The Avenging Corpse

Short Story

The Avenging Corpse

By Lawrence Kadzitche

The house, a sprawling bungalow, stood at the foot of Mulanje Mountain. Inside, the tall man sitting in an armchair by the fire reading a bible in the posh lounge on that cold and foggy night would be dead within the following hour.

It was seven in the evening. He had not yet locked the front door. Absorbed in the good old book, he did not hear the front door open and a man slide into the lounge. The man who entered was equally tall and a spitting image of the man reading the bible.

It was this man, who resembled him in every aspect, who was going to kill him. “Hello, John!”

John looked up with a start. “Jimmy?” he asked incredulously with a frown.

“Your one and only brother,” Jimmy said with mock affection.

“It can’t be,” John said shaking his head. “I thought…”

“I was dead?” Jimmy finished for him. “I’m still around, my brother.”

John got unsteadily to his feet. He had heard that Jimmy had been shot dead by the police in a botched armed robbery in Mocambique. Although he was his twin brother, John had felt no loss. It was like hearing that a man who had killed your children had died in a car crash.

You see, Jimmy was what you would call the black sheep of the Matiki family. He had caused untold problems to his parents. He had stolen their money, sold their property. He had been a favourite child of their mother who had tried to make him stop his bad behaviour.

But he had gone from bad to worse. At 25 he had raped two under aged daughters of a family friend and run away. They had later heard that he had crossed into Mocambique where he had turned into an armed robber. This had broken their mother’s heart. She had died a few years later.

John knew his brother’s presence meant one thing: trouble with a capital T. “So what happened?” he asked sinking back into his chair.

Jimmy swaggered to the fridge and took a bottle of beer. He opened the bottle with his teeth and spat out the bottle top. He took a sip and sighed contentedly.

“It wasn’t the police who shot me,” Jimmy broke off, pulled a chair and sat down uninvited facing his brother. “We successfully got away; we had robbed a payroll for a big estate. But my three friends double crossed me. One of them shot me and they left me for dead. I guess they thought sharing the loot among four people was one too many.”

John stared miserably at him.

“But that was a very bad mistake. They should have made sure I was really dead,” Jimmy continued unpleasantly. “You know me, John. I wouldn’t let such scum go unpunished. It would be a disgrace to the Matiki family, not so?”

John cleared his throat to avoid making any comment.

“When I recovered, I hunted down those swine. Each one of them died where I found him. They died very terrible deaths, those men,” Jimmy said with relish. “I caught up with Joao in Nampula. I cut off his genitals and fed them to dogs while he watched. I laughed as he screamed…”

“You can spare me the details,” John interrupted him. “So you thought of finally coming home or you’re just visiting?”

“Well, I heard you and dad had finally made the family business big,” he replied casually. “So I came back to take over.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Let’s be honest; you guys cannot let me run the business, you know. You would think I would mess up things,” Jimmy said in a voice tinged with self pity. “So I just have to take it from you by force.”

John frowned, watching his brother closely. What did he mean by ‘take it by force?’

“Well, I retired dad. I arranged that he die in his sleep before I came here. A pillow placed over his face and he was gone. You know he had a bad heart,” Jimmy said.

Fear crept on John. He knew Jimmy too well to know that he was not joking. He suddenly felt hot and wiped sweat forming on his brow with the back of his hand.

“I need a drink,” he said hoarsely.

“I’ll get one for you,” Jimmy said getting to his feet quickly.

He came back with a glass of beer and handed it over to his brother.

“Back to business. You’re still young, I cannot retire you,” Jimmy said. “I’m here to replace you.”

John swigged at his beer to hide his nervousness. “Look here, Jimmy. Was it necessary to kill dad? We could have talked this over…”

Jimmy cut him with a wave of his hand. “You know you wouldn’t have said that if I had come in peace. Anyway, the decision to get rid of you has already been made.”

The tall figure of Jimmy sitting in a chair opposite him in a bossing attitude swam before John’s eyes. There was something wrong with him. He felt dizzy. He emptied his glass of beer but still did not feel better.

“You’ll be dead in a few minutes, John,” Jimmy whispered. “You may now say your last prayers. Greet mom and dad for me when you get there.”

John knew his brother was about to kill him. He must trick him and try to get help. He managed to stand up but suddenly collapsed back into the chair.

Jimmy laughed. “I told you that you that you will be dead in a few minutes. The beer. I put some poison in it while I was getting it for you. Cunning, isn’t it?”

“You’ll not get away with this…” John croaked.

“Oh, I will. You remember that bottomless hole at the bottom of the mountain? When you’re dead, I’ll dump your body in that hole. As long as nobody finds your body, they will never know you died. I’ll assume your identity, sell the business and live like a king elsewhere. Or even continue living here.”

With a sickening feeling, John knew his brother was right. Jimmy could pass for him anywhere at anytime. With everyone thinking Jimmy had died in Mocambique no one would ever think of him as impersonating someone else.

“So you see I’m right,” Jimmy said with glee. He looked at his wrist watch. “You’ve two minutes to live.”

By the end of the next two minutes, John was dead. Jimmy drank several bottles of beer to celebrate his victory. An hour later, he picked John’s body and put it on his back the way women carry a child, putting the corpse’s arms round his neck and the legs round his waist.

He opened the front door and stepped into the dark, foggy night. He set off towards the hole without any fear of being seen as it was very unlikely people would be out at such a time in the foul weather.

When he arrived at his destination, he went to the fringe of the hole and swung the body off his back. To his horror, the body did not leave his back. The weight of the body tipped him off balance. As he hung precariously on the edge of the pit, he tried desperately to tear the body off his back. But the dead man clung firmly to his body.

As he fell into the pit, he wondered how his dead brother could do this. It was as he was hitting the rocks below that he realized what had gone wrong. It was a stupid error; how could he have overlooked that?

Muscles and joints of a body stiffen a few hours after death; the body had clung to him because the muscles and joints had stiffened. And the muscles and joints had failed to relax because rigor mortis had set in. And with this realization, he died.

End.