Stephen Jones (ed)

by The Mammoth Book of Zombies (mobi)

  She bathed, dressed, perfumed and painted for the interview. The meeting took place in the parlour and it was unchaperoned. A carriage drove up in the dusk, and Vera LaValle met Nicolo Varek under candlelight.

  And it was thus that Varek, the friend of the nobility, the mentor of magicians, the peer of alchemists - Varek, the man who was above matrimony or the commonplace emotional reactions of ordinary men - fell in love.

  Candlelight and coquetry definitely won the day, and the night. The suave, cold middle-aged man became a stammering, intense importuner. As to the matter of age, Varek was quite explicit on that point.

  "Do not think of me as old, my dear," he reassured her. "For I am truly ageless. There are secrets I possess, secrets you shall share with me. Oh, we will share a great deal, you and I!"

  He began to boast then, like any love-sick youth, and to confide.

  Varek was Russian by birth, but the date of that birth and the details of his parentage would (he smirked) astound her. Suffice for him to say that he came of noble blood. He had been educated at the leading universities of Europe, but the bulk of his learning came from extended sojourns in Mongolia and Hindustan where he had studied occultism and the forbidden mysteries. Upon his return to Europe, he had visited Italy and imparted some of his wisdom to Cagliostro - wisdom which Cagliostro misused in his unscrupulous career. Varek, still seeking disciples, later gave instruction to the Comte de St Germain, whose mastery of mass illusion and the principles of levitation enabled him to win fame and fortune.

  But he, Varek, was not interested in such trivia. True, as an alchemist he had sought to transmute baser metals to gold. But he soon realized that cultivation of other powers was more important.

  Once he had developed them, fame and fortune would be his for the asking.

  There were two secrets, and two only, which were worth possessing. One of them was the secret of eternal youth, and the other, the secret of eternal life.

  To the discovery of these secrets, Varek had dedicated himself for scores of years.

  It was a costly study, an expensive search. In order to finance himself he had, at times, resorted to base means. As an alchemist he was acquainted with the group that centred around La Voisin, and he admitted assisting that notorious female in her preparation of poisons. He had also been familiar with the clique surrounding the infamous de Montespan.

  "But that was ages ago!" cried Vera, when she heard him. "Over a hundred years!"

  Nicolo Varek, the unsmiling one, smiled. "Exactly," he said. "You see, I succeeded in at least part of my quest. I did discover the secret of eternal youth. Discovered it and possessed myself of it."

  "You are over a hundred?" Vera murmured.

  Varek inclined his head. "I assure you, time is a relative concept. You will not find me less ardent a lover due to my age, no less honourable a man because of my past associations. As you realize, we who seek the mysteries have always been on the fringes of society. We skulk in darkness, we consort with the underworld, we compound with the charlatans simply because we have never been accepted by the scholars and the savants. They are jealous of our achievements, these so-called "men of science" - although virtually all they know or hope to know has come from our work.

  "Yes, it is we alchemists who have given them their chemistry, we sorcerers who have preserved what little is known of medicine and physiology and biology, we mystics who have the only knowledge which can develop into a science of the mind."

  "I don't understand," Vera said. "What are you trying to tell me?"

  "I'm telling you not to be afraid of me." he answered. "It has been said that I am a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a scoundrel, a magician, a murderer. Very well - I am all these things, but to a purpose. That purpose is power, power greater than you can dream!

  "I've played my part behind the scenes these years past, my dear - and you've seen the result! I've had my interview with Mademoiselle Charlotte Corday, and Marat died. I've talked to Citizen Robespierre's brother, and Danton is no more. I've ways and means to pull the strings and make the puppets dance. And the end will be power. Great power. Once France is properly disrupted, there are other lands ripe for revolution.

  "Revolution, my dear, always ends in dictatorship. Dictatorship, my dear, always ends in megalomania on the part of those who rule. And what would a megalomaniac do for the secret of eternal youth or the secret of eternal life - or both?

  "Ah, yes, it will end only one way: My way. I shall rule the rulers! Think of that, my dear. Within a few years, Nicolo Varek will be the unseen ruler of the world. And you, his empress, his queen."

  Varek came closer, and Vera could see the paper thinness of his bloodless lips. He might have been forty, he might have been four hundred. "The secret of eternal youth. How does that please you, my little one? To be always young, always as you are today? To live, to rule, to enjoy the senses to the full forever? I have that gift for you, that dowry.

  "And soon - sooner than I dare tell you - I shall have the other, too. The Great Secret. Eternal life! I've a laboratory here - you must see it - where I experiment. In times like these, there is no shortage of subjects. Samson sells me the unclaimed ones every day." The bloodless lips formed a bloody smile. "I'm getting closer and closer to the solution," Varek told her. "And once it's gained, the world is mine. Ours!"

  It was mawkish melodrama, but it was also naked nightmare. For the little lisping, whispering, sniggering creature came closer and closer, and then he was no longer braggart or stammerer but merely a lustful automaton. He pawed at Vera LaValle and she endured his carrion breath upon her neck for a moment. But only for a moment. Then she wrenched free, and Varek, losing his balance, tumbled grotesquely to the floor.

  Vera LaValle laughed.

  She didn't refuse his offer of marriage. She didn't call him an old man, a liar, a murderer, a repulsive fool. She didn't do anything but laugh.

  Her laugh said all those things.

  Nicolo Varek rose, tugged at his ruffled clothing, and bowed coldly. "Adieu," he said. And left.

  Vera LaValle waited. She waited for Lucien to scamper in, rubbing his hands briskly in anticipation. She waited for the effect of her story upon him; his crestfallen stare, his agitation, his frantic reiteration of, "Why, why, why? He was our only hope, out only chance! Why?"

  She waited, then, for the summons. It came soon enough.

  Somebody had denounced Citizen LaValle and his daughter. As usurers, as enemies of the People.

  She waited for the trial, and it was short. Lucien sobbed when he heard the verdict, but she shrugged.

  She waited, then, for the tumbril.

  Waited, those last few days, alone. For Lucien LaValle hung himself one gloomy Sunday morning and she was left alone.

  She was alone, and waiting, that last night when Varek came.

  Citizens were not allowed to visit with prisoners in their cells on the eve of execution. But Varek was not a citizen. He was not a man at all in the ordinary concept of the word. He was a mocking shadow that glided silently to her cell.

  One moment nothing, and the next, Varek was there. Whispering in the darkness.

  "Vera, Vera LaValle, listen to me! I have news for you. Great news!"

  Silence, as he waited for a reply. But she said nothing. After a moment, he continued: "Remember what I told you? About the laboratory, the experiments, the secret of eternal life? I have it at last, Vera - I have it at last! Oh, it's not exactly all I'd hoped, and much remains to be done in refining the method. But it's the goal of sorcery through the ages, the dream of science. And I have it. For you. For us!"

  Silence once more. Vera LaValle did not move. He spoke again: "Eternal life, Vera! I swear it's the truth; I can give you eternal life. All you need do is say the word and you're free. I can get you out as easily as I got you in. And now you can be young forever, alive forever! You must believe me, you must!"

  Vera turned and faced him through the bars of the cell. She could not see his face in th
e darkness of the corridor, but he could see her countenance - and the lineaments of loathing.

  "I do believe you," she said. "And I tell you that I prefer to die tomorrow morning rather than spend eternity - or a single living moment - with you."

  Varek's laugh grated through the gloom. "A plain answer, Mademoiselle LaValle. But I wonder if you have rightly considered what's in store for you. When the tumbril rolls and the sun is gleaming, gleaming on the bright blade of the guillotine? Have you see the heads in the basket, Mademoiselle? Have you seen Samson lift them by the hair and exhibit them to the crowd?"

  "You can't frighten me," she whispered.

  "Do you know what it's like to be dead? Dead forever and ever?

  They'll put you in the ground, Mademoiselle, in the cold wet ground. You'll lie there in eternal darkness, lie there and rot and decay into slime and dust. And the lips that you withhold from me will feed kisses to the worms.

  "Aren't you afraid of death, Mademoiselle LaValle?"

  She shook her head and smiled into the blackness beyond the bars. "Not as much as I fear life with you," she said. "Now, go and leave me in peace."

  He broke down, then. The creature cried and begged. "I don't understand, it's never happened before - that a woman, a girl, a mere child should do this to me! I thought I was immune to folly, but since the moment I laid eyes on you I cannot endure the thought of not possessing you. You are a burning in my blood, you must know that and you cannot refuse - you cannot! But you must be mine of your own free will, not by force. I want you willingly, and I must have you." Varek sobbed, and it was the dry and dusty sobbing of a reanimated mummy, rustling in the darkness.

  Once again, Vera LaValle shook her head. "No," she said.

  Varek's sob held not grief but rage. "Good enough," he cried. "If I'm not fit for you, I commend you to a new lover. To Death! Death shall embrace you, twine his bony fingers in your curls, take your head as a souvenir of his conquest. Adieu - I leave you to hold tryst with your beloved. He'll not be long now!"

  And he left her.

  Then and only then did Vera break down. For she had lied. She did fear death. The thought of dying terrified her past all comprehension, and now in the darkness she could almost see the grinning presence of Death incarnate; the skeleton in the black coat, the grinning skull covered with a cowl.

  He was still with her the next morning, when the guards came. He walked with her to the tumbril, and as she and five other weeping and bedraggled women took their places, Death climbed in beside them.

  Death grinned at Vera LaValle as she rode through the streets of Paris to the site of execution. Death pointed his finger at the roaring crowd, the prancing Citizen Samson and his grimacing assistants. Death showed her the shrieking silhouette of the knife against the dawn-drenched sky.

  Death was with her as she walked to the platform. Death helped her up the stairs, and it seemed to Vera in the delirium of the last few moments that not Samson but Death himself was the executioner - removing her cloak, binding her arms forcing her to kneel and gaze down at the bottom of the basket when all the time she wanted to gaze up; gaze up at the knife, the bright blade of the knife which was the only real thing left in the world.

  Then, as the roar of the crowd came up, the blade of the guillotine came down.

  Death took Vera LaValle in his arms.

  And - released her!

  "You want to know what it's like, of course," she told me, sitting there on the bed, thousands of miles and lifetimes later. "But I don't remember. There was no pain, no sensation, and yet I felt, I was conscious in a new way. There was no sense of duration, either.

  "Then the pain came back, and I was alive.

  "I had this pain in the throat, and in the head.

  "I opened my eyes. I saw the bandage on my neck. I saw the silver tube coiling to the top of my spine. And I saw Varek.

  "You know what happened, of course. Samson had sold me to Varek after the execution. He took me to his laboratory and brought me back to life.

  "I realized it, naturally, at once. But I can never convey to you the horror of that moment - when I discovered that he had sewed my head back on my body!

  "It was grotesque, it was ludicrous, and it was somehow blasphemous. But despite it all, in the weeks to come, I learned to respect the power, the wisdom, the genius of Nicolo Varek.

  "My convalescence, if you can call it that, was slow. It was not easy, with the crude techniques he had painfully evolved, for Varek to keep me alive and nurse me back to a semblance of health and sanity. But he did it. Since that time I've learned a great deal about what he does to reanimate the dead, and still I haven't grasped the true secret."

  She paused, and I cut in: "You say he sewed your head back on? But that's… incredible."

  Vera pointed at the scar and smiled wanly. "Would you find it equally incredible if I told you that there's a metal plate covering half of my skull - that there is metal, some sort of machinery, extending down the neck and into the upper spine? That Varek, in 1794, was using electrical voltage and a sort of miniature dynamo for metabolic regulation? That the control he exercised and still exercises is a combination of hypnotism and an extension of brain-waves transformed into electric current? Yet it's true, all of it. I am an automaton - operating on the power generated from within plus the current fed me by Varek at a distance. I'm alive yet not alive. I do not age or change, I do not eat or sleep. But there's something worse than sleep. Something much worse." She shuddered. "That's when he turns me off."

  Either she was crazy or I was. Or both of us. This I knew. But I believed her. I believed the cold-eyed, cold-skinned creature with the livid scar who talked to me across the centuries.

  "He's done it to me, many times, temporarily and to suit his convenience or his needs. But I've seen him do it to others - permanently. It's horrible. They die, then; die a second death. A hideous death, forever.

  "That's the hold he has over me, over all of us. The ability to turn us off. Because there's something inside that wants to live, fights to live. Oh, how can I tell you the story of what took a hundred and sixty years to live?" Vera glanced around the room, and for a moment her agitation seemed completely human. "There's not time; he'll come out of it now, hear us."

  I pressed her. I had to know the rest. "Quickly, then," I urged. "What happened after you recovered?"

  "He was still experimenting. I was his first complete success. There were other… corpses… that he revived temporarily. But they were damaged, warped. Completely insane. At the time, he hadn't perfected his methodology of control. Several escaped. There was an ugly scandal. And Robespierre's dictatorship fell. He went to the guillotine himself. Varek no longer had protection in Paris. So we fled.

  "The Embargo was on, and the only ship we could find was bound for the colonies. We ended up in Haiti, just the two of us.

  "It was a strange relationship. He no longer desired me, of course - and I think he almost regretted his monstrous act of revival. Gradually he set about to make me his servant. And of course, he succeeded. I was alone, helpless, literally dependent on him for my existence.

  "I offer no apologies for serving Varek. I had no choice. And he was master.

  "It didn't take long for him to establish himself in Haiti and in San Domingo. He had brought money and jewels. We took a mansion; he posed as a planter. And immediately set about fomenting an insurrection. You know what happened to Haiti a few years later, when Toussaint L'Ouverture, Dessalines and Christophe revolted against the French. Varek played his part. Blood flowed, and there were bodies for Varek's new laboratories. Black bodies to experiment upon. Black bodies to toil on the plantations.

  "It was at this time that a new superstition arose. The one about zombies. The walking dead. Can you understand now just why and how this belief was born?"

  I nodded, thinking of my dreams. There was a horrid logic and conviction behind her words. Varek had created the concept of the zombie. His creatures walking the wo
rld.

  "The blacks were primitive, simple. Varek bungled often. He was still groping, evolving methods and techniques. The botched jobs were the zombies.

  "And the vampires - that was Hungary, of course."

  I raised an eyebrow. "But Varek isn't responsible for the belief in vampires. That's an ancient superstition."

  "Correct," answered Vera. "But we went to Hungary from Haiti because of the belief. Because, there, tales of the walking dead would be ascribed to superstition and no one would investigate too closely if some of Varek's experiments moved freely over the countryside. Also, Varek wished to follow the latest developments in European scientific research. Even before the Revolution, he had worked briefly with Anton Mesmer in the development of hypnotism. Now he was interested in the new psychology.

  "You see, attaining the power he dreams of is a long and a complicated process. It involves much more than merely the ability to control the reanimated bodies of the dead. At first, Varek could not keep a corpse alive except by constant hypnotic control. He had to focus his own energies every moment. Then he reached a stage were he could fix a behaviour pattern for hours, or days, and turn to other matters. But that is not enough.

  "Each reanimated corpse must be provided for - given a new identity, a new life, a new rote to play. Varek moulds the puppets, breathes life into them, and then he must manipulate the strings. Dozens, scores of puppets, on dozens of separate stages; all play their part in one involved drama.

  "He had to enter into scientific fields, enter into politics. How much of the intrigue behind the Third Empire in France was due to his work, I'll never know. For in 1847 I rebelled; I tried to get away. And as punishment he turned me off for seventy years!"

  Vera's white death-mask contorted in remembered agony. "For seventy years I followed Varek across the world as baggage - in an ice-packed coffin. And meanwhile he meddled with science, he pulled strings, and he waited. What's time to Varek?

  "I awoke in Russia, during the Revolution. By this time he'd come to realize that he needed living allies; men to work in front of the public. Dupes and spies. He'd made some connection with a monk, Rasputin. There was a plan to kill the young Tsarevitch and then bring him back to life again; the Czar and Czarina would be at his mercy, from that point on. But somebody murdered Rasputin, and we fled Russia for a spell. That's when I was reanimated again.