[Galaxy Of Fear] - 02(9)

“This has got to be the place,” Zak said to the darkness. “The Crypt of the Ancients.”

He stood before the iron door and took a deep breath. “Urn, excuse me,” he said out loud. He felt foolish, but so what? He’d do anything to bring his parents back. “My name is Zak Arranda. I’m not from Necropolis. I don’t know if that matters. But my parents are gone. And I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.” As he spoke, the feeling of foolishness was replaced by something else. Hot tears welled up in his eyes. “It’s not fair that they were taken away from us! Especially not like that. We didn’t even get a chance to see them! And now I miss them so much. I’d give anything to be able to see them again, just once. Not the way I see them in my nightmares, I mean really see them and talk to them. That’s why I came here. If you really were a witch, if you really did have the power to bring back the dead, this is for a good cause. So won’t you help me? Please?”

He waited.

Nothing happened.

The iron door remained as solid and cold as the moment before he spoke.

“Stupid idea….” Zak felt foolish once again. He sniffed back his last tear. “Thinking that something like this would work. Next thing you know you’ll be muttering about the Force and wishing you were a Jedi like Tash.”

Zak remembered the bet with his friends. He looked around and saw that there were several smaller graves around the Crypt of the Ancients. He walked over to one and pulled out the small knife Kairn had given him. He hesitated for a moment when he realized that he would have to stand on the grave to stick the knife into the ground. What would it be like to stand on a grave? Zak took one careful step onto the burial plot. Was it his imagination or did the ground seem softer, squishier?

“It’s your imagination,” he told himself.

Still, how would he feel if someone stood on his grave?

“I wouldn’t feel anything,” he told himself.

Zak took another step. Now he was standing right on the grave. He couldn’t help but imagine that his weight was pushing down on the ground, which was pushing down on a coffin, squeezing a lifeless bodyless than two meters beneath his feet. He waited, his heart pounding.

Nothing happened.

Of course nothing happened, he thought. You’re being ridiculous.

Shrugging off his fear, Zak raised the knife high into the air, hesitated just a moment, and then plunged the knife into the ground.

For a moment Zak froze again. He heard a muffled sound below him. He turned quickly, ready to run. Just as he did, a long, low moan rose up from the beneath his feet. The ground shuddered.

And a hand reached up through the dirt.





CHAPTER 6


The moment he saw the gnarled white hand, Zak yelled in terror and started to run.

He took only a few steps before he saw the ground in front of him also tremble. Clods of soil shot up as wriggling arms forced their way to the surface, followed by the ghastly, grinning faces of two zombies. They twitched violently, but with every spasm they crawled farther out of the holes into which they’d been placed. Like Zak’s nightmare vision of his parents, the creatures’ pale skin hung limply from their bones. A few thin strands of dead gray hair clung to the sides of their heads. Inside one of the monsters’ slack jaw, Zak could see a thick tongue lying like a dead worm.

Zak was so frightened by the two undead creatures before him that he’d forgotten about the first one. When he tried to run, he felt something incredibly strong grab the hem of his cloak, holding him back.

“Let go of me!” he shouted, wriggling free of the cloak. He let it fall to the ground behind him as he ran for his life.

Zak ran so fast that soon he had left the zombies behind, swallowed up in the great fog bank that hung over the cemetery. He had lost them.

Unfortunately he had lost himself, too.

Zak was no longer on the path he had taken to the Crypt of the Ancients. He didn’t know which way to turn. All he could see were rows of headstones. There were thousands of them! Even worse, Zak had no idea when another dead body might spring out of its grave to grab him.

Zak’s heart was racing. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen. It was impossible, but it had happened. The dead had risen. Three people had dug themselves out of their own graves!

Could I have caused it? he wondered. Have I offended the dead?

Whether he had caused it or not, Zak wanted out of the cemetery.

“Help!” he shouted. “Someone help!”

A distant voice returned his cry. Zak ran toward the sound of the crying voice. “Who’s there?” he called out. “Where are you?”

He heard the voice cry out again and thought he recognized it as Kairn’s. Kairn had come to help him! Zak hurried toward the sound, keeping an eye out for any more of the terrifying creatures. They didn’t seem to move very quickly, but he didn’t want to end up in that cold, powerful grip again.