J. C. Conaway - Quarrel With The Moon

[dem bones]

J. C. Conaway - Quarrel With The Moon (TOR, Apr. 1982)

Blurb
WORSE THAN ANY NIGHTMARE
It began with the bones. Strange remains of a creature almost human....

Josh Holman at the New York Institute of Anthropology could not believe his eyes. He seemed to be staring at a new kind of missing link!

The remains had come from the mountains of West Virginia. Josh would investigate. And with him would go his lady, beautiful Cresta Farraday, taking a vacation from her career as a top fashion model, hoping to revitalize her relationship with Josh.

But the strange bones were the least of it. Before Josh and Cresta arrived in West Virginia, three people would die. Horribly....

And they were only the first.
Something in the mountains was hungry.
Something that craved human flesh.
Something that had a QUARREL WITH THE MOON

Josh couldn't help grinning. "This is like something out of a 1940s horror movie."

Appalachian Mountains, W. Virginia, 1949. The local simpleton, Cissy Chastain, 17 gives birth to twins, the second of them a male monstrosity, all black and hairy with long clawed nails. A horrified Reverend Hooper demands that this "spawn of Satan" be destroyed, but Cissy's Ma can't bring herself to abide, and instead buries .....

New York City, 1982. Josh Holman, 32, a researcher at the Institute of Anthropology, specialist subject, Canis Lupus. Josh is nursing a hangover after a night out with girlfriend Cresta Farraday at the trendy Krypton Club. Cresta, twelve years his junior, is a fashion model of international repute, and Jit stings Josh that she earns way more than him. As for her creepy, fag industry friends, he despises them, hence last night's blazing row on the dance-floor, after which he suffered another of his blackouts. The police eventually found him sprawled out in Central Park, his shoes gone but wallet untouched. All he can remember is jogging at the speed of light. What has he been up to? Josh promises Cresta he'll seek help with his problem, but it's a promise he has no intention of keeping.

An amazing discovery during an archaeological dig in the Appalachians. The skeleton of a half-man, half-beast. Josh - who was raised in the mountains - is packed off by an excited Dr. Phelps to investigate .....

[dem bones]

Cresta helps Josh load his "formidable genitals" aboard a state-of-the-art camper van, and together they set off for his home village of Jericho Falls. When his hangover kicks in and he dozes off at the wheel, almost killing them both, Cresta insists Josh pull over for the night (he parks the Scamper behind a billboard advertising Seagrams Seven).

Josh has demanded full credit for the discovery of the man-wolf skeleton which is hard on Harry Eves and his randy young assistants Ted Dwyer and Amy Parrish. These three are camped out at the Indian burial mound in the mountains, awaiting the arrival of the glory-seeking piss artist. They call it a night. Old Harry necks a bottle of Bourbon, Ted and Amy to enjoy al fresco bad sex like they were bit players in a Hamlyn nasty ("He entered her and they were joined together as man and woman", etc). The eerie howls in the night are an unwelcome distraction.

When everyone is asleep, the hairy ones creep from the trees and approach the tents. They are famished ...