Konrath, J.A. - DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

One of the youngest scouts, Billy somebody, raised his hand. No doubt because he was too terrified to hear more.

“Billy, are you too terrified to hear more?” Hollis asked. “Because that’s okay. Nobody here will judge you.”

“No, Mr. Hollis. I have to go to the bathroom.”

Hollis sighed again. “Go ahead, Billy. But don’t go too far away. Anyway, there’s something inhuman in these woods. Something that hungers for human flesh.”

Theolonious raised his hand. Probably wet himself he was so scared.

“Do we have any more hot dogs?” Theolonious asked.

“You already had three.”

“Jimmy ate the one I dropped one the ground.”

“Jimmy didn’t come with us on this trip.”

“Well, okay, I ate it, but it wasn’t as good as the two that didn’t get dropped on the ground. Can I please have another one?”

“This inhuman creature,” Hollis said, ignoring him and raising his voice, “slaughtered Troop 192 on a night very much like tonight. It cracked open their bones and sucked out the marrow, and slurped up their intestines like spaghetti, then flossed its sharp fangs with their muscle fibers. And rumor has it this insatiable monster still hunts in these very woods, on the night of…” Hollis paused for dramatic effect, “the full moon .”

“Was it a Dracula?” Cecil asked.

“Draculas don’t rip people up,” said Anthony. “Draculas just look unhappy a lot, and kiss girls like in that movie my sister watched seventeen gazillion hundred times.”

“Those were dumb Draculas,” said Cecil. “But there are cool Draculas, like in Lord of the Rings .”

“Those were orcs.”

“Not those! The other ones!”

“That was a Kraken!”

“The horrible creature,” Hollis said, standing tall and raising his arms over his head, “was a werewolf!”

“I thought werewolves just took off their shirts a lot like in that movie with the Draculas.”

Hollis shook his head. “In real life, werewolves like to crack open the rib cages of little boys with their sharp claws and bite their still-beating hearts right from their chests. That’s what happened to Troop 192.”

“If they were attacked by a werewolf,” said Anthony, “wouldn’t they become werewolves?”

“Not if their bodies were shredded and thrown around all over the trees and lake and ground. If you’d been paying attention when I started telling the story you could have caught that little detail.”

“What if a werewolf bit a skunk?” Theolonious asked. “Would it become a werewolfskunk?”

“A werewolf wouldn’t bite a skunk,” Hollis said.

“Why not?”

“Why would it bite a skunk? Would you bite a skunk?”

“I wouldn’t bite a skunk today,” said Mortimer, “but if I was a werewolf, I think I’d bite a skunk if there was one sitting there. You’d have to bite it gently, y’know, so that its whole head doesn’t come off, but I think, y’know, werewolves can bite gently when they want to, even though they usually don’t. They couldn’t use their whole jaw or, y’know, anything like that, but if they just used their front teeth and didn’t close them all the way, I think they could bite a skunk without its head coming off.”

The other cub scouts murmured their agreement.

“Y’know,” Mortimer added.

“And what if the werewolfskunk bit a deer?” asked Theolonious. “Would it turn into a werewolfskunkdeer?”

“I want to know how one werewolf ate all of Troop 192,” said Cecil. “How big is a werewolf’s stomach?”

“Haven’t I already explained that twice?” asked Hollis. “The werewolf didn’t eat their whole bodies. He ate the best parts, then scattered the rest of them all over the place so that the kids couldn’t turn into little werewolves. Do you want a demerit? Do you?”

“I need toilet paper!” Billy yelled from the woods.

“Use leaves!” Hollis hollered back.

“I tried! They’re all stuck to me!”

Fredrick raised his hand. “Would a werewolfskunkdeer try to eat people? Or would it just forage for nuts and berries?”

“You don’t even know what ‘forage’ means,” said Silas.

“It means to search for provisions.”

“Well, you don’t know what ‘tourniquet’ means!”

“Yes, I do. We learned about them last week. It’s that thing you twist around your arm or leg to stop bleeding.”

“Well, you don’t know what ‘hypothesis’ means!”

“ Silas ! Enough!” Hollis clenched and unclenched his fists a few times. “Anyway…”

Theolonious frowned. “So is a werewolfskunkdeer a person who changes into something that’s a wolf, skunk, and deer all at once, like it has fur and Bambi eyes and sprays skunk spray, or is it a person who can change into a wolf or a skunk or a deer?”

“I have no idea,” Hollis said.

“I think he changes into one of them, but he can’t control which one it is. So he’ll be fighting Bigfoot and he’ll want to change into a wolf because wolves are better at fighting Bigfoot, but he’ll change into a skunk instead and Bigfoot just steps on him. That’s probably why you don’t see many werewolfskunkdeers around anymore.”

“What if a werewolf bit a Dracula who bit a zombie who then bit the werewolf?” asked Cecil.

“My baby brother bit the babysitter, but she didn’t turn into a baby.”

“Shut up!” said Theolonious. “That’s not what we’re talking about!”

“But what if a werewolfskunkdeer bit a wolf? Is it a werewolfskunkdeerwolf, or does the wolf part just not matter because it was already a wolf?”

“Werewolfwolfskunkdeer sounds better,” said Anthony.

“Soon the full moon will rise,” Hollis said, raising his arms theatrically. “And then the werewolf takes its supernatural form and…”

“You mean the werewolfwolfskunkdeer.”

“No. I mean the werewolf. There’s no such thing as a werewolfskunkdeer.”

“You forgot the extra wolf. It’s werewolf wolf skunkdeer.”

“I did not forget the extra wolf. We aren’t talking about the werewolfskunk deer.”

“The werewolf wolf skunkdeer.”

“We’re talking about a werewolf! A regular old werewolf! That’s it. Just a man who turns into a goddamn wolf, okay?”

The scouts went silent. Hollis knew he’d gone too far by using the g.d. word, but the punchline to his story was so amazing and they were ruining it.

“Mr. Hollis, is this poison oak?” Billy asked, walking back to the campfire holding some leaves.

“Yes, Billy. Put that down.”

“I wish I’d picked different leaves. Can I go home?”

“No. There’s some baking soda in the tent. Let me finish my story and I’ll get it for you.”

“Could a werewolf eat a baby whole, in one bite?” asked Anthony.

“I suppose one could,” Hollis said. Actually, he knew that one could. Firsthand. Heh heh.

“So when it pooped out the baby, would the baby be a werepoopwolf?”

“What if a werepoopwolf bit a werewolfwolfskunkdeer?”

“It would be a werewolfwolfwolfpoopskunkdeer.”

“Enough,” Hollis said. “The next person who says something gets a bad report to their parents and they won’t get to come on any more of these trips. Got it? See that full moon up there? That ties into our little story, doesn’t it? Do you see the connection between what happened to Troop 192 and the lunar cycle of today? You get it, right? Do you know what Troop 192 was doing on that fateful night? They were— irony alert —sitting around listening to scary stories from their scoutmaster! Do you get where this is going?”

The scouts remained silent.