When the Dead Rise

When The Dead Rise

Being 16 years old in an old small town really takes a toll on you. Mr. Townsend, the old man from around the way, hit a cow last week. That drew city wide news stations to the area. Other than that, the city of Massillon, Ohio is monotonous to say the least. This day started the same as most. My mom was gone, just as she is every morning before sunrise. The local dinner where she worked opened at 4am. I pulled my glasses onto my face and checked the alarm on the bedside table. 6:37am on October 30th, 2020. I exhaled deeply and lifted my body out of the bed. I headed to the kitchen and cracked a few eggs in a bowl.

“Wake up Tiara, time for another groundhog day,” I shouted through her thin wooden floor at my little sister sleeping above. I could hear a slight moan emerge as I continued to whisk the eggs.

There was no movement so I yelled again, only louder this time.

“Damnn it, five more minutes please!’ her voice seemed to rumble the thin planks of the old wooden floor.

“No, now, school starts in 45min” my voice filled the voided air of the small house and the floor began to creak under the weight of her feet.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, I can’t imagine who would be calling me at this hour. I pulled the phone to my ear without checking to see who the caller was, Torrey’s voice on the other end.

“Turn on the tv now!” he shouted through the phone.

Torrey is normally not one for theatrics but the tone of his voice shook my core. I pulled the eggs off the stove and went into the living room to turn on the tv. Torrey has been my best friend since middle school. His reaction to most things were a shoulder shrug and whatever. Everything else was a chuckle or non chalte laugh.

“You rushed me to the TV so that I can watch Living Single.” I chuckled

“Can you be serious for once in your life,” he retorted “Turn on the news, channel 8, 6 or 3 something like that, just find it.” His voice cracked with each passing word.

Images of people screaming and crying bolded the morning news. The headline read “12 people in the small town of Massillon disappear without a trace.”

Tiara finally came down stairs and joined me in the living room. “I saw that on Facebook this morning, weird huh, nothing ever happens in this town and then 12 people go missing. I think it’s a Halloween joke.” she said as she stuffed an apple into her mouth.

“Torrey, is it someone that we know who is missing and where would they go? There isn’t anything around here for miles.” I asked, trying to remove the chuckle that was building inside of me.

“I don’t know of anyone but Mr. Dartz, next door to me, is missing his daughter. He has been crying all morning. I don’t think this is a joke but you are right, there is nothing for miles where would they go? Who would take 12 random people?” The concern for the lives of the town citizens evident in his words.

The phone disconnected without another word spoken. I lifted my glasses and rubbed my eyes, it has to be a joke right. Who would wanna take 12 of these boring people. I finished my eggs and called for Tiara to meet me at the car. The drive to school was normal. There was Mrs. Austin tending to her plants and Mr. Brown grabbing his paper. Normally, Ms. Simmons would be walking to the end of her driveway but today she wasn’t there. I can not remember a time she wasn’t there waving us off to school. Maybe she was one who was taken, but she was close to 60 years old, why her?

I shook the thoughts from my head and pulled into the parking lot of the high school. "Have a good day T, I will see you here at 3:15pm, don’t be late.” I said as she and my sister walked off toward her 9th grade class. Torrey waited for me at our normal meeting spot at the bottom of the southside door.

The look on his face was hard to read. His skin glowed in the sunlight like pure honey while his brown eyes reflected a hit of fear that I couldn’t quite gauge. I had never seen him like this. He was fearless, nonchalant, and goofy. Fear was not a quality I would use to describe him.

“What has gotten you all bent out of shape?” I asked as we maneuver our way through the students in the hallway. He cracked a smile and shook his head as he continued to walk ahead of me. He didn’t say a word to me the rest of the day. The speed bums of the day just kept coming. A few teachers were missing, more than normal. The office came on the PA and stated that attendance was down 12% from its normal 4%. Maybe the families of the missing accounted for the lack of students. Last period came and I took my seat in the rear of the class as I always do. To my left always sat Torrey, this was one of the few classes we had together, to my right sat Catrina Rae and her group of followers. It was always about 6 of them and they ran in a tight pack at all times. Although they didn’t bother me, other students were not so lucky. Torrey made his way to his seat, his face still flushed with the same fear as this morning. He sat down and said nothing. Catrina and her crew missed the bell, all of them. I turned to Torrey whose head was buried in a doodle on the front of his notebook.

“That’s odd, all of them are missing, even Trisha the teacher’s pet?” I said softly to him. He lifted his head slightly and mumbled something under his breath.

“Huh” I said loudly, causing Mr. Perry to stop his lesson and stare. When he finally began talking again, I turned back to Torrey whose brown eyes were fixed on mine.

“They were the first to be sacrificed.” he said calmly. A chill ran down my spine as a chuckle never followed his sentence.

“Excuse me, they were what,” I said softly

The bell rang at the end of the day and I walked to my normal spot, waiting for Torrey to join me but he never came. The parking lot looked thinner than normal. The spot where the football players tossed around the ball before practice was empty. The chess club was missing from their usual picnic table and parents lined the streets, waiting for their student to walk out of the building.

“Hey sis, what are you staring at?” Tiara approached me just out of my line of sight.

“Something is going on here, look around half of the school is missing, parents are near freaking out and Torrey has been acting crazy all day” I said.

Tiara shrugged “It’s Friday, Halloween is tomorrow, and it’s a full moon,” she said pointing at the large round moon that was still visible in the afternoon sky.

At home, my mothers bag was near the front door but she was nowhere to be found. That isn’t normal, by now she would be starting dinner. As night fell I began to worry. I called her, no answer.

“Hey Tiara, you heard from Mom?” I asked her as she stuffed a mountain size spoon of yogurt in her mouth. She shook her head no and headed up the stairs.

I turned on the tv, there was no update on the missing people but a story on how the moon was red tonight and higher in the sky than normal. I walked to the kitchen window to catch a glimpse, but something else caught my eye. A group of people walking in line down the street. It was weird, they weren’t talking or laughing just walking like something right out of the walking dead. I walked out the front door to see another large group walking the same way. My neighbor, Mr. Pierce was leading the larger group walking toward me.

“Mr. Pierce, where are you and all of those people going?” I yelled at him but he didn’t respond. Every bone in my body told me to go back in the house but I followed the crowd anyway. In the distance I could see the first group of people enter Carr cemetery. That cemetery has been in this city for over 200 years. Most of the headstones were barely readable. Once I reached the entrance I stopped and hid behind a large oak tree located a few feet inside the gate. A circle of people formed around a large headstone.

“Hey, what are you doing here you are not supposed to be here!” Torry’s voice rang out from behind me.

“What is going on here!” I asked. Looking over the crowd I noticed that many of the people in the circle were the people who had missing cases open on them.

“I wish you wouldn’t have come here, I did my best to keep you out of this. Please go home now.” he said in a concerned voice.

“Torrey, where is my mother!” My voice shaky. His hand raised and pointed to a woman on the fair right side of the circle. A tear formed in my eyes. What were they doing to her, what was going on here and why was Torrey acting like he had a hand in all of this.

A moment later a green huge emerged from the group and everyone standing fell to the ground. I rose to my feet prepared to run and be with my mom. The ground began to shake and the green hue expanded into the rest of the cemetery. Headstones began to rise and caskets started to surface. A slight gasp left my body as the lids began to open and bodies began to climb out. I wanted to scream, I should have screamed but I couldn’t. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. More people from the town filed in. They formed a circle and seconds later they dropped to the ground. More caskets opened releasing the bodies that once held them.

“You see,” Torrey whispered to me as he grabbed my shoulder. “The dead will walk while the citizens of this town sleep. I have been working for years to wake up my brothers and sisters of the dead and today, I finally made it happen. When you get to be my age, time stalls and life becomes boring. I want to thank you, you reminded me of the joys of living again and growing. I will grow old in this body and then I will take another, I will never get tired of living. Who knows, maybe I will travel and sacrifice other towns.” His voice was calm as the tension on my shoulder increased. I turned my head to look at him, a graceful smile brightened his face. Behind him stood a single headstone alone under the tree I had been using for cover.

Torrence Jones 1 Nov 1874 to 17 Mar 1903, a small car carved in the space above his name. Chills took over my body and tears fell from my eyes. He walked around me and placed one hand at the top of his resting place. “In all these years, I have never wanted to save a human in this town, this is a first.” A sharp pain entered my temple and my vision began to go dark. I could feel a line of blood trickle down my face. Torrey kneeled down beside my weakened body, with what looked like a thick branch painted with my blood in his left hand. “No sense in starting now,” he said as my vision went completely dark.