel statue; Robert felt its blank, pitiless gaze fall on them, but he also felt Christy's body writhing and, lower down, his own inevitable reaction stirring to life in spite of the circumstances.

Christy's mouth, hot and hungry, devoured him with one kiss after another, each deeper and more penetrating; when she spread her legs and wrapped them around him he leaned in despite himself; and when one of Christy's hands crept, spider-like, down the length of his body and to the front of his trousers she found him alert and awaiting her attention.

Perceiving the wetness and eagerness between Christy's legs, Robert remembered, briefly, his first time, years ago, and how the feeling of having done something he shouldn't have never quite deserted him. That feeling came back now stronger than ever, but once again Robert didn't turn back; freeing his bulge from inside his trousers, he felt the coarse tingle of Christy's small hairs brush against the sensitive head for only a second before she pushed it in further, discovering the hot and wet sensation that lay just beyond.