The Big W

I always thought I saw shadows jumping at my windshield every time I drove by the old cemetery. The damned thing looked totally out of place in the city and for some unknown reason most of the street lights along the front gates were never on whenever I drove past it after work.
For the longest of time I never thought about it but it was always on a full moon when the shadows crept closer to you, their icy chill clawing at your seams when one was most unaware. I always kept the speakers on my car at full blast whenever I drove past the cemetery. I felt like I would hear some devilish howling calling me from beyond the grave. The shadows were enough as it was and the whole creepy experience certainly didn't require a soundtrack to go with it.
I never told a soul about my experiences driving past the cemetery at night. Once I told a costumer and he recommended that I eased up on the smoking and drinking. Not a bad advice per se but at that point I was pretty careless about my drinking. Regardless, the shadows were always there every full moon whether I was intoxicated or not. Yet, they didn't become real until I saw the first report of grave desecration on the TV.
It was a week night, the bar was empty but for a couple of regulars. We were almost closing and I remembered my boss watching the local news on TV. It was a brief report, almost a footnote, but enough for it to knocked me back into the reality of all those full moon nights filled with smoky shadows. Someone had violently trashed several grave sites and it wasn't till the next day that I found out that the corpses had been desecrated too. The memory of it still feels visceral and raw, like the metallic coldness of a knife that slips and carves your flesh unintentionally. The thick hotness of your own blood palpitating out with an undeniably fierce freedom.
Thinking back now it is a bit odd how little coverage the first desecration had. Five graves wildly unearthed with three corpses savagely ripped apart. Fresh ones too. The oldest one was from a few months back. Most of their rotting flesh eaten by someone or something. The only reason I knew all those early details was thanks to one of my regulars at the bar who worked for the city's PD. He spilled the beans while drunk one night. After that I was hooked. I was almost tempted to stop by the cemetery but thankfully I never did. The shadows always came out punctually every full moon and no matter how drunk or high I was I never had the courage to pursue them.
I did walk past the cemetery one day towards the college campus nearby. But it was during bright day light and accompanied by a dear friend of mine. We were also across the street from the gates but she must had, somehow, sense some nervousness in me because I remembered her asking me several times if I was alright. I walked faster towards campus, ignoring her. Thankfully we met some friends of her on campus and we got completely trashed at a local bar by early evening. She never commented about my strange attitude that day and I was glad she'd forgotten. This happened just a few days before the second string of grave desecration. This time the cemetery was shut down for good. The area cordoned off and a security guard placed at the front gates 24/7. I remembered feeling bad for the lonely soul whom worked the night shift there. All those shadows must drive him crazy, I thought. Funny.
One night, a few days after the second incident, the old timer from the PD showed up and sat at the end of the bar. I remember not recognizing him at first and he gave me a nervous smile when I asked him what he wanted to drink. "What's up, Dave?", he said and at the sound of his rough voice I instantly recognized that there was something wrong with Joe. I gave him my most genuine smile as he quickly drank his beer. "It's fucked up, Dave", he mumbled as I placed a second beer in front of him.
That night, the last time I ever saw Joe at the bar, he told me everything that was going on at the cemetery. I heard about the second desecration earlier that day but I've yet to drive by the cemetery since I was staying with a friend for a few days and she lived north of the cemetery, which meant we never passed it when driving to work. Joe told me the city had closed the street going down the cemetery, the one I took to get home. He said the FBI was involved and that they were literally camping on site as we spoke. He looked disheveled and erratic, his speech slurred as he drank beer after beer. He probably drank a case of beer that night. And the things he told me, I felt were things ordinary citizens shouldn't know. But he kept talking. And the more he talked the more spooked he got and the more I felt that everything he said was the absolute truth. Someone else would've think that he was a raving madman but I've seen Joe drunk a billion times and this time he was acting like a man possessed. He was acting like someone that needed to get something off his chest quick or the very same thing he was keeping inside would've ended up driving him nuts. He spilled his guts to me but in the end I don't think it helped his sanity one bit. Joe told me many things that night. He told me what the FBI found at the cemetery. He told me he saw the thing with his very eyes but he wouldn't described it to me. He struggled for words to described the insanity he saw at the cemetery, such insanity that he ultimately wasn't able to deal with. The memory of that thing became the thing that unhinged his weak grasp on reality and utterly unmanned him.
I saw Joe one last time two weeks after he stumbled out of the bar that lonesome night. Thinking back now I don't think I slept at all for a full week after Joe told me what he saw at the cemetery. I spent my days obsessing about the ramblings of a drunkard which I never really knew what kind of position he held at the city's PD. My drives home from work were different now since I no longer drove past the cemetery; the whole street was blocked by the PD and the FBI. Plenty of unmarked black vans parked along the street which made me realized someone besides the local PD was involved. No one walked down this street towards the campus further up ahead anymore. All vehicle and foot traffic used the road near the intercoastal parallel to the cemetery's or the one near the interstate further west. And the oddest thing of all was the complete silence from local papers and news. It seemed that after the unmarked black vehicles showed up a veil of silence descended upon the city on anything concerning the cemetery and the areas surrounding it. Even on the internet. The two grave desecrations would showed up on most internet searches but only as footnotes blaming local vandals. I found one report online from a religious newspaper's website that blamed satanists but it was quickly taken down a few days later. The report originated from a local Catholic Church two counties north of the city. When I called the number on the website I only got their voicemail, which was full. I planned to take the hour drive there on my day off but never got around to it. Four days after I last saw Joe I finally had a day off but I spent it on campus drinking with a friend. She and I walked past the cemetery towards campus many times before but this time we drove down the road near the intercoastal till we reached her place on campus. Her dorms overlooked the cemetery and the parking lot next to them stood right across the cemetery main gates. I noticed the full moon riding against the early afternoon skies and I couldn't help but feel a slight pricking against my skin as I thought of the shadows lurking inside the cemetery, waiting for the night to finally come spilling out like projectile vomit. I remember wondering if the FBI agents waiting inside their cozy vehicles noticed the shadows at all. Were the shadows looking for me? Did they still remembered me? Yes, indeed but i didn't know that back then.
We drank through the afternoon and the early evening. We even went to a basketball game at the campus gym but we were too drunk to care and too high to remember who won the game. On our walk back to her dorms she realized she didn't have her keys with her. She laughed and told me not to worry, a friend nearby had a spare set and she told me to wait by her car while she went to grab them. We had walked to her car because she wanted to get some of her books since it was parked a bit far from her dorm. I remember clearly how gloomy the cemetery gates looked from where I was standing. The shadows came at me shinning the moon against them but I realized that no shadows materialized that night, the only thing the moon shone her yellow light upon were the black vehicles parked along the street of the cemetery. And the vehicles' shiny black armor reflected madam moon's light beautifully against them. I always thought they were agents inside those vehicles, I don't know why. But nothing moved as I saw a large black dog coming through the cemetery gates and onto the street. It looked like a normal dog as it sniffed his way down the sidewalk and near one of the vehicles. There were no lights on that side of the street but the moonlight was more than enough to make me realized what at first I completely and utterly missed. The black dog looked just like any other dog. Maybe a lab or a shepherd, I wasn't too sure what I was thinking at that moment. But I felt like the cold hand of death just suddenly griped me by the throat and squeezed my very soul out of me. The black dog standing near one of the black vans easily towered a good foot and a half over the roof of the vehicle. Now, I figured the top of the van was nearly 6 feet tall, give or take an inch. So that made the black dog about seven and a half feet at its head. Impossible.
The image of the beast across the street helped me sober up almost instantly. It acted like a normal dog, sniffing its way along the sidewalk and even lifting its massive hind leg to quickly urinate on one of the vans. The front gates of the cemetery were engulfed in shadows so I couldn't really tell if they were open or shut. Either they were open or the black beast had walked right through the metal bars like the shadows growing out of them as I looked perplexed, frozen in place. I've taken my eyes off the beast for just a brief time to look at the shadows coming out of the cemetery gates but when I looked back at it I noticed it was standing on the middle of the street. Looking at me. And standing on its hind legs. It looked like a demonic grizzly bear standing like that, but its features were undeniably dog-like and its size incredibly unbelievable. I felt cold sweat running down my chest and back and a cryptic shiver ran all over me as my sweat-soaked clothes stuck to me in an icy embrace. The eyes of the beast were blood red and it stood frozen-solid like a stone pillar staring at me with its hellish snout dripping dark saliva upon the ground. The dark shadows coming out of the cemetery were almost upon it when I heard the cracking of dead leaves behind me. The noise spun me out of my death-dream and as I turned around I saw a figure approaching me with a look of concern upon her face. "Are you okay, oh my god?", my friend said as she grabbed me by my arm and pulled me towards her building. "Dave, you are soaked through!", she exclaimed as she looked at me. I opened my mouth to tell her about the beast standing on the street just behind us but no words came out. I must've scared her deeply that night because after she took me to her room, changed my clothes and put me to sleep, she spend the next day nursing me back to reality. She definitely missed all classes that day but thankfully, I recovered enough later that day so that at least kept her from sending me to the emergency room. Some time later, she told me she almost did this.
We never talked about what happened that day and at the end of the semester she transfer to another state . I still talked to her once in a while but we aren't close anymore. I think what she saw in me that day scared her and I can't really blame her for that. I still carry the memory of that day deep within me like a cancerous tumor, one that will surely bring a slow and agonizing death when l least expect it.
I moved out of the city right after they started tearing down the cemetery. All those corpses and ancient tombs relocated and given a fresh place to rest. All those shadows shone unto oblivion. The past buried beneath tons of concrete and constant progress. Some things are better left untouched.
My last day at work was uneventful. Everyone was very sweet. I went out for drinks with some friends for one last hurrah since I was leaving the city in a few days. I drove home a bit drunk, something I've done plenty of times before, but decided to stop at the gas station for a six pack since I knew my fridge was completely empty. I noticed the blue lights as soon as I got out of the car and for a fearful second, I thought that maybe I was being pulled over. As I took a deep breath I saw a police vehicle, lights flashing at full blast, parked behind the gas station. Two officers were interrogating a homeless-looking fellow that was fidgeting and overall acting very strangely. I went inside and grabbed a six pack and quickly paid for it. As I exited the station, I heard screams coming from the direction of the officers and the homeless fellow. He was being handcuffed and I could hear the officers telling him to stop resisting. They twisted him around and as he faced me I realized that was old Joe whom I have not seen in ages. What I heard him scream chilled me to this day:
"HELP ME. SOMEBODY PLEASE. THEY'RE LOOSE. THEY OUT ON THE STREETS NOW. THEM BIG DOGS OUT OF THE CEMETERY. THEY HUNGRY, MAN! THEY CAN'T BE STOPPED. EVEN THE FBI KNOWS THAT. HELP ME PLEASE! GOD HAVE MERCY!