Part 16 (1/2)

I walked to the door and opened it, not at all surprised to find a flight of stairs leading up to the next level. I looked behind me first, but the two of them were paying no attention to me, so I walked up the stairs. They were much more solid than the ones earlier; in fact they felt like pillars of strength, wrought from the earth itself.

Once I got to the top of the stairs, it took me awhile to understand what I was looking at. I mean, it really took me awhile. Instead of a boring, dark attic as I had expected, I was looking down the length of a well-lit room. There were flickering candles in the middle of the wood-slat floor, hundreds of them, some of them red but most of them black, all of them forming this giant oval. In the middle of the floor was something white and moving. It took me awhile for my eyes to focus on it, to pinpoint what it was, but when I did, a small scream got buried in my throat. It was a small white snake with yellow diamonds down its back, pinned to the floor with a knife down its middle, writhing in pain as it was forced to die an immobile death.

A strange smell of sweet baby powder and tangy copper filled my nose as a cold breeze blew past, making the flames dance. I looked up and saw row upon row of bleeding chicken feet suspended from the arched ceiling by delicate wires, the drops of blood scattering on the floor.

I didn't know what to think or say or do. I wanted to yell and scream and tell Perry and Maximus to come up here, to see what I was seeing, but I couldn't. I couldn't do a single thing because things were happening beyond my control, without pause, without consent. I was f.u.c.king losing my mind, that's exactly what was happening.

Because at the very end of the room, beyond the dying snake and where the hundreds of black, greasy candles were burning, there was a mirror. A full-length mirror. A mirror that was aimed right at me but didn't even hold my reflection. But what it did hold, what all the mirrors held lately, was my mother.

She waved at me from inside that silver, the way she looked in my dreams, the way I remembered her in life. She waved at me. She blew me a kiss. And then she disappeared.

I blinked, trying to regain control of myself, of my soul, of my G.o.dd.a.m.n bladder, when my attention was ripped from the empty mirror-the mirror that still wouldn't hold my reflection-to the s.p.a.ce just beyond it.

A tall, hulking black man stepped out from behind the mirror. A familiar face, if not for the dead glazed eyes and drooling lips that curled up in rage as soon as he saw me. It was Tuffy G. It couldn't have been anyone else. Tuffy G, the man we all saw die in the bar, was standing in this attic with me, looking like I was next on his. .h.i.t list. I didn't know what to think, but luckily my instincts were quicker than that.

I turned and ran and ran hard. I went for the stairs, feeling the floor beneath me shake and rumble as the giant undead thing came toward me. I kept running, taking the stairs two at a time until I was on the landing of the third floor. Perry was by the wall trying to get readings from her thingamabob and Maximus was filming an inanimate couch.

I screamed. I ran. I tried to warn them.

But Tuffy G already had a plan.

He lurched forward after me, and just when I felt his hand grazing the back of my s.h.i.+rt, I knew he went off to the side.

Toward Perry.

My Perry.

She screamed once she saw him, his arms outstretched, his mouth open, teeth bared. He grabbed her by the neck and shoulders, his fat, dead hands about to dig into her and break her to pieces. His jaw snapped violently, wanting to eat her alive.

I didn't have much time. No time to think about what was really happening, whether this was a ghost, a zombie, or a sick f.u.c.king prank. I dropped my camera to the floor, making sure the lens was pointed in the general direction and grabbed the nearest sharp blunt object, a floor lamp without the bulb. I swung it up like I was in the Little Leagues and cracked it against Tuffy G's back. When that only made him pause in mid-attack, I quickly did it again, dropping low to a crouch and swinging at the back of his knees. I swung hard enough to break any man's legs. Only this wasn't any man. The lamp post broke instead, splitting in half, and Tuffy G turned around, enraged and ready to fight. His dead eyes focused on me, and even with all my super strength, I was pretty sure I was a goner.

”Hey, f.u.c.ker!” Maximus's voice rang out across the room. I looked over at him at the same time that Zombie G did. He was by a window, aiming his camera at us and waving obnoxiously. Even if I wasn't the undead, I'd want to tackle him.

Tuffy G fell for it. He lurched forward, the floorboards creaking beneath him, closing in on the s.p.a.ce between him and Maximus, the living and the dead. He was almost at Maximus, almost to the point where I wanted to say something, anything, just in case I never saw the ginger alive again.

But he was a man with a plan. He tossed aside his camera at the last minute and dropped flat to the floor. The zombie kept running, too stupid and enraged to gauge what had happened until it was too late. He went straight through the window with a crash, gla.s.s fragments flying everywhere, then dropped to the ground far below. I ran to the window just as Maximus was getting to his feet and we both looked out together.

Three stories down, on the circular stone patio in the courtyard, his body lay, rivulets of blood flowing from him.

Tuffy G had died for the second time.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

I stared at the body for a few moments, having a hard time soaking it all in, what just happened, when I heard Perry whimper from behind me.

I snapped out of it, ignoring the implausibility of what happened, and went to her. She was huddled against the wall where Tuffy G-or Tuffy G A.D.-had pinned her, ready to take a bite out of her, and she was shaking and crying. I put my hands on both sides of her shoulders and looked at her as closely as possible in the glow of the streetlights. Her eyes were wet with tears but she looked okay otherwise. Her beautiful neck was fine.

”You're okay, baby,” I told her. ”He didn't get you.”

She shook her head, tears running down her face. ”I don't understand. He was dead. I saw him die.”

”We all saw him die. And now we saw him die again.”

”But why was he trying to hurt me? G.o.d, Dex, he was trying to bite me! I thought these weren't the real undead!”

”I don't know, but there's something upstairs you need to see.”

”Does it involve candles?” Maximus asked.

I turned my head to look at him, keeping Perry firmly in my grasp. ”Yes, why?”

He was looking toward the attic door. Smoke was beginning to filter out of it.

”s.h.i.+t!” I yelled. Tuffy must have knocked them over on his way after me. ”What do we do?”

”We get the f.u.c.k out of here, right now,” he said, picking up his camera from the ground and giving it a quick once over. He'd thrown it pretty hard, but from what I saw, only the lens looked cracked.

”Shouldn't we wait for the police or fire trucks?” Perry sniveled.

”No,” Maximus and I both said in unison. She nodded, understanding, and wiped her nose. Maximus wanted the NOPD as far away from us as possible and I wasn't about to get our footage taken away from us again. Besides, between the three of us, we'd actually gotten something, I knew it.

Now the smoke was getting thicker and flames crackled at the top of the stairs, illuminating a slice of floor in the flickering light. If we stood around much longer, we'd be swallowed up fast.

”Let's go,” I said, giving her shoulders a squeeze. ”We have to run.”

At that, there was a thump from up above us. Something or someone in the attic.

She swallowed hard, her eyes searching the ceiling. ”What else did you find up there?”

”I'll tell you in the truck,” I said, pulling her. I didn't see anyone else in the attic, except Tuffy. I hoped it was just the house starting to collapse on itself.

I picked up my camera, which had skittered across the ground, and we quickly hopped down the aging stairs, careful to sidestep the ones we'd broken. The fire grew louder behind us, and once we hit the main floor, I was met with the idea that the house might not let us leave at all.

I was about to warn Maximus about this, but he crossed through the front door to the porch easily and Perry and I followed. I glanced down at the door frame as I stepped over it, and noticed a thin line of salt. If I had the time to stop and investigate it, I felt like I'd discover it went all the way around the house.

Maximus was already at the truck and starting it, Perry was climbing in the front seat, her eyes begging me to run faster. I caught up and jumped in the back, looking up at the house as we pulled away in time to see flames spread along the roof.

The window in the attic shattered, the sound competing with the noisy truck as we roared off, and I wondered if it was the heat that caused it or if someone had broken the window, trying to escape. And if it were the latter, should I have felt relieved or not?

Maximus drove like a madman out of the neighborhood, all of us silent and breathing hard, pulses racing.

Perry turned around in her seat to look at me. ”What happened upstairs, Dex? Where did he come from?”

”Aside from a fresh grave? I don't know.” I explained to them what I saw in the attic, the circle of candles, the live snake pinned to the ground, the hanging chicken feet, then Tuffy G rising from the corner of the room, gla.s.sy-eyed and enraged. I left out the part about my mother. They would have thought I was nuts.

”I captured it all, I think. Until he started running at me and then I just ran like h.e.l.l.”