Dead Scared

by Ivan Blake

  “Mallory show you Father’s film of the creepy dead lady?” Rudy asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Believe it?”

  “Not until now.”

  When the spirit is inside its body once again, the family must read a second prayer to calm the troubled spirit and clear away the emotion that drove the victim to suicide in the first place. This part of the ritual is the most awful because the corpse will thrash about. The spirit will feel all the pain that drove it to suicide in the first place, and it will be maddened to find itself trapped inside a rotting corpse. The family may have to restrain the corpse until the calming prayer is read.

  Once the calming prayer has worked and the corpse is still, the family must ask the gods to release the healed spirit from its body a second time. This is the second cleansing death, and with its second death, the spirit will leave behind all the madness that drove it to suicide.

  Finally, when the cleansed spirit is free from the body once again, it will be able to hear the family’s guiding prayers and go in search of Puya.

  Freda, that’s all I wanted for Annisa, to free her from her torment, and that’s why I begged Rahmat to do what he did.

  At first he refused. I offered him money, lots of it, and he finally agreed. Together, we would begin the ritual of Annisa’s second cleansing death by asking the gods to return her spirit to her corpse.

  “But your dad is half way round the world,” Chris said. “How could his magic work here?”

  “How the hell should I know? Torajan crap was Mallory’s thing. I sort of remember something about gods existing in a world parallel to ours, not just in Toraja. Distances don’t mean anything to their priests; they cast a spell in Toraja, the request goes into the world of their gods, and it comes out wherever they want it to.”

  Chris tried to make sense of Rudy’s explanation, gave up, and returned to the fax.

  In the morning, we staggered to Rahmat’s house, ate something strange, and then chanted and burned dried roots, and I fell into a trance.

  I saw Annisa dressed in pink silk and surrounded by pink and purple flowers. I called to her. She looked at me and then began searching frantically among the flowers. She started to scream and to tear at the earth, blood all over her hands, and as I watched, the flowers began to wilt and worms appeared among the rotting plants and...

  I awoke and knew immediately we’d made a terrible mistake. We had begun the ritual, but we couldn’t complete it! I’d been too drunk to realize when we began the ritual that I couldn’t possibly get back to Maine in time to read the calming prayer or the prayer of release over Anissa’s body before you buried her.

  Rahmat was horrified. It was what he’d feared most, that the ritual once begun would not be completed. He vomited and cursed me again and again. If I hadn’t got him drunk, he shouted at me, he would never have begun the ritual. We had made things far worse for Annisa’s spirit because, instead of being tormented and tied to her place of death forever, her spirit might now be tormented and trapped forever in a box, inside a rotting corpse, deep in the earth.

  “But this is nuts,” Chris said. “When did your father start this ritual, yesterday? If it had worked, Mallory’s corpse would have been flopping about in the church during the funeral. It wasn’t. You were there. Nothing moved.”

  “That’s because when Father started his ritual, Mallory’s corpse was too far away from her spirit. The body was in town at the funeral home, while the spirit was way out here and too stupid to know where to look.”

  “So now, she’s not just waiting to kill me, she’s also searching for her corpse?”

  “Right. And that’s not the best of it. Before Father did his thing, Mallory’s spirit was mad at you but stuck here where she died. All you had to do was stay away. Now, because Father asked his gods to reunite her spirit with her body, her spirit is free to wander anywhere in search of her corpse. Which means she’s now free to follow you—anywhere! Which means you’ve got one hell of a problem: a pissed-off, dead girlfriend who can follow you and keep beating the crap out of you until she stumbles across her corpse—which she may never do.

  “Follow me?”

  “Who else is she going to follow? You’re the one she hates. She found you out there on the tracks, so she knows where you are, and now, if you run in any direction, she can follow…and she will follow because she hates you that much!”

  “Okay, your dad wanted your mother to do something to set this mess right. What was it?”

  “Keep reading.”

  Freda, you must complete Anissa’s cleansing death. First, bring her body back to the house to reunite it with her spirit. It will be obvious when this has happened. You might have to tie the corpse down until you finish the ritual, but don’t weaken. Mallory’s not alive. She cannot be returned to us; at this point, all we can do is help her to a peaceful afterlife.

  Then you must read the calming prayer over her, and finally, the prayer for her second death. Rahmat has written both out, and I’m sending them to you with this fax. You won’t understand a word since they’re written in the language of the gods. Even so, Rahmat insists both prayers be read over our daughter’s body exactly as they’re written.

  One more thing; I realize you may have destroyed Annisa’s corpse already. Perhaps you had her cremated to prevent me from seeing her when I returned for the funeral. I wouldn’t put it past you. If that’s so, then you must use any remaining parts of Annisa—her hair, nails, dried blood, anything you can find around the house she may have touched—to serve as a temporary repository for her spirit until she can undergo her second cleansing death. If the items are laid out properly, her spirit will find them, and you can read the prayers over the parts instead of the entire corpse.

  You must do this, Freda, because if you don’t, you may be in grave danger. I pray Annisa’s last moments were filled with love...

  “We know different, don’t we,” chuckled Rudy.

  ...but if they were not, if perhaps she was filled with anger, if her death was meant as an act of vengeance—against you, most likely—then you and Rudy are in terrible danger because Anissa’s vengeful spirit, deafened and driven mad by its rage, will lash out at you and anyone else it senses is important to you.

  So do as I say, Freda, if not for my sweet Anissa, then for your own pitiful self.

  “This is crazy!” Chris said. “I thought Mallory had made all this magic stuff up, like it was a bad joke, or she was crazy. Did you believe any of this?”

  “Well, I didn’t, not until you showed up with the shit beat out of you—by a ghost.”

  “This is totally nuts!”

  “Must be flattering to think you were the last person on Mallory’s mind before she whacked herself.”

  “So she’s out there, mad as hell, can’t find this Puya place, and is waiting to beat me to a pulp again.”

  “No body, no brains, nothing left of our dear Mallory, except one big fucking ball of hate...for you!”

  “Okay, so what did your mother do when she read the letter?”

  “Nothing; because I never showed it to her. I told her Father had faxed us to say he wasn’t coming home. Mother was a real mess after that. Then I sent Father a return fax telling him we’d take care of Mallory.” And again, he grinned.

  “So you did what your dad asked?”

  “Hell no! I gathered up everything in the house Mallory had ever touched, and burned it all, right before the funeral. I never believed any of Father’s Torajan bullshit, but I wasn’t going to give Mallory the satisfaction of doing her stupid magic, even if she was dead. And if it turned out there actually was something to all Dad’s ‘tormented spirit’ crap, then I was hedging my bets. I’d make sure Mallory suffered in her afterlife, the way she’s made me suffer in this one.”

  “You weren’t afraid of her?”

  “Not really. I just figured it was all garbage. Then you knocked on the door, and I almost crapped my pants. I thought you were Mallory
, come to punish Mother and me. Then I saw you, and I knew we were off the hook!” He let out a raucous laugh. “You’re obviously the one she’s mad at, and all because you didn’t come when she snapped her fingers.” He kept grinning like an idiot. “Don’t you feel stupid?”

  “So, if this stuff is for real, then I have to find Mallory’s body, reunite it with her spirit, and then read the special prayers or she’ll keep coming after me.”

  “Forever!”

  “Okay, so where are the prayers?”

  “Funny thing, I burned them too.” Rudy roared with laughter.

  For an instant, Chris wanted to leap across the room and beat the little weasel to a pulp. He needed the kid, however, for the moment anyway. He had to get as much out of Rudy as he could before punching the creep’s lights out. He took a moment to consider his options.

  “Maybe I don’t have to read the prayers. I just have to lead Mallory to her corpse.”

  “You got it. She can only keep following you around as long as she doesn’t know where her body is.”

  “When she finds her body, she has to re-enter it because her gods have ordered her to; then, if I bury her...”

  “Right, my dear sister will spend the rest of eternity thrashing about in her coffin until she grinds herself to dust. Sweet. We both win. And leading her to her corpse shouldn’t be too difficult. After all, it’s got a goddamned eight-foot high pink cross on top of it!”

  Oh hell no! An icy hand seized Chris’s guts and twisted. Mallory’s corpse! He hadn’t actually seen it at the funeral; no one had, the casket had been closed. “But if her body isn’t in her grave…”

  “Sure it is. You and the other clowns buried her. We all watched.”

  Chris said nothing.

  “What…like…maybe she wasn’t in the stupid coffin? Are you saying you stole her?”

  “No! Not me.”

  “But somebody? You think somebody might have stolen Mallory’s corpse?”

  Yeah, and Chris knew who.

  “That would be so cool,” Rudy said. “I knew every guy in school had the hots for her body, but dead? Now that’s sick!”

  Chris had to get out of there. He had to get to Meath’s place before the doctor fed Mallory’s corpse to his goats, assuming, of course, Meath had her.

  “If Mallory’s corpse really is missing, well, then you truly are screwed.” Rudy let out another raucous laugh. “You and all your friends.”

  “What?”

  “Your friends, they’re screwed too. If you have any friends, I mean.”

  “What about my friends?”

  “It’s like Father said.” Rudy grabbed the fax from Chris, rifled through the pages, and read, “...Anissa’s vengeful spirit, deafened and driven mad by rage, will lash out at anyone it senses is important to you.” He laughed again.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I think it means if you even touch someone, Mallory will think you care about them and she’ll do to them what she did to you.” He laughed, and said, “Great, huh?”

  “You’re such a slimy piece of crap.”

  “Me? All my life I’ve had to put up with bastards like you, taunting me, playing cruel tricks on me, hurting me. Why shouldn’t I take a little pleasure in someone else’s pain for a change? And you, you always were a dickhead, with your ‘I’m better than you’ attitude and your black clothes, like you’re sooo cool. Well, not anymore. From now on, your life is gonna be nasty and lonely.”

  Chris stared at him for a moment, then suddenly leapt from the sofa and dove across the room as fast as his injuries would allow. He seized Rudy, dragged him up into his arms, held him in a crushing embrace, and kissed his cheeks over and over again.

  “What are you doing? Get away from me!” Rudy cried. Then it dawned on him what Chris was up to, and he screamed, “Oh god, no!” and fought like a mad man to break free of the embrace. He didn’t have a chance.

  “Call this a test,” Chris said. “Maybe Mallory can’t hear what I’m saying. She sure as hell can see!” Chris lifted Rudy from the floor, swung him from side to side like a beloved teddy bear, and kissed him time and time again before letting the scrawny creep fall to the floor.

  “I wonder what Mallory will make of our new friendship,” he said, then grabbed his coat and limped to the door. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

  Chris opened the door, and a wave of white-hot rage swept past him.

  “No! Mallory, please no!” Rudy screamed.

  Chris pulled up his collar against the bitter night air and slammed the door behind him. As he limped toward the road, he heard the sounds of furniture breaking, dishes being smashed, and screams.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Monday, December 16

  Chris hobbled to the road and started for home. There were no lights along this stretch. “No chance I’m going to reach Meath in time to stop him,” Chris said under his breath, “but I have to try.”

  He’d beg a lift from the first car which came along. Someone was bound to take pity on him; after all, he was a bloody mess, and probably unrecognizable as a Chandler. He could still taste blood in his mouth, and his left eye had crusted over again. With each step, he shuddered at the throbbing pain in his right hip and leg, and every icy breath felt like a shard of glass being pushed deep into his chest.

  He dared not look back. Somewhere out there in the darkness behind him, he could feel Mallory’s presence. She must have finished with Rudy by now. He didn’t suppose she’d be content to follow him for much longer. The nausea was returning, the bile rising in his throat.

  Even before he heard the engine, Chris saw the lights of a car up ahead moving slowly toward him. Then the air crackled...and Mallory chose that moment to vent her rage again.

  A terrible scream deafened him, a burst of blue light almost blinded him, and a wave of white hot rage knocked him to the pavement. His skull smacked against the asphalt and he was dragged to the middle of the road, right in front of the approaching car. All Chris saw were stars from the blow to his head and headlights coming toward him. Burning rubber filled the air as one of the tires skidded to within inches of his face.

  The driver’s door flew open. “Chris?” someone cried. “What’s happened to you?”

  Gillian! She ran to Chris’s side and reached for him.

  “No!” he shouted, and Gillian fell back.

  “What? What is it?”

  “You mustn’t touch me. You can’t let her see.” Chris struggled to his knees.

  “Who? See what?”

  “Mallory!”

  “Mallory...Mallory Dahlman?”

  “When you were driving toward me, what did you see?” Chris tried to stand, then doubled over, struggling to draw a breath against the headwind of pain engulfing him.

  “I...I don’t know. I was driving along, looking for you in the ditches. Suddenly I saw a bright light in the road ahead, and then there you were, sliding across the pavement.”

  “A light, that’s all you saw?”

  “Just the light.”

  “But it was Mallory!”

  “Mallory’s dead.”

  “I know that. But I saw her tonight, twice, and each time in a bright light. I did, I saw her, I swear. And both times, she attacked me.”

  “Chris, you’re talking crazy! I’m taking you to the hospital!”

  “No, we have to get to Meath’s place. If I don’t stop him, I’m going to be seeing a lot more of Mallory.”

  “Stop Meath from what? You can’t go fighting anybody tonight, you’re hurt!”

  “I have to! You must believe me. I’ll explain everything on the way.”

  In spite of the pain, Chris refused Gillian’s assistance as he limped to the car. Gillian got back behind the wheel and Chris into the passenger’s seat. He wiped some of the blood from his face and tried to reopen his swollen eye. Gillian made a three-point turn in the road, and they headed for Meath’s farm.

  “It’s a miracle you came along,”
Chris said, picking gravel from the gashes on his face.

  “I was frantic when you didn’t come home after the funeral. So was your mom. She came to our door and asked that I take the Buick and look for you.”

  “Glad you did,” Chris said through clenched teeth. The side of his face that Mallory had dragged across the asphalt was one huge weeping graze and stung like the blazes.

  “I thought you’d been attacked by the hockey team or Ed Balzer or maybe Mallory’s relatives.”

  “No, it was Mallory.”

  In a breathless rush, he told Gillian about the girl on the tracks and the attack, visiting the Dahlman house and the bizarre fax from Mallory’s father, and his suspicion that Mallory’s corpse may have been stolen by Meath. Talk of ghosts and Torajan prayers made absolutely no sense to Gillian. She only understood a fraction of Chris’s tale, something about Meath having Mallory’s corpse, and him needing it back.

  “You’re doing this for Mallory?”

  “Not for her, well kind of, but not because I care about her. I need to get her remains back from Meath, because if I don’t, then Mallory will never leave me alone.”

  “You mean…her memory will haunt you?”

  “No, I mean she’ll haunt me!” Reflected in the front windshield, Chris glimpsed a face, the merest suggestion of a face, hovering in the back seat. Hate burned in its eyes. “She did this to me. And she attacked me again, back there on the road. You saw the light. Her father said...”

  “Mallory’s father?”

  “I told you—in the fax he sent to Mallory’s mother.”

  “Oh, okay.” Gillian’s confusion was obvious and entirely understandable. Chris sounded mad, even to himself. The situation was totally insane. He tried to explain once again.

  “It’s like this. Mallory’s dad says because she committed suicide, her spirit is stuck here—part of it anyway, the last emotion she experienced before she killed herself, her anger at me. It’s not Mallory. I don’t think her spirit knows what she is or who we are or what we’re doing. She can’t even hear what we’re saying. She’s just anger and hatred, that’s all—hatred of me and anyone important to me.”