Elton rushes after her with Dingus at his side. Tiff's leap into action takes them into the large family room off the kitchen. Memory floods Elton in the light peeking through the boards; he remembers his brother and his friends leaving him here when he was much younger. Just a kid, really— maybe twelve, maybe younger. Their laughter haunts this house; he can remember the way it sounded when they got in the car and drove away, when he chased them down the driveway with tears streaming down his face.
They had only intended for it to be a harmless prank and came back to get him almost immediately after driving out of sight, but the fear of hearing the car drive away as he stands in this large room, like he's all alone again strikes him. He isn't that kid anymore, and he isn't alone, but there it is: the same old fear. His brother was mortified by how terrified Elton was and tried to make it up to him after-the-fact. He had long forgiven Paul, but he may have milked it a time or two.
Honestly, that made the two of them much closer than they probably ever would have been otherwise. His brother is his best friend now. Elton wouldn't have it any other way. (Well, he wishes his brother would let him come live in Vancouver with him, but he understands.)
The family room is largely unchanged from when Elton stood in it all those years ago. All manner of old furniture has been piled into this room, covered by large, dusty white sheets like the ghosts of moving in and moving out. The one thing that Elton can tell is different is the fact all the windows have been boarded up. In fact, now that he has a much better look at them as he follows Tiff to the entryway of the family room, he can see the boards are quite new. It's a great indication that someone has been here recently.
With zero hesitation, Tiff snaps her fingers as a signal for Kepler to follow her and scales the stairs two at a time. The beam of her flashlight marks her path, winding up curved steps to the second floor, lime UFO under-beams on dark steps and exposed railings.
Elton flags behind just a touch in the time allotted for taking notice of the new boards on the windows; he only started moving faster when he heard Tiff's feet scampering up the steps. Soon enough, he can see Kepler's long rat tail turn the corner onto a landing and up to the next floor. The crash comes again, but he thinks it's only louder now because both of them are on the same floor.
"Hey, slow down!" he hisses. "We don't want to rush into... whatever that is." Was that louder than intended?
Hand on the door the noise seems to be coming from, she glances at him over her shoulder, eyebrows raised. "That's the only way! This isn't a horror movie, Ellie, it's real life."
"I know! Exactly," He hisses at her as quietly as he could with her still able to hear.
"Then there's no reason to hesitate. It doesn't care about cinema."
"Just.. I don't know. My experiences in this sort of realm are looking for ghosts in old graveyards, a few EVPs, and this ding dong."
Dingus looks up to Elton and wags his tail.
She palms the door impatiently. "You're going to get more whether you like it or not."
"Fuck it. Open the door."
She didn't even need the go-ahead. She does it anyway.
The creaking door opens like a can of worms to a foul stench that makes Elton's face twist in disgust and Tiff's frown in familiarity. They know what it is in the same way most people do— instinct and experience. Death. Decay.
The source is obvious. There's a corpse standing in the middle of the room. A man's corpse. The flesh that's left on the bones is rotting and has dirt clinging to it, decomposition-green, putrid, and writhing with ripe white maggots, like the zombie has been freshly exhumed. Elton can't quite place the age of the man, but he can clearly see that he's dead.
In contrast, Tiff can't keep herself from grinning. She pans the beam of her flashlight up it and bares her teeth in delight. It's easy not to flinch when you've worked so many decomposition cases and your boss keeps indulging you in your weird obsession with prodding corpses. It's even easier when you just want to see what's making this thing tick— some sort of virus, some sort of magic, some sort of deep-seated curse of grief and rage.
Turning its head quickly and harsher than a normal neck should, the creature makes a noise somewhere between a grumble and a growl. Clearly, it has noticed them crowded in the doorway.
"Okay, well..." Elton swallows. "This is both a massive fucking surprise and also not. You said necromancy and I'm looking at it."
"There it is," she breathes. "There it is. Bring forth the donkeys."
Elton chooses not to ask about the donkeys.
Something in the corner blocked by the door makes a shuffling noise. This gives the zombie cause to look away from the group and settle into some sort of crouching stance.
Is it making itself wider? Elton can't figure it out. Near Tiff's ear, he whispers, "What the fuck do we do?"
"Just— one second." Tiff peeks behind the door.
A grinning skull meets Tiff's gaze and its connected skeleton body back pedals, bones rattling on its hands as it waves her off.
She brings a hand to her face, keeping the other, with the still-shining flashlight in it, near her hip. "Oh my god, that's so neat! Are you sentient?"
The skeleton nods at Tiff, jaw clacking with every bob. It points at the zombie and backs further into the corner. The zombie simply continues to stay in its weird crouch and looks back and forth between Tiff and the skeleton.
"Hold on, hold on." She holds up a finger. "I have an idea, and maybe we can talk if it works. Give me a second."
Tiff rummages through her bag until she comes up with what she knows she'll probably need: two pills from an unlabeled bottle and a centrifuge-type test tube full of a peach-colored liquid from one of the exterior pockets of her bag. Knowing Elton will probably object (people often do), she shoves the pills into her mouth and downs them with the solution before he can say anything. This particular combination has been a little more theoretical than she would like, but that's true of everything she hasn't found a consistent formula for yet. It's a trial-and-error process where everything tastes bitter, and sometimes you need to take something you invented for a slightly different purpose in tandem with something you made for semi-psychic ones in the hopes that you'll be able to talk to a skeleton behind a door in a haunted house in Canada. That's par for the course. Improv, or something.
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and looks back to the skeleton. "Did it work?"
Looking at Tiff with its hollow, empty eye sockets, the skeleton nods.
"Great." The taste in her mouth sucks. She wishes she brought something to drink other than old water.
The skeleton speaks, without vocal cords or diaphragm, but with clear intent. "How intriguing! I would be more impressed by your magical ability, but I myself appear to be quite the testament to the feat in that regard."
"You really are. You're an absolute wonder."
"As much as I'd love to chat, and I would, there appears to be another undead creature blocking my exit. He seems to be quite insistent I stay put while the master of this house is gone." Bony hands gesture towards the zombie and then fall to its sides. Hollow sockets peer at Tiff, watching like they're expecting her to do something.
She doesn't say anything about how it's not actually magic. It's a pedantic line of thought she doesn't need to entertain right now. "The master of the house— would that be Boris Covington? How come he... created you? Or animated you?"
Elton can't see beyond the door, as he was behind Tiff, but he can guess what's going on. "Is there a skeleton behind the door, Tiff?"
"Yeah!" She can't keep the excitement out of her voice. Head on a swivel, she turns around briefly to beam wide megawatts at him. "Isn't this so cool?"
"I suppose it is! There's also a zombie there."
"Yes, Elton. I see the zombie. He's also— and you shouldn't be surprised I'm saying this— He's also very cool."
"Oddly, he hasn't attacked. Is he not hostile unless we try something with our new friend?"
"Well, they said it's keeping them here 'while the master is away,' so—" She looks to the skeleton again, mind already whirling on the idea of throwing something at the zombie and reaping the delicious consequences. "What exactly does it mean?"
Their new skeleton friend brings a hand to its chin and strokes it like there's skin and hair there. For a moment, it reminds Tiff of Elton making the same gesture. "Another one of you, eh?"
"Yeah, he's behind me." Tiff gestures over her shoulder to the hall beyond the doorway.
"I guess that does help in this situation. The more the merrier!"
"So, about Boris. Or the master. Who may or may not be Boris Covington."
"Ah, yes... the master. Not my master, but our friend over there seems to think so." If the skeleton had eyes to roll, they probably would do so. "I was a real person once., so no one created me other than my parents and the Lord."
Tiff grins. "Gross!"
"I died in 1954, if that helps. A hunting accident. At least I think it was? You think I was murdered?"
"Could have been, but there's no way to know without knowing more, you know? Also, I'm not— legally, I'm not allowed to decide whether someone was murdered or not. That's more my boss's jurisdiction. I just handle the bodies— Um— I'm going to throw something at the zombie."
She throws her still-shining flashlight at the undead man in the center of the room.
The flashlight bounces off the dead man's head with a sickening and oddly-wet sound. The connection point collapses in on itself. The zombie turns its head toward Tiff and straightens its body up from the strange widened crouch. Without warning, it lunges at her.
Elton yelps and stumbles back, colliding with the wall behind him. "Fuck!"
This, however, is enough for Elton's yellow labrador to see the creature as a threat. A horrific sound of bones crunching and tendons snapping came from directly behind Tiff for a moment before a canine-like creature jumps in front of her. Dingus isn't exactly a dog anymore, even if he resembles one. Steam flows from his mouth as he bares his long, yellow teeth. The Hellhound's coal-black fur stands on end like the bristles of a wire brush; it would probably feel fairly similar.
And of course, it's about two times the size of Dingus and his yellow lab form.
The zombie, as expected, doesn't care nor seem impressed by the new obstacle in its path to Tiff. It simply barrels into Dingus and goes to bite the Hellhound wherever its loose, blackened teeth find purchase. Dingus does the same in return, searing the creature's rotten flesh as his teeth sink in.
There's no real time for Tiff to think about the implications of this kind of zombie biting something. In the moment, she sidesteps the oncoming zombie and incoming hellhound, pulls out her ray gun, and fires at the undead head.
She's still too close. The zombie tears itself free from the hellhound's mouth, leaving cartilage and decomposed muscle behind. Maggots spill from the torn, paper-thin skin and squirm on the wooden floor. It doesn't bite her; instead, it grabs her by the neck and pins her to the floor, squeezing until the spots set in, she thinks about Kroakulus, and she thanks god she can't die. She puts a foot against its chest, but trying to kick it off of her does little to help. She has been pinned by the undead enough times in recent memory that she really should know better.
Watching everything from the wall across the hall from the door, Elton breathes again, "Fuck."
He's aware Dingus is coming back in for the attack by trying to wrench it off of Tiff by its ankle, but he rushes in anyway and attempts to plant his foot into the side of the zombie's head. The zombie's skin tears, revealing bone; Dingus sinks his teeth in further. Long canines splinter the periosteum like the perfect point for pulling. The zombie scrapes across the floor. What remains of its clothing catches on splintering, unfinished wood. Still trying to catch her breath, Tiff pushes herself up off the ground, from her back to immediate standing. (She hopes Denny knows she's grateful.) There's no time to really stand there and rub her crushed windpipe, since the zombie has turned its sights toward the guy who tried to kick it in the head.
She steps between them, readies her aim, and fires again, fully intent on getting it between the eyes and keeping Elton from a life-changing bite. Laser beams aren't the most threatening thing in the world, but they do the trick. It burns through the bone to the gray matter beneath.
Elton scrambles back a bit on his ass. Tiff stepping in to save it causes him to fall back, to hit the splintering wood below. He nearly had his meat ripped from his bones by rotten teeth, so he's grateful that Tiff blasted the thing in its skull.
As an extension of the blow dealt to it, the zombie keels over backwards, back arched as it hits the ground. Tiff steps forward, lowering the ray gun to her waist like she used to do with the handgun. There's no smoke to blow away. There never really was. She still thinks it would look cooler that way.
She's seen Zombieland. Denny made her watch it. She knows what you have to do with the zombie. Some part of her doesn't trust the laser that hit its brain to have properly severed the spinal cord, even if that isn't what kills a zombie in actual practice— and, truth be told, she doesn't want to take this thing and flip it over to get to the back of its neck.
She stands over it for a moment, looking down into dead-glass eyes and slack jaw. Dingus, still hellish, pants next to her while Kepler squeaks from the corner. She tunes them both out.
She frowns at it. She would have preferred being able to study and observe it. This works just as well.
Tiff raises her foot and brings it down on the zombie's head until there's nothing really left but the pulp of what it used to be. Black, sludgy blood splashes up her jeans and boots; bone gets caught in the laces.
Still on his ass, Elton tries to catch his breath. He guesses Tiff maybe wasn't done with the creature post-laser-beam when he watches her boot, slamming down on its head over and over again, fling rotten chunks of flesh and brain matter everywhere. He nearly retches when several gooey splashes hit his face, but he doesn't dare let anything like that happen. Appearing as if he's unphased by all of this is key. Absolutely! Cool, collected— Elton Castle.
His gaze shifts to his hellhound who was now sitting on his big hellacious butt, watching Tiff squish out the final bits of zombie brain. She twists her heel into it like she's squeezing a teabag. (She probably drinks tea or something. Whatever.)
Elton looks around Dingus. "Holy fuck. Is it over?"
The skeleton mirrors Elton's question, peeking around from behind the door. "Yes, is our fetid friend well and truly dead?"
She doesn't bother wiping the backsplash from her face. "Should be."