The Undead That Saved Christmas

by ed. Lyle Perez-Tinics

  By April Guadiana

  www.manson26.deviantart.com

  Dedication

  This story is respectfully dedicated to the loving families who foster

  children in need. So few who give so much to so many. Thank you for all you do.

  Author Bio

  Edward Russell was born and raised in Indiana. After nearly a decade of sight-seeing around the country courtesy of the Army he returned to his home town and began working on a college degree. He just completed his first novel and became a Grandfather.

  GingerBrains

  By Edward J. Russell

  Jacob sat in his comfy chair and watched the lights swirl on and off around the Christmas tree, his three grandchildren positioned around him, the youngest in his lap. Outside there was a light snow fall, the flakes fluttering down like butterflies. Left alone he could have easily slid into a light slumber.

  “Dad,” his daughter said, while touching him on the shoulder. “Not falling asleep are you?” Jacob smiled in response; his daughter had the same sixth sense as her mother. She had entered the living room, silently carrying a tray of treats. Little Jane leaned forward and took a cookie off the tray.

  “Have a cookie Grandpa J,” she said, holding one under his nose. “They are gingerbread men!” “Oh, no thanks honey, I am not really a fan of gingerbread men.”

  Little Jane wrinkled her nose and gave him a quizzical look. Her mother laughed and then kissed Jacob on the top of his head.

  “You should tell them the story, Dad.”

  The grandkids all looked at him expectantly and he knew he had no choice. Jacob liked telling stories, almost as much as the kids liked hearing them. Closing his eyes, he paused and collected his thoughts.

  “This all happened a very long time ago and it started in March not December. My best friend Wooky and I were in his room reading some comic books. I was twelve at the time and looked forward to becoming a teenager. It was a rainy day, so with nothing better to do we sprawled out on his floor and looked through his brother’s comic book collection. Just before lunch, Wooky's older brother shoved the door open and told us we had to look after his little sister. Marie was maybe eight or nine years old and a pain in the backside.”

  “Just like Jane,” quipped Jack, the middle child and Jacob’s only grandson.

  “Now now, this is a long story so don’t interrupt or we won’t get to the presents.” Jacob was pretty sure that would have the desired effect.

  As I was saying we were reading comic books. Wooky tossed her a comic book and told her to keep quiet so she did. We didn’t hear a peep out of her. I must have fallen asleep because Marie woke me up tapping my foot. When I asked her what she wanted; she glanced over at her brother, who was asleep. She then leaned in close to me and held out her fist. For a brief moment, I thought she was going to pop me in the nose. She opened her fist and showed me some coins, and asked if she had enough for postage and handling. I asked her what she was talking about and she again glanced at

  her brother. Then she showed me an advertisement in one of the comic books.

  Back then all the comics had ads for various silly things like joy buzzers, x-ray glasses or magic kits. The items on those pages always seemed so cool. I wanted the glowing ghost, but my father would have tanned my hide for wasting good money on such a thing. Marie had found something she couldn’t resist. I asked her what she wanted and she pointed to a small colorful ad for voodoo zombie plants. After reading the ad I looked at Marie who had this huge grin on her face. I couldn’t help but wonder what she wanted with some dumb plants. She must have read my mind because she answered without me even asking.”

  Cause they make little people who I can play with,” Marie said. “Then I won’t have to play with you and Billy.”

  William was Wooky’s real name, but his family called him Billy. His closest friends called him Wooky and I don’t remember how that all got started. Anyway, I looked at the ad again and noticed that you got seeds not a plant. The seeds were listed at sixty cents and after counting the coins in Marie’s hand I saw she had sixty-three. The problem was that the mail order company would only accept orders of a dollar or more. She needed help if she was going to get the seeds.

  It was pretty easy to convince Wooky to order something as well. He and I had our eyes on a foot locker of Army men. After a few minutes of begging we talked his older brother Todd into placing the order for us. Turns out Todd wanted the X-ray specks. Todd was also able to convert all of our coins into dollar bills. Since he worked at the local drug store, he could have the package delivered there and our parents would never know.

  Three dollars was quite a lot of money back then. Had either Wooky or I tried to get three bills for all that change we would have been asked a bunch of questions and our parents would have been informed. If we had money for junk, we had money for school supplies.

  The next few weeks were like a roller coaster ride filled with excitement and disappointment. Every day we raced home from school to see if the package arrived. I think that is something lost to your generation. With all the emails and instant messages, you never get the excitement of receiving something the in mail. Sometimes I think you kids are a little too connected.

  The package took every bit of the six to eight weeks the ad claimed for delivery. It arrived in May; I remember it pretty clearly because school had just let out for the summer. The foot locker turned out to be cardboard that was nearly paper thin and practically dissolved the first time it got wet. Still, Wooky and I played with those Army men all summer long. The X-ray specks that Todd ordered turned out to be a joke and he got nearly everyone with it. Instead of seeing your bones in your hands, they put black circles around your eyes.

  Poor Marie ended up a little disappointed; all she got was a tiny paper envelope with four seeds. The little green seeds looked like dried up peas and had a funny smell to them. I know she had this idea that she would have a playmate and the seeds were a bit of a letdown.

  Wooky was a good brother though, and while I was busy dividing up the Army men, he helped Marie plant her seeds. I don’t remember exactly what they used for flower pots, but I do remember that they put them on her window sill.

  Her room was up in the attic and that probably helped her keep the flowers hidden for most of the summer. I use the term flowers loosely. The plants grew to be an ugly green splotchy mess. To me, they sort of looked fish like. As if someone had just stuck a bass face first in a flower pot. Where the fins should have been there were dusty, grey flowers. Only they were more like feathers than flowers. Instead of petals the plants had filament like structures that stuck out from the side of the plant. They looked wrong and out of place. Worst of all they smelled. By the end of summer her room smelled like dirty feet, which is why Marie’s mother made her get rid of them. Marie was pretty upset, so we replanted the stinky feet flowers down by the creek just before school started back up.

  Once school started the plants were pretty much forgotten, until one brisk afternoon when Marie dragged us out to see them. It was mid-October and the flowers had died, but in their place were four hard pods. They looked like rotten coconuts. They were green with purple splotches. Marie asked if we could eat one. We made her swear not to try. We got busy with school and didn’t pay any more attention to the pods until the last day of school before Christmas break.

  Marie’s class was having show and tell, so she decided to take in one of the pods. Instead of rotting like a pumpkin after Halloween, the pods developed a husk and were like giant seeds. They looked even more like a coconut. In fact, that’s what Marie’s teacher said they were. Marie insisted that the pod came from a voodoo zombie plant, but her teacher would have none of it. By the end of school that day, the entire class had heard about it and wanted to see the pod.

  Brock, the school bully, wanted to break open the pod and once he got his hands on it, he started slamming it on the ground trying to break it open. Marie started crying, so Wooky steppe
d in to try and get the pod back. This led to a game of keep away. Brock and his buddies kept the pod just out of his reach. That’s when I jumped in. I had been watching them toss it back and forth. I got down their pattern and when they tossed it near me; I caught it and took off. They didn’t have time to react. I had twenty yards on them before they even moved. I could hear some of the other kids cheer as I escaped with the pod. Brock and his boys had no chance of catching me.

  I ran all the way to the woods without stopping and ended up by the creek with the other three plants. I stopped to catch my breath. Wooky must have known where I would go because a short time later he and Marie showed up. I handed the pod over to Marie and she beamed. The grin that spread across her face seemed almost too big to be real, like a cartoon. She jumped forward and hugged me so hard we both fell to the ground. We started laughing. Then Brock and his toadies showed up. They had followed our tracks through the snow.

  Brock had an evil grin on his face that I knew meant trouble. He started talking slowly in low tones and pacing back and forth. This was a sign that we were in for a beating. Brock was older, bigger, and a lot meaner. He enjoyed intimidating his victims sort of like a cat toying with its prey. We would not be able to run away again. I would not have put it past Brock to even stoop so low as to rub Marie’s face in the snow.

  Without a word Wooky took the pod from Marie and told Brock he could have it if he just left us alone. Brock laughed and said he would take the pod when he was ready, but first he would teach us a lesson. Strangely, I was more scared of my own mother at that point though. I knew Brock was going to pound me and I would probably end up with two black eyes and a fat lip. I could live with that. Mom would kill me. She was the one who started the tradition of the family getting together on Christmas Eve and taking a family photo. To use your term, my mom was going to freak. What could I do? We were cornered.

  But when you corner something, you had better be prepared for the unexpected. Wooky went a little crazy. He had been pushed too far and reached a point where he didn’t care what happened to himself. Gripping the pod like a football, Wooky threw it at Brock with all the strength he had. Time seemed to slow to a crawl and I saw everything as if it were playing out in slow motion. I saw the pod leave his hand in a perfect spiral -on target- to hit Brock in the face. I saw Brock turn his head and his eyes widen as he realized what was happening. He had just enough time to turn his head to avoid a direct impact. I had to close my eyes as the pod connected with his face. There was a sickening crunch and the sound brought the flow of time back to normal.

  As I opened my eyes, I saw Brock down on the ground, his face resting on the pod. Blood was streaming out of his nose, running over the pod and pooling in the snow. He was either dead or knocked out. Everyone left standing was too stunned to move. No one had ever stood up to Brock before; let alone taken him out. Brock’s toads were shocked, but still moved first. One of them pointed at Wooky and screamed that he was dead, while the other knelt down next to Brock and gently nudged him.

  My first impulse was to run and I glanced over to Wooky. He seemed surprised by his own actions and was unable to move. I started to take a step toward him when there was a loud cracking sound. I turned to look and saw that the pod had split open and steam was emanating from it. As the steam cleared we all watched in horror as something reached out from within the pod. It was bright green, almost neon green and sort of shapeless. Something was crawling out of the pod and was absorbing the blood it came into contact with. You can imagine my amazement as I watched, what I can only describe as a gingerbread man, made out of snot slowly crawl out of the pod.

  The ad from the comic book came back to me then. The reason Marie wanted to order the seeds was for the little green friend pictured in the advertisement. I realized then that the little girl in the picture was not skipping happily along squealing with delight in play with the green gingerbread man, but was screaming in terror and running from it. We were in serious trouble, out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  As the thing moved over Brock, his buddy who had been trying to revive him quickly backed up. The gingerbread man thing oozed its way along to the back of Brock’s neck and his body convulsed a few times. Then Brock sat up and his eyes opened, but there was nothing in them. He looked like a zombie. It was like something out of a horror movie and even though we didn’t know it, we were only at the beginning.

  Marie was smart enough to know we should get out of there, quickly. She grabbed her brother by the arm and told him she wanted to go home. That broke the spell he seemed to be under and he started backing up. He looked at me and we all took off running. We ran to the edge of the woods before stopping. Wooky wanted to know what we were going to tell our parents. There was no way they were going to believe such a crazy story. We decided to send Marie on home to keep safe while we crept back to see what exactly was going on. Did I mention we weren’t real bright as kids?

  As we walked back through the woods, we started to realize how foolish we were being. Yet, we had to know what was happening to Brock and his friends. We didn’t know if Brock was dead, alive, or something in between. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any clear answers when we got back to the creek. Brock was sitting with his back against a tree and each of his cronies was face down in the snow with one of the gingerbread things on them. Their bodies were twitching here and there in ways that did not make sense. It didn’t take a doctor to know that those boys were really messed up. Between the blood stained snow and their strange actions, anyone could tell something was very, very wrong. It was time to get the grown-ups involved.

  This time we ran all the way back to Wooky’s house without stopping. We burst through the front door panting and started to look for his mom. The only person we could find was Todd, who was talking to Marie. She was sobbing and we knew she had told Todd everything. Todd was nineteen and had graduated from high school the year before. He was the most adult person we knew who was not completely like the grown-ups. He made us tell him what had happened and he listened intently. When we finished, he asked us to show him. On the way back to the creek, Todd told us that their parents had gone into town for dinner and shopping. That was good and bad. Good that we would not have to get the grown-ups involved and bad because we would have to fix everything ourselves. At least we had Todd.

  The place was cleared when we got there. The snow had been displaced and shoved around, but Brock and his toads were gone. There was also no trace of any blood. If it wasn’t for the cracked pods, I think Todd would have thought we were just making up a crazy story. There were three cracked pods now and Todd looked at them closely. We tried to see if we could find tracks leading away, but the sun was going down and it was getting hard to see much of anything. We didn’t have street lights or anything out there and no one thought to bring a flashlight. Todd grabbed one of the cracked pods and tossed it to Wooky. He then stooped to pick up the one that had not opened yet. As soon as he touched it, a crack formed and the green goo shot out onto his fingers. Todd reached into the crack and pulled the goo man fully out of the pod. We got a good look at it. Wooky gasped and uttered the word ‘GingerBrains’. It had the same basic overall shape as a gingerbread man, but there were no features. No eyes or ears or mouth. Still it could move. Like an inch worm, it was pulling and pushing itself up Todd’s arm and towards his head. Todd was trying to shake it off but with no luck. I stepped forward and tried to shove it, but it was like trying to push gelatin. I remember it being very cool and slimy to the touch, kind of like a snail.

  The thing was quick and slid behind Todd’s neck and he started groaning. His face clenched like he was in agony. Todd dropped to his knees with his hand reaching for the back of his neck to try and pull the thing off. He screamed at us to run and fell face first into the snow. Not knowing what else to do Wooky and I took off, once again heading for his house.

  Marie was watching for us at the window and opened the front door as we approached. In a panic, Wooky s
lammed the door and started pacing around the room. While he paced about, I explained to Marie what had happened to Todd. I saw the color drain from her face. Holding back tears, she asked me if her brother was going to be alright. All I could tell her was that I didn’t know.

  I decided I would go to my parents for help. I took Wooky’s bicycle and it was full dark as I pedaled away. It turned out to be a waste of time, since no one was home at my house. Instead there was just a note telling me to go to Wooky’s house and my parents would pick me up there later. They had gone into town to shop as well. Looking for an adult, I continued on toward town. Riding past the school, a sudden movement caught my eye. Based on the shape of the shadow, it looked like it might be Brock. Trying to keep quiet, I followed him at a short distance. By the direction Brock headed, I knew he was walking toward the football field. Leaving the bike behind, I followed him near the middle of the stands. In its dim glow, I could see that Brock’s friends were holding someone face down on the ground. Slowly a part of the goo gingerbread man that was on the back of Brock’s neck stretched out until it touched the person being held on the ground. The figure started to struggle and I could hear muffled screams. For the first time, I was really scared. When Brock was attacked I was just stunned and when Todd went down I was too shocked to really understand what was going on. Seeing Brock purposely infect someone else terrified me and brought everything home.

  As quietly as I could, I made my way back to where I had left the bike and took off pedaling as fast as I could. I didn’t get far because as I rode around a corner, I nearly ran into old man Burns and wrecked the bike. I had to swerve to miss him and instead of going right, I went left and rode straight into the side of the building. Mr. Burns, our school janitor and grounds keeper jumped to his left and fell in the snow. Old man Burns was a crotchety old man and the string of profanity that came out of his mouth still burns my ears to this day. To add insult to injury, the front tire of the bike was bent beyond repair. I would not be riding that bike anymore tonight. While brushing the snow off of his clothes, old man Burns asked me what I was doing around the school and acting like a lunatic. I tried to tell him everything; about the seeds, the pods, and the little goo men that came out of them. He didn’t listen. He thought I was just a stupid kid making up crazy stories. Until I told him about Brock and the kid being held down under the bleachers. Burns did not like anyone messing around his school after hours.