by Tony Lewis
No See Norman poured her more beer.
“A friend is a person whom you trust. Someone to share things with, both good and bad. It's someone who'll listen, and take care of you when times are tough.”
“So,”said Oboe, “you are my friend?”
“Well, yes I suppose I am. And an honour it is to be called that.”
“I am your friend too,” said Oboe.
No See Norman reached across the table and took hold of Oboe's hand, and gave it a loving squeeze.
“Good,” he said.
“Where are you from?” asked Oboe.
No See Norman sipped his beer and rubbed a hand over his long white beard.
“Oddly, I'm a bit like you. I don't know where I was born or who my parents were. My earliest memories start right here, living in this hut. I've always been here by myself. It's never been a problem though. I'm more than self-reliant as you can see. It is nice to have some company though.”
Oboe nodded her head in understanding.
“What are parents?” she asked.
“Oh, you poor thing. Ultimately you will have, or would have had some somewhere. Your parents are you mother and father. A man and a woman who fell in love and created you.”
The words mother and father conjured up emotions in Oboe. Warm, happy feelings that, although made her feel good, had no memories attached to them.
“I understand,” she said, a sudden melancholy temporarily overtaking her good mood. She stared at her friend and tried to process the emotions building within. “I can feel them but I don't remember them.”
“Not to worry, my dear,” said No See Norman, his voice subdued but laced with parental kindness. “I'm sure it'll all come back to you. Happy memories have a habit of doing that.”
“Will they? Really?”
“Certainly. Whenever you're feeling a bit low, all you have to do is recall a time that you were happy and you'll cheer right up.”
Oboe reached across the table and stroked the old man's cheek.
“I shall always remember now,” she said.
* * *
Ollie, Stitches, Flug and Mandrake trudged through the forest. It was dark, eerie, quiet, and wouldn't you know it, it was raining.
“Terrific,” said Stitches. “Once again I find myself tramping through the woods in the middle of the night and for what? To go and fetch a transvestite Flug lookalike that's decided to wander off. There really needs to be some sort of quality control for reanimations. I mean, God forbid someone should bring something back to life that's got a modicum of intelligence. It's all wrong.”
Ollie was as hacked off as his colleague if the truth be known, but it didn't help having a disgruntled zombie along for the ride moaning about absolutely everything.
“Tell you what,” he said, “if you're that fed up, turn round and go back to the castle. It's not that far.”
Stitches vehemently shook his head.
“You're having a laugh, aren't you? Walk back there. On my own. In the dark. Through the forest. On my own. During a full moon. With all those monsters out there. ON MY OWN?”
“Looks like you're stuck with us then, doesn't it?” said Ollie.
Flug, who had been trailing along behind forlornly calling out every now and then, quickened his pace and caught up with Stitches. He put an arm around the zombie's shoulder.
“Me know you sad,” he said, “but me sad too. Me want find Oboe.”
Stitches reached up and patted his friend's hand.
“I know,” he said, “and I'm sorry. Don't you go worrying your big self. We'll find her.”
“Fanks, Stitches.”
Mandrake stopped suddenly and looked around.
“You see something?” asked Ollie.
“No. It's just that this place looks familiar. I could swear that I've been here before.”
“Well, there's plenty of places for you to hang around, I suppose,” said Stitches.
“No, not that,” said Mandrake. “I wouldn't have wandered this far to end it all. My legs would have been killing me the next day. Anyway, I'm better now.” He cast a knowing glance at Ollie. “It was a long time ago when I first met Davina. I'm positive we came here for a picnic.”
“You came out here for a picnic? You're braver than I gave you credit for,” said Ollie.
“I'll say,” added Stitches. “I'd rather put on a meat suit and go for a swim in a croc infested swamp. Or eat one of Mrs. Ladle's cakes.”
“I take it you recognise something then?” said Ollie.
“Mmm. Think so.”
Stitches wasn't so sure. Most forests looked the same even when compared to the prehistoric domain that he was standing in now. In fact, now he thought about it, it looked just like the woods and forests that he remembered from his youth near the New Forest, and subsequently his time spent in the Caribbean.
Phillip Meeup, as he was known, had been born in 1805, the same year in which Nelson had kicked Napoleon's backside at Trafalgar, and saw the opening of Thomas Telford's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, carrying the Llangollen Canal over the River Dee (I know that second fact is dull, but at least you've learned something new).
His family had been rather well to do. Mother stayed at home and tended house whilst Father ran a very successful import business, bringing in everything from apples to something beginning with z. On a side note, due to the lack of health and safety, and customs, his ships also managed to smuggle in as many diseases as you could count on one hand (unless you picked up the virulent Portuguese Fingers Falling From The Right Hand Syndrome, in which case you'd have to use the left one. There was also Indonesian Wrist Rot which, if caught, meant you couldn't count at all. Unless you used your toes. Of course if you contracted Shepton Mallet Toe Fungus… we digress).
As was usual in those bygone days, on reaching twenty five, young Phillip, after a long and boring apprenticeship, took up a position helping to run his father's firm. He travelled all over Europe and even got as far as Moscow. In 1839, when Phillip was thirty four his father, whose health wasn't the best, asked him to travel to the West Indies, as he had heard that all sorts of exotic items were up for grabs, and seeing as the locals judged how prosperous a person was by how many bananas he had, there was quite a profit to be made.
Excited by this new prospect for travel and adventure Phillip jumped at the chance. He had never married or had any children and therefore had no ties to hold him back. And so on a bright summer's morning in 1840, Phillip Meeup set foot on Haitian soil.
To cut a long story short (paper doesn't grow on trees you know) he settled in very well. He got a thriving export business up and running that sent out all sorts of stuff back home. He also met a lovely young lady and had a rather decadent house built for them (It appeared decadent to the islanders at any rate. To be honest they would have been impressed by a dwelling not made of mud and reeds, and didn't reek of goat).
All was going swimmingly until completely out of the blue, a man claiming to be the husband of his lady friend showed up. A fierce confrontation ensued involving all three of them. Ultimately, Phillip got the better of the interloper and threw him out, and not being one to be being taken for a fool, the young lass followed swiftly behind.
Phillip put the unfortunate incident to the back of his mind and carried on with expanding his rapidly growing business.
It wasn't until about a week later that he started to feel funny. His teeth had begun to ache, and his gums were bleeding when he brushed them. He was also off his food, unusual for someone with such a healthy appetite as his. After a fortnight he started to panic. His skin was turning grey and papery to the point that patches of it were flaking off, and if that wasn't bad enough he wasn't sleeping too well either. When he did manage to snatch a few hours, disturbing nightmares plagued him. In them he was dead, but not dead, condemned to spend the rest of eternity as neither man nor spirit. A wandering wraith of no earthly purpose.
Three days later he passed away. His housekeeper,
a wonderfully eccentric black woman with the biggest hips you've ever seen, found him in bed, stiff as a post. The doctor diagnosed a viral infection, (what a surprise. Its two hundred years later and they still use that tired old rubbish) saying that he was surprised that someone with a `feeble Western constitution' had survived so long out here.
Phillip Meeup was buried the next day without much ceremony, in a dusty, ramshackle plot in the local cemetery.
When he woke up, to say that he was confused was the biggest understatement since the Mayor of New Orleans sent a message to the President of the USA saying `It's been a bit breezy here. Any chance of a couple of tents and a mop?'
As he tried to sit up he cracked his head a belter on what sounded like a piece of wood. A very long piece of wood. It went from above his head to beyond his feet. He reached out to his sides and an inferno of panic blazed through him as his knuckles rapped on solid walls. He was totally enclosed. But where and why? He managed to get his arms up so that they rested on his chest and pushed upwards. Whatever it was, it wouldn't budge so much as an inch. So there he was, trapped and alone in the dark without any inkling as to what had occurred. He remembered feeling a bit under the weather but that was about it. Everything after that was a bit of a blur. If he didn't know any better, and if it wasn't a completely outlandish conclusion, he might have thought that he was in a coffin. It was about the right size but…..no, it couldn't be. He was being paranoid, wasn't he?
Time passed slowly. Boredom set in and niggly little things began to prey on his mind. Why aren't I hungry or thirsty? How come I don't need to go to the loo? How come I haven't run out of air yet? And why, oh why can't someone invent some sort of bag to put tea leaves into to stop them getting everywhere? You could call them leaf cases. No, that would never catch on.
It could have been hours, days or weeks, he wasn't sure, but at some point he was disturbed by a scrabbling sound from above. It sounded like an animal digging through the earth. It was insistent, rapidly increasing in speed and coming ever closer.
BANG BANG BANG.
“Phillip, can you hear me?”
He was so shocked at first that he couldn't get a word out of his parched throat no matter how hard he tried.
BANG BANG.
“Answer me, dammit?”
“I'm here,” he croaked. “It's me.”
“Mind out.”
With a splintering thud the head of an axe sliced through the wood stopping just short of his nose. Fingers, then hands probed the gap, took hold of the ragged edges and pulled. Then, amidst a flurry of chunks of wood and dry soil, he was grabbed by the lapels and hauled upwards.
It was pitch black and he couldn't see his hands in front of his face. He shook his head to clear it of detritus.
“Are you alright?”
Finally he recognised the voice of his saviour.
“Deborah?” he said.
“Yes, Phillip it's me,” she said, giving him a hug.
“What's happened to me?” he asked, pushing her away, still confused. “How did I end up here?”
She paused for a moment and he could hear her swallowing. Whatever it was, it wasn't good.
“It was Dubois,” she said quietly. “After you threw him out he wanted revenge. He crept back here one night and laced your wine with a certain…concoction.”
“Not the twenty six. That's my favourite…..What do you mean by concoction? Exactly how long have I been down there?”
“A month.”
“A month!” he shouted. “But how? Why haven't I starved to death? Or dehydrated? It's not possible.”
“I'm so sorry, but it's true,” she said.
“My family?”
“They've been informed of your demise,” she said matter of factly.
“Go on then. Tell me what happened.”
“Dubois got drunk a few nights ago and shot his mouth off about what he'd done. He gave you a mixture of herbs and frog poison. It makes your body shut down so to all outside appearances you seem to be, well, dead.”
“But obviously I'm not,” he said, incredulously.
“Not quite. Not to put too fine a point on it, you've been zombified.”
“Zombie what?”
“The herbs that he gave you have basically killed you…..”
“Wha…”
“But you're not entirely dead.”
Phillip was now as mystified as a person told that they had died, but not quite, been buried for a month, and had come back to life. Sort of.
Although she couldn't see him, Deborah could sense his fear and anxiety.
“Look, I know none of this makes sense. What I need to do, though, is get you out of here and back to my house.”
“What about mine?”
“Sold off, I'm afraid.”
“Christ, this just keeps getting better and better.”
Unfortunately, it didn't. Once back at Deborah's he got a chance to see himself in a mirror.
“I look like three day old gruel,” he said dejectedly. “And not the expensive stuff either. I mean the filth they serve in gaol. And they'd send it back.”
If he had any moisture left in his system, he would have shed some tears. Instead he was only able to produce dry, heaving sobs that left him curled up in a foetal position on the bathroom floor.
“So how long…?” he started, but trailed off once he had calmed down somewhat.
Deborah didn't need to hear the rest of the question.
“Forever, as long as you look after yourself. As you get older, there will be a certain amount of wear and tear, but zombified bodies are usually fairly resilient.”
“Makes me sound like a traction engine,” he said. “So why did that lunatic feel it necessary to do this to me? I'd never heard of him until you mentioned him, let alone did him any harm.”
The silence issuing forth from Deborah told him everything he needed to know. All of it.
“He's your ex, isn't he?”
“Yes.”
“You ended the relationship, didn't you?”
“Yes.”
“He couldn't accept it, could he?”
“No.”
“Came back for you, didn't he?”
“Yes.”
“Didn't know about me, did he?”
“No.”
“I'm knackered, aren't I?”
“Yes. No. Not really. Oh I don't know. At least you're alive.”
“Alive! It seems I don't need to eat, sleep, drink or go to the toilet apparently, so aside from saving me, oh let me see, one hundred percent on my grocery bill, I'm not seeing all the major benefits of this sudden shift in lifestyle.”
“I'm sorry, Phillip.”
“Oh yeah, and not forgetting the fact that I'll get the chance to see in a new millennium or three. Of course that's if I don't fall apart at the seams first.”
“I said I'm sorry,” she said, crying openly.
“I know. Come here.”
He wrapped his arms around her and gave her a squeeze. As he did, his knuckles cracked like walnuts and his shoulders moved too far in their drying joints.
“Oh good grief,” he muttered to himself as he held Deborah and watched the sun begin to rise. “It's going to be a long century.”
“Stitches. STITCHES,” shouted Ollie. “Wake up. Stop night dreaming, will you.”
“Sorry. I was miles away. So, do you recognise it then, Mandrake?”
“Nah. My mistake. Must have been thinking of something else.”
They moved on.
* * *
Mrs. Ladle flew round and round and round and round the roof of Jocular's castle. She didn't need to she just wanted to. She got a kick out of chasing the bats that lived under the eaves of the topmost tower. Eventually she tired of it though and decided that she better go and see Jocular to find out what he wanted her to do. Obviously it was something decorating related otherwise he wouldn't have asked her to bring her `WITCH GUIDE TO RENOVATION AND RESTORATION: MODERN LIV
ING IN A SUPERNATURAL WORLD' spell book. Actually, it was more a serial magazine than a book, one of those that starts off as a `fascinating week by week insight into something extremely dull' that ends up extending to so many editions landing on your doormat that your great, great, great grandchildren will only be a third of the way through the entire series when they inherit the massive collection of heaving `handy binders' that you felt compelled to buy. Mrs Ladle's periodical had started in 1167. She kept them all in a shoebox thanks to a handy shrinking spell revealed in issue 21,438.
It contained everything within its millions of pages, from how to keep skin moist and pliable (for lampshades, cushion covers etc.) to a hundred and one things to do with a vase (a hundred and two if you put flowers in it).
She had used it up here a couple of times before. Once when Jocular wanted every wooden stair in the castle to say `OOF' whenever they were stepped on, and when he decided it was a grand idea to turn all of the water supply yellow. Now, Mrs. Ladle was no great respecter of the Vampire Lords lofty station, and in particular his decorative skills, and had wasted no time in letting him know that the stair idea was just plain odd and that no one, resident or visitor, dead or alive or into whatever fetish you could think of, would want to drink water that looked like wee wee.
God alone knew what he wanted her to do this time. He probably wanted the statues to sing greetings to anyone walking along the corridors and passageways, or have a musical trap door opening over the basement.
She swooped down in a tricky and quite frankly hazardous manoeuvre, and landed outside the front door. Or where she thought the front door should be, or to be more precise, where the front door used to be. All that was there now was a large hole, a pile of assorted debris, and a very sullen looking Egon who was standing there with a door knob in his hand.
“I coughed and it fell off,” he said, indicating the vast slab of wood at his feet.
“I see,” said Mrs. Ladle, putting her broom in park and dismounting. “Mmm. That explains the door, but what happened to the entrance hall? His Royal Dimness decided he needed a sunroof, did he? Hello, Humpy.”
“Not exactly,” said Egon, readjusting his comb over so that it didn't resemble a wandering shag pile carpet. “We had a close encounter of the reanimation kind.”