I just woke up from a dream that was perfect for the holiday, so I thought I’d share it.
In this dream, I was part of a group of people hunting zombies (yes, I know) on this old property that had been owned by a mad scientist of sorts. People had been buried there from before the Revolutionary War, with an absolutely massive graveyard broken up and hiding in pieces throughout the woods behind his mansion. He had allegedly been on his way to experimenting on the corpses to build himself a final, immortal body when the locals realized what he was doing and stormed the mansion, chasing the old professor into the woods, killing a few reanimated corpses, and finally lynching him in a very pitchforks-and-torches way near a statue of the professor he had his working zombies build.
Since his death, it had become tradition to back every year and kill off any stragglers that could be found, since they were really old and decomposing. They weren’t much of a threat in the woods, as long as we had kept them the woods. Late into the night, after we came across what we thought was the last zombie around, we hung about in the woods, laughing about what had happened there so far in the past, about this damned scientist who could have killed us all in his search for immortality. Someone took a shot at his statue, chipping off a bit of stone and laughing, and then we were all taking turns doing it, amazed that people had ever been scared of this man.
“You think that’s funny? Someone needs to be taught a lesson.” I heard a voice behind me and spun, falling and stumbling backward at the sight of the scientist alive behind me. Everyone in the group scattered, screams trailing into the dark as I jumped up and ran across the clearing, toward the statue. He came after me, nearly roaring. I aimed and fired into him a few times, hoping his reanimated form could even be killed; the bullets didn’t even seem to affect him as he chased me down. I turned to keep running and tripped, falling on my back as he was on top of me.
In the moonlight he reached down to grab his hands around my throat. I put my hands up to try to break his hold when I realized there was no pressure on my throat. My hands had gone right through his arms. I was staring up at his ghost.
The old scientist dropped silent as he understood as well, his face contorting horribly. As close as I was, I heard him whispering, “Am I dead? No. Did I do this to myself?”
His body pulled itself off me suddenly, the man grasping at his own neck now as his feet left the ground. He started laughing now, hoarse but loudly enough to echo through the clearing. “We’re all failures, every one.” he raved between chokes. He came to a stop beneath a thick oak branch, his own statue actually pointing to him. “We’re all FAILURES,” he screamed, grabbing at an unseen rope around his throat and pulling himself up for one last breath, “each of us bound for death.” He broke into sobs, piercing howling and crazed laughter coming every few moments until he lost all breath and faded to nothing in the moonlight, leaving me there alone in the quiet night.
