Moon
The big, fat, ol' moon shone down on Manhattan indiscriminately that night. It shone on drugstores and pizza joints and coffee bars. It blazed over St Antony's hospital and was clearly visible through the large bay windows of the ER, incongruously cheery.
It emphasised the shadows.
To Ted, everything seemed too bright, too colourful, like a series of over-exposed photographs rather than real life. Individual images made sense, burned on his retinas, imprinted on the hard-drive of his brain.
Barney, pale-faced with pain, hunched over the cheap, plastic seat, the material of his Armani sweat pats wrinkled around the bottom of his sneakers.
The blood-drops scattered over the floor at Barney's feet.
Robin, her face as ghost-white as Barney's was, soft and earnest, frozen mid-sentence while she tried to keep on talking to him, reassuring him. It felt like hours that they were left there, although it was probably minutes.
Lily and Marshall, hands outstretched as they burst through the swing doors into the waiting room, Lily's face etched with horror, Marshall's almost green with nausea when they saw what had happened to their friend.
"Wow," Lily said with a half-laugh. "When Robin called me to say you'd been mugged, I was ready to rip you a new one, the number of times I'd told you to stick to the main pathways when you take a run around the park. But now I can see that someone beat me to it."
"Lily!" Ted found himself saying, horrified, as sound and moving pictures crashed in on him once again.
Barney's phone call had been weird, almost surreal. Even now, Ted wondered why they hadn't just called an ambulance.
"I'm hurt," Barney's voice, strained, staccato and strangely quiet. "Cuts and bruises. Need to get to a hospital. Can you pick me up?"
Cuts and bruises they'd expected, when Robin bundled into the back seat of the cab after him. But Ted was totally unprepared for what he saw, once his brain had processed the pictures, once he realised that the dark stain across Barney's chest and shoulder was blood, not water. The treacherous moon had made it look black. Even now, in the unforgiving strip-lighting of the hospital, it didn't look real. So close to Halloween, Ted half believed that Barney would turn around any second and tell everyone what a legendary prank he'd just pulled on them. But when a doctor finally (finally!) managed to see him, Ted was disabused of this notion.
The Doc pulled gently at the shredded material of Barney's zippered track top and fresh blood welled up from the deep slashes in his chest. Marshall's hand smacked over his mouth. Lily looked as though she was going to faint.
"These are some wounds, son," The doctor said, working quickly to stem the blood flow, giving Barney a shot of something. "The cops'll want to know, what kind of knife-?"
"Wasn't a knife-" Barney said, through clenched teeth. "Was a claw-" Mercifully Barney's eyes fluttered shut and he passed out.
"Did he say 'claw'?" Marshall asked later, wonderingly.
"Sure sounded like it," Ted said.
And because it was Halloween and after two a.m., and the full moon made every tree into a monster, they all shivered.
Only Robin believed it was due to the cold.
*--*--*
The attack on Barney was only the first of a series of violent attacks in Central Park that month. Over the next few days, the cops called on GNB a dozen times, trying to eek out the details of Barney's statement. But as far as Marshall could see, they got nothing new. Barney had been out running, had strayed off the path. Someone (or something) had jumped him in the dark and he'd managed to roll away from them when he fell. Barney claimed that he hadn't felt the knife and he was fit enough and quick-witted enough to get back on his feet and run as fast as he could.
But he remembered the claw, coming at him, a flash of cold silver lit by moonlight. The detective who interviewed him put it down to a trick of the light, a memory defect caused by fear and adrenalin, but Barney insisted he'd seen a claw.
Marshall was the first person to say it the word, although admittedly he said it when he was sure Barney wasn't within earshot.
Robin scoffed. "Marshall, there's no such thing as a were-"
"Robin!" Marshall shushed her, miming zipping his lips shut. "He's only over at the bar!"
Robin laughed and shook her head while Ted shrugged indulgently. "We don't say the wmmr-wmmf word." He grinned. "Apparently."
Marshall snorted. "Yeah. Yeah. Because you… you guys… you won't be laughing during the next full moon." His voice took on a ghoulish quality. "He who survives an attack by a werewolf is himself cursed."
"Someone's been watching American Werewolf In London," Ted said, grinning.
"How awesome is that film?" Marshall grinned.
"Totally." Ted fist-bumped him.
"Guys, Barney is not a werewolf," Robin said. "Don't you think I would know?"
"The knife wounds are healing real quickly," Ted conceded.
"And he keeps sniffing me!" Lily complained.
"What-?" Marshall asked, worried.
Lily nodded. "You know that werewolves have a heightened sense of smell."
"If he grows fangs and starts howling at the moon, you guys will be the first to know, okay?" Robin said, laughing, just as Barney came back to their table with a round of drinks.
"What'ya talking about?" He asked, sitting next to Robin.
"Top Ten Halloween films," Ted improvised. "We were debating if any of the Saw films qualify…"
But Barney wasn't listening. He'd leaned into Robin, pressing his face into her hair and breathing in. "Mmmm, you smell great today…" He murmured.
Robin tried to ignore the look Lily shot her.