Wake the Dead

The scratching was what woke me up.

The jittery skirting of the thin walls of my decrepit house jerked me from sleep, almost teasingly. As if the fun was outside, and here I was, trapped in a box and faced with utter boredom. Or as if they were dogs, eager for entertainment.

They invited me out to play.

I could hear tapping, pattering away as gently as rain, but I knew it wasn’t falling water that had stirred me from rest.

I sat there on the bedcovers and listened to it for a moment, until the clicking grew more impatient and hurried.

It probably wasn’t real. Probably just another dream my mind had cooked up for the night. Might as well act on my impulse and see how things went in my dream-world that was always a little twisted—not quite normal and not quite fantasy.

I didn’t bother to put on my shoes or even a coat as I shuffled toward my door, gleaming eerie obsidian in the darkness. After all, it was a dream; I didn’t need to keep warm. I glanced at the infrared clock by the living room table, the only break of real color in the two-tone world of blue and black that world became at night.

Just past midnight. How wonderfully cliché…like a horror movie.

Flicking on the front porch light as I left, I stepped outside barefoot, slipping the door shut behind me without caring about it being locked. I turned toward the shrubbery that dotted my lawn. The icy wind swirled. I looked up into the sky—there was no moon or stars tonight.

Yeah, this is not natural
A bunch of holes where the dead used to be underground
Forget supernatural
‘Cause all those resting in peace are out and walking the streets
Yeah, with no heartbeat

A row of four human figures stood where my bedroom wall faced the darkened street. Their silhouettes were illuminated from a street lamp not far behind, but they were too far away for me to make out anything beyond a dark shape. I also noticed that somehow, they had little flecks and shreds of light gleaming on parts of their bodies—but too florescent to be a reflection of the porch’s glow.

“Who are you?”

One of them stepped forward with a dry scruff, raising their palm with a circle of dull light coming from it.

No, I realized. Not coming from it.

Coming through it. It was the light from the lamp posts.

I let out a sickened groan. Those were holes, some kind of wounds.

The figure came closer. Closer…they were within an arm’s length.

“Who are you?” I whispered. For the first time I felt a twinge of fear.

It beckoned a thin finger. Now the other three shuffled off suddenly, flexing their arms and legs, and I turned to watch them go. They were nearing a lamp post now…

No. No, they couldn’t be...My stomach knotted with revulsion.

They were corpses. Two were dressed in black slacks and shirts as wispy and thin as paper, torn and decayed. The other wore a dress that trailed past its ankles, all frays and nearly dirt.

I could barely make out anything else. Just heads, feet and fingers. Some bones showed, glittering with slime and long-caked blood where light hit. Where the crinkled skin remained, it was tinted a mossy greenish brown.

Across the sky they can hear you on the other side
A scream that's loud enough to wake the dead
And all alone you bought tickets for the nightmare as you wake the dead.
Wake the dead!

I swallowed the scream that was building up quickly in my lungs, burning for release. Each one now moved silently toward other houses on my street, pounding on doors, smashing in doorbells in a kind of impatience barely repressed by their half-functioning bodies.

This had to be a dream, so why did it feel so…?

Something clutched me by my shirt collar. I recoiled in shock—while I had been preoccupied with watching the others, the one closest to the door seized me.

I tried to tear away from its hold, but the hand didn’t even wobble. It somehow managed to have an iron grip.

“Oh, oh my God!”

I seized its wrist with my own two hands, trying to ignore the awful feeling of decomposition, the skin crawling with parasites, the bones crackling like deadwood.

The face merely smiled, molasses teeth revealed. Its eyes were hollow sockets and devoid of any emotion.

It was then that I realized this was far too real. This wasn’t a dream. I didn’t understand how this could...But the only thing that mattered was the leering skull in front of me. I tried to thrash again.

“No! No, no…”

Without warning, it began to drag me away. My heels ripped at the concrete as I resisted, but I had no more success than as if I had tried to stop a car I was chained to from driving away.

Down the front lawn steps, nearly falling in the process. He was excited now, facing away from me. A strange rapid gurgling came from his stomach.

Oh, This is not possible
Yeah, this is not possible
An empty hole in your chest where your heart used to beat
Does this mean what I think it means?
How could both you and me be about as dead as we could be
Yeah, with no heartbeat

There was screaming now. Other people must have opened their doors—as curious as I had been—and realized what laid outside in wait for them. I watched with growing horror as the dead stomped into houses to seize the rest of the family. Children’s shrieks of terror and confusion echoed around me, and I tried not to hear them.

I was nearly at the end of the street. I had given up being dragged like a rag doll and now just walked, stumbling every now and then. My neck was beginning to ache from the tightened seams that cut into the back. The stinking aroma of rotting flesh and soil that burned under my nose nearly made me gag.

“Where are you taking me?” I murmured, not really expecting an answer. I didn’t get one, except for a rattling hiss.

Nearly everybody on the street had been awakened by now, and countless walking dead were forcing them out under waves of hysteria and bringing them all in the same direction—out to the main road. But what were they going to do with us?

Across the sky they can hear you on the other side
A scream that's loud enough to wake the dead
And all alone you bought tickets for the nightmare as you wake the dead.
Wake the dead!

“Oh!”

Out of my carelessness, I tripped over a rock hidden in the grass, landed face-first across the concrete, and blacked out.

Take a walk with me, Walk with the dead
'Cause you knew that we had to die sometime, yeah
Well darling, tonight could be
Darling tonight could be

I woke up a few minutes later. I was lying in the dewy grass now, with scrapes on my cheek and an aching foot (had I been dragged by my foot when I was knocked out?) in a place I couldn’t recognize.

I stood up. Half the town was crammed into the space surrounded by a rusted, spiked fence whose paint had long been worn away. I recognized it, although I had only been here once before.

It was the local cemetery.

The amount of people—maybe two or three hundred—standing around the cracked tombstones was almost ridiculously out of place. This was in the middle of nowhere, just inside the forest that enviously skirted the edge of town.

We were penned in like animals. Strangely, no one was trying to climb over the eight-foot high fence, but clung together in small groups. Everyone, be it child, woman or man, looked oddly scared and small in their nightclothes, shivering or crying, like cornered rats who knew they were trapped, but only wondered how long it would be before they were finally killed.

Let your voice shred miles of diamond skies
Just to walk as they wake in the darkness, yeah
Well darling tonight could be a beautiful night to die
A beautiful night to die
Yeah

I shoved my way through the crowd, and it parted—no one was bothered to argue with me. I emerged on the other side. There was a wall of them, blocking us from going any further, staring blankly with gnashing jaws. Beyond the guards stood all the rest.

Some had been long since decomposed—nothing but skeletons, eerily jerking around like marionettes made of toothpicks. Others were freshly buried, almost looking…normal, if you could call it that, with the exception of their greenish, bloated limbs.

They filled the entire area, moving about quickly and silently with a sense of purpose.

All I could do was shudder. I was living a nightmare.

Just then, a piercing sound broke through them.

“SCRReee-UHH!”

There was a whistle of reply from the rest of the zombie crowd, like steam escaping from a pot. The very air seemed to grow still with tension.

“SCRrr-eee-uhHH!” the cry repeated.

All movement and sound stopped, and the world hung in a balance for a split second.

Then it snapped.

Wake the dead!
Fuck it! You’re dead!

All at once, they surged forward, a hideous mass of sheer bodies. They crashed forward toward us, and the crowd roared deafeningly.

“NO! NO! Help me!”

“Oh, God, oh please, no!”

People exploded into a panic, shoving over each other as they tried to retreat back. But they couldn’t—the fence was too high and those strong enough to climb it were pressed against it too roughly.

What was most terrifying of all was watching people turn on each other. Mothers dropped their children and dashed right over them in their madness, letting their babies be stampeded; men let go of their partners and ran. Hoarse yelling, screaming and wailing burst from throats as people climbed over each other like ants scurrying for safety when their anthill is opened.

The dead snatched up those who were on the outer edge of the mob, ignoring the trumpeted cries of shock and protest.

I was several people away from that edge. I stared dumbly as they were dragged over to a separate section of the cemetery—one that hadn’t been used yet.

One with unfilled graves, fresh and ready.

Wake the dead!
Fuck it! Yeah!

The dead lurched forward again, and began tossing people into graves as effortlessly as though they were made of foam. There were enormous thuds as the bodies landed.

Wake the dead! Wake the dead!

My instinct kicked back in. I had to run—now. I couldn’t let myself be taken! I could escape, there were people over the fence sprinting away into the trees. All I had to do was move.

I stumbled forward, throwing myself into the mass. I was maybe fifty feet from the fence, but it was a solid, crazed mob the whole way through.

Even fifty feet seemed like a mile.

I kicked and pushed, not caring who I stepped on or knocked down. Many people were too hysterical to even realize what I was doing, and were shoved aside easily. I concentrated on putting enough people between me and those monsters, before—

Too late.

Gritty bones closed around my wrist and yanked me backward. I gave a sharp yelp before trying to tear myself from its grip. Frantic and now brimming with panic that was throbbing through my veins, I looked back hopelessly at the cemetery gates.

I didn’t want to lose life. I didn’t want to be trapped in a hole in the ground, never again to feel warm orange light on my skin or taste a welcoming cool breeze, so different from the black night contaminated with the hot human breath of hundreds that was so unbearably stifling. I didn’t want to lose my hold, my love of my family and friends, my memories and dreams and hopes and despairs…

“N-NO!”

Across the sky they can ha-ha-hear you
A scream that's loud enough to wake the dead
And all alone you bought tickets for the nightmare as you wake the dead.
Wake the dead

I had underestimated how quickly the crowd would be cut through. Now I was paying for my mistake of not getting out of there while I had the chance with the fate that lay in store for me.

I dug my heels as far into the ground as they would go and flailed, kicked, did everything I could to get that hellish creature off of me, but I didn’t do any better than I had back on the street.

“You can’t do this! You can’t do this to me! No! NO!”

Dozens of us had been taken from the crowd now. The shattering rhythm of the thuds that signaled bodies tumbling into the holes, the pounding roar of the screaming, and the gurgling and hissing of twisted pleasure coming from all the dead made me feel as though I was going to explode.

I was going to be buried alive.

Across the sky they can hear you on the other side
A scream that's loud enough to wake the dead
And all alone you bought tickets for the nightmare as you wake the dead.

Just then, light shimmered in from above. I looked out into the shifting clouds to realize that the moon was coming out. A brilliant glow spilled everywhere, illuminating the corpses and graves like a nightlight.

I was far away from the shrinking group of people now. More and more were escaping, stumbling and tumbling over each other like animals. And I was not with them.

Wake the dead!

The movement stopped. Trembling and unable to stay up, I collapsed on my knees. I gazed up at my captor—who, unlike my last one, was nothing but a skeleton, all bones and no flesh—stared hollowly back. Its hand raised and pointed stonily toward a tombstone.

In the moonlight, I read its inscription. The chicken-scratch letters displayed a final message.

YOU HAVE DISTURBED US
FROM OUR REST
AND NOW THE DEAD
SHALL TAKE YOUR PLACE

“Wh—“

Without warning, I was shoved roughly into the hole. I tumbled down, letting out a cry as my elbows and knees banged against the narrow edges.

Wake the dead!

Down, down, down—the hole was a full ten feet deep. I turned my head upward. The inky sky was only a patch now, barely illuminating the tomb with a faint wisp of light. The cries rippling above me sounded far away.

I clawed at the dirt walls, sending chunks of rocky soil mixed with sand tumbling down. If it was loose enough, I could make holes to be used as handholds.

I sent hordes of earth down, digging small dents into the ground, still pulsing with shaky adrenaline. But the earth was too soft—where I tried to make holes, it was smoothed back over by more sliding back over it like it had never been disturbed.

I couldn't do it.

Showers of dirt began to pound down like a brown blizzard—they had already started. I reluctantly ducked down and covered my eyes.

No, there was no time for this.

Grimacing as the dirt landed in my open mouth, I kept trying to dig. There had to be a way out. There had to be.

Wake the dead!

The earth suddenly started to quake, and I jumped back. Final moans echoed from the graves around me as the ground vibrated, while the zombies replied from above with heaving cheers.

The walls collapsed around me. I didn’t even have time to cry out. Rocks and rubble cascaded around my body with me powerless to stop it, rapidly raising up to my waist…my chest…

I could feel the air literally being crushed out of my lungs from the rocks being crammed in so tightly. I gasped madly for oxygen, but now it was over my head.

I was in complete darkness, unable to hear the screaming. Muck and dirt covered me like a thick, cold blanket—except this time, I couldn’t take the blanket off. And it was crushing me.

Wake the dead!

I felt my muscles succumb to the weight and slump, my mouth unable to take in any more air. Dizziness began to overtake me as my lungs strained for oxygen.

Memories flashed through my mind as I lay frozen under the rock. My life, every memory I’d ever seemed to have burst forward as though they had been saved for this final moment…all warm blurs in the cold night, a small comfort to the horror I was living—or was that dying?

But those thoughts were numbed when I realized I would never see those I cared for again. Had they all been brought here too…?

My mind was shutting down now, too confused by the haze to carry on. I was tired…so tired. Maybe that was it. Maybe the dead came back tonight…to live their lives again, and to let us sleep.

I shuddered violently, convulsing under the soil, and then my heart stopped beating.

WAKE THE DEAD!