I clutched my forehead. “No, but I saw the body rise out of the grave — whoosh! — that crack in the eye has me all twisted up — ”
“Quick!” Pete’s whisper carried a new note of agitation. “Finish the bottle, Cart. We mustn’t stay any longer — I haven’t any gun.”
“Wow, what a rotten dream,” I gurgled, swallowing. Pete snatched the drained bottle, then balled up her handkerchief and knelt over me, scrubbing grime and dried blood from my mouth and nose. Whisky fumes stung in my nostrils. I babbled shakily, “I thought I’d been buried in that rosewood coffin. Whew! Actually seemed to hear ’em nailing on the lid. It was real, Pete! Real as the devil! I — I can’t seem to get over it. Can’t figure out where the reality ended and the dream began.”
Her lips tensed, white, as she caught at my lapels and urged, “Cart, can you stand now?”
I put my hands on the floor and pushed myself up. After a second attempt, with Pete’s help and by climbing up the desk, I gained my feet. Pete propped me against the desk, hovering anxious and fearful, as if at any moment I might tumble down in ruin. The office merry-go-rounded for a minute while my uprighted legs felt melty in the knee-joints, wanting in bone. She told me I’d fainted a dozen times within the past half-hour. Bands of pain were tight around my skull, but my available eye was clearing, the office walls, slanted ceiling came steady.
“I’ve gone through the whole category of bad dreams,” I bleared down at Pete. “Finally I thought you and I — but the Widow Gladys and Toadstool were there — were trying to climb the staircase. Then I thought you and I were down in the tunnel where — ” Warmth flowed up from my stomach and enveloped my heart, dizzied me as another thought fevered through my head. I caught Pete’s shoulder. “Where’s Tousellines? And Narcisse?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What’s that sound?”
“Hush!” Turning from me tensely, she sent a glance of fear at the door shut on the hall. Beyond the door, the hall was filling with amplified sound, as if a crowd was pouring in from the verandah, tramping, jostling and stamping, clapping hands. The sound grew; rattled our closed door. I took a quick breath to speak, and Pete apprehended my intent, turning to lay cold fingers over my lips. How white she was! I could feel my face tightening, sensible to emergency.
“They’re in the hall,” she gasped. “We must run! — Cart —”
I wasn’t punch-drunk now. The château was swamping in a roof-lifting, Bedlamite clamor that had burst in out of the night in a flood of thumping, drumming sound, an undertone sifting of rumba gourds, sticks clacking together to measure the time-beat of a weirdly off-key, many-throated chorus — do, re, mi — do, re, mi — a chant nerved faster and faster, louder and louder until the din shook our door as if a hand were on the knob, the floor trembled under me and dust hazed down from the ceiling.
I grasped hold of the chunky bottle for a weapon and glared, fighting to establish sense behind this thing. Eyes wide, Pete watched the door, behind which bodies seemed to be rushing pell-mell into the hall, the sound as of a trampling elephant herd trumpeting that three-note chant. Kettledrums boomed a tremendous rataplan; the rushing and chanting hushed into remarkable quiet; and telephoned through our door came a thin-piped, whinnyish echo like the voice of a speaker heard above a far sea of heads or an echo from a rooming-house speaking tube.
“Silence, Cacos — The King of all Zombies speaks — ”
Liquor, dizziness, headache, everything went out of me in one single paralytic shock. I knew that voice coming from the lobby of the hall! Numbed, mentally at a standstill, I made a convulsive clutch at Pete.
“It’s him!”
Before she could fathom my meaning, the voice was speaking again.
“The King of all Zombies, the White Master of the Dead, would tell the living black that those who follow him can never die! The dead who fall with him shall be raised again. Behold, Cacos! The master of life and death, the undead dead has come to rule from the tomb! Speak, Tousellines, and tell them what I say — ”
I could have sworn a subterranean power was rocking the floor. Quivering, one-eyed, agape in the candle-gloomed stuffiness of that office under the stairs, I had to catch the edge of the desk and goggle, witless, at the door beyond which a voice, undeniably belonging to Tousellines, had started a stream of creole in a tone so soprano with terror it fairly whistled. This parroted jibber was answered by a cannon-blast cheer. Again the kettledrums boomed for silence; the horselike whinny echoed through the door.
“Behold the dead from the grave, risen to lead you. Behold the white zombie come to be your king. Attend, Cacos! Send word through the mornes. Bring your brothers flocking to the call. Say no harm befalls the black who follows the Zombie King! Say no evil can come to him who joins forces with the undead dead! Tell them, Tousellines. Speak!”
“Pete!” I was swaying, nonplussed, sick. “It’s him — him!”
Tousellines squealed out, and cheers broke in waves that palsied the door to shudder the candle and rattle the rain-slashed window. The drums boomed for silence. The neighing, other-world voice went on —
“Cacos, the army of your country comes to enforce your bondage. Tomorrow these brothers of your race would try to wrest freedom from your grasp. But the hills are yours for the taking. The land, the rivers, fields, all shall be yours. Summon your friends to a day of liberation. Call the blacks to the army of the King of the Dead. Spread word the Zombie Master has come from his grave to lead you again, as last night, from victory to victory over your enemies. Remember the gold of yesterday; arise, conquer, there is gold tomorrow. Cacos, the Dead King calls! Tell them, Tousellines! Tell them!”
Translating this rhapsodic jargon into creole did not agree with the oratorical powers of Master Tousellines. His voice was the hysterical shrilling of a terrified monkey. When it died away, din swelled through the house in percussions that shook the framework to its foundations.
“Papa Proudfoot! Papa Proudfoot!”
It blasted from a jungle of throats, surging, massing into a single eruption of sound. Robbed of animation, I could only hang to the desk and let my knees shake, my one good eye bulging at the door, at Pete, at the door.
I had been in that coffin! That was the voice which had neighed my requiem and told me about Pete — Pete who had been killed —
She was purple-eyed. Luminous in candleshine, her face was colorless, porcelain. She stood with a distracted hand in the glinty thicket of her hair, staring in shocked fixity at the door, lips drained of color, whispering. “Mad.” Her words were barely audible in the silence that followed the roaring of that name. “Mad! Stark, raving mad — ”
Silence. Quiet broken only by the rain at the stained-glass window behind my back. Time out in the little procession of minutes as they paused to see what should happen next. Again that unnatural whinny was broadcasting in the hall.
“Cacos, the King of the Zombies has spoken!” The neigh ascended to a raucous, cockatoo screech. “Behold the white dead man who lives with the heart torn from his body. Behold the corpse upright from his grave. Arise and salute! Follow and conquer! Freedom, riches, eternal life for all! Salute Papa Proudfoot, King of all Zombies, new Emperor of Haiti — ”
I don’t know whether the cheer which followed the Tousellines translation of that outblast opened the door, or whether Pete, herself, opened it. I know she had moved forward to put white fingers on the knob. Her hand, withdrawn from her hair, had loosed a gleaming mantle about her shoulders, her face was marble, and she moved with a somnambulant step, a hypnotic rigidity unnatural as that of someone in a dream. I couldn’t have stopped her. Never! I couldn’t have stopped her if her next step had plunged her to eternity! I was glue! Frozen glue! My hands shaking the desk-edge brought the roll-top slamming down on my fingers, and I hadn’t the power to liberate them. I couldn’t prevent the opening of that door. Not I! Fresh out of a coffin ten feet underground, resurrected to stand in that office wit
h my left eye cabbaged and my fingers caught in a desk and my right eye captured and held by the picture framed by the opened door.
I know one picture I’ll never shrug off with a secret (if unsound) feeling I could do better. The picture of the hall beyond that door-frame! Pen and ink chiaroscuro. Doré gone mad in black and white.
Black for the swooped-up shadows, the angled corners, the gallery’s overhang, the cloudy night of the ceiling. Black for the scribbled heads massed from wall to wall, purple-black for frizzy wigs, shoeshine black for bald spots, blue-black and lavender in cheekbones, upflung fists, corded muscles. Wet tar for the statue of Tousellines posed near the library door. Blackest of all, the figure silhouetted against the charcoal smudge of the opened library, the figure that stood with arms wide and cape-wings spread bat-fashion, overshadowing the scene.
White for the candles that were stars upheld in burnt-cork hands, the outshooting pin-lines of light spattering through the dark, the eggs that were Negroid eyes, the ivory grins of piano-key teeth. Blue-white for the sheen on gun-barrel and brandished machete; ash-white for the bandaged head of Lieutenant Narcisse lolling brokenly between two ebony Nubians who towered in the foreground. White, outstretched shadows for the sheet-wound row regimented on the library threshold; and whitest of all for the torso of that black-winged creature in that doorway, the face a plaster death mask, the hands talons of bone at the tip of each wing, the body to the belt, exposed, like a skinny picked butcher-shop chicken, ribs and wishbone visible as shadows in an X-ray.
A single splash of ruby had dropped in that pen sketch, and the smear glowed like a new red badge on that naked chicken-breast. The thing turned its head in the library door and stood revealed as the Prussian Eagle. I saw two fish-scale eyes, the mouth a blue trap under the vulpine nose, the strip of adhesive on the tall, bald forehead. I saw it wasn’t the Prussian Eagle, but a decayed and perverted Blue Eagle with a carpenter’s hammer in one fist of talons, in the other a shiny handful of spikes.
A corpse holding a mass meeting! A dead man exhumed, making a speech. Small wonder an eerie gale was blowing the length of the hall, fluttering the drapes on his skeletal arms, stirring the cobweb hairs on his skull. I saw him lift the hammer in a sort of dictator’s salute —
“Papa Proudfoot, King of all Zombies — ”
The black and white hall shook with the response, the shouting of white-toothed mouths, drums pounding, rumba-rattles going like applause in a night club. Palsy seemed to infect the timbers of the house. Wind rushed through the surging, massed heads and flattened the candle-flames on their wicks. Narcisse’s ashen countenance, dimly visible between the shoulders of the Nubians supporting him, was distorted, streaming bright sweat. He was moaning drearily and his eyes roamed wildly at the thing in the library door as it lifted its fistful of spikes and screamed.
“Papa Proudfoot, Emperor of Haiti. Tomorrow, Cacos! Tomorrow we strike! Put flame to the enemy! Pillage and burn! Haiti is ours! Tell them,” the blue mouth raved at Tousellines, “that Papa Proudfoot leaves them a moment for an errand with the Culte des Morts. Bid them execute this traitor Narcisse and the body is theirs for the sport. Say I go to my office for consultation with the dead. Send the black Louis upstairs to bring down the body of the dead Ma’mselle Dale, and then — ”
“Uncle Eli!”
In memory to this day that name, as Pete cried it then, puts a creep in the part of my hair. Every egg in that black basket of white eyes rolled at the frail shade in the office door. The thing in the library door whipped its isinglass stare straight at the office where Pete moved. I yanked my fingers out of the desk and the top came down with a little report.
“Uncle Eli!”
Pete moved into the candle-gloom of the hall. Her arm seemed to float up from her side, finger pointed at the Dracula-face of the exhumed in front of her. The bat couldn’t budge. The hammer fell from one bunch of claws and banged on the floor like a shot. The nails showered down in a ringing rain.
“Uncle Eli, I condemn you as my murderer. I condemn you for the deaths of those in your household. Tell them, Tousellines,” she cried, “that the Princess of the Dead has come to claim the throne. Shot through the eyes, I was, but I rise from death to accuse my assassin and break the evil spell he would put on these Cacos and their country. Speak my command, Tousellines — the Queen of the Zombies — has come — ”
The world, as far as I was concerned, came to a stop. Only shadows in the stopped world swayed. For a year of sixty seconds, you could have heard a spider’s thoughts in that hall; then the lawyer’s lower lip broke into piercing squeals, the mob in the front door moaned, shouted, surged backwards; Pete stood in a wind of fear that seemed to pour from those cringing egg-eyes.
I guess my own eyes were doing some bulging; but the eyes of Uncle Eli! The eyes of that cadaver with that red gouge on his chicken-breast were bulbs of unsocketed terror, straining at the girl like frogs trying to escape a leash, wider and wider until it seemed they must break in that face. Something did break in that plaster death mask! The adhesive-taped forehead wouldn’t hold. Under the spell of the girl’s pointed finger that face appeared to crumple, cave inward, collapse.
A single blue vein ran from temple to temple like a zig-zag of lightning under the skin. The electrocuted eyeballs turned upward and stuck. The blue mouth opened and gave vent to an exorcised devil in sound.
“Aaaaaaaaaaa — ”
One hand clutched the wattled throat. The knees buckled, the stomach bent. He fell like an “S,” cork-screwing slowly on the way down, the black cloak slipping down off his shoulders like an evening wrap. There was a second when I glimpsed a livid smear in the middle of his naked spine. A little swirl of black cloth, and he was down.
“Let the Cacos return to their homes!” Pete gave the cry. “The King of the Zombies is dead!”
The picture broke into sounds.
The sound of Tousellines shrieking. The sound of Narcisse, released from his captors, falling as if his ankles were broken and hitting the floor. The sound of the Cacos going home. I’ve an idea those black Haitian brigands are running yet, for they funneled through the door with the tumult of racing buffaloes, and the night sped them on with whistles and screams. Their departure left a hurricane in the house. Things were falling in upstairs rooms and dishes were dropping with a sound like shot clay pigeons in the pantry.
I rocked out of the office; stood goggling the dead thing in the library door. There was a rumble under my feet.
“Cart! Tousellines!” Pete’s voice penetrated the sawdust of my brain cavity. “Wake up, both of you! Narcisse is hurt! We’ve got to get out of here and carry him! Quick — before they come back — ”
“Ma’mselle! Mon Dieu!” The old darkey could only weep and wring monkey hands. I couldn’t wring mine. I stood.
“Don’t stand there!” Pete spun at me. “Hurry! Cart, I’m going upstairs after the picture — ”
Picture! Great God! There she was halfway up the staircase. Her running feet seemed to shudder the balustrade. A rain squall slapped the front door, set it banging on its hinges. A cloud of water entered the hall. In the library where a shutter must have blown open, books were tumbling from shelves, and a paper volume flew around in the morguish gloom like a gull trying to get out. Sheets flagged on the dead in their mute line-up; doors slammed up and down the hall; candles were going out all over the place; it was the debacle at the end of Alice’s Wonderland excursion.
Pete was Alice flying down the stairs with her traveling bag and a big scroll of canvas clasped in her arms. Somehow I was picking up the cavalry boots at one end of Lieutenant Narcisse, and Touseilines was tugging manfully to raise the shoulders.
“Oh, dear,” Pete was crying. “Hurry — ”
We staggered through the door, wobbled over the verandah and plunged into a cataract. Over my shoulder I had a last look at the château’s hall. Candle-light was licking at the wan, green face of Uncle Eli with its ruptured eyes, adhesive
-taped forehead, and the blue mouth set like a trap. Naked to the hips, the black cape billowing and lashing about his legs, he lay on his side, face toward the door, the red stigma glowing on his breast — a picked chicken blown down off its hook.
One last time I looked back. Not until we’d cleared the end of the valley, running through Noah’s flood, and left a mile between us and the house. The deluge had blown itself into fulminating wind, and a prong of yellow moon had torn a hole in the crape sky.
The valley was a blue bowl inundated; the château a silver-striped animal crouching shadowy on the slope below the cemetery bluff. Angel and tree stood high in the moon-pallored dark like two little crests on a beetling crown.
Sighting them there, I believed I saw them move down the sky. Black blocks of thunder tumbled across the windy valley; left a tremor in the air. Pete dropped her suitcase to catch at my arm, and Tousellines lowered his end of Narcisse with a strangled shout. I shouted, too. That angel was moving! The tree was chasing after it. Far to the west the mornes echoed to a chorus of Lilliputian screams. The valley gave a roar to drown out the wails of the fleeing Cacos; and I watched graveyard and hillcrest come tumbling and bubbling, sliding and booming down the far escarpment like warm chocolate down the side of a cake; a glacier of storm-loosened mud that buried half the valley in its avalanche.
Whoom! Like that. The black hill fell across the bowl. Haiti trembled. Château Morne Noir was gone.
“M’sieu Proudfoot! M’sieu Proudfoot!” That was Narcisse, wakened by the thunder, lifting a bug-eyed head to look around. “M’sieu Proudfoot — Zombie —”
“Zombie nothing,” was Pete’s low-throated answer. “This time Uncle Eli is buried to stay.”
Murder On the Way! Page 20