Risen (31 page)

Seeing his friend come back had terrified Tom. Then again, he was just a teenager, and what did teenagers know about life? Witnessing any birth would be frightening to someone who'd never seen it. Peg had given birth twice and she knew it was a painful, bloody process, the stuff of horror stories. But giving birth was such a common occurrence that people had to make it beautiful in their minds. Birth was the physical expression of the divine spark, after all. It was God's gift.

Maybe the Risen were a new gift. Just as off-putting, perhaps, to those who witnessed it unprepared, in the wrong setting—in the middle of a mortuary, for Chris'sakes, at midnight—but it was no less a gift to be granted a second chance than to be given the first one.

What had happened, after all? The Ganger boy had shot Deputy Haws, and Haws had risen. What was so horrible about that? Strange, yes, even bizarre. But the end result was that Haws wasn't dead, there was no murder...wasn't that better than the alternative? Brant had seen them talking after church. Reconciliation?

As for Haws staking out Brant's house, that could've been Brant's imagination. Everybody knew that Haws could often be found on a hot afternoon parked under a shade tree, head lolled back, snoring. It could've been pure coincidence that he took his nap in front of Brant's house yesterday, and Brant overreacted after seeing what he thought were blood stains on the dock, stains that Tom hadn't been able to find later that night.

Brant and Tom wanted to leave town. They wanted to run away from something they didn't understand. A child might be frightened, too, by a spectacle of clowns and elephants and wild animal tamers, but he'd learn eventually that a circus was indeed something uncommon and even grotesque, but it wasn't anything to be feared.

Why shouldn't miracles be frightening, too, to the uninitiated? A magician sawing a woman in half could be unsettling to someone who'd never seen the trick before. Why shouldn't real magic be even more disturbing? But that didn't mean it was bad. And if it meant that Annie could be returned to her....

It was four o'clock. She'd sat in the quiet kitchen for an hour, turning these thoughts over and over in her head. Brant and Tom wanted to pack up first thing in the morning. They wanted Peg to arrange with the Cooves County Hospital to move Annie to a hospital in Junction City. She'd promised to look into it, and she would.

But she wasn't going anywhere, not yet.

She had to see what the day brought, and what it promised for herself and her girl.

***

Downtown, Doc Milford and the Lungers and their son Josh and Sheriff Clark and Clyde Dunwiddey had scrubbed down the Sheriff's Office and gone home.

Carl and Bernice Tompkins slept peacefully and the cats had settled down and the cockroaches had retreated to the nether regions under the house and inside the walls, some making the journey through the grass to the neighbors' houses on either side.

Frank and Doris Gunnarsen finally got their coffees and had a long chat with John and Madge Duffy. They left the Duffys' after two, promising to get together more frequently from now on.

Merle Tippert, Jack and Dolores Frelich, and Hiram Weems the traveling salesman had awakened shivering in the woods, found their clothes stacked and folded neatly nearby, and dressed quickly. They hurried to their cars, making a date to reconvene at Ma's for breakfast in the morning.

Jed Grimm had had a long talk with Galen Ganger and Irma Klempner, and they'd decided not to go home right away. The boys had seen them, so word would be spreading quickly. As far as the town knew, they were the first resurrections since John Duffy, so it was important to treat them with precisely the right "spin." Jed called Reverend Small over to help plan an event for Monday morning.

Seth tossed another log on the fire. He stood in front of it and warmed his hands, smiling.

Things would really start happening now.

Despite their late night, everyone in the Culler household was up and around before eight o'clock the next morning. Brant was in the kitchen making coffee when Peg came in. They exchanged greetings and a quick kiss and a hug. They stood in one spot for more than a minute, holding onto one another as if it might be the last time. Peg sighed and Brant said it felt good to hold a woman who wasn't made of inflatable vinyl. Peg said that surely it hadn't been that long and Brant replied that it had and they kissed again, for real this time.

Tom was upstairs sitting on the edge of the bed, breathing hard. He'd had another zombie nightmare. This time it wasn't just Deputy Haws but Galen and Jed Grimm and Brant and it seemed like half the town who was after him, chasing him through the mortuary, through the park, and somehow he found himself at the reservoir, his back to the water while the zombies closed in. He ran into the water and started to swim, but then he couldn't move his legs and he felt himself spinning down into the black depths, and he couldn't breathe and he knew he was going to die, and he was going to come back, and when he did, he would be one of them.

He went to the bathroom and was going to splash some water on his face but decided, once he was there, on a nice, hot shower. When he came downstairs he could smell freshly brewed coffee and bacon frying on the stove. He walked into the kitchen where Peg sat at the table with Brant. They both looked grim. Tom checked on the bacon, which should have been turned over a minute ago.

"Should I flip this?" Tom asked, and Peg said she'd do it. She didn't get up immediately, though, but sat there looking sadly at Brant, so Tom got out the spatula and turned the bacon over before it burned.

Peg said, "I'm sorry" and put her hand over Brant's. Her took her hand and squeezed it, said, "Me, too." Tom watched them over his shoulder.

"You guys have a fight?" he asked.

Brant let go of Peg's hand and picked up his coffee cup.

"Your mother says she's not ready to leave town," Brant said. "She thinks we're full of beans."

"I didn't say that," Peg protested. "I said I didn't want to risk moving Annie until we knew more."

"Mom, I saw it. I saw Galen come back."

"I know you did. I believe you."

"Then why won't you...?" Tom's voice trailed off. He knew why. "You're thinking about what Madge Duffy said, aren't you?"

"If there's a chance, if there's any hope at all, no matter how slight"

"You can't trust her! Don't you see that? She's one of them! You can't trust anybody in town! Anybody could be Risen! Anybody!"

"He's right," Brant said. "John could've killed Madge"

"I know that! I understand everything you've said...I'm not a child and I'm not stupid!"

"I didn't mean—"

"Look," Peg said. She was trying hard to keep the discussion from turning into an argument, but she wasn't going to give in to what the men wanted until she was convinced it was the right thing to do. She was beyond acquiescing automatically to the male of the species.

"You say people are coming back. You've seen them, and it's frightening. Of course it's frightening because it's the unknown. It's something we don't understand. But that doesn't make it bad. Maybe it's the best thing that ever happened to this town. Maybe we aren't even the only ones. Maybe leaving town wouldn't accomplish anything! Whatever's going on, I'm not going to risk moving Annie until I know...until I'm certain it's the right thing to do!"

There was a long moment of silence broken only by the sizzling of the bacon. Tom folded some paper towels and laid the bacon strips out to drain, and Brant sat back in his chair and sighed.

"Well," Brant said, "I guess we've got our work cut out for us, Tom. Obviously you aren't going to school today."

"I hadn't thought about it."

"And this is Peg's day off, right?"

Peg nodded.

"So let's do this: Peg, you check into Annie's transfer. Meanwhile, Tom and I will go to Junction City and look through the morgue."

Tom started to protest, but Brant cut him off.

"I mean the newspaper morgue. Back issues of the paper."

"Looking for what?"

"Somebody named Eloise, for one. Anything about people making miracle recoveries, being pronounced dead and coming back...you'll know it when you see it."

"Can't we just Google it?"

"How many million hits do you think you'll get for 'Eloise'?"

"Okay, point taken. What about Galen?"

"What about him?"

"He's back. Some kind of shit's going to go down."

"Then it's just as well you won't be here for it," Peg stated. Tom glared at her, but he knew she was right. Peg excused herself and went upstairs to shower.

Brant took over the cooking duties from Tom. He broke four eggs into the bacon grease.

Tom said, "I knew she wouldn't leave."

"She just needs more convincing," Brant replied. "I can't say I blame her. We laid an awful lot of stuff on her last night. We have to find out about Eloise."

"Irma Klempner's been out of her gourd as long as I can remember. Eloise could be the name of her sled for all we know."

"Yeah, but it's all we have to go on."

"Well, she's back. Maybe we should just ask her."

"If she's one of them, it's too late. No, the newspaper's our best bet."

"Okay. Big city, here we come."

"It's boring, godawful work, sifting through the morgue. You sure you're up for it?"

"Can't be any worse than school."

"Don't believe it. How do you want your eggs?"

Tom said "over easy" and they spent the next few minutes in silence, eating breakfast, mulling things over, pondering the imponderable. Peg came down dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and drying her hair with a towel, and Brant headed upstairs for his turn in the shower. Twenty minutes later he and Tom were in the car, headed for Junction City.

They'd no sooner pulled into the street when the telephone rang. Peg answered. It was Doris Gunnarsen, and she had remarkable news.

***

The excitement in Doris's voice was infectious. She began with "You remember John Duffy?" as if anyone in town could've forgotten, and slid right into, "Well, it's happened again!" without waiting for a response.

"It's Irma Klempner and the Ganger boy. They're back from the dead, I swear to God. I heard it myself straight from Madge Duffy who got it straight from Reverend Small, and he got it straight from Jed Grimm who was right next door when it happened. Now, I didn't see the accident but you can imagine... I mean, those cars were burning like I-don't-know-what and the bodies... well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what the bodies must have looked like. We're talking crispy critters, here, no disrespect intended.

"So Jed wakes up in the middle of the night and for some reason he's thinking about those bodies in the embalming room. Maybe he had a dream or something, I don't know, but whatever... he wakes up and those bodies are on his mind and he decides to go next door and take a look. And what does he see when he gets there but Irma Klempner and the Ganger boy, alive and whole and as pink as a baby's bottom, standing there outside the mortuary without a stitch. So he throws his robe around Irma and takes them both back to his place and calls Doc Milford.

"Can you imagine? A crazy woman and a teenaged hoodlum in your house, both of them fresh off the slab... you wouldn't find me in that house, let me tell you! But anyway, Doc shows up and runs a few tests and... well, the upshot is that they're both in perfect health. And Irma Klempner! From what I hear she's as clear-eyed and right in the head as Doc's seen her in forty years!

"Can you believe it? I don't know what's going on in this town but it's something else, that's for sure. The Reverend's having a special service this morning, ten o'clock, to announce the news and to, you know, help people sort it out in their heads. I hardly know what to make of it myself. People coming back from the dead... doesn't it give you the shivers?

"Listen, I'd love to chat but the Reverend's depending on me to get the word out. Be a dear and call the diner? See you at church! Bye, now!"

The phone clicked and, without having a word since she answered "Hello," Peg hung up the receiver. She phoned Ma and talked to Cindy who promised to spread the word to the breakfast crowd. She figured that Ma would be willing to close up for an hour or so since he wouldn't have any business anyway. Then Peg ran upstairs to do something simple and quick with her hair and to put on a nicer shirt.

At about a quarter to ten, the church bell started to toll.

***

Brant and Tom drove by the church on their way out of town. Brant slowed for a better look. He recognized Jed Grimm's car out front and the old Chevy pickup he'd seen at Franz Klempner's farm. Tom pointed out Janis Ganger's car.

There were other vehicles, too. Merle Tippert's Studebaker was unmistakable, which made them think that some of the other cars might have been the ones parked at the reservoir all day yesterday. One of them had out-of-county tags and a Hartford Insurance bumper sticker. They attributed it to Hiram Weems who sold insurance and did a little claims adjusting in the area. Brant recognized Carl Tompkins' truck, and Deputy Haws' squad car was there. Others, too.