Free Resurrection Dreams by Richard Laymon

floated in the middle on the milky pond.
    Melvin took another handful of popcorn and filled his mouth. He watched himself wink at the camera as he returned to the cart.
    He studied the book again, then addressed the camera. “Three candles, midnight black.” One at a time, he lighted the wicks, dripped pools of black wax onto the body, and placed the burning candles upright in the wax. When he was done, a candle stood in the tangled hair of her pubis and the other two rose from her breasts.
    Melvin bent over the book, slipped handwritten papers out from under the top page, and read aloud.
    “Master of Darkness, I, your servant, do humbly beseech you. I have prepared the earthly remains of Elizabeth Crogan in the manner prescribed. She has been annointed with the blood of the bat; she has consumed the Nectar of Hizgoth; the candles of the Black Triumvirate are burning at the three corners of the luminex. Her remains are in readiness. I beseech you, send me the soul of Elizabeth Crogan that she might join me in the service of your realm.”
    Melvin, listening to his voice, refilled his glass with Pepsi, took a drink, and ate more popcorn.
    On the screen, he kept on reading.
    Finally, he came to the end. “This I ask in the name of the Black Triumvirate.”
    He stepped around the cart. Standing beside the body, he plucked the lower candle from its bed of stiff wax, and plunged it, flame first, into her mouth. The Nectar of Hizgoth spilled down her cheeks. He tossed the extinguished candle aside, then dunked each of the remaining candles into the Nectar.
    Stepping behind Elizabeth’s head, he raised both arms high. Blood had soaked through the bandage on his right hand, and trickled down his wrist and forearm. He shut his eyes. He mumbled, “Come on, babe.”
    He looked down at her.
    Nothing.
    Melvin stopped chewing his mouthful of popcorn. He leaned forward, staring at the body, half expecting its eyes to open, its head to turn. He’d been there; he knew she wouldn’t move. But he could almost see it happening.
    “Come on, come on,” he said on the television.
    That Melvin lowered his arms, dug a Kleenex out of his robe pocket, and mopped the dribbles of blood off his right arm and wrist. Looking up, he glared into the camera.
    He bent over the corpse, thumbed up an eyelid, and gazed at the eye.
    The lid stayed open when he released it.
    He stepped around to the side of the table. He shook her shoulder. Her head, with its single open eye, wobbled from side to side, slopping out the white Nectar.
    He bent over and pressed an ear to her chest.
    His face came up. He scowled at the camera. The left side of his face was smeared with bat blood.
    “Didn’t work,” he said to the camera in a calm voice. Then he yelled, “SHIT!” and hammered his fist down between her breasts. Nectar erupted from her mouth. He pounded her again and again, using both hands, crying out in pain as he punched her with his wounded hand.
    Melvin scowled as he watched. He didn’t much enjoy seeing himself in the throes of his disappointment and rage and agony. He especially didn’t like the way he’d lost control. He picked up the remote and pressed the Fast-Forward button.
    In fast-forward, he really looked like a lunatic punching her, shaking her, prancing around the table waving his arms as he silently shouted, cuffing her some more, rushing offscreen and reappearing with a mirror that he held under her nose, scowling at the mirror, hurling it away in disgust. As he scurried up onto the table, Melvin pushed the Stop button.
    The basement laboratory vanished. On the screen, a cute gymnast in a leotard did the splits on a balance beam while she talked about the “safe, sure feeling of confidence” she got from using Lite-Days Mini-Pads.
    Melvin shut the television off. He finished the Pepsi in his glass.
    He turned sideways on the sofa and looked at Elizabeth Crogan sitting there next to him, leaning back against the cushions, hands folded