The Lesser Dead

by Christopher Buehlman

  I turned around; here came the coffee table again. I got under the table, slid like I was sliding into third, kicked his legs out from under him. He fell hard. On top of me. The table hit a shelf full of tchotchkes, made an awful noise.

  Now he grabbed my neck, choking me. Lot of good that would do, I don’t breathe much, but it did hurt. He saw that wasn’t working, fishhooked a thumb into my mouth, tore my mouth open all the way to the cheek, and that hurt like blazing hell. It wasn’t fair he got to be so strong so young! I remembered a move I saw in a karate magazine, snaked my left arm over his right arm, under the elbow of his left, and slapped up under his elbow, hard. It rolled him, but then he just rolled me over again, straight on top of the Miracle Whip jar and all the other broken glass, I was cut to shit.

  “OW, fuck!” I said, but his knee slid in the mess on the linoleum and he was off-balance enough for me to roll him the rest of the way over. He flopped on his stomach and said, “Mom!”

  The telephone rang.

  I pulled the open refrigerator over on top of him; the milk broke, tomatoes rolled everywhere, then I slipped in gravy or maybe it was blood. There was an awful lot of blood in this place.

  “Mom!” he said again.

  The telephone kept ringing.

  I had never peeled a vampire before, I didn’t want to. But what else? Take him with me? No time to think.

  He started wriggling out from under the fridge, so I stomped on his neck and broke it.

  Somebody knocked on the door.

  Somebody across the room said, “MO-om!” and I realized it was Gonzalo exactly imitating the way the kid sounded when he was watching TV. Poor bird had no idea, he was running back and forth on his little wooden bar.

  “Mr. Baker?” a woman said, her voice muffled through the wood, but I could tell it wasn’t my new friend next door.

  The kid’s neck righted itself with a sound like tearing off a cold turkey wing; it was even worse than the sound it had made breaking. He started doing a push-up, trying to get the fridge off.

  I had to peel him.

  I saw a block of knives, pulled out the big one, the one for turkeys.

  I jumped on top of the fridge and stomped, flattening him out again under it.

  The phone rang, the door knocked.

  “No, don’t! No, don’t!” the bird said. I thought it was talking to me, then realized it was repeating somebody else’s words. Probably their last words.

  Now the little chunk was pushing me and the fridge up; a jar of pickles slipped out and went rolling.

  “Whatever is going on in there, I want you to know I’ve called the police,” the woman at the door said.

  The phone stopped ringing.

  I struck, jamming the knife down as far as I could into the kid’s skull, which was pretty much all the way to my fist, then pulled out halfway and stirred the point. He went flat, but it wouldn’t last. There was only one way.

  I pulled the knife out.

  “No, don’t! MO-om!” Gonzalo said.

  I put the knife, edge up, under the kid’s neck.

  “Sorry, Mikey. I’m so sorry.”

  Hey, Mikey! He likes it!

  Then I did it.

  It’s not an easy thing. I don’t know what you’ve seen in the movies, but it’s not like that. It’s awful.

  His brain started working again before I got through the bone and he tried to fight, jerking himself back and forth like a giant windshield wiper in all the mess beneath him, wheezing air through his cut pipes, bucking the refrigerator and spilling out more little bottles and fruit.

  But I held on and did it.

  I got it off.

  Just as the police arrived.

  * * *

  This is how it looked on the cover of the New York Post:

  SATANISTS

  STRIKE

  YORKVILLE

  I won’t force their whole shitty article on you, but the short version is this: Police responded to calls about a disturbance at a fifth-floor apartment in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Yorkville. Several commands to open up were ignored, forcing officers to bust in. Officers on the scene claimed to have seen someone holding, and I quote, “a kitchen knife and a head”; they recalled firing on this individual. None of them could supply a description except to say that he or she “wasn’t very tall” and “moved with surprising speed.” The suspect is believed to have escaped out the living room window despite the lack of a fire escape from that balcony. The headless body of twelve-year-old Michael Baker was found in the kitchen. The brutally stabbed bodies of his parents were found in the bathtub, along with child-sized hand and foot marks, though no readable fingerprints were discovered. Disturbing satanic messages and images had been painted on the wall in blood, including references to the punk band the Ramones and the notorious club CBGB. While the NYPD officially expressed confidence about catching the perpetrators, one unnamed source reported that evidence had been tampered with and that the crime scene had been “heinously mistreated.” The family pet, believed to be a parrot, also appeared to have been stolen.

  * * *

  Here’s how it looked from my end:

  “OPEN UP!” he said. “POLICE!”

  I was standing on the back of a refrigerator, holding poor Mikey’s head. I knew they couldn’t catch me, but they were going to find bodies. I just had to make sure they wouldn’t find anything vampirey. Luckily, the bar was low because people generally didn’t believe in us, but some of this evidence would be tough to ignore.

  Four hard knocks rattled the door. These were pretty good doors, but nothing a determined person couldn’t get through.

  Think!

  First, the head. Mikey’s little fangs had to go—I set the head on the counter, knocked the canines out with the butt of the knife, and stuck these in my pocket. My face was itching terribly where my torn cheek healed itself.

  “OPEN UP OR WE’LL BREAK IT DOWN!”

  Where were the Baker mom and dad? Bedroom? No. Bathroom. Stacked up the way the kids liked to do it. Completely drained, fish-belly white, brutalized necks and wrists, blood all down the front of Dad’s boxers where somebody got his femoral. From the stains on Mikey’s shirt, one had to guess that he had taken part as well, too scared to leave, not knowing how to hunt. By the time I came around he was so hungry he got brave. But who turned him, and why? An accident? Maybe. No time to think.

  Three more hard knocks.

  The Bakers’ holes would play funny at the coroner’s, and there was no time to burn them.

  Shit shit shit.

  There was nothing for it. I stabbed and cut the fuck out of both of them, doing my best to slash up the bite marks, stabbing them in random places, too, just to confuse things. She belched and he farted a big one while I did it; you know how stiffs are. This wasn’t the best way I could think of to spend an evening.

  I stepped out into the living room and picked up the kid’s head, meaning to hide it, I don’t know where, just as the door went bang! and the biggest cop I ever saw, a huge Polish-looking guy with no neck, walked in behind his service .38.

  “DROP THE KNIFE!” he said, and I did.

  “Drop the fucking head! Do it now!”

  I did.

  Two more cops came in, also drawn and ready to shoot, one with the shotgun that had blown the door.

  “Now drop your guns,” I said.

  Two of them did, but the little Hispanic guy in the back was tougher; he only lowered his .38 a bit, then raised it. I was about to tell him to do it again when I felt my back push out a piece of the jar I fell on and I jerked. Hispanic guy shot. He was a good shot. It tore through my chest, clipped my heart, and put a hole right through my lung. He probably would have shot me again, but he saw I was unarmed.

  “Lay down on the floor!” he said, moving closer and reaching for h
is cuffs, perplexed at the inaction of his friends. “You guys want to help me, or what?”

  I fixed his eyes and went to give him a counterorder, but my lung wasn’t quite healed and I only managed to bend over and cough blood.

  He slipped the cuff on one hand and turned me, kicked the back of my knee to make me kneel.

  “Seriously, a little help?” he said, grabbing my wrist and darting his eye back at his drooling friends. I yanked my hand free, grabbed his gun hand, and jerked that up in the air as he shot again.

  “Stop,” I wheezed, looking him in the eye again, really pouring it on. He relaxed, went slack-jawed.

  “Holster your gun.”

  He did.

  I peeked out the window. Two cop cars, one cop down at the cars watching the front, talking into the radio. I had a minute.

  “You three, listen. I want you to make it look like punks or satanists did this, got it? Get sponges, whatever, paint weird shit on the walls. Stop before your buddies get here. Block the door so they can’t get in for a minute.”

  “What about you?” said the little Hispanic guy, sounding genuinely concerned about me.

  I went and grabbed Gonzalo out of his cage. He crawled onto my shoulder.

  “Me?” I said, rubbing the already closed gunshot wound on my chest. I made my hand small and shook off the cuff. “I’ll be just fine,” and I went out the window.

  I climbed up to the roof, then climbed down once I got to the other side, the side away from the street. Two more cop cars and an ambulance were just pulling up.

  I grabbed the bird’s feet so he wouldn’t fall off while I ran, and run I did.

  Like the shadow of an airplane on the ground.

  HOLLOW BE THY NAME

  Before I went anywhere, I went to see Chloë. She always calmed me down, lifted my spirits. Poor, beat-up, runaway Chloë, was I the only person who understood her?

  I knew I’d probably be waking Blond Jesus up, so I brought him a meatball sandwich, the smell of which turned my stomach a little, what with all that greasy tinfoil with cheese stuck to it. Everything reminded me of carnage now: the Hunchers’ brains down in Margaret’s apartment, the stuff that came out of the Baker kid. But Blond Jesus loved that goddamned meatball sandwich, ate it with big, grateful bites and chewed with his mouth open. He wanted to talk, but I wanted the company of the dead. After the pandemonium of telephones, gunshots, screams, squawks, and a kitchen being trashed, I needed somebody who knew how to shut up.

  “Watch my bird,” I said, leaving Gonzalo there. “Make a stand for it or something, would ya? Nothing fancy. I’ll give you five bucks.”

  “Sure thing,” he said, showing me a big, steamy mouthful of food, steaming up his own glasses.

  I put my hand over my mouth and lit out of there. When I got to the pipe, I threw away my ruined shirt and pants and squeezed through in my skivvies. It felt kind of improper, but never mind. It wasn’t like that with Chloë, she was just a kid. I slipped through the hole and into Chloë’s cave. I was safe there. I let myself just say whatever I wanted. Or maybe I just thought it, I don’t even remember. It was something like praying, something like beatnik poetry I’d heard down in the Village. I just poured out words.

  Our Chloë, who art in cavern, hollow be thy name. Thy cavern come, here I come, I played my drum for him, pa-rum-pum-pum-pum. Chloë, I’m feeling bad about the things I’ve done, the things I have to keep doing just to keep, what is it, living? I’m not saying I’ve got it rougher than you, your days were few, and very blue. I’m going to stop rhyming now because it sounds stupid. I just think about you, whoever beat your face in. How could they do that? Everything seems set up so you’ve got to hurt someone all the time, no matter what. I cut a guy’s head off today, a kid, I mean I really cut it off. He was a vampire, I probably did him a favor. Maybe somebody should do that to me, I don’t like myself very much right now. Probably you don’t like me either, bothering you all the time like I do, you probably wish I’d just go away, but I’m selfish and I think I need to talk to you more than you need me to leave you alone. But you don’t need that, do you? You don’t need anything anymore and never will again. People bring you things, like I bring you flowers sometimes, and would have tonight but I had to get a guy a sandwich for watching my bird so my hands were full, but you don’t care. You’re like, It’s nice that you brought me things, but I’m dead, I don’t need anything, I don’t want anything, I’m complete. Maybe that’s what you’re here for, as an example. Maybe you’re my god of small places. You teach me things. Through you I see maybe only the dead are perfect. Maybe only the dead are gentle.

  Something moved on the other side of the wall.

  “Hello?” I said.

  No answer.

  Fuck it, what was I afraid of after the night I’d had?

  I went back to communing with Chloë.

  Anyway, kid, I thought I should tell you that I’m thinking about leaving. The tunnels, but maybe even New York. Sorry if calling you kid offends you, I don’t mean any disrespect, you’re probably the same age as me. What I mean is, we both died at the same time, only you did it right. Not that I really want to die, at least I don’t think so. But I’ve got to get out of here. At least for a while. Not that I know what I’d do out in the boondocks, out in the wilds of Philadelphia or Hoboken, or Milwaukee. Can you imagine? Me out in Milwaukee with Lenny and Squiggy and the Big Ragu? Not that you watch TV, that’s Laverne and Shirley, it’s all right. But what do you think about all this? Stay or go? Let’s play a game. If I should go, just be really quiet.

  She didn’t say anything.

  All right. But that’s not fair, is it, because I think I really want to go and I rigged things, and what are you going to do, talk? Let’s be fair. If I should stay, just be really quiet again.

  She didn’t say anything.

  But someone else did.

  “Town meeting.”

  I looked up at the missing bricks and saw Old Boy’s dully glowing eyes peering in at me.

  “How’d you find me?” I said.

  “Your bird smells.”

  “I left the bird.”

  “I know. But you still smell like him.”

  “Hey, I heard you,” I said. “How come? I heard your foot on gravel. You’re normally so quiet.”

  “Shut up,” he said, but not unfriendly. “Town meeting is at dawn. At the water pipe. Margaret’s pissed.”

  “When is she not?”

  He smiled and went away.

  * * *

  “What the fuck is that?” Margaret said.

  “It’s an African gray parrot.”

  “I can see what color it is.”

  “That’s part of its name.”

  “Just keep it quiet.”

  “Quiet!” Gonzalo said.

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “Get it out of here before I kill it.”

  “Quiet!”

  “Have I got time? Before you start the meeting?”

  “No, you trivial little man, you haven’t, but run.”

  She didn’t look at me. I didn’t like that.

  I ran the bird back to my room, put a shoestring around his leg, and tied him to the stand. He said something to me in German. Something like Lext Un-Fayger only the x was more like the ch in L’chaim. I thought that was weird, I didn’t see the Bakers popping out any foreign languages, and then I remembered Gary Combs was kind of an egghead, had some foreign-language books.

  “Want to groove on Miles?” I asked him, but he didn’t, just bobbed his head at me, and off I ran to the meeting, afraid I was going to be found out for any number of things that would cost me my life.

  TRUST

  “Some of you’s been feedin’ ’em, and there’s more than one. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about, neither.”

&nbs
p; More than a few of us got really uncomfortable just then. All of us were there except the kids. Ruth had them at the 18th Street station, no doubt boring them stupid, frowning them into lassitude. She was old and strong enough to keep them in line and loyal enough to Margaret not to need a pep rally.

  “I don’t want to go callin’ out individuals by name because, to be plain, there’s too many of ya. You know who you are. But it stops now. Either they hunt on their own without makin’ a mess or they die. It’s brutal, but that’s how it has to be.”

  I pictured the Bakers in the bathtub. I pictured the Asian lady on top of the stack at the theater. I pictured the blind rabbit. Cvetko and I exchanged a look. Cvets smelled like smoke and mortar.

  “We got it too good down here to have the law comin’ down with thirty fuckers and a dozen dogs, cleanin’ us out, wallin’ off tunnels, makin’ patrols in force. Which is exactly what’ll happen if people up there start dyin’ and they figure out where it’s comin’ from. It was hard enough last year with that crazy kike shootin’ people cause his dog told him so, and the cops all jumpy and nobody goin’ about alone no more.”

  “Last year wasn’t all bad,” Billy Bang said. “The blackout was fun.” That got a laugh. He and Luna and I went out on a spree that first night the power went out, just biting the fuck out of everybody like it was Halloween. All the cops were cracking skulls in Brooklyn, so there we were climbing through open windows in the Upper East Side, knocking dead electric fans out of the way and bleeding the wealthy, tasting their fear and their salt, the veal in their blood, enjoying how inconvenienced they were by it all, how embarrassed to be caught with messy hair, sweating through tank tops just like their employees in Astoria and the Bronx.

  “That’s as may be,” Margaret said. “But I want to hear from each of you that you understand me.”

  “I understand,” that Edgar fellow said.