Page 7 of Blood Moon
After the assembly, they split us into groups for tours. Thankfully, Em and I were paired together. She huddled close to me with wide eyes and anticipation, and I tried my damned best to match her energy and shake off everything that had transpired in the hall.
The tour guide introduced himself as Tyler Babu. He was a sophomore majoring in engineering with warm brown skin and thick black hair that flopped when he moved. In the center of his light blue shirt was a greeting that read “Hi, I’m your new friend!”
Outside the building, Tyler led us to the Campus Center—a long stretch of green manicured grass with walkways and mature trees that crowded in on each other. At the center was a water fountain with the founding fathers, and every few hundred feet were black iron benches and tables—all in memory of someone who was affiliated with the university.
The Campus Center stretched further than a mile, and scattered on the outskirts were limestone buildings of different shapes and sizes, all of which had faded green scalloped roofs and large, arched windows. In front of a few select buildings were statues of wolves. They sat high and mighty like gargoyles. The only things missing were iron pitched fences.
Lakeland felt like it was pulled from a fairytale, too beautiful to exist in a town so embedded in the paranormal legends that it had an annual carnival named “Once Bitten.” But then, maybe it did make sense. All of us were born with a little strangeness in our hearts.
Each building we toured smelled of terracotta and pine and shared wide hallways, ornate crown molding, and touches of gold here and there. Though the buildings were empty for the most part, I imagined myself in the classrooms, planted in the chairs, breathing in the old carpets while I scribbled words into a notebook or gazed out a window. Soon enough, I’d be doing just that.
Furthest away from the Campus Center and closest to the sports fields was the Bowman Art Building. It looked different than the rest with a leaner, more modern shape. The limestone was swapped for a more minimalist design, and lengthy windows stretched up and down the exterior.
The closer we got to the building, the more I felt like I was being watched, as if at any moment someone would appear from behind one of the large maple trees or be revealed in the reflection of a window from an empty building as we passed by.
The south entrance of the Bowman Art Building opened into the Sutton Art Museum of Kansas, and sitting at the front desk was a woman with olive skin and big brown and gray-streaked curls pinned behind her ears. She wore a fitted black pantsuit with a sunflower-printed scarf wrapped tastefully around her neck.
She stood, greeted us with a fixed smile. Her name was Abba Ruiz. She’d been working at the Sutton Art Museum for the last fifteen years. It was her second home.
The museum consisted of natural artifacts from the state of Kansas that dated back to when the prairies were seas, but now the building also housed local pieces from artists and a section where art students could display and sell their work.
“I’ll be around if anyone has questions.” Abba smiled as she scanned the crowd, winking at me.
Tyler looked at his watch. “We’ll be here for approximately five minutes before our next stop. Feel free to look around,” he said, and then he hurried around the corner toward the restrooms.
Em and I surveyed the area with our heads high and our noses pointed, making dignified remarks about the pieces we saw and then laughing at ourselves. I liked that Em’s energy relaxed me enough that we could goof off together. She reminded me of a friend I had in high school who had moved away junior year after her mother’s job relocated them.
We’d been so close, but after Rena left, I’d admit, I let my jealousy get the best of me. I was agile and unpredictable. I didn’t like that she had both her parents, and I didn’t. And it wasn’t that my friend deserved to suffer due to an uncontrollable force in my life, it was that I hadn’t coped. Was unsure how. I let my burning house of trauma engulf her when I should have embraced that being around her and her family was a breath of fresh air.
It was something I never had the chance to tell her before she left. Those memories chewed away at me, crumpled me, and I hoped this new opportunity gave me a chance to be the kind of friend, the kind of person, I longed to be.
I slowed to a halt, holding Em’s arm back when we came across the folklore section.
Bright lights hung over displays. Fossils, jewelry, and different rocks all seemed to sparkle.
Em snickered. “Some things never change. It feels like elementary school all over again.” She scanned the crowd of others looking around the museum. “Now we just need an old townie to tell us how the Lakeland legends are real.”
I hadn’t realized Em was from town, too. The way she dressed and styled her hair was so different than most people from Timber Plains, so much more different than even the artsy parts of Kansas City; I’d assumed she was from Paris or some other far-off place. She had a slight accent as well, one I couldn’t place, but perhaps she’d inherited it from her parents.
“Right,” I mumbled, approaching the displays anyway.
As I did, Em sang,“One, two, the wolves are coming for you.”
I rolled my eyes and laughed under my breath as I continued forward.
“Three, four, the vampires are at your door …”
I swatted my fingers at Em, and she giggled, still humming. It was an old song grandparents would sing to scare their grandchildren into believing that if they misbehaved, they’d be fed to the monsters that were hidden in the woods. It was an odd tactic that hardly worked.
But Timber Plains was known for its lore about werewolves. All of us grew up hearing different versions of the same stories about the packs of wolves that settled in the Midwest to protect the town from blood-sucking demons. I was unsure where the stories first originated from and why. Though now, it was more like a running joke the adults and teens shared amongst themselves, but to the children who grew up here, it felt very real. At least, at one point, it had to me … and in a confounding way, the stories still connected me to Rena. It was the way she told the legends—so much more different than the stories my friends’ parents told—that made the unreal feel definite.
I had believed in the werewolves and the vampires just as much as I believed in Santa Claus. But when Santa turned out to be my parents, the stories about the town seemed steeped in a more fantastical world than the one I lived in. It was all make-believe, part of the culture here. When people thought of Kansas City, they thought of BBQ. And when they thought of Timber Plains, they remembered the long tales about werewolves.
However, seeing these artifacts now, all of it reminded me of Rena and the strange thing that happened the night she disappeared …
In front of me, a glass case held a leather-bound book inside. Its pages were crumpled, and a yellow cast crawled to the edges and slowly worked itself to the center. The book was opened toLupus in Fabula.Underneath that, the translation:The Wolf in the Story.And on the next page was a detailed sketch of how a man named Aadan fell from the heavens and turned into a wolf.
So it went, Aadan traveled to the Midwest to protect the prairies and the people from the growing threats in the area. Decades passed, and Aadan craved more than the life of a protector. He begged the heavens to keep him human so he could experience the world as the mortals had—to fall in love, to have a family—but the heavens sent endless rainfall and war instead.
