by Tanith Lee
But others were not so comfortable with their dead. On finding her husband in bed with her, Sam Jenkins’ widow had at first moved into the spare room, but having a dead man in the house soon became too much for her and she changed the locks, with the result that her dead husband spent his nights standing on the front lawn. It was around this time that I first heard the word ‘zombie’ being used.
The first thing that happens when the dead start waking is not that they go on a rampage like you see in the movies, it’s that you find out all your insurance policies are worthless. Sam Jenkins had a life insurance policy with his wife as the beneficiary, but the insurance company refused to pay out because they said Sam didn’t meet their definition of dead.
Then Alice’s mother got a huge bill from the hospital because her daughter – being officially deceased – was no longer covered by her health insurance.
The second thing that happens is property values plummet. Sam Jenkins’ widow, unable to pay the mortgage, tried putting the house up for sale. But nobody wants to buy a house with a dead man standing on the lawn. Even if – like Sam’s widow – you try to make the dead man a selling point by explaining he deters burglars.
The third thing that happens is church attendances rise. The fourth thing is they fall again as everyone comes to the conclusion there’s no point in worrying about the afterlife if you’re only
going to spend it hanging around the park.
The fifth thing is all the jobs go, as businesses tend to prefer locations where the dead stay dead.
The next thing that happens is the town itself begins to die as everyone who can get away gets as far away as possible, until the only people left are the dead and those few who refuse to abandon them.
Sometimes I go to the park and watch the dead together. Despite being all different ages and backgrounds, they seem at ease in each other’s company.
The silence of the dead when faced with the living can seem awkward, but when the dead are together, their silence is a comfortable one, their blank faces not so much vacant as serene.
And though their faces are far from expressive, I was there one day as a newly-deceased came to join them for the first time, and I am sure I saw recognition in their eyes.
Five years ago, there were more than three thousand people in this town. Now there are less than three hundred. As the town’s living population continues to move away, more of the dead are being left to fend for themselves.
With no one to dress them or comb their hair, some of them were getting into quite a state until a woman named Hilary Frentzen stepped in. The first thing Hilary did was to get a shelter built so the dead would have somewhere to get out of the rain. Then she set up a charitable foundation to collect donations of food and clothing, which she distributes in the park.
The dead do eat, just not a lot. Every day Hilary hands out slices of day-old bread donated by supermarkets, and watches as the dead take one or two bites and then scatter the rest on the ground for the pigeons. Of course the pigeons – being dead themselves since the town council poisoned them all a couple of years ago – are no more interested in the bread than they are. Not even the insects are that interested since the park was sprayed, so every day before she leaves, Hilary picks up the leftovers.
She’s tried giving them vegetables, but the dead won’t touch them. If you ask her, she’ll tell you that no matter how hard she tries, she cannot get the dead to eat broccoli.
Once, as an experiment, Hilary bought a dozen chocolate cakes and took them to the park. The dead didn’t leave a single crumb behind. She told me she can’t afford to do that every day, but now once every month or so, she’ll buy them some chocolate cakes as a special treat. (Even dead wasps perk up at the smell of chocolate, which is another reason she doesn’t bring it too often.)
Hilary used to get very annoyed when tourists turned up with portable sound systems playing Thriller at full blast, or shouting: “They don’t want bread, they want brainzzz!” but that kind
of thing has been happening less and less since the state barricaded the highway and put up all of those ‘Quarantine’ signs.
And there’s hardly been a single crime since the day a guy who was stripping the lead off a dead person’s roof slipped and fell, breaking his neck. He’s been in the park ever since, walking sideways with his head twisted over one shoulder.
I don’t think the dead feel any pain. When I used to visit Alice in her room, I’d always ask her: “Do you feel any pain? Do you feel anything?”
But she’d never answer.
Then one day as we sat with me talking and her staring into space, I picked up a pin and jabbed it, hard, into her arm.
She moved her head slightly, just enough to look down at the pin.
“You felt that, didn’t you?” I said. “Does it hurt?”
She went back to staring into space.
When she stood up to leave for the park, the pin was still protruding from her arm.
I reached up and pulled it out; she didn’t notice.
The dead don’t seem to age, either. Eating only a few bites of bread a day – plus one piece of chocolate cake a month – they’ve all lost a bit of weight, but otherwise they haven’t changed. I’d kind of expected their hair to keep growing, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Which is probably just as well because the dead’s hair is invariably a mess. Someone living always has to comb it for them because for some reason they will not do it themselves.
The one exception to this is Rosemary Harold, who died without a single hair on her body – not even an eyelash – because she’d been in the middle of chemotherapy.
Alice is one of the few dead people in the park who hasn’t been reduced to wearing hand-me-downs thanks to her mother, who still buys her new clothes when she needs them.
The first couple of years, she used to take her to the mall, which wasn’t easy because the sales people didn’t like serving the dead and wouldn’t let her try anything on, and there was one guard who’d obviously seen Dawn of the Dead on television and would always follow them around, scowling, from the minute they arrived. But Alice’s mother persevered because she said it was the one time Alice actually seemed to know where she was and why she was there. She even claimed Alice would invariably head straight for the most expensive thing in the shop, just like she did when she was alive.
Not that it matters now the mall is shut.
At one time this town had five churches, four cafes, six bars, two auto dealerships, three banks, two primary schools, a high school, a motel, a funeral parlour, and a meat-packing plant (which closed the day after a calf’s head on a shelf in the freezer room was seen blinking). All of them are boarded up now. So are most of the houses.
The streets are full of abandoned dogs and cats. It’s the live ones you’ve got to watch out for, because they’re nervous.
My next door neighbour adopted a dead dog. When I asked her why, she said, “Why not? He’s no trouble and he doesn’t bark.”
Five years ago, they said it was a miracle I was still alive. Three weeks ago they told me the miracle was coming to an end; my organs were shutting down one by one. All because of one stupid thing I did one night when I saw sixteen.
People told me my only hope was to get out of this town before I died. They told me it only happens here; if I die somewhere else, I won’t wake up. I won’t end up with those zombies in the park.
I’m sure all those people were right, but I knew something they didn’t know. I’ve been going to the same doctor since I was a kid – he’s the only doctor in town these days – and the last time I saw him, he said he was going to tell me a secret.
Remember I told you about when it all first started, and how they shipped a man’s body to another state to see if he would wake up, and he did?
It turns out my doctor was sent along to accompany the body. He was there when the man woke up, and he’d asked him: “What was it like being dead? Do you remember any of it?”
> And to his amazement, the man had answered him.
“He spoke?” I said.
My doctor nodded. “Only that one time, and never again. Considering what he said, I thought it best to keep quiet about it.”
“What did he say?”
“All you need to know is: there are a lot worse places a person could end up,” my doctor said as I left his office that last time, “than in the park.”
I went to the park today and saw a dead man sitting on a bench with Hilary Frentzen combing his hair.
What is it about the dead that they refuse to comb their own hair? For five years I had been telling myself that I would be the exception. I would be the one who speaks, who dresses herself, who eats vegetables, who continues to do simple things like comb her own hair... but with every moment that passed, these things seemed less and less important.
The next thing I knew, I was standing face to face with Alice. And for the first time in five years, she looked at me as if she knew me.
The Grimoire
Donna Scott
A grimoire, you say? Oh, yes, I think I can help you as it happens… but let me tell you, they’re a devil to track down: the trouble with grimoires is that they are forever disguising themselves as books.
I am curious as to how you heard about my little shop. How did you know this would be the right place to look? I agree, yes, we do have the right sort of ambience for them. Nothing plastic about this establishment. Not a whiff of commercialism… nor indeed, much profit. But books, yes, they are always very welcome here.
You know, people might be all kinds of brave around one or two paperbacks, but they can be very intimidated by lots of books. Likewise, books dislike lots of people. I feel sorry for the ones in that big bookshop in town – the one with all the cards and mugs and toys on the ground floor and all the books trying to hide upstairs. I’ve seen them huddling under ‘Poetry’ thinking no one will ever find them there. And then they get burrowed out and flung on the twofer tables, all face up and prone to greasy fingers. Mind, I don’t blame new books for being scared of having their spines broken by careless browsers! – That first crack is always the worst – And you’d never see an age-old grimoire settled there, where it’s accessible. Unlike this place…
Anyway, as I say, grimoires can be tricky things to find, so here, take a chair while I rootle around and try to – grrr, good grief this box is heavy – find this thing for you. And I’ll tell you about the last person to come in here looking for a grimoire.
I remember it was a gorgeous, sunny day in June last year. Quite chilly in here, though. I never take these gloves off, you know, except to turn the odd stuck page.
But yes, the woman… the witch I should probably say, though she looked nothing like the old hags from the fairy tales. In she came, wearing a white sundress, and I thought to myself, there’s someone going to get black dust and cobwebs stuck to them and then complain to me about it. Because she didn’t look at all unsure of herself, you know. Well-kept sort of lady, with long brown hair, a bit like that newsreader who does the dancing. I’m always wary of people who come in smiling... Most people who enter a second-hand bookshop will offer no more than a cursory nod before edging their way to the first shadowy alcove out of my line of sight. It’s a game, see. I’m supposed to ask them if there’s anything particular they’re looking for, and then they’re supposed to tell me. Then I find the book in question or I don’t. Then they are supposed to leave. That’s what happens in other shops. Most folks who wander in here have no idea what they’re really looking for. But I find what they need.
The woman bade me, “Good morning,” in a voice that was rich and honeyed enough to drown an ortolan. I said hello back and asked if there was anything I could do for her, and she said yes…
Now here’s where you’re probably thinking she mentioned a specifically esoteric sort of title. A Necronomicon perhaps, or Volumes 1-6 combined of Conrad Horst; a small volume from the Bibliothèque Bleu; an Agrippa facsimile...
“I’m looking for The History of Reynard the Foxe,” she said. “Kelmscott Press edition.”
I gulped at that. It just so happened that I did have the very book the lady had mentioned. But it was no ordinary book. It was a most beautiful thing, bound in snow-white vellum, tied in ribbons of decaying yellowed silk. Printed by William Morris’s own press, with woodcut illustrations by Burne-Jones and block letters in the manner of ages past; made to be a piece of art, a precious object. The story itself was one taken from Caxton’s translation into English of an old Dutch version of the tale of a fox who refuses to go to court in case the Lion King finds out about his crimes against all the other beasts. And being a Kelmscott edition, I knew it was something special; got it in a house clearance a few months before from some old fellow’s shelves, and I’d already telephoned the University of Birmingham – they have a lot of Kelmscotts in their Fine Print and Rare Editions Collection. And Frank, the curator, had asked me to pop the book along to him some time for a look – only I’d have to wait for an opportune moment to close the shop. I’d been half-expecting Frank to come to me instead.
“You’re not Frank,” I said to the lady, stating the obvious. “Did he send you?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t have the faintest idea who you’re talking about.”
There was something slightly off about the way she spoke. For a second, I couldn’t put my finger on it. Was it the slow and deliberate way she had formed the words? The tone of her voice? Was it the fact she was still smiling as if she were advertising hairspray? I suddenly felt very cold, and was thinking of putting my pullover back on, when I realised I was already wearing it.
“I’m sorry too, ma’am,” I said. “I don’t have any Kelmscotts in at the moment. If it’s rare editions you’re after, I’ve got a first edition Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone newly acquired, about to be showcased on an antique book site, after which I’m expecting it to fly... or if it’s late Middle English works you’re interested in, I do have a number of Caxton facsimile reprints, including your fox tale, I do believe –”
And then it seemed that the dark had suddenly descended in my little shop, and the smile disappeared from the woman’s face, and all the honey from her voice.
“Vellum. Handmade. Kelmscott.,” she spat, almost shouting. Quite rude, I thought. But she got worse. After a dramatic sigh of exasperation, she continued: “From the house of Harry Irving, deceased. Would have been in the company of quite a few other books. Let me jog your memory of some of them.” Then she began marching round my shelves, pulling books from them and flinging them haphazardly towards my feet. “One book of Fleur Adcock poetry; Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Railway Children by E Nesbitt; Thomas Babington Macauley’s Lays of Ancient Rome; Liber B vel Magi by Aleister Crowley, and–” she marched over to my cluttered desk and took the top book out of a box on top that I had yet to sort through.
“Great Scott! Stop a second,” I said, my hands held up in case she decided to fling that one at me from close range. I was sorely tempted to punch the woman. As I took a step towards her I think she thought I might because she stepped back as if to dodge out of my way, her eyes half-wild still. “Right, stopped throwing my shop around, have we? Good. Okay, let’s discuss this like adults. How do you know these books are from this Harry fellow?”
“One Basic French Cookery Course,” she continued, thrusting her chin up at me as if in challenge. “By master spy thriller writer, Len Deighton, of course. Signed to Lissy.” She held the book open on the fly, revealing the author’s signature.”
“How did you –?” I began.
“Know? Because I know these books and they know me. I have grown up with them.” She shrugged. “And because the box has H. Irving House Clearance written on it in marker pen.”
I had to concede that it did.
“So, if you grew up with them, you’re his daughter?”
She arched an eyebrow and said haught
ily, “No. I was his pupil. And his lover.”
Feelings along the lines of being scandalised threatened to surface at that moment, what with Mr Irving having been an old fella, and this woman... Well, I struggled to put an age to her. Not a very young lady. But I wouldn’t say middle-aged either. She was a bit too smooth and glamorous, if you know what I mean? But I put my sense of propriety aside. I mean, I’d spoken to the man’s nephew and he said there was no other family left; no one else who might want his stuff. It had all been left to him and he didn’t want any of the books. And I’d only given him a hundred for the lot – including the Kelmscott. I had been looking at a tidy profit. I suspected this lady had the same in mind, but did she have any real claim to the books? I didn’t think so. She may have recognised a few from the clearance, but really she could have been anybody.
So, I asked her again. “His lover?
“Yes,” she replied, holding my gaze, but oh so slightly twitching.
“I nodded to the book in her hand. “Are you Lissy?”
“No.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Then I took the book out of her hand and put it back in the box. Which she promptly upended, books scattering all over the desk and floor, mixing up the ones I’d made a note of with ones I hadn’t and customer orders ready to go. I clenched my fists, but forced myself to keep them down. What a mess!
I tell you, people who mistreat books will never earn a special favour from me, so as she was shrieking, “Where is it? Where is it?” I abandoned any thought that may have been forming to do a deal with her on the Kelmscott instead of the University.
“I don’t have it,” I told her again. “Now kindly leave my shop.”
This she did, though I had to practically shove her out, with my arms mimicking the blade of a snowplough, as it were. And then, as I sometimes do, I decided to close a few minutes early and get on with my cataloguing and bookwork, as I had quite a lot to do and was feeling too tense to cope with customers. The woman banged on the door for a bit, but she stopped after twenty minutes or so. Just as well the local residents in this area were all out at work, or I’m sure one of them would have telephoned the police…