Undead Ed

by Rotterly Ghoulstone

  The arm was not so lucky. It was absolutely CAKED in the emerald grunge, from shoulder wound to fingertips. I had done my job well.

  Suddenly, the parking area exploded with vampires and werewolves, crowding in on every side. While the arm flopped around on the tarmac like a fish out of water, I scrambled onto my feet.

  The vampires had all grown elongated fangs that now hung down over their lips and made them look deadly. The werewolves were in wolf form, padding around the arm with snarls and snapping fury.

  Two things happened very quickly.

  First, the arm began to mutate.

  Then, the tarmac erupted.

  Still thrusting myself backward, I screamed out loud when the ground between my legs spewed upward in a volcano of dirt and tarmac. A ghoul appeared, its eyes glowing with malicious hunger and its little mouth already salivating at the thought of devouring my undead flesh.

  I booted it hard in the face, but that just made it angry.

  “Fat babies!” someone screamed. Ghouls sprang up all over the parking area, latching onto vampires and werewolves as a terrible fight began.

  Everywhere I looked, vampires were rising into the air, biting into the necks of some ghouls while trying to shake off hordes of others. The werewolves were doing the same, shaking violently as if they’d just emerged from the sea and were frantically trying to get dry. Ghouls were flying off in all directions but scrambling back so fast that they were almost a blur.

  Learn to move faster than other food.

  I peered around, looking for an escape route. Max Moon and Jemini were fighting back-to-back; Max had one dead-looking ghoul hanging from his jaws while the vampire girl was sucking a gallon of blood from two more.

  “Hold on, Ed,” Max cried. “I’m coming to help you! Just hold on!”

  But Evil Clive’s gang was losing. Big time.

  I finally found my feet and began to run away from the depot. Behind me, I heard a demonic voice in hot pursuit.

  “Come back here, Ed—I haven’t finished with you yet! Mwaahaaha!”

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw—to my horror—that far from being destroyed or shrunk away, my arm had actually lengthened. It was now a grotesque fleshy snake, and the hand had…nine fingers.

  “Argghh!” I screamed as my twisted nemesis piggybacked onto a flock of ghouls in order to keep up with me.

  I panted to a halt, completely out of energy, and turned to face my fate. Then I remembered that I wasn’t that old, wussy, no-courage Ed anymore—now I was Big Ed. Zombie Ed. UNDEAD Ed.

  “Hahahaa! You can’t run, Ed!” said the tiny, mocking mouth. “You can never escape me!”

  “He won’t need to,” said a small voice behind me.

  Forgoth the Cursed took several quick steps forward, threw his teddy bear between me and the arm’s rampant ghoul horde, and screamed, “Mumps, Mumps, come out of the dumps!”

  There was a strange popping sound, like someone piercing a bubble in a piece of bubble wrap…and then the ragged little teddy bear started to transform.

  To this day, I can barely describe the thing that Mumps turned into…but what I do remember—very clearly—is that it was like the gates of the underworld opened and spewed out something even a half-starved mongrel would leave on the edge of its bowl.

  Mumps swept forward, a big, red, all-engulfing octopus with tentacles spraying out in every direction. As the ghouls did whatever they could to avoid the main body of the beast, Mumps collided with an oak tree at the side of the road, its horns impaling the bark and rooting it to the spot. Quickly realizing it was stuck, the Free-Roaming Demonic Entity then struck out with seven tentacles, snatching ghouls into the air and flinging them off in every direction.

  All the time, Forgoth the Cursed stood dejectedly in the middle of the road and watched the scene with a mixture of boredom and grim anticipation. Evidently, he’d sent Mumps into battle a lot.

  I stood frozen to the spot, but that turned out to be a big mistake.

  The arm appeared from nowhere, snaking around my shoulders and snatching hold of my throat with its nine spider-like fingers.

  I cried out in pain once again as I felt the tiny teeth tear into my neck.

  This time, my own desperate fury overtook my fear. I dug down deep, snatching up all of my newfound courage, and I got…really…ANGRY. I slapped my hand over the hand and dug my fingernails hard into the back of it. Then, still unable to release the grip, I lifted up the arm and bit it with all my might.

  The grip released slightly and I wrenched the arm away, throwing it onto the ground. It cackled demonically and flipped over, the fingers working madly to send it crawling after me once again.

  I was swinging on the end of my last nerve, and I had not an ounce of strength left in me. My only weapon against the arm now was knowledge…and I had far too little of that.

  “Kambo Cheapteeth,” I screamed, pointing at my grim enemy as it writhed toward me.

  The arm stopped instantly. At first, I thought the words might have killed it, like some powerful spell taking mastery over an evil spirit. Instead, the arm slowly turned over and raised itself up once again.

  Even in the silence, I could feel its surprise. I was about to shout again when Mumps came galumphing up behind the arm, snatched it out of the ground, and flung it with incredible force over the tree line.

  I watched as my erstwhile limb flew high, high into the air. I didn’t see where it landed, but I knew in my heart that this battle was far from over.

  The arm would return…and now its mouthy hand had more fingers to fight with.

  LESSON 15: EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

  I wish I’d hung around to find out whether the gang won its fight against the ghouls. I wish I’d taken more of a heroic stand against the evil arm myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t. Instead, I did what I do best.

  I ran.

  But this time, it was different.

  I ran with anger.

  I ran with determination.

  I ran…with a purpose.

  Admittedly, much of the purpose seemed to involve keeping my jaw attached to the rest of my head. It had slackened considerably and I was terrified of losing it. To make matters worse, a horrible, tooth-rotting smell had started wafting up from my mouth to my nose, and I was praying it didn’t have anything to do with another worm. Where did they come from, exactly? How did they get in?

  Moving at high speed along Outskirts Road, I pounded the ground as if the very hounds of Hades were after me and as if my life (if I’d had one) depended on escaping them.

  There were still two wraiths on guard outside Mortlake, but something about my expression and the speed I was going obviously stopped them from attacking.

  I bombed it into the dark, deserted town square, past my old house, past the pizza parlor where my dad and I used to get my dinner on Friday nights, past the barber’s where I always seemed to get the worst haircut in school.

  School.

  I sprinted up the drive, slammed through the double doors and cannoned along the corridors, past the English Department, past PE, Geography, and History…

  …and into Science Lab 1.

  There I slowed, a new determination in my eyes.

  The writing at the bottom of the fact sheet in my folder. It must have said something more about me, maybe something about Kambo Cheapteeth? I needed to know.

  I pushed open the door to Evil Clive’s office and marched inside.

  Naturally, the gang’s inanimate leader was still in the same position, poised over my crummy folder with that stupid baseball cap still perched on his head.

  “All right, Clive,” I said sarcastically, snatching up the folder and dragging the sheet from inside. My eyes moved to the tiny paragraph below the heavy print. It read:

  Ed Bagley is an innocent kid who needs to find peace. Save him from that thing…if you can.

  I felt my eyes welling up with tears, and the anger inside me was like molten lava in my stomach. My lif
e, my death—it was all so unfair.

  “Who are you, Kambo Cheapteeth?” I said to the world in general. “And what did I ever do to you?”

  I turned to leave the room, but a skeletal hand suddenly closed around my wrist.

  “Kambo was a circus clown,” said Evil Clive with a grin. “And you really messed up his death…”

  LESSON 16: FLASHBACKS CAN BE USEFUL

  Okay, folks, I’ve held off on telling you this bit for too long. It’s a horrible story, and I don’t even like to remember it myself…but here goes:

  FLASHBACK INTERLUDE

  GRIM LIFE EVENTS NO. 2

  —CARNIVAL CHAOS

  On the dark and stormy night I had my carnival “accident,” a lot of other stuff was happening that I couldn’t possibly have known about. It was a bit like those horrible movies where fate makes five or six people run into each other at the worst-possible time.

  Of course, I didn’t know that then.

  I was doing something dangerous and stupid, and—when you’re a kid—that means you get blamed for pretty much anything else that happens afterward, even…even if it’s not your fault…

  …even if it would have happened anyway, and it was just your timing that sucked.

  The rain was hammering down and we were all soaked to the skin.

  I’d been trying to impress the cool kids in school, and that included Candy Lipsnicki. Not that she would ever have acknowledged that I was even alive, not after that awkward Halloween encounter…but I had to try. I remember how the two older guys who were with her laughed when I said I could turn the bumper cars on for them. They snickered at me, both of them, said the circus was shut, said no kid would have the guts to break into the truck and power everything up.

  I said I wouldn’t need to: the panel was on the outside.

  I’d been there two nights before, with my mom and dad—I’d seen the guy in the sweats punching buttons on the back of the truck, the part connected up to the little kiosk where everyone stood in line and paid their money.

  All the switches were labeled—it should have been the easiest thing in the world.

  It wasn’t.

  I remember all of them watching me: the two goofy idiots from the estate and, most importantly, Candy.

  I had to climb a bit, but it wasn’t difficult. The panel was just a bit too high for me to reach from the ground.

  Looking back, I don’t even remember that much after my hands grabbed the sides of the panel.

  All I know for sure is that there was a blinding flash and it felt like my whole body exploded.

  I was told afterward that I’d been thrown back from the truck and had hit the ground, hard, and that my hair and fingertips were burned and smoking.

  The two guys from school had run off; the girl called an ambulance on her cell.

  When my parents came to the hospital, they went nuts.

  When I got back to school, I was ignored by my so-called friends and mocked by the two rumor-spreading losers who ran off and left me.

  I was that stupid kid who electrocuted himself.

  The only person who actually spoke to me during those horrible weeks was the girl I’d been trying to impress. Candy told me that she felt sorry for me, that she should have stopped me from doing such a dumb thing.

  She also told me something really odd, something that made me shudder, something I always thought of as being the worst coincidence in the world.

  She told me that at the exact moment I put both hands on the panel, the truck got hit by lightning.

  LESSON 17: LEARN ABOUT “UNFINISHED BUSINESS”

  So that was how it happened, but I didn’t have time to focus on the past for long. I shook myself from my daydreams and tried to remember where I was.

  When the skeletal hand snatched hold of me, I almost jumped OUT of my skin.

  Sure, I’d been frightened before—a million times. On balance, though, I don’t think I’ve ever actually achieved flight in the same way I did when Evil Clive sprang to terrible, animated life.

  “What on earth!” I screamed, checking to make sure I hadn’t filled my tattered trousers with a gallon of pee. ‘Y-y-you’re n-n-not r-real!”

  “I’m your worst nightmare, kid!” said the scratchy, demonic voice. “Your WORST nightmare! Mwaahaha! Arghgh!”

  The skeleton shot forward until its hideous grin was mere inches from my face.

  I screamed. I was shaking like a leaf in the wind, but Evil Clive kept on coming.

  “Are you scared?” he taunted. “ARE you? ARE YOUUUUU? ARRREEE YOU?”

  “Yes! YES! YEEESSSS!”

  “Good! I’ll rip you apart, boy—I’ll rip you APART!”

  “Please!” I managed through trembling lips. “W-w-hy would you—”

  “I don’t need a reason—I’m Evil Clive! Arghgh!”

  I closed my eyes and waited for the icy fingers of pain to find me…but nothing happened.

  When I opened my eyes again, Evil Clive was sitting down at the table, writing on a piece of paper. Rather oddly, he’d turned his baseball cap around so that the brim was facing backward.

  “Er…” I said awkwardly. “I thought you were going to rip me apart?”

  Clive sniffed and looked up at me.

  “Decided against it,” he said, his everpermanent grin fixed on my terrified face. “Bad for business. Sit down, will you? You’re making the place look untidy.”

  I found the seat and very carefully lowered myself into it, keeping my eyes on the newly animated creature before me.

  “You never moved when I came in before,” I muttered. “You never said a single word.”

  Clive shrugged. “I was asleep. Besides, you’ve got bigger problems to worry about than me, boy—you’d better believe that.”

  I gulped some air and clasped my hands together to stop them from shaking.

  “Kambo Cheapteeth is…in my arm? How?”

  Clive sat back in his chair and steepled his skeletal fingers.

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he said. “Us deadies don’t hang around for long. We’re only here on personal errands—something folks call ‘Unfinished Business.’ I have mine, you have yours—the only difference with me is that I’m sort of a guide. My Unfinished Business is to know what everybody else’s is and help them to solve it. I can’t go to my rest until all my people find theirs. You are one of my people—get me?”

  I nodded, but there was something I didn’t understand.

  “How did—”

  “Kambo Cheapteeth was a clown, but he was also part of something called the Brotherhood of the Secret Smile. There were three of them, all circus performers, and every one was twisted—they were all quite, quite mad. They made the pact together—they’d all kill themselves at an appointed time on the night of the full moon; it was a dark ritual they named ‘The Lightning Caller.’ Kambo summoned the lightning that struck him in the back of that truck…the truck you electrocuted yourself on at exactly the same moment. His spirit passed into your arm.”

  My heart began to pound. I’d been walking around living my life with the dark ghost of an evil clown inhabiting my left arm.

  How in the name of sanity could I not notice something like that?

  Evil Clive suddenly stood up, accompanied by an orchestra of teeth-shattering clicks.

  “I have band practice across town,” he said, snatching up a trench coat from the back of his chair and putting it on.

  Band practice?

  I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help it.

  The sight of a grinning human skeleton in a trench coat goes beyond odd and into the extremely surreal. I felt like I was in the twilight zone.

  “Before you ask,” Clive went on, “destroying Kambo Cheapteeth is not your Unfinished Business…but his UB may well be to finish you. After all, you ruined his death—there’s a good chance he’ll never catch up with his bonkers friends now…”

  Clive strode over to the door.

  �
��You have to finish this,” he muttered, his bony fingers fastening on the wooden handle. “Come find me when you’re done. Oh, and Ed?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful. You’re not impossible to destroy—always remember that.”

  LESSON 18: FACE YOUR FEARS HEAD-ON

  When you have no idea what you’re doing, go with your instincts—they’re pretty much all you can rely on.

  I found myself walking back along Outskirts Road, heading for the factory.

  I’d run away from my friends. In my fear and anger, I had deserted them. Was that who I was now? A guy who ran away at the first sign of danger? Was I really—in death—no better than I’d always been when I was alive? A sniveling, wretched freaky little coward who shrank into corners of the world and watched other people fight for me?

  NO.

  NO MORE.

  NOT NOW.

  NOT EVER.

  As I made the decision to fight, it felt as though a weight lifted from my shoulders. I wasn’t frightened anymore—not of the ghouls, not of the hand, and not even of the twisted soul of Kambo Cheapteeth. It was payback time—and I was going to be the one paying. I just needed to figure out how.

  I walked along, sidestepping the multitude of corpses strewn across the road at regular intervals. There seemed to be an even mix of vampires, werewolves, and ghouls. Had all of these creatures finished their Unfinished Business? If not, could they really be dead?

  I shuddered and continued trudging up the road. There was no sign of Forgoth or Mumps, and a feeling of deep foreboding settled over me. A storm was brewing, and I definitely didn’t want to get electrocuted again…

  “Hey.”

  I glanced over at a massive horse chestnut tree beside the road. Max Moon was sitting underneath it.

  “Your hand didn’t get you, then…”