Zombies

by Otto Penzler

  “I don’t understand Creole patois,” I said, somewhat irritated.

  “Literally, it is: ‘When you sup with the devil, be sure you have a long spoon.’ ”

  “I don’t follow you,” I said.

  He smiled again. “Oh, it’s just another warning.”

  I had no desire to listen longer to anything so indefinite and vague; so I changed the subject. I don’t think anything he could have told me would have influenced me; I would have gone back to that house and Rosamunda Marsina no matter what was lurking there. But I expected nothing so strange, so horrible, as that which I did discover.

  I returned to the house that evening, and again put off saying anything to Rosamunda. But she herself afforded me an unlooked for opening before I went to bed that night. She had come down from upstairs, and I could see at once that there was something she wanted to tell me.

  “I think it’s only fair to tell you,” she said, “that your door will be locked tonight, after you have gone to bed.”

  “Why?” I asked, trying not to betray my astonishment.

  “It is because it is not desirable that you walk around at night.”

  This hurt me a little, suggesting as it did that perhaps I might make use of the darkness to spy out the house. I said: “Rosamunda, there are stories about this house, aren’t there?”

  I was sorry at once, for she looked suddenly very frightened. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I have heard things in New Orleans,” I said slowly.

  She mastered herself a little, asking: “What?”

  “Oh, nothing definite,” I replied. “Some people think that there is something wrong out here.”

  “Something wrong? What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you seen anything wrong?”

  “No . . .” I hesitated, and she caught my dubious tone.

  “Do you suspect anything?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She looked at me a little coldly. Already I was beginning to repent my having spoken to her about the house. Also, she had suspected at once that I had broken my promise to her and had talked about the house. I had not foreseen that, and cursed myself for a fool. I had succeeded only in creating an atmosphere of tension.

  That night I was awakened by a sharp cry of terror, which was cut off abruptly even before I was fully awake. I was out of bed instantly, standing in the middle of the room, listening. Once I fancied I heard the sound of Rosamunda’s voice, a low, earnest sound, as if she were pleading with someone. Then, silence. How long I waited, I do not know. At last I took up my electric candle and made for the door. Then I remembered that it would be locked—as Rosamunda had told me. Yet I reached out and turned the knob, and the door was not locked!

  I looked cautiously out into the hall. But I had time to see only one thing: a bloodless face, convulsed with hatred, staring into mine—the same face I had seen against the window of the second floor—and above it, a heavy cane upraised. Then the cane descended, catching me a glancing blow on the side of the head. I went down like a log.

  How long I lay there I do not know; it could not have been long, for it was still dark when I came to—and found Rosamunda’s frightened eyes watching my face anxiously, felt her delicate fingers on my forehead. I struggled to sit up, but she held me quiet.

  “Be still,” she murmured. Then she asked quickly: “You are not badly hurt?”

  “No,” I whispered. “It was just enough to put me out.”

  “Oh, it was my fault. If I had locked the door it would not have happened.”

  “Nonsense,” I said quickly. “If I hadn’t been so curious . . . if I hadn’t heard your voice . . .”

  “I am glad you thought of me, John.” It was the first time she had used my Christian name, and I felt more pleasure than I cared to admit. But before I could express my sentiment, she said swiftly: “In the morning you must go.”

  “What? Go away—and not come back?”

  She nodded. “If you do not go away, both of us will suffer. I should not have let you come, let you stay.”

  Boldly I said: “I’m not going until I can take you with me.”

  She looked closely at me; then bent quickly and kissed me. For a moment I held her in my arms; then she pushed me gently away. “Listen,” she said. “In the morning you must go with your baggage. Go anywhere—back to New Orleans. But at sundown, come back to me. You must not be seen by Aunt Abby. I will wait for you in the magnolias just below the veranda.”

  I stood up, steadying myself against the doorframe. “I’ll come back, Rosamunda,” I said.

  She nodded and fled down the hall. I went back into my room and packed my things.

  In the morning I departed ostentatiously, making it certain that the older woman, Abby, had seen me go. But in the evening I was back. I never left the vicinity, and was within sight of the house all day. How could I leave there—when Rosamunda might be in danger? I approached the house that evening effectively screened by low trees and the magnolias.

  Rosamunda was standing before the veranda, almost hidden in the bushes. She was agitated, standing there twisting her handkerchief in her hands. She ran forward a little as I came up. “Now I must tell you,” she breathed. “I must tell someone—you. You must help me.” She was obviously distraught.

  I said: “I’ll do anything I can for you, Rosamunda.”

  She began to talk now, rapidly. “We came from Haiti, John. That is a strange island, an island of weird, curious things. Sometimes it is called the magic island. And it is. Do you believe in magic things?”

  I did have a knowledge of magic beliefs, some old legends I had picked up in the Indian country, and quite a collection of tales I had heard from levee Negroes. I nodded, saying: “I know very little of it, but I think it can be.”

  “You have never been to Haiti?”

  “No,” I replied.

  She paused, turned and looked a little fearfully at the house; then spoke again. “There are many strange beliefs in Haiti,” she said, talking slowly, yet betraying an eagerness to finish. Then she looked deep into my eyes and asked: “Do you know what a zombi is?”

  I had heard weird half-hinted stories of animated cadavers seen in Haiti, whispered tales of age-old Negro magic used to raise the dead of the black island. Vaguely, I knew what she meant. Yet I said: “No.”

  “It is a dead man,” she went on hurriedly, “a dead man who has been brought out of his grave and made to live again and to work!”

  “But such a thing cannot be,” I protested, suddenly horrified at an idea that began to form in my mind, a terrible suggestion which I sought to banish quickly. It would not go. I listened for Rosamunda’s hushed and tense voice.

  “Believe me, John Stuard—they do exist!”

  “No, no,” I said.

  She stopped me abruptly. “You are making it hard for me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I will believe you.” But inwardly I protested; surely such a thing could not be! Yet I could not banish from my mind the memory of strangely silent figures working the fields at night.

  Rosamunda spoke swiftly, her words coming in an agonized rush. “That woman—Abby—she knew how to raise these people from their graves. When we came to New Orleans, we came alone. Just the two of us. She was in a hurry to get out of Haiti; I now think she was wanted in Port au Prince. I do not know. I was only a little girl, but I can remember these things. Every year they come more and more distinctly to me. Soon after we were here, the slaves came.”

  I cut in: “What slaves?”

  “They are in the cellars—many of them. All Negroes. We keep them in the cellars all day; only at night Abby sends them out to work. I have been so afraid you might find them, for you heard them screaming—and you might have seen them in the fields at night.”

  “But surely you don’t mean—you can’t mean . . .”

  “I do. They are dead!”

  “But, Rosamun
da . . . !”

  “Please, let me tell you what I know.” I nodded, and she went on. “I was quite old when Matilda came. She was the last of them. All along up to her, the slaves came, one after the other. I never saw them come. One day they were just here; that is all. But many nights Abby was gone—and soon after, slaves would come. Abby always took care of them herself, making sweet bread and water for them. They ate nothing more. After Matilda came, something happened. Aunt Abby hurt herself, and couldn’t leave the house. She wouldn’t have a doctor, and since then she could leave her room only with great difficulty. She had a speaking tube put into her rooms; it ran down into the cellars, so that she could direct the men—those poor dead men—into the fields. They were taught to come back as soon as light showed in the eastern sky. Only Abby could direct them, but I could tell Matilda what to do. Over Matilda Abby had no power—it often happens that way.

  “After she came, there were no more slaves. I was quite grown then, and I came on a newspaper one day that told of a series of grave robbings that had been climaxed by the recent snatching of the body of a colored woman, Matilda Martin. That was right after Matilda came. Since then, I have known. At first it was horrible for me to live here, but there was no place for me to go. I have been living with these dead men and Abby, John, and I cannot go on—and I cannot leave these poor dead ones behind me. I want to go away with you, but they must be sent back to the graves from which she took them.”

  Looking at her frightened yet determined face, I knew that she would go away with me. I did not want the house, nor the magnolias; I wanted Rosamunda Marsina. “There is a way, then, to send them back?” I asked, still only half believing her shocking story.

  She nodded eagerly. “They must be given salt—any food with salt—and they will know they are dead, and will find their way back to their graves.”

  “And Miss Abby?” I said.

  She looked at me. “She is too strong; we can do nothing if she knows.”

  “What shall we do?” I asked.

  Rosamunda’s eyes went suddenly cold. She said: “Matilda can be directed to Abby. Only I can direct her. Matilda hates Abby as I do. Abby is a fiend—she has robbed these dead of their peace. If I go from here, she must not be able to follow—else she will hound us until we are dead, and after that . . . I don’t want to think what might happen then.”

  An idea came to me, and at first I wanted to brush it aside. But it was persistent—and it was a way out. “Rosamunda,” I said, “send Matilda up to Abby.”

  Rosamunda looked at me. She nodded. “I was thinking that way,” she said. “But it must be before she has the salt, because once she has tasted salt there is nothing left for her but to find her grave.”

  Then she shot a frightened glance at the windows of the second floor. She clutched my arm. “Quick,” she murmured. “They will be coming from the cellars soon. We must be ready for them. They never refuse food, never. I have made some little pistachio candies, with salt. We must give the candies to them.”

  She led the way, almost running into the house. I came silently after her. Below me I could hear the shuffling of many feet, and above, the dragging footsteps of Miss Abby, moving away from her speaking tube. Rosamunda snatched up the little plate of candy and preceded me to the back door.

  Then suddenly the cellar doors opened, and a file of staring men shuffled slowly out, looking neither to right nor to left, seeing us, yet not seeing us. Rosamunda stepped boldly forward, holding out the plate. The foremost of them took a piece of the salted candy, and went on, munching it. Their black faces were expressionless. When the Negroes had all taken of the candy, Rosamunda turned to reenter the house. “Come quickly,” she said. “Soon they will know.” I hesitated, and saw—and my doubts were swept away, leaving my mind in chaos.

  The little group had stopped abruptly, huddled together. Then, one by one, they began to wail terribly into the night, and even as I watched, they began to move off, hurriedly now, running across the fields toward their distant graves, a line of terrible, tragic figures against the sky.

  I felt Rosamunda shuddering against me, and slipped my arm gently around her. “Listen!” she said, her voice trembling. Above us I could hear suddenly the angry snarling voice of Miss Abby. At the same time the sound of wood beating wood came to us: Abby was pounding the walls with her cane.

  Matilda stood in the kitchen, and Rosamunda went up to her at once, addressing her in a soft, persuasive voice. “Above there is Abby, Matilda. Long ago she took you away from where you were—took you to be her slave. You have not liked her, Matilda, you have hated her. Go up to her now. She is yours. When you come down, there will be candy on the table for you.”

  Matilda nodded slowly; then she turned and began to shuffle heavily into the hall toward the stairs. Upstairs, silence had fallen.

  Both of us ran from the kitchen, snatching up two small carpet-bags which Rosamunda had put into the corridor, and which she pointed out to me as we went. We jumped from the veranda and ran down the path. Behind us rose suddenly into the night the shrill screaming of a woman in deadly terror. It was shut off abruptly, horribly. Rosamunda was shuddering. We turned to run. We had gone only a little way down the deserted road when we heard the nearby sound of a woman wailing. That was Matilda. Rosamunda hesitated, I with her, pressed close in the shadow of an overhanging sycamore. We looked back. A shadowy figure was running across the fields; in the house a lamp was burning low in the kitchen. And yet, was it a lamp? The light suddenly flared up. I turned Rosamunda about before she had time to see what I had seen. Matilda had turned over the lamp. The house was burning.

  Rosamunda was whimpering a little, the strain beginning to tell. “We’ll have to go away. When they find Abby dead, they’ll want me.”

  I said, “Yes Rosamunda,” but I knew we would not have to go away, unless that fire did not burn. We hurried on to New Orleans, and went to Jordan’s apartment.

  Next day it was discovered that the house in the magnolias had burned to the ground, Miss Abby with it. The Creole woman, Rosamunda Marsina, had spent the night with her fiance in the apartment of Sherman Jordan—so said the papers. Jordan had seen to that. Rosamunda and I were married soon after and went out to rebuild that house.

  Since then, I have tried often to dismiss the events of that horrible night as a chaotic dream, a thing half imagined, half real. But certain things forbade any such interpretation, no matter how much I longed to believe that both Rosamunda and I had been deceived by too vivid belief in Haitian legends.

  There were especially those other things in the papers that day—the day the burning of the house was chronicled—things I kept carefully from Rosamunda’s eyes. They were isolated stories of new graveyard outrages—that is what the papers called them, but I know better—the finding of putrefied remains in half-opened graves of Negroes whose bodies had been stolen long years ago—and the curious detail that the graves had been half dug by bare fingers, as if dead hands were seeking the empty coffins below.

  THE MOST FAMOUS and beloved writer in America, Stephen (Edwin) King (1947– ), was born in Portland, Maine, and graduated from the University of Maine with a B.A. in English. Unable to find a position as a high school teacher, he sold some stories to various publications, including Playboy. Heavily influenced by H. P. Lovecraft and the macabre stories published by EC Comics, he directed his energies to horror and supernatural fiction. His first book, Carrie (1973), about a girl with psychic powers, was thrown into a wastebasket and famously rescued by his wife, Tabitha, who encouraged him to polish and submit it. It received a very modest advance but had great success as a paperback and a career was launched—a career of such spectacular magnitude that King was the most consistently successful writer in America for two decades and remains the most popular author of horror fiction in history. In 2003, he was given the National Book Foundation’s medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In addition to writing numerous novels and short stories, King
has written screenplays and nonfiction, proving himself an expert in macabre fiction and film. More than one hundred films and television programs have been made from his work, most notably Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980), Stand by Me (1986, based on the novella “The Body”), Misery (1990), The Shawshank Redemption (1994, based on the short story “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”), and The Green Mile (1999).

  “Home Delivery” was originally published in Book of the Dead, edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector (New York: Bantam, 1989).

  CONSIDERING THAT IT was probably the end of the world, Maddie Pace thought she was doing a good job. Hell of a good job. She thought that she just might be coping with the End of Everything better than anyone else on earth. And she was positive she was coping better than any other pregnant woman on earth.

  Coping.

  Maddie Pace, of all people.

  Maddie Pace, who sometimes couldn’t sleep if, after a visit from Reverend Peebles, she spied a dust-bunny under the dining room table—just the thought that Reverend Peebles might have seen that dust-bunny could be enough to keep her awake until two in the morning.

  Maddie Pace, who, as Maddie Sullivan, used to drive her fiancé Jack crazy when she froze over a menu, debating entrées sometimes for as long as half an hour.

  “Maddie, why don’t you just flip a coin?” he’d asked her once after she had managed to narrow it down to a choice between the braised veal and the lamb chops . . . and then could get no further. “I’ve had five bottles of this goddam German beer already, and if you don’t make up y’mind pretty damn quick, there’s gonna be a drunk lobsterman under the table before we ever get any food on it!”

  So she had smiled nervously, ordered the braised veal . . . and then lay awake until well past midnight, wondering if the chops might not have been better.

  She’d had no trouble coping with Jack’s proposal, however; she accepted it and him quickly, and with tremendous relief. Following the death of her father, Maddie and her mother had lived an aimless, cloudy sort of life on Deer Isle, off the coast of Maine. “If I wasn’t around to tell them women where to squat and lean against the wheel,” George Sullivan had been fond of saying while in his cups and among his friends at Buster’s Tavern or in the back room of Daggett’s Barber Shop, “I don’t know what the hell they’d do.”