Undead

by John Russo

  “Let’s do what we have to do and be on our way,” Johnny said, in a disgruntled tone. “It’s almost dark, and we still have a three-hour drive to get home.”

  She shrugged at him, to show her annoyance, and he followed her around the side of the church.

  There was no lawn, no gate—just tombstones, sticking up in the tall grass, under the trees, where a few scattered dead leaves crackled under their feet as they walked. The tombstones began in the grass just a few yards from the church and spread out, among trees and foliage, toward the edge of the surrounding woods.

  The stones ranged in size from small identifying slates to large monuments of carefully executed design—an occasional Franciscan crucifix or a carved image of a defending angel. The oldest tombstones, grayed and browned and worn with age, almost seemed not to be tombstones at all; instead, they were like stones in the forest, blurred by the darkening silence engulfing the small rural church.

  The gray sky contained a soft glow from the recent sun, so that trees and long blades of grass seemed to shimmer in the gathering night. And over it all reigned a peaceful silence, enhanced rather than disturbed by the constant rasp of crickets and the rustle of dead leaves swirling in an occasional whispering breeze.

  Johnny stopped, and watched Barbara moving among the graves. She was taking her time, being careful not to step on anybody’s grave, as she hunted for the one belonging to her father. Johnny had a hunch that the idea of being in the cemetery after dark had her frightened, and the thought amused him because he was still angry with her and he wanted her to suffer just a little for making him drive two hundred miles to place a wreath on a grave—an act he considered stupid and meaningless.

  “Do you remember which row it’s in?” his sister called out hopefully.

  But he neglected to answer her. Instead, he smiled to himself and merely watched. She continued going from stone to stone, stopping at each one that bore a hint of familiarity long enough to read the name of the deceased. She knew what her father’s tombstone looked like, and she could remember also some of the names of the people buried nearby. But with the approaching darkness, she was having trouble finding her way.

  “I think I’m in the wrong row,” she said, finally.

  “There’s nobody around here,” Johnny said, purposely emphasizing their aloneness. Then, he added, “If it wasn’t so dark, we could find it without any trouble.”

  “Well, if you’d gotten up earlier…” Barbara said, and she let her voice trail off as she began moving down another row of graves.

  “This is the last time I blow a Sunday on a gig like this,” Johnny said. “We’re either gonna have to move Mother out here or move the grave closer to home.”

  “Sometimes I think you complain just to hear yourself talk,” Barbara told him. “Besides, you’re just being silly. You know darned well Mother’s too sick to make a drive like this all by herself.”

  Suddenly a familiar tombstone caught John’s eye. He scrutinized it, recognized that it was their father’s, and considered not telling Barbara so she would have to hunt a while longer; but his drive to get started toward home won out over his urge to torment her.

  “I think that’s it over there,” he said, in a flat, detached tone, and he watched while Barbara crossed over to check it out, taking care not to step on any graves as she did so.

  “Yes, this is it,” Barbara called out. “You ought to be glad, Johnny—now we’ll soon be on our way.”

  He came over to their father’s grave and stared at the inscription briefly before taking the wreath out of the brown paper bag.

  “I don’t even remember what Dad looked like,” he said. “Twenty-five bucks for this thing, and I don’t even remember the guy very much.”

  “Well, I remember him,” Barbara said, chastisingly, “and I was a lot younger than you were when he died.”

  They both looked at the wreath, which was made out of plastic and adorned with plastic flowers. At the bottom, on a piece of red plastic shaped like a ribbon tied in a large bow, the following words were inscribed in gold: “We Still Remember.”

  Johnny snickered.

  “Mother wants to remember—so we have to drive two hundred miles to plant a wreath on a grave. As if he’s staring up through the ground to check out the decorations and make sure they’re satisfactory.”

  “Johnny, it takes you five minutes,” Barbara said angrily, and she knelt at the grave and began to pray while Johnny took the wreath and, stepping close to the headstone, squatted and pushed hard to embed its wire-pronged base into the packed earth.

  He stood up and brushed off his clothes, as if he had dirtied them, and continued grumbling, “It doesn’t take five minutes at all. It takes three hours and five minutes. No, six hours and five minutes. Three hours up and three hours back. Plus the two hours we wasted hunting for the damned place.”

  She looked up from her prayer and glowered at him, and he stopped talking.

  He stared down at the ground, bored. And he began to fidget, rocking nervously back and forth with his hands in his pockets. Barbara continued to pray, taking unnecessarily long it seemed to him. And his eyes began to wander, looking all around, staring into the darkness at the shapes and shadows in the cemetery. Because of the darkness, fewer of the tombstones were visible and there seemed to be not so many of them; only the larger ones could be seen clearly. And the sounds of the night seemed louder, because of the absence of human voices. Johnny stared into the darkness.

  In the distance, a strange moving shadow appeared almost as a huddled figure moving among the graves.

  Probably the caretaker or a late mourner, Johnny thought, and he glanced nervously at his watch. “C’mon, Barb, church was this morning,” he said, in an annoyed tone. But Barbara ignored him and continued her prayer, as if she was determined to drag it out as long as possible just to aggravate him.

  Johnny lit a cigarette, idly exhaled the first puff of smoke, and looked around again.

  There was definitely someone in the distance, moving among the graves, Johnny squinted, but it was too dark to make out anything but an indistinct shape that more often than not blurred and merged with the shape of trees and tombstones as it advanced slowly through the graveyard.

  Johnny turned to his sister and started to say something but she made the sign of the cross and stood up, ready to leave. She turned from the grave in silence, and they both started to walk slowly away, Johnny smoking and kicking at small stones as he ambled along.

  “Praying is for church,” he said flatly.

  “Church would do you some good,” Barbara told him. “You’re turning into a heathen.”

  “Well, Grandpa told me I was damned to hell. Remember? Right here—I jumped out at you from behind that tree. Grandpa got all shook up and told me I gone be demn to yell!”

  Johnny laughed.

  “You used to be so scared here,” he said, devilishly.

  “Remember? Right here I jumped out from behind that tree at you.”

  “Johnny!” Barbara said, with annoyance. And she smiled to show him he was not frightening her, but she knew it was too dark for him to see the smile anyway.

  “I think you’re still afraid,” he persisted. “I think you’re afraid of the people in their graves. The dead people. What if they came out of their graves after you Barbara? What would you do? Run? Pray?”

  He turned around and leered at her, as though he was about to pounce.

  “Johnny, stop!”

  “You’re still afraid.”

  “No!”

  “You’re afraid of the dead people!”

  “Stop, Johnny!”

  “They’re coming out of their graves, Barbara! Look! Here comes one of them now!”

  He pointed toward the huddled figure which had been moving among the graves. The caretaker, or whoever it was, stopped and appeared to be looking in their direction, but it was too dark to really tell.

  “He’s coming to get you, Barbara! He’s d
ead! And he’s going to get you.”

  “Johnny, stop—he’ll hear you—you’re ignorant.”

  But Johnny ran away from her and hid behind a tree.

  “Johnny, you—” she began, but in her embarrassment she cut herself short and looked down at the ground as the moving figure in the distance slowly approached her and it became obvious that their paths were going to intersect.

  It seemed strange to her that someone other than she or her brother would be in the cemetery at such an odd hour.

  Probably either a mourner or a caretaker.

  She looked up and smiled to say hello.

  And Johnny, laughing, looked out from behind his tree.

  And suddenly the man grabbed Barbara around the throat and was choking her and ripping at her clothes. She tried to run or scream or fight back. But his tight fingers choked off her breath and the attack was so sudden and so vicious that she was nearly paralyzed with fear.

  Johnny came running and dived at the man and tackled him—and all three fell down, Johnny pounding at the man with his fists and Barbara kicking and beating with her purse. Soon Johnny and the man were rolling and pounding at each other, while Barbara—screaming and fighting for her life—was able to wrench free.

  In her panic and fear, she almost bolted.

  The attacker was thrashing, pounding, seemingly clawing at all parts of Johnny’s body. Johnny had all he could do to hold on. The two of them struggled to their feet, each maintaining a death grip on the other—but at the same time the attacker was like a wild animal fighting much more viciously than most men fight—beating, thrashing—even biting Johnny’s hands and neck. Desperately, Johnny clutched at him and they fell in a heap.

  In the total darkness, the blurred form of the two seemed to Barbara like one thrashing thing, and she feared for the outcome and she had no way of telling which one had the advantage or who was going to win or lose. She was nearly overcome with the desire to run and save herself, and yet she wanted to save her brother—but she didn’t know how.

  She began to scream wildly for help. And her fear became even more intense through her screaming, because part of her mind knew there was no one around and no one to hear her screams.

  The two men on the ground were rolling and tumbling and slashing at each other and making animal sounds—one figure gained the advantage, and in a brief outline against the dark sky Barbara saw him slam his fists down onto the other’s head.

  She found a tree limb and snatched it into her hands, and took a step or two toward the fighting men.

  Again, the fists came down, with a heavy dull thud and the sound of cracking bone. Barbara stopped in her tracks. The figure on top had a rock and was using it to smash his enemy’s brains.

  Moonlight fell across the face of the victor, and Barbara saw with a shudder of doom that it was not Johnny.

  Again the heavy rock thudded into Johnny’s head, as Barbara remained paralyzed with shock and fear. And then the rock fell to the earth and rolled and Barbara braced herself with her tree branch ready to use as a club, but the attacker did not rise. He continued to kneel over the vanquished body.

  And Barbara heard strange ripping sounds, and she could not see clearly what the attacker was doing—but the ripping sounds continued in the night…ripping…ripping…as if something was being torn from Johnny’s dead body.

  The attacker did not seem to be concerned with Barbara…as her heart pounded wildly and she remained rooted with fear and the ripping sounds enveloped her and blotted out her sanity and her reason, and she was in such a state of extreme shock that she was near death and all she could hear was ripping…ripping…as the attacker wrenched and pulled at her brother’s dead body and—yes!!—she saw in a fresh shaft of moonlight through a passing cloud that the attacker was sinking his teeth into Johnny’s dead face.

  Slowly, wide-eyed, like a woman paralyzed in a nightmare, Barbara began moving toward her brother’s attacker. Her lips fell apart and involuntarily emitted a loud sob.

  The attacker looked at her. And she was startled by the sound of his breath—an unearthly rasping sound. He stepped over Johnny’s body and moved toward her in a half-standing position, like an animal hunched to spring.

  Barbara let loose an ear-shattering scream of sheer horror, and she dropped her club and ran—the man coming after her slowly, with seeming difficulty in moving, almost as though he were crippled or maimed.

  He advanced toward Barbara, making his way between the tombstones, while she ran stumbling and gasping for breath, and tumbled and rolled down the muddy, grassy terrace to the car. She yanked open the door. And she could hear the slow, muffled footsteps of her pursuer drawing nearer as she scrambled into the front seat and slammed the door shut.

  No keys. The keys were in Johnny’s pocket.

  The attacker was moving closer, faster, more desperate to reach the girl.

  Barbara clutched at the steering wheel, as though it alone might move the car. She sobbed. And almost too late she realized the windows were open—and she rolled them up frantically and locked the doors.

  The attacker ripped at the door handles and pounded violently at the car.

  Barbara began screaming again, but the man seemed impervious to screams and totally without fear of being caught or surprised.

  He grabbed up a large stone from the road and shattered the window on the passenger side into a thousand little cracks. Another pounding blow, and the stone crashed through the window, and the man’s hands were clawing at Barbara, trying to grab her by the hair, the face or the arms—anywhere.

  She caught a glimpse of his face. It was death-white—and awfully contorted—as if by insanity or agonizing pain.

  She smashed her fist into his face. And at the same instant she tugged at the emergency brake and pulled it loose and the car began to drift downhill, the attacker following after, pounding and ripping at the door handles and trying to hang on.

  As the grade got steeper the car managed to pick up speed, and the man was shaken loose and forced to trot after it. The car went still faster and the man lost his footing and clutched at the fender, then the bumper, as he tumbled and fell heavily into the road. The car gained momentum, with Barbara’s pursuer no longer hanging on. But he regained his footing and kept pursuing, resolutely, stolidly, in a slow, staggering shuffle.

  The car was now plummeting down a steep, winding hill, Barbara frozen in the driver’s seat, clenching the wheel, frightened by the darkness and the speed, yet too scared to slow down.

  The light switch! She yanked it, and the headlights danced beams of light among the trees. She swerved to avoid crashing as the beams revealed the grade in the road and the car bounced and lurched over it and she saw that it was narrowing to one car width; and, about two hundred feet ahead, the downhill grade was going to end and an uphill grade begin.

  On the uphill grade, the car slowed…and slowed…as its momentum carried it some distance up the upgrade. Barbara glanced backward, but could see nothing—then, in the dim outline of the road, the pursuing figure of her attacker rounded a bend and she knew he was moving fast after her.

  On the upgrade, the car reached a full stop. Then, with a bolt of panic, Barbara realized it was starting to drift backward, carrying her toward her attacker…as he continued to draw nearer. The car picked up momentum as she sat paralyzed with fear.

  Then she grabbed at the emergency brake and yanked it tight, the lurch of the car throwing her against the seat. She struggled with the door handle—but it would not budge until she remembered to pull the button up—and as the attacker drew nearer she yanked the door open and bolted from the car.

  She ran.

  The man behind her kept coming, desperately trying to move faster in his shuffling, staggering gait—as Barbara ran as fast as her legs could carry her up the steep grade of the gravel road. She fell. Skinned her knees. Picked herself up and kept running and the man kept coming after her.

  She reached the main highway, at th
e top of the hill. And she kicked her shoes off and began to run faster—on hard blacktop rather than gravel—and she hoped to spot a car or truck or any kind of vehicle she could flag down. But there was nothing in sight. Then she came to a low stone wall, on the side of the road—and she knew there must be a house somewhere beyond the wall. She struggled over it and considered hiding behind it, but she could hear the rasping breath and plodding footsteps of her pursuer not too far behind her and he would be sure to look for her behind the wall—it was too obvious a hiding place.

  Then, looking ahead for a moment to get her bearings, she thought she could make out a soft glow of a window in the distance, across a field and through the leafy overhanging branches of scattered trees.

  In the dark, stumbling over boulders and dead branches and gnarled roots, she ran toward the lighted window across the field.

  She came to a shed first, at the edge of a dirt road leading to the house. Beside the shed, illuminated in the glow of a naked light bulb swarming with gnats, stood two gasoline pumps of the type that farmers keep to supply their tractors and other vehicles. Barbara stopped and hid for a moment behind one of the pumps—until she realized that she was too vulnerable under the light from the shed.

  As she turned, the light revealed her attacker coming closer, shuffling toward her across the dark field with its shrubs and trees and overhanging foliage.

  She ran toward the house and began calling for help as loudly as she could yell. But no one came outside. No one came out onto the porch. The house remained silent and cold, except for the glow of light from one solitary window.

  She pressed herself against the side of the house, in a darkened corner, and tried to look into the window, but she could see no signs of life, and apparently no one had heard her screams and no one was coming out to help her.

  Silhouetted in the glow of light from the shed, the man who killed her brother was drawing nearer.

  In panic, she ran to the rear of the house and into the shadows of a small back porch. Her first impulse was to cry again for help, but she silenced herself in favor of trying to stay hidden. She gasped, realized how loud her breathing was, and tried to hold her breath. Silence. Night sounds…and the sound of the wild beating of her heart…did not stop her from hearing her attacker’s running footsteps slowing to a trot…then a slow walk. And finally the footsteps stopped.