Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  Xiu nodded, touched the old woman’s arm in a silent thank-you, and jogged down the steps before halting and turning back to Lei-Fang. “Where are you going, Wuyi Zhou?”

  “We’ll know when I get there. Go, child, run along and tell your husband I will need him in a few minutes.” Lei-Fang watched Xiu and her daughter disappear down the street, the child half-awake as she curled tiny arms partway around her mother’s neck and flattened her face against Xiu’s shoulder. Lei-Fang frowned and vanished into the darkness of her house, flicking on a light switch as she passed, the evening settling in quickly now as the sun dipped low in the sky.

  In Xiu, Lei-Fang recognized the same concern she had seen in countless mothers who had come to her over the years. Obedient children were always suspect. Lei-Fang never had figured out why. Xiu’s daughter wasn’t possessed, but someone had opened the way. Something was coming; the first steps had been taken and Lei-Fang had felt the cold chill down her spine that spoke of Yin and Yang out of balance: the natural order turned on its head. It had been a long time since she had dealt with a risen spirit. More often it was those who lingered – po or hun ghosts who for whatever reason, more often than not their murder, couldn’t rest – that had to be exorcised. But this… This was as if someone had opened a door into Diyu; someone practicing wugu to drag a spirit out of the eighteen Hells and the ten courts of the underworld. Lei-Fang shook her head: it was unwise to take what King Yama had claimed and passed judgement on.

  The old wuyi – her mind and body clear of pain for the first time in nearly a year, her mind shutting out everything but the task at hand out of long training – looked down into the umbrella stand near her front door. Several umbrellas and her cane poked out of it. And resting in the shallow well, leaning against the wall where it had stood for twenty years, removed only when Lei-Fang had cleaned the wood and oiled the blade, was her spear. Lei-Fang drew it by the haft, feeling the remembered weight, the wood long ago worn smooth from the oils of her hands. Using the spear as a walking stick she went to retrieve her shenyi – the formal robe the closest she could come, in Toronto, to wearing the traditional garments of a wuyi without drawing unwanted attention.

  A horn honked outside, followed shortly after by a knock at her door and the sound of Xue calling “Wuyi Zhou?” through the wood.

  “Coming!” called out Lei-Fang, the wuyi garbed in her shenyi and wielding her exorcising spear. Now all she had to do was figure out how to transport her spear in Xue’s car without getting them arrested.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Like two whispering ghosts the boys stole into the shadowed grounds of Mount Pleasant Cemetery. They hoisted the backpack they had brought with them over the high fence, avoiding the open entrances for fear of being seen. The pack landed in the loam with a soft thud and the boys went up and over after it. Joe, the elder of the two, retrieved the bag and pulled their flashlight out, handing it off to his brother, Peter, as they slipped between the graves. They kept the flashlight off, skulking low, bent-kneed, as they made their way to the section of the graveyard their employer had specified. They didn’t worry overmuch about the noise their shoes made as they scuttled across the grounds, the cemetery never entirely quiet with the rush of traffic on Yonge, the faraway clatter of subway cars – like the one they had ridden uptown on – heading into and out of Davisville Station on the aboveground tracks, and the lonely calls of night birds echoing from tree to tree.

  “So, you think Mom’s gonna buy the sleepover story?” asked Peter.

  “Yeah, it’s good. Bud’s covering for us and his parents are out of town, so if Mom calls, she’ll have to talk to him.”

  “Okay,” shrugged Peter, trying hard not to shiver in the darkness, despite the warm night. “Hey, Joe,” he whispered as they made their way between the graves, his brother glancing back over his shoulder, “do you think that guy’s trying to raise a fighter?”

  “What, like Lee Pyron?” asked Joe. His brother nodded, and they stopped moving while Joe thought it over, the two of them huddling close together in the deeper shadows of a tall tree, its leaves rustling in a soft wind. “I don’t know. I mean, he wasn’t wearing robes like one of the Daoshi. Still, what else would you want a jiang shi for?” He frowned and slipped off, his brother scrambling after him in the late-summer dark.

  “Well, if he’s not like Jun, do you think he’s like Faust the eighth? It must have something to do with the way it worked in Shaman King, ’cause what he gave us is all wrong for how the undead worked in Shikabane Hime, right?” asked Peter, his nerves wire-taut and his tongue garrulous in the rush of adrenaline and freedom that came with stealing into a graveyard on a warm summer night, when all the world is still and everything else fades away outside the borders of grass and stone.

  “Well, yeah, he gave us a jufu to put on the corpse,” Joe shrugged, squinting as he tried to read the headstones in the dark. “I can’t see a damn thing. Put on the flashlight.”

  Peter fumbled with the flashlight until the switch caught and the beam played over the grass at their feet. The boys walked in silence, moving a few feet apart as they looked for the grave they needed, Peter swinging the light back and forth like a slow searchlight.

  “Where the hell is it?” asked Joe. “Pete, do you see the name? He said there’d be English on the tombstone, too.”

  “Found it,” hissed Peter, his flashlight illuminating a high, narrow tombstone carved from polished stone. Peter thumbed off the flashlight and Joe dug out a pair of collapsible camping shovels from the backpack. The boys assembled them in silence, listening for signs of other nocturnal visitors before they started digging.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  It was dark by the time Quon stood outside the wrought iron fence running parallel to Yonge. Intermittent cars hurtled past, and regular subway cars rattled in the distance behind him. He tapped his fingers on the fence, rubbernecking casually, watching for observers who might notice a grown man fence-hopping into a perfectly accessible graveyard. When the street was relatively clear of pedestrians and there was a lull in the passing traffic he clambered up the fence with a grunt, and half-slid, half-tumbled down the other side.

  Quon dusted off his long coat as he rose, striding into the shadows of the concealing trees. He dug his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat to hide their quivering as he walked between the graves, and forced himself to amble, not wanting to arrive while the boys were still digging. Quon had no taste for the necessarily messy work, only for what followed.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  “Turn in here,” said Lei-Fang, pointing left as they drew up between the eastern and western gates of the cemetery, heading north on Mount Pleasant Road, the route bisecting the two halves of the grounds.

  Xue angled the car through the stone posts bordering the open gates and slowed the sedan to a crawl. “Where do you want me to wait?” he asked, checking the rearview mirror to make sure no one was coming up behind them. The cemetery appeared utterly deserted in the warm night.

  Lei-Fang shook her head. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll make my own way back.”

  “Are you sure, Wuyi? Xiu said your hip was still bothering you.”

  “There’s a bus stop not fifty feet from where we’re sitting.” Lei-Fang turned to glare at Xue, who shrunk back into his seat. “Are you implying that I can’t walk fifty feet?”

  “I was thinking about all the other walking you’ll be doing first,” Xue said quietly, avoiding Lei-Fang’s gaze.

  “Yes, I know,” sighed Lei-Fang, “but you can’t be here for what’s coming. Go home to your wife and child.”

  “Do you think you’ll be here until morning then, if you’re planning on taking a bus back?”

  “It takes how long it takes,” Lei-Fang shrugged as she unbuckled her seat belt, eased herself out of the door and closed it behind her. “The dead are fussy that way,” she said through the open passenger side window.

  Xue leaned across the car as Lei-Fang went to pull her spear out o
f the backseat of the sedan. “What should I tell Xiu?”

  “Tell her whatever you like,” said Lei-Fang, hefting the spear and planting its butt in the ground like a walking stick. “I wouldn’t tell her the truth, if it were me,” she added, straightening the fall of her shenyi, “but that’s up to you.” Xue frowned at her while Lei-Fang waited for him to leave. “Drive safely,” she hinted, tapping one long finger on the haft of her spear.

  Xue shook his head as he pulled the wheel hard to the left and did a slow, tight turn. He waved at the wuyi as he drove out of the cemetery gates.

  Lei-Fang let out the breath she’d been holding, afraid that he would refuse to leave. She couldn’t vouch for his safety, and she didn’t like the idea of depriving Xiu of a husband and their daughter of her father. The old wuyi closed her eyes and reached out for the unnatural flow of chi in the cemetery. It wasn’t hard to find: the discordance lit up like a beacon in the midst of so much natural energy. The cemetery was still verdant in the late summer and the imbalance was a rot festering at its heart somewhere to the west. It was still more potential than spirit, but the force at work had called the coming spirit by name, had dragged it up out of Diyu. This was no normal jufu. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be; Lei-Fang wasn’t sure.

  Knowing just how long the night ahead would be, Lei-Fang shoved aside the pain in her body – let the coming work push it from her mind – and made her way into the depths of the darkened cemetery.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Joe leaned heavily on the shovel, gulping down lungfuls of air. “Why do they have to bury them so deep?” he huffed up at his brother.

  Peter shook his head. “The smell?” They stood atop the excavated wooden coffin, drifts of earth and clumps of grassy loam scattered at their feet. The hole they’d dug was ragged, but wide enough for them to stand beside each other. “So, what, do we just crack it open?”

  Joe rubbed his sore back. “I guess. He wasn’t real clear on the details of how we got to the body.”

  “All right,” Peter shrugged, and jammed his shovel down into the edge of the simple pine box, cracking the wood. “Help me push,” he hissed through gritted teeth. Joe tossed his own shovel up over the lip of the hole and helped his younger brother heave on his shovel like a crowbar.

  The wood cracked open and fell away with a loud clatter. Both boys went dead still in the wake of the echoing crash, but only the hooting of a lone owl followed the tumult. “Quick, get the jufu,” said Joe, putting a hand to his face to block the foetid stench of the corpse while Peter crawled out of the hole to go digging in the backpack. The worms had worked their way through the soft pine of the coffin and eaten away at the meat of the body. What was left was a combination of liquefied gristle and dirty bone. Small insects still crawled in and out of the corpse’s cavities. “Oh God, that’s rank.”

  “Why does he look like that?” asked Peter, kneeling at the edge of the grave and clutching the jufu in both hands.

  “Because he’s a real corpse, not an animated one,” spat Joe around the flesh of his hand, fighting back nausea. “Give me the talisman. The sooner we raise him the sooner we can get out of here.” Peter leaned in and Joe snatched the paper out of his hands. “I tell you, this better be the best reanimation ever.”

  The bugs skittered away from Joe’s hands, disappearing deeper into the dead man as the boy knelt down to drape the jufu on the corpse’s skull. He positioned it as carefully as he could with one hand, still using the other to cover his nose and mouth, then scrambled out of the grave to be clear of the jiang shi’s reach when it rose.

  Both boys covered their heads and flattened themselves along the ground. And waited. Several minutes passed while a warm wind blew through the trees, carrying with it the stink of the open grave. When nothing happened, the brothers looked around cautiously and scuttled along the ground to peer over the lip of the pit.

  The corpse lay exactly where they had left it, just as dead as it had been before.

  “Well, that was a complete waste of time,” said Joe, blowing all the air out of his lungs as he stood up and dusted off his pants. Peter rose with him and they moved off to refill their lungs with air that didn’t smell of corpse and rot.

  “What are we gonna do now?” asked Peter as they gathered up their things. “Should we bury him again?”

  “Hell no,” spat Joe as he collapsed the shovels. “Let somebody else do it. I’m tired, I’m filthy, and I want to go home and shower. We’ll tell Mom we didn’t feel like staying over at Bud’s the whole night after all. ’Kay?” Peter nodded eagerly as they turned their backs on the dead man to load up the backpack. Neither of them saw the bony hand rise over the lip of the hole, the ruined figure hauling itself out of its own grave one slow foot of earth at a time.

  “You wanna put on Gungrave when we get back?” Peter asked, his enthusiasm for the undead undaunted by the night’s excursion. Behind the two boys the skull of the jiang shi rose over the lip of the grave, the jufu affixed to the corpse’s forehead, the wide talisman trailing down to cover the better part of the dead man’s face.

  “After digging up a corpse?” Joe spat as the jiang shi’s upper half cleared the grave and it buried the claws of one hand in the dirt and heaved its lower half over the rise. “I’m not watching anything with zombies tonight unless there are hot, naked women in it.” He paused, then he and Peter looked at each other and said “Highschool of the Dead,” in unison, grinning in silent agreement as they went back to their packing.

  The jiang shi rose to its feet, a moaning wind whistling through gaps in its rib cage.

  “Hey, do you think we should give that guy his hundred back?”

  “What are you, nuts? He totally wasted our time. He’s probably laughing his ass off right now.”

  “Well, I just thought—” Peter stopped short as a rotting, mostly bone hand fell on his shoulder. “What?” he had time to say before the jiang shi turned him roughly around and opened its mouth, the gaping hole hidden by the trailing edge of the jufu, and inhaled.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Quon came around a bend in the path, slipping out of the shadow of an enormous tree in time to watch the jiang shi toss aside the desiccated husk of Joe. It fell not far from Peter’s shrivelled corpse. The dead man straightened and inhaled empty air, then exhaled deeply, clearing its throat before it tried to speak. No sound came out, and the jiang shi stared down at its hands, confused.

  “Father?” called Quon as loudly as he dared, his eyes wet. He wiped them on the sleeve of his overcoat. He took several steps towards the jiang shi, ignoring the dead children on the ground, and the creature stretched out its arms to him.

  “Stop! Don’t touch him,” yelled Lei-Fang, moving around the bole of the tree under which the risen corpse of Lin Changgong stood before his son. Her spear was in both hands, its tip wavering between the two men: the living and the dead.

  Quon turned on the wuyi. “Who the hell are—”

  “There’s a reason this magic is forbidden,” hissed Lei-Fang. She kept her spear raised as she swept her gaze over the jiang shi and the young man. Her shoulders sagged as she took in the two dead boys, barely teenagers. “It’s dangerous enough when performed by someone who actually knows the wugu,” she added, swallowing her anger as she turned back to Quon, “let alone someone who has no idea what they’re doing. All that is keeping me from exorcising you to Hell along with him,” she said, tipping her spear at Changgong, “is that you do not carry the chi of a practitioner. But he cannot remain here; his hunger will only grow. And no matter how deep or how dark you conceal him, Niu Tou and Ma Mian will find him and drag him back to Diyu.”

  “Who?” asked Quon, unable to parse her words. His hands articulated his confusion, then his anger. “What are you talking about?”

  “Ox-Head and Horse-Face,” said Lei-Fang more patiently than she would have thought possible. “Servants of King Yama who greet the newly dead upon their arrival in Diyu, and hunt the souls that escape the u
nderworld; the monsters Yama sent to collect Sun Wukong. You truly think yourself the equal of the Monkey King – the only figure in history ever to defy them? You dragged a spirit out of the eighteen Hells, child. What did you think would happen?”

  “No,” said Quon, as if by refusing her words he could erase the truth of them. “I brought him back, that’s all that matters. I have subverted the laws, as he did before me.” Quon pointed behind him, at the jiang shi wavering slightly in the wind. “He knows where my mother went when she left us, and he will help me find her. He will help me bring her back.”

  Lei-Fang slumped, glanced at the haggard corpse, and settled her gaze on Quon. “That thing is not your father, child; a jufu only restores the body. I don’t know how you managed to trap your father’s hun in his own corpse, but you haven’t raised him from the dead. All you’ve done is pull him out of Diyu to bind him to another prison. And if what you say is true, then in life, twenty years ago now, your father condemned two siblings to a fate worse than death. Your father was a monster, child, and you have followed in his footsteps. But his actions killed not only children, but others close to you as well. And if you—” Lei-Fang interrupted herself, pausing to squint at the jufu covering the corpse’s face. “Why is there a stroke missing in the third character?”

  “What?” asked Quon, turning to his father and leaning in to examine the jufu while the jiang shi stood silent, breathing in and out in imitation of life. “What does that mean?” Quon asked, pivoting back to Lei-Fang.

  “It means you don’t have control,” Lei-Fang whispered as she raised her spear in a defensive position, planted one heel in the loam behind her and squared her shoulders. “Walk very slowly towards me,” she instructed Quon, not taking her eyes off the jiang shi behind him.

  “I still don’t even know who you are—” Quon began, before the corpse of Lin Changgong put a bony hand on Quon’s shoulder. “Father?” Quon asked over his shoulder, his voice a breath on the wind, before the jiang shi swung him around and inhaled deeply, stifling the scream rising in Quon’s throat.