Whispers in the Night (36 page)

We didn't talk much. I was almost too weak for conversation by that point. Ralan took advantage of that and rambled on about past memories and how he was going to miss me; it was obvious that he was only too glad not to be asked any hard questions. I wanted to call him a lying leading-me-on bastard, but tears pricked my eyes at the thought of never cussing him out again. The thoughts I'd had of the two of us making civil rights history, proving that zombies can be loving productive members of society and don't have to eat their loved ones, were very hard to let go of. I wondered if I would have the strength to do those things without Ralan by my side, and I shuddered. Would I let the loss of love turn me into a monster?

Ralan saw me shivering and responded by laying another blanket atop me. “You look cold, honey.”

When I could feel the final veil starting to descend over my vision, I panicked a little and grabbed Ralan's hand to get his attention. I gave him the prearranged signal and drew my finger across my throat to say it was coming, and Ralan started to sob. I sighed and asked, “Are you going to stay until it's over?”

“Yes, Talyna, I promise I'll be here.”

“Ralan, I don't know how to live without you!”

“Shh, you'll be fine, I swear. You're the strongest person I know.”

“Can I come see you after? At least one time?” I could see his hesitation and wondered if he was thinking of me, his dying fiancée, or what his parents would say. “Just to say good-bye. I won't hurt anyone, Ralan, you know that.”

“I know you won't. I'll come by here, okay? Two weeks from today, I'll come just to make sure you're all right. Okay?”

I was so grateful at his words I could only cry knowing I would see him once more. Then that old Trickster came and took my life away, leaving me with a huge hole in my heart and an inimical darkness all around me.

 

 

I don't remember waking exactly, I remember only eating. When my faculties began to work once more, I was surrounded by several dozen empty Meatco packages that looked as if they'd been opened in a hurry. About a tenth of the stockpile Ralan had arranged for me had been decimated. Apparently the hunger is so strong it brings on a fugue state and the body blindly attempts to feed itself whatever is at hand. I shudder to think what might have happened if I hadn't prepared properly; I can easily imagine breaking out of the apartment and attacking unsuspecting innocents in a frenzy. The need was so strong!

After finishing the half-consumed flesh I woke up with, I set about straightening up the food room, disposing of empty containers and gobbets of meat strewn around the place. I then showered and changed, stopping to look at my new self in the mirror. My chocolate skin had an ashy gray tinge to it, like death had laid a light covering of itself over my pores. My eyes had sunken in just a tiny bit, but my hair and nails had grown a couple of inches during the transition. The new growth in front of my braids was probably three inches longer than it was before, and if things were different, I would've been doing the happy dance. But now I stared at the familiar face looking back at me, so very different but still the same. Looking into my eyes, I still saw some intelligence and empathy, which was reassuring, but I also fancied I saw a flicker of madness, a promise to do absolutely anything to satisfy that psychotic hunger—for flesh. The burning hunger that filled my whole body forced me to devour another helping of processed human flesh every couple of minutes, provided by my friend and yours, Meatco Packaging Plant. And Ralan. Contacting him was still very important to me, but calling his parents' phone number up from my memory was impossible. I guess the Revitalized don't do numbers, because I couldn't remember a single one. Which was fine with me; I didn't want to take the chance that they might answer instead of Ralan, and I knew that would open a whole new can of worms. So I made myself presentable, packed a bag full of my new favorite snacks, grabbed the door key (to make sure no other zombies came by and hit the jackpot), and stepped outside for the first time in my new incarnation.

 

 

I really didn't mean to eat Ralan's parents. I purposely brought an alternative source of food so I wouldn't even be tempted. I even waited until I saw them leave the house so I could be alone with Ralan. Munching on a Meatco packet, I watched them walk down the block before I walked up the stoop and turned the doorknob. I was ecstatic to see Ralan standing in the foyer as if he were waiting for me. I
wasn't
happy to see all the packing boxes full of his things around me, though. Ralan appeared to be frozen at the sight of me standing in the doorway. Maybe I came back to life a little too early, which of course was what the boxes were all about. It was obvious even to a zombie.

“Ralan, I'm back. I came to see you like I promised.”

Ralan didn't move, stuck in some emotion that would not allow him to speak.

“Ralan, what's going on? Are your parents moving away?” I looked into the box nearest me because I sensed the worst sort of betrayal. And yes, the box was filled with knickknacks belonging to Ralan—his Meharry sweatshirt that I loved to borrow, a picture of the two of us on the beach in Monterey Bay before the world erupted in disease and it was still safe to go out . . . I wondered briefly if this box was going or staying.

I stepped toward Ralan, who still hadn't said anything but was suddenly able to move and quickly scrambled backward on unsteady legs, tripping over boxes to land on his gluteus maximus. Seeing his things packed away could not eclipse the pain I felt when Ralan almost broke his legs to get away from me.

“What is this?” I grabbed a poncho that I'd bought him last year and threw it at him. Instead of answering me, my previous pillar of strength sat on his ass and began to cry. I tore through the box, filled with remnants of our former life. I pulled out the picture of us in Texas and threw it at his head.

“Ralan, you were going to leave me, weren't you? You promised—
promised!
You said you were going to come see me at least once. Do you know how scary this is for me? And you were just going to leave me alone to—to live dead!” I cried bitterly, but no more than Ralan did, covering his face and sobbing loudly. However, his tears did not move me in the slightest.

I grabbed around for my bag of Meatco supplies because anger was bubbling up inside me and I needed to be masticating madly on something. As I looked around the room frantically to see where I'd laid it down, I understood how even cognizant zombies accidentally ate loved ones. I was so monumentally mad that I feared for Ralan's safety. The fact that he just sat on the floor crying like a lamb asking to be slaughtered didn't help matters. Seeing my bag lying in the archway, I started for the door, wanting to get away from him before I could not control myself anymore and bad things happened. Unfortunately, Ralan's parents got there first.

Looking back, I can just imagine what the Johnsons were thinking when they saw me in their house.
The dreaded zombie scourge had ARISEN, found them, and there was going to be hell to pay!
Mr. Johnson had a roll of masking tape in his hands from the store, so I guess they had run out before they could finish packing. Mrs. Johnson was empty-handed, but her face wasn't empty, it was full of disgust—nose wrinkled up and lips pulled back in an unattractive grimace as if she smelled something unbearable. Maybe she did, though I was pretty sure I'd taken a shower before I left. However, Mrs. Johnson didn't get a chance to harangue me like she did constantly when I was dying. The previously uncontrolled anger I had experienced watching Ralan boo-hoo over his own betrayal broke loose from the feeble hold that had held it in check. I growled, “You!” and leaped on her. I jumped right onto her face and chomped on her nose and boy, did it taste good! I ignored Mr. Johnson's attempts to pull me off his wife and continued chewing on her face, oblivious of Ralan's piercing screams. I held my hands on both sides of Mrs. Johnson's face and tried to pull her nose off to swallow what was left, so I could start somewhere else. I do remember pushing her against the front door to close it and seeing her terrified eyes, broadcasting fear, pain, and yes, revulsion. I don't remember snapping her neck, only that she eventually stopped struggling and I started to eat her in earnest.

 

 

I awoke chewing on Mr. Johnson's testicles. Ralan was trussed up on the floor with masking tape, hog-style. His mouth was also taped shut and above that, his frightened eyes still leaked and seemed to beseech me for . . . for what? I would never eat Ralan. His folks had asked for it for months, though. I swallowed the tasty morsel Mr. Johnson had unwittingly supplied and looked around. Mrs. Johnson's body lay in front of the door, wedging it shut so even if someone had tried to open the door they couldn't have. Her nose was indeed gone, as were her eyes and throat. I don't know which got eaten first, but for her sake, I hoped it was the eyes. She was a bitch.

I assumed there was a struggle, because the room was a mess; upended boxes were everywhere and the belongings of the Johnson family were scattered all around me. Anything fragile had been broken and I wondered why no one had come over to find out what the hell was happening at the Johnsons'. Lucky for me no one did; I'd have been carried off to the containment asylums for rogue zombies straightaway. I was aware that my lack of discovery could change at any moment and began to take steps to get out of there ASAP.

I turned to Mr. Johnson, who in addition to having no balls was wearing a red necktie minus the neck part. He obviously would not be making the Great Escape with me. Getting his manhood chomped on was pretty appropriate, considering he never had the balls to stand up to his wife. I still liked him, though, and don't really know why I attacked him. Probably because he was trying to save his wife. He should have looked at it as a favor.

That left Ralan, whom I was taking with me. I wasn't up for conversation with him at that point, so I left him all taped up. I mean, what can you really say when you just ate a man's parents? Not much, believe me. I really wanted to take Mr. and Mrs. Johnson to the graveyard and let them turn there, forever dooming them to the life they so abhorred, but I didn't have time to be dragging their asses all across town and whatnot. I kind of don't want to say what I
did
stay and do, but I moved Ralan to the back door, where he couldn't see into the living room area. But the reality is that Meatco packets are a bit like soy milk—just not as good as the real thing. I wouldn't have known what I was missing if Ralan had kept his promise to me. I never would have tasted . . . well, tasted his parents. After that, Meatco was a poor substitute. Who would have thought that those two racist assholes would taste so good? Okay, basically I just took some of Lois and Pete Johnson with us. Just think of it as preserving their memory; as I eat them, they kind of live on inside me, right? Ralan never has to know.

 

 

I took Ralan back to our apartment. That was actually the only place I could take him since I was territorially linked there by death. He was still taped up, as I didn't think he was ready to be released yet. After the first day, I did take the tape off his mouth, but he refused to speak to me. His anger was understandable but I was angry with him, too! If he had stood up to his parents from the get-go, the tragedy of them getting what they deserved would have been avoided altogether. After the third day, Ralan did talk but only to tell me that he would never forgive me after what I'd done.
He
would never forgive
me?
Boy, did that ever piss me off! I was kind of glad this whole situation occurred so I could see how flaky he really was. I mean, what if we had gotten married? He probably would have pulled a similar stunt. So much for unconditional love.

However, I did decide to give him another chance. I was planning to love him for life, and technically I was still alive. And I still thought it could work between us. Ralan, of course, took some convincing, but I tried using a little sex to get his mind going in the right direction. After all, he said he couldn't forgive me, not that he didn't love me. Full-blown sex was out of the question since I'd have to unbind Ralan for that, but the truth was that if you give any man head—under any circumstances—he tends to listen. I did get a little too excited during the maneuver, and accidentally gave him a little nip. But basically, I was as good as ever. I wasn't even a little bit hungry. Ralan started showing symptoms a couple of days later, vomiting the food I tried to give him and complaining of stomach cramps. It wasn't on purpose, I swear, but wasn't it funny how things worked out? I thought it could only bring us closer together, really! I made him as comfortable as I could, and would, of course, be right there for him. At least he'd have someone with him when he awakened, which was more than I had.

I tried to feed him a Meatco packet yesterday, but he was still refusing meat. I knew that would change soon enough. I figured once he's weak enough, it would be safe to loosen his bonds without him trying to escape, so we could get ready for his change. I was a little worried about our food supply running low; it was supposed to feed only one zombie. I knew we could get around that, though, we'd just have to go out every now and then to replenish our stock. And of course, I still had my secret stash, courtesy of Ralan's parents.

Gosh, it would be so nice to have someone with me who totally understood what I was feeling! I just couldn't wait.

Brandon Massey

“H
ow's the new book coming along, honey?”

Andrew had been reaching for the bowl of tortilla chips, anticipating dipping a fresh chip in the dish of spicy salsa, his mouth watering in expectation. Danita's question made his mouth go dry.

“The book?” He drummed the table. “It's coming along okay, I guess.”

Danita's brow creased—the same look he imagined she gave her clients at the law firm when they tossed a lie her way. Frowning, she folded her arms on the table, leaned forward.

“What page are you on?” she asked.

He cleared his throat. “Well, lately, I've been doing some outlining, working out some of the fuzzy story elements. You know how I write. I need to have a clear sense of direction before I move forward.”

“You've been outlining for a long time. Your deadline is only three months away.”

“I know my deadline, Danita. You don't have to remind me.”

“Right, but like you said, I know how you write. You always do several drafts before you're finished, and you haven't even completed a first draft yet. I'm worried about you.”

Andrew idly stirred his sweet tea. Her concern both touched and annoyed him. For many years, he'd longed for a relationship with a woman like Danita. She was smart, ambitious, loving, pretty. She admired his talent for spinning tales and supported his writing career not for the money and fame it brought him, but because she understood that writing was his labor of love. She wanted him to do well, and he loved her for it.

But sometimes, he wanted her to back off and let him be a neurotic writer—with all the loopy work habits, unpredictable creative impulses, and paralyzing bouts of angst that came with it.

“It's fine,” he said. “The book is coming to me slowly. It works that way sometimes.”

Danita's lips curled. She didn't believe him; worse, he didn't believe himself.

The book was not coming to him slowly—it was not coming to him at all. His second novel was like a headstrong dog that refused to be either cajoled or punished into obedience. The more he pressed and teased, the more it resisted. It was maddening.

It hadn't been that way with his first novel,
Ghostwriter.
He'd written
Ghostwriter
in a frenzy, burning through five hundred pages in only four months. And it was good, damn good. The first agent he queried wanted it; the first publisher they sent it to bought it, plunking down a six-figure advance that enabled him to quit his day job as a programmer. Books by black authors were hot, and industry people were calling him “the African-American Stephen King,” a derivative label that he despised, yet tolerated because it gave the marketing people an effective handle. Film rights were sold for three hundred thousand; lucrative foreign rights sales to eleven countries followed soon after. The book had been flying off the shelves since it hit stores five months ago. Readers were clamoring for the next book. His editor was ready for the next book. So was his agent. Add his girlfriend to the list, too.

But no one was as ready for the next book as he was—and he couldn't write it. Writer's block, which he had long believed was a myth made up by wannabe authors who'd never finish anything, had fallen like a brick onto his hands, rendering them numb and useless. Each morning, he sat at his brand-new computer, a bright and painfully blank screen staring back at him, and after an hour of fitful typing and story outlining that led nowhere, he'd log on to the Internet and spend the rest of the day surfing the Web under an alias so none of his online writer buddies could ask him what he was doing, and shouldn't he be working on the next book . . . ?

“Did you hear me, Drew?”

He blinked. “Sorry, I spaced out. What did you say?”

“I said, you need inspiration. Something to get your creative juices flowing.”

“Maybe I could start drinking. It's worked for some writers.” He chuckled.

She didn't laugh. In the past, she would've found humor in such a joke. He wondered if she was actually worried he just might take up the bottle to loosen his creative muscles.

“Why don't you immerse yourself in a place that fits the stuff you write about?” she said. “Somewhere scary.”

“Like your parents' house?”

That time, she did laugh. “Oh, you got jokes now, do you? No, silly, I mean, you write about ghosts, haunted houses, stuff like that. Why not go somewhere creepy?”

“Like a haunted house?”

Her eyes widened. “The cemetery. At night!”

Andrew laughed, then shook his head. “I know which one you're talking about. Girl, you're crazy.”

“It's the perfect place,” she said. “And it's so close. You wouldn't even need to drive—”

“Ain't no way in hell I'm walking around a graveyard at night, Danita.”

She grinned. “See? That's why I know it would inspire you—because the very idea scares you. It'll put you in the mind-set you need to write your book.”

“Uh-huh, right. You're a better lawyer than you are a psychologist.”

“Make jokes if you want, you know I'm right,” she said. “Go to the cemetery for one night, Drew. I know it'll help you beat your writer's block. I can feel it.”

“I'll think about it,” he said, which was his way of signaling that it was time to change the subject. Danita and her crazy ideas. Why in the hell would he want to creep around a graveyard at night? What would be next—visiting haunted houses? Participating in séances? Simply because he wrote about such things didn't mean he wanted to experience them firsthand. He didn't need to. His own imagination, nourished over the years with a steady diet of horror flicks, novels, and the nightly news, supplied all the inspiration he needed.

But what had his imagination done for him lately? he had to ask himself. He had been fiddling with the novel for ten fruitless months, the deadline thundering toward him like a freight train. He could request an extension, but an extra three months would mean nothing if he didn't defeat his block. He knew he had to do something drastic to rekindle his creative spark.

By the time they finished lunch, Andrew had reluctantly decided that Danita was right. He would visit the cemetery. Tonight.

 

 

After his agent sold movie rights to
Ghostwriter,
Andrew moved out of his apartment in Atlanta and purchased a stylish, two-bedroom condo in the suburb of Marietta, northwest of the big city. The condominium was located next to Magnolia Memorial Cemetery. He hadn't minded because the condo was great and he got an awesome deal. Besides, he found it oddly fitting for a horror writer to live next to a cemetery; death, his favorite subject matter, was right next door. In fact, the town newspaper had mentioned it when they interviewed him: L
OCAL
H
ORROR
W
RITER
F
INDS
I
NSPIRATION
I
N
H
IS
B
ACKYARD
.

What few people knew was that he'd never so much as set foot in the cemetery. Why should he? Using the cemetery's proximity to his home as a PR ploy was clever; but the thought of walking amongst the graves, especially at night, scared the hell out of him.

He couldn't explain his fear; it was a primitive dread that seemed to be biologically hard-wired into him, the same way irrational fears of the dark, enclosed spaces, and the number thirteen affected some people. Was there an official, psychological term for graveyard phobia?

An hour before midnight, after spending yet another evening meandering at his keyboard, Andrew stood beside his Range Rover. He wore a light jacket and gripped a yellow utility flashlight. In front of him lay the deep, dark forest. Beyond the woods, the cemetery awaited.

Andrew shivered, but his chill had nothing to do with the cool March breeze that swept across the parking lot.

A pale, full moon gazed down at him. His mind, so attuned to the ominous meanings of full moons, night-blackened forests, and graveyards, churned out a carnival of nightmarish images: hulking werewolves creeping through the forest; rotted corpses struggling out of the earth; phantoms drifting like smoke across headstones . . .

“Okay, cut it out,” he said to himself. “Go in there, walk around for a few minutes, and come home. Save the macabre imagery for the book.”

He exhaled. Then, heart thrumming, he entered the forest.

 

 

Viewed from the lighted parking lot, the woods had appeared to be dark. But when Andrew actually stepped into the forest, it seemed much darker, as if light could not penetrate the area.

He resisted his compulsion to flick on the flashlight. Artificial light would ruin the mood. The whole point of this exercise was to help him tap into the spirit of the night, if there was such a thing. He carried the flashlight for an emergency.

He shook off the absurd thought and crept through the undergrowth, grass crunching beneath his boots. Leaves brushed his face, and twigs probed him like fingers, the darkness alive with the sounds of nocturnal creatures.

The cemetery lay ahead, bathed in soft moonlight and shrouded in mist.

As he stepped out of the woods, a length of barbed wire snagged his jeans.

“Shit.” Stepping back, he tore the denim loose from the wire.
There goes a pair of good jeans
. He noticed, concealed in the shrubbery at the edge of the forest, a low, barbed-wire fence that seemed to run the entire length of the woods on this side. Was it there to keep the forest-dwelling creatures out of the cemetery? Or . . . was it there to keep something in the graveyard
out
of the forest and the world beyond?

He laughed at himself. Danita had been right. This little jaunt was filling his head with all kinds of strange ideas.

He leapt over the fence and into the cemetery. Fog enveloped the area. He noted, on his left, a huge mound of dirt, like a man-made hill. Ahead, he saw countless graves, most marked by footstones on which stood metallic tubes filled with sprays of flowers. The funeral home lay in the distance, barely visible through the mist.

Silence had cloaked the night. He could hear his heart pounding.

“All right,” he said to himself. “Walk around for a few, soak up some atmosphere, then go home. That's all I need to do.”

He started forward. The churning fog seemed to thicken around him as he moved. He was tempted to turn on the flashlight, but he decided against it. Certainly, a caretaker patrolled the grounds at night. A light shining in the darkness would be a dead giveaway. He could imagine how he'd explain why he was there. “Well, I'm a horror writer, mister. I came here seeking inspiration for my novel. My name is Andrew Graves. Graves is roaming the graveyard, you know? Pretty funny, huh—”

Wrapped in mist and his own thoughts, Andrew didn't see the dark pit yawning in front of him. He walked into emptiness and fell, screaming—all the way to the bottom of a freshly dug grave.

 

 

“Hey, are you okay down there?”

Lying on his side on the hard, damp earth, his head spinning, Andrew thought he was hearing things. It was a young woman's voice—soft, musical, soothing. Like something out of a dream.

“Hello?” she called again. “If you're conscious, please say something.”

“I'm here,” he said, shakily. He sat up, winced as pain bolted through his shoulder. He didn't think he had broken any bones, and though his shoulder ached, he knew that it wasn't dislocated. He'd dislocated his shoulder when playing high school football, and this pain was not nearly as bad as that had been.

He looked up. The woman's face, a featureless black oval, peered down at him.

“Can you stand?” she asked. “Give me your hands and I'll help you climb out of there.”

“Okay.” Who was this woman? The caretaker?

He stuffed the flashlight into his jacket pocket and struggled to his feet. The hole was six feet deep; the top a couple of inches above his head.

The woman's hands seemed to float toward him through the mist, as if they belonged to a disembodied spirit. His heart stalled . . . and when he moved closer, he saw, clearly, that her hands were ordinary flesh. His imagination was running away with him.

He grasped her hands—her soft, warm skin sending an unexpected thrill through him—and she pulled him up. He worried that he'd be too heavy for her, but she tugged him upward with ease.

She was a few inches shorter than him, slender, wrapped in a knee-length, silvery jacket. Her dark hair flowed to her shoulders. In the darkness, he couldn't see much of her face.

“Thanks,” he said. “I don't know how I fell in there. I guess I wasn't paying attention to where I was going.”

She shook a cigarette out of a pack and struck a match. When she brought the flame near her face, his breath caught in his throat.

She was absolutely gorgeous. She looked like a black porcelian doll, her features too perfect to be real.

Seemingly unaware of his admiration, no doubt accustomed to causing hearts to stutter, the woman slowly took a draw from her cigarette. “I wasn't going to ask you how you fell in there. I was going to ask you what you're doing here.”

“Why?” he asked. “Do you work here? Are you going to throw me out?”