When night fell and the birds retreated to roost, Larry secured the cemetery gates, made a cup of hot cocoa in his shack, sat by the fire, and cranked up the television. Blaring sitcom music always drowned out the sounds of loosening earth and the moans and groans that followed.
Just as someone on TV guessed the price of a home sauna, Larry heard the lively pattering of feet across the ground. Someone was sprinting across the cemetery.
Larry jerked his gaze to the window and saw nothing but the silhouette of a bent tree outside his window. Since when did those things run so fast?
He jumped at the slamming of a crypt door.
Grave robbers. Bravery and pride for his cemetery surged through him like molten lava, fueling his withering muscles and aching joints. Larry switched the TV off, unhooked his kerosene lamp and ring of keys from the wall, and holstered his pistol. With bat-like hearing uncharacteristic of a fifty-seven year old man, he traced the footsteps to a newly built crypt. It belonged to Makayla Winters, a teen who had died a week ago in a freak accident in a freak prank.
Larry turned the key in the hole and met no resistance; the door had already been unlocked. He eased the heavy stone door open. A male voice drifted from the bottom of the crypt.
“A few stitches, Makayla, and you’ll be good as new.”
Larry froze. Not at the voice – he was used to those – but at how youthful and decent it was. The man sounded neither dead nor thieving.
Holding the lamp before him so he wouldn’t slip on the mossy steps, Larry descended into the cool yet rank environs of the crypt. He could not help but admire the crypt as he went – the perfectly cut stone blocks, the well-sanded walls. Years of working in the cemetery had instilled in him a greater appreciation for what was often overlooked. Larry decided he would ask the crypt’s inhabitant if she was pleased with her new home. He seldom spoke to the zombies, preferring instead to turn a blind eye, but wasn’t it was rude to ignore the host?
Sitting on a stone stool was Makayla, her still-blonde tresses gleaming in candlelight. She still wore the red prom dress her parents buried her in, though it no longer matched her new skin tone, now the color of cat vomit. Her skin was cracked, patches peeling off like old wallpaper.
Her left arm rested on the edge of her open coffin; her other arm was in the hands of a young man in a doctor’s coat. He held her arm against her shoulder socket and was pulling a needle and thread through her decomposing flesh.
“Promise me – no more handstands,” the man said sternly.
Makayla pouted. “Does this mean my cheerleading days are over? But cheerleading is my life.”
The young man sighed. “You’ve done it, Makayla. I can’t take away your only joy.” He smiled. “All right, but then I”ll have to glue and stitch up your other arm, just in case.”
Makayla grinned, revealing a few missing teeth. Then she stiffened.
“Doctor,” she gasped, and pointed at Larry with her good arm.
The young man turned. Sleek black hair, sparkling green eyes, flushed cheeks. He had “the works,” as Larry like to put it, but there was something odd about him that Larry couldn’t quite make out.
“What are you doing here?” Larry asked. “The cemetery’s closed.”
“Isn”t it obvious?” said Makayla. “He’s fixing me up.”
The doctor finished the last stitches in her right arm and released it. “All done.”
Makayla moved her arm and squealed. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Then she picked her stool up, placed it on Dr. Mortimer’s other side, and offered him her other arm with a cheesy grin.
“Not so fast, young lady. Let me speak to our new visitor.” He turned to look at Larry. “You must be the gravekeeper. I’m Dr. Mortimer, zombie doctor.”
An open wooden box with a leather strap sat open on the floor, containing surgical equipment, tubes of super glue, needles and thread, and cases of make-up. The doctor’s lab coat was smeared with dirt and moss.
“How long have you been doing this?” Larry asked.
“A few weeks now. In my hurry to mend poor Makayla here, I’d forgotten to be discreet tonight. I apologize if I interrupted your TV night.”
Larry’s hairs bristled as he realized the man had been spying on him.
“Why?” he asked.
Dr. Mortimer hesitated before asking, “Have you ever loved someone, Larry?”
“Yes.” It pained him to think about his wife, who happened to be lolling around the east section of the graveyard. She cast puzzled looks at him occasionally as he passed by, as if wondering where she had seen him before. He would wave, and she would tentatively wave back, before going back to nibbling one of the flowers he put on her grave every sunset.
“Well.” Dr. Mortimer paused. “Zombies need love, too.”
“I agree,” quipped Makayla, batting eyelashes coated with fresh mascara. “People make us hideous, violent, scary. I used to adore zombie movies. 28 days later – yes, please. World War Z? Count me in! But now that I know what real zombies are like, I prefer vampire movies. Eh, Doctor?” She winked at Dr. Mortimer.
Dr. Mortimer wasn’t listening; his face had lit up at the sight of something behind Larry. He smiled, wide, revealing two sharp canines that glinted in the candlelight.
Larry spun around and found himself face-to-face with a skeleton, clad in a velvet dress that hung off its bony figure; long sleeves trailed along its humerus and opened like a silk fan to its radius, ulna and spindly fingers.
“Lavilla, meet the gravekeeper,” Dr. Mortimer said. “Caretaker, meet Lavilla, my beautiful wife.”
The skeleton’s jaws clicked as they moved. “Hello.”
Larry cried out in shock and bolted behind Makayla’s coffin. “It talked,” he said in a whimper.
The skeleton cackled. “That’s always fun.”
Beige skin slowly crept onto its bones; black satin wrapped around red velvet and curled around the smooth flesh.
In seconds, Larry was staring at a beautiful, pale woman with hair dark as midnight and lips rich as ruby.
“Lavilla never tires of scaring people,” Dr. Mortimer said with a fond smile.
“Oh, how amusing,” said Larry.
“Lavilla, I need to stitch up this young lady’s other arm. Would you please wait in the car?”
Her flawless lips curled into a frown. “I only wanted to see how lovely Makayla was doing.”
Makayla wiggled her newly attached arm. “I’m great, thanks.” Her brow had been slightly furrowed since the appearance of Lavilla. Larry had the feeling Makayla wasn’t too pleased about Dr. Mortimer being accounted for.
“Eh,” said Larry, “I should be leaving, myself. Early day tomorrow.”
“Bye Larry!” Makayla waved her good arm as Dr. Mortimer worked on her other. “Come chat with me sometime. It gets way too quiet in here. I’ll show you my handstands.”
“Goodbye, Larry,” said Dr. Mortimer. “I expect to see you again soon.”
“Yeah. And, er, thank you for fixing up the…”
“Zombies. Just call us zombies,” said Makayla. “We’re not oversensitive or anything.”
“Right.”
Larry crawled into bed feeling a little less lonely that night, now that he knew of a regular in his cemetery who wasn’t falling to pieces. As much as he enjoyed being the guardian of Starfinch Cemetery, it was nice knowing someone else supporting his life’s cause. Also, he was glad it wasn’t a grave robber. That had happened once before, and Larry had lost a whole night’s sleep trying to clean up the mess.
At three o’ clock in the morning, he was woken in the middle of the night by an emergency phone call. Someone wanted to place a reservation for a grave site.
“Sorry for waking you, Larry,” said the caller, a manager of a funeral business. “Lad fell off scaffolding. His family’s demanding immediate confirmation. You know how some grieving people can be. And I think, just let them be, you know, Larry? Anyway, The funeral will end in a week from now, and we’ll need a plot ready by then.”
“I’ll have it ready by noon.”
“Great. I can always count on you, Larry.”
Larry set out to place grave markers.
New zombies were always extra loud and tended to annoy the older zombies. The night the newest addition was buried, Larry had expected scuffles to break out, and break out they did. Larry sat in his warm cottage as the zombies went to town outside, and wondered if this meant Dr. Mortimer had more work to do. Now that Larry knew about the zombie doctor, he realized that must be why he had seen fewer zombie parts lying around than usual.
Strangely, Larry grew fond of the newcomer when Chuck (that was the new zombie’s name) offered to repair his roof for a few stalks of sunflowers over his grave. Larry, having wanted to repair his roof for a long time but having a crippling fear of heights, gladly agreed. Zombies didn’t remember anything of their lives, but they retained their muscle memory.
“You’re really good at this sort of thing,” said Larry, the night Chuck was helping to repair his roof.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Aye,” said Chuck. “I’m also good with the ladies. One time I was working – aieee!”
Chuck’s wrist fell off, bounced off the dirt and skidded to a halt. The construction zombie clung to the ladder for dear life with his intact hand.
“Come down slowly,” said Larry. “I’ll get Dr. Mortimer to look at you.”
Dr. Mortimer did not look so fresh that night. He had heavy dark circles under his eyes. His face was ghostly green instead of pearly white.
“You shouldn’t push your zombies too hard, Larry,” said Dr. Mortimer, flashing his immaculate teeth. “They are past their prime.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Chuck the zombie said. “I wanted sunflowers.” The moist dirt underfoot glowed in the hard moonlight. Chuck swayed on his stool after the chill breeze, as Dr. Mortimer glued, then stitched his wrist back on. Chuck was in the middle of an undead joke when Lavilla stopped by.
“Ah. New friend, Larry?” Lavilla said in a slurred voice.
“Yes, mam.”
“More work for my husband,” she said, smiling and touching her husband’s shoulder with long fingers.
Dr. Mortimer’s eyes was awash with weariness; his shoulders slumped under his tailored suit. “I told you to wait in the car.”
“It was getting stuffy.”
“Roll down the window.”
Lavilla’s voice took on a cold undertone. “Does my visit irk you, husband dearest?”
Dr. Mortimer closed his eyes. “I’ll be done in a moment, Lavilla. Please return to the car.”
Lavilla turned her back on the three men (if a human, a vampire and a zombie all qualified as men) with a swish of her black satin gown and she disappeared down the path towards the gate.
“How does she get in and out with the gates locked?” wondered Larry out loud.
Dr. Mortimer’s weariness was momentarily lifted as he laughed. “Vampires are not stuck to the ground like humans are.”
“Zombies alike,” emphasized Chuck. “I do wish I could fly.”
Larry was silent, his mind whirring why Dr. Mortimer was so insistent his wife remain in their car. A horrid guess festered in his head. If his guess was true, dark things were going on in his beloved town of Starfinch.
And so Larry did something for the first time since his placement of graveyard caretaker two decades ago: he left the cemetery while it was still dark and his zombie wards were lolling about the grounds. He had never dreamed of abandoning his post: but more crucial things were at hand.
A few zombies were wandering near the cemetery gate, engaging in small talk about crow families and bunnies that had found their way into their graves (and their stomachs.) They watched with glassy eyes as Larry unlocked the gate.
“Where ya goin’, Larry?” a man in a tattered suit asked.
“Someone,” muttered Larry.
“How rude,” said a woman zombie. “And they make us look like the uncivilized ones.”
Dr. Mortimer must have reached the road by now, being able to fly and all. Larry fumbled with the locks and slid the rusty gates open as quietly as he could. There was a loud screech, and the surrounding zombies grimaced and covered their ears. “Sorry,” he said, and squeezed past the narrow opening to the other side. He locked it again and said, “Now be good. I don’t want to see any limbs twitching on the floor when I get back.”
“It was an accident that one time,” cried a particularly tall zombie.
Larry huffed and puffed his way down the dirt path to the road. There was no one there. He hopped into his truck, cursed its loud ignition and drove down the one-way street. Trees with gnarled branches reached for him as he drove by; the stars hid behind thick plumes of cloud. It was a bad night to be spying on vampires, but Larry had to know.
After minutes of going way too fast for a fifty-seven-year-old man driving in pitch blackness, Larry finally saw two pinpricks of light in the distance. He eased his foot onto the pedal. That had to be them; no one else had left the cemetery for hours.
Larry got to a distance close enough to make out the white pinpricks and far enough so they wouldn’t spot him. They merged onto the main street, and the flow of traffic allowed Larry to creep a little closer without arousing suspicion.
The sedan stopped in front of a red brickstone apartment building. Dr. Mortimer helped Lavilla out and they entered the building holding hands. A few windows were lit in the building; someone’s shadow was gyrating in one of them. Larry parked on the opposite end of the street, turned off his engine, and waited.
It was three o’ clock in the morning and a faint mist had descended upon the streets when a slim shadow crept from one of the windows. By then all the windows were dark; the street was still as death. Larry barely saw the shadow; it took five-seconds of staring at the building for him to notice.
The shadow scaled the walls like a lizard. It landed on the pavement without making nary a noise, then crept in the street shadows three blocks down to another apartment building. Then it was scaling toward the walls again, crawling towards an open window.
Far too late, the idea of calling the police popped into his head. There was no point now; the police wouldn’t get here until five minutes later, at best. Larry wound down his window and eased his rickety but thin frame through. He wheelbarrowed his way out of his car, dusted himself off, then crept to the building as quietly as he could, feeling like a thief. More than once, he felt his shirt pocket for a crucial tool that he hoped would come in handy.
There would have been no way for Larry to reach the open window if there wasn’t a fire escape leading to another open window on the other side of the wall. Hoping it led to the same apartment, Larry eased himself through the second window for the night. When did his life get so exciting? And when did he get so fearless? He guessed years of living with zombies had densensitized him to the supernatural. He wasn’t sure it was a good thing.
In the room, Larry couldn’t see anything but the blinking display of a digital clock. Nothing stirred. Larry inched forwards. His footsteps were muffled by the thick carpet. His fingers brushed leather and he caressed what seemed like a sofa. He crouched behind it and listened for movement.
There – a slithering in the room on the right.
Larry found himself rooted to the ground. If that was who he really thought it was – what was a weak, feeble old man to do against it?
Too late now.
Cooking a plan right off the bat, Larry reached for the digital clock, set the alarm to a minute from what it curently was, and set it back on the side table. In a few gut-wrenching seconds, it went off.
There was a shocked gasp – then a gurgled scream, as if someone was trying to yell but had his throat cut off. Something crashed to the floor and shattered into pieces. The screaming grew louder. Then words slowly formed in a whisper: “Hee-lp me.”
Instinct told him it was safe to burst in. Larry entered the room and saw a man dressed only in his Spongebob boxers, his fingers grasping his neck. Blood oozed from between his fingers and dripped onto the sheets. A photo frame lay on the floor with shattered glass sticking out like shrapnel.
“Is the bleeding bad?” Larry asked. The man lifted his fingers for a few seconds, and Larry saw two puncture holes. Thick, crimson liquid seeped slowly from the wound, then stopped.
The man looked at his blood-soaked hands and wailed, “I don’t feel anything. Am I going to die?”
“You’ll be fine, mister. Did you see anything?”
“Yes, yes! I saw a woman. Insanely hot. Had her fangs in my neck.”
“Thank you, sir. I advise you to keep your windows locked and to get to a hospital should you feel woozy.”
“Wait – who are you? How did you get in here? Are you a policeman?”
“Sort of.”
Larry left the same way he came. Once in his car, he raced like a mad man back to the cemetery. Now that his fears were confirmed, his inner wimp took over and all he wanted to do was lock himself in his cottage and get the panic out of his system. Rational decisions would have to come later.
There were no zombie limbs strewn all over the cemetery this time. They looked pleased to see him.
“Why, Larry, you look so pale you almost look like us!”
Larry strode to his cottage without a word and bolted the door behind him. Then he slid to the floor and buried his face in his hands.
It took a minute before he noticed the fire had gone out. The cottage was uncharacteristically chilly.
“Why hello, my dear gravekeeper.”
The voice was slick like poison. Larry looked up.
Lavilla stood silhouetted by moonlight against the open window. Blood was smudged across her perfect lips.
Larry’s throat tightened. “W-why are you here? Where’s the doctor?”
“He’s at home, snug as a bug. Tending to those oafs all night wear him out. He doesn’t even seem to need to eat anymore.”
Larry forced a smile. “Sounds like a workaholic in the making, eh? You should keep an eye on your man.”
Lavilla’s lips curved ever so slightly. “Oh, no. He should be the one keeping an eye on me.” She slinked towards Larry. “I’ve been a bad girl, Larry.”
“No - no, I don’t know. How so?”
“Oh, but you do know. You made a good burglar, Larry. Too bad that smell of zombie’s so strong on you. I knew it was you the moment the alarm rang.”
Larry was silent, too afraid to move. He thought about screaming for help, but the only help in the vicinity was of the zombies. Those things could barely keep themselves together. So he said, “Please make it quick.”
“Not gonna call for help from your zombie friends?” she crooned. “How noble. You’d rather die than see them torn apart, huh? Are you protecting the undead, Larry?” Her eyes twinkled with mirth.
Why was his shirt pocket so heavy? That was when Larry remembered. Larry saw a glimmer of hope - it was worth a shot. He thrust his shaking hand into his pocket and pulled out a silver cross – one that had been gifted to him by his grandmother, bless her soul.
Just as he had expected, Lavilla tossed her head back and laughed.
Then a black figure sailed through the window, grabbed Lavilla’s neck and pulled her in a steady headlock. She gagged for a second, then her eyes filled with fury.
“Let me go, you idiot,” she said. “He must die, or our secret’s out.”
The voice was low, soothing and familiar. “Lavilla, I told you to stop this.”
“Their lives are too worthless to be spared.”
“Let’s go home, together, Lavilla, and leave Larry alone. The poor man’s pissing himself.”
She stomped her foot and a heel snapped off. “But he knows! If we spare him we’ll have to uproot ourselves again, find a new place, rearrange the furniture, sun-proof the house. I’m so sick of it, Mortie.”
A flash of irritation crossed Dr. Mortimer’s face. “I told you to stop feeding, but you wouldn’t listen. We have bottles of mammalian blood in our fridge, and you won’t touch them.”
“They taste disgusting. I want humans. I want real food!”
Dr. Mortimer stiffened. “Lavilla –”
Lavilla lashed out in rage and clawed at his face. Red marks appeared on Dr. Mortimer’s porcelain face. “I want to eat. I want to eat!” She lunged at Larry, but Dr. Mortimer was quicker. He grabbed her again and pulled her arms into a knot behind her. She yowled in pain and thrashed like a dismembered snake. When she ran out of fight, she broke into sobs and crumpled to her knees. “Why did you save me? Why didn’t you just let me die with our child?” She touched her neck, and whenever Larry rewound to this moment in the months that followed, Larry would see two adjacent pinpricks on the smooth, white skin that he hadn’t noticed when he was sitting a puddle of his piss.
Dr. Mortimer picked her the broken Lavilla up and cradled her in his arms. His wife flailed at his touch, wailing her head off and pounding at his chest. “Why did you save me? Why?”
Dr. Mortimer directed his sad gaze at Larry, who was experiencing waves of minute convulsions. “Open the door for me, will you, Larry?”
Larry did so best as he could with shaking limbs. A trail of pee extended from Larry’s sitting spot to the door. The suave doctor looked at Larry for the last time. “Take care of the zombies for me, will you?” He gave Larry a sad smile, then, in a blink, both vampires vanished.
The zombies were devastated to hear Dr. Mortimer had gone, until Larry showed them a shiny wooden box left at his doorstep that morning.
A note was stuck onto it, a message written in elaborate cursive letters:
“To the new zombie doctor.
Love, Lavilla and Mortimer.”
THE END