Undead Read Free Page A

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,