The Zombie Stone

by K. G. Campbell

  Facing August, at the far side of the courtyard, sat an outbuilding with a large pair of doors, like those of an old-fashioned garage. Nestled beneath the structure’s roof was a low-slung second floor with small darkened windows.

  Escargot yanked open an obstinate second—pedestrian—door and August entered a gloomy space largely filled by a decrepit automobile from a bygone age, with thin, spindly-spoked wheels, lantern-shaped headlights, and a general appearance more reminiscent of horse-drawn buggies than a modern car. The entire vehicle was the color of rust, and its canvas roof hung in shreds.

  Escargot squeezed past it toward a narrow wooden staircase and called up, “Miz Belladonna?”

  August was suddenly assailed by the acrid, familiar smell of lacquer. It transported him to the moment he first met Belladonna crafting her pasta jewelry in the grotto-like gloom of Château Malveau’s salon.

  “Escargot? What are you doing out here?”

  August recognized his cousin’s voice. Although they had parted on amicable terms, he was still a little intimidated by the prickly young lady.

  “We have”—Escargot paused, casting a disdainful glance at the DuPonts—“unexpected guests!”

  The upper floor reminded August of his garret bedroom at Locust Hole, for it was jam-packed with towers of storage boxes and long-ago things retired from daily use: a pitchfork, a Chinese parasol, a rocking horse with three legs.

  In a clearing at the center, behind a tableful of bottles and packages of pasta, sat Belladonna. An elaborate necklace of black-lacquered fusilli hung about her neck. She was hunkered over, occupied with varnishing a sheet of lasagna, when a single butterfly alighted on the table before her. Her head snapped up.

  “August?” Her eyes opened wide. “What on earth? Oh, and your zombie too? Good Lord, what happened to her arm?”

  “Alligator,” explained August. “We’re here to—oh!”

  August quickly grasped the bundle that Escargot had roughly thrust against his chest.

  “I’ve included an old pair of pajamas for the gentleman, and a nightgown for the young…well, that.”

  August mumbled his thanks.

  “The pleasure, sir, is all mine,” responded Escargot (although it clearly wasn’t) as he retreated down the creaking stairs.

  August shared with Belladonna the reason for his and Claudette’s presence in Croissant City, and Orchid’s motive in permitting them to remain at 591 Funeral Street.

  Belladonna shook her head and snorted.

  “Mama will do anything to get her hands on that wretched fossil; it’s downright weird. I can’t tell you how many hours Beau and I have wasted searching through all this junk.” She indicated their surroundings. “Through the whole house, in fact, before, of course, you went and found it, and…”

  August grimaced, acknowledging his part in the recent loss of the precious gemstone.

  “What is this place?” inquired August, removing his helmet and eyeing a cast-iron range buried beneath a stack of yellowed newspapers.

  “The chauffeur would have lived up here,” explained Belladonna briskly, “in the olden days. And before cars came along, it would have been the coachman. I expect this”—she patted the bench on which she was seated—“came from an old carriage.

  “Now.” The girl stood and wiped her hands on a rag. “I guess you’ll want to sleep somewhere.”

  She crossed to a corner of the room where a door was partly visible behind the attic clutter. The girl used her body weight to shove aside a stack of boxes and cracked the door to reveal a small closet.

  “If I remember correctly,” she muttered, rummaging around with one arm. “Yes. Here it is.” She awkwardly extracted a fold-up cot, well used, its enamel chipped. “There’s only one, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s all right,” responded August. “Claudette prefers the floor. I think it reminds her of her tomb.”

  Belladonna grunted in reply as she heaved a box from the pile.

  “We’ll need to make some space for you. I can’t imagine that anyone has slept up here in decades. You saw the state of that car downstairs.”

  “Let Claudette move those,” suggested August. “She’s mighty strong.”

  “I recall,” said Belladonna archly, as she dumped the box near August’s feet.

  As she stooped, the top of the girl’s head caught August’s eye; a dark stripe ran along the parting of her hair.

  Belladonna’s roots were not blond, but brown.

  “You dye your hair?” As soon as he’d said it, August felt self-conscious. It suddenly seemed like the sort of thing a person shouldn’t really ask.

  But Belladonna, as she straightened, seemed unruffled. She ran her hand through the honey waves and glanced up at them. She nodded with a small, bitter smile.

  “I do. We do, Beau and me. She makes us. To look more like her. To look more like Malveaus.”

  August frowned, baffled. “But you are Malveaus.”

  Belladonna nodded slowly. “I suppose. Legally.” She looked directly at August. “But…we’re adopted.”

  August blinked, unsure how to proceed.

  “Ah!” he said knowingly. He wanted to respond appropriately so proceeded with caution. “So, you’re special.” He smiled generously. “You were chosen. Specifically.”

  Belladonna did not return the smile.

  “Chosen?” she wondered. “Or recruited? Recruited to be Malveaus; no, to be perfect Malveaus. To dye our hair Malveau blond. To act like Malveaus act and talk like Malveaus talk.” She glowered at nothing in particular. “To be genteel and respectable, to wear black and endlessly mourn for a man we can’t even remember.” A muscle flexed in her jaw. “To be just…like…her.”

  “Well,” August began quietly, “Beauregard is…”

  “Just like her?” suggested Belladonna. “My brother loves to feel superior. He loves belonging to an old, highfalutin family.” She glanced at August. “That’s why he dislikes you so. You, cousin, are the real deal. Mama’s blood runs through your veins. To be sure, it’s DuPont blood—nuttier than a squirrel turd—but it’s a darn sight fancier than mine and Beau’s. Knowing that has Beauregard all twisted up like a salted pretzel with jealousy. He’s insecure. That’s why he’s always so desperate for Mama’s approval, why he’s always trying to prove to her that he’s a real Malveau.”

  Belladonna shook her head.

  “But Beau doesn’t get it. She doesn’t see us as her children; not really. We’re more like living dolls, to dress up in her image. We’re a living, breathing advertisement for Malveau perfection.” She frowned. “Whether we like it or not.”

  A sudden clatter interrupted their conversation. Claudette had shifted enough boxes to create a space that permitted the closet door to swing fully open, and a suitcase had tumbled out, busting open and spewing its contents across the floorboards.

  “Be more careful, Claudette!” admonished August, hurrying to scoop up the jumble of memorabilia: notebooks, withered corsages, and faded photographs.

  Belladonna unfolded the cot.

  “I think there’s enough room here,” she said. “And look!” She pointed through a small window revealed by Claudette’s labors. “You can see the stars. It’s like the St. Louis Hotel. There’s even a little bathroom over there you can change in.”

  August emerged in baggy, oversized pajamas to find Claudette chomping on the hem of her borrowed nightgown and Belladonna tucking a sheet around the thin, moth-eaten mattress. For a moment, his cousin looked almost maternal.

  A sudden, jarring tring-tring caused August and Claudette to jump.

  Belladonna, with a surprised expression, looked around. She peered behind a steamer trunk, then a tower of hatboxes, and then, from inside a wicker baby stroller, she withdrew a pincushion, a rust-spotted flashlight, and, finally, an old-fas
hioned black dial telephone with a curly wire—the source of the high-pitched sound.

  “Yes, Escargot?” she said into the receiver. “Oh, how peculiar. Well yes, I suppose, put her through.”

  Belladonna turned to August and held out the receiver.

  “It’s for you.”

  “I’ll return your clean clothes in the morning,” whispered Belladonna, “before breakfast.”

  August accepted the receiver gingerly and regarded it like the foreign object that, to him, it was.

  “Hello?” he said cautiously, waving at his cousin’s departing back. “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  “Who is this?”

  Nothing again.

  Then he detected a faint, shrill squeaking emanating from somewhere near his chin and realized he was holding the contraption upside down.

  “August?” He heard a familiar voice brimming with shrill hysteria. “August? Is that truly you? Tell me, sugar, that you are quite safe, or I shall expire right here on the fainting couch at this very moment.

  “How could you do this to me? Why would you do this to me? Oh, August, what will become of you? What will become of me?”

  August waited patiently until the lady ran out of breath.

  “Hello, Aunt Hydrangea,” he responded calmly. “When did we get a phone?”

  There was a moment’s silence; the lady had clearly not anticipated this response.

  “Why, sugar, we’ve always had a phone, someplace or other. Several, I imagine. It’s a lack of phone line from which we at Locust Hole have suffered. A product, no doubt, of not paying our bill these past months. Or is it years? You know, it might just be a decade.”

  “How,” August rephrased his question, “is it that you’re able to make this call?”

  “Why, that delightful Mr. LaPoste is here. And, August, he has given me use of his…” Her voice was muffled as she directed it elsewhere. “What do you call this device, Mr. LaPoste? A mobile phone you say?” Then louder. “His mobile phone, sugar.”

  “Why on earth,” wondered August, “is the mailman there at such a late hour?”

  “What’s that, Mr. LaPoste? He says to tell you, August, that he received your note, that he will water your pepper plants, and that he is diligently keeping an eye on your aunt Hydrangea. Oh! Me? Why, that’s most kind, Mr. LaPoste, but quite unnecessary.”

  August heard her giggle and felt a little nauseated.

  “Now, August.” Hydrangea refocused. “You get yourself back here to Locust Hole this very minute.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible, ma’am.” August patiently explained that he could not abandon his search, because he was unable to show up to his own life until he had rid himself of his tenacious undead ancestor, and to achieve this, he must locate and secure the Zombie Stone.

  Hydrangea sighed, resigned. Another silence.

  “And is she there, my sister?”

  “Aunt Orchid has given us a place to stay.”

  “How does she look? And what of the house? Tell me every detail.”

  August began to relate his observations of the house on 591 Funeral Street, fielding Hydrangea’s questions as best he could.

  “Yes, the furnishings are very grand. Yes, there is still a harp in the music room. No, I will not kick Aunt Orchid under the table when no one’s looking.”

  As he listened and obediently responded, August watched Claudette awkwardly recline on Belladonna’s old carriage bench. She stuck the thumb of her dismembered arm into her mouth and sucked. August knew that this passive state was the closest the zombie came to sleeping. He wondered what she was thinking. Or if she was thinking.

  Her drowsy air was infectious. August yawned and slumped onto the cot that Belladonna had unfolded and made up for him.

  “It is getting late, Aunt. I’m sure Mr. LaPoste would like his phone back so he can get home.”

  A handful of memorabilia was still strewn across the floor, from the suitcase, August realized, that had tumbled from the closet. The boy pushed the postcards and photographs around with his toe.

  “Yes, I promise to come home as soon as possible. I’ll be sure to wear my helmet and gloves. No, I won’t tell Aunt Orchid that.”

  Something suddenly caught August’s eye.

  “You too,” he said absently. “Goodnight.”

  Eyelids drooping, August picked up an old, browned newspaper clipping.

  He read the headline, yawning again, “ ‘After dramatic upset, local debutante wins Pepperville pageant.’ ”

  The accompanying photograph featured a young woman wearing a sash embroidered with the words “Miss Chili Pepper Princess.” She was being crowned—presumably by the previous title holder—with a tiara that August immediately recognized as Hydrangea’s. But the face below it belonged to someone else. The boy peered more closely.

  “Why, Claudette,” he said. “I think this is Aunt Orchid.”

  * * *

  * * *

  That night, August had strange dreams. Their soundtrack was the rustle of palm fronds from the courtyard, which occasionally morphed into the celestial strains of melancholy harp song.

  He saw a crystal ball, a swirling mist within. Something began to materialize, a second orb, but of a lustrous amber, with a black spiral at its core, resembling an alligator’s eye. The crystal ball evaporated, leaving only the Zombie Stone suspended in a velvety black vacuum.

  August strove to reach it, struggling against a combative wind. The stone grew no closer. The palm fronds thrashed, and August could make no headway against the gale, which had grown frigid. His hands and feet felt frozen. He reached, straining, for the stone; through squinted eyes, he could see his own outstretched fingers. “My toes,” he thought, “are so very cold.”

  The boy awoke with a start. He was sitting bolt upright in his cot, heart pounding. Beyond the small window, tossing palm fronds were silhouetted against the starry sky. His blanket had ridden upward, exposing the boy’s feet, and an icy draft had chilled his toes to a pale blue.

  The distinct breeze appeared to originate from the closet immediately before him, for the door was open, and staring into it was Claudette.

  “Claudette?” The zombie turned to August with a low groan, while simultaneously pointing into the closet (inasmuch as zombies, with their claw-like, twisted fingers, can point). “You hear something?”

  August slipped on his shoes and joined her at the end of the cot. The draft was strong enough that it rippled Claudette’s nightgown.

  Behind the boxes, cases, and tarnished golf clubs, August could see a brick wall. He glanced to his right, through the window, to observe the same brick extending along the east side of the courtyard.

  “It’s the back wall of the theater,” he informed Claudette. August lifted his nose into the current of cool air; it smelled of damp and papery decay.

  “Remember,” said August, “what Cyril Saint-Cyr said, about a secret passage?”

  Together, the DuPonts hurriedly began to empty the closet of its contents.

  “Belladonna,” observed August, “said no one has slept up here in decades. If you weren’t lying right in front of this closet, I reckon you’d never notice the draft.”

  The boy now stood immediately before the closet’s cleared rear wall. He ran his palms across the worn brick.

  “I can feel the air coming through here. And here. And down here.”

  August knocked, generating a weak, flat slap. Again. His third attempt produced a deep, resounding thud. He glanced at Claudette.

  “Some of these bricks are just a veneer,” he explained. “I think they might be cemented to a door.” He continued knocking and pressing close to the sources of the draft.

  Pop! A brick—or rather some moving part disguised as a brick—suddenly depressed beneath his
touch and a good portion of the wall creaked open, swinging away into a dark void.

  “Oh my,” breathed August. “You didn’t know about this, Claudette? Oh, right, how could you? You were dead long before your brother created it.”

  Feeling about the far side of the wall, August’s palm located a cold, metal light switch. Click! Nothing. Click! Click! The void remained an inky, unwelcoming black.

  “Now, where,” wondered August, “is that rusty flashlight?” He exited the closet and made for the wicker baby stroller. “Belladonna will be so excited. We’ll explore tomorrow when it gets light; maybe we can even get into the theater. Ah, here it is. Well, what do you know, Claudette; it still has some battery power.

  “Claudette?”

  August stared into the closet, which moments earlier had contained a small zombie and was now entirely empty.

  “Oh, no.” The boy sighed as he approached the dark opening. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  He held up the flashlight, sweeping its watery beam through the darkness. Several yards away it picked up movement: a shambling, ragged figure.

  “Claudette!” hissed August furiously. “Get back here!” But the zombie grew smaller and dimmer. “Ugh!”

  August let his head fall back in frustration…and entered the secret passage.

  The floorboards creaked beneath his feet. August could hear the uneven, dragging progress of his undead relative somewhere up ahead.

  “Claudette! Come back!”

  The skimpy, flickering circle of light before him picked up a mouse scuttling along the baseboard and, on either side, mildewed wallpaper printed with an oppressive, organic pattern that appeared to warp and shift, forming ghoulish faces.

  Here and there, the wall covering had been lacerated by ragged horizontal scratches like those made by animal claws.

  “That,” muttered August, pausing to study and touch one of the violent gashes, “does not look good.”