The Laughing Corpse

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Vampires were once ordinary human beings; zombies, too. Most lycanthropes start out human, though there are a few rare inherited curses. All the monsters start out normal except me. Raising the dead wasn't a career choice. I didn't sit down in the guidance counselor's office one day and say, "I'd like to raise the dead for a living." No, it wasn't that neat or clean.

  I have always had an affinity for the dead. Always. Not the newly dead. No, I don't mess with souls, but once the soul departs, I know it. I can feel it. Laugh all you want. It's the truth.

  I had a dog when I was little. Just like most kids. And like most kids' dogs, she died. I was thirteen. We buried Jenny in the backyard. I woke up a week after Jenny died and found her curled up beside me. Thick black fur coated with grave dirt. Dead brown eyes following my every move, just like when she was alive.

  I thought for one wild moment she was alive. It had been a mistake, but I know dead when I see it. Feel it. Call it from the grave. I wonder what Dominga Salvador would think about that story. Calling an animal zombie. How shocking. Raising the dead by accident. How frightening. How sick.

  My stepmother, Judith, never quite recovered from the shock. She rarely tells people what I do for a living. Dad? Well, Dad ignores it, too. I tried ignoring it, but couldn't. I won't go into details, but does the term "road kill" have any significance for you? It did for Judith. I looked like a nightmare version of the Pied Piper.

  My father finally took me to meet my maternal grandmother. She's not as scary as Dominga Salvador, but she's . . . interesting. Grandma Flores agreed with Dad. I should not be trained in voodoo, only in enough control to stop the . . . problems. "Just teach her to control it," Dad said.

  She did. I did. Dad took me back home. It was never mentioned again. At least not in front of me. I always wondered what dear stepmother said behind closed doors. For that matter Dad wasn't pleased either. Hell, I wasn't pleased.

  Bert recruited me straight out of college. I never knew how he heard about me. I refused him at first, but he waved money at me. Maybe I was rebelling against parental expectations? Or maybe I had finally realized that there is damn little employment opportunity for a B.S. in biology with an emphasis on the supernatural. I minored in creatures of legend. That was real helpful on my resume.

  It was like having a degree in ancient Greek or the Romantic Poets, interesting, enjoyable, but then what the hell can you do with it? I had planned to go on to grad school and teach college. But Bert came along and showed me a way to turn my natural talent into a job. At least I can say I use my degree every day.

  I never puzzled about how I came to do what I do. There was no mystery. It was in the blood.

  I stood in the graveyard and took a deep breath. A bead of sweat trickled down my face. I wiped it with the back of my hand. I was sweating like a pig, and I still felt cold. Fear, but not of the bogeyman, of what I was about to do.

  If it were a muscle, I would move it. If it were a thought, I would think it. If it were a magic word, I could say it. It is nothing like that. It is like my skin becomes cool even under cloth. I can feel all my nerve endings naked to the wind. And even in this hot, sweating August night, my skin felt cool. It is almost like a tiny, cool wind emanates from my skin. But it isn't wind, no one else can feel it. It doesn't blow through a room like a Hollywood horror movie. It isn't flashy. It's quiet. Private. Mine.

  The cool fingers of "wind" searched outward. Within a ten-to-fifteen-foot circle I would be able to search the graves. As I moved, the circle would move with me, searching.

  How does it feel to search through the hard-packed earth for dead bodies? Like nothing human. The closest I can come to describing it is like phantom fingers rifling through the dirt, searching for the dead. But, of course, that isn't quite what it feels like either. Close but no cigar.

  The coffin nearest me had been water-ruined years ago. Bits of warped wood, shreds of bone, nothing whole. Bone and old wood, dirt, clean and dead. The hot spot flared almost like a burning sensation. I couldn't read its coffin. The hot spot could keep its secrets. It wasn't worth forcing the issue. It was a life force of sorts, trapped to a dead grave until it faded. That is bound to make you grumpy.

  I walked slowly forward. The circle moved with me. I touched bones, intact coffins, bits of cloth in newer graves. This was an old cemetery. There were no decaying corpses. Death had progressed to the nice neat stage.

  Something grabbed my ankle. I jumped and walked forward without looking down. Never look down. It's a rule. I got a brief glimpse just behind my eyes of something pale and mistlike with wide screaming eyes.

  A ghost, a reallive ghost. I had walked over its grave and it had let me know it didn't like it. A ghost had grabbed me round the ankles. Big deal. If you ignored them, the spectral hands would fade. If you noticed them, you gave them substance, and you could be in deep shit.

  Important safety tip with most of the spiritual world: if you ignore it, it has less power. This does not work with demons or other demi-beings. Other exceptions to the rule are vampires, zombies, ghouls, lycanthropes, witches . . . Oh, hell, ignoring only works for ghosts. But it does work.

  Phantom hands tugged at my pants leg. I could feel skeletal fingers pulling upwards, as if it would use me to pull itself from the grave. Shit! I was eating my pulse between my teeth. Just keep walking. Ignore it. It will go away. Dammit to hell The fingers slipped away, reluctantly. Some types of ghost seem to bear a grudge against the living. A sort of jealousy. They cannot harm you, but they scare the bejesus out of you and laugh while they're doing it.

  I found an empty grave. Bits of wood decaying into the earth, but no trace of bone. No body. Empty. The earth above it was thick with grass and weeds. The earth was hard-packed and dry from the drought. The grass and weeds had been disturbed. Bare roots were showing, almost as if someone had tried to pull the grass up. Or something had come up underneath the grass and left a trail.

  I knelt on all fours above the dying grass. My hands stayed on top of the hard, reddish dirt, but I could feel the inside of the grave like rolling your tongue around your teeth. You can't see it, but you can feel it.

  The corpse was gone. The coffin was undisturbed. A zombie had come from here. Was it the zombie we were looking for? No guarantees. But it was the only zombie raising I could sense.

  I stared out away from the grave. It was hard using just my eyes to search the grass. I could almost see what lay under the dirt. But the grave showed behind my eyes in my head somewhere where there were no optic nerves. The graveyard that I could see with my eyes ended at a fence maybe five yards away. Had I walked it all? Was this the only grave that was empty?

  I stood and looked out over the graves. Dolph and the two exterminators were still with me about thirty yards back. Thirty yards? Some backup.

  I had walked it all. There was the grabby ghost. The hot spot was there. The newest grave over there. It was mine now. I knew this cemetery. And everything that was restless. Everything that wasn't quite dead was dancing above its grave. White misty phantoms. Sparkling angry lights. Agitated. There was more than one way to wake the dead.

  But they would quiet down and sleep, if that was the word. No permanent damage. I glanced back down at the empty grave. No permanent damage.

  I waved Dolph and the others over. I got a Ziploc bag out of the coverall pocket and scooped some grave dirt into it.

  The moonlight suddenly seemed dimmer. Dolph was standing over me. He did sort of loom.

  "Well?" he asked.

  "A zombie came out of this grave," I said.

  "Is it the killer zombie?"

  "I don't know for sure."

  "You don't know?"

  "Not yet."

  "When will you know?"

  "I'll take it to Evans and let him do his touchie-feelie routine on it."

  "Evans, the clairvoyant," Dolph said.

  "Yep."

  "He's a flake."

  "True, but he's good."

  "The d
epartment doesn't use him anymore."

  "Bully for the department," I said. "He's still on retainer at Animators, Inc."

  Dolph shook his head. "I don't trust Evans."

  "I don't trust anybody," I said. "So what's the problem?"

  Dolph smiled. "Point taken."

  I had rolled some of the grass and weeds, roots carefully intact, inside a second bag. I crawled to the head of the grave and spread the weeds. There was no marker. Dammit! The pale limestone had been chipped away at the base. Shattered. Carried away. Shit.

  "Why would they destroy the headstone?" Dolph asked.

  "The name and date could have given us some clue to why the zombie was raised and to what went wrong."

  "Wrong, how?"

  "You might raise a zombie to kill one or two people but not wholesale slaughter. Nobody would do that."

  "Unless they're crazy," he said.

  I stared up at him. "That's not funny."

  "No, it isn't."

  A madman that could raise the dead. A murderous zombie corpse controlled by a psychotic. Great. And if he, or she, could do it once . . .

  "Dolph, if we have a crazy man running around, there could be more than one zombie."

  "And if it is crazy, then there won't be a pattern," he said.

  "Shit."

  "Exactly."

  No pattern meant no motive. No motive meant we might not be able to figure this out. "No, I don't believe that."

  "Why not?" he asked.

  "Because if I do believe it, it leaves us no place to go." I took out a pocketknife that I brought for the occasion and started to chip at the remains of the tombstone.

  "Defacing a gravemarker is against the law," Dolph said.

  "Isn't it though." I scrapped a few smaller pieces into a third bag, and finally got a sizable chunk of marble, big as my thumb.

  I stuffed all the bags into the pockets of my coveralls, along with the pocketknife.

  "You really think Evans will be able to read anything from those bits and pieces?"

  "I don't know." I stood and looked down at the grave. The two exterminators were standing just a short distance away. Giving us privacy. How very polite. "You know, Dolph, they may have destroyed the tombstone, but the grave is still here."

  "But the corpse is gone," he said.

  "True, but the coffin might be able to tell us something. Anything might help."

  He nodded. "Alright, I'll get an exhumation order."

  "Can't we just dig it up now, tonight?"

  "No," he said. "I have to play by the rules." He stared at me very hard. "And I don't want to come back out here and find the grave dug up. The evidence won't mean shit if you tamper with it."

  "Evidence? You really think this case will go to court?"

  "Yes."

  "Dolph, we just need to destroy the zombie."

  "I want the bastards that raised it, Anita. I want them up on murder charges."

  I nodded. I agreed with him, but I thought it unlikely. Dolph was a policeman, he had to worry about the law. I worried about simpler things, like survival.

  "I'll let you know if Evans has anything useful to say," I said.

  "You do that."

  "Wherever the beastie is, Dolph, it isn't here."

  "It's out there, isn't it?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Killing someone else while we sit here and chase our tails."

  I wanted to touch him. To let him know it was all right, but it wasn't all right. I knew how he felt. We were chasing our tails. Even if this was the grave of the killer zombie, it didn't get us any closer to finding the zombie. And we had to find it. Find it, trap it, and destroy it. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was, could we do all that before it needed to feed again? I didn't have an answer. That was a lie. I had an answer. I just didn't like it. Out there somewhere, the zombie was feeding again.

  15

  THE TRAILER PARK where Evans lives is in St. Charles just off Highway

  94. Acres of mobile homes roll out in every direction. Of course, there's nothing mobile about them. When I was a kid, trailers could be hooked to the back of a car and moved. Simple. It was one of their appeals. Some of these mobile homes had three and four bedrooms, multiple baths. The only thing moving these puppies was a semitruck, or a tornado.

  Evans's trailer is an older model. I think, if he had to, he could chain it to the back of a pickup and move. Easier than hiring a moving van, I guess. But I doubt Evans will ever move. Hell, he hasn't left the trailer in nearly a year.

  The windows were golden with light. There was a little makeshift porch complete with an awning, guarding the door. I knew he would be up. Evans was always up. Insomnia sounded so harmless. Evans had made it a disease.

  I was back in my black shorts outfit. The three bags of goodies were stuffed in a fanny pack. If I went in there waving them around, Evans would freak. I needed to work up to it, be subtle. Just thought I'd drop by to see my old buddy. No ulterior motives here. Right.

  I opened the screen door and knocked. Silence. No movement. Nothing. I raised my hand to knock again, then hesitated. Had Evans finally gotten to sleep? His first decent night's sleep since I'd known him. Drat. I was still standing there with my hand half-raised when I felt him staring at me.

  I looked up at the little window in the door. A slice of pale face was staring out from between the curtains. Evans's blue eye blinked at me.

  I waved.

  His face disappeared. The door unlocked, then opened. There was no sight of Evans, just the open door. I walked in. Evans was standing behind the door, hiding.

  He closed the door by leaning against it. His breathing was fast and shallow as if he'd been running. Stringy yellow hair trailed over a dark blue bathrobe. His face was covered in bristly reddish beard.

  "How are you doing, Evans?"

  He leaned against the door, eyes too wide. His breathing was still too fast. Was he on something?

  "Evans, you all right?" When in doubt, reverse your word order.

  He nodded. "What do you want?" His voice was breathy.

  I didn't think he was going to believe I had just stopped by. Call it an instinct. "I need your help."

  He shook his head. "No."

  "You don't even know what I want."

  He shook his head. "Doesn't matter."

  "May I sit down?" I asked. If directness wouldn't work, maybe politeness would.

  He nodded. "Sure."

  I glanced around the small living-room area. I was sure there was a couch under the newspapers, paper plates, half-full cups, old clothes. There was a box of petrified pizza on the coffee table. The room smelled stale.

  Would he freak if I moved stuff? Could I sit on the pile that I thought was the couch without everything collapsing? I decided to try. I'd sit in the freaking moldy pizza box if Evans would agree to help me.

  I perched on a pile of papers. There was definitely something large and solid under the newspapers. Maybe the couch. "May I have a cup of coffee?"

  He shook his head. "No clean cups."

  This I could believe. He was still pressed against the door as if afraid to come any closer. His hands were plunged into the pockets of his bathrobe.

  "Can we just talk?" I asked.

  He shook his head. I shook my head with him. He frowned at that. Maybe somebody was home.

  "What do you want?" he asked.

  "I told you, your help."

  "I don't do that anymore."

  "What?" I asked.

  "You know," he said.

  "No, Evans, I don't know. Tell me."

  "I don't touch things anymore."

  I blinked. It was an odd way to phrase it. I stared around at the piles of dirty dishes, the clothes. It did look untouched. "Evans, let me see your hands."

  He shook his head. I didn't imitate him this time. "Evans, show me your hands."

  "No," it was loud, clear.

  I stood up and started walking towards him. It didn't take long
. He backed away into the corner by the door and the doorway into the bedroom. "Show me your hands."

  Tears welled in his eyes. He blinked, and the tears slid down his cheeks. "Leave me alone," he said.

  My chest was tight. What had he done? God, what had he done? "Evans, either you show me your hands voluntarily, or I make you do it." I fought an urge to touch his arm, but that was not allowed.

  He was crying harder now, small hiccupy sobs. He pulled his left hand out of the robe pocket. It was pale, bony, whole. I took a deep breath. Thank you, dear God.

  "What did you think I'd done?" he asked.

  I shook my head. "Don't ask."

  He was looking at me now, really looking at me. I did have his attention. "I'm not that crazy," he said.

  I started to say, "I never thought you were," but obviously I had. I had thought he had cut his hands off so he wouldn't have to touch anymore. God, that was crazy. Seriously crazy. And I was here to ask him to help me with a murder. Which of us was crazier? Don't answer that.

  He shook his head. "What are you doing here, Anita?" The tears weren't even dry on his face, but his voice was calm, ordinary.

  "I need your help with a murder."

  "I don't do that anymore. I told you."

  "You told me once that you couldn't not have visions. Your clairvoyance isn't something you can just turn off."

  "That's why I stay in here. If I don't go out, I don't see anybody. I don't have visions anymore."

  "I don't believe you," I said.

  He took a clean white handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around the doorknob. "Get out."

  "I saw a three-year-old boy today. He'd been eaten alive."

  He leaned his forehead into the door. "Don't do this to me, please."

  "I know other psychics, Evans, but no one with your success rate. I need the best. I need you."

  He rubbed his forehead against the door. "Please don't."

  I should have gone then, left, done what he said, but I didn't. I stood behind him and waited. Come on, old buddy, old pal, risk your sanity for me. I was the ruthless zombie raiser. I didn't feel guilt. Results were all that mattered. Ri-ight.

  But in a way, results were all that mattered. "Other people are going to die unless we can stop it," I said.

  "I don't care," he said.

  "I don't believe you."

  He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket and whirled around. "The little boy, you're not lying about that, are you?"

  "I wouldn't lie to you."