Frisbee

by Eric Bergreen

FIFTEEN

  Back in January of that same year, my brother and I had slept over at Cory’s house one night. As per usual, his mother and father had made us popcorn and served us soda and set up a movie in their video player before retiring to their bedroom with a gallon jug of wine. We had done it countless times in the past, snacks and drinks while we lay in our sleeping bags and had fallen asleep to a movie. But this particular night was a little different. It wasn’t some kiddy cartoon or an action adventure movie that we stayed up to watch until midnight. Oh no, it was better. Or so we thought at the time.

  Cory had been begging his mom for some time to rent George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Of course his mom being sweet and loving and concerned for her youngest child was worried that it would bring him nightmares after the first viewing and had refused. But Cory had been persistent, begging, pleading, and throwing an occasional temper tantrum, trying to whittle her down. After a couple months of this, she let in and got the movie from GO Video around the corner from us.

  He of course kissed her ass afterwards, thanking her for finally renting it for him. Inviting us over that night to watch it with him was something else he had to beg his mom for as well. There was no way he was going to watch it alone, and Janeal was worried that it might frighten all of us-especially me-to the point she’d have three scared boys sleeping in bed with Guy and her by the end of the night. But we promised her that it wouldn’t come to that.

  Jason and I didn’t tell our mother that we would be seeing this particular film before we asked to spend the night at the Dayborne’s in fear that she wouldn’t have let us stay there if we had. We also knew it would be a scary movie, but like all kids, we thrived on terror.

  Christy, at twelve, and probably braver than the three of us put together, sat on the couch and watched the first ten minutes of the movie with us. While munching her own bowl of popcorn, she got up to “use the bathroom” just as the first zombie started to attack Barbara in the cemetery. We didn’t see her for the rest of the night.

  The movie was put in at around ten o’clock and didn’t finish playing until after eleven-thirty. Not a word was passed between us as we sat watching the horror flick. I had to shut my eyes more than once as I assumed Jason and Cory did as well.

  It was the first horror movie that I had ever seen. I can’t say the same for the other two, but I know they were feeling the same way I was when it was over.

  There are zombies outside the house and they’re coming to get us.

  The three of us were nowhere near sleep by this time. Cory changed the TV to something a little less dreadful. He found Johnny Carson doing his late show with a guest comedian and it broke the tension between us. For a while.

  We sat up and chatted in low hushed tones, so we wouldn’t disturb his parents, got more sodas out of the fridge and made trips to the bathroom together.

  Night of the Living Dead was not brought up again that night. We talked of other things like baseball and who the coolest teacher at Stallings Elementary was.

  But the feeling of dread was still with us. It was with me at least, I know that.

  Jason and Cory fell asleep somewhere around two in the morning while I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking of zombies, petrified. I was close to tears at one point, about to go knock on Janeal’s bedroom door, but remembered the promise we’d made her. I also knew I wouldn’t be invited back to spend the night again if I did.

  I think I contemplated going on back home after a couple hours of shivering in my sleeping bag-and not because it was cold-but knew there would be no way to get inside our house. All three doors would be locked. Besides, there were zombies roaming the streets, and I couldn’t take the chance of meeting up with one.

  I never did fall asleep that night. The fear that movie instilled in me was too great. But at six o’clock that next morning, after the sun had come up, I snuck out and went back across the street to our house. I knocked on the front door lightly. My mother opened it up in her bathrobe and asked me what I was doing home so early. Of course I broke down and told her about the movie and to my relief she wasn’t upset that we had watched it. She was concerned about me not going to sleep all night and made me a cup of hot chocolate and sent me to my bed, letting me sleep until noon.

  For two weeks after, I had to have the light on in my room, one on in the hallway, and my mother sitting vigil next to my bedroom door before I fell asleep at night. Jason didn’t seem to mind all that much either and after a while that frightening black and white movie slowly lost its grip on me and I soon returned to a normal sleep routine.

  But if you rolled those two weeks of night terrors up into one instance, into one feeling, it would describe how I felt the moment I saw that demon head rise up from behind the refrigerator in Dead Grove after the four of us had finished with our magazines.