Joey had been really sad when his dog Buddy got that lung tumor and had to be put to sleep, but he’d never really deeply wished that Buddy would come back, at least, he didn’t think he had.
Even if he had wished for Buddy to come back, it wouldn’t be like this, rotting and moldering, carrying an old tennis ball. Buddy had been dead for four months, four warm months, and the grave he and mom dug next to the rose bush hadn’t been deep enough to keep out worms and gophers and other things that liked to chew on dead dogs. Buddy had gnaw marks on his legs, and his eyes were nothing but rotten sockets. His face had bits of leaves and beetles sticking to it. He smelled like a warm shallow grave.
Joey had always let Buddy lick his face. Not this time.
Joey screamed and ran into the house, sliding the glass door shut and bolting it with the baseball bat that his mom kept there. Buddy ran up to the door and smacked into it, just like he always did when he was alive, like the glass was too clean for him to see, except that it made more sense now because Buddy didn’t have any eyes.
Joey’s mom was away on a business trip, and he was left alone for the weekend, supposedly with Aunt Velma to watch him, but Aunt Velma mostly just left him alone and dropped in every now and then. They did this all the time. He knew the rules, and he had his mom’s cell number to call if something went wrong, but nothing could be so bad that he’d call his mom for help like he was some little kid who couldn’t be trusted.
Not even his dead dog come back to life.
Buddy put his muddy paws on the glass and tipped his head to one side. He made what sounded like a whine, then dropped the tennis ball and panted.
Trying not to look at his dog, Joey crept forward. He reached out and grabbed the edge of the curtain, then jerked it closed with a single motion. He still heard Buddy’s whine and scratching on the glass, but at least he didn’t have to see the sad look in those eyeless sockets.
He went to the bathroom and flicked on the light. Three roaches skittered out from under the vanity.
“Gross,” he said, and stepped on the slowest one. The other two skittered away.
He turned on the water and cupped his hands under it. Splashing cold water on his face didn’t calm him down like it always seemed to for the people on television. Maybe he should try something else. Like a snack. It had been an hour since lunch, and he was getting kind of hungry.
He felt something under his shoe. He lifted it, and saw the roach he’d stepped on. It was still moving, so he stomped it a couple more times. The other roaches were watching from the edge of the tub. They waved their antennae, but they didn’t run. Where’d all these roaches come from? Didn’t his mom have the pest guy spray for them a couple of months ago?
In the kitchen trash, something was rustling around. More roaches? He ignored them and opened the refrigerator. His mom had bought a rotisserie chicken for him before she left, and he’d only eaten half of it. He pulled out the chicken and set it on the counter, then started rummaging around for cheese to make a sandwich with. A sound made him turn.
The rotisserie chicken had gotten up and was limping around the counter on its drumsticks.
Joey grabbed the trash can and puked into it. As he leaned over the bag, he saw what had been making that rustling sound. It was the half-pack of hotdogs that had gone bad. They were writhing like the world’s biggest maggots. Joey puked again.
When he was done puking, the roaches had come out of the bathroom and were sitting on the kitchen floor, looking at him.
Including the one he had stepped on.
Joey grabbed his cell phone and his house key, then ran out the door. His mom didn’t answer her phone, probably because she was in meetings all day, so he went to see his best friend.
Conner lived just a few blocks over, and if anyone knew how to deal with zombies, it was him. Conner had seen just about every zombie movie ever made, and even filmed one himself for a school project.
Along the way to Conner’s house, animals started to follow him: squirrels, bugs, birds with broken necks, and even a cat with a smushed face. He was like the Doctor Doolittle of the damned. Joey rode his bike as fast as he could so that the dead animals couldn’t catch up with him. It would have worked, too, except Conner took forever to come to the door, (probably texting his girlfriend) and by that time the four dead mice that Conner’s cat had left on the doorstep had come back to life and were scampering around near his feet.
Conner opened the door a crack. “Yeah, dude, what’s up? I’m not supposed to have people over. I’m grounded.”
“It’s an emergency.” Joey pointed at the dead animals. “Zombies.”
“Ah, gross!” Conner said, then his eyes narrowed. “Did they bite you?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“They’re just sitting there. They’re not attacking.” This was true. They stayed a foot back, except for Buddy, who whined and dropped the tennis ball at Joey’s feet. Dead mice, dead cat, something that might have been an opossum, a whole lot of bugs, and a flock of partially decayed songbirds all arrayed themselves in a circle around Joey. Either they were respecting his space, or someone had told them what happened to the roach in the bathroom.
“All right. Come on in. Keep it quiet, though, I’m kinda grounded.”
Joey started to walk into the house, but the animals came with him.
“Not them, grandma’ll flip. She doesn’t even like animals when they’re alive.”
Joey thought about it. He backed up away from the house slowly, allowing plenty of time for the animals to follow him. Then, on the count of three, he dashed toward the house, up the steps, and slammed the screen door behind him. Buddy almost made it, but the others weren’t even close.
Conner’s house smelled like fake peach and menthol cigarettes, and no matter what time of day it was, the television was on in every room in the house.
“Who’s makin’ all that ruckus? Conner? Is that you? You best not be having any friends over, young man, you’re grounded.”
“I know, grandma,” Conner shouted, while gesturing with his free hand for Joey to go into his bedroom.
Joey slunk in through the bedroom door. The bedroom had a big black flag tacked over the window, so it was always dark. Conner had a really badass stereo system that his dad got for him, and a metal bunk bed so high up that he couldn’t sit up without smacking his face into the ceiling. Conner turned on some heavy metal up loud so his grandma couldn’t overhear them talking.
“Okay, from what I know about zombies, if you wanna take them down, you have to either cut their head off or shoot them in the head. So whaddaya wanna try first?”
Joey didn’t like the idea of cutting any animal’s head off, especially not Buddy. “Let’s try shooting them first.”
“Okay. Where are we gonna get a gun?”
They ran over the list of people they knew who owned guns, and the only one they could think of who might let them use one was Conner’s grandpa, but he kept them locked up. Conner called him anyway, and even though his spiel sounded pretty reasonable to Joey, Conner’s grandpa evidently had other ideas. All Joey could hear from this side of the phone was “are you out of your fucking mind?” shouted so loud that Conner took his phone away from his ear.
“That’s a no then?” Joey asked.
Conner made a face at him.
“Damn.” Joey never got to shoot anything. His mom didn’t like guns.
“We’ll have to try something else then.”
“You want me to go outside and get one of those animals?” Joey asked.
Conner lifted back the corner of the flag, and pointed out the window. “We don’t have to. Look.”
All the animals from outside had come up to the window and were sitting on it, staring in. Buddy was there too, still holding the tennis ball. Conner opened the window a few inches and grabbed one of the squirrels. It freaked out when Conner touched it, and it looked like it was trying to bite him, so Joey grabbed its tail. As soon as
he touched it, it got calm, like it was a pet kitten that trusted him. Conner got out a big bowie knife.
“So, you want me to do this?”
Joey did. Actually, he didn’t. The squirrel was kind of cute, for a zombie. He didn’t want either one of them to cut this poor thing’s head off. It had already been run over by a car; it had tire marks on its back leg. Cutting the thing’s head off when it was already dead felt like stealing from a blind kid.
“No,” he said. “I’m the one who did this to it. I’ll do it.”
Joey put the blade against the squirrel’s neck and pushed down. It took more effort than he thought it would to cut the thing’s head off. The squirrel squeaked once, and its head fell off the social studies textbook they were using as a chopping block. It rolled over, ears over stump, and landed on the desk, leaving a brownish red stain on Conner’s essay.
Joey let go of the squirrel. It righted itself, then scampered over to its head. The eyes twitched, and it opened its mouth to chitter something at its body.
“Aw, man, that sucks. We’ll have to try something else.”
“Like what?” Joey asked. Cutting off the head of a zombie was supposed to work. It was supposed to kill anything.
“Fire,” Conner suggested.
“Your grandma will kill us if we light a fire in here.”
Conner shrugged. “We’ll sneak out and go to the park. They have fire pits there.”
Conner turned his music up even louder. Joey put both pieces of the undead squirrel into a trash bag and tied the top in a knot. Conner started to say something about airholes, but Joey just looked at him, and then they both giggled, manically. If you couldn’t kill an undead squirrel by decapitating it, you certainly couldn’t kill it by putting it in a plastic bag.
They had to be extra careful sneaking out, since Conner was grounded, but as soon as they got out the door they were home free, because his grandma tended to stay away from his room when he had heavy metal music playing.
Joey rode his bike, and Conner rode on Joey’s pegs, on account of his own bike had a flat tire. Joey kept his eyes on the road, refusing to look at a flattened armadillo that rocked back and forth, trying to free itself from the pavement. Buddy kept up with him most of the way, but he had stumpy little legs and they lost him before they got to the park.
It was a big park. The side near the school had playground equipment, the middle had barbecue grills and picnic tables and a ramada, and the far side had a copse of trees and a large lawn that sloped down towards the river. Eventually it stopped being lawn, as if the groundskeepers gave up, and it had trees and nettles and some thorny bushes that would probably take the place over in a year or two. Joey pedaled as far in as he could, until his and Conner’s weight pushing the tires into the soft earth made bicycling difficult.
It wasn’t until they got to the barbecue grill that they realized neither one of them had thought to bring a lighter.
“Maybe we should go back to your house,” Joey suggested. The squirrel had been rustling around in the bag the whole time, and he really wished they didn’t have to do this.
“No way can I sneak out twice,” Conner said. He pointed to the far end of the park, past the brambles and scraggly trees, to the underpass where the homeless people hung out. Smoke poured up from behind the trees, and even from here they could smell wood smoke and burning leaves. “Let’s go ask those guys.”
As they got closer to the river they smelled diesel and dead fish. The homeless people freaked Joey out. If Conner was as scared as Joey, he didn’t show it. They approacheda couple of dirty guys with long hair standing next to a trashcan with a fire in it. One of them smoked a cigarette, and when they approached, he turned to stare at them, not in a friendly way, but more like a challenge. If Conner hadn’t been with him, Joey might have turned back at that point.
The smoker stubbed out his cigarette and folded his arms. The other guy just sat on the ground digging at the rocks with a stick, as if he were waiting for nothing in particular.
“Can we use your fire?”
“You cold?”
Conner shook his head.
“Whaddaya want the fire for then?”
“To burn something.”
“Yeah, whatever,” the smoker said.
Joey couldn’t untie the knot. He almost used his teeth on it, but stopped at the last second, realizing how gross that was. He tossed the whole thing into the flames.
The plastic caught immediately, curling up into a sticky black paste. The squirrel started to chitter, and its body scampered around as if looking for a way out.
“What the hell, kid? You some kind of sick fuck, torturing an animal?”
“No, it was already dead,” Conner said.
The man on the ground stood up and peered into the can to get a look. The squirrel’s tail had caught on fire, and its fur smoked. The most horrible smell—like a pan when you let some hot dogs boil dry—emanated from the can.
“It’s headless! Aw, Jesus!” The smoker looked horrified. “What the fuck, man!”
Joey and Conner both looked at each other and shrugged. He might have been able to come up with a story that sounded okay, except that just then Buddy showed up, barking around his favorite tennis ball. Part of Buddy’s flank gaped open, exposing maggoty flesh. He smelled almost as bad as the burning squirrel.
The smoker looked at Buddy, then back to the headless squirrel, still scrabbling around inside the fire like a lobster trapped in a pot. “You’re a fucking warlock. I don’t want none of that black magic shit. I’m a Christian man.”
He cuffed the other guy on the shoulder, and both of them took off, glancing over their shoulders warily, like coyotes.
The squirrel still hadn’t died. Its fur had burned off, and the head was all black, like a potato in the coals that someone had forgotten, but the body kept scampering around, trying and failing to climb the sides. He felt bad for it. Twice he reached forward, having decided to pull it out of the coals, before reminding himself that it had already been dead before he’d even cut its head off.
Conner’s phone rang. He looked at it and swore. “Hey, I gotta go. Let me know if this works, okay?”
Joey nodded, but didn’t turn around as Conner ran home.
He kept watching, as the sun went down and the fire burned low, but even when the squirrel was nothing but charcoal, it was still moving. It took a real long time to get that way, too. He felt sick. He had tortured the poor thing, and for nothing.
Buddy whined, as if he knew what Joey was thinking.
“I won’t do that to you, boy. Don’t you worry.” It was his fault that Buddy came back from the grave. It wouldn’t be fair to Buddy to have to burn to death the second time. His tumor had been bad enough.
When he went back to where his bike was, Buddy followed him the whole way, still holding the tennis ball. It had grown dark, so people didn’t seem to notice that Buddy was really undead, that he had sockets for eyes and that there were bugs crawling around under his skin.
He’d ridden his bike out of the park, with Buddy running along behind him, when he got a call from Conner.
“Hey, Joey, I looked it up on the internet. Turns out that thing you’ve turned into has a name.”
“Yeah, I’m a fucking warlock.”
“Not exactly. You’re a necromancer.”
“Great. How do I stop being one?”
“Sorry, dude, it looks like you’re stuck with it. Says here that necromancers raise corpses from the dead, and that the corpses will stay in their animated state until the necromancer releases them.”
“Hear that boy? All I have to do is release you. Okay, Buddy, I release you.”
Buddy wagged his tail.
“Anything else? That doesn’t seem to do squat.”
“Conner William! You’re not supposed to be on the computer, young man!” Conner’s grandma shouted in the background.
“I’m doing homework grandma!” Conner shouted back
. “There are a couple of sites offering anti-magic charms, but they’re pretty expensive. You got a credit card?”
“No. Isn’t there anything else?”
“Young man!” Conner’s grandma’s phone said, sounding like it was right next to the receiver. “That doesn’t look like homework to me! I’m going to tell your mother! Get off the phone right now!”
Conner disconnected.
Joey sighed and put his phone away. He didn’t want to go home. Sometimes the house got lonely when mom wasn’t there, and it would be especially spooky if dead roaches and roadkill and ham sandwiches were hopping around near his bed while he slept. He needed to get this taken care of.
He never thought he’d go to school when he didn’t have to. But then again, he never thought he’d accidentally raise the dead either.
When he was a kid, he thought that the teachers lived at school, and that if you ever went there on Saturday you’d find them in their classroom, maybe standing still and silent, waiting to be reanimated like an animatronic doll that didn’t have a quarter inserted. He knew that there was a good chance that no one would be there. But he didn’t want to face the rotisserie chicken at home, so he rode his bike down the familiar streets grown unfamiliar by dusk. When he got to the parking lot, most of the cars were gone, and only a few lights shone in the windows of the low brick building.
Mrs. Oshiguri’s room was one of them. He knocked on her door.
She looked surprised to see him. When she saw dead Buddy and a crowd of undead animals trot in after him, she looked even more surprised.
“What. Is. That?” Mrs. Oshiguri asked.
“It’s my dog, Buddy. I accidentally raised him from the dead. I’m a necromancer, whatever that is.”
“From necros meaning dead, and mance, meaning magician. Why would you want to be a necromancer?” She looked askance at the dead animals, and put a lab table between them and her.
She didn’t have to worry. Even Buddy stayed close by Joey’s side, more loyal than he’d ever been as a living dog. When he was alive, Buddy used to run off and chase squirrels or sniff walls whenever he got the chance. He’d even run away a couple of times, but now he seemed tame and trusting. Like the undead squirrel. He didn’t tell Mrs. Oshiguri about the squirrel.
“Conner looked it up on the internet. He didn’t say how it happened to me, or how I turn it off. I thought you could give me some pointers, seeing as how you’re all about science.”
The dissected frogs from earlier that week were twitching on their pins, and the cow fetus she kept in a jar on her desk swam in its formaldehyde. She made a face like she was trying to keep her lunch down.
“This is magic, not science. I teach biology, not,” She dry heaved at the frogs. “Not necrology. You need someone else.”
“I don’t have anyone else. Conner couldn’t help me, and my mom is out of town.”
She frowned. After a long pause, she nodded as if she’d come up with the answer. She walked across the room and used a key to unlock some of the cabinets. After taking out some Bunsen burners, she climbed onto the counter and reached behind a stack of petri dishes for a small cardboard box. She opened it, took something out, and then climbed down, leaving the box on the counter next to the Bunsen burners.
“This is a focus stone,” she said, handing him a small broken geode. The crystals inside were white and minute, like spilled salt. “If you hold this and concentrate, it will reinforce your control so you can un-animate your dog.”
“Really? Magic stone?”
“Try it.”
Joey thought it sounded like bullshit, but he gave it a try. Clutching the stone with all his might, he concentrated on releasing Buddy, releasing all the dead animals, letting them all go back to their normal, dead, state. He thought about how sorry he was for the poor squirrel he’d decapitated and burned, and about the armadillo, and about the rotisserie chicken (he was going to become a vegetarian from now on, that was for sure). He added, as a prayer, how sorry he was that he’d disturbed the rest of all those animals without even meaning to, and mentally released all of them, even the blueflies and the roaches and whatever worms or ants he hadn’t even noticed. He especially concentrated on releasing Buddy, on letting Buddy be a normal, dead dog again.
When he opened his eyes, Buddy still stood there, holding the tennis ball expectantly.
“It didn’t work.”
Mrs. Oshiguri’s shoulders fell. She reached out for the stone. “I can put that back for you.”
“It’s okay, I got it.” Joey walked across the room to put the geode back in the box. The box was filled with other stones, pyrite, quartz, obsidian, agate, all with green velvet depressions bearing their labels. He stuck the geode back into the geode spot.
“You lied to me. You just made that up, like Dumbo’s magic feather?”
“It’s all I got, Joey. Like I said, I’m a biologist. I deal with science, not this magic stuff.”
Joey didn’t bother keeping his disappointment off his face.
“Well, thanks anyway.”
He went home, pedaling slowly on his bicycle so that no one hit him in the dark. He was followed by a cloud of formerly-dead blueflies and junebugs, and trailed by car-struck squirrels, chittering after him like undead little sisters. The house was dark, and when he opened the kitchen door, the rotisserie chicken hopped off the counter to greet him, like it was his pet or something. He put it in the garbage with the writhing hot dogs. The ancient answering machine blinked, meaning that mom had called (why she didn’t call his cell phone was beyond him.) He didn’t call her back though. What was the point? She couldn’t help him; this was something he was going to have to learn for himself.
It was a little cold on the porch, but with the light on, he could see most of the yard. Dead moths, stuck in the bottom of the glass orb, began to flutter again when he got near. Buddy waited, expectantly, by the front door.
He reached down and took the disgusting tennis ball out of Buddy’s mouth. He threw it, not too far, down the stairs and into the yard. Buddy gave an excited bark and ran after it.
It took Buddy a long time to find the ball, but he eventually did. Apparently his nose still worked.
“I’ll figure out how to kill you dead later on, Buddy, but for now, let’s just play, okay?” He ruffled Buddy’s fur, to pretend everything was okay, even though the feel of the worms crawling under the skin filled him with revulsion.
Buddy barked, a raspy soil-laden bark. He dropped the tennis ball at Joey’s feet.
Joey kept throwing the ball, again and again.
#
His mom showed up on Sunday, carrying a bag from a burger joint and her guiltiest-parent-in-the-world expression.
“I got your message and changed my flight. Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you.” She hugged him, and he even hugged her back.
“It’s okay mom. I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you can plan for.”
“When I was a kid, they didn’t have things like this, accidental magickings, weird creature sightings, curses. You want a hamburger?”
She reached in the bag and pulled out a sandwich, but it started wriggling, so she dropped it with a shriek. It hopped across the porch, trying to get closer to him.
“I don’t eat hamburgers anymore.”
He touched it, thinking “lie still”. It stopped moving. He hopped off the porch to where he’d left the shovel, and dug another hole in the softened earth. His hands had blisters from digging. Buddy came over and started to dig, but he told him no, and Buddy stopped.
Mom looked like she was going to throw up. “Is that Buddy?” she whispered.
“Yeah. I figured out how to make most of them rest again, but not Buddy. He just won’t leave.” Joey picked up the tennis ball and threw it underhand across the lawn. Buddy took off after it.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Play ball with him until he gets tired of it. Until he gets tired of me.”
/>
“Have you been playing with him this whole time? Since you called me?”
“Yeah. I brought him back, I owe it to him.”
She fell silent for a few minutes, watching him throw the ball back. When she spoke again, it was in the voice she used for other adults, like she was talking to someone on the phone, or a client.
“It startles me how fast you’ve grown.” She stood up and reached forward like she was going to ruffle his hair, but instead she just let her fingerstips fall to his shoulder, squeezed once, and went inside. She left the bag of burgers on the porch.
Buddy dropped the ball at Joey’s feet. Joey picked it up, but something has changed with Buddy. He didn’t look so expectant anymore.
“You ready?” Joey asks.
Buddy whined.
Joey reached out and carefully, gently, killed his dog a second time.
END
This story was one of a few “practice ideas” I had to warm up to a new world I wanted to write a novel in. In this world, magic begins to work, and people have to start dealing with it. I wanted the idea of a society dealing with something that was new, not just to them, but to everyone. What do you do if you have a problem that no adult in your life knows how to deal with, because it’s new to them too? I also wanted, as in Gingerbread House, to hit the difficult middle mark between humor and horror.
For book reviews, essays, and updates on my epublishing adventures, visit: www.katercheek.com.
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