Micro Monday #10: “Brought Back” by Marston Kelley

The third day of my brother’s death, I sat in my kitchen. The sun shone through the window, painting early morning yellows across my table and walls. The sun seemed too bright for me as I stared mindlessly at the wall. I take a sip of my coffee; I’d held it long enough for it to have gone cold. The shock of the cold bitterness of it all hit me. 

A gentle knock at the door. I ignore it. I didn’t need anyone else telling me how to feel about his death. Or saying they were sorry for me. I’d heard it all. If someone left a giant pile of money on my doorstep I wouldn’t complain, but the door would still get shut in their face. 

Another knock. Harder this time. I sighed. Maybe it was a neighbor with food. I hadn’t eaten in a while. It didn’t feel like it was worth my time. Nothing really did. 

As I come up to the door, I notice it’s Brent’s girlfriend, Catherine. She looks distraught. 

I open the door and see that she does not appear to be doing well. Her skin dark, big bags under eyes, and her hair looks unwashed.

“It doesn’t work for me,” she mumbles, holding up an old book.

“Yeah, I’m having a hard time, too…” I start. 

“No, the book,” she says. “It can bring him back. But it’s not working for me.”

“He’s not on a work trip or something, Catherine. He’s dead. He’s not coming back.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve been reading from it…”

“No one’s coming back,” I say.

“Just listen...” She opens the book, flipping through it. 

“I’m glad you stopped by, but I’ve got to get ready for work.” I close the door on her. She stands on the porch, watching me through the window on the door. Her sunken eyes  bloodshot. Her skin looks dry, and I can see prominent veins on her face, neck, and chest. Probably dehydrated and not eating; like me. 

“Please take care of yourself,” I say through the door. Not sure if I was saying it for her or for me.  

Later that evening, my phone rings. Troy pops up on my screen. A friend of my brothers. But I hadn’t heard from him in a long time. He’d shown up at the funeral, but from the sounds of things him and my brother hadn’t talked for quite some time. 

“Hey, you doing ok?” Troy’s voice comes through the phone. 

“Yeah. Yeah, just doing what I can to stay busy. Not trying to dwell on it,” I say.

“Uh, Brent’s girlfriend…” he starts.

“Yeah, she’s fine. She’ll figure it out.”

“No, I mean, she came to my house.”

“Wait, what?”

“She had a book. Said she’d been reaching out to whoever she could. I let her in because she looked awful.”

“Ok, so what?”

“She read from the book. A mouse under my sink started running around.”

“She scared a mouse? So, what?”

“The mouse was rotting; stuck to a trap I forgot about months ago.”

“Oh, Christ. I’m not doing this with you, too.”

“Bro, she’s messing with some dark shit. And whether it’s true or not she’s going to get herself in trouble. She looks awful, too. Like she’s taking some hard stuff. Or withdrawing from it, I dunno. You need to tell her family or something.”

“She doesn’t have any family. Only had Brent,” I say. 

“Well, then now she only has you,” he says. 

I hang the phone up after telling him I’d check on her. But I didn’t know if that was true. The sink smelled; the trash had piled up, and my last clean pair of clothes I had put on yesterday. And it had only been three days. I wasn’t doing too great myself. 

A box of my brother’s stuff sits on my couch next to me. It smells like him. Every time I pass by. Like dirt and oil, and the body spray he soaked himself in. If I open the old sci-fi movies we used to watch together, I can smell the cheap whiskey we used to drink. I can hear him telling a joke: “He’s pretty slow. Doesn’t walk very fast either!” We would laugh together with our old friends as an innocent woman got ripped apart by giant bugs on the tv. 

With these memories in my head, it’s like I can feel him sitting next to me. I can feel the pain in my arm from the slug he’d give me telling me he should probably head home. 

Things changed a lot when he met Catherine. Brent became a whole new person, but not in a self-improvement sort of way. He distanced himself from everyone, claiming work, Catherine, and how far they lived away, were taking up all of his time. I’d barely gotten to see him the last few years. 

Tears drip off of my nose and chin. I miss him. I’d been missing him. His death came out of nowhere. Hit by car on the way to work. At least that’s what Catherine had called me to say. None of us had ever really gotten confirmation on that. When my family tried to look into it, for insurance purposes, Catherine was quick to intervene. Telling all of us she’d taken care of it, and not to worry about anything. Catherine had already set up a viewing, funeral, and grave site; to quite the upset of my family. His viewing was closed casket because of the accident; Catherine decided, at least. 

Unlike a dead car battery, a person didn’t have a battery to jump start back to life. In what world does someone come back from the dead? Not this one. 

Not for a second do I think someone can come back from the dead. If it could be done, it would’ve been done. Wouldn’t the government come in and steal that kind of technology immediately? How would a reincarnated person come back into society? My mind wanders to an old zombie film we used to watch. Flesh grey, eyes sunken and cloudy, arms outstretched, as they stumbled towards their next victims. 

Before I second guess myself, my phone rings in my ear. On the third ring, I’m about to hang up when Catherine answers.

“Mark?”

“Hey, what’s up…”

“I have everything set up already. Come over.” Her voice is dry and raspy. 

She lived closer than I realized. It made me realize that Brent had been choosing not to come over to see me, instead of the distance he always talked about.

Catherines house towers over me. A relic from her family, who we were all told were no longer around. She inherited the house and some money, never heard more than that, and Brent never talked about it. He wasn’t around to be given the chance anyways. 

I didn’t get a chance to knock before the door swung open. Catherine stood just beyond the light that shown in. 

“I’m glad you came, Mark,” Catherine says. 

“I just wanted to talk, see if you needed anything.”

“Yeah, I’m good. Happy you’re here,” Her voice sounds weak.

The door clicks shut behind me, and the darkness of the house envelopes me. Black curtains cover all of the windows, hardly letting any light in. I stand in a crammed entry way. In the dim light I can see a bigger room off to my left. A living room of sorts, I think. A small hallway extends back past a set of stairs. The stairs lead up to blackness. A rotten smell hits me after a moment. Like unwashed bodies and an unkept house. I thought the smell at my house was bad. 

“So, uh, how are you holding up?” I ask.

“Like I’m about to die,” she says. 

I fake a laugh. Catherine stays silent.

“Can’t believe he’s gone,” I say.

“He doesn’t have to be.”

“Look…”

“Just come to the kitchen. You’ll see.”

“Look Catherine…”

“The book is set up in there. You can read from it.” There’s desperation in her voice. “Read from it, and you can leave. If nothing happens, nothing happens.” She’s hard to make out in the dark. Her voice is shallow and raspy. 

“Okay, I’ll read from it. But I’m not sacrificing anything,” I say.

A sound comes from her that I suspect is a laugh. 

I follow her down the hallway, past the stairs, and into the kitchen. Candles sit on all surfaces, dozens of them. They flicker and cast shadows across the walls. A huge circle surrounded by symbols is drawn on the floor. The color of it is dark, and I hope that it’s nothing but paint. 

“You’ve really committed to this book idea,” I say. “This is feeling awfully weird now that I’m here,” I say. 

“It’s not an idea. It’ll work,” she says. 

I take a deep breath, questioning what I’ve gotten myself into. 

The old book sits on a pew. Its pages open to the middle of the book. The same symbols on the pages match the one drawn on the floor. There are words sporadically written all around it. 

“You stand at the book, and I’ll tell you when to start reading,” Catherine says. 

She moves to the middle of the circle. 

“Uh, shouldn’t you stand over…” I try to tell her to move from the circle. But before I know what is happening, words start coming from my mouth that I do not know. 

Catherine convulses in front of me. Despite her body shaking, her eyes pierce into me. They are cloudy and sunken, but staring into me, nonetheless. Words fly from my mouth, and I can’t stop speaking them as hard as I try. Droplets of blood splatter the book and pew as I talk, and she continues to convulse. But as it started, it stops. Catherine stands in the middle of the kitchen, her skin healthy, and her eyes no longer cloudy. They sit in a brand-new face, on a whole new person. 

My mouth tastes metallic, my tongue finds lacerations on the insides of my cheeks and gums. Maybe even on the tongue itself. Blood fills my mouth. 

“I needed you to bring someone back to life, but it wasn’t Brent.” She smiles a lively grin.

Marston Kelly is an aspiring new writer from a small town in the US, Utah. Some of their favorite horror is John Carpenter's The Thing, anything vampires, and anything classic.