JF Gonzalez - Back From The Dead.wps

by phuc

  “Oh yeah?” Gordon looked up from the back cover, which he’d begun to peruse.

  “Yeah. Creepiest shit I’ve read in a long time.”

  “So where’s the zombie stuff?”

  “They make an appearance about a quarter of the way into the book, but the serious shit doesn’t happen until the last third.”

  Gordon was ruffling through the pages, as if searching through a textbook. “No, I mean, where’s the formula? You know…the spells on how they make the zombies?”

  “You’re still gonna read the whole thing, right?”

  “Well, yeah!”

  Tim took the book back and flipped through it, finding the pages in question.

  Gordon sat down next to him on the bench. Around them kids mingled, eating lunch together in groups or by themselves. A group of girls were sitting on the grass of the quad talking and laughing. “I guess I can show you where it is since I already told you about how they make the zombies. It’s not like I’ve given you spoilers.”

  “Spoilers?” Gordon looked confused.

  Tim ignored the confused look on Gordon’s face. “Here we are. Page thirty-six through forty-three.” He showed Gordon the pages in question. “Most of the background on zombies is here.” He flipped through another thirty pages. “And here’s the part where the main villain performs the ritual.”

  Gordon all but snatched the book from Tim’s hands. “Cool!” He started reading through the passage in question. “This is some serious shit.”

  “Don’t mess up on your zombie-making on the first try,” Tim quipped. He reached for his water bottle for a swig.

  Gordon looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  Tim grinned. “You’ll see.”

  “Nah, really, what do you mean?” Gordon was getting that look Tim knew only too well; that menacing look that hinted at upcoming verbal or physical abuse.

  Tim quickly back-peddled, his old habits falling into place whenever he was bullied by Gordon and his crew. “Nothing, nothing! It’s just that in the book the main villain performs the ritual the wrong way and…well, shit happens. You’ll see what I mean when you get to it.”

  Gordon was looking at him, seemingly satisfied by the answer. “Okay,” he said.

  He rose to his feet. “I better get going. Thanks, Count!”

  “Don’t mention it,” Tim said, feeling the little punch to his gut at the word Count and suddenly feeling embarrassed for letting himself be manipulated by Gordon that way.

  Why did you go out of your way to loan him a book? To be his friend? To get on his good side? You know Gordon and his friends are never going to be on your good side and there’s no use being friendly with him or trying to accommodate them. They’ll just use you and spit in your face. Just like Gordon did just now by calling you Count.

  Tim watched Gordon walk away, feeling a burning distaste in the pit of his belly.

  Sometimes he wished he could lash out at those who tormented him like the villains did in the horror and SF novels he read. He wished that, for a brief time, magic really existed so he could turn them into frogs or slugs and then step on them, grinding them to paste beneath his feet. He wished he could humiliate them publicly in a way that it would never be traced back to him.

  Tim sighed. No use getting bent around the axle now. What was done was done.

  He couldn’t undo it. And if Gordon never returned his copy of Back From the Dead he could pick up a used copy somewhere. No big deal.

  Tim reached into his backpack and pulled out another book, a Robert E. Howard title, and settled back to read. Best case scenario was Gordon really got something out of Back From the Dead, which, in Tim’s opinion, was a solid horror novel. It didn’t matter if he returned it, just that he understood its underlying message: that if you pushed somebody hard enough they would push back.

  And sometimes they would bite.

  Chapter Six

  The following night, Gordon entered the woods five hundred yards off Briar Road near Zuck’s Farm and, with the help of a flashlight, wove his way between pine and birch trees until he found a spot he liked.

  He set the burlap bag down on the ground and found an old log to sit on. Leaving the flashlight on, he dug inside the bag for the things he’d brought with him.

  The first item was a paperback copy of Back From the Dead. He’d lost the copy Count Gaines loaned him at Mt. Joy Cemetery and had to make an emergency trip to Aaron’s Used Bookstore on Broad Street after school to find a replacement. He set the book down on the log and pulled out four silver saucers and four black candles. The book said the candles had to be made from sheep’s fat and he’d gone to a Pagan Book and Gift Shop in Lancaster ( might as well call themselves witches, Gordon had thought) to purchase these along with some other things, which he brought out: an ounce bag each of hemlock, belladonna, and witchgrass. He brought out the ceremonial dagger–seven inches of jagged steel–and a can of salt.

  One of the bags contained an item he’d spent considerable time and energy last night obtaining, but he’d done it. Count Gaines never told him about this ingredient, and Gordon was of good mind to pound the little shit when he saw him at school next time.

  Gordon pulled the item out now and turned it over gingerly in his hands, his heart pounding.

  It was a plastic baggie containing powdered human bones.

  When Gordon read the passage that contained the preparation for the ritual yesterday during Study Hall, he’d been concerned. The spell specifically stated that one of the ingredients needed was the powdered bones of a human corpse. For several minutes he’d stewed in anger, almost prepared to leave study hall in a hunt for Count Gaines so he could kick the shit out of him, but then he started thinking about his predicament. The cemetery near Reamstown Road at that old Mennonite church was old, and several of the graves were interred above ground in large stone cairns. Gordon and Susan had walked through it one day on their way home from the Reamstown fair and Gordon thought it might be easy to push the lid of one of those cairns over, revealing the coffin inside.

  With that in mind, he’d placed a call to David Bruce and explained his predicament and outlined his plan. David was willing to help. So late last night Gordon had snuck out his bedroom window and started his car, which was parked at the curb in front of the house, and drove to David’s. David had been waiting for him and they’d driven to the graveyard in silence. Once there they made their way onto the grounds, selected the first cairn they came across and went to work. Using a crowbar and brute strength, they managed to move the lid of the cairn enough so that Gordon could get to the coffin within. A couple of heavy strikes with the crowbar splintered the wood, but that wasn’t enough. “Shit, we need to break the fucking lock on this thing,” Gordon had muttered.

  “We gotta get the lid completely off then,” David said.

  They’d wound up pushing the heavy lid of the cairn completely off, giving them open access to the coffin. Two strikes with the crowbar and the old lock snapped, gaining them access to the thing that lay within.

  Gordon thought he’d be sick, but he wasn’t. The body had withered to bones long ago, and what remained of its burial shroud had turned to brittle rags. Gordon took the skull, the femurs, a fibula, and several rib bones, stuffing them in the burlap bag he’d brought along. Then they’d gotten the hell out of there.

  Only as they scrambled to get back into the car, David heard a sound. “What’s that?” he’d said. He’d turned a panicked gaze toward 272, which was five hundred yards away.

  Gordon had flung the burlap bag into the vehicle and was so nervous and itching to get the hell out of there that he barely noticed the book fall out of the car’s backseat and onto the parking lot. All he saw was the dim glow of headlights down the road.

  “Shit,” he’d said. “Get in the car! C’mon!”

  They’d gotten in the front seat and hunkered down. Gordon had peered through the window and watched as the headlights grew larger. The vehicle made a r
ight turn and headed down another secondary road. Gordon sighed, feeling the tension ease. He started the engine, his eyes concentrating on the receding tail lights of the vehicle.

  They’d been so rattled by the incident and in such a race to get the hell out of there that he didn’t realize the book had fallen out of his car. He didn’t realize this until the following morning when he went to school. He was lucky Aaron’s had a copy.

  Otherwise, he probably would have had to drive into Lancaster to try to scare one up.

  Gordon sighed, sifting the powdered bones in the bag. Today after school, shortly after he returned home from the bookstore, he’d taken a pair of rib bones, a piece of the skull and a femur, and ground them to dust with repeated strikes of the hammer. It had taken a good twenty minutes to smash the bones into fine powdery bits. He’d stashed the remaining bones in a box under his bed. His parents never set foot in his bedroom anyway.

  While obtaining the bones had been the most difficult, the last item was the one that filled him with trepidation this evening.

  This other item was in a box and still alive. He left it in there as he went about making the preparations.

  He poured the salt in a circle, being careful the lines were heavy enough to be seen. Then he drew a pentagram with the salt, again being careful the lines were well discernable. When he was finished he stepped carefully outside the pentagram and placed the saucers around strategic points, pausing every so often to consult the book. He placed the candles in the saucers, lit them, then took the book and the herbs and ventured to the center of the pentagram. He consulted the book, flipping through the pages and squinting in the darkness at the text. Then, following the book as best he could, he reached into each baggie, pinched a piece of herb or powdered bone between thumb and forefinger, and threw it at the four corners of the pentagram. “As above, so below,” he said. “From the four points of the earth, through the elements of space and time, I beseech thee!

  Awaken and open the gates! Listen, for I bring you sacrifice. With my left hand I bring it to you in sacrifice.”

  He paused, checked his watch and frowned. The book said the spell had to be started precisely at midnight and it was two minutes before. Did it really make a difference? At least he was getting a head start. Besides, he had to get the box with the rabbit he’d brought along.

  Stepping out of the pentagram briefly, Gordon plucked the cardboard box off the ground and stepped back into the circle. Using the blade of the ceremonial dagger, he cut the tape that bound the box shut and carefully opened the lid. He reached inside and grasped the rabbit by the scruff of the neck and, with one quick motion, lifted it and drew the blade of the dagger across its throat as it bleated once and kicked its legs frantically.

  Blood sprayed out into the pentagram. Gordon continued the spell, reciting the words he’d memorized this afternoon. “I bring you sacrifice with my left hand. I bring you fresh blood as sacrifice. Oh Damballah! Oh Erzuile! Hear my prayer! Oh Azathoth, the blind piper of a thousand names! Oh Hanbi, Father of He Who is Our Dark Demon Father Pazuzu, I call on you to grant me this dark boon! I give you the blood of the living, which I have spilt on this hallowed ground so that the powers you bestow will make one who’s dead alive again!”

  The rabbit continued to kick until it suddenly slowed, then stopped. Gordon’s right hand and wrist were drenched with the rabbit’s blood. When the rabbit was dead, Gordon set the animal down in the pentagram. He dipped the forefinger of his left hand in the wound, grimacing as he did so, then stood and flicked the blood from his fingers at the black candles, sprinkling blood on the dancing flames. “Azathoth, Hanbi, Baal, Pazuzu, Damballah! Erzuile! Abaddon!” He repeated these names as he sprinkled the blood, watching as the flames flickered as the blood spilled on them. Actually, according to the book, you were supposed to say something else but it was in some other language and Gordon couldn’t very well hold the book and do all this at the same time. When he was finished, he picked up the book and flipped through to the page in question. He tried pronouncing the words as best as he could. “Aya absath ngya, wahlee obsoth, ngya, yian…wow!” What the hell did that mean, anyway? “Azathoth! Mgwai! Damballah!

  Damballah!”

  The flames of the candles rose and flickered. The wind picked up slightly, blowing leaves. Gordon shivered.

  The crickets, which had been chirping and seemed almost like background music to Gordon, continued but there was a funny sound in their cadence. It was almost as if the rhythm of their chirping had been knocked off track just slightly and then resumed again.

  It was slight, and Gordon thought he was imagining it when it happened. He stopped the ritual, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.

  The chirping of the crickets continued. Gordon listened, his blood running cold.

  Something about them sounds different now, it’s almost like they’re in a different key, a different cadence or something and I know I heard that, I know I heard them getting knocked off their rhythm, this is so fucking weird–

  Overhead, in a tree, an owl hooted.

  Gordon started, heart racing, his skin breaking out in gooseflesh. This was just getting too damn creepy.

  Gordon hurriedly finished the ritual, repeating the words and phrases from the book as best he could. He threw another sprinkling of the herbs and bone over the five corners of the pentagram, closing the ritual, and by the time he was finished he was feeling like a fool for letting it all get to him. And besides…what the hell was he doing?

  Did he really believe in the shit Count Gaines believed in? Did he really think this ritual was going to make the ground cursed? That if he buried something dead here the curse would bring it back to life?

  Now that the ritual was over it was time to find out.

  Gordon knelt down and dug a hole with his hands, cursing himself for not bringing a small shovel along. He dug into the moist soil, heaving clumps of dirt in a pile on his left side, and when he’d gone down a foot or so he picked up the dead rabbit and placed him inside. He shoved the dirt back over it with his hands, tamping it down flat.

  Then he stood up, blew out the candles, tossed everything in the burlap bag, then kicked at the salt-drawn pentagram, scattering it. As he worked he listened to the crickets, pretty sure now that he’d let his imagination get the best of him. The rhythm of their chirping was normal; it hadn’t changed at all. He’d just imagined the whole episode.

  When he was finished he hurried through the woods to his car, forcing himself to take it slow and not trip over any vines or bushes.

  Once in his car he threw the burlap bag on the front passenger seat, started the car, and drove away.

  * * *

  Naomi Gaines watched her son as they ate supper, wondering what was going on in his world.

  The past few days had seen a remarkable change in Tim’s demeanor. No longer sulking, no longer shy and reserved, Tim seemed happy and talkative now. Ever since that day five years ago when Scott Bradfield and those other boys had done that horrible thing to him, Tim had been through hell. It didn’t help that so many people in the community, with the exception of school administrators and the local police, weren’t very supportive.

  Naomi had warned Jeff early on that if they moved back to her hometown they had to be prepared for the narrow-minded attitudes of the local population. Jeff hadn’t taken her seriously enough, though. His eyes were opened not just by what happened to their son, but when Tim was in seventh and eighth grade at Spring Valley Middle School.

  “How’re things going, son?” Naomi asked casually.

  “Great,” Tim said. He’d already wolfed down his steak. Jeff was wiping his mouth with a napkin, listening as Tim related how his day went. “George and I hung out here after school.”

  “He seems like a neat guy,” Naomi said. She and Jeff had met George and Al when they came by the other Saturday to pick Tim up to go to the movies. While cautiously optimistic, they’d come away feeling good about meeting both
boys. What little she knew about George, she figured he was too new to the area to be exposed to Tim’s history and the tainted reputation he had with the student body of Spring Valley High. Still, Tim wasn’t a total outcast at school. There was that computer whiz he hung out with and that girl, some art student. Chelsea. They were kids like Tim; kids who had been cast out of all the social cliques, who were forced to band together lest they be picked on and harassed by the social elite of the student body.

  “Yeah, George is cool,” Tim continued. “He and Al are into the same books and movies as I am. It’s really neat to finally meet guys who aren’t like, all wigged out over science fiction and horror movies, you know?”

  Naomi smiled. “I know, honey. Trust me, I kinda went through something similar when I was your age.”

  “Yeah, you told me.” Tim was looking at her and Jeff. “And Matt and Chelsea are cool too. I like them, but they aren’t into the same kind of books and movies as I am nearly as much as George and Al.” He turned to Jeff. “So, Dad, how different was it to go to a big city school?”

  Jeff shrugged. He’d grown up in Baltimore and living in Spring Valley was his first experience living in the country, in a small town. “Hard to say,” he said. “It’s been over twenty years since I’ve been in high school and we had our share of cliques back then, too.” He traded a glance with Naomi. “But even I can tell things are different here. I work right off Main Street, you know, and most of the people I work with live in town.

  I’m kinda like you in a way, Tim, only in a corporate environment. The people I work with all share the same background and interests and I…well, I don’t. You’ve probably heard me tell you and your mom that I’m the only person at my office that reads during their lunch break, right?”

  Tim nodded, chuckling. Naomi couldn’t help but shake her head. Jeff had mentioned this before. While Jeff wasn’t an unabashed horror fan like their son, he read the occasional Stephen King, sometimes Peter Straub. One day Jeff had tried a Richard Laymon novel at Tim’s urging. Jeff had liked it, but commented on the remarks his coworkers had for his choice of reading material. Only a sick mind would find this kind of stuff entertaining, one woman told him that day after getting a glimpse of the cover of the book while in the company break room. Jeff had commented on the incident that evening over dinner. Screw ‘em if they don’t like it, he’d said.