Holiday of the Dead (10 page)

“Do any of you know how many compounds Valinson Pharmaceuticals has stockpiled, waiting for federal approvals and testing to complete? Or how many so-called failures we house in the clean vaults?”

From across the table Cynthia, head bowed, whispered, “Please. Don’t do this, Warren.”

Warren felt the slightest twinge of mortification rush through him. He was about to murder the remnants of his family. Just like they all murdered Uncle Gerald. For money, wealth and power.

Warren crushed the feeling and sat up straighter.

“No,” he said firmly. This was not about material things; this was about justice long overdue. Murder could be redeemed by death and death alone.

Uncle Gerald’s attentions swung his way. Warren let himself imagine the bobbing of that skull-like visage to be supportive confirmation. He nodded back.

“Did we give Uncle Gerald a choice? We tinkered with his meds, causing a fatal reaction because we had grown weary of the cycle of deathly illness and miraculous recovery. We wanted the old curmudgeon to just die already, fork over the empire to a bunch of ungrateful brats. We rationalized, saying it was justice for the years Aunt Linda suffered under Uncle Gerald’s domineering. Everyone blamed him for Cousin Stefanie’s suicide when he disowned her over the issue of her sexual preference. Our father – his own brother! – cursed his name on his deathbed for a lifetime of petty evils. We all hated him for various personal incidents and cruelties.

“And for that we labelled him worthy of execution. But was that really why? No! Sheer greed the cause.”

Warren ticked off the list of their crimes.

Paul had wanted the money for his real estate company. Shady dealings that saw more people fall into homelessness than domiciled. Not to forget the prostitutes or cocaine.

Ophelia needed the wealth and notoriety of being an heir to the Valinson Pharmaceuticals name for parties and socializing, hobnobbing with the blue-bloods and affairs with rich and powerful men.

Jerry, the penultimate used-car salesman, for the crumbs Ophelia would throw his way.

Harry had to cover up the feelings of inadequacy and failure at not making it into the pros, “And hide your secret of diddling little boys. Oh yes, Harry. We all know about your tastes,” Warren said.

Harry’s eyes shot wide. He looked around, ready to violently deny the accusations before seeing the looks of revulsive acknowledgement.

“My own damnable research and experimentations required financing. At least Cynthia did something worthwhile with her spoils. Yet not one of us was willing to stand on our own merits, make our own way through life and amass our own fortunes. Impatient and too lazy to earn it.” Fury was flowing freely, years of repressed anger and shame tumbling out with such vitriol.

“What right did we have? What right?”

Dumbfounded silence was the reply. No one met his gaze. He had finally done it. Warren had shamed them. Every crime uttered was stark truth.

Whose idea it had been originally was moot, time effacing that particular detail. They all played a part. It just sort of, happened.

Warren bolted from his chair, towering from the head of the table. “Absolutely none. And here lies fitting punishment. All I had to do was steal the right compounds. Once the initial tests proved conclusive I simply smuggled Uncle Gerald’s body from cold storage, not that any of you would ever notice its absence. Unlike all of you I still put in a day’s work instead of frittering away my time and money. At our departed uncle’s company, no less. It was easy.”

Warren motioned to the struggling form strapped in the chair to his right. “And there he is. The bastard himself. Not quite alive, but no longer our victim.”

Warren lifted a small remote control detonator he had kept hidden beneath his napkin and pressed a button. There was a brief flash from the back of the chair and the smell of cordite fused the air.

“Life returns to dead tissue at a cellular level, with some interesting side-effects,” Warren said and settled back into his chair.

“Good thing it’s Thanksgiving. Plenty of food to go around.”

Uncle Gerald’s bonds loosened and fell away. The shrivelled Thing was free, the knot keeping the straps in place having burned through by the controlled explosion. In a moment the freed corpse jerked to its feet and lurched forward.

At the other end of the table four co-conspirators jostled each other to be the furthest from the advancing revenant. The shouting drew Uncle Gerald toward them. Only Cynthia remained in her seat; a flood of tears raining from her eyes, the deluge staining the tablecloth with mascara and sorrow.

Warren tried not to watch. He’d seen enough during his initial testing.

The rats were the worst, far too dreadful to be used as a punishment even for this lot. The dead hobo hadn’t been as voracious as those beasts. Yet every result was the same. They felt no pain. Age of a corpse was irrelevant unless decomposition had destroyed motor function entirely. Uncle Gerald was relatively limber once defrosted.

Warren reached for a clean plate and began to pile on strips of succulent turkey breast and heaps of creamy mashed sweet potatoes.

As he spooned peas onto his plate he heard the high-pitched, unmanly yelping of Jerry as the others shoved him to the forefront. Uncle Gerald lay cold, clammy hands around the living sacrifice’s throat, pulling. A second later choked screams took on a new level of anguish as a rancid maw latched onto Jerry’s cheek and rotten teeth sawed through soft pink flesh. Uncle Gerald’s head reared, rent flesh glistening redly as it was chewed with emotionless contentment. The scent of fresh blood mingled with the air.

“Oh my god!”

Harry started pounding on the door again, Paul knocking Ophelia aside and joining his brother in trying to break down the portal. Warren took a sip of water and considered the gravy; sure they would fail to break through the sheet of steel embedded between planks of wood. He had planned well.

Ophelia was on her knees blubbering and crying as she regained her senses from Paul’s bludgeoning. Only she was close enough to hear the sounds of chewing meat ushering from the spectacle of her dead uncle mauling her living husband. No matter how cold Ophelia had been throughout her life, the grisly scene was enough to break her façade. Her throat tore as she screamed in terror. Jerry’s cries subsided to a gurgling hiss as fleshy morsels were gouged from his gut.

“None of us are leaving here,” Warren said. He stuffed a piece of turkey in his mouth. It was tasteless, like masticating paper.

Jerry’s death-rattle went unheard beneath the din.

Carnage was mounting.

Uncle Gerald rose up from the cooling body and lurched towards Ophelia. This was another phenomena Warren had observed during his testing – the reanimated lost interest in feeding once life had faded from a meal. New, fresh meat would be sought. Warren’s youngest sister constituted the nearest living flesh.

Ophelia tried to crawl away, but Uncle Gerald’s fumbling hands found her ankle and began to tug. Lacquered nails left furrows in the carpet as Ophelia desperately tried to hold on. Her once immaculate make-up was smeared and runny. Bubbles of snot burst in her nostrils as she was yanked back into the cold clutches of Uncle Gerald. Her silken blouse offered no protection from unfeeling fingers and teeth.

Warren glanced at his watch and began counting along with the ticks of the second hand. Right on cue, one minute later, Jerry’s ravaged corpse rose up with vacant eyes and slack jaw. The holes in his torso were leaking red messes. One eyeball drooped out of its socket, held on by a glistening pink thread. Crimson ooze dripped from Jerry’s lips. A quivering, low moan followed the bloody flood.

Warren nodded to himself and continued his flavourless repast. He ignored Ophelia’s pleas and the futile pounding of his brothers, spooning more sweet-potatoes onto his empty plate. Flesh ripped and tore. Anguish and terror filled the room. Warren himself was ravenous.

When was the last time he ate? Days? Too bad everything tasted like ashes in his mouth.

Even as Uncle Gerald and Jerry bore down on Harry and Paul, Ophelia was rising from the dead and joining ranks. Warren decided to look up and watched his younger sister reach out for their brothers – entrails swinging freely from her once toned abs like a blood-slick pendulum – as they fought against Gerald and Jerry. The carpet soaked up rubies of life.

Warren dipped a dinner roll into the gravy boat. He brought the dripping bread to his mouth and sampled it. Still tasteless.

The outcome of the life and death struggle was never in doubt for Warren. Uncle Gerald and his newfound allies were as inexorable as the tides. They would not tire, they would not flag or yield to thoughts of mercy. Harry, Paul, and Cynthia had nowhere to run.

Drawn out moans joined the cries of fright at the other side of the room. A glass shattered.

Warren spotted the cranberry sauce and wondered if that would prove to titillate.
Only one way to find out
, he mused. He reached.
And the last chance
, he added a bit later.

Even with the Damoclesian blade about to befall, it wasn’t a depressing thought, more freeing than anything. He scooped a thick spoonful and transferred it to his plate.

At the other end of the table Warren noticed Cynthia’s head lying at a weird angle against the back of her chair, a dearth of foam gushing from her gaping mouth and rolling down the front of her chiffon dress. An open bottle of pills lay next to her half-eaten dinner. Warren never would have thought Cynthia capable of resorting to suicide, but he supposed, had the roles been reversed, he might have done more than consider the option himself. Either way the guilty were punished. Perhaps her humanitarian works did allow for mitigation of her suffering. It was now out of Warren’s hands.

Harry’s and Paul’s cries transmuted from frightened horror to torturous howls. The struggle was nearly over. The doom of the Valinsons’ had come.

Warren used his fork to skewer the quivering red gelatine and bring it to his mouth. The tart substance burst to life on his tongue. At last, something with some flavour.
Delicious!

He closed his eyes and savoured the texture and the taste. Somewhere in the background Harry and Paul were gutted and gnawed. The walls dripped gore. A Thanksgiving charnel house was born.

Warren scooped up another lump of cranberry sauce and sat back, eyes closed and serene. He plopped the spoonful into his mouth and held it on the tongue, savouring. Waiting.

Guilt was dissipated. Blown away on an autumnal night’s breeze like the leaves from a tree.

THE END

DIG

By

Lee Kelly

“Are we there yet?” 

Steven knew fine well that they weren’t.  They’d only been in the car for twenty minutes and he knew that it was at least another hour before his parents would be arguing about who forgot to pack the deckchairs.

His dad didn’t answer, so Steven decided to ask again.

Through a gap in the headrest Steven could see his dad’s neck turn the fiery red of repressed rage.  “No.  I’ll tell you when we’re there,” he muttered through clenched teeth.  Steven giggled at his father’s reaction and plucked his ‘Combat Dan’ action figure from the open rucksack at his feet.

“No.  I’ll tell you when we’re there,” the toy echoed in Steven’s best Dad voice.  Combat Dan was bouncing along the back of his mum’s seat, parroting the phrase over and over.   “No.  I’ll tell you when we’re there.  No. I’ll tell you when we’re there.  No.  I’ll …”

Steven’s mum reached around and snatched the toy from his grasp, throwing it onto the dashboard.  “For Christ’s sake, Steven! Give it a rest!” she barked

He watched his mum in the rear-view mirror, her eyes narrowed as though daring him to say something else.  He knew better than to argue back when she had that expression on her face so he hunched down in his seat, drew the hood of his jumper up over his head and sulked in silence.

The peace in the car was suddenly shattered by a string of expletives aimed at the vehicle in front as it slowed to a halt yet again.  Dad gripped the steering wheel tightly as though choking the life out of the driver of the Volvo.  “If we’d have set off when I wanted to we’d have avoided all of this traffic.”

“Well it wasn’t me fannying around in the bathroom, was it?”  Dad’s voice was rising in volume, even managing to drown out the honking horns of the grid-locked traffic.

“For fu …” Steven’s mum caught herself in time, glancing at her son in the rear-view mirror.  She lowered her voice to a quiet hiss. “Ten minutes makes no fucking difference, John.  Stop being a dickhead and let’s try and enjoy ourselves for once, shall we?”

The bickering continued, but Steven didn’t hear a word.  He was far too busy daydreaming about pirates, ice-cream and burying Dad alive.

There were no pirates, the solitary seafront café was closed for refurbishment and Steven had been threatened with a good hiding if he kept on getting sand on his dad’s trousers.  Things were not as much fun as he had imagined. 

The beach was deserted; in no part due to the icy winds and black skies.  The family were wrapped up tightly, and Steven’s mum had even huddled up beneath a tartan rug that they kept in the boot of the car.  No-one was speaking after the deckchair argument and out of bloody-minded stubbornness neither adult would break the silence and suggest that they head home.  

Mum projected an aura of fury from beneath her tartan hummock, slurping angrily at her lukewarm thermos coffee whilst reading her latest Mills & Boon bodice ripper.  Dad flicked through a gardening magazine, turning each page as though it caused a personal affront.

Steven was largely oblivious to the mood, so intent was he on The Project.  With Combat Dan supervising, he had decided that he was going to see how far down he could dig before the tide came in.  He had high hopes for reaching Australia, or at the very least finding some lugworms that he could use as bait in a seagull trap.  He’d only been working for thirty minutes and already the red plastic of his spade vanished completely into the hole with each scoop.  The dribbly yellow dry sand had long-since been replaced with the wet, brown stuff that was much heavier for him to lift but did make a wonderful sloppy sound.