by Ivan Blake
“And you believe the bright light I saw was her.”
“Yes.”
“So if all that’s left of her is hate, then how can she be smart enough to know who’s important to you?”
“Anyone I touch or hold or kiss, she just reacts. Hugging is enough to set her off. I hugged her brother Rudy, and she tore into him.”
“If I’d helped you back there in the road…”
“She’d have attacked you too.”
“So...until she’s gone...we can’t even touch each other?”
Chris said nothing.
“Okay then...why isn’t she attacking you now?”
“I...I don’t know. Maybe because she has to build up enough strength between attacks, like an electrical charge, like lightning in a cloud.”
“And why hasn’t she killed you?”
“I don’t know that either. Maybe she can’t. Maybe we’re linked somehow—she can’t kill me without…I don’t know…maybe hurting herself even more.”
“But if she hurts you enough...eventually you are going—”
“I don’t want to think about that.”
“Chris, you don’t actually believe any of this, do you? Maybe you’ve got a concussion.”
“I only know what I saw, and what Mallory has already done to me.”
“All right. If it is Mallory then how do we stop her?”
“We lead her to her corpse and then we bury it, spirit and all.”
“Lead her? How?”
“She’ll go where I go, and she’s already following us, me anyway.”
“What? Where?”
They were nearing Willard Lane. Chris suddenly said, “Pull in.”
Gillian turned into her lane and stopped the car. “I don’t understand. You said we had to get Mallory’s corpse before Meath destroys it.”
“Yes, I have to, and you have to call the police.”
“You can’t fight Meath alone! Wait. Maybe we should check Mallory’s grave before you go tackling Meath. What if he doesn’t even have her?”
“I don’t have time. If Meath has her, he’ll destroy her body as soon as he’s finished his experiment, and then I’ll be stuck with Mallory’s spirit forever. And if he doesn’t have her, well, then I’ve got time to find her. So I have to try Meath’s place first.”
“Then we shouldn’t waste time calling the police.”
“The police have to see for themselves what Meath’s been up to. That’s why you have to call them and say I’m on my way to Meath’s place because I think he stole Mallory’s body. And if they won’t believe that, then say I intend to hurt Meath. Say whatever you have to, to make them come. When they arrive and find Mallory, maybe then they’ll believe what I’ve been saying. After that, I hope I can reunite Mallory’s spirit with her corpse and somehow get them both back into a grave so she can’t attack me anymore.”
“I’m frightened. If Meath’s as mad as you say, he might kill you.” She started to reach across the car to touch Chris’s cheek.
“No, Gillian, please.” He pulled away. “Look, I know this makes no sense. You just have to trust me. I’ve got to stop Meath, and you’ve got to call the police.”
She got out of the car and Chris slid into the driver’s seat. Gillian looked at him with tears welling in her eyes.
“I can do this,” Chris said with a smile. “But please, get the police.”
He pulled the car door closed and threw the Buick into reverse. It roared backwards up the lane, then headed for Meath’s farm.
* * * *
Chris struggled to keep the huge car on the icy pavement. Freezing drizzle coated the windshield and wiper blades, making it almost impossible to see the road ahead. Chris touched the brakes as he approached Meath’s turnoff, and the car went into a violent spin which he barely managed to stop before plowing into a ditch. He took a moment to get his breathing under control, then backed onto the road, spun the car around, and took off down the winding track to the farmhouse. Through the trees and the freezing drizzle, he could just make out the lights ahead.
The Buick rumbled and plowed along the icy trail about as fast as its Fireball Straight-8 could manage. Ruts and boulders and potholes and stumps threw the beast of a car about wildly. Chris, tossed around like a rag doll, clung to the huge wooden steering wheel. Every inch of him hurt. One enormous mud hole bounced his head so viciously against the roof of the car that, for an instant, he could see only shooting stars. Wouldn’t you know, Mallory chose that moment to lash out again. She raked Chris’s back right through the car seat with what felt like a fist full of razor blades. He screamed in agony and lost control of the car.
The Buick leapt from the icy lane, plowed across a patch of rough ground and over a huge mound of frozen manure, barely missing Meath’s truck, and then, almost airborne, it slammed into the shed to the right of the farmhouse. Chris heard the screams of goats as the two-ton car crushed everything inside the building.
At the sound of the crash and the screams of his goats, Dr. Meath came running from behind the house brandishing an old rifle, and shouting, “What the hell? What the hell?”
Chris clambered out of the Buick and stumbled across the wreckage of the shed and the shattered remains of a dozen goats, many not yet dead and screeching in agony. Meath, now standing on the porch, howled with laughter. Chris stared in disbelief at the wreckage around him.
“Well, this is too good to be true!” Meath roared. “If I thought you were going to help me before, I sure as hell own you now, boy. With what you’ve just done to my goats, I own your sorry ass for all time. You will do everything, and I mean everything, I tell you to do. Get me? So, you’d better follow me or you’re dead meat—like my goats.” Meath turned and headed for the barn behind the house. “You’re just in time to see something amazing.”
“What about the animals?” Chris asked, surveying the wreckage and the gore. One goat thrashed about at Chris’s feet, blood gurgling from its mouth and a long splintered board protruding from its belly. Another goat, bleating horribly, stumbled past on three legs, dragging its mangled fourth behind.
Meath wheeled about, raised his rifle, and fired off several quick shots. A few of the most horribly injured goats simply exploded in front of Chris. Blood and flesh splattered all over him.
“Leave the rest. The cold will take care of them.” Meath marched off toward the barn. “If we’re successful tonight, I won’t ever have to look at another damned goat,” he said over his shoulder. “So follow me!”
Chris stumbled after Meath. Bad beginning, absolutely the worst goddamn beginning he could have imagined to his battle for Mallory’s corpse.
* * **
Meath’s wife, still on crutches, stood in the barn doorway. “What happened?” Her voice was barely human. She tried to get out of her husband’s way. Not quickly enough.
Meath shoved her to one side.
She dropped the crutches, stumbled backwards and flopped down on her backside. She grabbed her neck and cried out in pain, then sat there, whimpering pathetically. Meath made no move to help her up.
“Come in, Chandler. Say hello to the wife; she got her voice back, sort of.” He swept his hand around the room. “Oh, and say hello to your classmate. I think you were close once.”
As Chris stepped into the barn, his stomach lurched in horror. Lashed into the barber’s chair was Mallory’s naked corpse, her flesh the color of congealed oatmeal, with great purple blotches where fluids had pooled beneath her skin. Her body was covered in dirt, and her hair was matted with grass, dead leaves and mud. The clothes in which Mallory had been laid out at the funeral home now lay shredded and scattered in the dirt around the platform.
The beautiful young woman he’d desired, caressed, and embraced just weeks ago, now utterly debased and corrupt; the sight of her horrified and sickened him. His head spun and stomach roiled; he staggered to one side and grabbed the barn door frame to stop from toppling over.
“Gracious, bo
y, what happened to you,” Meath asked when he saw the extent of Chris’s injuries. “Townspeople not pleased you showed up at the funeral? No matter. I’m glad to see you.”
“What have you done to her? It’s...it’s...appalling!”
“Appalling? It’s science. And I haven’t done anything yet.”
“How did you get her body? We buried her! We filled the grave. I was there.”
“What did you see, a tasteless pink and purple coffin?” Meath slammed the barn doors shut and crossed to the barber chair. “I wasn’t about to let such a spectacular corpse slip through my fingers,” he said as he fondled Mallory’s shoulder. “So, last Wednesday, when Mrs. Dahlman ordered her daughter’s remains returned to the freezer because of all the gawking kids, I switched her with some old farmer from down the coast whom we were burying the same afternoon.” Meath put on a lab coat and lifted the activator from its footlocker.
“Only a handful of people showed up for the old man’s service, and they certainly didn’t want to see his ugly face, so the casket remained closed. No one had the slightest idea Mallory was in there instead of him. And since no one stayed for the interment, I faked the closing. I’d have dug her up on Friday or Saturday if there hadn’t been all that fuss at the parlor over the girl’s funeral arrangements. And I’d have been back here with her earlier today if Brewster hadn’t insisted I put in an appearance at the Dahlman wake.”
Meath wrestled his birdcage mechanism onto Mallory’s shoulders and had just started adjusting the device around the head and neck when the barn doors flew open.
“Close those doors!” he shouted at his wife.
The old lady crawled to her crutches and tried to stand.
Chris heard the air crackle and saw a pale blue light outside the barn doors, and then a ghostly face. Meath was too preoccupied with the activator to notice.
“After I left the wake, I went back to town, pulled the dear girl out of the ground, and brought her home in my truck.” As he talked, Meath tightened the first thumb screw against the gray flesh of Mallory’s forehead. “Come up here. You need to see how this is done.”
On crutches once again, Meath’s wife turned to close the barn doors, but too late.
Mallory swept into the barn screaming like a banshee.
A wave of fury and a rush of scorching air sparked and crackled and knocked aside everything in its path. Old lady Meath was knocked to the floor again. She clutched her neck and screamed in agony. Bulbs exploded, shelves toppled, tools fell from the back wall, and milk buckets flew in all directions. Meath was thrown from the platform and into the dirt. Chris flew backwards against the side wall of the barn and slid down onto his backside. The wind knocked out of him, Chris knew too well what had happened...and that Mallory was far from finished.
The blast rocked the monstrous barber chair backwards. Several bolts fastening its circular base plate to the platform ripped from the plywood. The chair rocked forward and more bolts were torn away. For just a second, the chair came to a rest. Then all hell broke loose.
A shudder ran through Mallory’s corpse. The arms twisted and legs kicked out against their restraints. The head jerked up and down and the mouth—which had been stitched shut at the funeral home—opened in a silent scream. Mallory’s lips were shredded as the stitches pulled through the soft tissue. Dead eyes opened in a gaze filled with horror.
Mallory Dahlman had found her corpse; her spirit had returned to its putrefying flesh.
“What the hell was that?” Dr. Meath gasped. “Lightning? Was the barn hit?”
“It’s Mallory,” Chris shouted. “Look!” Her corpse was thrashing about like a gaffed fish in the bottom of a boat.
“Nonsense. She’s dead, I drained her myself.”
“She may be dead, but she sure as hell wants out of that chair.”
“Lightning. Ball lightning, that’s it.” Meath got up from the floor and brushed dirt and goat crap from his lab coat. “Some kind of electrical discharge. Look, there, it’s making the muscles twitch.”
“No, it’s Mallory!” Chris struggled to stand. Every breath felt like a shard of glass in his chest.
“Don’t be stupid,” sneered Meath.
“I’m stupid? You’re the one with a dead girl in a barber chair. And she isn’t just twitching. She’s jumping around like a bucking bronco.” Chris coughed, clutched his chest in agony, and spit blood. “If we don’t bury her soon, she’s going to rip herself to pieces. We’ve got to bury her right away.”
“Hell no, this is great.” Meath returned to the barber chair. “I thought she was a wonderful specimen before, and now! Alive yet not alive? Absolutely perfect! Quick, help me tighten the screws around the head before she damages her neck. We’re only going to get one shot at this.”
“No!”
Meath scowled at Chris. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no, I won’t let you do this! We have to bury Mallory. You should never have dug her up. You should never have dug any of them up!” With that, he dove across the barn, and tackled Meath.
They rolled off the platform and onto the dirt floor; Chris cracked his head against the barber chair. For the third time that night, he saw stars, but he would not let go of Meath’s legs.
“You little bastard, you’re next, I swear.” Meath kicked out savagely at Chris and tried to break his grasp. “Help me,” he cried to his wife as they wrestled in the dirt, “Please, Maude! Help me!”
Clinging to the doctor’s legs with every ounce of his strength, Chris didn’t see the old lady drag herself across the floor, find the rusted shovel near the platform, and then balance herself up on her knees. All Chris saw was a fourth explosion of stars—and then blackness.
* * * *
Chris came to with a scream that shredded his throat. Blood flew out of his mouth. Pain shot from his neck, down the spine, and out into his limbs. Every nerve ending was on fire. He screamed again. The agony was electric. Then, over his own cries, he heard the click of something mechanical against his skull. He tried to grab at his neck, but couldn’t raise his arms. He couldn’t move at all. “I’m paralyzed!” he tried to cry out, but couldn’t even move his jaw.
“Oh please. I haven’t done anything to you yet,” Meath grumbled in his ear, “well not much, anyway.”
Chris’s eyes flew wide. Meath’s face hovered inches away.
“This is so good,” Meath said. “For years I’ve had to work with corpses, smelly, bloated corpses of country fools. And now suddenly, I have two healthy young specimens—well, one and a half anyway—alive enough to give me good results, and dead enough so no one will miss them when I’m done. Everyone thinks the Dahlman girl has already been buried, and after all the trouble you’ve caused, Chandler, I bet your own family will be happy if you disappear.”
“What have you done to me?” Chris uttered through clenched teeth. His hands and feet were lashed to a kitchen chair, head and shoulders fastened inside a web of wires and steel, and jaw clamped shut in a metal cup. He could feel thumb screws cutting into his temples and forehead.
“You can relax, Chandler, I want to finish with the girl first.”
Mallory’s corpse thrashed about more violently than ever. And with many of the bolts which once held the barber chair to the plywood platform now dislodged, the entire chair rocked from side to side.
“Perhaps you can tell I’m using the latest version of my activator on the girl. It has an improved clamp on the jaw to rotate the head more precisely. You will have to be content with an earlier model. If I’m successful with Miss Dahlman, then I may not need your neck at all, Chandler. So let’s keep our fingers crossed. Remember though, if you give me any trouble, I have only to tighten this screw…” Meath turned a screw at the base of Chris’s neck; he heard a terrible crack at the back of his head, and pain shot down his spine. “One turn and you’ll be a cripple for life. So sit back and enjoy the show.”
Chris had to do something to buy time until the police
arrived. “Look at her!” he tried to say in spite of his clamped jaw and clenched teeth. “She’s been dead for a week and yet she’s trying to walk! Don’t you think that’s amazing? Shouldn’t you be studying that?”
“Chickens with their heads cut off do it all the time.”
“But she’s human...or at least she was!”
“I told you. It’s just some kind of electrical discharge. I’ve worked in a funeral parlor for twenty years. I’ve seen bodies sit up, pass wind, and soil themselves. I’ve even seen them open their eyes and throw their arms in the air.”
As Meath spoke, he examined the cage encasing Mallory’s head. While Chris had been unconscious, Meath had somehow managed to finish installing the activator in spite of Mallory’s crazed thrashing about.
“And on nights when I was on duty at the funeral home and bored, I sometimes applied electrical leads to their muscles and made them dance. Miss Dahlman’s performance is a little more dramatic, but so what? I don’t care about parlor tricks. I’m far more interested in my own work, so shut up, or it’s the screw for you.”
At every point on Mallory’s body where she was restrained, the ropes had already cut through the skin to expose muscle and bone; no blood, just yellow liquid oozed out of every severed vein. Her struggle to break free was becoming more and more violent as the restraints ate away more and more flesh and became less and less effective.
“Must hurry,” Meath said as he finished his examination, “or we’ll have to tighten the fastenings all over again.” He laid the kitchen timer in Mallory’s lap, stepped away from the body, and turned on the tape machine.
“I have finished setting tensions, and in spite of the subject’s persistent movement, I should be able to get good readings. The timer has been started.”
Under his breath Meath counted down from ten. As he whispered, “One,” the activator made a strange rattling noise followed by a brief pause, and then a sharp crack. Something like a spring flew from Meath’s contraption and across the barn. Mallory’s eyes almost jumped out of her skull, and for an instant, she ceased her crazed attempts to break free of the chair. Then her frenzied movement resumed, only this time the jaw dangled loosely, and the head was cocked unnaturally to one side, and bobbed about as if the neck was made of rubber.
