Thriller

I woke up to a zombie drooling on my face, which, on the whole, is not a good way to start the day.
Normally, I'm not a morning person, but the undead have the same affect on me as a cattle prod does.  I go from zero to sixty faster than a Mercedes.  Before I really knew what I was really doing, I had rolled off the bed and grabbed my sixteen inch meat cleaver from under my pillow.
The zombie drooled at me.  He was one of the less fleshy versions I'd seen lately; meaning he was mostly bone with some thick chunks of flesh and a few organs moving things around.  He was also covered thickly in ichor, which was dripping on my carpet and bedspread.  To give you a comparison, imagine a rotting beef joint liberally covered in warm Jello.  
Once again: not the way to start my day.
I shouted a battle cry and lunged at the zombie.  He just sort of groaned and fell over.  I chopped his head off, partly to shut him up, mostly because he got ichor on my carpet.  The stuff stains worse than red wine.
I thought about just taking a shower and seeing what my housemate was up to afterwards, but I decided against it.  Things had probably gotten out of control again.
So I picked up the zombie head by the stump of the spine and marched downstairs to give my dear 'ole housemate, Robert Mezzalini, a helping hand and a piece of my mind, not necessarily in that order.

Robert, or Robby, as he prefers to be called, is, in a nutshell, the cheeriest, most optimistic necromancer I've ever met.  He looks like every emo-child's idol: black hair worn over his right eye in a smooth 'n' straight style; pasty skin; narrow, cleft chin; and a build like a whippet.  He wears more eyeliner than Britney Spears, has a collection of fingernail polish large enough to put a drag queen's to shame, and owns enough Gothic jewelry to open his own store.  He's uncomfortable in any clothing that wouldn't frighten a small child.  But, at the same time, he is always happy, always has a positive outlook on life (and, frequently, death), and otherwise wears his emotions on his spiky sleeves.  He's the sort of fellow who gets completely ADD when he's excited, holds no qualms about crying during sad movies, and has a soft spot for small, skeletal animals.  
We share this old Victorian house that, technically, Robby owns because he inherited it from his parents, but I pay all the bills for.  This is because I work as a well-paid architectural consultant; Robby works part-time at an occult bookstore/curio shop and makes minimum wage.  
I found Robby posed at the top of the basement stairs, wielding a baseball bat with a nail through it and playing Wack-A-Mole with his latest creations.
"Robby," I yelled over the groans coming from the basement.  "What happened?"
"Sorry, Susan," he shouted back without turning to look at me.  "Did I wake you?"
"No, your zombie did."
"I thought one had gotten by me," he brought the baseball bat down on another groaning head.  "Are you hurt?"
I gave a snort of contempt loud enough for him to hear.  "Hardly.  You need any help?"
"Nope," he shouted, kicking a zombie down the stairs, "I think I've got it under control this time."
"Right.  I'm going to go shower, then."
"Okay," the bat crushed another skull, "Enjoy it."

Now don't get me wrong, whoever you are.  Robby and I live in a normal world with normal people who don't believe in magic and don't have to kill undead first thing on a Saturday morning.  We could be the people living in the apartment above you or the house beside yours, the ones who always seem to be up at all hours making weird noises, or the people down the street who throw Rocky Horror themed parties but make sure all of their neighbors get Christmas cookies.  We're not, obviously, or I'd be telling you this story in person, but we're like that.  We're harmless.  Strange, but harmless.
And we used to be even more normal.  Robby wasn't a necromancer when I moved in with him and I didn't have to sleep with a butcher's knife within arm's reach.  But, about a month ago, Robby was cleaning things up at work and found this paperback entitled, How to be a Necromancer in Ten Easy Steps.  He bought it and brought it home. I thought it was a joke.
I woke up the next morning to find he'd resurrected my goldfish.
Not that I wasn't grateful, I'd been missing the little guy horribly, but my housemate had just performed a necromantic rite in our kitchen while I was asleep upstairs.  And I had a rotting, undead fish-albeit a cute one-but, still, how's a girl supposed to deal with that?
I did the best thing I could think of to do at the time; I made Robby clean up the mess he'd made in the kitchen, then I went and screamed into my pillow for the next half hour in sheer terror.  
There's a lot more to the story than that, but that was the beginning.  The morality of the situation, the zombies, and another book, Help!  My Roommate's a Necromancer, all came later.  Basically what it boiled down to was this: Robby's my friend as well as my housemate.  I couldn't let him get killed all alone.  And I certainly couldn't let him have all the fun.

I came downstairs after my shower.  Robby was done with the zombies, had a mop out and was cleaning up the slime on the floor.  He was covered in ichor himself; still wearing a lab coat, rubber gloves, galoshes, and had his hair was held out of his eyes with a sliver clip-you know, normal mad scientist working gear.  He also looked unusually grim, which doesn't happen to Robby unless the end of the world is coming.
"What's the problem?" I asked.
He seemed reluctant to tell me.  That meant it was really, really, really bad.  "Those weren't my zombies," he said at last.
I wasn't quite sure what to say this.  I finally settled on, "Then whose zombies were they?"
"Can we sit down and talk about this?" Robby asked.
I looked him over.  Then he looked himself over.
"Okay, maybe not while I'm this gross.  But…"
"Look," I interrupted.  "Go shower.  The four-year-old down the street could have killed those things with his mother's rolling pin.  We'll be fine for the next hour or so."

An hour later we were sitting in the kitchen eating a late breakfast and watching Figment, the undead fish, swim around in his bowl.  By the time Robby finished his waffles, he looked a bit more like his old, cheery self.
"So I think I might have summoned up a new kind of monster," he said, like he'd just won the school spelling bee.
"What kind of monster?" I asked suspiciously, expecting something like the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters.
"An ethereal one," he said as if that explained everything.
"So…a spiritual one?" I asked.  He nodded.  "We've moved on to spirits then?  No more zombies?"
"Not quite…"

I listened very patiently to his explanation and waded through mass technical details before I got the gist of what had happened.  But the time he'd finished, his cheery demeanor had drooped somewhat.  I guess he realized the gravity of the situation.  
"Let me get this right," I said.  "You attempted to summon your first spirit from the Netherworld, or wherever, and, when it said you needed to sacrifice a spirit in return, you got one from a pet store hamster.  However, instead of getting an equally small ethereal creature, you got a creature that summons up zombies-really, really pathetic zombies.  How?"
Robby shrugged, "I don't know.  All I can figure is that I ran across some misaligned arcane astrometrics from one of my old zombie projects that I hadn't dispelled properly.  But thinking about it in the shower just now, I think that the spell might have been crossed with an incomplete grid for distance and a modifier for phonographic…"
"Robby," I said sharply, "layman's terms, please."
He thought about that.   "I think the spirit may gravitate to a location when someone plays…a certain song.  But in its wake, it will summon up every undead thing in a," he did some mental math, "radius of about a mile and a half from that song."
"Is this song popular?"
More hesitation, "Not as much as it used to be, but, yes, it's still kinda popular."
I made an attempt to find the positives in the situation.  "But the undead will be pretty harmless, right?  I mean, the one in my room this morning practically killed himself."
There was a lot more hesitation this time.  "I don't know.  I guess you could call the ones from this morning re-dead."
"Redead?  Like the creepy, molesting things from Ocarina of Time?"
"No, no," he said quickly, "they were just undead that were already undead.  They were brought back again."
"You mean brought back as zombies for a second time?  I thought that wasn't possible."
"Wwweeeelllll…" Robby said, long and drawn out, as if stalling was going to make things any better.  "I couldn't do something like that.  There have only been two or three necromancers in history that have that kind of power.  But this thing…" he spread his hands and shrugged again.
"So spirit thing can summon up really strong zombies then?"
"Oh, yeah.  We're talking 28 Days Later kind of zombies.  Ones that are strong, fast, smart, and really, really hungry."
"Jesus Christ and Saints preserve us," I muttered, putting my head down on the table.  "Can we stop this thing?"
"Actually, yeah," Robby said, "The zombies are strong, but they take a lot of the power from the spirit.  The spirit is just like a sentient version of the power a necromancer uses to make zombies in the first place.  It'll be easy to catch the spirit-it's attracted to its song.  We play the song, it turns up, we trap in it a little glass bottle, seal the bottle with a little rite, and poof!  Spirit can't bother us anymore.  We just have to keep all of the zombies it summons from killing us."
I glared at him.  I usually do the fighting end of this.  That meant the undead were all mine.  "Oh goody," I growled.
"Don't worry," he said cheerfully, "You won't have to kill anything.  Or probably not, anyway.  I have a plan for a really great distraction.  All you have to do is a little dancing."
"Robby," I said, still glaring, "what song did you choose?"
"A…a…logical one…" he said shrinking into his chair, "for a necromancer…"
"Robby," I repeated, louder, "what song?"

"I just want to say, Robby, this was in poor taste."  We were standing outside of the graveyard down the street, a CD player with the detachable speakers facing each other, a glass bottle between them, in the middle of the design he was just finishing chalking on the pavement.  It was almost three am.  "Very poor taste."
"You've been saying that all day," he said.  "I thought it was the logical musical decision.  It was either that or one of the songs from Rocky Horror."
I thought about the dance numbers in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  "I'll hold my peace," I said.
"I thought you might," he replied smugly, putting the last flourish in the design.  "There!  Provided the bottle doesn't fall over or break, we should be good."
"Turn down the bass then," I told him.  "I'm not doing this more than once."
"Right, bass down, volume up."  He grabbed the remote.  "Now when the undead start walking, you start dancing."
"Yeah, I know," I said, "The zombies are physical extensions of the spirit and dancing is a physical extension of music.  The zombies will start dancing to the song because they are attracted to the physical extension of the music.  We've been over this thirty times already.  Give it a rest." I shivered the red nylon jacket we'd picked up from the thrift store that afternoon.  "Do I look enough like Michael Jackson?"
He looked me over, "Maybe.  If he were white and a woman, then yes."
"I'm not going to make the obvious snide remark."  I tugged at the collar of my jacket.  I was going to get him for this.  Somehow I was going to get him for this.
"Your butt looks cute in those jeans?" Robby tried, seeing the expression on my face.  I glared at him.  "It does," he said defensively.
"Let's just get this over with."  
Robby hit the play button.  At first, there was nothing.  Then, a door creak and some footsteps across a wood floor came from the CD.
"Are you sure this is the right song?" I asked.
"Positive."
"All right," I said moving toward the center of the street so I had plenty of room.
"Don't forget your dance steps."  Robby said, "If you get it too messed up, then this won't work."
"Don't forget your words to the rite to seal the bottle.  I've already said I'm not doing this more than once."
The familiar three four, pop/disco beat started.  I tapped my heel in time to the music.  "How will we know when it gets here?"
"You'll know," Robby said confidently.  A wolf howled on the CD.
Then I heard an undead groan and the scraping of packed earth being moved out of the way.  Zombies crowned the hill that the graveyard was built on.  For a moment, I thought they were regular people, they moved so smoothly, so quickly, but the stench of rotting meat wafted down toward me.  They were definitely dead.
"It's close to midnight.." Michael Jackson sang over the CD player.
The air got colder.  Much colder.  A nearby zombie pulled itself out of the grave.  
No matter how many times I see that, it still makes my flesh crawl.
I did a quick head count.  Forty zombies so far and more coming. I hoped this stupid plan of Robby's worked.  I had my knife in a sheath strapped to my thigh, but I didn't think I could fight them all.
"You see a sight that almost stops your heart.
" You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it."
A few of the zombies had made it too the street.  "Now is as good a time as any," I thought.  
I did two right shoulder pops and then turned to the side bouncing on the balls of my feet, shaking my hips and my knees.
A few of the zombies stopped walking and picked up on the steps.  I was a little depressed to find they knew it better than I did.
On the other hand, it did give me someone to follow.  Dancing not really my strong suite.
"I've got it!" I heard Robby cry.  Then he started muttering, using words I didn't even try to understand.  I just kept dancing.
The zombies and I were just finishing up the head isolations, when I heard Robby say, "Gotcha!" a moment later adding, "I got it Susan!  It's bottled."
"Great!" I shouted, marching to the right, hands held like claws.  "Now why haven't the zombies gone away?"
I heard some panicked flipping of pages.  Robby had gotten out his book again.  Usually that's not a good sign.  "Give 'em a…minute…" he said uncertainly.
I was really going to get him for this.
I did the shuffling turn and the bent knee stomps toward the graveyard.  But instead of stopping when I did, the zombies just kept walking.  Some of them danced to their graves and sunk under the torn up grass and others just kept on going over the hill, back wherever they'd come from.
I wiped my hands off on my jacket.  "That was easy," I said.  I was shaking a little.  Stage fright, probably.
"I knew you could dance, but I didn't know you were that good."  Robby said to me.
"I'm not," I replied, "I was just following them."
"Really?" Robby held up the corked bottle, which was now full of smoke.  "Maybe we should let this little guy out for parties."
"I don't think zombies make very good guests," I said, taking the bottle from him and examining it in the light of a streetlamp.  It didn't look all that scary, just sort of like cigarette smoke.  "What do we do with it?"
A voice drifted out through the glass.  It was soft and dry, like very old paper.  It sounded nothing like Vincent Price:  
" Whosoever shall be found,
"without the soul for getting down.
"Must stand and face the hounds of hell
"and rot inside a corpse's shell."
"Nobody asked you," I told it.  "Come on, Robby.  Let's go home."
And though I never mentioned it to Robby, and I swear he never said a word to me, I thought I heard that same voice whisper.
"For no mere mortal can resist,
"The evil of the Thriller."
And give a very evil, quiet laugh.