Moon Blood (COMPLETE)

Chapter Two: A Hungry Sickness

It frightened Neil how little he remembered of the night before. What had happened after the cinema? His brain hurt trying to remember as he stumbled home.

"Give me your key." David was already fumbling in Neil's pockets.

"Jacket."

"Thanks." Without another word David had unlocked the front door and was dragging Neil in. Shambling like a zombie, Neil made glacial progress.

"You're gonna be late. I'll be fine, just lock the door and post the keys back through the letterbox."

"Thanks man, I'll call you later." David was already half out the door. Neil barely had the strength to remain in his sitting position before he collapsed in a great heap as soon as the door clicked closed. Everything ached and his head thumped, but Neil didn't have the energy to move. The polished wooden floorboards were cool beneath his cheek.

*****

When he awoke, the sun was high in the sky and it was stifling hot. His right arm was completely numb. Neil pulled himself up onto his elbows, drenched in sweat. He was ravenous. Had he eaten? He could barely remember breakfast. On hands and knees, he crawled upstairs: his goal, the bathroom. Perhaps a shower would drown this dreadful fever.

The cold water poured over his bowed head and he groaned as he held the shower head over it. Neil had never in all his life felt this ill, or this drained. Saliva poured from his mouth like he wanted to retch, and retch he did, but it wasn't bile that his stomach brought back up.

Blood first, a pool of blood circling the drain, making the water pinkish. Neil tried to gasp, but his stomach convulsed again, expelling something solid and warm. A chunk of dark red thudded onto the bottom of the bathtub, and a thick taste of metal coated his mouth. He retched again, but there was nothing left in his stomach, only the acrid taste of acid mixing with blood. He was shaking, terrified tears mixing with his dripping mouth.

What was happening to him?

No answer came from within his quivering body, and it craved rest. But first he had to deal with the ominous lump of meat still steaming in the swirling water. He gagged, but he couldn't leave it there.

Pale fingers tried to find purchase on the slippery lump of meat and gristle, not helped by the running water. The other hand grabbed his dripping nose and mouth as he lifted it to drop in the toilet. He gagged again, and dropped it in. His stomach answered, and more blood came up, covering the fleshy lump in pinkish water.

*****

It took the best part of an hour, but Neil cleaned the bathroom top to bottom. Every last piece of evidence he'd vomited up was washed or flushed away, but it didn't quell the emptiness in his body, the violent trembling of his hands or the chattering of his teeth. He tried sleeping it off but his body refused to warm even under a bundle of blankets. He shivered as he heard the front door opening, not quite sure if he'd even slept, and his phone buzzed.

It was David, asking if he was okay. The words were blurry on the screen and Neil blinked.

"Neil, darling? Are you in?" His mother was behind his bedroom door and she knocked.

"Yeah." His voice was croaky.

"You hungry?"

He was famished, but the thought of eating something brought that queasy feeling right back up his throat. "N, no. Not hungry. Thank you."

His bedroom door opened, and the pinched, slightly sallow face of his mum peeked around the door. He was seventeen and still his mum didn't seem to comprehend the danger of opening a teenage boy's room unannounced. "Oh god, Neil. You look terrible! Are you sick?"

"I think so." He didn't have the energy to be sarcastic.

"I'll bring you up a hot drink, you sleep it off, okay?"

"Okay." And he turned over.

*****

Neil missed the first search party, but joined Dave and James on the second one. There hadn't been a whisper of Rachel Galvin since she had been reported missing, and the air of uncertainty was weighing heavily on the marching huddle of people. Some were holding banners, some had megaphones and were shouting for Rachel to come home. Right in the middle, Neil spotted Rachel's parents, two ghosts floating with nary a glimmer of life in either of them.

Neil knew that finding Rachel alive now it had passed the forty eight hour mark were slim to none, but threaded amongst that despair was a desperate 'what if': a last grasp of hope her friends and family clung to, trying to stave off the grief.

The day had been so warm, but now evening had fallen and an unusual chilly wind was kissing Neil's cheeks. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked skyward at the waxing moon, watching wisps of cloud blow past it.

"You okay, bud?" asked David, tapping Neil's head. He blinked and nodded, turning to him. "I know it's a dumb question but, you're thinking about Rachel, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Neil lied. He couldn't bear to think about her. Everytime he did, an unbidden torrent of ambivalent emotions welled up in his gut and he couldn't even begin to guess why: sadness, excitement, hunger, the taste of blood and vomit. Perhaps it was guilt that was gnawing on the back of his head, and Rachel's memory had been permanently attached to yesterday morning in the bathroom.

They continued to march through the estate, flying the banners and chanting words of encouragement. The atmosphere was a mask of positivity, a veneer protecting the grief waiting to leak out from underneath. It did little to assuage the rumbling churning in his body.

"Still," David said, wrapping an arm around the slouching shoulders of Neil, "you seem better than yesterday. Slept it off, did you?"

"Yeah, I think so." He was at least lucid today, rather than hallucinating and throwing up vomit in a fever-induced mania. It had to have been one: there was no chunks of flesh in the bathroom, it had been spotless when he'd woken up, and a fat lip easily explained that bloody taste in his mouth. Besides, it was utterly ludicrous. The chanting changed and pulled him from his thoughts as they walked down the main road once again.