We don’t take kindly to outsiders
around here, pardner,” said the grizzled and sunburnt face.
“... Darryl Choi?” I said. But it couldn’t be.
“Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” the man tipped that face up at me and I saw his familiar dark eyes clearly under his dusty cowboy hat.
“You’re dead,” I blurted. The cowboy stood and drained his sarsaparilla.
“This outsider botherin’ ya, Smokes?” the bartender said, polishing a glass behind the gas station counter, which had been apparently repurposed as a saloon bar. There were still vape cartridges and 5-hour-energy drinks on the shelf behind him, gathering dust next to bottles of unlabeled brown liquor and oil lamps.
“I’m not an outsider,” I argued. “This is my hometown. I took your niece London to prom, Mr. Jarocki.” The bartender narrowed his eyes at me.
“Name’s Ben Wiley Sr to you,” he said, frowning under his huge white handlebar mustache. “Now, your money’s as good as anyone else’s, kid, but after you quench yer thirst, you better take that steel horse you rode in on and ride along yonder, if you know what’s good for yeh.”
“Yonder?!” I said. “What the hell is going on? This is Massachusetts. Is this a bit?”
The five other cowboys in the gas station, who were all sitting around makeshift tables that had been hammered together from pieces of the Holiday station shelving, stopped their card game and glared at me. One of them reached for his sidearm.
Darryl clapped his hand around my shoulder.
“Settle down, boys,” he said. “This here fella’s kin, he just don’t know it yet. Sit down, pardner, and I’ll tell my tale.”
“I just came in to pay for gas. The thingy wasn’t working outside,” I said. “I’m actually late to my mom’s memorial service right now.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, son.”
I sat down. The plastic chair squeaked. Mr Jarocki brought me a stein of sasparilla.
“Folks ‘round here, y’see… we ain’t afraid o’ death no more,” Darryl said. He lit his pipe. Red embers lit his dark eyes. “I met death. He’s a ten-cent man.” Darryl stared through the Holiday station windows past the gas pump and toward the horizon of Peabridge, Massachusetts.
In 2016, Darryl Choi had been crushed to death by a semi on his way home from UMass Amherst. He was the first friend I ever lost. His death had hit me hard. We weren’t as close as I was with some of my other friends, but we’d cut class a couple of times to vape by the creek and trade Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I didn’t think he could grow facial hair, but he had a lot of it now.
“Y’ever heard of Pet Semetary?” Darryl asked.
“Yeah, I saw the movie,” I said. “And the remake.”
“Well, turns out, we got one of those.”
I stared incredulously. If I hadn’t been at Darryl Choi’s funeral, I wouldn’t have believed him.
“Basically, it works just like in ol’ Steve King’s account. You die, they put you in there, you come back wrong. First time they tried it with a person, it was Christina Elspeth, the old schoolmarm.”
“Oh no, Mrs Elspeth died?”
“It don’t matter now,” Darryl grunted. “Listen. They put the schoolmarm in the cemetery and the next day she was crawling back all fulla murderous rage n’ such, same as the dogs n’ cats n’ fish, but worse. Spoutin’ all kinds of vileness. So her husband shot her in the head.”
“Not before she cut him real good across the belly, though. The ol’ fella bled out right quick in his flower garden. So they buried both of ‘em in the Semetary-whatsit again, on account of the headstone already bein’ paid for.”
Mr Elspeth was my youth pastor. He always snuck us leftover communion bread and we’d eat it with marshmallow fluff. I didn’t even know he had a gun.
“So another day passed, and, well, the two of ‘em sprung back outta that dirt mound. Mr Elspeth had come back ‘wrong,’ just like his missus before him– all evil and such. But Mrs Elspeth came back even wronger. Turns out, there’s a step down below ‘evil.’ I’m talkin’ downright… well, sorta like those red fellers we used to play at killin’ as youngsters in that movin’ picture game.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Darryl,” I said. “Can you drop the cowboy accent?”
“Folks call me Smokes these days,” he said. “Smokes Barlow. Wilbur Lee Barlow if you’re a lawman.”
“I’m not gonna call you Wilbur Lee Barlow,” I said.
“Naw, you’ll call me Smokes, like everyone else,” he replied smoothly.
“The red zombies from Resident Evil, is that what you were talking about earlier?”
“Anyhow, the two of ‘em went on a killin’ spree round here. And I guess word got out about the cursed boneyard– everyone and their mother, I mean the ones who survived, hoped maybe their kin would be the exception to the rule. So more n’ more bodies went in the mound, and each of ‘em came out as evil as the last. ‘Cept for Mrs Elspeth, who came back worse for wear.”
“They put her back? Again?”
“Well, see, the headstone had been paid for. So Mrs Elspeth comes back and she’s still spittin’ hell’s worst curses and hankerin’ for a stabbin’, but now she’s also sort of a mad scientist sort. So she breaks into the hospital n’ starts grafting people’s limbs together–”
“Hang on. What the hell do you mean she’s a mad scientist sort?” I said. “She was a music teacher?”
“Well, see, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. She’s running around, hair all crazy, in a stolen lab coat, rantin’ and ravin’ about man playing god and splicing DNA and such, creating humanity’s next evolution and such. So eventually the hospital staff knock her out and toss her back in the hole. Next time she came back, she was a 19th century venture capitalist named Montgomery Prescott III who aimed to turn Peabridge into a factory town.”
“Sorry, when did this all happen?”
“‘Course, by this time, her husband was on his third resurrection too, so Prescott was a force to be reckoned with with the power of science behind him. The two of ‘em did a bang-up job whippin’ this place into shape, corralling all the zombies n’ throwing em in the hole, y’know, for science, and to see if they could monetize it. Prescott Mining & Scientific Enterprise un-buried all the dead from the regular ol’ graveyard and tossed ‘em in the hole, myself included. Then, when they came back, they put all those evil folks to work in the mines, or in the lab.”
“Now those mines were dangerous, of course, with all the coal dust and gas leaks… Prescott didn’t give a damn about safety. Lotta folks died. But they’d just bring ‘em back. A couple weeks in, though, and there were about twenty Montgomery Prescott III’s and about a hundred mad scientists running around, and it turns out, Monty Prescott works for no man. Each of ‘em enlisted a squad of mad scientists and started their own enterprise. Wasn’t too long before they started assassinating the competition. At this point, we’d all just gotten used to throwin’ people in the hole.
“Turns out, after Prescott, you come back as kind of a Dracula. Now I won’t go into all that business– you know ‘Salem’s Lot?”
“What about that there Catholic picture show up there on the Netflix, the one on the island, put together by that Irish feller? Michael somethin. O’Flanagan.”
“Mike Flanagan? Midnight Mass?”
“There ya go. It was all pretty much like that.”
I looked around at the gas station. Other than the restructuring that had transformed it from a regular Holiday gas station into a cowboy saloon, it looked like this place had been through waves of disasters. There were bullet holes all over the ceiling, a massive rusty brown stain that someone had tried to scrub out with lye on the linoleum, burn marks on the walls with strange curling imprints of what looked like vines and needles…
“I’m guessing that ‘everyone is vampires’ didn’t last long,” I said.
“It just ain’t sustainable,” Smokes shook his head. “Vampires always think it’s a smart idea to make everyone vampires, but, see, it just don’t work out. What do they eat? Turns out, they don’t. They starve. Then it’s back in the hole.”
“So things carried on like that for awhile. At a certain point, we were just chuckin’ people in there to see if there was an end point, y’know, how far this thing goes. Turns out, it goes Evil, Mindless Zombie, Mad Scientist, Montgomery Prescott III, Master Vampire, Ghoul, Skeleton Warrior, Skeleton Jazz Musician, Man-eating Plant, Plant-eating Man– or a Vegan, I guess you’d call him, and a real sonofabitch– Haunted Ventriloquist, Haunted Dummy, Haunted Mummy, Christian Family Vlogger, ‘Edna,’ Evil Cowboy, Zombie Cowboy, Plant Cowboy, ‘Edna’ again, then just regular ol’ pure Cowboy.”
“What comes after Cowboy?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just Cowboy all the way down after that.”
The cowboys playing poker glanced up at me through clouds of tobacco smoke. I recognized some of these people from around town. Or, rather, I recognized who they used to be.
“So… my mom’s memorial… she’s not really dead, is she?” I said, a wave of hope and relief overwhelming me. “I thought I’d have to say goodbye to her today. But she’ll be back, won’t she?”
Smokes only smiled sadly.
“You won’t find fuel for your steel carriage, pardner,” said Smokes. “I’ll give you a ride to the cemetary.”
I followed Smokes out to the parking lot, where several horses were hitched.
“Where did you guys get all these horses?” I asked.
“Oh, where there’s cowpokes, there’s horses,” he replied. “That’s a rule of nature.” Smokes fed the horse an apple and stroked her mane before bidding me to climb on behind him. I held onto his waist, which was pretty weird for me because we were never close like that, and we galloped off up the highway toward the middle of town.
We passed the elementary school, which had been covered in radiation warning signs and barbed wire. Then we passed the old Coney Island restaurant, which had been converted to a one-room schoolhouse. Main Street’s restaurants, law firms, and tattoo parlor had been replaced by a Dry Goods store, an ox stable, a wagoner, an apothecary– the barber was the same, but it looked like he also pulled teeth now.
The park that I played in as a kid had been bulldozed to hell, and in its place was a brown dirt yard with scattered mounds and holes all clustered near the center. A new sign hung over the entrance on a wooden board: Lazarus Mound Cemetary.
“I guess we coulda been more creative,” Smokes said. “But it’s too late for couldas, I reckon.”
A group of cowboys, clad in black, stood over a dirt pile. They held their hats to their chest as the eulogy was read. Smokes followed me to my mother’s fresh grave. I dropped my bouquet of flowers on top of it.
“Family only,” said one of the cowboys, glaring at me.
“Uncle Matt, it’s me,” I said. He twirled his goatee and grimaced, revealing a new gold tooth.
“It’s Billy ‘Cobra’ Nash these days,” he said. “Didn’t recognize ya, son. I s’pose you want to say a few words,” he gestured to the mound.
“Well, I would,” I said, “But I’m pretty sure she’ll pop out halfway through.”
“That’s no way to talk about your poor dead mother,” said Great-Grandma Tess, who I hadn’t seen since 2004, when she died from stroke. Except she wasn’t Great-Grandma Tess. She was a short old man with a long rabbity mustache and two guns on either side.
“Let the kid grieve, Slim,” said Cobra.
The sun set on us. The resurrected cowboy versions of my family members became hungry and bored, and set up a small campfire where they heated up coffee and beans, and spun some yarns. I asked questions about the cowboy economy and how it could sustain itself in this Massachusetts town that didn’t have that many cows, and they responded by cussing me out and telling me to get lost, city boy. I said I couldn’t be a city boy because I was from here, and they took away my beans.
Finally, after about an hour, there was rustling from the mound.
“Here she comes,” said Cobra.
The dirt shuffled and ran down the side of the mound, a miniature landslide. Finally, a gloved hand emerged. Then an arm. A dirty, dusty head, crowned in a cowboy hat, burst from the pile, coughing.
“Well, butter my biscuits, if it ain’t The Cheat, just in time for dinner,” said Slim, hands on his hips.
My mom, who was now a dirt-covered cowboy named The Cheat, clicked his boots together to dislodge some stones from his spurs.
“Howdy. Miss me, fellas?” The Cheat rasped, spitting pebbles into the fire.
“Mom?” I said. The Cheat looked me over.
“They call me Vernon ‘The Cheat’ Maddox now,” my mom said.
“Why Maddox?” I asked. “Mom, what was wrong with Nguyen?”
“Ain’t a cowboy name,” said Mom.
“A cowboy can’t be Vietnamese?”
“Listen, kid,” said The Cheat, clapping me on the arm. “I’ve had a long day, and to be frank, I can’t abide a city slicker like you before I get my brew. Gotta fill up on beans n’ coffee or I’ll be skinner than a jazz skeleton in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
I watched my mom walk away toward the fire, greeting the other cowboys like old friends.
“It’s like she didn’t even recognize me,” I said, broken.
Smokes patted me on the shoulder.
“That ain’t your mother no more, pardner,” he said. “Same as I ain’t Darryl Choi.”
“What’s the point of raising people from the dead if they’re not themselves?” I said.
“I reckon you’ve missed the essential theme of the Pet Semetary premise,” Smokes said. “The point is, it’s a curse, not a blessing. To the living, at least. Mister Stephen King said sometimes dead is better. And here in Peabridge, we reckon he was right.”
I heard a metal click. I turned around to see Smokes’ shotgun pointed square at my forehead.
“Whoa,” I said. The cowboys at the fire turned to watch with dim interest, including my own mother. “Darryl, hey, put that away.”
“Dead is better. But you know what’s best? Cowboy,” he said. “Cowboy is the best there is.”
“Best there is,” said the cowpokes around the fire in eerie unison.
“Wait, wait, wait–” there was a bang. My vision filled with red, and then there was nothing. I saw and felt and heard nothing as Smokes watched my limp body fall backwards into the hole. He kicked dirt over me casually. He holstered his weapon. He sat down around the fire, next to the others.
“How many bullets ya got, Smokes?” asked The Cheat through a mouthful of beans.
“Not enough to get him all the way through,” Smokes replied, lighting his pipe. “But enough to get him past Dracula, for sure.”
“That’s the one you gotta watch out for,” The Cheat said. “I’ll stand vigil with ya, pardner.”
“You go home, Maddox, wash that dust off, tend to your herd. Be on the lookout for Edna– word is she’s still at large in places,” Smokes said.
“She’ll come around,” said Slim. “They always do.”
The campfire’s embers rose up to the cloudy, dark sky. Smokes leaned back and tipped his hat low over his eyes.
“This town’s got room for plenty more cowboys,” he said. Around the fire, a dozen pairs of black, gleaming eyes turned toward the Lazarus Mound, waiting.
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