Page 36 of The Undead

“Okay.” Rebecca smiled at her, even though it hurt. “I’ll hurry?

“You do that. Did you do your homework, Becky? You ought to pay more attention to your schooling. Girl like you …” Momma shuffled away, muttering, off on some new errand before she could finish the thought.

Rebecca Foster had been out of school for fifteen years.

There was breathing on the other end of the phone, harsh, quick breathing. Rebecca pulled it away from her ear a little, sure that she could feel that hot breath on her neck, stirring the hair.

“Hello?” she said sharply. “Is anybody there?”

There was a click on the other end of the line. She stood there with the receiver held a little away from her ear, listening to the buzz and crackle, and then slowly replaced it on the phone. Adam. Yes, she was sure it had been Adam. He could tell when she was thinking about him, the devil had his ways …

But that was all right. She was patient, and thorough, and would find his weakness. She was the Eye of God. Rebecca took one of the discarded chicken bones and broke it and broke it until it was in tiny crumbled pieces on the scarred counter.

A sense of peace descended over her, as well as a memory of multicolored light.

When she was ten years old, the family lived on a farm way out in the country, miles away from a road and hours away from even a small town. It was hot in the spring and hotter in the summer and unbearable in early autumn, but Rebecca had loved it anyway. She’d particularly loved the bumpy weekly drive to the Community Baptist Church in nearby Brundle, where she’d modeled her momma’s fine sewing and admired the pretty stained glass window behind Preacher Stuart’s head.

It was a round window, and the wood around it was painted black. There wasn’t any pattern to it, just bright abstract colors—red, blue, green, yellow. But mostly red, a beautiful dark red like-grape juice held up to the light. It reminded her of the peace of God, every time she looked at it. After a while, she realized that it was looking back.

It was almost enough to make her forget the bad things about the farm, and Daddy.

She’d learned later that the window wasn’t really stained glass at all, just tissue paper glued in patterns over a plain sheet of glass, but it was still the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Almost as beautiful as her mother’s set of bone china dishes. But those were locked away and to even breathe on one was a swatting offense. Rebecca never, never wanted to give her daddy a chance to turn her over his knee. Anyway, the stained glass window was there for her to admire every single Sunday.

She was thinking of the light glowing in that window when she should have been watching what she was doing.Hold the ladder,her daddy had ordered, as he climbed up to tie the rope on the sturdy hook in the center of the bam. It was a hot August day, 100° in the shade and thick with humidity. The smell of the barn was choking—moldy hay and fresh manure; Rebecca thought she could feel the smell crawling down her throat like a river of tickling little ants, and the thought made her cough. And cough again. The ladder shook with the force of it.

“Hold it still, girl!” her daddy yelled from above, and she nodded and coughed some more. I’m droppin’ the rope now, you hear me?”

She’d nodded again, still thinking about the sun streaming through the colored window. She dreamed about the window all the time in Daddy’s presence, because she believed that the window was God’s eye and while it was on her nothing bad could happen. Motes of dust danced in the blue light, then the red, then the yellow. She liked the red best. She dreamed the window was made with real rabies, sometimes.

She looked up just in time to see the dark mass of the rope falling down on her like a whipping, coiling snake. And screamed.

And jerked backward.

With the ladder.

Her scream was so loud that she didn’t hear Daddy’s, and by the time she looked up he’d stopped screaming. He was still jerking, though, just like a worm on a fishing lure.

The thick iron hook had punctured his belly and ripped up until his ribs stopped it and wedged it firmly in place. A smooth white coil of intestine slipped down around his knees, and slipped lower every time he twitched.

Like a worm on a hook.

Rebecca stood there watching him, numb and silent, as the rope turned red and began to chip her father’s life onto the dirt at her feet. Like rubies.

Like bits of glass from her shattered church window. Like the fiery eyes of a very jealous God.

Rebecca Foster, ten years old, went to her knees in the blood and dirt and thanked him for freeing her at last from her daddy’s grasping, hurting hands. She wouldn’t hear him outside her room at night anymore, wouldn’t feel his fingers slipping up inside her panties when he lifted her up.

Wouldn’t have to think about any of that anymore.

God was looking out for her.

Rebecca made sure she was at the hospital early, even though she had the day off. She wanted to watch them—Adam Radburn and Michael Bowman. Especially Doctor High-and-Mighty Bowman. She’d seen them together in the morgue that night when Bowman learned the truth; he’d had time to think, to reach the only moral decision, but instead he’d turned to darkness, to the devil. She’d tried to save him, but the damned were so hard to save, so hard.

Dr. Bowman seemed distracted. Something was wrong with his hand, but that wasn’t the worst of his problems, no indeed. He took such vain care of himself, and she was sure he’d never have let himself look so bruised and worn if he’d had a choice. Rebecca waited while he did his surgeries—whatever else could be said of him, nobody could claim he wasn’t good at his job—and watched him go toward the elevators to his office.

When the tall Indian woman came up to him, Rebecca felt as though somebody had stuck her with a hot needle. She’d seen that woman with Adam one night, when Rebecca had followed him from work. She’d assumed the woman was another one of his perverted victims, but now here the woman was, in the hospital …

Dr. Bowman didn’t seem to know her. They went up in the elevator together. Rebecca waited and sketched idly on her notepad; the images that came out were perverse and disturbed, dark shadowy things that seemed ready to leap off the page. She ripped the pages out and crumpled them up. As she shoved them in the trash, the elevator opened and the Indian woman got off. Rebecca hesitated, uncertain, and as she did the stairway door banged open and Michael Bowman ran out, gasping. He pelted after the Indian woman. Rebecca followed and got there in time to see her drive off in a plain green car. Dr. Bowman stood there helplessly, put his hands to his head in a gesture of absolute exasperation, and turned to go back inside. Rebecca didn’t have time to hide, was caught flatfooted, staring right at him.

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