Grave Intentions

by Ty Schwamberger

  A distant howl ripped through the cemetery.

  Derrick sniffed a few times, wiped his nose with the back of his right hand and said, “Yeah. Yeah…guess you’re right, man. At least I’ve got you, right?”

  The tone in his best friend’s voice almost made Craig break down and starting crying.

  “Hell yes, man. Everything is going to be ok and you’ll always have me by your side,” Craig said, trying to choose his words carefully. They didn’t have the fifteen or twenty minutes for Derrick to calm down enough to continue with the cleanup. “Just think, man… In about a month we’re gonna be college men and we’ll leave this shit-for-brains town behind us. Neither of our shitty childhoods, family, or whateverthefuck will matter anymore. We’ll be free.”

  “Yeah,” sniffed Derrick. “I guess you’re right.”

  He knew this was his chance to break his friend out of the pain he was feeling.

  “Hell yes, I’m right. Now, unless we wanna spend the next fifteen-to-life breaking bricks in some jail yard or picking up trash alongside the highway, we better get our asses in gear and finish cleaning up around here.”

  “Yeah. Ok.”

  Craig gave Derrick time to say one more silent prayer and then they turned and started walking back over to where they had their drinks.

  It was time to clean up the girls, what was left of them anyway, pick up their shit, and get the hell out of the cemetery. Craig figured nothing would really connect them to Cowboy, so they would just leave him lying in his bloody puddle in the middle of the street. Sure, they were taking a risk not cleaning up that mess first. Who knew when a cop cruising by the cemetery gates would decide to investigate a car double-parked in the middle of the night and find a bloodbath with body parts strewn over the sidewalk. With no possible way of knowing how or what happened, the cop would call in reinforcements from probably two counties over and then they would be screwed for sure. But if they were to go out there now, there was no way in hell he would want to step back inside the cemetery. No. The best thing to do right now was to go clean up the girls real quick and get the hell out of dodge. Yup. Good or bad, that was the plan.

  Another throaty howl ripped through the still night.

  “Wait,” Craig said all of a sudden.

  Derrick’s shoes slid on the wet grass a few inches and then he turned and said, “Jesus, man. That right on top of that howl almost made me piss my pants, again. Jesus.”

  “Shit. Sorry, man. I just remembered something,” Craig said, not believing he was going to go back on what he had just decided as their safest plan of action at this point.

  “Huh. What?”

  “I’ve got my baseball bag in the trunk of my car.”

  “You still hauling that around?”

  “I had to play summer league to pad out my extracurriculars for college. I’ve got my old pair of baseball pants and a t-shirt in there. Don’t have any underwear, but I do think I’ve got a cup.”

  “Great. Just what I wanna think about right now, your stick and berries in a tiny plastic dish.”

  “Hey. Shit, man. Think of it this way, would you rather have me freezing my boys off and flappin’ this way and that or would you rather take a quick detour to the car so I can put on some clothes.”

  “Hummm, now that you put it that way…”

  “Hey, wait.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got an even better idea, man,” Craig said, excitedly.

  “Great. What now?”

  “Ok. You head on over and I’ll go to my car and get my clothes. Hell. I might even have some old rags in the truck that we can use with the ice water that’s left in the cooler to clean up the headstones and shit that have blood all over them, ya know.”

  “Not bad…”

  “Yeah. You can head over to the girls now, maybe find somewhere we can bury them easy or something, and by the time I get back and am all snug as a bug in a rug, you can have half the job done. That’ll cut our clean-up time in half and then we can get the hell outta this place and back to my parents’ and maybe catch a few hours shut-eye, ya know?”

  Derrick thought for a moment. “Yeah. Ok. Guess that does make a lot of sense.”

  “All right, man,” Craig said, staring to walk away. “I’ll see you in a bit, ok? This’ll all work out and then we can get the hell outta here.”

  “Uhhh, but…”

  “But, what?”

  “What about my dad?”

  “Shit, man. What about him?”

  “I still wanna kill him for what he did to me as a kid, ya know. He kept, well, they both kept my mom’s secret from me. I guess I always knew something was up but, being a kid, I just didn’t have the brainpower to put my finger on it. And now he has to dig her up after a month of her being dead, for who knows what reason, and bite her and then turn into a…”

  As if on cue, another howl echoed through the cemetery.

  “Ok. Ok. Ok. I get it, man. Ok? Let’s just clean up first and then we can figure out the best course of action. I’ll leave it up to you… After we clean up the girls and shit, we can either get the hell out of here (which is what we should do, ya dumbass) or hunt down your dad,” Craig took a deep breath. “Plan?”

  Derrick hesitated for a moment. “Plan.”

  Craig gave his friend a quick wave, turned and then took off running to his car. He wanted to find some clothes, put them on, get back to the picnic area and clean up whatever Derrick didn’t have done by the time he got back, and then, yes, get the hell out of the cemetery and leave some werewolf hunter to deal with the big bastard beast that was roaming Parkside Cemetery.

  Craig had pants on and was just pulling a dirty t-shirt (which was better than nothing) over his head when he heard Derrick scream, echoing through the dark night.

  Craig quickly grabbed a handful of old rags and his thirty-four-ounce baseball bat from the trunk and slammed the lid down. The too-loud thud made Craig cringe and look around for late-night or early-morning dog walkers or cops coming. The street was clear. He then turned around and started running back to his best friend.

  He hoped he was still going to be alive when he got there, because he didn’t think he would have enough dark left in the night to clean up yet another dead body.

  Chapter Seven

  Craig had been running full speed back toward the front gate of the cemetery when he changed his mind and raced back toward the car for his hunting knife, the special knife his father had given him for his birthday years ago. If Derrick weren’t already dead from the wolf’s first bite or swipe of its giant dagger-like claws, one or two more wouldn’t do that much more harm.

  He hoped.

  About fifteen or twenty feet from his car, he stopped and looked down at his discarded pants, covered in thick red ooze and saliva. It looked like the werewolf had used them for a napkin, wiping away bits of a freshly eaten meal from his hairy chin and the mouth that hid razor-sharp teeth. Craig glanced from side to side but didn’t see Cowboy’s head anywhere. He was glad about that. Seeing one head rolling toward you and bumping into your feet was one too many as far as he was concerned. He quickly rumpled his jeans this way and that, looking for the knife. It was nowhere to be found.

  Shit!

  From behind him, the werewolf roared and Derrick screamed a second time.

  Double shit! Where the hell…

  Something out in the middle of the street gleamed from the moon high above.

  He threw down his jeans and raced toward his knife in the center of the street, covered in blood and bits of Cowboy’s flesh. His quickly looked from side to side, but didn’t see the knife’s sheath anywhere. The knife itself looked like the beast had used the thing as his own personal toothpick.

  The hell with it, he thought to himself, quickly grabbing the knife’s slippery leather handle with his right hand. Looking from the antique hunting knife in his right hand to the baseball bat in his left, he felt like a formidable foe for Derrick’s dad, the werewol
f.

  Another roar ripped through the air, followed by a high-pitched scream, echoing through the ever-dying night.

  All right, Craig thought, trying to pump himself up for the battle that lay ahead. Let’s do this shit!

  He hoped that Derrick was still alive by the time he got back to the picnic area.

  “Derrick!” Craig spun round and round, watching the blood-covered grass and headstones around him flash in front of his eyes, over and over again. “Derrick, where the hell are you?”

  Not seeing Derrick or the werewolf anywhere, Craig threw the baseball bat and knife to the ground by his feet and grabbed onto his knees. He panted for breath that came out in raspy, wet sobs.

  He just couldn’t believe it. It didn’t seem possible. After everything that had happened, it just seemed unreal that it had come down to this—he was alone in the middle of a dark cemetery. The slight lightening of the horizon signaled sunrise approaching, which equaled they were fucked all the way around. It would be him, alone, who would have to clean up the rest of the mess, find Derrick, or his body and then dispose of it, probably in the same mass grave as the girls, and then get the fuck out of Dodge before the cops or some nosey old bat came along walking her tiny pooch.

  What the hell am I gonna do? Craig thought between gasps.

  That’s when a hand grabbed his right buttock, and he nearly shit his pants.

  Derrick was laughing behind him, not some big, crazed werewolf ready to rip the ass off his body. He spun around, fist cocked in the air, ready to strike, even at his best friend trying to give him the scare of his life. Craig was about to let his fist fly when he looked down at Derrick’s outstretched hand, which held another hand.

  “Jesus Christ,” Craig half-screamed, stumbling backward. He fell onto his buttocks. “What the hell, man. You almost scared the shit right outta me.”

  Derrick laughed and then said, “Sorry, man. I couldn’t resist.”

  “Geez, man. What gives?” Craig pushed himself off the ground and picked up the bat and knife.

  “Eh. I finished cleaning up the girls…put them in this hole I found a few rows that way,” Derrick said, pointing off to his left. “I figured it must have been dug for a funeral tomorrow morning or something. Anyway, I was just standing around waiting for you to come back, so we could get started on washing down the headstones and maybe trying to wash away the blood on the grass, when I saw this here.” Derrick held up the bloody stump of a hand. “It was just lying in the grass. I must have missed it…and remembered the time when we were in the showers after gym class and you said Jessy-the-Queer-Boy grabbed my ass while my back was to the middle of the shower room.”

  “Uh, ok. And?”

  “‘And’, what? You don’t remember?”

  “Well shit, man, of course I remember. I told you that Jessy did it while it was actually me that came up and slapped your ass. Shit. I noticed you were rinsing shampoo out of your hair and knew you wouldn’t be able to open your eyes, without burning the shit outta them, anyway, so I figured I’d pull a little prank on you, that’s all.”

  “‘That’s all’.” Derrick’s eyes went wide. “Dude. That was some deranged shit, man.”

  “Oh, come on. It wasn’t that bad. Hey, I told you that it was me and not Jessy a few days later, didn’t I?”

  Derrick scrunched his face up. “Well, yeah, but still, man. That shit haunted my dreams for nights. Before you told me the truth, every time I would see Jessy in the hallways in between classes, I would think about him wanting to ass-rape me in the gym shower or something. Scared the ever-livin’ crap outta me. I mean, I’m not a homophobe or anything, but damn. I’m into chicks, man. Take Stacy for instance…”

  “Oh, you mean the chick that had a tighter cooch than even Joan?”

  “Yeah true, but…”

  “No, ‘but’, man. Shit. It wasn’t that bad to take a severed hand and grab my ass with it? Shitfire. I heard your dad, err, the werewolf howling and you screaming, so I high-tailed my ass over here, and then when I don’t find you anywhere in sight I started thinking the worse, ya know? Hey, wait a minute. Is that Stacy’s hand or Jo…”

  “It’s Stacy’s hand…I think.”

  “Ugh. Oh well, guess if it was Joan’s that would be the closest I’d come to gettin’ any from her tonight. I mean, I guess I could go over to that hole, wherever you said it was, and go down there with her and…”

  Derrick cut in, “That’s sick…even for you, man.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I was just joshin’ ya, dude. I wouldn’t actually ever fuck a corpse. Besides, did you see how that wolf ripped her fucking body apart and wore the shit outta her face. Hellfire. Even if I was horny, which is always cause she would never give it up to me, I would sure as hell never fuck a corpse.”

  “Riiight.”

  “Seriously, man. Never…”

  “Ok, ok. Enough talkin’ about fucking corpses and shit. I told you I disposed of the girls’ bodies, now all we gotta do is clean the blood and the odds and ends of the girls off the headstones and grass and then get the fuck outta here…”

  “Hey, wait.”

  “What?”

  “I thought you wanted to hunt down your old man and really give it to him?” Craig asked.

  “Oh, that. Yeah, well…I thought about it, and since all we have is the two of us and that baseball bat and your knife there… Hey, wait a second, where did you find your knife, anyway?”

  “Oh, this?” Derrick replied, holding his antique hunting knife up for Craig to see. “I found it lying in the middle of the street, looking like the wolf used it as a fucking toothpick or something. It had blood and shit all over it before I wiped it off on my baseball pants here.”

  “Oh, ok. Well, still… All we have is me, you, a baseball bat and a fucking knife. Shit. You really think that is gonna be enough to fight, err, and kill my dad? He’s big as all get-out, with some big-ass claws and teeth and can run faster than…”

  “Wait. How do you know he can run fast? I mean, you were back in here already when he started after me out at my car.”

  “Oh, that… Well, when you heard the howls and me screaming before, he was over there,” Derrick said, pointing to the destroyed picnic area a few feet away. “I was walking back over here and saw that he must have come back for another taste of the girls, what was left of them anyway… Hey, did I mention what a bitch it was cleaning up all their body parts and innards that were scattered about? No? Anyway, I noticed that Dad was over there taking another bite out of Stacy or Joan—I couldn’t tell which at this point—and when I saw it, I let out a scream and then he took off.”

  “Took off?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know why, but he just took off when I screamed. I don’t know if I startled him or something. Hell, maybe he even recognized me. Anyway, I screamed and he just takes off running toward the back of the cemetery. He was leaping over ten-foot-tall hedges and shit like they were track hurdles.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah,” Derrick said, shaking his head back and forth. “So, like I was saying…I don’t know if it’s such a good idea that we try to hunt him down. He’ll probably just kill us too, just like he did with the girls and Cowboy.” Derrick paused for a moment, trying to catch his breath. “I don’t know about you, but I wanna live long enough to get some, man.”

  Craig laughed and then said, “Yeah, yeah, me too, man. Me too.” He then came over, handed the bat to Derrick, put his arm around his friend’s shoulders, and said, “All right, man. Let’s clean this shit up and get outta here. If we hurry, we can still make it home before my folks wake up. Then, if we’re lucky, which we seem to be so far tonight since we haven’t been ripped to bits, my mom will make us some of her famous flapjacks.”

  Derrick smiled and said, “Sounds good to me, man. Yeah, that sounds awfully good to me.”

  Another howl ripped through the cemetery. Nearby.

  The werewolf was coming back for another meal.

 
; “All right, man,” Craig opened the lid to the surprisingly still-intact cooler. “Let’s haul ass cleaning this shit up and get the hell outta here.” He pulled the old rags from his trunk out of the waistband at the back of his pants. He handed a few of them to Derrick.

  “Sounds good. Let’s do this,” Derrick said, taking the rags.

  Two beers floated in the melted ice. They didn’t say a word to each other; they didn’t have to. Each of them reached down and into the cold water and pulled out a can of beer each. They popped the tops simultaneously, smiled at one another, and drank. After all the physical and emotional strain, the beer helped calm their nerves. They each took a few more swallows before lowering the cans from their lips.

  Craig exhaled deeply and said, “Damn. That has to be the best beer I’ve had in a long while.”

  Derrick laughed and replied, “Yeah, I’m with ya on that. Then again, it wasn’t that long ago we were drinking some beers with the girls.”

  A pang of guilt surged through Craig’s veins. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was the stronger of the two of them and he should have been around to protect the girls or if it was just a strange and macabre thing to be enjoying a beer in the middle of an eerie old cemetery where so much carnage had taken place. One thing was certain: he was glad to be alive. He was happy to still have his best friend in the world by his side and that they were going to be okay. He hoped. He knew that as long as he stayed close to Derrick, that if the werewolf did decide to attack before they could get the hell out of the cemetery and back to his parents’ house, that he would lay his life on the line to protect him. He owed the memory of Stacy and Joan that much. He knew that they would want him to protect Derrick at all costs—especially from having to endure any further trauma from his own father, be he human or creature of the night.

  Craig shook his head to clear the disturbing thoughts, drained the rest of his beer, threw the empty can off to one side and then bent over and plunged a fistful of rags down into the cold water. Derrick did the same.