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
sits parked at the crossing-point of two dirt roads out in West Tarker's Mills.
There is a low, snorting grunt, and a wild, terrifying smelllike something you
would smell in the lion-house of a zoo.

His head is snapped around and he stares into one green eye. He sees the fur, the
black, damp-looking snout. And when the snout wrinkles back, he sees the teeth. The
beast claws at him almost playfully, and one of his cheeks is ripped away in a
flap, exposing his teeth on the right side. Blood spouts everywhere. He can feel it
running down over the shoulder of his shirt, sinking in warmly. He screams; he
screams out of his mouth and out of his cheek. Over the beast's working shoulders,
he can see the moon, flooding down white light.

August