by Gina Ranalli
Coscom Entertainment
winnipeg
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual places, events or persons living or dead or living dead is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-926712-26-0
Praise the Dead is Copyright © 2010 by Gina Ranalli. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce in whole or in part in any form or medium.
Published by Coscom Entertainment
www.coscomentertainment.com
eBook Edition
Cover Art by Gary McCluskey
For the good guys.
Chapter One
He crushed the black beetle beneath his bare heel and bent over to examine his handiwork. The insect’s guts were white and disgusting and made him laugh good and hard. He sat down on the sidewalk and prodded the dead insect with his small index finger. The creature didn’t move of its own accord; the boy frowned, uncertain why this would be.
It seemed wrong to him somehow.
Little brow creased, the boy picked the bug off the pavement and rested the tiny corpse in the cup of his right hand. He placed his left hand over the right, hiding the beetle, and closed his eyes for a moment, a smile spreading across his face.
Seconds passed.
In his hand, the beetle twitched, tickling the boy’s palm. More time ticked by and then the insect was alive again, scurrying out from between the boy’s fingers and falling back to the sidewalk to limp away, its body still hobbled and broken, gone back to its mysterious beetle business.
The boy opened his blue eyes to the bright afternoon sunshine. He grinned and eventually the grin became a giggle, which in turn became a laugh.
He had discovered a new game and he looked around, anxious to play it again.
Much to his dismay, he couldn’t see anything else to play with, but then he remembered the fish that lazily swam around in the tank his mother kept in the corner of the living room and he was happy again. He clumsily got to his feet and headed back inside.
The boy was four years old.
Chapter Two
In another part of the country, a different child of the same age—this one a girl—was in the middle of a conversation with a crow. She sat at a picnic table in the backyard of her grandparents’ house, her legs dangling two feet above the pine needles blanketing the ground. The crow cawed from the lowest branch of a nearby spruce.
The girl tilted her head quizzically, dark eyes raised to the bird. “Don’t say that,” she said. A moment later, she added, “Because it’s scary.”
Listening to the cawing crow, her nose wrinkled in distaste and she shook her head. “That stuff is make-believe.”
“Lindy!” the girl’s mother called from inside the house. Amelia James stood in the doorway, her figure blurred by the screens, drying her hands on a dishtowel. “Why don’t you come inside and play with your cousins? It’s getting cloudy out there. Aren’t you cold?”
“No,” Lindy replied, though in truth she was getting slightly chilled. A breeze ruffled her pixie hair and goosebumps sprang up on her naked forearms.
“Well, if it starts to rain, I want you in here pronto. Understand?”
“Okay.”
Her mother disappeared back into the dimness of the kitchen and Lindy was almost sorry to see her go. She looked back up at the crow on its branch. The bird had remained silent throughout the girl’s exchange with her mother. Now, it squawked loudly.
Lindy coughed, but didn’t reply to the bird. Like the sky, her thoughts were filling up with dark clouds.
The bird continued to talk to her until Lindy shook her head. “No!” she almost shouted, then cast a worried glance in the direction of the backdoor. She waited to see if anyone in the house had heard her, but if they had, they weren’t coming to investigate. Lowering her voice, she told the crow, “I can’t do anything about that.”
Cawing its reply, the crow bobbed its head up and down, its black bead eyes trained on Lindy.
“Maybe when I’m grown-up,” she agreed. “But that’s not for a long time.”
She coughed again and felt the first twinges of a headache, but knew better than to mention it to her mother or father. She sometimes got headaches during or after a conversation like the one she was currently having, but when she’d complained to her parents, her father had laughed at her. He assumed she was making it up, parroting something she’d heard her mother say at some point.
“Kids don’t get headaches,” he’d say with a bit of a chuckle. “What would you get a headache for? You have nothing to worry about.”
But, Lindy did get them. She’d just learned to keep it to herself after a while.
She looked away from the crow, studying the red-and-white-checked cloth that draped the picnic table. “When I’m grown-up,” she said again. “If I still need to.”
Even to the untrained ear, it was obvious the crow was protesting her statement.
Lindy’s heartbeat increased. The bird made her nervous.
“Gonna rain,” she said and abruptly rose from the table and raced for the backdoor, giving one final glance over her shoulder at the crow. Still on its branch, the crow watched the fleeing child, ruffled its sleek blue-black feathers and lifted its gaze to the crackling gray sky.
Despite her wishes, Lindy clearly heard the bird agree.
Chapter Three
Rain pelted the window above Andrew Perry’s bed as he lay on his back, tossing a Nerf football to himself and thinking back on the day’s events.
He’d been playing his game with the insects in the postage stamp-sized lot behind the apartment building where he lived with his mom when an orange tabby had strolled by, tail swishing lazily back and forth.
Andrew recognized the cat as belonging to a neighbor from across the hall. Its name was Oscar and Oscar was definitely not supposed to be outside. He was only allowed to go as far as the hallway, but obviously someone hadn’t known that.
Or maybe Oscar had been clever and just escaped.
Andrew smiled, crouched down in the dust with an ever-growing crippled army of spiders, ants, worms and beetles at his feet. He said, “C’mere Oscar,” and held his small dirty hand out to the kitty.
Oscar responded immediately. He recognized Andrew and sauntered over, bumping his soft head into the boy’s outstretched hand.
When Andrew finished crunching the cat’s spine with a shovel he could barely lift, he passed his healing hands over the wreckage of the body and the animal stirred and eventually walked again, albeit with a crooked awkward gait, which was good; nevertheless, Andrew was frustrated. He wanted the animal to be exactly how it used to be: perfect in every way.
Instead, the tabby drunkenly stumbled around and Andrew could do nothing about it except sullenly sit in the dirt and listen to the woman who screamed and burst into hysterical sobs when she came upon her beloved Oscar in the backyard, assuming the cat had either fallen from a great height or been hit by a vehicle. She barely glanced at Andrew as she scooped up her pet and ran to the front of the building shrieking her husband’s name over and over.
Andrew ignored her and ground his teeth, furious with himself, wondering why he couldn’t master what seemed to be such a simple skill.
He waited until everything was calm out on the street before kicking dirt onto the bloodied shovel, then he went back to the front of the brownstone and climbed slowly to the top of the stoop where his mom sat with her boyfriend, Walter. Both were smoking cigarettes and drinking beer from frosty cans.
“Hey, Champ!” Walter said and ruffled Andrew’s blond hair. “What’s going on?”
Andrew hated when Walter called him Champ. He
also hated it when Walter ruffled his hair. Come to think of it, there wasn’t a whole lot that Walter did that he liked at all.
“Nothing.” Inside, Andrew was grumpy, but he smiled anyway as he sat down on the step below the adults.
“You didn’t hear that commotion?” his mom, Julie, asked.
Andrew’s smile broadened. “What commotion?”
Julie turned her face away and muttered something about small favors.
“Wasn’t nothing,” Walter said. “Cat next door had a little accident, is all. But he’s off to get fixed up right now and he’ll be fine before suppertime.”
“Accident?” Andrew frowned, feigning concern.
“It was nothing,” Julie said. “Just like Walter told you. No biggie.”
“The kitty will be okay though, right, Mom?”
“Yep. Just a . . . a scratch. Just like you got that time you fell off the monkey bars at the park. You remember that?”
“Yeah. I needed stitches. Right here.” Andrew felt along his left eyebrow, showing where his head had been split.
“You were brave, too,” Julie said. “Barely cried and it didn’t even leave a scar.”
“Nope,” Andrew proudly agreed. “Bleeding stopped and . . .” He trailed off, uncertain of how to continue. His memory of the incident was foggy at best, but he’d heard his mother tell the story a hundred times.
“Almost right away,” Julie confirmed. “Doc sewed it up because he didn’t want it to open again.” She turned her attention to Walter and said, “It was something else. His head had an inch-wide gash in it, but the blood just . . . stopped coming. Less than a week later, it was totally healed and—see for yourself—no scar at all.”
Walter took a gulp of beer and nodded like he was impressed, but Andrew knew that he wasn’t. He didn’t care a single lick about Andrew. He was only being nice because Andrew’s mom would be mad if he wasn’t.
The day had grown dark with gray clouds shortly after and the three of them went back inside to have some lunch, and by the time he’d finished eating, the rain was coming down in buckets so Andrew just went to his bedroom to amuse himself and think about Oscar.
There had to be a way to bring them back from the dead in perfect shape, didn’t there? What would be the point if they just came back all screwed up and messy-looking?
Andrew continued to toss his ball high into the air and contemplate this problem.
He was a month away from his sixth birthday.
Chapter Four
Sometimes Lindy prayed to die.
She shivered beneath the wool blanket, pulling it up so it covered half her face, leaving only her eyes and the top of her head exposed.
Home sick from school again, she was on the couch in the living room, the TV’s remote close at hand, though she’d turned the TV off a few minutes prior.
Outside, the birds were at it once more.
She tried not to listen, tried to tell herself she wasn’t hearing anything more than everyday birdsong—the same thing every other person on the planet heard every day, even if they didn’t notice it—but that wasn’t the truth.
What Lindy heard was more warnings and the more she tried to tune it out, the more frantic the birds became.
Nauseous, she coughed and shivered again.
“Go away,” she whispered. “Please. You’re going to kill me.”
But, of course, the birds didn’t go away. They never did. Lindy was beginning to suspect the creatures were trying to kill her.
With a pale, frail hand, she reached out from under the blanket and switched the television on again. She cranked the volume until the actors on the soap opera were shouting their sweet nothings to each other.
A moment later, her mother hurried into the room and snatched the remote control from her hand and lowered the volume.
“Not so loud,” she scolded. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”
Lindy’s only reply was a moan of misery.
Amelia stood looking down at her daughter, an expression of concern on her face. She touched the back of her hand to Lindy’s forehead.
“You’re burning up,” she said. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to get the thermometer from the bathroom.”
The instant her mother was gone from the room, Lindy reached up to cover her ears with her hands. “Shut up!” she pleaded with the birds. Hot tears began to roll down her face as her stomach churned again. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
But maybe they couldn’t. Maybe they were as helpless to stop with their doomsday messages as she was to listen to them.
This realization wasn’t much comfort to a six-year–old child, however, and Lindy continued to weep softly until her mother returned and stuck the thermometer in her mouth.
“Under the tongue,” her mom reminded her, as if Lindy could ever forget. Sometimes it seemed she was sick more often than she was well. “Don’t cry,” Amelia said gently, stroking Lindy’s wispy hair. “You’ll feel better soon.”
When the thermometer beeped, Amelia removed it and studied the numbers. “102.” She let out a long, world-weary sigh. “Time for a wet wash cloth.”
She started to leave but stopped when Lindy croaked out a soft, “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Please make them stop.”
Amelia hesitated. “Make who stop, honey?”
“Them!” Lindy pointed to the windows. “The birds.”
Frowning, Amelia said, “The . . . what? The birds?”
“They never stop.” Lindy burst into full-force tears, covering her ears once more. “They just never stop!”
The woman stared at her daughter, seemingly uncertain of how to respond. A moment passed and then she went to the window, pushing aside the lace curtains to peer into the yard. What she saw caused her to gasp in surprise.
A legion of birds—mostly crows—sat on the back fence, in the trees and on the grass, all squawking and chirping. Lindy said, “See? They never leave!”
“What the . . .” Amelia looked back at her daughter. “You don’t like the sound of the birds?” Lindy shook her head quickly, almost a reflex by now.
Turning back to the window, Amelia muttered, “Weird. Why are there so many?”
But without knowing exactly why she was doing it, a minute later Amelia was in the backyard shooing the birds away and Lindy finally stopped crying and was able to lower her hands. Almost immediately she began to feel a little better. The headache subsided and with it, the upset stomach.
By the time her mother returned with a wet wash cloth, the little girl suspected her fever was also on the decline, but she didn’t mention it to her mom. Because she knew that, like the birds, all of her symptoms would return again, most likely sooner than later.
Chapter Five
By the age of nine, Andrew had already learned the power he possessed was called “The Power of Resurrection,” and though he was intensely proud of this special ability—recognizing that no one else had it—he knew it was very important that he kept it to himself.
The way people tended to scream and cry when they came across one of his resurrected animals was enough to tell him he would be in a world of trouble if anyone—even his own mother—knew he’d been the one to not only kill the animal but to bring it back as . . . something else.
But as the years went on, Andrew grew more and more frustrated at his inability to return the animals to their former selves, and because he had no other outlet for his anger, he took it out on the innocent.
Birds, rodents, cats—and on occasion even dogs—were mutilated almost beyond recognition but still walked as though alive. It became a game to Andrew to see how much damage he could inflict and still raise the previously dead.
The most interesting fact he discovered in what he considered his “experiments” was that the head could not be separated from the body or even too severely damaged. Beyond that, he could do anything to the creatures. Even if they couldn’t actually walk when
he was done with them, they at least attempted to. They moved.
By this time, his mother had married Walter and the three of them moved into a house on the outskirts of the city. Plenty of animals for Andrew to play with and, though he initially wanted to commandeer the basement for his experiments, he had to be satisfied with what had once been a small shed in the woods behind his elementary school—now a decrepit, crumbling structure with an entire wall missing and a sagging, moss-covered roof.
The younger kids were too afraid of the place to go near it, spreading the rumors of it being haunted from one year to the next, but occasionally teenagers would find their way to it, usually looking for a place to drink or have a make-out session.
Working mostly during the daylight hours, Andrew didn’t worry about being interrupted and when the day came that he actually was, he had plenty of warning. The boy and girl made enough noise stumbling through the woods, laughing and talking.
Andrew quickly assessed his options, looking around at the bloody tools and animal parts. A quick glance down at his body told him he had very little gore on him, but not enough to be noticed unless one was really looking. Good thing, too, because there was no way he’d have enough to time to strip and dress in the other set of clothes he carried in his backpack to ensure his mom wouldn’t discover his bloodied garments. He’d learned to do his own laundry at a very early age and spent most of his chore money on new clothing. His mother, always preoccupied, was never the wiser.