The Grey Girl, The Van Tassel Murders
Time is Short

Alistair Fox was furious. “Years of waiting,” he growled. “Months of planning,” he told a car he passed. “And no small sum of money spent,” he snarled as he passed a bank. More angry thoughts tumbled through his mind. He had done the research, found the anomaly, and even brought her to the house of her own accord. But now, now he had to deal with that meddlesome Lewis. He clenched and unclenched his fists. He knew the family was always going to be an issue. An evil grin skittered across his face. He had a contingency plan already in place for them.

A light throbbing started behind his left eye. He could handle Lewis, he was sure of that. The boy and his family would still die when they were no longer needed. What he hadn’t counted on were the demons. “Why are they here?” Alistair demanded of no one. He had the feeling he did not have all the information he needed, and that annoyed him further. He drove through the quiet neighborhood, past the manicured lawns and into his driveway. His finger unconsciously pushed the button on the garage remote. He was out of the vehicle before the door closed.

Alistair frowned at the long scars on the door of his car. He liked this car. Again, he had spent no small sum to get it exactly the way he wanted. Not that the money had been his or even earned by him, but it was the principal of the thing. His fingers traced the three parallel scrapes. In his mind’s eye he could see the demon grinning as it did the damage. This was no doubt a warning from one of those wretched devils. They always thought they were so much superior to him. At least until he tricked them.

His evil grin returned. How many deals had he made? How many times had he been able to get what he wanted and not had to pay the price? He knew that when the end came he would be punished for his cleverness. Of course, with the knowledge he had, combined with what he sought, that day would be a long time coming.

The smile faded quickly as the day’s events returned to his mind. How had it gone wrong? Staring at the hood, he addressed the car. “The girl shows up, they pull her from her body, they take the body.” His fist banged on the metal. “That is what should have happened. So why did she turn into a mummy?” Now he had a dented hood to fuel his anger. “Where did the body go? Where did the spirit go?” He had to step so as not to cause more damage to the car. He turned toward the door as he wondered the most important question in his mind: Where the hell was his prize?

He kicked at the mound on the floor as he entered the house from the attached garage. It was less than satisfying. So, still frustrated, he turned around and kicked it again, and again, and again until something came loose and rolled unevenly across the stained, carpeted floor.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He spoke to the man sitting on the couch. The man stared back with unseeing eyes. “Did you not want me to kick your wife’s head off?” A sword appeared in his hand. “What?” he asked, pointing to the weapon. “Oh, does this scare you? It should!” Alistair stabbed and hacked at the corpse on the couch.

It wasn’t too difficult to rend flesh from bone, as the body had already begun to decay. The family who had lived here had been dead at least a month. The severed head of the man lay next to the torn-off head of the woman. Both grinned at him through rotted lips. “Maybe I should go upstairs and …” He slumped. In the upstairs bedrooms, decomposing into their beds, were the couple’s two children. “Oh, why bother?” He nudged the man’s head with his boot. “Even abusing corpses is no fun. Damn that girl.” He slashed a deep gash into an armchair. “All she had to do was leave a body for them to claim.”

He slumped into the only piece of furniture that wasn’t damaged or covered in fluids from decomposition. More of a throne than a chair, it was spacious, comfortable, gilded in pure gold, and encrusted with gems. Suitable for a sorcerer of my power, he thought. He sat on his throne, angrily flicking sparks onto the ugly carpet. He watched a pattern start to form as each spark smoldered.

“Should you really be sitting there, fretting and doing nothing?”

Alistair looked up, trying to figure out where the voice he just heard had come from. Then he saw it, the woman’s head was now staring at him.

“I said, should you really be sitting around?” the head asked again.

“It’s not as if you have nothing better to do.” The man’s head now joined the conversation.

Upstairs, Alistair heard several thumps. He knew the corpse children would be down shortly to chastise him too. “We have obviously run into some problems,” Alistair replied grumpily, turning in his chair so his feet hung over one of the arms. He rested his head against the other. “It’s not my fault you failed to …”

“We didn’t fail!” shouted the grotesque, rotted children and their parents’ heads. “You told us you would bring the living dead girl. You said we could have her body.” The different mouths around him all spoke in the same voice. “We tore her soul out, and we were left with nothing.” The children appeared on either side of the throne. Alistair didn’t look at either figure. The little girl’s arm fell free of her pajama top. Alistair laughed as it happened.

“If you’re going to threaten someone, you really should use something more … substantial.” He sat up, ready to swat the child away. “Damn you!” he shouted. The girl’s remaining hand had raked across his cheek. Blood flowed freely for a second. He ran a hand over the wound and it knitted itself back together.

“Figure out how to get us a useful body!” the voices chorused.

“What’s wrong with what you’re using?” He placed a kick into the smallest corpse’s chest. Grimacing in disgust, he shook the slime and entrails from his boot.

The small face looked up from its ruined torso to meet his eyes. “As you can see, fool, these are dead. Dead and rotting. We need the body of a living person. A living body that is dead but not dead.”

“Maybe,” Alistair mused. Sunken eye holes looked in his direction. “Maybe we did it backward?”

The children had picked up their parents’ heads and were stalking slowly toward him. The heads all snapped their jaws at him.

“I think we need to make that girl whole again. Then you take over the body and cast her out.”

The corpses all turned to look at each other. They seemed to have a muttered conversation Alistair couldn’t hear. After several moments they turned to him again. “Make it happen.” The bodies crumpled, erupting into vile mounds of rotting flesh. The two heads rolled to his feet.

“Oh right. Just restore her.” He glared at the piles. “I don’t know how the hell she was brought back in the first place!” he shouted. Something bit into the leather of his boot heel. Alistair stood, ignoring the pressure. He made to take a step forward, annoyed at the weight. The man’s head was chomping on the hard rubber heel. He frowned, kicking the head away while moving toward his library in the basement.

The library had been expanded to contain his vast number of books of spells and incantations. A large cauldron sat in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a fire pit. It was mostly for show, but Alistair loved the classics. His throne appeared as he sat. A pile of books flew to a small table that appeared from nowhere to stand beside the throne. He picked up one of the books and began to search for clues on how to possibly restore a spirit to a dead body that was nothing but desiccated flesh. How does one return dried husk to living flesh? he wondered. The pain was beginning to grow behind his left eye.