Nigel [HHWC]

The only reason Nigel didn't crap his pants when he walked into the strangely silent ballroom was that he'd already been and "he was very thorough" as his mother used to proudly announce to the neighbours long after he grew old enough to feel embarrassed. Nothing came out of that end, but his dinner and coffee, on the other hand, threw themselves up and out of his mouth in one continuous, palate-searing flow, all over his lovingly polished, purple Doc Martens.
The scene before him was horrific. There were body parts everywhere, even on the posh, fake crystal chandelier. But then again, said chandelier was lying on the faux wooden floor of the hotel ballroom, its massive chain barely visible under all the entrails and other... stuff. He looked up and where the vaulted ceiling - the only authentic thing in this place - used to be, there was nothing. He could see the night sky.
After wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he let his eyes roam the room in search of survivors while fumbling for his cell. With trembling fingers, he dialled the emergency services and got someone on the line. He explained the situation in a hoarse voice and the woman on the other end made him repeat himself a few times, asking trick questions. It was Halloween Night, you see, the worst time of the year to be needing help. Finally, she told him to hide somewhere safe and that help was on its way. It was probably the tremulous voice and frequent swallowing sounds that convinced her.
He felt a little better, but not by much. The hotel, a converted church, conveniently called The Church Hotel, was in the middle of nowhere. The once bustling villages around it had all died out, killed by the lure of the shiny cities. The countryside was fresh out of young blood and the last oldster had been dead for five years. He was buried, him and all the others, in what used to be the churchyard, right behind the hotel's service entrance.
It could be hours before anyone came.
All Nigel could do was find a crawl space to hide in and wait. He gave the ballroom one last once-over in the hope of one feebly wagging finger, a faint moan, any sign of life. But this room was Death's domain, staked and claimed. And it stank.
The initial shock to his system had been visual. Now that he had taken action and could do nothing more, his sense of smell revived with a kick, like the well-oiled engine of his beloved Honda. The stench rushed up his nostrils and stabbed him through the eyes. He staggered back out of the room, trying to keep his stomach from committing suicide by jumping out of his mouth. That brought him to his knees, with his forehead almost touching the horrid carpet. He was still in that position when he heard a tremendous whacking sound, followed by what sounded like something heavy falling down.
He didn't dare turn around. He used to be mad at those characters in horror movies who swiveled their eyes excruciatingly slowly toward the source of a sudden noise. Now he understood. His whole being contracted itself into a tiny homunculus, on its knees, butt cheeks clenched in a death grip, absolutely motionless, suspended in the centre of his chest. The instinctive, sharp intake of foul air triggered by the broken silence behind him seemed to stretch itself out to infinity. He found he didn't need to breathe again. His mind had become one with everything around him. He was pure focus. His terror had crystallised and merged with him, breaching the space between subject and object. All these years wondering what all those noodleheads were prattling about, satori and what-not. Now he got it. What a time to have an epiphany. Then, something stirred behind him.
As it turned out, he wasn't as thorough as he thought. Fortunately, it was only a little one.
His own pungent scent dragged him back into his body. In one swift motion, he pulled himself up and pivoted to the left toward the emergency exit at the end of the corridor. He bounded forward, as light footed as a gazelle, a wonder to behold, and the perfectly formed little turd bouncing about in his Y-fronts didn't bother him in the least.
Whatever it was he was running away from didn't follow him. By the time he reached the backyard with the giant wheelie bins, all was quiet again. He eyed the bins for a minute, contemplating climbing into one of them, but the thought of not being able to see what was coming made him drop the idea. He looked around and saw the stone wall with the rusty gate in the middle. It led to the old churchyard, the very churchyard which got the hotel fully booked every Halloween Night.
This year, The Church Hotel had been reserved well in advance by the organisers of ConCon, the Conspiracy Convention. It was an ideal setup: isolated spot, Halloween costume party, face covering mandatory, no name tags. The participants only knew each other by their online handles and were under no obligation to reveal even those. Near perfect anonymity. Nigel had been sent by his paper to cover the event.
Conspiracy was getting popular, to the point where the hardcore conspiracists were starting to roll their eyes in disgust. Conspiracy going mainstream, imagine that. This had all the hallmarks of an NWO manoeuvre: weakening the movement through dilution. It was becoming cool to mistrust The Powers That Be. The only thing, so far, that had kept the movement from being trivialised this way was the stigma of paranoid nuttery. Not anymore. Paranoid was the new bipolar.
ConCon had been formed specifically to address the problem. Of course, the anonymity measures were a double-edged sword; the convention could easily be infiltrated by Disinfo Agents. So the organisers had leaked news of the event and its venue to the press in a sort of reverse psychology approach, hoping to make it less tempting to the cloak-and-dagger types. Nigel's paper had obliged by plastering a "Disinfo Agents welcome" headline all over the front page, in exchange for an exclusive.
Right now, Nigel couldn't care less about his article. All he wanted was safety. He could sneak back into the hotel and dodge the thing apparently still lurking there or he could venture among the graves. He pushed the gate open and walked in.
He headed straight for the fancy memorial stone, still imposing in spite of the obvious neglect, and forced his way through the weeds until he was safely ensconced behind it. He leaned his weary back against the damp and moldy stone and found himself staring at a dilapidated mausoleum. He crept toward it, not that he had any choice as the weeds were easily knee high in that part of the graveyard. The crypt's wrought iron gate was hanging off its hinges but the heavy wooden door appeared securely locked.
As he got closer, he realised that the churchyard was ancient and that gave him the creeps, but not for long. Nothing could freak him out more than what he had seen in the ballroom. As he got nearer, he saw that the old ornate padlock on the door was so rusty, it looked about to fall off by itself. Nigel shouldered his way in and the lock offered no resistance.
Once inside, he sat with his back against the door and his feet braced in front of him. He would be no match for the thing - or things - responsible for the dismemberment and disemboweling of two hundred people plus staff, but he might be able to make the crypt entrance look undisturbed from a distance.
And so he waited for rescue to arrive. He even fell asleep. A low, rasping voice shocked him into full consciousness. He was on his feet before he'd had time to unglue his eyelids.
There was a man sitting on the only coffin in the place. He was smiling horribly. It wasn't his fault though; half of his face was missing. One disquieting fact was that he wasn't missing any teeth. For some reason, Nigel couldn't get over that. He kept staring at the old geezer's mouth in morbid fascination.
The old man, dressed in dungarees and plaid shirt, repeated what he had just said: "You're one lucky young fella."
On hearing that, Nigel finally reached the seemingly blasé stage of profound shock. He stopped feeling anything other than detached curiosity; he was a spectator of his very own existence. It was with clinical precision, in a clipped voice he'd never heard before that he asked: "how did you get in here?"
But the old man was trundling down his own tracks. "If you hadn't needed to take a dump at just the right time, the zombie outbreak from outer space would have got you too."
Nigel, still in investigative mode, went on with his questioning: "How do you know all that?".
But the old guy kept on going: "There's one other survivor, you know. He tried to bash your brains out with a fake XVIIIth century bronze candelabrum because he thought you were one of 'them' but he managed to knock himself out instead. I told you: you're one lucky fella."
The word 'survivor' broke through Nigel's trance. He leaned forward, just a little bit. "What about the huge hole?" The old man rolled his eyes in a truly disturbing way; it couldn't be helped as he had no eyelids.
"Those idiots on the Mothership. They wanted to find out how low they could fly before the reports of a giant flying saucer were taken seriously. They took out the roof of the hotel and then they realised that they wouldn't be able to get back up without letting out some ballast. So they dumped their entire cargo of experimental zombies through the hole and took off. You can imagine what happened next."
At this point, Nigel was all ears (the old man didn't have any. Nigel noticed that when the geezer scratched his temple with his bony index finger). "So, where are all the zombies now?"
"Oh, no worries there", said the old man. "The earth's atmosphere didn't agree with them. They just had enough time to slaughter everyone - well, minus two - then, they all dropped dead, you know what I mean, and decomposed at an accelerated rate. The world is safe, for now."
"Did the guy who tried to kill me also need to go to the loo at the right time, then?" Nigel asked next.
"Him? Oh no. He was the only Disinfo Agent that didn't fall for the obvious trick. He knew something was up. When the ShBeeptHitTheFan he was on his laptop in his room, reporting to the Head Reptile, or whatever they're called."
"Holy crap." Nigel said. "So, you're saying I could come out now and nothing would try to tear me to pieces?"
"That's right", the old man said. And he slid off the coffin, gently tapped on the lid and whispered "Sorry, Squire. I had to get somewhere to rest my weary ischial bones for a bit."
By now, the light of a new day was finding its way through the narrow openings of the small latticed window on the wall behind the coffin. Nigel was facing the fading form of an animated corpse and it didn't bother him any. "You never told me your name."
The old man shook his maggot-eaten head and sighed a surprisingly profound sigh, given that he had no lungs to breathe with.
"Nigel, my boy. Don't you recognise your old Grandpa? By the way, you didn't bother showing up at the funeral five years ago. It made me feel sad." And then, he vanished into thin air. At the very same time, the door to the crypt was pushed open, sending Nigel sprawling head first into the esteemed Squire's coffin. A uniformed cop rushed in and shouted: "We've got a live one!" And wouldn't you know it? His face was beaming with happiness.