Sunday, June 25, 2017

WHEN the DEAD KNOCK part 3

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.



By R. Peterson

June Swafford turned off the television as soon as the end credits for The Lawrence Welk Show rolled. The program was of course a re-run but it brought back delightful memories. She and Elmo had often danced in the living room along with Bobby Burgess and Cissy King or while the Lennon Sisters sang. In the distance dark clouds rumbled as she closed and locked the front door, probably a storm brewing in the mountains above Motha Forest and set to fall on Comanche County during the night. It was a good thing the cows were in the barn and the chickens had been fed earlier. A tear stung the corner of her eyes when she said goodnight to Elmo’s picture propped on the top shelf of the bookcase just before she started up the stairs to her bedroom. He was too young to have died of a heart attack at age fifty-nine.
June awakened from a dream in which she was riding in a hay wagon with a group of other sixteen year old girls, they were going to a Christmas party at the Comanche County school house. Elmo was singing Somewhere My Love before he began to pound on the door. “Let me in woman. You promised me the next dance!” He’d of course been to Bingo and hadn’t gotten home until after dark … must have forgotten his key. He sounded drunk. She bet every beer in his bag was gone and hoped there would be at least one prize.
Still half wrapped in her dream, she slid open the bedroom window and called down. “You know where the spare key is you noisy old fool. Are you trying to wake up the neighbors or just Hicks?” It wasn’t until she heard him pull the lid off the milk can and then open the front door that full consciousness kicked in: Elmo was dead. She turned on the lamp next to the bed and stared intently at nothing.
He dropped something heavy on the kitchen floor and it fell with a loud thump that shook the house. Her breathing came in quick ragged gasps. She could hear him as he turned the water on at the sink and washed his hands. Next footsteps started up the stairs and the bed began to shake along with her arms and legs. This can’t be happening! Her mind continued to slap her - trying to make her wake up. I was at his funeral. I stood in Black Rose Cemetery and watched as that six-thousand, seven-hundred and eighty-five dollar coffin … “Would you want your loved one resting for eternity in anything less?” Egbert Callahan had insinuated. …was lowered into the ground and covered with dirt. She could hear Elmo’s footsteps on the landing now. There was a smell like damp ground plowed for the first time. She thought about jumping out of bed sliding the dresser in front of the door, anything to stop whoever or whatever was in her house. It couldn’t be her loving husband returned to life even as much as she wished it could be. He had been dead for over nine years. Her pulse revved like an old tractor with a broken piston. “Did you win anything?” Her voice sounded like gravel sliding to the bottom of a well but it was the only way she could keep from screaming. She was shaking so bad her teeth were chattering against each other.
“Not a damn thing!” His voice suddenly sounded low and ugly the way it had when Fred Hicks had driven a steel pipe into their hay field and irreparably damaged their swather (windrower) during hay season because Elmo refused to sell him, ridiculously cheap, forty acres of rich ground that bordered his rock and weed patch.
June watched the knob on the door turn as the light in the room dimmed but she was gone before the door opened - off to join her beloved Elmo in the next world.

-------2-------

            The fire was going down just outside the tent otherwise Jim Hunting would have stayed in the sleeping bag. A light breeze had blown across Mawkat Lake just before sunset but everything was calm now. He didn’t mind sleeping in a forest … he just hated the dark. In the American Army compound just outside of DaNang all the lights were run by a portable generator. It was the first thing the Viet Cong knocked-out just before they attacked. Flames flashing from the barrels of M16’s and the constant welding torch fire from M60’s mixed with the screams of the dying and the shouts of those doing the killing to create the musical score to the first act of Hell if insanity were ever to take the stage.
            Jim had been up for three nights smoking Vietnamese shake and loading a needle. Suddenly he was on guard duty at one of eight towers surrounding the compound and a mountain of stacked beer cases. Endless long hours spent staring into the darkness. The things that were hiding could kill you … the things that weren’t there attacked your mind. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. The first time it was less than a minute and Jim slapped his face hard half a dozen times and swore it wouldn’t happen again. The second time was more than ten minutes. He’d burnt his fingers with a Bic lighter until they blistered and bled swearing he’d die before he closed his eyes again …
            `He’d woke up blind in one eye in an army hospital in Japan. One leg was mangled the other broken. He was expected to walk again with braces but one half of his face looked like pancake batter that had hardened during the bubble stage. He’d never marry unless the girl happened to be blind and in love with guilt. The VC had attacked from his corner of the outpost. Charlie Company lost thirty-five men including his best friend from school Brad Stevens. Jim looked at the photo taken outside a bar in Tokyo just before their arrival in Viet Nam every day. It always put a pain in his heart like cardiac arrest but he looked anyway. It was punishment like slapping his own face or burning himself with a lighter. Brad was to his right along with several members of Charlie Co. They were all smiling. Of the eight in the picture three were dead but it was Brad who seemed to stare directly at him through the years always asking the same question … Why?
            Jim had arrived home from Japan just in time to attend Brad’s funeral in Black Rose Cemetery. Jim stayed back in the trees and didn’t mix with the family members. Guilt made him a prisoner and he headed for the incarceration of Motha Forest whenever possible.
            Jim put another log on the ire and a shower of sparks rose toward the stars. The only sound was the chirping of crickets and the soft lapping of water on the shoreline. He was just turning to go back in the tent when he saw a rippling of water far across the lake reflected by the moon. He squinted his good eye to make out what looked like a dark figure in a canoe paddling toward him.
            Jim was suddenly sleepy. All he wanted was to crawl back inside the tent, but someone was coming … Jim was sure of it. The first time he felt his eye close the canoe was halfway across the lake and Jim slashed three lines down his arm with a hunting knife honed to a razor edge. Never again! The pain was excruciating but two minutes later he opened his eye again and the boat was now close enough for Jim to see strong arms pushing a paddle though the water. Jim stuck his hand in the hot coals from the fire leaving it there until the smell of burning flesh and sizzling blood made him wretch and gag. Never again!
            The canoe was closer now. Jim could almost see the face of the man paddling. He fought to keep his eye open but it was as if a weight were attached to his eyelid. Jim stumbled into the tent and searched through his duffle bag. The canoe was sliding onto shore and the smiling face of Brad Stevens shown in the moonlight as he stepped onto the bank.
            Jim felt his eyelid begin to droop again as he lifted the M1911 pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. Never again!

-------3-------

            It was still an hour before sunrise but the employees of the White Apron Bakery did their baking at 4AM and already a crowd of homeless people were forming in the alley for breakfast.  At any minute, the big man with the scowling face would open the back door and toss yesterday’s unsold baked goods into the dumpster. “Wow! Look at how much she’s grown!” Antonio James Custler approached a ragged woman holding a bundle in her arms. He’d spent the last two weeks in jail for vagrancy.
            “She gets a little bigger every day,” Beth gushed as she un-wrapped the blankets showing a rag doll with blue-button eyes and a red-stitched mouth.
            “She sure does,” Tony said, taking the doll and rocking it gently in his arms. He scanned the crowd of hungry people. “Anyone seen Clarence Brown?”
            “Clarence drowned in the Cottonmouth River while you was locked up,” Beth hung her head. “He went looking for that ring o’ keys you told us about, and fell into the fast current near the Townsend Bridge!”
            Tony had inherited a small house from a rich man he didn’t know. A large ring of different keys all fit the lock on the front door but each key created a different life for the person who used it. It had been too much for Tony to handle and he had finally tossed the key ring in the river.
Tony shook his head. “Why the heck did that big, ugly, black, bear go and do something stupid like that?”
            “He was looking not so much for a better life just something different,” Beth said. “life on the streets gets too predictable after a while.”
The crowd behind White Apron Bakery suddenly grew quiet when the back door to the business opened. “Damn mangy bunch of dogs!” a heavyset man complained as he lugged a huge tray filled with day-old donuts, bear-claws and cinnamon rolls to the dumpster. He scowled at those who looked hungrily at his tray. “Why don’t you all get jobs? I work for my meals … so should you!”
            “There’s a reason these people are on the streets and it has nothing to do with jobs!” A huge man stepped from the shadows with a face like bloody hamburger. The crowd gasped, it was Clarence Brown! Most of his facial features had been rotted away by the river and there were clumps of moss where his ears should have been. His eyes were milky white with tiny unmoving pupils in the center. He was dripping wet like he’d just came up out of the water.
The terrified big man dropped the tray of day old breads and turned to run back into the bakery. Clarence grabbed him by the back of the neck. “These people are my friends, Clarence said as he slammed the man into the concrete wall. “These donuts are bound to be a little dry … how bout you bring out some milk to wash ‘em down with?”
The man was too terrified to talk. He nodded his head instead.
            “I’ll be expecting you back out here in two minutes,” Clarence said. “Don’t make me come in after you!”
When the White Apron employee went back in the bakery Tony approached Clarence. “What are you doing here?” he gasped.
            “I went looking for that key ring you tossed in the river,” Clarence said. “There’s a lot of mud on the bottom of the Cottonmouth where it runs through the city… it took some time to locate them.” He tossed the keys to Tony.
            “But how?” Tony caught the keys. He was astonished to see his long dead friend walking the streets.
Clarence smiled. “When you’re dead …you can hold your breath for a long long time!”

-------4-------

            “Get us out of here, Jimmy!” Sheriff Walker retrieved a flashlight from under the seat and shone it in the deputy’s face. Outside the County police car throngs of the recently unearthed dead were trying to smash out the car windows. Jimmy Wong was in shock staring with eyes as big as two rickshaw wheels at the horror which was smothering them. “Let’s move now!” The sheriff reached over, jammed the automatic shifter into reverse and pushed down on Jimmy’s leg. The car groaned for a moment and then lurched backward. The arms, legs and other parts of the dead that didn’t slide off the hood and roof became caught between the tires and wheel-wells. Dried-blood, gristle and bits of rotted flesh sprayed the windows as the car backed onto the highway. The sudden shift from total dark to squirming nightmare brought Jimmy back to his senses. “Awwwggggaa,” he screamed as he found drive, jammed his foot on the gas pedal, and the car lurched forward.
            Both sides of the highway were crowded with dead people come to see an automotive game of chicken. Enough bodies had fell away from the car for the sheriff to see they were between two cars hurdling toward each other at ninety miles per hour. There wasn’t time for anything else; Sheriff Walker unrolled his window and drew his Colt 45.

-------5-------

            It was smoke burning his eyes that made Julio awaken. The tiny trailer just north of Black Rose Cemetery was shaking and bouncing. Maria was picking herself up from the floor. It felt like they were in the middle of a stampede but those weren’t cows outside they were bodies , a few recently diseased but most rotting flesh clinging to old bone. Julio could smell propane and could hear the hiss from the tank mounted on the front of the mobile house. One of the marching dead must have broken the line and a spark from something must have ignited the gas. “Tenemos que salir de que la casa va a estallar!” Julio screamed.
            “It’s my fault,” Maria said. “I should have kept you awake!”
Julio grabbed his wife and forced open the door. Most of the risen dead from the cemetery had passed by the trailer and were heading toward the desert in the west. He tried to pull her outside but she resisted. “No sin la madre!” (Not without the holy mother) she insisted. She turned and dashed back inside the trailer picking the broken-glass portrait of the Virgin Mary from off the floor.
            “This is my fault!” Julio put his head in his hands. “No one is safe as long as I’m alive!”
The glass frame in Maria’s hand crumpled and she struggled to catch the paper print before it hit the ground. There was not just one portrait under the broken glass but two. The first was a painting by Raphael of the Madonna but hidden behind it was another … a gruesome, fleshy rendering called the Mask by Pedronunez .
Maria was staring with such horror at the second print she didn’t notice Julio with the gun to his head until she heard the hammer click. “Wait,” she screamed. “We’ve been praying to the blessed mother … and to the Devil!”
Julio stared at her and the two prints as the house on wheels behind them exploded in flames.

-------6-------

            “Are you crazy!” Jimmy Wong screamed as the sheriff leaned out the window with the high powered pistol. “Those people are dead!”
            “Maybe so … but that damn Ford isn’t!” The sheriff fired three times in rapid succession before Hick’s black Falcon skidded sideways with a blown right front tire, rolled once and then became airborne. It bounced once coming down just in front of the bumper and a jagged fender tore out the radiator and half the engine before it flew over the hood scratching the roof with both tail fins and exploded into the car hurtling up behind them. Bits of torn metal and car parts blasted outward in all directions like shrapnel.
            “That was close!” Jimmy was gasping for breath.
            “Not close enough,” the sheriff said. He gestured towards the shattered windshield.
            The walking dead began to move toward the sheriff’s demolished car as Jimmy tried to start the engine.

-------7-------

            Maria tried to tear the awful image of the Devil but when it wouldn’t rip she walked toward the fire. With a flash as bright as lightning a goatish face appeared in the flames coming from the trailer. “You asked for my help many times and I never refused … is this the way you repay me?”
            “Jesus is our only God … if we prayed to you it was by trickery,” Maria said. She halted her steps for only a second.
            “I’m willing to make a deal,” the image said. “Place the painting back in the frame … this time with my image out and I’ll give you what you’ve been searching for!”
            “You don’t have anything that we want!” Julio was furious as he pointed the gun at the flames.
            “Look behind you …. I can make you a family again!”
Julio and Maria both turned. Jose was walking across the cemetery he looked as normal as they did. “Mama! Pappa!” Jose cried “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
Julio covered his eyes with one hand … as he raised the gun with the other.

-------8-------

            Bony fingers were reaching through the broken windows on all sides when Sheriff Walker checked the rounds in his gun. There were two bullets left. There were more shells in a box under the seat but there wasn’t time. “I don’t feel right about shooting you … first,” the sheriff said looking at Jimmy. “But it’s better than being torn apart by a bunch of zombies.”
            “Do it,” Jimmy said closing his eyes and gritting his teeth. “I hate long drawn out goodbyes.”
Sheriff Walker cocked the gun, hooked his finger round the trigger and began to squeeze. There was a blinding flash of light along with a strange intense cold. Everything in the world began to slow and then turn black.

-------9-------

Maria heard the blast from Julio’s pistol and watched him slump to the ground. There was no time for pain … only for shock. She turned toward the flames; the demon was smiling. “Don’t forget your son,” he pointing to the young man walking toward them. “You still have your son!”
            “I can bring father back to life,” Jose said. He was now running toward her. “We can be a family again!”
            “I would rather spend one second with God than an eternity with sin,” Maria stared at the image of the Devil … and then she flung the portrait into the flames.

-------10-------

            Sheriff Walker and Jimmy Wong opened their eyes at the same time. They were parked behind the large billboard advertising Conoco gasoline near highway one and Cass Elliott was crooning Dream a Little Dream of Me on the radio.
            “What the Hell!” Jimmy said. “One minute we’re ready to be eaten alive by zombies and the next thing you know we’re trying to trap speeders jumping off the interstate!”
Sheriff Walker shrugged his shoulders and reached for the thermos filled with coffee on the seat between them. “This is Cloverdale,” he said. “You’d best learn to roll with the punches.”

-------11-------

            “Bendecir a nuestro Dios en el cielo!” Julio burst through the door of the little house in Juárez Mexico. “The papers have been approved and we have the permits to immigrate to America!”
            “But how?” Maria gasped. “I thought it would take many years and a fortune in bribes.”
            “Sometimes miracles happen!” Julio took the portrait of the Virgin Mary off the wall and kissed it. “We must always believe that God is on our side.”
            “What part of America will we live in?” Maria could hardly contain her excitement.
            “In the northwest … in the state of Montana …” Julio picked up his ten year old son Jose and tossed him into the air. “We will both have jobs working on a ranch and Jose can learn to ride a horse!”
            “Will we have to fight Indians like General Custer?” Jose’s eyes were wide.
Julio laughed. “Our troubles are no more. Cloverdale is a sleepy little town where nothing much ever happens!”

THE END?


Sunday, June 18, 2017

WHEN the DEAD KNOCK part 2

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.



By R. Peterson

Sheriff Walker returned to his office inside the Comanche County Courthouse, staggered to see the amount of incident reports piled on his desk. “People have been having the recently diseased show up on their doorsteps,” Martha Kinsley sighed as she placed another stack of papers on his desk. “Either these people have all gone nuts or I have for taking them seriously.” The sheriff glanced at Martha. The petite woman with short bouncy blonde hair who ran dispatch and did most of the office paperwork was in her mid-thirties. Only the tiny lines of wrinkles under her eyes, from manning the 911 lines three nights a week from midnight to six, hinted at her age.
The sheriff shuffled through the report names on his desk … Councilman Sears, Judith Banning, Mayor Otter and a long list of others, many of them were business people and those with civic responsibilities. “These aren’t the sort who usually sees swamp gas or a sheet blown off someone’s clothes line and report ghosts,” he said, “and you have to remember … this is Cloverdale.”
“Did I tell you I was born in L.A.?” Martha said as she placed a cup of hot coffee on the sheriff’s desk and opened a box of jelly donuts from White’s Bakery. She leaned over as she slid the donuts toward him and he noticed the two top buttons on her blouse were undone. “I moved here after my divorce looking for some peace and quiet.”
“We don’t have a million cars fouling the air and the traffic jams with snipers,” the sheriff told her with a smile. “But we get enough strange to make up for it.”
“The mayor seems pretty upset,” Martha said. “She’s called twice since you were out … I told her the radio in your car was having issues.”
“It is,” Sheriff Walker said as he took a bite from one of the donuts. “Damn thing won’t work at all … unless I turn it on.”
Deputy Jimmy Chong entered the office and hurried toward his desk. The sheriff called him over and handed him the stack of papers. “What do you make of these?”
            “I’ve been through these reports a couple of times,” Jimmy said, shuffling through the paperwork. “All the incidents are about murders or sightings of people who have died recently.”
            “So what’s the connection?” Sheriff Walker was impressed by his new deputy’s knack for seeing the obvious.
            “Black Rose Cemetery,” Jimmy said grimly. “All these reports are about people recently residing there or about others getting ready to move in. I was just on my way out there. Kelly Weston, the cemetery Sextant, has had some vandalism going on.”
            “I’ll go with you,” the sheriff said. He glanced at Martha. “If the mayor calls again tell her I’m putting in a request for a new radio along with the law enforcement budget at the next city council meeting.”

-------2-------


                        Harry Walton’s love of driving was a thing of the past even though only two months before he’d been infatuated with it. He gripped the wheel of the tanker truck as he rumbled down Canyon Road gathering raw product from all the farmers in the area. If it was up to him, he’s never get behind the wheel of a vehicle again but a young man had to have a job. The Cloverdale Dairy and Cheese Factory employed two others with arms strong enough to lift and dump eighty pound milk cans into the tank and Harry was lucky to be able to do it with only one.
He was in town during summer vacation from Montana State University visiting his cousin when the Lucky Dice Car Club noticed his fifty-six Chevy with the hood scoop and flame paint job and asked if he’d like to become a member. The dozen guys wearing black denim jackets and most with Elvis style duck tail haircuts seemed pretty cool and there were always plenty of girls hanging around so Harry said “Okay!”
            A voluptuous blonde named Cindy McCowan who wasn’t afraid to show her figure was giving him the eye and Harry noticed the guy standing next to her glaring. “There will be a test to see if you are worthy,” Frank Hicks said.
            “What kind of test?” Harry asked.
          “We don’t want no damn chickens in our club …only chicks,” Hicks slapped the girl on the butt. “We go at each other center line at ninety, Vineyard Road at midnight … You turn away before I do … and you’re smoke!” 
            “How do I know you’ll turn out?” Harry had asked.
            “I’m still here aren’t I?” Hicks looked around at the other club members. “Everyone here has had to prove they don’t have hidden feathers.”
It was like two parties each one at the opposite end of a road with everyone drinking beer and listening to music. Harry had straddled the white line revving the engine in his 409 Chevy while a mile away Hicks did the same in a souped up Ford Falcon running a 413. Cindy McCowan showed up for the initiation wearing tight pink pants and a white halter top. “I thought you always rode with Hicks as his good luck charm,” Vern Johnson who was flagging the contest asked as she appeared at the side of the highway.
            “After we see what this Chevy can do I might have to trade up to GM,” she said giving Harry a wink.
            Be cool and don’t lose your nerve Harry told himself as Vern looking through binoculars and signaling with his arm dropped a pair of girl’s yellow lace panties and he tromped on the gas pedal and began to accelerate. Hicks has done this many times before.
At a mile apart it should have taken the two cars no more than thirty seconds to meet but for Harry it felt like forever. He kept waiting for Hicks to turn out. The black Ford hurtling toward him looked something out of a horror movie. It wasn’t until the last split second that Harry yanked the wheel to the left and by then it was too late. Hick’s car crashed head-on into the front passenger side and spun him in a complete circle twice before the crushed car became airborne, flew over an irrigation canal and then rolled seven times across a corn stubble field coming to rest against the trunk of a giant cottonwood tree. The doctors all said he was lucky to be alive.
            Harry was in Cloverdale General for a month and there was already grass growing on Hick’s grave when he got out. Cindy McCowan had visited him the after the first operation but after she found out his left arm was useless and would always just hang there she hadn’t been back.

Harry shook his head to clear the memory. The sun came out from behind some clouds and he turned on the radio. It was one mile to the next farm.  Dee Dee Sharp was singing Mashed Potato Time. Static suddenly faded out the song the same time as Harry noticed a plume of dust rising on the gravel road ahead. Frank Hick’s voice broke through the buzzing like scratches escaping from a 45 record. “You turn away before I do … and you’re smoke!”
Harry couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the black Ford Falcon barreling down the center of the narrow road coming right for him. He knew this time he wouldn’t turn as he accelerated and shifted gears. This time he’d become the smoke … and perhaps rise to a better place.

-------3-------

As Jimmy parked the county patrol car next to the Sexton’s Buick, Sheriff Walker noticed Kelly Weston’s new Hispanic assistant shoveling fresh dirt from a trailer; obviously the soil was intended to level out disturbed graves. “Who said the dead rest in peace?” Sheriff Walker shook his head as he and Jimmy surveyed the damage.
            “These are all new graves and we always get some settling,” Weston said. “That’s one of the reasons I hired Julio to help with both kinds of planting. He doesn’t just have green thumbs this guy could grow potatoes alongside bacon in a frying pan. Lately he’s been working double shifts with the vandalism. It looks like someone attached a chain and yanked the vaults right out of the ground and stole the bodies.”
            “That’s all Cloverdale needs:  its own Doctor Frankenstein,” Jimmy said looking at the dozens of violently open graves.
            “Tomar un descanso y habla con nosotros!” (Take a rest) Sheriff Walker called to Julio Hernandez. He’d ran a background check on the man before he was hired and although he suspected the married man with three children’s immigration papers were forgeries he seemed okay … everyone has to eat. The man was a wanderer never staying in one place for long.
            “Siento causar estos problemas,” (sorry for the problems) Julio said as he wiped his hands on a rag taken from the back pocket of his ragged but clean jeans. He took an energy drink from his back pocket and drank half. The sheriff thought he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
            “There is no reason you have to be sorry,” the sheriff said. “You didn’t pull these bodies out of these graves did you?”
            “Cuando empieza nueva vida puede partir incluso la roca.” (When new life starts it can split even rock,) Julio said. His eyes were wide showing white all around. “La suciedad de estas tumbas fue empujada hacia arriba desde abajo!”  (The dirt from these graves was pushed up from below!)
Jimmy was busy making notes on a pad. “I was right,” he said. “This cemetery is the connection to what’s happening. Every one of these defiled graves is related to our reports of people seeing the dead.”
Julio went back to shoveling and the sheriff finished talking to the cemetery Sextant. “We now know where the dead are coming from.” John told Jimmy as they drove back to town. “Now we have to find out what’s bringing them back to life.”

-------4-------

            Leston Neville sat in the passenger side of the black Ford while Wendy drove. She looked good for a dead woman two months in the grave. The blood smeared baby began to cry and Leston noticed a binky with a plastic ring on the seat next to the infant. He moved a soiled blanket and tried to insert the pacifier into the baby’s mouth. Part of the infant’s lower jaw fell away leaving a gaping hole running into the squalling body. The crying sound was louder now and much lower like a trumpet suddenly turning into a bassoon. “Don’t just sit there gawking!” Wendy screamed. “Fix it!”
Leston put his hands on his head wanting to scream himself but he was incapable of making any but the smallest of sounds. Finally after a mile he was able to squeak out “How?”
Wendy gave him a disgusted look reached over and opened the glove box. She flung a roll of duct tape at him. “Wrap it on good,” she ordered pointing to the jaw laying on the seat, “and don’t worry about Lesty being able to breathe … we passed that turn in the road  a few months back.”
            Leston noticed one of Wendy’s eyes was slipping from its socket. He reached over and gently tucked it back into place. “Where are we going, Hun?” He was beyond the point of being repulsed.
            “To a party,” Wendy said. “To see people who haven’t been alive for years.”

-------5-------

            When Sheriff Walker saw the cars crowded on the road ahead at first he thought it was teens having some kind of road racing party. They had the radio blasting and were listening to Three Dog Night sing Mama Told Me Not to Come. Deputy Jimmy Chong thought the same thing and was beginning to slow, hoping to block the road for any juveniles looking to escape whatever illegal thing they were doing when suddenly the sheriff yelled. “Go! Go! Don’t stop! Get us out of here!”
            “What the Hell!” Jimmy yelled as he accelerated the patrol car and began to weave between the parked vehicles. Dozens of skeletal fingers reached for the door handles and scratched the paint as he roared through. Several were on the car hood and blocking the windshield either having flung themselves there or been thrown there as the car plowed through the crowd. The car struck something, either a tree or another car. The walking dead covered the outside of the car like a blanket. There was only darkness and classic rock music blaring from the radio. “This is the craziest party that could ever be … Don’t turn on the lights! I don’t want to see.”

-------6-------

Julio Hernandez opened the refrigerator in the tiny camp trailer looking for another energy drink. The Comanche County Cemetery Board had allowed him and his wife Maria to live on county land next to Black Rose as part of his compensation. Even inside the tiny metal house things were better than they had been in Juárez. The Mexican city was filled with violence. Every night he and his wife had prayed that their ten year old son Jose would stay away from the gangs and insist on having a better future. Jose was a good boy … too good. When he refused to join a local chapter of Los Zetas he was found with his throat cut from ear to ear.

Julio had been beyond grief, he had been destroyed. For all the thirty three years of his life he had always been a faithful Catholic and a true believer. “Why me?” he screamed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary hanging on the wall of his house at the beginning of Dia de los Muertos (Days of the Dead) and three days after the funeral. In his rage he had cracked the glass cover. “Haven’t I not given you my whole life?” It could have been lack of sleep or reflection from the crack, but the eyes in the portrait seemed to look down in sadness and in shame.
“What do you ask me for?” A soft motherly voice seemed to come from the portrait.
“Give me the power to bring back the dead!” Julio insisted. “If only for a day or a night … I cannot live without my Jose. I cannot live with this pain!”
“Night it is!” The portrait said just before it went back to being just a painting. And there was laughter in the city … somewhere far away.
The next afternoon Julio thought he saw Jose with a group of younger boys playing on a busy street but lost him in a crowd. Strange things were beginning to happen. His long dead mother and father were sighted by his sister. An uncle missing for years was found buying bananas in the market. They were forced from their home by terrified neighbors, doctors and police who said they were cursed with Bruja Embarcación a kind of mind sickness. Friends told them Jose had gone north looking for them and so they followed. Days were hot and endless ever searching and hiding from immigration people but the nights were worse. When Julio fell asleep his prayers came true. He would raise not only the ones he loved but any recently buried body up within a half mile radius, and more were rising all the time.

            This job in Cloverdale Montana seemed like some kind of joke. Working next to the dead and trying to stay awake at night. But they were desperate. “Sólo para una semana o dos,” he had told Maria. “Only until we have money to follow the trail.” He’d tried his best to stay awake, but this was the third night with no sleep. He thought maybe Maria had gone into the tiny kitchen to make more coffee but he found her sleeping on the floor. She looked so peaceful he was almost ashamed at what he’d put her through. He kissed her and lay beside her for only a minute … for only a minute … with a tiny prayer asking forgiveness. “Maria, madre de Dios nos perdone nuestros pecados.”
Just to the south in Black Rose Cemetery the ground began to tremble. Soil and rock was pushed up from below. Not just one or two graves opened … they all did … and the dead began to rise.

TO BE CONTINUED.



Sunday, June 11, 2017

WHEN the DEAD KNOCK

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.



By R. Peterson

                Louise Porter managed the best she could to combat loneliness after her husband John succumbed to a fatal heart attack in early March. Nights were the worst. Most days the sixty-six year old woman kept busy readying her garden for spring planting behind the house on Garlow Street in Cloverdale and she did weekend volunteer work at several civic organizations including the Red Cross and a local group associated with the High School PTA – L.S.D. (Ladies for Student Development.)
            Her interest for television shows vanished, likewise her energy whenever the temperature rose above seventy degrees. It was late on the night of April nineteenth as Louise sat reading a novel by Nicholas Sparks with a Jazz radio station playing softly in the background when a loud knock came on the door. At first, something about it sounded recognizable, but then Louise’s mind went suddenly blank. She’d lived long enough not to trust anyone who came calling after ten o’clock and it was almost midnight. She tuned on the porch light and looked through the peep-hole in the door.
“Anybody home?” Louise gasped and felt blood drain from her face when she heard the familiar voice call. This had to be an illusion, conjured up by her loneliness. She stepped back, blinked and then looked again. John stood on the porch with one hand stuck in the pockets of his favorite patched bib-overalls and the other holding his father’s canvas creel and his favorite pole. He was grinning and raising one eyebrow the way he always did when he teased her. The floppy golf-hat she’d given him for his sixty-eighth birthday with trout flies stuck around the brim perched jauntily on his thinning hair.  “I know you don’t like it when I go fishing and then arrive home after dark but by golly this time they were really biting. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to clean them but I would be much obliged if you’d unlock the door.”
“I don’t know you … go away!” Louise stammered.
“It’s me, Lucky!” John bent down and peered through his side of the peep hole. John was the only person in the world who called her Lucky. He’d used that nick-name for her since High School when he’d made eight for eight at the foul line during the championship game with Butte while wearing a bobby-pin from her hair attached to the sleeve of his basketball uniform.
“You’re dead, John … go back to heaven,” Louise pleaded. Her words sounded silly even to her own ears.
John made a show of sniffing under his arms and then wrinkling his nose. “I know I smell bad,” he said laughing. “But by golly I ain’t dead yet … although with this breeze coming up it is getting deathly cold out here.”
The wind blew the parting in his hair to the opposite side showing the receding hairline that he was always trying to cover-up and suddenly Louise felt sorry for him and was tired of being alone.
            “If you’ve got mud on your shoes leave them on the porch,” she scolded. “I just mopped this floor this morning!”
A hundred thoughts were running through her head tugging and pulling on her subconscious trying to get her attention but she pushed them away. It was so good to have John home … she had missed him so badly. “I’ll run you a tub while you clean the fish,” she said. He kissed her cheek as he took fish out of the bag.
            Louise hummed a song as she filled the old claw-foot tub upstairs with water and added John’s favorite bath oil. Please don’t let this just be my imagination or a dream she closed her eyes and said a silent prayer. When she went back downstairs the house was empty and John was gone … if he had ever been there.
            Louise cried herself to sleep weary of a grief that could so cruelly distort even the most cherished memories of a dearly departed loved one. It was 4:19 AM when she opened her eyes. John stood over the bed staring down at her. There wasn’t time to scream.

-------2-------

            Sheriff Walker turned his head as the second deputy in less than ten minutes ran down the stairs from the bedroom and out the back door of the Porter residence. All the bedroom windows were open fresh air seemed to help. John felt queasy himself. Mrs. Porter had been his best friend’s widow. Seconds later, the sheriff could hear Trent Wilson stumbling and throwing-up in a pristine bed of marigolds and pansies. “Who the hell would want to butcher an old lady like that?” Chet Hunting, the Comanche County Coroner, asked. He and two assistants had just finished gathering up all the recognizable pieces of the woman and placing them in carefully labeled Ziploc freezer bags.
            “That’s what we are going to find out,” the sheriff responded.
The first deputy who had recovered somewhat from his sickness returned from inspecting the bathroom. “The bathtub was full but nobody ever climbed into it,” he said.
            “How do you know that?” Sheriff Walker knew Jimmy Chong was a born detective and was always amazed at how his simple but brilliant mind worked.
            “There were fresh towels on the rack next to the tub and none had been used, also the carpeted floor mat was dry if anyone wet had stepped on it, it should have been a little damp.” Jimmy shook his head. “It’s a shame to waste all that money.”
            “Run that past me again!” The sheriff was interested.
            “The tub was full of Diptyque bath oil, at least twenty dollars an ounce I figure Mrs. Porter must have planned on soaking in a hundred dollars’ worth of designer suds mixed with Epsom salts.”
            “Louise never had any trouble with her arthritis,” the sheriff considered. “It was John who liked to soak his feet and fall asleep in a hot bath.” After a moment he walked into the bathroom to check for himself. “I wonder who she filled the tub for.”

-------3-------

            There wasn’t a day that went by that Mary Joe Carlson didn’t think about that awful day at the end of March, and each time, she did she hated and despised herself. Timmy Johnson was just four years old and Mary had agreed to watch him while his mother went to a sewing class. He called her Maw-ree in an adorable child’s voice. It was a warm day for March and Mary watched as Timmy played with toy trucks in a sandbox her own children had long since outgrown. It was expected to be a hot summer and the irrigation company had turned the water into the canal that crossed the back of the yard the week before. The water was only three foot deep and Mary wasn’t worried even though there was no fence to keep toddlers away. Timmy was making motor sounds with his mouth and tongue as he drove the toy truck across a small mountain of sand and Mary laughed remembering her own children doing the same. She heard the phone ring inside the kitchen and decided to let Timmy play … she’d call back whoever was on the phone.
            Elisabeth Manning was sobbing. She’d just found a woman’s phone number in her husband’s wallet when she was doing laundry. Mary tried her best to console her best friend. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Beth,” she said. “Has Frank ever given you any cause to suspect that he might be having an affair?”
            “That’s just it,” Liz sobbed. “Lately he’s been dropping into the Red Rooster after work and I’ve smelled perfume on his collar several times.”
            “Did you ask him about it?” Mary decided to invite Liz over and filled a pot with water for coffee.
            “He claimed he stopped to help a drunken woman change a flat tire and she slobbered all over him while he was jacking up her car.”
            “Who was this woman?”
            “He said he didn’t know her, but the first time he tells me the story she was driving a car and the next time it was a pickup … you’d think if he spent all that time jacking up a vehicle he’d remember what kind of outfit it was!”
The coffee was done perking and Mary poured herself a cup while she listened to Liz describe other unusual things in her husband’s behavior … suddenly she remembered Timmy! “Liz I’ll call you back!”
The rest of the memory was a nightmare complete with echoing sounds and flashes of chilling light.
She ran outside and Timmy was not in the sandbox. Neither of her next door neighbors had seen him. Mary had run up and down the canal bank calling his name before someone finally called the sheriff’s office. First she feared he might have been abducted and then later prayed that he had been. Sheriff Walker and two volunteers pulled Timmy’s body from a culvert pipe where Vineyard Road crossed the canal just a hundred yards from her house.
No one, not even Timmy’s grieving mother blamed her and that somehow made it even worse. There were times that Mary wished she could die, but then that would be too easy … she needed to suffer for her negligence. She wanted to contract some horrible disease that would disfigure her face and leave her in terrible pain but sometimes she wondered if even that would be enough.
Mary walked out back past the sandbox with a basket of laundry ready to be hung on the line. Life has to go on … even for those who are not worthy. Suddenly she heard Timmy’s voice calling. “Help me!”
Mary dropped the basket of clothes on the grass and nearly fainted as blood rushed out of her head. “The voice came again. “Help me Maw-ree!”
Mary ran down the canal bank, her heart thumping wildly with cold terror and a kind of irrational second chance answer to her nightly prayers. She plunged into the water and swam into the culvert opening even though there was less than six inches of air-space as the water swept under the bridge. There was more room once the water passed the inside edge of the pipe and the bridge supports. Timmy clung to a piece of rebar jutting out from a concrete wall. “Hang on!” Mary screamed. “Don’t you dare let go!”
Timmy’s fingers slipped off the iron rod just before Mary reached him and he sank into the dark rushing water. “No,” Mary shrieked as she submerged and tried to locate him.
Ten minutes later, it felt like hours, Mary dragged herself out of the pipe wishing she had the guts to stay there and die. She was standing in rushing water up to her waist and moving toward the canal bank when she felt something grab her leg and pull her under. “Maw-ree,” a cold voice bubbled.

-------4-------

            Sheriff Walker couldn’t believe it; two murders in less than a week was a push even for Cloverdale. “You sure this wasn’t just an accident?” he asked Chet Hunting as they recovered Mary Joe Carlson’s body from a pool of flotsam and driftwood near a washed out bank.
            “No way,” the County Coroner said. “Mrs. Carlson didn’t drown she was strangled … even though the marks on her neck came from an awfully small person.”
            “How small?” Sheriff Walker was almost afraid to ask.
            “It couldn’t be a midget,” Chet said, “because their hands are near normal size. I’d say these marks came from a child three or four years old!”
            “What the Hell is going on in Cloverdale?” The sheriff took off his hat and slapped it against his leg like he was trying to rid himself of some kind of clinging dust.
            “I don’t know but I think you’d better be finding out,” the coroner said. “Plenty of people are going to be asking you that same question.”

-------5-------

                        Leston Neville gripped the steering wheel tightly to keep the old Dodge truck from creeping into the borrow-pit as he bounced along the back-roads of Comanche County. It was past four AM. There was a time when he had made modest money repairing autos, now he just didn’t give a damn and he let his own vehicles fall into pathetic disrepair. The one-gallon ceramic containers filled with homemade corn-whiskey in the back rattled together each time he hit a bump in the road. Life wasn’t worth living without Wendy and Leston drank as much moonshine as he sold. There were three more stops to make and he could go home … but home was just a place to sleep out of the rain … a place to cry without being seen.
            Even though they barely made enough money to pay taxes on the forty wooded acres and somehow feed themselves he and Wendy were thrilled when they found out she was pregnant. Wendy scoured the second hand stores and gathered enough material to make several baby outfits hand-sewn by candlelight after her chores were done. Leston made a cradle out of un-split lengths of kindling wood and even though one of the rockers was off center, Wendy had tears in her eyes when she told him he was going to be the world’s best daddy.
            Leston was beginning to nod off and he jerked the wheel sharply when he felt the right front tire leave the gravel. The truck skidded sideways but he got things under control. There was no money for a doctor and Wendy had decided to have the baby at home. “It’s the most natural thing there is,” she’d told him. What she didn’t say was that it was almost as natural as dying.
Leston knew something was terribly wrong when after a full afternoon and one whole night of agonizing labor Wendy still hadn’t delivered. At 3 AM when she finally began to scream and he saw all the blood he loaded her into the truck and drove hell bent for town. It was the first of March and the last snowstorm of the winter was raging across Western Montana. The belt that ran the generator for the truck lights broke and Leston frantically made one out of twisted twine. When that broke with less than nine miles to go he decided to drive by moonlight. The truck tires were bald and snowdrifts were beginning to cover all the open areas between the clumps of trees.
Leston didn’t see the fleeing deer until it was too late and the truck hit one and skidded off the road. He tried frantically to push the truck from the deep snow with his bare hands all the while listening to Wendy scream and knowing there was no way he could help her. Then like a miracle that comes out of the sky with a host of singing angels, car lights appeared in the distance. Leston wrapped Wendy in a blanket and stood in the center of the road waiting for the vehicle to arrive.
When the car, a forty-something black Ford coupe with one downward pointing headlight began to slow Leston moved off the side of the road and was horrified when instead of stopping … it sped up. Leston was so distraught that he began to run after the car with Wendy in his arms. He ran until his lungs felt ready to burst and then he ran until he coughed up blood. At least Wendy had stopped screaming. More than an hour later he saw lights from a house and somehow struggled up to the door. He was delirious and later learned the farmer and his wife had to use warm water to pry Wendy’s frozen body out of his arms. The baby had tried to come out the wrong way and had gotten caught. It would have been a boy.
There was no money for the funeral or the two coffins … so the church took up a collection. A month later Leston was still climbing out of a hellishly deep canyon of depression and decided to sell his mechanic tools, buy alcohol distilling equipment from Fred Hicks and keep steady company with the comforting spirits. They’d been together morning, noon and night going on three weeks. Like all good marriages this was till death do we part. He could still hear Wendy’s screams when he closed his eyes but they weren’t as loud.
Leston was beginning to nod off again. He forced his eyes to open wider. Off in the distance he could see car lights. Something about the way they shined looked familiar … he felt his teeth grind together hard enough to chip the enamel. A black Ford coupe with one downward pointing headlight rounded the bend and came right toward him. This time it didn’t thunder on past but stopped dead in the road.
Fiery rage swept over Leston as he stopped and reached for the sawed-off ten-gage shotgun he kept behind the seat. The door to the Ford opened when he was still two yards away and bringing the barrel up level. Wendy leaned out and stared at him with black lifeless eyes. “Hurry,” she said. “We’ve got to get our baby to town to see the doctor.” Something about her smile made his blood run cold.
Leston could see a blood smeared newborn infant wrapped in a tablecloth on the seat next to her. He wasn’t completely out of his mind. It wasn’t alive … and neither was she. He knew it was wrong as he threw the gun over a fence and walked around to the passenger side of the Ford and climbed in … there was still no money for a funeral … but he just didn’t care anymore.

TO BE CONTINUED …