Finley led them to the hole where Huck would now stay. The headstone would be ready in a week or so. The name “Hutchinson Kerrick” would decorate its face, along with a depressingly short span of years.
And even though the headstone was unready, and the flowers were already fading on the wet earth, none of this mattered to Finley. In his mind, you didn’t need monuments and performances to remember a friend. All you needed were memories.
The creature that lurked beside Huck in the coffin agreed with him.
As the sun set and the shadows lengthened in the graveyard, the creature settled in for a listen, making itself comfortable in the little box they had buried Huck in.
Finley faced the group, tears collecting in his eyes, even as he fought to keep his voice level.
“Should I go first?” All eyes were focused on the pile of dirt. “Okay. I met Huck when I was about seven years old. It was kindergarten, and we were both terrible at naptime, so the teacher would always put us in the corner, far away from the kids actually sleeping, and we would just play games. It started with rock paper scissors, and we played it so much we started to get bored with so few options. So, we made it rock-paper-scissors-tank- banana-blender-pencil sharpener, and on and on.
“Soon we lost all track of the game’s rules, but we never really stopped playing. We’d see each other in the halls and throw each other a new move like ‘bazooka’ or ‘fish attack’ and see what the other one would come up with. I think people started to think we were in some sort of weird cult, always flashing messages at each other.” He chuckled, but as the sound escaped him his eyes fell on the pile of dirt were his friend lay.
“We played it all through high school, and I thought we would carry it on to college too. And to the rest of our lives. Huck, why did you have to-” Finley choked, letting the words stay lodged in his throat. He looked up at his friends, but none would meet his eye. “Does anyone want to go next?”
Finley retreated and Yosef stepped forward.
And so it went, each of the young people sharing a memory they had of dear dead Huck. Some were funny, most were not, but it did not matter to the creature in the coffin.
The stories just made it hungry.
Huck never gave the thing a proper name, though he tried to give it everything else. But it was only in death that he finally gave the creature what it needed.
Now it was free at last, finally able to make its own choices, and ready to bring the curtains down on the story it had first crafted centuries ago.
All it needed to do was devour the tasty looking tear-soaked children above it.
It ripped its way out of Huck, bursting into the coffin they had buried him in. It clawed its way through the wood and dove into the earth, and no one heard it as it burrowed through the mud like a swarm of worms.
It waited there for a moment, inches from the surface. And to its surprise it discovered it was an empathetic creature, because the children above it seemed so lost.
But it knew just the solution.
It surged up to its wonderful meal, and they heard it at last as it erupted from the dirt, its talons flashing in the light of the moon.
But the boy in the box had one final card to play, and as the talons came down, he spoke those first and final words.
Once Upon a Time…
The five children vanished, inches from the claws of the killer. The monster roared in rage, scything at the air, desperate for the blood of the five who had come to bury their friend.
But they were gone.
Gone.
They were on Poa. And a new story had begun.