by Clark, Simon
COME
OVER ALL ALONG
IT IS OVER
I WANT
Then the words began to flash:
COME COME COME COME
Augustine sounded scared: ‘Kenny. What’s happening?’
‘It’s only a film,’ he said. ‘They’ve got themselves worried by a horror film.’
‘No, it’s everywhere!’ screeched Edith. Her neck seemed to stretch out even longer from the black turtleneck. ‘Look at the phones!’
There were a couple of phones on the coffee table. Kenny checked them. The screens pulsed:
COME COME COME
An eBook reader lay on a sofa cushion. The same stark command burned there, too:
COME COME COME
‘See?’ Georgo yelled. ‘Something bad got into the house!’
That’s when they heard the sound of singing.
* * *
The dead began to sing. Two thousand, three thousand corpses recharged with life, resurrected by hate, approached the house on Skinner Lane. For them, the moon blazed as bright as an Egyptian sun at noon.
Three thousand dead men and women that had erupted from the cemetery graves opened their mouths to sing their song of REVENGE.
The man standing on top of the brick wall at the back of 21 Skinner Lane opened the yellow book and began to read aloud in his thundering, corpse-raising voice: ‘They approached … over barbed wire fences that sagged beneath their weight, cracking posts. Then they snapped open the gate … One by one they collected around the house in a circle … These were the dead. Three thousand mouths cracked open and –’
* * *
Kenny pulled the string that opened the blind behind the patio doors. To his amazement he saw that thousands of figures had gathered on the back lawn. There, in the moonlight, a man stood on top of the wall. He was reading from a book with bright yellow covers. He swayed slightly as if feeling the words’ numinous power as they spewed from his mouth – a mouth that possessed no lips.
Edith screamed; she pointed at the wide, staring eyes of the corpses. ‘It’s them. They’re making the words appear on the telly.’
Georgo stumbled backwards until he slammed against the wall. His dribbly mouth became a cascade of silver spit. ‘What they want from us? Why’re they here? Kenny, make ’em go away. I don’t like looking at ’em!’
Augustine clung to Kenny’s arm. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I–I … th–they g–going to c–c–ker …’ His stammer had returned. ‘Thar–that man.’ He stared through the window at the figure with the yellow book. ‘Him! He’s m–making this har … har … happen!’
The man on the wall pointed at the patio doors where the four terrified occupants of 21 Skinner Lane could be seen. The man bellowed with laughter.
‘REVENGE!’ he yelled. ‘REVENGE!’
The eBook reader carried the same searing word on its screen:
REVENGE!
That word promised terrible and violent events for the occupants of the halfway house. Kenny realized that they were in mortal danger.
Meanwhile, three thousand vengeful corpses advanced on the building.
The man on the wall stood there laughing. He was enjoying this.
Loving it. He couldn’t wait to see what happened next to the two men and two women at 21 Skinner Lane.
‘Ee … ah–ah. Mmm …’ Kenny struggled to say the most important words of his life. ‘Sss … thar … ss … mmm –’
Augustine slipped her hand into his. ‘Go on,’ she whispered, ‘I know you can say the words.’
Suddenly the route from his throat to his lips was clear. Kenny took a deep breath; his voice rang out as clearly as a golden bell: ‘I know who that is on the wall. It’s the man who made my life hell! It’s Michael! Michael’s back!’
* * *
Robert Horobin, three years’ dead, clutched the shrink-wrapped corpse of his mother to him. Her dead face pressed to the hard sheath of plastic. Her lips moved; she sang the song of revenge, too.
His decaying lips chanted the chorus: ‘Revenge, revenge, revenge …’
The moon burnt with the brightness of a welder’s torch. He didn’t know what evil magic had brought him here from the cold comfort of the grave. Yet Robert Horobin knew that the man on the wall had summoned him by reading from the yellow book.
And he knew that soon he’d break into the house of the four frightened people. Then he and his post-mortem comrades would rip those four people apart.
* * *
‘Who’s Michael?’ Georgo’s sticky lips were trembling. ‘Why’s he making this happen?’
‘M–Michael used to try and frighten me with m–monster stories,’ Kenny told them. ‘He was bad to me. One day I tricked him into going out at night and m–my friend killed him.’
‘I don’t want ’em here!’ A terrified Edith clawed at her curly, yellow hair. ‘Scary faces! Make ’em go away!’
Hundreds of dead-alive people crowded across the lawn. Their wide, staring eyes were nailed to the halfway house. They wanted in.
They wanted blood.
Georgo’s expression changed as he realized an important truth. When he spoke the shape of his voice had changed. Got all jagged and pointy. He sounded angry with Kenny. ‘This is your fault! You got Michael dead. Now he’s come back to hurt you – and us!’
The word on the phones, TV and eBook reader flashed with the ferocity of explosions:
REVENGE REVENGE REVENGE
Edith gawped at Kenny. ‘Georgo’s right. It’s you they want. S’you, ’cos of your bloody friend killing him out there.’
Augustine pushed Edith backwards. ‘It’s not Kenny’s fault. He didn’t make them come here. Michael was torturing him … that’s what it was: torture! Kenny had to stop his life being made rotten.’
A pounding began on the windows. Out there in the moonlight, the creatures began to attack the house.
Augustine turned to Kenny. Her blue eyes were so trusting. ‘Kenny, you said your friend would protect us.’
‘Come with me.’ He caught hold of Augustine’s hand, then lead her upstairs. A plan had begun to take shape inside his head. The plan scared him. Thoughts of what he must do made his heart beat faster and faster and faster.
But now he had his plan nothing must get in his way.
* * *
They pressed up against the house. Three thousand rotting bodies – the recent dead, the old dead. They crushed so fiercely against the patio doors that the pressure forced their liquefied guts to escape through every hole in their bodies. Jets of black, stinking liquid spurted across the glass doors.
Meanwhile, the man on the wall read from his yellow book: ‘Soon – the time would come. The feeling rippled through the multitude … Limbs began to twitch, hungry jaws chewed the night air.’
He – and his name is Michael – was the puppet-master. He made his cadaver puppets begin to beat their putrefying fists against doors, windows, brick walls. In a few moments, the time would come. They would be inside 21 Skinner Lane. Soon these necrotic puppets would kill.
* * *
Kenny ran upstairs, followed by Augustine. He pulled the cord that made the attic ladder descend with a rattle and a squeak. Quickly, he climbed the ladder into the attic (no dust, no cobwebs: the house is new). Augustine scrambled in after him. Silvery moonlight streamed through the skylight.
Kenny didn’t hesitate. After shoving open the skylight window, he pulled himself out onto the roof tiles. Gently, he helped Augustine out onto the moonlit roof. She sat there in her silver Alice band, pink pyjamas and stared in wide-eyed horror at the thousands of corpses that crossed the fields from the cemetery. They were all headed for the house. Already the back lawn of 21 Skinner Lane had become a heaving ocean of decomposing heads, torsos and limbs, as the dead pressed toward the house.
Even from here, Kenny could hear the terror-struck cries of Georgo and Edith as the dead tried to break down the patio doors.
K
enny walked along the apex of the roof. At the end, by the chimney, he stood there to look down on the tall figure on the wall.
The skin had gone (Mr Skinner had peeled Michael before he died). Though the face had been torn off, the arrogant body language remained. As if he’s the biggest and bestest person in the world, thought Kenny. And everybody else are just stupid fools.
Nasty Michael. Evil Michael.
Although the skin was missing, the internal organs were still there. Kenny saw the heart and the pulpy-lumpy-dumpy grey lungs still stuck inside the ribcage. The intestines were like tightly coiled snakes.
Nasty … nasty … nasty …
Augustine reached the end of the roof, too. She steadied herself by gripping Kenny’s arm.
‘I’m frightened, Kenny. They’re going to get into the house. How are we going to stop them?’
His eyes locked onto the figure that was a grim totem of bones and dried out guts. The twenty-one years’ dead Michael enjoyed this. He knew that his army of the deceased frightened the occupants of the house. And he loved the feeling of power it gave him.
Michael had his victims again. The sadist was back.
Kenny turned away from the scene below. He gazed at the lane that ran through an avenue of trees. On top of the hill were yet more trees. Huge ones. They seemed to reach up to lovingly brush their leafy tips against the face of the moon.
Kenny called out in a clear voice: ‘Mr Skinner. This is Kenny. Your friend.’ Branches stirred in the breeze, whispering. They sang a different song to the dead. The music of the trees was the hymn of life. ‘Mr Skinner. I need your help again. Michael’s back. He’s going to hurt me. Do you remember, Michael, Mr Skinner? You saved me from him once.’
Then: CRASH!
Augustine cried out, ‘They’ve broken the glass! They’re getting in!’
‘Mr Skinner. I need you again!’
The trees’ music became a long, drawn out sigh of regret.
After that, the sound of shouting. Kenny watched as Georgo and Edith climbed out to join them on the roof.
Georgo’s wet lips were fluttering like crazy. ‘Them things are in the house! They’re coming up the stairs!’
Edith started screaming.
‘Mr Skinner!’ Kenny called out toward the trees on Skinner Lane. ‘Mm–Mr Skinner!’ They seemed a million miles away from the halfway house. The huge oaks were tranquil.
Augustine spoke in a low voice, ‘Your friend isn’t coming, is he?’
‘I’m sorry … I really believed he was real. It w–was a long time ago … now I’m not so sure if he was ever there.’ He pressed his lips together as his eyes began to prick. ‘He might have only been alive inside my head.’
‘You did your best,’ she said softly. ‘And I’m still glad to be your friend.’
Kenny put his arm around Augustine. Skinner Lane was deserted. Leaves rippled as a light breeze ghosted through. Georgo and Edith were frozen in terror on the roof. Crashes came from inside the house as the corpse legion made their way upstairs to the attic ladder. In a little while, they would be climbing out onto the roof, too.
Kenny decided to kill Augustine. He’d spare her the agony of being attacked by the vengeful dead. Perhaps fling her from the roof? The impact of the fall would deliver a merciful death.
Pale arms appeared at the skylight. They resembled the many limbs of a spider as it felt its way out of its lair.
Kenny moved his hand until it now pressed against Augustine’s back. He’d push her from the roof.
The first decayed head emerged from the skylight. A pair of bulging eyes fixed on Kenny.
This is it … he felt calm. He knew what he must do.
Push Augustine to her death. It’s not nasty. It will be a mercy. Spare her from suffering.
A bloated man-corpse hauled itself onto the roof.
Then everything changed. A streak of grey skin. A blur of arms. A searing flash of astonishingly dark eyes. Kenny yelled with delight. He punched his fist into the air.
The Skinner was back.
The bloated man-corpse burst as a huge fist slammed into its stomach. A second blow sent it hurtling from the roof into the mass of jostling bodies in the garden.
The Skinner stood upright on the roof. A giant of a man – ten feet tall. He had thick bobbly, grey skin … like elephant hide. The eyes were completely black. A thin scattering of red hair bristled on the body. His head, however, was completely hairless. And, when he saw Kenny, his smile seemed as big as the moon.
Kenny put a protective arm around Augustine. He smiled back at his giant friend.
The Skinner’s lips parted as he bared his teeth in delight. He leapt from the roof into the garden. There he started to destroy the legion of the dead.
Kenny watched his towering friend rip the skin from a corpse in one swift movement. That done he flung the mess of bones aside. Ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred, five hundred. The Skinner went about his skinning. Flayed corpses piled up into nothing less than gruesome hillocks on the lawn.
Meanwhile, on the wall, Michael read from the yellow book. By now, he seemed to be chanting lines at random.
‘His face was alive with post-mortem growths. They looked like ripe strawberries, all glossy and red, crowding around his eyes …’
‘Oh, no,’ gasped Kenny.
Something terrible was happening. Thousands of corpses were fighting back. They began to overwhelm the Skinner. The giant, grey man staggered under the mass of bodies climbing over his back. Their sheer weight brought the hero of Skinner Lane to his knees.
Kenny watched the thrashing fists of dead men and women. A moment later, the tide of rancid flesh had engulfed the Skinner. Nothing could be seen of him.
Michael’s legion of the dead had won. Now they could claim their prize: the four frightened people on the roof.
Michael laughed with the sheer pleasure of victory.
There was a sense of an engine bursting into life inside Kenny’s head. His skull throbbed. This was scary. It was exhilarating, too.
Kenny had done with cowering. He’d done with being the victim.
The time had come to act.
Kenny hissed to Augustine, ‘Stay here.’
After that, he scrambled down the drain pipe until he was close enough to the wall to jump onto the stone slabs that capped the brickwork. Fearlessly, he ran toward the figure on the wall, the puppet-master of the vengeful dead.
Michael turned the faceless head toward him. ‘How’s life been treating you old boy?’ Without waiting for an answer, he chuckled, ‘As you can see, death has been treating me very well. What is really extraordinary is that I have found this rare book. You know something, Kenny? I used this book to raise myself an army. My very own army of revenge.’
Nasty Michael.
‘G–g–go ah–away!’
‘Still making a yatter like a barrel full of monkeys, Kenny?’ He rolled his bloated eyes at the mound of squirming corpses that covered the Skinner. ‘It’s a pity about your friend, old boy. The ugly bugger couldn’t help you after all, could he?’ His voice oozed with the promise of evil acts as he gazed up at Augustine on the roof. ‘Now, there’s a pretty girl … I could make use of a pretty girl, Kenny.’
With a yell of anger, Kenny launched himself on Michael. The body had no skin. The face had vanished long ago. Kenny still attacked.
He ripped out the entrails (like dusty snakes, dirty smelly snakes). He thrust his fist into Michael’s ribcage; he broke the heart and lungs to pieces; this was like breaking up brittle cheese crackers.
Kenny roared, ‘I’m not going to let you bully me anymore. You’re dead, Michael! You don’t scare me!’
He punched the ugly head in front of him. Dust jetted from holes in the skull. The second punch burst one of the plump eyeballs.
Then Kenny looked into the remaining eyeball. It bulged as it locked onto Kenny’s face. The bully hadn’t expected Kenny to fight back. The single eye shone with fear.
&nb
sp; A scared voice blurted from the lipless mouth. ‘Kenny, leave me alone. I promise I’ll never hurt you again.’
‘You’re a bully, Michael. That means you’re a coward.’
‘I am. I admit it. I’m a coward. Now let me go, Kenny. Please Kenny.’ The voice was a serpent hiss.
And Kenny knew that, given the chance, Michael would come back to cause more hurt.
Kenny punched the head again. As the skull bone shattered into a million crumbs … a million dirty, grey crumbs … Michael gave a piercing scream.
As the body fell to pieces there on the wall, Kenny caught the yellow book. That slim volume, which had given birth to such strange nightmares. Its words had the power to summon hidden, buried things.
Kenny threw the thing as hard as he could. The yellow book rose higher and higher until it seemed to merge with the yellow moon. Kenny never saw the book fall back to earth.
The Skinner erupted from the mass of bodies. Kenny knew that the puppet-master’s spell was broken. For the Skinner easily hurled Michael’s warriors aside. The men and women seemed so weak, and somehow empty: they could have been dolls made out of toilet tissue.
Even as Kenny watched the dying moments of the battle, the dead were scrambling to get away. They were returning to the cemetery. Each one was going back home to their man-sized dwelling beneath the earth.
* * *
Georgo woke Kenny in the morning with astonishing news.
‘Me and Edith!’ The man’s wet lips trembled with excitement. ‘Me and Edith! We’ve decided to get married!’
Kenny went downstairs. Apart from the broken glass in the patio door, and a few upturned chairs, there was little evidence of what happened last night. The dead were gone. A nasty stain remained on top of the brick wall. That’s all that was left of Michael.
Dead and gone Michael.
The Skinner had gone, too.
Kind Mr Skinner. Faithful Mr Skinner. Mr Skinner, the protector.
Augustine stepped out of the house and onto the lawn. She went to stand alongside Kenny.
