Blind Date A Book 2020 – Book #21
The material (chapter) in this post is copyrighted by the author and may not be used or copied in any way without the author’s permission.
Chapter 1
Troy Jones, Grace Hanson, Alex Keeler, and Nick O’Hara were sitting in a small, family cemetery in the woods behind the Hanson’s farm. The full moon was slowly rising on the horizon, the landscape growing darker and darker with each passing minute. It was the perfect time and place for what the group had planned. What better place and time to try and raise the dead . . .
Of course, everyone except Alex thought it was a joke. Waiting to get started, they sat drinking the beer Nick had taken out of his old man’s fridge and smoking the weed Grace had provided.
“You know what we should do after we’re done with this sh–” Troy stopped in mid-sentence when Alex’s elbow made contact with his stomach. “Hey, what was that for?”
“You were about to say shit, weren’t you?” she asked with her hands on her hips. “I can’t believe you’re being such a dick.”
“Sorry, babe,” Troy said, trying to placate his girlfriend. “You know I don’t believe in all this supernatural, voodoo stuff.”
“It’s not voodoo,” Alex said, huffing and crossing her arms.
Troy leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I’m really sorry.”
Grace held a joint out to Alex. “Here, this will make you feel better and get you in the mindset for the ritual.”
Nick laughed and almost spit beer on them all, but covered his mouth at the last moment.
“Anyway, as I was saying,” Troy said. “I think after we get done with the ritual we should go to the carnival in Dresden.”
Grace grimaced with disgust. “We aren’t babies anymore. Why would we want to go to some stupid carnival?”
“Yeah,” Nick threw in for good measure as he finished off his third beer.
“Because, we’ll be all messed up,” Troy said, grabbing a bottle for himself before Nick drank it all. “Everything will be awesome!”
Grace took the joint back from Alex and took a long drag.
“Sounds fine to me,” Alex said with a giggle. “I love cotton candy. I haven’t had any of that for a long time.”
Nick nodded eagerly. “You think they’ll have nachos? I could go for a big bowl of nachos right now. All covered with cheese.”
Troy laughed and took his turn with the weed. “They’ll have all kinds of food. We can eat ‘til we puke and then go on some rides or something.”
Nick stood up and made his way over to the edge of the woods, weaving back and forth the entire time. When he reached the tree line, he unzipped his pants and relieved his bladder with a moan.
Grace giggled. “If we are going to go to the carnival, I guess we’d better get this thing started. I’ve got the munchies bad!”
Alex laughed, dug through her bag and retrieved a bottle of what she said was a “potion” that would bring the dead back to life. She also pulled out the book with the incantation, which was supposed to give the potion its “power.”
Troy rolled his eyes and winked at Grace. She covered her mouth with her hand to suppress a giggle.
They’d been to various cemeteries and done the same ritual many times before. It never worked. But, for some reason, Alex was obsessed with the occult and raising people from the dead. She said she wouldn’t give up until she’d done it. So being the supportive friends that they were, they went along with it. Besides, they always had a great time partying out in the middle of nowhere.
“You guys ready?” Alex asked as Nick sat back down. “Everyone join hands . . .”
The ritual had begun. They said what they were told to say, chanted when they were supposed to chant, and lit the candles Alex had set up in front of each one of them, around their chosen grave. After all that was done, Alex poured the “potion” on the grave, starting at the head, straight down the center, to the feet.
They waited, watching. Nothing happened, as usual.
“Okay,” Alex said with a sigh. “I guess it didn’t work, again. We did everything right. I don’t know what went wrong.”
Troy leaned over and gave Alex a one-armed hug, kissing the top of her head when she let it fall on his shoulder.
“It’s okay, babe,” he said gently. “We’ll try again another time. I’ll buy you the biggest bag of cotton candy we can find. Will that make you feel better?”
Alex giggled, rose up on her knees, wrapped her arms around Troy’s neck, and kissed him.
“I guess that was a yes,” Troy said with a grin, as she pulled away.
“Let’s get going,” Grace said, standing and brushing dirt and dry leaves from her butt. “I’m starved! I hope they have hotdogs. A hotdog with all the fixin’s sounds really good.”
Nick stood and grinned. “I’ve got a hotdog for you, if you want to eat one.”
Grace rolled her eyes and shoved Nick playfully. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. Quit trying to pimp yourself off on me.”
They were all standing now, and turned to walk back to Troy’s car that was parked behind a corn field where no one could see it.
“Hold on a sec,” Nick said, turning back. “I gotta leak the lizard again.”
Troy, Alex, and Grace shook their heads and kept walking.
“We’ll meet you at the car,” Troy yelled back over his shoulder.
Nick waved an acknowledgment as he unzipped and peed on the grave they’d just been sitting around. He started singing and watched the lightning bugs that were flitting around him.
When he looked down again, he saw that one of the candles had fallen over and there was something white sticking out of the ground beside it. Zipping up, he knelt down to see what it was, thinking they might have dropped something.
Just looking at it, he couldn’t figure out what it was, so he touched it. It was hard and kind of smooth. Tugging gently, he extracted it from the hard-packed dirt. It was a human finger bone.
With a yelp, he dropped it and stood up, wiping his hands on his jeans. His eyes scanned back and forth over the grave to see if there was anything else weird. As he watched, the earth shifted.
He turned to yell to the others as the hand the finger had come from shot up out of the ground and grabbed his ankle.
Nick screamed.
Kicking and trying to dislodge his leg from the vice-like grip, he was shocked to see a head and a torso break through the ground. Bugs and dirt clung to the skull. The eyes were nothing more than hollow voids, staring out at nothing.
Nick was too paralyzed with fear to scream again. He just stood there in shock, watching the body pull itself out of the grave.
Holy shit, he thought, it worked!
As he came back to his senses, Nick tried again to kick free, but the grip was too strong.
The person they’d brought back to life gave his leg a sudden jerk and a twist, throwing Nick to the ground.
“Maaaaaa,” it moaned, as it sank its teeth into the exposed skin of his ankle.
Nick cried out with pain, groping at the ground around him, trying to get away or at least find something to beat the thing off of him with.
He screamed as he felt his flesh tearing, and looked back to see the zombie happily munching on what it had torn off. He started to cry, instantly sobered by what was happening to him.
He tried more frantically to get away and his hand landed on a rock. He grabbed it, turned on the ghoul, and slammed it down on its head. It took five hard whacks before the creature stopped moving. Its bug-filled skull lay shattered around it on the ground. Insects swarmed and ran in every direction, trying to figure out where their home had gone.
Nick dragged himself away, out of the zombie’s grip, and fell back onto the ground panting and sobbing. After a moment, he sat up and looked at his ankle. The wound wasn’t as bad as he’d expected – only a small piece of skin was missing.
He glanced over at the skull, wiping tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. The ghoul was missing quite a few teeth and he figured that was why he hadn’t sustained a more serious injury.
Hurriedly, Nick stood and ran toward the path where the others had disappeared on their way to the car. He hobbled awkwardly because of the wound, but he wanted to get away from the cursed place as fast as he could.
***
Troy, Alex, and Grace were sitting in the car, waiting for Nick. They had the radio blaring and were rocking out to their favorite band while smoking another joint. The passing of time hadn’t registered to them.
They all jumped when Nick tore open the rear, passenger door and started ranting.
“We did it!” Nick yelled to be heard over the music. “We brought that bastard back from the dead and he bit me! It was a zombie! The damn thing bit my leg! Look!”
He pulled up his pant leg and showed them all the two inch by one inch bloody wound where a patch of skin was missing.
Alex frowned, turning down the radio. “Are you making fun of me? Because I don’t like it. Is this some kind of a sick joke?”
“No, no,” Nick said, shaking. “I’m telling the truth! Come look, the body is still there.”
Grace said nothing, just watched as Alex bowed her head and stared at her hands.
Troy noticed Alex’s dejected posture as well. “Get in the car, Nick, before I decide to get out and kick your ass.”
“I’m serious, you guys,” Nick pleaded. “Listen to me! There was a zombie, a real zombie, and it bit me!”
Troy slammed his fist down on the back of the front seat. “This is your last chance. Shut your hole and get in the car or I’m leaving you here.”
Nick swallowed hard, glanced over his shoulder, and decided the safest idea would be to get in the car. He didn’t like that they didn’t believe him, but he could convince them, over time, he supposed.
Nodding silently, Nick slid into the back seat with Grace, looking at the floor board, shutting the door securely behind him.
Alex was sniffling in the front seat and Troy was trying to calm her down, throwing dirty looks at Nick every now and again. Finally Troy got her to stop crying and they departed for the carnival.
Grace leaned over to Nick and snarled. “Nice one, jackass. You shouldn’t make fun of Alex and tease her like that – you know she’s sensitive. Why do you have to be such a dick?”
Nick didn’t answer. He just looked out the window. Maybe they were right, maybe nothing had happened; it could have been his imagination. He’d been drunk and high, after all.
The rocking of the car made Nick tired. He knew they had an hour drive to where the carnival was, and since no one was talking to him, he decided he might as well get some rest. His ankle was burning and he felt lethargic. It didn’t take him long to fall asleep.
Click here to Blind Date this book!
