The Backstory

It was no ordinary night. It should have been a full moon. At least that’s what the forecast called for. Urban legend suggests that on the night of a full moon, people behave in unexpected and strange ways. But the moon did not appear with the fading light on October 17, 1986 as expected. Instead of the usual display of harvest moon brilliance in the night sky, the sun, earth and moon had aligned in a configuration creating a total lunar eclipse and giving birth to another astronomical phenomenon called a Blood Moon.
 

During this eerie event, the moon is shrouded in a reddish stain, as if it has been doused in blood. Somehow the Elysian skies unknowingly lent their aid to the setting of the dark stage on which the nightmarish plot would soon unfold. By 10:00 pm, when the Blood Moon begins to reappear from its murky darkness, events in the little town of Murphy start to unravel.
 

Through the woods near the river, a gravel drive leads to a house where a restless teen tries to clear his thoughts. He is nauseated. Beads of cool sweat from the beer can in his hand, trickle in random streams of icy fingers silently landing onto the bedsheets. He sits motionless in his dark bedroom, waiting. Not a sliver of the full moon creeps through the window blinds. He guesses it to be 2 am—the blood moon has retreated in the West.