The Laughing Corpse abvh-2

by Laurell Kaye Hamilton

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because if I do believe it, it leaves us no place to go.” I took out a pocketknife that I brought for the occasion and started to chip at the remains of the tombstone.

  “Defacing a gravemarker is against the law,” Dolph said.

  “Isn’t it though.” I scrapped a few smaller pieces into a third bag, and finally got a sizable chunk of marble, big as my thumb.

  I stuffed all the bags into the pockets of my coveralls, along with the pocketknife.

  “You really think Evans will be able to read anything from those bits and pieces?”

  “I don’t know.” I stood and looked down at the grave. The two exterminators were standing just a short distance away. Giving us privacy. How very polite. “You know, Dolph, they may have destroyed the tombstone, but the grave is still here.”

  “But the corpse is gone,” he said.

  “True, but the coffin might be able to tell us something. Anything might help.”

  He nodded. “Alright, I’ll get an exhumation order.”

  “Can’t we just dig it up now, tonight?”

  “No,” he said. “I have to play by the rules.” He stared at me very hard. “And I don’t want to come back out here and find the grave dug up. The evidence won’t mean shit if you tamper with it.”

  “Evidence? You really think this case will go to court?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dolph, we just need to destroy the zombie.”

  “I want the bastards that raised it, Anita. I want them up on murder charges.”

  I nodded. I agreed with him, but I thought it unlikely. Dolph was a policeman, he had to worry about the law. I worried about simpler things, like survival.

  “I’ll let you know if Evans has anything useful to say,” I said.

  “You do that.”

  “Wherever the beastie is, Dolph, it isn’t here.”

  “It’s out there, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Killing someone else while we sit here and chase our tails.”

  I wanted to touch him. To let him know it was all right, but it wasn’t all right. I knew how he felt. We were chasing our tails. Even if this was the grave of the killer zombie, it didn’t get us any closer to finding the zombie. And we had to find it. Find it, trap it, and destroy it. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was, could we do all that before it needed to feed again? I didn’t have an answer. That was a lie. I had an answer. I just didn’t like it. Out there somewhere, the zombie was feeding again.

  Chapter 15

  The trailer park where Evans lives is in St. Charles just off Highway 94. Acres of mobile homes roll out in every direction. Of course, there’s nothing mobile about them. When I was a kid, trailers could be hooked to the back of a car and moved. Simple. It was one of their appeals. Some of these mobile homes had three and four bedrooms, multiple baths. The only thing moving these puppies was a semitruck, or a tornado.

  Evans’ trailer is an older model. I think, if he had to, he could chain it to the back of a pickup and move. Easier than hiring a moving van, I guess. But I doubt Evans will ever move. Hell, he hasn’t left the trailer in nearly a year.

  The windows were golden with light. There was a little makeshift porch complete with an awning, guarding the door. I knew he would be up. Evans was always up. Insomnia sounded so harmless. Evans had made it a disease.

  I was back in my black shorts outfit. The three bags of goodies were stuffed in a fanny pack. If I went in there waving them around, Evans would freak. I needed to work up to it, be subtle. Just thought I’d drop by to see my old buddy. No ulterior motives here. Right.

  I opened the screen door and knocked. Silence. No movement. Nothing. I raised my hand to knock again, then hesitated. Had Evans finally gotten to sleep? His first decent night’s sleep since I’d known him. Drat. I was still standing there with my hand half-raised when I felt him staring at me.

  I looked up at the little window in the door. A slice of pale face was staring out from between the curtains. Evans’s blue eye blinked at me.

  I waved.

  His face disappeared. The door unlocked, then opened. There was no sight of Evans, just the open door. I walked in. Evans was standing behind the door, hiding.

  He closed the door by leaning against it. His breathing was fast and shallow as if he’d been running. Stringy yellow hair trailed over a dark blue bathrobe. His face was covered in bristly reddish beard.

  “How are you doing, Evans?”

  He leaned against the door, eyes too wide. His breathing was still too fast. Was he on something?

  “Evans, you all right?” When in doubt, reverse your word order.

  He nodded. “What do you want?” His voice was breathy.

  I didn’t think he was going to believe I had just stopped by. Call it an instinct. “I need your help.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “You don’t even know what I want.”

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “May I sit down?” I asked. If directness wouldn’t work, maybe politeness would.

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  I glanced around the small living-room area. I was sure there was a couch under the newspapers, paper plates, half-full cups, old clothes. There was a box of petrified pizza on the coffee table. The room smelled stale.

  Would he freak if I moved stuff? Could I sit on the pile that I thought was the couch without everything collapsing? I decided to try. I’d sit in the freaking moldy pizza box if Evans would agree to help me.

  I perched on a pile of papers. There was definitely something large and solid under the newspapers. Maybe the couch. “May I have a cup of coffee?”

  He shook his head. “No clean cups.”

  This I could believe. He was still pressed against the door as if afraid to come any closer. His hands were plunged into the pockets of his bathrobe.

  “Can we just talk?” I asked.

  He shook his head. I shook my head with him. He frowned at that. Maybe somebody was home.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I told you, your help.”

  “I don’t do that anymore.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You know,” he said.

  “No, Evans, I don’t know. Tell me.”

  “I don’t touch things anymore.”

  I blinked. It was an odd way to phrase it. I stared around at the piles of dirty dishes, the clothes. It did look untouched. “Evans, let me see your hands.”

  He shook his head. I didn’t imitate him this time. “Evans, show me your hands.”

  “No,” it was loud, clear.

  I stood up and started walking towards him. It didn’t take long. He backed away into the corner by the door and the doorway into the bedroom. “Show me your hands.”

  Tears welled in his eyes. He blinked, and the tears slid down his cheeks. “Leave me alone,” he said.

  My chest was tight. What had he done? God, what had he done? “Evans, either you show me your hands voluntarily, or I make you do it.” I fought an urge to touch his arm, but that was not allowed.

  He was crying harder now, small hiccupy sobs. He pulled his left hand out of the robe pocket. It was pale, bony, whole. I took a deep breath. Thank you, dear God.

  “What did you think I’d done?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Don’t ask.”

  He was looking at me now, really looking at me. I did have his attention. “I’m not that crazy,” he said.

  I started to say, “I never thought you were,” but obviously I had. I had thought he had cut his hands off so he wouldn’t have to touch anymore. God, that was crazy. Seriously crazy. And I was here to ask him to help me with a murder. Which of us was crazier? Don’t answer that.

  He shook his head. “What are you doing here, Anita?” The tears weren’t even dry on his face, but his voice was calm, ordinary.

  “I need your help with a murder.�
��

  “I don’t do that anymore. I told you.”

  “You told me once that you couldn’t not have visions. Your clairvoyance isn’t something you can just turn off.”

  “That’s why I stay in here. If I don’t go out, I don’t see anybody. I don’t have visions anymore.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  He took a clean white handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around the doorknob. “Get out.”

  “I saw a three-year-old boy today. He’d been eaten alive.”

  He leaned his forehead into the door. “Don’t do this to me, please.”

  “I know other psychics, Evans, but no one with your success rate. I need the best. I need you.”

  He rubbed his forehead against the door. “Please don’t.”

  I should have gone then, left, done what he said, but I didn’t. I stood behind him and waited. Come on, old buddy, old pal, risk your sanity for me. I was the ruthless zombie raiser. I didn’t feel guilt. Results were all that mattered. Ri-ight.

  But in a way, results were all that mattered. “Other people are going to die unless we can stop it,” I said.

  “I don’t care,” he said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket and whirled around. “The little boy, you’re not lying about that, are you?”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, yeah.” He licked his lips. “Give me what ya got.”

  I got the bags out of my purse and opened the one with the gravestone fragments in it. Had to start somewhere.

  He didn’t ask what it was, that would be cheating. I wouldn’t even have mentioned the boy except I needed the leverage. Guilt is a wonderful tool.

  His hand shook as I dropped the largest rock fragment into his palm. I was very careful that my fingers did not brush his hand. I didn’t want Evans inside my secrets. It might scare him off.

  His hand clenched around the stone. A shock ran up his spine. He jerked, eyes closed. And he was gone.

  “Graveyard, grave.” His head jerked to the side like he was listening to something. “Tall grass. Hot. Blood, he’s wiping blood on the tombstone.” He looked around the room with his closed eyes. Would he have seen the room if his eyes had been open?

  “Where does the blood come from?” he asked that. Was I supposed to answer? “No, no!” He stumbled backwards, back smacking into the door. “Woman screaming, screaming, no, no!”

  His eyes flew open wide. He threw the rock fragment across the room. “They killed her, they killed her!” He pressed his fists into his eyes. “Oh, God, they slit her throat.”

  “Who is they?”

  He shook his head, fists still shoved against his face. “I don’t know.”

  “Evans, what did you see?”

  “Blood.” He stared at me between his arms, shielding his face. “Blood everywhere. They slit her throat. They smeared the blood on the tombstone.”

  I had two more items for him. Dare I ask? Asking didn’t hurt. Did it? “I have two more items for you to touch.”

  “No fucking way,” he said. He backed away from me towards the short hall that led to the bedroom. “Get out, get out, get the fuck out of my house. Now!”

  “Evans, what else did you see?”

  “Get out!”

  “Describe one thing about the woman. Help me, Evans!”

  He leaned in the doorway and slid to sit on the floor. “A bracelet. She wore a bracelet on her left wrist. Little dangling charms, hearts, bow and arrow, music.” He shook his head and buried his head against his eyes. “Go away now.”

  I started to say thank you, but that didn’t cut it. I picked my way over the floor searching for the rock fragment. I found it in a coffee cup. There was something green and growing in the bottom of it. I picked up the stone and wiped it on a pair of jeans on the floor. I put it back in the bag and shoved all of it inside the purse.

  I stared around at the filth and didn’t want to leave him here. Maybe I was just feeling guilty for having abused him. Maybe. “Evans, thanks.”

  He didn’t look up.

  “If I had a cleaning person drop by, would you let her in to clean?”

  “I don’t want anybody in here.”

  “Animators, Inc., could pick up the tab. We owe you for this one.”

  He looked up then. Anger, pure anger was all that was in his face. “Evans, get some help. You’re tearing yourself apart.”

  “Get-the-fuck-out-of-my-house.” Each word was hot enough to scald. I had never seen Evans angry. Scared, yes, but not like this. What could I say? It was his house.

  I got out. I stood on the shaky porch until I heard the door lock behind me. I had what I wanted, information. So why did I feel so bad? Because I had bullied a seriously disturbed man. Okay, that was it. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

  An image flashed into my head, the blood-soaked sheet on the brown patterned couch. Mrs. Reynolds’s spine dangling wet and glistening in the sunlight.

  I walked to my car and got in. If abusing Evans could save one family, then it was worth it. If it would keep me from having to see another three-year-old boy with his intestines ripped out, I’d beat Evans with a padded club. Or let him beat me.

  Come to think of it, wasn’t that what we’d just done?

  Chapter 16

  I was small in the dream. A child. The car was crushed in front where it had been broadsided by another car. It looked like it was made of shiny paper that had been crushed by hand. The door was open. I crawled inside on the familiar upholstery, so pale it was almost white. There was a dark liquid stain on the seat. It wasn’t all that large. I touched it, tentatively.

  My fingers came away smeared with crimson. It was the first blood I’d ever seen. I stared up at the windshield. It was broken in a spiderweb of cracks, bowed outward where my mother’s face had smashed into it. She had been thrown out the door to die in a field beside the road. That’s why there wasn’t a lot of blood on the seat.

  I stared at the fresh blood on my fingers. In real life the blood had been dry, just a stain. When I dreamed about it, it was always fresh.

  There was a smell this time. The smell of rotten flesh. That wasn’t right. I stared up in the dream and realized it was a dream. And the smell wasn’t part of it. It was real.

  I woke instantly, staring into the dark. My heart thudding in my throat. My hand went for the Browning in its second home, a sheath attached to the headboard of my bed. It was firm and solid, and comforting. I stayed on the bed, back pressed against the headboard, gun held in a teacup grip.

  Through a tiny crack in the drapes moonlight spilled. The meager light outlined a man’s shape. The shape didn’t react to the gun or my movement. It shuffled forward, dragging its feet through the carpet. It had stumbled into my collection of toy penguins that spilled like a fuzzy tide under my bedroom window. It had knocked some of them over, and it didn’t seem able to pick its feet up and walk over them. The figure was wading through the fluffy penguins, dragging its feet as if wading in water.

  I kept the gun pointed one-handed at the thing and reached without looking to turn on my bedside lamp. The light seemed harsh after the darkness. I blinked rapidly willing my pupils to contract, to adjust. When they did, and I could see, it was a zombie.

  He had been a big man in life. Shoulders broad as a barn door filled with muscle. His huge hands were very strong looking. One eye had dehydrated and was shriveled like a prune. The remaining eye stared at me. There was nothing in that stare, no anticipation, no excitement, no cruelty, nothing but a blankness. A blankness that Dominga Salvador had filled with purpose. “Kill,” she had said. I would have bet on it.

  It was her zombie. I couldn’t turn it. I couldn’t order it to do anything until it fulfilled Dominga’s orders. Once it killed me, it would be docile as a dead puppy. Once it killed me.

  I didn’t think I’d wait for that.

  The Browning was load
ed with Glazer Safety Rounds, silver-coated. Glazer Safety Rounds will kill a man if you hit him anywhere near the center of the body. The hole will be too big for salvage. A hole in its chest wouldn’t bother the zombie. It would keep coming, heart or no heart. If you hit a person in the arm or leg with Safety Rounds, it will take off that arm or leg. Instant amputee. If you hit it right.

  The zombie seemed in no hurry. He shuffled through the fallen stuffed toys with that single-minded determination of the dead. Zombies are not inhumanly strong. But they can use every ounce of strength; they don’t save anything. Almost any human being could do a superhuman feat, once. Pop muscles, tear cartilage, snap your spine, but you can lift the car. Only inhibitors in the brain prevent us all from destroying ourselves. Zombies don’t have inhibitors. The corpse could literally tear me apart while it tore itself apart. But if Dominga had really wanted to kill me, she would have sent a less-decayed zombie. This one was so far gone I might have been able to dodge around it, and make the door. Maybe. But then again...

  I cupped the butt of the gun in my left, the right where it was supposed to be, my finger on the trigger. I pulled the trigger and the explosion was incredibly loud in the small room. The zombie jerked, stumbled. Its right arm flew off in a welter of flesh and bone. No blood, it had been dead too long for that.

  The zombie kept coming.

  I sighted on the other arm. Hold your breath, squee-eeze. I was aiming for the elbow. I hit it. The two arms lay on the carpet and began to worm their way towards the bed. I could chop the thing to pieces, and all the pieces would keep trying to kill me.

  The right leg at the knee. The leg didn’t come loose completely, but the zombie toppled to one side, listing. It fell on its side, then rolled onto its stomach and began pushing with its remaining leg. Some dark liquid was leaking out of the shattered leg. The smell was worse.

  I swallowed, and it was thick. God. I got off the bed on the far side away from the thing. I walked around the bed coming in behind the thing. It knew instantly that I had moved. It tried to turn and come at me, pushing with that last leg. The crawling arms turned faster, fingers scrambling on the carpet. I stood over it and blasted the other leg from less than two feet away. Bits and pieces of it splattered onto my penguins. Damn.