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Normally, Dr. Dead would be hard pressed to pay attention to such miniscule problems as sand strewn across the floor. That was a normal thing that tended to happen after you had been walking outside for any period of time. However, over the course of the last week, there appeared to be progressively more of it, and even worse, more appeared almost as soon as the previous had been swept away. By his best will, the doctor could not imagine the cause of such stupid problem (for it was a stupid problem to have, for a man of his position and status), for there was simply too much of it for three people to have brought in, even if two of them were not exactly alive in the conventional meaning of that word and tended to wander around a lot when they were not exactly needed. Worst of all, if had begun to happen in his laboratory as well, which would not be weird per se, were the aforementioned laboratory not at a completely different location than the damn manor, and if one did not have to walk down almost ungodly long tunnels, to get there. Which should technically eliminate any chances of bringing dirt from outside onto the premises.
And there just appeared more and more, and more of it; paradoxically, the more the place was being swept, the more sand appeared.
And then it began appearing not just on the floor but other surfaces as well. Even worse, it began to appear on and in things such as plates and cups, and although Dead would have happily ignored all of that as well, there came a day when he took a sip of his morning coffee and found that it also had been generously flavoured with sand.
At this point, most people would have probably started suspecting an unknown prankster to be making fun of them. As was, that mysterious prankster would have had to get past doctor’s peculiar home security system before they could proceed with their plan, and… well. That was where their plan, along with their mortal self, would have gone out with a bang. Or rather, with a kind of a crunchy sound. Something you would hear if you bit into a particularly tasty potato crisp.
Dead grumbled under his nose as he disposed of the ruined drink (and every single last drop of its relative still in the coffee machine, for a good measure, even though he could not see any alien ingredients in there) and run the cup under water. As though following an unspoken order, there appeared steps behind the door, and a moment later Patient Zero shuffled into the kitchen, dragging a broom with him – an accessory that had at this point become as common to the two zombies as an expensive Swiss watch would be to a stuck-up businessman.
The doctor watched the zombie follow through with his ordeal – something he did not do all that often, for most of the time the pair currently under his command had come to represent something similar to feral cats. They were there, they were doing their own thing, they were useful, and sometimes they had to be fed, but mostly they kept to their assigned tasks until called upon. Therefore, Dead would not pay much attention to them, also sticking to doing his own thing most of the time.
He noted that, as much and diligently as Patient Zero devoted himself to the task, the sand was still everywhere. In fact, the zombie passed by multiple times while he stood leaning against the counter and waiting for the new batch of (hopefully sand-free) coffee to be ready, and every time there was a trail left in the deadman’s wake. The ordeal repeated several times this way, and the result was the same every time.
Dead furrowed his brow. There was a system to this, one that seemed as stupid as it was likely. Where the zombie went, sand followed. The doctor recalled that the unfortunate cup from earlier had been brought to him, by Victor.
He tapped his fingers against the surface of the counter as he watched the zombie go around the kitchen one last time, with the exact same result, before Patient Zero shuffled towards the door again. Sure enough, a trail was left in his wake.
“Zero?” when the deadman was almost out the door, Dead called out to him.
The zombie turned, and Dead beckoned him closer.
“Interesting…” the doctor muttered under his nose, as he inspected the skin on the creature’s hands and head and found it to be falling apart at a very slow, but nonetheless impressive rate. “That… that wasn’t really supposed to happen. Hmm. Right. You. Outside. Now. I’m going to see if this is the same with your companion. Hmm.”
***
Ten hours later, nothing much had changed about the situation, except there were now significantly more papers and books scattered on the table and the floor of the doctor’s study, with an annoyed, irritated Dr. Dead sitting among them. At one point during this time, his right eye had stopped twitching, and a permanent scowl had set upon his face instead.
What good was a zombie if it started falling apart after some time?
It was no good.
No good at all.
This was something he had completely forgotten to account for. Or, rather, this was something he had never thought to account for in the first place, while he was busy toiling away over his pet project. After all, this was a first. Something completely new, something nobody had ever heard of before, let alone attempted to achieve. Let alone something that somebody had actually achieved, before him.
The positive side to this was that it seemed, it had taken a very long time for the process to begin. Patient Zero had been the first created, so to speak, and that had been a while ago, and then Zero had, on his turn, turned Victor, and that had also been a while ago.
Dead tapped his fingers against the table’s surface, as in his mind he once again went over every single detail that had happened since then.
There had been a bit of time between the two zombies being turned, and the moment when they had begun falling to dust, so to speak. The first months had been rather peaceful, despite the doctor having originally had a different plan, but, his own body had decided this for him, by simply refusing to go on the way he had and declaring, in its own way (which had involved Dead waking up on the floor of his study one fine day, with a carpet burn on his cheek, to add injury to the insult), that sheer willpower and multiple cups of strong black coffee on a daily basis were neither a permanent nor adequate replacement for sleep. After those months, there had followed a bit of commotion, and then the one big thing, and a few days after their return home was when the doctor had pinpointed the start of the deadmen’s slow deterioration.
Maybe there was a limit to their abilities that he had not accounted for. A limit that, after being reached, would signal the start of their decline. The zombies did not lack strength, even as they slowly dissolved, for the lack of a better word. Rather, if felt as though the flow of time had finally caught up with them and wished to put things back the way they had been before Dr. Dead had messed with them.
Completely out of nowhere, he recalled the stories his mother had been reading them when he was still a child. Scary stories, read on dark autumn nights when wind whistled in the windows and howled in chimneys. Stories full of undead beings that slept during the day and rose during the night, to prey on unsuspecting people.
He rose from the chair and began pacing around the room slowly, hands behind back. There was an idle, annoying pain, which Dead stubbornly ignored, hoping he could simply walk it off, and which did, eventually, let go, probably only to come back with vengeance later. The doctor passed the window once, then a second time. He stopped at the locked bookcase and run his eyes over the tomes stored there. Everything science, no fictional or religious nonsense. He checked the silver pocket watch, only to find that it showed what he already knew, and began walking again.
The window practically beckoned him.
And then, the doctor did something he would do only rarely.
He opened the curtains.
It was autumn, the foliage outside having appropriated the characteristic reds, oranges and yellows, and leaves had covered the path leading towards the family graveyard that sat, tucked away neatly on the fringe of the estate. Between the autumnal colours and the blacks of the tree branches that could already be seen among them, the belltower of the small chapel with its half-collapsed roof and queer cross was yet hidden away from the living as it waited for winter when it would reach towards the sky like the hand of a deadman on the Judgement Day.
For a long moment, the doctor remained standing there, with his hands behind his back in a pose truly more suited for a formal meeting or a funeral ceremony rather than simple afternoon at home.
Dead did not particularly like seeing that place. One of the reasons why the curtains mostly stayed closed.
With a silent click, the voice recorder began working.
”I honestly still don’t know what date it is. It is a Wednesday, that’s for sure. I have been here since this morning, and now it is five in the afternoon, so that is the better part of the day. Despite this, I still have no answer to my question. I fear I am at war with the mankind’s most ancient, most powerful enemy; the time itself. So, the question is, how does one conquer the merciless passage of time? I have come to think that, despite the cause of it originating in science, the solution might lie in the hopes and dreams of the people. I shall therefore have to cast aside calculations, knowledge and scientific facts for a time, and seek help with the obscure, the illogical, the world where fantasy meets reality, for many cultures have indeed dwelled upon the simple question: What lies beyond the grave?”
Click.
With the curtains carefully closed again, and the space as dark as it had been before, the doctor left the room.
***
”It is approximately one hour after the last entry. I discovered that I, indeed, do not currently possess many sources and materials related to mythology, especially the kind of which I seek. I suspect this is much due to my father’s… nature, to put it one way. I was, however, able to round up a couple books on the subject, and both of them seem to agree that, indeed, as much as I would not like it… *sound of steps walking across the room, and a curtain being drawn* …the graveyard is the answer. Or, rather, the hallowed ground. *chuckling* Oh, I think I will enjoy this.”
***
The fog had begun rolling in already before they had left the house, and by the time the peculiar group had arrived at the tall fence and the gates cutting the graveyard off from the rest of the property, it was covering the ground like a soft, fluffy blanket; one that you wished to lie down and roll around in. It flowed like water across the graves and over the headstones, and now that the sun had descended and disappeared behind the horizon, it invoked a surreal feeling. One that poked at the very primal, primitive parts of a human being and made goosebumps rise on their skin.
The old, rusty gates gave in with an ungodly screech that could have woken the dead. Had there been a living person anywhere in the near – or if there had been a neighbourhood – it would have most likely woken even the heaviest of sleepers out there. As it was, however, the only living beings protesting such turmoil were the local raven couple who had found a spot for the night in a nearby tree and proceeded to cuss the odd group out in their quaint language before they took off and settled on the roof of the decrepit chapel, as it that were a much better place for them right now.
The odd trio passed by the chapel, while being watched, with great suspicion, by the ravens, and headed deeper into the plot of land that had been left to its own devices ever since… Dead really, really did not care to remember, since when. Possibly since the last person resting here had been buried. Or maybe since the last person who had been caring for the graveyard had left. It could rot and fall into disrepair as much as it wanted, and he would not give a damn about it. If anything, there were times when he wished to set fire to the chapel and everything around it, and only the knowledge that his dear father would have been glad to know that he had yet gotten under his son’s skin after all these years stalled his hand.
Eventually, they stopped in the middle of the burial grounds, both well-hidden away from curious eyes, in the unlikely case that there might be any, and so that, in case he was yet wrong about this, Dead would not have to face his failures every time he decided to open the curtains and look outside. Both zombies milled about next to an old grave the headstone of which proudly stated (albeit in less that perfectly legible way, for moss and even a patch of lichen had colonised most of it by now):
A L I C E [illegible]
[illegible]
B E L O V E D W I F E, [illegible] [illegible] L O V I N G [illegible]
“No, we dig here,” the doctor stated, pointing at the ground closer to the willow tree that dragged its slow, tormented days out in the middle of the graveyard. “I don’t need or want dear old aunt Malice to crawl out of there together with you both. I had enough of her while she was still alive. That witch isn’t worth the effort it’d take to put her back under.”
The process itself did not take that long to complete, not with two deadmen, neither of whom could be tired out or needed a break, in charge of shovelling the grave earth. Dead reckoned, if this happened during winter, it would take significantly longer, and he would probably freeze a few of his own body parts off while waiting for the zombies to finish. In the time it took them to dig a decent grave-shaped hole in the ground, the fog had claimed the land, leaving the small lantern they had brought along from the manor their only source of light. The flame quivered behind the glass, casting light upon the willow tree and the headstones nearby, and shadows danced on them, as though at the behest of an invisible conductor.
“I think that’s enough,” Dead finally spoke when the peculiar grave was, in his opinion, deep enough, and both eager beavers stopped at once, waiting for whatever order would follow next. “Hm. No, no, no, you both stay where you are. You’re going to spend… hm… the night in there. Might as well lie down and get comfortable. Shovel, please!”
He could hear Patient Zero hum something, before the zombie handed him the shovel and followed orders while the doctor fished a bottle with ruby-red liquid out of his pocket. Another hum followed, in an entirely different tone, both accusatory and annoyed at the same time, as without a doubt the deadman recognized what the content of the bottle was.
“Yes, funny how it all circles back to the beginning, no?” Dead mentioned, matter-of-factly, as he doused the grave with the liquid. “I personally don’t think this will do anything at all, but, it won’t hurt, either, will it now? Oh, come on, would you rather fall into pieces?” With that, he dismissed the displeased grunts that followed this statement, picked up the shovel and proceeded to move the grave earth back where it had been before they arrived. “I really don’t know what would happen then, to be perfectly honest, but I don’t think you’d be any deader than you are now. Now that I think of it, maybe I should… no, that’d be cruel. On the other hand, if somebody were a freak enough to consent to that specifically… Anyway, nighty-night!”
He could have sworn, he saw Patient Zero roll his eyes, before a generous heap of earth landed on the zombie’s face.
The doctor reckoned that he did not have to labour here for long, only until the pair had been covered entirely. The grave earth should be the keyword here, not how much of it he used. Nothing in the books had mentioned how much of it was necessary, for a ghoul or an undead being to be safe in their grave, and some stories downright contradicted each other on this topic, but then again none of that was even remotely scientific. It would only become – or not – the scientific method tomorrow morning when he returned to see if his effort had paid off at all.
“Good night indeed,” Dead cleared his throat and muttered into the general direction of the freshly formed heap of earth at the bottom of the pit. “You need to stay in there until I call for you, and I need a shower.”
The ravens cawed again when he closed the gates behind him, and the doctor stopped to grimace at the birds before he extinguished the lantern and made his way towards the house, the annoying pain already coming back with a vengeance, just like he had predicted.
He figured he would be lucky if he could get out of bed – or chair – on the first try in the morning.
***
It was still early, and Dr. Dead would have loved to say, he had spent the night more or less peacefully, but that would have been a filthy lie, for the night, indeed, had been spent leaning over a pile of paperwork first in the study, then the kitchen. The shuteye he had caught at the beginning had lasted maybe two hours, and then he had woken and found himself unable to fall asleep again. After pointless tossing about for half an hour (and he had truly made the effort, this time, rather than taking the more accustomed route of strong black coffee and sheer willpower straight away), he had eventually cursed everything, his own sudden onset of impatience including, and retreated to the study instead, where he had stoically avoided the window for the next hour. Eventually, he had moved to the kitchen on the first floor and on the opposite side of the manor completely, simply to put more distance between him and the plot of land in the corner of the property.
Maybe he ought to have just stayed at the graveyard overnight, if this venture was going to be this stubborn about not leaving his thoughts, Dead mused as he walked towards the rusty gates. Frost had fallen in the early morning, and the leaves and grass glittered with ice, crackling as he walked on them. Otherwise, the world around him was perfectly quiet, in that magical way of quiet that mostly happens on winter nights after a heavy snowfall, and even the raven couple merely chose to glare him down as he entered the graveyard.
Nothing much had changed inside the walls, aside from the ground and the headstones having become significantly whiter. A small bronze angel who sat on a pedestal, watching over a grave nobody had been able to recall whom it belong to when the doctor was still a child, had obtained a silver veil overnight, and the leaves that had fallen upon it looked like it was holding a mourning bouquet as it knelt in prayer for the soul buried there.
The doctor stopped at the pit where he hoped the two zombies were not exactly alive in the regular meaning of the word, but also not dead either. Frost had visited here as well, and the fresh grave earth had been covered in its silver to match the surroundings.
“Sooo,” Dead addressed the heap of soil at the bottom of the pit that had sat, undisturbed, since the previous evening. “Everybody still dead in there?”
To his relief, the pile moved, as if answering his question.
“Well, don’t waste time then, crawl out! Are you, or are you not, zombies?”
The pile shook, and a hand emerged. Then another. Then more movement, as both deadmen dug their way out. Victor rolled onto his side, looking slightly confused (although, if you were to ask Dr. Dead, the zombies always looked slightly confused), while Patient Zero sat up straight, much like a vampire in its coffin, and shook his head, before spitting out a mouthful of dirt and taking a long, accusing look at the doctor. It took a good moment for them to emerge completely, but finally, they were standing in front of their Lord and Master and looking better than they had been when Dead had left them in their peculiar grave.
The doctor circled them a couple times. He checked their hair and skin, finding the results to his liking, which, granted, came with some disappointment over him having to admit, there was some truth to the fictional nonsense of mythology. Not that it mattered much, however, for the moment when the zombies had crawled out and stood in front of him in a better form than before, fiction had undergone transformation and become science instead. He could not put his finger to it, but it also appeared, at least on a quick inspection, that something had changed about the pair, and there was something subtly different about their appearances.
Dead made a mental note to keep an eye on that when he sent them into their peculiar spa the next time.
“All right,” the doctor finally ceased his circling around the zombies like a vulture and clasped his hands, “close this thing up then, and let’s go back! I don’t want to spend a single second more in this place that I have to!”
Here, both Patient Zero and Victor began groaning at once, in a rather concerned tone at that. The language of the deadmen, if one could call it that, was clearer now. Not as clear as Dead would have liked it to be, but it would hopefully yet get to a point where he could understand more than just the basic intentions and separate words in it. Kind of a crucial thing to do, too, if one wanted an undead army and preferred it not to be plotting to tear their master to pieces behind his back.
The doctor narrowed his eyes, tilted his head and listened, trying to pick out separate words.
“Down… else… down there… somebody…” This really felt like a child trying to read their first book, did it not? “Somebody… grave?” Here, it finally struck him, and Dead felt his right eye twitch. “What do you mean, there’s somebody else down there???”
There was a moment… several moments, actually… when he tried to remember if there had maybe originally been a grave here. A baby that had died before christening, perhaps, that was granted a resting place in holy ground? Maybe somebody whom the family had hated enough to bury without a grave marker, but still buried them in the lot, to save their face in front of the townspeople? Maybe a beggar, or a vagabond, who had asked for place to stay overnight, and died in the night, and the masters of the house at that time had been kind enough to give them a burial, but not kind enough to mark the poor soul’s resting place? Maybe even a body from before the graveyard had been established, even though that seemed unlikely, for it had been there for almost as long as the manor itself, if not even longer.
At the end, there was only one thing he could do.
He walked up to the pit and looked down.
The earth was moving, and it became clear, somebody really was down there and doing their best to get out and join the (not so much) living again.
A hand finally emerged and grasped around, before it settled on the ground and felt about, approximately in the place where the zombie’s head should be. It clawed at the earth and sand, and then a second hand joined the first. Together, they clawed and dug, and finally succeeded in unearthing its face. The zombie made a sound, which appeared to come from approval, before it proceeded to unearth the rest of its body with patience characteristic to the living dead.
Slowly, in front of a both very confused and anxious Dr. Dead, the zombie rose to its feet, swaying lightly.
It looked up, and Dead was fully prepared to see dear old aunt Alice who had decided to rise from the grave, just so she could be an obnoxious cunt to everybody around her once again.
Fortunately for everybody involved, dear old aunt Alice had not decided to make an appearance, and with luck, she was never going to.
The doctor squatted at the grave and tilted his head. The deadman looked back at him; a dazed and confused creature, whose jaw hung loose, giving him the appearance of a panting dog, with grave earth still clinging to his skin, hair and clothes. His appearance was modern, for the lack of a better word; too modern, in fact, for it to be very long since his death. His clothes looked new, if appropriately dirty, as if he had recently been shopping for them in the town. There were colourful tattoos covering his arms under the dirt, and the zombie’s hair was stuck together in dreadlocks.
“Whom do we have here?” Dead cooed, and the creature blinked at him. “And here I thought, I knew of everybody ever buried here. Where did you come from, hm?”
He reached out, and the zombie stared at the hand offered to him.
“Come on! Come, sweetheart! Out with you.”
As it was, he had yet to find a better way of identifying faulty individuals who would, instead of recognizing their Lord and Master, see him as convenient dinner with home delivery instead. And after having spent a downright ungodly amount of time in the laboratory with Patient Zero and the rest of the subjects (sadly now terminated, on the behalf of having proven to be, indeed, faulty), the doctor had become very good at recognizing the tell-tale signs of a zombie planning to strike right there and then.
The individual in question made a step closer and swayed his head first to one, then the other side, as if trying to focus his eyes on the hand. The zombie made a couple more steps, stopping maybe a little too close for Dead’s liking, though the latter did not falter. The doctor remained where he was, waiting, observing even the slightest movement of the deadman, while ready to retreat and give command to Patient Zero and Victor, to destroy the newly arisen the moment he saw the slightest hint that anything was wrong with it.
The zombie raised his own hand and grasped the one offered, and Dead winced as the feeling of cold and death, and grave soil, and whatnot else against his skin sent an unpleasant shiver down his spine. He had never gotten used to that, no matter how often he had to deal with them, physically. It was a primal kind of a reaction; one that had been present in the mankind already since the dawn of man, and which stated, explicitly, that this meant danger. This was something you did not do; not if you wished to remain healthy and alive. This was a predator, and its prey was you. And the doctor decidedly pressed this feeling down and held on.
Oh, he just knew he was going to be sorry for this stunt in the evening, when Dead pulled the (rather heavy, too) critter out of the grave and upright.
“Well, there went my good day,” he grumbled. “Probably shouldn’t have done that. Now, let’s take a look at you, shall we?”
The newcomer did not differ much from the other two deadmen already in his service. Just as dead and dishevelled-looking, and just as unperturbed by the world surrounding him as long as it did not have anything to do with his direct duties, or orders given. Dead once again inspected the skin and the hair on the creature, then his eyes and what reflexes had been left in the reanimated body, although he guessed the best way to test that would be later and on an appropriate living target.
“What do we call you, then?” The doctor finally stepped back from the deadman and took a long, good look at him from a distance. “You have a name? Of course you do, but, I don’t think you can tell me. Hmm.” Dead made a few circles around the zombie. “You need one, though. Can’t have Victor, Patient Zero, and zombie. Tommy. How about that? I think that’s fine. Very well, you shall be Tommy, then.”
If the deadman had any objections to this name, he did not bother voicing them. Instead, he just swayed in place and hummed to himself, as if trying out his newly regained vocal cords.