Chapter 8
Andrew slowed to a stop when he reached Garrett’s house. Staring at the open front door, he tried to calm himself and relax. He peered around the corner, and seeing nothing unusual, he stepped inside. It was dark, and the silence was chilling. Where the heck was everyone? Maybe they’d surprised Garrett upstairs in his bedroom while he was asleep. The lack of noise worried Andrew. Had the three intruders already knocked their target unconscious…or worse? As he started towards the staircase there was a loud noise from the basement. It had sounded like metal grating and grinding, followed by a commotion. Turning around, Andrew hurried to the basement door, which was open. Taking the stairs two at a time, he began to get a feeling of unease in his gut as he got close enough to hear the sounds that made up the commotion he’d heard. They didn’t sound human.
Growls, snarls, hissing, and roars of pain combined with other sounds…sounds that Andrew couldn’t really explain. The sounds reminded Andrew of what you hear when you stir spaghetti or mac and cheese. They sounded like flesh being ripped and torn. At the bottom of the steps Andrew stopped, terrified to look around the corner. He needed to help Garrett…if Garrett was around the corner. Taking a deep breath to once again calm his nerves, Andrew stepped around the corner…and pissed himself.
What Andrew saw didn’t make sense to his mind. He’d always been a fan of horror flicks, ever since he was a kid. Monster movies were some of his favorites. But they were movies, fiction. What he saw in front of him was something straight out of those movies…but it wasn’t fake.
There was a large metal box of some kind in the back of the room, about the size of a tool shed. The door to the box looked to have been ripped open, hanging off its very large, steel hinges. That was strange all in itself, but was of no importance compared to the other things in the room.
When he’d stepped around the corner, Greg, or what he’d always known as Greg, had locked coal-black, soul-less eyes on him first and let out a terrifying half shriek, half hiss. As chilling as the sound had been, what the act of making the noise revealed inside Greg’s mouth was even worse. Long, jagged, razor-sharp teeth overflowed out of his mouth. They pointed every which way, reminding Andrew of a venus fly trap, except much much freakier.
The monsters formerly known as Brad and Ted took notice and turned, the same black eyes and jagged snaggle-toothed mouths on their pale faces. Long, sharp nails shot out from their fingertips, and they, along with their mouths, were dripping with blood. The blood came from the creature they were all huddled around.
Greyish-brown tangles of fur covered muscular, sinewy skin from head to claw on the beast. It had the face and snout of a wolf, but it’s torso and size were that of a man. It hunched over in a biped stance, nursing bite and scratch wounds it had apparently received from the ghastly trio surrounding it. Could that be Garrett, Andrew wondered.
All the odd things that had caught Andrew off guard about Garrett came back to mind. The way he cocked his head to the side like a dog, his pointy ears, his terrible temper, his unnatural strength, his need for privacy, his untrusting nature, the way he’d grown facial hair overnight, and finally his strange behavior earlier in the night when he insisted Andrew stay away from the house after the sun went down. Throw that in with a full moon and the story Andrew had found about Garrett and his family being attacked by what Garrett had referred to as a wolfman and you have an equation that looks something like this. Garrett Sheppers + all the crazy crap previously mentioned=Garrett is a freaking werewolf. Holy nuts, Andrew thought, werewolves and vampires are real.
They stayed that way for a minute, Andrew too scared-shitless to run and the four monsters too stunned to react. That didn’t last long, however. First, werewolf Garrett noticed his vampire attackers had stopped tearing into him and he took advantage. Blasting past them, he started running right towards Andrew. Paralyzed in fear, he stood still as the werewolf ran into him, knocking him to the ground, and continued up the stairs and out of sight. Cursing and hissing, the three vampires shook out the cobwebs.
“Damn it! We are never going to catch him now!”
“Oh, we will…he can’t run forever. Right now, we have other…worries.” Andrew shook out his own cobwebs from being knocked down by Garrett just in time to see Greg, Ted, and Brad begin to stalk towards him. His friends were no longer interested in talking. They’d warned him, and now they were going to make him pay. Damned if he was going to make it easy for them though.
He quickly got to his feet and tore up the stairs and out the front door as fast as he could. He could hear their footsteps coming up the stairs and on the tile behind him just as he reached the road. Looking across at his home, it seemed a million miles across the inky black road. Halfway across, he felt long fingers wrap around each of his shoulders and drive him into the ground. Rolling over he saw Ted’s open, snarling, fang-filled mouth dripping bloody saliva into his face. Oh crap, Andrew groaned as he frantically tried to hold off the vampire’s bite. He had thought Garrett was strong, but Ted made Garrett look like a wimp.
It wasn’t long before Brad and Greg caught up, but just before they could join in to finish Andrew off, a car came out of nowhere and slammed into Ted, knocking him off of Andrew and squealing to a stop inches from Andrew’s face. He didn’t wait to see what had caused the driver to not see them, scampering to his feet and booking it into his house and locking the door behind him.
He peeked out the window, listening as an older man got out of the car, apologizing and saying his eyes were getting bad. The three vampires growled and tackled the old man, tearing him to shreds before he knew what hit him. The poor old guy never had a chance. As Andrew watched his former friends devour the old man, he couldn’t believe his eyes. These weren’t the romanticized vampires from the movies. They were more like zombies.
They bit, tore, and ripped flesh off of the man, slurping, guzzling, and sucking every drop of blood they could get their tongues on. Andrew began to shake. What the hell was he going to do!? Suddenly Billiam came charging into the room barking. Andrew looked back at his little dog, shushing him. When he turned back and looked out the window, he was face to face with Brad’s blood soaked face…and he didn’t look happy.
Letting the blinds shut, Andrew fell onto his butt. Scrambling backwards in an awkward crab walk, he got as far as a few feet before the door flew open and all three vampires strode in like they owned the place. They all had wicked, ghoulish smiles on their faces…and they still looked hungry.