A Monster of a Mystery

Written by Nick Andreychuk, Published on 4/3/2009

Five monsters stood at the cemetery gates, hesitant to enter. “Aren’t monsters supposed to love cemeteries?” I asked, looking around at the witch, the vampire, the werewolf and the mummy that accompanied me (I’m a ghost). “I don’t think real monsters would be afraid to go in.”

A full moon glowed in the sky, casting shadows from the trees spookily over the graves. To be honest, I was terrified, but this is how teenagers are supposed to spend Halloween night, right?

“I’m not afraid,” Donald the vampire said.

“Like I told you yesterday,” my best friend, Randy the werewolf, told me, “on Halloween night, the real monsters come out to play. That’s why we’re wearing these costumes, so the monsters will think we’re one of their kind and leave us alone.”

“And the place most of the monsters come from is cemeteries,” Donald added. “Walking through this cemetery will prove we’re not afraid of monsters. It’ll separate the men from the boys.”

“Ahem,” Linda the witch cut in, “it’ll separate the grown-ups from the children.”

Everyone groaned -- even Wendell the mummy, who’d only known Linda for a week. Wendell was new to the neighborhood, having recently moved in next door to Linda, and this was his first time in the local cemetery, night or day. But he didn’t have to know her for long to react with the same groan as the rest of us -- she was always reminding us that girls could do the same things boys can do, often better.

“My cousin saw a werewolf on the last full moon,” Randy said. “He said it was huge!”

“Maybe your cousin saw an actual wolf,” I suggested.”

“No way,” Randy said. “It was walking upright, like me.” He raised his hairy arms up menacingly and howled at the moon to get his point across.

“We’re more likely to run into a vampire tonight,” Donald said. “So beware if you see a man-sized hole in a grave, because it means a vampire crawled out of there!”

“Or that a zombie clawed its way out,” Linda added.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Randy said. Everyone agreed -- we had to steady our nerves and just walk in. So we did. We loudly joked that if any monsters got in our way, they’d have to give us candy for the right to stay in our cemetery.

Soon we came upon a big old crypt. The crypt’s door was open and Linda dared us to go inside. It was dark inside the windowless tomb, and the old rock looked like it could crumble and collapse at any time ... but no one would admit to being scared.

“Okay, let’s do it,” Wendell said. “Maybe the coffins in there will have other mummies like me!”

Donald entered the crypt first. Being the tallest of the group, he had to duck a bit to get through the doorway, his Dracula-style cape fluttering behind him. “Or maybe,” he said over his shoulder, flashing his pointy white fangs, “the coffins will all be empty because vampires don’t sleep at night!”

We’d soon discover that something other than mummies and vampires had lured us into a trap ...

The moment we were all inside the crypt, the creaking door slammed shut behind us. We were instantly thrown into pitch blackness, so I couldn’t tell who -- or what -- had closed the door.

Wendell screamed. I somehow managed not to. “Anyone have a flashlight?” I asked.

“I do,” Linda said. “But I can’t find it.”

There came a muffled thump, Randy cried out, then I heard what sounded like the shells of countless cockroaches skittering across the floor.

“Nobody move,” Randy said. “I tripped and spilled all my candy. And I don’t care if you’re one of my friends or the boogeyman, you can’t have any of my candy!”

We’d been to dozens of houses, so that was a lot of candy for Randy to pick up in the dark. As we stood there waiting for Randy to finish picking up his treats, I heard a rock scraping against another rock. It had to be the heavy concrete lid of one of the vaults!

For several minutes, I stood still, listening for monsters. I shivered when I heard something moving outside. Then I thought I heard something sneaking up on us from the direction of the concrete vault. So I was relieved when Linda finally broke the silence. And the darkness.

“I found it!” she exclaimed. Linda turned her flashlight on and shone it around.

She pointed the light right in Wendell’s eyes and his pupils contracted in protest before he had a chance to put his hand up to shield his eyes. “Hey, watch where you’re pointing that thing,” he said.

Linda swung the flashlight onto Randy, who was just picking up the last piece of his spilled candy. He looked around the floor and smiled when he saw no stray suckers or chocolate bars. “I did pretty good finding everything in the dark,” Randy said.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what could be in there with us, creeping up on us at that very second. I pointed in the direction I’d heard the vault lid sliding off. “Shine the light over there,” I said.

Linda obliged and I was startled to discover a hole in the crypt wall. Two large concrete bricks had been pulled out. That’s the sound I’d heard.

“With our costumes we must look pretty horrifying,” Randy said, “because we scared some monster enough that it tore through the wall to get away from us.”

“Well, there could be other things in here,” Donald said, as he headed for the hole. “So I’m getting out of here, too.” But when Donald got to the hole in the crypt wall, it was obvious he couldn’t fit through it. “Someone else will have to go through and open the front door.”

Wendell was much smaller than Donald and he was quite eager to get out. But the moment he stepped outside, he screamed. We heard him run around to the front of the crypt, but for all we knew he was being chased by a werewolf. Then he screamed again.

Suddenly, Wendell yanked the crypt door open with all his might. He stood there shaking. “Zuh-zuh-zombies!” he cried.

Donald pushed past him, then shrieked in terror.

My curiosity momentarily overtook my fear and I hurried out to see what was going on. At the nearest gravesite, a ghoulish head and shoulders had broken through the earth, along with two decaying arms. And at the grave next to it, a female zombie had pulled half her body out of the ground.

“Everybody run!” I shouted. Not thinking, I turned and ran past the crypt, coming close to where the hole in the wall was -- where Wendell had first seen something that had made him scream. And there was another top half of a zombie! Only, instead of making me run faster, seeing this caused me to stop and stare.

It was the exact same zombie in the exact same position as the one I’d seen at the front of the crypt. Even in my terrified state, my mind was able to process that fact.

My friends stumbled to a stop around me. “Why are you stopping?” Linda asked. “Let’s go!”

“Hand me your flashlight,” I said. With the added illumination, I came to a certain conclusion. “The zombies are fake! Look, this one’s not moving.”

“Zombies are slow, lumbering monsters,” Randy said. “Don’t you watch the movies?”

“Yeah,” Donald said, not taking his eyes off the zombie in the ground, “they just keep coming until you make a mistake, and then they eat your brains!”

“No mistake,” I said. I walked over and yanked the monster off the ground. It didn’t protest. There was nothing beneath the top half that we’d seen. It didn’t feel like rotting flesh, and a closer inspection revealed it to be foam-filled latex. “One of you played a Halloween ‘trick’ on us, but I should get the ‘treat’ because I figured out who did it.”