The Fall and Rise of the Dead

Out of interest, I traveled to study the reason behind the death rate rising and then altogether being unrecorded in Alabama in the 1950s. What happened then? I was about to find out, finding a person over the Internet that lived during that time. He told me that he'd only tell me if I stopped and visited him - he's not a very good typer and his story is long, and besides, he told me that if I simply heard it over the Internet I'd think he's lying, but he has photographical evidence behind what happened.

When my plane arrived to the town's airport, I had to take a cab way out to the country, then I had to walk a decent half-mile because the cab driver refused to drive on a dirt path that looks extremely bumpy. But eventually I arrived at the old man's house, knocking on the screen door that couldn't stay closed, because that was the only door on the house.

This man's house was obviously not taken care of - there was a lot of scraped off paint, a lot of shingles falling off, a broken window on the side, and the porch boards looked as if they have never been replaced for years. But there's a reason behind it. The old man tells me to take a seat on one of the porch's rocking chairs, he does the same. I was a little bit hesitant, but I wanted to show a good first impression for the old man and did so.

He tells me that back in the 1940s, when he was in elementary, he remembers a strange student in high school that would always disturb him simply by being present. Not a lot of people talked to this student, nobody picked on him either, everyone just shrugged him off, almost as if he didn't even exist.

This student was certainly a character, the old man reassures me, but he just never showed it. His name was either John or Josh, the old man couldn't remember because his most common name was the Stick Man, getting the name from a couple of jockies among the first couple days of his arrival, considering how skinny the boy was. These jockies picked on this kid for the first week he was in the school, but the next week it was just an all of the sudden stop, nobody talked to him at all, and he never talked to anyone, he acted almost like a robot, and just by seeing him you felt a depressing atmosphere arise in the room.

Well, when the old man began his first year of middle school, the sixth grade, this boy started riding his bus, in fact he lived in the next house down, which was a couple of miles away, which wasn't too far away in the country, especially since the house never had a closer neighbor.

The old man said that one day he went over to visit the kid, hoping to catch a new perspective of him. Visiting him didn't help at all, oh, the total opposite, says the old man. The old man had caught him in the act of doing some kind of ritual, killing one of his father's sows in a very... creative way that the old man didn't want to go into. If that isn't disturbing enough, the old man said, how about seeing him mumble a bunch of words from what seemed like a made-up language and all of the sudden the pig coming back to life!

The Stick Man had been doing this ritual every day of the week except for on Saturday, for some odd reason, and he only done it at night after the sun was hidden, and by the looks of it, he used different pigs - the old man's guess was that he was trying to strengthen his ritualistic power, considering that he soon began resurrecting two pigs at the same time, and sometimes he would wait a day or two to revive the pigs.

Every day had the old man spied on him for this, his main goal was to gain insight on what this boy was saying, but the old man could only make it out as a few seconds of mumbling.

One day, the Stick Man caught him peeping as the old man had decided to get closer than his usual hiding spot to hear clearer. The Stick Man turned to him and said, "Hey..."

Turner, the old man, came from his hiding spot and said, "Hey, whatt'er ya doin' there?"

The Stick Man explained, "Well, I was trying to save my dad's sow, save him a little bit of money, but heck we're rich... it's too far into the light by now anyways."

"I seen you kill it, how do you plan on saving it?" Turner asked.

"Just watch, I can do it to any living thing, except for a few plants," the Stick Man said. "I'll show ya, that way you can get better at it too and you don't have to worry about a loved one passing on or losing money because your animals die."

The Stick Man picked up his knife and stabbed another sow in the the neck. He quickly pulled the knife out and explained, "Usually, I have no problem losing their souls if they had only died a minute or two ago, but I have gone longer a few times. Heck, the longest dead one was when I revived it was a whole day, that's how powerful I am at this right now."

The Stick Man spoke the magic words and this time Turner heard them clearly. "Usa riaco, Mina kai, al tepoh - hale la." The old man would right their spelling down, but refused to pronounce them out for me, telling me I'd probably never get the correct pronounciation but it's safest not to try anyways.

In an instant, the dead sow that had plopped into the dirt had opened its eyes, began shaking like crazy for only a second, and then stood on its legs.

"The reason it shakes is because the soul turns the brain back on and the brain reconnects everything in the body and starts everything back up." the Stick Man explained to Turner. "Want to try?"

Turner was a little bit scared, because it was witchcraft, but he said he'd try on a runt. The Stick Man went into the barn and fetched one up. He cracked the runt's neck and dropped the dead body to the ground, in which Turner recited The Stick Man's words with the help of the Stick Man mouthing them.

Not only did the runt come back to life, but Turner's magic was so powerful that the sow that had been gone for a whole hour had revived too, and so did a lot of dead flowers on Stick Man's porch. For miles there had been dead souls returned in all living things, Turner's magic was so powerful.

"Oh wow, my friend! You are a very powerful Necromancer, but you never had known until now!" Stick Man said.

Turner did not know what to think of this - was he to be happy or to be sad, considering he thought that witchcraft was a sin.

The Stick Man graduated two years later when Turner was in 8th grade, but during Turner's freshman year, The Stick Man had moved out into the city just outside of the country. Turner hadn't practiced witchcraft since, he spent the last for years of his schooling working on his family's farm and doing school work. When Turner was a senior, there had been bad news: The Stick Man died, passed away from not treating an illness that Turner guessed he got from hanging around dead bodies too often. Turner was the only one who talked to the Stick Man, the only one who the Stick Man talked to... even Stick Man's parents didn't talk to him besides for business related things. Turner had to attend his funeral.

With Turner, Stick Man's parents, and two other relatives of Stick Man only arriving to the cemetary, Turner knew he had to do it - there weren't many people there, and he felt that it was what Stick Man has taught him for. Stick Man's relatives were sitting in their chairs, nobody weeping, only tears rolled down his parents face as they stared at his body from the chairs. Turner had tears in his eyes as he stood up by the casket, waiting for the priest to leave. As soon as the priest left Turner was debating - would he be disappointed from being awaken from his peaceful, eternal slumber? Or would he be approving of getting another chance to live on earth? Turner couldn't think any longer, he was becoming nauseas from his sadness and time was running out. Turner whispered the words, and as long as the soundwaves of the words had the slightest vibrations, the ritual would work. Turner closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again, seeing that Stick Man's eyes were now open, but were encircled in black and he had bloodshot eyes. He stared straight up at Turner, just the way Stick Man looked made Turner jump. Stick Man began shaking, but it lasted more than a second like it did with animals, Stick Man began kicking and rolling around and moaning in high then low pitches and did quite a bit of other motions. He fell out of his casket and went into a violent seizure, his relatives screamed bloody murder, and the priest cowered in fear, chanting prayers to cast this demon away. After a few minutes, Stick Man's body stopped acting up, it just was frozen in a kind of twitch. Turner was frozen too, the entire time Turner stood closeby and was unsure of what to do, just stood and watched in fear with his jaw dropped to his neck. Regaining power over his speechless vocal cords, he bent closer to Stick Man, shaking in fear. He said, "Stick?"

This thing was not Stick Man, it had to have been the wrong soul or something, a soul of an animal. Stick Man's body jumped at Turner, tackling him. Stick Man ran off and Turner was knocked unconscious from the fall. He awoke the next morning in a hospital that was plenty full of people. The doctors told Turner what happened and Turner remembered perfectly, it was the strangest thing to ever happen to him. But when the doctors told him that all of the cemetary's corpses had been walking around town and still were that day, Turner didn't know what happened until he thought for a moment... He recalled at how strong his magic was, he recalled that all of the way back to his house the first day he said those magical words he saw flattened roadkill walking around, he remembered that his magic was uncontained and took effect in miles of animals.

Nobody could know that the outbreak of these zombies were his fault, so he simply stayed silent. These zombies did not eat people's flesh or brains like in the movies, they had no reason to, their stomachs did not require much food, their digestion ability wasn't that good as it was. Besides, humans were omnivores, why would zombies desire other humans if they could eat just about any animal or plant?

These zombies caused a lot of deaths because of their animalistic behavior - tackling people on cement, knocking down things, fighting people for what appeared no reason and hurting them, etc. There had been a good thous



and zombies in the city at that time, and it took exactly seven years to re-kill them.

Ever since, Turner had learned a lesson - if you are going to resurrect the dead, never resurrect humans, only animals, because in the second coming of a person's soul, the bodies act completely based on instinct.

When Turner finished his story, he knew that I didn't believe him - so he showed me photographs developed before photoshop or any electricity to edit pictures even existed.