My Undead Heart (eBook)

Dwight

Also on Tuesday Evening

“Hello, Dwight? Are you there?”

I was surprised to hear Wendy’s voice on my phone. First of all, the caller ID said it was Modern Memorials calling and I’d never heard of them. I screen business phone calls with my landline’s answering machine since I don’t often answer. At the time I was busy feeding my fish. My aquatic family fills twenty-four tanks, and they need regularly scheduled attention. Aquarium care was my profession at that time.

Also, Wendy was dead, or so I’d heard. This was another reason I was surprised to hear from her. I’d gotten the news the day before. Still, hearing her voice saying my name decided it. I picked up.

“Wendy Allard?” I asked.

“Wow. Hey, Dwight. What’s happening? Listen, Dwight, I know I might not be your favorite person anymore, but I really need your help. Can you come across town and pick me up? I need a ride—like right now?”

Not my favorite person? Only at those times when I wasn’t thinking about her—and that was rare. That status of favorite was hers automatically. After getting the news she’d died, I’d spent Monday night going through my photo collection. I had hundreds of pictures of her, thanks to the righteous reach of my telephoto lens.

I suppose you could say I’d been stalking her, but that never seemed to come up as an issue. We’d both been students at Springfield State. She’d started two years later than I had. It had been three years since I’d first caught sight of her.

She arrived on campus in the fall in full gothic splendor. I made photographic record of it. Jet black hair, a tiny black dress over tight black jeans, silvery gray lipstick and maroon smoke eye shadow all harmonized perfectly in this lady of darkness. I had Kinko’s print that picture poster-sized, which I set up as the centerpiece of my shrine to her in the basement of my townhouse, just to the side of the stairs. When I’d heard she’d died, I went down there to contemplate my loss. I almost cried.

It was easy getting a crush on her in the first place. Wendy was the counter-culture queen of Springfield State. When most girls were getting training bras, she was probably getting her first tattoo. She had half a dozen piercings visible by the time she was a senior in high school. When Springfield High School got a metal detector, she became the argument against one, because it would trigger every time, causing delays. It was unthinkable to have to search her every day to make sure none of the other ones she had hidden turned into handguns or machetes.

I thought she didn’t like me. I’d figured that out a couple of years ago. I’d been publicly humiliated. She left me sitting for over two hours at Rocket Burger waiting for her, but she never showed up. It was her friends that set me up—she claimed she knew nothing about it—but that seemed unlikely because the rest of the students clearly did.

“Pick you up?” I asked. I was worried I was being set up again. “Now? Uh… look. I have a question. I’d heard you died.”

“Let’s talk about that later, okay? So, will you come? Please?”

“Where are you?” I asked. Her directions weren’t useful, but she was totally certain of the address. Modern Memorials was in a building complex in North Springfield Technical Park. She said to hurry, and to bring towels and blankets because she was really wet. I loaded up and drove.

I was suspicious of course, but the call did come from a business phone. She’d called from where I was driving to. My caller ID was the proof. Wendy had to have been there.

Thick gray smoke was leaking from under the edges of the roof of Modern Memorials as I was arriving. There were two loading dock bays on the front of the building. One was at the right height for box trucks. The other one was set lower, probably so a hearse could back up to it.

That lower door was open. As I pulled up, my headlights lit the inside of the space. I saw someone coming toward me, bent at the waist, hands clutching chest and stomach. It wasn’t clear right away that it was Wendy. I got out of my car to help whoever it was. Blood soaked the front of her clothing, and she was blackened with soot and charring. Some of her long hair had burned away from the top of her head.

“Dwight,” she said. “You came.” Then I knew it really was Wendy. It was her voice. She was hurt bad and needed help. I thought to have her lie down right there, but the billows of smoke told me it was time to get out. I took her by the arm and steered her out. The loading bay had several dozen coffins stacked up. Near the stack of coffins, there was a man lying there dressed only in his undershirt, boxers, and socks. He wasn’t moving. On the back wall, flames were shooting out of what looked like a furnace or oven. The wall above it was solid flame reaching all the way up to the ceiling.

“What about him?” I had to shout to be heard over the crackling of the flames. She shook her head to say it was hopeless. I helped her out of the building, supporting her by the shoulders. She was having trouble standing upright. She held my left arm so tight I thought the bones might break.

I got her to my car. Smoke swirled up from her head and neck. I pressed a towel against the smoldering spots. She hissed with discomfort. I spread the spare blankets I’d brought along over the back seat and had her lie down. “I’ll call 9-1-1,” I said, “but I’ll pull back away from this first. What happened?”

“No. No 9-1-1. What day is it?”

“It’s Tuesday. Tuesday night.”

“The third night,” she said. Her voice was soft. Then, sounding very urgent, she said, “There was some big screw up, I guess. I think I may be in trouble. Please—help me, Dwight. Get me away from here.”

Even when she was cold and condescending toward me, she would be hard to deny. But now she sounded so frightened and desperate, I did as she asked and drove us away.

Her stink was making me nauseous. You know that metallic odor of clotting blood? And she smelled of scorched hair and charred meat and smoldering plastic. There was this rancid smell too, like the grease disposal behind a highway diner. I rolled down my window.

I drove us out of the industrial park and headed toward Central Hospital. I told Wendy I was taking her there.

“Oh please, no. Please don’t do that! Can you just take me to your place? Let me lie down for a while. Things aren’t what they look like.”

“What do you think they look like?” I asked. “You’re joking, right? ‘Cause from here, it looks like you’ve been assaulted, stabbed, and set fire to.”

“How much did you see back there?” Wendy asked.

“I saw a building with smoke coming out, a loading dock with a stack of coffins, and there you were, walking out all blackened and bloody. I think that’s a really good reason to go to the hospital.”

“A hospital doesn’t help people like me, Dwight. I’m already dead.”

I helped Wendy lie down on the kitchen floor. My townhouse has a ground floor entrance from the car port that opens into the kitchen, so I was able to walk her in. Blood sloshed out of her stomach wound. Keeping her flat reduced the spilling. I turned on the exhaust fan over my stove to reduce the stink.

Wendy wasn’t as disoriented as I’d have expected from someone risen from the dead. I had questions, but my priority was the same as hers: to see how badly she was hurt.

I almost didn’t recognize her. A lot of her hair was fried away. Both of her cheeks were blackened, and one had a thin crack. Her lips were charred. There was blood on her teeth. Bloodshot brown eyes looked at me through singed eyelids. For a moment, I thought I saw two extra teeth behind her front teeth, but I wasn’t sure. I looked a second time but didn’t see them.

She had on a once-white lab coat, stained with dried blood and fresh. The trousers she had on looked like they were borrowed from a construction worker. Her hands were black and brown, from soot and scabs. The fingertips of her left hand were burned down to boney points.

She had oversized men’s work shoes on. I slipped them off her. The tops of her feet were bare, but there was bubbled-up black membrane wrapping around the sides and bottom of each foot. Her shoes must have melted onto her feet.

“How bad is it, Dwight?” I was going to have to look at her chest.

“Let go of the coat. I need to see.” She took her hands away, leaving it to me to open the coat.

I was kneeling on the floor next to her. I opened the right flap of the stained lab coat toward me, and then the left flap away from me, revealing the remains of a black lace blouse. I was careful not to reveal the parts I used to dream of seeing.

Through the lace, I saw she’d been cut open from collarbone to navel. On the TV crime investigation shows they show corpses all neatly sewn up after an autopsy, but Wendy’s chest was left hanging open.

“There’s stuff missing, isn’t there?” she asked. Her diaphragm muscle squeezed up...