Grave Intentions

by Ty Schwamberger

  “Jesus. Yeah, I guess you’re right, man.”

  “Of course I’m right, Craig. Now tell me what’s zooming around in that tiny head of yours.” Derrick walked over to the cooler, grabbed two more beers, gave one to Craig and popped the top on his can. The alcohol was making this at least a tad bit easier to deal with.

  Derrick had never been much of a drinker. He had already been feeling buzzed after his first beer, but didn’t want to risk even a friendly ribbing from Craig or seeming less of a man’s man in front of Stacy. He wouldn’t have to worry about impressing her ever again. Part of him felt bad thinking this, while the other part of him was relieved that it was finally over.

  “Well,” Craig began, “do you think there is a chance that your dad saw us, but passed us up to nibble on the girls a bit because he recognized you?”

  Derrick considered this for a moment while taking another drink of beer. “Hummm, good hypothesis. To be honest, I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, anything is possible at this point and time, right? He could have seen me, or hell even you, and decided to make a late-night snack out of the girls instead of us. He sure was sneaky about it no matter how you slice it, though.” Derrick then cringed. Slice. That’s what happened to Joan and Stacy. They were sliced, diced, chewed, clawed, ripped, licked, maybe even fuc… He stopped himself before he went any more macabre on himself.

  “Eeek. Anyway. I guess when it comes down to it, it really doesn’t matter how he got back inside because obviously he did, or the girls wouldn’t be turning into worm food right now. What we need to do is arm ourselves just in case he comes back before we clean up this mess. Then after we’re done, we’ll go searching around. I’ve got a flashlight in my glove compartment that we can use. We’ll find him and make him pay for what he did…to both the girls and you.”

  “Thanks, man. Wait, one question.”

  “Yeah,” Craig said.

  “We’re gonna clean this shit up?”

  “Uh, yeah, dumbass. No disrespect, man, but we can’t just leave the girls like this. For one, the caretaker or cops or some lady walking her dog through the cemetery tomorrow morning is gonna find them and call the cops. Next thing you know, there is a shit storm of reporters and crime lab people and every looky-loo within a fifteen-mile radius. They’ll probably dust the headstones or the fucking grass we’ve been sitting and touching and find our prints. Then we are both up shit creek without a paddle, ya know? There goes college.” Craig waved his hand back and forth through the air.

  “Yeah, guess you’re right there, man. Ok, so I guess we clean these two up and figure out what to do with the bodies. So then, what’s number two?”

  “Back to one for a minute. You mentioned figuring out something to do with them. Look around you, man. We’re in the middle of a fucking cemetery in the middle of the fucking night. There’s no better place in the world to stash a couple bodies, not that I’ve pondered the matter or anything. Shit. Don’t give me that look, Derrick. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah yeah, just bustin’ your balls. Ok, I get ya. So what is this number two of yours then that you still haven’t told me about?”

  “You’re not gonna like it.”

  “Really? Do you think I like any of tonight? Well, besides the drinking with you guys and hearing that Stacy was gonna let me feel her up, not that I totally believe it or anything from what she unknowingly or whatever put me through the last four years… Other than that, though, this entire night has blown a big horse’s dick.”

  “True. True. Anyway, what I was gonna say is that I think we should also re-bury your mom.”

  Even in the near dark of the soft moon glow, Craig could see Derrick’s face turn pale. The truth of the matter was, they really did need to re-bury her so as not to arouse suspicion.

  “Derrick, you ok, man?”

  Derrick shook his head back and forth a few times and replied, “I don’t know. I mean, I couldn’t really see it was my mom, ya know. I knew it was her grave by the location, but I couldn’t actually see her. I’m not sure I would be able to handle seeing her now, Craig.”

  Craig thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I get ya, man. Tell ya what, once we figure out how to bury the girls and clean up the place a little bit, I’ll take care of your mom and you can handle these two. Once I’m done I’ll come back over, and if you aren’t done by then, I’ll assist you with whatever else needs done. Deal?”

  Derrick choked back some sobs and replied, “Yeah, guess that’ll help me deal with this a little better. Just can’t imagine seeing her after a month, ya know?”

  “Yeah, I get ya,” Craig said, patting his best friend on the back. “All right, let’s haul our asses over to my car and grab the flashlight before we start any of this shit. We don’t wanna be stumbling around in the dark and miss a big puddle of blood or something pooling on the ground under the girls’ bodies when we move them.”

  “Right on.” Derrick started to follow his friend back out the way they came. As they closed in on where he knew he would be able to see his mom, Derrick twisted his head all the way to the right, looking out past the iron fence onto the street. He just couldn’t take the chance of seeing his dead mother even in his peripheral vision. No way.

  After a few minutes of walking, they stepped over the small chain that was supposed to keep cars out of the cemetery after dusk and started making their way toward Craig’s car. They didn’t talk. Didn’t need to. They both had their assignments, and Derrick knew it would be better for him to just try to stay focused on the task at hand. Derrick felt a heavy pit in his stomach at the very thought of it. He pushed the thought of her decaying corpse, deep, way down inside his mind. All I got to do is what I got to do with the girls, Derrick thought, and then Craig and I can get some breakfast somewhere, sneak back into his parents’ house and no one will ever be the wiser. The cemetery’s caretaker will never know what happened; the cops won’t find out, we’ll be scot-free. Over and done with.

  They came up to Craig’s car parked under a large oak tree, and Derrick waited by the back bumper, looking up and down the dark town’s streets on the lookout for an approaching car, as his friend fumbled around inside his glove compartment. Obviously from the time it was taking Craig to grab the flashlight, he was having trouble finding it.

  Shit. That’s all we need, not to be able to find the flashlight and we’ll miss some big puddle of blood or thrown-about guts somewhere and somebody tomorrow will find them, probably some pooch being walked by some old lady and then we’ll really be up shit creek.

  Craig continued to fumble around inside the car.

  Come on, man!

  Derrick’s worst fear—at least at this particular time—materialized. A car turned the corner down at the end of the block, its headlights pushing away the darkness in front of it, and was coming closer. If Craig didn’t find the flashlight in the matter of thirty seconds or less, they were going to be busted.

  The car kept approaching.

  After a few more seconds, the car passed the last of the many side streets before the entrance to the cemetery, and Derrick leaned his head inside the open door of the car.

  At the sudden appearance of Derrick’s head, Craig yelped and flinched, hitting his head on the doorjamb. “What the fuck, man? I nearly bashed my skull in.” Craig reached to a large goose egg rising from his scalp.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Derrick whispered, extending his hand past Craig’s face, pointing through the windshield to the car creeping along, getting ever closer still.

  “Fuck me,” Craig said, finally locating the flashlight under the front passenger seat, backing out of the open car door and easing the door shut with a soft click. Both Craig and Derrick then crouched down by the door, hoping that they hadn’t been seen already. “Sonofabitch,” Craig whispered.

  “Yeah, tell me about it. I nearly pissed down my other pant leg when I saw the fucker turn onto this street and start coming our way. I thought at first it would turn down Granite or
Walnut Street, ya know. But, no. The bastard just keeps creeping along toward us.”

  Craig craned his neck to the left and peeked over the hood of the car.

  “Still there?” Derrick asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, you can say that again. You’re right, Derrick. He’s going as slow as molasses. What the hell is he doing, anyway? Reminds me of that scene in Boys n the Hood when that car of black guys is cruising the hood looking for that one dude’s brother or something. Then they find him in an alley and blow him to shit.”

  “Thanks for the reminder, Craig. Really.”

  “Sorry, but it’s true. That’s exactly what it reminds me of. Hell, who else would be creeping down the street at two in the morning other than some black guys in some Oldsmobile with illegally tinted windows?”

  “You’re such the equal rights kind of guy, you know that, man?”

  “Ah, shit, don’t give me that. You know I’m not a racist or anything. My dad told me there has been a rash of drive-bys in the area anyway. He said that some black thugs are coming from the inner city looking for more profitable targets to gun down and then steal all their jewelry and shit from said targets.”

  “Geesh. Now you sound like a combination of a racist and a crime reporter.”

  Craig chuckled and then softly punched Derrick in the arm.

  “Hey! What the hell you do that for?”

  “Dude, I’m just messing with you. Shit, a lot of my friends are black.”

  “Ahhh, so that makes you not a racist, eh? Isn’t that what every white boy from an all-white suburb would say when they’re accused of being a racist?”

  Fact was, Craig really wasn’t a racist but sometimes said some things that were inappropriate at times. Like now. And that’s exactly what they didn’t need—any more drama than they already had going.

  Then two things happened at once.

  A throaty howl rose from somewhere back inside the cemetery, and the oncoming car stopped on the other side of Craig’s car.

  Derrick looked over at Craig and whispered, “Yup.”

  “What?” Craig whispered back to his friend, just as they heard a car door popping open and the crunch of gravel under someone’s shoe as they stepped out of their vehicle.

  “What man?” Craig asked, again.

  “Yup, we’re pretty much fucked from the front and the back now.”

  Chapter Five

  Craig and Derrick heard a car door slam shut, then a cough through a throat cut from shards of swallowed glass. There was a brief silence, followed by the crinkle of what sounded like plastic, something scratching against something else, and a small burst of light. A moment later the dim light went out, and they heard a deep breath. From the sound of it, the man, if it was indeed a man, had lit a cigarette and had just blown out his first hit.

  “Ok,” most definitely a man’s voice, said. “You boys quit playing with each other’s pee-pees and get on out here where I can see ya. I knows ya back there.”

  Both Craig and Derrick’s scrotums shriveled and their testicles receded into their warm bodies. The air was, in fact, starting to get a little chill to it.

  The two boys looked at each other, but didn’t know who should say something, if anything. Didn’t know if it was the cops to bust them for drinking in the cemetery, or maybe even digging up a body and killing two of their friends.

  Unless they were followed by a classmate, or worse yet, one of their enemies from high school, no one would know that Joan and Stacy had meant the world to both of them. They faced possibly spending the rest of their lives in prison, where from what they had seen on TV, all sorts of bad things—sexual things that should never be inflicted on another human being—happened to young men like themselves. If they escaped that they still faced having the bad luck of meeting their fate in the middle of a dark cemetery by the claws and fangs of some wild beast.

  “Boys,” the man growled with a slight Southern drawl, “you best get your skinny asses out here now where I can see ’em or I’m gonna come over to that there side of the car and drag you over here. And believe me, neither of you want that to happen.”

  Craig and Derrick both whispered “shit” and slowly stood up. Their backs were to the strange man on the other side of the car. They weren’t sure if they should turn around and meet their fate on their own or be told to do so, instead they just stood there with their arms by their sides.

  “All right, fellas,” the man said, “get to strippin’.”

  Craig turned his head slightly toward Derrick and whispered, “Is this dude some sort of fag or what?”

  Derrick shrugged his right shoulder.

  “HEY! You hear me boys? I said get yer clothes off and down to yer skibbies. And don’t even think of trying no funny business. I got my eye on you. Ya little punks. Don’t even act like you don’t know what you two limp dicks were doing in there. Believe me, I seen it all.”

  “Huh?” Derrick said.

  “Wha…what was that, boy? You givin’ me lip?”

  “Uh, no, sir. No way. I would never do anything like that. Ummm, I just do…don’t understand why you’re doin’ this.”

  “Weeelp, maybe you do and maybe you don’t.”

  Craig blurted, “What the hell does that mean, you old perv? You’re just trying to see some young kids in their underwear. Well, let me tell you a thing or two…I’m going commando and ain’t wearin’ no drawers.”

  This time Derrick turned his head to his friend and mouthed “what the fuck” and then faced forward again. Derrick wasn’t sure, but he could swear that he could see Craig out the corner of his eye, smiling. Jesus. What in the world is he trying to do to us, get us ass-raped? Derrick thought, gooseflesh popping up all over his skin.

  Derrick could see Craig out the corner of his eye—starting to take off his shirt. Shit.

  “Come on now. I ain’t got all night, ya hear,” the man exhaled again. Derrick could smell the tobacco smoke. Some of it, whether on purpose or not, floated by his face. He caught the oncoming sneeze before it happened. He swallowed.

  Derrick finally followed suit and began to take off his own shirt. Once it was off, he threw it on the ground next to Craig’s.

  The man coughed and said, “You two boys ain’t bashful, are ya?” He laughed. It was a high-pitched squeal like a teenage girl. Both boys wanted to laugh, but didn’t dare offend the man. They still didn’t know his appearance or worse yet, what in the world he wanted with two eighteen-year-old boys. Then the man said, “Come on now! Get goin’. Take yer all off! Let me see those pasty asses ya got on ya.” Then he laughed some more.

  “Uh, sir,” Derrick began, “I thought you didn’t want us to strip all the way down to our birthday suits?”

  The man squealed again and then replied, “Well, you can thank your friend here for that. What’d you say yer name was, boy?”

  “Who, mine?” Derrick asked.

  “Yes YOU, dumbshit.”

  “Derrick.”

  “Ah, Derrick, as in, the name of the famous baseball player?”

  “Uhhh, no, sir. It’s actually spelled different than his name.”

  “Oh. Well, ok. Don’t like them Yanks any ol’ how. I’m a Rangers fan, myself. The Ryan Express. Whew! What a big boy that sonofabitch was…is…anyway. He could fire a baseball the fastest I’ve ever seen a man do. Damn near took the head off a player once. Humm, what the hell was that pasty boy’s name…”

  “Robin.”

  “Ah, yes. Ventura. Heck of a ball player himself till he was stupid enough to run out to the mound and start shit with the man with a cannon of an arm. If I remember correctly, I do believe that Ventura boy got his head pounded quite a few times.”

  “Yeah. But we were pretty young when that happened and I don’t really remember seeing it,” Derrick tried to distract the man from telling them to take off the rest of their clothes.

  “Don’t care much about that, boy. Anyhoo. You two a
re ripe for the pickin’ now. Yes sir-eee. Like ’em with some meat on their bones, but guess you boys will have to do for tonight’s entertainment. Now, get to strippin’. You definitely convinced me that I wanna see both yer asses. Now!”

  Without a shadow of a doubt, that was no cop standing behind them. He didn’t act or say things like a cop and didn’t smell like a cop… Anyway, as far as Derrick was concerned, it was now or never. Either him or Craig needed to make a move now, or their asses were gonna be grass. Or worse.

  Derrick looked over. Craig’s head was down but he was laughing silently, while trying to work the button loose on his jeans. Derrick couldn’t believe he of all people, the biggest homophobe he had ever known, was actually going to strip in front of a grown man. Derrick then cleared his throat to get his friend’s attention. Craig didn’t look over. Evidently, the situation was getting the better of him and he looked like he was losing it. Yes, Billy Badass, Craig Coleman, looked like his mind wasn’t computing the seriousness of the situation. Either that or he had a plan. But Derrick felt like he owed his own personal safety to Craig all during high school and now it was his turn to stand up to a bully. Derrick hoped that was all this guy was.

  Derrick spun around and faced the man.

  He screamed.

  Craig spun around, his pants to his knees, just in time to see a huge black shadow leap over the man’s beat-up car and crash onto his back.

  Both boys were in shock. Before Derrick was able to gain enough composure to run, the back of the fur-covered beast moved up and down. Blood sprayed into the air as one of the tall man’s arms was ripped from his body with a crunch and thrown in their direction. The severed arm smacked Craig in the face, and he cried out as he tripped over his jeans, now around his ankles. He flopped down on his buttocks on the hard cement sidewalk next to the parked car.