Fierce Pretty Things

by Tom Howard

  Mrs. Leary died the third week of June right after school let out, and for the next two weeks nobody saw Mr. Leary out on his porch. The lawn got overgrown pretty quick and the lights were always off, and there was some speculation that he was dead, too, probably because of some damn fool thing he’d done, only we were all too scared to knock on the door to check on account of Rusty the Lhasa Apso, and also him being Grandfather Vampire.

  Then one night when it was still early in the summer I was staying over at Praeger’s, in the back bedroom of one of the second-story units at Shute Beach, and Praeger turned out the lights so we could discuss the five most terrifying nightmares we ever had, and he looked out his window and said, “Son of a bitch,” which is what he always says. I got up and looked and I saw it too: a light burning in the projectionist’s booth at the Super 130, and a long thin shadow bent nearly in half, the head bobbing up and down now and then. Praeger grabbed his binoculars and said, “Son of a bitch,” then handed them to me and I said, “Son of a bitch.” Because it was Grandfather Vampire who was standing there in that booth, holding a screwdriver as if he’d never seen one before in his life. Praeger grabbed the binoculars back from me, then I grabbed them back from him, and it went on like that for a while, neither of us saying a damn thing. Then the light went out in the projectionist’s booth and we saw Mr. Leary drive away. Praeger said, “I’m gonna go fix it for him,” and then he was hanging out the window by his fingertips and then he jumped, without even bothering to put on his shoes, exactly like a damn fool. But I followed him.

  Took him the better part of the night to fix the projector, and took me running back and forth to get supplies all night, and in between there was a lot of Praeger scowling and asking where the hell the intermittent sprocket was, and who the hell designed these cambers, et cetera, which I figured was mostly an excuse for him to say hell and to show off, but he got it fixed. He wrote up some notes for Mr. Leary on how to thread the reels, then we left.

  Next night I was back at Praeger’s and we watched through the binoculars as Mr. Leary came back to the booth. He saw what Praeger had done, read the note. Looked out the window. Left the booth. Praeger and me started discussing top five most lethal creatures on the planet not including snakes. Hour later Mr. Leary came back carrying two reels of film. Hour after that he was still sitting on the floor of the booth, film everywhere, looking damn lost, looking exactly like an old lost vampire.

  Praeger sighed and said “Son of a bitch,” and started getting dressed.

  Short time later I was leaning against the inside of the booth while Praeger got the reels threaded up. Mr. Leary stood off to the side watching him work, bony arms hugging his shoulders, and every few seconds he looked over my way. I was doing my best to become invisible, on account of suddenly remembering the time a few years back when Grandfather Vampire almost backed over me with his car as I was riding my Big Wheel past his house. Dragged me home and stood there in the doorway with one bony hand clutching my shoulder as he yelled at my mom. But he didn’t let on if he remembered now. Just nodded at me when he finally caught my eye, and I nodded back.

  Praeger finally got it all set up, and a minute later we were sitting out front of the booth in lawn chairs, amidst the high weeds, watching Mr. Leary’s movie. Only it wasn’t a movie exactly, just a white screen. Or almost a white screen, because you could see some shadows moving around and whatnot, but that was about it. (“Son of a bitch,” I whispered to Praeger, but he just ignored me and kept watching.)

  Mr. Leary stayed in the booth and didn’t say a thing during the film. But when it was over he offered us both a dollar a night to come out the rest of the summer, every night around midnight, till school started up again. Praeger to run the projector and me to do concessions, which seemed like the easier job to me on account of there not being any actual customers per se.

  So the next night we snuck out again, and Praeger found a new set of reels waiting for him and got them threaded up while I pretended to do stuff around the concession stand. Once the movie started we watched from the lawn chairs, eating stale popcorn and drinking some questionable root beer that Praeger’d brought from his basement. Mr. Leary, same as before, watched from the booth. Hands folded in his lap, body like a stone, only his eyes completely alive as he watched the screen.

  Still wasn’t what I’d call a movie. No title at all, just started straight off with what looked like a funeral. (“In media res,” Praeger said, and I said, “Yeah sure.” Damn Praeger.) Only a handful of people at the gravesite, which seemed sad enough to me, but the scene was notable mainly because of the damn small casket they were lowering into the ground. Reminded me a lot of Donnie. Not his actual funeral, but I mean the way everything looked that day. Sun was going down in the background and it was mad beautiful, all violets and golds like something out of a dream. I’d wanted to say something at the time but didn’t, since nobody wants to hear about some beautiful sky at a funeral. I wouldn’t want to hear that either. So I apologized to Donnie in my head and kept my mouth shut.

  People finally started to leave. It was autumn and bronze leaves were falling and again I thought it was kind of a pretty scene, spite of everything. Then the camera just hung around the grave for a little too long, which didn’t please me any. I started to itch. Looked over at Praeger and he refused to even raise his eyebrows like he does sometimes to make me feel less nervous.

  Then, son of a bitch, a hand came snaking out of that grave. I bounced off the lawn chair and took off running, but when I looked back Praeger hadn’t moved, barely even looked in my direction. I had a mind to head straight back to Shute Beach and crawl in the window, only I didn’t on account of not wanting to be in Praeger’s bedroom by myself. Instead I hung out at the edge of the lot with my back up against the fence so as to not expose myself to a surprise attack.

  A few minutes later Praeger ambled over, now with his eyebrows raised.

  “You know I got a thing with zombies,” I said. Embarrassed a little but not much, since it was Praeger.

  “Ain’t zombies,” he said. “Just come on back.”

  “Call me when the zombies are gone,” I said.

  “Can’t,” he said, sounding exasperated, “since the damn movie stopped when you ran off.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I said, and Praeger agreed. So I went back with him, and he was right. That hand was still frozen on the screen, just coming out of the ground, only now the image was flickering a little as if the projector lamp was dying.

  “Looks busted,” I said, but Praeger just shook his head and sat down, so I sat down too.

  And the movie started back up right away.

  Maybe Praeger didn’t think it was a zombie movie, but I don’t know what else but a zombie crawls out of a grave like that. Just a kid, younger than me and Praeger even, but still a zombie. Mouth hanging open and face covered in mud, hair matted down with mud, mud in his eyes. Dressed all in a nice suit, though, which I figured made sense, and I wondered why more movie zombies didn’t go around in nice clothes. One of his nice shoes had come off.

  My stomach was flopping some but I kept watching. You could see it was a struggle for him to walk, plus his mouth kept falling open and flies were buzzing all around him like he was a hamburger that got dropped on the side of the road. He must’ve walked a couple of miles, dragging his left leg behind him like a prisoner with one of those balls attached to his leg. Trying to breathe, which didn’t make any sense to me, but I thought maybe he just remembered what breathing was like and thought he was supposed to breathe. Anyway, the sound gave me the jeebs.

  The town he was walking through started looking familiar. Not exactly the same—like, for instance, Pemby’s Auto Parts on Washington was called Pendee’s Auto Parts in the movie. But familiar even so. And then the middle school. The cut-through on Henderson. When he walked past Spider Park I turned to Praeger and started to say son of a bitch, but Praeger shushed me and said just keep watching.

  He f
inally made it home, then just stood there in front of the door with the flies buzzing around him, caked in mud, wearing that one shoe, mouth hanging open. Rang the doorbell. Footsteps coming, and I knew who’d be on the other side. She’d scream when she saw her son standing there, and after she screamed she’d collapse on the floor. Then he’d eat her brains without a doubt. I decided I wasn’t going to watch that part, no matter what Praeger said.

  Instead the dad opened the door. Tall, thin, with hollowed-out eyes, but a young face, younger and kinder than I expected. He kneeled down slow, the way you would with a dog you aren’t quite sure is friendly. And then the zombie boy just sort of lurched forward and fell into his arms. And now the brain eating had to begin, anybody could see that. But the dad only hugged him close, exposing his vulnerable skull, and the boy hung there in his dad’s arms, still trying to breathe, rattling his dead lungs. I realized I was holding my breath.

  And then, real slow, the zombie boy began to crumble away. Like sand running out through a busted hourglass. His dad was left kneeling on the floor with his arms wrapped around a pile of clothes and mud. And the screen went white.

  For a few seconds Praeger and me didn’t move. I looked over and he gave me the eyebrows, and I gave him the eyebrows back.

  When we got up, Mr. Leary wasn’t in the booth. Praeger shut off the lights and the projector. We walked back to his place and I didn’t say a word, since I could tell Praeger was thinking.

  “Gonna need a staple gun,” he said after a while, and I said, “Of course.”

  Next day we sat down in Praeger’s basement and made up a hundred flyers. Secret midnight showing at Grandfather Vampire’s Super 130. Below that was a title: “Zombie Boy Returns.” Praeger had me draw a little zombie doodle beneath the title on each of the flyers, and by the time we were done I was swearing like mad and couldn’t hardly move my hand anymore. We walked outside and the sun hurt our eyes from being tucked away in the basement. In two hours we had the flyers stapled from one end of Westover to the other, and by then it would’ve been harder to miss those flyers than to find one of them.

  Still, only Gus Hargrove and Eddie Pastornicky showed up the first night. Dragged their sleeping bags in through the busted gate and I nodded and handed them bags of stale popcorn while Praeger got things started inside.

  Gus looked up at the screen. “What is it,” he said.

  “Are you gonna ask questions the whole time?” I said. “Damn.”

  He shrugged.

  The movie started up. Praeger and me took our regular positions, and Gus and Eddie found a spot clear of the high weeds and settled in.

  Zombie boy came back to life in his dad’s arms, reappearing out of the sad little pile of mud and graveclothes right there in the foyer. Which was a nice way to start. I eyed Gus and Eddie to make sure they appreciated it.

  His name was Emilio, turned out. Not exactly a classic monster name, in my opinion, although Emilio was looking less like a monster tonight anyways. His dad got him cleaned up and dressed in some regular, non-grave clothes, brushed his hair, and made sure he was presentable for his mom. Then they sat together in the kitchen and waited. Mom finally walked in carrying a vase of flowers, noticed the muddy footsteps, and followed the trail to the kitchen. Took one look at zombie boy—at Emilio—and again I was sure she would scream, or at least drop those flowers and the vase would shatter. But she just came to the table and sat down with Emilio and his dad. Put her hand on Emilio’s head, Emilio kind of half-smiling on account of not being able to use his face completely just yet, on account of still being halfway dead. And she looked back at the dad and nodded. Like, okay, sure, we’re doing this thing with Emilio coming back from the dead and whatnot.

  They had to teach him pretty much everything all over again. How to walk regular without shuffling like a monster. How to brush his teeth and dress himself. How to talk, which was something that he never seemed to really get a hang of, or maybe he was just always a little quiet, even before being a zombie. I thought that was possible. Donnie was quiet and took a long time to answer questions sometimes, but I never thought it was because he was slow. Just liked to think about things first, was all.

  The movie ended with Emilio’s first day back to school. Nervous, holding his backpack, same backpack I had last year with a robot dinosaur on it. Trying not to let his mouth hang open in that zombie way he had. Stepped into the school and kids started looking around, and you could tell things were going to get bad in a hurry. We read Frankenstein last year in Mrs. Leary’s class, so I knew everyone was going to turn on Emilio pretty quick now, and then I had to think he would be forced to eat their brains. Only maybe we wouldn’t mind so much, watching, since we knew he just wanted to fit in, same as Frankenstein’s monster, and why couldn’t they just let him alone already.

  Only once again things didn’t go that way. Kids just came over to Emilio and smiled at him, and shook his hand, and touched his clothes, and tousled his hair. And Emilio smiled back, at least the left half of his mouth did. Tried to say something that came out in a grave-y kind of way, and nobody screamed. One of the teachers came out to see him and took him by the hand and walked him to class. The sun was coming in through the windows, and it was that same crazy sky out there, and the light shining on Emilio made him look kind of nice, even sitting there with his mouth hanging open a bit. And that’s how the movie ended.

  By the next night we had a dozen more kids, and Praeger and me had to clear out some of the weeds to make room.

  Emilio was back on the playground with the other kids. Building a go-kart with his dad. Having dinner with his parents. Reading books. Still didn’t say a whole lot, like Donnie, and sometimes when he was thinking about something real hard, or when he was alone, he could look kind of sad, kind of lost. Sometimes he opened his closet door and saw his old graveclothes hanging up in there, all cleaned up now. Didn’t say anything, just looked at them.

  But when he smiled, I swear there was something a little beautiful about him. Almost glowed sometimes, even, when he was happy. When does somebody glow like that? A few times I caught myself leaning forward, smiling, when some other kid would pick up one of Emilio’s books that had dropped out of his bag, or hold the door open for him, that kind of thing. Kids aren’t always friendly like that. Good things don’t always happen like that. But I wanted good things to happen for Emilio because of how he looked when he was happy. Everybody did. You could see that.

  More and more kids started coming to the drive-in, sneaking out after their families had gone to bed. For some reason they stuck around and came back again the next night, and the next. Sometimes things were exciting, like the time Emilio tried to climb up the water tower and fell twenty feet and everybody thought he was dead all over again, for real this time (but he wasn’t, broken leg was all, and he got to wear a bright green cast just like Gus had that time a few years back, which made Gus hoot when he saw it). But mostly things were quiet, not all that dramatic. Just a regular kind of life. But kids kept coming to the drive-in to see what would happen next. They were worried when Emilio had to get up to deliver a speech in class. They laughed when Emilio went to the beach with his mom and dad and they all built sand zombies. When Emilio came home one day with a Lhasa Apso puppy, every kid at the drive-in cheered, even Eddie Pastornicky. And every night when the movie ended, we shuffled out through the high weeds and walked like ghosts ourselves through the Westover streets back to our homes, talking a little about what we’d seen, but mostly just quiet, thinking our own private thoughts, I guess.

  Westover got to be a little strange, come late July. Kids were so tired from the late nights that they slept half the day away, and when they did come outside, the sun was too bright to take. We avoided playgrounds and ball fields and instead took to gathering in basements and garages and other places that didn’t get a whole lot of sun. And we’d talk about what we’d all seen the night before at Grandfather Vampire’s drive-in.

  There was a go
od deal of speculation. Older kids, the more sophisticated ones, were starting to think something bad was coming. You don’t come back from the dead, reasoning went, without some repercussions. Possibilities were discussed. A fire. A car accident. Disease. Sooner or later something was going to send Emilio back to the grave.

  I didn’t try to guess. Maybe I just didn’t care what was supposed to happen anymore. Maybe I just wanted him to grow up, like he was doing, and just be happy.

  “But that ain’t a movie,” Praeger said, when I told him that. We were on our way to the drive-in one night in late July.

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Praeger said, “I know.”

  July turned into August. Emilio grew up. He went to high school and tried out for the football team. Didn’t make it, not having ever really mastered the hand–eye coordination thing or the running thing, but everybody liked him so much that they made him team president, which I didn’t even know was a thing. He wasn’t the smartest kid, or the most athletic, or the most anything, really. But he did okay. And as he got older he never got mean. He just stayed good, is I guess what I’m saying. And I was happy because not everybody stays good.