Cycle of the Werewolf

In the small, quiet Maine town of Tarker's Mills, a place of baked-bean church suppers and schoolchildren bringing apples to their teachers, something inhuman arrives during a January blizzard. The story follows the town through an entire calendar year, with each month bringing a full moon and another killing by a werewolf whose identity remains unknown until a 10-year-old boy who uses a wheelchair pieces the truth together.

The cycle begins when Arnie Westrum, a railroad flagman stranded in a signal shack during the storm, hears scratching at his door. Something massive smashes through: a huge wolf with blazing yellow eyes whose snarls sound terribly like human words. Westrum's screams soon fill the night. In February, on St. Valentine's Day, the werewolf claims Stella Randolph, the lonely owner of the town's sewing shop. A scratching at her window wakes her, and she opens it, half-convinced she is dreaming of a lover. The wolf leaps inside and kills her. In March, a blizzard knocks out power across the town, and a howling fills the darkness. The next morning, a linesman discovers the frozen body of an unidentified drifter near downed power cables, surrounded by large wolfprints.

Spring arrives, but the shadow deepens. In April, 11-year-old Brady Kincaid stays too long on the town common flying his kite. As the full moon rises, the werewolf charges him on two legs, one paw clutching the boy's kite in grotesquely human fingers. Brady is found the next morning at the War Memorial, headless and disemboweled. In May, the Reverend Lester Lowe of the Grace Baptist Church has a nightmare in which he delivers a sermon warning that the Beast walks among them, only to watch his congregation transform into werewolves and to realize that he, too, is changing. He wakes in relief, but when he opens the church doors that morning, he finds the gutted body of Clyde Corliss, the church janitor, draped over the pulpit. In June, Alfie Knopfler, the owner of the Chat 'n Chew café, serves a familiar customer on the shortest night of the year. Turning to pour coffee, Alfie glimpses in the coffee-maker's reflection the customer's face shifting and thickening, the eyes lightening to gold-green. The transformed Beast kills him.

The turning point comes in July. The town has canceled its Fourth of July fireworks because of the killings, devastating Marty Coslaw, a 10-year-old who uses a wheelchair and looks forward to the display all year. His parents and older sister Kate respond with little understanding, but Uncle Al, Marty's favorite relative, listens to the boy's frustration and gives him a package of Chinese fireworks to set off alone after everyone goes to bed. That night, Marty rolls onto the verandah to light his fireworks under the full moon. The Beast emerges from the woods and shambles up the lawn on two legs, its green eyes reflecting the firelight, its clawed hands reaching for Marty's throat. In desperation, Marty lights a packet of Black Cat firecrackers and throws them in the creature's face. Four crackers detonate beside its muzzle and blow out its left eye. The werewolf screams and flees. Marty's parents send him to stay with relatives in Vermont for the rest of the summer. Despite his shock, Marty feels exultation: He faced the Beast and survived.

In August, Constable Lander Neary expounds his theory that the killer is a split personality but dismisses any notion of a literal werewolf. He overlooks a critical detail in Marty's deposition: Marty stated he put out the creature's left eye. The narrator notes that only one person in Tarker's Mills wears an eyepatch that summer, but Neary would never believe that individual capable of murder. That night, the werewolf kills Neary in his pickup truck. In September, the Beast slaughters all 11 of farmer Elmer Zinneman's pigs. Elmer and his brother Pete organize a hunt for November, when bare woods and snow will make tracking easier.

On Halloween night, Marty, back from Vermont, goes trick-or-treating dressed as Yoda. The Reverend Lester Lowe, wearing an eyepatch, drops a candy bar into his bag and smiles. Beneath the mask, Marty's face goes deathly pale. He recognizes the werewolf not merely by the missing eye but by a vital similarity between Lowe's human features and the snarling face he saw in July. Marty had not encountered Lowe before because he is Catholic and attends a different church.

In November, Lowe watches from the parsonage as caravans of hunters leave town daily. He is not worried about them; what concerns him are anonymous notes in a child's handwriting, the latest reading: "Why don't you kill yourself?" (108). After his May nightmare and the discovery of Corliss's body, Lowe began acknowledging signs he had previously ignored: torn clothes, unexplained scratches, blood on his hands and lips, and bursts of well-being coinciding with the full moon. When he woke blind in one eye on July 5th, denial became impossible. He traces his condition to a day the previous November when he picked unfamiliar flowers near a cemetery; they turned black before he reached town. Refusing responsibility, Lowe insists he is a man of God and that even evil serves God's will. He resolves to discover who has been sending the notes and silence that person. Feeling the pre-transformation restlessness, he drives to a motel near Portland to evade the hunters, where the transformed Beast kills Milt Sturmfuller, the town's abusive librarian, in the parking lot.

The final confrontation comes on New Year's Eve, the night of December's full moon. In early December, Marty called Uncle Al and told him everything: the July encounter, the identification of Reverend Lowe on Halloween, and the anonymous notes Marty himself had been sending to Lowe. Marty argued that Lowe's failure to contact his parents about the accusatory letters proved Lowe's guilt, since an innocent man would have complained. He asked for silver bullets, a gun, and Uncle Al's presence on New Year's Eve. Uncle Al initially refused but relented when Marty asked how he would feel if Marty were killed. Al had a friend melt down Marty's silver confirmation spoon and cast two bullets for a .38 pistol. At 15 minutes to midnight, with the rest of the family asleep, the picture window in the Coslaw family room explodes inward. The Beast, perhaps seven feet tall with one glaring green eye, lunges at Marty. Uncle Al freezes in horror. Marty calmly raises the pistol and says quietly that he is going to try to set the Reverend Lowe free. He fires both silver bullets, the second blowing out the creature's remaining eye. The werewolf collapses and dies as the lighted ball descends in Times Square on the television.

As Marty's father rushes in, the werewolf's body begins to change. The fur recedes, the claws melt into bitten fingernails, and the snarling face relaxes into the features of the Reverend Lester Lowe, lying naked and wrapped in bloody curtains with snow blowing around him. Marty tells Uncle Al the Beast is dead and begins to weep. Uncle Al holds him tightly and whispers that he loves him. Outside, the wind howls as the first minute of the new year becomes history.