Strange Conflict

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘What happened to her?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Naturally her family was most anxious to hush the matter up, so the nuns took charge of her and she was smuggled away by night, in a ship that was leaving for France, to enter a convent. But the Bocor who made her a Zombie would still have the power to bring her back to Haiti if he wished, and if he were a very powerful occultist he would also have the power to animate her brain and put into it such thoughts as he wished to express, even at a very great distance; though it would not be possible for him to enable her to speak.’

  Suddenly the Doctor’s manner changed. He stood up abruptly. From veiled mockery his tone hardened to one of open enmity and contempt, as he said:

  ‘I have amused myself by talking to you for long enough, Mr. Aron. I am now going to bed and to sleep. When you wake your friends and they renew their struggle to escape meeting me upon the astral they may gain a short respite from the interest which I’m sure they will feel if you repeat to them what I have told you about Zombies— particularly the story of the beautiful Haitian girl who was sent to France. I was the Bocor in that instance, and in order to keep a watch upon you all, through her, during your journey it suited me very well to bring her back to Haiti.’

  For a moment Simon did not catch the full implication of what Doctor Saturday had said, then his heart stood still. He slowly turned his head and stared at Philippa.

  19

  The Living Corpse

  The beautiful dumb girl was sitting there without a trace of expression on her face. If she had heard the Doctor’s words she showed no sign of it whatever, and it suddenly came to Simon that apart from eating the food which had been set before her at supper she had not made a single self-initiated action since she had entered the Doctor’s house.

  Even as he struggled against the bewildering horror of the situation his swift brain was working again. If, as the Mulatto had said, she was indeed a Zombie whose brain he had power to animate and direct even at a distance, he could presumably also empty it and leave it blank at will. Every idea that Phillippa had expressed by writing on her tablet since they had first met her on Waterloo station, nearly a week before, had, therefore, been pure persiflage—just a meaningless froth of written words—not in anyway expressing the personality that she had been in her true self two years or more ago, but conventional phrases having just enough individuality to convey to her unwitting companions the sort of person whom the Doctor wished them to believe her to be.

  They had it only from her that she had been struck dumb by a bomb which had fell on a hospital in which she was nursing, and evidently that was quite untrue; yet it was just the sort of story that their clever enemy would have caused the girl to tell, knowing it to be a certain winner in gaining their sympathy for her. That other business, too, about her having lived in Jamaica and having had an uncle who had taken her all over the West Indies, was also a fabrication of the Doctor’s, put out through her solely to enable her to remain in their company so that she could continue to act as a focus for him to keep an easy watch upon them.

  Kaleidoscopic pictures of himself and the girl together during the last few days flickered wildly before Simon’s mental eyes. He had held her hand and danced with her, and had it not been for his terrible anxiety about his friends on the previous night, so that his mind was capable of thinking of nothing else during those frightful hours when he did not know if they were dead or alive, he would certainly have made love to her; yet she was a dead thing—a body without a soul—something that had come back out of the grave.

  As he stared at her smooth, faintly dusky cheeks and rich red lips, that seemed impossible; and yet, now that he knew, he had a great feeling of revulsion. There was something rather repellent in her apparent full-blooded healthiness, and he felt that even to touch her would now fill him with nausea. At the same time he was conscious of an overwhelming pity for her—or rather, for the person that she had been before she had been robbed of her soul.

  The lovely thing at which he was staring was only a lump of ‘human’ clay, animated entirely by a tiny portion of another extraordinary powerful will. Somewhere the girl’s spirit must be imprisoned, suffering all the tortures of one that was neither in incarnation nor out of it, that could neither enjoy that tranquil period after the completion of a life on Earth nor go forth as a free spirit to animate another human body; but must watch in an agony of misery the uses to which the body that she could no longer control should be put, until some fatal accident or disease of the flesh rendered that body no longer tenable for the alien entity which had taken possession of it.

  Another thought struck Simon. As long as he had imagined that he had the dumb girl’s companionship he had not been afraid of the Doctor, although he was perfectly well aware that she could have done little to protect him—just as a man walking through a jungle at night might be comforted by the presence of his dog, although that dog could not guard him from the bite of a snake or a panther’s spring. The others were sleeping, and so deeply that he doubted if his loudest shout would wake them. Philippa was not even a friendly animal, but a puppet in human form animated by the will of his enemy, and he was utterly alone with the malignant Satanist.

  All those thoughts had rushed through his brain like lightning. At the last of them he had felt a sudden impulse to spring from his chair and dash in terror from the house, but resisted it; and, by the law that all resistance to Evil brings added strength, a new thought leapt into his mind. ‘You fool! Your case is no worse now than it has been the whole evening. You had made a plan, and Philippa had no part to play in it. Therefore this frightful disclosure of the Doctor’s makes no difference. He told you about Philippa only to terrify you. Don’t let him succeed. Carry on as you meant to; as though he had not mentioned it, but had just announced—as you expected him to do sooner or later— that he was going to bed.’

  Simon’s plan was a very simple one and he had hatched it hours before. He was quite capable of following and taking part in a discussion while at the same time thinking of someone completely different, and during the whole session the Doctor had done nine-tenths of the talking, so Simon had had ample opportunity to consider the situation from every angle.

  He was now absolutely convinced that when the Doctor went to sleep he did not mean to bother about the enemies that he had lured into his house; he would go out to lie in wait for Rex and Richard. If he could prevent their return he would be able to deal with the others at his leisure and during the coming day would derive a sadistic delight from watching them show signs of ever-increasing fatigue until they finally succumbed. Simon had decided that the best service he could possibly render, and indeed, as far as he could see, the only one which offered any hope of saving them all, was to carry the war into the enemy’s camp. At whatever risk to himself, he must endeavour to sabotage the Doctor’s plan so that Richard and Rex could escape his attack and manage to rejoin them.

  According to what de Richleau had said, since their two friends had failed to return before sundown, and there were no night-landing facilities at Port-au-Prince, there was now no hope of their arriving until dawn. Evidently the Doctor had taken that into his calculations—hence his willingness to stay up talking until the small hours. He knew that the other would not take off from Kingston airport until two hours before sunrise; so, providing he was asleep by five or even six o’clock he would still have ample time in which to attack them during the latter half of their journey. Simon had set himself the task of keeping the Doctor awake until well after sun-up and he had spent a considerable portion of the last few hours in thinking of methods which might best enable him to do so.

  Had his gun not gone down with the plane he would have been extremely tempted to whip it out and shoot the Doctor where he stood, taking a chance that, de Richleau and Marie Lou being asleep, their astrals were in the immediate neighbourhood. They could then have seized upon the Evil spirit at the moment of blackout immediately following death and have imprisoned i
t, thus accomplishing in one daring stroke the victory that they had set out to gain. But if the astrals of his friends were not in the vicinity the Doctor’s spirit would escape and, since they had no protection, would have them at his mercy. So the risk was great. But in any case he had no gun or other means of meting out swift death to the Satanist, so he was not called upon to gamble with the fate of them all.

  The obvious course was to endeavour to wound the Doctor or to hurt him so much that he would be unable to sleep on account of the pain; but that was easier said than done. The Mulatto had the appearance of a man of about sixty but he was powerfully built, and Simon, who was very frail, felt certain that he would get the worst of any physical encounter. Only a surprise attack could inflict the requisite type of injury, and such an attack is not easy when one’s opponent is fully aware of one’s animosity, quick-witted and prepared for any eventuality.

  Nevertheless Simon was a redoubtable opponent when he set his shrewd brain to work and he had taken considerable care to review every portion of the human body in relation both to the pain it can give when harmed and to its accessibility for swift attack.

  In those desperate minutes after the Doctor’s revelation about Philippa, Simon had kept his eyes cast down so that his enemy should not be able to read his thoughts. Suddenly he lifted his right foot knee-high and, with all the force he was capable brought the point of his heel crashing down upon the Satanist’s left instep.

  The Mulatto staggered back, his face contorted with agony. The sharp heel-edge had dug right down into the delicate tendons of his instep, just above his shoe-lace, and as Simon ground the hard edge home one of the small fragile bones which make up the arch of the foot snapped under the stab.

  As the Doctor dragged free his foot he panted slightly and his eyes seemed to start out of his yellow face with the intensity of their malevolence. He made no move to strike at Simon, but lifting his injured foot he whispered: ‘By Baron Cimeterre, I swear you shall pay for that.’

  But Simon had only started. The infliction of the wound was less than half his plan. Seizing the large oil-lamp from the table, he picked it up and hurled it at the Doctor’s head.

  By ducking the Doctor escaped the dangerous missile but under the suddenness and violence of the attack he gave back and turned to stagger from the room. The lamp crashed in a far corner and the oil ran out in a sheet of flame which greedily leapt up the flimsy curtains. Next moment Simon had jumped upon a chair. There was another oil-lamp, swinging from a beam in the centre of the room. Wrenching this away from its sockets—holder and all—he hurled that, too, after his retreating enemy.

  The second lamp also missed the Doctor, but as it burst, another great pool of flaming oil ran across the wooden floor, devouring the rush mats as it went. In a few moments the house would be on fire, just as Simon had deliberately planned that it should be.

  ‘Now, damn you, sleep if you can!’ Simon screamed, and, leaping from the chair, he rushed out of the room to rouse de Richleau and Marie Lou.

  They were sleeping as they had fallen, fully dressed, upon their beds, and at first Simon thought that he would never be able to wake them. He shouted at Marie Lou and pulled her up into a sitting position, but she only flopped back again with a little groan. Desperate measures were necessary and he had to smack her face hard before any semblance of consciousness returned to her. The Duke proved equally difficult to rouse, and five precious minutes had fled before Simon had them both on their feet and they had taken in his garbled account of what had happened.

  Still half-asleep, the other two stumbled after him as he raced back to the living-room. During the whole of his brief, violent attack on the Doctor, Philippa had not moved a muscle; she had just remained sitting in her chair, staring blankly in front of her. The fire had taken a rapid hold upon the wooden buildings and as they entered the sitting-room they saw that it was now half-obscured by flames and smoke. Philippa’s chair was empty, but suddenly she emerged from the centre of the smoke-screen. Evidently she had tried to follow the Doctor to his room but had been unable to do so.

  As she lurched towards them they momentarily recoiled in horror. Her great eyes were staring, her mouth was wide open in a strangled scream, but no sound came from it. Her hair and her clothes were on fire and she seemed distraught with agony.

  In a second, de Richleau had off his coat and flung it round her, while Marie Lou and Simon strove to beat out the flames from her burning skirt with their bare hands. Somehow they succeeded, just before she fainted and slid down among them to the floor.

  The greater part of the room was now a glowing furnace and the only door as yet unattacked by the crackling flames was that leading to the guests’ bedrooms. The Duke and Simon grabbed Philippa up and, pulling her through it, carried her out by way of the nearest room on to the verandah.

  Further along it they could see the fire had already spread to the dining-room and that unless it was swiftly checked it would soon be devouring the Doctor’s bedroom and study. They could hear him, somewhere on the other side of the pall of smoke and flying sparks, shouting to his house-boys, and the sound of heavy running feet. For one brief moment Simon allowed himself to savour his triumph as he exclaimed viciously:

  ‘Not much chance of that swine getting to sleep tonight now.’ Then he turned his attention back to the poor, soulless body that they knew as Philippa.

  De Richleau was already examining her and he said despondently: ‘The poor girl’s got terrible burns on her head, arms and legs. We must get her down to the hospital as quickly as we possibly can.’

  ‘She—she’s not a girl at all—she’s a Zombie,’ Simon jerked out. ‘Doctor Saturday told me—said so himself just before I went for him.’

  ‘What’s a Zombie?’ asked Marie Lou in a puzzled voice.

  De Richleau answered grimly. ‘Zombies are bodies without souls—dead people who have been called back from the grave to serve the Witch Doctor who has captured their souls. How utterly frightful!’

  In a few swift sentences Simon told them what the Doctor had said of Philippa’s history.

  The Duke nodded. ‘I should think, then, all the house-boys are Zombies too. But although Zombies can’t talk they can feel, so this wretched body that we call Philippa is suffering every bit as much as if the girl’s spirit were in it. We must get her to the hospital just the same. Heave her up, Simon, over my shoulders. It’s only about quarter of an hour’s walk down to the edge of the town and with any luck we’ll meet help on the way.’

  They bundled Philippa’s body across the Duke’s back in a fireman’s lift and bowed under her weight he staggered down the verandah steps with Marie Lou leading the way and Simon behind to protect the small party’s rear. To carry the body was a considerable effort for the Duke, and every hundred yards or so he had to rest for a moment, but when they had covered half a mile they met an early market-cart which was coming down a forked road towards the town.

  Although they could not speak Creole the great fat mammy who was driving grasped the situation and helped to arrange the unconscious form upon her bunches of vegetables. Whipping her miserable donkey into an ambling trot, she drove straight to the hospital, while the others ran and walked beside the little cart.

  At the hospital they were relieved of her charge by a Mulatto nurse, who was called a Negro house-surgeon. After what they had heard of Haiti it was a pleasant surprise to find that the hospital at least would have rivalled any European institution in a similar-sized town for its cleanliness, its equipment and the evident efficiency of its staff, all of whom spoke passably good French. Philippa’s charred garments were cut off her and under a light covering she was swiftly wheeled away on a trolley for her burns to be treated. The others, meanwhile, were asked to sit down and wait for the surgeon’s report in a bare but not uncomfortable room.

  While they waited they discussed the happenings of the night and de Richleau gave unstinted praise to Simon for his well-planned, courageous and skilfully
-delivered attack on the enemy.

  The Duke said that normally any Black as powerful as the Doctor would be able to overcome his own pain and throw himself into a self-induced trance, but that having set fire to his house would almost certainly prevent him from doing that. He would naturally be extremely anxious to save the valuable magical impedimenta, which he doubtless kept somewhere in his study, and other possessions, so the chances were that it would be at least a couple of hours before he had salvaged what he could and found a room in some neighbour’s house in which to sleep.

  Simon had started the fire at about twenty minutes past three. It was now just on four. Another two hours would bring them to six, and it would take the Satanist at least a further hour to subdue the acute pain in his foot before he could get to sleep; so there was very little likelihood of his being able to leave his body before seven and the probability was that he would not succeed in getting out of it until considerably later. Owing, therefore, to the skilfulness of Simon’s stategy there was good reason to hope that he would have no time in which to work upon the astral before dawn, and they all felt confident that Rex and Richard would set out from Kingston at the earliest possible moment which would enable them to make a daylight landing at Port-au-Prince.

  Half an hour later the Negro surgeon came down to tell them that Philippa’s burns were extremely severe and that he would not be able to answer for her life, but that it was difficult to tell yet if she would survive her injuries. He was a kind and friendly man and, seeing their depressed state, insisted on one of the nurses bringing them some hot coffee laced with rum to put them into better heart. When they had drunk it, he suggested that they should come back in the course of a few hours, by which time he hoped to have further news for them.