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

Hollis stood up.

“That’s riiiiiiiiight! The story I was trying to tell you is foreshadowing what’s going to happen tonight! Ha! How about that, you little brats? The reason there are so many similarities in the fate of Troop 192 and our situation at this very moment is because I am a werewolf!”

He stood there, facing the moonlight, waiting for the inevitable transformation.

“What story did you tell the other kids?” Cecil asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Were you telling them about another werewolf attack before that one?”

“Yes. That’s right. It’s all a vicious cycle. Each story I tell the scouts is about the previous massacre. I’ll tell the next troop about you guys.”

“If you killed all of those Cub Scout Troops, who keeps hiring you as a scoutmaster?”

He adjusted his angle. Change, dammit, change !

Theolonious raised his hand. “So if you bit a mummy—?”

Screw it , Hollis thought. He’d brought an axe.

Frederick was first, right in the middle of another stupid question when the axe caught him under the chin. It cleaved his jaw in half, his tongue waggling through the gap, blood spurting like a lawn sprinkler.

Hollis pinned Billy under his foot and hacked his arm off, then dangled it above his face, teasing him.

“Stop hitting yourself!” he yelled in Billy’s face, slapping him with his own hand. It was good fun until shock set in and Billy stopped screaming.

Cecil got a straight chop to the throat, but the axe wasn’t sharp enough to decapitate him fully, and his head flopped backward, still attached to some sinew.

As he’d warned earlier, Hollis drove the axe head into Anthony’s ribcage, cracking it open, then diving in the feast on the child’s still-beating heart with his razor-sharp werewolf fangs that seemed rather flat and dull for the job. He did manage to bite off a piece of something that could have been a ventricle, but might have been an atrium. Hollis always got those confused.

Theolonius watched, eyes wide, hugging his knees. He was covered in blood that wasn’t his own. Hollis raised the axe, ready to make a lupine feast of the boy’s small brain, when Theolonious began to scream.

No, not a scream.

That’s more like a howl.

First the boy’s nose extended, becoming hairy and snoutish.

Then claws burst from his fingertips, curving into the shape of scythes.

Hollis dropped the axe, dumbfounded, as the miniature werewolf then grew…

Antlers?

Theolonious quickly spun around, lifting his giant black tail, one that had a white stripe running down it ala Pepe Le Pew.

“Oh no…”

The werewolfskunkdeer sprayed Hollis with its anal scent glands while the scoutmaster was screaming, and some of the spray got into Hollis’s mouth. The smell…the taste…was so bad, Hollis had no choice but to whip out his Swiss Army Knife, thumb open the mini scissors, and immediately begin snipping away at his own nose and tongue, snip snip snipping until…

“Mr. Hollis? Is this the baking soda?”

Hollis blinked away the daydream and stared at Billy.

Hollis sighed. “That’s it, Billy.”

Theolonious raised his hand. “Mr. Hollis? Will we get our fishing merit badges tomorrow?”

“Yes, Theolonious.”

“Is storytime over?” Cecil asked.

“I guess.”

Silas raised his hand.

“What, Silas? Do you want to ask me what ‘transitory’ means?”

“I want to know what’s wrong with your ears. They’re getting longer.”

Hollis slapped his hands against the sides of his head. Indeed, his ears were getting longer. Longer and hairier.

He jammed a finger into his mouth, tapping the quick growing fangs.

It’s about time.

Hollis leapt onto Silas, taking the boys whole head in his mouth. He squeezed his mighty werewolf jaws closed, feeling the skull bend inward, then crack suddenly, popping open like a walnut, squirting hot brains through Silas’s nasal cavity.

With Cecil, he dug his snout into the boy’s belly, clenching his teeth down on a length of intestines, holding tight as Cecil ran for the trees. Cecil managed to pull out his intestines, both large and small, his colon, his stomach, and something that might have been a spleen, before keeling over.

With Billy, Hollis dug one of his claws through the child’s eye socket, then dug it through his skull and out the other eye, holding him like a six-pack. Then he pulled, tearing off the bridge of Billy’s nose.

Theolonious cried out in horror, and Hollis ripped his lungs out of his chest, squeezing them like an accordion, making the scream go on and on and…

“Mr. Hollis? Is that a werewolfskunkdeer?” Cecil asked, pointing at something in the woods.

Hollis shook his head to clear it. The fantasies were getting more and more real. The medication wasn’t working like it should.

“It’s not?” Cecil asked.

“What are you pointing at, Cecil?”

“That thing, with the horns.”

“You mean the tree?”

“No, the…oh, yeah. The branches looked like horns.”

And then the transformation began. For real this time? Hollis bit down on the inside of his mouth as hard as he could. It hurt like hell—this was definitely real. Those little bastards were about to see what a true werewolf could do.

The scouts stared at him. Their jaws dropped as one.

The inside of his cheek was bleeding pretty badly. He shouldn’t have bit so hard.

“That’s right,” he said. “Just like I’ve been hinting over and over, I am a werewolf! And on this night of the full moon, I shall enjoy a Cub Scout gore feast!”

Cecil screamed. Hollis laughed and then, transformation complete, let out the howl of the beast he had become.

“That’s it?” asked Billy.

“What?”

“You’re not very furry.”

“My arms are hairy!”

“Not that hairy. My dad’s arms are hairier.”

“Look at my ears! Those aren’t normal ears anymore. Look at my fingernails! And my nose sort of looks like a snout now!”

“I thought werewolves were supposed to be a lot scarier,” said Theolonious.

“You know what? You kids suck ! It’s not my fault that the werewolf who bit me didn’t break the skin all the way, and that I don’t do a complete change! You should still be terrified! When’s the last time you saw somebody’s fingernails grow a full half-inch within ten seconds? Never, that’s when? You’ve never seen somebody’s nose change shape like that!”

“My sister got hit in the face with a basketball and—”

“Shut the hell up! I have killed hundreds of Cub Scouts, and if you think your ridiculous werewolfwolfskunkdeermoosepygmy fucker is the height of terror, then you can all just…just…” No, no, no, I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this again. Please, not again. Don’t let it happen again…

It happened again. Hollis succumbed to tears.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

“Mr. Hollis, can we go home and play Nintendo?”

“Yes.” Mr. Hollis wiped the tears from his eyes. “Yes, we can.”

THE END

Serial

A Bonus Short Story by Blake Crouch & J.A. Konrath

1

The hardest thing about killing a hitchhiker is finding one to pick up.

Donaldson could remember just ten years ago, when interstates boasted a hitcher every ten miles, and a discriminating killer could pick and choose who looked the easiest, the most fun, the juiciest. These days, cops kept the expressways clear of easy marks, and Donaldson was forced to cruise off-ramps, underpasses, and rest areas, prowl back roads, take one hour coffee breaks at oases. Recreational murder was becoming more trouble than it was worth.