Between States Box Set

Under a Confederate Moon-3

It had been ten years ago, on a small farm in the western part of Virginia, that Caleb became other. Twelve at the time, armed with his pa’s shotgun and a pouch full of lead pellets, he sat with his back against the barn, the chicken coop ahead in his sights. A full moon hung over the land, expectant, casting a silvery gloom over the empty farmyard. Caleb’s parents were asleep; his ma didn’t like him out here with the gun, but his pa trusted him, said it’d make him a man.

It made him something, alright.

His mission was to stop whatever critter kept getting into their coop. The past two mornings, Caleb’s pa had found dead hens and a handful of missing birds, one of their best layers among them. Something was coming onto the farm after the sun had gone down, a fox maybe, a wolf, or some sort of cat down from the mountains. Handing the rifle to his son, Caleb’s pa had ruffled the boy’s light hair and told him, “You shoot anything in or around that coop that ain’t got feathers, you hear me? Animal or not, I don’t care. We’ll sort it out in the morn.”

Animal or not. Caleb couldn’t imagine what Pa meant by that. The farm was a couple acres from its nearest neighbor, and a good half day’s walk from the town square. Who’d sneak out here to steal a few scrawny birds? Unless he meant Indians, or escaped slaves…

A silent shadow entered the farmyard, interrupting Caleb’s thoughts. His sweaty hands tightened on the rifle, already filled with one load of shot, ready to fire. The shadow moved as if stalking, thrown ahead of its maker by the moon above. Slowly, without a sound, Caleb raised the rifle’s sight to his eye. He squinted, aimed for a spot to the right of the chicken coop, and waited with one sure finger on the trigger.

The shadow stopped, the creature sensing him. Come on, Caleb prayed as a bead of sweat trickled down his face to burn his eye. He blinked to clear his vision, dropping the gun just a tad…

Suddenly the night was split with the sharp cry of a bobcat. It flashed through him as the shadow pounced. Too late, he realized that he wasn’t the hunter but the prey—the cat had been stalking him. He saw a blur of golden fur with dark markings, felt teeth like blades cut into his ankle, and his finger squeezed the rifle’s trigger involuntarily as he scrambled away.

Pure luck lodged the bullet into the bobcat’s chest, killing it. But the horror wasn’t over—Caleb watched, fascinated, as the cat before him…changed. The paws sprouted fingers, the hair receding. The legs straightened, lengthened, took on human shape. The forepaws bent into elbows. The fangs in his skin retracted into the short, blunt teeth of a human boy, not much older than Caleb himself.

An Indian, by his coloring. Naked. Dead.

In the morning, his pa said good riddance and buried the body in the stony left field where nothing grew but rocks and dandelions and wild alfalfa. His ma was convinced the Indian had had a dog with him, a mangy cur of some type—what else could’ve given her boy such a nasty bite? Caleb was reluctant to admit that the Indian had bitten him. How would that sound? A bobcat attacked him and when he shot it dead, the damned thing turned human.

Who would believe that?

His wound healed slowly. His mother kept it slathered with salve, but for weeks the skin around the bite looked bruised and ugly. A month after the attack, it began to seep a clear fluid that scared Caleb. He suspected it was infected. As if thinking that made it so, his stomach started to cramp later that day, his bowels knotting together, and a dull throbbing ache took up residence behind his right eye. When night fell, he twisted in the sheets of his bed, soaked with sweat and riddled with pain. Dying, he just knew it.

After a few minutes, the pain retreated to a haunting memory that he still felt in his bones. Weak, hungry, sure that he’d beaten whatever sickness had gripped him, Caleb shook his head to clear it, and heard the flap of an animal’s ears. The world around him looked faceted, deeper than he was used to, more alive. Despite the darkness in his bedroom, he saw everything clearly, as if it were awash with a golden light. An uneasy growl filled him, and the faint smack of a tail on his bed sheets made him whirl around, sure one of the farm’s dogs had snuck into his room.

But he was alone. Cautiously, he pushed himself up from the bed. The arm that supported his body was straight, narrow, and covered in thick, short fur.

And ended in a bobcat’s paw.