The Zombie Stone

by K. G. Campbell

  A ghostly figure came into view, hovering aimlessly in the middle of the corridor.

  “Claudette! You are in so much trouble. Seriously, you can’t just wander off into dark passages like that. What are you looking at?”

  August stooped to examine a crack in the floor. It was perhaps a quarter inch wide and dissected the floorboards in a perfectly straight line from wall to wall. From it rushed the pervading cool, damp, moldy air.

  “The source, I guess,” said August, “of the draft.”

  Claudette emitted a grunt of curiosity and August glanced up.

  “What is that?” he said, pointing. “Right there, beside you?”

  A round steel casing, drum-shaped, like the end of a soda can, was mounted on the passage wall at rib height. From its side protruded a short pipe with a plastic knob on the end. A double-ended arrow on the casing’s face indicated that the lever moved from left to right.

  Over this lever hovered Claudette’s hand.

  “Don’t you do it, Claudette!” warned August. “I’m telling you, one time when Stella Starz pulled an unidentified lever, she released fifty racing pigeons…the day before the race!”

  August stood, slowly, arms extended.

  Claudette’s fist closed over the plastic knob.

  “I mean it, Claudette! Don’t you pull that—aaaaargh!”

  The floor beneath him instantaneously disappeared and August hurtled downward.

  A moment later, when he gathered his senses, the boy found himself lying spread-eagle on a pile of mattresses. He was winded but unhurt. Far above him, Claudette’s eyes were madly swiveling.

  “Wha…” August forced himself into a seated position to discover that a double trapdoor had released him into a sort of cage suspended below the passage.

  To his right lay a cold, impenetrable wall. He was otherwise surrounded by rigid vertical bars, and beyond those lay a lofty room, illuminated by a luminous shaft of moonlight piercing a skylight of wired glass. The corridor above him had clearly been borrowed from and framed within this much larger space.

  August promptly shrieked. Hovering in the air several yards away was a phantom. The spirit was pale and insubstantial, with burning ice-blue eyes and a yawning black void where its mouth should be.

  A moment later, the boy gasped in relief as his brain registered that the thing was two-dimensional. It was painted, part of a larger image depicting some creepy, nocturnal cemetery where other such spirits drifted skyward from their graves.

  “This must be,” August spoke upward, toward Claudette, “where they kept the theater scenery.” Beyond the graveyard he could see the exposed edges of other enormous stacked backdrops: a fairy-tale forest, a Greek temple, what looked like part of a sun-bleached desert.

  The musty odor was stronger here, the product, August guessed, of yards and yards of rotting painted canvas.

  The boy stumbled awkwardly to his feet and staggered across the stack of mattresses, attempting to find his balance. Holding the bars, he looked down.

  Some ten feet below him, on a cement floor, the remains of his flashlight were scattered. He looked up.

  Some ten feet above him hovered Claudette’s face, which appeared to register something close to alarm.

  “You should look guilty!” August scolded the zombie crossly. “I told you about the racing pigeons.” He sighed and looked around. “Okay, let’s try this.”

  August grabbed a mattress and, rolling it into a loose cylinder, stuffed it into a corner to hold it in place. He repeated the process with a second and a third, and, stacking them on one another, attempted to scramble over and up, toward the square hole above him.

  But the mattresses were uncooperative (as mattresses tend to be), sliding out from the pile and springing stiffly open, smacking the boy in the face.

  He scowled up at Claudette, who, with a remorseful expression, lay facedown and reached into the cage.

  “Ew! You’re drooling, Claudette! This won’t work; it’s too far.”

  Nonetheless, the boy stood on tiptoe, one fist gripping an iron bar for support, straining toward the zombie’s outstretched hand. August leaped as best he could from the limp, uneven mattress mess beneath his feet.

  But his fingers and Claudette’s were still feet apart.

  The boy fell heavily back to the mattresses.

  “I don’t think,” he said, looking up at the zombie with despair, “there’s a way out!”

  August leaned back limply, legs spread out.

  “Is there anything,” he wondered after a moment, “you could throw down that I could grab on to?”

  With her attached hand, Claudette lifted her torso from the floor and twisted her head from side to side. She slumped back onto her chest, clearly employing her only active arm to reach for something nearby.

  Suddenly the zombie’s hand appeared again, fingers open, reaching down past the boards of the open trapdoor.

  “No, no,” said August. “We’ve tried that. You’re too high up. I mean, is there like some rope or…” He stopped short as Claudette’s hand descended farther and farther…and yet farther into the cage.

  “Oh, I see.” August grinned.

  The descending digits belonged to the zombie’s amputated arm, which she was extending into the space like a lifeline.

  August groaned as, on tiptoe, he stretched upward, as far as he possibly could.

  “Got it!” The boy’s hand gripped the zombie’s dismembered wrist. The zombie’s dismembered hand gripped the boy’s wrist. August’s stomach lurched as he was yanked swiftly upward toward the ceiling, arced through the air, and landed facedown on the floor of the secret passage.

  “Impressive,” acknowledged the boy, brushing himself off at the edge of the impassable opening. “But in the future, let’s leave strange levers alone.” Reaching out, August gripped the handle on the wall and forced it toward its opposite extreme.

  A strained creaking and electrical whir accompanied a sudden lurch from the trapdoors, which subsequently began to rise jerkily, propelled by obscured mechanics. But as the opening closed, an unanticipated consequence became immediately obvious.

  “Uh-oh!” said August as the moonlight was promptly extinguished.

  August thought of the broken flashlight somewhere twenty feet beneath them. His heart thumped hard, as anyone’s might if they found themselves in an unfamiliar secret passage and unexpectedly plunged into total darkness.

  “Claudette?” August reached for the zombie, and the feeling of her cold, lifeless forearm was vaguely comforting.

  “I think,” said August’s bodyless voice, “it was this way back. Wait, where are you going? No, this way. Or was it this way? Oh dear.”

  Without any visual reference, August felt completely disoriented.

  As his eyes grew accustomed to this new, lightless situation, they detected a thin red stripe several yards away.

  “Can you see that, Claudette? What is that?”

  Feeling his way along the jagged gashes in the wall, August headed for the crimson line and, within several shuffled yards, discovered that the corridor ended.

  A sliver of dull red light escaped through a crack by the floor, suggesting that they had arrived at a door. And sure enough, beneath his palms, August detected peeling wooden panels and a metal knob.

  “It’s probably locked,” speculated August. It wasn’t. But before he pushed it open, August pressed his ear against the door to listen.

  All footsteps and movements now stilled, silence closed in. August could hear his own heartbeat. He could hear an electric buzz, like that of a distant lightbulb. He could hear the minuscule displacement of air by the paper-thin wings of a solitary butterfly.

  The brass within his fist was cold and hard. The floorboards seemed to press themselves against his feet. Or was gravity
pressing him into them? He sensed some dull, distant throb, perhaps the very heartbeat of the earth.

  Someone whispered in August’s left ear, but Claudette, he knew, was on his right.

  The boy was immediately reminded of his experience in the DuPont-Malveau family cemetery. He was reminded of Professor Leech’s séance.

  Something, August knew, was up.

  He opened the door.

  * * *

  * * *

  August felt for the light switch. It was unresponsive.

  However, the reddish light escaping from around a second door opposite was enough to dimly illuminate the room before him.

  August and Claudette descended a handful of steps into a modestly sized chamber, tightly crammed with an eclectic jumble of objects.

  “This,” observed August, “must be the old prop room.”

  Chairs, sideboards, and coat stands were stacked in towers, and the ceiling was concealed behind a canopy of unwired light fixtures in every possible style, from medieval to modern. Tangled throughout the crowded space was a collection of bizarre things: a suit of armor, a stuffed marlin, a barber’s pole, and several mannequin torsos.

  Whisper, whisper.

  “Do you hear that?” August glanced at Claudette and was extremely surprised when she nodded. “You do? I’m not crazy?” The zombie shook her head.

  “Hello? Is anyone in here?” August proceeded with caution toward the other door. He edged past a large mounted globe, upon which was perched a witch’s hat.

  “Argh!” The boy was startled when a figure lunged toward him, crashing to lie lifeless on the floor. The life-sized ballerina had a face that appeared to have melted, like a candle.

  “Wax!” August informed Claudette, running his finger across what remained of the dancer’s forehead.

  “This one is locked,” August announced, arriving at the second door.

  He peered through the large keyhole. Immediately beyond lay a shadowy space of panels, raw timbers, and pulleys dangling from dark places. A few hangers still hung from a rolling coat rack, and a broken microphone lay on the floor.

  Beyond this lay the larger expanse of a stage, its central portion concealed by barriers that appeared to form some sort of freestanding enclosure. Beyond the footlights lay the much grander reaches of a soaring auditorium.

  The only light was red and provided by emergency exit signs. But it was enough to see that the place had been repurposed.

  The rows of theater seating that would once have held an audience had gone, replaced by a complex maze of vertical partitions. Arranged within these, August could make out a shadowy, static populace of costumed figures.

  Many were obscured by the system of cubicles. But others were partially visible in the crimson gloom, sporting crested helmets, imperial crowns, bishop’s miters, and jauntily angled stovepipe hats.

  “Saint-Cyr’s Wax Museum,” August said, turning to Claudette. “The famous and infamous, large as life in wonderful wax!”

  He stood, turned, and surveyed the prop room.

  “Well, that,” he said, “certainly explains our ballerina friend.”

  Whisper, whisper.

  “Who is that?” August was irritated now. Why was he hearing these pesky voices?

  He navigated the muddle of props, peering into the darkest corners of the crowded room.

  “Is someone hiding in here? Do you need help?”

  Whisper, whisper.

  The boy sidled into the narrow passages between the shelving systems loaded with bizarre bric-a-brac. At eye level August passed powdered wigs on stands, jars of false teeth and glass eyes (he pushed the latter out of sight, so that Claudette wouldn’t be tempted to swap them out with her own), hands of wax, feet of wax, faces of wax, a grotesque grinning baby, a scowling old-timey police officer, a hollow-eyed young boy.

  Whisper, whisper.

  It was louder now. More insistent. Demanding even. August could almost identify some element of language.

  His attention was captured by the sad-faced young boy before him. This wax sculpture seemed different from the others; more complex. More lifelike. August peered at it closely.

  “Is that”—he extended an inquisitive finger—“even wax?”

  But before he could find out, the boy’s eyes snapped open.

  August yelled and backed into the shelves behind him, knocking a toaster and a sharply jangling tambourine to the floor.

  Over his shoulder popped a woman’s face, or at least half a face, all flesh below the lady’s nose having decomposed to expose her lower skull and jawbone. For a moment, August assumed that, like the ballerina, this was a damaged and unfortunate waxwork. But the moment was brief, for it immediately became clear that this woman was not formed from wax, being very much animated, her teeth clattering excitedly together, her eyes bulging and blinking.

  Wigs, jars, and waxy body parts, skateboards, vases, and electrical appliances began to shift and tumble and clatter. The two animated faces were clearly attached to animated bodies that were now extricating themselves from the objects around them.

  August stumbled back through the shelves toward Claudette, narrowly dodging a bar stool dislodged by the abrupt emergence of a third awakening figure.

  Claudette moaned pitifully, pointing toward a fourth.

  As lamps and plastic fire hydrants and tennis rackets fell to the floor or crashed against walls, it felt as if the entire room had been magicked to life. Grunts, growls, and indescribable animal sounds accompanied the appearance of jerking angular limbs and fiercely flashing eyes.

  A huge, powerful man loomed out of the shadows, his enormous, yellowed, withered hands extending toward August. The figure’s swinging jaw and open mouth revealed scant but gruesome teeth, and he emitted a spine-chilling, soulless howl.

  Other twisted, twitching persons appeared behind him.

  “RUN!!!” screamed August, shoving Claudette toward the secret passage.

  But the boy was half-blind and clumsy with panic and tripped, his limbs splaying across the handful of steps below the doorway.

  He felt a cold and bony grip around his ankle and was promptly yanked backward. August screamed, grabbing at the stair rails. But his assailant was powerful. A second mighty wrench was accompanied by a violent, splintering snap, and the boy was dragged backward again, this time with a broken bannister in his fist.

  “Claudette!” he yelled.

  Suddenly August’s collar jerked against his throat as his pajamas were grabbed from above and his ankle was wrenched free. The next thing he knew, the boy was in the secret passage beside Claudette, who was slamming the door closed.

  The DuPonts threw their shoulders against it as a mighty force struck the door from the opposite side, rattling August’s teeth. Another blow knocked August to the ground. The third ripped the dry, termite-riddled wood away from the hinges.

  August and Claudette fled back through the corridor, with only the dim red light from behind to guide them.

  They were pursued by a cacophony of grunting and stumbling and the alarming sound of long, strong fingernails ripping along wallpaper.

  “The trapdoor!” yelled August.

  As he hurled himself against the wall beside the lever, it dawned on the boy that this was surely the very circumstance for which the devious device had been designed.

  The ragged, shambling, drooling, wild-eyed, snaggletoothed horde of zombies (for surely it is now clear to all that this is what they were) was almost upon them.

  August waited until he felt the first spatter of spittle on his face, then, with a primal yell, pulled the lever with all his might.

  * * *

  * * *

  “I thought there were more of them,” August observed to Claudette. “It seemed like there were more.”

  Four zombie
s, strewn awkwardly across the mattresses, ogled up at August from the suspended cage. Although similarly twisted and dilapidated, each was distinct in their state of decay and personal trappings.

  One was a glum-looking young woman whose tasseled gown and feather headdress suggested the costume of a theatrical entertainer. The smallest of the zombies was the hollow-eyed boy, who was robed in the rich silks and ornate jewels of a foreign prince. The lady with but half a face sported a dapper hat and buttoned boots, which, despite her state of decomposition, lent her an air of fashionable respectability. The last and largest zombie, judging by his polka-dotted head scarf, swashbuckling coat, and knotted sash, was surely a pirate.

  “Is that…no, it can’t be,” said August, frowning. “Is that the pirate Jacques LeSalt?”

  At the mention of the name, the zombie’s head cocked to the side.

  “It sure looks like him; at least, how he’d look after being dead for a very long time.” August scratched his head. “And the other ones, they look familiar too. The sad showgirl. The small prince. The half-faced lady.”

  August grabbed Claudette’s arm.

  “Madame Marvell’s houseboat! The poster! DuPont’s Dance of the Dead!” Claudette regarded August expectantly. “These,” the boy explained, palms held forth toward the undead group, “are Orfeo’s zombies! The deceased that he reanimated with the Zombie Stone, for diversion and delight.”

  He studied the zombies for a moment, and was struck, as he had been on his first meeting with Claudette, by their pathetic air. Tangled and tattered beneath him, the derelict creatures suddenly seemed far less fearsome than they had in the crowded and gloomy prop room.

  “They must have been hanging around that storage room for”—August performed a mental calculation—“almost a hundred years! I guess people imagined they were props…or old waxworks. But why are they coming back to life now?”