Holiday of the Dead (71 page)

Han fired up the engine (it started immediately – we’re trying to avoid clichés here!). Another mistake people make in these situations is to screech away at top speed, careening into things and inevitably crashing like the stupid cannon fodder they are. Han wasn’t stupid. He pulled off the grass carefully, three-pointed and drove at a gentle pace back towards the main gates.

“Move it, for fuck’s sake!” Cara screamed, finally back in the game.

“Have you seen
any
horror films at all?” Han asked, incredulous.

She opened her mouth to speak, but shut it again. A creature thumped into the side of the Jeep, causing her to shrink away.

Han slowly picked his way through the creatures and around the dismembered woman in the middle of the road and then out onto the main street.

THE END

Special bonus story by the legendary co-writer of
Night of the Living Dead
.

THE WALK-IN

By

John Russo

Reverend John Sutherland was inordinately annoyed by the shrill of the tea kettle. Not that it blew his concentration. He had been unable to concentrate even before it went off. It wouldn’t have helped if he had closed his study door; in fact, it would’ve been worse. He didn’t trust his wife, and always had to keep an ear cocked for what she might be up to.

He was fifty years old, greying and balding, and Barbara was only thirty-five. She looked about five years younger than her calendar age. Just as beautiful as when he married her, eleven years ago. But inside she was somebody different. He had no real proof of this. But nevertheless he knew. If God would have let him have a peek inside his wife’s mind, he would have been afraid to look. At times he felt guilty about feeling this way. But he could not make the fear, the dread, the nasty, resentful thoughts, go away.

He didn’t look up when she came into his study. He pretended to be absorbed in the writing of his Sunday sermon, even though he had barely managed to squeak out a couple of unimpressive paragraphs. He had already decided to dig out one of his old sermons instead. But he still had the bible and other treatises open on his desk, to make Barbara think he was hard at work, so she’d stay away.

Instead, she had made tea.

She seemed to know he was trying to deceive her.

Agonizing over this, John Sutherland did not turn to face his wife when she set down the tray, her body shielding it from his view anyway, as she surreptitiously dropped two capsules into his cup. His was the one with the ceramic
bas relief
of Jesus, complete with golden halo. Hers was the one with the
bas relief
of Mary Magdalene.

“How’s the sermon going?” she asked politely.

“Just about finished,” he said, pulling his notebook on top of the measly two paragraphs, and getting up to kiss her. A polite, sexless kiss, as polite and as sexless as her inquiry.

They both sat down, he at his desk, she in the big leather chair often used by parishioners who came to him with their sins, their guilt, their interminable problems.

The Episcopalian priest and his wife sipped their tea in a long, edgy silence.

Finally Barbara said, “I want desperately to be normal … to be the ‘me’ that you remember, John. I don’t think that seeing a psychiatrist is doing me any good.”

“But, darling …” Reverend Sutherland began.

Barbara interrupted him urgently. “I feel as if there’s a war going on, in my mind or in my soul. And I’m losing. Barbara Sutherland is slowly fading to nothingness. I’m desperate, don’t you see? And I’ve read about someone who may be able to genuinely help me.”

“Who?” the reverend asked, trying to sound patient, trying to hide his doubts.

The doubts only increased as he listened to his wife telling him about a man named Dr. Steven Monroe, a so-called ‘parapsychologist’, who claimed to specialize in the study of ‘supernormal occurrences’.

Aghast, Reverend Sutherland couldn’t help scoffing. “You mean ESP, clairvoyance, stuff like that?”

“Yes!” Barbara blurted. “And reincarnation. And … and … possession.”

John stood up slowly, came to his wife, and placed a tender hand on her shoulder. “Barbara … darling … please believe me; what’s wrong with you has a perfectly rational explanation. You spent three years in a coma. The fact that you finally recovered physically can almost be called a miracle. But, an experience like that had to have a terrible mental and emotional after-effect. You’ve got to fight hard to overcome the trauma … and then you’ll be yourself again, or nearly so. But, to some extent you’ll always be a changed person. You’ve got to understand that, darling, and we’ve both got to learn to live with it.”

Pushing his hand away, Barbara argued vehemently. “Dr. Monroe says that many people who survive near-death experiences are completely changed afterwards. He believes that the human body can be taken over by an invading spirit, or aura, when its defences have been sufficiently weakened. What if something like that happened to me, John? What if I’m not … not going insane? What if conventional psychiatry can’t really help me?”

He took a deep breath, and forced his voice to be calm and reasonable. “People like this so-called ‘Doctor’ Monroe are charlatans. They prey on ignorance, on superstition. All my life I’ve fought them and their ilk, and I’m not about to start condoning their shady practices.”

“Even if it means losing me?” she said, nearly in tears. “Even if it means losing me … to Maria Rocail?”

He took his wife into his arms, cradling her head against his chest. With stern reassurance, he told her, “Maria Rocail is dead. There’s no such thing as witchcraft. The only power she can have over you is the power you give your own memories of her wickedness.”

“Think about it, John,” Barbara said sadly. “Think very deeply about whether or not you truly want to lose me.”

She pulled herself away from him, and disconsolately left the study.

In a little while, because of the capsules in the tea, Reverend Sutherland fell asleep over his treatises and his inept scribblings.

Barbara stole back into the study. She put the Bible into a drawer. Then she removed a crucifix from its hook and rehung it upside down. Mumbling a Satanic prayer, she stared down at her drugged husband, who looked almost as if he were dead.

Several weeks and quite a few capsules later, Reverend Sutherland yielded to a growing impulse to pay Dr. Monroe a visit. As he drove downtown and parked in a cavernous parking garage, he couldn’t quite believe that he was going against his own adamant principles in this way. But more and more, lately, an almost heretical rationale had begun to implant itself in his brain. He told himself he was desperate, willing to try anything that might offer hope, no matter how outwardly preposterous it may seem.

Maybe, if his wife wanted to believe in this particular charlatan, the belief would turn out to be more beneficial than reality. Sometimes it didn’t matter where you got the inspiration to make changes in your life. If believing in the ‘luck’ of a rabbit’s foot gave you hope and courage to go through hard times or attempt the seemingly impossible, could the misplaced belief be entirely bad?

With these kinds of confused thoughts churning in his head, making him question his worthiness as a man of God, he pushed the buzzer of Dr. Monroe’s brownstone. The man himself came to the door, and ushered Reverend Sutherland into his Victorian-style office. There wasn’t a secretary or receptionist in sight, and no desk or cubical that might have accommodated one. Dr. Monroe was quite handsome, with blonde hair and beard, wearing an impeccably tailored pinstripe suit and vest. He looked to be about thirty.

Reverend Sutherland accepted a cup of tea, sipped it, and was overcome with an uncontrollable urge to tell everything about himself and his desperate situation. He revealed that his wife, Barbara, had recently awakened from a coma caused by a terrible automobile accident. She was unconscious, on a life support system for three years. Then, she suddenly awakened, with perfectly restored physical and mental vitality. It was if Reverend Sutherland’s prayers had been miraculously answered.

“Except something was wrong,” Dr. Monroe prompted.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Because you’re here, talking to me. And because these things aren’t unknown in the field of parapsychology. Tell me more. I think I can help you.”

His words tinged with hope, the reverend recounted how joyful he had felt, taking his wife back home to his church and rectory. For a while, things had gone well, and they had both repeatedly thanked God for the miracle He had wrought. But then came the shock of discovering that all was not well, after all, for Barbara began exhibiting symptoms of a split personality.

Most of the time, during the daylight hours, she seemed totally normal, like her old self – kind, affectionate, staid and moral. But during the night, her ‘other personality’ would take over. She imagined herself to be Maria Rocail – the wife of a self-styled ‘witch’ named Simon Rocail. The Rocails were notorious for their anti-Christian beliefs and practices. They led a coven of strange, perverted people who performed the Black Mass, indulging in pagan orgies, and tried to work evil spells upon their enemies. They still were worshipped, even idolised, by their followers, even after they both died. Simon and Maria committed suicide three years ago, when they were about to be arrested for causing the death of a small child in one of their occult ceremonies.

Reverend Sutherland had been a bold, outspoken adversary of the Rocails. He had preached against them and their ‘phony’ worshipping of Satan. He had called their ‘witchcraft’ nothing but a blasphemous superstition. And he was instrumental in leading the police to uncover their ritual murder.

When Simon and Maria Rocail poisoned themselves at the foot of their Satanic alter, they left a scroll, signed in blood, which promised that they would come back as reincarnated beings to take revenge on their ‘Christian Persecutors’, especially Reverend John Sutherland. The reverend had scoffed at this threat, and had asked God to forgive him for being secretly glad that the Rocails were dead. He did not believe in their pathetic spells and curses or witchcraft. He was convinced that the Inquisition was a blight upon the Church, a horrible dogmatic mistake that sent thousands of innocents to agonizing torture and flaming death at the stake.

“How did this business with the Rocails’ impact upon your wife?” asked Dr. Monroe.

For a long moment, Reverend Sutherland did not answer. He grappled with the ominous feeling that, in dealing with this so-called ‘parapsychologist’, he was giving in to temptation, allowing himself to be seduced by New Age jargon and methodology that often cleverly disguised the devil’s own, insidious propaganda. But he swallowed his misgivings, telling himself that it was his own overwhelming desire to find peace for his wife that made him so willing to try a desperate approach. And he prayed that God would understand and forgive him.

Usually he had to patiently cajole and lead his parishioners toward deep personal revelations, so he could understand and help them. He was used to maintaining a careful distance from his own emotions as he listened to their tales of sexual abuse, adultery, and so on. But now he felt that he was the one who had to open his own heart to a stranger. And he found it extremely difficult.

Clearing his throat nervously, he said, “When Barbara is in the throws of one of her … uh … nocturnal episodes as Maria Rocail, she becomes more wanton, more lascivious, more sexually aggressive than she ever was three years ago. Sometimes she ‘sleepwalks’ down to the sacristy.”

“How do you know this?”

“I’ve followed her. I had to know – don’t you see? But I wasn’t prepared for the awfulness of it. One night I heard her mumbling prayers to Satan, cursing the Blessed trinity.”

“How did you feel about this?”

“I prayed for her. I asked God’s forgiveness. After all, this blasphemy was subconscious. She wasn’t in control of her faculties. How could she have been? She was always a good, God-fearing woman. She’s been in therapy for the past six months, seeing a psychologist. It doesn’t seem to be doing any good. She read some of your books, and she was impressed. I remain sceptical, to put it mildly, Dr. Monroe. I consider myself a modern, enlightened clergyman. I don’t believe in the occult, the paranormal. I’m here out of desperation – a vague hope that somehow you might be able to help my wife – even if the ‘help’ turns out to be only an ability to replace her present delusion with something less blasphemous and destructive.”

Dr. Monroe leaned back in his swivel chair, pressing the tips of his fingers together. In a tone of wounded sincerity, he said, “You can trust me far more than you know, Reverend Sutherland. I have a degree in psychology. I’m a legitimate scientist, an explorer of the mind, who has found its terrain murky and enigmatic. Certain occurrences cannot be understood in conventional terms. I have come to believe that people’s minds are sometimes taken over by the souls, or auras, of those who are dead.” He paused, eyeing the reverend with a look of bemusement. “I see by your expression that you find this hypothesis utterly outlandish.”