Zombie Pulp

EMILY

When Emily came out of the grave, Mother was waiting there for her. She saw little Emily and began to immediately shake and sob. A broken cry came from her throat as the immensity of her daughter’s resurrection hit her. She went down to her knees in the sluicing muck, gasping and staring, her mouth unable to form words.

Emily just stood there, her white burial dress dripping wet and dark with graveyard soil that fell in clots. Even in the wan moonlight, her face was pale as tombstone marble, her eyes huge and black and empty.

“Emily?” Mother said, caught in some sucking, manic whirlpool of utter joy and utter horror. “Emily?”

Emily just watched her, completely indifferent to the scene. Raindrops rolled down her pallid face like tears. Finally, she grinned because it was what Mother wanted. She grinned and Mother recoiled like she had been slapped. Emily had not grinned in awhile and it came out a bit too crooked, a bit too toothy. “Mother,” she said, her voice dry and scraping like a shovel dragged over a concrete tomb lid.

Mother came forward, uncertain at first, but that endless week of mourning had drained everything from her and she could no longer see how this was wrong, how this was unnatural and insane. So she stumbled forward and collected Emily in her arms, squeezing her in the rain, paying no mind to the fetid stench that came off her daughter.

“I prayed for this, baby! I prayed and I wished and I hoped and I never, ever, ever lost my faith!” Mother said. “I knew you would come back! I knew you would come back to me! I knew you weren’t really dead!”

Emily did not hug her back.

In fact, the warmth of Mother’s flesh slightly repelled her…even though the smell of it was appetizing. She felt Mother’s arms around her, but it did not move her. Emily came out of the grave with certain things, certain needs and desires, but love and affection were not among them.

But Mother did not see any of this and mainly because she did not want to. Grief had shattered her and mourning had laid her bare. The madness that comes with losing a child is a special madness, stark and numbing, seamless and all-encompassing. So Mother simply accepted. There was nothing more. Just acceptance.

Mother rambled on and on about how she had prayed and wished for Emily’s resurrection, how she had sat in her bedroom grim night after night after night, staring into the flame of a single candle and wishing her little girl alive again. And how last night she had dreamed that Emily had opened her eyes in the cloying darkness of her little pearl-white casket and that’s how she had known to come tonight with a shovel to set her baby free.

“But you weren’t dead, baby!” Mother said again and again. “I told them at the wake and I told them at the funeral and they wouldn’t believe me! They wouldn’t believe that my little girl wasn’t dead! But I knew! I knew! I knew you weren’t dead!”

“Yes, I was, Mother,” Emily said.

But Mother didn’t hear that either.

There were only her delusions now which were a high, sturdy brick wall that things like reason and decency could not hope to break through. She had her Emily back and that’s all that mattered, that’s really all that mattered. Emily was back…or something that looked like her was.

“Help me, baby,” Mother said, on her hands and knees, pushing wet earth back into the grave. “We have to cover this up so people don’t ask questions. You know how they ask questions. But I won’t let them take you away from me again.”

But Emily did not help.

She just stood there, still grinning, watching Mother fill in the grave, watching her cry and sob and make funny, high-pitched sounds deep in her throat. Emily did not honestly see the point of filling in the grave. She had not been among the walking dead long enough to understand that there was a need to be careful, a need for secrecy in all things relating to her rising.

But that would come with experience.

As all things did.

Emily’s memory was intact and she was sly and cunning. She would learn. For essentially she was still a child and had a child’s love of play and make-believe. So she figured it wouldn’t be too hard to pretend she was a harmless little girl.

As Mother labored, Emily looked around the cemetery, at the crypts and monuments and stones, enjoying this place and thinking she would like to come here often. But not too often. If she did that, sooner or later she would be seen and that would give the game up. People expected dead little girls to stay in their coffins, they did not like them wandering around cemeteries by night.

Even Emily knew that.

Mother finished the grave, filthy from head to foot, only her eyes and teeth white and shining like an old time vaudeville performer in blackface. It all added to the necessary absurdity of the entire situation. She came right over to Emily and hugged her, wrinkled her nose at the smell, but kept hugging all the same. A fat, twisting earthworm fell from Emily’s matted hair and Mother cried out. But even this, she ultimately ignored.

“Let’s go home, baby,” she said. “Let’s get you out of this awful place.”

Emily allowed herself to be led away by the hand amongst the leaning stones and vaults covered in creepers. She did not want to leave. She wanted to run through this place and sing and dance, hide behind stones and leap out in the cold moonlight. The smell of rank earth and rotting boxes, crumbling flesh and yellowed bones intrigued her, made her stomach growl. She wanted to dig down far below with her bare hands and chew on things. Nibble them.

But Mother would not have that.

They went through the gates and a church bell in the distance gonged out the hour of midnight. It was a perfect time for a resurrection and Emily knew it. And knowing it, she giggled. Then they were in the car and Emily remembered that she hadn’t been in the car since the night her appendix burst and the infection set in. She couldn’t remember much of that, just the fever and the pain and the sound of Mother crying at her bedside.

“Everything’s going to be okay now, baby,” Mother said. “You’ll see. Mother will make everything right.”

Emily just kept grinning, feeling the hollow in her belly and wanting to get her teeth in some meat. She thought of crunching bones and chewing graying meat and the image of these things made her stomach growl. If it wasn’t for the heat in the car that Mother insisted on blasting, things would have been perfect. Emily sat there as they drove into town, remembering things from before but associating no warmth with any of it.

She knew only hunger.

“Talk to Mother, baby, please talk to me.”

So Emily did. “I’m hungry,” she said.

*

At home, Mother told her they had to be quiet. Very quiet because George was sleeping upstairs and they didn’t want to wake him. Not yet. Not before Mother had time to explain certain things. But Emily understood. When you came out of the grave, certain things had to be explained. She remembered George just fine. George was her step-father, Mother’s husband. Not Emily’s real dad because he was dead a long time. George had liked Emily when she was alive. He took her to the zoo and the circus, he took her shopping and bought her things and helped her with her homework. George had been very nice. But like everything else, there was no fondness associated with George now. Emily had liked him before and maybe she would even like him now…once he was cold.

“The first thing we have to do is clean you up,” Mother said.

Mother cleaned herself up first and made Emily wait in her old bedroom. Emily looked at the posters on the pink walls, the princess bed and frilly pillows, the books and CDs and dolls lined up on the shelf. It meant nothing to her. Just things that she had collected up and coveted once, but no longer. She did not see how they would get her meat so they had no practical value. The bed felt soft and spongy. Emily did not like it, nor the clean stink of detergents on the Beauty and the Beast coverlet.

What she did like was the mirror.

She could remember how she liked to put on dress-up clothes and look at herself in it. She looked at herself in it now. She looked… changed. She was very thin and her skin was very white, gray shadows under her eyes, her lips almost black. Still grinning, her teeth looked long and narrow and yellow, black stuff wedged between them. Her gums were gray and her lips were shriveled back from them.

Emily liked how she looked.

She liked the patch of fungus at her throat, the soil that clung to her white lace burial dress. The beetle that crawled over her brow and the larva squirming in her cheek. She especially liked her eyes which were large and black and never seemed to blink. They stared and stared, wide and cataleptic. She held up her hands and her fingers were bony, the skin gray and seamed, dirty and damp.

She had a smell to her that was all her own.

It was fetid.

And absolutely delicious.

Mother took her into the bathroom and scrubbed her under a hot spray of water. The heat was sweltering and it made Emily nearly sick to her stomach. Mother shampooed her hair and scrubbed her with pink soap, scrubbing and scrubbing, cleaning the grave dirt off her and the patches of green mildew that had grown up her cheeks and down her arms. Emily did not like being washed. The soap smelled of berries and lilacs and the shampoo smelled of coconut and she found it nauseating. She liked her other smell. The smell of wormy earth and embalming fluid, putrescence and casket satin.

But Mother would not have that either.

She dressed Emily in lavender pajamas, the ones with prancing cutesy unicorns on them. Emily remembered that she had loved unicorns before, but now things were different. She did not understand unicorns any more. She only understood burial. And meat.

In the kitchen, Emily’s other smell beginning to make itself known, seeping through the perfume of soaps and shampoos, Mother made her some food. First toast and Cocoa Pebbles. Then waffles and Ore-Ida French fries in the oven. But Emily did not want these things. She did not want pre-sweetened cereal or bread, pizza or Hostess pies. She wanted other things.

“You have to eat something,” Mother said. “You’re…you’re so thin.”

“I’m hungry,” Emily said.

So Mother went through the cupboards and refrigerator, trying to find something Emily might want. Emily was sickened by the smell of everything Mother made. But there was another odor, one that was intriguing. When Mother’s back was turned, Emily followed it to its source: the garbage can under the sink. In there, amongst egg shells and old lettuce leaves and discarded tissues there were a few scraps of raw hamburger clinging to a foam carton. They were discolored and rank-smelling. Emily began to lick them free, the juices in her mouth running at the wonderful taste, the wonderfully rotten smell.

“Emily!” Mother said, slapping the carton from her cold white hands. “You can’t eat that! It’s yucky! It’s full of germs!”

“I’m hungry,” Emily said.

And then she heard footsteps coming down the stairs and knew it was George. She could smell his cologne and it was disgusting. But there was a good, yummy odor there as well. Some reeking juice, perhaps, from thawing meat he had dripped on his sock. Just a speck, no doubt, but Emily could smell it and it made her mouth water.

Mother heard George’s approach, but too late to do much about it. Her eyes wide and frightened, she looked over at Emily. “Hide!” she whispered. “Get in the pantry.”

So Emily did.

George entered the kitchen. “Christ, Liz, where have you been? You had me worried sick.”

“There was some shopping to do,” Mother said.

“At this hour?”

Emily could sense Mother’s apprehension. She could smell the sweat that ran down the back of her neck, hear the steady tom-tom beat of her heart. “Some places are open twenty-four hours,” Mother said, thinking quickly.

Like cemeteries, Emily thought.

George grumbled a bit. “What’s that smell in here?” he asked. “Smells like something died.”

Emily giggled under her breath.

“It’s…it’s the garbage,” Mother said. “I was just going to take it out.”

Oh, Mother’s juices were running hot now, her nerves jangling with electricity. Her palms were sweaty and her lips quivering. George had her very upset. Emily thought it was funny. It was a game Mother was playing, a gag she was playing on George.

George did not seem to like it.

He stepped farther into the kitchen. Emily could see him from the darkness of the pantry, hidden there as she was amongst the shelves of canned goods and dried pasta, the bags of potatoes and onions that smelled very sharp, though not unpleasant.

“Are you all right, Liz? You don’t look so good. Do you feel all right? You know what the doctor said. You’ve been through an awful lot, you need your rest.”

“I’m fine,” Mother told him. “Why wouldn’t I be just fine?”

Emily grinned from her hiding place. Though the pantry was pungent with the odors of dried food and vegetables, she was smelling that drop of juice on George’s sock. It was intoxicating.

“Liz…c’mon, honey, let’s talk, okay? Tell me what’s on your mind. Is it Emily? Let’s talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Mother told him, her voice growing cross.

George went over to her. “Honey, please. She’s gone. We have to accept that, we have to get on with-”

“She’s not gone!” Mother said, her eyes filled with tears, her head shaking from side to side. “She’s not gone at all!”

“Liz…”

Mother was right and George was wrong, but he didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand any of it because it was part of the game. Emily decided it was time to teach him the game, so then he, too, would know. She stepped out of the pantry, her eyes huge and her pale mouth grinning. “Peekaboo!” she said.

George literally jumped and swung his head around. He looked and his eyes widened and his mouth opened and his head began to thrash violently back and forth. His ruddy complexion bleached to the color of new bone. In the split second that realization settled in, he began to breathe very fast, in and out, as if he could get no air. “Oh no, oh no, oh no! Oh, dear God, no! It can’t be! IT CANNOT FUCKING BE! IT CAN’T-”

He was scared and Emily knew it.

Just scared out of his mind, his heart racing and his lungs rasping, a sharp and foul odor of fear-sweat coming off him. Something Emily could smell just as a wild animal can. She did not know, though, if he was really afraid or just pretending like they did with their yearly Halloween games.

So she jumped out at him and hissed, baring her teeth and making her fingers into claws.

George screamed and fell into Mother who kept trying to explain it all, crying and choking, her voice wavering and completely mad. This is what they’d both wanted, wasn’t it? This is what they’d both needed…Emily back with them. And now she was. And wasn’t that wonderful? Wasn’t that an absolute miracle? WELL, WASN’T IT? These were the things Mother kept saying…or trying to…but George was not hearing her. He was only trying to get away as Mother held onto him, shouting louder and louder about what a miracle it all was. And then they were fighting. George was out of his mind and Mother was trying to hold him and he was hitting her, calling her names and she was crying and shaking and it was an ugly scene. “This isn’t normal! This isn’t natural! Look at that fucking thing! That’s not your daughter! That’s not Emily! It’s a thing from a fucking grave!”

They fell to the floor fighting and Emily did not like their fighting. George was going to be trouble. So Emily pulled a metal tenderizing mallet from the cupboard and brought it down on his head, loving the pulpy sound his skull made. She brought it down again and again and again, blood spattering against her face and standing out in sharp contrast against her white, seamed skin.

“No, Emily!” Mother cried out. “No, no, no! Stop that! Stop it!”

So Emily stopped and George’s body just lay there, very still and quiet. Emily stared down at it, liking him better this way. Now he wasn’t causing trouble. Now he was happy. Emily looked at the end of the mallet. There was blood dripping from it, brain globs, strands of hair. She brought it to her mouth and pressed her tongue against it. It tasted good, so she began licking the stuff off and spitting out the hairs. It was tasty…though much too warm to be truly delicious.

“Emily! Emily! Emily!” Mother cried, afraid again. Angry, maybe, and unhappy. “Don’t do that! Don’t do that! Do you hear me?”

Emily heard her. “But I like to,” she said.

That made something snap inside of Mother.

She pressed herself up against the refrigerator, sobbing and trembling and a funny look came over her. She began to talk to herself, staring but not blinking at all. Laughing sometimes so Emily knew things were all right. Mother was just going crazy again like she had when Emily had first come out of the grave. Poor Mother. If Emily had been capable of compassion, she might have felt sorry for her. Mother just sat there, that terrible look on her face like part of her mind, probably an important part, had been sucked down into some black, bottomless gulf.

“Watch me,” Emily told her and went on her knees next to George’s corpse.

George’s head was open and things were leaking out, clear things and red things and gray things and clumping things. Emily dipped her fingers into his open skull like it was a fondue pot, the kind they’d had at her seventh birthday party last year. She dipped her fingers and licked them off. Everything was tasty. Her hunger was so severe that finger-licking was not enough. She gripped George’s skull and broke it apart with her fingers, licking at the sweet red jelly inside, sucking up strands of tissue and the buttery soft folds of gray matter.

Mother just stared off into space, her mouth moving but no words coming out.

Emily cleaned out the skull until she was full. Inside, it was clean and sparkling and white like a freshly-washed pot. There was more good stuff, but Emily was full. For now.

Her bloodless face smeared with gore, Emily just stood over Mother, smiling at her.

Finally, Mother’s eyes began to focus. “Oh, Emily,” she said, her teeth chattering. “You can’t…you can’t eat the dead.”

“Yes, I can,” Emily told her. “I like the taste.”

*

Mother did not like to do what she did next, but she did it because she had to. She had to protect Emily and she would do whatever that took. She loved Emily so much and she kept telling her that. But it was lost on Emily, because whenever she thought of people like Mother, there was only coldness inside her, ice crystals and graveyard earth, nothing more…except hunger.

“George did not understand, Emily,” Mother said as she dragged the body to the back door. “I wanted him to understand, but he wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t understand how wonderful this all is. And we’ll miss him, but we can’t have him causing trouble, now can we?”

Emily shook her head. Already she understood that she did not like people who caused trouble.

Mother took care of everything.

She dragged George’s body out into the backyard and dug a deep hole in the flower garden and then put him in it. It was a nice hole, Emily thought, there in the rich black soil beneath the spreading limbs of the old oak tree where Emily’s tree swing still hung. She wanted to lie down in there with George, be buried with him. All that dirt would be nice, but Mother said no.

Curran, Tim

Zombie Pulp

Then Mother locked Emily in her room and went to her own.

Emily sat on the floor, thinking of cold things, marble stones and wilting funeral sprays, dead leaves blown through churchyards and secret buried boxes filled with good things to eat. Other than that, she just looked around her room in the darkness. Mother needed lights and Emily used to, but now she saw very good in the dark. Just like a cat. She looked at her toys and her games and none of those things interested her anymore. She had other interests now.

It took Mother a long time to fall asleep that night and Emily could hear her crying and talking to herself. While Emily waited she looked at some of her books in the moonlight coming through the rain-spattered windowpane. She had lots of picture books. Princesses and cuddly animals and little girls running and playing. She liked the pictures of the little girls. They made her hungry.

When Mother was asleep, Emily slipped out her window and went out into garden. The air was chilly and moist and she liked it. On her hands and knees, she dug George up and he was nice and cold. And very yummy. Especially the meat of his throat and all the stuff inside his belly. When she was done, Emily covered him back up because she understood that certain things-like lunch and supper and breakfast-had to be kept secret.

Emily liked secrets.

She knew lots of things other people didn’t.

But she would never tell.

*

The next few days, Emily and Mother settled into their new life together. It was not exactly like it was before. But Emily did not mind. She liked to watch Mother and her craziness. The way she talked when there was no one in the room and the way she sometimes cried. Her eyes were very red and her hands shook. Sometimes she would look at Emily like she was disgusted and other times she would look at her like she was afraid of her. Emily did not mind, because Mother kept telling her that she loved her and Emily believed her.

Mother took a lot of pills and drank from one of George’s bottles of whiskey. She had quit smoking last year because Emily had asked her to, because smoking could kill you, they said at school. At the time, Emily did not want Mother to die, but now that did not seem like a bad thing. It was a fun thing, really. Regardless, Mother was smoking again. She smoked one cigarette after the other and when the phone rang, she sometimes cried out. She would answer it, but her voice was always very funny. Emily went to answer it once herself, but Mother stopped her just in time.

Still, there were fun games to play.

Mother told Emily that if someone came to the door, she was to go hide down in the cellar. Emily had never liked the cellar. Especially the old coal bin with its dirt floor and dank smell and stone walls threaded with spider webs. But the new Emily liked it just fine. She spent a lot of time in the coal bin. The door was big and heavy and it creaked when you opened it. Just like a crypt. Emily liked to play down there. She liked to pretend that it was her tomb. She would lay on the dirt floor and cross her arms over her chest just like dead people on TV. She dug herself a grave and sometimes she laid in it. She took her old dolls down there and buried them too.

It was great fun.

Those first few days people came and went. Emily’s funeral had been ten days before, but still the people came. They still brought cards and casseroles, plates of ham and pies. So much that Mother started throwing it away. She rarely ever ate and then only when her head was spinning and she couldn’t stand up. She told Emily that she had no appetite.

So sometimes Emily would hide in her tomb in the cellar-a place Mother would not go, which was good because Emily had buried some parts of George down there which were getting green and delicious-smelling-or sometimes in the spare room upstairs when people came to visit. Then she would watch them leave through the parted curtains. Mother told her not to do that, but Emily liked to. One time, when Aunt Doris stopped by, Emily had been watching her leave through the curtains and Doris had looked up and saw her. At least, Emily thought so. Doris took one look and ran to her car and did not come back.

But Emily did not tell Mother about that.

And she didn’t tell her about the kids in the neighborhood. She liked to watch them through the curtains, too. Mother would not let her go out and play with them. She said Emily was sick. Maybe another day. But Mother was lying and Emily knew it. So she just watched the kids. She knew all of them, used to play with them. Sometimes Missy Johnson from down the street, Emily’s old best friend, would ride her bike past the house and look up at it. A couple times she stopped out front and just stared. Then she rode away fast. Emily knew Missy was crying. Missy was sad because Emily was dead. Emily thought that was funny.

But Emily was getting sick of staying in the house.

She wanted to go out. She wanted to see her friends and tell them all the secrets she knew. They would like that.

But Mother made her stay inside, so she played alone and listened to the people passing by on the walks. The mailman and the neighbors, her friends riding their bikes and rollerblading and skipping and singing songs. She wanted to skip and sing with them. Next door, she could hear a baby crying. It was Mrs. Lee’s new baby that had been born just a couple weeks before Emily’s funeral. Emily liked to listen to it cry. She had always liked babies. She still liked them…but for other reasons.

She wished she had a baby of her own.

A fat, squealing, pink little baby to play with.

Maybe one night, Emily would go over there and play with it.

*

Nearly two weeks after Emily had been out of her grave, the house was filled with flies. They were attracted by Emily’s special smell and despite all the sponge baths and perfuming Mother did, that smell remained. Finally, when some of Emily’s skin came off in the tub, Mother stopped doing that. She just got used to the flies. Emily didn’t mind them. They liked to cover her like a blanket, always buzzing and nipping. Sometimes when she opened her mouth, flies flew out. There were things burrowing under Emily’s skin, too. Some were in too deep for her to get at, but others were close to the skin and she could dig them out with her nails. There had been a big swollen spot at the side of Emily’s neck and when she scratched it open, dozens of fat white worms came squirming out. Emily kept them in a jar, but they died.

Mother spent a lot of time out of the house.

Usually when she came back she was drunk. She was worried about George, she said, because people were starting to ask questions about him and there might be trouble if they didn’t stop.

But Emily didn’t care about that.

There wasn’t much of George left now. Just some bones and scraps and Emily was getting hungry again.

When Mother was gone, sometimes Emily would put on dress-up clothes and look at herself in the mirror. Feather boas and tiaras, wedding gowns and long evening coats that did not fit very well. Emily was no longer just white, she was gray now. There were patches of furry stuff growing up her cheeks and around her neck. It itched something terrible. Sometimes when she combed her hair, locks of it would come out. There were lots of white squirmy things in her scalp.

One afternoon, while Emily was alone, there was a knock at the door.

She hid upstairs. Whoever it was just wouldn’t go away. They finally opened the door and came in. It was Aunt Doris. “Liz? Liz, are you here?” she called out. She waited for an answer but didn’t get one. But she didn’t leave. She just walked around and Emily could hear her saying things about the smell in the house, the flies, and the mess.

Emily hid at the top of the stairs, watching her.

But Aunt Doris must have heard her, because she turned around and said, “Liz? Liz, is that you?” No answer again. Emily giggled, even though she did not mean to. Doris just stood there. “Is someone there? Who’s up there?”

Emily ran off to hide.

Doris came up the steps and Emily could smell the fear on her. It was getting so that she liked that odor. It made her hungry. It was like good odors coming out of the kitchen when supper was cooking in the old days. Emily remembered that she had never really liked Aunt Doris. She was always pinching Emily’s cheeks and kissing her and her breath always smelled like garlic and her perfume was just awful. It would linger in the house for hours. Mother sometimes called Aunt Doris a “no-good nosey Nelly.” Emily had thought that was funny.

But now she understood.

Aunt Doris was being nosey. She had no business here, but she came anyway. So Emily waited in the hall closet for her. She tried not to giggle, but it was not easy. Aunt Doris was walking back and forth, looking in rooms. Emily could still smell the fear on her. It was a thick, sour yellow odor that Doris was not even aware of. She walked around, muttering things to herself. Emily hid in the darkness. It was like playing hide-and-seek. She wondered if Aunt Doris liked hide-and-seek. Smiling, Emily rattled her fingers on the inside of the closet door.

And that got Aunt Doris’ attention.

She stood outside the door. “Is someone…is someone in there?”

Emily giggled.

Aunt Doris opened the door. She opened it very slowly, breathing very hard now, then threw it open all the way.

“You’re it,” Emily told her.

Aunt Doris screamed and fell down, clutching her chest and writhing on the floor. Emily could hear her heart struggling to find its beat, but it was skipping, speeding up and slowing down. And she kept screaming, of course.

So Emily jumped on top of her and banged her head on the floor until she stopped moving. Then she dragged her down to the cellar and buried her in the coal bin.

Mother would never know a thing.

*

The night after Emily knocked Aunt Doris unconscious, then tore out her throat in the cellar, Mother started acting very peculiar. More peculiar than normal, that was, because Mother was always very peculiar. Mother used to work very hard to keep the house clean. She’d scrub and wash and wax, make big dinners like roast beef and flank steak, but these days she never cooked or cleaned. She liked to drink whiskey, smoke cigarettes, and take pills. She was very thin and shaky, sometimes she cried and sometimes she held a pillow over her mouth and screamed into it.

But that night when she came home, she started asking questions about Aunt Doris.

“Emily…did she come over today?”

Emily just smiled. “She might have, but I hid just like you told me.”

“You…you didn’t hurt her?”

Emily shook her head. “I never hurt anyone. But sometimes I make them be quiet.”

“Oh, Emily…did you?”

“Did I what, Mother?”

But Mother could not ask the question. She needed to drink and smoke and talk to herself for awhile. She liked to do that. Sometimes she would curl up on the floor for hours, mumbling and staring off into space. Those were the times that Emily went down into the cellar for a snack. She would disinter all her dolls and they would have a little tea party. Emily would pretend they were eating, too.

Emily waited until Mother passed out and then she went and sat in her room. She could hear the Lee’s baby crying next door. It sure liked to cry a lot. When it was dark, Emily went out her window and over to the Lee’s house. She saw Mr. and Mrs. Lee watching TV through the window. They were very nice people. The baby had the room in the back of the house. Emily stood outside its window. Everything was done in blue so she knew it was a boy.

“Hello, baby,” she said through the window screen.

But the baby was sleeping and Emily knew that babies needed a lot of sleep. Carefully, she pulled the screen out of the window and went inside. She was very quiet. She did not want to disturb Mr. and Mrs. Lee. The baby was sleeping in a little blue onesie and diaper. He had a teddy bear in his crib and a Winnie the Poo mobile that spun round and round.

“Hello, baby,” Emily said.

She picked him up and he began to squirm. She held baby close to her and he squirmed even more. Then he began to cry and cry. As much as Emily cooed to him and sang songs under breath, baby would not stop struggling and crying. That was not good. If Mr. and Mrs. Lee came, they would not let her play with baby. They would take him from her and she did not want that. Baby was so soft and warm and chubby. Emily wanted to kiss him and touch him and suck the breath from his little mouth.

“Stop, baby,” Emily told him. “Stop making noise.”

But baby wouldn’t, so Emily made him be quiet. His little fat neck broke beneath the caress of her gray, flaking hands. Carrying baby by the feet, she slipped out the window. Long before Mr. and Mrs. Lee came into the nursery and the screaming and commotion began, Emily had baby down in the coal bin. She showed him to Aunt Doris.

And then she began to play with him.

*

Mother was gone the next morning and the phone kept ringing and ringing while Emily was playing dress-up. Mother did not want Emily answering the phone, but it kept ringing and ringing and Emily could not stand it anymore. Her hearing was very acute since she left the grave. She liked things to be quiet now. She liked things cold and damp and silent.

But the phone kept ringing.

Finally, she pulled it off its cradle.

A voice on the end said, “Liz? Liz? Liz, are you there?”

It was a voice that Emily had not heard in a long time. A very sweet, patient voice that belonged to Grandma Reese, Mother’s mother. Emily had always liked grandma whenever she came to town which was only a few times a year. Usually at Christmas and sometimes in the summer. She would always bring Emily gifts.

Emily liked to hear her voice, yet that emptiness inside herself would not let her feel happy or sad, just coldly indifferent.

“Liz? Liz, are you there.”

“Hello, Grandma,” Emily said.

And on the other end there was a gasping and a great commotion as the phone was dropped and grandma began to wail in a high, unnerving voice.

Emily hung up.

She did not like those kind of sounds.

Afterwards, Emily went back to playing dress up. She put on a white sparkling lace gown that looked very much like her burial dress. She wore a floppy straw hat with a big flower on it like rich ladies sometimes did at Kentucky Derby. Pearls and bracelets and long white gloves. In the mirror, she thought she looked very nice even though she was all swollen-up and blackening, worms crawling under her skin and flies covering her face. Her left eye had fallen out of the socket the day before and she could not find it. A great flap of skin hung from cheek now and you could see the skull beneath. When she grinned, her smile was all yellow teeth and gray gums, her lips shriveled away.

It was Saturday and on Saturday afternoons, Emily and Missy Johnson used to go play in the vacant lot across the alley. There were stands of trees to every side and it was like their very own kingdom. They liked to play very dramatic games as all little girls did. Usually, they would pretend they were sisters and their parents had died in a plane crash and they were hiding from the bad people who wanted to kill them. Or they would pretend one of them was dying from an incurable disease and the other was a doctor or a nurse trying to save them. But in the end, the sick one always died. And that was funny, because now one of them had really died.

Out the window, Emily saw Missy riding her bike down the alley. She had her plastic Barbie case with her. You opened it up and it was a little salon with mirrors and a wardrobe, lots of little dresses and shoes. She was going over to the vacant lot.

Mother had warned Emily that she was never to leave the house, but since she was all dressed up, she decided it would be okay. She went out into the backyard and right away Mr. Miller’s beagle down the alley began to howl. Emily walked over towards the vacant lot, her high heels clicking on the concrete. She saw Missy there. Missy had her back to her. She had her Barbie case open and was singing as she dressed Skipper and Stacey.

Emily came up behind her like she always had. “Boo,” she said.

Missy turned and screamed like Emily had never heard her scream before. She scrawled away on all fours and ran, screaming the whole while. Emily called out to her, but she wouldn’t stop.

Emily went back home.

On the way, Mr. Miller drove down the alley in his car and she waved to him. He just kept staring…staring so much, in fact, that he drove his car right through his own fence.

*

The neighborhood was busy after that.

Cars drove up and down the street and a lot of them were police cars. Lots of people gathered outside the house with Mr. Miller. Missy’s mom and dad were there, too. By the time Mother came home, there were people everywhere and lots of policemen in uniforms. They tried to stop Mother, but she ran from them and came inside.

“What did you do?” she said to Emily. “What did you do?”

“I went outside,” Emily said.

Mother locked the doors as fists pounded on them, wanting to be let in. There was a lot of shouting and yelling as night came.

“We have to get out of here,” Mother said. “We have to go somewhere safe.”

“The cemetery,” Emily said.

“Yes, that’s where we’ll go.”

But then there was more pounding at the door and finally something kept ramming it until it came off its hinges. Then the police came charging in and Mother ran right at them, screaming and fighting.

“Run, Emily!” she called out. “Run!”

So Emily did.

She ran out the back way and almost made it to the vacant lot when she heard the barking of big dogs. Men were running through the neighborhood with flashlights. Emily went into the vacant lot and hid in the grass. She dug up Mrs. Lee’s baby where she had hidden it in the dirt under the big rock, brushed the crawly things off it. Then the men came and put flashlights on her, blinding her.

“Dear God in heaven,” one of the policemen said.

Emily shook her headless baby at them and hissed, showing her long teeth.

The dogs that were with them were howling and baying and snapping at their handlers. The men let them go. The dogs came right at Emily, sinking their teeth into her, tearing open her dress-up clothes and biting free flaps of flesh and crunching bones. Lots of people cried out, but they didn’t come any closer. The dogs chewed and rent and split Emily, yanking off her limbs which kicked and clawed in the grass, fingers looking for something to grab. The dogs did not stop. They were mad and frothing and snapping and biting.

Emily kept screaming until there was nothing left to scream with.

Then there was just silence and the growling of dogs and people whimpering.

So fifteen days after Emily came out of her grave, what was left of her was shoveled back in there again.