Once Upon a Werewolf |Isaac Lahey|

Flashback (Graveyard)

Summer 2003

When I was younger I was never afraid of graveyards. The Lahey's had owned and ran the Beacon Hills Cemetery for as long as I had known them. During the summer when my dad was at the hospital, Mr. Lahey brought me along to keep Isaac company while he worked.

Camden, Isaac's older and more charismatic brother, was almost never there. He spent his summers at a combination of swim practice, soccer camp, a friend's house or any number of other activities that Isaac either too young for, or disinterested in. No, the ever lanky and uncoordinated Isaac was disinterested in any sports or large groups of friends. He prefered spending the day with me and getting into all sorts of trouble in the cemetery.

We spent some days racing through the graveyard in a cutthroat game of tag or hide and seek. Other days we laid out next to the stones and took turns making up stories about what the person buried beneath must have been like. These stories were always elaborate tales of heros, circus performers, explorers and knights who all ended up in the graveyard after a long and adventurous life. On days too hot to be spent outdoors, we would watch horror movies in a back room or pretend a ghost was haunting the office. The Beacon Hills Cemetery held some of my most vivid and imaginative childhood memories, as did the woods just on the edge of it.

One day, when Camden was 14, he had broken his arm wrestling with friends and no longer could attend his swim practice. After that, Camden reluctantly joined us on the days he couldn't find a friend to save him from the boredom. He spent many days hogging the TV, unwilling to join us a pair of 8 year olds. After a while the boredom wore him down, and he convinced us to go into the woods. Isaac and I were too scared to go there by ourselves, having heard stories of werewolves and vampires lurking in the trees. Many of these stories were in fact told to us by Camden, who loved the supernatural almost as much as he loved to tease us. However, soon after the first time he dragged us out deep into the forest, Camden realized that it was no fun to play with two kids who were too scared to move. From then on he convinced us that if we pretended to be werewolves, we would be less scared.

"Come on guys, it will be fun," Camden pleaded, standing on a giant tree stump like it was a stage,"Just pretend we are the werewolves that live in the forest."

"I don't want to be a werewolf," I protested.

"Fine El, you can be uh, a witch."

"You already look like a witch," Isaac agreed, and I punched him in the arm. Though I wondered if my waist length blond hair and and messy overalls proved, or disproved, his point.

"I will be a witch then and cast spells on both of you then!" I say, picking up a stick to use as a wand.

"Not that kind of witch dummy, this isn't Harry Potter. Witches in this game help the werewolves," Camden said

"Then who is fighting who?" Isaac asked, confused that this game didn't seem to match Camden's competitive personality .

"Werewolf hunters of course!"

And from then, we spent the entire summer out in the woods playing witches, werewolves and hunters. Camden and Isaac would run through the woods, pretending to be chased by hunters. If they got trapped or hurt, they would come to me and let me rub dirt over the legs like I was healing them, as long as I was careful not to get too much dirt on Camden's cast. Though Camden was a bit too old for that sort of stuff at his age, looking back I think he liked taking a break from the pressure of high school life. Though by the time Camden's arm had healed, he went back to his various sports practices like nothing had ever happened. Despite this, Isaac and I got so attached to the game that we played it alone. Sometimes we would switch roles, other times we would both be werewolves and spend the day chasing each other around. We outgrew it eventually, but I could pinpoint those days in the woods as some of the happiest memories of my childhood.