Andy

Andy splits the Earth with his shovel, that first stab at the ground that would lead us to the next step in our plan of protection. I grab my shovel and copy his movements while a silence falls between us.

The moon is full, pushing through the thick, dark clouds where it can, casting a cool blue glow across the glimmering headstones. One could almost forget the morbid place they were standing in just admiring the sea of shining stones like those on a beach after high tide.

Too many thoughts are plaguing my mind and I don't know how to address any of them. My move to California, graduation next year, switching schools, and dealing with this entity are just a few of the items on my growing list of stresses. It’s a matter of time before I start losing hair from all the stress.

Today is Wednesday, Saturday is our outing to Talia Lake, plus the wedding my Mom invited me to. Sunday is prom... Shit, prom... I still need a dress.

I toss another shovel full of dirt over my shoulder while I contemplate the details of my universe. I should be stressing right now over my dress and grades and all these normal teenage things, but oddly enough I am so caught up in warding off the paranormal and living this strange life that none of those things feel right to me anymore.

I suppose I could borrow a dress from my Mother’s backlog, or just go buy something quick from the boutique, and that would easily fix the dress problem. I just wish all the other issues had just as easy solutions.

Just then, my phone rings. Andy briefly stops digging to look up at me as I fish it out of my back pocket and check the screen, reading in the bright white text incoming call from CC.

“Hello?”

“Ash! What’s up?” CC’s joyful voice comes out of the receiver and warms my soul instantly. His cuddly personality is an instant lift out of any gloom.

Ironically, the answer to his question would be ‘what’s down’ as we’re digging our way to China at the moment.

“Is this a leisure call, CC?” I ask him, stabbing my shovel into the ground while I talk to him. I hear Andy chuckle. “because to be honest, I don’t think you want to know what I’m up to right now.”

A drawn-out pause follows before I hear him speak again, this time his voice is intrigued but uncertain. “I like to dance with the weird shit. Lay it on me.”

I look down at the dark, deep hole forming at the base of the headstone of his former best friend and take a deep breath before replying. “How weirded out would you be if I told you I’m currently at the town cemetery defiling a grave in the cover of night?”

“I have to admit, that’s outside the realms of what I was expecting and what I am comfortable dancing with.” He replies, his tone grim but amused. “What the Hell are you doing there? Are you alone?”

“No... No, Ashley and Andy are here. Elizabeth, too. It’s a long story but the short version is that we need to craft witch jars for the three of us to protect us from a demonic entity we brought back from the woods. We need all the gory bits from their human bodies to get it done, so...” I trail off, deciding that he really didn’t need all the grim details to understand what I mean.

“Wait... Witch jars? And a demonic entity? Is this something we picked up from that fucked up place in the woods? Dammit Ash, I told you that place was bad news there was such a bad vibe coming off of it and now what? You’ve attracted some creature to follow you home?”

I sigh, running a hand through my hair. “Unfortunately... Hey, you haven’t had anything weird happen since we went up there, have you?”

His voice abruptly turns cautious. “...Why?”

“Any instances when you were talking to someone and they suddenly made you start to question if it was actually them? Just something off about their personality?”

“No, why?”

“There’s some kind of shapeshifter after us now, it can take the form of any person - living or dead, and try to trick you into giving up your soul. It’s a fucked up situation but the bottom line is this: It needs to either accumulate human souls to manifest a human form, or it needs to simply steal an existing one.”

“Like possession?”

“Right. They’ll just kick you out of your own body. If you ever feel that you are in danger, just say the Lord’s prayer, it’ll destroy them.”

“You mean the one with all the ‘our father who art in heaven’ stuff?”

“That’s the one.”

“Right...”

He trails off, sounding quite confused and concerned. “So you’re up at the cemetery... Digging up Ash and Andy? For pieces of their human body?”

“We need certain samples of their tissue to add to the witch jars. Then we bless them with positive energy and it will ward off the demons and give us an aura of positive light... At least that’s what I’m hoping for. If this fails, we’ll be stuck yelling prayers at anyone who seems suspicious and that’s going to get tedious and stressful - especially if our suspicions turn out to be wrong and it’s just someone having an off day.”

“It sounds like a shitty predicament to be in”

“It is.” I agree, “I don’t suppose you’d like to come out here and chill with us?”

“Oh no! I am not getting sucked into vandalizing a grave, I shall catch up to you all on Saturday. In the meantime, try not to get possessed... Or arrested.”

“We’ll try.” I laugh, “Watch your ass, Coma.”

“Will do. Over and out.”

“Bye.”

Andy chuckles when I hang up.

“What is it?”

“CC is something else, I swear...” He laughs, shaking his head, tossing out more dirt. “I can’t blame him, though. If the roles were reversed, I can’t say that I’d be too eager to be possessed by the demon brought out of the woods by my friends.”

“Yeah... For that reason, I’m surprised that Elizabeth wants to be here so bad. I thought she’d be weirded out by all of this, but she doesn’t seem bothered.”

By this point, we’ve made some great progress. We’re nearly three feet down, and currently working on expanding the hole to be wide enough to open the lid when we reach it.

“What do you think it’ll look like now?” Andy wonders. I look at him in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“My body. The way we redecorated it before the funeral... Do you think it’ll still look like me?”

“Oh...” I trail off, unsure of how to answer his grim question. “Do you want the morbid answer?”

He laughs in a lighthearted fashion. “You know it doesn’t bother me.”

“It’ll probably still look like you. After all, it’s only been a little over a month since you were buried. But the... Quality of your appearance will have surely deteriorated to a grotesque level.”

He throws his head back and cackles; it’s a sweet, light sound that seems to split the heavy, cold and damp air for a moment and brings some warmth to the situation. “Yeah, you’re probably right... On that note, if you’d like to go hang with Ashley and Elizabeth during the collection process, I won’t be offended.”

I sigh and shake my head, continuing to dig. “I honestly can’t say that I’m too excited to see your corpse again... I thought it was all behind me when they put you in this hole. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the four of us packing out here in the middle of the night to dig it up for the chance to protect ourselves against a shapeshifter.”

“It’s all very fucked up, huh?”

I nod in agreement.

He shrugs a bit. “I honestly can’t say that it is the life I imagined for myself, but I also can’t say this new life hasn’t been enjoyable. All the perks that have come with death have made it all pretty okay.”

I snort, “Yeah, the freedom to scare anyone you want in any way you choose would definitely be a perk. It seems very limitless, except for the whole exhaustion side of things.”

“Yeah, that part sucks... But then it makes this all a little more real. Like being a superhuman now or something, still having to restore your energy at the end of the day, but then waking up and being able to walk off a roof with no side effects.”

I think about that for a moment before my brow creased in deep thought and I propose my next question. “Speaking of which, important question: Can you float, fly, or levitate?”

“If I can, I haven’t figured it out yet.” He replies before looking back up at me with a bright smile that shines through the darkness of the pit. “I knew there was no end to your curious questions. Do you have any more?”

“Of course,” I murmur, “but many of them are outrageous and would take way too much prefacing to make them make even a degree of sense. For that reason, I will keep those stupider thoughts tucked away for now.”

“Come on, your theories aren’t dumb. I quite enjoy listening to your questions and understanding how you perceive things.”

I shake my head, “Not all my theories are even remotely logical. They deal with bizarre topics, everything from wondering if you can learn to develop new ‘powers’ or if you could ever become a dangerous entity. What I’m saying is that not all my theories are fun.” I crack a smile at him.

He shrugs, “They’re fun to me... And harmless, if that’s what you’re worried about. The only problem most of the time is that I just don’t know how to answer some of your more outlandish questions, and that’s fine because it keeps us guessing and it keeps us wondering... Who was it who said that one should never lose the ability to wonder?” He ponders it for a moment before shaking his head and continuing.

“Plus they give me new ideas for things to try. Hell, it was you who figured out that I could communicate with other spirits when you took me to the Dead Zone.”

“Probably would have been better if I hadn’t.” I deadpan, reminding him of the trouble it had since gotten us into.

“Life is really too short for regrets, Ash. Take it from me. I spent way too much of my life pondering over stupid moments when I said the wrong thing or wasn’t cool enough. It’s all worthless in the end when you’re in the ground anyway.”

I hang my head a bit, sighing. I feel the guilty pressure pushing down on my shoulders, trying to force me to crumble into the grave and admit defeat. I am a frail human with weak ideals struggling to see the mythical creatures living in my normal reality. It’s impossible not to have regrets about things when so few people in the world have this gift.

His hand clamps down on my shoulder, causing me to look up at him. In the dim light, his eyes seem to glow. I look into them and can make out the slender shadow of his lips curling into a kind smile. The same smile he’d used that night in my room to convince me he was not an intruder but some lowley spirit seeking help.

“It’s not your fault.” He says firmly, his hand falling away from my shoulder to cup my chin, tilting my head up to lock eyes with his. “We’ll have the time of our lives now, because we do not know what tomorrow brings. There is no time for regrets. Right?”

I hesitate, everything in my mind screetching at once, causing a white noise static to blank out all my thoughts. I feel the flickers of anxiety swelling up in my chest as he leans in, not waiting for my response.

This lanky boy has to lean down to some degree to reach my short stature, but even so, he does it sweetly and without complaint. He smiles as he places a kiss upon my cheek, then my lips. I feel the dull chill of his skin when he pulls away, wondering idly what it’d be like to kiss warm, lively lips... Not those of a corpse.

“Come here.” He murmurs, tossing his shovel aside and opening his arms wide. I drop mine and go to him, stumbling over the damp clumps of dirt and grass to wrap my arms tightly around his ribs, burrowing my face into the space below his collar bone.

He’s wearing that damned noisy Prophet jacket again, and I love it. The noisy handcuffs on the back and all. When I breathe in, the stink of stale cigarette smoke from years of exposure invades my nose.

“Whatever happens,” He murmurs, his voice rumbling deep in his chest. “I swear to protect you from it. If I am torn limb from limb and sent to firey pitts of Hell, you should know that I did it for you. It’s all done for you. To get hit by a dozen cars and take a bullet to the heart in my physical form... To pull you from freezing waters and force life back into your heart. I will do it. It’s what I’m here to do. I don’t know anything else in this life, and nothing else makes sense.”

“I love you.” I say softly, loud enough for him alone to hear and not the world. To keep it a private, intimate thing between just us two. “And I need to save you, too...” I pull back a little bit to look at his face, reaching up to pat his jaw. “So let’s get this wrapped up.”

A warm smile consumes his features and he places a quick and fleeting kiss atop my forehead before pulling away and grabbing his shovel once more. “Shall we?” He gestures around us, causing me to laugh. I scoop up my own off the ground and we get back to work.

It’s a half hour before we hit something solid down below. We work together to clear back the dirt, pushing against the sticky soil to clear the shiny, smooth top of the casket.

At this point, my jeans are caked with dirt and grime, but it goes with the territory, I suppose.

Andy is crouched beside the lid, messing around with the lock mechanism while I keep working to get as much of the residual dirt off the top as possible. The lid will be heavy enough to lift without all that unnessecary weight on top.

“Alright, it’s unlocked. Everything good?”

We do a once-over to make sure all the corners are clear and that there will be enough room behind the casket for the lid to rest. With that, we get down and dirty and get to work trying to open it.

I dig my knees into the mud and grunt in exertion as we work together to lift the lid. With a unified shove, it creaked open, thudding back against the dirt wall of the pit. Breathing heavily, we look to one another one last time before allowing our gaze to fall upon the darkness inside the padded box. With the abrupt movement of the lid, it brought to life the stink of decay from inside - the smell of decomposing flesh swirling up into the cool air to meet my nose.

With shaking fingers, I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight, actually terrified to allow the light beam to touch his body. Terrified to see how nature had already reclaimed his body in the three weeks since he’d been placed here.

“Want me to do it?” He asks softly. I shake my head firmly. “No. No, I can do this.”

The glow first settles on his feet; the shiny black funeral shoes. With a painfully slow movement, I move the light upwards across his pressed black slacks to the white button down shirt now heavily stained with the yellow stains of whatever rotting fluids were now pushing through the holes in his skin from his death injuries - once stitched shut and clean, now reopened and rotting.

I catch his hands in the light and freeze. They’re still clasped over his abdomen in a peaceful way, but the careful makeup application from the mortician has begun to fail, showing the deathly grey color under blotches of artificial peach and crimson tones. The dark purple veins curling through the tendons on the back of his hands, enhancing the skeletal appearance of each boney, well-defined finger.

“Ash-” he warns me and I hesitate, unsure if he is stopping me because he doesn’t want me to see, or because hedoesn’t want to.

I look to him quickly. “Do you want me to?”

His jaw flexes while he breaths and thinks hard for a moment. “We don’t have a choice.” He murmurs back.

While gritting my teeth and forcing deep breaths, I light up his face and despite my strained efforts to keep quiet, a shocked squeal escapes my lips. That beautiful dead boy was no more.

His skin is a disturbing shade of grey underneath the dark, brooding lines of eyeliner we’d added the night before the funeral. Little serpentine purple veins are dull shadows all over his face. I am grateful to discover that his eyes are still shut.

It’s a grisley scene, no doubt... The layers of scar wax applied to the left side of his head and cheek are peeling back now, exposing the true extent of the injuries that aided in his Earthly departure. Large chunks of his skin had been scraped away, and in the cuts, dark, thick blood has gathered, trailing down his neck and staining the collar of his white shirt a dull brown.

I wrinkle my nose at the sight, and peek over at Andy who’s expression mirrors mine.

“Shit.” he murmurs, “I somehow did not realize that half my face got ripped off in the wreck... That’s... Unpleasant.”

“To say the least.” I murmur back.

“Right... What stuff do we need?” He blinks, averting his gaze from the unappealing cadaver to me. I reach for the backpack and dig around inside, producing all the tools he’d need for the project.

“You’ll need blood, finger and toenail clippings... A tooth would probably be a big contribution to make up for the things we can’t get.”

“Right.”

I set down the jars in the soil beside the open casket. They would soon be filled with some very unappealing substances.

“Might as well get the worst out of the way. Do you have pliers?”

I hand him a pair of blue handled ones. “Not that it matters much for you, but do you want gloves?”

“Naw, I mean, it’s still me, right? Regardless?”

I shrug. “Germs are germs - not that they’ll have an effect on you.” All of this is more of the bizarre and extraordinary than I can deal with in one setting. I feel my stomach churning with nausea.

“Are you okay?”

“Not really, no.” I huff back, trying to breathe evenly with deep, heavy breaths.

“Go on ahead and go meet up with the others. I’ll finish up here.”

“Is that a good idea? Seperating in a place like this?” I wonder, hesitating. “You need someone here to do the prayer for you if you get attacked. We can’t take any risks until this is sorted... So as much as it disturbs me, I’m not going anywhere.”

I do chose, however, to avert my eyes elsewhere when he peels back his stiff lips to reveal the rows of wire poking out of his lower gums and connecting to his upper ones like a crude wire stitch holding his mouth shut.

I don’t look, but I can hear him shoving the pliers up under the wire far enough that it reaches the wire cutter notch at the back. With some effort, the wire snips and he’s able to remove a small piece.

“That’s gnarly.” He comments as he holds it up in the light to inspect it before tossing it aside and going to clip another piece.

After a few minutes, I hear the snapping of dry skin as he pries open the mouth. “You know, it makes it a little more tolerable to pretend it’s a living body.” He says as I assume he is going in with the pliers. I don’t look, I just concentrate way too hard on the dirt wall to my right.

I hear the twist and snap as he yanks the piece of bone free of the dry and brittle tissue.

“So that’s what I look like missing my front teeth.” He murmurs to himself, a breathy, nervous chuckle following it. I don’t think he knows what to say, either. He’s just pulling out these weird comments to make the job a little easier on himself.

“Did you get them?” I ask cautiously, my voice strained while I fight the sickness and need to flee the scene.

“Yep.” He replies. “How are we collecting the blood?”

“I brought needled syringes... Though I didn’t take into consideration how... Solid it would be. I don’t know if they’ll work.”

I hand him one and he uncaps the needle, checking the plunger to make sure it works before he looks for somewhere to do it.

“Not to make this really weird or anything... But I watched this mortician documentary a few years ago and they said that when you die, your blood all settles in one area... So in this case, your ass.”

He shoots me a dirty look. “You are not seeing my dead ass.”

I shrug. “You wanted options...”

He grabs his hands, and tries to move them around, but they’re so stiff that it doesn’t look like he will be getting much from them. Nonetheless, he decides to try the neck.

He injects the needle deep into the skin, applying heavy pressure to push it through. Once the needle is embedded, he pulls back on the plunger, and a few spastic, garbled drops fly up into the cylinder and splatter the clear plastic a dark brown. I look to him and frown. “There’s no blood there.”

“I know.” he groans, pulling out the needle and setting it aside. “Mind giving me a hand, then?”

I set down my phone and force my hands to cooperate. He grabs onto the shoulder, and I manage his feet. We lift it as carfully as we can, rolling him over onto his right side.

When I recover my light and shine it inside, we’re in for a nice, gory treat. All the incisions and wounds on his back have leaked, staining the silky cushion inside with a myraid of discolored blotches. Andy frowns, but preserveres. He pushes up the back of the black suit jacket and pulls the white shirt out of his waistband. He manages the fabric, pushing it far enough up his own back to expose the pale grey skin littered with deep purple blotches and broken veins where the blood had settled.

“You’re in luck,” I breath, trying to lighten the mood as much as I can. “We don’t have to look at your ghostly ass, afterall.”

He actually laughs and shakes his head, grabbing for the syringe again and looking for a place to stick the needle. “So you know, it was a pretty fine ass.”

He presses his hands against the skin and lets out a disgusted, garbled groan. “Ewww, it’s all smooshy.”

Against his disgust, he proceeds to tackle the task. Again he inserts the needle and pulls back on the plunger. There is some resistance, but with a bit of patience, the thick, dark blood begins to bubble up into the clear cylinder.

“Finally.” He mutters, watching it fill to the top. When it’s full, he recaps the needle and hands it to me. I hold it gingerly, taking care to tape the cap on it before putting it into my backpack.

“Here’s these, too.” He hands me a zip lock sandwich bag with his two front teeth inside, the roots long and bloodied. I pinch the corner of the back as I accept them.

“Fingernails next?”

I nod, handing him the clippers and fixing the light upon his hands. We look at them and sigh.

“Dammit Andy, did you have fingernails at all?” I hiss, looking down at the nubs. There was no white part to his fingernails.

“I was a nervous guy.” He defends.

“So you gnawed them off like a damn rat? Jeez dude.”

“Ouch, that hurts my feelings.”

“Not as much as you hurt your nailbed.”

“There’s always the pliers!” He produces them and holds them up in the light. I just groan and turn away while he goes to it.

“Okay...” I breathe without looking at him, “Now some hair. And use the scissors please jeez.”

The sound of him snipping away at his former black locks follows.

“You know what? I really miss my black hair.”

I look at him now, seeing him with a pouty expression staring down at his face. “Should I dye it back?”

I look up at the short little brown updo he did while we were enroute to California.

“You’ve had that hairstyle for less than two weeks.”

“I know... But I just like this one better.”

“You are so bizarre.” I laugh, “We’re sitting in your grave at ten o’clock at night and you want to talk hairstyles.”

“It’s an important conversation.” He defends, “Anyway, is that all that’s on the list? I would like to rest in peace now.”

“Now that we’ve finished defiling your grave? Yeah. We got all we need, let’s close this up.”

I grab ahold of his feet again and together we roll his body back over. Andy works to fix his hair to cover up the place where he’d stolen some locks while I made sure everything was as in immacualte condition as we’d found it in. It was while I was straightening his coat that I noticed the small item sitting in his breast pocket. I lean forward and pull it out, realizing that it is the eyeliner pencil I left with him that afternoon. Just holding it in my hands brings back a rush of memories. There were so many tears and so much pain. I was distraught when I ran home in the downpour, wishing so hard that God would take back his decision and bring me back to me.

Then again, it turned out that he had never really left and I was pretty pissed at him for that one.

“What’s that?”

I hand it to him. “A parting gift.”

He rolls it around in his palm and smiles fondly. “You know, if I weren’t here right now, I would have deeply appreciated this gesture of kindness from the stranger that you were then.”

He pokes it back into the pocket and pats it once before standing up and extending his hand to me. I grab it and pull myself to my feet. We take our last (and hopefully) final looks down at Andy and work together to close the lid. Andy locks it up while I climb up out of the pit and toss up the backpack. Once he’s done, I pull him out and we get to work pushing all the dirt back in, which proves much easier than getting it out. Still, it was almost twenty minutes before it looked anything like it did before we showed up.

“I really hope that no one notices the absence of the new grass.” I say, pointing down at the fresh grass seedlings that had been sown on top to keep the dirt from blowing away. We’d killed almost all of it in our excavation.

We stand there for a moment just staring down at the grave in silence. In the dim light I can make out the lettering on his black headstone. Andrew Dennis Biersack. December 26th, 1990 - April 15th, 2015

“Come on, let’s head back.” He claps me on the shoulder and scoops up the backpack, allowing it to hang by one strap of his shoulder, while is other arm drapes over my shoulder, guiding me away.

We head back to Ashley’s grave with our score of body parts and fluids. When we get there, they’re just finishing up filling in the hole again.

“Well? Get everything you needed?” Ashley asks, dusting off his black jeans, Elizabeth standing beside him, aiming the flashlight at us both.

“Yep, for better or worse.”

“I’d be willing to bet that yours is way worse than mine.” Ashley says, flashing the smallest of smiles at his own grim joke. “Nice and gooshy enough for you?”

“Oh plenty,” Andy replies with joyful sarcasm. “yeah, everything was nice and leaky.”

“Best condition for a dead body, of course.”

“You two are disgusting!” Elizabeth interupts them, shooting the each a dirty look. “Before this conversation can escalate the point where you graphically describe your dead undercarriage, can I ask, are we done here?”

Andy and Ashley throw their heads back in laughter and I go to Eliza’s side. “Yeah, we’re done... Let’s leave them.”

The two of us go ahead and set off down the trail, allowing their laughter to fade behind us. The sound of it shatters the blissful silence all around.

“So honestly, how bad was it?”

“Bad.” I reply, wrinkling my nose. “The smell, on top of the looks... Do you know what it feels like to lift and roll over an insanely heavy, stiff, leaky body? It’s not fun.”

“Well hopefully this all works out for you and you never have to look at another dead body again, eh? Come on, let’s get come and get cleaned up. I reek right now.”

“I’m probably going to have to burn these clothes,” I muse, looking down at my dirtied outfit. “It won’t get past my Mother without her asking fifty questions about the origins of these stains and to be honest, I don’t think I could think up a lie convincing enough to appease her.”

“Hey Ash!”

I turn slightly and see them both catching up to us. Andy stops by my side. “I’ve got something to show you.”

I nod to Eliza and both her and Ashley head on ahead. Andy has a gleeful smile on his face that makes me suspicious. That’s when I notice his hands are behind his back.

“What are you doing?”

He pulls out his hand, producing a large, rounding object in the palm of his hand.

“What’s this?” I wonder before realizing that it’s the gourd from before, only now with one side ripped out of it from being removed from the fence with a not-so-gentle touch.

“Another ghost thing.” He says, “Watch this.”

He balances it in the palm of his hand and squeezes his eyes shut, concentrating hard on something with a wrinkled brow and a deep frown. At first, there’s nothing. Just Andy standing there with a broken, leaking gourd in his hand and a face that looks like severe constipation.

Then... The skin actually starts to move... No, not move, but ripple. A rippling current moves through the skin, reviving life into the little fruit as it went. The skin pulls together and smooths out, and little by little it is restored to its former self.

“Revival.” He says simply, rolling the pear-shaped gourd from one hand to the other with a proud smile.

Notes

Okay! So I am hoping to set up an upload timeline so things don't get muddy while working on this. I have a bad habit of when I get into writing a story, I kick out three or four chapters at once and get so excited that I post them all at once and then get bored again. So here's the upload schedule: I will be updating this story every Monday and Thursday.

Thank you all for the support and warm welcome back! Sorry for the super TMI chapter lol. I wanted it to be disgusting to read, and I was deeply inspired by 'Rise of the Governor' by Jay Bonansinga. It's a Walking Dead book, but the way he describes the gore and carnage is brilliant.

Also! I am constantly looking for new songs to add to the soundtrack for this book. If you have any, feel free to comment them! This chapter was inspired by Hospital For Souls by Bring Me The Horizon and Room of Angel from Silent Hill 4

Thank you Merelan for commenting!