After Midnight (8 page)

The beast went limp; its legs st
opped thrashing and kicking, the head fell and lolled, and its hands, hitherto grasped weakly around my biceps, loosened. It was dead.

A bit of the stinking fluid dripped from
its wound and onto my cheek, and my mind convinced me that, acid-like, it was sizzling through my flesh. I summoned the last bit of strength left me and pushed the dead weight of the fiend off onto the floor. I lay there panting and drenched in sweat, heart still thumping and adrenaline coursing through my veins. The smell of decay was in my nostrils and on my clothes; every time I breathed though my nose, I could smell rot and earthy graveyard dirt; every time I breathed through my mouth, I could taste the evil flesh of the monster.

Still trembling with terror, I staggered off to the bathroom and scrubbed my hands, trying desperately to get the gunk off of them.

Done, I shambled into the kitchen, hyperventilating. There was a bottle of booze in one of the cabinets. Which one? I tried to remember, couldn’t, rooted around, and found a half empty jug of Captain Morgan under the sink.

After a long, steadying drink, I gathered the guts required to go and check out the thing that I had
murdered. I reluctantly moved into the parlor, crunching broken glass underfoot like brittle snow. In soft lamplight I stood over the monster for a long time, mesmerized by it. The face was caved in and leaking, closely resembling a rotten apple. His skin was a ghastly gray and his suit was covered in dirt; the stench of him was nothing short of incredible.

Mouth clamped tightly shut against a rush of hot stomach bile, I dropped to one knee, my shaking left hand covering my nose. With my right I hesitantly reached out and gripped the white undershirt of the beast and ripped; the damp fabric tore easily. When I saw what waited for me under the shirt, I gasped and stood so quickly that I nearly toppled over backwards. I rushed to the bathroom off the kitchen and lost the contents of my stomach and nearly my sanity. I had had hope before, but now there was no denying what the thing was. For under the ghoul’s shirt, on the gray mottled flesh, so cold that it seemed to radiate a chill, was an ugly Y-shaped incision.

Shaking and hyperventilating, I washed my acidic mouth out in the small marble sink next to the toilet. In the smudged mirror, my eyes were wide and bloodshot. I took several deep, shaky breaths before I forced myself to return to the parlor. For a long time, I stood over the body, dazed and blinking my eyes.

No, this is impossible, this can’t be happening.

But it was.

As dawn approached in the east, I picked the knife up from the floor and went into the cool morning through the kitchen door which had been left standing ajar by the ghoul. The storm had quieted, the ground was wet, and the world smelt fresh and clean. There was a small shed in the backyard that my uncle had built back in the seventies, made to look like a barn. The door was padlocked and I didn’t know where to find the key. With my mind playing scenes from
Night of the Living Dead
, imagining every natural sound as the approach of some unimaginable beast, I panicked and kicked the door open. Feeling only slightly as if I had tipped over a headstone, I hustled into the musty darkness, redolent of grease and gasoline. The mower was in the middle of the space, and from feel alone I found the tarp where my uncle had left it back in August or September ‘88. I pushed away the cinderblocks holding the corners down with my feet, and balled the tarp up. I nearly ran back to the back door, and when I was once again in the house, I locked the door.

I laid the thin, time-eaten tarp on the parlor floor and, regretting that I had not taken the time to search for gardening gloves, used two oven mitts to roll the body of the hellion on. Some vile yellowish cemetery fluids had soaked into the carpet, and I made a mental note to rent a carpet shampooer from Food-Lion before Monday, when the young doctor and his wife returned for a follow-up tour of the house

I monitored the morning news on Fox 5, and discovered to my great relief that a Romero-like zombie invasion was not underway. I thought briefly of calling the police, but that was crazy. If the cadaver in my care
was
an escapee from a local cemetery, what would be the outcome of calling the law? They would lock me up for grave-robbing and brand me as insane or a necrophile. It would be better to handle this myself.

After a
bout of fitful sleep plagued by wretched nightmares, I loaded the tarpaulin-wrapped body into the back of my Isuzu Trooper. It was dusk, cooling down as the sun sank in the west in a glorious show of orange and purple, and it would be pitch black when I arrived in Bealeton, halfway across the county.

The dead stink filled the car as I drove east on dark highways, the radio lowly whispering
Krokus songs. I obeyed the speed limits to the letter, was a more cautious driver than usual, and did nothing whatsoever that would draw attention to myself.

North of Bealeton along Route 17, just south of a spot-in-the-road called Opal, a dark, decrepit farm sat forlornly off the highway amongst a tangle of weeds and underbrush. My parents owned the place and planned to pass it on to me when they went; nobody lived there, and hadn’t since around the time Charles Manson was making a mockery of the California justice system. The place was mostly land, with only a rickety home, a small barn, a chicken coop, and a rusting Packard sitting in tall weeds next to a small pond full of geese shit and slime.

I parked the Trooper in the back field of tall brown grass, kept the headlights blazing and the radio playing, and used a shovel taken from my uncle’s shed to dig a deep hole in the rich black soil.

Making sure that the beast would never again rise, I gave him a few more quick whacks in the head with the shovel after I had dragged him from the storage compartment. I thought of taking his head off entirely,
but I was tired, paranoid of being spotted by a passing police cruiser, and more easily sickened than I previously thought. I just rolled the corpse into the hole and, sweating buckets despite the cool breeze, filled it in. The nocturnal chirping of crickets and bullfrogs under the music soothed me, and I believe that I nearly fell asleep while working, for I can’t clearly remember filling in the last three or so feet.

Weary and sore, I covered the freshly turned dirt with a large gray piece of wood and set a course for home.
Call me a coward if you will, but I still can’t drive along that road, let alone visit the farm. I’ll sell it soon as my parents move on.

To this day, nearly fifteen years later, that night haunts my sleep. I sold the house to a developer, who knocked it down, thankfully, and I still have terrible nightmares about the whole affair. I found out not too long after, in the
Daily Pickett
, that the body who wandered into my aunt’s home that night was Stanly Warren, a 31-year-old high school teacher from Marshall who died the previous March of some unspecified illness.

The
Picketts Meade Sheriff’s Department was baffled by the robbery in Pinewood Cemetery and by the fact that instead of a six-by-six hole they found what appeared to be an earthen tunnel burrowing down. Even though things didn’t rightly add up, they called the whole thing the work of a common grave-robber, and it slowly faded from the papers as bigger and badder things came along; from front page to second, fifth to last.

But
I was plagued by horrible dreams that left me shivering, panting and paralyzed with fear in my bed. I suffered anxiety attacks for a number of years, and was instilled with a phobia of cemeteries, morgues, hospitals, and every other conceivable place closely associated with death and the dead. For a while I was even held in the grip of an insane obsession focusing on Stanly Warren (what was he like in life? What did he look like? What was his political affiliation?), and devoured whatever information I could find on the man, which wasn’t much. I even introduced myself as an old friend of his to his widow and interviewed several of his students for a non-existent newspaper.

Finally managing to put aside my debilitating terror, I visited his grave one sunny afternoon about three years after that horrible night, my chest tight and my eyes oscillating absent mindedly over the long rows of gray and white marble headstones. I nearly fled several times after imagining angry beings crouching behind the leafy trees which dotted the tract, hiding inside the occasional bush, and peering hungrily at me from behind gravestones; but though wavering, my resolve remained.

With constricted breathing, a thundering heart and watery bowls, I found the simple gray marker denoting the second-to-final resting place of one Stanly Warren; and was immediately struck by the inscription above his name, between the busts of two chubby-cheeked angel children, eyes cast admiringly Heavenward, who closely resembled the Campbell’s Soup Kids. I don’t know if it was a macabre coincidence or a frightening prophesy from beyond; they say God has a sense of humor, but I never imagined the Lord’s tastes in such matters would be so morbid.

For etched into the rough stone were the chilling words: Only Sleeping. 

They’ve
been saying a lot of awful things about me in the press. I've seen a few papers and heard a newsbreak on the radio in the sheriff's office. VIRGINIA CANNIBAL CAPTURED; NORTHERN NECK NECROPHILIAC WAS LOCAL DOCTOR; HOUSE OF HORRORS STUNS NATION. I saw myself on Fox 5 last night being transferred from the Warsaw town jail to the Richmond County lock-up, dressed in a tweed jacket and jeans, my hands behind my back and my head down, grim-faced deputies leading me down a set of stone steps. Reporters were shoving microphones in my face and shouting questions at me like I was the president. I can't help but find a bit of amusement in that.

But I
don’t
find amusement in what they’re saying about me, all of the dirty, vicious, sensationalistic lies. I shouldn’t let it perturb me, but I can’t help it. I never murdered anyone. I swear before the throne of God I never harmed a living soul. All of the remains they found came from corpses. I didn’t eat human flesh, either. I’m sure keeping people in the freezer led to that assumption, but it’s simply not true.
And
it’s not true that I had sex with any of them. That’s just sick. I never made love to them,
any
of them, Veronica included. Veronica
especially.
My love is purer than that. I wasn't motivated by perversion or lust. She was my angel, I would never defile her with...
that
.

She was so beautiful when she first walked into my office, so young and fresh, her skin glowing with vitality and her eyes dark and exotic. In ten minutes I
was smitten, in twenty I was infatuated, in thirty I was in love.

She was ill. Unbearable stomach pains, shortness of breath, dizziness. Even now I can hear her warm, sweet voice as we discussed the symptoms, her sitting worriedly on the examination table. She was so scared, and it took all my power to keep from putting my arm around her. I wanted so badly to comfort her in a way that professionalism didn't allow. I longed to hold her and whisper into her ear, to stroke her cheek and make the pain go away.

But I couldn't, and it made me sick. I could only write a prescription and send her on her way.

That night, she was the only thing I could think of. I was tormented with a burning passion that I knew would never be
requited. I paced the floors most of the evening, my chest tight and my heart aching sharply. I tried to sleep, but couldn’t, so I took a drive through the country and only came back home at dawn.

I ate a light breakfast, and then vomited into the toilet. Done, I stared at myself in the mirror above the sink, studying my wrinkled face, my bloodshot eyes, my white beard, my glasses, my sweater vest. Such a lovely young creature would never want a man who could pass for Freud in a cheap made-for-TV movie.

That thought eviscerated me, and I puked again. Is this love? I wondered,
true
love? What an awful feeling!

That day and the next dragged by in a blur of anguish. On Thursday I was too dejected to get out of bed. On Friday, a day which was always slow, I caved
in, and did something I promised I wouldn't do: I pulled out Veronica's number and called her under the pretense of medical curiosity. Her mother answered, and gave the phone to her goddess of a daughter.

"Hello, M
iss Myers," I said, my mouth dry and my heart pounding, "this is Dr. Cosgrove."

"Hi," she chirped, "how are you?"

"I'm fine," I said with a small smile, "and you?"

"Much better."

“That's good to hear," I replied dully; I had actually been hoping the symptoms persisted so I could see her again.

God, how I wish I never had!

On Monday, she was in my office again. I was overjoyed to see her, but her hollow eyes gutted my heart. She had been up the entire night in agony.

I...don't want to think of the weeks that followed. It's too painful, the way her life drained away. I made regular visits to her home, although house calls are unheard of, even in rural Virginia, and brought her the best gifts I could lay my hands on. Flowers and chocolates, stuffed animals, a locket engraved with her initials. She was so modest, and accepted my presents only with reluctance. I never confessed my love aloud, but I’m sure she saw it in my eyes, and felt it in the way I tenderly handled her.

Eventually, she became too sick to remain at home. She was admitted to the local hospital on the twenty-fifth, and I visited her twice a day, held her hand, whispered encouragements to her, read her poetry and the Bible. I was at her side that Sunday morning when she fell into her coma, and on that Thursday night when she died.

She was buried on a Monday as the heavens wept. I can't remember most of that horrible day; I was numb, in shock. Once I returned home, I sank into my Lazy-
Boy and stayed there, alternately gazing into space and weeping. Even after the sun had set, I sat unmoving, mired in grief.

I was there the whole night and most of the next day. I only rose to attend to the butcher’s son, who was hurt during football practice at the high school. I dragged myself through another three cold, lonely days before Veronica visited me in my dreams, a glowing vision in white, her hair done wholesomely up with ribbons and her lips pink and glossy
in the moonlight. She lay next to me, warm and fragrant, and held me close through the night.

The next day
, I went to her grave and knelt on the dirt; perhaps I was hoping to communicate with her soul, or maybe I just wanted to grieve. I can’t clearly remember what brought me there, or what kept me there; all of that was blown away when she spoke to me from the ground.

“Willard...is it you? Willard, it’s dark. I’m afraid.

She wasn’t dead! Thank God, she wasn’t dead! It was all a part of her plan. She faked her illness and death so that we could run away together. I should have known. A life so beautiful and vibrant would
never
end so senselessly.

“
Go
,” she told me, “
come back tonight. I’ll wait for you
.”

I walked through the wrought iron arch and back into the world of the living, delirious with joy. Back home, I packed a bag and waited for nightfall on the porch; it seemed as though an eternity passed before the day began to seep from the western sky. At 9:30, too excited to sit still, I put my bag, a shove
l and a spade into the car and drove aimlessly to and fro.

Finally, it was 11:30, as good a time as any, I supposed; the cemetery was relatively isolated, wedged between the Potomac and a two-lane highway flanked by thick foliage. There was a caretaker, but he rarely tended the grounds.

By the time I parked on the dirt service road two miles from the gate and three from the main highway, my heart was racing and my breath came in short, fiery gasps. In less than an hour, Veronica would be mine forever, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish. I didn’t know where we would go, but I didn’t care. As long as I had her, nothing else mattered. I love Virginia and the Northern Neck, but for her, I would leave and never look back.

It was ten to twelve when I got the shovel from the trunk and walked up the road. The gates were padlocked, so I clambered over the stone wall. I’d never been in a cemetery at night, and was surprised to find something like fear creeping up my spine; in the moonlit darkness, the headstones rising from the ground were alien and grotesque, and the voice of the chill wind was actually the hushed tones of the restless dead.

Smiling and damning myself as a fool, I climbed to the top of the hill and found Veronica’s grave.

“I’m back,” I panted.

“
Oh, Willard! Hurry!
"

I hurried as much as I could. Two and a half hours later, sweat slathered and exhausted, I
scraped the lid of her coffin, and my heart nearly exploded out of my throat. “I’m almost there!” I cried with a laugh. Somehow, I summoned the strength to partially raise the head of the casket and opened it with trembling fingers, my heart stopping when I saw her in the silvery light. She wasn’t alive, as I had expected; she was dead. My angel, my love, my heart...she was dead.

I must have blacked out. The next thing I fully remember is holding her in my arms and sobbing against her breast.

I couldn’t just leave her there alone to...
rot
, so I reburied the casket and brought her home with me. I gave her the back bedroom and held her through the night, weeping and whispering her name.

The next day (or was it the day after that?), I forced myself to part
from her and drove to Tappahannock. There, I bought things to decorate her room; pink curtains, paint, frilly pillows. I spent the afternoon making the room worthy of her, and then, as dusk drew on, I laid with her in my arms, my love, my desire, my beauty.

For a time we were so happy. I couldn't wait to come home to her. I would hold her hand and read her poetry, make her eloquent dinners, and buy her the best clothes.

But despite my best efforts, she began to decay. Her arms, her legs, her face. I tried using synthetic materials, but they were never satisfactory, never quite real enough. I suppose you could say they shattered the illusion I had of her being alive.

I can’t recall the first time it ever occurred to me to…use human flesh, but I do remember a dream I had in which Veronica suggested to me that I should “Harvest the bounty of the earth.” We were on a hill in feeble moonlight. She was standing before me dressed in glowing white, a beautiful smile on her face. She swept her arm back, and I saw a vast cemetery, rows and rows of headstones rolling back toward the horizon. From the ground then rose a multitude of
corpses, all of them young women. “They are me and I am them,” Veronica said, and then I awoke in a cold sweat, panting and scared.

I was appalled at the thoughts blossoming in my mind, but also curiously attracted to them. They seemed bizarrely genius, if hideously unpleasant.

I began scanning the obituaries of every paper from the Northern Neck and telling myself that I wasn’t doing what I thought I was.

The lie ended on a Monday
; as I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a bagel, I came across a death notice that caught my attention and nearly sent me jumping for joy.

A high school cheerleader in Colonial Beach had died the previous Friday after falling from a bleacher; the poor girl fractured her skull on the pavement, sending jagged slivers into her brain, and was pronounced dead on arrival at Mary Washington University Hospital. The black-and-white face staring back at me, sweet and smiling, resembled Veronica only
passingly, but I could ascertain that they were roughly the same in size and shape.

All that day my conscience tormented me. Did I really plan to defile a young girl’s grave, the final resting place of a daughter and sister sodden with tears?

When the sun sank into the Potomac and all the gruff fishermen who troll its waters sailed home on crimson water, I nearly decided against my ghoulish aspirations. No. I won’t do it. I'm a country doctor, I said to myself; I may know nothing about preserving dead bodies, but there are other ways. There
have
to be.

But Veronica decided me. She was…God help me, she was rotting, falling apart, her bones were starting to stick through in places. I had to act
quick.

The cemetery where the girl was buried sat in a glen near an old plantation house ten miles inland. I parked my old station wagon on a dirt road through the forest and stole into the somber tract. The soil was freshly turned, and flowers were piled at her headstone like an offering to a goddess.

With each shovelful of earth my heart ached with remorse. When I reached the dusty coffin, I again almost abandoned my plan. But then I thought of Veronica at home, decaying in the back bedroom like some dirty, festering secret, and that pushed me over the edge. I opened the casket and pulled the girl out. Her eyes had popped open sometime after the funeral, and she stared at me reproachfully. I carried her back to the car and put her in the trunk, then returned and filled the grave in, silently praying that her family would never have to know.

The ride back home was the longest twenty minutes of my life. I parked around back, and took her in through the kitchen. I carried her down to the basement, laid her carefully out on the workbench, and then stomped upstairs and fell into bed, every muscle in my body sore and quivering.

I dreamed of the girl in the night. She somehow got out of the cellar and came to me, furious that I had disturbed her rest.

But Veronica protected me...

In the morning, I was reluctant to perform the operation, but I had no time to spare. First, I carefully removed her arms with a chainsaw, then her legs. When I was done, I hung the torso on a meat hook and vomited.

Composed, I fetched Veronica and brought her into the basement. I still wasn’t sure exactly how to go
about it. I thought that perhaps I would…switch body parts. Give Veronica the girl’s limbs, and the girl Veronica’s. But at the last minute I realized all I had to do was graft the new flesh over Veronica’s…frame.

I used almost every part of that first girl. When I was done, I buried her in a shallow grave in the forest.