by Tanith Lee
I wonder if Coral is less afraid? I’m concerned about her. Or has she gained courage and found a suitable host for herself?
I notice I am much taller like this than I was as Laurel. Daphne, even barefoot, is a good five feet eight inches in height.
I must find some proper clothing. It’s far too cold to go about like this. And there are old shampoos in one of the modern bathrooms. I shall take one to the rill and wash my hair properly.
On my right thigh there’s a sore place. When I first noted it, I was disturbed, thinking it might be some sort of decay of the Zomboid flesh. But I saw not long ago that it’s healing. The healing is very fast.
But I must find Elizabeth. Has she been able to change yet? I thought she couldn’t bring herself to it – but she’s so brave and wonderfully wilful, I think now she has. I’ll find her, and together then we will seek and find Coral. Will I though be able to see any of them still? Now I’m flesh again, and if they so far are not? If Elizabeth – is not...
(Coral): My father.
I curl up here inside the cupboard, and I hear them stamping about the house. Bees. They have all become the Z-thing bees from the wilds outside. Even Elizabeth has done it. Even she.
I am all alone, and forever.
My father...
My mind is coiling and turning about and around itself like a snake.
I can only think at last of that night, the night I was killed, there in my cold little bed. All this while, years, decades, I have known Miss Archer murdered me. But, of course, it was never Miss Archer. She was a lovely little clever brainless fool, my father’s dupe and concubine. But it was he who stole into my room and clamped the pillow tight and immoveable to my near-sleeping face. It was his strength, the strength of a determined and pitiless man, that crushed out my life. And that stench of dark and heated metal was, too, the reek of that same villainous vile man at his work. My dearest mother had left in trust for me some little inheritance or other, but he would gain it all if I should die. And so he took care my signature was always current on the documents. And when the hour was at its best he snuffed me out like the fragile candle I was. No doubt, she, Miss Archer, was his accomplice, at least in telling everyone how sickly I had always been, had caught a chill despite her constant wise admonitions to take care, had evidently succumbed to it, and my own pathetic frailty, in the night, when she and he had been innocently at the piano, playing and singing virtuous songs of honourable, self-sacrificing love and pious valour. In fact they would have been at other games; his murderous paws, that had just dispensed with me, washed themselves clean in the romantic dews of her passion, as he – what does Elizabeth say? – fokked her senseless. Did she know or guess he had murdered me? She was, under her teacher-cleverness, a dolt, a ‘twit’ as Elizabeth might say. Or if she did deduce his perfidy, probably she was too greedy to reveal it.
He should have swung on the fokking gallows, my rat of a father. At least now he rots in some hole in the ground. While I have lived, admittedly in a limited and insubstantial, wispy way. But I have lived. Nor do I suffer in Hell for the unspeakable crime of filiacide, as is the other possibility for him, should Hell at all exist.
Why I came to this revelation here, in my cupboard, I do not know. But I feel perhaps it is good that I have. It has freed me of some shackling chain I never realised lay on me. It has released me to become, perhaps, myself, whomsoever that may be.
I will not call her ‘Coral’ any more. That is for sure. Coral is pink and brittle and may break. No, I shall be Cora, which I know in Greek, or believe I know it, means Maiden. Which I am. A maiden. Then, I am Cora.
Then, Cora, shall we after all rise up and pass through the cupboard door, and see what they have become, our loving friends, now Z-bees? For after all, somehow I have survived, in spirit, the stinking claws of a murderer, and in spirit still I can survive all else. Rise up, then, Cora. Let us proceed.
Outside, I see him instantly. He climbs the stair and comes along the passage slowly, as if the effort makes him ache. And – how curious – though not at all now as he was, I know this is our Knight, and too, now, I know his name is Gui, a name of old France.
Seeing me, for see me he does, a slow smile rises through his much-different face. His eyes are blue, however, as before, and he looks out from their windows, and gradually, moment by moment, he is becoming more and more himself.
“What a brave girl you are,” he says to me, and I understand his words, as I never before did. “I’m so glad to see you, and the others will be glad. But I have some news, though I’ll wait a while to tell you. Let’s find Eliseth, and the rest of them, first. Come dear, come with me.”
His voice is like that of a true father. If I could, I would put my hand in his.
(Gui): That ground was hard, in the aftermath of the battle. The battle with my own lie, and with the real facts. And I was rotten, though not with self-blindness, but gangrene. Sheer mortal decay. When the stinging and tingling began, I believed it was the end of me. I would not cry out, but writhe there, and shadows closed over me, as, in that other death, there had been no time for me to feel.
When peace poured through, water through a dirty drain, I opened up my eyes, and saw, over by a tree bending with its own foliage, a young woman sat. Clearly she was mindless, one of the foe, even so not raging or lumbering and intent on harm. Perhaps she took me for one of her own clan, the monsters, for I had drawn on the body of one such.
Then up is she, and runs fleet as a deer. But I am better it seems. And so I get to my feet, and pain it assails me, but for Christ’s sake not as it was. I judge then from the few wounds taken of enemies in my former human life, that I have healed, heal still, but mended I am, or will soon be.
Why this is, God He may know.
I think, frankly, it’s just the influx of ghost-life, revving up the dormant brain and immune system, kicking health back into touch, where for the unoccupied Zombie, empty of life-force, operating on overdrive, such abilities are gone.
As I go slowly then back towards the house, I pass again the girl like a running deer. She is small and slender, with a lost sad face. Nothing in her bright eyes, except – what is it there? And of which of them does she remind me? I know. This maid is like Coral. Well, then, perhaps...
When I am in, and find her in the corridor, I see her plain, as before. It seems I shall be like Eliseth, or what Eliseth has become – a man? On God’s earth – but still she can see ghosts, as I now do.
I wish I might take Coral’s hand to lead her down, but cannot, she being yet as she is. But she smiles at me her cautious little smile.
“Does it hurt to go into them?” she asks of me.
“No,” I say. “It’s strange – and sometimes there are past injuries–” I try for words to encourage and not affright her, “But they heal, and well and swiftly. You need only be brave a moment.” How I hope for her this will be so.
But she says, “I am a coward. Afraid of everything, always.”
“The coward,” I answer, “is the bravest of any, if he will act despite his fear. While the hero has no work that way at all.”
At a window, we pause. “Look, do you see?”
For there below, on the lawn of unkempt grass, the deerlike girl stands, as if – waiting. As if that body, soulless and mindless, yet sees that life is due to come back. If it is.
Coral looks out. “She is like me,” says Coral. And then, “When I am her I shall be Cora. Will you be kind to me still?”
“Ever and always, dear Cora.”
And she drifts out through the window, dropping soft as thistledown, as mist and light, over and into and away within the waiting vessel there beneath. So Eve, entering the clay about the rib of Man. So the soul entering the chosen child. So the spirit through the Needle’s Eye.
PART FIVE
Edward, El, Daphne, Cora and Guy
They have found biscuits, which are hard and stale, and canned fish that seems all right, and tea and coffe
e which are still viable, once the water has been heated over the big fire they have laid, and lit with matches. For a wonder, the chimney doesn’t catch alight, perhaps mostly because they wouldn’t care if it did. There are bottles of red wine, which has lasted, and even a magnum of Champagne, which bubbles out green, and buzzes in the mouth, but seems not bad, if not as good, probably, as when it was laid down in 2010. The cellars are in an awful state but they’ve rummaged through, laughing and cursing. When loose bits of ceiling and endless cobwebs fell on them, or outraged mice tore over their feet, they shouted with joy – they can feel, they can smell and taste, their skins are scratchable by debris, and their eyes water at the dust.
The party goes on through the day into the dark, and across midnight. Their acquired bodies stand up to the onslaught quite well. Only Daphne is sick – the Champagne – and recovers quickly via the dose of brandy El furnishes from an old black bottle. (El also held Daphne’s head while she threw up. El didn’t seem to mind. After, El stroked Daphne’s yellow hair and said he (he now, El) was going to call Daphne not Daphne, but Daffodil, for this succulent hair.) “I’ll paint you, Baby,” said El. “You’re a beauty. A grand example of the fair sex.” And El thought, You filthy wretch, you body. Down boy. Don’t freak her out. But Daphne the Daffodil blushes through her body’s weather-caught tan, and doesn’t seem unduly to mind. Gui and Edward play cards, and teach Cora to play Patience, and Poker, and Gui says he thinks his body must have played cards before, for how else does Gui know these games?
They sleep in batches from about 3 a.m. onward. Gui and Cora go to look at the sinking stars near dawn. Edward lies on his back on the long table, with a cushion under his head, snoring a little, and hearing himself snore, and loving the noise of a proper throat.
Next day, with childish glee, they all (though decorously in private) perform their natural functions, marvelling nearly religiously over the results, (even Daphne had been unsuitably fascinated a moment by her sick). They wash in barely heated water, lave on deodorants and hair-gels, and nearly choke themselves with slurps of toothpaste and harsh new brushes. From ransacked closets, they dress in a comic parade selection of clothes ranging, roughly, between the slightly threadbare 1950’s and the outrageously over-retro styles of 2019.
Oh the pleasures of the physical. How had they ever grown bored with these toys? Never, never again. Not so long as they live, which they each intend to do now – if not forever – then for as near as makes no difference.
But it’s possible, isn’t it, one way or another, these newly acquired living vehicles the heroes have annexed may die – of natural causes – war, accident, disease, murder, age... Even perhaps, for whatever now-unpredicted reason, one or other of them may one day kill the body he or she now has on, which at this present time they value so highly. Who can foresee? And what then? To be a ghost again, and maybe seek another re-housing project? Or flying elsewhere to other ills or blessings of which they can know nothing, here. But let that go for now. Now is the Present, the Gift of Today, and there can be Champagne, if not quite up to standard, and every hand can hold a glass, or a toothbrush, or a doll, or a sword or a rose. Or another hand. And the fire burns bright.
Later, over toasted loft-stored apples and mugs of tea, they discuss the journeys they will make next. Perhaps there are other centres of live un-Zombied people, or even people reclaimed from Zombishness by an influx of ghosts similar to their own invasion force.
They have a sing-song round an out-of-tune piano, (played by El), in which Cora’s dolls join. Gui manages to call El ‘El’. He’ll get better at that. He’s decided to spell his own name in the English way: Guy.
It rains, and they – and the dolls – go out to roll about in their nice new clothes. Children again.
(They know instinctively they have been miraculously lucky in discovering – or having presented before them – such almost perfect new domiciles, (bodies). The luck they never question. It’s theirs by right. And so perhaps it is... unless some magnetic need of theirs has drawn ideal specimens towards them here. Rather as El and Ed used to make the lights work – )
At some other juncture they know, one and all, they must leave the house, and begin the follow-up adventure of their rebirth. A family, and such a close one, they are of one mind.
El kisses Daphne Daffodil under a tree, going slowly because DD grew up in the early 1900s, not the 1960s. And DD blushes, and holds El’s hand. Guy begins to teach Cora old French, and she begins ably to learn it. He lost a daughter once, still-born. But here is another daughter, and she’ll grow up – her body is about sixteen, seventeen. As he, he supposes, will grow old. He will be glad to do so. He’s had no bloody chance to grow old before. And killing enemies? Well, one he has successfully repossessed. He’s more eager now to assist his friends.
As for old Edward, (now about fifty-seven), he has found a family, but also a pipe and some tobacco – bollocks to the deteriorated and poisonous cigarettes electrically shorted out, or growing verdigris in the stores. He had smoked a pipe at Murchester, and elsewhere, until the hoo-ha about smoking turned everyone into a frustrated monk. Who cares now? Who cares?
Life is for the living. Live and let live.
And so they do. Soon out into the wide world they will go, bold as brass and twice as bright. The sun’s rising again, strawberry and honey. And this tomorrow is, and will be always, another day.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the Master of my Fate:
I am the Captain of my Soul.
Invictus
W.E. Henley
(1849 - 1903)
EPILOGUE
The Recluse
Today I will thank God, nay, I shall heap upon the Lord ten thousand praises: They are gone. How I have lamented and suffered this while, these endless years, nigh on three hundred of them.
At the commencement, the intrusion seemed not too onerous a burden upon me, for only one in number was there to haunt my peace, and that one inclined also to keep mostly to himself in the purlieus of the old castle. Yet then, in ones and twos, the rest were added unto him, until at length full five of the beasts had taken up their residence within my private lair. I could step nowise and nowhere without I must chance upon some other. I, who throughout his existence, quick or dead, have loathed and shunned the company of what simpletons are apt to call My Fellow Man. Tush. I have no fellow, nor he me. The last of them also proved the worst, too, since he drove me out my library wherefrom, until that hour, none ever had, neither ghost nor man. For most living presences grew invisible to me, when once I had become a phantom, and inaudible too. As indeed I must conclude I grew for most of them. Nor had this fiend troubled me, while yet he lived. But following his doubtless deserved demise, we were in another case quite. A ghost by then, as am I, his continual adherence to my own preferred retreat, my hermitical cell, caused me to conceal myself yet more, especially from him, and then into exile I take myself, to the lower depths of this, once my, house. And there, ten or more long years, I have clung, pitiable as a bat upon the darkness’ wall. In hiding, cursing my lot, nor no respite in view.
During this winter of my discontent, creatures of vile aspect began to swarm across the land outside. They are not Men, as not quite living – since, as a ghost, as I have said, full-living men, nor women, I seem not to see. But these things, a sort of golem, I do. They have a name also, which I have partly heard, as if spoken on the wind, Zumble I believe it to be; but they are monsters that prowl.
Then commences a miracle. The ghostly five presences here inflicted upon me are able, it turns out, to enter and possess the Zumble Kind. Thus my torturers pass from the state of spirit back to flesh, if so it may be termed, and imbued with fleshly form and motion they are apt to desert my house and rove the country beyond. There is, for myself, this added curiousness: while the Zumble Kind are, for me, both visible and somewhat obscure – when once occupied by the
five ghostly parasites who had infested here, the five chosen Zumble creatures dim out from my sight, as does a flame beneath the hood of a smoke-dirtied lamp. To their discredit, their noise is still audible to me, as that of men generally is not. But even the noise grows muted. Until there comes a congruence of days and darknesses, and then, to my joy, all five enghosted Zumbles depart.
For sure, I have no interest in any man, nor female either, save their history comes to me within the covers of a book. By concentration only I see my tormentors leave, one fine day’s break, passing away down the hill, unsightly outlines, as of sacks of vaporous skin that walk and talk, yet fainter with each beat of my silent heart, and so they vanish into the view, as water soaks in earth. Thank God, I say, nought else but ten thousand praises be upon the Lord.
This then of myself I will say: my father inherited this house from my grandsire, on the death of the same. My mother dwelled selectly, by then, in London, and since I was nine years I saw but little of her, nor wished more. For my schooling, my father, Francis Hollander, engaged tutors to lesson me privately, and though I liked none of them, and two were perfect clodpolls, I learned sufficient for my purpose, and did not need to mingle with other persons. My father, here, had some understanding of my preference. Nay, I am sure he himself had no fondness for company, not mine, nor my mother’s, nor that of any other one. Perhaps I shall expand briefly on this theme. I have one short memory of the woman, my dam, spurning a painting of the Virgin Mother and Jesus, her Son, She holding the Messiah in a loving coil of light, to protect and worship, both. My mother’s contempt was not, it seems, for religion. Rather this woman disliked merely the concept of maternal love. To this hour, I carry marks which attest to that theory. Her personal harshness to me was of such vividity that even as a ghost, I keep the scars. For him, the man I must assume had sired me, best he liked to walk about the grounds here, to shoot a little, and now and then to fish from the quiet pools. Unlike myself, he was not much drawn to reading. Instead he would write out books himself, for perchance he felt no other scribe could match him in awarding to him pleasure. Some of his works, I believe, he published, under some one or two false nom de plume, as the French rabble have it. I remember that we did not breakfast, nor dine together, but I would meet him sometimes in the house; our exchange at this, for my part carefully respectful, and voiceless on his, would last no longer than a minute, if so great a while. At occasion, he might have music. But he would then have the musicians taken to a certain room, and there let a servant serve them with food and alcohol, and after this they would play, out of his sight, but the music to be heard by him, elsewhere. This wise custom of his I too adopted, in my adult years, when he in turn had gone to earth in his grave. Like him, also, I had a favourite coat, mine of a greenish brocade, which I would wear when in my library, though more sober clothes at supper; during which, as with my sire, only one servant waited upon me, and silent as the tempered night. So I lived nicely in my house, but in my own order must at length meet that fatallest Hour of Death. So I woke from a peaceful slumber in my forty-ninth year, and getting up from my bed, learned yet I lay in it. Some time I was bemused, but then far less, seeing no demand had come with my end that I rush elsewhere, into some Heaven or Hell awash with dead humanity at its loudest and least desired of me. Then too, I gave my thanks to God. Yes, even though I could no longer open my books to read them, for I was secure enough, and so required them less, having no otherwhere from which to flee to them in fear.