Tammy put an end to that.
Every priestess needed a temple, someplace to practice her forbidden arts in peace and quiet. The first time her mom almost walked in on her as she conjured the spirits had proven that. To that end, Tammy had taken Make Out Barn for her own. It wasn't hard. All it took was some carefully controlled arson and a simple rite of the Dreadful Aura. Her temple had been left alone ever since, making it perfect for her needs. She could study up on her destiny, raise the dead, and leave corpses to soak up black magic without having to worry about kids looking to enjoy the pleasure of swapping various bodily fluids and adults hoping to interrupt such pleasures.
She shone her flashlight on the bodies. The ritual demanded they be buried in shallow graves, and so they sat in inch-deep holes in the ground, covered from head to toe with a thin layer of dirt. The Mark of Those That Inhere Within the Smothering Shadows were carved into their foreheads. The first stage of the magic had taken effect. The fetid flesh of the corpses had become a pallid green, and their teeth had become rows of razor-sharp fangs. Thick, black claws had grown from their fingertips. They were still dead, but soon they would rise to serve her.
Gleefully grinning, she removed the occult odds and ends from her backpack.
Chad shone a light on a dead face. "Uh . . . Tammy?"
She ignored him. Tammy did not exist once she and Chad went through the doors of the temple.
"Mistress Lilith."
"Yes?"
He tiptoed a wide circle around the dead people. "What are we doing with these guys?"
"We?" She chuckled at the pronoun. As if Chad were an equal partner in her destiny. "We are raising the dead."
"Oh. Okay. Like zombies, right?"
"Sort of."
The ritual shared certain elements of zombie-making, but these were a far more dangerous breed of walking dead. The spell itself even entailed some risk to the casters. It was the most difficult feat of black magic she had yet to attempt, and if something went wrong someone would have to be torn apart when her minions first rose. Chad had volunteered for the duty if the necessity arose, though he didn't currently know it.
He reached for the black candle she'd set out. She slapped his hand away.
"Don't touch anything."
"Okay." He cast a nervous glance toward the nearest dead guy. "So do we have to get naked again?"
"No."
"Oh. Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Okay."
"Oh, alright," she sighed.
He smiled stupidly as he stripped off his clothes in fifteen seconds flat.
"Your turn, Mistress Lilith."
Chad leered while she got undressed. It wasn't necessary, but it made things easier. Chad would do just about anything as long as they were both naked while doing it.
"You didn't really like that old dude, did'ja, babe?" he asked as he posed and flexed.
"No. Of course not," she replied.
Tammy organized her supplies. There wasn't much to it. She just had to call forth the shadows to enter the corpses which involved a quick incantation. She had Chad lay out his mom's good silverware and her dad's camping tent stakes. She lit the black candle and began. Chad knew enough to sit quietly in the corner while she worked.
"I conjure thee, from the endless night, from the icy hearth of forever quiet, from the shadows which cannot be banished, I conjure thee!"
She put her finger to the page to mark her place and grabbed her pocketknife. After another five minutes of steady incant-ing, she pricked her index finger.
"Ose-thay at-thay eyeth-wray in-ay arkness-day. Eyes-ray. Eyes-ray. Eyes-ray!"
She flicked a drop of her blood on the black candle. The flame flared, spewing an unnaturally thick cloud. Shapes and things terrible and unknowable slithered in the gray smoke. They whispered and cackled, all too eager to be given form in the world of flesh.
"Eyes-ray!" Tammy shouted. "Eyes-ray and-ay obey-ay eye-may ill-way. Eyes-ray! Eyes-ray!" She threw her arms wide. Her flashlight cast fearsome light across her face. A skittering piece of dark crawled over her eyes.
Chad would have been frozen in sweaty horror had he noticed, but he was too busy staring at her pert breasts as they rose and fell as she incanted.
The smoke funneled downward into the mouths and eyes of the bodies. A chill wind blew. The unholy chattering quieted, and stillness settled on Tammy's temple.
Everything was still quiet ten minutes later.
Chad dared speak up. "Mistress Lilith, is that it?"
She leafed through her Necronomicon to find where things had gone awry.
He ventured from the corner and stood by her side. "They're not rising."
"I noticed."
"What went wrong?"
"Shut up, dumbass, and let me think."
He looped an arm around her waist. "I don't know about the dead guys, but I think Big Jimmy is starting to rise."
She was busy deciding which of Chad's body parts to dig her fingernails into when the candle flickered. Five ragged moans rose. Tammy snatched up her flashlight and shone it on the corpses.
Her minions sat up and slowly, clumsily rose to their feet. The four walking dead with two good legs stood in hunched, predatory stances. The fifth one-legged corpse hopped about in an awkward balancing act. Ten sets of beady, milky eyes stared at their new mistress, either awaiting their first command or, perhaps, their first meal.
Chad huddled closer to Tammy, either out of terror or, quite possibly, to cop a cheap feel. Either way, she stomped on his foot to deter him.
She pointed to the door. "Go forth," she whispered. "Go forth and sate your unholy appetites on the flesh of mine enemies."
The corpses shuffled (or hopped) to collect their weapons of knives, salad forks, and camping stakes. They shambled out of the barn one at a time. The last dead thing stopped just long enough to cast a wicked glare at his mistress. And then they were gone.
Tammy raised her hands over her head and giggled the malign giggle of a schoolgirl consorting with the legions of darkness and having a hell of a time doing it.
As soon as Duke parked the truck in the diner lot. Earl jumped out, grabbed the battered cassette player from the bed, and started to walk down the road.
"Where you goin'?"
"I'm getting something to eat," Earl answered.
"Any particular reason you're taking the tape player?"
"It's a long walk."
"Don't forget. Sheriff wants a word with you."
"I'll be back in plenty of time."
Earl stepped out of the light of the diner's sign and was swallowed up by the night. He walked about a half-mile down the road before turning around. He wasn't up to the torment Duke would subject him to if the werewolf found out he was going to visit a ghost. He wouldn't say much. Not with words. But Duke could say more with a look than anyone he'd ever met. Earl had seen glass-eating, tough-as-nails, drunken badasses retreat in trembling terror at the sight of Duke raising one eyebrow. Earl didn't understand it. He only knew that he wasn't up to the raised eyebrows and knowing half-smiles Duke would throw his way if the werewolf discovered his graveyard date.
"It's not a date," he verbally reminded himself. "It's just a . . . " He searched for a less objectionable noun. ". . . just an appointment."
He frowned. That was a touch too formal.
"Get-together?" he tried, but he didn't like the sound of that either. Not with only two of them getting together.
"Meeting?"
He didn't know what it was, but it was definitely not a date. Cathy was lonely, and he was just being nice. That was all there was to it.
"Rendezvous," he tried, but the word was French enough to carry romantic implications.
"It's just a thing," he quickly decided. "A nice thing. That's all it is."
He skulked up to the graveyard, low to the ground to keep anyone in the diner from spotting him, although he was pretty sure nobody would be watching all that closely. Just to
be safe he hopped the broken fence on the graveyard's dark side.
"You came," Cathy said.
She smiled, and, while Earl's body didn't exactly respond like a mortal body, he still felt a strange flutter in his stomach.
"I said I would. I brought this." He held up the dented box. "I thought you might like to listen to some music. 'Cuz, y'know, it's probably been a while since you got the chance." He dug some cassettes out of his overall pockets. "I've got Elvis and Randy Travis, BB King, Buddy Holly—"
"Buddy Holly. That'd be just great."
"You have been here a while." He inserted the tape.
"Not that long. I just like Buddy Holly."
Buddy began belting out a static-filled song that wasn't entirely decipherable. Earl fiddled with the knobs to correct the problem, but the crackling remained. He gave up and took a seat beside Cathy on her grave.
"So how was your day?" he asked.
"Same ol', same ol'. I saw some birds. I think they were ducks. And a Volkswagen Beetle drove by. Haven't seen one of those in a while."
"They started making 'em again."
"Cool."
"The engine is in the front now."
She frowned. "Well, that's stupid. It's not really a Beetle then, is it?"
"Nope," he agreed.
They listened to the music a while. She silently sang the lyrics with Buddy.
"How was your day?" she asked.
"Okay. I slept."
"Oh. That's right. I forgot. So do you have to sleep during the day or can you walk around if you want?"
"I'm pretty much dead when the sun's up."
"Do you dream?"
"Vampires don't dream."
"Never?"
"Well, we don't really sleep. We just sort'a shut off."
"Bummer."
Cathy nodded along with the music. Earl considered putting an arm around her shoulder, but it didn't seem right. He wanted to, he thought, but it seemed a little forward on his part. And what if she didn't want his arm around her shoulder? Just because he could touch her didn't necessarily mean she wanted him to.
For just a nice thing, this sure as hell felt like a date. It'd been a long time since he'd been on one, and he'd never been very good at it.
Cathy reached over and took his hand in her own. He was glad the undead didn't have to worry about sweaty palms.
She smiled again. He smiled back again.
"So this cemetery-guardian job," she said, "how does it work? I mean, I can't do anything. How am I supposed to guard anything?"
"I'm not real sure. Have you tried to do anything?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know, but just because you're immaterial doesn't mean you can't do stuff. I knew a ghost in Alabama who could make fog and chain-rattling noises. And there was another in South Dakota that was able to shatter glass and move small stuff around."
"How'd they do that?"
"They just did it. I don't know a lot about ghost powers, but I don't think there is any special trick to it. It's just practice, I think."
Cathy lay back on her plot.
"That stuff about vampires being able to change shape, that isn't true, is it?"
"It's true."
She propped up on her elbows. "No way."
"Sure is."
The ghost grinned with charming suspicion. "You're screwing with my head. There's no way someone . . . even a vampire someone . . . can turn into a bat or wolf."
"And mist," Earl added.
"Yeah, right. It's just impossible."
"Like ghosts and vampires?"
"Okay, smart guy. Show me."
There was teasing doubt in her voice. Coming from anyone else, it would have annoyed him. Coming from her, he could only flash a goofy, lopsided smile.
He bowed. "For my first trick, I'd like to do a little shape- shift I call 'The Wolf.'"
She held her hands out and performed a soft, aristocratic clap.
Like most of his vampiric talents, Earl had never truly mastered shape-shifting. He never had much reason to, and on those few occasions he had, it always left him stiff and sore. Cathy was partly right. Shape-changing was one of the harder feats a vampire might attempt. It involved a lot of bone-shifting, muscle-twisting, and organ-shuffling. Not to mention the displacement of those extra pounds that separated wolf from human. They melted away, but all that nonexistent weight seemed to rest on his kidneys. Or maybe that was just canine instinct that made him want to piss on everything.
He hunched over and balled his hands into tight fists. He grunted and shook with the effort and finally let loose with an embarrassing intestine-churning growl. And nothing happened.
"Are you okay?" Cathy asked.
Earl leaned against a wooden tombstone. "Yeah. Just give me a sec. Getting it started is the hardest part."
He stood tall and straight, attempting to regain some dignity, and tried again. It took a long minute for him to gather together his will and push it through his body. At first it felt like the mother of all bowel movements. The gurgling warm sensation started in his guts and spread from there. Once it started, he just had to ride it out.
His transformation was a lot smoother than Duke's. Whereas the beast within Duke literally burst out of his skin in a gruesome, nausea-inducing metamorphosis, Earl's change was a fluid moment of grace. And, unlike Duke, Earl's clothes even changed with him, disappearing to wherever all his extra weight went. The man melted into the wolf. Not the half-ape monster that Duke became, but an unassuming, feral canine. As a wolf, Earl looked more like a bony mongrel than a wild predator.
Cathy's eyes flashed with delight. "That's fantastic!"
Earl's lips parted and he bared his long, yellow teeth in a canine grin of pride. He took a moment to adjust to his four-legged form and push away the urge to take a leak on all the nearby tombstones.
She reached out and rubbed his muzzle. Then she scratched under his chin. He was tempted to roll over and let her rub his belly, but quickly changed his mind. Naked dogs had a harder time concealing certain biological reactions than fully clothed humans. He let her massage his ears for a few minutes before going into his next trick.
Now that he was back into the swing of things, the change from wolf to bat was surprisingly easy. He flew a couple of quick laps around the graveyard while she watched in wonder. A tremendous satisfaction entered him at the sight of her enjoying herself. It didn't really help her situation, but at least it took her mind off it.
He decided, somewhat optimistically, to try changing to mist. He'd only done it four times before. The last time his concentration had slipped for only an instant, and he'd lost his legs to a sudden gust. But he was willing to lose an appendage or two for another of Cathy's smiles.
It turned out to be easier than his earlier changes. As a cloud of curling fog he drifted in the breeze while concentrating on holding onto all his floating molecules. Cathy passed her ectoplasmic fingers through his body. A tingle ran through his insubstantial nerves. Had he currently possessed knees, they would have wobbled at such an intimate touch. Instead his form of fog tumbled over in an excited, whirling loop. He hoped she didn't notice.
Transforming back into a man proved harder than he remembered. It took considerable time and willpower to gather up all his errant pieces and jell them back into physical form. He wasn't entirely certain, but it felt like some of his internal organs hadn't made the trip back. There was a vague empty sensation where his liver and spleen should have been.
He bowed to another round of applause.
"That's impressive," she observed.
Earl would've shrugged, but his aching shoulder wasn't up to it. A wise vampire always stretched before assuming forms. It was just common sense.
A brown police cruiser pulled into the diner. A tall, lean man Earl guessed to be the sheriff got out and went into the diner.
Buddy launched into a hissing rendition of "Peggy Sue" that sounded as if it were being beamed directly from the outer
regions of the galaxy. Cathy jumped up and took Earl's hands.
"This is my favorite. Do you want to dance?"
"I'm not a good dancer."
"That's okay. Neither am I."
"I only know how to waltz."
"Really? Me, too."
Earl glanced at the cruiser. The sheriff could wait another five minutes.
She moved closer, guiding his hand to her back. She began the dance, then smoothly gave him the lead. At first, he was far too busy counting in his head and avoiding open graves to enjoy himself. And though ectoplasm had always been cool to the touch before, something about Cathy made him uncomfortably warm. But gradually, without him even realizing it, she drew closer and laid her head on his shoulder. They slowly spun through the cemetery in each other's arms. They kept dancing even after Buddy was swallowed whole by static.
She smelled like blooming roses and freshly dug earth. Was that the scent of all ectoplasmic beings, he wondered, or was it just her? He'd never gotten this close to a ghost for this long.
"You know, Earl, you were right."
"Yeah? About what?"
"You aren't a good dancer."
"I'm the only one available," he replied with a grin.
"Good point."
He held her at arms' length, and she twirled once. She fell back into his arms.
"Earl, how old are you?"
"Ninety-seven come May."
"You don't look it."
"Well, I try and stay out of the sun. It keeps the wrinkles away."
She laughed. It fluttered through the graveyard, filtering into the world of the living. Any mortals passing by would have stopped and wondered where it came from. They would've found a man dancing with an imaginary partner and decided it better to mind their own business.
Earl and Cathy stopped dancing and looked into each other's eyes. Strands of phantasmal hair drifted across her face in the light breeze. He brushed them away and caressed her cheek. Her blue lips parted ever-so-slightly. They leaned closer.
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