Zombie Nights

Zombie Nights

I DON’T GO OUT MUCH. Never during the day, of course. And only on the darkest nights. I am content with taking no physical form and simply entertaining myself with stories that I concoct and share with others of my kind. Mind is basically all I am, except on those nights when I want to take a physical form--human mostly. Although cats are fun too.

Going out at night is a great way to create a story. In fact, the story kind of creates itself. Once people see or hear me, or merely sense my presence, things start to happen. I can just take a part in the unfolding action. It’s a lot like impromptu performance that human actors do. I think the difference is that for the people it all seems very real. For me, it’s just good fun.

I do need to be honest, though. Sometimes the action gets pretty serious for the humans. People have even gotten seriously hurt or killed because I dropped in on their activities. It’s never my intention, but those stories take off like uncaged pigeons when people start reacting in ways that I have no control over. I’ll tell you about one of those. It can serve as a lesson should you ever encounter one of my kind.

Let me first explain, though, that when I take a human form I can only take a form that is appropriate to my state of being. What I mean is, I can’t take a form that looks like your Aunt Nancy or your best friend Jeremy. I am dead. That’s my state of being. So, when I take a physical form, that form must reflect the current state of my former body. I died forty years ago. I’m buried in Glendale Cemetery and the condition of my body is…well, imperfect. Oh heck, it’s downright grotesque. So, my appearance among humans can by itself kind of get things off on the wrong foot. I always hope that the humans will have a sense of humor about it and play along, but most do not. Disappointing, yes, but if I am in the mood for action, then things can get wild in cases like that. The particular encounter I have in mind is such a case. I’ll call it “Wild Night at Samantha’s.”

It was a cold and rainy…no, just kidding.

It was in fact a beautiful fall evening, about seventy degrees, with the setting sun’s golden light bathing the trees and the normally bleak cemetery lawn with a fairytale splendor.

Okay, I’ll stop with the lame attempts at lyrical humor.

But, yeah, it was a great evening out in the cemetery. More people should have been there to enjoy it, but I noticed only three, all women, and it took them a while to get around to my grave. They seemed to be visiting quite a number of graves, writing on note pads as they went from one to another. This I observed from my usual location on my nights out, which was high in an old, arching elm tree not ten feet from my grave. Close enough to pick up their conversation.

“I heard about this one, Ann,” one of them said as she stared down at my pathetic little marker.

“Really? What’s the story?”

“My father knew him. They were in the same graduating class at the high school. He was a class clown type, my father said. You know, funny but a magnet for trouble.”

“Any idea what kind of trouble?” Ann said.

“Probably all kinds, but I only remember the one because my father was involved. Oh, and Samantha’s mom was there too, when it happened. That’s what my dad said. He and Samantha’s mother dated for a while, I guess.”

“Check out the date on the stone,” the third woman said. “Forty years ago.”

“Yeah, and it was a major story back then, Janet. My dad mentioned it quite a few times. Are you ready for it?”

“Tell it!” Janet replied.

“M-U-R-D-E-R.”

The silence didn’t break for three whole seconds. “No kidding?” Ann said. “This person here, James Carson?”

“No, well, yeah. Carson was the one who did the murder. He killed my father’s first girlfriend, Charlotte somebody. Samantha’s mom saw it happen and my dad saw it.”

“Well then, holy hell, this is the marker we want tonight,” said Janet. “Can’t be any other.”

“That’s gonna rock the house,” said Ann. “Samantha’s gonna freak. How soon do you think we should come back, Diane?”

The third woman, Diane, looked around the cemetery. “We could probably do it right now. There’s no one here. But we better wait till dark. We still have a few other things to find for the scavenger hunt.”

“I don’t think those things are going to exactly rock the house,” said Ann. “Not like this one.”

They were back half an hour later. I wouldn’t even call it dark. More like dusky. They parked their car in the drive about thirty feet from my grave. Ann carried a small throw-blanket, Diane a shovel. They let Janet do the digging because she was quite husky. Full of vigor, too, as she had the stone out of the ground within two minutes. They did a silent clapping routine then hauled the stone to the car. No need for me to scurry down from the tree to follow them. I knew where Samantha lived. It’s a small town. Same house her mother lived in years ago.

I waited for the party to get cooking. That was about eleven o’clock. I figured the women would have had a few drinks in them by then. I crept around the place until I could get a good look into the living room. I counted six women. All but one was seated, and each of those held a glass of wine. The one standing was Janet. I could hear well enough to tell she was explaining their little adventures in gathering each of the items required by the scavenger hunt. I listened with only half attention until she got to the grave robbery story. And even that didn’t interest me much because I had seen the whole thing. She threw in a few embellishments, such as barely ducking the squad car’s spotlight as it passed. But no harm done.

Other than Janet, Ann, and Diane, I recognized Samantha and Samantha’s mother, Missie, in the room. The sixth woman was new to me. I thought I might have seen her about town but never learned her name. All were late thirties in appearance, but were apparently not too old yet for party shenanigans like scavenger hunts.

“Let’s see the damn grave marker,” Samantha said, following Janet’s overly long preamble.

“We’ll get to that,” Janet replied. “First, though, you need to hear the story behind it. Diane was, shall we say, involved, but by way of familial relationship only.” Janet laughed. “Like a couple of other party-goers present here tonight.”

“Then get to the story,” said Samantha. “Diane, you yell it.”

Diane stood up and gave her seat to Janet. It was at that point that I thought it was most proper and timely for me to intervene. I re-formed myself in my usual way―meaning I undid my physical form outside the home and re-formed it inside, two steps from where the interior hallway met the living room. I always enjoy those moments when the contacts first get sight of me. There are only a few different reactions it seems. Panic and flight is one, screams included. Posturing for combat of some sort, usually by men. And thirdly, frozen terror, an inability to move or speak for a period of time. Then, sometimes but rarely, there can be a fourth reaction. That is seeing the monster as a prank, a joke involving a ton of makeup and a very talented makeup artist. When I walked into the room at Samantha’s house, it was an audience of five frozen like a package of popsicles and one skeptic, Samantha herself, screaming first, then laughing loudly and pointing at me but yelling at Janet: “Wow! You win, girl! Who did that work? Unbelievable!”

I worried the prank theory might catch on, but no chance. The others wore faces of complete shock. In fact, I could see Samantha’s bold take quickly fade into a stance much like the others.

“No one attempts to leave the room,” I began. And I was very serious about that and my tone left no doubt. “Where’s the stone?” I asked Janet.

No answer from Janet.

“Where’s the stone!” I yelled at the room.

Finally, Janet pointed to the blanket folded at the side of the couch near her feet. I walked―well, staggered really, as beings of my type find walking difficult―over to the blanket and extracted the stone and held it up for all to see.

“If anyone is going to tell this story,” I said, “it’s going to be me.” I pointed at the name on the stone. “That’s me,” I said. “James Carson. And I’m going to tell you the true story, not the one others told forty years ago. Anyone got a problem with that?”

No response.

“I’ll take that as a ‘go right ahead’ then.”

I had no idea how heavy that stone was, especially for a being with little muscle strength left in the arms. I set it down before beginning my tale.

“First of all,” I said, “I do not use makeup.” I winked at Samantha when I said that. “Second, I am dead. No mistake about that. Am I a zombie? Well, yeah, people like to use that term. I don’t like it, but we’ll move on from that. Third, Janet was going to tell you that I murdered a woman named Charlotte some years back, and that the police shot me dead when I tried to escape.”

It was then I noticed that Ann and Janet had passed out. As they were sitting either side of Diane, their heads lay on each shoulder. “Give them a nudge,” I told Duane.

It took more than a nudge to bring them around. Yeah, okay, I had to step over there and give each of them a little slap on the cheek. Not really much more than a nudge.

“Fourth,” I resumed, “I did not murder that woman. And, yes, the state police did shoot me, but I wasn’t running from them. I was chasing my dog that got out our fence and was loose down the street. They should have said more specific to stop me than, ‘Hold it right there!’”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Samantha’s mother, Missie, said. She stood up and glared at me. “I don’t care what you are, a zombie or a fried chicken nugget, get out of this house at once.”

“Zombies eat people, you know,” I said to Missie. “People who piss them off. And I’ve been pissed at you for almost half a century. It’s just that I’d rather be where I am now than where you are. I bet you’ve had a hard time of it all these years. If not, you are truly a messed up human being.”

She walked up close to me and said, “Eat this!” and threw her fist into my face. I think it did knock a little chunk off, but nothing serious.

I took hold of the front of Missie’s cute little pullover sweater with a brown bear’s face embroidered on it and lifted her off her feet and carried her back to her seat. “I will leave when I finish the story,” I said. I plopped her down.

I walked back to my spot by the stone on the floor from where I could block any attempt to flee the room. I continued my story.

“Ah, let’s see, I think I’m at point number six.”

“No, five,” said the woman whose name I didn’t know. She had a gleeful look on her face that I found stimulating. In a mental sort of way, you understand. Mental energy, I mean. Sure, she was attractive, but that’s outside my realm of action. I might have stared at her for a few moments, longingly perhaps, but all fell back into place quickly.

“Is it five?” I said finally. “Well, I’m glad someone is paying attention. Okay, so I did not kill Charlotte, but I was blamed for it. Framed for it. Someone even went so far as to throw the killer’s gun into the woods behind my house, but not so far that it wouldn’t be found eventually. The last thing, number six, I guess I already mentioned. I was out on bail when I went looking for my dog. That was after Samantha’s mother here and her boyfriend at the time, Diane’s father, Alan, swore up and down at court that I was the shooter. Jealous rage, they called it. I never knew exactly who I was jealous of or why, but it stuck.”

I scanned the crowd at that point and saw that I had everyone’s attention. At least their eyes were open and fixed on me.

“So,” I said, “why would Missie and Alan point fingers at me? Anyone got a clue?”

No one answered. Half of them were still in semi-shock, I suppose, so I couldn’t blame them.

“Okay, I’ll fill in the blanks for you. Diane, it was not your father who pulled the trigger. He and Charlotte had been friends and lovers before Missie here came on the scene. No motive there. I was a passerby on my Schwinn Sting who happened to observe the deadly deed. Two shots, by gosh. Two hits. Who knew Missie was so lethal?”

“What?” Samantha screamed. She pointed to the front door. “Get out of here right now. I don’t care if you’re a sick zombie or Frankenstein’s monster. Get the hell out!”

“Samantha,” I said. “Remember, you can’t hurt me. You could tear off my arms and I would grow them back in a minute. Hey, I have allowed this whole affair to slide for forty years. I could have taken revenge anytime. It just didn’t matter to me anymore. But when I look for something interesting to do on a nice but boring fall evening, and I see a trio of grave robbers filch my stone, I feel I need to follow up with that. Frankly, I think this business is likely to blow up again in some kind of major incident if you people don’t manage it well. I’d like to stick around for that, but I think it’s going to play out over many days or weeks. I don’t have that much patience. Bye.”

I started for the door, then turned back. “Oh, and put that stone back where it belongs.”

So, that’s the end of my example of how my interference (I like that word) can sometimes lead to unpleasant outcomes. In the wake of that example, Missie had a lot of explaining to do, to her daughter and to the other women present that night. Too many heard the truth at that party and by the end of the week the whole town had heard it. No formal charges were filed, however. The police and probably most of the town didn’t buy the part of the story about the visiting zombie. Most would have suspected a little too much drinking that night. Even so, not much was seen of Missie after that. Too many suspicious looks on the street. Rumors of an estranged daughter I bet are well-founded.

END