21

Shambling On

Lottica and Nick rushed to their mother's side. Nick cradled her badly blistered head in his arms. Lottica took her mother’s frail, scarred hands and tenderly stroked them whispering, "It's okay, Mommy. It's just the Kareima."

She could hardly believe she was comforting a zombie. But it was still her mother. Even in that bruised, broken and burned form, Lottica knew that her mother had somehow been given back to her.

Their father limped over and knelt awkwardly beside them. Trying to be helpful Nick suggested, "I think it was the shock."

"Actually, Nick, I think it's me.” He turned to Lottica and said, “Let me take your mother's hands." He gently placed them in his and held them to his chest. A glow spread beneath their damaged hands, and a vivid blue-white ember sparked to life in each of their wedding rings.

Their wedding rings lit the room in a gentle swarm of blue fireflies.

Linda Breima’s eyes popped back open in surprise. "Dale, what on earth is going on?"

He sighed. "That, my dear, is going to be a long story," he said rather sheepishly. "And I really only know about half of it."

"Who knows the other half?" Lottica asked.

"Well, Lottie, that’d be by mother and father."

"Grandmother and Grandfather know about this?" Lottica pointed at the pulsing light emanating from her father.

"Much better than I do. It‘s an old and very long story."

Nick looked back over his shoulder at the wide open door. "I don't think this is the place to hear the story. We better get moving. This place won’t be safe for long."

"Why not?" Linda asked, her mommy senses tingling.

"That’s also a long story," Nick told her.

Deilune helped Linda to her feet in a clumsy dance of oddly angled limbs. He kept one arm around her as he suggested, "Well, then let's go get something to eat and hear all these long stories. I'm starved."

“You're…hungry?" Nick asked, confused.

"I sure feel hungry. You know, a nice big pepperoni and brain pizza, sounds like just the thing." He grinned and tried to wink which only widened the gap between his bad eye and its torn socket. He poked at the eye and added, "I sure hope this thing stays in."

“Gross!” Lottica squealed, trying to process all the challenges it seemed that undead parents presented. Not least of which was dad jokes—zombie-dad jokes. “Can we just get out of here, please?”

Before they headed out into the night, Nick thought they should try to put the mausoleum back in some kind of order. Otherwise, they might have to explain their parents’ empty sarcophagus to the authorities. And that was something Nick knew no one would believe.

Together, though clumsily, the four of them shoved the heavy sarcophagus back against the wall and replaced the lid that had broken and slid off. The metal door was dented outward and the door latch was toast, but with the door wedged shut, someone would have to get up close to see the actual damage.

"Good as new," Deilune remarked mischievously.

"Just like you?" Nick teased back, surprised that he’d even try that with his undead dad.

His father put his one decently working arm around his son’s shoulder and laughed. "Let's get this motley crew moving."

So, near to ten o'clock on Halloween night the reconstituted Breima family walked and shambled rather incongruously down Cemetery Hill under the rapidly clearing Halloween sky.

Hidden in the chestnut grove adjacent to the now-deserted Breima mausoleum, two men in capes with crowbars at their sides watched the steady, though somewhat shambling, progress of the reunited Breima family moving down Cemetery Hill.

On the chest of the taller of the two caped men, the fiery light of his gemstone dimmed considerably. He clutched at the pendant of fading red and leaned heavily against a tree, trying desperately to regain his once proud self-possession.