Undead. John Russo

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СКАЧАТЬ she could remember also some of the names of the people buried nearby. But with the approaching darkness, she was having trouble finding her way.

      “I think I’m in the wrong row,” she said, finally.

      “There’s nobody around here,” Johnny said, purposely emphasizing their aloneness. Then, he added, “If it wasn’t so dark, we could find it without any trouble.”

      “Well, if you’d gotten up earlier…” Barbara said, and she let her voice trail off as she began moving down another row of graves.

      “This is the last time I blow a Sunday on a gig like this,” Johnny said. “We’re either gonna have to move Mother out here or move the grave closer to home.”

      “Sometimes I think you complain just to hear yourself talk,” Barbara told him. “Besides, you’re just being silly. You know darned well Mother’s too sick to make a drive like this all by herself.”

      Suddenly a familiar tombstone caught John’s eye. He scrutinized it, recognized that it was their father’s, and considered not telling Barbara so she would have to hunt a while longer; but his drive to get started toward home won out over his urge to torment her.

      “I think that’s it over there,” he said, in a flat, detached tone, and he watched while Barbara crossed over to check it out, taking care not to step on any graves as she did so.

      “Yes, this is it,” Barbara called out. “You ought to be glad, Johnny—now we’ll soon be on our way.”

      He came over to their father’s grave and stared at the inscription briefly before taking the wreath out of the brown paper bag.

      “I don’t even remember what Dad looked like,” he said. “Twenty-five bucks for this thing, and I don’t even remember the guy very much.”

      “Well, I remember him,” Barbara said, chastisingly, “and I was a lot younger than you were when he died.”

      They both looked at the wreath, which was made out of plastic and adorned with plastic flowers. At the bottom, on a piece of red plastic shaped like a ribbon tied in a large bow, the following words were inscribed in gold: “We Still Remember.”

      Johnny snickered.

      “Mother wants to remember—so we have to drive two hundred miles to plant a wreath on a grave. As if he’s staring up through the ground to check out the decorations and make sure they’re satisfactory.”

      “Johnny, it takes you five minutes,” Barbara said angrily, and she knelt at the grave and began to pray while Johnny took the wreath and, stepping close to the headstone, squatted and pushed hard to embed its wire-pronged base into the packed earth.

      He stood up and brushed off his clothes, as if he had dirtied them, and continued grumbling, “It doesn’t take five minutes at all. It takes three hours and five minutes. No, six hours and five minutes. Three hours up and three hours back. Plus the two hours we wasted hunting for the damned place.”

      She looked up from her prayer and glowered at him, and he stopped talking.

      He stared down at the ground, bored. And he began to fidget, rocking nervously back and forth with his hands in his pockets. Barbara continued to pray, taking unnecessarily long it seemed to him. And his eyes began to wander, looking all around, staring into the darkness at the shapes and shadows in the cemetery. Because of the darkness, fewer of the tombstones were visible and there seemed to be not so many of them; only the larger ones could be seen clearly. And the sounds of the night seemed louder, because of the absence of human voices. Johnny stared into the darkness.

      In the distance, a strange moving shadow appeared almost as a huddled figure moving among the graves.

      Probably the caretaker or a late mourner, Johnny thought, and he glanced nervously at his watch. “C’mon, Barb, church was this morning,” he said, in an annoyed tone. But Barbara ignored him and continued her prayer, as if she was determined to drag it out as long as possible just to aggravate him.

      Johnny lit a cigarette, idly exhaled the first puff of smoke, and looked around again.

      There was definitely someone in the distance, moving among the graves, Johnny squinted, but it was too dark to make out anything but an indistinct shape that more often than not blurred and merged with the shape of trees and tombstones as it advanced slowly through the graveyard.

      Johnny turned to his sister and started to say something but she made the sign of the cross and stood up, ready to leave. She turned from the grave in silence, and they both started to walk slowly away, Johnny smoking and kicking at small stones as he ambled along.

      “Praying is for church,” he said flatly.

      “Church would do you some good,” Barbara told him. “You’re turning into a heathen.”

      “Well, Grandpa told me I was damned to hell. Remember? Right here—I jumped out at you from behind that tree. Grandpa got all shook up and told me I gone be demn to yell!”

      Johnny laughed.

      “You used to be so scared here,” he said, devilishly.

      “Remember? Right here I jumped out from behind that tree at you.”

      “Johnny!” Barbara said, with annoyance. And she smiled to show him he was not frightening her, but she knew it was too dark for him to see the smile anyway.

      “I think you’re still afraid,” he persisted. “I think you’re afraid of the people in their graves. The dead people. What if they came out of their graves after you Barbara? What would you do? Run? Pray?”

      He turned around and leered at her, as though he was about to pounce.

      “Johnny, stop!”

      “You’re still afraid.”

      “No!”

      “You’re afraid of the dead people!”

      “Stop, Johnny!”

      “They’re coming out of their graves, Barbara! Look! Here comes one of them now!”

      He pointed toward the huddled figure which had been moving among the graves. The caretaker, or whoever it was, stopped and appeared to be looking in their direction, but it was too dark to really tell.

      “He’s coming to get you, Barbara! He’s dead! And he’s going to get you.”

      “Johnny, stop—he’ll hear you—you’re ignorant.”

      But Johnny ran away from her and hid behind a tree.

      “Johnny, you—” she began, but in her embarrassment she cut herself short and looked down at the ground as the moving figure in the distance slowly approached her and it became obvious that their paths were going to intersect.

      It seemed strange to her that someone other than she or her brother would be in the cemetery at such an odd hour.

      Probably either a mourner or a caretaker.

      She looked up and smiled to say СКАЧАТЬ