PeterAndTheVampires.com by Darren Pillsbury

"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 84 and 85

2010-01-03T01:35:00.000-08:00

“By the way,” Jenkins said, “he’s asking for you.”

Peter froze. “Wh-who?” he stuttered.

“Doctor Crazy. Says he wants to see you. Won’t talk to me at all other than telling me that.”

“I’ll go with you,” Grandfather offered Peter.

Jenkins shook his head. “Says he doesn’t wanna talk to you, old man. Says he won’t say anything if you’re there…but he wants to talk to the kid. Don’t worry, he’s all wrapped up in a crazy jacket.” Jenkins peered down at Peter. “You be sure and tell me exactly what he says, got it? Exactly. Might say something incriminating.”

Peter nodded silently.

Jenkins jerked his head towards the ambulance. “He’s over there.”

Peter looked back at Dill and Grandfather, and walked slowly over to the ambulance.

Dr. Veedermeier sat in the back of the ambulance. His face was smudged with soot; his glasses were bent and slightly askew. His upper body was wrapped tightly in a white straitjacket. Peter knew from watching magicians on TV that the things were nearly impossible to get out of; he just hoped that magic wasn’t one of Dr. Veedermeier’s many hobbies.

As soon as he saw him, Veedermeier broke out into a wide smile. Unlike the man back in the laboratory just 30 minutes ago, Dr. V looked almost normal.

If you ignored the straitjacket, that is.

“Oh, Peter! Peter, I’m so glad you came…oh Peter, I’m so sorry about what happened back in there…” Veedermeier looked intensely sad. “I said some things I shouldn’t have…I let myself get a little carried away…”

“You tried to kill me,” Peter whispered.

“No, no…I didn’t mean it, I promise I didn’t. I never wanted to hurt anyone. You do believe me, don’t you?”

Veedermeier looked desperate for approval. Even though he didn’t believe it at all, Peter figured that he was talking to a crazy person. What did it matter if he played along? What was there to gain in arguing with him?

“Yeah,” he mumbled.

“Oh, good…Peter, you have no idea how relieved I am to hear that.” Veedermeier dropped his voice to a whisper. “And Alpha…is he alright?”

Peter nodded. “He’s okay.”

“Did he run away?”

“I found a place for him…he’s safe.”

Veedermeier heaved a happy sigh of relief. “Oh, good. Take care of him, Peter. Take care of him for me, will you?”

Peter nodded.

“I was a bad father…I was a bad father to all my children…” A single tear dripped from Veedermeier’s face, wiping clean a trail across the smudge of ash on his cheek. “I didn’t mean to be, but I was.”

Peter’s stomach clenched, but he didn’t say anything.

Veedermeier looked at the burned-out husk of his laboratory. His body slumped. “So much lost…so much work and effort, gone…but,” he said, suddenly cheery, “we’ll begin again. You can be my apprentice. We’ll rebuild and get the greenhouse going again, and I can teach you, Peter. I’ll teach you all the wonders of science.”

Peter’s skin crawled at the creepy tone in Veedermeier’s voice. He wanted to say, You mean all the wonders of science that tried to kill me tonight?

But instead he just nodded silently.

“It’ll be fun, Peter,” Veedermeier cackled, and started to rock back and forth rapidly. “It’ll be so much fun, just you wait! It’ll be so much fun! SO MUCH FUN! SO MUCH FUN!”

Peter stepped back, frightened. One of the paramedics ran up and pulled Dr. Veedermeier all the way into the ambulance and restrained him on a gurney with straps.

“SO MUCH FUN! SO MUCH FUN! SO MUCH FUN!” Veedermeier kept laughing hysterically.

“That’s all, kid. We gotta go,” the paramedic said as he closed the ambulance’s back doors.

Peter watched as the ambulance drove off down the street. Even through the metal doors, and even as it drove away, he could hear Veedermeier’s voice shouting to him.

“I’LL BE BACK, PETER! JUST YOU WAIT! I’LL BE BACK…AND IT WILL BE SO MUCH FUN! I’LL BE BACK…I’LL BE BACK…”

The ambulance lights disappeared around a bend in the road.

Peter shivered.

TOMORROW: PETER AND THE SMALL THINGS

(I'm trying an experiment...that's not the real title of the story, but we'll see how you like it better when you don't know exactly who the bad guy is...)

Oh, and this is what I thought Frank might look like:

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 82 and 83

2010-01-02T00:01:00.000-08:00

“Let me down, Frank, please,” Peter said. Once he was on the ground, he pointed at the house. “This is yours, now. You can live here.”

Frank looked blankly from Peter to the house, and back to Peter.

“Yours,” Peter repeated.

Still stroking Percival, Frank shuffled over to the house and walked inside. The steps creeaaaaaaaked underneath his feet, but they held.

“Dude, it’s pitch black in there,” Dill whispered.

“He can see in the dark, remember?” Peter whispered back.

Suddenly, there was a CRASH. Boards split apart inside.

“Oh crap!” Dill gasped.

There was a noise from Frank – though not the one Peter expected. It was a kind of half-barking, half-laughing sound. When the monster stuck his head out of the blackened doorway, he had a giant smile on his face.

“Are you okay?” Peter called out.

The monster bobbed his head up and down, still making the goofy half-barking sound.

“What a weirdo,” Dill muttered.

“You said you wanted to live with monkeys,” Peter reminded him. “That would make you happy – so how different is this?”

“Really different. There aren’t any monkeys,” Dill pointed out in a Duh! tone of voice.

Frank, meanwhile, had climbed out of the shack and come back over to the boys.

“We’ve got to take Percival with us, Frank, but you stay here…we’ll come back and see you tomorrow with food, okay? You go in there and go to sleep, and we’ll come back tomorrow, okay?”

The giant nodded, and slowly placed Percival on the ground. The dog licked his unbandaged hand one last time, and then Frank ambled off back towards the shack. At the doorway he paused…turned back to Peter and Dill…and waved his hand, flapping it at the wrist like a two year-old.

Peter waved back. Dill gave a little half-hearted wave, too.

Then Frank disappeared into his new home.

“He’s kinda dumb,” Dill whispered.

“Let’s bring you back from the dead and see how smart you are,” Peter rebuked him as they turned back for home. Percival followed them.

“Dude, I’d be the smartest zombie in the world.”

“Yeah, right. What’s 7 times 5?”

“Zombies don’t give a crap about math,” Dill scoffed. “I’d get, like, a bulletproof helmet so nobody could shoot me in the head and kill me again. That’d be awesome. And I’d wear lots of deodorant so you couldn’t smell me…nobody’d even be able to tell I was dead! They’d say, ‘Dang, who’s that guy smellin’ so good?’ and I’d be all like ‘Raarrr!’ and eat their brains.” Dill shook his head. “Dude, I’d be the best zombie ever…”

He talked about exactly how great a zombie he would be, nonstop, until they reached Grandfather’s house.

***

Grandfather was waiting for them in the truck. Apparently it was no problem for him to retrieve it from the school; Jenkins and the other deputies, along with the fire department and paramedics, were busy trying to tame the fire and find out what other horrors were waiting for them in the ruins of the building.

When they returned, the laboratory was a smoldering shell of its former self. The greenhouse looked like someone had taken a blowtorch to all the plants inside, which gave Peter a pang of regret. All those amazing plants, dead and gone…

Old Man Parker was sitting on the lawn as an ambulance medic took his blood pressure.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” the surly man barked, trying to wave him off. “I just…Percival!”

The black mop ran across the grass and tumbled into his owner, enthusiastically licking his face.

Grandfather, Peter, and Dill walked up.

“So…you’re alive,” Grandfather said gruffly.

“I guess,” Parker said gruffly back.

“No need to thank me.”

“I won’t, then.”

Deputy Jenkins walked out of the smoking front door of the laboratory. “So you’re back. Did you find the thing?”

“We chased it to my property,” Grandfather said. “I shot it, and it fell off the cliff into the ocean.”

“Right,” Jenkins sneered, clearly not believing him.

“You’re welcome to go dredge the waters looking for it.”

“I’ve got my hands full here.” Jenkins shook his head in amazement; it was the first time Peter had seen him 100% sincere. “You would not believe what we found in there. Looked like twenty pairs of legs sewn together, burned to a crisp. Not to mention what that freak had in the back room. We must’ve found twenty bodies, and parts of bodies…good God…”

“By the freak, I assume you mean Dr. Veedermeier,” Grandfather said.

“Who else?” Jenkins barked.

“Is he…?”

“Oh, he’s alive, all right. That serial killer show room he’s got back there kept him alive till we got to him.” Jenkins shook his head. “Never seen anything like this in my life.”

“Where are you taking him?”

“I’d like to take him back to the jail and give him a little pounding over the head with a phone book, but the paramedics are insisting he’s gotta be admitted. So over to Shadow Hills.”

Dill’s eyes went wide.

“What?” Peter asked. “What’s Shadow Hills?”

“The loony bin,” Dill whispered.

“I ain’t letting him plead insanity on this one, though,” Jenkins insisted. “We’ve got him on I don’t know how many crimes just from the evidence on the scene…plus I’m betting I’ve found my killer for the Charterton fraternity boys on Thanksgiving.”

Peter froze up. He looked at Grandfather, who just nodded at Jenkins. “Is that so?”

Jenkins nodded. “I can tell. I got a gut feeling.” He looked down at Peter. “You oughta be happy; we got the killer.”

Peter gulped and nodded. “I…I am.”

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 80 and 81

2010-01-01T03:58:00.000-08:00

“That thing could kill you,” Grandfather said angrily.

“So could falling down the stairs,” Peter pointed out.

“The stairs aren’t trying to kill you.”

“I’ve had about fifteen things try to kill me the last two months,” Peter said, “and he’s the only one that hasn’t. I think he deserves a second chance.”

Grandfather grumbled something to himself.

Peter crouched down. “Hey…uh…Alpha…”

“Let’s call him Frank,” Dill suggested.

“Frank?”

“Like Frankenstein.”

“Frankenstein was the scientist – ” Grandfather began.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dill said, waving him off.

“I should point out that the monster killed Frankenstein’s fiancée, and a host of other people.”

“That’s why we’re calling him Frank,” Dill explained, as though talking to a stupid person. “A guy named Frank wouldn’t do that.”

“Hey, Frank,” Peter called.

The gray giant lifted his head. Rivulets of rain dribbled down his bald head.

“You wanna go with us? We’ll take you someplace safe and dry.”

The monster opened his mouth and made a sound somewhere between a bark and a gurgle.

Dill cocked his head. “He kinda sounds like Chewbacca.”

Peter nodded. “Kinda.”

“Kinda looks like Chewbacca, too…if you shaved Chewbacca, and he looked like a gray Uncle Fester with glowing yellow eyes.”

Peter held out a hand. “Come on…come with me…”

The monster looked from Peter, to Grandfather, to Dill…and then slowly got up.

“Whoa,” Dill said. Even standing in a three-foot hole in the ground, Frank towered above them all.

“Where are you taking him?” Grandfather asked.

“Just meet us back at the house,” Peter said.

“I’m not letting you go by yourself!”

“Somebody’s got to take Percival back.”

“The creature can carry the dog, he likes it so much.”

“Okay,” Peter said. He reached out a hand to the monster. “Come on…come on…”

The monster placed its cold, dead hand on Peter’s. A shiver went up his spine, but he did the best to hide it.

Then the creature stepped up out of the hole in the ground.

“Can you pick up Percival? The dog?” Peter asked.

The monster got a smile on its face, stooped down, and pulled Percival into his arms. The black mop licked the creature’s gray face.

“Come on,” Peter said, and started leading everyone deeper into the woods, away from the school.

They had walked for five minutes when Dill started complaining. “Dude, I’m TIRED. Can’t we just leave him here?”

“If we had a faster way, I’d do it, but we doooOOOOON’T – ”

Without warning, the monster had scooped Peter up into the air with one hand and plopped him on its right shoulder.

“Hey, I wanna ride!” Dill complained – but immediately began screaming as the cold, gray hand gathered him up and deposited him on the left shoulder.

“Oh…okay, that’s alright,” Dill said.

Grandfather stepped back and clacked his shotgun. “I’m not riding on any reanimated corpse.”

“I thought you wanted to go with us.”

“I’ll follow behind.”

“Okaaaay,” Peter said doubtfully, and pointed deeper into the woods. “That way, Frank!”

The monster suddenly sprinted forward.

Grandfather was left behind in a matter of seconds. “Wait!” he cried out.

“Just meet us at the house!” Peter yelled as the old man’s shape receded in the distance.

The monster raced through the trees. Peter and Dill hung on for dear life, fingers scrunched in Frank’s woolen overcoat. Peter directed their progress, pointing which way the lumbering locomotive should go.

First they exited the woods and reached the main road. Peter had Frank stay in the shadows as they ran back to Grandfather’s house; they made it in half the time it would have taken Peter and Dill to bicycle there.

“Uh uh uh uh uh,” Dill groaned as he bounced up and down on the monster’s shoulder.

Once at Grandfather’s, Peter had the monster skirt the property and make his way into the field out back. Then he took the monster to the end of the rotting fence and into the woods behind Dill’s house.

“Hey!” Dill exclaimed unhappily.

“Trust me.”

They trundled through the underbrush for almost a minute before coming on an old, ramshackle hut that looked like an ancient schoolhouse.

“Stop, Frank,” Peter commanded.

“Oh nooooo,” Dill whispered, a terrified look on his face.

“Hrrrrr?” the monster said, turning a surprised face to Dill.

“Sorry, man,” Dill said. “I couldn’t help myseEEELLLLFFFF – ”

The monster whisked Dill off his left shoulder to the ground, and swatted at his shoulder like he was trying to get something off it.

“Did you pee on his shoulder?” Peter asked, horrified.

“It was just a little squirt!” Dill shouted. “Besides, you can’t bring me back here and expect me not to pee a little!”

It was true. This was the site of the boys’ first adventure together…the time they had encountered the dead men who raided Grandfather’s garden at night. The shack was their temple, an ancient pagan place of worship.

But it was also dry, and isolated, and deserted since the dead men had fallen to their doom.

At least, Peter hoped it was deserted.

If it wasn’t, though, Frank was probably the best one to handle any current inhabitants.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 78 and 79

2009-12-31T01:49:00.000-08:00

“The man who can answer that is still in there, locked in a safe room,” Grandfather said, pointing at the burning building. “And another one of those things has escaped into the woods. Are you going after it, or am I?”

Jenkins looked from Grandfather to the blazing monster on the ground, then back to the old man.

“You come right back,” he ordered.

“Understood,” Grandfather said as he rose to his feet. “Take care of Parker.”

“We’re coming too!” Peter said, and ran after Grandfather.

“No we’re not,” Dill said.

“Fine, stay with Deputy Jenkins, then,” Peter snapped.

Dill looked over his shoulder…and then raced to catch up with Peter and Grandfather.

“Go back, boy,” Grandfather growled as he ran for the woods near the school. He was following a series of huge footsteps embedded in the muddy ground.

“No! We’re part of this, too!” Peter said.

“I’m not,” Dill contradicted.

Peter looked over at his friend. Even though everyone’s clothes were damp from the rain, Dill’s jeans looked unusually dark. Especially around the crotch.

“Did you pee your pants?” Peter exclaimed.

“No,” Dill said defensively.

“Then why – ”

“I’m a werewolf,” Dill stressed. “I was marking my territory.”

“You just didn’t take your pants off.”

“Shut up!”

“Both of you, quiet!” Grandfather barked as they reached the forest. A huge swath of trees were bent or snapped, depending on their size. Alpha’s trail was clearly marked.

They raced through the forest for several minutes, following the path of devastation…until it ran out. Grandfather paused and listened.

Twenty feet away, there was a depression in the ground and a giant rotting oak lying over it. From beneath the fallen tree came a quiet whimpering.

Grandfather held up the shotgun and advanced carefully. Peter and Dill followed close behind, craning their necks for a look.

The gray giant sat in the middle of the hollow, holding Percival in his arms, gently stroking the dog’s head.

Grandfather raised the shotgun.

Peter smacked the gun to the side. “NO!” he cried.

Alpha looked up instantly. His face was tortured and sad as he stroked Percival’s fur.

“Boy, you have no idea what you’re doing,” Grandfather hissed, and started to raise the gun again.

“You can’t shoot him!” Peter protested. “He didn’t attack me back in the lab – and he stopped that arm spider thing from getting me in the school! Plus, he saved Percival! I don’t care what else he’s done, he risked his life to save a dog! He can’t be all bad!”

“He’s unnatural,” Grandfather hissed. “He’s a convicted prisoner, raised from the dead – ”

“You sound like Deputy Jenkins,” Peter said accusingly.

Grandfather glowered at Peter.

There was a tiny little noise; it was Percival whimpering. The dog leaned up and licked the gray giant’s face. In turn, the monster smiled.

“See?” Peter demanded.

“Dude, I bet Darth Vader liked puppies, too, but that don’t mean he was a good guy,” Dill said.

“Darth Vader turned good at the end,” Peter pointed out.

Dill tsked and rolled his eyes. “That was a movie.”

Peter threw up his arms in frustration. “Movies are all you ever talk about!”

“Quiet,” Grandfather said. “It’s doing something.”

Alpha got up on his knees and leaned forward. Gently, gently he placed Percival on the ground in front of Peter’s feet…and then he crouched back down in the hollow and bowed his head.

It was almost as though he was waiting for the end.

Grandfather raised his gun.

“No!” Peter yelled.

Grandfather sighed, and lowered the gun. “Well what would you have me do?”

Peter thought for a second. “We could keep him…”

“You’re insane!” Grandfather snapped.

“Uh, yeah, that’s kinda dumb,” Dill agreed.

“We don’t have to keep him in the house,” Peter said. “We could just let him live alone, out in the woods.”

“Out in the elements, with nothing to shelter him,” Grandfather said sarcastically.

“I know a place where he could stay,” Peter said. “And we could feed him.”

“I’m not paying to feed a – ”

“You gave Dr. Veedermeier millions of dollars to make him come alive!” Peter shouted. “You’re the reason he’s even here!”

“I had no idea Hans would do that!”

“You won’t even buy me a TV. You can at least spend some money on a guy who it’s your fault he’s here, and he saved my life.”

Grandfather scowled.

“I don’t know,” Dill muttered.

“Come on,” Peter said. “Think of him as a pet. Nobody else has a pet…uh…”

“Unnatural, resurrected corpse,” Grandfather snarled.

“A pet Frankenstein!” Dill said brightly.

“Frankenstein was the name of the scientist,” Grandfather pointed out. “The creature was Frankenstein’s monster – ”

“Yeah, yeah, I seen the movies,” Dill said condescendingly, and crouched down to get a closer look at the gray giant. “Nobody calls Frankenstein ‘Frankenstein’s monster.’ ‘S too long.”

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 76 and 77

2009-12-29T20:49:00.000-08:00

“NOOOO!” screamed Veedermeier. “NOOOO, HOW COULD YOU?”

Peter ran over to Dill. “Are you okay?”

Dill sniffled. “I hate science.”

“ALPHA, BETA, GAMMA – KILL THEM ALL!”

Peter looked back. The leg-monster was rolling towards him and Dill.

The arm-spider appeared on a nearby table, ready to spring.

The strangest thing was that Alpha stood still in the center of the room, watching but never moving.

Peter pulled Dill up from the floor and they ran. The arm-spider vaulted from the table but missed, and banged into a chair before toppling to the ground.

The leg-monster changed course on a dime and started rolling right behind them.

From out of nowhere, Percival launched out and seized one of the monster’s ankles in its teeth. The leg-monster swerved and hit a table as the black, floppy dog bit down harder.

Peter and Dill reached the entrance of the laboratory. Peter tried the doorknob: locked.

He turned back around. Parker was on the floor ten feet away, unconscious. Grandfather was leaning over his body, doing something – CPR? Peter couldn’t be sure.

What he was sure of was that the leg-monster was going to kill Percival. It had started kicking the dog mercilessly. The dog let go and tried to run away, but the leg monster rolled over him, pinning him to the ground, and started stomping his body.

Peter screamed. He heard the noise come out of his body louder and deeper than he thought possible, enough to shake the walls and floor. Then he realized that his own screams were being drowned out by those of the gray giant.

Alpha seized one of the feet that protruded into the air, and with no more effort than tossing a bookbag, he yanked the leg-monster off of Percival. It flew across fifteen feet of countertop, knocking over computers and microscopes and everything else in its way as it hurtled across the room.

“NOOOOO!” Veedermeier screamed in rage. “NO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

Without even looking at his master, the gray giant leaned over, scooped up Percival’s limp body in his arms, and ran through the laboratory towards the exit.

Grandfather tried to pull Parker out of the way, but needn’t have bothered; Alpha leapt over them and kept on running, full steam, until he RAMMED headfirst into the locked door.

The entire wall ripped apart with the shriek of metal and the clattering of bricks. The gray monster staggered out into the rain, cradling Percival in his arms like a baby. Then he moved to the left and disappeared from sight.

“Run, boy, run!” Grandfather bellowed at Peter, who grabbed Dill’s arm. Together they raced through the gap in the wall and into the cold air. Grandfather followed right behind them, dragging both his shotgun and Old Man Parker’s unconscious body out onto the wet grass. As soon as they were clear, Grandfather pulled out a stick of dynamite, clicked a metallic lighter, lit the fuse, and threw the explosive through the air and into the lab.

“Nooooooo!” Veedermeier squealed. Through the hole in the wall, Peter could see the little bald man retreat into the room at the rear of the lab and shut the door behind him.

“GET DOWN!” Grandfather roared as he threw himself on the lawn.

Peter and Dill both dove to the ground.

BOOM!

Fire roared out of the hole like a fireworks display gone wrong. From the side of the building came the crashing and tinkling of glass as the greenhouse windows blew out. They may have been bulletproof, but they evidently weren’t explosives-proof.

Peter looked back and watched the flames devour the building. A voice inside him screamed, But Dr. V’s still in there! As much evil as the tiny man had done, Peter still couldn’t bear to think of him perishing in the fire.

Something else distracted him, though: the sound of sirens.

Wheeeeee-oooooooooooo.

Peter looked away from the building and watched as three Sheriff’s department squad cars roared into the school parking lot and screeched to a halt.

Jenkins jumped out of the lead car, his gun already drawn. The fire from the laboratory glittered in his aviator sunglasses.

“Flannagan!” he roared. “Get down on the ground!”

“I AM on the ground, you idjit!” Grandfather shouted back.

“Throw away the shotgun and hands on your head!” Jenkins screamed. “That goes for you kids, too!”

Peter and Dill put their hands up without any argument.

“We have to go after something that escaped, Jenkins!” Grandfather yelled.

“You don’t have to do anything except lie on the ground, old man!”

Jenkins walked cautiously towards Grandfather, handcuffs at the ready. The other two deputies stayed back at the squad cars, but still aimed their guns at Peter, Dill, and Grandfather.

“Hans Veedermeier is still in there!” Grandfather said angrily. “You should be trying to save him!”

“I should be trying to make sure that a homicidal maniac is under lock and key!” Jenkins sneered.

Just as he was about to put the cuffs on Grandfather’s wrist, something burst out of the fire in the building.

It was the arm-spider…but it was engulfed in flames.

The fiery monster hurtled through the air and landed on the grass, where it frantically raced towards Jenkins, all eight arms pumping in a flame-covered frenzy.

“AAAAAAH!” Jenkins screamed. He drew his gun and started shooting. “KILL IT, KILL IT!”

The deputies at the cars opened fire.

The burning creature kept coming.

It leapt into the air –

BLAM!

The arm-spider was knocked out of the air and fell to the ground, its burning arms twitching. The orange flames sizzled and popped in the misting rain.

Grandfather knelt on the ground, shotgun in his arms, its barrel still smoking.

Jenkins looked at the old man…started to say something…

And then the arm-spider spasmed violently on the ground.

Jenkins screamed and pumped another five rounds into it before it lay still.

“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?” Jenkins screamed.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 74 and 75

2009-12-28T20:23:00.000-08:00

Without warning, the arm-spider leapt into the air. One hand grabbed the barrel of Grandfather’s gun and shoved it up towards the ceiling. The rest of the creature slammed into Grandfather, toppling him into Old Man Parker.

BANG!

Grandfather’s gun went off as he and Parker fell to the floor. On the far wall, a convoluted structure of beakers and rubber tubes exploded into a burst of green liquid and shards of glass.

Suddenly the lights went out.

Dill screamed again.

The room stayed pitch black for only a second, though. When the light faded up again, it was deep red. Everything around Peter looked like it had been bathed in blood.

Veedemeier had his remote control out. He slipped it back into his lab coat, which now looked crimson instead of white. “Get them, children,” he said quietly.

The head-creature lurched forward, the skulls on its arms weaving drunkenly through the air.

The leg-creature rolled forward, its dozens of feet propelling it into battle.

And Alpha, the giant gray man, lumbered towards them, hands outstretched.

On the floor, Grandfather was struggling with the arm-spider. The creature was on top of him, all its fingers gripping the fabric of his coat. On the underside of its body was an obscene gap filled with teeth. The evil-looking mouth drooled mere inches away from Grandfather’s face. The only thing between its fangs and Grandfather was the old man’s shotgun, which Grandfather held out as a barrier.

“Yes, Beta is a hungry little fellow,” Veedermeier chuckled as he watched Grandfather locked in mortal combat. “While Alpha was retrieving a couple of fresh recruits from the hospital, Beta unfortunately took a bite out of some other bodies in the morgue. Caused a bit of a stir, I understand.”

Peter looked around for a weapon. The closest thing he could find was a broom leaning up against the wall. He grabbed it and launched himself at the arm-spider.

Two of the monster’s hands succeeded in pulling Grandfather’s gun away and tossing it across the room. It was about to pounce on Grandfather’s face when Peter ran at it and jammed the broom handle at an angle deep into the monster’s mouth.

The thing shrieked as Peter kept running and peeled it off Grandfather’s body. Peter tried to force it up in the air, impaled on the broom, but it was like trying to balance a watermelon at the end of a stick: its weight was too much. The broom tilted down, and as soon as it hit the floor the arm-spider ran away, leaving the slobbery end of the broomstick behind.

Meanwhile, Old Man Parker had gotten to his feet. He was trying to aim his gun when the leg-monster rolled up and kicked it out of his hands.

Another foot kicked him in the face.

Then two legs reared back and thudded square in his chest.

Parker went flying backwards and toppled onto the ground.

Percival the dog ran around in circles, barking furiously.

Dill screamed over in the corner and ducked one of the head-monster’s ‘hands’ as it bobbed and weaved through the air.

“I’m a werewolf!” he kept screeching. “Leave me alone, or I’ll bite you! Leave me alone!”

Peter felt a shadow fall over him. He looked up into the eyes of Alpha, which even in the blood-red light glowed an unearthly yellow.

“It gives me no pleasure to do this,” Veedermeier called from the rear of the room. “We could have all been friends…it could have been live and let live. But no…you had to come with guns, Seamus, like those men to the farm in Germany. Come to destroy what you perceive as deformed and wrong. Well, the joke is on you, this time, because my children are anything but helpless.”

Peter didn’t move. Strangely enough, Alpha did not move, either. He just stood there, watching Peter dispassionately.

“You fool!” Grandfather yelled as he staggered to his feet. “Do you even realize how horrific these things are? The things that you’ve done?”

“You can’t judge me!” Veedermeier yelled as the leg-monster rolled over Grandfather, pinning him to the ground. “You aren’t my equal – you aren’t fit to judge me!”

Peter looked from Alpha over to Dill, who was cowering in a corner. Both the head-monster’s arms hovered over him, their teeth snapping eagerly.

Without waiting to see what the giant would do, Peter rushed at the two heads and swung the broom like a baseball bat.

The wooden handle connected with a sickening CRACK. One of the heads reeled back, all of its upper teeth knocked out, and squealed in a deafening, high-pitched whine. The other skull wheeled towards Peter and chomped down on the broomstick. With a savage twist of its head, it snapped the broomstick in two.

“Napoleon, when he wanted to be crowned emperor, summoned Pope Pius!” Veedermeier raged from the back of the laboratory. “But at the moment when the pope was about to place the crown on Napoleon’s brow, Napoleon took the crown away from him and placed it on his own head! Do you see? Do you see the brilliance in that? Napoleon had no equals! How could another man, another mere mortal, give the symbol of power to him? Only Napoleon was worthy – so he took it for himself! Only Napoleon was worthy of crowning himself emperor!”

Peter looked at the half-a-broomstick he still held in his hands. The place where it had broken was jagged, leaving a long, pointy splinter of wood.

The mouth spat out the end of the stick it had broken off, and then the monster advanced on Peter. All five heads in the center of the body were snapping hungrily towards him.

“I am Napoleon!” Veedermeier crowed. “I am more than Napoleon! I am not just an emperor – I am a god! I am the creator of life! I have no equals – not in science, nor intelligence! Like Napoleon who took the crown from the pope, I have no equals! I crown myself god! This is my world, and these are my children!”

Peter tuned out Veedermeier’s insanity and waited as the head-monster lurched forward, all five mouths open for the kill.

Peter had no idea if what he was about to try would work, but he didn’t know what else to do.

As the monster rushed at him, Peter ducked down.

The heads passed over him, and Peter was directly beneath its cluster-like body.

He could see that there were heads on the other side, too. It really was like a cluster of grapes, with heads facing every direction.

Except down.

With one powerful jab, he rammed the jagged end of the broomstick up under the collection of heads. The wooden spit sunk two feet deep into the rotting flesh. Peter let go and rolled across the floor.

Every head on the monster shrieked, a hellish chorus of agony. The stitched-up limbs staggered and buckled, and the monster stumbled backwards into a row of flasks and vials that shattered everywhere. Waves of liquid hissed and smoked across the floor as the creature hit the ground, where its legs and arms flopped and its jaws frothed and snapped. After several seconds, it was over. The creature lay still even as its flesh bubbled in the spreading pool of acid.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 73

2009-12-27T23:43:00.000-08:00

Behind Veedermeier, the door with the keypad beeped and opened. And out rolled a ball.

Except it was a ball made of legs – dozens of bare, human legs – attached to some unseen central point. Legs pointing down, with feet on the ground and supporting the rest of the creature. Legs pointing up into the air, slightly bent at the knee. Legs dangling out on all sides and at all angles, feet moving slowly, as though searching for a place to stand on.

The monstrosity looked almost like a dandelion puff, if the wispy white seed pods were instead long, dead-looking legs.

Unlike the arm monster, which moved like a spider or a crab, the ball of human legs rolled forward. The feet on the bottom pushed off, and the legs right above them hit the floor as the entire ball rolled. Then they pushed off, and more legs took their place, until the legs that were once sticking up the air were now on the floor, and the legs that had once supported the creature were now straight up in the air.

And because the legs stuck out every which way, the thing could move in any direction in a split second. First it moved forward, then at an angle, then sideways before stopping. It was like seeing a basketball rolling across the room, then immediately moving in a 90 degree angle without any warning, like a ghost had suddenly pushed it aside.

When it came to a stop, the legs in the air moved slowly, knees bending, feet searching for solid ground, like a sea anemone’s tentacles gently waving in an underwater current.

It was horrifying…and yet even that wasn’t the worst.

From behind the ball, out of the keypad vault, came a human figure. Except the arms and legs were twice or three times as long as normal. Within seconds, Peter saw why: ragged stitches showed they had been sewn together from pieces of multiple limbs.

And there was no body. The thing was just two long, gangly legs, and two long, gangly arms…

…and heads.

There were at least five of them where a normal human body should have been, sprouting like a cluster of grapes. And there was one more head at the end of each arm where the hands would normally go.

The heads were maybe the most repulsive thing Peter had ever seen – hairless, eyeless, noseless, earless. But they had mouths. In fact, they were all mouth. Giant, gaping jaws that filled up the space where nose and eyes should have gone. Gnashing teeth that reached blindly for something to bite. The heads on the ends of the arms were especially repulsive, because they seemed to float through the air, slowly weaving up and down, searching for something to devour.

When the monstrosity finally came to a stop behind Veedermeier, it was taller even than Alpha, though not nearly as bulky or strong. But infinitely more horrifying.

And the smell….

The chemical stench of formaldehyde rolled out of the room around the creatures. It filled Peter’s nostrils and touched his skin in a damp cloud and made him want to vomit.

“My God,” Grandfather whispered. “Hans…you’ve lost your mind…”

“Not at all!”

“You’re insane! These – these abominations – ”

“Careful,” Veedermeier said angrily.

“That’s what they are! Monstrosities – they’re death personified!”

“I don’t create death, I create life. Life from death. I have taken back from death the things it claimed, and given birth to the most amazing, beautiful creations…”

Grandfather raised his rifle and pointed it at the nearest monster, the arm-spider.

“Don’t do that,” Veedermeier warned. “I would do anything to protect my children. I know you can understand that. We both know what you have given up for yours…”

“Quiet!” yelled Grandfather, and swung the gun towards Veedermeier.

Peter looked at Grandfather.

What did Dr. Veedermeier mean, ‘what you have given up for yours’?

“You should also know, Seamus…my children would give up anything for me, as well,” Veedemeier purred.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 71 and 72

2009-12-26T23:51:00.000-08:00

“So you made another zombie. Congratulations," Grandfather scowled.

“You wouldn’t sneer if you knew how difficult it was. In the end, it was only one, though. And he was just a stepping-stone.”

“…a stepping-stone?”

“Oh, it was difficult at first, keeping the radiation levels constant. Finally I settled on the solution of injecting particles from the meteorite directly into Alpha’s brain. That solved almost all of the problems with reanimation, but it was only a beginning.”

“Alpha,” Grandfather repeated warily.

“Yes. Alpha, come out.”

From where he was hidden behind one of Veedermeier’s bookshelves, the giant shuffled into view. One hand was freshly bandaged. As for the other details, in full light he was even more horrible. His baldness, the gray of his skin, the deep pits of his nostrils instead of a nose – all of it was more visible, plus the little details missed in the dark: the wrinkled, prune-like skin that passed for lips. The lack of eyebrows or eyelashes. The patchwork of scars across one cheek.

And the eyes…the eyes stared down with their same blank, yellow detachment.

Peter, Dill, Grandfather, and Parker all stared up at the monster, who stared back at them with no reaction whatsoever.

Then Percival ran forward and barked until Parker physically pulled him back by the collar.

Peter could have sworn that the creature’s face softened the slightest…that its brows raised, and the corners of its mouth turned up the tiniest bit.

“His eyes…why do his eyes look like that?” Peter asked.

“Ah!” Veedermeier exclaimed. “One of my proudest achievements. His eyes were almost destroyed when I recovered his body…so I made new ones for him. Optical scanners, fully enhanced. He can see perfectly in light or dark.”

“The things you’ll do for a dead man, that you won’t for a living one,” Grandfather said, his voice dripping with contempt.

“No university or wealthy patron would have had the stomach for the things I had to do to give him those eyes,” Veedermeier said. “And a living person probably wouldn’t have survived the operation. That’s the benefit of working with the dead: you can’t make it any worse than it already is.”

“Where did you get it?” Parker asked. “It wasn’t from me.”

“No, I found Alpha through other channels. He was a prisoner in another state, accidentally electrocuted by a downed power line while working on a cleanup crew after a storm. With no family to claim him, the warden was happy to let an outside party take the body for burial…after a generous contribution, of course. Amazing what your money will buy, Seamus. I had to go through the whole charade of getting him embalmed, of course, but – ”

“You raised a convict from the dead?! What kind of a fool are you?!”

“He wasn’t a murderer or anything like that,” Veedermeier protested. “He was there for grand theft…I believe assault was one of the charges he was convicted on, but really, Peter wasn’t in any danger when I sent Alpha after him.”

Peter’s eyes widened. “You?! You did that?!”

“I didn’t want to hurt you, Peter, but I realized after our discussion about the frogs and the formaldehyde that I had made a mistake. You knew something was wrong, and I couldn’t risk you telling your grandfather. So I was going to take you and stow you safely away. Maybe you could have become my apprentice…we’ll never know, because Alpha was very naughty.”

Veedermeier turned and scowled at his creation. Despite the monster’s far greater size and power, it lowered its head and cowered like a puppy under the gaze of its master.

“He has a mind of his own sometimes. I still don’t know exactly why he didn’t follow my orders, but he will follow them from now on. Or there will be consequences,” Veedermeier said angrily to the enormous figure behind him.

“You were going to kidnap my grandson?!” Grandfather thundered.

“Kidnap is such an ugly word,” Veedermeier demurred. “I keep telling you, Alpha wouldn’t have harmed him.”

“You keep calling him Alpha. That implies a Beta.”

Veedermeier beamed. “And a Gamma, and a Delta. My proudest creations. Alpha was difficult enough, but he is, finally, just a reanimated body. If I were going to push the limits of scientific endeavor, I had to create new life. Something never seen before. It was quite difficult, let me tell you. Transplanting a central nervous system into places it was never meant to go…terrible nuisance. But so rewarding. Children, come out!”

In the moments that followed, Peter wasn’t entirely sure if he was awake or dreaming, because the things he saw came from the depths of the most disturbing nightmare imaginable.

Just a few feet away, a hand raised up from behind a table and grabbed the edge.

Then another.

And another.

Just like when Peter had been in the high school, and the arms had reached into his hiding place.

But this time the hands heaved and pulled what was attached to them into view.

More arms.

It was the giant spider had seen outside in the dark, but it was composed entirely of human arms attached to a fleshy abdomen. It looked like Veedermeier had taken eight human arms, then taken a human body and lopped off the head and neck and every limb, and then sewed it all together.

And it was alive.

The fingers on the hands grasped and felt as the arms moved the body across the top of the table. There were no eyes, no nose, no ears. The thing seemed to feel its way along, with the fingers touching and prodding wherever they landed.

That was just the start of the nightmare.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 69 and 70

2009-12-25T20:38:00.000-08:00

“Phineas, you fool,” Grandfather barked, “why’d you close the door?”

“I didn’t!” Parker protested.

“Open it back up!”

CLANK.

The sound of a heavy bolt falling into place reverberated through the lab.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Dr. Veedermeier’s voice said gently from somewhere in the darkness.

“Hans,” Grandfather snarled, “turn on the light.”

“As you wish.”

Suddenly, the fluorescent lights flickered on, so bright that they blinded Peter. He had to wince to see anything.

At the very far end of the laboratory, about a hundred feet away, Dr. Veedermeier stood with his hands in his lab coat pockets. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, but he looked quite calm.

“Hello, Peter,” he said kindly. “Hello, Dill. Good to see you again.” Veedermeier nodded politely towards Old Man Parker. “Phineas. You brought your dog, I see.”

Grandfather held his shotgun in both hands, though he didn’t point it at Dr. Veedermeier…yet. “You’re coming with us, Hans.”

“Oh? Why?” Veedermeier asked.

“Because I know all about your experiments.”

Veedermeier chuckled lightly. “I doubt that quite seriously, Seamus.”

“I’d say I have fairly good acquaintance with your abomination. He tried to kill us in the cemetery not half an hour ago.”

Veedermeier looked concerned. “The boys aren’t hurt, are they?”

“Nearly killed,” Grandfather snapped.

“I’m sorry about that Peter, Dill. I would never want either one of you hurt. Although,” he said to Grandfather, his voice becoming accusatory, “I imagine things didn’t transpire without some sort of provocation on your part, Seamus.”

“Why, Hans?” Grandfather asked.

“Why what?”

“You had the chance to start over again. You had the money to do anything you wanted.”

“And so I did exactly what I wanted.”

“What, rob graves? Play Dr. Frankenstein? I look at you and see a genius, a man with unlimited potential. All you had to do was be reasonable, to – ”

“To do it all your way. Isn’t that right, Seamus? You’d let me do anything I wanted, as long as you approved. Just like Charterton…just like Heidlberg University… just like every other small-minded bureaucrat who’s ever lorded their money and authority over me. What you don’t understand, you fear, Seamus. And you understand so very, very little.”

“I understand this: you’re a very sick man, Hans. You need help.”

Veedermeier began pacing back and forth slowly. “Peter, when I was a boy in Germany, I grew up near a farm. Now, perhaps you don’t know much about genetics, but you have to continually add in new animals as you breed them. If you take a group of sheep, for instance, and never add new ones to the mix, they just continue to inbreed…which causes recessive genes to begin to appear…which can lead to some very unusual traits cropping up.

“The man who ran that farm was an eccentric fellow, older than your grandfather. He never bought new animals from other farmers, or mixed his stock in any way; he just allowed them to interbreed, over, and over, and over again. People tried to get the old man to do things their way, but he would just chase them off his property with a gun. Much like your grandfather is acting at the moment,” Veedermeier added dryly.

“The rumors started in our town one day, when a local boy said he’d seen something terrible on that farm. My friends and I rushed down there in time to see the police leading the old man away in handcuffs. They tried to hide the evidence, but there was too much of it. Far too much.

“There were goats with six feet…a sheep with two heads. Chickens that looked unlike anything you’ve ever seen…a cow that seemed to have a twin, small and malformed, growing out of its side. The most extraordinary creatures I had ever seen in my short life…and the police, in their infinite wisdom, killed each and every one of them.”

Peter listened in horror.

“The adults said that the animals should have never existed, that they were suffering. I never understood how killing an animal was better than letting it suffer, but…and who were they to judge what suffering was? Perhaps those animals were happy. Perhaps, with their physical deformities came greater intelligence…sweeter natures…who knows? Not the adults. Not the authority figures. They didn’t try to know, they didn’t try to find out. They just…ended them.”

Veedermeier snapped his fingers.

“Poof. Gone from this world…but not from here.” Veedermeier pointed to his head. “Not from my mind. Because…and I know this may be difficult for you to understand, Peter…but those animals were beautiful. They were…unique. Magnificently unique. But the guardians of what was normal and ordinary couldn’t stomach them. Couldn’t allow them to continue to exist. Every day since then, I have devoted myself to the unique…and the singular…and the extraordinary…” Veedermeier gestured at Grandfather. “…whether or not it fit the approval of the men with guns.”

“This is madness,” Grandfather said coldly. “Hans, surely you can see – ”

“I see a world where nature has the ability to create the thing that has never before been seen. Like the animals on that farm. Simple inbreeding created the most extraordinary things; nothing more! Just walling off nature, and letting her run her course.

“I wanted that power to create the extraordinary. But if I was only copying nature, what good was that? What good was it to copy the things that nature could do on her own? But I soon realized there was a place nature made all things go, but allowed none to return from: death. And I knew that if I could conquer death, I would conquer nature, as well. And I have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.”

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 68

2009-12-24T21:04:00.000-08:00

“Why do you have dynamite?” Peter asked.

“Your grandfather gave it to me,” Parker said dully. In his arms he cradled another gun, not nearly as big or impressive as Bertha.

Peter looked at Grandfather. “And why’d you give him dynamite?”

“When you have to dispose of twenty zombies at one time, bullets aren’t exactly the most efficient manner.”

“Now you’re talkin’,” Dill said, momentarily snapped out of his self-pity party.

“The boys shouldn’t come, Seamus,” Parker said. “This is too dangerous.”

“Yeah, way too dangerous,” Dill agreed.

“Normally I would agree, but I think they’re the only ace we have to play,” Grandfather said. “Hans will never stand down for just the two of us; there is a possibility he might if the boys can shame him into it. He has a soft spot for children, and that monstrosity of his has endangered them twice tonight.”

“I think you have a soft spot in your head,” Parker growled.

“I want to take him and his…beast alive, if possible,” Grandfather said. “He won’t listen to me, and he won’t listen to you. The boys are the only chance we have of reaching him.”

“And if we can’t?” Peter asked.

“I’ll make sure you’re well out of the building before we light the fuse,” Grandfather assured him.

Peter shivered.

“This is so messed up,” Dill repeated to himself quietly. “This is so messed up…”

***

Grandfather’s truck pulled up in front of the laboratory. It looked so quiet and innocent in the truck’s headlights, like a giant tube of white cookie dough half-buried in the ground.

All four of them got out of the truck cab; Percival leapt from the back into his master’s arms. Grandfather went up to the door and tried the handle. Locked. He rapped on the metal building with the butt of his gun.

“Hans!” he shouted. “Hans, the jig is up! We know what you’ve been doing with the bodies, and we know all about your monster. Let us in, Hans, or I’ll blast my way in.”

Peter shivered in the rain, and waited.

Nothing.

“Give me a stick,” Grandfather ordered, and held out his hand to Parker.

Suddenly, there was a metallic clank. Grandfather tried the doorknob again…and the metal slab swung open. The lab was dark inside.

“Follow me close,” Grandfather said quietly.

The four of them and Percival stepped inside. Even with the lights from Grandfather’s truck shining through the open doorway, it was difficult to see more than twenty feet into the lab. Grotesque shadows played over the walls, and gradually faded into darkness thick as ink.

“Maybe he’s not here,” Dill whimpered hopefully.

“Oh, he’s here alright,” Grandfather muttered. “He opened the door, didn’t he? Hans, come out!”

But instead of Dr. Veedermeier appearing…there was a creaaaak, and the front door SLAMMED shut, plunging them into pitch black.

Dill screamed.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 67

2009-12-23T22:18:00.000-08:00

Their eyes locked: Peter’s, wide with terror; the monster’s, haunted by sorrow.

And then it ran away.

Peter watched as it turned and crashed through the trees, thudding through the underbrush, and disappeared into the night.

Grandfather had retrieved his gun, and he fired into the darkness after it.

BLAM!

But the gunshot seemed to have no effect. It certainly didn’t slow the monster down.

“Percival!” Parker wailed as he ran to his dog.

The black mop licked its master’s face.

“Good boy, good boy,” Parker murmured, then looked at the twisted length of metal he still held in one hand.

“Bertha!” he cried mournfully.

“Was that the thing you saw at the high school?” Grandfather asked Peter quietly.

“Yes.”

“Holy CRAP am I glad I stayed with your grandfather then,” Dill whispered. The whole time, he had been lying on the ground, hands over his head.

“DID YOU SEE WHAT THAT THING DID TO MY TRUCK?” Parker screamed.

Grandfather nodded. “Hans certainly has been busy.”

Parker looked stunned. “Hans…Dr. V? You think…you think he…?”

“I think it’s time we paid a visit on our colleague,” Grandfather said grimly.

“Last time we couldn’t get in,” Peter reminded him. “Not even with your gun.”

Grandfather nodded as he looked out into the black forest.

“Phineas…do you still have that dynamite I gave you?”

***

It took them fifteen minutes to walk back to the cemetery caretaker’s cottage. It took another ten for Old Man Parker to rummage around until he found the things Grandfather wanted. By the time they were on the road in Grandfather’s truck, almost half an hour had elapsed since the attack.

Peter sat crammed next to Dill, both of them wedged between Parker and Grandfather, who drove. Percival was in the back of the truck; the light rain had turned heavier, and Grandfather had insisted the boys both ride in the cab.

Dill shivered as the heater blasted full on his face. “This is messed up,” he kept saying under his breath.

“What are you going to do to him?” Peter asked Grandfather.

“I’m going to tell him to come out peaceably, both him and his monster.”

“And what if he doesn’t?”

“Then we’re going to use the dynamite to blow them both to hell.”

Peter looked at the faded red sticks that Parker held in his lap, with their stiff fuses. They looked like overgrown cherry bombs, or giant packets of pennies in those red wrappers the banks give out.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 66

2009-12-22T21:09:00.000-08:00

The truck suddenly lifted up into the air from the rear. One second the red metal was inches away from Peter’s back; the next, it was gone, ten feet up in the air.

The flying truck bed smacked into Grandfather’s gun barrel and knocked it out of his hands.

Peter looked up and watched in amazement as the truck rear-end-somersaulted through the air and flipped over onto the asphalt.

KER-RAAAAAASH!

The truck slammed to the earth upside down and the cab crunched under its weight. Though the headlights cracked and popped, the bulbs inside kept blazing bright - bright enough to illuminate the figure that now stood before them.

It was the dark figure from outside of the high school. The one who had stalked Peter.

But Peter had only seen him from a distance before. Even then, he had looked large.

Up close, he was a mountain.

Draped in black pants, his legs were bigger around than Peter’s body. His torso was mostly hidden in a black overcoat, but it looked almost as thick as Mom’s Honda was wide. His arms were giant cranes, his hands wrecking balls. Tiny raindrops fell through the halo of light from the truck’s headlamps and slicked down his bald scalp, eight feet above the ground.

For the first time Peter could see the man’s features, and they were fearsome. His nose was almost completely absent, so that it was just two gashes of nostrils in his face. His lips were curled in rage around yellowed teeth that looked as big as a giraffe’s. His skin was gray – not grayish, but a deep, deathly color halfway between white and pure black. And his eyes…his eyes were featureless orbs, yellow and glowing under heavy, Neanderthal scalps.

The creature ROARED. Peter could feel the shockwaves on his face, and choked on the stench of formaldehyde as it rushed over his face in warm, dank waves.

“MY TRUCK!” Parker screamed, and raised Bertha to the creature’s head.

The monster put his hand over the end of Parker’s shotgun. Though Bertha was huge – big enough to stop an elephant, Peter guessed – it still looked like a chopstick poking into the monster’s palm.

Then Parker fired.

BOOM!

The gun went off and blew a hole clean through the monster’s palm.

Peter knew this, because he saw the gun blast start on one side of the monster’s hand and end on the other. Chunks of…something flew through the air.

The giant ROARED again, this time in pain, and jerked his hand with a twitch. The metal barrel of Parker’s gun bent like taffy with a metallic squeeeeal.

“BERTHA!” Parker shrieked.

Percival launched himself into the air and grabbed onto the monster’s ankle with a snarl. Without even a thought, the giant kicked his leg out, and the dog went sailing through the air. He landed about fifteen feet away with a high-pitched whine.

And then…Peter saw it clearly in the glare from the truck headlights. The monster’s face, which had been a mask of murderous rage, suddenly contorted in fear as it looked out into the darkness at Percival. And not fear for its own safety – it had taken a gun blast to the hand and not only survived it, but disabled the weapon; what more did it have to fear? – but a fear for the dog. It was like a child who, in a fit of rage, hurts the family pet, and then realizes he has gone too far when the animal cries out in pain.

The monster raised one hand, as though reaching out to help – and then it looked down, straight into Peter’s face.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 65

2009-12-21T19:53:00.000-08:00

Peter got a very bad feeling in his stomach…

“All right, THAT’S IT!” Grandfather hollered, but before he could aim his gun, another headstone came whirling out of the treeline.

WHAM! This grave marker embedded itself into the side of the truck, like a circular saw blade cutting into a piece of wood.

“NOOO!” Parker screamed.

“Holy crap!” Dill shouted.

Grandfather aimed his gun.

BLAM!

For a second or two after the blast, the shockwaves echoed through the dark cemetery.

Then…

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHH!”

There was a roar from the forest – an elemental, primeval sound of fury. Like a mastodon from a million years before, or a sabertooth tiger. The creature, or person, or whatever it was, howled from the treeline with an anger and a hatred that Peter had never heard before, and hoped never to hear again.

That was about when the angel came flying through the trees.

At first he thought his eyes were deceiving him. Then he thought that the end of the world had come, because, after all, here was an angel flying through the air at him!

As it crashed headlong into the truck, though, lifting the vehicle momentarily up on its side, the angel burst into a dozen pieces and collapsed in a dusty heap on the ground.

The angel was a statue – a six-foot-tall statue made of solid rock. The type that people put up on top of really, really fancy graves.

It had to have weighed several hundred pounds.

The thing in the woods had sent it sailing like it was one of Beth’s dollies.

“Get behind the truck!” Grandfather yelled.

“I don’t think that’s gonna save us!” Dill screamed back.

“Just do it!”

All five of them, Percival included, raced around the back of the truck and cowered, waiting for the next object to come raining down out of the darkness.

“What IS it?” Parker asked, trembling.

I think I know, Peter thought to himself, and prayed he was wrong.

“Keep down,” Grandfather commanded. “It’s got enough ammunition out there, it could keep us pinned down all night.”

But the thing in the woods didn’t want that.

THUD THUD THUD THUD.

They realized too late what the sound was: footsteps shaking the ground.

“Parker, get up!” Grandfather shouted, and whipped around, raising his gun over the side of the truck.

Parker stood up and tried to get Bertha into position.

He was only halfway to his feet when it happened.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 64

2009-12-20T21:10:00.000-08:00

Old Man Parker’s tomato-red pickup truck was a lot newer than Grandfather’s, but about the same level of beat-up. Peter and Dill rode in the back with Percival the dog as the truck wound along the single paved road crisscrossing the dark cemetery. Only the truck’s headlights lit their way.

It was misting as they started their trip, and the mist soon settled into a very light rain.

“Do you think there’s still zombies out there?” Dill asked as he stroked Percival’s hair.

Peter shook his head as he tried to keep it covered. “No.”

“You would think people would know how to kill zombies,” Dill said in a superior voice. “Shot to the head. That’s all it takes! Shooting them in the shoulders?” he scoffed. “Gimme a break.”

“Not as many people watch as much television as you,” Peter said.

Dill nodded sadly. “Yeah…” he sighed.

The red pickup reached the tip of a curved road and stopped. Parker got out with Bertha propped over his shoulder. “Well, it’s on foot from here.”

Grandfather exited the passenger side. “Of all the stupid things you’ve ever done, Phineas…”

Parker looked at Peter as he let down the back gate of the truck. “You’re a saint to live with that old fart, you know that?”

“I’m a saint to live next to him,” Dill said.

Grandfather glared at him, and Dill hopped over the other side of the truck bed.

Parker whistled, and Percival jumped off the end of the truck. “Come on, boy.”

“How far to the body?” Grandfather asked.

Percival froze on the ground and started growling.

“Just…up ahead…” Parker said haltingly, then dropped to one knee. “Get down!” he hissed.

Peter and Dill flattened on the dewy grass. Grandfather knelt, shotgun at the ready. “What is it?”

Parker pointed into the trees. It was hard to make out – the truck’s headlights dropped off quickly amongst the trees and gravestones – but Peter saw what Percival was growling at.

Someone was out there.

It was just a little movement, but there was definitely something going on amongst the trees. The shape was human, but…

“Come out of there!” Grandfather hollered.

The shape froze, as though it hoped it wouldn’t be seen.

BOOM!

Grandfather fired his shotgun into the air, then directed it back towards the trees.

“I’m giving you till three! One…”

Parker pointed Bertha towards the shape as well.

“Two…”

There was movement amongst the trees. The shape seemed to be leaning over, picking something up.

“Three!” Grandfather yelled, when the shape moved – fast.

Something whirled through the air out of the trees. Grandfather ducked just in time as a flat stone CRASHED through the pickup’s windshield in a shower of glass.

“MY TRUCK!” Parker screamed. Percival started barking up a storm.

Peter looked up in awe. The stone now embedded in the driver’s side seat was a gravestone. Three feet high and six inches thick, made of solid granite, it had to have weighed at least a hundred pounds.

And whoever was in the trees had thrown it like it was a frisbee.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 63

2009-12-19T19:06:00.000-08:00

“Phineas, listen to me,” Grandfather said angrily. “We don’t have any time for games here. I need to know what’s happened in the last year, and I need to know now.”

Parker looked like a guilty kid, caught in the act of stealing a candy bar. “Well, I didn’t want to do it, understand.”

“Parker!”

“He needed more bodies, he said. He was afraid the zombies would come back, so he needed to understand how to make sure they wouldn’t. So…he needed more bodies.”

Grandfather stared at him. “Am I to understand that you dug up old graves to give that man corpses to experiment upon?”

Parker fidgeted more. “Well…not exactly.”

“What do you mean, ‘Not exactly’?”

“They…had to be fresh, Dr. V said. So…after a funeral, I would…dig the coffin back up…”

Peter’s eyes went wide.

Grandfather shook his head in amazement. “You didn’t.”

“Well what did you expect me to do!” Parker exploded. “You can sit there on your high horse all you want, but you’re not the one living in a graveyard where the dead could come back any time, now are you? Mr. ‘We have to save the townspeople’…you don’t give two spits in the wind for the townspeople when they’re alive, so why would you care for ‘em once they’re dead? They can’t feel anything, the dead don’t care…”

“How long did this go on for?” Grandfather demanded.

“‘Go on for’?” Parker repeated. “It’s going on now.”

“Now?” Grandfather said, voice brimming with disbelief. “As in last week?”

“No – as in tonight.”

Grandfather leapt up from his bench. Percival the dog stumbled to his feet as well, startled by the sudden movement.

“WHAT?”

“There was a funeral this morning!” Parker said, half explaining, half protesting. “Dr. V said he needed ‘em fresh, what was I supposed to do?”

“When’s he coming to pick it up?” Grandfather roared.

Parker shrugged. “How should I know?”

“How should – ? Well you see him, don’t you? You make arrangements, don’t you?!”

Parker shook his head. “No. I just leave the bodies by the back wall of the cemetery…Dr. V said it was best for everybody, that we should just keep it our little secret – ”

“You fool, you stupid fool!” Grandfather raged. “Take us there, now!”

“But – ”

“NOW!”

***

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 62

2009-12-18T20:13:00.000-08:00

“At first, I couldn’t believe it. It was a nightmare come true, and I was sure I was still sleeping…till he made a noise.

“Unnnnnnnnnhhhhh, he grunted at me, deep and rattling, like a dying man on his deathbed. Then he started towards me, arms and legs jerking like a man who ain’t got no more control over his limbs than a bad puppeteer. I slammed the door in his face, but he kept pounding on the wood, moaning and carrying on. That’s when I got ol’ Bertha.”

Dill frowned. “Bertha?”

Parker leaned over the side of his rocking chair and picked up a double-barreled shotgun of his own from the floor. “This here’s Bertha. And as soon as I had her, I kicked open the door and had her say ‘Howdy-do, Mr. Dead Feller.’”

Parker shook his head. “But the strangest thing…Bertha shot right clean through him. Aimed at his heart, but all I saw come out was dust on the other side. Poof. Just…dust. Musta made an impression, though, because he turned around in his jerky way and hightailed it outta there. I hit him again from the backside. One of his arms came off, but he didn’t seem to mind none. Just kept walking out into the forest, and then he slipped off into the trees.

“I went out lookin’ for him the next day, figuring I’d find him and give him what for. No dice; he’d completely disappeared on me.

“Until the next night, when he came back. And this time, he showed up with a friend.

“It was a woman. No idea who she was, but she’d been dead less time than her pal. Her face still looked like a face, and her hair hadn’t completely fallen out yet. And her eyes; still had one of her eyes. Black dress, covered over with moss. Her lips were gone, so you could see every one of her teeth as she gnashed ‘em and moaned.

“I shot her in the shoulder with Bertha. Big chunk of her dress blew out, but she kept comin’. I shot her dead in the chest – didn’t make a bit o’ difference to her. Finally I blew out her knee, and that slowed her down a good bit. She and her buddy limped off into the woods. I kept firin’, and bits and pieces of ‘em flew off, but they kept on going.

“By this point, I was right afraid there might be more of ‘em out there. Two in as many nights? There might be twenty out there roamin’ the woods. So I kept Percival in with me, and I thought back to my own father, who’d run the place for fifty years and passed it on to me. And I thought back to the time he’d got in trouble, with the monstrous thing up in the pines, and who he’d called in his hour of need.”

Peter wanted to know – and partly didn’t want to know – what the ‘thing up in the pines’ was. He didn’t ask, though, as Parker continued his story.

“He told me on his deathbed, he said, ‘Son, there’s a man you know who’s as cantankerous a son of a gun as ever lived…but when the chips are down, boy, Seamus Flannagan is the one you want on your side.” Parker looked over at Grandfather and scowled. “Son of a gun part was right, that’s for damn sure.”

“So you guys called Dr. Veedermeier?” Peter asked.

“Ohhhh, the Doctor,” Parker groaned. “That little weirdo. Yeah, he solved the problem, all right…but he’s been a pain in my backside ever since.”

Grandfather looked shocked. “What are you talking about? Hans was never supposed to contact you again, not without talking to me.”

Parker shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well…yes. Yes, that was the plan.”

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 61

2009-12-18T00:44:00.000-08:00

Grandfather’s truck puttered outside the gates of Greenvale Cemetery.

“What good is this gonna do?” Peter asked.

“I want to know exactly what we’re dealing with,” Grandfather muttered as he leaned on the horn.

Hooooooooonk!

“Dr. V said he hadn’t talked to him since the zombies,” Peter pointed out.

“After the last hour, do you believe everything Hans Veedermeier has said to you?” Grandfather asked darkly.

Peter didn’t answer, but inside he thought, No…no, I don’t.

After a long wait, a man in overalls, hunting cap, and a salt-and-pepper beard appeared on the other side of the gates. A black, floppy-haired dog followed behind him.

Grandfather flashed the truck lights.

The man grudgingly unlocked the padlock to the chain around the gates and gestured the truck inside.

“Whatever happens, boys,” Grandfather said, “let me do the talking.”

***

“I got no idea what you’re talking about,” Old Man Parker said gruffly.

They all sat around the crackling fireplace in the cemetery’s tiny caretaker’s cottage. Dill and Peter sat on the floor in front of the fire; Grandfather was perched on a rudely hewn wooden bench. Parker creaked back and forth in a rocking chair. His black mop of a dog, Percival, sat at his feet. Peter kept reaching out his hand, and eventually the dog began to lick his palm.

“The boys know about the zombie problem,” Grandfather said.

Parker stopped rocking and looked at Dill and Peter. Then he started moving back and forth again. “I still got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t have time for your stubbornness, Parker,” Grandfather snapped. “I need to know what you know about Hans Veedermeier, and I need to know it now.”

Parker shook his head and smiled bitterly. “Same old Seamus Flannagan, just showin’ up and bossin’ everybody in sight, expecting them all to do his biddin’.” Parker’s smile faded. “Well, I ain’t bowin’ and scrapin’ to you, that’s for damn sure.”

Peter could see, from the set expressions of the two men, that this was going nowhere. So he decided to step in.

“Was it scary when the first zombie showed up?” he asked.

Parker chuckled ruefully. “Boy, you have no idea.”

“I heard a noise earlier that night, a kind of distant boom. Thought it was maybe a tree falling down in the cemetery; it happens sometimes. Told myself I’d check it out in the morning. But as I was getting ready for bed, there was a noise outside. I got a bunch of wind chimes out on the porch, maybe you saw ‘em as you walked in. Well, they started clattering something fierce. Only problem was, there wasn’t any wind that night.

“So I open the door, and there he is. My God, I can still remember the look of him. There’s no sight fouler on God’s green earth than a dead human being, boys, and this one had been dead for a good long while. Years, I reckon. A dried-out husk of a man. His skin was pitted and holed out, and there wasn’t any eyes in his sockets. He just kind of stared at me blindly. His jaw was lopsided, with one side totally ripped off, and the other just hanging on by a thread. His hair was long and stringy, and his hands looked like a lizard’s, bony and fingernails all long like claws. His funeral suit was moldy and spotted, and the nice white shirt he’d been buried in was gray as the skin on his forehead.”

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 60

2009-12-16T22:55:00.000-08:00

Post #500!

Peter waited in silence for almost five minutes before he pulled his phone out with shaking hands.

There were four bars of service now. He pressed a couple of numbers.

“Dill…?” he asked shakily.

***

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Grandfather asked.

Peter nodded. All three of them were standing outside of Veedermeier’s building in the cold.

Grandfather smacked the door to the laboratory with his shotgun. “Hans…come out!”

Peter had spent several minutes in terror back in the school classroom as he waited for Grandfather and Dill to arrive. Once they appeared in the hall, Peter finally found the courage to climb out of his little cave and join them.

And the first thing to do was confront Veedermeier. But he wasn’t answering his door.

“Hans!” Grandfather shouted.

“Yeah, he’s totally hiding out,” Dill announced.

“We’ll see about that,” Grandfather said grimly, and walked around the side of the building to the greenhouse.

“HANS!” he yelled. Getting no answer, he swung his gun into the glass panes that formed the greenhouse walls.

CLATTER.

The glass rattled, but it didn’t break.

“What?!” Grandfather exclaimed, and swung again, harder.

The glass vibrated noisily, but didn’t so much as crack.

“Stand back,” Grandfather commanded. Peter and Dill ran for cover as Grandfather pointed both shotgun barrels at the glass and unloaded.

BANG!

When the smoke cleared, there were tiny holes where the shotgun pellets had scarred the glass, but the pane still stood there, whole and unbroken.

“What in the world?!” Grandfather exclaimed.

“Duuuuude,” Dill said admiringly. “Bulletproof glass!”

Grandfather started firing at random at the greenhouse. Peter and Dill covered their ears.

When the smoke cleared, there were dozens of tiny cracks in circular patterns, but not a single pane of glass was broken.

“Why in the world would he fit a greenhouse in bulletproof glass?” Grandfather snarled.

“I guess he could afford it,” Peter said accusingly.

“And I guess he thought some old crazy guy might try to shoot him up one day,” Dill said matter-of-factly.

Grandfather scowled. “Let’s get out of here. We have someone to go see.”

***

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 59

2009-12-15T23:29:00.000-08:00

There were four hands, all of them gripping the side of the crawlspace.

And all of them were right-handed.

Peter couldn’t understand – it was impossible, right? To have four people out there –

The hands let go of the edge of the tunnel and extended towards him - on arms that were far too close together.

Four arms…all of them reaching inside the crawlspace.

It was like they were blindly flailing around, trying to feel their way into the tunnel. There was something obscene about it, like watching a knot of earthworms wriggling and writhing in all directions.

And the smell.

It hit Peter in a wave: a sickly, chemically smell.

The smell at the back of Veedermeier’s lab.

Formaldehyde.

The arms were pushing further and further into the tunnel, reaching out, blindly fumbling for Peter.

He sat there, unable to move, unable to breathe, just watching the grotesque display as it forced its way further and further into the hole.

CLOMP…CLOMP…CLOMP.

From outside the countertops came the sound of heavy shoes thudding onto the tiles. And then those shoes walked up to the gap between the counters. They were enormous brown things, scuffed and caked in dried mud. Peter had seen an NBA player’s sneakers once in a display at a California sports arena. Those were a Size 18. Beth could have probably fit her whole head into one. Well, these were even larger. They sprouted from the end of a pair of dirty black pants, but that was all Peter could see: the shoes and the pants, maybe up to the man’s knee. He could barely see that because of the grasping, writhing arms in the way.

There was a pause…and then a giant hand reached into view. Huge. Humongous. It was the size of a whole Christmas ham; the thick, stubby fingers could have easily palmed a basketball like Peter would grab an orange.

And the hand was gray. Not just regular skin with an unhealthy tint; no. GRAY.

The gray fingers grasped one of the smaller spider-arms and gave a gentle tug.

The hands that had been straining towards Peter started trying to grab onto pipes, the counter, anything they could reach.

But the giant gray hand kept pulling, and all of the spider-hands slid and finally lost their grip. The giant hand pulled them out of sight…waited a few seconds…and then the shoes shuffled out of Peter’s view.

There was the crunch…crunch…crunch of glass gritting underfoot, and then the footsteps clomped and echoed down the hall outside.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 58

2009-12-15T02:28:00.000-08:00

Peter let go of the blinds and looked around in desperation. No back door out of the room. There were wooden tables and plenty of plastic chairs, but the only thing that might help him was a long, tall, black counter that was solid from top to bottom. Actually, it was two black counters standing back to back. Peter had seen them in movies: it was where high school kids did science labs. Each counter had a dozen sinks, and little tiny metal spigots off to the side that looked like strange water faucets, but probably weren’t. The countertops were stacked with all sorts of odds and ends in neat rows: glassware, rubber tubing, metal racks.

But the best thing was there was a crawl space on the floor where the counters joined, a sort of tunnel that looked just big enough to fit him.

Peter flicked off the lightswitch, pulled out his cell phone (still reading NO SERVICE), and used the dim light of its display to guide him over to the countertops. He got down on his hands and knees and scurried into the crawl space.

It was like a cave that extended twelve feet back into darkness. On either side of him there was plumbing for the sinks and a bunch of other tubes. The floor was a thick carpet of dust that left his hands and jeans filthy, but he didn’t care, just as long as those things couldn’t reach him.

Behind him in the room came the sound of the doorknob rattling, as though someone was trying to jiggle it into unlocking.

Peter sighed. Maybe his luck would –

KERASH!

Peter jumped as the window shattered and glass tinkled across the ground. There was a metallic pingpingping as the venetian blinds bent back, then the sound of the lock clicking and the door creeaaaaaaking open.

Tap tap tap tap tap.

The spider was inside.

Peter turned around, his heart hammering inside his ribcage. He was almost at the end of tunnel anyway, and a good eight feet from the entrance. If he was going to die, he wanted to see it coming.

Tap tap tap tap tap.

He imagined the horrible black pincers coming into view, the segmented legs, the horrific eight eyes that would peer around the corner…

Had Veedermeier really been messing around with animals? Giant, mutant versions that never should have existed in nature?

Had something escaped?

Tap tap tap tap…tap…

Peter held his breath.

Something appeared in view and grasped the edge of the tunnel.

A hand.

A human hand. Normal size, unlike the giant with the yellow eyes.

Peter frowned. That was impossible; he had heard the spider coming! Where was the spider?

Suddenly, another hand joined the first.

Is someone out there? Someone normal?

Something was wrong, but Peter didn’t realize it for several seconds. Then it hit him: both hands were right-handed. The thumbs both stuck up in the air as the fingers faced the same direction.

There were two people outside.

No, wait…

Another human hand joined the other two.

Then another.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 57

2009-12-14T02:44:00.000-08:00

Scuttle scuttle scuttle scuttle.

Peter turned around –

There, fifty feet away at the edge of the building, stood the giant man.

Peter had never felt so happy to see something he’d previously feared.

“THERE’S SOMETHING HORRIBLE HERE!” Peter screamed. “IT’S A GIANT SPIDER, BIGGER THAN ME – ”

The giant man didn’t say anything.

He just started walking towards Peter.

And finally, at this range, Peter could see what he had not at 100 feet away:

Two glowing, yellow eyes stared out of the shadowy face.

The bald giant and the spider together…they’re working together!

How?! Is it his pet?!

It didn’t matter. Trapped – he was trapped!

He could run away from the school and towards Veedermeier’s lab, eighty feet away – but the laboratory was so long, that there was no way to get to the front entrance without going by the giant, and no way to circle around the back without crossing paths with the spider.

Or I can go in the school.

Peter looked at the open door, and realized why it was open.

He was being herded. Like cattle, or sheep.

They were trying to force him into the school.

For a second, he thought about how stupid it was to do exactly what they were trying to get him to do…

But if he stayed outside, they were going to catch him no matter what.

Peter gritted his teeth and ran inside the building.

He tried closing the doors behind him, but they were chained open.

There was no question: this was a set-up.

Scuttle scuttle scuttle scuttle.

Peter turned around and fled into the darkness of the school.

Behind him, there was a new sound as the spider moved from the leaves outside to the worn tiles of the hallway:

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

He tried all the classroom doors on his left as he raced past: every last one was locked. If he could just get inside one, he could get out through a window, maybe…but he had to hurry. The further he got inside the school, the darker it became; there was no light except that from the door behind him. He had to get out of this corridor or he was going to die alone in pitch black –

Click.

One of the doors swung open when he tried it.

He bolted inside, slammed the door shut, and turned on the light switch. The fluorescents made soft tink tink tink noises as they came to life in little stuttery blinks.

He pushed in on the button on the doorknob, then turned around.

It was a science classroom.

I can’t get away from science

He knew it was a science classroom because laminated posters hung everywhere in kind of a cheesier version of Dr. Veedermeier’s lab. Posters of the earth drawn inside a light bulb, or a cartoon man with a wizard’s cap carrying a beaker and a telescope. Another stated in puffy letters that Fysics is Phun! Posters everywhere…

…all over the windowless walls.

Peter moaned, and pulled the venetian blinds away from the window next to the door.

In the hallway, the shadow of the spider advanced across the floor, made even longer and more monstrous by the dim light from far down the hallway.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 56

2009-12-13T01:09:00.000-08:00

“Oh crap,” Peter whispered, and looked to his right. The main school building was there; he could circle around, run down to the football field, and double back to Grandfather’s truck from there…

Or he could run back and bang on Veedermeier’s door.

Who was probably stealing dead bodies.

Or he could try to run around the big guy.

He can probably move a lot faster than what he’s doing right now…

Peter turned right and started walking hurriedly towards the high school.

He glanced over his shoulder; the giant was following, albeit very slowly.

Peter was caught between dueling emotions: fear that the man was coming, but relief that he could easily outrun the lumbering mountain.

Peter reached the side wall of the school and sped up to a run, his feet crunching through the dead leaves on the ground. The distance to Grandfather’s car was now doubled – maybe tripled – but if he ran the whole way, he could probably –

Something caught his eye as he passed by, and he paused to look.

A door in the side of the school was wide open, yawning into a darkened hallway lined with lockers.

What the heck?! Who would do that?!

That’s when Peter heard the sound.

Scuttle scuttle.

The same sound from the previous night…like a crab moving through dead leaves…

Peter looked up ahead. The moon was on the other side of the sky, which plunged this side of the school into shadow. There was no way to see anything except vague outlines and the shape of leaves in the grass…

Scuttle scuttle.

There. Up ahead.

About a hundred feet away there was a shape about four or five feet long. Peter couldn’t tell what it was in the dark, just that it was low-lying and uneven, with lots of hilly slants and angles to it. A dog, maybe, or a couple of dogs? Big dogs…standing sideways…?

Then it moved, and Peter knew exactly what it was.

A spider.

Several of the angles pumped up and down as the thing moved forward through the leaves and grass. That was all he could see: thick, fat legs pumping up and down, up and down, as the shape came closer…

Scuttle scuttle scuttle.

Terror and revulsion churned in Peter’s stomach. The thing was unnatural – it was impossible – it was horrific –

And it was headed straight for him.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 55

2009-12-12T01:53:00.000-08:00

Peter hustled out of the door and didn’t turn back. He heard it click shut behind him, and the sound of a deadbolt sliding into place.

Immediately he realized his bike was gone.

He looked around from left to right, but it was nowhere to be seen. He had left it right here, right here in the grass in front of the building – and now it was gone!

Somebody took my bike?!

He looked around the left side of the building, then the right, just to make sure that it wasn’t simply a prank. Upon discovering that, no, it was real, he muttered under his breath and thought of all the ways he’d like to beat up whoever it was.

Maybe the thief had biked down the road near Grandfather, and seeing that the guy had taken Peter’s bike, Grandfather had stopped him and whooped up on him.

Yeah, right.

The good thing was, Grandfather’s truck wasn’t far away. A few minutes’ walk and he would be there.

Grumbling, Peter set off through the darkness, hands in his pockets, wondering if there was any way he could find out who had taken it…

…when he saw the figure up ahead.

About a hundred feet away stood a humongous man, as broad-shouldered as a refrigerator, in black pants and a dark overcoat. There was no telling exactly how tall he was at this distance, but he was enormous: easily six-and-a-half feet, maybe seven.

It was the man who had gone into the school. The one who had left the blood on the steps.

Peter froze, his heart thumping in his chest. The man didn’t move, he just stood there…watching. At least, that’s what Peter thought he was doing; in the shadows cast by the moon, the man’s face was entirely swallowed in shadow, as was most of his body. Peter could tell he was bald, though, by the moonlight glinting off the back of his domed head. His face was entirely swallowed in shadow, so the eyes weren’t visible. There was something odd about the color of his skin…as though it were gray…

He’s just the janitor’s brother…he’s just the janitor’s brother Peter kept repeating to himself.

“Hey,” Peter called out, and waved.

The dark figure did not wave back. It only stood there, still, silent.

Peter’s heart beat faster. He did not really want to take the chance of walking past the guy, in case he had been transporting bloody bags of God knows what. But he had to get past him to Grandfather…

Dill. Call Dill.

Peter pulled out his phone and flipped it open.

Two words glowed on the tiny screen:

NO SERVICE.

“What?!” Peter hissed to himself. “This is supposed to work everywhere!”

He looked up from the phone.

The giant hulk of a man was moving towards Peter. Slowly, with a lumbering gait, but he was coming directly towards Peter.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 53 and 54

2009-12-11T00:20:00.000-08:00

“No school would have ever hired me again after my disgrace at Charterton University. So, to set me up with some sort of…societal approval, you might say, so that I wasn’t the ‘mad scientist’ who lived apart from the rest of the world, your Grandfather agreed to donate this entire building to the high school and pay my salary if they would only allow me to teach some science courses. And I do love to teach, Peter. Teaching and experimentation are the only two ways to acquire knowledge, do you realize that? Now, by teaching, I am of course including reading from a book. But I learn just as much from those I teach as they do from me. To cut me off from that avenue of discovery, well…it would be like telling me I could never eat or drink anything more than bread and water again for the rest of my life.”

Peter nodded. Then, after a few seconds…

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course you can!” Veedermeier exclaimed. “You can always ask me anything.”

“You haven’t seen any more of that guy Dill and I saw, did you? The scary guy?”

Veedermeier slapped his forehead. “Ach! I’m so forgetful sometimes! That was what I originally wanted to speak to you about. I hope you weren’t frightened too much?”

“Oh, we were pretty scared. But we got away fine.”

“Oh, good. Good. You see, you probably just saw Stanley, the high school janitor’s brother. He’s a very tall fellow, very big, who helps out his brother on weekends. He’s kind of a quiet fellow, doesn’t even talk to me, but completely harmless. I think that might have been who you saw.”

“Oh. But there was blood on the ground – ”

“Really? Hm, I don’t know anything about that. Perhaps he was moving some trash from the kitchen, and some of it leaked? Perhaps blood from hamburger meat or something of the sort?”

“Maybe…but the guy we saw had glowing yellow eyes. That janitor brother guy doesn’t have yellow eyes, does he?”

“Glowing yellow eyes?” Veedermeier said, surprised. “You saw his face that well?”

“Well…not really. But I know they were eyes.”

“Sometimes the janitorial workers wear reflective patches, like bike riders do during the night, to make sure they don’t get hit by cars…is it possible that what you saw was merely reflective patches?”

But they blinked.

I think…

“Maybe,” Peter said, suddenly unsure of himself. “Maybe. Can I…ask one other question?”

“By all means!”

“You, um…you’re not stealing bodies anymore, are you?”

Veedermeier looked shocked. “No! Heavens, no. Why?”

“Well, there was a break-in at the hospital last night, and some bodies were taken.”

“Yes, I heard about that…” Veedermeier clucked sympathetically. “Terrible business. I suppose I shouldn’t talk, given my track record, but – ooooohhhh. That’s why! You thought that it was me, perhaps? Back to my old ways, maybe?”

Peter gave a half-smile. “Well…yeah.”

“No, no. I’ve given that up. Well, just that avenue. Life…life is an amazing, amazing thing, Peter. We here on Earth too often limit our concept to that of water- and carbon-based lifeforms, but there is no reason that life couldn’t be made out of silicon, or based on methane. For instance, formaldehyde is poisonous to human biology, but in actuality, human flesh can be modified to accommodate the formaldehyde. That’s essentially what happened with the zombies; rotting had somehow allowed their tissues to tolerate formaldehyde.”

“Like the frogs.”

“Hmm?”

“The frogs for dissection. They’re in formaldehyde, too.”

“Oh, no. The school doesn’t use formaldehyde-packed frogs, since the fumes are toxic and can cause health problems. No, there are other ways they preserve frogs these days. But the zombies were all from bodies prepared for burial by a mortician, and they use an embalming fluid, which has a very high dosage of formaldehyde, as well as methanol and ethanol…”

Peter wasn’t listening to the rest. He couldn’t. All he could hear were several sentences, pinging around inside his skull, over and over again…

Formaldehyde. Used to preserve frogs for dissection, you know. Come along, nothing to see.

Oh, no. The school doesn’t use formaldehyde-packed frogs…

Veedermeier had been lying. He had been lying about the smell coming from the back of the lab…he had said it was frogs…and now he was saying they didn’t use it on frogs…

“I should really get going,” Peter said abruptly, and slid out of his seat.

Veedermeier looked up, surprised. “So soon?”

“Yeaaaah…I should be getting back.”

“Oh. I see.” Dr. Veedermeier looked at Peter searchingly for a few seconds, then smiled a little, though not as big as before. “Well, let me see you off.”

As he stood, he pulled out what looked like a remote control from his overcoat and began punching a few buttons.

“What’s that?”

“This? Oh, just a master control for the laboratory. See?”

Veedermeier’s chubby little finger tapped a button, and the lights in the laboratory dimmed by about half.

“Cool,” Peter said in spite of his rising distrust. “Dill would love that.”

“I’ll bet he would. I’ll bet he would…” Veedermeier said absent-mindedly.

“What are you doing with it?” Peter asked, trying to be offhand about it.

“Oh, this and that…mostly just shutting off the alarm on the front door. I’ll probably check up on a few experiments, then call it an evening.”

“Okay.” Peter reached the front door and put his hand on the doorknob. “Well… see you later…”

“Peter,” Dr. Veedermeier said.

He paused at the door. “…yes?”

“I forgot something. Silly of me, really. You said that formaldehyde was used in preserving frogs for dissection, and I said that we used frogs preserved in other ways…I forgot that we still have a large amount of them stored in the back that I have to get rid of.”

“Oh.” Peter nodded, trying to keep the apprehension he felt from showing on his face.

“You remembered from the other day, didn’t you? The smell of formaldehyde in the air? That’s when I told you about the frogs.”

“Oh. Uh-huh, that’s right.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Veedermeier asked softly.

Peter’s fingers trembled on the door handle.

“I just…figured I’d got it wrong. You use a lot of big words sometimes, so I figured maybe I’d misunderstood.”

Veedermeier studied Peter’s face …then smiled. “That’s true, I certainly do. I certainly do. Well, I just forgot about those frogs…but once I remembered, I thought I’d clear up the mystery.”

Don’t you mean, when you remembered your lie?

“Okay.” Peter forced himself to smile. “Well, see ya.”

“Goodbye, Peter,” Veedermeier said softly.

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"Peter And The Frankenstein" Page 51 and 52

2009-12-10T01:23:00.000-08:00

“Could I, um…could I have some tea?” Peter asked.

“Of course, of course!” Dr. Veedermeier said happily, and poured out a cup. “There’s sugar if you want it!”

Peter held the cup to his lips…was afraid again, just for a second, that maybe the liquid inside was some sort of knockout juice, and Veedermeier was immune to it…and then drank.

Mmm.

It was really good, an orange-y taste, delicate and with the faintest whiff of spices. Hot, but not too hot, it warmed him from the cold air outside.

“I like it,” Peter said.

“Excellent! Excellent.”

“And yeah…Grandfather did tell me about the zombies.”

To Peter’s surprise, Dr. Veedermeier began talking about it enthusiastically. “Oh, it was the most interesting case! Remember that moment when you and Dill were here with your Grandfather, and I said Dill’s condition was the most fascinating I’d seen in – and then I trailed off? Well, I was about to mention the zombies, but I figured I should practice some discretion in case you didn’t know about it. And why should you have? Well, except for the fact that you’ve obviously encountered werewolves! But the zombies were…do you remember the lecture this afternoon? How I said that the human brain was basically built up around the reptile brain, like a bigger, more complex computer assembled around a core of an older, more primitive one? Well, that was what was happening with the zombies. Through my studies – yes, the ones that got me thrown out of Charterton University, I’m afraid – I had determined that when we die…that is, when our hearts stop beating, and we stop getting oxygen to our brain…well, the first cells to die out are those involved in the ‘big computer’ – our most human qualities. Memories, language, appreciation of music, all these things…next, vision goes, then fine motor control. By that I mean, the ability to, say, pick up a quarter, or dance to a song. All of these things are part of the ‘big’ computer that makes us human. Strangely enough, the ‘little’ computer suffers far less damage, even over extended periods of time. In fact, in some of my studies, I found that the reptile part of our brain could be started over a year past our death, and still handle much of the basic functions of the body, such as breathing, digestion, and so on. I was curious if emotions were still functioning – they should be, for fear and anger are generated by parts that are among the most primal, the most ‘reptilian’ of our brain. But by that time, of course, the ‘human’ part of the brain is mush, and so my subject could hardly tell me what he was feeling, much less thinking.

“And what I have described is precisely what happened with the zombies. The radioactivity from the meteorite – he told you about the meteorite, yes? – well, that energy ‘jumpstarted’ the remains of all those dead bodies in their graves. The vast majority of the brain was gone, dead, rotted away. But for some reason, the reptile brain got restarted – which meant the zombies could move, albeit in fits and jerks, and they could ‘see,’ just like those blind people I talked about earlier who could ‘see’ an object with their reptile mind. They made noises, these…horrible, guttural groans and grunts, but nothing approaching human language. And, of course, one of the main drives all living things have is to eat, to procure nourishment. And the zombies wanted to eat. But all emotions, and memories, and morality – the human part of the brain – was gone. Maybe anger and fear were left, but not love, or sympathy, or anything approaching what you would call human. It was an army of unbridled, animalistic urges released on an unsuspecting town, and we had to act quickly – and violently, unfortunate though it was – before they could hurt anyone but themselves.”

“Like Old Man Parker,” Peter suggested.

“Ah yes, Phineas!” Veedermeier smiled and took a sip of his tea. “Nice fellow.”

“Do you still talk to him?”

“No, I haven’t spoken to him since the, um, ‘zombie incident.’ By the by, everything I just told you was merely a theory, but it explained the situation far better than your grandfather’s version. I believe Seamus thought that the meteorite opened up some mystical portal of supernatural mumbo-jumbo that somehow brought the zombies back to life.” Veedermeier smiled. “I cannot entirely disprove his hypothesis, but as a scientist, I strive to find answers in the here and now that do not rely on fairies or elves.”

You might change your mind if you’d seen what happened to my sister, Peter thought.

“What happened to the meteorite?” Peter asked.

“Oh, I store it in a lead canister at a nearby warehouse with some of my other equipment and inventions. Don’t worry, completely safe. I studied it for several months’ time – a very strange mix of different radiation types. But I couldn’t crack it immediately, so I’ve put it away for awhile. I’ll come back to the problem fresh some day.”

Peter looked around at the laboratory. “‘Other inventions’? You mean…you’ve got more stuff?”

Veedermeier laughed. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe! I bought an underwater sub, even, and spruced it up with a few of my own modifications. Your grandfather has been very generous, very generous indeed.”

“My grandfather?!”

“Oh. Oh, he didn’t tell you? Oh dear. Please don’t let on that you know…he does like his kindnesses to be anonymous…”

“He bought you the submarine?!”

“Well, not exactly. He gave me several million dollars to outfit scientific inquiry as I saw fit.”

“Several MILLION?!”

And he won’t get ME a television set? Plus, that underwater sub would’ve come in real handy with the swamp monster…

Veedermeier sighed. “Please don’t tell him I spilled the beans, Peter. He’s very touchy about that sort of thing. After he bribed the high school to take me back on – ”

“Bribed the high school,” Peter repeated, stunned.

“Well, yes.” Veedermeier gestured all around at the building and laboratory. “Though he won’t accept a plaque commemorating it, everything you see is courtesy of Seamus Flannagan.”

Peter looked at the blinding white room through new eyes. This was all because of Grandfather…

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