Fierce as the Grave: A Quartet of Horror Stories

by John Hornor Jacobs

  A voice murmured to them.

  "So, this is your great-grandfather standing in front of you. The man who built this temple. The secret amulet you found allows you to commune with your ancestors. Now you've lit the incense and poured out the rice wine. Right? It's time to worship him, honor his memory. And you know how you're gonna do that? That's right. You're going to blow him."

  The girl giggled and the Kabuki man looked perturbed with her attitude. That could've been the make-up, though.

  I clomped into the studio, still pointing.

  "Umm...can I help you?" The voice came from the dark.

  "This is a closed set." The Kabuki man and faux-schoolgirl looked at me, faces blank, as if things like this happened all the time.

  I walked forward, moving between where I assumed the camera rested and the actors. Turning my back to the bright temple, I began to make out the faces of the two men by the camera. One of the men peered into a monitor, washing his face with blue light.

  The older man glared at me from a canvas director's chair. My arm pivoted like the needle on a compass and settled on him.

  "Cortez." My mouth made the sound. I wondered what my face looked like then.

  "Yeah, that's me. Who are you? And why the fuck are you pointing like that?" Cortez's face clouded and he stood from his chair.

  "Cortez." My voice sounded cold. I suddenly became very frightened. Hearing my own voice speak in that tone rattled me to my bones. "You killed me. Left me to drown."

  Then my body popped and jerked again, like being electrocuted.

  My eyes closed and all I could see was water, murky muddy water. I felt a something tethering my leg and the bruising up and down my body made my movements hurt. I floated in the dim light that streamed down like moving pillars. The surface rippled, just out of reach. I could make out a chair sitting below me, what looked like a tripod nearby it. A light casing. A table with a book that wafted in the sluggish water like some strange aquatic creature, swollen to globe size and calving off constant white particles like smoke. I could make out the faintest hint of a diagonal in the murk that seemed to be stairs.

  I struggled, wrenching my body left and right, trying to break free, to rip loose of the chain binding me. The surface rose away, diminishing, and I realized, even if I escaped, I would have to swim upstairs. I stopped struggling then. And felt rage. Anger suffused my body like a drug, ripping and clawing, red and unbound. And then I died.

  My body slowed and the light disappeared from above. White flashes, like light-bulbs going off behind my eyes, bemused me. Then red. Then white again.

  Nothing.

  I was on my knees in the studio. My perception firmly seated itself back into my own eyeballs, my own body. I lifted my arms - I lifted them, not the dead girl - and looked at my hands. They dripped with gore. But I still had my gloves on, and that was a blessing. I whirled around, looking at the studio, searching for...

  A body. Not much remained of the man who sat near Cortez, peering into the monitor. Parts of his face were missing, giving his appearance a decidedly gruesome - and vacant - look. He smiled at me, eye-sockets empty and lips gone. I looked at him for a long time, becoming fascinated with the musculature of the cheek revealed by his gaping wound. The human body is an infinitely interesting thing. I walked over and knelt down by the man. With my forefinger, I pulled his cheek back further so that I might see the way the muscles attached to the bone of his skull. I looked around for something to write with, to draw on.

  And then shook my head, trying to clear it of the focus.

  My medicine must have been wearing off, because this level of intense concentration only came with my Asperger's long fugue-like states where I had no recollection of any activities. Yet afterward knowledge filled my head like some reverse Athena, full-formed and leaping back into Zeus' divine cranium.

  I looked at the set, toward the temple. The man and the girl were absent. No bodies. Thank god.

  My own personal bag of flesh hitched and the drowned girl commandeered my v-space again. Floating, she approached. Closer now, her eyes bored into me, black and pupil-less. It was as if she saw me for the first time. She opened her mouth, a dark cavity, and screamed.

  And screamed.

  I heard nothing. I found my own mouth gaping open in response, as if I was retching, yet no sound issued.

  A groan came from behind the camera. The dead girl's head pivoted on a long slender neck, turning black eyes toward the man on the floor, her hair floating along behind, swirling. I walked around the camera and found Cortez splayed out like a combat casualty. His head rolled to the side and his eyelids fluttered. The left side of his face was purple and swollen. He looked like he'd been hit by a baseball bat. And for all I knew, he had.

  She filled my vision as I stood over Cortez. She moved close to me, black eyes like pools. The verrata - was it verrata? Or was I seeing something else? Was she the infection?

  The verrata loomed, blotting out the rest of my view of the studio.

  "Who are you?" I watched in horror as her mouth opened and closed, mirroring my words.

  She cocked her head and stared at me with inhuman - once human maybe - eyes. She opened her mouth and I felt mine opening in time, mirroring her. I could feel the shapes that my mouth took. I felt dislocated and centered all at once, her speaking through my mouth soundlessly.

  "Madeline. Escre. My. Name. Was." She paused, thinking. I guess. It is hard to tell with verrata. I felt the cold wash through me again, seeping into my bones. "Killed. Me. Cortez. Raped. Left. To. Die."

  "Jesus Christ, that's horrible."

  Her eyes closed, face darkening. She swam even closer, the translucent flesh of her face appearing pallid and unforgiving. Her brow hitched forward and hatred filled her features, mouth a grimace, eyes narrowed. Then she opened her mouth once more.

  Again I mirrored her as she screamed. And screamed. But no sound came from my body. I bent over, hands balled into fists, my body convulsing, silently screaming. I couldn't breathe.

  Finally, when she relinquished her control, I slumped over, on top of Cortez.

  "Wait!" I coughed. I rolled off of the man and placed my hands palm down on the floor. "This guy could die if he doesn't get help. It looks like I...like you broke something in his face. A bone or something."

  "He. Must. Die," shaping the words in my mouth. And then she assaulted all of my senses. Her eyes swam in my v-space, filling it, the cold suffused my body, and her screams - after years of darkness - were heard.

  ***

  We walk into Bargetown now, the derelict lean-tos and shanties dark in the night. I know this because I can see through her eyes. She asks me lots of questions and I have to provide her with the answers, if I can. I speak with quite a few things, entities, talking in clicks and pops that I didn't understand until very recently. But I don't really know how to provide her the answers she wants. Parts of me can create images, parts can make noise. We're learning about each other as we go along.

  She asks me about Bargetown, and I answer, finding the data she needs.

  Bargetown is a large city-like conglomeration of barges, welded together on Lake Pontchartrain, where people have loosely formed a government outside that of ArkLaTex Jurisdiction. Population is roughly 23,043 with a 3.4% margin of error. Dwellings include few houses, numerous tents and shacks. Police records indicate that a large population of criminals call Bargetown home. I check the GPS satellites and give her her exact longitude and latitude which she discards rapidly. I give her all the data and try to display it in a way that pleases her. We're learning together. I can tell from the way her body responds that she seems to like the display.

  She wants her body to remain strong so that she can continue lifting the heavy weight on her shoulders. A man, she carries. Cortez.

  I trigger the small gland resting on top of her kidneys and her body pops and buckles. She hitches the man higher onto her shoulder.

  We move through Bargetown. Every
few nanoseconds I check the ether and get the time. She asks me for a map and I retrieve one, taken just that morning, at least that is the server-date on the file. I put the map in her eyes but she has a moment of dislocation and I sense that she dislikes the way I presented the information. I feel like crying, yet the only eyes I have are hers. I try again, giving her two choices and she picks the one that is less intrusive. This makes me glad.

  She hops across the gap between barges and stops. The man is relatively quiet, only letting out soft moans once an awhile. The waters of Lake Pontchartrain gurgle and lap softly at the barge's hull, fifteen feet below.

  She looks at his face and I offer her more information about his clothes, his watch. Possible diagnoses for the wound on his face.

  She scans the area. We can hear the strains of zydeco and reggae music filtering through the night. I identify the music and offer her artist information. I offer her information about the stars, the constellations in the heavens. She stares at a cinder block by the plywood wall of a shanty. I estimate its weight at twenty pounds.

  She strips the man, and with brute strength shreds his pants into long strips. She ties his leg to the cinder block. Then she kneels down, squatting on her hams, and begins alternately slapping and spitting on the man's face.

  She continues this for a long while, squatting on her hams, slapping and spitting. He groans again and his eyes flutter open. They look around unfocused. Then fasten on her face.

  She says in a deep, masculine voice, "Cortez, you left me there to die. You had him rape me and then when the levees broke, you set up the camera and left."

  His eyes go even wider. "How do you...how can you know that. I never told anyone about...how can you know that?"

  "I know. My name is Madeline Escre."

  She stands over him. With one foot, she pushes him over and he falls into the water of the Pontchartrain with a splash, the cinder block following after. She screams and brings her hands up to her face, tearing at her eyes and ears. She rips at her clothes.

  She stops screaming and her heart rate slows. She turns and watches the water for a long time. It takes only one minute and forty three seconds until the bubbles stop. I offer her this information. She discards it by clicking her tongue. At least I think she's discarded it. She doesn't ask for it again.

  She watches the water.

  ***

  I can't remember much about who I was. I used to be warm. But I like information. I have intense interests.

  She's angry now, so angry I trigger little places in her brain that calm her, keep her heart from exploding. She looks at the sky and screams, hands up, clawing at the heavens. She discards all the information I provide her about cumulo-cirrus cloud formations.

  She looks at the city, watches the lights twinkle merrily from the vantage of the levees. I offer her information on the buildings, the signs, the cars. She ignores the telltales I show. She watches the city with a hatred that is hard for me to understand. Killing Cortez will never be enough. She queries me regarding the structural faults in buildings. I am denied that information. The server's ghost provides me with a link to the Homeland Security Act of 2026. There's an insistent buzzing in the ether and I let her know that she has messages from Cynthia Wetham and Mary Elizabeth Thibault. She discards the information.

  We walk the levees, searching for sluice-ways and weak points. Once, I knew everything I needed to know about the levees, but now, when she asks me, I have to query the oracles and databases to give her the answers. The weaknesses of the sluice-ways. Locations of pumping stations. Erosion rates of the levees of New Orleans. She queries me about the city altitude. She queries me about the current sea level. She queries me about the weather.

  We walk the levees, searching for something. And when we find it, the whole world will be drowned in blood.

  HEAVEN OF ANIMALS

  "Once we lived with common sense," Red Wolf said to the man on the horse next to him. He looked back over the rump of his mount at the herd. "Back then, it was necessary to live off the land. We respected the elements, and we understood that death was a harmonious part of life.”

  “Goddammit, Red, why do you have to talk like that?" Jake said, shielding his eyes from the morning sun with his hand. "You ain't even a real Indian, for christsakes. And we are forced to live off the land, if you haven't fucking noticed."

  Red Wolf remained quiet, watching the herd. The two men sat on a small hill, looking down at a lush valley bisected by a stream. The herd milled nervously on the far side of the running water, lowing. The sound of moans came softly across the valley, along with the stench.

  Jake shook his head and resettled his rifle across the pommel of his saddle. He raised binoculars and scanned the valley, panning his head back and forth.

  "I'm rarer than an Indian, Jake," Red Wolf said. "I'm a phony Indian. The last of a dying breed."

  "Ain't we all?" He sat straighter in his saddle. "Look over there, Red. Looks like we got a freshie."

  A dead man shambled out of a stand of trees near a ruined farmhouse.

  "He's gonna out-pace the herd. That's trouble. And one of us is gonna have to go down there and lure them across the stream, looks like."

  Red Wolf nodded. He twisted in his saddle and squinted at Jake.

  "Because we killed everything that moved, we imagined ourselves safe from wolves. Now look."

  "Yeah, I hear you, Hoss," Jake said, his voice thick with tobacco. "Who's gonna lure those revs?"

  Red Wolf watched the larger man for a moment, took off his hat and wiped his pate with a handkerchief, then said, "I'll do it. You take out the freshie."

  "Awright. I'll lure next time. You're a miserable shot anyway."

  Red Wolf kicked his horse and rode down the hill, toward the stream. As he got closer, the revenant spotted him and changed course.

  Swinging a leg off his horse, Jake dropped to the ground and lay his rifle across the saddle.

  "Be still, girl. Be still." He squinted his left eye and tightened his finger on the trigger.

  The sound of his shot echoed across the valley. The pinwheel of vultures following the herd fell away. Crows erupted from the copse of trees behind the dead man.

  "Shit." He worked the bolt, sending a shell flying. His horse nickered. He could hear the herd lowing, coming across the valley, their moans louder now.

  Looking over the saddle, he saw Red Wolf sitting on his horse, looking up the hill at him, face inscrutable. The herd had screwed up their courage -- or hunger -- and began moving across the stream. Off to the right, the dead man closed the distance between himself and Red Wolf faster than Jake expected.

  He placed a hand on his horse to settle her.

  "Whoa, girl. It's all right." He slid the 30.06 across the saddle again and sighted the revenant. Jake took a deep breath and held it.

  Again the shot echoed loudly, the sound beating the air, then diminished. Jake smiled, looking at the motes of blood hanging in the morning light. He saw that Red Wolf held his pistol and waited, staring at the prone body of the freshie.

  He waved at Red Wolf, beckoning. Red Wolf kicked his horse into motion and walked slowly back up the hill, leading the horde of zombies out of the stream.

  "We're getting our common sense back," Red Wolf said, once at the crest of the hill. "Living with the wolves inside us has made us see."

  "Dammit, Red," Jake said, spitting into the dust. "Why do you have to talk like that?"

  2.

  In the afternoon, they came out of the valley and onto the interstate. Jake cut the barbed wire fence adjacent to I-40 with bolt-cutters and walked his horse through. Red Wolf followed, scanning the rise of interstate for any stray zombies. The herd moved easily through the fields, moaning and shambling, falling into irrigation ditches or getting separated by barbed wire. Jake sniped the laggers as best he could. The heavens darkened and the wind changed.

  Jake looked up at the sky. "Couldn't you let us get one herd in without all the damned w
eather? Is that too much to ask?"

  Red Wolf nodded. "We're all wreckage. Each one of us a collection of tissues, powered by a beating heart. But not them."

  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  Red Wolf opened his mouth but Jake held up a hand and said, "Wait, don't tell me, Tonto. I'd rather not know.” He paused. “You know how to ride before? Or you learn in the chain-link fields?”

  “The fields.”

  “Huh.” Jake spat. “You ride pretty damned good.”

  Thunder rumbled in the west.

  He looked at the dark clouds moving in, a sour expression on his face.

  "Shit. The wind at our back is gonna make this twice as hard," he said, wrinkling his nose. He turned and looked back at the herd making its way up the embankment and onto the interstate, two hundred yards distant. "Hard and fragrant. Okay, listen, Red. I gotta save ammo for sniping. But you got that pretty little pistol. And beaucoups of ammo. Without the revs able to smell us, it's gonna be hard to keep them on our tail unless we get closer to them, and I don't want to do that," he paused, looking at the smaller man, "Or we make a big ruckus. So I want you to shoot off that little noise-maker every few minutes until we get back to camp. All right?"

  Red Wolf tilted his head and looked at Jake, unmoving, except for the shifting of his horse.

  "We got ten more miles to get back to the races, and we can probably make that before dark if we hoof it, but the sound is gonna be drawing them from all over, not just the ones on our tail. There might be ones in front of us too, so stay alert."