What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Zombier (10 page)

* * *

Modern History class. The tedious chanting of the professor. In the background, just the sound of pens writing on notebooks. Cynthia, focused on her paper, was writing thick, wrinkling her forehead. Amanda was restless.

A shadow came into her peripheral vision; she moved her eyes for a moment and the black figure was there, behind the board with the big sheets, where the professor was writing. She could see him because his thin legs emerged from underneath. He didn’t move, but she knew he was there.

She sprang up. At the same time, thirty heads turned toward her.

“Sorry, I have to go,” she mumbled embarrassed. She picked up her stuff and ran to the door. She broke outside.

Her feet stepped on something soft. Underneath there was purple grass. And the yellow sky with the clouds, and the dark tree on top of the hill.

She turned around, but behind her there wasn’t the class anymore, just a distant gloomy wood.

A rustle through the leaves, and the small black figure that was coming in the open. Now he was on all fours, moving like a spider in her direction.

Amanda started to run. After a few step, she stumbled and fell.

* * *

She opened her eyes.

She was in her bed again. She sat down, rubbed her face, tidied up her hair, speaking to herself. “Am I really awake?”

She took the mobile phone and dialed Cynthia’s number.

“Hello?” her friend’s voice was sleepy.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing? I’m about to have breakfast and get ready for History class. Don’t you tell me you’re beaten after last night.”

Amanda made a little smile, relieved. “No, no, I’m in. I’ll get ready, and we’ll meet at school. Okay?”

“Okay, Okay,” said Cynthia with a muffled yawn. “I don’t understand why you needed to call me. You’re acting weird, you know?”

“Weird... sure. See you later then.” She hung up.

Amanda looked around as if she wanted to check that her room was all right, that there wasn’t anything strange, or anyone...

“Damn it, I hate vivid dreams.”

Sometimes it happened to anyone, the mind played bad tricks making you believe that you were awake when instead you were still dreaming. She shook her head as to clear her thoughts.

She stood up staggering, yawned, got in the shower.

The feeling of the hot water was relaxing; it made flow away that sense of restlessness.

A dive into the closet, catching random clothes, a bite to a toast with butter and jam, then she slipped out the door.

* * *

The purple grass was still in front of her. She didn’t want to go out; she didn’t want to leave her house. But there was something moving in the shadow of the hallway, and it seemed to be looking for her, following her like a cockroach that flees from the light.

In a few moments, he had got incredibly closer.

Amanda threw her bag on him, but he dodged with a jump. The books flew out, and the figure clung on the wall, made the hallway mirror fall. She didn’t even hear the noise of broken glass.

She didn’t stop to think, just started to run again on the purple glass, on the hill, struggling toward the top, almost without breath, trying to scream for help, but no one was there. No one could hear her.

It’s just a dream
, she told herself, feeling her legs heavier and heavier.

It’s just a dream
, she thought when he grabbed her ankle making her fall to the ground.

She tried to struggle, rolling on the grass.
It’s a nightmare, it’s just a stupid damn nightmare!
And the grass become stiffer and twisted, but also drier, softer, like her bed sheets.

Now she was feeling the mattress underneath her body, and the noisy shriek of the alarm clock, but there was something else.

Like an oppressive weight on her chest.

She opened her eyes, and the creature was on top of her, a black deformed face, pointy teeth and bottomless eyes.

He put his skeletal claws around her neck and started to squeeze, choking a scream in her throat.

Angelica prepares the tea for her dolls, she’s a merry five years old in her fancy little dress.

She doesn’t know the ugly things of the world.

Her mom doesn’t tell her scary stories before putting her to sleep; everything is pink and happy for her, and everyone is good and smiles all the time.

Angelica places the cups on the little table with the lace tablecloth; one for her, one for Matilda the rag doll, one for Tommy the furry bear, and one for her new friend that just came into the kitchen.

Her new friend looks a bit shy, he doesn’t say a word; only his heavy breath resounds in the room. It’s like a pant.

“What’s your name?” asks Angelica, but he doesn’t speak, and stare at her with his dark rounded eyes; he comes near the table.

“You are furry like my teddy bear, I’ll call you Buddy,” says the little girl’s cheery voice. “Uhm… I’d like there were some cookies… mom? Why don’t we offer some pastry to Buddy?”

Mom is sleeping and doesn’t answer.

Buddy makes another few steps, lays his paws on the table, his sharp claws scratches the lace, leaving red stains on the white cloth.

“Look at this! You get it all dirty. Mom will be really mad when she wakes up… you even stained her dress.”

Buddy shows the grin of his long fangs, still dirty with shreds of food.

“Here, drink your tea or it will get cold,” says Angelica. She’s sitting on her little chair and pretends to sip an invisible drink.

She turns toward her mom, who lies on the floor, all dirty with red; she has strange slimy things coming out of her belly. And stares glassy-eyed to the ceiling. A dark puddle have spread around her.

Angelica shrugs. Her mom will eventually clean up everything, after her nap.

Buddy, hungry, jumps and flip the table, tossing around the plastic cups.

He’s ready for dessert.

At the end of the road leading out of town, there was an abandoned house.

It was an old colonial house, all made of wood, with the horizontal planks once colored – God knows how, and now all scraped and washed out, of a sickly gray. With the crumbling porch and the cracked sloping columns, bent by the persistent dampness, the rotten steps of the entrance. The windows with broken glasses and unhinged shutters, leaning like unsteady teeth. The roof, too, was in a bad condition, with holes here and there.

The whole house gave a feeling of unfitness and alienation, like something that was thrown to the present through the centuries and didn’t manage very well.

No one knew who the owner of the house was, but everyone kept their distance, except some brave kids, that sometimes came to take a closer peek through the many holes, in order to get a glance of the strange interior, composed by tapestry of unusual color, furniture of disparate shapes, weird ornaments and so on. It looked like even the thieves weren’t interested in what was inside that strange house.

One day, at the end of summer, a young tramp came to town; he had run away from home and was wanted for small robbery. After spending some nights at the train station and being chased away by the sheriff’s son, he found himself wandering around town, looking for a place to stay. During a sudden storm, he stumbled upon the old abandoned house and decided to break in.

The stranger didn’t know a thing about the legends of the town and so, even if with some kind of concern – due to the crumbling appearance of the building – he walked on the front porch, which squeaked a moan under his feet. He forced the planks that barred the door, and that wasn’t difficult at all, since the wood was rotten like the rest.

He entered the hallway and suddenly found himself thrown in an alien space. Beyond the familiar dust and the familiar webs, in front of his very eyes, there was a really weird house.

A long corridor cut in half the ground floor; under his feet laid a rug stained with mold and corroded by time, where, among the curls of dust, he could see a complicated pattern of strange black stick figures, tangled in an arabesque of exotic plants and unknown animals, on the background of a village of huts and fires burning under strange spits.

The wallpaper was worn out and torn so much that big portions were missing, showing the frame of old wood. The still noticeable spots had a pattern of freaky masks with triangular eyes and pointy fangs.

The boy considered the above just the eccentricity of some rich guy and went on exploring the other rooms. On one side, a stair with missing steps led to the upper floor, but was so shabby looking that it would have been impossible to climb. On the left a door, or just the frame of it, because the door was long gone, led to a kitchen as odd as the entrance. A bamboo mat, gnawed by the usury and the moths, covered the lower part of the walls; the cabinets, broken and bent, made of a dark wood, were inlaid with leaf motives.

The table and the chairs were tipped over, crushed and scattered all around, like there had been some kind of violent struggle. And behind a chair, lying on the floor, stuck out something gray and elongated that looked quite convincingly like a bone. What kind of bone he couldn’t tell, but it was enough to make him feel uncomfortable.

He turned toward another room, from the opposite side of the hallway, the only one that still had a door, the only one that was closed.

He put his hand on the brass knob, but the door didn’t move. The humidity must have made it swell and stuck. He pushed, but it wasn’t enough. He stopped for a moment, because something grabbed his attention. Like a crawling noise, a subtle hiss coming from the other side of the door. He stepped backward.

What the hell.

He took a run-up and hit it with his shoulder. The door gave up with a snap, and the guy lost his balance and fell face to the ground.

But under his body, instead of the usual shabby and dusty floor, he found something slimy and creeping. The entire surface was covered with worms. Larvae, earthworms, bugs, but also centipedes and cockroaches, a swarm of ravenous creatures that looked like they were chewing on strange masses scattered around the floor.

The tramp jumped up, like he was on fire, and started hopping and shaking the bugs off.

He was turning around in order to regain the door, when a sharp whistle froze his blood. It came from above his head. He looked up.

In the dim light of the incumbent night, the snake-like body was moving sinuous between the ceiling beams. It hissed and slithered toward him rapidly.

The only thing the tramp was able to see was the long yellow fangs and a black tongue that wrapped around his neck; then came the darkness, and the choking, and the awareness of what the masses on the floor were, and that he would have soon become one of them.

She was a very sweet girl, thought the man while adding salt to her leg, right before sinking his teeth.

Thank you for reading this.

I hope you enjoyed.

You can find out more about me and the things I do here:

http://alliewader.blogspot.it/

Twitter:
@AllieWadeR

See you around.

Allison Wade