Supernatural Encounters

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Raising the umbrella high over her head, Harper then swings it down onto the shoulder of the person sitting in the chair and quickly begins to repeat the process.

"What" Whack. "Are" Whack. "You" Whack. "Doing" Whack. "Here?" Whack. 

The figure remains still throughout the attack until the hand slowly reaches up and grabs the umbrella on its way down. With a strong tug, it pulls the makeshift weapon out of her hands. And proceeds to take a huge bite out of the item. 

"What the...Dave?!"

Harper digs out her cellphone and turns on the flashlight, illuminating the porch's seating area. 

Sitting on one of the plastic wicker chairs, currently eating her umbrella, is Aeron's pet zombie Dave. 

The couple took Dave in after finding him working at a haunted house event; everyone thought he was a stoner or something instead of being a reanimated corpse. So when he went missing, no one really asked questions. It took Harper a while to get used to having a man-eating dead body living in her house. She nearly kicked him out the first day when he tried to eat her cat Sherlock, but now Dave is part of the family. 

And like the rest of the family, Aeron's absence has been rough on the zombie too. Like any dead body, Dave is decomposing; she keeps the a/c colder than she normally would to slow down the process, but she still finds pieces of his flesh littering her floor when cleaning. It always creeps her out but nothing is worse than when she finds Sherlock eating said flesh. The urge to scream wars with the urge to vomit and it just turns into the loudest dry heaves in the world. 

Usually Aeron uses his magic or whatever demons call it to freeze the decomp, but it only lasts for a week before it must be reapplied. With the demon being gone so much, Dave is starting to look a little rough. His skin is gray with a marbling of black and green, and the dehydration has caused it to shrink, making his nails and hair look like they've grown. The drying up of the fluids has also made his already thin frame look down-right skeletal, and the lack of stomach acid means he can't digest his food. So everything gets thrown up. Like he is doing right now.

Harper sighs as she watches the zombie heave up broken pieces of metal and plastic mixed in with the little bit of bile still resting in the bottom of his stomach. "Oh Dave. What are you doing out here?" 

"I let him out," Lily says, sticking her head through the door. "Some weirdo was hiding in the bushes, and I thought to myself 'Nope, Lily. Just nope. Can't let weirdos hide in bushes.' But I am not the most scary person..wait, ghost. I'm a ghost. But I am not the most scary ghost. So I let Dave out to scare the weirdo away and protect the house. Go me."

Staring at the ghost in horror, Harper tries to figure out which part of the story deserved her attention first. The fact that some guy was at her house.The fact that said guy was hiding and waiting for her cause no one waits for Aeron. The fact that Lily felt that she needed to protect the house...

"Lily, did Dave..get bite-y with the guy hiding in the bushes?"

Threat of a new zombie running around won out against all other concerns it seems. 

"No, he didn't get the chance." The disappointment in the ghost's voice made Harper make a silent promise to never piss her off. "When we got the door opened, the guy ran off. I decided to keep Dave out there just in case the jerk came back."

A wave of relief flows through Harper as she hears that news. After the nightmare that has been the last 24 hours, she really didn't feel like spending the night calling every ER and Urgent core in the city trying to track down a bite victim.

"Thanks Lily. And thanks Dave." She throws her two undead roommates a grateful look before gently sliding an arm around Dave's shoulders to guide him through the door. " Let's get inside, and you can tell me more about your crazy evening while I tell you about mine."

" Your night was crazy too? Like... 'good, fun' crazy or 'someone trying to kill you so you chase them off with a zombie' crazy?"

" The second one." Lily works to turn the door handle as Harper pulls Dave to his feet and moves him towards the door. A low groan slips out as Harper slips in the pile of zombie vomit while trying to shuffle the unexpected hero through the doorway. " I just bought these shoes too. This night just keeps getting worse. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if someone popped out of the bushes trying to collect on that stupid bounty. "

"I hope not, lady Bishop." Alistar's Voice echoes from the darkness of the living room. " My brother cannot afford anymore distractions this night."

"Oh shit! "Lily shrieks, flying back through her roommates. "Stranger danger ! Stranger Danger!"

Maybe one day Harper will look back on this moment and laugh. Maybe one day Lily will be able to look at Harper's wrist without feeling immense guilt. Maybe one day Dave will be able to be near Harper without flinching. But that day won't be any time soon.

Lily's shout sets an already stressed Dave on edge. When she flies back from the doorway, the zombie becomes overwhelmed and swings his arms at the apparition. Her vision whites out as heat blossoms on Harper's cheek when one of Dave's hands strike the side of her face. Unfortunately, Harper's arm is still wrapped around the undead man, so when she lurches to the side with the force of the strike, Dave lurches with her, throwing them both to the ground.

A sharp pain shoots through Harper's wrist as she struggles to get out from under the literal dead weight on top of her. She pushes against his chest but the skin slips away from the bones when she applies any pressure, causing her hands to become covered in fluids, making it harder to get any leverage.

At one point she swears she hears Lily yell "help her " but it feels like an eternity before Alistar appears in field of vision. The demon's lefthand shoots out and grabs the zombie by the shoulder. In the blink of an eye, Dave is gone and Harper is left staring at Lily's tear streaked face and a slight frown on Alistair's normally stoic face.

"It's okay,"Harper mumbles as she struggles to sit up. "I've had worse. You saw me when I got home yesterday, Lils. "

" Harper... your wrist..."

The teary voice out of the normally cheery ghost causes Harper's stomach to turn. She glances down at the mentioned limb and feels her heart stop.

There, wrapping around from the top left side of her wrist down to the bottom left like a demented bracelet, sits a bite Mark.

Dave bit her.