Characters in Cycle of the Werewolf

… and he braved his sister's icy, disapproving silence, and on a cold, clear early December day, Al took Marty for a ride in his sports car, loading him carefully into the passenger bucket. Only this day there was no speeding and no wild …

Clyde Corliss is dead, but his two goodfornothing brothers, Alden and Errol, are still alive and well and cashing in their foodstamps at the A&P two towns over-they don't quite have the nerve to do it …

… eyeball witness to the freak that's killed six people in his town, including Neary's good friend Alfie Knopfler. And is he allowed to interview the boy? No. Does he even know where the boy is? No! He's had to make do with a deposition furnished to him …

… there is something so human in the howl that it makes his hand drop from the latch and he allows Alice Zinneman to pull him back into the living room. He puts his arms around her and draws her down onto the sofa, and there they sit like two frightened …

… that he lost his virginity on a fragrant early summer night like this one -the girl had been Arlene McCune, who is now Arlene Bessey, and married to one of Bangor's most successful young lawyers. God, how she had moved that night on the back seat …

… tales of the werewolf they say killed the drifter last month, Stella Randolph the month before, Arnie Westrum the month before that. But he doesn't laugh now. As the moon turns April dusk into a bloody furnace-glow, the stories seem all too real. He …

… the next day his parents will bundle him off to visit his Uncle Jim and Aunt Ida over in Stowe, Vermont, where he will stay until the end of summer vacation (the police concur; they feel that The Full Moon Killer might try to attack Marty again, and silence him).

You know?" "Sure," Billy Robertson says, because Pucky looks like he may hit him with all his force if he disagrees. "How about another beer, Puck?"

Brady Kincaid, eleven years old, has gotten a Vulture for his birthday and has lost all track of time in his pleasure at feeling the kite tug in his …

… Cal Blodwin, the Grace Baptist's head deacon, shambles down the center aisle, snarling, money spilling from the silver collection plate, his head cocked to one side.

On a more secular note, Chris Wrightson, the biggest drunk in Tarker's Mills, throws his Great Spring Drunk and staggers off in the silvery, unreal light of a nearly full April …

Clyde Corliss is dead, but his two goodfornothing brothers, Alden and Errol, are still alive and well and cashing in their foodstamps at the A&P two towns over-they don't quite have the nerve to do it right here in the Mills.

But Constable Lander Neary's good police work comes to an end that night when a hairy, moon-silvered arm reaches through the open window of his Dodge pickup as he …

"Acts like a new man, too," his wife tells her close friend Delia Burney, with a lecherous little grin. Brady Kincaid, killed by the Beast in kite-flying season, is still dead.

… that he says it again: Yep, Mother Nature is pruning her deadwood... and then the lights go out and Donna Lee Sturmfuller utters a gasping little scream. She also spills her coffee. You clean that up, her husband says coldly. You clean that up right …

The fat science teacher, Elbert Freeman, seems to be growing fatter, his shiny blue suit is splitting, clocksprings of hair are bursting out like the stuffing from an old sofa!

"Don't talk about it," the barmaid replies, shuddering. Her name is Elise Fournier, she is twenty-four, and she attends the Grace Baptist and sings in the choir because she has a crush on the Rev. Lowe.

… the four deer found slaughtered out by the turnpike the day after the October full moon, and upon Elmer Zinneman's eleven pigs, killed at full moon time in September. The argument rages at The Pub over beers during the long autumn nights. But Marty …

Clyde Corliss is dead, but his two goodfornothing brothers, Alden and Errol, are still alive and well and cashing in their foodstamps at the A&P two towns over-they don't quite have the nerve to do it right here in …

Gramma Hague, who used to make the best pies in Tarker's Mills, has died of a heart attack, Willie Harrington, who is ninety-two, slipped on the ice in …

… Grandfather Coslaw sat looking down the slope of the lawn toward the woods, a glass of schnapps in one hand. This had happened on July 2, two days ago. "It's just the fireworks they cancel. And you know why."

… entirely a dark emotion, although the next day his parents will bundle him off to visit his Uncle Jim and Aunt Ida over in Stowe, Vermont, where he will stay until the end of summer vacation (the police concur; they feel that The Full Moon …

There are a few who suspect the truth-Constable Neary's wife Joan is one-but the town can be a dark place, and no one knows for sure but them. The town keeps its secrets.

"Who's there, goddammit?" His father, not sounding very much like a Big Pal. "Marty?" Kate, her voice quavering, not sounding mean at all. "Marty, are you all right?" Grandfather Coslaw sleeps through the whole thing.

He forgets all about good police work. Instead his mind fixes on something Kenny Franklin said in the barber-shop that morning. Maybe it's some kind of disguise this fella puts on. Like a mask and all, you know.

Lester Lowe watches it from the door of the Baptist Parsonage; he has just come out to get his mail and he holds six circulars and one single letter in …

There is a gun in Marty's lap, a .38 Colt Woodsman. Two bullets are chambered in the -gun, and both of them are pure silver. Uncle Al has gotten a friend of his from Hampden, Mac McCutcheon, to make them in a bullet-loader.

All of those, and one ten-year-old boy named Martin Coslaw in the doghouse until Christmas, most likely. He pushes the Black Cats further up on his lap, gropes happily in the bag again, and comes out with the biggest twizzer of all - a World Class Twizzer if ever there …

The ice in Matty Tellingham's cow-pond has gone out, and the patches of snow in the tract of forest called the Big Woods have all begun to shrink.

… into a motel called The Driftwood near the Portland-Westbrook line, and this is the same motel that Milt Sturmfuller and Rita Tennison have chosen on this November night to do their business. Milt steps out at quarter past ten to retrieve a bottle of …

He has never so much as raised it. Now the beast collapses... shudders once... and dies. Mr. Coslaw stares at it, open-mouthed. Marty turnes to Uncle Al, the smoking gun in his hands. His face looks tired... but at peace.

… and tocks solemn tocks; he sits down, puts the religious circulars carefully aside on the table Mrs. Miller polishes twice a week, and opens his new letter. Like the others, there is no salutation. Like the others, it is unsigned. Written in the …

Slush freezes solid in weird sculptures. Old Man Hague's hayfield - known locally as Forty Acre Field-takes on a cracked glaze look. The houses remain dark; oil furnaces tick and cool.

… hears it as he stands at the bedroom window of his Laurel Street apartment in his longhandles; Ollie Parker, the fat and ineffectual grammar school principal hears it in his own bedroom; others hear it, as well. One of them is a boy in a …

Yes, some of the men are just skylarking, but some-Elmer and Pete Zinneman, for example-are dead serious.

… at O'Neil's Gulf Station out on Town Road by the entrance to the turnpike, a tourist starts giving Pucky O'Neil some lip about the price of gas and Pucky brains the fellow with the gas-pump nozzle. The fellow, who is from New Jersey, needs four …

… is afraid now, his two hundred and twenty pounds of good Navy muscle are forgotten now, his nephew Ray is forgotten now, his back seat coupling with Arlene McCune is forgotten now, and there is only the Beast, here now like some …

… telling his battered wife Donna Lee that he is on business, but his business is a B-girl named Rita Tennison who has given him a lively case of herpes which Milt has already passed on to Donna Lee, who has never so much as looked at another man in …

"I don't believe it," Neary says emphatically, and nods his head to emphasize the point. Stan has to draw his scissors back in a hurry to avoid putting one of the blades into that beefy roll of fat at the back of Neary's neck.

The cycle of the Werewolf has begun. FEBRUARY Love, Stella Randolph thinks, lying in her narrow virgin's bed, and through her window streams the cold blue light of a St. Valentine's Day full moon.

It's just not right, when you look forward to something for so long... it's not right for Victor Bowle and some dumb town council to come along and take it away. Not when it's something you really need. Do you get it?"

Violet MacKenzie, who teaches piano... her narrow spinster's body is filling out, her thin nose flattening and splaying!

Gramma Hague, who used to make the best pies in Tarker's Mills, has died of a heart attack, Willie Harrington, who is ninety-two, slipped on the ice in front of his little house on Ball Street late in November and broke his hip, but the library has …