Frost spilled across the backyard, spreading from the spirit's feet like an unliving thing. Skeletal phantoms and shadowy wraiths rose from its curling depths. Samhain threw aside the shovel and advanced on Kerchack.
Kerchack jumped to his feet, dashed into the house, and slammed the door shut.
"Oh crap."
The Guy didn't raise his head from his paper. "So how did it go?" he asked, as if the thick ice forming on the wall and the rejoicing howls of a thousand ghosts didn't make things rather obvious.
"Huuuuungryyyyyy." The Spook pounded cracks in the ceiling. "Huuuuuuungryyyyyy."
Kerchack glanced out the window. Samhain, a sinister smile across his face, moved toward the house. The gates to the underworld had been thrown wide, and specters poured from the spreading fog.
Cold fingers seized Kerchack by the shoulder and dragged him across the kitchen. Joyce wasn't the only one who could touch him now. Gramps, now recovered, had hold of him too. They threw him against the sink and held him there.
Samhain entered the house. Though his body appeared solid and Kerchack had the sore, bloody jaw to prove it, the King of the Dead passed through the wall like a phantom. He leisurely approached Kerchack, but hesitated and turned toward The Guy, who had set down his paper for probably the first time in fifty years.
"Pardon me?" asked Samhain, "but do I know you?"
"Don't think so." The Guy shrugged.
Samhain tapped a long finger against his rounded chin. "Oh, but you look quite familiar."
The Guy pulled his newspaper up again. "Oh, I get that a lot. Just have one of those faces."
Samhain said, "Well, I just know we've met somewhere. Oh well. Guess it's really not important."
"Guess not," agreed The Guy.
The Attic Spook bayed loudly enough to crack the ice on the walls. Samhain seemed genuinely startled by the sound, but he quickly recovered.
Madness gleamed in Joyce's eyes as she dragged Kerchack before her king. "Let me kill him, master."
Gramps punched Kerchack in the gut. He slumped to the floor, curled into a ball, and gasped for breath. They kicked him a few times.
"Bet'cha wish you'd bought me that big screen now, you stupid little shit."
The Spook's thumping became violent enough to knock chunks of ice and drywall from the ceiling. Samhain's brow furrowed.
The fog filled the kitchen, crawling up the walls. Sprawled on the floor, Kerchack shivered in its icy touch. It wasn't just cold. It was numbing, draining. There were things in it, ghosts and things that weren't quite ghosts that he couldn't describe. They were all around him, caressing his flesh, and he couldn't really feel it. He just knew. From his vantage point, he noticed that while the fog covered the walls and spread across the ceiling, it seemed not to like the spot where the Spook had pounded cracks in the ceiling directly above Samhain's head.
"Shall I kill him now?" asked Joyce.
Samhain brushed her aside. "No, this mortal has given me my kingdom. The least I can do is usher him into its loving embrace myself."
His right arm uncoiled and seized Kerchack by the shoulder. The powerful grip and thorny hand made Kerchack grateful for his numbness. He was pretty sure without it, he would've been screaming his head off.
Samhain flashed his glittering grin. "Now, young master, it is time to go the way of all moldering flesh."
Kerchack hadn't meant to end the world, but somebody was bound to do it eventually. In his final moments, he tried to find comfort in that.
The ceiling exploded, and a shimmering ectoplasmic something (kind of like a huge clawed hand, but not really very much like it at all) reached into the kitchen. It swiped at Samhain, who moved back just in time to avoid being grabbed.
Samhain's eyes, so full of malevolence moments ago, were now wide with some new emotion.
Terror.
Apparently, some fathomless horrors were more fathomless than others.
The Spook tore away more of the ceiling. Several wispy tentacles snaked toward Samhain, who wasted no time dropping Kerchack and fleeing through the wall. The Spook retreated into the attic, and Kerchack thought it might've given up the chase. But it roared, and he heard a terrible crash as the thing smashed through the attic wall in pursuit of its meal.
Kerchack, Gramps, and Joyce, all went to the window to see what was happening in the backyard. By the time they got there though, it was already nearly over.
The Spook was a hulking thing of bubbling liquid ectoplasm. It was big. So big that Kerchack had a hard time imagining it could fit in the attic. But he supposed it was usually immaterial, so that wasn't a problem. But Samhain's presence must've done something to it, awaken long dormant appetites. It held him in one massive hand as Samhain struggled to free himself. The Spook didn't really have a throat as far as Kerchack could tell so it just shoved Samhain into itself.
It was transparent, and the entire digestive process was visible. It didn't take long, just a few seconds to dissolve Samhain into nothing.
The Spook turned around, though it was difficult to tell its front from its back. It had a lot of eyes scattered all over the lumpish thing that was its head. Each was a window to another world, another place that was beyond such pale things as mortal flesh and spectral ectoplasm. Kerchack felt his mind starting to fall into them, but he couldn't look away. Fortunately, the Spook slipped like a shadow into the air and back into the attic a second before madness swallowed Kerchack whole.
The lingering fog dwindled, and the numbness in him faded, reminding him of the bloody gashes on his face and shoulder. He was never so glad to feel pain in his life.
"Oh, Kerchack." Joyce hugged him. "Oh my goodness, I nearly killed you."
"Ouch."
She released him. She was herself again. There were still a few splotches on her ectoplasm, but these were fading fast.
"You alright, boy?" asked Gramps.
Kerchack shrugged, and it hurt like a son of a bitch. "I'm okay." He wasn't really sure though. He might've been bleeding to death, but he didn't feel like peeling his shirt away to check right now. There was one more thing to do.
He went into the backyard and picked up the shovel. Then he went to the assembly of ghosts at the edge of the property line. Shock and confusion covered their faces, but they didn't seem nearly as dangerous now.
"Okay, folks, nothing to see!" shouted Kerchack. "Go onto your homes or graves or whatever! Sorry for the inconvenience."
The phantom army began to disperse. Most just faded away, back to the other side where they belonged. The others headed toward their old familiar haunts.
Kerchack studied the hole in his house and knew he would never get it fixed. Maybe he'd just throw some plywood up there to let the Spook have some privacy. He went into the house and had a seat at the table. Gramps was already back in his chair, watching television. Joyce had gotten some antiseptic and bandages and started tending Kerchack's shoulder. Tederick, whistling and occasionally reciting a line from one of the dirty limericks Gramps had taught the bird, sat atop the refrigerator.
The fog had faded, taking the chill and the ice with it. Except for his wounds and the hole in the ceiling, everything was back to normal.
The Attic Spook moaned, but there was a contented quality to the sound for once.
"You got lucky," said The Guy.
"It's better to be lucky than good," replied Kerchack, although he wasn't sure he believed that. But the world wasn't destroyed, so he wasn't complaining.
Joyce had just finished bandaging Kerchack's shoulder and putting band-aids on the cuts on his cheek when there was a knock on the door. It was Sheriff Kopp. He glanced at the shovel that Kerchack held (though he hadn't realized he was still carrying it).
"I think we got some things to talk over, son."
Kerchack tried to play things cool, but Denise couldn't help but notice his wounded face when she climbed into the car. "Jeezus, honey, what happened to you?"
He smiled despite himself.
It hurt because of the gashes on his cheek, but he was just so happy to hear her call him 'honey'.
"Oh, it's no big thing," he said. "Cut myself shaving."
She flashed him a skeptical look but leaned in and gave him a hug. He yelped.
"How did you — "
"Shaving," he said, then quickly segued before she could recover. "Ready for the movie?"
"Sure. And I was thinking afterward we could go back to your place and try to use the shovel again."
Kerchack started the car and pulled onto the dirt road leading to Rowling. "Sorry, but the Sheriff confiscated it."
"He can't do that."
"We're better off without it," said Kerchack. "Trust me."
"It's bullshit. First, they take your shovels. Then, they take your guns. Then, the next thing you know, we're all communists."
"Yeah, well, what are you gonna do?" he said.
The next five minutes passed in silence as Denise silently fumed.
"Denise, uh, baby." The words sounded strange attached to his voice. "I know this is kinda dumb question, and maybe I shouldn't ask it, but you didn't like me just because of the shovel, right?"
She laughed. "Damn, 'Chack, you are one insecure guy. C'mon, I'm not going to sleep with a guy just because he has a magic shovel. I mean, what kind of girl do you think I am? I let Gary Hinkley feel me up a few times because he had that sweet convertible, but it was strictly under the shirt, over the bra."
She kissed him on the cheek. "I think I really like you, 'Chack."
He grinned, not even noticing the pain.
The Cranky Dead Page 5