The Laughing Corpse

Chapter 37

The hallway was just like I remembered it. A long stretch with no cover, then a blind corner at each end.

“Right or left?” I whispered to Wanda.

“I don’t know. This house is like a maze. Right I think.”

We went right, because at least it was a decision. The worst thing we could do was just stand there waiting for Gaynor to come back.

I heard footsteps behind us. I started to turn, but with Wanda in my arms, I was slow. The gunshot echoed in the hallway. Something hit my left arm, around Wanda’s waist. The impact spun me around and sent us both crashing to the floor.

I ended up on my back with my left arm trapped under Wanda’s weight. The left arm was totally numb.

Cicely stood at the end of the hallway. She held a small caliber handgun two-handed. Her long, long legs were far apart. She looked like she knew what she was doing.

I raised the .357 and aimed at her, still lying flat on my back on the floor. It was an explosion of sound that left my ears ringing. The recoil thrust my hand skyward, backwards. It was everything I could do not to drop the gun. If I’d needed a second shot I’d have never gotten it off in time. But I didn’t need a second shot.

Cicely lay crumpled in the middle of the hallway. Blood was spreading on the front of her blouse. She didn’t move, but that didn’t mean anything. Her gun was still gripped in one hand. She could be pretending, then when I walked up, she’d shoot me. But I had to know.

“Can you get off my arm, please?” I asked.

Wanda didn’t say anything, but she lifted herself to a sitting position, and I could finally see my arm. It was still attached. Goody. Blood was seeping down my arm in a crimson line. A point of icy burning had started to chase away the numbness. I liked the numbness better.

I did my best to ignore the arm as I stood up and walked towards Cicely. I had the Magnum pointed at her. If she so much as twitched, I’d hit her again. Her miniskirt had hiked up her thighs, displaying black garters and matching underwear. How undignified.

I stood over her, staring down. Cicely wasn’t going to twitch, not voluntarily. Her silk blouse was soaked with blood. A hole big enough for me to put my fist through took up most of her chest. Dead, very dead.

I kicked the .22 out of her hand, just in case. You can never tell with someone who plays voodoo. I’ve had people get up before with worse injuries. Cicely just lay there, bleeding.

I was lucky she’d had a ladylike caliber pistol. Anything bigger and I might have lost the arm. I stuck her pistol in the front of my pants, because I couldn’t figure out where else to put it. I did click the safety on first.

I’d never been shot before. Bitten, stabbed, beaten, burned, but never shot. It scared me because I wasn’t sure how badly I was hurt. I walked back to Wanda. Her face was pale, her brown eyes like islands in her face. “Is she dead?”

I nodded.

“You’re bleeding,” she said. She tore a strip from her long skirt. “Here, let me wrap it.”

I knelt and let her tie the multicolored strip just above the wound. She wiped the blood away with another piece of skirt. It didn’t look that bad. It looked almost like a raw, bloody scrap.

“I think the bullet just grazed me,” I said. A flesh wound, nothing but a flesh wound. It burned and was almost cold at the same time. Maybe the cold was shock. One little bullet graze, and I was going into shock? Surely not.

“Come on, we’ve got to get out of here. The shots will bring Bruno.” It was good that I had pain in the arm. It meant I could feel and I could move the arm. The arm did not want to be wrapped around Wanda’s waist again, but it was the only way to move her and keep my right hand free.

“Let’s go left. Maybe Cicely came in this way,” Wanda said. There was a certain logic to that. We turned and walked past Cicely’s body.

She lay there, blue eyes staring impossibly wide. There is never a look of horror on the face of the newly dead, more surprise than anything. As if death had caught them while they weren’t looking.

Wanda stared down at the body as we passed it. She whispered, “I never thought she’d die first.”

We rounded the corner and came face-to-face with Dominga’s monster.

Chapter 38

The monster stood in the middle of a narrow little hall that seemed to take up most of the back of the house. Many-paned windows lined the wall. And in the middle of those windows was a door. Through the windows I could see black night sky. The door led outside. The only thing standing between us and freedom was the monster.

The only thing, sheesh.

The shambling mound of body parts struggled towards us. Wanda screamed, and I didn’t blame her. I raised the Magnum and sighted on the human face in the middle. The shot echoed like captive thunder.

The face exploded in a welter of blood and flesh and bone. The smell was worse. Like rotten fur on the back of my throat. The mouths screamed, an animal howling at its wound. The thing kept coming, but it was hurt. It seemed confused as to what to do now. Had I taken out the dominant brain? Was there a dominant brain? No way to be sure.

I fired three more times, exploding three more heads. The hallway was full of brains and blood and worse. The monster kept coming.

The gun clicked on empty. I threw the gun at it. One clawed hand batted it away. I didn’t bother trying the .22. If the Magnum couldn’t stop it, the .22 sure as hell couldn’t.

We started backing down the hallway. What else could we do? The monster pulled its twisted bulk after us. It was that same sliding sound that had chased Ma

The flesh between the different textures of skin, fur, and bone was seamless. No Frankenstein stitches. It was like the different pieces had melted together like wax.

I tripped over Cicely’s body, too busy watching the monster to see where my feet were. We sprawled across her body. Wanda screamed.

The monster scrambled forward. Misshapen hands grabbed at my ankles. I kicked at it, struggling to climb over Cicely’s body, away from it. A claw snagged in my jeans and pulled me towards it. It was my turn to scream. What had once been a man’s hand and arm wrapped around my ankle.

I grabbed onto Cicely’s body. Her flesh was still warm. The monster pulled us both easily. The extra weight didn’t slow it down. My hands scrambled at the bare wood floor. Nothing to hold on to.

I stared back at the thing. Eager rotting mouths yawned at me. Broken, discolored teeth, tongues working like putrid snakes in the openings. God!

Wanda grabbed my arm, trying to hold me, but without legs to brace she just succeeded in being pulled closer to the thing. “Let go!” I screamed it at her.

She did, screaming, “Anita!”

I was screaming myself, “No! Stop it! Stop it!” I put everything I had into that yell, not volume, but power. It was just another zombie, that was all. If it wasn’t under specific orders, it would listen to me. It was just another zombie. I had to believe that, or die.

“Stop, right now!” My voice broke with the edge of hysteria. I wanted nothing more than just to start screaming and never stop.

The monster froze with my foot halfway to one of its lower mouths. The mismatched eyes stared at me, expectantly.

I swallowed and tried to sound calm, though the zombie wouldn’t care. “Release me.”

It did.

My heart was threatening to come out my mouth. I lay back on the floor for a second, relearning how to breathe. When I looked up, the monster was still sitting there, waiting. Waiting for orders like a good little zombie.

“Stay here, do not move from this spot,” I said.