Zombies

by Otto Penzler

Edita nodded. “Margal is a powerful one, it is said. Perhaps the most powerful one in all Haiti. Much to be feared.”

  “And he lives in Bois Sauvage?” Kay was not happy at the prospect of taking Tina to a village dominated by such a man.

  “In Legrun, a few miles from there.” The frown persisted. “Perhaps you will not encounter him. I hope not.”

  “I hope not, too.”

  Night fell while the stew was cooking. The woman used a bottle lamp in the outdoor kitchen but called on her man to bring a lantern when the food was ready to be carried to the house. Kay woke Tina and the five of them sat at the table in the front room where, with the door shut, there was a strong smell of kerosene from the lantern now hanging from a soot-blackened wall peg.

  After a few moments of eating in silence, Edita looked across the table at her man and said, “These people are going near to where the crippled bocor is, Antoine.” The frown was back on her pocked face.

  “So Joseph has been telling me.”

  The nurse in Kay was curious. “Crippled, you say?”

  They nodded. “He cannot walk,” Antoine supplied. “Different tales are told about the cause of it. One is that he was hurt when a camion he was riding in overturned and crushed him. Another is that he became involved in politics and had his legs broken by enemies from the capital. Still another tale is that his mule fell from the cliff at Saut Diable.”

  “You will be seeing Saut Diable tomorrow,” Edita interjected, “and can judge for yourself whether one could survive a fall from there. At any rate, Margal cannot walk but is very much alive.”

  “And very much to be feared,” Antoine said.

  SLEEP FOLLOWED THE supper. In these remote mountain districts no one stayed up much after nightfall. For one thing, kerosene for illumination had to be transported long distances and was expensive.

  But falling asleep on that peasant bed was not going to be easy, Kay discovered. At least, not with all her aches. The mattress was stuffed with some kind of coarse grass that had packed itself into humps and hollows. Each time she sought a more comfortable position, the stuff crackled as though on fire. Tina slept, thank heaven, but in the end Kay could only lie there.

  The caille was far from quiet, too. One of the three sleepers in the front room snored loudly. In the thatch overhead, geckos croaked and clicked and made rustling sounds. Outside, other lizards sounded like people with sore throats trying to cough, and tree frogs whistled like toy trains. But the outside noises were muffled; the room had no windows. At this altitude, the problem at night was to keep warm, not cool.

  A roachlike fire beetle, the kind the peasants called a coucouyé, came winging in from the front room, pulsing with green light as it flew. Landing on the wall, it climbed to the thatch and pulsed there like an advertising sign that kept winking on and off.

  In spite of it, Kay felt herself dozing off.

  Suddenly Tina, beside her, began to tremble.

  Was the child dreaming? If so, it must be another of her bad ones. She had been sleeping with her hands pressed palm to palm under one cheek, and now turned convulsively on her back and began moaning.

  Damn! I don’t want to wake her but I’ll have to if she doesn’t stop. Propping herself on one elbow, Kay peered at the twitching face, glad now for the pulsing light of the beetle above them.

  Something dropped with a dull plop from the thatch onto the foot of the bed. A gecko, of course, but she glanced down to make sure. The gecko lizards were small and harmless. Kind of cute, in fact.

  The nightmare was causing Tina to thrash about in a frenzy that made the whole bed shake. Kay reached for her to wake her. There was a second plop at the foot of the bed. Kay turned her head again.

  The fire beetle had fallen from the thatch. Still glowing, it struggled on its back with its legs frantically beating the air, six inches from the gecko.

  The lizard’s head swivelled in the bug’s direction and its beady eyes contemplated the struggle. Its front feet, looking like tiny hands, gripped the blanket. Its slender brown body moved up and down as though doing pushups.

  Mouth agape, it suddenly lunged.

  Crunch!

  With the light gone, the room was suddenly dark as a pit. The child at Kay’s side sat bolt upright and began screaming in a voice to shake the mountains.

  The rest of what happened was so terrifying that Kay felt a massive urge to scream along with the child.

  At the foot of the bed the beetle-devouring gecko had become larger. Was now, in fact, a great black shape half as big as the bed itself. Its feet spread out to grip the blanket, and its huge reptilian head turned toward Kay and the screaming child. Its enormous dragon body began to do pushups again.

  It was about to leap, to open its awful jaws and crunch again!

  Scarcely aware of what she was doing, Kay grabbed the child and rolled with her off the bed, onto the swept-earth floor near the doorless doorway. Not a second too soon. As she scrabbled for the doorway, pulling the shrieking youngster along with her, she heard the creature’s awful jaws snap together. Then, still on hands and knees, still pulling the child after her, she reached the front room.

  The screaming had aroused the sleepers there. Antoine was lighting the lantern. His woman caught hold of Tina and hugged her, telling her to stop screaming, she would be all right. Joseph, helping Kay to her feet, peered strangely at her, then turned to look into the back room as Antoine stepped to the doorway and held the lantern high to put some light in there.

  Tina stopped screaming.

  Kay stepped to the doorway to look into the room she had just frantically crawled out of.

  Nothing.

  But I saw it! It was there! It was huge and leaped at us!

  After a while Antoine said, “M’selle, what frightened you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There was nothing on the bed. Not even the small lizard that had eaten the fire beetle.

  You imagined it, Gilbert. But Tina had become frightened first. Tina, not she, had done the screaming.

  She looked at her watch. In an hour or so, daylight would replace the frightening dark. Backing away from the bed, she returned to the front room where Edita was now seated on a chair with Tina on her lap.

  “Are you all right, M’selle?”

  “I guess so. But I know I can’t sleep anymore. Just let me sit here and wait for morning.”

  The woman nodded.

  Kay sat. She had gone to bed in her clothes, expecting the night to be cold. She looked at Tina, then up at the woman’s disfigured face. “Is she asleep?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  The silence returned.

  Joseph and Antoine came back into the room. Both glanced at the child first, then focused on Kay, no doubt awaiting an explanation.

  Don’t, she warned herself. If you even try, Joseph might decide to go back.

  But they were not willing just to stand there staring at her. “M’selle, what happened, please?” Joseph said.

  He had to be answered somehow. “Well . . . I’m ashamed, but I believe I just had a bad dream and woke Tina up, poor thing, and she began screaming.”

  “That is all?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  By the way they looked at her, she knew they had not bought it.

  III

  In the village of Vallière the expedition was stalled for a time while Joseph talked with people he knew. But not for long. Beyond, the trail continued its slow, twisting climb and the stillness returned.

  The mountain stillness. No bird cry or leaf rustle could have much effect on a silence so profound, nor could the muffled thumping of the mules’ hoofs over the layers of leaf mold. She felt as though she were riding through another world.

  Now at last the trail was levelling off and she saw Joseph ten yards ahead, looking back and waiting for her. As usual, Tina sat snugly in front of him, fenced in by his arms. Kay pulled up alongside.

  “For a little while it will be h
ard now, M’selle,” Joseph said. “Should we stop a while?”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Well, all right. Perhaps we should get this place behind us, anyway.”

  Remembering something the woman had said last night, Kay frowned. “Is this the place they call Saut Diable?” It meant, she knew, Devil’s Leap.

  He nodded.

  She strained to see ahead. The track, mottled with tree shadows, sloped down into a kind of trench where seasonal rains had scored it to a depth of eight or ten feet. Riding through such a place, you had to remove your feet from the stirrups and lift them high. Otherwise, if the mule lurched sideways, you could end up with a crushed leg.

  “You must make your animal descend very slowly, M’selle,” Joseph solemnly warned.

  She nodded, feeling apprehensive.

  “But don’t even start to go down,” he said, “until I call to you from below.”

  “Until you call to me?”

  “At the bottom, the trail turns sharply to the right, like this.” Dramatically he drew a right angle in the air. “I will be waiting there to help you.”

  She was not sure she understood, but watched him ride on and noticed how carefully he put his mule to the trench. Waiting at the top, she saw him disappear around a curve. It seemed a long time before she heard him calling her, from below.

  Scared, she urged her own mule forward.

  It was the worst stretch they had encountered, not only steep but slippery. The red-earth walls were barely far enough apart to permit passage. Her mule took short, mincing steps, stumbling at times. At one twist of the trail he went to his knees, all but pitching her over his head, then was barely able to struggle up again. With her feet out of the stirrups, she marvelled that she was able to stay on the animal’s back.

  Luckily, the walls were a little farther apart at the bottom of the trench, and her feet were back in place. Joseph waited for her with feet apart and hands upraised, clutching a dead stick as long as his arm. Behind him was only empty blue sky.

  “Come slowly and hang on!” he shouted at her.

  As she reached him, he swung the stick. Whap! It caught her mule across the left side of the neck and caused the animal to wheel abruptly to the right. As she clung to the pommel to keep from falling, she got the full picture and promptly wet herself.

  Joseph had been standing on the edge of a sheer drop, to make sure her mule didn’t take one step too many before turning. Had the animal done so, both she and it—and Joseph, too, no doubt—would have gone hurtling down into a valley hundreds of feet below!

  Her mule stopped. A little distance ahead, Joseph’s animal was waiting, with Tina aboard and looking back. The trail was a ribbon of rock no more than six feet wide, winding along a cliff face for a hundred yards or more with awesome heights above and those terrifying depths below. Joseph, still clutching his stick, caught up with her and gave her mule a pat on the shoulder, as if to apologize for clubbing it.

  “You are all right, M’selle?”

  “I’ll never be all right again.”

  He chuckled. “Actually, I was not worried. This grey beast of yours has been here before and is not stupid. I only wanted to be sure he would remember that place. Just give him his head now and let him follow my animal along here. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, hoping he would not notice her wet pants.

  He walked on ahead and swung himself into the saddle, saying something to Tina that made the child look at him with adoring eyes. His mule started forward, and Kay’s clop-clopped along behind it.

  Then the trail began to go dark.

  Kay looked up to see what had happened to the sun. It was there but fading, and the sky began to look like a thick sheet of overexposed photographic film, becoming blacker every second.

  She looked down. A dark mist rose from the valley which only a moment ago had been green. But was it a mist? Distinctly, she smelled smoke and saw flames. Then, like an exhalation from the earth itself, the darkness swirled up to engulf her.

  Suddenly she could see nothing in front of her, nothing above or below, nothing behind. All creation was black and boiling.

  Her mule stopped. Why? Because in her sudden terror she had jerked the reins, or because he, too, was now blind? What was happening was unreal. It was no more real than the harmless gecko that had become a ravenous dragon last night.

  Margal, she thought. The bocor who can’t walk. We’re getting closer and he doesn’t want us to.

  The sky, the valley, the trail snaking along the cliffside—all had disappeared now. The darkness had engulfed them and was furiously alive, shot through with flames and reeking of smoke. The smoke made her cough and she had to cling to the saddle as she struggled to breathe.

  And now the thunder. Peal upon peal of thunder, filling the fiery darkness in the valley and bouncing off the cliff in front of and behind her. Only it wasn’t thunder she was hearing, was it? It was a booming of drums, ever so many drums. The sound assaulted her head and she wanted to scream but knew she must not. A scream might frighten the grey mule.

  The animal wasn’t easily frightened. More than once he had proved that. But he was still standing motionless, waiting for her to urge him forward again.

  Should she do that? Had his world, too, gone mad? Or did he still see the trail in front of him, Joseph and Tina on the mule ahead, and the green valley below?

  I can’t stay here. Can’t risk it. But there is no way to turn and go back.

  Should she try to dismount and walk back? No, no! The world was so dark, she might as well be blind. If she tried to slide from the saddle on the cliff side, the mule might step away to make room for her. Might take a step too many and go plunging over the edge. And if she tried to dismount on that side without knowing where the edge was, she might drop straight into space.

  She clucked to the grey as Joseph had taught her. Touched him, oh so gently, with her heels. “Go on, fella. But slow, go slow.”

  He gave his head a shake and moved forward through the smoke and drum-thunder, while she prayed he could see the trail and would not walk off the edge or grind her into the wall.

  If he does grind me into the wall, I’ll know he can’t see any better than I. Then I can pull him up and at least wait. But if he goes wrong on the outside, God help me.

  The mule plodded on through the unreal darkness. The drums thundered. Tongues of scarlet leaped high from the valley—high enough to curl in over the trail and stab at her feet, as if to force her to lift them from the stirrups and lose her balance. Fighting back the panic, she clutched the saddle with both hands and ground her knees into the mule’s sides for an added grip.

  What—oh God!—was happening to Joseph and Tina? She could not even see them now.

  Saut Diable. The Devil’s Leap. Had the man named Margal been crippled in a fall from here? She didn’t believe it. No one could survive such a fall.

  Dear God, how much longer?

  But the grey could see! She was convinced of it now. He trudged along as though this journey through the nightmare were all in the day’s work. Not once did he brush her leg against the cliff, so she had to assume that not once did he venture too close to the drop on the other side. Was the darkness only in her mind, then? Was Margal responsible for it?

  Never mind that now, Gilbert. Just hang on. Pray.

  It almost seemed that the one creating the illusion knew his grisly scheme was not working. Knew she had not panicked and spooked the mule into plunging over the edge with her. The thunder of the drums grew louder. She thought her skull would crack under the pounding. The darkness became a gigantic whirlpool that seemed certain to suck her into its vortex. She tried shutting her eyes. It didn’t help.

  I’m not seeing these things. I’m thinking them.

  The big grey walked on.

  The whirlpool slowed and paled. The flames diminished to flickerings. The sky lightened and let the sun blur through again. Slowly the image of the other mule took shape ahe
ad, with Joseph and Tina on its back.

  She looked down and saw darkness leaving the valley, the smoke drifting away in wisps, the green returning. It was like the end of a storm.

  Ahead, Joseph had stopped where the cliff passage ended and the trail entered a forest again. Dismounting, he swung Tina down beside him. The child clung to his legs. On reaching them, Kay slid from the saddle, too.

  She and Joseph gazed at each other, the Haitian’s handsome face the hue of wood ash, drained of all sparkle, all life. Trembling against him, the child, too, stared at Kay, with eyes that revealed the same kind of terror.

  The nightmare wasn’t just for me. They rode through it, too.

  Kay felt she had to say something calming. “Well . . . we’re here, aren’t we? Saut Diable is behind us.” Brilliant, she thought. Just what we didn’t need.

  “M’selle . . . what happened?”

  “What do you think happened?” Get him talking. Get that ghastly look off his face. Off Tina’s, too.

  “Everything went dark, M’selle. The valley was on fire. The flames reached all the way up to the trail and the smoke made me cough.”

  She only looked at him.

  “Drumming,” he continued hoarsely. “I heard all three drums—the manman, the seconde, the bula. And I think even a fourth. Even the giant assotor.”

  “It was all in our minds,” Kay said. “It wasn’t real.”

  “M’selle, it happened.” He turned his ashen face to look at Tina. “Didn’t it, ti-fi?”

  Still too frightened to speak, the child could only nod.

  “No.” Kay shook her head. “The drumming was only thunder, and there was no real fire. Walk back and look.”

  He refused to budge. When she took him by the hand to lead him back, he froze.

  “Just to the cliff,” she said. “So we can see.”

  “No, M’selle!”

  “It didn’t happen, Joseph. I’m telling you, it did not happen. We only imagined it. Now come.”

  His head jerked again from side to side, and she could not budge him.

  At the hospital she was known to have a temper when one was called for. “Damn it, Joseph, don’t be so stubborn! Come and see!” Her yank on his wrist all but pulled him off his feet.