Broken Heart 7.5 - The Adventures of Zombie Larry

  A Broken Heart Press Digital Publication

  © 2010 Michele Bardsley

  EYE SCREAM

  “It’s an eyeball,” said Patsy Marchand. She glanced at her son, Wilson. He looked a little green around the gills. He nodded. He was trying very hard not to look at it.

  The eyeball was centered on the lid of a pickle jar. The lid lay on the kitchen island, nestled among the bowls of candy she’d been preparing for the Halloween party.

  “Where’d you find it?” she asked. She’d never been the squeamish sort, and ever since she’d become loup de sang, aka lycan-vampire, very little wigged her out.

  “It was here when I walked in to get some Kit Kats,” said Wilson.

  “I told you to leave the candy alone.”

  “It’s not like I can eat anything now,” he said. “There’s a freaking eyeball in our kitchen!”

  Patsy raised a finger and aimed for the eye.

  “Oh, my God. Mom, if you poke it, I’m gonna puke.”

  “What’s going on?” Gabriel strode into the kitchen looking like his usual fine self, and Patsy was instantly distracted by her husband. Was it bad to have the constant urge to lick him? He was her Halloween treat—and hella better than a Kit Kat.

  “I thought you were setting up the decorations.” She accepted his kiss, enjoying the tiny thrill the small contact initiated.

  “Eva kicked all the men out. She accused us of not helping.” He scoped out the bowls of candy. “I figured I’d grab some Kit Kats.”

  “I told you guys to keep your paws off the candy.” She pointed down. “Look what Wilson found.”

  Gabriel leaned over. “It’s an eyeball. Nice touch.”

  “It’s real,” she said. “See all the red, stringy parts?”

  Wilson made a gagging sound, and ran toward the sink. “Gross, gross, gross!”

  “Really?” asked Patsy. “I thought I raised you to be less girly.”

  “I don’t apologize for finding someone’s ripped out eye hurl-worthy.” He leaned over the sink and took in deep breaths. “I’m reacting like a normal person. You’re the freak.”

  “Thanks, son.”

  “Whose do you think it is?” asked Gabriel.

  “Well, did you see anyone with only one eye, possibly screaming and clutching their face, wandering around our house?”

  Gabriel actually took a minute to think about it. “Nope. How about that Kit Kat?”

  “Dude!” Wilson sucked in half the room’s oxygen. Then he turned around and marched out muttering about his parents, the mental patients.

  “What do we do about it?” asked Patsy.

  “We could ask Eva if she wants to use it for decorations.”

  “I see why you got kicked out.” Patsy grabbed a handful of Kit Kats and pushed them into her husband’s hand. “C’mon. We need to check out how the haunted house is coming along.”

  Holding hands, they left the kitchen.

  A few minutes later, Jenny Matthews O’Halloran skipped into the kitchen. She paused, then turned and gestured to her companion. “C’mere. Told you I found it!”

  The man paused in the doorway. He was dressed in a dark suit with shiny black shoes. His hair was wispy, and his skin tinged gray. “Uuuuhhh.”

  Jenny dug in one of the drawers and took out a small, metal tube. Then she squeezed the substance over the back of the eyeball.

  Carefully she picked up the lid and walked very slowly over to her new friend. “Here you go, Larry. Put it in quick. I put Super Glue on it, so it should stay in now.”

  “Uuuuhhh.” The man plucked the eyeball from the lid. He tried to stick it into his socket, but missed and the orb landed on his forehead.

  Jenny tried to help, but Larry had gotten one of his fingers stuck in the glue. So now his hand and his eye were stuck to his forehead. After a minute of Jenny pulling on his arm, his hand came away, but his finger skin stayed put. It hung off the side of the eyeball like a little bat wing.

  Oops.

  Jenny cocked her head and considered the problem. “It doesn’t look that bad.”

  “Uuuuhhh.”

  “Well, at least you’ll never lose that eye again.” She grabbed a Kit Kat and handed it to him. “C’mon. I want you to scare my brother.”

  The zombie stuffed the entire candy bar, wrapper and all, into his mouth.

  Jenny laughed. “Happy Halloween, Larry.”

  I REALLY DIG YOU

  “It’s a shovel,” Jessica Matthews said as she accepted the object from Patsy. She looked around the cemetery, and shuddered. She thrust the shovel back at her friend. “No. Hell, no. You tricked me.”

  “I promised you Godiva,” said Patsy, “but only after you do me this one little favor.” She plucked her own shovel from the trunk of her white Mercedes. “It won’t take long.”

  Jessica glared at Patsy, who ignored her and walked down the nearest row of tombstones.

  “Fine!” said Jessica stomping after her, “but I want two boxes of Godiva.”

  Patsy stopped at a grave and peered down at the piles of dirt. Jessica squatted next to her and examined the hole. It was easy to make out the ripped open coffin. “Are those chains?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” said Patsy. “He keeps getting out.”

  “Who?”

  “Larry Stotten.”

  “And he is…?”

  “I don’t know. Some guy who died in 1954.”

  Jessica stood up and looked around the cemetery. It was quiet. The full moon hung in the sky like a white chocolate truffle nestled against a sky of dark chocolate. Mmm. Chocolate.

  “There he is!” yelled Patsy.

  The vampire queen took off and Jessica followed. It was only after they reached the zombie that she remembered as a vampire of the Family Ruadan, she could fly. She looked down at her muddied shoes and sighed.

  “Hey Larry,” said Patsy. “Time to go night-night pal.”

  “Noooooo.”

  “Dude. He talked.”

  Patsy tossed Jessica a glare. “I don’t care if he sings opera. He can’t wander around the freaking town.” She aimed the shovel at his knees and WHAM.

  Larry the zombie went down howling.

  “Grab his head!” shouted Patsy as she sat on his squirming legs.

  “How about no?”

  “Three boxes, okay? Just hold on to his damned head so I can drain his ju-ju.”

  “That sounds perverted.”

  “Jessica!”

  “Fine!” Jess dropped her shovel and knelt next to Larry. He had wispy hair and gray skin and for some reason, his left eyeball was attached to his forehead. “Ew. What up with that?”

  Patsy spared a glance and grimaced. “Every time he gets out something weird happens to him.”

  “Is this the same guy who bit Meyer?”

  “No. If you’ll recall Meyer kicked that zombie’s head off.”

  “Oh. right.”

  Jessica grabbed Larry’s head and the eye still in its socket rolled up to look at her. “Sorry, dude.”

  His arms stretched toward her, but his coordination sucked and he didn’t do much other than wiggle his fingers at her.

  “Noooooo.”

  Jessica felt sorry for him. What was wrong with having a zombie for the town mascot? It wasn’t like it would be weird or anything.

  “Pleeeeaaassee.”

  “His breath is rank, but I swear I can smell Kit Kat.”

  “You can detect Kit Kat taint on zombie breath?”

  “It’s a talent.”

  Patsy shook her head and started muttering the spell that would turn poor La
rry from zombie to corpse. A minute later, he stopped moving and lay still. Then she said, “I think we should chop him up.”

  “Not for all the Godiva in the world,” said Jessica. “Let’s just get him back into the grave. And you know what? If he rises again, just leave him alone. He was kinda nice for a zombie.”

  Patsy scooped up Larry and carried him to the grave. After getting him tucked in, her and Jess piled on the dirt until the hole was filled.

  “I need a shower,” said Jessica.

  “Me, too. Let’s get outta here.”

  They walked to Patsy’s Mercedes, dumped the shovels into the trunk, and left.

  Almost three hours passed before two gray hands popped out of the freshly turned earth like big ugly flowers. A few minutes later, Larry crawled out of his grave and leaned against his marble headstone. He straightened his damaged knees, checked to make sure his forehead eye was still affixed, then got up and shuffled toward town.

  DO YOU FEAR WHAT I FEAR?

  “It’s haunted,” said Bryan O’Halloran.

  “Hel- lo, welcome to Broken Heart,” said Wilson Donovan. “Everything’s haunted. Just ask my mom.”

  Wilson’s mother, Patsy, would know. Like his own mom, Patsy had gotten Turned into a vampire. And she could actually see and talk to ghosts. She saw them everywhere; worse, they saw her. Plus, she’d once raised a zombie army, which Bryan thought was so beast.

  “Well, this house was haunted before the town got freak-a-fied.” They left the cracked sidewalk and walked through the yard, which was filled with itchy, knee-high grass. Bryan aimed his flashlight across the front of the tiny house. The beam revealed peeling gray paint, broken windows, and a sagging porch.

  This section of the neighborhood had long been abandoned. The streetlights didn’t work, the sidewalks were crumbling, and all the houses in the cul de sac looked like movie sets for horror movies.

  “You know the story, right?” asked Bryan. He approached the porch, stopping at the broken steps and peering at the front door. It was half-opened, offering a diagonal glimpse into the darkened room beyond it.

  “Lemme guess,” said Wilson, sounding bored. “Some dude killed his wife. With an ax. Then he buried her in the basement.”

  Bryan rolled his eyes. “What is this? The Goosebumps hour?” He laughed, mostly to cover how nervous he felt. For all the weird crap he’d seen—from his vampire mom to that zombie with the eye glued to his forehead—he was still creeped out by this place. They’d been hanging out at Wilson’s house, talking about Halloween and trying to top each other’s scary stories. Then Bryan had mentioned this place, and now they were on a ghost field trip.

  “What are you waiting for, dude?” Wilson punched his shoulder. “C’mon.”

  He jumped over the steps and crossed the porch, which didn’t look too steady. Still, no way would he let Wilson think he was a coward. He followed him into the house. They stood in the small living room, and Bryan flashed the light around.

  “It smells like ass in here,” said Wilson.

  The beam revealed a ratty couch and a broken coffee table. Obviously, they weren’t the first trespassers to venture here. Graffiti covered the walls and trash littered the nasty, hole-ridden carpet.

  “So what’s the story?” asked Wilson. He turned on his own flashlight and flicked it over the wall to examine the graffiti.

  “It was 1954. A widower and his two little girls move from Tulsa to Broken Heart. One day, the girls disappeared—somewhere between the bus stop and this house. Nobody every knew what happened to them. The father went crazy with grief and shot himself. Some people think he killed his daughters.”

  Wilson looked over his shoulder, his expression suggesting minor interest. “And buried them in the basement?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Lame.” Wilson panned the light into the hallway. “Where do you think the basement door is?”

  “Probably in the kitchen,” said Bryan.

  “Let’s go.”

  Bryan reluctantly followed his friend into the kitchen, and yeah, there was the door that led to the basement. He had to admit this place was creepy. It smelled bad, too, like rotting meat. And he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him. Goosebumps pimpled his skin and the hair on the back of his neck felt electrified.

  But he couldn’t wimp out. Wilson would never let him live it down if he refused to go check out the basement.

  “That’s weird,” said Wilson. “This whole place is falling apart, but this door is nailed shut.” He ran his fingers along the doorjamb. “We can’t get in this way.”

  Relief flooded Bryan. Any excuse not to go down to the basement was okay by him. “I’m bored,” he said. “Let’s roll.”

  “Don’t be a chickenshit. We’ll go outside. Maybe there’s a window or a ground entry.”

  BANG!

  Both boys nearly jumped out of their skins.

  “What the hell was that?” asked Bryan. He spun around the dilapidated kitchen. The light bounced from ceiling to floor.

  “Ooooooooooooooo.”

  Bryan’s heart kicked into overdrive and his palms got sweaty. Fear rollercoastered through him. He looked at Wilson. His friend was as white as a sheet, his eyes as wide as dinner plates. “It’s nothing,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  “Ooooooooooooooo!”

  Knock, bang, knock, bang.

  “I’m out!” cried Wilson.

  They bolted from the house, sprinting over the steps, and kept on running all the way down the street.

  A minute later, Tamara LeRoy and Jenny O’Halloran popped out from their hiding places in the cabinets.

  “Boys are stupid,” said Jenny.

  Tamara smiled. “Eh. They have other uses.”

  “Yuck.” Jenny turned on her flashlight and moved it around the kitchen. “You really think that guy killed his kids?”

  “No,” said Tamara. “I think it’s a dumb story.”

  They examined the dusty counters. “Hey look.” Jenny picked up a battered business card. “Larry Stotten.” Her eyes went wide. “That’s my zombie!”

  “I told you, Jen, you can’t keep a pet zombie. Your mom doesn’t even like cats.”

  “Maybe he’s looking for his daughters,” said Jenny. “We should help him.”

  “It’s been more than fifty years,” said Tamara. “I don’t think that’s a mystery we can solve.”

  Jenny crossed the kitchen and examined the basement door. “That was smart of you to nail the door shut. It sure freaked out the boys.”

  “I didn’t nail it shut.”

  Tamara and Jenny shared a look.

  “Time to go,” whispered Tamara.

  Jenny nodded, and together, they hurriedly left the house of Larry Stotten.

  SHE’S NOT MY GHOUL FRIEND

  “Zombie alert,” said Jessica O’Halloran. She plopped down next to Patsy on the couch and stuck her hand into the bowl of popcorn. New residents to Broken Heart would never have so casually taken a seat next to the queen of two paranormal species, much less pawed her popcorn. But Jessica had known Patsy practically her whole life, and often still asked her for a haircut. Prior to Patsy’s prophesied role as leader over all, she’d been the town’s beautician.

  “It’s Larry, isn’t it?” asked Patsy. She never took offense of Jessica’s casual treatment of her. Actually, she preferred it over all the fawning she got from people who wanted her to decide crap about their lives. She wasn’t Oprah for God’s sake.

  “Nope. Some dead chick in a pink nightie,” said Jessica. “But Larry’s out there, too. I think there’s a zombie argument going on.” She shoved a handful of popcorn into her mouth. “I find it ironic we’re watching Shaun of the Dead.”

  “I’ve raised a zombie army,” said Patsy, “and that part where the zombies start ripping out that guy’s stomach still squicks me out.”

  “Eh,” said Jessica. “Once you’ve hacked off someone’s head, zombie eat
ing habits aren’t that exciting.”

  “You ever known our zombies to eat brains?” asked Patsy.

  “I’ve never known them to eat anything. It’s not like you can’t run away from a zombie. I’ve seen snails outpace them.”

  Patsy sighed. “Well, I better get out there and see what’s going on.”