by Amy Cross
“I really need to go,” she tells him. “I'm sorry, but...”
With that, she turns and hurries from the room. Ignoring his attempt to ask her what's wrong, she makes her way down the stairs and into the hallway, where she spots a framed photo of Ruth Havershot hanging on the wall. She feels a shiver pass through her body as she opens the door and runs out into the night, and she doesn't stop running until she's made her way to the end of the street and around the corner, at which point she finally stops and leans back against the wall. Out of breath, she realizes that air is leaking out of several holes in her torso. Reaching down, she slips a finger under the edge of her dress and feels a loose flap of decayed skin, with dusty old meat beneath. Seconds later, she gets a whiff of decaying meat.
“Idiot,” she whispers. “Anna Marsh, you're nothing but a monster. No guy would ever...”
Sighing, she looks up at the night sky. In the distance, she can hear a lot of chatter coming from the big tent in the town square, but the last thing she wants right now is to be around other people. If the evening with Scott was one final attempt to enjoy the company of living people, it turned out to be a complete disaster that only served to prove the opposite: that she's better off alone, out of sight, where people won't find out the truth and call her a monster. She thinks back for a moment to the video game, and to the glee with which Scott was dispatching zombies.
“Die, you piece of crap,” she whispers sadly, echoing the words her would-be paramour had shouted at the screen.
Taking off her high heels, she starts trudging home along the dark street, heading away from her last ever date.
Chapter Fifteen
“Hey!” Sam calls out as she pushes the door open and peers into the tent. “Anyone here?”
It has been more than an hour since everyone was forced to leave, and while most of the audience has now dispersed from the town square, Sam has been hanging about, hoping to work out exactly what happened. The screaming stopped a while ago, and as she looks across the tent's gloomy interior, she realizes that the show seems to have been packed away. There's no sign of anyone as she makes her way past the rows of wooden seats, and when she gets to the front she spots a patch of ash on the floor, as if nothing more is left of Robert Shaughnessy's body.
“Neat,” she mutters. “What kind of show ends like this?”
Hearing voices nearby, she makes her way around the side of the stage and stops for a moment. From the other side of a curtain, she can just about make out the hushed, agitated tones of Charles Raven.
“I swear,” he hisses, his American accent even more noticeable than before, “nothing like that has ever happened during one of my shows. You saw it! That goddamn man burst into flames!”
“Spontaneous combustion?” replies another voice, which Sam quickly recognizes as Andy. “I mean, it's a bit of a coincidence, but it's still possible.”
Raven doesn't answer.
“It is possible, isn't it?” Andy continues. “I've read about things like that. People can just up and catch fire sometimes, with no real cause. Isn't that the most likely explanation here?”
“This was something else,” Raven continues. “The crowd was good tonight. There was enough faith and energy in the room to bring that man back to life. Didn't you feel it?”
“Um... Not really, boss,” Andy replies, “but you know how I am. I don't pick up on these things, not the way you do.”
“It should have worked,” Raven insists. “Instead, he burned right in front of us. So where did all that energy go? We brought something back to life in this godforsaken town, so if it wasn't Robert Shaughnessy, what was it?”
“Damned if I know, boss,” Andy replies. “Just... Maybe it'll help to get some sleep and look at things again in the morning. We've given Mrs. Shaughnessy some valium, so she's passed out in the back. Maybe tomorrow things'll seem different.”
“There must be something powerful here in Rippon,” Raven tells him. “Something that was able to redirect all that energy and absorb it. I can't even begin to imagine what we're dealing with, but I've certainly never encountered such a thing before. I knew I could feel something unusual when we arrived here, and now I'm certain. There's some kind of powerful evil in this town. For the first time in my life, I'm not sure I have the necessary strength to fight back.”
“He really believes it,” Sam whispers to herself. “All this bullshit, he really thinks it's true.”
“Is someone out there?” Raven asks suddenly.
Stepping back behind another curtain, Sam listens as Andy makes his way through to the main part of the tent. He's just a few paces away from her, and she holds her breath, hoping desperately that he won't notice her. She can't even begin to work out how she'd explain her presence, and she's still not entirely convinced that Charles Raven can be trusted.
“No,” he says after a moment. “There's no-one here.” He makes his way back past the curtain. “So what do you want to do, boss? Are we gonna cancel the rest of the shows here and move out of Rippon in the morning? Maybe it'd be best to just cut our losses and move on. I mean, this town isn't exactly heaving, is it? We could make way more money if we went... Well, almost anywhere else!”
“Are you joking?” Raven asks incredulously. “We have to stay until we can work out what's happening. We brought something back to life tonight, and I want to know what.”
“But if it's not safe -”
“I'm not concerned about being safe, I'm concerned about fighting whatever evil forces we can find here. Raven Revivals isn't just about showbiz, it's also about the battle between good and evil. We saw an innocent man burn to death tonight, as if something stole his energy and left his body to be destroyed, and I'm not going to rest until we know why. How can I risk another session if there's even a chance that the door to evil could be thrown open for good? These powers are a responsibility, not a toy!”
“Sure, boss, but -”
“What if I've opened a portal?” Raven asks.
Sam rolls her eyes.
“What if I've done something that I can't undo?” Raven continues. “I always tell myself that I understand the forces I'm dealing with, but what if I've finally gone too far into the darkness? What if I've awakened something that's more powerful than I could ever have imagined?”
“When you put it like that,” Andy replies, “I guess maybe we should stick around after all.”
Realizing that she needs to get away before she's noticed, Sam heads back to the door and then out into the town square. Until she overheard the conversation between Raven and Andy, she was convinced that the whole thing was a big con, but now she's starting to wonder if something else might be happening. After all, Charles Raven certainly seems to believe in his own powers, which means he's not quite as big a phony as she'd expected.
When she gets to the street corner, Sam stops and looks back for a moment at the Raven Revivals tent. The flag is still rippling in the wind, and for a moment she struggles to believe the horror that she witnessed when the man burned before her eyes.
“We brought something back to life tonight,” she whispers, echoing Raven's words, “and I want to know what.”
And that's when it hits her.
A cold chill runs through her body.
“No,” she whispers, “it can't be...”
Turning, she hurries along the street, but she soon breaks into a run. By the time she gets to the bottom of the hill, she's running as fast as she can, racing through the darkness as she desperately tries to get back to the cemetery in time. She hurries through the gate, not even bothering to stop and secure the padlock, but instead of going to the cottage she runs to the crypt entrance and fumbles to get the door open.
“Please no,” she tells herself as she races down the steps and along the crypt's dark tunnels, until finally she reaches the room with the Devil's tomb and -
She stares.
She waits.
She takes a deep breath as her heart pounds in her chest.
The Devil's withered, burned black body is still exactly where it has always been, beneath the glass that covers his final resting place. Taking a step forward, Sam looks down at the body, but to her relief she realizes that nothing seems to have changed. She runs a hand across the glass, half-expecting the corpse to suddenly spring to life, but after a couple of minutes she realizes that everything seems to be completely normal. Still, she knows it can't be a coincident: if Charles Raven really did summon up some kind of energy, and if that energy really was redirected by some force in Rippon, she can't shake the feeling that it must be something connected to the cemetery.
“We brought something back to life tonight,” she says again, her mind racing with possibilities, “and I want to know what.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Stupid goddamn...”
Lifting the dress over her head, Anna quickly scrunches it into a ball and dumps it in the garbage.
“I'm just an idiot,” she mutters, staring down at the dress for a moment before turning and making her way to the bathroom, wearing just her underwear. “I'm nothing. I'm just Sam's assistant. No, I'm not even that, I'm... I'm just someone who helps out around the place.”
She stops by the mirror and stares at herself, and she immediately flinches when she sees the thick metal staples holding Ruth Havershot's arms and legs onto her own grotesque, rotting torso. Just a few hours earlier, she'd managed to convince herself that she had a chance of appearing 'normal', but now she cringes at the thought of her own naivety.
“Face it,” she continues with a shiver, “you're nothing more than a zombie with delusions of grandeur. There's no way in hell that anyone is ever going to find you attractive or useful. Hell, you'll probably just rot away to nothing pretty soon. Bits'll start falling off, and then you'll -”
Stopping suddenly, she notices something strange on her shoulder. For a moment, it's as if the light in the room is shifting subtly, but when she steps closer to the mirror she realizes that the color of her skin is slowly changing, becoming a little more vital and alive. Feeling a tingling sensation, she peers at the reflection and realizes that beneath the metal staples, her skin appears to be slowly fusing with the skin of Ruth Havershot's arm. On top of that, the rotten holes in her torso seem to be slowly closing up, as if the skin is knitting itself back together. She's used to strange sensations in her body, usually caused by maggots burrowing through her meat, but this is something different.
“What the hell?” she whispers.
Over the next couple of minutes, she stands in stunned silence and watches as more and more of her body begins to heal. The disgusting blues and yellows of her dead skin are fading away, and she's even starting to look a little healthy. She keeps telling herself that she's imagining things, that it's all some kind of sick joke, but finally she realizes that she can't deny the reality of what she's seeing.
“I'm un-rotting,” she gasps. “I'm coming back to life!”
Chapter Seventeen
“No, stop!” she shouts as the chainsaw swings down and slices through her arm. She turns to pull away, but it's too late: her arm is gone, and the chainsaw's ragged teeth have pulled away much of the flesh from her shoulder. At least there's no blood: all her blood dried up a long time ago.
“Goddamn zombies,” he sneers. “I swear I'll never get tired of killing you.”
“Please -”
He kicks her hard in the back, hard enough to fracture her rotten spine as she falls forward.
“What's that, zombie?” he asks. “Gonna pray, are you? What kinda messed-up God would answer the prayers of a monster like you?”
Down on her knees, Anna looks across the dark parking lot. It's late at night, and the deserted city looms all around. Reaching down to support her weight with her one remaining arm, she tries to crawl away from her attacker, but moments later she hears the chainsaw coming closer and finally she feels the blade ripping through her waist. When it hits her spine, she feels a juddering vibration run all through her body with such force that she can barely even see properly, almost as if she's being shaken to death. There's no physical pain, of course, since her body has long been dead, but she lets out a cry as she feels a boot against the side of her neck, pushing her onto her side.
He stands over her, with the spinning chainsaw just a few inches from her face.
“Please,” she whimpers, with tears running from her eyes, “don't do this...”
“I don't know if you can understand what I'm saying,” he replies, his dark face hidden by shadows. “I don't know if somewhere in that dried and desiccated brain of yours there's even a hint of intelligence or understanding, but I'm gonna tell you anyway, just so you know that the human race isn't gonna just fade away. I don't care how long it takes, but I'm gonna rid this planet of every last stinking zombie in existence. You're all gonna get ground up into dust.”
“I don't want to get cut up,” she replies. “Please, I'm on your side...”
“What's that?” he asks, sounding almost amused by her utterance. “I thought I heard a gurgle coming from your rotten mouth. Don't tell me the zombie bitch has actually learned to talk!”
“Why can't you understand what I'm saying?” she shouts. “It's me!”
“Nice try,” he grunts, leaning down and shoving his hand deep into her mouth. He puts a foot on her chest while pulling at her face, and finally he rips her rotten jaw away and tosses it to the ground, before grabbing her flailing tongue and tearing it from her throat.
“I won't stop until you've all been destroyed,” he continues, holding the tongue up for her to see. “Every goddamn last one of you. And do you know why? Do you know what's gonna drive me to spend the rest of my life crossing the world, killing every monster I find?”
She tries to beg for her life, but all she can do is spray blood from the hole where her jaw and tongue have been torn away.
He leans closer, and finally his fury-filled face emerges from the shadows for a moment.
“Here's the thing,” he sneers, wiping her own tongue against her face. “Remember this. I. Hate. Zombies. So... kisses!”
He steps back, drops her tongue to the floor and stamps down on it hard, smearing it against the sidewalk.
“To think I actually kissed you,” he adds, with obvious disgust.
And with that, even though she gasps at him in an attempt to get him to stop, he lowers the blade of the chainsaw straight into her face. Her whole body judders as the metal teeth rip through her rotten skin and then down into the bone, grinding all the way through to her dry husk of a brain. She tries to scream as her entire head is cracked open, and finally the two sides fall away from one another, with the blade of the chainsaw moving down to start carving through the stump of her withered neck, causing her entire body to vibrate violently as it's torn apart.
***
“No, stop!” Anna shouts, sitting up in bed. “Scott, please -”
She sits in darkness, staring at the fluttering curtains that frame the window. Outside, the nighttime quiet of the cemetery is a stark contrast to the remembered sound of the chainsaw, which is still ringing in her ears. Her heart – which has been still for more than a year – is pounding in her chest, as if it wants to remind her: I'm alive! I'm back! Hallelujah, I'm beating again! And most of all, she's out of breath, as if her lungs are also celebrating their revival. Her entire body, which was dead for so long, is now singing and thumping with the fervor of fresh life.
“Jesus,” she whispers, trying to stay calm.
She takes a deep breath, before realizing that her cloths feel uncomfortable.
“Disgusting,” she mutters, reaching down to feel the sweat that has soaked through to her t-shirt. “Ew, even more disgusting!”
“Did you say something?” asks a voice nearby.
Looking across the dark room, she spots Sam's bed by the far wall, with a figure under the sheets. It's too dark to make out Sam's features properly, but she has no doubt that she's being watched
with that same skeptical frown that Sam always reserves for particularly troubling moments.
“No,” Anna says finally. “I mean, yes, but... also no. Don't worry about it.”
“Sounded like you were having a nightmare,” Sam continues, sounding very much awake. “I was just trying to decide whether I should give you a poke. I remembered you saying once that you missed having dreams since you died, so I figured if you were finally managing to have one, I should let you get on with it even if it wasn't the most pleasant thing in the world.” She pauses. “Actually, I thought you didn't really sleep at all? Is this something new?”
“It was just a nap, really.”
“And was the nightmare bad?”
“No, I'm fine,” Anna mutters, getting out of bed and heading to the door. “I think I just need a glass of water.”
“I thought you didn't drink anymore. You told me it tickled when the water ran out of the holes in your neck.”
“I'm trying a few old things out again. You know, just to get some old habits back and try to remember what it's like to do normal stuff.”
“Are you sure you're okay?”
Stopping at the door, with the room still shrouded in darkness, Anna looks back toward Sam's bed. She's tempted to turn on the light and let Sam see her repaired body, just to get the moment over with, but then she'd have to explain what happened and that would definitely be something of a sticking point. She has no idea why her body has suddenly started to fix itself, and she's worried about jinxing the process or even undoing all the good work. The last thing she wants is to be bombarded by Sam's inevitable questions, so she figures she should just play for time:
“I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?”
“Something just seems weird with you,” Sam replies. “Don't take this the wrong way, but after I got home tonight, I could tell you were...” She pauses. “It was weird how you were already in bed. You know you can talk to me, don't you? If anything's wrong -”
