Blue

The Red Moon

When Adam was four, everything that belonged to his parents was delivered to his Grandmother's house, along with himself. His Grandmother sat him down softly and told him that his parents had passed away in a boat accident and that he was going to live with her from now on. Adam could remember the way the bells on her shawl jingled whenever she moved, the way all of the dried herbs looked terrifying, the way the symbols chalked over the doorways and on some of the doors looked like threats instead of safety measures. Adam had run away the following night.

They found him on the beach, several miles from her house, sobbing for his parents under the glare of the waning gibbous moon. After that, Adam and his Grandmother had a talk about why he had run away, and, more importantly, about the fact that he should never, ever leave at night. This was the first night Adam was introduced to the full moon and what it meant. His Grandmother told him that he was lucky the moon was waning, and that something terrible could have happened to him if he had run away when the moon was full. His parents were gone, his Grandmother had told him, but he was still here and so was she. She would take care of him. All he needed to do was follow her full moon rules, and he could do almost anything else he wanted.

The first rule, the most unbreakable rule, the rule that had struck up a flickering match of fear in his Grandmother's eyes, was to never, ever, leave the house once the sun set on a full moon. The other rules were all along the lines of not bothering his Grandmother as she did whatever she did and cloistering himself within the walls of his room. The final rule was the rule that no matter what, even if he had the stupidity to break every other rule of the full moon, Adam had to make sure that he never broke, was to never step foot on the beach. He had agreed to the rules after a little thought, asked for ice cream for dinner, and then received it. Adam had not run away from his Grandmother's house since.

But tonight, as he watched his Grandmother lift her talismans up into the corners of the room, he wondered why she was bothering. She muttered nonsense under her breath as she swept around the room, sealing and blocking and protecting, or whatever she was doing.

He slowly washed his plate in the sink, watching her.

"Adam, dear, could you hand me some of that cloth? I want to block up the edges of this window." She was taping black tarp to the windows, something she had never done before. He handed her the cloth and watched her stuff it into the cracks of the window so that no moonlight could possibly enter the house. Her shoulders lowered slightly with relief once the night was no longer visible from the window.

"Come on, we just have to do this with the other windows and then you can go on to bed," she told him. He began taping black tarp to the other windows, blocking out any light of the moon.

"Grandmother," he said suddenly. She was too busy focusing on the windows and muttering things under her breath to turn and face him.

"How did my parents die?" he asked. Her shoulders tensed and then immediately relaxed, conscious of his eyes on her.

"What do you mean, dear? You know they died in a boating accident. It was a terrible, terrible tragedy." Her voice was calm and her delivery of this statement was practiced. She looked at him, her eyes overly innocent.

"I was doing some digging and, you know, there's no record of them renting a boat. And we don't own one. There's no record anywhere," he said. He had caught her. Her eyes blinked once, twice. Satisfaction stretched languidly and settled down into his stomach, but it didn't feel quite right.

"You and I both know they didn't die in a boat accident, did they?"

"Adam, I don't have time to talk to you about this. I have to get this house protected from the full moon. I don't know what you're expecting to discover... The police report says it was a boat accident. Do I know better than the police? How would I know? Just help me cover up these windows. That's what you should be concerning yourself with. That's all you should be concerning yourself with," she said. There was a misty, suspicious quality to her rebuttal and it made him all the more sure she knew exactly what had happened to them. He shoved a few more rags into the window cracks and then turned toward her, his jaw jutting out slightly, like the jab before the right hook he was about to send her way.