Norman was washing his three-wheeler that Saturday. He always washed it on Saturdays. It was his pride and joy that Robin Reliant, all fins and slick angles, like a pocket Cadillac.
As he soaped it's blue body his mind wandered to when his darling wife and he had got married in the 1970s. A simple but gorgeous affair for a few friends and family, they'd used the Robin as the wedding car.
It looked like a blue batmobile that day, with it's Just Married ribbons stretched across the bonnet and pepsi cans rattling at the rear as they drive up the street for the drive to Butlins.
Ada had looked fabulous, her long black hair and chiffon veil blowing in the breeze like wondrous sails, the canvas of their joyous new voyage, young and free with everything to live for in a world of promise and sunshine.
They'd gone on to many adventures in the Robin, a turquoise three-wheeled cruiser trundling across Britain and Europe, as far east as Romania, the two of them like astronauts in a capsule bound for happiness. People wind down their car windows at traffic lights, whistling at the amazing Reliant, the two occupants beaming with the sunlight of nomads, the wide smiles of being young and madly in love.
It was all so long ago now and norman didn't want to let darker thoughts crawl in, the darkest of thoughts from the very worst of times.
He circled his sponge over the Robin's long front lights and caught a glimpse of his face in the gleaming chrome trim.
God, he looked old! Older than he'd ever done and he seemed to be aging faster than ever these last few years. Aging like an applecore chucked behind the shed, drying up, the pips popping out, no longer living.
He was a dead man walking on the death row of his sentence, a long life of loneliness and grief, his grim companions since that dreadful day, nestling with the grimmest, which he kept locked away in the deepest hole.
The Reliant was all he had left of his glorious life together with Ada, a tangible portal to the beautiful past, where he so dearly wanted to be again. He mused if he drove fast enough down the street might he break the time barrier between him and his beloved.
It was then he noticed a group of youths stood in the road. They were young and mean-looking and gathered round something on the ground. It was a hedgehog curled into a ball. The youths were kicking it to one another like a football, it's spines making it jar and jolt on the asphalt. The ruffians looked so underfed he thought they might eat the poor creature!
His anger surged ike a hot tide. He'd always detested bullies. He walked to the end of his drive and shouted at them.
"You boys, leave that hedgehog alone, you'll injure it!"
The kids hadn't noticed the old man before but now they all turned to face him. They stared like hateful things and one stepped forward, the most dreadful-looking of them all: pale, sunken cheeks, thin lips and crater eyes.
"You fuckin' what you old bastard! It's none of your Fuckin' business so keep your fuckin nose out!"
"Leave the hedgehog alone!" He said loudly and firmly.
"This old cunt must be deaf boys!" He said to his gang.
They all turned and stared at Norman, a stare of combined malevolence that made the hairs on the back of his stand up.
The scrawny leader moved closer and the other boys followed until they were all stood on the pavement directly in front of Norman's drive, where he was washing his car.
The gang leader was standing almost next to the Robin.
He slowly traced his finger along the chrome finned rear lamp.
"So, this is your old banger is it old man?"
"Funny looking pile 'o' shite ain't it! It's missing a fuckin front wheel!"
He howled at his own wit and swiveled to hear his troops laughing loudly too.
"Keep your hands off the car!" Norman warned.
"I think you're forgetting the word please you grouchy old fucker!"
"Say Please!"
The youth took hold of the radio aerial and began to slowly bend it
"Bend my aerial and you will regret it for the rest of your life!"
"Ooh! Fuck! Hear that boys! We'll regret it! Jeepers, we're just quaking in our fuckin boots aren't we!"
Once again, he howled with laughter and his goons followed suit
"What the fucks a warty old twat like you going to do, eh!"
"Fuckin' nothin' that's what cos you're a crusty old wanker who can't fart without shittin'!"
"And what's so special about this heap of crap anyway? You shag the old lady senseless in the back? That's it, it's your three-wheeler shag cupboard ain't it!"
"Shut your mouth you disrespectful streak of piss!"
Ah. Smelling blood, the leader persisted.
"And where is the old bitch anyway? Get her out here and we'll show her a fuckin' good time in the back won't we boys!"
"Yeah!" They all agreed, pressing nearer to Norman, "a fuckin good time!"
"She'll be so full o' jizz you'll have to wash her out with that fanny sponge you're holding fella!"
He prodded Norman in the chest.
"And just maybe when we're done we'll shove that maingy fuckin hedgehog right up her cunt so you can never fuck the old witch again!"
Norman grabbed the youth's finger hard. Noticing the nail was strangely filthy with what looked like earth, he began to bend it backwards.
"Ah, ah!"
The leader contorted in pain and began to stagger backwards, Norman holding fast.
"Get off my car, get off my property and stop disrespecting my wife!"
With one further push, the youth's soily finger nearly broke but returned to position, the agonised youth caressing it as it throbbed beyond belief.
One of the others spoke solemnly.
"You shouldn't have done that mister."
The whole gang repeated it.
"You shouldn't have done that!"
The leader staggered backwards, straightened up and rejoined his mates.
They stared once more at Norman in an vacant kind of way, a couple of them drooling.
Turning, the leader kicked the retreating hedgehog towards Norman. It flew through the air and they didn't see him expertly catch it with his right hand, releasing it into his back garden.
"All the best little blood!" He whispered in its ear.
Finishing up Norman retired inside to eat a TV dinner in front of the box. The evening News was on talking about cancer and his mind wandered back to his Ada. She had died after a long battle with the monstrous disease. It took away the love of his life and crushed his soul forever. He became only half a human, skulking in the shadows like a fox, retreating from the world he wished would burn. His life since then was a rudderless shamble and his demons fought hard to ascend.
He kept a lock of Ada's hair on the mantle piece in a wooden box, which they'd bought together at Castle Bran in the Carpathian hills. They'd been the happiest of days, an endless summer of high pastures and sweeping meadows, where they ran through the tall fescues, collapsing by burbling mountain streams to make passionate love.
Only at the end of that Carpathian summer did the days shorten and the nights exude the mountains' darkness. It was on the night they packed their tent that Ada was bitten by a large dog that had emerged from the forest.
It was a deep bite and the local village nurse looked at the pair sceptically, reluctant to dress the wound and continually tutting and making the sign of the cross.
Ada had had it re-dressed in England but by then the bite had all but disappeared. Ada had seemed younger after that, stronger. Bigger even. Her appetite for meat had grown too and it was in the months that followed when Sheep began to be mauled on the lonely moors above the town.
But cancer got her in the end, the monster in us all.
"Ada!" He sighed.
The fizzing snow of the dead screen brought him out of his drowse and he crawled on all fours up the stairs to bed.
Early next morning his world collapsed again.
It was still semi-dark outside but he could see on the drive his beloved Robin Reliant had been smashed to smithereens. Great ragged chunks of blue fibre-glass were strewn around the drive and huge wooden posts ripped from his fence had been rammed through the windscreen like stakes.
The car was wrecked.
So was Norman. He collapsed to his knees and sobbed. So sad for the car, so sad for himself, sobbed for Ada and their beautiful love.
His tears fizzed in his eyeballs and as his sobbing abated a new emotion took hold. Rage.
The man balled his fists and ground his teeth. Fury surged inside him like a maelstrom. He banged the rug over and over until he calmed.
Norman needed to talk to his wife. He walked the mile to her grave in the local but semi-abandoned churchyard. Chatting by her graveside would ease his soul and he would tell her the terrible news about their beloved car.
When he arrived at the church gates it was dusk but he could still see a group of figures hunched over his wife's grave. They were shouting and gnashing, squabbling and drooling.
The grave was torn apart, the coffin broken, the headstone defiled with shit.
Where's the old fucker's wife's body? They shrieked like a pack of starving hyenas, their clothes ragged and soiled, their faces flecked with spittle and earth. One of them was chewing on a ragged hand from the next grave, itself desecrated and upturned.
Norman recognized the boys from the day before, the nasty scrawny scrotes who had confronted him on his drive. The very same whom he knew for certain had smashed up his robin. Their robin.
He stared at them dribbling into the coffin and hard as it was to believe in this day and age, he instinctively knew what they were, a foulness from legend, a canker from myth: grave-feeders.
They were ghouls.
Ghouls robbing Ada's grave.
His fury boiled and he gripped the iron gate tightly.
"There is no body you fuckin filthy scrotes. My wife was cremated."
The ghoulish troop jerked round and gawped at the old giffer stood by the trees.
So, you came looking for us eh old man? What, was it the nice gift we left you on the drive? The leader of the pack hissed.
Norman came out of the shadow of the yew and balling his fists he roared like a lion, his rage erupting in a geyser of purest hate.
The ghouls , suddenly off-guard, stepped back. Even the leader looked non-plussed.
Norman strode to the graveside, still bellowing and stooped to retrieve an urn tucked in the recess beneath the headstone. The urn was engraved with the name Ada.
"You fuckin' stupid cretins are in for a treat. When I've done you'll be sorry you were ever fuckin born!"
Norman unscrewed the urn and placed it on the headstone. He took a penknife from his pocket and made a deep cut in his palm. It bled.
He squeezed copious blood onto the urns ashes and swirled it round until if formed a frothy grey and red broth.
Smiling broadly at the mesmerized ghouls, Norman spoke.
"You ought to be running now boys. You see, my Ada ......"
He downed the gloop slowly, savouring it's poignancy, the ashen essence of his beloved wife. The earthy liquor sloped along his gullet and dripped into his stomach. Big grey drops of ash, bone and hair hit his acid bag and with each splash he jerked.
The mutation convulsed through his old body: his bones cracked apart, skin ballooned and matted with thick fur. His teeth lengthened and nails grew into sharp talons.
Snarling, he rose from the graveside, a massive seven-foot gnashing beast.
He smiled and through huge fangs growled:
".... Yes, my darling Ada, she was a werewolf boys, a really fuckin' big one and she's as hungry as... Well, you're going to find out for yourselves!"
The troop of ghouls yelped in disbelief. Even their leader lost his swagger and quickly turned tail. They scurried through the headstones like scared conies.
No-longer-Norman would teach these heathens a final terrible lesson.
Uncontrollable fury pulsed through him as he remembered how they had wrecked his Robin, ransacked his memories and defiled his Ada's resting place.
He was going to truly enjoy eating their scratty brains and shitting out their ragged souls.
He leapt into the night and the dreadful screaming lasted for hours.
There were indeed worse things in Hell than ghouls!
