The Living and the Dead

by Greg F. Gifune

  The voice possessed a nearly feminine tone but seemed more like a man attempting to sound like a woman. Deep, drawn out and slurred, it was reminiscent of a recording played back too slowly. He didn’t recognize the voice, but knew he’d heard it. It was in his head, like a thought, like his own thoughts set to someone else’s voice. We know you can hear us.

  Perry put the video recorder aside on the couch and ran his hands up over his face, across his eyes and onto his forehead, pushing his hair back. Perspiration collected between his fingers. With a sigh, he held his hands out in front of him and studied the tattoos on either forearm. He remembered when he’d gotten them. He remembered the small half-moon tattoo Lennox had on her lower back too, and wondered if he’d ever touch it again.

  Perry…

  He snatched up the recorder, knowing what he had to do. It all made sense now. The answers had been in the video footage, right there in front of him the entire time. It was speaking to him, like all great directors, telling him this was his time, his chance to be somebody. The things he’d already captured on his recorder would make him famous, and before the night was through he’d have even more. He’d be the most celebrated filmmaker on the planet, stalked by paparazzi, featured on all the hot TV shows, an instant darling of celebrities and the rich and famous. He’d be one of them. He’d be a star. Wasn’t that what life was all about? Isn’t that all that really mattered?

  “Be somebody,” his father had told him. “Don’t matter who.”

  Perry rose from the couch and crept toward the front door, looking back over his shoulder into the kitchen. The candle there was still burning, illuminating enough of the room to show Lana sitting at the kitchen table, one elbow propped on the table, her cheek resting in her hand.

  A few feet away, Duck was sitting on the floor, his back to the cupboards beneath the sink and his head bowed in sleep.

  Walking lightly, so as to minimize the squeak of his sandals against the floor, Perry unlocked the door. Video camera in one hand, he pulled open the door. It pulled back, as if the night had tried to snatch it away from him, then gave free and opened wide.

  A wall of darkness and fog greeted him, accompanied by a surge of wind that sprayed cool rainwater across his face and neck. The fog was so thick he couldn’t see more than a few feet, but he aimed the recorder out in front of him and stepped through the doorway anyway. Slowly, he panned the camera back and forth until he’d located a small tear in the fog through which he could make out the nearby forest. Branches writhed in the wind, and a loud cracking noise echoed through the forest, the sound of trees being felled now and then by the storm. But he could see little else. As he ventured further, rain spattered the lens, beading up in several places and blurring the video screen. Adrenalin surging and delusions of grandeur rising, he wiped the rain free and panned across the yard.

  Something separated from the darkness above him, moving stealthily through the fog. Had the forest been closer, he could’ve imagined it was only a large tree branch bent downward by the wind. But it moved in complete silence, with fluid, controlled motion, much the way an arm might. An arm with something attached to the back of it, something large and pliable, alive.

  Like a great wing.

  Perry looked up, seeing it not through the video screen but with his own eyes. Mouth open, a gasp of air snagged in his throat as he tried to speak.

  He’d never believed in God, but called for Him just the same. More a shriek, really, a guttural, primal, helpless screech that bellowed above the storm as Perry dropped the recorder and, disoriented in the rain, ran in the first direction his legs carried him.

  Lights suddenly appeared—bright lights cutting the darkness—who was it? What was it? In his panic, terror and confusion he ran on, only knowing he was running away from those lights and whatever had been standing next to him in the dark. Veering off, the world tilting and spinning, he charged wildly through the rain and into the forest, paying no attention to the wind and sounds of something large ripping free and falling, crackling as it went, breaking everything in its path as it toppled toward him, a massive dark mass moving through the night and coming down on top of him with tremendous force.

  It wasn’t until it had smashed him into the soft earth that he realized he’d been pinned beneath a fallen tree. It hit him with such violence, Perry thought it had killed him.

  And it had.

  His mind told him to move but his body refused. He was trapped—crushed beneath the unimaginable weight of it—and yet there was no pain. Even the fear was gone. Instead, he felt only a bizarre need to submit to the same darkness that had until then frightened him so.

  And with it came peace, surrender.

  The last thought to cross Perry’s mind was a memory of that cowboy getup his father had given him for his sixth birthday. And those little white plastic bullets.

  He may have smiled as he lay dying, he couldn’t be sure.

  Hidden in the fog, the dead watched silently, glimpsing Perry’s last breath and awaiting his induction to their fold.

  Behind them, the faint outline of the creature stood in silent vigil, eyes burning fire-red through the night.

  28

  Funny thing, memory. Can’t always count on it, but it’s all anyone’s got. Problem is the thread separating the genuine from the imagined is so slender there’s hardly any difference between the two, and when it’s all said and done one is of no less practical use than the other. In fact the most dominate and infusive recollections are those that reside in the breach between reality and fantasy, which says an awful lot about the human condition. Maybe it’s the way the mind works, automatically filling in empty spaces and replacing horrible truths with something more palatable. After all, a story altered even slightly from its origin, told again and again, eventually becomes fact even to the teller, the very person who knows for sure it’s anything but. Could be an instinctual survival mechanism, might really be that simple, a means by which everyone gets through the day and night intact. Or maybe it’s exactly what it appears to be.

  A wish. A fantasy. A lie.

  Through the mist clouding her mind, harboring equal parts truth and dream, Lana watched the scenario emerge and take shape. Their house…the living room…quiet and dark, Jonathan sitting on the edge of the easy chair he always collapsed into after work, bathed in the glow of moonlight, trying to make sense of what she’d done.

  Their history together crystallized into a slideshow of memories gliding past her mind’s eye. Accurate, counterfeit or somewhere in the middle, it mattered little just then. Meeting…dating…their marriage and then...a blur of disjointed images, a slothful parade of uneventful monotony, a profusion of unremarkable years, an entirely forgettable life thereafter. A waste, such a horrible, shameful waste of precious time, the pictures slid through her head and were gone, worthless cargo ejected from a mind already in the midst of an irreversible downward spiral. Yet when she forced herself to look at the vision of this man she’d known and been with for so long, to see him, Lana realized he didn’t look much different at forty than he had when they’d first met, this tall and dashing salesman with chestnut hair, hazel eyes, square-jawed good-looks and a physique he kept lean and strong from hours of tennis and swimming in the summer months and jogging on his treadmill during the winter. Despite his outward appearance her husband possessed a deep-seated vulnerability; emotional weakness, in words less kind. Lana had experienced it before of course, but never like this.

  “I’m sorry,” she heard her voice say. “Maybe without me you’ll have a chance at real happiness.”

  That’s it, she thought, a coward to the very end, make yourself feel better by claiming this is actually for his own good.

  Jonathan looked up, as if a loud noise had startled him.

  Lana felt overwhelming guilt. Her husband was far from perfect, and often took her for granted as much as she did him, but she’d stolen everything from him, figuratively and literally. The look on his face su
mmoned something in her she’d previously believed long dead.

  “Lana?” he asked in an unusually strained voice. “Are you there?”

  As he realized she wasn’t, he deflated, dying a little more right then.

  “I have to go home,” she heard herself say, her voice echoing as if she were speaking from the end of a long hallway. “I—I need to go home.”

  The image of her husband was devoured by a rolling cloud of mist. As it drifted past, she felt something against her neck. A mouth…lips…cracked and dry…a warm and moist tongue sliding, delicately kissing her bare flesh just before the mist cleared and she found herself exactly where she’d been when her eyes had closed: at the kitchen table in Duck’s cottage. But now she was alone.

  No, not alone…the only person there.

  Sam Melton had joined her, standing next to her chair and bent at the waist so he and Lana could be face-to-face. He wore the same flimsy white hospital gown he’d had on the night he died, but now it was filthy and pungent and smelled musty, like a wet grave. He stared at her with dead and empty eyes ringed in black, his face emaciated, the rotted flesh peeled and dangling, his tongue slowly returning to his mouth, slinking between chapped, bloodless lips.

  Suffocating terror pinned her to the chair. She tried to speak his name but the words died in her throat.

  Sam smiled ghoulishly and vomited a thick black substance that ran out over his bottom lip and chin, coating them like motor oil. Blood—deep, dark blood teeming with maggots—splashed her, spattered her neck and sprayed up into her face, painting her flesh and filling her nostrils with its fetid stench.

  She kicked and punched at him frantically as her mouth opened in horror, setting free a piercing scream of shock and revulsion.

  “Holy shit!”

  Duck—it was Duck, across from her sitting on the floor beneath the sink—scrambling to his feet and lunging for the shotgun on the counter.

  “Did you hear that scream?” he asked, weapon in hand as he stumbled past her. “Asleep, were we—did we fall asleep?”

  “Help me!” Lana attempted to shout, but the words emerged as mere whispers.

  “The door’s open!” Duck called. “Somebody opened the fucking door!”

  Lana rolled from the chair and stumbled about the kitchen, pawing at her neck and chest in an off-balance pirouette reminiscent of someone attempting to swat away a swarm of bees. But her hands came back free of bile.

  There was no blood, no Sam Melton, and the scream that had awakened them had not been her own.

  Head still spinning, she grabbed the 9mm from the table, clutching it hard as she could with both shaking hands, and followed Duck to the other room.

  The front door to the cottage was open. Through the darkness beyond it, the rain fell harder than ever, but the fog had thinned somewhat.

  In the mud just outside the doorway, lay Perry’s camcorder, illuminated by a pair of headlights from a car parked at the very edge of the property.

  * * *

  They’d both seen the man run from the cottage. Off-balance and moving with such terrified velocity, he’d nearly fallen several times before he’d reached the forest. There was no question he was running from something as if it were right on his heels, but neither saw anything but the stormy darkness.

  “Who is that?” Anita asked in a voice laced with fear.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Whatever’s going on in there can’t be good. That kid was running like he had a pack of wild dogs nipping at his heels. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Stay here.” Chris pushed the door open. “I’m going to check it out.”

  “Don’t leave me out here alone!”

  “Lock the doors and sit tight. If I’m not back in five minutes, go.”

  Before she could object again Chris slipped into the night and ran for the cottage, the storm raging in his ears. He looked to his right at the forest for some glimpse of the running man but saw nothing. Instead, the horrific sounds of a large tree tearing loose and toppling mere feet from him exploded through the night. Instinctively, Chris raised his hands above his head and cowered, but as he sunk into a crouch he saw the tree moving through the darkness several feet away in the forest. He also saw the young man collapse beneath it.

  Heart hammering his chest, he changed directions and ran for the forest. He knew the man was seriously injured or perhaps even dead, but if there was any chance he could help him he had to at least try.

  * * *

  Having just watched Perry’s final moments, Duck slammed the video recorder down on the table and paced about the kitchen in awkward sloping strides, a caged animal weary with fear and consumed with rage at having been confined in the first place. Shotgun in hand, he shook his head, as if to clear it a moment, then looked to the floor and mumbled something unintelligible.

  Lana, who had followed him into the kitchen once he’d grabbed the recorder and she’d secured the door, remained quiet.

  “Is he dead?” Lennox asked from the doorway, her tone calm and face expressionless, the combat knife held in both hands.

  She already knew the answer, they’d all heard the horrifying scream, but Duck gave a vague nod anyway. “Camera shows something moving in the night next to him and then he screams and runs for the woods.”

  Lennox started for the recorder.

  “Don’t.” Duck cut her off. “You don’t want to see that.”

  “Why did he go outside?” Lana asked. “Why would he do that?”

  “What’re they waiting for?” Duck growled, looking out the window at the headlights. The car had been there several minutes but hadn’t moved.

  “My guess is they’re sizing us up too,” Lana said.

  “That thing,” Lennox said. “It’s toying with us.”

  “Locked doors aren’t going to keep any of this out.” Lana placed the 9mm on the table and put her hands on either side of her face. “Sam was here. Here, in this kitchen.”

  “Did we fall asleep?” Duck asked. “All I remember is that scream and—”

  “Did you hear a word I said? He was here. Sam Melton. Not out in the woods or looking through a window, but here, right fucking here!”

  “All right, OK, I hear you.” Duck nearly touched her shoulder but pulled away at the last second. “We just—we can’t panic—we have to hold it together.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Lennox asked flatly. “He’s really gone.”

  “I don’t know for sure, Lennox but…” Duck shrugged even though she was no longer looking at him. “Whatever happened to him out there is...”

  “Shouldn’t we go look for him?”

  “I called for him but there was no answer. Between all that’s going on out there and whoever these people are in the car, we need to be careful. Holing up here may be our only chance. It ain’t much, God knows, but at least this place can be defended somewhat.”

  A sudden and violent knocking on the front door shook the entire cottage.

  Lana grabbed the 9mm and chambered a round. “Looks like your theory’s about to be tested.”

  29

  Lennox hung back, watching with what had quickly become a rather disturbing calm, as Lana took up position to the side of the front door, 9mm at the ready and looking like something out a police reality show. Duck, again using the shotgun, pulled back the curtain and looked out at the night.

  Two people—a man and woman—stood huddled just outside in the rain, the man pounding on the door with one hand, his other arm holding the woman tight. Both appeared terrified.

  Duck squinted and leaned closer to the window but still couldn’t make out anything more. Racking the shotgun, he stepped back and nodded to Lana. “On three, open it.”

  “But we don’t—”

  “Just do it.” He nodded his head once…twice…three times.

  Lana yanked the door open and leveled the 9mm at them as Duck moved closer and did the same with the
shotgun.

  “Who are you?” Duck screamed.

  Both the man and woman raised their hands.

  “Answer me goddamn it!”

  “It’s Christopher Dempsey!” the man yelled back. “Duck, it’s me, Abel’s son, Chris!”

  Duck pawed perspiration from his eyes then quickly returned his hand to the shotgun. “Chris…” His racing mind made sense of what the man had said. “It’s OK,” he said, lowering the shotgun and waving them in. “I know them.”

  The moment they’d crossed the threshold Lana slammed and locked the door, the 9mm now down by her side.

  “Chris, sorry I didn’t recognize you. Been a while and…well…all hell’s been breaking loose around here tonight.”

  Chris and Anita stood dripping just inside the doorway. “Yes,” he said softly. “We know.”

  After wiping his hand on his jeans, Duck offered his hand.

  Chris accepted it and they shook. “This is my…friend…Anita Stevens.”

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Duck said with a quick nod.

  Anita looked from one person to the next but said nothing.

  Everyone awkwardly introduced themselves.

  “Are you OK?” Lana asked Anita once the formalities were over.

  She shook her head no. “I’m pretty far from OK.”

  “What the hell’s going on, Chris?” Duck asked.

  “I was hoping you’d know.” He rubbed his eyes. “My father…”

  “He’s here.” Duck jerked a thumb behind him. “Put him to bed in the back. He’s in rough shape.”

  Before Chris could explain what had happened outside, Lennox stepped forward. “Did you see someone run from the cottage just now?”

  Chris and Anita exchanged troubled glances but said nothing.

  “Her boyfriend,” Duck explained.

  “Yes,” Chris finally answered.

  “Do you know what happened to him?” Lennox asked.