Dead Pulse Read Free Page A

shiny Levi belt buckle that reflected in the sunlight that broke through clouds. He thought of his first kill, Marilyn, back in his hometown. A sexual assault that went further than he first anticipated. He had waded out with her weighted body and let her slip into the murky water of Lake Garrow.
    The second was Jenny Tucker, he rolled over in his mind the stormy day he lured her into his car offering her a lift to get out of the rain, she didn’t stand a chance. He’d beat her first until she was barely breathing; she was certainly unconscious and no longer able to fight off his sexual advances. After he had killed her a short-lived remorse came over him. Almost disgusted with his behaviour he quickly buried her in a shallow grave not far from his fresh kill that lay before him, Dorothy.
    Dorothy’s smudged lips and freckled chin were covered with the crimson lipstick that Carpenter liked to wear once he had captured what he thought of as his girls . Her clothes were ripped and matted with blood. Her lifeless eyes looked blankly up at his chiselled good-looking face, albeit one also smudged with red lipstick. Carpenter closed her eyes whilst giving her a kiss on her cooling cheek, oddly feeling a tingling sensation in his lips as he inhaled the scent of her body. Turning from the body his crazed beady eyes scanned the ground for his spade; he was nothing if not prepared.
    As he turned back to where the corpse lay ready to start digging her shallow grave, Dorothy’s corpse sat bolt upright. She tightly gripped his ears and sprang at Carpenter’s face.
    Birds fled the trees as Carpenter met his demise with a resonant scream.
     
    As the drizzling rain stopped the clouds cleared, and the pale blue seemed to dissolve, becoming a deep orange. Farmore’s only Cemetery sat amongst scattered trees and was for the most part fairly neglected, the oldest graves and tombs were on the whole unkempt. Many of the graves marked a tragic period in the town’s history of a collapsed mineshaft that took many of Farmore’s men and children. A memorial statue was erected in the only regularly maintained part of the cemetery. The statue of a miner cradling a child in his arms stood in a neatly trimmed circle of lush grass.
    A gentle wind with the smell of cut damp grass caught Sam's breath as he placed some of his grandmother’s favourite flowers tulips gently on her grave.
    The news reports of an imminent pandemic scared him and made him value life that little bit more. Mulling over the issue of his own mortality as he walked through the graveyard he could hear eerie thumps and thuds. Trying to place the sounds that were all around him distant fireworks, he thought. Stopping he looked intently at one grave. It had a small oval picture of a rounded face man under an etched cross, below was a verse, the engraving half covered by ivy that twisted and twined around the base of the headstone. Stepping closer his brown boots crackled on pinecones, pausing for a moment in the silence of the graveyard a dull thump seemed to come from the base of the headstone. He moved closer to the grave, gawking, convinced that he heard something. Did he see the ground move? He stood up and shivered in the fading light, he intuitively knew something wasn't quite right. The grave seemed to be stirring to life and despite his instincts telling him otherwise he moved forwards once again.
    “Aggggrhh!” he yelled out as an icy hand gripped his arm.
    “I'm sorry boy,” a thin man with a gaunt face stood with a bunch of keys in his hand. “I startled you? I've got to lock up now.” He said with a faded Irish accent.
    Sam stood speechless his heart pounding in his mouth. The distraction appeared to quieten the graveyard and everything seemed normal once again. Sam composed himself shrugging his shoulders. “Jeez.”
    The man looked to be pleased with the affect he had on Sam. “You jumped boy! You know not many come here so late, most around lunch