Tim Curran - Resurrection

Darin stormed away, making for his own house and his SUV in the driveway if he was to be believed.

Inside, Russel and his mother were nailing boards over the windows, lording over an improvised collection of weapons: sharpened baseball bats and broomsticks with steak knives attached to the ends. Mitch had to wonder what good any of it was going to do.

“You both need to get out of here,” Mitch told them.

“There’s nowhere to run to, Mitch. This is the end battle. Just like in the Bible. Hell has delivered up the dead and this is the last stand of mankind. The whole world is like Witcham now.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Oh, yes I do. Hell on earth.”

“Russel, you can’t believe this.”

Russel drove a nail through a board. “It’s true. Just like in that picture where the dead take over the world. You can stay here with us, Mitch. Help us get ready. Because tonight they’ll be out in force.”

“I don’t think they have to wait for dark,” Tommy said.

“Sure they do,” Russel told him. “That’s how this works.”

Outside, both Mitch and Tommy just shrugged. There was no point in arguing with a dementia that was so well-developed. They wanted to stay and die, there wasn’t much you could do.

Mitch sighed, wiping a sheen of wet mist from his face. “Let’s go over to my house. I want to get some more shells for the Remington.”

They trudged through moist yards to his own, wet leaves blown up against the house, water dripping from the roof. It was impossible not to look at that house without getting assailed by a hundred memories. There were the raingutters he’d put up five, six years back. He could remember being up on the ladder and Chrissy was standing at the bottom, nine or ten years old and cute with pigtails and freckles on her cheeks. There were the Andersen windows that Lily and he had put in one sunny September day three years ago, the air brisk and sharp as apples, the sort of day you were glad to be alive. To either side of the porch there were Lily’s flower boxes filled with wilted brown stems. There were those pain-in-the-ass hedges that she made him round off every summer with the clippers. God, it was everywhere. All the damn memories. He could see Chrissy running up the walk from grade school, her dark hair bouncing and her Little Mermaid lunch box bumping against her leg. He could see Halloween pumpkins on the porch, Chrissy taping up cardboard skeletons and green-faced witches in the windows. He could see the trees that Lily hung with lights every Christmas, the evergreen boughs she decorated the porch railings with. He could see himself out there come Easter, scattering the carrots Chrissy had left for the Easter bunny in a trail, taking a bite out of each one first.

Oh, Jesus, Jesus Christ in heaven…it had been a life. A real life. It had been his life and he had been content with it all. In love with it. In love with his wife and his stepdaughter. All the holidays and special times, raking leaves in the fall and cutting grass in the summer and shoveling snow in the winter while Chrissy pegged snowballs at him. Chrissy’s slumber parties and Lily’s quilting guild. Tommy and he building the garage out back. Summer cookouts with steaks on the grill and cold beers in hand, Chrissy and her friends splashing in an inflatable pool and?

“Mitch?” Tommy said. “You okay, man?”

Mitch swallowed it all down before it took him away. He wiped his eyes with the back of his fist. “I’m all right.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go in there, you know? I can get the shells.”

“No, I’m going in.”

Mitch led the way up the porch, shutting it all down inside of him until he was numb and could not feel a thing. Just some wind-up machine out doing a job. The door was unlocked and he couldn’t remember if he’d locked it or not. No matter. He led the way in with Tommy behind him and he wondered vaguely in the back of his mind how many times they’d come in like this together, carrying groceries or six-packs or bowling trophies. Maybe even Christmas presents to be surreptitiously placed under the tree for Chrissy. A new sled and skates, Barbie’s Dream House and an Easy Bake Oven. God, those were the days. Tommy…crazy fucking Tommy…climbing up onto the icy, snowy roof on Christmas Eve night, stomping around up there like Santa Claus so Chrissy would go to bed already.

Stop it! he told himself. You don’t feel any of it! You don’t feel anything! Nothing at all! You’re empty!

Mitch got the box of shells from the locked metal box up in the hall closet. As he was taking them out, something gave him pause. At first he thought it was those damn memories again, sneaking up to torment him. Because he was smelling lilacs. Lilacs of all things. He stepped farther into the hall, over near the staircase leading to the second floor.

The odor was stronger.

Lilacs.

“You smelling it?” he said to Tommy.

Tommy nodded. “Yeah. Flowers or some shit.”

“Lilacs.”

That meant nothing to Tommy, of course. Not really. But to Mitch it meant everything. He knew that smell. Knew it very well and it made something in his belly pull down low. Lily’s body lotion. She put it on after she had a bath. Its smell was distinctive and he could feel her skin beneath his lips, that lilac odor sweet in his face.

Mitch stood there looking up the stairs.

“What’s the matter?” Tommy asked.

He told him.

“Shit,” Tommy said.

They went up the stairs side by side and when they got there, they went right to the master bedroom. Right away, that telltale scent of lilacs became almost overpowering. Beneath it, there was something else, a dankness Mitch was glad he could not smell. What he saw in there?in his bedroom?was much like what they’d seen in that other bedroom yesterday at the Bell house. Someone had been here. Someone had been at Lily’s vanity. They had scattered cosmetics and perfumes and what have you everywhere. Drawers were yanked open, emptied. Silky underthings hanging out like guts. And there was the tube of lilac body lotion. Most of it had been squirted all over the vanity top and then tossed to the floor and stepped on, the remainder seeping into the carpet. Somebody had been using it, though. It had been on their hands when they pressed them against the vanity mirror, leaving creamy prints there.

Mitch felt like he was going to swoon. He steadied himself against the chest of drawers. “She was here. Last night or early this morning.”

Tommy swallowed. “Who?”

“Lily.”

“Mitch, you don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

And he did.

They come back that quickly. They die and rise that quickly.

Tommy was looking at the bed. There was a gray stain on the quilt. Somebody had been laying there, somebody that was wet and dirty.

Sure, Mitch, he thought. She came back here looking for you. She went to her mirror and smashed things around looking for the lotion. When she found it, she smeared it all over her cold white flesh. Perhaps grinning like a skull the whole time. Then she laid in the bed and waited for you. As she had waited for you other nights…

“She was here,” Mitch said. “She might still be. You got that salt on you?”

Tommy pulled the waterproof bag out from under his raincoat.

“All right. If she’s here, let’s find her.”

Tommy didn’t argue.

They went from room to room, looked in closets and behind furniture and under beds. They could not find her. Finally, they opened the cellar door and looked down there into the black rising water. It was at least four feet deep and rising, coming right up to the seventh or eighth step. Cardboard boxes and plastic bottles of detergent bobbed on the surface.

“She’s down there,” Mitch said. “I know she is.”