Free Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein Page B

actually was David. Before the creature woke up, Ferguson bound the animal’s hands and feet with rope. He lashed the creature to a chair and set the chair in front of the fire. Then Ferguson sat and waited.
    The creature woke up screaming. A horrifying scream of pain and anguish. Ferguson was panicked. The creature looked like David, so he wanted to help it, but at the same time he was afraid of it. Fergie stood nervously in front of the creature, not knowing if he should untie it or knock it out again. Then the creature got quiet and leveled its eyes on Ferguson, sending a chill up his spine.
    “Untie me, John,” the creature said, calmly.
    Ferguson froze, looking into the large, black eyes of the creature.
    “Untie me, John,” the creature repeated, and Ferguson wanted to untie it. He felt a need to untie it. Against all his better judgment, he felt compelled to do what the creature asked. And as he took a step toward the creature, the creature smiled and said, “Good boy,” and John’s heart stopped beating. It wasn’t David’s voice anymore. It was the voice of Ferguson’s father.
    Ferguson squinted through the darkness and there it was. The long face with the crooked nose and the whiskers. A slit for a mouth with no lips. His father’s sunken eyes, black as coal. And the voice, with an edge of contempt in it always. “Good boy,” he said, like his father used to say when he did something any moron could do. “Good boy.” Ferguson tried with all his might to resist untying the creature, but he couldn’t. He was drawn toward the thin, hairy body with his father’s face and voice.
    Ferguson took out his pocketknife and began to cut the rope that held the creature. It was thick hemp and difficult to cut. Ferguson’s knife slipped and he sliced into his thumb. Blood sprang out of the wound. Ferguson put it to his mouth and sucked. The blood tasted hot. So hot. And suddenly things became clear to Ferguson. Suddenly he was free of the feeling that he wasn’t in control of his own actions. Like shrugging off a heavy coat, Ferguson could move as he wanted. He stood up and the creature looked at him with anger. “Untie me, you idiot. Are you too stupid to do what I say?” Ferguson stood over the creature, and all the rage he felt about his father, who had passed away years ago, whose funeral he did not attend under protest, all the rage and anger of how this ugly man had ruined his life and the life of his mother came rushing to the surface, and as he raised his flashlight over his head, he knew that whatever this thing was, tied to the chair, it was using him and using his father’s dead soul to manipulate him, and his anger pushed bile into his throat and he said, “I’m sorry, David,” before he brought the metal flashlight down on the creature’s head, knocking it so far into unconsciousness it would not wake up until morning, until after the sun had climbed into the sky. And when it did awake, it was not a creature. It was David Livingstone, a man, a shaman who had done battle with a force much more powerful than he, and had lost; but in exchange for a price he had not agreed upon, he had been spared from becoming one of the undead, from being forever transformed into a kushtaka.
    F ERGUSON DIDN’T ASK. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t want to know. As far as he was concerned, the events of the previous night simply hadn’t happened. It was all a dream. A hallucination. It had to be. People don’t change shapes; they don’t become animals. It doesn’t happen.
    Neither man spoke as they walked down to the dock. David seemed satisfied to let the matter drop. He was in a daze and looked almost fragile to Ferguson. Broken. There were two large welts on his temple, and when he walked, he seemed to be in pain. David climbed into his boat and started the outboard.
    “You’ll send me a report and an invoice?” Ferguson asked.
    David looked up and nodded slightly as he guided the boat out into the