I’d forgotten all about that when Aunt Amy made my hot chocolate Saturday evening after dinner. I took it and went upstairs to
my bedroom to pack my bags, and the next thing I knew, I was conked out on the bed, fully dressed, having the most bizarre
dream.
I dreamed that Brett and I were at the cabin, looking at the sunrise over Muskrat Pond. All the trees were leafless and
covered with hoarfrost, glistening in the morning sunlight. I was trying to convince Brett to come to my car with me, but he
shook his head and pulled away. He turned toward the lake, which by now was blood-red, reflecting the sun squatting just
above the horizon. Then Brett walked to the lake and began to wade into it. I tried to run to him, but I couldn’t move my legs.
(Don't you just hate it when you have dreams like that?)
So there I was, powerless to stop him as he sank into the water. But just as he was about to go under, he called out my
name, and that’s when I woke up.
It was strange. I could have sworn that someone actually had called my name. At first I thought it must have been Moomie or
Aunt Amy, but Moomie was already asleep, and my aunt wasn’t in the house.
It was a little past 9:00 at night, I had fallen asleep for several hours, and Aunt Amy wasn’t home. I was getting a very bad
feeling about all this, so I threw on a coat and ran outside. Sure enough, my rental car was the only one in the garage.
#
When I drove out to the cabin it looked like an eerie version of my dream. But instead of sunlight glinting off hoarfrost on the
trees, there were dozens of people surrounding the cabin, each one holding a flickering Tiki torch, the lot of them looking for
all the world like the villagers storming Castle Frankenstein. At the head of the mob, was my beloved aunt, and was she ever
surprised to see me! She rushed over and said, "Maya! What are you doing here?"
Hello? What was I doing there? I made some sort of witty retort, something like, "Me? What the fuck are you doing here?"
Whatever I said, I must have used the F word, because she got royally pissed off then, and we launched into a screaming
match.
While we were yelling at each other, some turkey in the crowd decided to torch the cabin. You know, kill the zombie and get it
over with so they could go home and watch "America’s Most Wanted" or whatever.
To give Aunt Amy credit, I don’t think she had actually meant for the cabin to get burnt down. She seemed as shocked as I
was to see it suddenly burst into flames, and despite a light snow flurry, that cabin went up like a Roman candle.
Heedless of the fire, I tried to run in there to save Brett, but my aunt held me back. I kicked and screamed like a banshee, but
she held on tight. Finally, I stood there helpless while the cabin, and my big dreams of getting together with Brett, went up in
smoke.
#
It didn’t take long for the fire to burn itself out, and once it did, the crowd dispersed, leaving me alone with Aunt Amy. Both of
us stood there in the flicking light of her torch, staring at the smoking remains of the cabin my grandfather had begun
decades ago, but never completed.
Except for a dull ache in the pit of my stomach, I was in too much shock to feel much of anything right then. It’s weird how
your mind tries to anchor itself to the mundane in the face of horrors you can’t, or don’t want to, accept. All I could think of to
say was, "Moomie never comes out here anymore?" For some reason, it seemed important to me that she not have to see
Poppy’s cabin in ruins.
My aunt shook her head and said, "No. I’ll let her think the cabin’s still here, waiting for Poppy to finish it when he comes
back."
I nodded, then turned and walked away, not looking back to see if my aunt was following me. When I got to my car, she was
right there behind me, and before I could open the door, she asked me where I was going. She must have realized that the
obvious answer, home, wasn’t going to be my first choice. Her voice dripped with concern, but I didn’t say anything, didn’t
move, and didn’t turn around to face her. Truth was, I didn't know where I was going. But more than that, I didn’t want to give
her the satisfaction of seeing the tears in my eyes. At the same time, I was sort of relishing the moment, sensing that at
least guilt, if not remorse, was plaguing her.
After a quiet minute, she said, "Maya, I know how you feel."
I let out a sharp laugh, and she said, "I’m serious. Look, let me tell you a story." Ignoring her, I reached to open the car door.
She touched my arm and said, "Please, dear. It won’t take long."
It was the "dear" that did it. She never called me that. I wiped my eyes, turned around, folded my arms across my chest, and
said, "Okay. Tell me a story." In my short acting career I’ve faced enough tough audiences to know how to be one myself,
and it worked. Aunt Amy, usually so calm and self-possessed, was obviously nervous. She stammered at first, not meeting
my eyes, before she managed to tell me her little tale of woe.
Years ago--before I was even born--Aunt Amy met a guy, a student at U.W. Madison. This was in 1970, back in the heyday of
student protests. The boy had been young, handsome, and passionately idealistic, and my aunt fell in love with him. But
Moomie disapproved of him and his long hair and his lofty ideals. She disapproved violently and wouldn't let Aunt Amy see
him. And my aunt was such a slave to duty that she obeyed.
So the boy ended up falling in love with someone else and got married, lost to my aunt forever. At first she hated my
grandmother because of it, but eventually she forgave her as she came to see that the boy really had been wrong for her.
You see, as the 70’s wore on, and so many of the 60’s radicals settled down to a "respectable" life, he never lost his
idealism, never stopped fighting for some cause or another. And Aunt Amy valued nothing so much as respectability.
When my aunt finished telling me all this, I almost felt sorry for her. But it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together to
figure out the punch line to that story, and it explained a lot that I’d only ever guessed at before. I said, "He was Daddy, wasn’t
he."
Aunt Amy nodded and looked away. I followed her gaze to the blackened husk which was all that was left of the cabin. I
shivered and clutched my coat close around my neck. "I’m staying here for a while," I said. "I’ll be warm enough in the car.
You go on home."
She grasped my arm before I could turn away, and she made one last-ditch attempt to justify herself. She said, "Maya,
please. I was only trying to save you. You didn’t seem to understand that that boy was already dead. I couldn’t risk you
throwing your life away on him."
I flashed her a bitter smile and said, "Aunt Amy, Poppy’s been dead for what? Thirty years? And you don’t seem to care that
Moomie doesn’t realize that he’s dead."
With her typical righteous indignation, she said that Moomie had refused to believe my grandfather wasn’t ever coming back
until finally she had given up trying to convince her otherwise.
I said, "Fine. But you know what, Aunt Amy? This wasn’t about me at all." I pointed at the burned-out cabin and was in tears
as I went on. "It was about Brett. When I got interested in him, he got close to you too by extension, and you got scared. And
since everyone else in this town is so spooked by zombies, it was easy to get a mob of them out here. And you all killed
him. Well, don’t do me any more favors."
She tried to tell me that they had only meant to scare him away, and I said, "Oh. Well then, it’s okay, isn’t it? You had good
intentions. You didn’t mean to kill him. But guess what, Aunt Amy? He is dead ... again. So I’m safe now, and you can go
home happy."
She went, but I don’t think she went happy.
#
I tried to stay awake all night, bundled up in my wool coat and Aunt Amy’s down-filled parka, which she loaned me before she
left. I told myself it was sort of a wake for Brett, but it was more like my own private pity party, my thoughts ranging from Poor
me to How dare they and back again. At some point I must have dozed off though, because one minute the sky was dark,
and the next, I was opening my eyes to see pink and lavender clouds in the eastern sky.
The previous night’s snowstorm had left only a dusting of snow on the ground and trees, which reflected a dim shade of
purple from the sky. From where I sat, I could also see the black fringes of Muskrat Pond, and the whole scene would have
been starkly beautiful if it hadn’t been blighted by the charred ruins of the cabin, now cold and silent. In any case, it reminded
me of the dream that woke me up the night before, and I found myself wondering if it might have been more than just a
dream.
Perhaps in my sleep I had overheard my aunt organizing that lynch mob on the telephone, and my subconscious mind had
built a dream around such hints. Maybe, but I preferred to think that Brett’s mind had called out to me, and somehow, in my
dreaming state, I had heard his call for help. Okay, maybe that was just wishful thinking, an attempt to make Brett larger-
than-life, to ennoble a lost love. But the more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that had to be it. It could, after
all, explain how zombies communicate with each other: by telepathy.
Then, as if I wasn’t being morose enough already, I was struck with a macabre desire to sift through the remains of the cabin
and search for Brett’s body, to make sure he was really dead this time. I can’t say I have ever considered myself a brave
person, or even an extraordinarily adventurous one, so it must have been morbid curiosity that drove me to it.
Picking my way through the debris, I couldn’t find any trace of a corpse, and I began to feel there was some hope that Brett
hadn’t been there after all. But surely that mob hadn’t been so stupid as to surround an empty building. They must have had
some evidence he was there. They must have seen his face in one of the windows or something, right?
I was walking around, confused but hopeful, when suddenly I felt the ground tremble beneath me. My first thought, from
years of living in Los Angeles, was that it was an earthquake. But in Wisconsin? Then a hand thrust up out of the ground
and grabbed my ankle, and I screamed bloody murder.
#
Brett must have been instinctively afraid of fire, and when he saw all those torches and no other way of escape, he dug down
and buried himself for protection. After I helped him dig himself out, he staggered down to the lake and washed himself off.
The ice-cold water didn’t seem to bother him, but just the thought of it sent shivers down my spine.
When he came back, I told him that once I noticed his class ring on the hand that was clutching my ankle, I’d felt so foolish
for screaming. I swear he smiled at me then and whispered my name.
Well, that was all the encouragement I needed. I packed the boy into my rental car, sneaked back into the house without
waking Aunt Amy or Moomie, got my bags, and we were on our way to the airport.
It turned out to be a sunny day, and with a bit of fresh snow on everything, it was all so bright. As we were driving though the
desolate farmlands of northern Illinois on our way to O’Hare airport, I called Darryl. I’d left my aunt a note telling her I forgave
her, figuring that was good enough for now, but I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye to Darryl.
I told him what had happened and that I was taking Brett to L.A. where I didn't think anyone would notice he was a zombie. I
thought Darryl would be just a wee bit understanding, but no. He practically screamed, "Maya, this is crazy!" Like I didn’t
know what I was doing. He said, "Whether or not anyone notices, he is a zombie."
I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t help it. Darryl’s a sweetheart, but honestly, sometimes he can be such a downer about the
pickiest little things. "Okay, Darryl. Yes. He is a zombie," I said, smiling over at Brett and giving him a wink. He was so cute
sitting there; I swear he’d have blushed if he hadn’t been one of the living dead. "But look, Darryl,” I said, “I really think I can
change him."
END
Return to page 2
my bedroom to pack my bags, and the next thing I knew, I was conked out on the bed, fully dressed, having the most bizarre
dream.
I dreamed that Brett and I were at the cabin, looking at the sunrise over Muskrat Pond. All the trees were leafless and
covered with hoarfrost, glistening in the morning sunlight. I was trying to convince Brett to come to my car with me, but he
shook his head and pulled away. He turned toward the lake, which by now was blood-red, reflecting the sun squatting just
above the horizon. Then Brett walked to the lake and began to wade into it. I tried to run to him, but I couldn’t move my legs.
(Don't you just hate it when you have dreams like that?)
So there I was, powerless to stop him as he sank into the water. But just as he was about to go under, he called out my
name, and that’s when I woke up.
It was strange. I could have sworn that someone actually had called my name. At first I thought it must have been Moomie or
Aunt Amy, but Moomie was already asleep, and my aunt wasn’t in the house.
It was a little past 9:00 at night, I had fallen asleep for several hours, and Aunt Amy wasn’t home. I was getting a very bad
feeling about all this, so I threw on a coat and ran outside. Sure enough, my rental car was the only one in the garage.
#
When I drove out to the cabin it looked like an eerie version of my dream. But instead of sunlight glinting off hoarfrost on the
trees, there were dozens of people surrounding the cabin, each one holding a flickering Tiki torch, the lot of them looking for
all the world like the villagers storming Castle Frankenstein. At the head of the mob, was my beloved aunt, and was she ever
surprised to see me! She rushed over and said, "Maya! What are you doing here?"
Hello? What was I doing there? I made some sort of witty retort, something like, "Me? What the fuck are you doing here?"
Whatever I said, I must have used the F word, because she got royally pissed off then, and we launched into a screaming
match.
While we were yelling at each other, some turkey in the crowd decided to torch the cabin. You know, kill the zombie and get it
over with so they could go home and watch "America’s Most Wanted" or whatever.
To give Aunt Amy credit, I don’t think she had actually meant for the cabin to get burnt down. She seemed as shocked as I
was to see it suddenly burst into flames, and despite a light snow flurry, that cabin went up like a Roman candle.
Heedless of the fire, I tried to run in there to save Brett, but my aunt held me back. I kicked and screamed like a banshee, but
she held on tight. Finally, I stood there helpless while the cabin, and my big dreams of getting together with Brett, went up in
smoke.
#
It didn’t take long for the fire to burn itself out, and once it did, the crowd dispersed, leaving me alone with Aunt Amy. Both of
us stood there in the flicking light of her torch, staring at the smoking remains of the cabin my grandfather had begun
decades ago, but never completed.
Except for a dull ache in the pit of my stomach, I was in too much shock to feel much of anything right then. It’s weird how
your mind tries to anchor itself to the mundane in the face of horrors you can’t, or don’t want to, accept. All I could think of to
say was, "Moomie never comes out here anymore?" For some reason, it seemed important to me that she not have to see
Poppy’s cabin in ruins.
My aunt shook her head and said, "No. I’ll let her think the cabin’s still here, waiting for Poppy to finish it when he comes
back."
I nodded, then turned and walked away, not looking back to see if my aunt was following me. When I got to my car, she was
right there behind me, and before I could open the door, she asked me where I was going. She must have realized that the
obvious answer, home, wasn’t going to be my first choice. Her voice dripped with concern, but I didn’t say anything, didn’t
move, and didn’t turn around to face her. Truth was, I didn't know where I was going. But more than that, I didn’t want to give
her the satisfaction of seeing the tears in my eyes. At the same time, I was sort of relishing the moment, sensing that at
least guilt, if not remorse, was plaguing her.
After a quiet minute, she said, "Maya, I know how you feel."
I let out a sharp laugh, and she said, "I’m serious. Look, let me tell you a story." Ignoring her, I reached to open the car door.
She touched my arm and said, "Please, dear. It won’t take long."
It was the "dear" that did it. She never called me that. I wiped my eyes, turned around, folded my arms across my chest, and
said, "Okay. Tell me a story." In my short acting career I’ve faced enough tough audiences to know how to be one myself,
and it worked. Aunt Amy, usually so calm and self-possessed, was obviously nervous. She stammered at first, not meeting
my eyes, before she managed to tell me her little tale of woe.
Years ago--before I was even born--Aunt Amy met a guy, a student at U.W. Madison. This was in 1970, back in the heyday of
student protests. The boy had been young, handsome, and passionately idealistic, and my aunt fell in love with him. But
Moomie disapproved of him and his long hair and his lofty ideals. She disapproved violently and wouldn't let Aunt Amy see
him. And my aunt was such a slave to duty that she obeyed.
So the boy ended up falling in love with someone else and got married, lost to my aunt forever. At first she hated my
grandmother because of it, but eventually she forgave her as she came to see that the boy really had been wrong for her.
You see, as the 70’s wore on, and so many of the 60’s radicals settled down to a "respectable" life, he never lost his
idealism, never stopped fighting for some cause or another. And Aunt Amy valued nothing so much as respectability.
When my aunt finished telling me all this, I almost felt sorry for her. But it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together to
figure out the punch line to that story, and it explained a lot that I’d only ever guessed at before. I said, "He was Daddy, wasn’t
he."
Aunt Amy nodded and looked away. I followed her gaze to the blackened husk which was all that was left of the cabin. I
shivered and clutched my coat close around my neck. "I’m staying here for a while," I said. "I’ll be warm enough in the car.
You go on home."
She grasped my arm before I could turn away, and she made one last-ditch attempt to justify herself. She said, "Maya,
please. I was only trying to save you. You didn’t seem to understand that that boy was already dead. I couldn’t risk you
throwing your life away on him."
I flashed her a bitter smile and said, "Aunt Amy, Poppy’s been dead for what? Thirty years? And you don’t seem to care that
Moomie doesn’t realize that he’s dead."
With her typical righteous indignation, she said that Moomie had refused to believe my grandfather wasn’t ever coming back
until finally she had given up trying to convince her otherwise.
I said, "Fine. But you know what, Aunt Amy? This wasn’t about me at all." I pointed at the burned-out cabin and was in tears
as I went on. "It was about Brett. When I got interested in him, he got close to you too by extension, and you got scared. And
since everyone else in this town is so spooked by zombies, it was easy to get a mob of them out here. And you all killed
him. Well, don’t do me any more favors."
She tried to tell me that they had only meant to scare him away, and I said, "Oh. Well then, it’s okay, isn’t it? You had good
intentions. You didn’t mean to kill him. But guess what, Aunt Amy? He is dead ... again. So I’m safe now, and you can go
home happy."
She went, but I don’t think she went happy.
#
I tried to stay awake all night, bundled up in my wool coat and Aunt Amy’s down-filled parka, which she loaned me before she
left. I told myself it was sort of a wake for Brett, but it was more like my own private pity party, my thoughts ranging from Poor
me to How dare they and back again. At some point I must have dozed off though, because one minute the sky was dark,
and the next, I was opening my eyes to see pink and lavender clouds in the eastern sky.
The previous night’s snowstorm had left only a dusting of snow on the ground and trees, which reflected a dim shade of
purple from the sky. From where I sat, I could also see the black fringes of Muskrat Pond, and the whole scene would have
been starkly beautiful if it hadn’t been blighted by the charred ruins of the cabin, now cold and silent. In any case, it reminded
me of the dream that woke me up the night before, and I found myself wondering if it might have been more than just a
dream.
Perhaps in my sleep I had overheard my aunt organizing that lynch mob on the telephone, and my subconscious mind had
built a dream around such hints. Maybe, but I preferred to think that Brett’s mind had called out to me, and somehow, in my
dreaming state, I had heard his call for help. Okay, maybe that was just wishful thinking, an attempt to make Brett larger-
than-life, to ennoble a lost love. But the more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that had to be it. It could, after
all, explain how zombies communicate with each other: by telepathy.
Then, as if I wasn’t being morose enough already, I was struck with a macabre desire to sift through the remains of the cabin
and search for Brett’s body, to make sure he was really dead this time. I can’t say I have ever considered myself a brave
person, or even an extraordinarily adventurous one, so it must have been morbid curiosity that drove me to it.
Picking my way through the debris, I couldn’t find any trace of a corpse, and I began to feel there was some hope that Brett
hadn’t been there after all. But surely that mob hadn’t been so stupid as to surround an empty building. They must have had
some evidence he was there. They must have seen his face in one of the windows or something, right?
I was walking around, confused but hopeful, when suddenly I felt the ground tremble beneath me. My first thought, from
years of living in Los Angeles, was that it was an earthquake. But in Wisconsin? Then a hand thrust up out of the ground
and grabbed my ankle, and I screamed bloody murder.
#
Brett must have been instinctively afraid of fire, and when he saw all those torches and no other way of escape, he dug down
and buried himself for protection. After I helped him dig himself out, he staggered down to the lake and washed himself off.
The ice-cold water didn’t seem to bother him, but just the thought of it sent shivers down my spine.
When he came back, I told him that once I noticed his class ring on the hand that was clutching my ankle, I’d felt so foolish
for screaming. I swear he smiled at me then and whispered my name.
Well, that was all the encouragement I needed. I packed the boy into my rental car, sneaked back into the house without
waking Aunt Amy or Moomie, got my bags, and we were on our way to the airport.
It turned out to be a sunny day, and with a bit of fresh snow on everything, it was all so bright. As we were driving though the
desolate farmlands of northern Illinois on our way to O’Hare airport, I called Darryl. I’d left my aunt a note telling her I forgave
her, figuring that was good enough for now, but I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye to Darryl.
I told him what had happened and that I was taking Brett to L.A. where I didn't think anyone would notice he was a zombie. I
thought Darryl would be just a wee bit understanding, but no. He practically screamed, "Maya, this is crazy!" Like I didn’t
know what I was doing. He said, "Whether or not anyone notices, he is a zombie."
I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t help it. Darryl’s a sweetheart, but honestly, sometimes he can be such a downer about the
pickiest little things. "Okay, Darryl. Yes. He is a zombie," I said, smiling over at Brett and giving him a wink. He was so cute
sitting there; I swear he’d have blushed if he hadn’t been one of the living dead. "But look, Darryl,” I said, “I really think I can
change him."
END
Return to page 2
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