Zombies

by Otto Penzler

  “In God’s name, man—” he began.

  Ramos rose from his seat, and it was as if the devil himself had etched the expression on his face.

  “God!” he said. In the single syllable was all the hate, all the contempt and loathing that a voice can muster, and in his eyes there had crawled a look that had been born in the eyes of Lucifer on the day he had damned his Master.

  “God,” said Ramos again. Then he spoke rapidly and terribly. A torrent of horrible blasphemy poured from his bitter lips. Words evil and ugly as a Black Mass poured in Lane’s shocked ears.

  “God,” said Ramos again. “What has your God done for me? On my distaff side my people were Indians, Incas. The men of the Christian God slew them, slaughtered them, robbed them. I curse your God, and from Him I take back what is rightfully mine—the treasures He has taken from me.”

  Panting he resumed his seat. His eyes fell upon the graven image of lifeless beauty at his side. Then a smile crept across his mouth, a ghastly, ugly smile.

  “You shall die, Lane,” he said more quietly. “And it is fitting that you die by Janice’s hand. Because of her love for you, I have been unable to control her will completely. There is some deep emotion for you within her that thwarts me. But in time I shall shatter it and she shall be mine, all mine. When you are dead the power within her that withstands me shall crumble. I shall have your girl, Lane. And she shall slay you with her own hands. She shall drive a knife through your heart.”

  He turned to the girl and thrust a dirk into her slim hand. “Janice,” he said.

  CHAPTER IV

  A DISEASED BRAIN

  A wave of jealous loathing rippled through Gordon Lane’s body as he saw how completely submissive the girl was to the beast in whose thrall she was inexorably held. Yet a flicker of hope went through him. She still loved him! And that love had kept her from submitting entirely to the mad doctor. The depth of that love had resisted his black arts.

  “Janice,” said Ramos again, and the quiet menace in his tone was more threatening than his roaring demands of a moment ago. “You will take that dirk. You will plunge it into the heart of that man there.” He pointed a finger at Lane and for the first time since he had come to this chamber, Janice looked at him. “You will slay him,” said Ramos again. “Because you hate him. You loathe him. You shall kill him. Cataran, stand back.”

  The caretaker’s voice rose in protest.

  “He will overpower her,” he said in a cracked, hysterical tone. “I shall slash with my knife, too.”

  “Stand back, you fool! It is not her strength she is using. Stand back.”

  Cataran stood back. His knife’s blade no longer touched the flesh of Lane’s neck. And now Janice advanced upon him.

  At that moment, Gordon Lane knew that he would rather have gazed into the heart of Hell itself than behold the sight which he confronted then.

  The woman he had loved beyond all else had metamorphosed into a snarling, savage beast. Her beauty had evolved into a satanic evil thing. Hate and loathing were in her face as she approached to slay the man she had once pledged to love until death.

  Until death! The phrase struck Lane’s mind ironically. Perhaps she had obeyed that vow literally. Perhaps she was now beyond death, and had come from the grave to slay, to kill.

  Slowly she came toward him. Lane took a step forward and stretched out his arms.

  “Janice,” he said, a suppliant appeal in his tone. “Janice, it’s Gordon. You must know me!”

  For a moment it seemed to him that Janice wavered in her death-dealing march. But then Ramos’ voice cracked like an icy whip through the room.

  “Slay him! Slay the thing you hate!”

  Lane essayed to catch the girl’s eye. Yet even when their gazes met no sign of recognition shone in her face. Closer and closer she came, like a crazed tigress stalking her prey. Then, in an instant she was upon him.

  Lane had no desire to harm her. It seemed a simple matter to take the weapon away from this fragile girl. Why Ramos had permitted this farce to begin he did not understand. He reached out his hand to take the dirk from her slim hand as easily as possible.

  And then a moment later he was fighting with all his strength for his life.

  The thing that grappled with him was not Janice Lansing. It was possessed of the strength of a terrible fiend. Lane seized her right wrist in his hand. Her left clawed like a beast’s talon at his face and blood streaked in rivulets down his chin.

  NEVER HAD WOMAN been born who possessed such terrible strength. And then as Lane glanced over her shoulder he saw the countenance of the doctor. It was taut and dripping with sweat as if the man was undergoing some awful strain.

  Then in an instant the significance of Ramos’ words came to him. “It is not her strength she is using!” Dear God! It was not her own strength. It was Ramos’!

  In a blazing flash Lane understood part of the enigma. Janice was held fast in the invisible tentacles of Ramos’ mind. Lane had heard of the doctor’s proficiency at hypnotism. Janice was at the complete mercy of Ramos’ brain. And somehow, through some devilish refinement of mesmerism, he was pouring his own strength into her body.

  Desperately Lane grappled with the girl. The power of an Amazon was in her arms. He could feel her hot breath on his face, could see the bared teeth as she snarled at him, and all the while, her terrible might was bringing her arm down—bringing that gleaming blade closer to his heart.

  Sweat, cold and glistening as drops of ice, stood on Gordon Lane’s brow. The demoniac power which the girl derived from the evil force in Ramos’ head drove the knife down closer and closer to his body.

  Lane leaned his face over toward the girl, and spoke to her softly.

  “Janice—Janice—This is Gordon. Gordon, who loves you. Janice, you must remember.”

  There was a pleading agony in his tone. Their eyes met. It seemed to him that for an infinitesimal fraction of a second the driving force of her arm abated. For a fleeting moment he thought he saw a glimmer of intelligence, of recognition in her eyes.

  And it was then that he made his move. Beyond her the veins were standing out on the doctor’s forehead. He seemed under a great strain.

  Lane’s hand tightened on the girl’s wrist, wrenched it hard. He brought up his right and seized the hilt of the dirk. Then he snatched it from her.

  He thrust her away from him and took a step backward. Cataran’s cry of alarm echoed staccato through the catacomb. In an instant, Ramos rose to his feet. His hand dropped to his coat pocket.

  The flickering candlelight danced crazily on the blue steel barrel of the revolver he jerked from his coat. It came up to aim at Lane’s heart.

  But Gordon Lane did not hesitate. With a serpentlike movement he drew back his arm, then he hurled it forward with all his strength. The dirk hurtled through the air.

  Even as Ramos’ revolver spoke the blade ate its way avidly into his shoulder. The doctor uttered a cry of pain, and stumbled forward. His foot slipped and he fell with a crash.

  Janice Lansing fell forward into Lane’s arms. Then Lane heard a slithering footfall at his side. Grinning evilly, Cataran approached with his own blade, prepared to slay. Lane sidestepped, swinging the girl around. Then his right lashed out. It cracked with a sickening sound on the point of the other’s jaw. Cataran dropped to the floor.

  TIGHTLY GORDON HELD the girl in his arms. Now she looked up at him, wonder and bewilderment in her face.

  “Gordon,” she whispered. “Gordon. I knew you’d come. How did you find me? What had he done? Don’t let him take me again, Gordon! Don’t!”

  “He won’t,” said Lane grimly. “Nor will he ever take them. . . . Look!”

  He indicated the six workmen. Since Ramos had fallen it seemed that the spell which held them had been broken, too. Exhausted they had fallen to the fresh earth they had dug. They stared at each other with wondering, bewildered eyes.

  “For God’s sake,” cried Lane, “why did he do this t
o you?”

  A shudder ran through the girl’s slim body.

  “For two reasons,” said Janice. “First, he made violent love to me and I refused him. Second, I learned his awful secret.”

  Lane indicated the prostrate emaciated Things which lay on their backs at the rear of the cavern.

  “You mean the secret of that?”

  She nodded. “It was when I was convalescing. He permitted no one to see me, telling people I was much worse than I was. That was when he was making love to me. Then one day I came upon him and Reeves, the undertaker, talking to Cataran. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But after hearing the first few words, I had to listen to the rest.

  “They—” She shivered as she glanced toward the exhausted creatures behind her. “They were patients of his over a period of time—who had no immediate relatives or friends. Or at least whose people didn’t care much what happened to them. He used to advertise in weekly country papers offering to take care of indigent relatives. He treated them with a preparation of Cannabis Indica. That stupefied them, rendered their wills supine to his devilish hypnotism.”

  Lane shook his head. “He must be mad.”

  “I think he is. He boasted of all this to me when he warned me what he would do if I refused him. Reeves, the undertaker, would bury his ‘dead’ live men. Ramos would sign the death certificate and with his reputation in the town there was no suspicion.”

  “But,” said Lane. “What if these distant relatives had wanted to see the body laid out? What if I had not been out of town when you were supposed to have been at the undertaker’s? If I had learned of your supposed death early enough to have viewed your body as well as have attended the funeral?”

  “He had that worked out, too,” said Janice. “You see, it was arranged that when Reeves laid out a corpse, he was to arrange the coffin so that the body was completely covered. The head seen through thick glass was the only thing visible.”

  “THE DRUG REDUCED respiration. The thick glass would also screen the almost imperceptible movement of slow breathing. Of course, I was buried in the family vault. But the others took the places of the dead Cervantes whose bodies Ramos burned. When he put them into the coffin in the mornings, he would order them in their hypnotic spell to arise at a certain hour. They were so obedient to his will that they awoke and reported to the catacombs ready for labor on the stroke of midnight.”

  Lane nodded. “And with Cataran in his pay that would explain why the Cervantes tomb was unlocked. So that the ‘dead’ men could get out. But, darling, why? For God’s sake, why? Is the man merely mad that he did these incredibly evil things?”

  “I’m certain he’s mad,” she said slowly. “Yet there was one completely sane motive for what he did. Ramos had always hated the Church. Far back he was descended from the persecuted Incas. He hated Christianity. One day when cleaning out the Cervantes tomb, Cataran found an old map that revealed the whereabouts of buried Church treasures that the Spaniards had taken from the Indians five hundred years ago.

  “Ramos wanted them. Apparently they were worth a great deal of money and they were buried in the catacombs of the graveyard. He dared not let anyone know. For then they would have become the property of the Church. Neither his blasphemous views nor his cupidity would permit that.

  “Those poor creatures were his laboring slaves. They dug at night for the treasure. During the day they returned to their coffins, held there by Ramos’ drug and by hypnosis. He did the same thing to me, fighting to dominate me completely.”

  “But tonight,” said Lane. “The phone call.”

  “I suddenly awoke in my coffin. For a short while I was in complete possession of my faculties. He had always had more trouble keeping the spell on me than he did with the others.”

  Lane’s arm tightened about her shoulder. “And I know why,” he said.

  “Anyway, I ran from the crypt. Ran to Cataran’s house and phoned you. Cataran found me and dragged me away.”

  She lifted her eyes, glanced across the room and uttered a little moan.

  “Look! He moved. He’s not dead.”

  “No,” said Lane. “But after this he’ll be where he can do no harm.”

  She clung to him.

  “Oh, Gordon, I’m afraid. I shall always be afraid while he’s alive. To know that someone can have such power over me.”

  FOR A LONG moment they held each other. Then Gordon Lane knew what he must do.

  “Darling,” he said, “go to Cataran’s cottage. Phone the police. Bring them here at once. I’ll wait here and keep guard. Hurry, darling.”

  She smiled at him bravely and ran out of the dank catacomb.

  Lane glanced around the room. The six emaciated Things lay almost unconscious on the ground. Perhaps they would live; perhaps they would pay with their lives for the ghastly thing that Ramos had done to them.

  Cataran lay motionless on the floor. Ramos stirred uneasily. Lane crossed the room and picked up the revolver that the doctor had dropped. In his head there burned Janice’s words. “I shall always be afraid while he lives!”

  He bent down over the prostrate figure of the fiend and leveled the gun. There was no compunction in his heart as he sent two bullets crashing into Ramos’ diseased brain.

  IN MANY WAYS, H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) lived a paradoxical life. Known today as one of the greatest of all horror writers, with numerous books in print and the model against whom other authors of dark fantasy are compared, he was a pitiful failure while alive.

  His first book, The Shunned House, written in 1924, was never published, merely privately printed and circulated among a small circle of friends in unbound pages in 1928. His next, Weird Shadow over Innsmouth (1926), had a painfully small printing of four hundred copies, of which only two hundred were bound, the remaining sheets destroyed some years later when there was no call for them. No other book was published in his lifetime.

  Although a frail recluse with few friends, he carried on a lively, almost pathologically relentless correspondence with other writers, fans, and, indeed, anyone who wrote to him, resulting in an estimated hundred thousand letters (according to his biographer, L. Sprague de Camp), an impressive total for an author who produced a mere sixty stories in his entire career.

  Lovecraft was asked to write a series of connected short stories for a new magazine, Home Brew, which he did for a quarter of a cent per word, and the inferiority of the work reflects the pittance of five dollars per story he was paid. The publisher titled the series, about a man who revives corpse after corpse and the consequences he endures, Grewsome Tales, but it was retitled Herbert West—Reanimator when reprinted. The first story, “From the Dark,” was published in the debut issue of Home Brew (January 1922), and five further installments followed through June. It was first collected in Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1943).

  The idea for “Pickman’s Model” came when Lovecraft heard of a series of tunnels that connected cellars of old houses in Boston, probably built for smugglers. It was originally published in the October 1927 issue of Weird Tales; its first book appearance was in an anthology edited by Christine Campbell Thomson, By Daylight Only (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1929); it later was collected in Lovecraft’s first short-story collection, The Outsider and Others (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1939).

  I.

  FROM THE DARK

  OF HERBERT WEST, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether to the sinister manner of his recent disappearance, but was engendered by the whole nature of his life-work, and first gained its acute form more than seventeen years ago, when we were in the third year of our course at the Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham. While he was with me, the wonder and diabolism of his experiments fascinated me utterly, and I was his closest companion. Now that he is gone and the spell is broken, the actual fear is greater. Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.

&nb
sp; The first horrible incident of our acquaintance was the greatest shock I ever experienced, and it is only with reluctance that I repeat it. As I have said, it happened when we were in the medical school, where West had already made himself notorious through his wild theories on the nature of death and the possibility of overcoming it artificially. His views, which were widely ridiculed by the faculty and his fellow-students, hinged on the essentially mechanistic nature of life; and concerned means for operating the organic machinery of mankind by calculated chemical action after the failure of natural processes. In his experiments with various animating solutions he had killed and treated immense numbers of rabbits, guinea-pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys, till he had become the prime nuisance of the college. Several times he had actually obtained signs of life in animals supposedly dead; in many cases violent signs; but he soon saw that the perfection of this process, if indeed possible, would necessarily involve a lifetime of research. It likewise became clear that, since the same solution never worked alike on different organic species, he would require human subjects for further and more specialised progress. It was here that he first came into conflict with the college authorities, and was debarred from future experiments by no less a dignitary than the dean of the medical school himself—the learned and benevolent Dr. Allan Halsey, whose work in behalf of the stricken is recalled by every old resident of Arkham.

  I had always been exceptionally tolerant of West’s pursuits, and we frequently discussed his theories, whose ramifications and corollaries were almost infinite. Holding with Haeckel that all life is a chemical and physical process, and that the so-called “soul” is a myth, my friend believed that artificial reanimation of the dead can depend only on the condition of the tissues; and that unless actual decomposition has set in, a corpse fully equipped with organs may with suitable measures be set going again in the peculiar fashion known as life. That the psychic or intellectual life might be impaired by the slight deterioration of sensitive brain-cells which even a short period of death would be apt to cause, West fully realised. It had at first been his hope to find a reagent which would restore vitality before the actual advent of death, and only repeated failures on animals had shewn him that the natural and artificial life-motions were incompatible. He then sought extreme freshness in his specimens, injecting his solutions into the blood immediately after the extinction of life. It was this circumstance which made the professors so carelessly sceptical, for they felt that true death had not occurred in any case. They did not stop to view the matter closely and reasoningly.