Excerpts anthologies Read an Excerpt From Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II, edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. As any savvy horror fan knows: the monster never truly dies. By Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., Shane Hawk | Published on August 4, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share “Neon Moon,” a short story by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. from Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II, an anthology of Indigenous dark fiction edited by the author and Shane Hawk, publishing with Vintage on August 18th. As any savvy horror fan knows: the monster never truly dies. The team that brought you the bestselling dark fiction anthology Never Whistle at Night has risen, hungry, from the grave to summon more dark delicacies for your delectation. In these twenty-one brand-new, groundbreaking, gruesome stories—authored by both established and newly unearthed Indigenous talent and illustrated by renowned Cheyenne and Arapaho painter Brent Learned—the contributors are fully embracing horror: both supernatural horrors and the everyday horror of living under colonialist rule.  Featuring stories of unspeakable yet satisfying terror, from twisted psychological tales to gore-filled monster hunts, this new selection of sinister stories will sate your darkest appetites and leave you slavering for more. Never Whistle at Night, Part II: Back for Blood is a further celebration of Indigenous survival and the enduring tradition of transforming adversity into art. Buy the Book Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (Eds.) Buy Book Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (Eds.) Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget “Neon Moon” by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. Breathe. Just breathe. Easier said than done, he told himself, flying down the alley, too scared to look down at the puddles and potholes that might snap his ankles, too scared to look over his shoulder. The thing was matching his breaths, the ragged sound filling his ears as he ran. Joey’d been at it for a mile or so, running straight across main avenues and boulevards, not missing a beat, luckily no cars this time of night blocking his path, the alleyway east of Broadway wide and clear. He looked down gangways left and right, hoping for a clear getaway, but none of them were inviting in the least and got less so as he headed deeper into opposition territory, home of TJOs and Kings, and the creature behind him gained a few steps whenever he looked to the side, so he gave it up. Here in the early spring, the air by the lake was still cool, not yet burning his lungs as he ran, legs churning with all he could give them. There were a couple of moments when he’d considered veering off the path but the thing’s heavy claws swiped into his hair streaming out behind him. It ripped out some strands here and there, even razored open a thin line in his scalp. Reminded him of the time the cops had grabbed him up by the lake, the fat patrolman Squiggy clenching a hank of his hair, throwing him on the hood of the squad car, a triumphant Gotcha, Injun, oiling across his fat, blotchy face, and he didn’t want a repeat of that shit, for real. And this was way more serious than that had been. The chilly air on his torn scalp pushed his feet frantically forward. * * * Joey and a couple of his boys had been sitting on the fire escape behind the Granada Theater, drinking beers and laughing at shit they’d read in the paper, dumbass politicians and fucked-up crimes, their crappy sports teams, even a story about a Mothman or some shit folks had called the cops on lately, swooping around rooftops and freaking people out. Chicago was an old place full of plenty of monsters, sure, but the ones they knew were real, were humans, like Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy. Old folks counted Bugs Moran and Al Capone in those numbers, too, but to him and his pals, those guys were heroes, men who took care of business when the Man wouldn’t or couldn’t. Nowadays folks said there was a Loch Ness Monster thing out in Lake Michigan, and the city had had its fair share of bell tower–climbing escaped monkeys and even a sea lion and a hyena back in the day, but the Mothman was some new shit, just the latest distraction in a place that got bored easy in-between murders of everyday citizens and political scandals that only affected the rich and well-connected. He hung out at the American Indian Center in Uptown sometimes, and a couple of the old guys there told him and his buddies a story the other day. They said they’d heard the original Mothman-thing that showed up out East was on account of some Shawnee chief’s curse, but he figured they were just fucking with the young ones, talking shit, trying to get all mystical and whatnot. Still, what they said gave folks pause; everyone knew not to trust the government ever since they first showed up in their lands, and the way he heard it, that first one in West Virginia or whatever had shown up around some old World War II munitions plant, so who knew what they were up to in there. And after the shit they’d pulled with the COINTELPRO infiltration of the American Indian Movement a few years ago, well, yeah, everything everyone’d ever thought the government could be and do turned out to be true. So maybe somewhere in there, the old dudes were onto something. Tonight the back of the old Neo-Moorish theater on Sheridan Road was a prime perch for hanging out. The Granada was taller than most open-air spots in this part of the neighborhood, streetlights and neon on Broadway spreading south while a clear and fine view of the lake beckoned to the east. They’d all snuck inside it one dark afternoon earlier in the winter and done a bunch of mushrooms, marveling at the weird artwork and vintage beauty of the structure, had good trips. They told themselves they’d come back and hang out, try to capture the magic again. But tonight it turned out to be just an abandoned building where their young selves could drink and smoke and talk shit in peace. And that’s what they’d been doing for a while when a shadow whispered across the moon, flickered the sky pitch black for a half second. “Did you see that?” Joey asked. “See what?” Jimmy said. “What are you talking about?” Tommy said. “I didn’t see nothing.” “The moon blinked out,” he said. “You’re crazy, bro,” Jimmy said. “Just some clouds passing by. The moon don’t shut off. It don’t work like that.” “It did, Folks,” Joey said. For real, someone in the dorms at Loyola must’ve seen it, he thought. They’re out there partying all night. They’d call it in, the little narcs. They loved to call the police. They’d done it to him and his boys plenty of times. “Keep drinking, homes,” Jimmy said, laughed. Tommy handed Joey a half pint of Early Times. “You need some of this,” he said, smiling. They were cashy tonight, copped a twelve-pack of tall boys and a brick of Richards, and besides, Tommy always had something extra hidden in his wallet. Even got the old wino who regularly bought booze for them at the liquor store a full pint of his own for his troubles. “Nah, bro. For real,” he said, taking a sip off his Old Style Tall Boy, then setting it down on the step. “Ain’t lying, Folks. On the Nation. That shit happened. Like it just turned off by a switch, no light at all.” Joey turned around and grabbed a couple of ice-cold cans from the bag, snuck them in his jacket pockets for later, when nobody would remember how many beers they’d had. Getting caught short wasn’t his style. They were Royals, in the Folks Nation with the Disciples, and all kinds of other sets across the whole city. There was plenty of opposition out there, Peoples and their Nation that included Kings and Vice Lords, and lately, even TJOs. At any rate, they now had a shit ton of enemies anytime they wanted to leave the neighborhood. “On the Nation” was a serious oath, not a thing to be taken lightly. Jimmy and Tommy had to think about what he’d said, then. “For real, Folks?” they said. “For real.” And so it got real, real quick. They stood up, drinks in hand, scanned the skies. “What did it look like, homes?” They raised their voices over an incoming train on the El tracks across the street out front of the theater. “I didn’t really see it too clear, you know?” he said, got up off the step, too, pointed out over the lake. “It just flashed across the moon right there. But must’ve been big, whatever it was, I guess, blacked out everything.” As they looked toward the water Joey thought he heard a thump and scattering of asphalt rubble on the roof above and behind them, but when he tried to tune his ear to the sound an Englewood train screeched into the Sheridan El station. The conductor’s voice crackled out loud enough to hear for two blocks around. “Loyola. This is Loyola, an A train. Next stop, Thorndale.” “Was it like the thing in the paper?” Jimmy said. “You know, that Mothman bullshit or whatever it’s supposed to be?” “I don’t know, bro. I don’t think so. It was quicklike. Could’ve been anything, I guess.” “But you must’ve seen an outline at least,” Tommy said. “Not really, Folks. Just a flash while y’all were talking.” “Well fuck a Mothman, anyway,” Jimmy said, staring out at the full moon, across the purple-black skies over the water. He waved his arms. “Bring it on, homes!” “I wouldn’t talk like that, I was you,” Joey said. “Man, I’ll say what I want,” Jimmy and his beer said. “Yeah. Fuck him,” Tommy and his Early Times said. “Y’all can say what you want, I guess,” he said, “but there might be consequences. Just sayin’.” They sat on the fire escape, drank silently for a while, looking east at the lake here and there, but mostly south, the lights on Broadway an undeniable draw. The roof had gone silent. Life was good at this age, drinking together, earthly cares minimal at best. There’s a solid couple of years there, mid-teens, when the world goes on forever, and you can live your life mostly unseen. Your teachers, parents, anyone not a gangbanger too, they all walk right by you like people on the street on their way to work or some other sad shit. As long as you don’t give them too much trouble, you’re on your own, can do whatever you want. It’s probably the last time you’ll ever be truly free in your life. They might’ve been thinking about that, but probably not. The focus was on the booze tonight, and they gave it their adolescent all. Before too long, courage from the alcohol was undeniable, its clear blue flame currently racing through Jimmy and Tommy. So. “We should go do something,” Tommy popped off. “Go fuck up some Kings at Thorndale or something. Or those fucking Assyrian Eagles up on Devon. Man, I hate those shitheads.” “For real, Folks,” Jimmy said. They’d been an enemy even before the Nations got formed. “Or we could just hang here and enjoy the moment,” Joey said, looking out over the big water, eyes drifting from the horizon on up. But as he peered into the face of the purply moon, traced the nose and mouth on its glowing surface, it happened again. “There! Did you see that?” Jimmy and Tommy were oblivious, mayhem already on their minds. “No,” they said. “What?” “It’s back,” he said. “Where?” “There.” He pointed out over the lake. The inky black around the moon provided no response, at least none they could translate. “We don’t see nothing—” As they stared out over the water, their vision partially blinded by peripheral light from the street below, the creature suddenly hurtled straight at them from the deep dark. It slammed into the fire escape, skittered over the metal edge, recovered, one set of claws biting deep into Tommy’s chest; the other tore off his face, the ripping sound drowning out the scream he’d started when he felt his forehead come away from the bone. A thick black talon slashed his throat wide open, heavy fat drops of blood plopping down onto the dumpster hood three stories below, his torn carotid arcing onto the pale-yellow ceramic of the building, running down into the thirsty mortar between the bricks. Jimmy took off down the fire escape stairs, hand clutching the iron railing, struggling to get back up after twisting his ankle and falling. Tommy’s still-warm folded-in-half face grazed Jimmy’s knuckles as it sailed to the alley below. Back on top of the fire escape, Joey took the briefest of seconds to assess this thing, noted it crouched upright, gripping the rail with taloned feet on thin bowed legs, like a bat’s. The upper body was massive. Broad-chested and heavily muscled, the traps on its shoulders were veiny boulders where its wings sprouted. That meant this was no bat or bird—the creature had fully developed humanlike arms, gray-black ropes of slick muscle that ended in a pair of three-fingered hands tipped by thick black obsidian claws. If it stood up, it would likely be close to seven feet tall and, judging by the length of its glossy black wings trailing down off the rail, it probably had a twenty-five-foot span when they were fully extended. Bloodred eyes glowed in what passed for a face, no emotion but hatred there. The darkness under its gaze hinted at long, needly teeth, leaking onto the slats of the fire escape. Jesusfuckingchrist. Joey really loved all the old movies like Frankenstein, The Hunchback, and The Wolf Man, monsters who’d been created by men whose cruelty erased the creatures’ humanity, but this real-life shit was crazy. “Go, go, go!” he hollered, pushing and shoving Jimmy down the stairs, gambling on those scrawny legs and curvy taloned feet not being near as quick as they could be on the metal slats. Luckily, if nothing else, he was right about that. He and Jimmy were on their way to the first landing when it gave up chasing them down the fire escape and pushed off into the air. It roiled and rolled in the dirty fog of the alley with an inhuman scream that sounded like a broken air raid siren. “Holy fuck, bro,” Jimmy said. “What the—” It rushed back in at them, misjudged the structure of the stairway, and shuddered into the railing just above where they were turning to the last flight of steps. One of its razor-sharp claws sliced through the rusted iron and its long arm got tangled in the metalwork frame. This fucking thing flies like it just got its wings or something, Joey thought. Didn’t make him any less scared, though. Just an observation, he thought. An apology. Or a prayer. They jumped the last three stairs and bolted into the alley, running for their lives. That scream came back, followed them across the blacktop and onto Devon Avenue as they ran across the street without looking. Fuckfuckfuck, he swore under his breath as he ran. Cain’t no one else see this shit? It was quiet down here this late at night, sure, but there were usually at least a few college boys from Loyola wandering around, pissing in the alley, talking loud and being foolish. Tonight, though, nothing. They ran. His chest expanded. Shiiiit, he thought, feeling immortal. I’ll run my ass all the way to the Indian Center if I can. A roar of wings and the skittering of claws on hot top crashed behind them. “Fuck,” Jimmy said, tucked his head low, ran as fast as he could. His buddy was fast, but not as fast as he was. And isn’t that how it goes, the rule of getting away? There’s only one of those. It’s to be faster. Joey heard Jimmy go down, a muffled shriek and the loud snapping of bones announcing his exit from this mortal coil. He swallowed his grief for now, no time to dwell on the screams that would haunt him for the rest of his days. He’d figure out how to deal with them if he made it out of this alive, just like most other survivors do. And right now, that was his only goal, to become a survivor. Run. * * * Foster Avenue came and went as he sped across, head down. Trucking down the alley on the other side of the street, he knew there were some snaky gangways behind the buildings that looked out on Winthrop. There was no way he could beat this thing in a footrace. It kept pace behind him, and he knew it knew it could take him any time it wanted. So, yup, fucking with him. Well, then. Time to fuck back. Just ahead, he knew there was an ancient wino who lived in a cardboard refrigerator box at the mouth of the gangway behind a big old courtyard building with a low entryway and a short set of steps. Yup. There he was, taking in the night air, unfortunately about to have his last hand-rolled smoke in his cluttered front yard, piss bottles and takeout containers, a balled-up gray moving blanket, talking to himself, a half brick of Richards leaning against his Maytag condominium. Joey could think about that later. He pulled one of the tall boys from his pocket and heaved it at him. “Here you go, old man! Next one’s on me, too,” he said, and cut sharp left down the gangway. Wino Joe caught the can and nodded his head. Like he’d hoped, the thing screeched to a halt, new and easier prey presenting itself. Behind him, Joey heard screams from the old wino that abruptly ended. That gave him more than enough time to cut up a flight of gray back stairs and into a hallway headed for the heart of this collection of dumpy apartments. Steam radiators clanked and groaned, but there were enough of them that it was hot and humid as fuck as he picked his way through the guts of the old building. The damp carpet smelled like cigarettes and old onions. Hints of piss and chili powder popped in as he made his way down a long hallway and then up another flight of stairs. Stopping after the landing, he saw he could go straight or hang a right. The old building was confusing once you got deeper inside, and his sense of direction was fucked. He looked up, saw another flight of stairs, passed on that. Looked down and— Fuck. A clawed hand gripped the railing below. The amber light from a cheap sconce reflected on the glistening bald head of the thing making its way up the stairs, longlong black wings trailing on the runner. It knew, looked up at Joey, its face erupting in that scream he’d heard earlier. Run. He did. Down the hallway to his right and out onto the back porch, screeches blistered his ears. He grabbed a trash can, tried to shove it under the doorknob. It was too short, and he said fuck it, ran down the stairs. Jumped the last few and made right for the street instead of the alley. The dinky trash can burst on the railing as the thing screeched again, flew over the banister, and churned his way. Run. Flying down the block, he moved onto the grass across the front lawns of courtyard buildings and three- and six-flats. Almost a block down, another gangway looked good, especially dark and low. He ran for it with all he had. Right before the first set of back stairs, there was a shallow alcove that led into the boiler room. Joey pressed in against it, made himself as small as he could, cut his eyes to the ground and held his breath, resisted scratching the dried blood from the torn scalp the creature had given him back in the alley. It rushed by him five seconds later, claws scurrying, breath wheezing, a low-key screech rasping from its drooly mouth. A string of the thing’s spit landed on the ground in front of him as it ran by, sizzling on the concrete. He counted to eight, let out his breath, slow and low. Ticking off a few more seconds, he dared a peek down the gangway. It was ten feet away, standing in the opening for the stairs, waiting for him. Its mouth yawned wide in what he imagined would be a laugh for this thing, its charnel-house breath fogging across his face. Yup. It was definitely fucking with him. He smiled back, playing along, and took off back down the gangway. It had to stuff itself into that low and narrow space to get through it, and that bought him precious seconds. Popping out the other side and jumping up onto the lawn, he hooked it right to cut down the alley, picking up his rhythm from earlier, never missing a beat. Run. The word flashed across his mind, screamed in his ears. And he obeyed. Legs pumping and burning, he dodged left into the alley that ran along Broadway, the thing pacing his steps, synching its breathing to his own. He could feel his eyes bugging, knowing it was three steps behind him. Please make it four, then five, six if he was lucky. Remember, good people, he was that. Luck, though, like liquor, can run out. It did. Right before Lawrence Avenue. There was a light on in the fire escape window on the second floor of the six-flat at the mouth of the alley, but it was probably the one over the stove in the kitchen. Anyway, no one would come to that window to watch him die. Joey had turned out to be the fastest of his buddies, but the Mothman had endurance beyond his world and genetically manipulated rage. Plus, wings. Getting tired of chasing this smallish human, the formerly human creature unfolded them, gathered the murky air around him and pushed. That was all it took. One little Indian went down with the force of his massive wings. He’d appreciated the chase, though. It’d made his night more interesting than usual, but he had other places to be, other things to do, he knew. He’d end this worthy human’s life with some mercy at least, a shadow of memory forcing some empathy into his mind. On occasion he’d remember who he was before the government’s experiments turned him into what he was now, brought to life to hunt down the last of the Indians and anyone associated with them. Ironically, the Americans who made him had based him on an Indian legend, twisting the Animikii, the Thunderbird, into something guaranteed to scare the shit out of them, maybe even make them obey in advance or give in prematurely. Then added scalpings, murder, and mayhem to make their point. Their final solution, Relocation in the ’50s and ’60s, hadn’t worked, had backfired, actually, the power of the American Indian Movement rising from the rubble of the cities they’d talked them into moving to. All of their programs of destruction over the years had failed. This was their Hail Mary. He didn’t possess the ability to work out just what this strange feeling, this empathy, was; his ability to feel remorse and sadness was supposed to have been engineered out of him. But the military scientists’ own lack of humanity and sense of community had fucked it up. Their disrespect of those two things had even allowed him to escape, eventually. And though he’d lost the ability to name those concepts, they still ebbed and flowed inside of him. The scientists’ cold calculations hadn’t considered that possibility. His accumulated grief would’ve killed a lesser being, but he knew that somewhere in the time before they’d forced him into the lab that he’d been human, a good person. A dad, a brother, a friend, like the parents and siblings and buddies this small human probably had—or was about to have had. Could he let this one go, run free? Drool leaked down onto the human’s chest, slow-burned through his T-shirt. Sorry about that, he tried to project with what was left of his original face. The rage would be taking over again soon, but he worked hard in the moment to be something he’d been made not to be. The Mothman blinked softly. Joey looked up into the creature’s fluttering eyes. Was that empathy? he asked himself. What the fuck? Its weight was unbearable. He could barely breathe, and felt his ribs creaking, starting to snap. Just kill me already, he sent out, didn’t figure trying to talk to this thing was possible. Mothman thought, Does it want me to kill it? Is that what it’s thinking? “Do it already. Now,” Joey said out loud with what would be his last breath. If you walked by the alley east of Broadway on the north side of Lawrence on that early spring night, creeping into the awakening morning, you’d be hard pressed to describe what you saw. An enormous, winged creature sitting on the chest of a young Native gangbanger, one massive set of claws on his throat, the others raised in a killing blow, their eyes searching each other as if they were communicating, death and action paused as if waiting for a camera to start recording. It was something you could never tell anyone else. Well, maybe in a bar late at night when everyone would be too drunk to remember—though not your family, that was for sure. But like most vignettes in the city, there was no one to see anything, no one to capture a moment that was a blip in the life of a metropolis that writhed and churned through the years, its minutes recorded for all to see somewhere, to be sure, but ones that few if any bothered to review. The creature understood, though, loud and clear. The government’s escaped creation leaned in, tried to smile, drew a single razor-sharp claw all the way across the human’s exposed neck. It caught the carotid and the jugular, so things got messy and multicolored. All the apologies and regrets Joey planned to give to his boys bunched up in his throat right before it got laid open and his briefest pang of survivor’s guilt spilled out into the alley. It dried there on the cold blacktop for everyone heading to the El for their morning trip to work downtown to judge, and maybe think about, but probably not. At least tomorrow’s page 10 would have a new Mothman story to help them pass the ride. Excerpted from Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II, copyright © 2026 by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (eds.). “Neon Moon” copyright © 2026 by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II</i>, edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. appeared first on Reactor.