“Well,” Derrick said, “what do you think?”
“Well,” Craig replied and then took a long breath, “I think that we’ve been awfully lucky so far not to be spotted by someone the entire night.”
“Yeah, true. Anything else?”
“Like what?” Craig asked.
“Well, where do you think we should start the search? Hell. You said we only have about thirty…probably more like twenty minutes now to find the werewolf and you know it’s gonna take quite a while longer to kill the bastard.”
“You’re definitely right about that,” Craig replied. “I think we might as well start at the back of the cemetery and work our way forward, ya know? He’s definitely not out in the street or he would have been easy to see. And he’s definitely not to the right or left of us…well, possibly to the right near your mom’s grave, but I doubt that, as well.”
“Wait. Why do you say he’s not by my mom’s grave?” Derrick asked.
“Well…cause when I regained consciousness and opened my eyes, I saw his hairy back running that way,” Craig pointed toward the back of the cemetery.
“All right, man. Your call.”
Craig tightened his grip on the knife’s handle. “It’s time to do this shit…and with the quickness.”
That’s when they heard a car engine coming down the street.
They both ducked behind headstones and listened. Nervous sweat broke out. Their bowels tightened. They both felt the impending doom approaching.
Then the hiss of the car’s tires on the street suddenly came to a stop. Crouching behind their respective headstones, they looked at each other. Craig nodded his head backward, motioning to chain at the front entrance. Craig was not only nervous to look, though he had a pretty good idea who was coming this early to the cemetery, but was also scared to utter a word. Sure, the caretaker who had stopped his car a good fifty or so yards away more than likely wouldn’t be able to hear a whisper, but he didn’t want to take any chances, especially after everything that had happened last night. They were already pushing fate; he didn’t want to risk much more.
Craig nodded one more time, then put the blade of the knife to his lips in the universal sign of “be quiet.” Derrick nodded and stayed hunched down behind his headstone.
The door to the caretaker’s car thudded shut. Then the engine roared to life, entering the cemetery grounds.
Craig took a deep breath. He knew what he had to do—he was going to have to run interference with the caretaker so that Derrick could hunt his dad down and deal with him once and for all. If the car kept driving, it would more than likely scare the werewolf away, and they would never be able to find him. He looked over at his friend and smiled. Derrick stared blankly toward his destiny at the back of the cemetery. Guilt seized Craig, mixed with happiness for his friend, because he was going to have to leave his best friend alone to handle his dad, the werewolf. To someone else, these feelings would have sounded like one and the same, but not to Craig. Oh no. It meant so much more than words. It was because he truly did love Derrick and had always been there through the years to protect him, but now he wouldn’t be able to be there if his friend got ambushed or worse. He also felt happy that he had been there all these years for Derrick and now it was time to let him be a man on his own accord—to handle his dad and whatever dangers lay ahead in the back of the cemetery.
And that’s when he did it.
Craig didn’t motion or whisper to his friend what he was about to do. He didn’t need to. His friend was smart enough to figure it out.
He tossed the knife, handle first, at Derrick, and took off running toward the caretaker’s car, now completely inside the cemetery, and still moving. The dull end of the knife hit Derrick in the arm. He let out a yelp and then went wide-eyed as Craig rushed past him.
Derrick screamed out, “Hey, man. What the…” But it was too late. Craig was gone.
Derrick quickly turned around and peeked over the top of the two-foot-high headstone. Craig was running full-tilt toward the moving car. The back of Craig’s t-shirt fluttered behind him. He was pumping his arms and legs, getting closer and closer to the car.
And then all of a sudden, Derrick understood.
Craig neared the car and took flight, coming down with a dull thud on the caretaker’s hood. The driver hit the brakes and the car came to a sudden halt, but Craig stayed on top of the hood by holding onto the windshield wipers.
It was Derrick’s turn.
Derrick reached down with his left hand and picked up the knife, jumped up from a crouching position, and took off running toward the back of the cemetery to find the werewolf.
His dad.
Once he found him, he would end all the childhood torment of never knowing the truth about his mother’s bloodline, of his father yelling at him, of the beatings he and his mother sustained.
He used this anger and resentment to fuel the pursuit of his dad.
The werewolf of Parkside Cemetery.
And whether he was truly and honestly, deep down, ready for what lay ahead, he wouldn’t have to wait long.
When Derrick was about halfway to the back of the cemetery, the beast attacked. Leaping down from one of the few tall trees on the grounds, it thudded down on all fours not fifteen feet in front of Derrick. Derrick opened his mouth to scream, but only a small whine came out. He involuntarily jumped back a few feet and came to a rest on his buttocks on the dew-covered grass. He could feel the moistness start to seep through his jeans, but he couldn’t get up. Oh, he wanted to, but the fear paralyzed his muscles. He wanted nothing more than to jump up, turn around and go running to Craig for protection. But, a dark spot deep within him told Derrick he could do no such thing. It was finally time for a showdown between the monster—the werewolf on the outside and his dad, or what, if any, was left his dad on the inside of the terrifying creature.
Standing on its back legs directly in front of him, the beast opened its mouth as wide as it could and roared at him.
Derrick’s eyes went wide in terror. Sure, he had always been a sonofabitch, but it was still his dad. Even if he could hurt his dad in human form, if he even had the balls to do it, with a relatively small weapon like a hunting knife, Derrick would never be able to slaughter such a fine specimen of the night. Even with all the pent-up rage deep within him, he just didn’t see that he had a chance—not with the sheer size of the big bastard in front of him.
No way, no how.
The beast roared once again and leapt. Derrick fell onto his back. One hand shielded his eyes from the impending death flying toward him, and the other hand stuck the knife straight up into the air.
The beast let out a high-pitched howl and collided with the knife. With a heavy jolt, the entire weight of the beast slid down Derrick’s arm and came to a rest.
As the creature lay on top of Derrick, he immediately thought back to when he was a boy when he and his father would wrestle on the living room floor. His mom never liked them horsing around like that, afraid that little ol’ Derrick might get hurt, or they would knock one of her vases or lamps off an end table or break the TV. Once, his dad had really pinned him good—crushing him, more like it. The werewolf weighed more, but even with his dad’s weight at the time, Derrick had had trouble sucking air into his lungs. He had thought he was going to pass out until his mom ran into the room and yelled at his dad to get off him before he suffocated him, or something along those lines. Derrick wondered now if his dad was really trying to kill him then or was just “horsing around” as his mom liked to call it.
Derrick tried pushing the beast off him, but it was no use. The thing was just too heavy for him to move.
God, how he missed his mom. Her great cooking, words of encouragement about school and life in general, the hugs, the way her hair smelled after taking a long hot bath…all of it. Derrick felt the pain of loss, love, and anger all at the same time. He wished he could see his mom once more time, even if that meant dying right here and now,
crushed and suffocated by his dad, the werewolf.
Somewhere behind him, voices—he couldn’t tell whose—were coming closer and closer with every shout and scream.
Are those two different voices? Derrick slipped back into jumbled visions of the nightmares that were his childhood and everything that had happened tonight to his mom, dad, Stacy and Joan, Cowboy and him and Craig.
Craig!
Oh God, Craig…please come save me!
Derrick tried to push the heavy beast off of him again, tried to squirm out from under him, but it was going to be impossible with his arm sticking through the creature’s body.
Derrick didn’t even need to open his eyes, not that he wanted to see the real-life picture of what had happened, to realize that in some way he was killing himself. If he would have just rolled out of the way, he would have been able to kill his father in a much more appropriate fashion—by not committing suicide at the same time. Instead, he stuck the knife into the air, impaling his father upon impact and causing his heavy body to slide down his arm and land on top of him, pinning him to the ground like Andre the Giant had with lesser opponents back in the day.
Derrick grunted out the last bit of air remaining in his aching lungs and tried one more time to push the werewolf off.
Nothing.
And then came:
Voices.
Confusion.
Grunting.
Breathing.
Blood pumping…
Blood pumping? What the fu…
Movement.
Pain—a pain in which he would have never thought possible—exploded in his neck.
The weight of the werewolf came off of him with a wet slurp, and, through the pain, he was able to suck air into his empty lungs. He coughed and rolled into the fetal position.
Derrick heard more acutely than ever in his entire life when the werewolf let out a blood curdling roar mixed with pain, loss, sorrow, regret, anger and…
Fear.
A second sound thundered through the now-bright cemetery, followed by a thump of something heavy falling to the ground.
They spent the next thirty minutes explaining to the caretaker all that had happened during their stay in the cemetery. They spoke quietly and fondly of the loss of Stacy and Joan, the re-burial of Derrick’s mom, the perils of trying to clean everything up before some old lady with her poodle came walking along or the cops showed up and busted them for only God knows how many charges—all of it. Wilfred, caretaker of Parkside Cemetery for twenty years, slowly nodded his small, old head like he understood it all and had heard it all before, but said little. He listened as he bandaged the boy’s wounds, especially the large one on Derrick’s neck, with a travel first-aid kit from his trunk.
When no more could be explained or admitted to, the boys shook hands with the nice, old man and began walking out of the cemetery.
They spoke little as they walked past the many headstones. Derrick even thought about stopping at his mom’s grave, probably the last time before he and Craig headed off to college next month. Instead, he said a silent prayer for her, telling her that he would always love her, forgiving her for keeping her secret from him for so many years.
The shroud of darkness that covered the cemetery even in the morning slowly faded away as they exited the front gate and walked toward Craig’s car.
“Well,” Craig began, shaking his head back and forth, while looking to his right at his best friend. “Guess we really made it outta there by the hair on our sacks, huh?”
Derrick shrugged, “Yeah, guess so. That old guy…”
“Wilfred…Freddy…”
“Yeah. Wilfred. He really saved our asses. Makes me think that he’s seen this stuff before, ya know?”
“Well,” Craig bobbed his head up and down while searching for his car keys through the pockets of his balled up, bloody jeans. “I got the same feeling. Shit. I would imagine that being a caretaker at a boneyard for two decades, you probably would run into some weird shit, ya know…hookers blowing bums against headstones, grave robbers, kids drinking booze, making out and smoking weed in there, all kinds of shit. Plus, don’t forget about all the bodies.”
“Yeah,” Derrick replied. “Guess you’re right. But, I still can’t believe he understands everything and was willing to take care of the girl’s bodies and shit.”
“Hummm…” Craig said with a grin. Then, “He probably gets off on it.” Then he laughed—not loudly, more like a chuckle.
Derrick reached up and grabbed the sides of his head as they reached their respective car doors. “Damn, dude. Don’t laugh so fucking loud, man. Not only are you gonna wake the dead and every other person that isn’t up for the day, yet, but you’re killin’ my ears, man.”
“Huh,” Craig opened his car door, slid inside and slammed the door shut. He put the key in the ignition and started the engine. A large cloud of dark smoke came billowing out of the tailpipe.
The smell of the exhaust started to burn the hairs inside Derrick’s nose. The idling car engine made his head pound.
Then he heard something else, faint at first but coming into shocking clarity.
Derrick looked down at the closed car window and realized where the voice was coming from.
It seemed odd to Derrick how he could hear Craig inside the car with the noisy rumble of the car’s engine and the extremely loud birds chirping away in the nearby trees, the squirrel scurrying across the street, an old lady breathing way down at the other end of the street while she walked her dog, and, yes, it was a poodle of all things—all of it.
All of a sudden Derrick felt like all his senses were on fire.
He pulled the door handle up, opened the door, slid inside and slammed the door. He jumped in his seat at how loudly the door connected to its jamb.
“Jesus, man,” Craig looked over at his friend. “You, ok? Your neck really hurting you or something? Shitfire. Hey, my dad has a really good first-aid kit stored in the garage for camping trips. I can patch ya up when we get back to my place, if my parents aren’t up yet and all, and you’ll feel better then, man. Sound good? Huh? Derrick? Derrrrrick? Motherfuckerwhatthefuckinghell…” Craig’s sobs turned into cries of total and utter fear…
Derrick, his best friend in the entire world, twisted and bucked in his seat. His neck snapped from side to side. The hair on top of his head turned a dark black as it grew down the back of his neck. The rest of his body started to sprout hair every which way. His fingernails started to grow longer. His irises turned from a light blue to a bright yellow. All of his joints popped and twisted this way and that. His arms and legs started to grow longer and longer. Finally, his face exploded and he started to grow a long snout, and his normally faint yellow teeth grew past his lips and turned a bright white.
The movement in the passenger seat stopped.
The only sound that Craig could hear in the car was the pounding of his heart.
Trying to focus on the large mounds of muscle that had formed under all that long, black hair where Derrick’s flat pecs used to be, Craig blinked a few times, looking for the rise and fall of his friend’s chest.
Jesus H. Christ…what the fu—
The second before Derrick’s eyes snapped open and a moment before his friend roared like the creature they had just finished killing, one last thought traveled through Craig’s head. As the person that used to be Derrick, the school nerd, opened his mouth and snapped it shut on his best friend’s face, Craig thought, In the movies the werewolf is always of the night…
And Derrick, or at least the small part of him that was still human, knew he could finally take care of himself.
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Grave Intentions Page 8