Zombie Pulp (11 page)

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.