Unburied

Barbra knelt and pulled the tray of potpies from the oven. She straightened and shut the oven door with her knee.

Her husband, Albert, cleaned his hunting rifle on the coffee table. Albert liked to consider himself a skilled sportsman, though he only once ever bagged anything bigger than a rabbit.

The elk in question still hung (its head, at least) over the fireplace. Barbra thought the thing monstrous, but she kept her peace about it.

Enough screams already filled the house. Barbra’s thirty-four-year-old daughter, Emma, always screamed.

Emma, an attorney for a small, family law firm, spent several hours a day on the phone, usually in the midst of a heated argument. Barbra suspected that Emma argued louder than necessary to draw attention to her “demanding career.”

Emma did work hard. She graduated top of her class. Barbra and Albert had missed Emma’s graduation speech. The van had broken down, and they couldn’t have loaded Billy’s wheelchair into the pickup.

Billy sat in his wheelchair at the kitchen table, which Barbra loaded with the fresh potpies. A string of moist drool hung from his lower lip.

The accident changed him. He had hit his head hard in that car wreck. The doctors had mistakenly considered his subsequent death inevitable.

Albert had planted a cross on the side of the road to mark the site of Billy’s accident. The cross would serve as a reminder of the dangers of drunk driving . . . and as a grave for Billy’s former self.

Billy hadn't spoken since the accident. His doctors doubted that he could even form complete thoughts. He wore diapers. He used to play football.

The accident had deformed more than Billy's mind. The car had, upon its roll down one of Colorado's thankfully shorter cliffs, claimed Billy’s right ear and twisted his right hand into a hooked mass of tattered meat.

“Dinner’s ready,” Barbra said.

“Be right there.” Albert reassembled his rifle.

Emma raised her voice from her bedroom/office. It sounded as if she argued with another lawyer over the phone.

Emma would arrive at the table late as always. She would afterwards complain in machine gun fashion about how hard she worked. She would report every obstacle and subsequent victory of her workday.

Barbra tucked a napkin into Billy’s front collar. She would have to spoon-feed him his pie.

The phone rang. Barbra frowned.

“Let it ring.” Albert seated himself at the table. “People shouldn’t bother folks this late.”

The phone continued to ring.

Barbra sighed, entered the kitchen, and scooped the phone from its hook. “Hello?” she said into the receiver.

“Mom?” Billy’s voice.

Barbra straightened with alarm. She hadn’t heard her son speak since the accident.

Her eyes darted past Albert (who watched her with an expression of annoyance with a side order of concern) to her son, who sat in his chair, his eyes vacant.

“Mom, why did you bury me? I wasn’t dead.”

Dread corkscrewed through Barbra. “Whoever you are, this isn’t funny.”

“You have to dig me up, Mom.”

She slammed the phone into its cradle so hard that Albert flinched. Emma wandered with a stunned expression from her room (she had that damned "smart phone" thingy pressed against her ear).

Albert stood. “Who was that?”

Barbra shook her head. “Nothing.” She seated herself at the table.

The phone rang.

Albert tossed his napkin on the table and stood. “I’ll handle this nonsense.”

“Don’t!” Barbra shrieked, though she couldn't explain why.

Her husband treated her to a curious expression. He marched towards and lifted the phone’s receiver. “Parker residence. What can I do you for?” He froze. His mouth dropped. “Who the hell are you? This ain’t funny, you little shit.”

He slammed the phone twice as hard as Barbra had.

Emma whispered into her cellphone. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” She disconnected, stared from her mother to her father. “What happened?”

“Nothing worth fretting over.” Albert reseated himself. His hand shook while he raised his fork.

The phone rang.

“Damn it to hell!” Albert launched to his feet. “I’ll handle this.” He marched into his den, slammed the door behind him.

Emma’s cellphone rang with an overly cheerful tune. Emma had not programmed her cellphone with a cheerful tune.

Emma’s face screwed with confusion. She set her phone on the table, then touched the screen to both answer her call and put it on speakerphone.

A crackled of static preceded Billy’s voice, which echoed unnaturally from the cellphone's speaker. “Dig me up, Mom! If I have to claw my way out of this cold dirt, I’m gonna tear your fucking face—”

Emma shut off the phone. She sat, breathed very hard.

Barbra glanced at Billy, who continued to sit and stare into the near distance, unaware of anything that surrounded him.

Seven insect-like legs sprouted from the potpie in front of Barbra. It scurried towards Emma, who scrambled out of her chair so fast that she knocked it backwards onto the hardwood floor.

The pie halted, bubbled, liquefied. The pie and its legs dissolved to steamy mush, until only a human ear rested in its place.

Albert screamed a blood-curdling scream that arrived from above the fireplace, where his head now hung in place of the elk’s own. The decapitated head choked on its own cries. Its eyes rolled. Foam frothed from its lips.

The door to the den slammed open. Albert’s naked body (his head replaced by the elk’s) trampled from the den into the kitchen. The creature tried to run on all fours, crashed sideways, and threw itself threw the nearest window.

Crash. The creature fumbled onto two legs, sort of mastered the idea, and raced into the dark woods that surrounded the house.

. . . Barbra and Emma took a moment to catch their breaths.

The phone rang.

“Ignore it,” Emma whispered. Her voice shook.

The phone fell silent.

Emma’s cellphone, still on the table, produced another overly cheerful tune. It coughed static and other white noises until Billy’s voice seeped from its speaker.

“Diiiig me up, you biiitch. Diiiig me the fuuuuck up.”

“Fine!” Barbra screamed.

She grabbed her keys, ignored Emma’s objections, raced outside, and climbed into her pickup. She fought to turn its stubborn engine. The vehicle awoke. The cheerful tune from Emma’s cellphone blasted from the radio speakers.

Barbra’s frantic hand turned the volume down on the radio. Silence followed.

She thought she saw the shadow of her naked husband leap over a fence in the distance.

A new sound dripped from the speakers. The sound that torn fingernails might make while they dug at hard packed earth. It continued while Barbra drove to the site of Billy’s accident. The sound gained speed and urgency along the way.

She slammed her fist against the radio, over and over again, until the sound stopped and her wrist ached.

She arrived too late.

She stepped out of her car and approached the cross that her husband planted at the site of Billy’s accident. Something had forced its way up from the ground in front of the cross, something bigger than a man. Or a bear.

Clawed footprints led from the ruined “grave” to the woods beyond it.

A cheerful tune played from inside Barbra’s car. Emma’s cellphone sat on the passenger’s seat, though Barbra knew she hadn’t brought it with her.

The tune groaned to a rusty halt. Heavy, bestial pants rose from the phone’s speaker.

Barbra wandered towards the phone as if she walked through thick sheets of syrup. The phone displayed footage of Barbra’s kitchen. Billy sat in his wheelchair at the kitchen table.

She heard, through the phone, the squeak of her front door. A mammoth shadow spilled over Billy. His eyes, which hadn’t focused on anything since the accident, rose to face whatever stood before him.

A smile crept across his drool-coated lips.

A blur swept over him, and the screen went black.