Nightmare of the Dead: Rise of the Zombies (10 page)

"You won't tell," his bottom lip quivered.

"You're my big brother, and you're supposed to make me happy! Do what I tell you. Put your head down so I can hit it!"

Trembling hands betrayed his own vibrant youth. He'd been reduced to an aged man with little power to defend himself against the strength of a younger soul.

The first blow on the back of his head brought him down onto the floor.

"I don't need mice," she said. "I got you. You're the best brother I could ever have!"

The next blow knocked him out. Her manic giggles followed him into the world of dreams.

When he awoke, he was concerned that damage might have been done to his skull. He'd read enough medical books to know that severe blows to the back of the head could cause permanent damage to his brain.

Abigail was scrubbing the kitchen floor when Saul went looking for her. As soon as he entered the room, she stopped everything she was doing and opened her arms. He ran straight into her embrace. It didn't matter that he was nearly a man; she was his only friend, the only person who didn't reject him or try to hurt him in some way.

The house servant, Abigail, comforted him in the kitchen. A homely orphan girl, she was the only person on the estate who seemed to worry about him. She often told him quaint jokes and anecdotes, and she always offered him a smile when nobody else seemed to be looking. Abigail was tenured; she'd lived with the family for three years, and always seemed to have treats for Saul in the kitchen whenever visited her. Abigail was trusted by Mother because she worked hard to keep their massive home in order. She was dutiful and capable.

Mother preferred servants with very few connections to the rest of the world; they were often homeless vagrants, orphans, or refugees on the run from home who needed a little bit of work. Members of the household staff disappeared after a while without any explanation, no matter how well they seemed to do their jobs. Abigail managed to keep her job for longer than most. Saul was starting to believe she would stick around.

Days passed, and whenever he met his sister's gaze, she glared at him with knowing eyes. If he displeased her, she would tell Mother about the mice. He was enslaved by her, and as long as he needed the tiny pets, she could do as she wanted with him.

The mice provided him some amount of relief from the pain that his existence brought upon him. Whenever he wasn't hiding from Mother's wrathful gaze, he did his best to avoid all contact with his sister. She continued to ridicule him, but it wasn't unfamiliar territory. As scathing as her remarks were, he was used to them.

He'd managed to find his own sanctuary in a tiny cave near the shore's edge. It was a place he often used late into the evenings when he could sneak away and weep into his hands. When he began to take his mice there, he found amusement in breaking their legs and letting them writhe along the cave's cold floor. He would cut them to see how long it would take them to die from blood loss. He would separate the whiskers from their faces and remove their eyes. When he spent time with the mice, he was able to forget all the pain he ever endured. There was nothing more gratifying than watching the rodents suffer under his mighty hands.

Breeding them became a more extensive project. His methods of torture and execution became more grotesque. On more than one occasion, he wondered if he could cannibalize the mice; he tried to boil one in a cup of water he set over a fire in his cave, and the creature's taste was hardly interesting. He expected something more unique, more exquisite. In an effort to test the limits of his taste buds, he crushed one in his fist and bit down into its flesh. Too much fur was caught between his teeth and it ruined the experience, although the blood was sticky and tangy enough for him to consider tasting it again. The next mouse he ate was skinned before he indulged, and the morsel pleased him. The third mouse was still alive when he snacked on
it;
the veins were still rushing with blood, the heart still beating.

His sister seemed to be restless. Saul rarely gave her an opportunity for a fresh lashing; she often resorted to the same demeaning labels, and he shrank away from her gaze. He did as she desired, and discovered that life was becoming far simpler for him. As long as he endured her torments and attempted to stay near other adults at all times, she was content to tease him while seeking other avenues to fulfill her need to cause pain. Her delights had spilled over to the boarding school she attended, where she'd choked another girl until she passed out. Mother was quite pleased with her daughter, but admonished her because a dead body could be easily discovered.

This was made clear to Saul when some gentleman callers visited their home late one evening. Gruff, dark-skinned men with exotic accents sat at the long dining table, and they drank and laughed long into the seemingly endless night.

Instead of venturing down to his cave, Saul decided to eavesdrop on the conversations in the dining room. There was much about Mother he didn't know, including her profession, though it was something he understood should remain a secret. Why did she often disappear for weeks at a time? Why did their father leave them? He wouldn’t discover the secret behind their incredible wealth until his mother's accident. 

Mother had finished explaining to her two male friends the recent misadventure involving her daughter and the attempted murder. The men were pleased, and wondered at her potential. They begged her to awaken the little girl and bring her downstairs so they could meet her, and after enough goading, she relented.

Saul returned to his sheets while Mother roused his sister. She was brought downstairs, and Saul quickly scampered back to the staircase to listen in on their conversation.

"A very special girl," one of the men declared.

"Indeed," his companion agreed. "Little girl, would you like to know the secrets of the Earth? We would like to show them to you, someday. Your mother would like to share them with you, too."

"I would like that," Saul's sister replied.

"We are the masters of our species," one of the men said. "We are masters of both fate and death. We are the freemasons of murder and pillage. We have orchestrated wars to remove weaker governments from power. The human race will obtain its ultimate goal, through our intervention. Little girl, do you wish to live forever? Do you wish to be a member of the master race?"

"Yes, very much so, sir."

"What of her brother?" a foreign voice asked Mother. "We'd hoped to acquire both children, of course. You've done quite well with this one, but…"

"He's listening to us, right now," Mother said. "I'll bring him down, and you'll see for yourselves."

Saul couldn't move. How did she know?

Mother always knew. This was something he understood about her. Did she know about the mice? Why was she so ashamed of him? Warm tears flooded over his cheeks. It was foolish to cry; he was nearly a man, and men didn't cry. The tears would infuriate Mother further. He tried to wipe them away, but when she arrived at the top of the stairs and stood over him, she smirked knowingly.

Tall and broad-shouldered, the images of his mother within the framework of his troubled memory always depicted her as the
heavily muscled
paragon of power. Her large, masculine fists were always clenched and her face was under the veil of perpetual shadow. He lacked the strength to look into her unforgiving eyes.

"Even now, you're a bitter disappointment," she said. "You will crawl down these steps like the cowering dog you are."

He made the winding descent on his hands
and
knees, and he grasped the railing to keep his balance. When he reached the bottom, he attempted to stand, but Mother kicked him and said, "Keep going. To the dining room."

The two black-bearded men and Saul's sister couldn't help but laugh at the teenaged boy's plight. Saul looked up at them and watched their joyous faces turn to each other as if each confirmed what they were seeing was in fact real. Saul was on his hands and knees, crawling toward them.

"My life's biggest failure," Mother announced. "He is named Saul, although the name represents my own folly. He's served us well as a pet. There's no telling how long he'll survive. We've already discussed his future, and although we find him repulsive, there is some benefit to keeping him."

"Would you consider giving him to one of our doctors? He may still be of use to us."

Mother was silent for a long moment. Saul couldn't help himself, because he thought there was a chance he might be able to salvage some measure of pride. "I'm studying to be a doctor! I know a lot about anatomy, and I've practiced dissecting…"

"Enough!" Mother roared. "You won't embarrass me further. Gentlemen, I will keep him in the interim, though I'll think on your offer."

"He should be punished," the little girl pounded her fist on the table. "We don't tolerate idiocy at the dinner table. This is a rule in our house, right Mother? And he shouldn't have been listening. He's a sniveling little bitch. Look at him! He's shaking!"

"That's right. What should we do with him?"

"I'm going to spank him. Saul, take your pants down and expose yourself."

He closed his eyes. It wasn't happening. Mother loved him, didn't she? Everything was all in good fun. But he understood she was trying to teach him how to be a man. He would have to grow stronger, like his sister. He'd failed to please her, when it should have been his life's mission to make her happy. Clearly, his sister made the right decisions. If Mother was happy with beating him, he had to accept his fate. He never wanted to let her down.

This was the right thing to do. Mother must be satisfied.

He removed his pants and exposed himself. The men watched silently—they wanted to know if she was really going to do it. This was simply a family dispute, wasn't it? Didn't this happen to most boys when they failed their parents?

"Get your ass in the air," his sister demanded.

Saul lay forward with his hands beneath his chin and allowed the beating to commence. He couldn't help but watch the black eyes of the two foreigners as they looked upon his punishment with approval. Even when his ass became raw from pain, he didn't cry, or flinch. He kept his eyes on the two men, and he wondered at the world they'd viewed with their black eyes.

After that evening, he understood.

He began to have the dreams.

They were confusing moments of sexual arousal, coupled with strange encounters with both his mother and his sister. He would awaken to wet sheets and soiled linen. Mother was going to be upset, because he'd wet the bet. Only, he didn't think he'd wet the bed. It was something else.

When Abigail came to collect the sheets to clean them, he shook his head frantically and begged her not to take them.

"Let's burn them, instead!" he insisted. "You don't know Mother. She'll be so upset."

"These are expensive sheets," Abigail noted. "She'll be even more upset if they go missing." She tapped her finger against her chin.

"I'm sorry," Saul wanted to weep, but he was fifteen years old, almost a man; he couldn’t cry anymore, especially not in front of a woman. "I don't know what happened. I don't understand!"

She sat down on the edge of the bed next to him. "I wouldn't worry about it. I think I know what happened, and I can't really explain it, but I know these things are normal. I can clean these sheets without Mother ever finding out what happened."

Saul nodded his head quickly at that. "Yes! Keep it a secret! Please!"

She pretended to think about it for a moment, and then said, "Okay. We'll call it a secret between friends."

Unsatisfied with his ignorance, he pored over the books in the library and learned about night emissions. He truly was becoming a man, but he was blooming late.

Meanwhile, his sister was distracted by a young man who was taken in as a boarder by Mother. The Mexican boy, whose name was Santiago, was supposed to be "learning" from the little girl, even though he was the same age as Saul—fifteen. He was a quiet boy who normally kept his hands buried in his pockets, and he accompanied the girl wherever she went. He was shown how to skin a deer and gut a pig. He was shown how to ride a horse. Saul understood that Santiago was an orphan, but he'd been given to their family by the same men who'd attended the evening dinner.

Saul's dreams became riddled with images of the house servants.

What if he could experiment with an actual human specimen?

His sexual frustration became a hindrance, though he shied away from girls in school and found them repulsive
,
because each in her own way served as a gruesome reminder of his sister's cruelty.

Abigail trusted him. She was a good friend, and always wanted to make him happy.

He explained to her that Mother needed something moved from a cave near the shore. The woman was more than willing to oblige, although she found the request odd, considering her duties rarely involved her leaving the house unless she needed to visit the market in town. She followed him down to the cave, and when she stood in shocked silence while surveying the graveyard of mice bones and
bloodstained
rocks, she didn’t notice Saul slip behind her.

He used to think he would hesitate when the moment of truth arrived, but it was relatively easy. He struck her on the back of her head with a mallet, and she reeled for a moment and staggered against the cavern wall. Disoriented, she looked at the trickling blood that oozed over her fingertips, and her puzzled expression locked on Saul as if she didn’t believe her eyes. She tried to ask a question, and for a moment, Saul wasn't sure how he would be able to knock her unconscious. She might have enough strength to resist him.