The Spooky Night Episode 1: The Angry Corpse

The Inn

In the early 1800s, the old man Felipe de Segovia opened an inn along the Old Spanish Trail. It was ten miles or so from downtown Pasadena, with a few neighborhoods scattered around the dusty road. His clients were mostly the traders and merchants traveling from northern New Mexico to southern California.

One autumn night, three merchants came in to check the rooms. They were business partners, knowing Felipe for years. The inn was full. It was all dark, they had nowhere to go. They begged Felipe for a one-night lodging.

“I have a place down the road. But I am afraid you won’t like it.” Felipe said, a little bit hesitant.

The three men said they were not up to options at the moment.

It turned out, Felipe’s daughter-in-law died two days ago. His son had left home to buy the coffin and had not returned yet. He found a deserted shed 200 yards or so from the inn to keep the corpse. He remembered there were two rooms in the shed, one of them had a large clay bed.

The three men took the offer right away.

The Shed

Felipe took an oil lamp and a couple of blankets, led them to the shed. They pushed open the creaky door. A table sat in the front room. Along the inner wall was a temporary bed. A female corpse lay flat on the top, covered by a white blanket. Her dark hair stuck out, next to it was the door to the backroom. A high-edged, dilapidated bed, with straw mats scattered on the top, was fixed to the wall of the backroom.

Felipe tidied up the backroom a bit, left the lamp on the front table, and left. The three men lay on the bed in parallel, heads pointing out at the edge, They fell asleep quickly. The oil lamp outside remained burning.

One of them was not asleep just yet. In the middle of the daze, he felt he heard something, shua~shua~, from outside. He open his eyes in a line, peeped at the front room. From his position, he could see the upper part of the corpse’s bed, the hair of the poor woman gleamed sallow under the lamplight.

Suddenly, the corpse sat up. In an effortless flow, she flipped open the blanket, got down the bed, walked toward the backroom.

He almost let out a scream. Before he managed to swallow it, she already stood at the edge of their bed. Bending herself, she blew to the face of the first man three times. Then the second man.

The awake man was the third one. He was petrified. His instinct told him not to let the corpse blow on him. Before she turned to him, he pulled up his blanket and covered his head. He held his breath, tried hard to suppress the shudder.

A whirl in the air, he knew she was here. Then the blow. One, two, three. He counted in his mind, as his face almost didn’t feel it. The blanket had saved him.

Then he heard the corpse glided out, climbed in her bed, and fell silent. A dead silence. While his partners lay soundless, he was awake like a fish being scaled. Finally, he stuck his head out, peeped through the door. She lay there as if nothing had happened. He stretched one leg, kicked the friend next to him. Again, and again, no response.

“He is dead…… they are dead…..” he curled up in the bed, quivering

“I must run….. before she realizes I am not dead.” He sat up and reached out for his jacket. Before he realized it was reckless, the sound, shua~shua~, already flew into the room. He quickly lay back down, pulled up the blanket. Again, he felt the corpse walked to him, stayed for a second, ruminating.

“Lord! She is going to grab the blanket.” But before the chill passed his mind, three mouth blows hit his face. Again thanks to the blanket they were barely perceptible. She glided back. Then silence.

He decided he must move fast. In a moment he summoned all his strength, erupted off the bed, made a dart for the door. Passing the corpse bed, he felt she sprang up with an unbelievable speed and lunged right at his heels.

He started to scream as soon as he was outside. But no one heard him. He didn’t know where the inn was. For a moment he saw a slim light. He ran to it, barefooted. He could feel the corpse running behind him.

It was a little house. He vaguely saw somebody moving inside. He got to the front, banged the door.

Another old man lived in the house. He was frightened. Thinking it was a robbery, he didn’t open the door.

The Eucalyptus Tree

The corpse got close. The man turned around, saw a large eucalyptus tree next to the porch. He ran for the tree. Before the corpse almost grabbed his cloth, he turned to the backside of the tree. They ran around the tree for several rounds, before she dashed to him from the right. But he turned back to the left. Then repeated. In a few minutes, the man was soaked in sweat. The corpse seemed tired, too, as she slowed down. But ultimately, she sent an air that she was very, very, angry.

Suddenly she stopped, facing the giant tree trunk. The man made an abrupt halt across the tree, gasping.

All of a sudden, she uttered a piercing shriek, jumped high, opened her arms to embrace the tree. The high-pitch scream knocked out the man instantly, he slid along the tree trunk like an empty sack. At the last split of consciousness, he thought he saw two hands, ghastly pale, dashed through the flank of the tree, clamped upon where his head was a second ago. A wisp of his hair or two dangling between the fingers. But he couldn’t feel the pain.

He went blackout.

His eyes remained open, staring upward. Although the view couldn’t register to his brain anymore, it reflected on the pupils — the hands overhead hit the tree like two iron rakes. Pieces of barks burst out, fell to his deadly face.

A couple of seconds. The fingers seemed to be attempting to pull out or cut back through the tree. But chiseled so deep in the tree they couldn’t move at all. The corpse jolted for a while before stayed still.

Up to the top of the tree, a little chipmunk looked down with great trepidation. It had lived on the tree for years and encountered countless thunder and lightning, but the tree had never wiggled. Tonight it was awakened by a deafening roar underneath, followed by a rumbling vibration along the tree. Through the branches, it saw a man lying face-up, eyes wide open. Across the trunk, another human stood still. It was hard to tell the height as, from the upper angle, the body was covered by dark hair. But the extended arms around the tree made it clear,

“What a giant monster!”

Long, dead silence, until the old man opened the door. Under the eucalypts tree, he found the man. He touched his body. A faint heartbeat. He moved him into the house.

The merchantman woke up at dawn. He told the old man what happened in the night. The old man walked to the other side of the tree. In profound awe, he found himself looking at a female corpse that stood straight up hugging the tree. Her arms stretched almost twice the length of her body.

He ran to the closest sheriff's office to report the incident. The officer came and talked to the merchantman, before finding the corpse holding the tree. He attempted to pull the fingers out. But they were like chisels being hammered countless times. He called his colleagues. Finally, four strong men pulled the fingers out. The holes left on the tree were like the drilling holes in the quarry.

The sheriff went to the inn and found Felipe. He ran to the shed. His daughter-in-law was gone. Inside lay the two merchantmen, long dead.

He refused to believe what the third man told him. He said his daughter-in-law was kind, loving, and demure. He took the corpse back, astonished to see her arms stretched twice as long, the fingers as hard as chisels.

Brolly

I hear Brolly growl in my ear. My dearest German Shepherd. I open my eyes, his face both bewildered and concerned. I must have got some weird moves. He never sees me take a nap in the middle of the day. I am getting old. And it’s fall now.

I feel some scratches on my arms. It’s almost bleeding. Wow~what happened? Vaguely, I remember I slapped on his paws when they pressed on my arms, very hard.