Undead. John Russo
dirtied them, and continued grumbling, “It doesn’t take five minutes at all. It takes three hours and five minutes. No, six hours and five minutes. Three hours up and three hours back. Plus the two hours we wasted hunting for the damned place.”
She looked up from her prayer and glowered at him, and he stopped talking.
He stared down at the ground, bored. And he began to fidget, rocking nervously back and forth with his hands in his pockets. Barbara continued to pray, taking unnecessarily long it seemed to him. And his eyes began to wander, looking all around, staring into the darkness at the shapes and shadows in the cemetery. Because of the darkness, fewer of the tombstones were visible and there seemed to be not so many of them; only the larger ones could be seen clearly. And the sounds of the night seemed louder, because of the absence of human voices. Johnny stared into the darkness.
In the distance, a strange moving shadow appeared almost as a huddled figure moving among the graves.
Probably the caretaker or a late mourner, Johnny thought, and he glanced nervously at his watch. “C’mon, Barb, church was this morning,” he said, in an annoyed tone. But Barbara ignored him and continued her prayer, as if she was determined to drag it out as long as possible just to aggravate him.
Johnny lit a cigarette, idly exhaled the first puff of smoke, and looked around again.
There was definitely someone in the distance, moving among the graves, Johnny squinted, but it was too dark to make out anything but an indistinct shape that more often than not blurred and merged with the shape of trees and tombstones as it advanced slowly through the graveyard.
Johnny turned to his sister and started to say something but she made the sign of the cross and stood up, ready to leave. She turned from the grave in silence, and they both started to walk slowly away, Johnny smoking and kicking at small stones as he ambled along.
“Praying is for church,” he said flatly.
“Church would do you some good,” Barbara told him. “You’re turning into a heathen.”
“Well, Grandpa told me I was damned to hell. Remember? Right here—I jumped out at you from behind that tree. Grandpa got all shook up and told me I gone be demn to yell!”
Johnny laughed.
“You used to be so scared here,” he said, devilishly.
“Remember? Right here I jumped out from behind that tree at you.”
“Johnny!” Barbara said, with annoyance. And she smiled to show him he was not frightening her, but she knew it was too dark for him to see the smile anyway.
“I think you’re still afraid,” he persisted. “I think you’re afraid of the people in their graves. The dead people. What if they came out of their graves after you Barbara? What would you do? Run? Pray?”
He turned around and leered at her, as though he was about to pounce.
“Johnny, stop!”
“You’re still afraid.”
“No!”
“You’re afraid of the dead people!”
“Stop, Johnny!”
“They’re coming out of their graves, Barbara! Look! Here comes one of them now!”
He pointed toward the huddled figure which had been moving among the graves. The caretaker, or whoever it was, stopped and appeared to be looking in their direction, but it was too dark to really tell.
“He’s coming to get you, Barbara! He’s dead! And he’s going to get you.”
“Johnny, stop—he’ll hear you—you’re ignorant.”
But Johnny ran away from her and hid behind a tree.
“Johnny, you—” she began, but in her embarrassment she cut herself short and looked down at the ground as the moving figure in the distance slowly approached her and it became obvious that their paths were going to intersect.
It seemed strange to her that someone other than she or her brother would be in the cemetery at such an odd hour.
Probably either a mourner or a caretaker.
She looked up and smiled to say hello.
And Johnny, laughing, looked out from behind his tree.
And suddenly the man grabbed Barbara around the throat and was choking her and ripping at her clothes. She tried to run or scream or fight back. But his tight fingers choked off her breath and the attack was so sudden and so vicious that she was nearly paralyzed with fear.
Johnny came running and dived at the man and tackled him—and all three fell down, Johnny pounding at the man with his fists and Barbara kicking and beating with her purse. Soon Johnny and the man were rolling and pounding at each other, while Barbara—screaming and fighting for her life—was able to wrench free.
In her panic and fear, she almost bolted.
The attacker was thrashing, pounding, seemingly clawing at all parts of Johnny’s body. Johnny had all he could do to hold on. The two of them struggled to their feet, each maintaining a death grip on the other—but at the same time the attacker was like a wild animal fighting much more viciously than most men fight—beating, thrashing—even biting Johnny’s hands and neck. Desperately, Johnny clutched at him and they fell in a heap.
In the total darkness, the blurred form of the two seemed to Barbara like one thrashing thing, and she feared for the outcome and she had no way of telling which one had the advantage or who was going to win or lose. She was nearly overcome with the desire to run and save herself, and yet she wanted to save her brother—but she didn’t know how.
She began to scream wildly for help. And her fear became even more intense through her screaming, because part of her mind knew there was no one around and no one to hear her screams.
The two men on the ground were rolling and tumbling and slashing at each other and making animal sounds—one figure gained the advantage, and in a brief outline against the dark sky Barbara saw him slam his fists down onto the other’s head.
She found a tree limb and snatched it into her hands, and took a step or two toward the fighting men.
Again, the fists came down, with a heavy dull thud and the sound of cracking bone. Barbara stopped in her tracks. The figure on top had a rock and was using it to smash his enemy’s brains.
Moonlight fell across the face of the victor, and Barbara saw with a shudder of doom that it was not Johnny.
Again the heavy rock thudded into Johnny’s head, as Barbara remained paralyzed with shock and fear. And then the rock fell to the earth and rolled and Barbara braced herself with her tree branch ready to use as a club, but the attacker did not rise. He continued to kneel over the vanquished body.
And Barbara heard strange ripping sounds, and she could not see clearly what the attacker was doing—but the ripping sounds continued in the night…ripping…ripping…as if something was being torn from Johnny’s dead body.
The attacker did not seem to be concerned with Barbara…as her heart pounded wildly and she remained rooted with fear and the ripping sounds enveloped her and blotted out her sanity and her reason, and she was in such a state of extreme shock that she was near death and all she could hear was ripping…ripping…as the attacker wrenched and pulled at her brother’s dead body and—yes!!—she saw in a fresh shaft of moonlight through a passing cloud that the attacker was sinking his teeth into Johnny’s dead face.
Slowly, wide-eyed, like a woman paralyzed in a nightmare, Barbara began moving toward her brother’s attacker. Her lips fell apart and involuntarily emitted a loud sob.
The attacker looked at her. And she was startled by the sound of his breath—an unearthly rasping sound. He stepped over Johnny’s body and moved toward her in a half-standing position, like an animal hunched to spring.
Barbara