Title: The Evil Undead (One/?)
Author: Randall Stone
Disclaimer: All characters are belong to someone else.
Summary: Xander finds out more about his Uncle Rory's past than
he ever wanted to know.
Notes:
Spoilers: S1-3
Clearly the Uncle Rory we saw in Hell's Bells was some kind of
cheap imposter. What would a story be like with the _real_ Uncle
Rory interacting with the Scoobs?
This story takes place in season 3 some short time after the
events of The Zeppo.
Category: B/X
Rating: PG-ish- nothing worse than what's on the show.
Feedback: Yes please.
*****
"Here we are." Xander pulled to a stop outside of a picturesque log
cabin. "401 Nowhere Lane."
"Cool. Let's take a look inside."
Buffy hopped out of the car and walked to the front door. Xander
grabbed the polaroid camera off the back seat and followed her. He
was standing directly in front of the door when Buffy threw it open
to reveal a horrific scene.
Xander took one look inside and immediately ran about ten feet away
and doubled over, vomiting. Buffy looked in, paled and took a
couple of steps backwards. She was still contemplating the scene
inside when Xander managed to compose himself and return to her side.
The door opened on to the single main room of the cabin. That room
looked like the inside of a slaughterhouse. Blood was everywhere-
on the furniture, on the walls, pooling on the floor. Miscellaneous
body parts were scattered around the room like some kind of gruesome
confetti.
"God, Buff, what could do something like this?"
"Not vampires. They wouldn't let all the blood go to waste."
"Thanks, this image wasn't disturbing enough before."
"I'm just saying." Buffy shrugged. "Come on, let's see if we can
find anything inside."
Xander followed her in, stepping carefully around the larger pools
of blood on the floor. While Buffy explored ahead of him, Xander
readied his camera and started taking pictures of the carnage in the
main room.
When he turned around to get a picture from another angle, something
caught his eye.
"Hey Buffy, take a look at this."
On the same wall as the front door, there was a message scrawled in
what looked like human blood.
WE ARE GOING TO SWALLOW YOUR SOULS!!
"Demons have the strangest taste in interior decoration."
Buffy commented when she saw the writing. Xander managed a weak
grin in response.
While Xander took some pictures of the writing on the wall, Buffy
walked into the only other room in the cabin, the bedroom.
The door to the room looked like it had been torn off its hinges.
As Buffy walked through the doorway, she could see evidence of other
barricades that had been placed in front of the door and had been
destroyed.
Leaning up against the bed was the only recognizably human corpse in
the cabin. It looked like it had been an average looking man in his
mid forties. Buffy didn't need any of her Slayer expertise to
determine the cause of death. The man's partially shredded shirt
could not hide the fact that most of his ribs had been caved in.
The body was still clutching a strange looking book in its left
hand. Its right hand held a small portable tape recorder. A large,
blood stained axe sat on the floor at its feet.
Buffy pried the tape recorder out of the corpse's hand and, out of
curiousity, rewound the tape a little ways and hit play.
"-the last of them. It looks like the spell worked." The voice on
the tape sounded weak and breathless. "They already got Norma and
the kids, there's nothing for me to live for now. Not that that's
an option, anyways."
There was a pause, as the voice seemed to be trying to work up the
strength to talk.
"I hope that anybody listening to this tape can avoide my fate. I
thought I was above the consequences of my actions. Please, don't
try to use the Nec- the Necro... the..."
There was a thump, then silence.
---
Xander pulled to a stop outside Buffy's house.
"You have everything?"
"Let's see. One very strange looking book. Check. A collection of
tapes from a dead man, labeled 'Notes and Observations', check."
"Don't forget some seriously disturbing photographs."
Xander handed the stack of Polaroids over to Buffy. Neither one of
them noticed that one of the pictures displaying the message on the
wall slipped from the stack and fell in the space between the
passenger seat and the door.
"I think that's all. Thanks again for the ride."
"No problem. I'll be a little late to our after school Scooby
meeting- I have to take the car over to Uncle Rory's after
school."
"I thought he was letting you borrow it for a while?"
"Yeah, but he insists that he's the only one that takes proper care
of his baby. He likes to give it a check up once a month."
"How very obsessive of him."
"Yeah, he's a real character."
---
Rory Williams arrived home from the driving range feeling pretty
good about life. Twenty years of investing in the S-Mart employee
stock purchase program meant that he had been free of the daily
rat race for a while now. He'd even had enough money to move away
from Grand Rapids and settle down in the same California town as
his sister.
Times had changed, he thought as he walked into his home. Hell,
he had changed. He took a look at himself in the mirror. He was
still pretty solidly built- maybe carrying a few more pounds than
he used to, but nothing major. Some streaks of grey running through
his black hair lent him some dignity, he thought. And of course, he
still had the chin. The main thing that had changed about him were
his daily activities.
Most of his days were pretty uneventful, now. He worked on his
cars, or on his golf game. He may have had to move across the
country and change his name, but he had finally managed to escape
the demons that had haunted his youth.
Rory shook his head as he walked out to the garage. Looking back
on it, he wasn't sure how he had managed to survive all of the events
of his life. He still kept the shotgun and his chainsaw attachment
on the wall of his garage. He even had the old medieval gauntlet
around somewhere. Not that any of them saw much use any more.
Nowadays, he thought to himself as he attached the dustbuster to his
arm, he was more likely to use a more practical prosthetic.
Rory was whistling a happy tune to himself as he vacuumed out the
Bel Air that he was renting out to his nephew. Xander was a good
kid, but Rory remembered too well what he had been like as a
teenager to abandon the Chevy to Xander's tender care.
Rory's whistling was abruptly cut off when he opened the passenger
side door and a photograph fluttered down to the ground.
"Hello, what have we here?" The expression on Rory's face
transformed from curiousity to rage as he got a good look at the
picture's contents. "Damn it, not again! Not here!"
Rory ran inside and picked up the phone. He cradled it in his
shoulder as he dialed a number with his remaining hand.
"Hi, Jessica, it's me. Is Xander home? Do you know where he would
be at this time of night? The school library? OK, thanks."
---
Joyce Summers looked at the clock. It was six, and Buffy and Dawn
still weren't home. Joyce's temper was heating up as the dinner
sitting on the table was cooling off. It was bad enough that Buffy
was out at all hours of the night thanks to her Slaying duties, but
now Dawn was trying to latch on to her sister in order to avoid her
curfew.
Buffy didn't even feel the need to call home any more when she was
going to be staying late. Joyce had just about had it with all of
this unpredictability. She decided that today she was going to
drive out to the school and give Buffy and her Watcher a piece of
her mind.
---
Andrew nervously looked at the clock. Most of the kids still in
detention at six o'clock at night were real hard cases. He was only
there because the school had a strict 'zero tolerance' policy
regarding computer crimes.
Andrew looked around the room. He stood out as clearly the weakest
student among the ten or so still there. He didn't relish the
thought of making his way home with this crowd in a half hour.
---
"So, Giles, what wisdom do you have to bestow upon us this evening?"
Xander asked the librarian as he entered the library from his
office.
"I just finished speaking with some of my more obscure associates.
They have confirmed my belief that what we have in our possession is
the Necronomicon."
"The what now?"
"The Necronomicon. The Book of the Dead. According to the
Watcher's Council it's little more than an old wives' tale. Legend
has it that it is bound in human flesh and inked in human blood."
Willow, who had been tracing her finger along the outside of the
book, drew her finger back as if burned. Dawn looked at Willow in
sympathy as she shuddered and snuggled deeper into Oz's embrace
while Giles continued.
"Written primarily in ancient Sumerian, the Necronomicon contains
spells that allow the caster to, among other things, raise the
spirits of the dead."
"I take it we're not talking Casper the friendly ghost here."
"I'm afraid not. The spirits tend to be quite violent."
"So can we slay them, or what?" Buffy was all business.
"I believe so. The spirits take the form of animated bodies, or
deadites."
"Deadites?" Angel spoke from the corner of the room. "I've heard
of those."
"Do you recall anything useful?" Giles asked. "My sources give
little more than the term."
"I don't remember much. The vampire that I heard it from was pretty
nuts. The only thing I know is that if deadites are in town, you
don't want to be there."
"Yes, well, the pictures from the cabin attest to that. Now, I am
going to listen to the audio tapes that we have to try to find out
exactly what happened out there. I have identified these books-"
Giles gestured to a stack of books on the library table. "- as
possibly having information regarding the Necronomicon. If you
would like to make yourselves useful?"
Everybody reluctantly agreed to start reading, and had soon divided
up the pile of books between them.
Some time later Xander was making a half hearted effort to read
through his assigned reference book while he listened to the tape
Giles was playing.
"...at last, my translation of the ritual is complete. I have
checked and re-checked my..."
At that moment the general silence in the library was broken with a
crash as the doors were kicked open. Silhouetted in the doorway was
an imposing figure of a man. His right arm appeared to end in a
chainsaw, while Xander could see the butt of what looked like a
shotgun strapped across his back. He also had a spare chainsaw
attached to his left hip.
"Where the hell is Xander Harris?"
Buffy, who had instinctively interposed herself between the stranger
and her friends, replied.
"If you want Xander, you're going to have to get through me first."
"...and everything is in order. I will now light the ceremonial
candles..." The tape continued to run in the background.
"Step aside girly, I need to talk to my nephew."
"Girly? Did you just call me girly?"
Rory ignored the death glare that Buffy was now directing his way as
he spotted Xander sitting behind her. Rory pulled the photo out of
his pocket and tossed it over to Xander.
"You want to tell me where you got this, Xander?"
"Um, there's a perfectly good explanation for all this..."
"...well, the only thing to do now is recite the incantation. Here
goes. Sha lo nab..."
"You see, it was for a school play-" Xander's equivocations were
interrupted by a shout from his uncle.
"The tape! Stop the tape!"
"...no reb ka pal..."
Everyone in the library stared at Rory as if he were crazy.
"You have to turn off the tape! Don't you understand?"
"...Ko rek mal! Ko rek mal! Ko rek mal!"
With this final invocation, the Necronomicon began to shudder like a
live animal. It rose, still shaking, to hover in the air above the
table. Ghostly streamers began to emanate from the book's cover and
circle around it. When the book was almost hidden from view by a
globe of these streamers, they suddenly exploded in all directions,
disappearing from sight.
The book then fell to the table with a thud. As it hit the table,
everybody in the library could hear the sound of all the doors
leading out of the school slamming shut.
Everyone in the room stood in stunned silence, staring at the
Necronomicon. It was Xander's uncle who spoke first.
"Crap."
***
The plot thickens...
Oh, and remember, you took the time to read, you can take the time
to write some feedback.
--Randy
Author: Randall Stone
Disclaimer: All characters are belong to someone else.
Summary: Xander finds out more about his Uncle Rory's past than
he ever wanted to know.
Notes:
Spoilers: S1-3
Clearly the Uncle Rory we saw in Hell's Bells was some kind of
cheap imposter. What would a story be like with the _real_ Uncle
Rory interacting with the Scoobs?
This story takes place in season 3 some short time after the
events of The Zeppo.
Category: B/X
Rating: PG-ish- nothing worse than what's on the show.
Feedback: Yes please.
*****
"Here we are." Xander pulled to a stop outside of a picturesque log
cabin. "401 Nowhere Lane."
"Cool. Let's take a look inside."
Buffy hopped out of the car and walked to the front door. Xander
grabbed the polaroid camera off the back seat and followed her. He
was standing directly in front of the door when Buffy threw it open
to reveal a horrific scene.
Xander took one look inside and immediately ran about ten feet away
and doubled over, vomiting. Buffy looked in, paled and took a
couple of steps backwards. She was still contemplating the scene
inside when Xander managed to compose himself and return to her side.
The door opened on to the single main room of the cabin. That room
looked like the inside of a slaughterhouse. Blood was everywhere-
on the furniture, on the walls, pooling on the floor. Miscellaneous
body parts were scattered around the room like some kind of gruesome
confetti.
"God, Buff, what could do something like this?"
"Not vampires. They wouldn't let all the blood go to waste."
"Thanks, this image wasn't disturbing enough before."
"I'm just saying." Buffy shrugged. "Come on, let's see if we can
find anything inside."
Xander followed her in, stepping carefully around the larger pools
of blood on the floor. While Buffy explored ahead of him, Xander
readied his camera and started taking pictures of the carnage in the
main room.
When he turned around to get a picture from another angle, something
caught his eye.
"Hey Buffy, take a look at this."
On the same wall as the front door, there was a message scrawled in
what looked like human blood.
WE ARE GOING TO SWALLOW YOUR SOULS!!
"Demons have the strangest taste in interior decoration."
Buffy commented when she saw the writing. Xander managed a weak
grin in response.
While Xander took some pictures of the writing on the wall, Buffy
walked into the only other room in the cabin, the bedroom.
The door to the room looked like it had been torn off its hinges.
As Buffy walked through the doorway, she could see evidence of other
barricades that had been placed in front of the door and had been
destroyed.
Leaning up against the bed was the only recognizably human corpse in
the cabin. It looked like it had been an average looking man in his
mid forties. Buffy didn't need any of her Slayer expertise to
determine the cause of death. The man's partially shredded shirt
could not hide the fact that most of his ribs had been caved in.
The body was still clutching a strange looking book in its left
hand. Its right hand held a small portable tape recorder. A large,
blood stained axe sat on the floor at its feet.
Buffy pried the tape recorder out of the corpse's hand and, out of
curiousity, rewound the tape a little ways and hit play.
"-the last of them. It looks like the spell worked." The voice on
the tape sounded weak and breathless. "They already got Norma and
the kids, there's nothing for me to live for now. Not that that's
an option, anyways."
There was a pause, as the voice seemed to be trying to work up the
strength to talk.
"I hope that anybody listening to this tape can avoide my fate. I
thought I was above the consequences of my actions. Please, don't
try to use the Nec- the Necro... the..."
There was a thump, then silence.
---
Xander pulled to a stop outside Buffy's house.
"You have everything?"
"Let's see. One very strange looking book. Check. A collection of
tapes from a dead man, labeled 'Notes and Observations', check."
"Don't forget some seriously disturbing photographs."
Xander handed the stack of Polaroids over to Buffy. Neither one of
them noticed that one of the pictures displaying the message on the
wall slipped from the stack and fell in the space between the
passenger seat and the door.
"I think that's all. Thanks again for the ride."
"No problem. I'll be a little late to our after school Scooby
meeting- I have to take the car over to Uncle Rory's after
school."
"I thought he was letting you borrow it for a while?"
"Yeah, but he insists that he's the only one that takes proper care
of his baby. He likes to give it a check up once a month."
"How very obsessive of him."
"Yeah, he's a real character."
---
Rory Williams arrived home from the driving range feeling pretty
good about life. Twenty years of investing in the S-Mart employee
stock purchase program meant that he had been free of the daily
rat race for a while now. He'd even had enough money to move away
from Grand Rapids and settle down in the same California town as
his sister.
Times had changed, he thought as he walked into his home. Hell,
he had changed. He took a look at himself in the mirror. He was
still pretty solidly built- maybe carrying a few more pounds than
he used to, but nothing major. Some streaks of grey running through
his black hair lent him some dignity, he thought. And of course, he
still had the chin. The main thing that had changed about him were
his daily activities.
Most of his days were pretty uneventful, now. He worked on his
cars, or on his golf game. He may have had to move across the
country and change his name, but he had finally managed to escape
the demons that had haunted his youth.
Rory shook his head as he walked out to the garage. Looking back
on it, he wasn't sure how he had managed to survive all of the events
of his life. He still kept the shotgun and his chainsaw attachment
on the wall of his garage. He even had the old medieval gauntlet
around somewhere. Not that any of them saw much use any more.
Nowadays, he thought to himself as he attached the dustbuster to his
arm, he was more likely to use a more practical prosthetic.
Rory was whistling a happy tune to himself as he vacuumed out the
Bel Air that he was renting out to his nephew. Xander was a good
kid, but Rory remembered too well what he had been like as a
teenager to abandon the Chevy to Xander's tender care.
Rory's whistling was abruptly cut off when he opened the passenger
side door and a photograph fluttered down to the ground.
"Hello, what have we here?" The expression on Rory's face
transformed from curiousity to rage as he got a good look at the
picture's contents. "Damn it, not again! Not here!"
Rory ran inside and picked up the phone. He cradled it in his
shoulder as he dialed a number with his remaining hand.
"Hi, Jessica, it's me. Is Xander home? Do you know where he would
be at this time of night? The school library? OK, thanks."
---
Joyce Summers looked at the clock. It was six, and Buffy and Dawn
still weren't home. Joyce's temper was heating up as the dinner
sitting on the table was cooling off. It was bad enough that Buffy
was out at all hours of the night thanks to her Slaying duties, but
now Dawn was trying to latch on to her sister in order to avoid her
curfew.
Buffy didn't even feel the need to call home any more when she was
going to be staying late. Joyce had just about had it with all of
this unpredictability. She decided that today she was going to
drive out to the school and give Buffy and her Watcher a piece of
her mind.
---
Andrew nervously looked at the clock. Most of the kids still in
detention at six o'clock at night were real hard cases. He was only
there because the school had a strict 'zero tolerance' policy
regarding computer crimes.
Andrew looked around the room. He stood out as clearly the weakest
student among the ten or so still there. He didn't relish the
thought of making his way home with this crowd in a half hour.
---
"So, Giles, what wisdom do you have to bestow upon us this evening?"
Xander asked the librarian as he entered the library from his
office.
"I just finished speaking with some of my more obscure associates.
They have confirmed my belief that what we have in our possession is
the Necronomicon."
"The what now?"
"The Necronomicon. The Book of the Dead. According to the
Watcher's Council it's little more than an old wives' tale. Legend
has it that it is bound in human flesh and inked in human blood."
Willow, who had been tracing her finger along the outside of the
book, drew her finger back as if burned. Dawn looked at Willow in
sympathy as she shuddered and snuggled deeper into Oz's embrace
while Giles continued.
"Written primarily in ancient Sumerian, the Necronomicon contains
spells that allow the caster to, among other things, raise the
spirits of the dead."
"I take it we're not talking Casper the friendly ghost here."
"I'm afraid not. The spirits tend to be quite violent."
"So can we slay them, or what?" Buffy was all business.
"I believe so. The spirits take the form of animated bodies, or
deadites."
"Deadites?" Angel spoke from the corner of the room. "I've heard
of those."
"Do you recall anything useful?" Giles asked. "My sources give
little more than the term."
"I don't remember much. The vampire that I heard it from was pretty
nuts. The only thing I know is that if deadites are in town, you
don't want to be there."
"Yes, well, the pictures from the cabin attest to that. Now, I am
going to listen to the audio tapes that we have to try to find out
exactly what happened out there. I have identified these books-"
Giles gestured to a stack of books on the library table. "- as
possibly having information regarding the Necronomicon. If you
would like to make yourselves useful?"
Everybody reluctantly agreed to start reading, and had soon divided
up the pile of books between them.
Some time later Xander was making a half hearted effort to read
through his assigned reference book while he listened to the tape
Giles was playing.
"...at last, my translation of the ritual is complete. I have
checked and re-checked my..."
At that moment the general silence in the library was broken with a
crash as the doors were kicked open. Silhouetted in the doorway was
an imposing figure of a man. His right arm appeared to end in a
chainsaw, while Xander could see the butt of what looked like a
shotgun strapped across his back. He also had a spare chainsaw
attached to his left hip.
"Where the hell is Xander Harris?"
Buffy, who had instinctively interposed herself between the stranger
and her friends, replied.
"If you want Xander, you're going to have to get through me first."
"...and everything is in order. I will now light the ceremonial
candles..." The tape continued to run in the background.
"Step aside girly, I need to talk to my nephew."
"Girly? Did you just call me girly?"
Rory ignored the death glare that Buffy was now directing his way as
he spotted Xander sitting behind her. Rory pulled the photo out of
his pocket and tossed it over to Xander.
"You want to tell me where you got this, Xander?"
"Um, there's a perfectly good explanation for all this..."
"...well, the only thing to do now is recite the incantation. Here
goes. Sha lo nab..."
"You see, it was for a school play-" Xander's equivocations were
interrupted by a shout from his uncle.
"The tape! Stop the tape!"
"...no reb ka pal..."
Everyone in the library stared at Rory as if he were crazy.
"You have to turn off the tape! Don't you understand?"
"...Ko rek mal! Ko rek mal! Ko rek mal!"
With this final invocation, the Necronomicon began to shudder like a
live animal. It rose, still shaking, to hover in the air above the
table. Ghostly streamers began to emanate from the book's cover and
circle around it. When the book was almost hidden from view by a
globe of these streamers, they suddenly exploded in all directions,
disappearing from sight.
The book then fell to the table with a thud. As it hit the table,
everybody in the library could hear the sound of all the doors
leading out of the school slamming shut.
Everyone in the room stood in stunned silence, staring at the
Necronomicon. It was Xander's uncle who spoke first.
"Crap."
***
The plot thickens...
Oh, and remember, you took the time to read, you can take the time
to write some feedback.
--Randy