Zak Rider: Teenage Monster Hunter

Chapter Fourteen (A): The Final Goodbye

Grace's hands tremble as she holds her phone up to her ear. It rings and she waits for someone to pick up.

"Hey Grace! What goes on? How's college going? Is Spencer keeping up with all those band posters?" Mr. Neil says once he answers the phone.

"Mr. Neil, something happened today. Something really, really bad. Spencer-" she pauses to wipe her nose and dry her eyes. "Spencer's dead Mr. Neil! Our friend Zak got possessed by a demon and killed her and her boyfriend, Kellin. I'm so sorry!" she says spitting the words out as fast as possible.

"She-Spencer? She-what? Oh my God," he says. "She's really gone?"

"I'm so sorry," is all Grace can say. She's crying so hard she can barely see the wall in front of her.

"Will you stay on the line while I break the news to Payton?" he asks. Grace agrees while he calls for his wife.

"What is is, Lorenzo?" she hears Payton Neil's voice in the background. She grips the arm of the couch for dear life as Lorenzo tells his wife their daughter's cruel faith.

Half an hour, all three are still crying and working out the funeral details. After hanging up, Grace sat down at her desk. She had a eulogy to write, and she wanted her best friend to have the best eulogy every written.

* * *

Dressed in black and grief stricken, Grace stands in the funeral home next to Beck, Zak, Mr. and Mrs. Neil, and Mr. and Mrs. LaCerente. Zak was taking things the worst out of the three teenagers for obvious reasons.

When the funeral service starts, Zak loses all control of his emotions and breaks down into sobs. Beck tries to comfort him by placing a hand on his shoulder but it does little to subdue the immense amount of pain Zak is indescribable and he can't hold himself together.

Grace then steps forward to read Spencer's eulogy. She wipes her eyes and begins.

"Spencer Neil, oh God, where do I even begin? Spencer was a complicated a complicated mess of a little bit of everything. She was a musician, an artist, a sports enthusiast, a girl friend, but most of all, she was my best friend.

"I remember the day I met Spencer, it was the first day of second grade and she had just moved to Green Bay from Portland. This little eight year old girl showed up on the first day at her new school in a Blink-182 shirt, black jeans, and hi-top Converse. She was the most punk second grader I've ever seen, even now. We became friends and were practically sisters we were so close.

"Senior year of high school snuck up on us so fast it was almost unbelievable. Spencer never lost her punk princess style and she still had her switch blade attitude. Everything seemed perfect, we were both attending the same college in the fall and Spencer found work making posters for local bands. It was all great until Noah Carpenter stepped into the picture. He was your typically bad boy and Spencer fell head over heels for him. Long story short, he cheated on her and broke her heart.

"But just as soon as she moved on and fell in love Kellin, she was ripped out of this world. Gone too soon," Grace finishes and then its back down. Beck gives her a nod as Officer Walters reads Kellin's eulogy. To end the funeral, a piano version of "Save Rock and Roll" by Fall Out Boy plays. Grace began associated anything Fall Out Boy related with Spencer and Kellin since the concert had been one of their last living moments.

* * *

The river surges underneath the bridge. The cool water rushes around rocks and tree roots. The moon's light casts a reflection across the moving water. Wind blows, making the trees lining the river bank sway back and forth. No ones watching him as he steps closer to the edge of the bridge. He looks down at the distance to the water. There would be no going back from tonight. Before he can second guess himself, he jumps.

* * *

How much loss could one person deal with before dissolving completely into nothing? Beck thought he was approaching this line at an alarmingly fast pace. Grace was sure she'd passed this line by at least 100 miles at this point. She was breaking down harder than Beck was, maybe because the days in between the events had been so few. She was almost positive she'd need a therapist after all of this. Officer Walters thought he was approaching this line fairly quickly himself. He didn't know how much more he could take. He knew he should have seen it coming, with things that had happened before. The suicidal thoughts and always been there, Zak Rider had just been magnificent at hiding them until now.

Officer Walters and Detective Iniesco found his body washed up on the shores of the river at exactly 3:33 AM after Grace had called Officer Walters saying Zak was missing at 3:15. It hadn't taken them long to find him, but they were thirty minutes too late. Zak Rider was gone.

Many tears were shed that night. It was only three weeks after Spencer and Kellin's death. The demon that turned out to be Zak's father had now taken seven lives from this world. Before he could take anymore, Beck and Grace found a priest to preform a banishment that prevented the demon from causing anymore problems. They burned the Ouija board they had used and helped the police force board up the old abandoned bar again.

With the Amanda Lancaster case, along with the other three victims' cases, closed, both Detective Iniesco and Officer Walters retired, deciding they had seen enough for a lifetime. Randy Walters picked up and moved out to Arizona to escape the awful memories housed in Green Bay of his deceased intern and paranormal investigator friend.

Grace and Beck began dating shortly after and dropped out of college and packed up everything to move to London. Beck becomes known for his dark, deep paintings while Grace starts a suicide prevention organization called the Zak Rider Foundation.

After a few years in London, their relationship becomes strained after they realize they don't actually have that much in common. They grieved together, fell in love, and fell right back out of it. Maybe if it had been under different circumstances they would have worked out, but every time Grace looked at Beck, she remembered the horrible tragedies that happened in Green Bay, and vice versa for Beck.

They split up and Grace returns to Green Bay to finish her degree and becomes a crime scene investigator. She keeps the Zak Rider Foundation going and saves thousands of lives every year. Beck never reunites with his parents, but lives happily without them, deciding he didn't need anymore negativity in his life. They both end up marrying different people even though they knew they were soul mates. They just couldn't take be reminded of the past any more than they had to.

Beck married a quiet Irish girl, named Alana. She was a painter as well and they met in Paris underneath the Eiffel Tower. They had two children, a girl named Melody Grace and a boy name Stephan Ryder.

Grace married an American actor named Lincoln Delgado. Lincoln, or Link, and Grace also had two children, two boys named Thomas Spencer and Jacob Riveraz.

The Delgado and Riveraz families lived without ever having to cross paths again, neither Grace nor Beck finding out the other had used part of their names for one of the kids' middle names.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Alright so that's the end of ending A! Thanks for reading! Votes and comments are lovely! Ending B will be up some time soon! Song on the side is "Tangled In The Great Escape" by Pierce The Veil featuring Jason Butler.

~AboveTheGlory