The Beast

by Aleister Davidson

  “I can’t believe what you did!” Candice yelled at Thomas and Evan. Her face turned beet red, and it was apparent she was furious. Then she burst into laughter. She laughed and laughed so hard that she ended up sending herself into a coughing fit, hurting her damaged ribs in the process.

  “Glad you did it though, now that it happened,” she managed to get out. “It isn’t like she was harmed, and she got a little of what she deserved for attacking me. And I’m still pretty sure that she is the monster…”

  “We should get together tonight and spy on her. See if she goes out of the house. We need to follow her and see if she’s the beast.” Thomas suggested.

  “I’d love to, but can’t. I have a family thing tonight,” Candice said.

  “No problem. I think its best if you stay as far away from Cindy as possible.”

  6

  Evan and Thomas rode their bikes through a field that backed up to the trailer park where they knew Cindy Hutton lived. It was full of corn that had yet to be harvested, and they were able to navigate between the rows through the moonlight, which was exceptionally bright. As they got closer to the park, Thomas pointed at a trailer on the edge and at the end of a cul-de-sac that was much older and more dilapidated than the rest.

  Cindy was sitting on the back porch, crying. The clothing she had soiled earlier that day was hanging on a clothesline that ran from the porch awning to a rusty metal pole in the middle of the meagre yard. It was apparent her pants would not recover, she should have just thrown them away.

  There was junk everywhere. Old paint buckets, blown out tires that would never be put on a vehicle again, garbage, scrap metal, Rubbermaid tubs full of unknown stuff, all strewn everywhere. It was plain to see Cindy had a horrible home life. They both realized that she was a bully at school because she was bullied at home when they heard her mother’s voice screaming at her.

  “Your daddy’s done passed out again. Get in here and help me get him to bed,” the still unseen woman said. Her voice sounded like she smoked a carton of cigarettes a day. A gravelly, phlegmy voice.

  “You put him to bed. I’m going to Terry’s house, whether you like it or not!” Cindy screamed back at her mother, and wiping tears from her eyes she ran awkwardly in the direction of Candice and Thomas. When she was only about fifteen feet from the cornfield, she stopped and began to sob.

  They overheard her speaking to herself. “I know he’s an old drunk, but he’s my daddy. Still, I’m sick of doing everything for that mean old woman. Some mother she is.”

  Thomas and Evan stayed as quiet as they could and crouched low with their bikes in the corn. They heard a noise coming through the field, from their left, like someone running and grunting at the same time. There was a leap, a snarl and a stifled attempt at a scream. In a flash, Cindy had the beast on top of her, tearing her throat out with its teeth which shone white, then glistened red, in the bright moonlight. Its claws raked up and down her torso, tearing her open and pulling out random sections of guts with each voracious stroke. Thick gouts of blood sprayed randomly in several directions, showering the site with a storm of crimson destruction.

  They heard her gurgling to death, drowning in her own blood, trying to breathe. Finally, the beast had its fill of savaging her and it closed its jaws with a snap and severed the spine. It wrenched back and forth for a moment and sent her head flying. It landed with a thud, rolling right over to lay at Thomas’ feet. He looked down to see the mix of sheer horror and extreme pain on what remained of her face. He caught his own reflection in her dulling, dead eyes.

  Reflexively Evan let out a high pitched scream. One of abject terror. The werewolf turned to face them, standing tall on its hindquarters. With the full moon behind them, its light made it quite easy to see the monster’s face. There was no semblance of humanity, nothing of emotion left. Only monstrous rage and demonic hatred. Whoever it had been before it changed did not matter; it could not be reasoned with. It was a thing of nightmares. Something that simply just should not have been, yet stood before them, growling a low pitched rumble in its bloody throat.

  “Ride!” Thomas yelled as he jumped on his bike. Evan was petrified and just stood there, whimpering, not moving to follow. Thomas panicked and spun his bike around in the loose dirt, between the corn rows. It hadn’t even occurred to him that running would have been much faster. In his terror, he had forgotten to drop his bike and jumped on it instead. He could only think of one thing. To not leave Evan behind. He had to try something.

  Reaching into the side pockets of his cargo pants for something, anything, with which to attack, Thomas’ fingers closed around a shuriken he had bought at a local karate dojo. They had left the house prepared for any number of things. But in the heat of the moment, Thomas forgot all about the abundance of gear they had brought to fight the monster. He forgot about his silver knife that he practiced with daily. He forgot about the folding crossbow in Evan’s backpack that both of them were able to hit a bull’s eye at fifty yards with. All he knew was the ninja star he found in his pocket in that horrible moment.

  Evan finally moved, just as the monster leaped through the air, right at him. Slathering jaws flinging blood and saliva in a spray, moonlight glinting off red, soulless eyes, the beast intended to do to him exactly what it had just done to poor Cindy. It was Evan’s dumb luck that his body chose to react precisely when it did, as he went faint and his legs went out from under him, he fell backward over his bike, landing with a whump and kicking up a dirt cloud that was visible even in the moonlight.

  All of that happened precisely at the moment Thomas let fly with his ninja star. It wasn’t silver, so he had little confidence in its effectiveness. That encouraged him to throw as hard and fast as he could. For eight years he had practiced with every possible weapon he could think of. That dedication paid off in a gory spray of blood and ooze as the shuriken whizzed right over Evan’s falling body and straight into the eye of the werewolf.

  There was a loud shriek as it leaped over Evan, and fell to the ground in a heap at Thomas’ feet, kicking up more dust into the dirt cloud as Evan began to cough on it. The beast let out a whimpering noise, like a puppy that had been kicked. Only two feet away from it Thomas understood what Candice had meant about the smell of it. Horrid, putrid, rancid, and foul all came to mind as his nostrils were overcome with a miasma of sewage-like awfulness.

  Thomas stood there over it for a few moments, breathing heavily, straddling his bicycle. Evan, still on the ground, was tangled up in his bike, struggling to get a breath. The beast was unmoving. Not breathing. Thomas nudged it with his foot. Nothing.

  He stepped around it to help Evan up off the ground. As he reached his hand out and clasped Evan’s arm he was smashed to the ground with so much force it knocked the wind out of him. Thomas was unable to let go of Evan’s hand in time, and it wrenched on his shoulder socket but also pulled Evan to his feet. Desperately moving his head back and forth to avoid the snapping jaws of the monster that pinned him down, Thomas reached for the blade on his belt. The silver one that he was sure would put an end to the monster. He couldn’t get his hands around it. He couldn’t avoid the jaws any longer.

  A high pitched yelp split the air, and the beast bounded off Thomas and tore off through the field, into the night. It howled in agony moments later, and Thomas and Evan could tell it had already run a long way. Thomas sat up to see Evan standing over him with the folding crossbow, loading another silver tipped bolt.

  “Well, we can safely say that Cindy isn't the werewolf!” Evan joked as he helped the still out of breath Thomas to his feet.

  “Yeah, but who is?” Thomas rasped.

  7

  The young men gathered up their things, dusted themselves off and fled as fast as they could through the field, pushing their bikes and running full tilt. It was evident that Cindy’s mom had passed out alongside her husband as nobody came outside to check on the commotion. Thomas shuddered to think of how Cindy’s parents would react to
her horrific death. The crime scene was a bloodbath of mutilation. And it was their daughter. He realized Evan had a good idea of how they were going to feel.

  It wasn’t long until they got back to the road. They were relieved to see the concrete. Somehow it represented getting home, getting back to safety, back to civilization and sanity. When they reached it, they knew they only had a few miles to pedal before they got back to Thomas’ house. It would just be a few minutes, then they could reflect on what had happened.

  About a mile into the journey Evan stopped Thomas and made a shocking suggestion. “Let’s go back for it. Let’s finish it off, Thomas. Let’s end this for good before someone else gets hurt.”

  “I don’t know Evan. We barely escaped with our lives. It was pure dumb luck that we aren’t as bad off as poor Cindy Hutton.” Thomas was trying to talk himself out of it as much as he was Evan.

  “What is it that made you so scared? You didn’t lose your family to that damn thing. I lost my mom at a very young age and when it took my sister and my dad…” Evan began to sob. “It took all I had left. Everything.”

  “Ok. I’m with you. But if it kills me, you get to explain it to my grandma.” As Thomas said the words, Evan realized he had just been a colossal jerk. Thomas had never even known his parents. They were killed by a drunk driver before he could walk. He had been raised by his grandmother, along with the help of several aunts and uncles. Evan bit his lip a bit as he gave Thomas a concerned look, admitting he understood he crossed a line. Thomas shook it off, letting Evan know it was a non-issue. They had bigger things to think about.

  And one of those bigger things became abundantly apparent when they spotted a dark, hulking form in the road ahead, about a hundred yards. A hulking form whose one good eye caught the moonlight and seemed to pierce the night itself. A long, deep howl cut through the chill night air.

  “Fuck this,” Thomas said as he threw his bike down. He pulled out his silver bladed knife and gripped it tight. Evan followed his lead and pulled his crossbow. They stood there in the road, defiantly. Unflinchingly. They knew they couldn’t outrun it, couldn’t even begin to. Standing and fighting was all they had left.

  As the beast charged them Evan had time to lose a couple of rounds from his crossbow at it but was unable to hit a moving target. He had only a few bolts left and was reloading just as the thing was upon them. Thomas stepped forward to protect him, extending his knife in front of him in a desperate effort to keep it from trampling them over. He hoped it would charge right into him and impale itself on the blade, but the monster was smarter than that.

  He was backhanded through the air and hit the ground several feet away with a loud thump. The wind was nearly knocked from him again. Evan turned and fired his crossbow point blank right into the werewolf, taking it in the shoulder. It barely flinched. The Beast was so blinded by fury and rage it had gone completely berserk. Evan trembled before it for the briefest of moments before it tore his belly wide open with an adrenalized blow, spilling intestines and organs out onto the ground. While Evan’s entrails piled up at his feet, the abomination snapped its vicious jaws around his throat. A moment later it tore a red, bloody hole in Evan’s neck and the young man’s eyes went dim.

  Thomas was just getting to his feet and catching his breath when he saw the massacre of his friend. He stumbled toward the monster’s back, and fell forward with his entire body weight into the thing, plunging his knife deep into its ribs. It twisted away from him as he fell to the ground, into Evan’s guts, while the blade stayed lodged in its back.

  The monster twisted and flailed in agony, screaming and howling in terrible pain. The wound around the knife began to hiss and smolder as if it had been on fire. A strange greenish glow emanated from the area of penetration. Thomas got back to his feet as best he could, covered and soaked in guts and blood. He had grasped one of Evan’s last crossbow bolts in his hand when on the ground. He charged the monster and rammed it into the things throat. It never even saw him coming as he approached from its blind side as the beast was preoccupied with the dagger stuck in its back.

  The silver tipped bolt tore into the werewolf’s throat in a spray of blood. Thomas held onto it this time and plunged it into the monster again and again. He stabbed the thing until he was exhausted. Dozens of times. It fell to the ground after only a few blows, but Thomas was unrelenting. He wanted to make sure it was destroyed for good.

  He finally felt like he could rest, like it was safe enough, and climbed off the top of the dead werewolf. He fell over onto the ground and closed his eyes next to its massive, bloody body. Then everything went black.

  8

  Thomas awoke to loud noises and emergency vehicles everywhere. He was handcuffed while he had been unconscious. He awoke just in time to see the coroner pull a white sheet over Evan and load him up on a gurney, put him in an ambulance and take him away. Thomas hoped it would be to the hospital, but he knew better. They were taking Evan’s body to the morgue.

  He wondered what happened to the monster. He sat up, and a police officer yelled to others to get their attention, “He’s awake.” As he heard the words, he saw the naked body of a young woman lying on the ground, right where he had killed the beast. A young woman with unmistakable red hair.

  A stern, dumpy looking cop approached. “I need to ask you a few questions kid,” the cop said. “Did you know Candice Southerland? What about Evan Lucas?”

  Thomas didn’t understand. The sun was just about to rise. How long had he been lying on the road? The questions he was asking himself were interrupted by the questions of the cop again.

  “Did you stab Candice? What about Evan?”

  “Wha…? Uh, no. No, the beast did this. The werewolf. He’s right over there.” Even as he said the words, Thomas realized he was pointing at the corpse of Candice, his dear friend. The only girl who seemed to have ever understood him.

  “Yeah. Uh huh. Sure, kid.” The cop didn’t seem enthused. He turned to one of his fellow officers and made a few motions. “Book him on murder charges, but I think this kid might be fifty-one-fifty. Whether this was a crime of passion or whether this was pure insanity, I don’t know. All I do know is that this kid made one hell of a mess. I mean, he even stabbed her goddamn eye out.”

  “Yeah, boss. I know what you mean. All my years on the force and I ain’t never…” the young cop cut himself short as he gagged a little. Recovering he continued, “yeah, this kid is a real piece of work. How could anyone have done something this evil?” The cop spoke as if Thomas weren’t even there.

  “I didn’t do it!” Thomas yelled. “It was The Beast! The Beast!” He started to cry at the realization that he would never see Candice or Evan ever again. “I tried to stop it, I tried to stop it!”

  “Ok, I believe you,” the fatter, more senior cop said in a mocking tone that let Thomas know he absolutely didn’t. “You’ll get your chance to tell it to the judge, but as it is…well, you gotta know how this looks? Now what kind of law enforcement officers would we be if we let you go, all covered in the victim's blood?”

  “Yeah Sarge,” the younger cop chimed in. “He doesn’t have nothin’ but a few scratches. Looks like they might’ve tried to fight back against the little bastard. Either way, this is the most evil shit case I’ve worked since that Satanic cult back in eighty-five.”

  Thomas understood that he was going to get no more sympathy from those cops than he would be getting if he were Charles Manson. To them, he had just murdered two people. Hell, they’d probably blame Cindy’s death on him too. He knew that life in prison or life in an insane asylum would be awful. But it would be nothing compared to living with the knowledge that he had killed Candice, that she had been the monster.

  9

  Thomas had only been in jail for a couple of days, after a short stint in the hospital. Still, he was very excited to have a visitor, to see his uncle. He had never imagined in a million years that he would ever end up in jail, let alone awaiting trial for
multiple murders. He was looking at decades to life in prison. Not a prospect that he felt was very fair after all he had been through.

  Thomas’ uncle John arrived early in the afternoon, but he was in his work clothes. Thomas could tell that he was taking a short break and would be heading right back to the grocery store after their visit. Thomas went to speak into the phone receiver as he put his hand against the glass separating them, but John made a motion for Thomas to remain quiet.

  “I know you didn’t do it, Thomas. That’s not even a question. I’m here for you, for support. Anything you need while you are in here, you just let me know, and I’ll see how I can help,” John said. Thomas could tell that he had more to say, but interrupted him.

  “I don’t understand what happened. Why won’t they believe me? I stopped the monster didn’t I?” Thomas asked rhetorically.

  “Yes, you did. Unfortunately for you though…well, how do I put this? The monster was Candice.”

  “I know uncle. I figured it out. But how did you know it was her? How did you know there was a monster?”

  “Thomas, she was the monster. Now, you are the monster,” John said with an air of sadness in his voice. “Those scratches she gave you…you’re gonna turn on the next full moon, Thomas. You’re gonna turn while you are in here and there is nothing I can do to stop that. The newspapers are calling you The Beast of Lexington, but they don’t even know what you really are. What you will become.”