After the Funeral (First Draft, Complete)

I’ve had a slew of requests to create an all-in-one page for this story, and here it is. Please ignore the two GAPING plot holes… I’m working on those as you read.

Thank you, Dear Reader, for stopping in, and I hope you enjoy the adventure!

Edit: I’ve privatized the original posts of this story, and decided to include my rambling introductions to each inline here. Sorry for the distractions, but hopefully it will give some semblance of what in hell I may have been thinking that day. -C.L.

———

AFTER THE FUNERAL

By C.L.Stearns

The Day Of

This is the story of the second time I died.

Mostly, I had loved Carol, but one can always argue that one has had enough. She came home from her brother’s funeral and killed me with an ax.

That is when I made my decision.

I wrote this snippet this morning in two sittings. The first line I borrowed from a prompt in the November Writer’s Digest special. Take a gander, see what you think.

“Well, if you could accuse anybody of being downright evil, it would be him,” Carol said.

She said it in a particular, snub-nosed fashion that made her seem just as downright evil. Maybe not just as evil but close. She had been harping about it all morning, had gone through all the stages – justification, denial, bitterness – and now she was just pissed. I can’t say I blame her, either. How many times have I seen a man push his fingers through fresh earth and watched the dirt spit him back into life?

Not many.

But she saw it. Says she did, anyway. It was three days ago. As I watched the smoke curl up-up-away from her cigarette, I realized that those three days must have been pretty rough and that my fit over coming home to find her sitting at the dining room table in front of an ashtray full of snubbed butts may have been overkill. Then it hit me.

“Where have you been for three days?” I asked.

I was greeted with a blank stare, Carol’s cigarette smoke fluttering around her like acrid angel’s wings. Then she spoke.

———

I’ve continued on the new story I began in the last post. Please read that part first, as it may shed some light on things that haven’t yet happened in this portion.

As of yet, I’ve not been able to discern a good title, and am going with a working title of After the Funeral for this particular story. If it changes, I’ll let you know.

Just to bring you up to speed, in the last reading we met the unnamed narrator and a woman named Carol who, it is inferred, saw her dead brother claw his way out of the grave. After the funeral, she disappeared for three days. The story begins with Carol at the funeral. We continue now with her feelings when she arrived in town and when she met with her mother for the trip to the funeral home.

Sit a spell, and give a go – I hope you enjoy, Dear Reader.

She arrived in the big city with eyes that were swollen and she looked like a punk rock chick late for an all-night 80’s party. She hailed a cab from the desk in the terminal and stepped into it when it arrived outside. She went straight to the church and hugged her mother, hugged her father, proceeded to cry more.

They went to the funeral home together, saw the body together, leaned on each other for support. The guests—if that is what they call funeral attendees—came and saw the body, leaned on each other for support. Carol’s eyes sharpened when she saw this and her mouth tightened flat.

On the long car ride to the graveside service, Carol spoke to her mother. Everything was shared in a whimsical fashion, as if the whole escapade was a horrible nightmare that would end soon enough.

“Why was he there, mom? Didn’t he know better?” Carol said. She looked out the window as she spoke.

“I don’t know, pumpkin,” her mother, Joyce, replied.

“He was stupid.” Carol’s voice floated inside the Lincoln Towncar like exhaled breath on a cold day.

“Now, Carol – ”

She turned to look at her mother. Carol thought just then that her mother was really beautiful. Also stupid, like her dead son, but beautiful.

“Don’t ‘now-carol’ me, mother. I’m not a child anymore. Darrel was stupid to hang out with those boys, and I’ve heard you say so before.” She turned and looked through the window again. “They’re no good.”

They’re no good, Carol thought. What an understatement.

Joyce turned her eyes down and watched her hands fumble with the embroidered blue rose on one corner of her handkerchief.

“You’re not being fair to your brother. He is dead. There is no reason to mock him today.”

Carol turned her head back and watched her mother as she kneaded the handkerchief. For a moment they were both quiet.

“I’m not mocking him,” Carol said. She turned her body in the seat and took her mother’s hands. They were very cold. “I’m only stating a fact. I think Darrel knew, at least a little bit, how bad those boys were, but they were his friends and he trusted them. God knows why, but he did. I respect my brother, but I don’t respect them.”

More silence filled the backseat of the car.

“I’m sorry, mother,” Carol said.

Joyce leaned forward, pulled her hands away from her daughter, and wrapped the latter in a strong hug. Her cold hands were still strong.

“I’m sorry, too, dear.” Joyce took in a rattling breath and Carol knew that her mother was going to cry again. “I’m sorry too.”

It was like any other funeral. The crowd of strangers connected by one newly-departed soul made smalltalk in the cool, wet air of a misty Thursday afternoon. The twentysomethings vibrated with excitement at a day of freedom from work; the thirtysomethings wondered if the tweenaged babysitter would remember to turn off the gas stove. The older crowd expressed their sympathies: “I’m very sorry for your loss; he was such a wonderful boy; is there anything I can do?” Darrel’s mother cried. His father held her shoulders, trying hard not to let her explode and cause a scene.

Carol stood silent through all of this. I was really worried when I left her at the security gate. She didn’t once look back. Her brother’s death had shaken her.

The pastor delivered a short sermon at the graveside and asked if anyone would like to share a story about Darrel. No one did. The casket was lowered and James and Joyce Abbey each tossed one handful of dirt away into the grave onto their son. It landed with a faint thump that Carol could just make out over the murmur of the crowd. Or maybe she imagined it. Joyce removed the corsage from her blouse and held it over the earthen mouth that was about to swallow her son forever. She held it there for a moment, and closed her eyes, squeezed them shut. As she let go—of the flower, of her son; there wasn’t really a difference at this point—a tear rolled along her cheek.

Carol stood and watched all of this from beneath one of the manicured oaks that had shaded the guests as they sighed and checked their watches.She threw no dirt, placed no flower. He was dead, that was all. And she was angry.

She paused here to have a smoke. I watched the smoke rise from her cigarette and when she looked at me I swear I saw smoke spilling from her eyes as well.

Carol was angry—downright pissed even—because Darrel had been stupid to die. He had been stupid to hang out with those boys from downtown, had been stupid to get into their business, stupid to deal, stupid to use. He had forgotten her birthday because he had been so strung out he couldn’t see his own fingers in the daylight and he hadn’t called and now he was dead and she was pissed.

She stood there like a statue through the ceremony. Joyce had not been happy with her, either,no, and had glared at her between sobs and hugs and fare-thee-wells at every opportunity. Carol glared right back and won every match, if only because her mother was fulfilling a mother’s duty.

When they lowered Darrel into the ground, she couldn’t do anything but stare. “Goodbye, Darrel,” she said to herself. To God she said, “Please watch out for him.”

The crowd began to funnel toward the open grave, pay their respects, leave. James and Joyce approached their daughter—their remaining child—and neither they nor Carol spoke. Mother and daughter made their exchange through icy stares, the conversation ending when the former lowered her eyes and walked away. James gave Carol a quick, one-shoulder hug and dutifully followed his wife.

Carol was alone with her brother.

Her memory spat out reminiscences about Darrel singing rock-n-roll songs when the pair of them were young. Creedence and George Thorogood. She couldn’t remember the names of the songs, and she thought that was odd. She could hear him sing Hurricanes a-blowing, the end is coming soon and remembered how annoying it was to hear him running around squelching those songs at the top of his lungs, the noise reverberating through the apartment from the brick walls. Carol was more partial to Heart of Glass by Blondie, because Blondie looked like her Malibu Barbie. One time Carol cut Barbie’s hair and Darrel ran and told mom.

Moooooommmmmmyyy! Carol’s got cutting things!

Now Carol, now Carol, nowcarol. Always that same nowcarol followed by a tsk-tsk and her mother’s head rocking back and firth. And this time Darrel had run off down the hall singing—

What?

Something different, not his usual stuff. Something darker. She could hear the voice of the real version, the band’s version—dripping with sex, but she didn’t know that then. She could hear the singer scream, moan, wail in ecstasy ooohh baby, baby, baby, I’m gonna—

On the edge of her tongue the words dangle.

oh, i really—i really—really got to go, yes i do

That’s it, she thinks—walking through the park—

every daaaaaayyy, every day

She could see Darrel walking down the hall in their old apartment. She could see him bouncing along to the beat, and then he stopped bouncing, singing, moving and spun his head quickly back to look at her. His eyes were wide and then he said—

i said babe, babe—

—he said, he shouted, sang—

oooooohh, bay-bay-a

—The words exploded from Darrel’s mouth in the hallway of their apartment when they were children and Carol had been frightened then and now she stood under a near-naked oak in the fall and watched the stillness as her brother lay dead in the ground and she felt the tear slide down her cheek and she heard him singing again, screaming again—exploding again—

babe i’m nevernevernevernevernever gonna leave you

She covered her face with her palms and wept into her hands.

but i’ve got to go away from this place

———

“Wow that’s, like, so powerful that you, like, heard Led Zeppelin and stuff. That’s—so deep.” Even as I was saying it, I felt like an asshole.

“You’re such an asshole,” Carol said.

“Dude.”

“No, there really was music there. In the cemetery. I could hear it. I thought it was in my head at first too, thought the memories were just that vivid, but the music was really in the air.”

“Not possible,” I said, “except under the strangest of circumstances. Like if the guys driving the backhoe had it cranked.”

“No such luck. It would’ve been louder, anyway. The stuff I heard was faint, tinny. Far away. Like the edge of an AM radio transmission. I walked to the canopy—everyone was gone now, of course—and stepped up to the edge of Darrel’s grave.”

———

Ordinarily, one would immediately look down into a grave up to which one has stepped. I didn’t doubt the story anymore when she told me she looked up to the sky. That’s where she always looks first when she steps up to something. The bathroom sink, the stove, the car. Doesn’t matter. It’s like OCD or something.

When Carol looked up she only saw the canopy and the miniature scaffolding that held it there. The bars had a weird green glow from the interrupted sunlight as it made its way into the shade where she stood. Humidity was higher near the grave, too. The air was sticky and thick. A small breeze blew through and carried the unique aroma of fajita tacos, and Carol crossed her hands and rubbed her arms to ward off the chill that climbed along her spine. She leveled her gaze and looked left and right and thought about the fajita tacos. Then she allowed her eyes to succumb to anticipation, and she looked down into her brother’s grave.

She screamed, and was only just able to bring her shaking hands to her mouth.

I haven’t done much with this story since the last entry a few weeks ago. I got distracted by my new mac (as you may or may not have figured out by reading “Maiku for Steve”, and by my newfound ability to use the absolutely bad-ass Scrivener program. It’s an A-MA-ZING tool for any and all writers, with emphasis on the “zing.” The interface is smooth and intuitive, and the ability to manipulate text is vastly beyond what I’ve been doing in the past with a plain old word processor. Any mac user should check it out (sorry windows fellers, it’s mac only). Oh, and my new mac is effing cool. Any computer user should get one.

I’m continuing “After the Funeral” this week. It’s a short entry, but I’m getting back in my groove and should have a much bigger update for it in the next couple weeks.

Enjoy!

The hand was balled into a fist, and it just stayed there, poking out of the earth the way a head of broccoli would if all the leaves were chopped off. It stood stolid and stiff and Carol stood agitated but unmoving and stared at it, the sounds of the music long since faded away. Her scream choked off and she squinted to make sure she was seeing this correctly, because it had occurred to her that not two hours prior to this moment, her brother’s coffin had been visible, above ground, in plain sight. Two hours before that, it had been at the Leopolt Funeral Home wide open and displaying Darrel to the small subset of humanity that deemed him worthy of final respite. Through thin eyes, she really did recognize Darrel’s balled, right fist. She recognized the 1-UP tattoo on the meaty area between his thumb and index finger. She remembered him running around the house, usually in his boxer shorts and socks, suggesting that anything anyone did that was remotely productive—sweeping the floor, microwaving popcorn, flushing the toilet—had earned them a 1-UP and he did this silly Egyptian dance that made absolutely no sense. Carol fought an escaping giggle over the thought of her grown, eighteen-year-old brother doing that silly dance.

She screamed again as the fingers on the hand slowly, purposefully opened, stretched, and closed. This scream lasted for the entirety of the hand’s motion, and stopped when the hand stopped. The hand stayed there, balled into a fist, for several more moments before it pushed up out of the ground, dragging behind it an arm, then a should, and eventually the rest of Darrel. He stood up and brushed the dirt from his burial clothes.

“Oh, hi Carol,” Darrel said. “I was hoping you’d be here. We’ve got some things to talk about.”

He smiled, and the smile frightened Carol. At first he couldn’t pin down what it was that was frightening about the sneer her brother wielded, but as it grew wider, too wide for his face, so wide that she thought his head would rip open and spew brains all over her, she made the connection.

His eyes shone in the late afternoon from behind the darkness that hovered around them. I know, that doesn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense when Carol told me this part either, but that’s the way she described it. What I assume is that his eyes were alive and dead at the same time, that she could see the hollow shell of Darrel standing there over the full exuberance of whatever it was that was standing in his body talking to her. He was empty and full, shining and dull, and it was the only way she could think to describe it: He was darkness and he was light.

His hair fluttered in the breeze and his smile relaxed somewhat.

Carol fought to get the words out, and when she spoke them they were weak and soft. “Hey, bro. How’ve you been?”

Sitting at the dining room table, my mouth dangled and my eyes stared at Carol. “You really said that?” I said in tones relaying totally fake shock. She told me to shut up and continued the story.

I’ve been on hiatus from this story for a little bit, but I’m back full force, and you should see updates regularly for the next few weeks if all goes according to plan. For now, I hope you enjoy this nifty chunk!

“You look good,” Carol said. Her eyes were huge.

Darrel laughed. “I look dead,” he said. “And I’m starving.”

He patted his belly.

Carol half mumbled the word “what” then cocked her head and look at her brother. “What… What do you—” She was having very understandable trouble accepting this. If my undead brother had shown up one day chit-chatting about the state of affairs in Manchester and then all out of nowhere suggested lunch at the Tavern on the Green, I’m certain I would have shat right there on the sidewalk. Finally, the words came to Carol.

“What do you want to eat?” she asked.

He lifted his hands, palm up on each side of himself in the universal not-a-clue posture. Carol frowned, but as his hands continued upward through the  air, palms turning downward, and as a sharp, toothy grimace melted her brother’s face, she screamed again. Her hands flapped at her mouth like effeminate birds, and sounds that resembled the phrase “ohgodohgodohgod” punctuated her ululation. She barely noticed Darrel’s words.

“FFFLLEEEESSSHH…”

The sound was guttural.

Carol’s screams rose through the ranks of pitch and tone and she very nearly reached inaudible sonic levels when she noticed that her brother was doubled over, laughing.

“Oh, man,” he said in gasps. “You should have seen the look on your face!”

She punched her brother square on the should, and his arm fell off and plopped on the ground. She let out a small scream, and out of shear gut reaction bent to pick up the arm, which was flailing on the ground like the headless part of a snake that has been chopped in two.

“Oh God, I’m sorry!” she said. Darrell winced, and his detached arm gave a hard slap against the grass. Carol flinched, and drew back, her hand on her chest. She realized at this moment that she had been about to grab the appendage that had been liberated from her brother, and was revolted. Her face crumpled and her lips curled with vile understanding. “What in the fuck just happened?”

Darrel smiled in his always-rediculously-calm manner. “Yeah, she said that would happen.”

“Who said?”

“Madame Adi. She’s the one who cast the spell.”

“Spell?” Carol’s jaw was wide, and she sat back on her rump. Darrel bent to his knees in front of her and picked up his disjointed arm.

“Yeah,” Darrel said. He attempted to jam the mushy shoulder back into the bleeding socket on his body, but couldn’t singlehandedly convince the arm to crawl backward up his dangling coat sleeve. “It was the only way I could come back.”

“I don’t understand, Darrel.” Her mind was floating as if she’d had about three too many stiff martinis. “Why did you come back?”

“You look like hell, kiddo. Let’s get a bite to eat.” Darrel let go of the seemingly reattached arm and reached his other hand out toward Carol. The problem arm fell to the ground again with a wet thud.

“Shit,” Darrel said. He helped Carol up and gathered his arm. It was becoming stiff and he grabbed the forearm and brandished it like a club.

Carol turned a woozy shade of gray.

“Why don’t we head down to Charlie’s and grab a pizza, huh? It’s only a few blocks from here. That’ll settle you down.”

The thought of pepperoni and gooey cheese piled high atop a dripping layer of tomato sauce was too much, and Carol vomited into the grave.

“Hey!” Darrel said. “I’ve gotta crawl back in there later!”

Carol glared at him, and they started to walk.

At Charlie’s, Darrel looked down at the arm he carried in his hand and then looked up at the flashing neon sign. It was a greasy spoon if ever there was one, and through the hazy windows, he could see all the amenities: The tired old waitress with the sagging breasts, coffee pot drooped from one hand over a patron’s empty cup and a cigarette dangling from between her lips; a belly-high bartop where one could order a cup of coffee and the rest of the meal (roaches no extra charge) and follow it up with a slice of week-old, mile-high cheesecake; the stupendously fat cook barking orders from behind the service window, grease and grime clearly visible on his shirt and apron, dingy hands that looked as if he had just cleaned out the carburetor on his early-model Cadillac.

Darrel ditched the arm in a sidewalk trash can and opened the door. He looked back at Carol.

“You coming, sis?”

Here’s an interesting fact: If you call your sister on the phone and ask her “If your dead brother came back to life and wanted to chit-chat about the weather, where would you take him to lunch?” then the conversation is apt to proceed poorly.

As you recall, Carol and Darrel have arrived at Charlie’s, a greasy spoon corner restaurant. Darrel is holding the door open with his one arm, and beckoning to his sister to join him inside.

This story is rapidly approaching resolution – we are beginning to see some tension building in this installation, and we discover the original story narrator’s name (Will) and some hints at his relationship to Carol. Also, this week we find out a little bit more about Darrel and why it is that he decided to crawl back out of the Earth and back into Carol’s life. Oh, the wonders of brotherly love!

I hope you enjoy the story this week. Drop me a line and let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by!

Carol looked at her brother. His skin was beginning to turn grey around his eyes and lips. Had it been that way before? She couldn’t remember, but it certainly was now. Funny, though, that his arm wasn’t bleeding. Standing there, holding the door in the chivalrous way he always did for a lady, Darrel looked like he had been frozen in time years ago; he did not look like he had died and come back. Except for that gray area splattered on his face.

“Who is Adi?” she asked.

“What?”

“Who is Adi?”

Darrel’s face caved in on itself and darkened. He looked at his dirty shoes, then looked up at his sister.

“Adi Mudra. She is a bokor. She’s the one who arranged for my return.” He turned and walked through the door.

Carol looked behind, back down Center Avenue, and thought of her little brother as he was when he was younger, when he would run around their house in his Superman Underoos, screaming at the top of his lungs. She thought of how annoying it had been to try to do her chores while he flashed back and forth across the living-room-kitchen area, doing his best to throw a stuffed animal at her or shoot her with a Nerf crossbow, and she was surprised to feel tears running down both cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut and let her head fall. After a moment she drew in a deep breath and forced herself to take a step toward Charlie’s.

As she walked in, the smell of old grease hit her first and was followed by stale coffee. She looked around the restaurant and saw Darrel sitting at a table in the far corner, fumbling through the menu with his remaining hand. As she walked toward the table, the waitress slung coffee into his cup, then stalked back toward the kitchen at the cook’s bellowing order-up call. Darrel didn’t wait for her to ask again.

“Bokors are witches that collect dolls. The dolls are used to store the departed souls of the dead and to increase the power of the bokor. Adi Mudra collected my soul when I died.”

Carol looked at her hands folded on the table. Silence vibrated between them for several minutes, and the haggard waitress happened by again and spilled three or four drops of coffee in Darrel’s still-full cup. He continued.

“I went to see her three weeks ago in Humboldt Park, before I came back to East Cypress, here. She lived in an apartment above the Enclave, and John told me that going to see her was a bad idea. ‘Crazy bitch,’ he described her.”

“And why did you feel compelled to hunt down some crazy witch in Chicago?”

“To bring me back. Didn’t I already say that?”

“Bring you back from where?” Carol thought of the music she had heard earlier in the cemetery—

I’m never gonna leave you but I’ve got to go away from this place

—thought of how she had cried leaping, bleeding tears for her brother. But there he sat, right across from her, piercing eyes staring into hers. They were vivid, almost glowing. But they weren’t, really. They were bright from far away, as if, well… As if his soul was far away. She lowered her chin to her chest and listened to the perpetual silence blistering in from the clinking plates and forks of the restaurant’s dining patrons. All that noise and all that quiet. All the light, all the dark. Not just Darrel. No, not just him, she thought.

The waitress came back without carafe in hand.

“Are you gonna order or what?” the woman croaked.

“Large mushroom and hamburger,” Darrel said.

Carol looked up and saw his eyes still fixed on hers. He hadn’t even glanced at the waitress, who was striding away from the table with a tumultuous gait.

“OK, the real reason was that I wanted to know a thing or two about the undead. I wanted to know where they came from, how they happened, all that. John’s a religious nut, insofar as he thinks anyone who follows a particular religion is a nut. In school, he took a ‘Religions of the World’ class and learned about this Haitian religion called vodou. Lots of misconceptions about it in modern society, what with the, uh, darker aspects of it. Hollywood meet Voodoo dolls and stuff. He says the only reason he paid attention in class was because of that, and he learned a lot.”

“So, this borker—”

“Bokor.”

“—Right, bokor lady, she…” Carol had a hard time spitting the words out. “She makes zombies?”

“Yeah. Bokors make zombies. Adi makes zombies. But I’ll get to that.”

Darrel slurped his coffee, some spilling down his chin through a hole that was growing in his lower lip.

Carol looked away across the thin crowd of griddlecake thespians sparsely dispersed throughout the room. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him grab for his napkin.

“So, I went to Chicago and got my ass kicked in the shit the first night because, of course, a white dude isn’t allowed in that part of town at night. Or during the day. John neglected to mention this.

“Adi found me in the alley behind Enclave and she helped me up to her home. I’d call it an apartment, but there was only a bed and a tiny table, only about ten feet of wall space on any side, so it was more like a room. But it was attached to a hallway and a few other rooms spidered off of that hall, so I call it a home. She had a dirty wine bottle full of a horribly bitter liquid, and she kept saying ‘Drink, drink’ and I drank, the whole time I was drinking thinking I wanted to die and the whole time I wasn’t drinking thinking that I actually was dying.”

Darrel took another drink, and managed to keep the coffee in this time.

“Two days passed before I realized that she had given me her bed.”

The waitress slapped a large hamburger and mushroom pizza onto the table and placed a short stack of plates beside it. She didn’t bother asking if we needed anything else before walking away and she didn’t have the coffee with her.

Darrel dug in, and then stopped. His eyes were wide, and he coughed. Chunks of half chewed ‘za flew out of his mouth and landed on Carol’s plate and shirt. A mushroom stem came to rest in her hair. Black, viscous liquid oozed from Darrel’s mouth, and he wiped it with his napkin. His faced scrunched as if he bit into a lemon, and the hole that had gaped below his lips had merged with his mouth. Three teeth shone white against the blackness of the dribble on his chin.

“Uggh,” he said. “Tastes like shit, like… death.”

He tossed the remainder of the slice onto his plate and again wiped what was left of his mouth.

“She didn’t tell me about that, the crazy bitch.”

“Why are you here?” Carol said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you died. You’re dead. Literally, you are falling apart, decomposing, right here in front of me. Why in the name of all that is holy would you put yourself through this?”

Darrel smiled and croaked out a frumpy laugh. He looked at Carol for a moment, and she could see his tongue flick up to wipe his teeth.

“Because of Will.”

I couldn’t hold my tongue anymore, and I piped up at this. I couldn’t fathomably see what any of Carol’s crazy brother’s rantings had to do with me. “Wait,” I said. “Hold the fuck on. Your idiot brother thinks that he became a zombie because of me?”

Carol was still staring at me, waiting, searching my face for some sort of reaction. I had none to give.

“Yes,” she said simply after a vast moment.

Now it was my turn to search, to see if her face would betray what she was feeling. Carol and I have always been close, since childhood, since puberty and driving lessons, since her first heartbreak and her first pregnancy scare, and since college. I could read her like a book any time, but today, it seemed that someone had surgically removed a few pages. I was lost in the details, and was growing more suspicious of her by the second.

I pushed my chair back from the table and went to the fridge to grab a beer.

“Want one, honey?” I said.

“No.”

I downed the first, scrunched my face against the tangy aftertaste, and opened the one I had already grabbed for her. I resumed my position across the table, and resigned to the fact that she knew something, or thought she did.

“All right,” I said. “Go on with the story. It’s turning out to be a lulu.”

“Anything you want to get off your chest first, dear?”

I took a long draught of my Honey Brown and smacked my lips across a heavy sigh of delight.

“Nope.” The now-empty second bottle clanked down on the table top. “You go on ahead.”

Before she continued, my mind flashed back to her re-entrance into our house. She was dirty, she reeked of grime and dirt. Her hair was pulled back into the loose, sexy pony tail that a high school volleyball setter wears after a night of bouncing around on the floor. She carried her duffel bag in and dropped it next to the table before she melted into the chair. The resounding clang was what my mind toyed with in those dense moments before she continued. It was the same clang my toolbox makes when I’m about to start working on the rain gutters or the porch. Tools. Heavy, dirty, grimy tools.

She knew something, no doubt. And I sat back and waited to see what—exactly what—she knew.

The Day After

Dear Reader,

I value the time you spend with me, and my laziness is a shitty thank you. Please forgive me for holding up the story; you have my promise that once it is done, it will be what I think is the best I can do. I write for you, and if you go away, then the people I create can’t have their story told. If a character’s voice cannot be heard, then that character ceases to exists, and if I can’t give my characters a voice, then I may as well follow suit.

This week, Carol and Darrel arrive in Chicago and we meet Adi Mudra in the flesh, as it were, and find her–at least I think–distasteful and uncaring. It is my opinion that your average Jamaican Voodoo Priest or Bokor would, in truth, be very compassionate about his or her followers, but Adi doesn’t care. She is stuck in a world that is unfamiliar to her, that is full of nonbelievers, that is completely alien, and she has become hardened to it. Even though she is still a Bokor–and quite a powerful one, I’d wager–she is changed from her priesthood and has fallen into the trap that is laid down at each of our feet in turn. She is broken by apathy and selfishness.

Next week, we’ll hear Darrel’s story in more detail and we’ll find out why he is decomposing before Carol’s eyes. I hope to also find out next week why it is important that Carol hasn’t slept with Will, but that will have to be a curiosity for another day. And why did the old woman call Darrel “spirit”? I suppose we’ll have to read on to find out.

I appreciate you, Dear Reader, and hope you’ll stay a while and give it a read. If you’re just joining us, check out the whole story here.

On a completely unrelated topic, happy birthday to me!

Carol woke on the bus when she felt something fall onto her head. She reached up and felt a rubbery mass drowning in her hair, and pulled it free. She sat up, and looked at the object in her hand. It was an ear. She looked at Darrel—she had been sleeping in his lap—and saw that he was looking out the window at the shimmering afternoon canvas scenery flowing past. Where his ear should have been was an oozing semicircular ring of bloody tissue surrounding a dark hole. Disgust flushed through her body, and the ear flew from her hand; she didn’t realize the force with which she had thrown it. She saw it plop against the window and fall on the floor of the bus. Darrel turned toward her.

“It’s getting worse,” he said through his partially exposed jaw. “She said it would happen, and I told her that was fine. I needed to make my point.”

Carol sat in silence and stared at the ear on the floor.

“Have you slept with him?”

She looked up at Darrel and raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“I mean in the last few months. Have you slept with him?”

“With William? Is that really any of your business?”

Darrel looked back out the window. His skin had a deep grey tinge to it and his face was more emaciated than it had been last night in the diner.

“Under normal circumstances, no. But as your brother, I’m making it my business now.”

Her look was icy. Darrel turned to her and showed no concern on his face. Carol wasn’t sure whether this was because there was none to show or whether it was because he was losing control of his facial vernacular. She decided the latter, because of the way his eyes looked at her. There was compassion there, buried somewhere deep inside this shell of her brother. She looked around the bus, and saw the other six passengers resolutely ignoring the strange pair seated in the back. She imagined that many of them would be frightened if they gave Darrel more than a compulsory glance. She looked back at him, watched his eyes seem to sag in their sockets, and felt sorry for him. He was—quite literally—falling apart, and it was because of her. She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted.

“We’re almost there.” Darrel resumed his sidelong glance at the passing rural terrain. They were near Chicago now, near the place where Darrel died four days ago.

He didn’t speak to her for another three hours. He didn’t turn his head. Judging from those dark, deep eyes, Carol guessed that if he could, he would be crying.

They pulled into the city along Interstate 90, through Gary, through Ivanhoe, and finally ended up at the Greyhound stop on West Chicago Avenue near LaSalle.

“We’ll walk from here,” Darrel said.

The woman’s apartment was less than three blocks from the bus station and they arrived just before dusk. Darrel walked through the entranceway and up a flight of stairs to the second floor. At the end of the hall, at a door unmarked except for the ghost of the number “4” and the letter “C” and two neat nailholes driven through the hearts of each character, he knocked.

Silence fled into the hall like a scared child. Carol felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle, and rubbed her arms against the embrace of a chill. The know rattled then turned, and a profound darkness invited them inside. Darrel looked at her, and she at him, and they stepped inside. The door closed behind them as if of its own accord.

The apartment was dim inside, the darkness almost complete, even compared to the dusky light outside, and as her eyes began to adjust Carol received a fright as a wispy voice behind her spoke.

“I told you, didn’t I Darrel?” said the voice.

“Yes, Adi, you did.”

“Sit.”

Darrel did so.

“Carol, you had best take a seat, too, dear.” The voice took on a sweet air, and Carol did as she was bade. As she let herself sink into the couch she saw the woman step from behind the door, from behind where she and Darrel were standing after they had entered her home. She looked around the small apartment and as she did, she realized that they were sitting on the woman’s bed, and that she was heading toward the small single-chaired table to take rest of herself.

The woman spoke.

“I am Adi, as he has no doubt mentioned.” Once she had herself situated in the seat, she turned to look at Carol. “I imagine you are here for answers.”

“Well, I…” Carol was interrupted.

“I can’t tell you anything, woman. Your brother here can, but I can’t. The only thing an old witch like me is good for is collecting a young person’s life and setting them on a path that will settle their minds. I can tell that you are as settled as one could be, insomuch as one who has had such a world-splitting experience as you. Am I right?”

“Yes,” Carol said. Her heart was racing, her pulse thumping in her head. Why does she creep me out like this?

“You look like hell, Darrel. I told you this would happen.”

“You did, Adi. Thank you.”

Carol looked at her brother in astonishment. His manners were never this good, not even on the rare occasions he had come home to visit their parents. She noticed how still he was, how his eyes almost rested on Adi Mudra’s soul, how he was subservient to her whims. This must be part of the spell. She turned to Adi.

“Why can’t you tell me what has happened here?”

Adi Mudra regarded Carol with discordance, as if she were a fly that kept buzzing around while she tried to carry on a conversation with an old lover.

Darrel spoke.

“Carol, please be respectful to Bokor. She commands such behavior.”

“Thank you, spirit,” said Adi. “Please enlighten the girl as to the transformation you’ve undergone.”

“Thank you, Bokor,” Darrel said.

His eyes never left Adi Mudra, his whole body barely moved except for his mouth. But the story spilled from him like pig’s blood poured from a misplaced bucket, and his body spent the energy on telling the story rather than on staying in a functional, human state.

———

Hello, Dear Reader!

Welcome back! I’m glad you could make it!

Today, we join Darrel in the first part of his tale. His discoveries are a little bit frightening, and some of the decisions coming in future installments are quite curious.

I hope you enjoy this current piece of the puzzle. If this is your first time joining us, please check out the rest of the story here.

“I came to Chicago six months ago to traffic drugs,” Darrel said. “I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth.”

He told of his adventures in the quintessential underground world of business, about his close calls—the caused Carol’s eyes to roil with tears—and about the time he was slipped a tainted drink at a party and woke up in an empty grave in Rose Hill Cemetery.

The sunlight was green and brown and awful. The air stank of freshly disturbed earth. His eyelids were heavy, and when they started to float up into the clouds, the eight-millimeter filmstrip of life that passed by him was one dark smear interlaced with random frames of powderburned memory. The fap,fap,fap noise that signaled the end of the reel pounded through Darrel’s head. He remembered that part clearly. As his mind crawled slowly back into the physical vestige of his body, his sight cleared, and he saw dark earth-tones and the reaching fingers of the sandman as he tried to pull himself away from delirium.

Eventually, he was coherent. There was no indication of time, no way to know where he was or which direction he came from—at least, until he turned his head upward.

The shadows fell on his left and bright, vile light coursed across his right-hand field of vision. He looked upward into a portal that crossed into the land of sanity, and realized that the light was of the sun.

And that he was in an open grave.

Darrel screamed, then stopped himself. He squeezed his eyes closed and listened hard. If the dimwitted fucks who had put him here caught wind of that scream, he would never live it down. Nor be successful in the trafficking biz. But all that aside, he had to get out of this hole. Now.

He jumped, and was able to grasp the topmost edge of the grave, but his hands ate into the soft earth and chunks of dirt and Darrel toppled down to the floor of the earthen box with a hollow thump.

“Fuck me,” Darrel said under his breath. No, fuck you, whoever you are, he said under his thoughts.

Then his brain registered the thump and he said out loud again, “Fuck me,” and proceeded to through caution against a brick wall and bellow like a child.

He was not only in an open grave, he was sitting on top of a coffin.

His nerves exploded with adrenaline, and his brain became a humming mess of wire. Oh shit, I’ve got to get out, got to get out, Oh, shit.

Darrel leaped again and grabbed the edge of the lofty opening and once again tumbled down, this time landing face first on the coffin. He scrambled to his feet, realized he was standing on the head of the coffin, and took a step backward. Then he realized he was standing on another important part, and thought to himself that it served the guy right for scaring the heavy-breathing shit out of him.

Just in front of his feet was the line that separated the head of the coffin from the foot, and for a moment, he thought about opening it. Then he dry heaved at the thought of sharing his airspace with a strange dead guy and thought better of it. He looked up at the edge of the grave and down again at the coffin.

“Hey, man, sorry, but I gotta get out of here.” He backpedalled to the far edge of the coffin. “You understand, right?”

With this, Darrel heaved the coffin up and toppled it end over end against the far wall of the grave. It stood upright, and Darrel grasped the bottom of the coffin—oh, hell, that’s the head—and pulled it away from the wall to make a ramp.

He walked up the coffin and hopped out of the grave with ease.

Sitting in the grass near the grave, he lit a cigarette.

Through exhaled, smokey breath, he said to his departed friend, leaning over the edge of the grave, “You know, this shit’ll kill ya.”

For several minutes afterward, Darrel laughed, uncontrollably, maniacally, and only with a fetid torpor engulfing his mind did he stop. He had rolled over the next gravesite, this one filled in and lush with green grass. He was looking at the headstone, upside down.

The smell hit him. The scathingly delicate aroma of rotting fish stung his nostrils, and the words on the headstone stung his brain: William H. Morgan, November 19, 1978, March 12, 2009.

Will Morgan. Isn’t that Carol’s beau’s name? He was sure of it, and he stared hard at the embossed letters as if to verify the information.

Darrel looked at his watch and in the tiny date window saw a miniscule number twenty-eight. And it was April, mid-spring, the sun was shining and the rains had passed and only a light breeze blew.

And Carol’s boyfriend was already dead.

…already dead…

…already dead…

…already dead…

The tribal beat of sticks and drums that began White Zombie’s Real Solution #9 wafted through his brain. The woman’s recant haunted him in that moment, and he was frozen, ice-cold on this warm spring afternoon, mounted in place atop the apparent grave of his future brother-in-law.

Fuck.

Darrel’s tale continues today. Enjoy, dear reader!

Darrel pushed himself up off the ground and ran until he came back to his apartment, and called John.

“John, I think I’m in trouble.”

“What are you talking about?” John asked.

“I think I know a zombie.”

“Those things ain’t real man, like I told you, it’s all an illusion.”

“You don’t understand. I just saw a gravestone, and—”

John interrupted Darrel. “And a body crawled out of it? If you didn’t see a body, there is no zombie, man.”

Darrel took a deep breath and sighed.

“No, no body.” He sat down on the couch. What did I see, then?

John breathed heavily into the phone on the other end.

“So, what do you know about zombies, John?”

“I know they ain’t real, and I know you must be fucked outta your gourd if you think you came across a real one.”

Darrel looked down at his feet in front of the couch in his apartment.

“Hmmph.”

“Well, you asked, and I answered.”

“But there has to be more, doesn’t there?”

“What are you talking about? You saw a headstone, man. It’s not like it was your sister, was it?”

“No, not Carol. It was Will,” Darrel said.

“Who?” John inquired without interest.

“Will. He’s the guy Carol’s been living with lately.”

“So, you saw the gravestone of a guy you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit, man. If I were you, I’d of scared myself too. What were you doing in a graveyard anyway?”

“Well…” Darrel relayed the events of the last few days.

“No shit,” John said.

“Yeah,” Darrel said.

“If you want to know about zombies, man, I know a lady. But she’s a little… weird, so to speak.”

“I don’t care if she masturbates with a crucifix and vomits split pea soup, so long as she can answer some questions.”

John didn’t laugh. Darrel took this to mean he was serious.

“Are you done yet?” John asked.

“Yeah, man,” Darrel answered. He rubbed a hand over his face.

A long silence hung between them. Darrel knew that John was waiting to be certain that his foolishness was over. When John spoke again, his voice was hushed, wary.

“Adi Mudra,” he said.

“What?”

“Adi Mudra. She lives in the project houses behind the Enclave, over off La Salle.”

“And what does she have to do with any of this?” Darrel asked.

“She makes zombies,” John replied.

Darrel sat and stared at the wall. The phone receiver slipped from his hands and hit the floor with a ringing clatter. Faintly, he could hear John’s voice querying his presence on the call.

She makes zombies. She made Will a zombie.

It never occurred to Darrel that he should call his sister. He had to find Will and end this. He leaped to his feet and ran into the bedroom. In his sock drawer, he dug to the bottom and found his Glock. He checked the clip and found it loaded, then shoved it into the waistband of his jeans and bolted from the apartment out into the street. The Enclave was only about ten blocks from his apartment on Cambridge.

As soon as he stepped onto the street, Darrel felt that he wasn’t alone. He ignored the feeling and turned south on Cambridge. After half a block, he looked back, and saw no one. When he turned on West Chicago Avenue, the feeling was much stronger, gripping him around the gut a massaging his innards. He stopped in an alcove at the Public Storage building just past Sedgwick and waited, kept an eye on where he had just come from and his destination. Regular foot traffic, nothing suspicious. He stepped onto the street and continued east along Chicago Avenue until he saw Bar Louie on the horizon. He turned left and cut across the parking lot there to the Enclave.

Ten feet into the lot, he froze. Will stood up ahead, simply staring in Darrel’s direction. Suddenly, the surrounding precipice was empty, and there was no sound. Even the passing string of cars, buses and SUVs was nearly silent. He could here crickets. Humming, rattling crickets. One landed on his shirt, startling him, and he flicked it away.

He looked up and saw that Will was moving toward him.

“Hey Will, how are you man?” Darrel said.

Will did not answer.

“I said, how are you, Will?” Darrel said. His stomach felt like Jell-O that had been sitting on the counter all day. His voice quavered a little, and he cleared his throat to steady it.

Again, Will did not answer. Darrel pulled his gun.

“Will, we need to talk. I saw some strange things today.”

Will continued to advance. He was now about twenty feet from Darrel.

“I’m warning you.” Darrel held the gun aimed at Will’s chest, but Will continued his approach.

Fifteen feet.

It was dark in the parking lot, and Darrel could only just make out Will’s face against the thick black night.

“I’m going to shoot you, Will, if you don’t stop.”

Ten feet.

Darrel pulled the trigger, and Will was thrown off the ground. His body arced in the air and spun around so that it faced back toward the Enclave. Will landed in a heap on the pavement.

The echo from the gunshot seemed to fill the entire parking lot. It reverberated off the buildings and slammed around inside Darrel’s head.

Ohshitohshitohshit, Darrel said to himself.

He walked up to Will and rolled his body over. There was a gaping hole in his chest, but no gush of blood. It was as if the wound had been cauterized by the gunshot, but Darrel knew this was impossible. The hole was clean through, and he could see the pavement beneath Will’s body.

His stomach did two more somersaults, then tried to vault whatever contents there were into the atmosphere. Darrel put his hand to his mouth and clamped his lips shut to force the vomit back into his gullet. He stood up and walked away from Will, walked to the edge of the parking lot near Bar Louie, and sat on a curb. He pulled out a Camel Wide and lit it.

Double fuck.

He sat distracted for three-quarters of his cigarette, but immediately snapped back to attention when he heard a sound from the direction of Will’s body. When he looked, he saw Will’s hand rise into the air feebly, then fall back. He saw the body rock gently from side to side for a moment, and saw the same hand swing its weight over to get him off of his back.

Darrel saw Will sitting in a four-poster squat, and saw the animal ferocity that shone in his eyes when Will turned his head in the direction of his attacker.

Without waiting to snuff out his smoke, Darrel bolted toward the Enclave, unloading two more rounds into Will as he went. Why the fuck do I think shooting him will do any good?

His feet pounded, his heart pounded. His head pounded, and he ran.

But Will was fast, extraordinarily fast, and Darrel didn’t make it to the Enclave. Will full-tackled him to the ground and began to beat him, to bite at his flesh, and to hit him with the butt of the pistol that had dropped from his hand when he hit the ground. After several moments, Darrel could see only faint outlines from the neon lights of the Enclave, and Will stood and walked away.

The neon lights faded out, and Darrel welcomed the dissemination of the excruciating pain.

———

Thank you for checking in!

I appreciate the time we spend together here, and I hope that the story today is to your liking. The story has come a long way (8,657 words by my count) and it has much farther to go. In the coming weeks, we’ll get to hear Adi Mudra’s tale and we’ll learn more about what has caused Darrel’s rapid degeneration. Hopefully, this will lend itself to how, exactly, Will Morgan is involved in this tale. We should remember in the last weeks when Darrel found Will’s grave, when Will attacked Darrel and left him for dead in the parking lot of  the Enclave.

The worlds of our characters are beginning to unravel in this story, and—I promise—the threads will become intertwined again soon. Please enjoy your stay. And remember, today is a tragic day in Darrel’s world.

Catch up here if you’re behind. And again, dear Reader, thank you. Without you, Carol, Darrel, and Will would have no one to read their story save for one crazy old shark hunter and a New Mexican penguin with car trouble.

Let’s dive in.

Darrel floated in the darkness. He was warm, his arms tingled, and his fingers crawled out of the shadows, grasping for his hands, reaching for, squeezing for his arms. His muscles ached.

A hand—not his own—reached through the darkness and caressed his cold, sparkling cheek. Warm air brxeathed over his face, and his body burned, and he smiled, welcoming the comfort of the airy wisps, shunning the pain, pushing the pain, and he was happy to be comforted.

But when his eyes opened, the warmth blew away on a chilling breeze and the pain squeezed him, tore at his muyscles, scratched his nerves, and stabbed into his brain.

…drink…

The voice was soft against the grit of the pain. It was music, it flowed over him and drained into his ears. The warmth began to creep in again, gently. He blinked and felt the surge of pain give over to the warmth slowly.

His eyes showed him only darkness, simple darkness, with just one spot of light shinging, one glimmer of hope springing into his mind. She spoke again.

“Drink, my child.”

Darrel drank, and pure, moldering warmth spread across his chest. His hands clenched into fists and his toes flexed in his tennis shoes.

The icicle of pain melted in his mind and he blinked again, several times. The old woman’s face was kind but her white, cataract-smothered eyes peered eerily into him. He lifted his hand to push the cup away.

“You must drink this, it will make you strong again.” The woman’s hold on Darrel was remarkably tight, resistant to his squirming. She pushed the cup to his lips again and his weakened body gave in, taking the liquid down. Darrel gave into the warm pleasure of the liquid remedy, if only for a moment before she spoke again.

“Trust in me, child. Trust old Adi Mudra.”

Darrel’s eyes flew open in terror. The surge of fear and adrenalin in his body exploded outward and before he realized it, he was on his feet, looking down at the woman kneeling in the parking lot of the Enclave night club. He muttered, gawked, and fumbled his way backward across the yellow stripes and across the sidewalk into West Chicago Avenue.

His face was a contorted ball of wax as he started, as the neon lights of Bar Louie and the street lamps peered accusingly at him. He only just heard the screeching tires, only just felt the vibration of the air horn. The tractor trailer bore down on him and caught the left-hand side of his body.

Darrel lay in the street in downtown Chicago for several hours until the sirens meandered toward him.

Three times the paramedics closed his eyelids; his eyes closed the last time that night as the zipper of the body bag clipped his nose and sealed off the lights. He was dead then. Of course, he had been dead before that, too. To Darrel, it felt as if he had been dead for a very long time.

My favorite part of writing is when the characters begin to step up and tell me how the story should go from this point. Adi did that today.

“The darkness of the body bag was frightening,” Darrel said, sitting on Adi Mudra’s couch. “But the darkness of death…”

Darrel looked up. He had been staring at his hands, twisting his fingers over each other like so many writhing snakes. Now he stared at Adi.

“The darkness of death is terrible.”

Carol felt a burning lump of coal in her throat, and she squeezed her eyes shut, as if mentally pinching herself to make sure this wasn’t some horrid nightmare. It wasn’t, and she looked at Adi Mudra with contempt and hatred spilled out of her mouth when she spoke.

“You did this, Adi?”

Adi Mudra’s eyes sparkled in a grandmotherly way, and the swirls of white in each pupil caught Carol’s attention. They settled down just long enough to see a familiar black and white portrait smiling back at her, a portrait that hangs every night two hundred and forty thousand miles above her head, that causes her to swell with happiness and dissolve into comfort each time she glances up at it.

Inside each of Adi Mudra’s eyes was a view of the moon. The moonman smiled at Carol, and she smiled back, she felt euphoric, she melted in her chair and stared into Adi Mudra’s eyes.

“No, child, it weren’t me. I’m just the collector.”

Carol only felt Adi’s words bubbling across her skin, nothing else. No pain, no worry, no hate; only bubbles that popped little words into her ears. Until the word “collector” exploded over her thoughts like mustard gas bombs. The acid of those words ate away the haze of euphoria.

“What do you mean, collector?” Carol spat as she said this, her teeth clenched and eyes blazing.

Adi Mudra plainly ignored this last and continued on. She fiddled with her hands in her lap, and the movement caught Carol’s attention.

“Your Darrel is a weak one. I didn’t have the time with him like I had with your dear William. I think that Darrel’s bones, served up nice by the big truck, were the only things that saved him from a terrible death.”

It was a leather bag. She held it up.

“You like this, nah? This Gris-gris? This is of your brother, so of course you drawn to it, yes. See how good it is? Without this, you brother would still be buried in the ground.

“It his bones, do the trick.”

“His… bones?” Carol said.

Adi held up the small pouch and shook it. From inside came a small chitter similar to the sound of rocks underfoot. Then she turned and dumped the bag’s contents on the table, and began to arrange them around a tiny doll with pale, cotton skin and ratted hair of the same color as Darrel’s.

“Look, see, girl. Come here and see,” Adi Mudra said.

Carol stood and glanced at Darrel. His eyes were blank and he stared at nothing. She walked a step and a half to the little table.

“You see these here? Those are part of Darrel’s small toe, and this lock of hair holds luck to us. The candle we burn to give us God’s strength.”

She turned to look at Carol, whose face was mere inches away. Adi’s eyes were wide.

“But you really don’t want to know your brother’s story, do you, nah?” Adi let out a wheezing burst of laughter. “No, you want to know about your dear William, yes? I can smell it on you, that stink like rotting meat.”

The old woman reached one slightly trembling hand to the girl’s cheek and stroked sallow fingers through Carol’s hair, pulled the strand toward her and inhaled sharply through her nose.

“I can smell the gluttony on you, child. I can smell your sex burn for him, too, nah?”

The hand crept along Carol’s neck, down her chest, and squeezed her left breast.

She snapped to standing, ripping the old woman’s hand away and leaving her with a stinging sensation that spread out from her nipple and dug deep into her heart. Adi burst into grating laughter that echoed against the many statues that lined the shelves on the wall behind her. She tossed her head back, and clapped her hands.

Carol’s mind was racing.

William, William, William. What are you, my dear sweet William?

She was becoming frightened. The reek of Adi’s stale breath floated up, and her head swam in the malodor of decay. Her brother continued to rot behind her, and she worried that this horrible, old woman might rot right here, if from nothing more than laughter. Her eyes rose to the ceiling, as if to lead her body up out of that stink, then cowered back down into the murk when Carol saw that the statues—not the same, no they were all different—but they were, those statues were the same. At least, they were similar enough to be obviously connected to the same purpose.

Had those been there before? Carol wasn’t sure, hadn’t really looked. She had been so focused on Adi Mudra that she hadn’t taken in the milieu of the room.

On the shelves stood hideous, smirking dolls with straw-woven hair and shabby coveralls made from tattered scraps of fabric. The bright colors and black faces of the doll’s statuesque features rained down on Carol. With a quick glance, Carol saw that the other walls in the old woman’s house were bare. She looked at Adi, and Adi’s laughter faded away.

“You like the bogeyman?” Adi said. She raised a hand and indicated the hideous dolls.

Carol’s brow furrowed.

“No, they’re awful. The eyes are… they pierce your soul.”

“Aye, child, that they do, but the bogeyman also protect me from the Tonton Macoutes, the undead. The bogeyman they protect me, and they protect your brother.”

“And William?” Carol asked.

“No, not William. He ain’t mine, I’ve no gris-gris for your dear William.”

Carol’s head throbbed, and she looked at Adi through crinkled eyes.

“Did you say ‘army of the undead’?”

Adi Mudra smiled, and Carol’s stomach did somersaults. She was sure she would throw up.

“Aye, Darrel, let’s tell Carol about the bogeyman, nah? Can you tell?”

Darrel sat and didn’t move. His eyes were empty, and the gape in his chin was gruesome.

“Poor Darrel, he not say a word til he told. And since I hold his gris-gris, I hold his power. This is how the bogeyman work. He a doll that frightens off the Macoutes and make them run away scared. They started as one Tonton Macoutes, and they grew to a whole army, the one of him stealing children off the street when they was bad. That’s what my grandma always told us kids, nah?”

Adi paused, then stood and reached up to collect one of the smaller dolls off the shelf. She turned the doll around, and Carol could see a small burlap sack slung over the statue’s shoulder. Adi Mudra reached into the sack and pulled out a bundle of grass tied with cotton twine, one tooth, a snake’s rattle, one small bone—it looked like a chicken wing—and a lock of black hair. The ends of each strand of hair were curled and white, as if they had been burned.

“They call him Uncle Gunnysack in America, Tonton Macoutes in French.

“The Macoutes they get more, and they become an army. Papa Doc was the boss, and they kill and they beat and they take what they want, leave the hard working folks with nothing.”

“Why?” Carol was less frightened now, as she saw Adi Mudra’s face soften. The old woman was looking down into the bogeyman’s face, quite obviously stuck in a deep well of reminiscence.

“I don’t know,” Adi said. “All I know is that one day they burn my house, and my papa he try to save my sister, and he got burned bad. We had nowhere to go, and papa lay in the streets and the infections took him after four days.”

“So, the bogeyman protects you, now?”

“Yes, my child. The bogeyman protects me, and protects your bother.”

“Why does Darrel need protecting?”

“That’s the question we got to ask, nah? Why do you think?”

Carol looked at her brother, her face fell with sorrow, and she looked down at her hands.

“I don’t know, Adi.”

“Ahh, young folks, you never pay attention.”

The old woman stood and shuffled across to a dresser on the other end of the room. She opened the drawer and pulled out a piece of paper, partly burned but with some of the writing on it still legible.

Adi handed the paper to Carol.

“Read,” she said. “Then we’ll find out why we got to protect Darrel.”

The paper said:

Aviton Legba, op

The gate for me, papa                 he temple

On my way back, I shal       nk you for this favor

The rest of it was burned away.

“I don’t understand,” Carol said. “What is this, Adi?”

“Is a spell, silly girl. Is a spell that was cast on Darrel. That’s why he fall apart so fast.”

Carol looked unyielding into Adi’s eyes, waiting for the woman to say more. She didn’t.

“What does it mean?”

“It’s an old spell that calls to Legba. He guard the gates to heaven and the road to hell.”

I got stuck. That’s all it is, really. I got stuck, and I couldn’t figure out where to go.

Last week I sat down at my Torpedo typewriter and retyped the last few paragraphs of my last AtF post, and then it hit me. I had reached the end of this story, and at the same time, Darrel was opening the door to another tale. Because this story is “After the Funeral,” though, and not “Darrel’s Zombie Adventures in the Slums of Chicago” or something similar, I had reached the end and needed to stop.

What follows here is the conclusion, as always in rough, first-draft form, of After the Funeral. The adventure comes to a close. I hope you enjoyed the ride!

In the coming weeks, I plan to postulate my take on the revision process, and will show some tips that I consider to be vastly helpful in taking an incomplete story, such as this one, and adding the polish that makes it good.

The indelible Stephen King said in his wonderful memoir “On Writing” that one should learn to “kill your darlings.” I plan on doing this to the fullest extend of what is necessary, so if there is a part of the story you’re attached to, you may need to defend it here in the comments section. We’ll hopefully learn a thing or two about characterization, the art of showing versus telling, dialogue, beats, and point of view.

What I hope to achieve in this exercise is a presentation of one writer’s method (read: madness). You can surely find on the Internet a million ways to handle a second or even third draft, but I plan to tackle it here in the ways that I’ve determined to work best for me. You’ve followed along the journey of a first-draft work, and I plan to lead you to the seventh ring, all the way to the end.

When we left Carol, Darrel, and Adi, we found the brother in a trance, the sister in hysterics, and the old woman shrewdly denying any involvement but lending her aid.

Thank you, kind reader, for taking the time to share a story with me.

Carol goggled at Adi. This is totally nonsensical, absolutely impossible. All that religious rigamarole is so many beans in a can, isn’t it?

“The gates to heaven and hell? Darrel? Are you kidding me?”

“No, child. No kidding me. Darrel is being taken by Legba to meet his fate, whether it be heaven or hell we don’t know. That why he’s coming to pieces.”

“And what exactly is a Legba?” Carol asked.

“You mean you don’t know? Don’t remember?”

Adi’s eyes faltered and twitched for a moment before she regained control of herself. She gave the Sign of the Cross and clasped her hands over her bosom, then shuffled back to her chair and sat down. She looked down at the hands in her lap, as if they had failed her in some way.

While Adi rocked back and forth on the small, wooden chair, Carol looked at her brother, and saw that his left eye looked loose. He reached to his cheek and pushed it, and the eye bulged. Carol covered her mouth and turned back to Adi. She was still in a semi-trance, or maybe she was praying. It made Carol’s stomach churn more, and she was almost relieved to do nothing more than close her eyes. But her pleasure was cut short by a croaking voice that almost made her cry.

“Carol.”

She opened her eyes and turned to her brother. Disgust and pity swelled in her throat. “What is it?” she said gingerly.

“Carol…carol…carol…carol…”

“What is it, Darrel?” She walked toward him, and his voice began to fade away. Carol sat next to her brother on the worn sofa.

“…carol…carol.”

He blinked, his bulging eye settled back into the socket, and his palor seemed to improve visibly in just that moment. Darrel turned to his sister, and Adi Mudra continued to pray.

“Carol, why did you do it?” he said. His eyes were round and wet, his pupils large, and his countenance very present. He was no monster now; Darrel had come back to her. He slowly raised a hand and brushed it against her cheek. His skin was gelid, joyless, but he was still her brother.

“Do what? I don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t. But you will. I have to go, Carol. Stay with Adi Mudra, she can protect you. She has the bogeyman with her.”

Darrel leaned in and kissed her cheek. He stood, went to Adi, kissed her forehead. Looking back at Carol, he spoke again.

“Legba won’t hurt me, Carol. He’ll take care of me so long as I make good by him. You stay here, and don’t try to follow.”

He turned the knob and opened the door.

“Darrel, sit. Wait.” Adi Mudra spoke in a sturdy voice. Carol saw that she had since recovered from her beffudlement and sat calmly, gazing at Darrel with a fixed look of authority. She paused for an interval, and when he didn’t move, she shook the gris-gris bag that was still clutched in her hand.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Darrel stared, open-mouthed, and Carol couldn’t help but smile at her brother. That was the same look he got when he was young and feigning uninvolvement. He turned his head to look at his sister, and also smiled.

“You know, Adi, I think I am.” Darrel grabbed the tiny leather bag, tossed it in the air and caught it. He stuffed it in his pocket and walked out the door.

The Day She Returned Home

“That was the last time I saw Darrel, night before last,” Carol said. She dragged the final breath of a cigarette and let it free into the air.

But what could I do? She knew my secret. She was taunting me, sitting there, lax-faced and indifferent to the whole thing. What the fuck was I going to do?

She prattled on about one thing or another on the day after Darrel left, but I was really only smiling and nodding at that point. In the middle of some story involving a cave behind a waterfall and a stolen finger that still wore its original owner’s prior adornment, I interrupted Carol.

“Shut up. Just stop talking.”

To increase the effect, I stood up and swooped away from the table.

“What, Michael? You don’t believe me?” she said.

“No. Of course not.” I laughed.

I could rip her throat out for all the sarcasm that it just sowed at me.

“What don’t you believe? The pizza joint? The train ride?”

“That you’d fall for it. I don’t believe you’d let your brother pull one past you like that.”

“Darrel didn’t pull one past me, Michael. All he wanted to do was warn me about you.”

There wen’t my argument. And here I come fighting.

“You really believe that happy horseshit? Really?”

Carol stood and lifted the bag from the floor. When she dropped it on the table, it clanged and tinkled.

“What’s in there?” I said. She smiled.

“Nothing you need to worry about, darling.”

I licked my lips, and would have begun to sweat, were I alive. Instead, I turned my back to her, and heard the bag’s zipper whiz its teeth across its tongue.

In the moments before Carol killed me—the second time I had died, mind you—I remembered a fair amount about my childhood, my mother, and myself. Floating there in the air under the blade of the ax were songs blared by an AM radio, silly love poems I had written to a handful of “love-of-my-life” types, curses spent by curs against my mother and duly paid back by me. I felt alive again, even as I knew that the freezing hand of death was about to reach up my shirt again and cop another feel. I felt excited, exhilarated, cranked up to eleven.

I also felt a terrible rush of hatred toward Carol.

I wasn’t turned zombie until after I had met Carol. We were in college together, both pre-med, both nearly to our residency, and both terribly lonely. I had gotten up the courage to talk to her, because it is always easy to speak with a colleague when they are of the same caliber as you, but I quickly found out that Carol’s understanding of medicine was far beyond mine, and I grew shy, grew distant, and grew depressed.

She found me at a grimy bar in Chicago—not Carol, but the zombie lady—and I made her job easy. I spilled my sobber’s tale over many Negro Modelos and two tequila chasers. She was very beautiful, the woman who stole men’s souls, and I was more than willing to take her up on her offer.

All I had to do was come upstairs, she said, and she would take care of the rest. If I had known what she had in mind, I would have run away home, crying to my mother, seeking the solace of her bosom. But I went with the zombie lady and loved her and cried for her and she stole my soul and replaced it with grandeur and confidence. Carol would be mine, and so she was.

I could hear the whistling wind jumping away from the ax, and I spun around and looked right in her eyes, and as the blade bit into the soft space between my neck and shoulder, as blood sprayed from me and covered Carol’s high cheeks and soft lips, I couldn’t keep it in anymore.

“Carol—”

(that’s when the ax hit)

“I—”

(that’s when the blood sprayed)

I fell to my knees.

“I think—”

(that’s when she looked more beautiful that i’ve ever seen her)

I didn’t get to finish the thought; Carol interrupted like she always does, that bitch.

“That we should see other people?” she said, lifting her foot to my chest and pushing my body off of the ax head.

“Yeah,” she said. “I got that.”

The ax hit the floor, echoing voices of wood and metal chiming like a deathclock at the end of the world, and I watched her feet turn and walk to the door. I lay in my kitchen bleeding, and after she closed the door I blacked out.

———

Carol missed one detail: I’m a zombie.

After my body recovered from the initial shock of the ax wound, I came to and pushed myself up into a sprawled sitting position. My left arm hung dead by thin ropes of tendon and ligament, and the bones that had made up the ball and joint were shattered. I looked like shit. I felt like shit.

Typing this story with only one hand was hell, but it was worth it.

If you’ll excuse me, I have a haughty bitch to deal with.

Now, where is that fucking ax?

———

fin