A Small Zombie Problem Read online

  “So,” she said, dabbing the corner of her mouth with a napkin, “you say that Orchid is in good health, lives in constant mourning, and has two children. Twins. How…ghoulish.”

  “They were nice to me,” protested August quietly. “Well, one of them was.”

  Hydrangea grunted, then sipped her soup.

  “And your journey,” she asked cautiously, attempting to appear calm, “was unremarkable? No giant alligators or other dangerous encounters?”

  August observed his aunt’s fluttery eyelids, and the soup spilling from her trembling spoon. Should he tell her? Surely the tale of his bizarre graveyard experience would shatter Hydrangea’s frayed nerves completely. As it was, his failure to immediately answer her clearly rattled the lady.

  “August?” she said sharply. “Is there something I should know?” Her agitation gathered momentum. “Did something happen? I knew catastrophe must follow this foolhardy scheme. Your first adventure abroad must surely be your last!”

  “No!” cried August. Then more calmly, “No, ma’am. There was no alligator. Everything was perfectly safe and uneventful.” He needed to steer Hydrangea away from this topic, to distract her before she succumbed to her fears and his newfound freedom was endangered.

  “Have you ever heard,” he said, abruptly but casually shifting gears, “of Orfeo DuPont’s famous fossil?” He attempted to appear innocently curious.

  Hydrangea looked up with a puzzled frown.

  “Now, how in heaven would you hear about…” Her eyebrows rose in sudden revelation. “Orchid!” she said, like a cat coughing up a hair ball. Hydrangea shook her head in disgusted disbelief. “As if deserting us for our enemies was not enough! Now she assuredly plots to get her greedy hands on the DuPont treasure!”

  August squinted.

  “Treasure?”

  “Great-Uncle Orfeo’s hunk of Cadaverite,” muttered Hydrangea, clearly preoccupied by thoughts of her sister’s wickedness. “It’s the rarest of gemstones, you know. Very troublesome to find. A specimen that size, the size of Orfeo’s? Why, it must be worth a king’s ransom.”

  “But…” August was confused. “Aunt Orchid said the stone was of value to no one but a collector.”

  “Pffft!” Hydrangea smacked her hand on the table in an uncharacteristically defiant gesture.

  You know how sometimes two things make a sound at exactly the same time, so you might wonder if you really heard the second thing at all? August could have sworn that as Hydrangea’s palm struck the weathered wood, he heard a crash from elsewhere in the house…the sort of violent sound that would result from someone—or something—forcing its way through a rotted basement door. Indeed, the water in his glass was rippling, as if from some tiny earthquake.

  “Did you hear…,” he began.

  But Hydrangea was all consumed by indignation and resentment.

  “Remember what I told you, August. Money and prestige. That’s all Malveaus care for. Orchid always has to be the best, have the most.” Her eyes widened with realization. “She wants you to search for the Cadaverite on her behalf, doesn’t she? That’s what she wanted with you. That’s all she wanted with you.”

  August’s face fell, transformed by an expression of shock and dismay.

  Hydrangea softened at the boy’s reaction.

  “I’m sorry, sugar,” she muttered, “but I fear it’s true.”

  The lady, however, had failed to notice that August was not looking at, or even listening to, her. He was transfixed by something just beyond his aunt’s right elbow.

  The dining room and parlor faced each other across the foyer. From his viewpoint, August could see something rising up through the parlor floor, or rather, climbing from the black hole that opened to the basement.

  A shadowy figure, with twisted, jerky movements, was heaving itself into the room. It got a foothold, then gathered height, until it crookedly stood, still strewn with weeds and dripping river water.

  It was Claudette.

  From the cracked door of his room, August could hear the clatter of broken china and the shrill sounds of Hydrangea’s indignation downstairs.

  “That child,” she was grumbling, “is as clumsy as a toad in a dollhouse! The floorboards will surely smell like catfish soup for a week or more!”

  August felt bad. But with few tools at his disposal, “accidentally” knocking his dinner to the floor was the only distraction he could think up at short notice. At least it had been effective. As Hydrangea squealed and fussed over the broken dish and wasted food, August had swiftly and quietly bundled Claudette upstairs…undetected!

  He closed the door softly and turned to confront his uninvited guest.

  “You smashed through a basement door?” hissed August accusingly. “I’ll need to repair that in the morning, you know, before butterflies find their way in and there’s explaining to be done.”

  But the sodden undead child was preoccupied, exploring the garret with a kind of vacant curiosity.

  “You found your eyeball, I see,” observed August. He was glad she had; he hadn’t felt great about tossing someone else’s body part into a murky river.

  “Oh! No! Not that!” He darted across the room to rescue Kevin the clown from the girl’s clumsily grabbing fingers.

  “Not that either!” She was attempting to devour an empty Mudd Pie wrapper.

  “Or that!” August retrieved his desk lamp as Claudette, with apparent fascination, followed its wire to the plug and peered into the empty holes of the adjacent outlet.

  August contemplated the girl with confounded frustration.

  “Why me, Claudette?” he wondered aloud. “What do you want with me?”

  The googly eyes swiveled toward him, and the girl burbled away quite chattily. But what—if anything—she was attempting to say, August could not quite decipher.

  Then she casually stuck her tongue into an empty socket hole.

  “Oh no…,” cried August, but too late.

  There was a crackling flash followed by a soft explosion, like a basketball falling into a tub of talcum powder. Claudette was propelled across the room, where she crashed noisily into an old sewing machine.

  “August?” came an alarmed voice from below. “What in heaven?”

  “Everything is fine, Aunt Hydrangea!” August responded quickly from his doorway. “Just knocked over my chair.”

  “Are you all right?” he whispered urgently, dashing to the girl’s aid. He had seen contestants on Are You a Dummy? perform CPR on a limbless mannequin and thought he might actually have a good shot at reviving a shark-bite victim. But in cases where the subject was already dead, any life-restoring process seemed a bit redundant.

  Indeed, Claudette’s eyes were spinning madly, but she seemed otherwise undamaged.

  “You know,” August advised her, “your tongue doesn’t normally go…”

  He froze. Normally. Normal. Now, there was a sobering thought.

  August had just reassured his friend…his first friend…his only friend…that everything about himself was…“perfectly normal.” While he was perhaps not an expert, August felt pretty confident that having an undead sidekick with erratic eyes and a fondness for sticking her tongue into electrical outlets was anything other than “perfectly normal.”

  With a knot in his stomach and his knees growing soft, August watched the stunned creature stagger around. This clammy, bedraggled girl could be a serious problem, a real obstacle to his new friendship with Beauregard. August’s new, un-lonely life could well be over before it had even properly begun.

  “If I climbed a tree,” pondered August, “and just waited, she would surely wander off eventually.” He pursed his lips. “But she knows where I live.” His brow furrowed in concentration. “One of those other tombs in the cemetery might have room for her. But she’s already bashed h
er way through a marble slab, so…” He tapped his chin. “I could take her deep into Lost Souls’ Swamp and leave here there.” He grimaced. “But it’s called Lost Souls’ Swamp for a reason. What if I can’t find my own way out?”

  Claudette, having recovered from her electrocution, was now peering into August’s large jar of Ping-Pong balls, shaking it and gurgling with what seemed like delight at the resulting sound. Suddenly, with a moist plop!, her wayward left eyeball fell out of her face and into the jar.

  “Ugh!” said August, appalled. “You cannot stay here, Claudette,” he muttered. “We need to get you back where you belong.”

  Claudette plunged her hand into the jar and frantically swished it around. She removed a white sphere and forced it into her eye socket, consulting a broken mirror to check the results. Nope! Just a Ping-Pong ball.

  She tried again.

  And again.

  August sighed wearily and massaged his forehead.

  “We need,” he repeated, nodding in self-agreement, “to talk to someone who knows a thing or two about dead folks!”

  On the south side of town, Pepperville’s Main Street was residential, lined by grand old townhomes and grander, older oak trees draped with Spanish moss. August and Claudette arrived in the tranquil, leafy neighborhood early enough that it still lay shrouded in cool morning mist.

  Slender fluted lampposts lined the median in the center of the road, each sporting two golden orbs that hovered in the air, insubstantial and blurred by the fog. To August, who had never seen one, the illuminated street had a wistful magic, like the Christmas tree in Stella Starz’s living room…before her impossible cat Officer Claw had scaled it in pursuit of the feathery fairy at the top.

  “I hope you weren’t too uncomfortable,” said August absently, studying his map in the weak light, “sleeping under my bed all night.” He looked up with a sudden thought. “Do you sleep? Whatever the case,” he mused, “I suppose the floor could not have been worse than a stone sarcophagus.”

  They arrived at a garden path that crossed a lawn and led to an imposing villa. Lush potted palms flanked the semicircular portico, and the tall, pointed gables were clad in decorative, scalloped shingles. But even through the mist, one could see the place had a shabby air and was in want of a fresh coat of paint.

  Claudette ogled a wooden sign mounted on a post by the sidewalk. August wasn’t sure if she could read it. But if she could have, the undead girl would have understood that the pair had arrived at “Goodnight’s Funeral Parlor.”

  * * *

  * * *

  The interior was almost as lightless as Locust Hole. The effect, however, was rich, rather than gloomy. The walls, columns, arches, and heavy turned banisters were all carved from lustrous, reddish-brown rosewood, and the place smelled distinctly of lemon-scented furniture polish.

  The only sounds were the innocuous hum of a vending machine in the corner of the foyer, and the faint strains of organ music drifting from speakers recessed into the ceiling.

  There was no one around. At the foot of a wide, twisting staircase sat a huge leather-topped desk, vacant but for a sleeping computer monitor on one side and a tarnished service bell on the other.

  August let his palm fall on the dome-shaped device, and it rang clearly and cleanly, echoing through the large, heavily paneled space.

  Nothing.

  He tried again, waiting several moments for a response.

  “Hello?” he called, mounting the lowest stair and peering upward.

  Dusty silence.

  “I don’t think…” He turned to Claudette.

  But Claudette was gone.

  “Claudette?” August spun in a circle. He darted back through the swinging front door and checked outside. She wasn’t there.

  Returning to the desk, his eyes searching every darkened corner, August noticed tall double doors at one end of the foyer that led to some other space. Cautiously he went to explore.

  The room he found had once been a rather grand parlor. A bruise-colored marble mantel faced the entrance, bearing large stone urns filled with plastic flowers. The boy’s dim reflection shifted in mottled mirrored tiles that encased the chimney breast.

  The parlor, however, no longer functioned as an elegant room for entertaining but as a showroom…for coffins. A large, aging cardboard sign on an easel read “Peruvian flu got you down? Take a dirt nap in a Goodnight casket.”

  The long wooden cases displayed a wide range of finishes, from the blackest ebony to the palest maple, and their polished fittings and rails gleamed sumptuously in the dim light. Some were displayed along the walls, on discreet steel frames that suspended one above another. Others were placed in a circular arrangement around the room, like the numbers of a clock, elevated at one end so they tilted forward for convenient viewing.

  At the very center, raised on its own festooned plinth, rested a casket of snowy-white lacquer. It was smaller than most; child-sized. Like many of the others, it was fitted with a split lid, the upper half being propped open, so the plush interior might be admired.

  Seated inside, lounging against a creamy satin pillow with a thoroughly self-satisfied expression, was Claudette.

  “What the devil are you doing?” hissed August in horror. “Get out of there, right now! You’re not supposed—”

  He was interrupted by a man’s muffled voice that came from behind.

  “Good morning, sir!”

  August jumped around to find himself facing a plump gentleman holding an equally plump beignet in his sugary fingers. It smelled buttery and fresh and utterly delicious.

  “Jupiter Goodnight,” the man introduced himself, “undertaker.” He mumbled rather, his mouth being full (presumably of buttery, fresh, delicious beignet).

  His attire, a handsomely cut suit and vest, was predictably dark and somber. But by contrast, the man’s face was quite jovial, wide and round, and his lips twitched constantly, as if suppressing an unwanted smile.

  “How might we assist you,” asked Jupiter Goodnight, beaming and staring widely at August’s helmet, “in conveying your departed one to the Other Side?”

  “Well, um,” stammered August. He paused, searching for the right words, couldn’t find them, so jumped right in. “I was wondering if…”

  “Speak up, sir, if you will.”

  “…wondering if you might explain the procedure for cases where your departed one…eh…comes back!”

  “Comes back?” declared Goodnight, stifling a giggle. August felt a giggle coming on too, and wondered at the man’s mirthful demeanor, which seemed entirely at odds with his doleful profession.

  “Oh, at Goodnight’s, sir, death is generally a one-way affair. We pride ourselves on never having had a repeat customer!”

  August bit his lower lip.

  “Well, Mr. Goodnight,” he said, half-apologetic, half-boastful, “I believe I may have your very first.” August threw his arm and hand out in a “ta-da!” gesture, and spun back to the showroom.

  Claudette was nowhere to be seen.

  August glanced back at Jupiter Goodnight. The undertaker’s lips were twitching merrily, but his eyebrows rose in baffled expectation.

  “Claudette?” hissed August. “Where are you?”

  Suddenly, with a gleeful grin, Claudette bolted upright in her coffin, where she had been lying concealed.

  And for the second time that week, August observed a grown adult crumple to the floor in an old-fashioned swoon.

  * * *

  * * *

  “Mr. Goodnight?” whispered August, gently patting the man’s ample cheek. “Are you all right?”

  The well-fed undertaker sat on the floor, legs splayed, propped against a burled maple casket with silver handles. His eyelids fluttered and slowly opened.

  “You fainted clean away, sir,” expl
ained August gently.

  “Fainted clean away?” The man was fuzzy-headed. But then he caught sight of the hovering Claudette, and with a start, his wits returned.

  “Little dead girls have no business running around scaring folks half to death!” he protested, wagging his finger at Claudette. “Popping up out of coffins like some Halloween jack-in-the-box!” His animated, mirthful lips made it impossible to determine how dismayed the gentleman truly was.

  “This sort of thing,” Goodnight continued, “is bad for business. Very bad indeed. In these parts, at least, folks prefer their dearly departed to stay that way!”

  “I can see why,” agreed August enthusiastically. “The unexpected arrival of an undead visitor can be very…inconvenient. I can tell you that it is so for me.”

  He fixed the undertaker with an injured expression.

  “Can Goodnight’s Funeral Parlor,” said August, deadly serious, “help me to return this girl to…well, wherever it is she came from?”

  “Goodnight’s handles only the dead, sir,” said the undertaker, “not the undead!” He took a large bite of the beignet that remarkably remained in his grip. The distressing incident had left him, it seemed, quite hungry.

  “You need to find yourself,” he mumbled, “someone who knows a thing or two about magic.” He gulped, then licked his lips. “You need to find yourself a sorcerer, perhaps, or conjure man…or at least a ball gazer.”

  He looked at Claudette and shook the last of the beignet in her direction.

  “Because what you’ve got yourself here, sir…is a zombie!”

  North of the Pelican State Bank, Pepperville’s Main Street became increasingly commercial, the smart gardens and villas giving way to a jumble of stores, restaurants, and traffic.

  Locust Hole lay downriver, so August and Claudette had entered town from the tranquil, residential south side. Downtown Pepperville presented August with an entirely new, and alien, environment.