Resurrection Dreams

  Charlie, holding his forehead, looked out the window. “How’d I do?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Melvin said. “Just fine.” He stepped to the front of the car. The concrete wall had bent the bumper on the right side, smashed the grill slightly, dented the front of the hood, and broken the headlight. From the look of the damage, Charlie must’ve hit the parapet going all of ten miles per hour.

  Damned old fart.

  Charlie swung the door open.

  “Stay in there!”

  He shut the door.

  Melvin went to him.

  Charlie looked out the window. He was pressing a handkerchief to his forehead. “Aren’ we gonna go home, now?”

  “In a minute.”

  Charlie lowered the handkerchief. His forehead had a nice gash. He looked at the bloody cloth, then pressed it to his mouth and began sucking on it.

  “Hand me your bag,” Melvin said.

  Charlie searched, found his medical bag on the floor, and lifted it to the window. “Wha’s in here?” he asked, shaking it.

  Melvin didn’t answer. He opened it, dumped gasoline onto Charlie’s lap, then bent down and hurled the remaining gas under the front of the car.

  “Wha’ y’doing?” Charlie asked. He sounded worried.

  Melvin ignored him. He struck a match and touched it to the moist pavement near the tire. A faint bluish flame rose and spread over the spill. Melvin stood up. He dropped the burning match into the doctor’s bag. With a soft whup, the satchel filled with fire. He tossed it onto Charlie’s lap.

  “Hey now!” Charlie blurted as he went up. One of his flaming arms knocked the bag aside. The door started to open. Melvin kicked it shut.

  “Stay,” he ordered.

  “Wha’s the big idea?” Charlie asked, frowning through the blaze. His shirt was on fire. So were his eyebrows and hair. “Le’ me out, ‘fore I’m ruined.”

  “Stay.”

  Charlie rammed a burning shoulder against the door. The door flew open. He swung a leg out. It wasn’t burning yet. Melvin hurled the door shut. There was a soft thud as it struck the man’s leg. Melvin tried to hold the door shut, but Charlie reached out the window for him. He lurched away from the blazing arms.

  The door flew open again. Charlie, afire from the knees up, climbed out of the car and looked down at himself. He started slapping at the front of his tattered, burning pants and shirt. Then he gave up. He planted his fists on his hips and turned his head toward Melvin. He swept a hand across his face a few times as if trying to bat the flames aside to allow himself to see better. “You’re tryin’ t’kill me all over again,” he said.

  Melvin glanced at the car. Flames were licking up through the cracks around the hood. Before long, a gas line would burn through.

  “Get back in the car,” he said.

  “Why, I don’ imagine I will, y’damn back-stabbin’ s.o.b.”

  With that, Charlie raised his blazing arms as if reaching for Melvin, and started limping toward him.

  Melvin lurched past the old man and ran to the middle of the bridge. Charlie staggered after him.

  The front end of the car was now engulfed in flames.

  If only Charlie was still inside!

  How could it go this bad? Melvin wondered. He never guessed it would go this bad.

  Melvin backed against the parapet.

  The blazing man, arms out like a movie zombie, stumbled closer and closer. He littered the pavement with flaming bits of cloth. His hair had burned away, leaving his head black and charred. His pants and shirt still burned. Flames still fluttered in front of his face. One eye was a bubbling pool. It burst, and fluid streamed down his cheek.

  He was on the walkway, only a few steps from Melvin, when the other eye went.

  Melvin sprang away from the parapet. He ran out into the road, then rushed Charlie from the side.

  His bandaged hand rammed the man’s burning shoulder.

  Charlie stumbled sideways. The edge of the wall caught his hip. One leg flew up, but Melvin saw that he wasn’t going to tumble over the top without some help. So he grabbed Charlie’s ankle and shoved it high. The old man, his weight on the broad top of the parapet, squirmed and kicked as Melvin forced his leg higher and higher.

  The car exploded.

  Melvin felt a hot blast of wind.

  With both hands, he thrust Charlie’s ankle toward the sky.

  Charlie dropped from the wall.

  Melvin leaned over. He watched the burning man twirl and somersault and finally belly-flop into Laurel Creek. With the sound of the splash, Charlie went dark.

  Melvin sagged on the wall.

  It’s over, he told himself. It’s probably okay, they’ll just think Charlie made it out after the crash, but he was on fire so he jumped into the creek to put the fire out. It’ll look like an accident, okay.

  “Damn back-stabbing s.o.b.!”

  A chill squirmed up Melvin’s back.

  He cupped hands around his eyes and peered down at the stream. He saw nothing but darkness.

  But he heard a quiet splash.

  He hurried to the far end of the bridge, stepped off the walkway, and began to make his way down the steep slope. The weeds under his feet were wet with dew. He skidded. He grabbed bushes and saplings to hold himself steady. Halfway down, his feet shot out. He landed hard and slid over rocks and twigs, wincing, gritting his teeth, eyes filling with tears as his back was scratched and gouged. A boulder finally stopped his slide. He lay there with his feet against the rock and took deep, hitching breaths. His back burned and itched. The wetness of his shirt felt good, though. He didn’t want to move.

  But he knew that he had to get up. He had to find Charlie and finish him off. Fast. People far away might’ve heard the explosion of the car. Or a motorist might come along.

  There was a rock under his left hand when he pushed himself up. It was half buried in the ground. He tugged it loose. It was the size of a softball, but a lot heavier.

  He stood, climbed onto the boulder that had stopped him, and crouched. The stream, a few yards below, looked black except for a few flecks of moonlight. He couldn’t see Charlie.

  Might be anywhere.

  A chill of fear spread through Melvin at the thought of the burned old man sneaking up on him. He told himself not to worry about that.

  The old fart’s blind. He can’t get me.

  The thing to worry about was letting him get away. Messed up as he was, he could still talk.

  Tell on me.

  Melvin climbed down the front of the boulder. He made his way carefully to the bottom of the slope and stepped into the stream. The water was cold. It wrapped him to the knees. The rocks of the stream bed felt slippery beneath his shoes.

  He looked under the bridge. Black in there, but light from the other side would’ve silhouetted Charlie, at least if he was standing. If he wasn’t standing…

  Melvin squatted down. The cold water seized his groin, stole the heat from between his buttocks. It climbed to his chest and made his nipples ache. But he was low enough for the dim glow beyond the bridge to backlight anything more than a few inches above the surface.

  A dark lump near the middle made his heart jump. He squinted at it. Charlie’s head? Maybe just a rock or the end of a thick branch. Whatever it was, it didn’t move. Melvin thought about wading closer to it.

  Awfully dark in there.

  He felt cold prickles on the back of his neck.

  That’s not Charlie, he told himself.

  Might be.

  “Charlie?” he asked. His voice came out husky, not very loud.

  No answer.

  Melvin stood up and started to turn away from the bridge, but suddenly he didn’t have the nerve to turn his back on all that darkness—and whatever was in there. Standing, he could no longer see the thing. He imagined it gliding toward him. He waded backward as fast as he could.

  He looked up at the blazing car. It felt good, comforting, to see all that light. He wish
ed he were up there, right now. In the brightness, feeling the warmth.

  When he lowered his gaze, he knew it had been a mistake to look at the fire. His night vision was ruined. Before, he could see. Not much, but some. Now, except for the fire way up there, he could see nothing at all.

  I’m blind, he thought.

  As blind as Charlie.

  He could sneak up on me easy.

  Melvin whirled around and staggered through the water. He knew he should search for Charlie, finish him off somehow, but all he felt now was fear and a need to get away. It seemed best to follow the stream until he was a good distance from the road, then head through the woods and make his way home.

  He flinched at the first blast of the fire alert.

  It filled the night, loud and piercing, a siren noise that grew and faded and died, then came again.

  Even as it roused the volunteers from their sleep, a police car would be speeding toward the bridge.

  Whimpering, Melvin started to run downstream. He pumped his knees, but the water dragged at him, held him back. Then his left foot stepped on something that moved under his weight. His foot slipped off it. He tumbled, dropped his rock, gasped and fell. Water splashed up around him. Closed over him. Arms wrapped his back.

  OH JESUS NO!

  He ached to shriek, but held his breath as he was embraced by the thing beneath him on the stream bottom—the thing that had to be Charlie Gaines. It squeezed him hard. It wrapped its legs over the backs of Melvin’s legs. Something slithered across his lips. Charlie’s tongue? Then he felt the edges of teeth against his lower lip and chin. He jerked his head back, heard the clash of the teeth snapping shut.

  Tried to bite me!

  Just like Patricia.

  In that instant, it all changed for Melvin. His stunned horror shattered like a shell that had been enclosing and smothering his mind. He felt the shell burst and fly apart, felt his mind breathe and flex and smile.

  Suddenly, he was Melvin again, not some whimpering sissy, and the thing embracing him and hugging him and trying to bite him was nothing more than Charlie Gaines. Not a hideous zombie, just an old fart who’d been burned to a crisp and didn’t know when to die.

  A charbroiled steak.

  With teeth.

  And now the teeth were scraping the side of Melvin’s neck. Though Charlie clung to him like a frantic lover, the embrace was below Melvin’s arms. That left his hands free. He clutched the side of Charlie’s face. It felt slick and crumbly. His thumb found the empty eye socket. He hooked his thumb inside the hole. Like pudding in there, but the bone was a solid ring and when he jerked it with his thumb, Charlie’s head turned with it. He forced the head sideways and down. He grabbed the near side of the face with his bandaged hand. Pressing the head against the bottom, he shoved himself upward. Charlie’s embrace wasn’t powerful enough to hold him. The arms opened just enough. Melvin’s shoulders and head broke the surface. He gasped for air.

  The fire alert blared again.

  He wondered if anyone had arrived at the fire.

  As the noise stopped, he heard a car door slam.

  He looked over his shoulder. The bridge was out of sight beyond a bend in the stream. High to the right, the leaves of the trees shimmered with firelight.

  He almost screamed as Charlie raked his back, splitting his shirt and ripping his skin. Hissing instead, he let go of Charlie’s face, tried to keep it down with the thumb of his other hand, and felt along the stream bottom, searching for a rock. He grabbed one. Charlie released Melvin’s legs and shoved at his chest. Melvin went backward, thumb pulling out of the socket with quick suck. Now he was on his knees. Charlie rose up in front of him. Blacker than the stream. Water sprayed Melvin’s face. “Gonna kill you,” Charlie said. His voice had a gurgle to it. “Back-stabbin’ s.o.b.”

  Melvin slammed the side of Charlie’s head with the rock. The blow snapped his head sideways. Melvin struck again. This time, he felt the skull crush and go soft. Charlie started to flop backward. With his left hand, Melvin caught the back of the old man’s head. Holding it above the water, he pounded the rock again into the soft place. It made a wet sound as if slapping mud. He hit it again and again.

  Charlie lay limp beneath him, not moving at all.

  So that’s how you rekill the fuckers, Melvin thought. Bash their brains in.

  He heard voices in the distance behind him. There were sirens, but they sounded much farther away than the voices.

  He lowered the rock into the water, and let it fall.

  He crawled around Charlie. He found both the man’s arms, grabbed his wrists, and began wading backward, towing him downstream.

  He did it for a long time.

  Sooner or later, he knew, they’d find the body. They’d think Charlie had jumped into the stream to put himself out, had cracked his head open on the rocky bed, and been carried downstream by the current.

  They’d think that for a while, at least. A good autopsy would change their minds, for sure. He’d read up on such things. Just one whack in the head, and they might figure it happened when Charlie went off the bridge. But Melvin had clobbered him five or six times. They’d know that wasn’t any accident.

  They’d figure Charlie’d been murdered. Then they’d find samples of Melvin’s skin under his fingernails. They’d know he’d been scratched. They might even learn his blood type.

  It was sure getting complicated.

  Melvin kept towing Charlie downstream.

  The only good solution, he finally decided, was to dispose of the body. If they couldn’t find it, they couldn’t do an autopsy. They might just stick with the theory that Charlie had jumped off the bridge because he was on fire, and gotten himself swept out to the river and lost.

  So how do I get rid of it? he wondered.

  That one had him stumped.

  Even if he was strong enough to carry Charlie around all night, and he doubted he had the strength to pick him up at all, where would he take him?

  He kept pulling Charlie along, certain that he would come up with an answer to the problem. He began to ache from the strain of bending over and wading backward with the body.

  Finally, he towed it ashore. He held onto one wrist to keep Charlie from drifting away, and sat on the trunk of a deadfall, feet dangling in the stream. After catching his breath, he listened. He heard the murmur of the stream, the breeze stirring the leaves, birds chirping, mosquitos humming. No human sounds. He guessed that he must be at least half a mile from the bridge. There wasn’t much chance of anyone wandering this far downstream. Not for a long while yet.

  “What’m I gonna do with you?” he muttered.

  “Bah stah s.o.b.”

  Melvin squealed.

  He flung himself down, hugged Charlie’s head to his chest, ripped out broken shards of skull, flung them, dug in, grabbed brains and jerked them out. He squeezed the sodden mass, felt it ooze between his fingers, heard bits of it splash into the stream. He dug in again, pulled out another mushy handful, hurled it away, and scooped out more and threw it.

  “Dead yet?” he gasped. “Huh? Fuckin’ pig!”

  Charlie sure seemed dead, but he’d seemed dead before.

  Melvin yanked the man’s jaw down. He tugged on the tongue, tried to tear it out by the roots, but his hand slipped off. So he wrenched Charlie around, slammed the back of his head against the tree trunk, held it there and pulled the tongue out as far as he could.

  He bent down close to the face. It didn’t look much like a face. It looked like charcoal, except for the white teeth and slightly pale shape of the tongue drooping out between them.

  Melvin sucked the tongue into his mouth. Drew it in deep. Bit into it, gnashed, and jerked back his head. Moaning, he picked up Charlie’s arm and pulled him to the middle of the stream. He let go. The body started to float away.

  Melvin opened his mouth. He pulled out the slab of tongue and flipped it into the bushes.

  Let them find the damn body.

&n
bsp; “That’s one dead fucker won’t tell no tales,” he said. Then he waded ashore, entered the woods, and headed for home.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “You’ve been a very bad girl,” Melvin said. “You were supposed to save yourself for me.”

  He was standing beside her bed, frowning down at her. He bent over. Vicki couldn’t see what his hand was doing, but a motor hummed and the back of the bed began to rise. A hospital bed? As it lifted her, she saw that she wasn’t in a hospital. The bed was in the middle of the Community Center auditorium. And as it lifted, the sheet on top of Vicki began to slide. She tried to grab the sheet. Couldn’t. Her wrists were bound to the guardrails of the bed.

  The sheet drifted down, falling away from her breasts and the huge mound of her belly.

  “You see?” Melvin asked. “You didn’t save yourself for me. I’m deeply disappointed in you, Vicki. I love you. You know how I love you. How could you let another man have you? How could you let him knock you up?”

  Impossible, Vicki thought. A false pregnancy, that’s what it is.

  “I didn’t,” she said. “It’s a mistake.”

  “Oh, really?” He thumped her belly with his knuckles. It sounded like a ripe watermelon. “Who’s inside there, huh? I know who it isn’t. It isn’t Melvin junior. Could it be Jack junior?”

  “No. It’s nobody.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “I can’t be pregnant. I haven’t slept with anyone.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t sleep. You fucked, though. There’s the proof.”

  “But I didn’t! Honest!”

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

  It was a lie, she supposed. But the last time was so long ago. Bart. He was the last. That was almost three years ago. New Year’s Eve. They’d both been smashed, she forgot her diaphragm and he didn’t use a rubber (“Like wearing a glove”) and then her period was late and she was sick with worry, but then it came. It did come. The blood poured out and she wept with relief.

  She got her period and, besides, that was three years ago. Couldn’t be Bart junior. No way. And she never did it with Jack.

  Unless she forgot.

  “We didn’t,” she said. “Jack and I…we had a fight.”