Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

How did she think he could just stop? Or that he would want to stop, for that matter?

The flask was empty, and he let it fall to the ground. "Why couldn't you understand?" he slurred, alcohol making his mouth a bit numb. He recalled her horror as he tried to explain why he did what he did, the immeasurable joy he received when he watched the light of life go out of their miserable eyes. But his mother didn't understand. She had begged him to stop, begged him to be the good boy that she always imagined him to be. But what his mother had asked of him was impossible.

Why? he asked again.

Tom pushed the troubling recollections from his mind and replaced them with thoughts of happier times — his memories of each murder — and immediately he felt soothed.

It was darker now, as if the sun had decided to pack it in early. The red mist continued to swirl about him. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen a fog so unusual. It was kind of creepy. Gripping the tombstone, he pulled his powerful bulk up, the bones in his knees popping in protest. It was times like these that reminded him there might come a day when he wouldn't be able to do what his mother so desperately wanted him to stop, that he would be too old. Just thinking it was enough to stoke the fires of his urge. It was as if a switch had been flicked inside his head, and he knew what he wanted to do — what he had to do.

It had been a little over two weeks since the desire was last satisfied. The memory of it flashed before his mind's eye. His mother was crying and carrying on, telling him that what he was doing was wrong, that he would go to jail, and who would take care of her then? She had been upstairs in the house they had shared since forever, changing the sheets on his bed, as she had every Tuesday for as long as he could remember. Dirty bedclothes in her arms, she had pushed past him, saying that he had left her no choice. She had to tell someone what he was doing, that it was all for his own good.

Tom had never thought of her as one of them — the losers that wanted to hurt him, to keep him down, but for a brief moment she had become the enemy. As she prepared to descend the winding staircase, he had thought about how dangerous it could be for an old woman to be performing the duties of a household. One terrible fall, and that would be that.

His left hand tingled with the memory of the act, and he brought it slowly up to his face, flexing his fingers. It had been the gentlest of pushes that sent the woman he had loved most in all the world tumbling down the wooden steps. She had landed in a twisted heap, her face covered with his dirty laundry.

She had still been alive. He'd gently pulled back the sheet that covered her face and found her wide-eyed and gasping, her neck bent in a most unnatural way. But the look in her eyes told him that death would soon claim her. He had seen that look many times before, and when it finally did come, the first tears of mourning had fallen from his eyes.

A horrible accident, the neighbors had whispered, and he had almost started to believe it was true.

Almost.

Tom wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his sports jacket and reached out to retrieve his empty flask. He slid it into a pocket, and told his mother that he would be back again tomorrow. The urge to kill was growing stronger. He placed a kiss upon his fingertips, and touched his mother's headstone.

As he turned away from the grave he noticed movement in the fog. It was a woman, slowly walking amongst the graves. Tom squelched the murderous hunger that began to urge him on. This is not the time or place, yet he continued to watch the woman who moved stiffly toward him.

And then he noticed the others. They were all heading toward him, walking through the strange, red mist. It was a strange sort of exodus from the cemetery and he wondered if there was anything was wrong. Puzzled, Tom fished through his pockets for the keys to his car and turned down the winding path that would take him to the parking lot.

A grave at the left of the path exploded, and Tom stumbled backward, reeling, as cold muddy earth and pieces of rotten wood pelted his face. The heel of his shoe caught the edge of a marker, and he went down on the grass.

The crowd was closer now and he prepared to yell to them, to ask for help. The words had almost left his mouth when he became distracted by motion in the darkness of the now open grave.

There was something, somebody crawling up out of the dirt. He guessed that it had been a woman, but only because it wore the tattered remains of a navy blue dress, and he could see a string of pearls still adorning the dry, leathery-brown skin of her throat. The woman hauled herself up out of the hole, rose stiffly to her feet, and shambled toward him with a gaseous gurgle.

He knew, then, of course. Knew exactly what he was looking at. But that did not stop his mind from attempting to rationalize. The poor woman had somehow been buried alive and had managed to free herself. That was the only explanation he would allow.

"Are you all right?" he asked, as she lurched closer.

The mist cleared. And he saw her.

Her hands were covered in loose flesh like gloves two sizes too big. She had no eyes, just two empty sockets that squirmed with life uncomfortable being above the ground.

Tom Stanley began to scream, just as his victims had done.

All around him graves exploded and he scrambled to his feet, lashing out at the decaying woman who blocked his path. The animated remains of the woman fell sideways, her skull striking a stone marker and shattering. He did not want to see what was inside the corpse's head and was thankful that the red mist obscured it from his view.

He screamed for help into the fog. There had to be other mourners nearby. From the corner of his eye he saw movement upon the ground. Hissing things clawed their way up from other graves and dragged what remained of them across the grass toward him.

A powerful hand came down upon his shoulder, skeletal fingers digging into his flesh. He spun out of its grasp and turned to see that it was the woman he had first noticed in the red mist. He tried to flee, hopping over the things crawling on the ground in the swirling fog. But she grabbed him again and he was forced to push her away, to touch her.

Her flesh was like wet clay.

"Bitch," he snapped, stepping back as she reached for him. Savagely, he slapped her hand away as the others slowly emerged from the crimson fog, all of them decayed and covered with grave dirt.

Part of him wanted to cry, to lie down upon the ground and curl up into a ball, begging for his mother's protection. But he knew he couldn't. He had to get away or they would get him for sure. It had to be the mist, something in the weird fog that made them come back from the dead.

They surged toward him, the noises they made horrible. He turned to run, but the ground erupted beneath his feet and he felt his ankle clutched in a powerful grip. He fell hard to the ground, the wind knocked from his lungs in an explosive wheeze. Tom rolled over, gasping for air, trying to free himself from the grasp of the pale hand that had reached up through the dirt and grass.

The dead were closer now. He could see their horrible faces and knew them all. They had come for him — all the losers he had killed over the years — and they had brought along friends. They shuffled closer, smiling, mocking him as they always had done.

Tom lay back upon the moist earth, overwhelmed by their number, throwing his hands over his face, curling himself into a tight little ball. "Mommy!" he shrieked, his eyes clamped shut against the horrors bearing down on him, and he felt a cold, gentle caress upon his cheek. Opening his eyes, he saw that they still loomed above him. He knew them all, each and every one.