J. Gonzalez - Back From The Dead

“So we’re still going to do it?” Gordon asked.

“Yeah,” Scott said. “I must be crazy for going along with this, but…” He shook his head. “What can it hurt?”

Last night and today at lunch, they’d talked about the burial site. Steve was convinced Gordon’s spell hadn’t worked on the rabbit because animals had no souls. Gordon asked him to explain that and Scott did the honors. “God made man in His image and breathed life into him, giving him a soul,” he’d explained. “The Bible doesn’t say anything about God giving animals souls. That’s why it didn’t work.”

It made sense. By the end of lunch they’d convinced Gordon that it was at least worth a try to bury the bum at the spot. Steve asked how long they would have to wait. Gordon answered, relying on his dim memory of his scant read of that passage in the book Count Gaines had given him. “It should happen overnight,” he said. “If we bury him at nightfall he should come back the following morning.”

“So we’ll have to camp out there at night,” Steve suggested.

“Or get there real early in the morning,” Scott ventured.

Now Gordon got to his feet. A nervous twinge of dread coursed through him. Might as well get this over with . “I say we do it. We can have him in the ground and be back here by midnight.”

The boys eyed each other warily. Scott nodded. He turned to Gordon. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

The boys stood up and then slowly headed to the guest house. Before they stepped inside, however, each boy headed to the utility shed that sat catty-corner from the guest house. Scott unlocked the padlock with a key on his key ring. The boys reached inside and each of them grabbed a different gardening tool — shovel, spade, hoe, pick. Then, as if they had a singular purpose, they headed toward the guest house and stepped inside.

Burying the bum was no problem.

They waited until nightfall to do it. With the homeless man’s very battered body wrapped in plastic garbage bags and stowed in the back of David’s SUV, they drove to the spot well after ten-thirty P.M. Once they were fifty feet down the trail, David popped the headlights back on again; he’d turned them off shortly before he made the turn to head down the rutted dirt road. They were deep enough in the woods now that they wouldn’t be seen. Besides, the other night it had been so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face when you were this far in the woods.

All four of them were silent as David piloted the vehicle through the narrow, twisting road until they reached the small clearing where they’d parked the other evening. Then, like they’d rehearsed this scene a million times, they got out of the vehicle and stepped into motion.

They hauled the plastic-wrapped corpse out of the rear of the SUV and, with David leading the way with a small flashlight, and Steve carrying a pair of shovels, the four threaded their way through brambles and weeds and trees to the clearing. To the sacred spot.

“Here we are,” Gordon said as they stopped in the clearing. Steve handed Gordon a shovel and the boys got to work. Within ten minutes they had a two foot hole dug in the ground, about six feet long and three across. Plenty of room to lay the body in, but not too deep. The guy still had to claw his way out, right?

When they were finished they rolled him into the grave, shoveled the dirt back over him, stomped it down. Then they gathered around and Gordon pulled out the book. Using the illumination of the flashlight provided by Steve, he concluded the ritual by making a hand motion in the air — the sign of the pentagram and the inverted cross. “Abbadon, Damballah, Pazuzu, Azathoth, Hanbi! I beseech thee! Bring what lies dead in this hallowed ground alive!”

Gordon rushed through the ritual, not really caring that he was fumbling it, just wanting to get the hell out of there. It was a still night, and a slight breeze rustled the leaves of the trees. When he was finished, Gordon turned to the group. “It’s done. Let’s go.”

He led them through the darkness to the SUV. When they piled in, Gordon tried not to let his nervousness show. Scott could tell, however. “Fuckin’ pussy,” Scott said, playfully punching his shoulder.

“Let’s just get out of here,” Gordon said. They don’t feel it , he thought. They honestly don’t feel it !

What Gordon felt was that same sense of eerie… presence was the only word he could think of. He’d felt a presence in that clearing, as if something had come alive. It was something unseen and silent. He’d felt it the night he’d come out here a few nights ago to consecrate the ground when those crickets had been jolted out of their rhythm. And he’d felt it again yesterday when David and Scott came with him.

And he felt it now.

David started the vehicle. He was snickering, too. “Count Gaines got you scared of this shit now, huh Gordon?”

“Let’s just go!”

David backed the vehicle around in a clumsy three point turn and piloted it down the dirt path. A moment later they were creeping out onto the secondary road. When there was no signs of cars, David popped the headlights and eased onto the road.

Five minutes later they were speeding east down Newport Road.

“Me and Scott will head out here first thing in the morning,” David said, his features smug. Confident. “We got weight lifting first thing in the morning, so we’ll get here at six. Sound good to you, Scott?”

“Fine with me, man,” Scott said.

“And if he’s clawing his way out, we’ll nab him and get him back to the guest house,” David said.

“What if he’s hostile?” Steve asked. “You know…like in Dawn of the Dead ? What if he tries to eat you?”

“Then I’ll shoot him in the head with my.38,” David said. “I’ll have it with me.” He looked at Gordon and Steve in the rearview mirror. “We’ll be fine. This is going to work out. And if it doesn’t…I mean, if the guy doesn’t come back from the dead, no skin off our butts. We’ll just bury him deeper so the animals don’t get him. Right?”

“Yeah,” Steve said.

Gordon nodded. Despite the calm assurances of his friends, he had a hard time believing everything was going to turn out okay.

Early morning. Six-fifteen A.M.

Scott Bradfield and David Bruce made their way through the thick woods to the spot where they’d buried the bum last night. Scott had picked David up at a quarter till six and they’d made the twenty minute ride in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Scott was pretty sure that when they arrived at the clearing they were going to find it in the state they’d left it in and they came prepared: both boys were carrying shovels and a burlap bag with a change of clothes for school. The burlap bag also contained two coils of rope in case they struck pay dirt and had to tie the dead bum up.

But if the spell didn’t work? “We’ll bury him deeper when we get there,” Scott had said during the few words they exchanged in conversation. “It shouldn’t take long.”

As they rounded the corner of the bend that took them to the clearing, David was a few feet ahead of him. Scott almost bumped into him as David stopped suddenly and said, “Holy shit!”

Scott reached the clearing and felt his stomach plunge into his bowels.

The grave was dug up. Torn pieces of plastic from the garbage bags they’d wrapped the bum in lay discarded in the shallow grave.

The bum was nowhere in sight.

Scott and David ran to the edge of the hole. They looked around, their faces panic-stricken. “What the fuck?” David began.