Better Off Undead

by Martin H. Greenberg

  She shrugged. “I think I knew that. I’ve had a while to get used to the notion. I just didn’t want to admit that Will had won.’’

  “He didn’t win. He was tried for murder and convicted. His last appeal was rejected last month,’’ David consoled her.

  He had a funny feeling that he shouldn’t be able to hold her hand. Nor should it feel warm in his.

  “Did you read in the paper yesterday that David Stanley killed himself?’’ Marla asked.

  “Such a waste,’’ the woman said, accompanied by the sound of a newspaper fluttering to the table. “The Stanley family must be cursed. First his parents, then his grandfather. Now David. All dead before they should have been.’’

  “Too much money and no reason to work for a living,’’ a man snorted. He sounded officious. The back door banged behind him. “At least now I won’t have to deal with his weekly emails ’advising’ me on how to run my own museum. He thought he knew more about the displayed artifacts than I do.’’

  “At least they found the body yesterday afternoon. I hate to think of the family not having the closure of a proper funeral and a grave to place flowers on,’’ Veronica continued.

  David’s already-cold body grew colder yet. And stiller. He couldn’t hear his own heart beat.

  “I suppose we should issue a statement of condolence and send flowers,’’ the man sighed, as if the duty were onerous. “Work out the proper wording for me, Veronica.’’

  “You know, Marshall, a little compassion would be nice,’’ she retorted.

  “I did not know the man, nor his family. How can I feel anything for them but contempt for ruining each other’s lives and wasting their grandfather’s hard-earned fortune.’’ A door slammed.

  David stared at Keely bleakly. “You must be devastated,’’ she said, squeezing his hand.

  “I don’t know what I feel. If I feel anything. Except that I’m glad to be here in this house. I love this house. I loved the time I lived here. And I think I could love you.’’ He cocked her half a grin.

  She giggled. “You know, if we weren’t both haunting this place, we’d never have met, never have been able to be together. I’m . . . I was fifteen years older than you.’’

  “But now we’re almost the same age. I’m glad you waited around for me.’’

  “You won’t need your grandfather’s treasure any more.’’

  “It’ll still be fun to look. Rearrange things a bit now and them, give the ladies a bit of a scare.’’ He bent and kissed her cheek.

  She stared back at him in wonder. “We can touch!’’ She placed her hand on his chest as if checking for a heartbeat. Then she smiled shyly and kissed his cheek. “I’m looking forward to having a long, long time to learn to love again.’’

  They broke apart and ran back up the stairs hand in hand. The cat scampered after them.

  “Did you hear someone on the stairs?’’ Veronica asked Marla.

  “Yeah, and I thought I heard laughter, too.’’ “That’s new. One more story to add to the ’Haunted Halloween Tour.’ ”

  “Now if she’d just dust half as well as she catalogues donations . . .’’

  FLESH

  Zombies. Revenants. The walking dead. Flesh-eaters. They’ve been a staple of horror movies and novels for generations, staggering and lurching their way through our literature mercilessly for so long, they almost seem real. These five stories show us just how real they can seem in the flesh.

  Nina Kiriki Hoffman chillingly shows us that it’s a matter of perspective that being undead can be better. On the lighter side, every woman’s dream of a perfect man is realized by Fran LaPlaca. Jay Lake twists the zombie tropes into a shockingly plausible tale of what happens when zombies are commonplace. For Devon Monk’s protagonist, there are more zombies than meet the eye. And Robert A. Hoyt spins an engaging yarn about a zombie that could have been titled “My Dinosaur Blue.’’

  MY TEARS HAVE BEEN MY MEAT

  Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  I looked away from my husband’s coffin, past the other mourners and the murmuring priest, and saw the white glimmer of a ghost over my daughter’s grave.

  The day was cloudy and cool, and smelled of stale water and decaying flowers. I held a bouquet of white lilies. Their Easter odor made me feel faint. Mother had pressed them on me to give me something to do with my gloved hands; before she handed me the flowers, I had not been able to stop tugging at the buttons on the cuffs of my black dress. “One more twist and one of those will come off,’’ Mother had muttered, and closed my hands around the lace-printed plastic holding the lilies.

  “We sorrow with our sister, Nicolette,’’ said the priest, “but we hold out hope of heaven for our dear brother Joseph.’’

  I clenched my fist around the flowers, felt the strong stems crunch in my grasp. Joe and the hope of heaven? Not very likely.

  But my daughter, Miranda: she should be in heaven by now. What was haunting her grave, and why?

  It wouldn’t be proper for me to leave my husband’s graveside in the middle of the service and go to my daughter’s. I wanted to save Miranda from whatever might be bothering her, but I had never been able to do that in life; why should anything be different now?

  Mother gripped my shoulder, pressed her thumb into the knotted muscles. She misinterpreted my tension, as usual, I supposed. Despite all evidence to the contrary, she thought Joe and I had had an ideal marriage. She had always liked him, relished the little attentions he paid her. Joe could be thoughtful if he decided it would gain him anything; he had remembered Mother’s birthday, her favorite cologne, her taste in flowers and colors. Mother was the one who had made all the funeral arrangements. I had been too shaken after Joe’s death. Mother told me she and Joe had talked about his wishes at some point, which I thought strange when I had any thoughts at all. She had picked a mortuary I had never heard of.

  Mother probably thought I was grieving for Joe now, when all I wanted was to see him buried so deep he couldn’t come back.

  The gravedigger cast a shovelful of earth on Joe’s coffin. I clenched the flowers tighter.

  “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’’ the priest said.

  If Joe had ever been earth or dust or ashes, I would have been able to stand up to him. He had been flesh and blood and bone, muscular, taller and more powerful than I. Often enough he had proved that to me. Worse, Joe had been mind. He had been able to outwit and disarm me with words, even more than he had hurt me physically. He convinced me he loved me while I watched the bruises color my skin. He convinced me that everyone we knew despised me and only tolerated me because I was inside the edge of Joe’s golden aura. He convinced me that without him, I was nothing. He did it so well that after I poisoned him, I had thought I might fade away.

  I squeezed the lily stems again, taking comfort from their crunch. I was still solid.

  I shifted my shoulders, and my mother’s hand slid off. Joe had followed Miranda into death. Oh, God. Could he hurt her there? Was that why there was a ghost over my daughter’s grave?

  “The Lord be with you,’’ the priest said, and most among the mourners murmured the response, “And with thy spirit.’’ “Let us pray,’’ said the priest.

  I prayed, while the priest led people in the Lord’s Prayer and then talked his way through other prayers about love, God, Jesus, and mercy. I prayed Joe hadn’t found some way to cheat death and come back to haunt me—he’d hinted at such a thing, just before he died.

  Joe had lost his greatest power over me after he pushed Miranda down the stairs. It took me time to realize it, though. I spent ages in a gray world after my daughter died. I didn’t care about anything except visiting my daughter’s grave. Nothing could hurt me enough to punch through the walls I had built, not until I realized, with dull shock, that three months had gone by and the blood hadn’t come.

  I used the home pregnancy test in a restroom at the local college, where I did not attend classes. Joe went throu
gh our trash; I couldn’t chance evidence at home.

  When I knew I had started another child, I woke up. “Would the widow like to cast a flower on the coffin?’’ asked the priest.

  I took one of the broken-stemmed lilies from the bunch and dropped it on Joe’s coffin. He had always hated that scent.

  “It’s all right to cry, Nikki,’’ Mother murmured.

  I couldn’t manage a tear. The gravedigger dropped more dirt into the grave. The priest took my hand, patted it, led me away.

  “Wait.’’ I broke from him and went back to Miranda’s grave. The specter no longer hovered above it. I wanted to leave Miranda a token; I always did when I visited her. I held nothing but the lilies, and I didn’t want to leave her one of those. I left one of my black lace gloves on her grave.

  I glanced around the graveyard to see if Randy, the night watchman, was nearby. He and I had become friends since Miranda died. But of course he wasn’t working now, in daylight; curiosity hadn’t brought him to my husband’s funeral.

  There was a reception afterward, at Joe’s and my house. Mother put the flowers from the service around the living room. I stood in the double doorway and looked into that room, the perfect place for Joe to have his business acquaintances over. The cream carpet was deep and nubbly. I had had it Scotchgarded while Joe was away from home. He would have been horrified that anything shielded his treasures from him, so I hadn’t told him. There was a sculpture in one corner he had paid twenty-five thousand dollars for, a lumpy bronze pillar that reminded me of a fat woman wrapped in a metal cocoon. The couches were slim on padding, long on pale woods and shimmery off-white upholstery. The bleached coffee tables’ legs tapered to slender points. You couldn’t put your feet up on any of this furniture. It seemed designed to break under pressure.

  Mixed with all this cool-colored distance, the various flower arrangements looked overblown and distasteful, though most of them were pale or pastel, too.

  How Joe would have hated it.

  Mother had set up a buffet—a coffee urn, an array of white porcelain teacups and saucers, coffee whitener and artificial sweetener, and three plates of skinny, unadorned cookies. Not many of the mourners partook.

  Joe’s mother and father, shadow shapes at the graveside service, came to me. I had left the lilies in the limousine; I found my bare hand tugging at the button on my opposite cuff as I strove to retrieve the comforting distance I’d maintained most of the day.

  Grace, Joe’s thin, wispy mother, patted my arm, her features crumpled like paper, her eyes leaking plentiful tears. Rudy, Joe’s father, patted my shoulder. He was a big bluff man, eaten away with age. Every time he lifted a hand, Grace flinched.

  “Nicolette, you’re welcome to live with us,’’ Grace said. She stopped patting my forearm and gripped it. Her fingers dug into my flesh like talons.

  “That’s right, honey. You just let everything go and come on home with us. We’ll take care of you,’’ said Rudy. He stopped patting my shoulder and rubbed it instead, his big hand moving in small circles. His breath smelled of soured coffee.

  “Nicolette will be fine,’’ Mother said. She drew me out of the clutches of Rudy and Grace, settled her arm around my waist. “I’ll stay here with her as long as she needs me.’’

  “Is that what you want, honey?’’ Rudy asked.

  I nodded, though it wasn’t remotely what I wanted. What I really wanted was to burn down the house and everything in it, collect all the money I was owed—Joe’s life insurance, homeowner’s, everything. Then I would change my name and move somewhere else. I would hate to leave Miranda’s grave, but to save the new child, I would move to where no one knew me. Nicolette, Joe’s shadow wife, could die; I would give birth to a new self, one who could be a strong, protective mother. Child and I could live someplace warm, where there were colors.

  For now, having Mother around was much easier than dealing with Grace and Rudy.

  Rudy closed his hand on my shoulder, shook me. He didn’t manage to shake me loose of Mother’s embrace. “You sure, doll?’’

  I nodded.

  “Well, all right.’’ Rudy’s fingers pinched my shoulder muscles tight against the bone. I would have a bruise tomorrow. “But anytime you need any little thing, doll, you call us. Grace and I feel like you’re our responsibility.’’

  Finally he let go. I leaned against Mother. Grace patted my cheek. At last they left.

  Mother’s arm around my waist felt like a lasso.

  “I never liked that man,’’ she said.

  “Thanks for saving me, Mother.’’

  Her arm tightened, then dropped away. “Well,’’ she said. “Let’s go talk to the people who really loved Joe.’’

  After that, I stood by the door and accepted condolences from Joe’s business acquaintances and poker buddies. I heard murmurs from their women, who whispered to each other, but not too softly. “Not a single tear,’’ one said to another, and, “She didn’t deserve a man like Joe.’’

  I had played bridge with them, barbecued for them and their husbands during the summer, cooked roasts and turkeys and potatoes for them in the winter. All the people Joe invited over so he could store up favors, people he had ordered me to cater to. I had never talked to them about anything real.

  Well, only one. Helena Whittaker. After Miranda died, I had had to talk to someone, and she sat beside me during Miranda’s funeral; her black-gloved hand rested over mine on the pew between us. Joe sat on my other side, his face buried in a white handkerchief. I was surprised later when I found it in the laundry, damp; I tasted it, and found salt. Real tears. During Miranda’s funeral I had been so bowed under the weight of my own grief I had no time for what Joe was feeling. Only the warmth from Helena’s hand had penetrated my shell.

  Later, Helena found me in the restroom of the funeral home. I had cried. She laid a handkerchief over her shoulder and put her arms around me, let me sob, listened to my wails of “why?’’ When I was exhausted and had run out of tears, she carefully folded up the tear-soaked handkerchief and stowed it in her coat pocket. We left the restroom together. She stood beside me as I faced Joe. I reached for the strength she had lent me. Instead, I saw her nod to my husband and turn away.

  As she left the house today, she studied me, her head cocked. Her lips firmed. She shook her head, brushed my hand, and slipped out the door, her huge and befuddled husband stumbling down the steps in her wake.

  The others left, couple by couple.

  “You should get some sleep,’’ Mother said.

  I let her push me upstairs. She drew a warm bath for me—the first time she had done that in an age—and pulled my clothes off, gently. I felt boneless, passive. She settled me in the water, then brought me a mug of warm milk. “Drink this,’’ she said. “It’ll help you sleep.’’

  The milk tasted strange, a little sour, though she had put honey in it. I took one sip and poured the rest into the toilet when she was out of the room. I didn’t flush, because she would have noticed. I just closed the lid.

  Mother bustled about between the bathroom and her guest bedroom. She muttered to herself.

  She looked at the empty milk mug and smiled. “Are you relaxed yet, dear?’’ she asked.

  I closed my eyes. “Yes,’’ I murmured.

  “Well, let’s get you to bed.’’ She helped me stand—and I needed help; I felt limp—dried me off, wrapped me in a robe, and dragged me into the master bedroom, where she had turned down the sheets on the wrong side of the king bed I had shared with Joe.

  “But that’s—’’ I tried to tell her. She pushed me down onto the bed and I thought, why fight it?

  Mother worked the covers over me, then tucked them in so tight I couldn’t move. She kissed me on the forehead and turned out the light. “Rest well.’’

  After the door clicked softly shut, I worked my arms free of the cocoon she had wrapped me in and jerked the covers loose. I so wanted to sleep. I had waited years for a night free of Joe’s p
resence or the menace of his potential presence. But I had to go back to the cemetery and check my daughter’s grave.

  Mother was a light sleeper, and I knew she was listening to make sure I was quiet and controlled.

  I slipped from the bed, stepping carefully on the throw rug Joe kept by his side of the bed. He had hated cold feet. That obsession helped me now by muffling my steps so Mother couldn’t hear. I crept to the closet and pulled out my longest, warmest coat. It covered my nightgown from neck to mid-calf. I grabbed a pair of fleece-lined winter boots, hugged them to my chest as I slipped out the door.

  Down the hall, a line of light striped the floor beside Mother’s room. She had left her door open a crack. To listen for me, I thought, and was surprised at the rush of bitterness that flooded through me.

  I heard murmuring from her room. Was she talking on the phone? But she was speaking so low. Did she actually have a visitor? If she did have a visitor and wanted to keep it secret, she should close her door. I wavered between creeping closer and listening to see whom she was talking to and leaving, but finally I opted for leaving. I had to check with Miranda.

  Three of the stairs would creak if I stepped on them; I knew this from the nights when Joe passed out in front of the television downstairs and I sneaked down to check on him and contemplate covering his head with a pillow. After a few times when he wasn’t passed out enough to ignore me, I figured out how to walk the stairs without alerting anyone to my presence. I used this knowledge a lot after Miranda’s death, when I went to visit her.

  The front door was a problem. It creaked when anyone opened it, even though I had oiled the hinges. Sometimes I thought it wanted to let everyone know how unhappy it was.

  I went to Joe’s study and slid the big window open. Silent. He’d paid a carpenter extra to smooth the window’s glide. He liked things smooth. I was sure he left the front door creaky just to keep track of me.

  I sat on the sill and put my boots on, then dropped to the flower bed below. I wasn’t going to be able to get back in through the window; it was too high off the ground. I had my key in my pocket, but I would probably spend the night on one of the chaises on the patio. I’d done it before.