And the earth moved.
Not greatly. Enough for the newly bowed perfection of his rib cage to cast off pain even as it resumed its proper shape. Enough for his face to uncrush, strength spilling upward like sunrays as it took back every curve and jut—like a translucent Halloween mask, crushed in a closet from long forgetfulness, but then poked back into shape by its grubby owner in hopes of yelping new scares out of his friends. If Danny had had air to breathe, he would have shouted for joy.
Wolf whined. Danny hadn’t heard that sound in a long time. He could tell Wolf’s throat hurt like hell, was all raspy and sore from the endless hours of fruitless keening that had kept them both in misery for an ungodly eternity. Now there was new strength in Wolf’s voice, strength and a weary caution that said, “I don’t suppose this is going to do me any good, but my options are limited, so here goes.” Wolf tried three muffled bursts of sound before he gave it up and started skritch-skritch-skritching at the sides of his coffin, more vigorous than ever.
Danny’s first impulse was to dig toward Wolf. But it made a hell of a lot more sense to try to break through on the other side, get out from under all this concrete if he could, and burrow up through dirt, rather than run smack into Wolf’s grave liner not inches away, punch through it, and potentially have the same problem all over again. Not only that, but whatever miracle kept him alive without the need to breathe might suddenly abandon him just a few more handfuls of dirt from the surface, sucking in greedy gulps of grade-Z topsoil. Better to tunnel out as quickly as he could, then dig Wolf free with his remaining strength.
His chest’s filling out had given Danny a few inches to maneuver in. He could rotate his arms, bend them so that his hands scraped against the underside of the slab and touched his shoulders. He could even position his flattened palms against the rough stone and gesture toward shoving upward. But he simply didn’t have room enough to put any force behind it, and the top of the grave liner, though now less oppressive, still felt like a mattress of granite sat on by half a dozen impassive sumo wrestlers. They weren’t about to jounce up and down on him, but they also weren’t about to cut him any slack just for trying. Making half an angel in the grave, Danny worked his left hand down to his side and applied pressure downward with his left arm and thigh. The weight shifted, then rocked back on him. He tried again and this time he managed to slide his right buttock back just an inch so that when the weight settled, he was in a slightly better position, one he built on the next time. His right leg slid gradually under his left, his left shoulder bore increasingly more of the shifting weight, his torso and hips turned and held rightward like a finely calibrated ratchet moving a notch at a time—until at last he was facing right and the slab tried to flatten him left side to right rather than front to back, its weight more intense for having less surface area to spread out over.
He suddenly pictured himself, a Berol No. 2 balancing a fucking stack of encyclopedias on some Watch Mr. Wizard long ago, and he thought, Hey, fuck this fulcrum shit, I’m gonna make the World Books topple! Wasn’t as dramatic as that demonstration had been, but by inching ever closer to the side, ignoring the crushing punishment above him that tore with rough stone at clothing and flesh, he gradually felt the center of gravity move behind him. The angle of the slab crept up from zero to five to ten, like a rooster beak creaking opening to crow him out into the world. It gave him only slightly less weight to fight against but he had more space to work with, a blind wall of earth instead of unyielding cement, and some place—not as vast as he’d have liked, but better than nothing—to put the dirt once he dug it out.
His left hand wasn’t much help, flopping uselessly at the end of an arm that had all it could do to keep off the crushing weight from above. But he made up for that with his right hand, gouging and clawing at the earth in front of him: ferociously at first, then being more methodical about it, carefully scooping it out not straight ahead but at an upward angle and packing it down in front of him to make a platform for further upward movement. A clod fell in his face, asquirm with worms. He brushed them off and wiped his eyes clean, absurdly blinking them against the impenetrable blackness. Can’t see a damn thing now, but that’s sure as hell gonna change before too long. With renewed zeal, he dug upward, at one point shifting free of the concrete slab, which canted and held behind his body—he was a fucking walnut easing out of the steel jaws of a nutcracker caught in a yawn. That’s right, officer, the grave gaped and let me the fuck out. But he wasn’t free yet, and he wasn’t about to sit back and chortle about it, not until he broke through to fresh air. And maybe not even then if, as he expected, his torn body had suppressed hurts of all sorts and they were just waiting to catch up. God help him if they slithered up from behind and seized him just inches from freedom.
Both hands now free and more of his body available to give each movement the old english, he threw himself into the digging with his whole being. The earth was solidly packed, as though not recently disturbed, which made him wonder just how long ago he and Wolf had been buried. But that was an idle thought at the moment, and spun free of his mind like the earth flying past his face. Earth and rock and the eyeless creatures that crawled and wriggled through it, they all came down, battered against his body, and were swept away. His lungs, he realized, were working again, moving the dead air in and out as they’d done when his coffin had angled whole about him. But he could tell somehow that they were merely exercising, not getting any sustenance at all from this pseudo-air; and though Danny didn’t need oxygen, and was amazed he didn’t, he craved it with his old cravings, craved it like a scuba diver whose air tanks fail him and who races to break the skin of the sea before the urge to inhale overwhelms him and his death comes rushing in.
His hands scooped upward, arms sweeping rocky earth down about him. One hand caught at a mat: soft tendrils bunched together. He tugged on it, felt it yield. Grass! The warm underside of grass. Both hands rose up, grappled with the stuff, pulled it apart like batting stuffed into a wall for insulation. Diffuse light poured in, battered his eyes. It tugged at him, made him impatient as all the demons in hell wanting to break loose and swarm out onto the earth. He thrust his head through, caught the stars in the night sky, heard the divine tops of swaying trees, saw them swaying, black shadows of broccoli against the night-blue sky. He expelled the rotten air in his chest, took in fresh: Christ, it fucking lit up his lungs. It seared them with effervescent flame. He felt the bursts of energy radiate through his body, spinules of pain and pleasure feeding every inch of him. They swirled in his torso, them zoomed down into his gut and off into all of his limbs. It was as if his entire body—not just a leg left crossed too long or an arm snoozed upon—had gone to sleep and was now tingling awake, fizzing like champagne under candlelight, bringing new stores of strength into a body already strong.
With his head free, he couldn’t dig out any more, but he wasn’t about to go under again. He shouldered his way out, tearing through the thick carpet of grass like it was an inconsequential layer of dust on a furnace filter. He pulled himself out, elbowing free. What remained of his graveclothes spilled dirt as he came. He stank like the worst pile of steaming dogshit he’d ever smelled; he could tell that now that fresh clean air washed through him with each breath. He’d need a shower, maybe a soaking-hot bath and a good scrubbing, a fucking toothbrush and some Crest and some Listerine, some new clothes, and a nice hot meal. Curious, he thought, he didn’t feel hungry yet. He tried to lick his lips, felt his dry tongue scrape over them, by instinct swallowed. Jesus! He gave a yelp at the sudden sword-thrust down his throat. The voice sounded deeper, more full of gravel, than his own. But the pain, like hammers ringing against steel, diverted him from that; his whole alimentary canal felt raw and red and flayed by the mere act of swallowing. He was hungry, all right, could probably eat a squalling baby if one were offered.
He’d get Wolf out first, then knock on Romano’s door, rip his fucking head off, and raid his fridge. He flexed his hands a
nd attacked Wolf’s grave, falling upon it and digging his fingers into the covering of grass. He ripped it away like it was bad silk, marveling at the strength in his hands. Like kids in pure white sand at the beach, he scooped whole armfuls of packed earth out of the ground, clearing off a small patch of grave liner, then standing on it and flinging the dirt away from the rest, up out of the three-foot hole. He could hear Wolf under there when he stopped, a squealing and clawing more frantic now than before; he also heard sounds from Romano’s place, the slam of a screen door, the old man’s mutterings. But Danny had one goal before him, and fuck-Romano-for-a-fat-old-spic if he was about to stop freeing his dog to deal with the head ghoul just yet.
He clambered out of the hole, stiff-armed one hand on the opposite edge, and stuck the fingers of his other hand beneath the grave liner’s cover. The dirt yielding to his poking fingers as if it were brown tofu, Danny gripped the rim and tugged that sucker up and off. The solid slab of concrete felt like plywood in his hands. He lifted it out of there and let it crash to the ground, shattering of its own weight. A small splintered hole in the coffin lid let Danny glimpse Wolf’s gleaming eye, his mix of light and dark fur about the snout, moving and shifting behind the hole. Wolf could smell air and it was making him frantic; if his experience was anything like Danny’s, it was also increasing his strength tenfold.
Something hard poked into Danny’s lower back. “Hold it right there, mister,” Romano said. A flashlight flared on, splashing the shadow of Danny’s head across the lower half of his tombstone. “I’m not about to miss with this shotgun, and the police are on their way, so why don’t you take it nice and slow, ease down on the grass, face to the ground, and put your hands above your head like the smart son-of-a-gun I know you are?”
“Sure I will.” Danny’s voice struck him odd, tongue too thick or too dry or out of practice to form the words right. “But this dog isn’t dead. You buried him alive.”
Wolf’s howls filled the air, punctuated by the sound of wrenching wood. “How the hell did you know about—?” Romano stopped, finally focusing away from Danny and onto the source of the animal sounds.
The flashlight shifted down into the grave. “Holy shit, what the hell is—?” Wolf’s paws, all four of them, were raking at the wood, scoring it open. His snout was out, his teeth pulping the coffin lid where they came in contact with it. His body thrashed under flashlight, fat eel skin in fur shimmying free, and his squeals had turned to snarls. The barrel of the shotgun was suddenly gone from Danny’s back.
Danny shifted free, knocked against Romano to throw him off-balance. The shotgun went off, the blast cutting out a good half of Danny’s hearing, the smell of cordite stinging his nostrils like a sniff of pepper. But there was nothing compromised about Danny’s eyesight: He saw Romano struggle not to fall; he saw the beautiful silver-gray of Wolf’s fur leap upward, led by the smooth red and jagged white of his open jaws; he saw those jaws muting a snarl as they closed like a kiss around Romano’s face and ripped whatever he was about to say clean off his fucking skull. The flurry of blood hit Danny’s face like the slap of a dark wing, cooling on an instant.
Romano toppled across Wolf’s grave, screaming, but Wolf dove into him, ravaging his chest and belly, making a meal of him, snarling and tearing into the old caretaker until he was nothing but corpse meat.
Danny watched, fascinated, and dreamed of Karin.
SIX
RESTORED TO LIFE
Wolf was still snacking noisily, ripping bloody cloth aside to get at the Italian sausage, when Danny walked the few hundred feet into Romano’s house. Fucking cat already had Danny in its nose, glared at him, went real low to the carpet, ears folded down and claws working nervously, then streaked off into the back of the house. Wolf’s dessert.
Fucker said the cops were on the way. Bad news. A bluff maybe, but he didn’t think so. Christ did he stink! He went into the cramped kitchen, shedding grave dirt as he walked, and lifted a coffee mug from the drainer. Water shot from the tap, gave weight to the mug, splashed on his hand and started rivulets of mud spattering on the sink’s cracked enamel. The first mouthful he squitchelled around and spat out, his expectorate pink and brown and grainy; the second he swallowed. Motherfucking shit on a stick! An icicle of fire plunged down his throat, would not stop for nobody no how. Waves of nausea washed through him from below. He suddenly went all hot and cold in the head and had to set the mug down and grip the sink with both hands, leaning over and breathing deep, to keep the water down.
He chased it with another shot, this one better, yes quite nice in fact. Took a third. His eyes roamed over a calendar, pad of paper by the wall phone—one sheet ripped off and taped beside the phone, Police scrawled in large loops with a number beside it. Danny lifted the receiver and punched in the number, heard it ring. Earpiece felt gritty. Need a fucking bath, a fucking change of clothes, rummage through Romano’s closet once the cops are called off. He went over to the ancient fridge, tugged on its upright silver handle, pulled it open. “Penryn police.” A female voice, all business.
“Yeah, this is Romano, from the cemetery.” What the fuck was his first name. A stack of mail spilled over on the kitchen counter by the phone. Danny fixed on the top letter. “Sal Romano.” Once more his voice sounded weird, but it was adjusting fast. He tried to deepen it, slow it down like he remembered Romano talking when him and Danny had walked the grounds. “That call I made maybe five ten minutes ago. Forget it, it’s a false alarm.”
“Just a minute.” Sounded exasperated. He pictured the pert bitch, tits boldly pooching out her dress blues, her long yankable hair shoved up inside her cap, wearing pants and swaggering about like she sported a dick under there when all the time she needed one bad, a good thick one shoved up inside her. Her and some fuck jabbered in the background. Danny went back to the fridge and roved his eyes over the pickings: the browned withered rippings of half a head of lettuce collapsed on a piece of clear plastic beside a one-quart carton of Lucerne homogenized and an unopened package of sliced turkey.
A loud voice assaulted his ear; he pictured that cop guy on TV, what was the fucker’s name, Dolph Sweet. “Hey Sal, where do you get off with this false alarm crap?”
“What can I tell you, I went out to investigate, and there was nothing—”
“Look, it’s like every month with you, the kids this, the kids that . . . hey is this Sal?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” Danny held the phone in the crook of his shoulder, ripped open the turkey.
“You don’t sound like yourself.”
“So maybe I’m getting a cold, I don’t know, I—”
“We got two of our best guys on the way.”
“So call ’em off.” Danny pulled a wadded clump of slices out of the package, started chewing. Jesus fuck, what a trip! His taste buds did cartwheels of delight.
“Okay, okay, we will, but you tell that cheap bastard Pyne to put a better lock on your front gate. Sure he’s a taxpayer, all that, but he used up nineteen ninety-three a month ago as far as I’m concerned, you hear me, Sal?”
Just then, three things happened: The cop’s words drew Danny’s eyes to the calendar, which—under a picture of Doubting Thomas gesturing to touch the palm wounds of Christ—absurdly declaimed APRIL 1993; Danny swallowed his first mouthful of masticated turkey breast and instantly regretted it; and Wolf, muzzle slicked back red with gore, burst growling through the screen door, hit the carpet on a run, and leaped at his master.
Danny dropped the receiver, which banged against the side of the kitchen counter and jump-twisted on its cord. One hand went to his throat, both to keep it from being ripped out and to stop the food’s obscene ripple downward. He fisted his other—swift instinct—and shot it against Wolf’s skull as the dog’s jaws closed on his hand. The fist connected solidly, a Louisville slugger smacking the hide of a baseball; the power of his punch surprised him. Out of the corner of his awareness, Danny saw Wolf’s body slap with a breath-stealing thud against th
e linoleum and skid into the stove. But for the most part his attention was otherwise engaged: He fell to his knees, feeling his insides shimmy and shake with invasion, and fountained his first swallows of food and water violently out across the floor. His guts clutched and heaved, another smaller wash of vomit, then a couple of dry mimes and it was over—all but the claws flaying his insides, a solid core of misery that made him cry out and beg for death. But through the scandal and acid of it, he wanted to laugh, couldn’t help in fact laughing as he throbbed in pain: he was dead, had to be dead, nobody could survive three days of burial let alone a whole fucking year. The phone was busy imitating the pinched metallic sound of a Victrola: “Hello, hello, hey Romano, what’s going on?”
But if he was dead, he was by God the alive-est dead man he’d ever come across. Wolf clacked aimlessly on the floor, shaking the blow out of his head and spattering the stove’s white enamel with the Ragu of Romano’s blood. He sniffed over Danny’s vomit, then nuzzled his master wetly. “That’s all right, boy,” he said, his voice ragged. “Way you look and smell, it’d be easy enough to mistake you for someone else too.”
Sirens wailed in the distance. The phone kept up its blustering, a cartoon fat man shrunk down to size, trapped hopping mad in a cage. Danny grabbed it. “Hey fuck you, you fucking pig, all right? Romano’s fucking dead, yeah, and I killed him, so why’n’t you get your fat fucking ass out here and spindle yourself on Romano’s dead Eye-talian dick, you fucking son-of-a-bitching bastard piece of hog shit!” He slammed the receiver against the floor and it put a gouge in the linoleum and shattered, white plastic flying everywhere. “Come on, Wolf,” he said, running a hand along the stiff fur that covered the musculature of his dog’s powerful shoulders, “let’s you and me get the fuck out of here.” Eyes gleaming with hellish fire, Wolf yawped his approval, his voice more powerful than Danny had ever heard it before.
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