The Undead

by Stephen Leather

  Earl looked nervously at the book, then smiled at Laura again. ‘Say, why don’t you come over here Laura, make yourself comfortable. Have some stew. It’s rabbit.’ Earl winked.

  Reluctantly Laura set the book back and joined them at the table. Earl did the honors of ladling her stew. She ate quietly while the hikers talked with their host. She noticed Earl smiled a lot, but it wasn’t a happy smile, it was more of a nervous smile, as if he had something to hide and the smile was his way of hiding it.

  For the next hour the group traded campfire stories. Earl was once attacked by a black bear, he said. He shot it with his rifle, which only seemed to make it angrier. He shot it eleven times before it died, stuck up in a tree with the rifle pointed down at its head. The bear crashed through several branches before hitting the ground. Earl laughed while he told the story, everybody else laughed, too. Except for Laura. It seemed to her that Earl had a pretty grim sense of humor, and she had to wonder what was the purpose of all those bone artifacts around the shack.

  Soon they were unrolling their sleeping bags near the fire and getting ready for bed. Earl warned, ‘Now don’t sleep too close to that fireplace, now. One time a fella got too near it and a cinder fell on his bag. Made of, what is it… polyester? Anyhow, the whole thing caught on fire, him in it, and damn near set him afire too! Just saying. Best be careful.’

  Those were the last words of the night: Be careful.

  * * *

  Sometime in the middle of the night Laura woke. Heavy rain drummed on the roof and pattered the windowpanes. For a moment she thought she woke up from the rain, but there was another sound: someone was muttering in the darkness.

  Slowly, she sat up. By the sparse light of the dying embers Laura saw Earl seated in a chair beside the sleeping hikers. He was reading from a book in a foreign language. At first, Laura suspected she was dreaming, but then she saw the book: it was the soft leather volume with strange writing in it. Earl was reading it aloud, in guttural German.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Laura.

  Earl didn’t notice her. He kept reading in German, his voice intensifying, filling the shack. His pockmarked face was different than before, focused and dispassionate; it looked as though a dark veil had fallen over it. Fear washed over Laura. He kept saying, ‘Ein Opfer… Ein Opfer.’

  A sacrifice.

  Without thinking Laura got up and went for the door, but something stopped her.

  Outside, three nude figures were running swiftly across the lawn in the rain. Two men and a woman, their pale skin gleaming. They looked like corpses. And they were coming towards the shack.

  The breath caught in Laura’s throat. She rushed over to Aaron and shook him. ‘Guys wake up! Wake up!’

  Her friends stirred and moaned. Aaron opened one eye. ‘What now?’

  ‘Get up! They’re coming! Hurry!’

  ‘Who’s coming? What are you talking about?’

  Aaron sat up and saw Earl reading from the book. Earl was now chanting a single phrase repeatedly: ‘Wecke sie auf! Wecke sie auf!’

  Awaken them! Awaken them!

  ‘Earl?’ said Aaron in a daze. The door burst open. The first of the dead things came in, and suddenly the room stank of rotting flesh. The dead man’s eyes were empty. He reached for Laura, but she screeched and darted away, picking up a chair and throwing it through the window.

  The dead woman came in next. She ran forward and clutched Steph’s throat, lifting her up in the air and squeezing until Steph’s eyes bulged, her legs kicking frantically. Steph’s skin turned pale and her eyes clouded. There was a loud Crack! and she fell motionless to the floor.

  The dead men were grabbing Dave and Aaron, still stuck in their sleeping bags. Aaron yelled and tried to fend off his attacker. The dead man snatched at his tongue, and Aaron watched helplessly as his tongue was ripped from his mouth, spraying blood on the shack’s floor. Aaron shrieked and choked, drowning on his own blood, while the dead man went about systematically breaking his limbs.

  Earl had stopped reading from the book and was now running across the room after Laura. Without thinking she jumped through the broken window, slicing her shoulder on a piece of glass. She hit the ground heavily and cried out in pain: one of her ribs cracked. Groaning, she got up and stumbled into a run towards the woods. Behind her were only screams and growls.

  * * *

  Sirens woke Jack Nightingale from a dreamless sleep as they did most mornings. New York might well be the city that never sleeps, but the emergency services carried the philosophy to the extreme. Fire engines, cop cars, ambulances, even though his room was on the fifteenth floor one or another would wake him several times a night. Nightingale wasn’t a fan of New York City, but his benefactor Joshua Wainwright had insisted that he go there, though he’d yet to tell Nightingale why. The Texas billionaire and secretive Satanist used Nightingale as his eyes and ears and sometimes muscle but he had gone quiet not long after he’d told Nightingale to relocate to the Big Apple. Nightingale rolled over and squinted at the display on the clock radio on his bedside table. It was just before eight. He got out of bed, shaved, showered and pulled on a suit and tie and went down to the street for his first cigarette of the day followed by breakfast. Smoking was prohibited pretty much everywhere in New York, but he could still smoke a cigarette as he strolled around the streets. Not that he didn’t get hostile stares and mutterings from the health Nazis, especially the ones out for an early-morning jog.

  He took his pack of Marlboro out and lit one with his battered Zippo, inhaled deeply and kept the smoke in his lungs for as long as he could before blowing a fairly decent smoke ring up at the sky. There was little wind and the ring travelled a good two feet before dissipating, giving him a warm feeling of satisfaction.

  ‘Hey, mister, can you spare a cigarette?’ It was a little girl’s voice. Nightingale turned and his eyes widened when he saw the girl sitting cross-legged in a shop doorway, a black and white collie at her side. She could have been in her late teens or early twenties, white-faced with heavy mascara and a black t-shirt with a red pentagram on it, a black leather skirt and black boots and she had a studded collar around her neck. The dog wore a matching collar. Nightingale knew she was much older than she looked. Proserpine was a demon from Hell and was eternal. She smiled up at him. ‘I’m gasping for a fag, mister,’ she said in a very fair imitation of a Cockney accent.

  ‘What do you want, Proserpine?’ he asked. Normally he had to summon her, a process that she hated and which put him at risk. But she had the ability to appear before him whenever she wanted. And that was usually when she needed something from him.

  ‘I told you twice, Nightingale,’ she said, her voice deeper and more masculine this time.

  He took out his cigarettes and tapped one out for her. She took it. He reached for his lighter but before he could get it out her cigarette began to burn. She took a long drag at it and blew out a thin plume of smoke that formed a perfect pentangle before dispersing. ‘Rings are so passé, aren’t they?’ she laughed.

  ‘Other than the cigarette, what do you want, Proserpine?’

  The dog growled at him and Proserpine stroked it behind the ear. ‘Easy, boy,’ she said. ‘It’s just Nightingale’s way.’ She smiled up at Nightingale. ‘He doesn’t like it when people are disrespectful,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘He’s ripped off people’s heads for less.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. So how can I help you, Princess of the Lower Realm.’

  ‘See, you just made that up,’ she said. ‘But I like it.’

  ‘My stomach is rumbling,’ said Nightingale. ‘I need to eat.’

  ‘I could join you for breakfast,’ she said. She nodded down the road. ‘Have you tried the waffles in Eddie’s? They’re to die for.’ She smiled. ‘Not literally, obviously.’

  ‘I’ll give it a go,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll join you.’ She stood up and walked with him to the diner. The gre
eter, a blonde girl just out of High School – wrinkled her nose at the dog. ‘You can’t bring dogs in here,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t have a dog,’ said Proserpine, looking into the girl’s eyes.

  ‘Okay,’ said the girl brightly, turning on her heel and leading them to a booth by the window. The dog went under the table and curled itself into a ball while Nightingale and Proserpine sat opposite each other. The girl gave them menus and walked away.

  ‘That’s a nice trick,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘People see what they want to see,’ said Proserpine. ‘It doesn’t take much to make them see what I want them to see.’

  ‘These aren’t the droids you are looking for?’

  Proserpine frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘The Jedi mind trick? Star Wars?’ He smiled at the look of incomprehension on her face. ‘Forget it.’

  A middle-aged waitress with too much make-up handed them menus and poured coffee into white mugs. ‘I know what I want,’ said Proserpine. ‘A waffle with chocolate ice cream and that cream you squirt from a can, and maple syrup and bacon.’

  The waitress frowned. ‘Are you sure about that, honey?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘It’s your stomach, honey,’ she said. She looked at Nightingale.

  ‘Can I have a bacon sandwich?’

  ‘That’s not on the menu, honey.’

  ‘Okay. Do you have a BLT?’

  ‘Sure we do, honey. Best BLT in the city, so they say.’

  ‘Terrific. I’ll have a BLT, but hold the lettuce and hold the tomato. And don’t toast the bread.’

  ‘Coming right up,’ she said, and hurried away with the menus.

  Nightingale looked at Proserpine over the top of his mug as he sipped his coffee. She stared back at him with black, featureless eyes, and he could see his own reflection in them. ‘So how can I help you?’ he asked as he put his mug down on the table.

  ‘I’ve got a job for you,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t work for you.’

  ‘Then I need a favour.’

  ‘Favours are for friends, and we’re not friends, Proserpine. You stole my soul, remember?’

  ‘Your soul was given to me, and I gave it back to you. You should be grateful you’re not burning in the fires of Hell as we speak.’

  ‘I am. Very grateful. But you didn’t give it back to me, remember. We negotiated a deal.’

  ‘I’m not here to quibble, Nightingale. I need you to do something for me. You have to go to North Carolina. Some hikers were murdered at the hands of a Satanist and his little friends. I need you to put an end to it.’

  ‘You’re Proserpine, a Princess of Hell. Why don’t you do it yourself?’

  Proserpine ran her finger across the table; as she did she seemed to burn the wood, carving a smoking black line in the shape of a pentagram.

  ‘The waitress isn’t going to like that,’ he said.

  ‘She won’t see it,’ said Proserpine. ‘To answer your question, Nightingale, I can’t.’ She tapped the pentagram. ‘I’m a demon. I don’t have the power to stop them. They’re Wights.’

  Nightingale shifted in his seat. ‘Wights? You mean like in the Tolkien books? I thought that was an old German folk tale.’

  ‘It is. But like you humans say, every story has an element of truth. The Wights are soulless. They don’t possess self-awareness. Their only purpose is to serve the Satanist who summoned them, Earl Haverford. You must stop him. He has an old book of spells in his cabin. That’s your key to killing the Wights.’

  ‘And if I say no?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Don’t play games with me, Nightingale. This is important. For me, and for your kind.’

  ‘My kind?’

  ‘Humans.’

  Their food arrived. The waitress put Nightingale’s sandwich down with a smile but tutted at Proserpine when she put the waffle, ice cream and bacon on the table.

  As the waitress walked away, Proserpine leaned across the table. ‘I need you to go to Bulger, North Carolina. There’s a survivor called Laura – find her and she’ll lead you to the book.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘You’ll know when the time comes. But let’s just say the Wights have an aversion to fire. The best way of killing them is to chop off their heads.’

  ‘That pretty much works for anything, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You’d be surprised, Nightingale.’

  ‘I have a question. Well, a few actually.’

  Proserpine sighed. ‘Just go to Bulger and stop Haverford.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because you’ve got the skills to do what has to be done.’

  ‘Right, but why can’t you just stop him yourself?’

  ‘He has protection.’

  ‘Protection?’

  ‘He has sold his soul to a devil. That’s where he gets his power from. So I cannot interfere.’

  ‘But you are interfering.’

  ‘Don’t try my patience, Nightingale. I cannot interfere directly. But I can get you to do what is necessary.’

  Nightingale nodded. ‘So you’re attacking another devil’s minion, is that it? There’s some sort of power play going on?’

  ‘Enough questions, Nightingale,’ she said. ‘I don’t have to justify myself to you.’

  ‘But you’ll owe me a favour, right? If I help you out on this.’ Proserpine pointed a warning finger at him. The black glossy nail flickered with flame. Nightingale held up his hands in surrender. ‘Okay. I’ll do it.’

  ‘I know you will,’ she said.

  There was a crash from the far side of the restaurant. A waitress had dropped a pile of plates and they had smashed into dozens of pieces. When Nightingale looked back across the booth, Proserpine and her dog had vanished and her plate had been licked clean.

  He picked up his sandwich. ‘Always a pleasure, Proserpine,’ he muttered, before taking a bite.

  * * *

  Nightingale walked out of the Raleigh-Durham International Airport shaken and tense. The flight was overlong and there had been turbulence most of the way. Having left the terminal he spent three hours on a bus headed to a small town called Bulger, population 997, and checked into a cheap hotel outside of town. As he paced up and down the threadbare carpet listening to the dripping tap in the bathroom, he realized that other than a couple of names he had basically nothing to go on – he didn’t know where to find Laura or Earl Haverford. He needed intel and he needed it quickly. He went on a stroll to the gas station and bought the local paper. Sure enough, a ‘Laura Reynolds’ was mentioned alongside the names of the deceased in what had become a murder mystery straight from the pages of a Dean Kootz or Stephen King novel - three hikers had been found dead in the woods a few miles outside of town, their limbs broken, tongues ripped out, skulls smashed. The bodies had large holes in the stomach area and were missing vital organs, presumably eaten. Traumatized survivor Ms Laura Reynolds claimed a local recluse called Earl Haverford committed the killings. Haverford was currently in police custody but would soon be released if evidence was not established. According to the article in the paper, Earl Haverford was going to be released in twenty-four hours. The paper had been printed that morning and it was now late afternoon, making it eighteen hours until Haverford’s release. He had to find that book before Haverford was back on the streets.

  Nightingale paid for the paper and a cup of coffee. He held up the paper for the clerk to see, showing a picture of Laura Reynolds. ‘See this?’ he asked.

  The man behind the counter nodded. ‘Sure. The Reynolds girl. I hear she killed all them kids, made it look like good old Mr Haverford did it.’

  ‘Know where I can find her?’

  The clerk shrugged. ‘Heard she’s in town at the motel with her gram. Her gram came up once she found out what happened. Don’t suppose she’ll be there very long.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  The clerk looked at him seriously. ‘She killed all those kids. She’s gonna g
et arrested, ain’t she?’

  Nightingale left, following the sidewalk into town. Huge trees shadowed the road, blocking out the summer sun. He smelled baked pine needles and hot dirt, and the fresh scent of a nearby stream. Birds sang in the forest around him as he walked.

  He reached the town a half hour later, the woods opening up before him to reveal a wide clearing of green hills and small, stout buildings. It wasn’t much of a town. He saw a post office, a bank, a grocery store, a fire station and a police station. There were a lot of houses, and as he walked on main street he noticed several pubs and churches of different denominations. He counted three pubs. Why would they have three pubs in a town with less than a thousand people?

  It was late afternoon and people were just getting out of work and filling up the pub parking lots and buying groceries. Nightingale passed several of them and asked where he could find the motel Laura Reynolds was staying at. A few of them frowned at him, probably taking note of his foreign accent.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ asked a middle-aged man wearing a black and red checked coat with a fur collar.

  ‘I’m a journalist,’ lied Nightingale.

  Suddenly everybody wanted to talk to him.

  ‘Oh, sure, I know where Laura’s staying!’ said a little old lady. ‘You’re a journalist? Why didn’t you say so! My name is Madeleine Barker. You go ahead and write that down, dear, so’s you don’t forget. If you want my opinion, I’ll tell you right now. That girl did it. No question. She killed her friends because she was good and jealous of that other girl. She was head over heels for that Carter boy, the way the Herald tells it.’

  ‘Which boy?’

  ‘The Carter boy. Aaron his name is – or was. Gosh I have got to remember he’s passed on. Such a shame, it is. He and that Stephanie gal were seeing each other and Laura was good and jealous. Gosh, everybody knows it, dear. Where you been?’