THE SORCERER
By Jeffrey Barr
“Jimmy, get over here, right away.” I can tell how scared Fred is just by how sober he sounds. I check my watch. Five-Thirty in the Pee Em. Yup, by all rights he should be dead drunk by now. But the usual slur is gone from his voice. Right now, he just sounds freaked. “And bring a gun.” After that, I’m starting to get scared myself.
I pull into his driveway (actually, just a oil-stained dirt approach, but what the hell), jump out, grab the thirty-aught and the shotgun. I trust Fred, we grew up together. Sure, he drinks more than he should, (more than a platoon of US marines should, Hoo-ah, to be technical) but we’ve all got our faults. Right now, however, I ain’t got time to tell you about mine.
I can hear Fred shouting from inside his trailer, then what sounds like furniture smashing. I bust in just as theres the sound of a door slamming. I see Fred down the narrow hallway, his back to the bathroom door. His hair is sticking up even more than usual, and he’s got dirt, stains, and worse all over his clothes.
“Shit, Jimmy, am I glad to see you.” He says, panting. I notice the veins are standing out on his arms as he strains against the door. Then there’s a bang from the other side of the door, and the knob starts rattling and twisting like crazy.
“What’s goin’ on here, Freddy?” I say, seeing the way Freddie’s eyes roll towards the door. It’s apparent to me that he’s just about shittin’ peach pits. The question is, why?
“I was on a grid road, man, an’ some guy just come out of the ditch, I didn’t even see him -”
“Oh gaw-damn Fred, this is so bad,” I say. Fred lost his license two months ago, after his third DUI. And I know what he’s gonna say next.
“And I hit him. Knocked him right the fuck over the hood. I swear, I never seen him. Just about rolled and killed myself, too.”
There’s heavy, snorting breath from behind the bathroom door, and if Fred thinks he’s going get any sympathy from me, he is sorely mistaken. Because if the guy he hit is dead, who’s that on the other side of the-
There’s a boom, and the door burst apart like match sticks. Buy cheap and get cheap, as my old mother used to say. And the thing that busts out from the trailer bathroom looks pretty close to falling apart, too. It’s a man, I assume, though it’s hard to tell. Half his head is caved in, and the eyes are glistening white marbles, staring out at nothing. A fucking horror movie zombie.
Fred looks at me as hes struggling against the remains of the door, trying to keep the thing in, and kind of shrugs. I swear to Christ the look on his face is that of a sheepish five year old who got caught filching cookies out his Grammy’s jar. God in heaven. The things arms are flailing around like mad (obviously it can’t see, not with those eyes, and the brain must be pretty well shot to shit as well), so I step forward and shove it back into the bathroom. Fred turns, quick for him, grabs it in a half-nelson. I see brains leaking out onto Fred’s shirt, and hey, guess what, that’s blood thats all mixed up with dirt on ole Freddie’s T-shirt. I want to ask Fred just why the hell he and the dead guy are here rather than the hospital in town, but I’m too busy jacking a shell into the chamber of the twelve-gauge. I yell at Fred to get out of the way, but the things got a death grip on the collar of Fred’s grimy t-shirt. Deathgrip, get it? And by the way, why is there a corpse wrestling with my good friend Fred? Did I miss the National Enquirer this week or what?
I aim a kick, steel-toe work boot and all, right at the things balls, and he doesn’t even blink. As if it could. I also note a big old butcher knife sticking out of the zombie’s back. Looks like it’s stuck in right to the hilt. Fred has some ‘splainin to do.
Fred’s groping around until he finally gets ahold of the knife. pulls it out, and chop, right into the things neck. Gross.
“Mind ya head.” Fred says. He starts taking wild swings at the head with the knife. It’s roughly the size of a machete, but shaped like a butcher’s blade. It stained with stuff I don;t want to know about. One swipe goes almost clear through it’s neck, another takes off its one good (sort of) ear.
Finally, Fred hits the right spot, (the sweet spot, as we called it back in school, and isn’t it amazing the number of parenthetical asides I’m capable of in a tense situation like this?) and we get the money shot. The head kind of pops off the shoulders, sounds like a beer can splurting open, the blood spraying up in an arterial fan up the walls and to the ceiling.
“God, Freddy- ” That’s all I get a chance to say before Fred interrupts me.
“We ain’t got time, we gotta bury this thing before the sun sets.” He sees me open my mouth and holds up a gore-streaked hand. “Don’t ask. If we don’t get this fucking guy in the ground before the sun goes down, believe me, it’s going to get a lot worse than one dead guy. Let’s just do it.” I grab the corpse’s arm. Then it grabs me, and squeezes. After a second it goes limp. A reflex I guess.
I’m dragging the corpse out the back door, Fred right behind me carrying the head.
“Shit!” He drops the head. “Frigging thing bit me!” I can’t help but start laughing. Yup, just a couple of regular guys, out and about to bury an undead body in the backyard. Might make a good Miller Time commercial. Hell, this could be our Carlsberg Years.
Dig, throw, dig, throw. And all the while Fred is trying to stuff the torso into a Hefty bag, and from the sounds of it, not having much luck.
Pretty soon I got the sucker dug, then comes the hard part. The corpse has been jittering and jiving the whole time, but now it freaks out even worse, somehow knowing we’re about to plant it. I grab up the bag and toss it in, then the head, which lands face up. From where I’m standing, it looks to be staring wide-eyed into the rapidly darkening sky.
“What did you say, Fred? ”
“Nothing. I thought you said something.” We stare at each other for a second, then look down.
“Evil.” The head says. The head’s voice is like rusty nails on a chalkboard. Gives me the heebie jeebies in the worst way, but then I’ve been feeling that way since I got here. And that smell. It’s permeating the air, and its strong enough to knock a brass eagle off a shit pile. Looking around, I see a bunch of other freshly-turned areas of earth.
“Evil.” It says to me again, then cuts it’s unseeing eyes over to Fred. I look at Fred too. He stares back at me, I look back at the head, this is starting to feel like one freaky-ass game of spin-the-bottle.
“Never mind it, Jimmy… ah, shit.” Freddy stoops to whack at the thing’s arm with a shovel. It was trying to get loose out of the trash bag. I lean on my own shovel, and look at the sky, where the sun is about halfway buried in the horizon. Whatever I’m going to do, I better hurry. Something tells me things will get a lot worse in the dark.
“Jimmy, I’m sorry about… all this. I don’t know what I was thinkin’. Besides, it’s never happ-” I can almost finish his sentence for him. It’s never happened before. I stare at Fred, feeling cold. He stares at me. Just standing there in his dirty clothes, hair sticking out every which way, and he looks kind of… threadbare but regal, somehow. Like the fallen legacy of something ancient. Like a tradition. I know the stories – everyone in town does. And back in the day I’d seen some weird stuff at Fred’s house. But, as I start filling in the hole, I tell myself the same thing I always have. Everybody’s got skeletons where they hang their shirts. Fred’s three sisters, long since gone to who knows where, they always told me their family went back a ways. Way back to Plymouth Rock, and before that, some dark corner of Europe. There was a painting in their living-room, a huge one, of the Salem witch trials. They said they had relatives there, too.
Fred’s still watching me, like he knows what I’m thinking . Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. I shoot the look right back at him. And, when the last shovelful of dirt lands, the sun takes a graceful dip under the side of the world.
“Fred-” I say, feeling a little uncomfortable.
“Yeah, Jim?” He sounds resigned, and I can see his hand almost, almost, go to the black book in his back pocket. The black book he doesn’t think I’ve seen. But I’ve seen it. One time I looked in it, while Fred was passed out. It was full, margin to margin with weird, crabbed writing that made me think of spiders. I had a headache for days, and for weeks at night I would see things. Things that murdered my sleep and made me afraid in the day. But they went away. And Fred? Well, Fred’s a buddy. A good friend of mine. Sometimes a buddy is all these is between you, and the dark.
“You got a cold beer for an old friend?” Freddy snorts laughter, throws an arm around me, and we walk out of the dark together.
