Karl Wagner - The Year's Best Horror Stories XXII

I want to embrace her, but she backs away as if my madness were contagious. “Why did you do it? And if I was dead, how could you bring me back to life? It’s impossible. This must be a nightmare, it has to be, because this can’t be real.”

“It is real,” I say. “Very real.”

“Oh Christ, this is too much. You literally stabbed me in the fucking back!” She laughs, but there is no humor in it.

“Calm down, Donna. After all, I brought—”

“You bastard, you loon, just stay away. My own boyfriend! I thought I could trust you, Jay. I loved you, and I thought you loved me, and—” She moans. “You just keep your distance.”

I take three steps backward. “This far enough?”

“Fine,” she says.

“I do love you,” I say.

A cruel sound leaves her lips, laughter so warped it borders on the maniacal.

“I never wanted to hurt you.” Suddenly I find myself justifying my actions to her, much as I have been trying to justify them to my own conscience. “But I had to do something. I was so scared. I had to, don’t you see?”

“Like hell I do.”

“I’m sorry. I care about you so much, Donna, you can’t imagine. But there are other things to be considered.” My head churns like the inside of a blender. “I needed someone I could trust. Besides, in a way, I’ve given you a kind of gift. You’re a pioneer. Not many people have ever returned from the grave.”

“I’m honored.” Her voice drips with sarcasm.

“Please, Donna, try to understand.”

She covers her face with her hands, like a child playing peek-a-boo. “This is all happening so fast. It’s crazy.” She looks up. “I want to understand, Jay, I truly do. Tell me why. You owe me that much.”

I shake my head, realizing how absurd this all is, like something out of a John Carpenter flick. A killer explaining his motives to his victim after she’s already dead. Ludicrous.

“All right, I’ll tell you, though I’m not sure I even know why myself. It started last April, when my father died. You remember that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. I was at the funeral with you, wasn’t I?”

“Yes. I appreciate it. You helped me get through one of the toughest times of my life. I thought I was over it. Then, about six weeks ago, when Ron died…” I felt tears build in my eyes but willed them away. “He was my best friend. We grew up together. I knew AIDS would get him sooner or later, but… he wasn’t even thirty years old, Donna.”

“I know.”

“I started to become obsessed with the idea of death. Every breath I took, I was afraid it would be my last.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Donna asks. “Maybe you should have seen a psychologist. It’s still not too late.”

“My sister used to see a shrink. I’ve always thought they were for… weak people. Strong people solve their own problems. And so I told myself I had to find a way to work through the problem, alone.

“That’s when I realized something. Why was I afraid of death? Why is anyone? Because it’s human nature to fear the unknown. Death is the ultimate unknown. So I decided to find out what it was all about. That’s why I did it, Donna.”

“Jay, I can’t believe… you’re…”

“Nuts?”

“I wasn’t going to—”

“You didn’t have to say it. I can see it in your eyes. But it worked, didn’t it? You were dead, and now you’re not. So tell me, what is the afterlife like? Don’t spare a single detail. I want to know it all.”

She says nothing, just stares at the beige carpet.

“I’m waiting.”

“I… what’s going to happen to me?” she asks miserably. “How am I going to live now that I’ve been… dead?”

I pause. “Same as before. Besides the only person who knows you were dead is me. Nobody will even suspect.”

She seems to consider this for a moment. “But what about this?” She turns around, giving me a glimpse of the torn blouse and the gouged flesh beneath, the bone-white of her vertebrae. I look away, feeling my stomach lurch.

“What about it?”

“How can I live a normal life with a hole in my back?”

My mind races. “I’ll fix it.”

“You? How?”

“Magic,” I lie.

“Magic,” she says dubiously.

“I resurrected you, didn’t I? Believe me, a little stab wound is nothing compared to raising the dead.”

Donna sighs, satisfied for a moment.

“Now, I want you to tell me everything you remember about tonight.”

A frown creases her brow. “Well, you knocked at the door, saying you had to talk to me, and it sounded urgent, so I opened the door and you—”

“I know that,” I say impatiently. “Tell me what you remember… after I stabbed you.”

“Well, I remember that the pain in my back was really bad, it burned, as if someone had set me on fire, and I thought it would never end, but then it did, I guess. It’s like when you fall asleep, you know it happened, but you can’t pinpoint the exact moment.”

“What else?”

“There isn’t much else. The pain was gone, somehow, and the next thing I knew I opened my eyes and I was here.” She shrugs.

“That’s it?”

“In a nutshell, yes.”

Stay calm, I think. Coax it out of her. Don’t panic. Not yet.

“What about all the time when you were actually dead?” I ask. “Don’t you remember anything? Even something that might seem insignificant?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “If anything did happen, then I can’t remember what it was. Maybe I was in heaven, but then when you brought me back it vanished from my memory, like a dream.”

My hand goes to the scissors in my back pocket. “You’re saying you had a dream?”

“I’m saying that I don’t know! Are you deaf? I don’t know, I just don’t fucking know!”

“Or maybe you do know and just aren’t telling me.” I take a step towards Donna. Either she doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “Maybe you’re being spiteful, you cold, dead cunt. Maybe that’s it.”

“No,” she says, leaping across the bed, crawling, eyeing the bedroom door. “Nooooo!”

She lunges, but I’m too fast for her. I grab her wrist as she reaches for the doorknob and twist her arm just enough so that she can feel how fragile tendons really are. A low squeal escapes her, then nothing, not even the rustle of her breath. She is as silent as a corpse.

“Are you going to tell me, now?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Donna gasps. “Nothing.”

“We’ll see,” I say, and bring my right hand out from behind my back. The scissors gleam in the lamplight, their stainless steel surface shiny enough to show me my own reflection. I bring them up so Donna can see them, and I savor the look of horror in her big blue eyes.

Then I bury the blade in her socket while she stares up at me in one-eyed agony and terror. Gore gushes out, splashing my hand, staining the carpet. After a minute I let go of her arm and the scissors. Donna’s body slumps to the floor. The blood flows long after the look of life is gone from her remaining eye, and I wait until it’s halted to remove the blades.

I lift her body back onto the bed and go into the bathroom to wash myself and vomit.

When I return, I kneel on the carpet and say the chant for the second time.

Afterwards I sit down in a chair by the bed. The only thing to do now is wait.

Joey Froehlich is one of the foremost gonzo madmen of the small press scene. No mean achievement. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii on November 13, 1954, Froehlich is best known for the hundreds of his poems, most of which could easily fit onto a matchbook cover, which have appeared in countless small press publications. He has also published two small press magazines, Whispered Legends and Violent Legends , and is at work on a third, Live Mysteries . Froehlich has spent most of his life in Kentucky and can now be found crawling around Frankfort. He is currently at work on a novel, The Eyes of a Saint , and he has compiled a collection of his poems entitled The Fuel of Tender Years , for which Stephen King has offered to write an introduction. Any publishers reading this?