Help From Beyond

Prompt: One morning in a restaurant, an old widow and a priest summon a zombie using only a clay tablet.

Gertie eased down onto the cracked vinyl of one of the seats surrounding the table in the center of the empty restaurant. She was a little early, but she’d always subscribed to the belief that better too early than too late.

The whisper of noise from the back didn’t worry her, she’d been expecting it. Father Theo shuffled into the room, looking around nervously.

“Don’t worry, Father,” Gertie told him. “We’re quite alone. The man who owns this place owed me a favour. All he asks is that we clean up any mess.”

“You know I’m not a priest in the traditional sense,” he reminded her.

She shrugged. “But you’re still a priest, even if it is of the old ways.”

He took the seat opposite her. “I have to ask, why here?”

“Here is where Henry died.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Very well. We should get started. Do you have the tablet?”

Wordlessly she pulled a clay tablet from the cloth bag she used as a purse, setting it on the table before him. It was a very special tablet, made from ash and graveyard dirt, blood and tears, and good red clay like the kind God made man out of.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Yes, Father, very sure. If my arthritis wasn’t getting so bad I’d never consider it, but desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“You understand it will not be like it was?”

“I understand.”

“Very well. We shall begin.”

Father Theo pulled the clay tablet a little closer and rested his fingertips lightly on it. He chanted quietly while Gertie watched with rapt attention. Keeping one hand on the tablet, he reached into his robes with the other and pulled out a small glass vial.

At his nod, Gertie took it from him, unstoppered it, then handed it back. Without breaking the chant, he sprinkled the contents on the tablet. There was a flare, a puff of smoke, and the tablet turned to dust.

“It is done,” the priest said solemnly.

“Thank you, Father,” Gertie said. She opened her mouth to say something else, but he shook his head.

“Just remember, if things do not turn out as you wish you have only yourself to blame.” He left the way he’d come, through the back door.

Gertie sat for a moment longer, the impact of what she’d undertaken finally hitting her. It was the way it had to be, she told herself. It was the right thing to do.

Slowly she pushed herself up from the table. Time to go home and see what this morning’s work had wrought.

Everything seemed normal when she reached her tiny house in a row of similar tiny houses. She climbed the steps slowly, pausing a moment at the top to turn and search the quiet street. With a faint shrug, she went inside.

Gertie was almost disappointed when there was nothing unusual to greet her. But then there was a sound from the kitchen that had her head raising up. Gertie smiled.

She made her way to the kitchen and stood in the doorway. “There you are, Henry. A little worse for wear, aren’t you?”

Henry swayed slightly in place where he stood in the pristine kitchen. He was covered with graveyard dirt, his clothes wrinkled. There were rough patches on his bald head, but his hands appeared to be intact.

“Well, you’ll have to do as you are,” Gertie told him. “Now come along, I have a whole list of chores I need you to do.”

The zombie that used to be Henry just moaned, and turned to follow her.