Full Half Crescent New

When I was a boy my grandfather told us stories at night. Some were of his own childhood; others sprang from his imagination into grand adventure tales that delighted everyone. Many carried a lesson or two, as all children’s stories ought to, though only in the later years did those of us left realize their importance. Each story was filled with the precise details of a master storyteller, yet as he got older his mind grew thin, and his stories became rambles, which we listened to with the uneasy respect given to an aging relative.

The last year of my grandfather’s life was at the height of the disappearances. By then his mind had almost fully gone, and it was clear his body was not far behind. Yet there were periodic nights when he almost touched lucidity again, and told the story with the four moons.

It was never the same story. Many details would change between tellings. The first time we heard it we were amazed that he had created a tale we hadn’t heard before. The next few times we enjoyed it with the warm sense of pity for one who cannot remember the correct details of their story. It’s hard to remember exactly when, but by around the fifth or sixth telling we had observed two distinct commonalities bookending each version: every story began on night of a full moon, and every morning after my grandfather told the story a different mother in our village would find their child’s bed empty with a set of small, bare footprints leading from an open front door directly into the woods.

The hero of the story changed each time. Sometimes it was my grandfather as a child, others as a young man. Twice it was my mother, and once the village priest. Most of the time it was just a name connected to a face we had never seen. The location was often different as well. Sometimes the hero was entering the woods, and others they were already deep in the woods. Sometimes the hero began on a mountain top, and others on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Each began with the hero observing the quiet beauty of the full moon at its zenith.

Sometimes the silence was broken by the howl of a wolf, or the screech of an owl. Others broke the hero’s attention with a gust of wind that blew off their hat, or a passing traveler greeting them as they passed. Later, when the hero glanced back up at the moon they would always notice clouds beginning to cover it. The story would meander slowly from here. The hero would pass through a town, they would catch a fish or two, they would sit quietly on the hilltop, they would barter for food in the market. Usually the stuff of everyday life, and never a rule that the events of the story belonged at nighttime. Yet throughout each a storm grew, and the light of the full moon was slowly extinguished.

The storm always broke violently. Whether it was a thunderstorm, a blizzard, or clouds of sand whipping around the hero, they quickly found themselves battered, lost, and alone. Sometimes they would find refuge under a tree or next to a rock, others they would end up huddled and shivering with no shelter but their own clothes.

Eventually the storm would quiet and the hero would survey their ruined surroundings. Their belongings were usually scattered, and they were often missing a crucial item, such as a knife or rations. Cold or hunger would set in as they resumed their journey, which would quickly be replaced by a sense of panic.

At this point in the story the panic of the hero would enter my grandfather’s eyes, and as the hero looked to the sky to curse the storm, so too would my grandfather shake his fist at the ceiling of our house, and one of us would have to grab his arm to break him from his fervor. Each time after he had calmed, my grandfather would reveal that as the hero cursed the sky, they realized the clouds had parted to reveal a waning half moon.

Panic turned to fear, and the hero would hasten their journey, though not knowing in which direction lay the warm embrace of safety. Sometimes the hero saw woodland creatures watching through the trees as they ran, others the hero just felt the dull pull on the back of the neck, yet saw no living thing when they turned. There were always watchers, eyes seen and unseen, as the hero ran or rode as fast as they could. The storm began again, this time slower than the first, though soon with an incomparable fury. Lightning would crash around the hero, felling trees in their path, causing rock slides behind them, boring holes in their boat. The sound of the storm would be deafening, and any cry for help would be drowned. The hero could feel the watchers closing in from all sides, breathing down their neck, reaching out to grab them.

The storm and the hero would stop in the same instant. They could still feel eyes on their back, but would find themselves along, save for a figure standing, sitting, kneeling in front of them. Like the hero, the individual was never the same. Once a beggar woman, next a handsome noble. One time it was my grandfather’s grandfather, another time a deer with magnificent antlers, another time a vulture feasting on a deer’s carcass. Each time as the hero arrived upon the figure they observed the waning crescent moon directly above the figure, and then looked down into the pitch black eyes of the figure staring straight through them.

The figure never spoke to the hero, but the hero always understood the anger in the stare. The figure would then slowly look up to the sky; the hero’s eyes would follow and they would see clouds forming again over the crescent moon. In this moment they would understand what was required, and would make an offering to the figure of their most precious possession. Sometimes this was a family heirloom, or jewelry given by a lost love. Other times it was simply all the money they carried, or their last piece of bread. Each time the figure would accept the gift, turn, and vanish into the night. The hero would take one last look upward at a now cloudless and moonless sky, and hurry homeward with an inexplicable feeling of guilt, shame, and being watched.

At first we didn’t tell anyone about my grandfather’s story. In the beginning it was just unsettling, but then again, at this point so was he, and he only told it about once a month. When we figured out it would predict the next disappearance, we became truly scared, yet still said nothing. I think we were still trying to convince ourselves of coincidences, or just frozen children who didn’t know what they were supposed to do.

My cousin Samuel told his father everything the morning his sister Hannah’s bed was found empty. That night the adults sat us down to explain that our grandfather had passed away, though they were still searching the woods for Hannah. At the funeral my father and my uncle had a massive fight, though I couldn’t understand why at the time. My uncle killed himself a few weeks later. They never found Hannah, though she was the last child to disappear.

My family stopped talking about my grandfather after that. I never spoke much about him to my own children, and now that they have grown I haven’t told any of this to their children. I do tell my grandchildren stories just as my grandfather told me stories, though I intend to keep this one hidden from them. Perhaps there is no purpose for writing all this down with no one to read it, though I keep dreaming of the full moon, and the recent news about the Nichols boy is revitalizing old memories. Writing this seems to help me see clearer into a past which has become more and more cloudy in recent months.

Surely they’ll find him soon.