THE NIGHT BLOGGER The Graveyard Game (and other cemetery plots) Episode Six 'Direct Market Thing'

 

By Al Bruno III

 

October 27th: Sue Charney was on the good side of thirty and the bad side of an impending financial apocalypse. Many would say that at her age, she should have known better than to sink her remaining savings into a direct selling organization in the hopes of making a quick fortune, but they might have done the same after sitting through one of Emblazon Unlimited's free recruitment seminars. Pyramid scheme or not, they make one hell of a recruitment video.

From the day her $300 sales kit arrived, Sue zealously pitched Emblazon Unlimited's dollar 'store quality' product line to her coworkers and friends, at parties and family gatherings, and even door-to-door through her apartment complex.

Her hard work generated few sales but plenty of reactions. Her neighbors complained, getting her in trouble for violating her lease's 'No Soliciting' clause. The break room at work emptied whenever she walked in. Her friends stopped returning calls, and her calendar became barren of family gatherings and parties. By April, Sue faced a decision: pay her rent or shell out more money for Emblazon Unlimited's seminars and stock management fees.

That was what sent her out to that secluded house on the outskirts of Ghent for what she had been told would be intense one-on-one sales coaching. Even now, I'm not sure why she and several others agreed to visit the residence of a man they had never heard of or met. Was it foolishness? Desperation? Or the lingering effects of that star-studded recruitment video?

A light shone in every window; the front door was unlocked. An earlier text message had told her to just go in and make herself at home.

So that's just what Sue Charney did.

And it was the last thing she ever did.

###

… I'll spare you the specifics of how I pieced together Sue Charney's final night. Let's just say it involved hard work, patience, and some serious online skullduggery.

I had my incredibly shady cousin Roy create a fake ID for me; he chose the name 'Nathaniel Blades.' That's Roy for you. Despite the name sounding fit for an action hero or an adult film star, it served its purpose. I used it to become an Emblazon Unlimited distributor. My initiation into the world of direct sales happened through emails and conference calls. There was a credit check, contracts to sign, and promises of a financial empire built on generic soaps and toilet paper.

Even for a newbie, my sales numbers were pitiful. Giving away stock to the needy will do that to you. There were more conference calls and increasingly insistent suggestions that I buy more sales training DVDs. I pleaded poverty and began talking about leaving the flock.

That's when they offered me a free consultation with their Northeastern Sales Coach, Davis Sawney. Imagine my surprise—they'd never mentioned a Sales Coach before. They sent me an address and an appointment time, naturally at night, so I put on my semi-good suit and shiniest shoes and made the hour-long drive to Ghent. As I was 'in disguise,' I left my straw fedora home.

There isn't much to say about Ghent; it's a quiet little town, the kind of place people move to if they find Utica too exciting. Davis Sawney's home wasn't all that fancy, but compared to some of the rural homes I'd passed on the way, it was practically a mansion.

No wait. That isn't fair. But as I've said many times before, I have been and probably always will be a city boy. Rural environments make me feel vulnerable, and rural people always make me feel like a nerd at football practice. When Joe Redneck looks at me, he knows he's looking at a guy who can't survive without fast food and Google Search; he knows that when civilization collapses, he and his kin will survive while I if I'm lucky, will have to earn food by selling my hiney to groups of feral rodeo clowns.

Wow. Now, that's what I call going off on a tangent.

My AMC Pacer made its way up the dirt driveway of the Sawney house, flecks of dirt spattering everywhere, even up onto the windshield. I parked near the house and walked up to the front door.

Knocking first yielded no response. Then I rang the bell, the sound echoing faintly inside the house, but no one answered the door or shouted a hearty "Come in!"

The longer I stood there, the more exposed I felt. That old familiar instinct to run began to settle into place, but I always ignored it. A strange feeling of being conspicuous came over me, that and the urge to run. I tried knocking and ringing again. Still nothing, I changed it up by ringing the bell and then knocking.

Still no answer.

My phone bleeped. I checked it and saw a text message from the same number that had sent me this address and directions. It said, "On conference call. Door unlocked. Come in and make yourself at home."

Dandy, just dandy.

A blast of unseasonably frigid air conditioning hit me as I let myself inside. It was so cold that I half expected to see sides of beef hanging from the ceiling. Instead, I found gentle lighting and tasteful colonial décor. Impressive-looking sliding doors blocked access to all the rooms and hallways except for one. Voices and music echoed towards me; I followed them, trying not to feel like a mouse in a maze or, to return to my previous metaphor, a cow in a slaughterhouse.

Either way, I made sure I tiptoed every step.

The hallway led to a wide receiving room, where a widescreen TV burbled and flickered with the latest Emblazon Unlimited promotional video. Plush, expensive-looking chairs were arranged in front of it. The walls of the room were eggshell white and decorated with tall oil paintings depicting cowboys being cowboys and bullfighters being assholes. In the center of the room was a wide table heaped with refreshments—sandwiches, fruit, and an impressive selection of alcoholic beverages.

I could imagine new arrivals making a beeline right for that table, so I didn't. Instead, I casually wandered around, looking for anything suspicious. After a few minutes, I realized the most questionable thing was the hairpiece the guy in the promotional video was wearing.

But this had to be the room where it all happened, the room where Sue Charney and at least a half dozen others had met their demise. I had tried to tell the state police what my investigations had revealed and what I suspected, but they dismissed me as always. As far as they were concerned, an ordinary run-of-the-mill serial killer was responsible for the desiccated bodies they were pulling out of Iron Fen Pond every six weeks or so.

Ten minutes went by, and still, no one had come into the room to meet Nathaniel Blades, aka Yours Truly. The promotional video must have been in a loop because it started playing again from the beginning. I brought up the "On conference call. Door unlocked. Come in and make yourself at home." message and tried to text back, only to get a number-not-in-service error.

"Hello?" I called out, "Is there anyone here?"

Nothing.

My eyes followed the path a normal person would take upon entering the room—I mentioned before they'd head straight for the refreshments. Briefly, I wondered if the bagel sandwiches had been spiked, then I saw it.

A square shape on the hardwood floor caught my eye, about a yard to the right of the table. It was barely noticeable, easily dismissed by anyone else as a flaw in the carpentry.

But 'normal' hasn't been part of my life for years. It didn't take much imagination to picture what came next: an unsuspecting soul enjoying free food, TV drowning out the sound of a trap door snapping open.

So, I lifted one of the plush chairs as gingerly and quietly as possible, setting it over the square on the floor. With that done, I decided to explore.

Each sliding door was locked, so I chose one at random and started picking the lock—a skill I've honed over the years, useful when dealing with the forces of darkness who rarely invest in high-end security.

After a few moments, the door slid open, revealing a narrow, twisting stairway. Climbing it induced serious vertigo. Twenty-four steps later, I faced a metal door. The lower floors of the house were chilly, but the upper floor was humid and thick. The hall had plenty of doors, but only one caught my attention, a thick, robust steel barrier resembling a meat freezer door. I crossed the hall and touched Its thick metal handle; it felt warm and clammy, like the skin of a sick man. As it swung open, I was hit by a gust of foul air.

The room revealed was not a freezer, but it had smooth, metallic walls that reflected the glow of the overhead fluorescent lights. A single window on the right side of the room was thick with condensation, matching the layer that coated every other surface—except for the altar.

And no, I wasn't surprised to find an altar on the far wall of the room. What else could there be in a place like this?

The altar, adorned in silver and gold, held an open-faced diorama of a yellow house. Within its central room stood a playhouse where seven wax figurines with wicks protruding from their heads were placed. Despite the heat, the only signs of melting were evident near the wicks of these figurines. My scowl became a mask of abject horror. I knew what those wax miniatures represented.

Dark, dried stains spattered the altar and its accessories. Blood had been spilled here, Sue Charney's specifically, but I'm sure every other corpse fished out of Fowler's Pond had started out here as a living being. I pulled out my phone and took some pictures.

The door hissed open behind me. I turned to see a short figure in a black suit that looked like a car salesman cosplaying as a high-powered executive. There was no anger or surprise in his voice. I snapped another picture.

"What is going on here?" I asked, "Why are you doing this?"

I've often said that I usually meet two kinds of trouble—stalkers and talkers. I'd expected Davis Sawney to be a talker, which was why I wasn't ready when he dove at me and brought me down.

Scrawny hands wrapped around my throat. I started choking and gasping.

We rolled across the cold floor. I pulled at the hands, but they wouldn't budge. I threw a few punches, but my attacker didn't react. When you're being strangled, you always find yourself staring into your attacker's eyes. They say the eyes are the gateway to the soul. If so, what kind of soul were those dull, emotionless eyes revealing?

I will probably never know because, at that moment, I jabbed my thumbs into them. There was no rewarding scream of pain and horror, but I could breathe again. I watched the black-suited stranger stagger and flail blindly. I'm not sure I can ever make you understand how much I wanted this murderer to make a sound. A curse, a scream, anything, but the only noise in that room was my gasping breaths and the shattering of glass when my assailant fell out the window...

###

"So, where are the pictures?" Sara asked as we sat on my couch. She spent almost every other night here so I could monitor her for further sleepwalking incidents. I think she would have preferred to stay every night, but that would have given her parents more to complain about. They believed she was spending time with an old friend from high school, and fortunately, that friend was willing to cover for her.

"It was broken in the fight," I said unhappily. "So I had to make an anonymous call to the police from a pay phone at a self-service gas station. I was surprised to find either, much less both."

She covered her smile with her hand, "How many phones is that for you?"

"I don't want to think about it." I also didn't want to think about whether I had left any usable fingerprints somewhere in that oh-so-elegant house of horrors. On my way out, I had wiped down both sides of the doorknob, but still...

Item: Forensics revealed blood traces of almost a dozen people on that altar, all linked to the bodies recovered from Iron Fen Pond. What they didn't find were the wax miniatures that had made me so justifiably nervous.

Item: As I suspected, Davis Sawney had been sacrificing his less productive underlings on a homemade altar for the last few months to appease whatever dark force had captured his interest. You might scoff, but the man amassed millions in cash and stocks, owning dozens of cars, a yacht, three mansions, and even an alpaca farm.

Item: What he didn't own was the house in Ghent, where he carried out his blasphemous acts. That house belonged to the corporate overlords of Emblazon Unlimited. It was loaned out to their top earners as a perk. No one in law enforcement or the legitimate press bothered to ask why this perk had trapdoors.

Item: While Emblazon Unlimited took no responsibility for the terrible crimes committed on their property, they did send heartfelt condolences, a year's supply of lavender-scented bath bombs, and the jerky-based treat called 'Beef Whips' to the families of the deceased.

And finally, as I said earlier, the body of Davis Sawney was never found. While some of you might think that means he survived his fall and slunk off like a movie maniac to kill again, I do not think so.

Why?

Now, you can take what I say with a grain of salt; after all, I had just finished being strangled. I told Sara, "When I ran to the window and looked out, I didn't see the yard or the driveway. I didn't see what I saw when I first arrived. I saw a swamp. It was night, but the sky was tinged green. The air smelled like stagnant water, but with just a trace of something else, like that odor you catch right after you blow out a candle. The trees were huge and twisted with branches that were tangled and thick with Spanish moss. Through them, I could just barely glimpse the silhouette of a tall, broken-looking building."

I hadn't realized I had begun to shiver until Sara took my hand. "What about Davis Sawney?" she asked.

There was a long pause before I told her, "I saw him. Just a glimpse. He was being dragged into the trees by a… a shape."

But what I didn't tell her was how very familiar that shape was.

 

THE NIGHT BLOGGER The Graveyard Game (and other cemetery plots) Episode Five 'Digging In The Dirt'

By Al Bruno III

 

October 10th: A few weeks after playing the Graveyard Game, Sara Bishop began sleepwalking. Her wealthy family in Clifton Park was incredibly upset—not out of concern for her well-being, as they had made it clear since her childhood that she was considered the runt of the litter and, worse, a girl. No, they were upset because, to the prestigious Bishop family, mental health issues were simply unacceptable. Just like not flying first class or mingling with minorities, it simply wasn't done.

You see, Sara was a menopause baby, a surprise of the highest order for her mother, father, and two thirty-year old brothers. She had what she called a 'begrudging childhood.' Whatever her family did for her, they did begrudgingly. I know some of you might say, "So what, she was rich?" but just think about it: every trip, every gift, every gesture—they made sure she knew the price tag. They even ragged on her about the cost of her tonsillectomy.

And no matter how much gratitude Sara expressed, it was never enough.

With a family like that, is it any wonder she ended up not being good at making friends? With a family like that, is it any wonder that after getting a scholarship to a prestigious university, she simply didn't go? Is it any wonder she stayed up nights researching cryptids and creepypastas? Bigfoot, you could make sense of. But your own mother treating you like less than garbage? Not so much.

Each night, Sara woke up a little further from home. At first, she dismissed finding herself in her bedroom doorway as a half-conscious trip to the restroom or kitchen. But soon, she was waking up in the hallway, then at the top of the stairs. The night she found herself standing in the front doorway, she went to her family for help. They offered more accusations than advice, making it clear in no uncertain terms that she would not be allowed to embarrass the family by seeking any kind of professional help. Instead, Sara's mother handed her a bottle of opioids and told her not to do anything stupid.

The pills had no effect. She started staying awake as long as she could, but in the end, sleep always won out.

Then, one night, as her brother was coming home from a night out with his friends, he found her stumbling down the driveway in her panties and t-shirt. He almost ran her over. When her father found out, he called her a slut.

So she started sleeping in her clothes and shoes, barricading herself in her room. But it did no good. She kept waking up further and further down the street.

Then, when all hope was almost lost, she called me...

###

…And I blew it. I invited Sara to spend the night at my place, I would sleep on the couch, and she would sleep in my bed. Thank God Mrs. Vincenzo changed my sheets for me on a weekly basis.

 She blamed herself for this situation, for playing the Graveyard game, but as far as I was concerned, I was the one responsible. I had more experience in these matters, and I had lost so much for wanting to see the secrets that hid in the shadows.

Staying awake to watch over her should have been a simple matter of working on my blog, but Sara couldn't sleep. She asked me to watch a movie with her. It was the least I could do. And that was how I learned her favorite film was This Is Spinal Tap. I'd never seen it before, but damn if it wasn't hilarious. After the movie was over, we got to talking. She told me about her profoundly toxic family, and I told her a sanitized version of the preternatural entity that had destroyed most of my family. All that confession finally made her feel sleepy, and she said she wanted to sleep on the couch. I told her it would be safer for her to be in my room, that was, there were two doors between her and the outside world, but she said she couldn't stand to be alone.

Lord, did I understand that feeling.

So I camped out on the recliner with a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and a mystery novel called The Case Of The Barking Clock. Well, it turns out the only mystery about that novel was how many drugs the author was in when he wrote it. I don't even remember falling asleep, but I did.

When I woke up, it was a little after 2 AM, and Sara was gone.

First, I blundered around my apartment, calling her name. Then, I ran down the stairs and started combing the neighborhood street by street. The night air was thick with a damp chill, and even though I was running along the sidewalks, I heard the faint rustling of leaves echoing around me. Each step seemed to drag as if time itself had slowed in the darkness. I called her name; no one answered, aside from an old man yelling at me to shut up from his second-story window.

So I doubled back to my place, jumped into my beat-up AMC Pacer, and started combing the streets that way. All my headlights showed me were empty sidewalks and closed storefronts. My eyes strained to see any sign of movement. Nothing. Then, to make matters worse, a cop pulled me over for driving suspiciously.

As I sat there waiting for the cop to write up my citation for driving fifteen miles an hour in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone, I prayed he wasn't one of Detective Bradshaw's pals. Then it hit me where I should have gone in the first place.

Once the ticket joined the others in the glove compartment, I started driving again, but this time, I headed straight for Pinewood Cemetery—the place where this nonsense had begun.

The idea that Sara would be there was one of my loopier notions. The abandoned graveyard was at least twenty miles away; in a sane world, it would take her hours to get there on foot.

But my world hasn't been sane for years.

 Albany's familiar landmarks passed in a blur. I was sick with the unsettling feeling that time was slipping away. My route to Pinewood Cemetery took me through some of the older, more rundown parts of the city and out onto the rural byroads. The streetlights became dwindling specks in my rearview mirror. Three AM was drawing close.

Three AM. The witching hour.

Certainly! Here's a revised version while maintaining the narrative voice:

I'm a city boy by nature, and I hate country roads, especially at night. They're too dark and isolated, with shadows below and cold stars above. The further I drove, the more alone I felt. A pair of headlights rounded the corner in the oncoming lane, glaring like those of a truck or SUV. They blinded me, and suddenly, I wished for a bit of isolation again. I was so busy cursing and fumbling with the sun visor that I almost didn't notice the vehicle swerving into my lane and accelerating.

It bore down on me, and in that terrifying moment, I saw it was Bus 55. Time seemed to slow as I took in every detail—the chipped and faded paint, the grimy windows. I could vaguely make out the shape of the bus driver, but his face was obscured in shadow.

With a surge of panic, I yanked the wheel, sending my car screeching into the opposite lane, careening along the ditch, and smashing through part of the guardrail. As I corrected course and found myself back on the road, I had a perfect view of the retreating vehicle.

And the nightmares that rode that bus had a perfect view of me. They crowded around the rear windshield, figures of men with faces painted in grotesque shades of gray and black. Their expressions twisted into mirthless grins. In the center of them stood the one who had spoken my name over a month ago, and he gave a little wave.

I sat in the middle of the road, trying to catch my breath. I whispered a chant reminiscent of Psalm 23 but with a lot of 'Fuck' interspersed. When I stopped shaking, I turned my car around and drove the rest of the way to the outskirts of Pinewood Cemetery. Parking in a secluded spot, and unlike last time, I remembered to grab my satchel out of the back seat. With my knees still watery, I started walking along the fence line.

I wondered to myself, what was that damn bus doing out here in the boonies?

This wasn't its regular route.

Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.

I found the hole in the fence easily, the same one that first Sara and then I had squeezed through before. The graveyard lay ahead, a sprawling expanse of crumbling tombstones and overgrown paths. How long had it been since there had been a groundskeeper? I couldn't imagine. The wind rustled the leaves in the trees, an owl hooted somewhere in the distance, each sound amplifying the stillness of the night and adding to the sense of foreboding. I retrieved my flashlight from the satchel, its beam cutting through the darkness as I slipped through the gap in the fence.

Moonlight filtered through the ugly trees, casting equally unpleasant shadows. To my right stood a ruined mausoleum, its wall crumbled and empty stone niches where bodies once lay. I shuddered, pondering where those bodies had gone. Had they been taken by the authorities or something more sinister? Over the years, I'd learned there were many ways for a corpse to leave its grave. Stealing one was so simple, even a blogger could do it.

Sara was at her namesake's grave, illuminated by a faint glimmer of moonlight, her figure almost ghostly in the dimness. She was kneeling, her hands caked with dirt as she clawed through the earth, muttering under her breath.

At first, I tried to call her by her name, but she didn't notice me. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs, her fingers trembling as they worked at the cold soil. With careful urgency, I reached out, gently pulling her away from the grave's edge. "Sara," I whispered, my voice barely a whisper.

"What's happening to me?" Her voice trembled, barely audible over the whispering wind.

"I don't know," I admitted. "But let's try and find out."

I pulled out a collapsible shovel from my satchel bag and told Sara to go back to the car. She refused, her eyes a mix of fear and determination. I had her take the flashlight and keep it trained on me.

Like I said before, digging up a body is so easy even a blogger can do it. The sun would be up in three or four hours, so I worked as fast as I could, the rhythm of my shovel crunching into the dirt breaking through the night's silence. The ground was stubborn and thick with roots. I was sweating and shivering all at once. My back started to ache, and then it REALLY started to ache. Around the time exhaustion threatened to overwhelm me, my shovel hit something hard.

The casket containing the remains of Sara Bishop's namesake was nearly two hundred years old. I had conducted research on the woman, but I chose to keep my findings to myself. According to historical records, she had been executed by hanging in 1848 for murder. However, rumors circulated widely, originating from unreliable sources. Some claimed she was the high priestess of a doomsday cult, others accused her of murdering children, and there were even whispers suggesting she was not entirely human.

Straddling the ancient casket, I positioned the shovel carefully, its metal blade scraping against weathered wood. With determined force, I pried and prodded until the lid yielded with a resounding crack, and the aged wood splintered apart. I asked Sara to bring the flashlight closer, and we both screamed at what it revealed. I clenched my eyes shut, then opened them again.

Inside lay the remains of a long-dead woman, but they had been grotesquely altered by some mad taxidermist. A caul of pockmarked flesh stretched over her face, and both hands had been removed, replaced by animal appendages—one serpentine, the other bestial.

"Gorgo..." Sara wept, her voice trembling. "Mormo... Luna... thousand-faced moon…"

###

October 11th: Before I filled the grave back in, I smashed the twisted shape it contained about twenty times in one of my standard acts of futility. Then I brought Sara back home to my apartment above Vincenzo's Pawn Shop and did my best to care for her. She spent most of the morning vacillating between catatonia and hysteria, but she's asleep on my couch now. I don't think she'll sleepwalk again, but I pushed the coffee table in front of the door just in case.

I am not sure what I am going to do when I start my shift downstairs in about an hour. Maybe Sara can nap in the back room? Maybe the forever patient Mrs. Vincenzo will keep an eye on her for me? I don't know. I'm just sitting on the floor, trying to figure out what the Hell I'm going to do.

This is a possession, but it isn't the result of some vengeful witch or surly phantom. What am I dealing with here?

Gorgo, Mormo, Luna, thousand-faced moon… What are you? How am I going to stop you? And why, upon closer examination, did I find that the 'grotesque stitched-together monstrosity' didn't actually have any stitches at all?

 

 

THE NIGHT BLOGGER The Graveyard Game (and other cemetery plots) Episode Four 'Shadow of The Zombie'

By Al Bruno III

 

September 19th: Victor Bisolglio spent most of his time either making meth or playing World of Warcraft, but his pursuit of one was always a detriment to the other. Sometimes, he missed raids because he was too busy cooking; other times, he was so fixated on his daily quests that he ended up making a useless batch.

Or two.

Or three.

He lived in a trailer on his parents' property, a weathered double-wide nestled among overgrown weeds and rusting farm equipment. They'd long ago given up on him, resigned to his presence like an irremovable stain. Victor had transformed the back corner of their once-tidy property into his own chaotic domain—a makeshift laboratory in a shoddily constructed tool shed a few yards away from his residence.

At ten o'clock in the evening, the door to that shed hung open, revealing a mad scientist's dream of tubing, containers, and smoke. A pungent stench, a cocktail of cat piss and nail polish remover, wafted from the rickety structure, carried on a faint evening breeze. Victor sat at a grimy picnic table nearby, hunched over the dim, multicolored glow of his laptop screen. Lost in the virtual world unfolding before him, he remained oblivious to the physical decay spreading around him—the scattered tools, the discarded chemical containers, the faint haze of smoke mingling with the evening mist.

Did Victor care that he was slowly turning his parents' once-pristine property into a small-scale toxic waste dump? Did it worry him that the last three batches of meth he'd delivered to Raevyn Legendre had been unsaleable garbage? Did he care that his friends, just like his family, had given up on him?

No, not in the least, not when he had reached a place where virtual achievement, where "respec," mattered far more to him than respect.

I was nearby, concealed behind one of the few trees that groundwater poisoning hadn't left leafless and bent.

A string of recent murders had unsettled Albany. Low-level dealers and cooks had been found savaged, their throats torn out, their entrails exposed to the night air, their skulls cracked open and emptied. Rumors swirled that the assailant was no mere mortal—a figure described as shambling, dead-eyed, and caked with dirt had been spotted near the crime scenes. Any mention of the 'Z word' was quickly silenced by the authorities, dismissing it as hysteria.

At a quarter to midnight, a shape emerged from the shadows, lumbering toward Victor's double-wide and the smoking toolshed. I fumbled for my iPhone, snapping pictures silently as I watched. Victor remained engrossed in his game, oblivious to the figure approaching him.

My conscience wrestled with my caution, and I shouted a warning, but Victor remained lost in the cacophony of music, sound effects, and online chatter blaring through his earbuds.

The dark figure overturned the picnic table, snapping Victor out of his virtual trance. The reality crashed down upon him as the figure swiped, narrowly missing Victor's scrambling form. It might have ended there, a tragic misunderstanding if Victor hadn't recognized his assailant.

"Earl?" Victor's voice cracked with disbelief.

Victor hadn't expected to see Earl Edmonds again, not since he'd buried him in the woods almost three weeks ago.

When the dark shape advanced again, Victor brandished what appeared to be a revolver from his jacket. He issued threats, but the figure kept coming.

I broke cover, sprinting towards them, arms waving frantically, pleading for restraint before things spiraled out of control. The shambling figure remained unresponsive, but Victor reacted.

He screamed and fired.

Not at me, thankfully, but at the man he'd once called a friend.

A bright ball of Fourth of July fireworks erupted from the barrel.

Yes, a flare gun. Victor's choice of sidearm had been a flare gun.

There was just enough time for me to think, What is this? I don't even...

Then, a sputtering ball of burning red bounced off the dark figure's chest, careened twice along the ground, and rolled into the toolshed.

Boom.

I had no idea what volatile mix of chemicals and God-knows-what-else was housed in that ramshackle building, but the blast tore through its walls and roof in an eruption of yellow and orange fire.

Victor was consumed by the explosion. Had it been a quick end, or did the pain linger long enough for him to realize what was happening? I hoped for the former.

The other figure wasn't so fortunate; engulfed in flames, it staggered and flailed. Then it screamed.

Perhaps, in those agonizing moments, Earl Edmonds realized he wasn't one of the walking dead after all...

###

...let the record show that if you are going to be an investigator in all things preternatural and uncanny, then you are going to find yourself huddling in the bushes more often than a compulsive masturbator in a nudist colony.

It was almost dawn, and I had been watching the comings and goings at the house on Lana Drive for half the day and most of the night. The air hung heavy with the musty scent of damp earth, and the distant hum of traffic occasionally pierced the quiet of the suburban night. When the owner left on an errand, I gave the place a quick once-over, something that was fifty percent reconnaissance and fifty percent breaking and entering. That done, I returned to my hiding spot in the woods. More waiting. Hours of waiting. Waiting until my knees were aching and my bladder was threatening to erupt. It wasn't until 4 a.m. that I thought the owner of the house was alone. That was when I made my move.

But not until I relieved myself on the side of a tree first. For what I was about to do, I needed to be full of less piss and more vinegar.

I made my way up the walk and knocked on the front door.

"Brian Foster," I announced.

Raevyn Legendre, half Bokor, half crime boss, didn't look at all surprised to see me. She stepped aside, her voice tinged with a community theater-level Jamaican accent, "Come in. Come in."

"Not surprised to see me?" I asked.

"I been expecting you," she said. Her skin was the color of coffee, her hair the color of bone, "They all said there was some guy in an ugly hat going around asking lots of questions."

"Well, you can't learn anything if you don't ask questions," I grinned.

We both smiled, but they were phony smiles, politicians' smiles. She led me past her parlor with all its faux Voodoo knick-knacks and a pair of very real Lorcin .380s on the center table.

It was very telling that she hadn't grabbed them; I guess she didn't see me as much of a threat. Her and everybody else in Albany.

There was a long hallway through the center of the house leading to a pair of bedrooms. My earlier snooping had revealed that Raevyn used the bedroom on the right for sleeping, and the one on the left was where she kept her ziplock bags of dried pufferfish, marine toads, and Hyla tree frogs, her Tupperware containers of Datura paste and lysergic acid diethylamide in crystal form.

I followed my host to her bare kitchen. There was a bottle of rum on the counter, her last bottle of rum, if I was correct. It was already half empty.

Raevyn Legendre, half Bokor, half crime boss, fully functioning alcoholic, poured me a glass and offered it, "Have a drink."

"I don't drink," I lied.

"Your loss," she emptied my glass, then refilled her own. "What you be wantin'?"

"I know you had Victor Bisolglio killed and a lot of other people too."

"You wearing a wire?"

I chuckled, "Why would I help the police?"

“You one of Bootsie Werdegast’s boys?”

"No, I graduated high school."

"Maybe you want to be a hero," she said.

"I just want the real story, for my dozen or so readers," I explained, "they love stories like yours. Do you know there are people out there that think you raise the dead to do your bidding?"

"Why you goin' believin' that nonsense?" Her accent slurred to an Irish brogue for a syllable or two then back again, "Everyone tells these crazy stories. I'm a drug dealer, I'm a witch, I'm an insatiable nymphomaniac..."

"Er... That last one is a bit of a surprise..." I didn't know whether to cringe or blush, so I did a little of both, "But back to the matter at hand. My sources tell me that Earl Edmonds O.D.ed at a party you held here almost a month ago. The same sources say that rather than get the authorities involved, you had some of your employees wrap him in an old rug and bury him in a shallow grave."

I paused for effect, but she just smiled.

"Now, someone dug up that grave a few days later, and I'm pretty sure that someone was you. Why did you do it? Because Earl wasn't dead. Oh, he looked dead, but he had been drugged with a little psychotropic cocktail people sometimes called," I made quotation marks in the air, "'zombie powder.'"

She raised an eyebrow and emptied her glass of rum. Then she poured herself another. The bottle was two-thirds empty now.

"This zombie powder causes a paralysis so severe that a layman might think the victim is dead. It's the stuff of Edgar Alan Poe's nightmares." I took a cautious step toward her, "And all the while, the poor bastard is in a state of living death. They're having nightmarish hallucinations. Imagine all that happening and being buried alive to boot."

She laughed at me, but I'm used to women doing that, so it's all good.

I continued, "I imagine the Earl you dug up was not the same man from just a few days before. I imagine it would have been easy to mess with his broken mind. How long did it take you to convince him he was a zombie?"

Raevyn emptied the glass again, but this time, she set it down on the counter beside her, "Why would anyone do something so... Theatrical?"

"Oh, I agree it is a very theatrical way to go about things, but then again, I'm not the failed law student from Wisconsin pretending to be a witch woman from Jamaica, so what do I know?"

That got her. She frowned and crossed her arms.

When in doubt, keep talking, so that's what I did. "Like they say on the Internet, Google is your friend. But don't worry, your secret is safe with me."

"Why-" she paused as if she was collecting her thoughts, "why would I go to all that trouble?"

"Because criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot."

I waited to see if she got the reference. She didn't, so I went on.

"You did it because you suspected there was a snitch in your organization. You used poor Earl to eliminate the usual suspects." I counted off on my hand, "They found what was left of Mordikai Aden in a dumpster. Shortly after that, a 911 call sent the police to Adrian Driscoll's apartment, but there wasn't much they could do for him. There wasn't much an undertaker could do for him either, if you get my meaning. Then there was Sandro Elsdon. He was killed alongside his girlfriend and two young kids."

"But why? Why not just put a bullet in their heads instead?"

"Because it taught your employees a very valuable lesson. Cross Raevyn Legendre and you will end up dead or worse." I took off my straw fedora and fiddled with it, "What are you going to do now that your pet zombie is really dead?"

"If what you're saying is true I would just make another. Maybe I got more waiting down in the basement. What would you do then? What if all I had to do to wake them up was just snap my fingers?" She tried to snap her fingers for emphasis, but her hand wouldn't quite obey her.

Panic settled into her eyes. Her legs failed her. All the while she slid down to the floor she kept trying to snap her fingers.

There was a handkerchief in my left pocket, I used it to pick up the bottle of rum and pour it out. I suppose you readers out there figured out what I did when I was snooping around her house.

Raevyn said, "Fa- fa-"

I'm not sure if she was trying to say my name or curse me out. I looked down at her, too disgusted with myself to gloat. My tone was almost apologetic, "You've got enough meth here to host a tweakers convention. I'm not sure if I gave you the recommended dosage of your zombie powder, so once I get a few blocks away, I'm going to make an anonymous call to 911 and let the chips fall where they may."

With that I started to leave, but I turned back and said, "I guess I got you dead to rights."

Then I left.

OK, so maybe I gloated a little...

###

...yep I just confessed to another crime on the Internet but once again my story in no way matches the way the powers that be want to portray events. If they arrest me it will raise too many questions as to what is really going on.

I did make the 911 call, just like I promised, but when the authorities got there, Raevyn Legendre was dead. They blamed the attack on pit bulls, which is an insult to all the well-behaved pit bulls out there and an insult to reality because the half-baked crime boss in question was allergic to dogs.

But something, maybe several somethings, gnawed her flesh down to the bone.

So I guess maybe she did have some spares somewhere in the basement, somewhere I didn't check. In their half-alive state, they must have heard my conversation with her.

And then? And then, sometime between me leaving and the police showing up, Raevyn managed to snap her fingers after all.

 

 

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