Laughter of the Undead Read online

  My closet was empty. My bed covers hadn’t been disturbed. All the dressers were too small for anything to fit in or under and there was nothing behind the corner TV. I stopped by my bed and lay alongside it.

  Tommy was there, curled into a tight ball, hands clasped over his ears and his eyes squeezed shut. Tommy looked like me, a tiny blonde freckly version of me. He had both of our parents in his face. There had never been any of my mom in my appearance. I was my dad from face to hair to skin, but Tommy had her eyes and her hair. Like a tiny whiter version of me.

  Tear lines streaked his face.

  "Tommy," I whispered. He didn’t move. "It’s me, little man. It’s Connor."

  I was too big to fit under the bed, so instead, I scooted closer and reached out a hand tapping his elbow lightly. He startled and tentatively opened one eye.

  When he saw me he uncovered his ears, blue eyes going wide.

  "Conny?" he whispered, using his name for me in a way that showed so much trust it hurt. I nodded. "Where are Mommy and Daddy?" he asked.

  I swallowed hard but couldn’t cry in front of him, so instead of telling the truth, I said, "Tommy, can you come out from under there?”

  He nodded and scooted toward me. I pushed myself away so he could crawl out from under my bed. As soon as he was free, he threw his arms around my neck and sobbed into my shoulder.

  "It was so scary," he whimpered.

  "I know, bud," I said and lifted him off the ground with me when I got to my feet. “I know. I’m here now. It’s gonna be okay."

  Empty promises I knew, but what else could I say.

  Oh, by the way, Tommy, we’re all gonna die. Maybe I had said that to Levi and Izzy, but I couldn’t say that to him. He didn’t need the throat-closing pain that I felt.

  No, I had to comfort my brother.

  The amount of relief I felt was almost enough to wipe out the lingering nothing which pretty soon would give way to everything else. But right now . . . right now, I had Tommy.

  I carried him down the stairs to find Izzy and Levi sitting at the table in silence.

  Izzy stood when I entered, rushing over to help or just ogle, I wasn’t sure.

  "Where was he?" she muttered, eyebrows furrowed in concern. I glanced at Levi, who didn’t appear worried, or appear anything else, and hadn’t moved from his seat, just leaned forward a little as if mildly interested.

  "Under my bed.” With my foot, I pulled one of the chairs out from the table and then knelt to set him in it gently. He still gripped the shoulders of my shirt, refusing to let go.

  "I’m glad he’s all right," Izzy said almost to herself. “I honestly didn’t know you had a brother.”

  "You’ll be okay, buddy," I whispered into his hair. Convinced, Tommy let me set him in his chair. He held one of my hands as I reached across the table to grab the train from where I’d dropped it and gave it to him. He took it and held it to his chest like a teddy bear. He wiped at his eyes with his arm, not letting go of my hand or the train, big blue eyes moving to Izzy in confusion.

  "Is he hurt?"

  Tommy let out a sound somewhere between a scream and a yelp, almost falling out of the chair until I grabbed his shoulders, pulling him back into a hug, thinking that he didn’t want me to let him go. But then I realized Tommy wasn’t looking at me but over my shoulder. I turned my head slightly, almost jumping out of my own skin when I saw Levi’s head about four inches from mine, frowning at my brother.

  “Jesus,” I muttered, managing to not cuss in front of the four-year-old after several seconds of mouthing in surprise. “You need a bell or something.”

  He just raised his thin eyebrows at me and I understood what had scared Tommy so much. For one, the suddenness of his materializing by my shoulder, and for two, his dark-rimmed eyes and the about ten bajillion piercings on his face. I didn’t mind, but piercings like Levi’s would be completely new to Tommy, and it had clearly scared the shit out of him. Luckily not in the literal sense. Tommy had been potty trained early on.

  Levi cringed and straightened. “Oh, sorry.”

  I rolled my eyes, arms still wrapped around Tommy. "In the first room upstairs," I said over Tommy’s shoulder, "on the bed there should be a big stuffed dinosaur. It should calm him down."

  Levi nodded and disappeared through the doorway.

  I extracted myself from Tommy’s grasp, gripping his shoulders so he was forced to meet my eyes.

  "Tommy," I said in my best big brother voice, "can you tell me what happened?"

  He nodded and sniffed, fiddling with the train. It was hard to understand with his toddler talk, but after a minute I’d gathered most of it.

  Dad had stayed home because of the snow. He decided to make lunch for him and Mom and she’d helped. They were cutting something while Tommy sat at the table playing with a train.

  I could imagine the scene. I’d sat in on it a million times before, doing homework while Dad made dinner, or helping Tommy color and play while Mom cleaned the kitchen. I could picture Dad singing some 80’s rock song and Mom humming along, but unlike Dad, Mom could actually sing. We’d learned early on I got my singing voice from my dad. I could picture all of it, even from his fractured words.

  And, worst of all, I could imagine what happened next.

  Dad cut himself while cutting what must have been the pepper still beside the stove. He must have cussed, dropping the knife. Mom would have turned to him, concerned, and he might have waved her off, and for a second everything would have been fine.

  But then he would have collapsed, and when Mom rushed to him, he started laughing and bit her arm. She would have screamed, shouting at Tommy to run and hide.

  He’d hid under my bed. He heard running and more screaming. He covered his ears.

  Next thing he knew, I was there.

  A couple of minutes? If we’d left school a couple of minutes earlier, I might have prevented it. Or maybe I couldn’t have, but knowing how close I had come to being able to help, to save even one of my parents, set my stomach into knots and tears pounded against the backs of my eyes again.

  At that moment, I swore to myself to do for him what I couldn’t for my parents. Save him and protect him with everything I had. Tommy would never get hurt as long as I was around.

  Steeling my nerve, I met my brother's trusting gaze again, trying for a reassuring expression. Tommy wiped at his nose again and pulled on my sleeve, “You kaykay?”

  He had yet to fully grasp the concept of the term “okay” and still said “kaykay” or just “k”, as he’d watched me text one time and it had stuck.

  It took me a minute to figure out why he was asking me if I was all right, and I nearly pissed myself when I looked down at my clothes. I was still covered in blood. I’d forgotten, but it looked like I’d been a victim of multiple stabbings.

  I tried for another smile, pushing some of his thin delicate baby blonde hair back from his forehead. “I’m all right, buddy.”

  Just then, Levi came back into the kitchen holding the big blue dinosaur by the neck, comical given the rest of his appearance.

  Tommy watched Levi with wide eyes.

  "Tommy," I said, "this is Levi. He’s a friend. Okay? He’s not going to hurt you."

  Tommy nodded, sucking on his knuckles like he did when he was nervous or thinking, but he didn’t take his eyes off Levi.

  Levi knelt down next to me, holding up the blue stuffed animal. Tommy didn’t take it at first, gripping the train. After a moment, he took his knuckles out of his mouth, wiping them on his pants.

  "Why do you look scary?" he asked in his small voice.

  "Bad fashion choice," Levi answered with a soft smile. He offered the dino again. “Trade you?”

  Tommy held out the train, taking the dino.

  Levi took the train, almost smiling.

  Izzy, Levi, and I all sat side-by-side on the living room couch, staring at the floor. If I’d had any state of mental awareness, I wouldn’t have sat on the couch, con
sidering I was still covered in blood, though most of it had dried into my clothes.

  Tommy sat at our feet, playing with the trains. Maybe I should have played with him, but if I broke down, if I lost it . . . well, I couldn’t. Not in front of him.

  While I had been scrounging the house for Tommy, Izzy and Levi had shut the bathroom door with my parents inside and cleaned the blood-covered knife off the kitchen floor.

  The snow was still ridiculous, swirling and whirling and howling against the closed windows, but we didn’t have time or the mindset to think about it.

  I took a can of soup from the cupboard and heated it up, setting the bowls on the table, but none of us touched the food.

  "Conny," I heard Tommy whine, pulling at my pant leg, "I’m sleepy."

  "All right," I said with a deep breath, getting to my feet. Something in me didn’t feel all there. Like the real Connor was removed and was grieving somewhere while this shell of me interacted with the world and took care of Tommy. I felt empty.

  After rubbing one eye with his fist, Tommy grabbed my proffered hand and followed me, dinosaur dragging on the floor. He dragged so much at the stairs that I gave in and picked him up and carried him upstairs. I was about to open the door to his room when he pushed on my shoulder.

  "I wanna sleep in your room.” It took me a long minute to register what he meant or what he had said at all. Then I blinked and carried him to my room instead. I set him on the floor and let him crawl into my bed.

  “Don’t want to wear your PJs?” I asked. He shook his head and pulled the blankets up from my bed. I sighed and helped him, covering him up once he laid down.

  "Can Mommy come sing to me?" he asked.

  I felt a ball in my throat and a throb in my skull, but I swallowed hard. Every night she would sing this song to help him go to sleep. She used to sing it for me too when I was younger and scared of the dark and what blindness waited there. But she was gone now.

  "Um . . . Mommy . . . left for a while," I managed shakily, smoothing back his soft baby hair.

  On instinct, my eyes flicked to the family photo over the head of my bed. Vacation in Florida, Mom and Dad smiling and Papa Anoki with me sitting on his shoulders. Tommy hadn’t been born yet when that was taken, and I was the only one left alive. Hanging from the tack that held the picture in place was Papa Anoki’s leather pendant necklace. I resisted the urge to touch it.

  "When will she be back?"

  I looked back at him and tried for a smile.

  "I don’t know, buddy. Not tonight at least.” I wasn’t ready to tell him what had happened and I wasn’t sure which one of us I was protecting. But he was too little right now and it was too soon. “Would it be all right if someone else sang tonight?"

  "Not you," he said, wrinkling his nose. I almost laughed.

  I can’t sing. At all. I literally sound like a dying horse.

  "No, bud, not me. Maybe Levi could sing?"

  That earned violent head shaking. "He’s too scary."

  "Izzy then?"

  "Yeah," he said, yawning, "your girlfriend can sing."

  "She is not my-" I began to protest, but sighed. "All right, I’ll go get her."

  I walked awkwardly back down the stairs. They hadn’t moved, and the soup still sat on the table, probably cold by now.

  "Hey, Izzy," I said. Then I realized that was probably the first time I’d addressed her by name since I was eleven. "Can you . . . sing at all?"

  She narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously but nodded in a roundabout ‘I guess’ kind of way.

  "So . . . my mom," my voice hitched and I had to clear my throat, "used to sing to my brother every night before he went to sleep. He wanted to know if you can sing to him."

  "I’m not good, I’m okay, but I guess I can try."

  They both followed me back up the stairs and Izzy continued into my room where Tommy was sitting and fiddling with his dinosaur's feet.

  I hung back inside the doorway, watching her and watching him as he stared at her. He threw himself back under the covers, hiding most of his face. “Are you gonna sing?”

  Izzy gave a weak smile and nodded, ruffling his hair. "What does your mommy sing to you?"

  "The star song," he muttered shyly.

  "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?"

  Tommy nodded.

  Izzy took a deep breath and turned to where Levi and I hovered in the doorway.

  "If I’m going to do this, neither of you can be in here. I don’t want you listening."

  We backed up so we no longer stood in the room, but I didn’t leave and I could still hear when she started to sing.

  Izzy was right, she wasn’t a fantastic singer, but at least she didn’t sound like a strangled cat— like me, and didn’t look like death and darkness had thrown up on her— like Levi. She didn’t sing loud either, only loud enough for Tommy to hear her, but her voice carried in the quiet house.

  "Up above the world so high," she sang, "like a diamond in the sky.’’

  As my mother sang she would stroke my brother’s hair. His eyes would start to drift shut and I could imagine the same thing happening with Izzy.

  Once the song had finished, Izzy hummed until Tommy’s soft sleep-breathing filled the room.

  "I knew you were there," she whispered as she came out of my room and gently shut the door behind her. "I turned the light off, but left the lamp on."

  "You didn’t need to," I said quickly before catching myself. I clamped my mouth shut.

  Levi and Izzy frowned at me.

  "We should go back downstairs to talk," I said hurriedly. The two still had furrowed brows but followed me back into the living room anyway. I stared for a long moment at the black TV. I could feel them both behind me. I felt their eyes glued to my back. They were waiting for me to break down. They were waiting for me to fall to my knees and sob and scream and cry. I wanted to. I wanted this knot of nothingness gone.

  Not yet. I still had something I needed to do.

  "We need to bury them." It came out as more of a whisper, but I know they heard me because I felt a hand on my shoulder a moment later. I clenched my fists and shoved it off, turning to face them. As close as Levi stood, it must have been his hand.

  "You can’t," he said, drawing his hand back so he could bury it in his pocket. "It’s freezing out there and the ground must be frozen solid."

  "I don’t care," I countered, "they deserve a proper burial."

  "He’s right," Izzy agreed. “We should bury them in the backyard."

  "But we can’t," Levi protested. “Physically can’t.”

  "We have a greenhouse," I said quietly. "My mother was a gardener. She grew her own vegetables. There’s a hole out behind it that we dug out in summer. We . . . we were going to plant an apple tree. I was going to help her pick one out in the spring . . . but now . . . "

  "We can bury them there," Izzy put a comforting hand on my shoulder. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and nodded. She squeezed my arm.

  “How are we going to move them?" Levi asked.

  "I’ll do it.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “I will do it.”

  They nodded, exchanging worried glances that made me angry for some reason.

  Not meeting either of their eyes, I stormed back to the entrance where I’d hung my jacket. We zipped our coats back on and opened the downstairs bathroom door. At first, I closed my eyes, not wanting to acknowledge what we already knew was on the other side of the door. Levi opened it and the stench of death and blood filled my nose. I finally opened my eyes.

  I froze at the sight. My legs gave out from under me, but I caught myself on the doorframe, eyes glued to the blood on the floor and my parents lying at terrible awkward angles. My mom didn’t have half her neck and my dad didn’t have the top of his head. My breathing started to catch, hitching and gasping like it did when my panic attacks started.

  “Connor? Are you all right?”

  I was having a panic at
tack. I could feel it in the itching of my palms and the tightness in my chest, and the cold in my cheeks meant I had gone the color of eggshells.

  “Connor?”

  There was so much blood coating the bathroom tiles and walls. It was their blood. My mom's blood, my dad's blood. Blood that meant they weren’t alive anymore.

  My parents were dead, and I was staring at their bodies.

  I needed to throw up, but I didn’t get the chance.

  A frozen hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me from the doorway.

  “Hey, man,” Levi said gently, “take a deep breath. Look at me and take a deep breath.”

  I did. I stared into his eyes and I took deep breaths until the world stopped spinning so much, squeezing his hand hard enough that it probably hurt him. But that little bit of physical contact, with Levi or anyone, helped to pull me back. I’d never been so close to him before or ever actually met his eyes, not like this. From a distance, his eyes were hazel, a honey golden color, but now, up close, I found the other colors, the blue around his irises and the flecks of green throughout the amber.

  “You can’t do anything if you pass out,” he muttered, still holding my wrist, his other hand on my shoulder. “Let us help you.”

  I closed my eyes and took another shuddering breath, his freezing hand comforting and grounding. I nodded, “Okay.”

  Panic attacks weren’t new to me, but normally only one thing caused them and this wasn’t that one thing. I knew how to deal with them and I couldn’t on my own. How Levi knew what I needed, I don’t know, but I was grateful as it dissipated and my hands stopped itching.

  Levi made a head motion at Izzy, gesturing to the room. “We’ll get your dad. We’ll be gentle. You can get your mom, right?”

  I nodded again and Levi let go of my arm, ready to step past me, but I grabbed him again. I tried to say something, but my voice caught, and I had to close my eyes and take another deep breath. He scanned my face. But I couldn’t answer, and I didn’t have to. Levi nodded wordlessly and stepped back.

  I knelt down beside my dad. I almost couldn’t bring myself to look, but I did. His eyes were closed and he may have been peaceful had it not been for the dried and drying blood marring the bottom half of his face and neck and staining the collar of his shirt. Taking a rattled breath through my nose, I gently enclosed his hand in my own. I haven’t held my dad's hand since I was a little kid, and for the longest time I’d brushed off the affection he and Mom gave me. But now I would have given anything for another hug.