Chapter Text
The cemetery is dead quiet and dark enough that Gerard probably doesn’t need the blindfold, but he’s wearing it anyways. He likes the theatricality of a séance almost as much as he likes the possibility of the supernatural. As much hope as he puts into these attempts to commune with the dead, what keeps him going through night after silent night is the chills that ripple up his back when he asks a question aloud. The blindfold helps block out the mundanity of earth and stone; a field full of bones and grave clothes, and very likely nothing else.
Without his sight to distract him, he introduces himself to the open air, asks for communion with the spirits that lie here, and waits patiently. The silence doesn’t shake his conviction. He knows it’s just a matter of time, just a matter of meeting with the right ghost. He sits on the damp grass, carefully positioned between the rows of graves so as to not disturb anything, and breathes frigid air through his teeth.
An owl coos softly from the trees beyond the fence.
Gerard draws in a breath to repeat his invitation – If there are any spirits here who lie unsettled in their graves, make yourself known. He stops short before he can begin, breath held. And cocks his head toward the sound of a snapping branch.
Distantly, a voice comes into focus.
“At least you have the dignity of being dead, seriously, it’s normal to decompose when you’re fucking- ow, motherfucker.”
Gerard’s brow furrows.
Turning towards the source of the commotion – somewhere over his left shoulder – and whipping the blindfold over his head, his eyes dart from headstone to headstone until he catches movement; a man, standing over a grave. He looks awfully corporeal for a ghost, but then who is Gerard to say what ghosts are supposed to look like? If he is a ghost, then he died young, and recently. He looks to be in his early twenties, although the amount of ink on his arms and hands suggests he may be a little older. He’s dressed like just about any twenty-something punk Gerard could find on the street: jeans too long and too tight, t-shirt, and a haircut that was obviously done in a bathroom mirror.
But who’s to say? A young, recently deceased malcontent would have more reason than most to stick around beyond the grave, wouldn’t he? Although Gerard finds it hard to imagine a ghost who kicks headstones and hops around on one foot like a kid discovering the consequences of rage-kicking solid rock for the first time. Still. There’s only one way to know.
Gerard rises carefully from the ground, the tamped-down grass springing back up, out from under his weight. The boy makes no indication he’s seen him, though they’re not very far from each other. It’s not until Gerard steps into the row of graves the apparition is loitering in that he looks up and locks his eyes onto Gerard’s.
Gerard’s steps falter. Scrambling for an opener that won’t get him killed by either a ghost or a grave robber, he goes for, “Hey.”
The boy blinks and says, “Hey.”
Seemingly both unsure where to go from there, a beat of painful silence follows, until the maybe-ghost clears his throat and says, “Sorry, I didn’t know anyone else was out here.”
“Right,” Gerard says.
Up close (closer – there’s still a couple of graves between them), he is unnaturally pale. But then that could just be a trick of the moonlight, or Gerard’s own wishful thinking.
“So, are you like,” he hesitates, “dead?”
The guy snorts. “Man, I wish.”
***
The worst part is, he’s not sure how long he’s been undead. Some things were undeniable – like the way his skin started to turn waxy and ghoulish, or how if he cuts himself while cutting carrots, the wound never really heals. It doesn’t even bleed. He has a row of uneven black stitches across the palm of his left hand now, because no matter how he bandaged it or cleaned it, the cut never closed. It just gaped across his palm, like a horror movie prosthetic without the corn syrup and red food coloring.
But it can’t have started just like that. There was the week or so he kept throwing up everything he tried to eat – that kind of thing happened to him anyways, but maybe this time had been different. Maybe he should’ve known he was turning into a zombie when he stopped sleeping, or when his coworkers kept telling him he was looking ‘peaky’. None of that mattered at the time. Frank was always sick, always dragging himself through work, and he’d never been a zombie before.
But he couldn’t really say that with any conviction. Maybe he’d been this way from birth, and these were just the final stages of decomposition. Maybe he’d never really been alive, and he was never really going to die. Maybe he was a time-bomb, ticking away until all he cared about was feasting on unsuspecting victims to keep himself going. He hadn’t yet had the urge to tear into human flesh, but that’s where this was supposed to end, right? Or not. Whatever he was turning into, he wasn’t expecting it to ever end.
***
Gerard is practically vibrating in the driver’s seat. His fingers wrap and unwrap themselves around the steering wheel, leaving behind a coat of sweat from his clammy palms. He keeps glancing over at Frank in the passenger seat like he thinks he’ll disappear if he doesn’t keep an eye on him.
“So how’d it happen?” Gerard finally blurts. “I mean, in movies it’s always like you get bit or you get exposed to some kind of toxic radiation or virus, or something. Is that really how it works?”
Frank keeps his head turned towards the window, but he answers almost immediately.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t remember.”
“Oh,” Gerard says. “Is that part of it, do you lose your memories too?”
Frank stares resolutely at the horizon.
“I don’t know. Not yet.”
Gerard just hums. As they lapse back into the inevitable silence that keeps returning between them – Frank’s not sure what could possibly fill the space between someone half-dead and someone so alive he can’t seem to stop moving, just for the sake of it – Gerard goes back to stealing little glances out of the corner of his eye.
Frank doesn’t look all that dead to him. He just looks tired. The deep, bruised purple under his eyes against the pallor of the rest of his face is alarming, but nothing he hasn’t seen before on friends three days into withdrawals. Even the rough black stitches crawling across the palm of his hand, the ones Frank is rubbing absentmindedly with the thumb of his other hand as they drive, aren’t so crazy as all that. What really convinced him had been standing across from him in the cemetery and feeling the abrupt stillness that came over Frank at intervals.
Here and there, he would simply forget to breathe. He didn’t seem to notice it, and Gerard kept waiting, and waiting for him to gasp and gulp, but he never did. He would start breathing again minutes later without any indication that he’d ever stopped. Gerard had felt that familiar thrill down his spine and knew Frank was telling the truth.
Now, speeding along the highway towards Gerard’s apartment, that rush refuses to leave him. He’s driving this living dead boy from the cemetery back to his place. He’s letting a zombie crash on his couch tonight. No biggie.