J. Gonzalez - Back From The Dead

“We gotta get the lid completely off then,” David said.

They’d wound up pushing the heavy lid of the cairn completely off, giving them open access to the coffin. Two strikes with the crowbar and the old lock snapped, gaining them access to the thing that lay within.

Gordon thought he’d be sick, but he wasn’t. The body had withered to bones long ago, and what remained of its burial shroud had turned to brittle rags. Gordon took the skull, the femurs, a fibula, and several rib bones, stuffing them in the burlap bag he’d brought along. Then they’d gotten the hell out of there.

Only as they scrambled to get back into the car, David heard a sound. “What’s that?” he’d said. He’d turned a panicked gaze toward 272, which was five hundred yards away.

Gordon had flung the burlap bag into the vehicle and was so nervous and itching to get the hell out of there that he barely noticed the book fall out of the car’s backseat and onto the parking lot. All he saw was the dim glow of headlights down the road. “Shit,” he’d said. “Get in the car! C’mon!”

They’d gotten in the front seat and hunkered down. Gordon had peered through the window and watched as the headlights grew larger. The vehicle made a right turn and headed down another secondary road. Gordon sighed, feeling the tension ease. He started the engine, his eyes concentrating on the receding tail lights of the vehicle.

They’d been so rattled by the incident and in such a race to get the hell out of there that he didn’t realize the book had fallen out of his car. He didn’t realize this until the following morning when he went to school. He was lucky Aaron’s had a copy. Otherwise, he probably would have had to drive into Lancaster to try to scare one up.

Gordon sighed, sifting the powdered bones in the bag. Today after school, shortly after he returned home from the bookstore, he’d taken a pair of rib bones, a piece of the skull and a femur, and ground them to dust with repeated strikes of the hammer. It had taken a good twenty minutes to smash the bones into fine powdery bits. He’d stashed the remaining bones in a box under his bed. His parents never set foot in his bedroom anyway.

While obtaining the bones had been the most difficult, the last item was the one that filled him with trepidation this evening.

This other item was in a box and still alive. He left it in there as he went about making the preparations.

He poured the salt in a circle, being careful the lines were heavy enough to be seen. Then he drew a pentagram with the salt, again being careful the lines were well discernable. When he was finished he stepped carefully outside the pentagram and placed the saucers around strategic points, pausing every so often to consult the book. He placed the candles in the saucers, lit them, then took the book and the herbs and ventured to the center of the pentagram. He consulted the book, flipping through the pages and squinting in the darkness at the text. Then, following the book as best he could, he reached into each baggie, pinched a piece of herb or powdered bone between thumb and forefinger, and threw it at the four corners of the pentagram. “As above, so below,” he said. “From the four points of the earth, through the elements of space and time, I beseech thee! Awaken and open the gates! Listen, for I bring you sacrifice. With my left hand I bring it to you in sacrifice.”

He paused, checked his watch and frowned. The book said the spell had to be started precisely at midnight and it was two minutes before. Did it really make a difference? At least he was getting a head start. Besides, he had to get the box with the rabbit he’d brought along.

Stepping out of the pentagram briefly, Gordon plucked the cardboard box off the ground and stepped back into the circle. Using the blade of the ceremonial dagger, he cut the tape that bound the box shut and carefully opened the lid. He reached inside and grasped the rabbit by the scruff of the neck and, with one quick motion, lifted it and drew the blade of the dagger across its throat as it bleated once and kicked its legs frantically. Blood sprayed out into the pentagram. Gordon continued the spell, reciting the words he’d memorized this afternoon. “I bring you sacrifice with my left hand. I bring you fresh blood as sacrifice. Oh Damballah! Oh Erzuile! Hear my prayer! Oh Azathoth, the blind piper of a thousand names! Oh Hanbi, Father of He Who is Our Dark Demon Father Pazuzu, I call on you to grant me this dark boon! I give you the blood of the living, which I have spilt on this hallowed ground so that the powers you bestow will make one who’s dead alive again!”

The rabbit continued to kick until it suddenly slowed, then stopped. Gordon’s right hand and wrist were drenched with the rabbit’s blood. When the rabbit was dead, Gordon set the animal down in the pentagram. He dipped the forefinger of his left hand in the wound, grimacing as he did so, then stood and flicked the blood from his fingers at the black candles, sprinkling blood on the dancing flames. “Azathoth, Hanbi, Baal, Pazuzu, Damballah! Erzuile! Abaddon!” He repeated these names as he sprinkled the blood, watching as the flames flickered as the blood spilled on them. Actually, according to the book, you were supposed to say something else but it was in some other language and Gordon couldn’t very well hold the book and do all this at the same time. When he was finished, he picked up the book and flipped through to the page in question. He tried pronouncing the words as best as he could. “Aya absath ngya, wahlee obsoth, ngya, yian…wow!” What the hell did that mean, anyway? “Azathoth! Mgwai! Damballah! Damballah!”

The flames of the candles rose and flickered. The wind picked up slightly, blowing leaves. Gordon shivered.

The crickets, which had been chirping and seemed almost like background music to Gordon, continued but there was a funny sound in their cadence. It was almost as if the rhythm of their chirping had been knocked off track just slightly and then resumed again. It was slight, and Gordon thought he was imagining it when it happened. He stopped the ritual, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.

The chirping of the crickets continued. Gordon listened, his blood running cold. Something about them sounds different now, it’s almost like they’re in a different key, a different cadence or something and I know I heard that, I know I heard them getting knocked off their rhythm, this is so fucking weird –

Overhead, in a tree, an owl hooted.

Gordon started, heart racing, his skin breaking out in gooseflesh. This was just getting too damn creepy.

Gordon hurriedly finished the ritual, repeating the words and phrases from the book as best he could. He threw another sprinkling of the herbs and bone over the five corners of the pentagram, closing the ritual, and by the time he was finished he was feeling like a fool for letting it all get to him. And besides…what the hell was he doing? Did he really believe in the shit Count Gaines believed in? Did he really think this ritual was going to make the ground cursed? That if he buried something dead here the curse would bring it back to life?

Now that the ritual was over it was time to find out.

Gordon knelt down and dug a hole with his hands, cursing himself for not bringing a small shovel along. He dug into the moist soil, heaving clumps of dirt in a pile on his left side, and when he’d gone down a foot or so he picked up the dead rabbit and placed him inside. He shoved the dirt back over it with his hands, tamping it down flat. Then he stood up, blew out the candles, tossed everything in the burlap bag, then kicked at the salt-drawn pentagram, scattering it. As he worked he listened to the crickets, pretty sure now that he’d let his imagination get the best of him. The rhythm of their chirping was normal; it hadn’t changed at all. He’d just imagined the whole episode.