Blood Lite

Old School Mark Onspaugh

"And arise!"

Everyone stood back from the corpse except Meg, who wanted to see whether the eyes would pop open like they always did in the movies.

The dearly departed, a crossing guard who had been struck down by a school bus, just lay there, like . . . well, like a stiff.

We waited thirty minutes, which seemed more than enough time for any self-respecting necromancer, then Dean hit Mal with his cap.

"Fuckin' retard—I knew that book was a load of shit." The book was old and covered in stained leather that Mal had promised was the skin of some wizard from fourth-century Persia or some such nonsense. He had gotten it off eBay from a dealer in Bakersfield. The fact that it was written in English had made us doubt its authenticity. It wasn't even Old English like Chaucer or something. More like that Robin Hood-speak you hear in bad sword and sorcery flicks. Lots of "thee" and "thou" and "ye."

"Let's get her back to the office," I said wearily. "My boss has a nasty habit of dropping in after nine."

We loaded the battered civil servant into the back of my Subaru. Dean had put pennies on her eyes, which only he had found funny.

I smiled at Meg, but I could see she was disappointed. She was the only reason I had agreed to this in the first place. There was something about her pale skin and bat tattoo that made me feel feverish. The way the chrome stud in her tongue winked in the sun. The hints that her pale flesh held even more wonders hidden from prying eyes. Marvels that I had yet to be privy to.

The starter made a grinding noise and the car finally started with a belch of exhaust. The thing was a piece of shit but none of the others had a ride. We bounced off the dirt track that led to the Carl Milton campground and back onto the main road to Baylor Brothers Funeral Home, where I worked part-time.

The moon was coming up as we passed the cemetery, and Meg's skin looked silver and luminous. I tried to think of something clever to say, something that might eventu­ally lead me into her cool embrace.

She beat me to it.

"There're a lot of fresh graves out there."

I looked, and saw several holes in the earth. But not the fresh excavations of men with equipment and a prac­ticed hand. More the frenzied eruptions of someone mak­ing their way . .. out.

I stopped, which turned out to be a major mistake, and demanded to look at Mal's book. Nervous, he opened it to the resurrection spell and handed it to me. The dome light on my car had burned out long ago, so I used a lighter. The spell read as he had recited it, up until the end.

... and arise---------!*

Dropping down to the bottom of the page, I read: *Recite here ye name of the deceased, lest thee raise every corpse within the sound of thy voice. "You didn't follow the asterisk?" I asked. By this time, Meg was screaming at the shapes looming outside, just as Dean was trying to subdue the surprisingly strong cross­ing guard.

"What's an asterisk?" Mal asked, his brow crinkling in a road map of confusion.

As the car began to rock under the assault of the hun­gry undead, I regretted many things.

I regretted I would never taste Meg's tongue stud as it clicked across my teeth.

I regretted I would never take that surfing trip to Aus­tralia.

I regretted being so close to a large cemetery like For­est Lawn.

But most of all, I regretted we had attended such shitty public schools.