by Otto Penzler
A ratty-looking clerk steps forward and wastes no time. “People v. Atgeld,” he snaps. He retreats as the group moves in front of the judge.
“Your honor,” Susan’s attorney begins, “my client is an important woman in the community. Her husband is Tyler Wilhelm Atgeld, owner of—”
“Important people steal too, counselor,” the judge interrupts irritably. “Get on with it. You have five minutes.”
“Yes sir, of course.” The attorney rushes on: his client is wealthy and store records show numerous charges on her account, all paid, and no complaint has ever been registered—
“She probably wouldn’t be here if there had, would she?” the judge asks wryly. He rolls his eyes. “You’re wasting the court’s time.”
“Mrs. Atgeld contends that the clothing found in her bag was placed there by the arresting officer, Patrolwoman Valensuela,” the lawyer announces. “My client states that the item was implanted during her initial detention.”
“A fairly common accusation, I’m afraid.” The judge peers at Carmen. “Officer Valensuela, what is your response?”
Carmen steps forward, jaw rigid to prevent the telltale shake of pleasure in her voice. “I submit as evidence, sir, the security videotape from the store.”
“Oh, by all means,” Susan Atgeld says sarcastically, “let’s look at that!”
“No one gave you permission to speak,” the magistrate snaps. “If you’re out of order again, I’ll end this trial prematurely. Do you understand?”
She nods, shocked as realization finally seeps into her senses; all the money in the world will not buy her special treatment in this courtroom. The ruddy tan on her husband’s cheeks goes gray around the edges.
“All right.” The judge motions to his clerk and the ratty man obediently rolls a small cart forward with a thirteen-inch television and a small VCR on it. He powers both on and steps away. “Plug it in, Officer.”
Carmen slides the tape into the VCR without hesitation and hits PLAY, then fast forwards for a few seconds before pausing. She glances at Susan and her lawyer, then at the judge. “This is it.” Her finger jabs the PLAY button again.
The snowy background of the screen is replaced by a grainy black-and-white shot of Lord & Taylor’s lingerie department from a ceiling viewpoint. A woman strolls into view with her back to the camera and fingers a few items, then turns and picks up a lace teddy; the camera gives a full shot of a woman who is unmistakably Susan Atgeld. Across from Carmen, the defendant thrusts out her chin defiantly, confident the tape will prove her innocence. But the woman on the videotape turns back, then hastily stuffs the lingerie into her bag; Susan McDunnah Atgeld’s eyes bulge and she chokes and sways. Her husband reaches for her but the prison guard shoves a billyclub between them and forces Mr. Atgeld back.
“That’s a lie,” Susan shrieks. “I’ve never stolen anything!” She is restrained by the guard and her attorney speaks frantically to her in a low voice; abruptly she shuts up.
“Your honor,” the attorney says smoothly, “you must realize how out of character this behavior would be for Mrs. Atgeld.” He looks pointedly at Carmen and she keeps her face carefully impassive. “I allege this tape has been doctored.”
Carmen’s heart pounds with exhilaration as the judge taps his finger impatiently. “Did you take this tape home with you, Officer?” His eyes are large and brown; there is no resemblance whatsoever to a doe or any other soft animal.
“No sir.” She stands straight, impeccably attired, a model of professional police work. “I obtained the tape from the store security lieutenant. After the arrest I returned immediately to the station. The tape was in the fingerprint lab until noon today, then it was logged in with the evidence sergeant.”
The judge looks at her quizzically. “Fingerprint lab?”
“Another matter, sir.”
He shuffles quickly through the small file, noting the police department’s time punches on the forms. “It all checks out.” He wastes no further time.
“Guilty.”
Susan’s husband gasps as the judge’s gavel makes its final descent; Susan herself faints and Mr. Atgeld is detained, helpless as another guard hooks a hand under each arm and drags his wife away without comment. One of her prison slippers comes off and lies in the middle of the floor until the clerk kicks it aside. Watching, Carmen thinks the woman is a fool for wasting what little time she has left by being unconscious. She turns back to the clerk and he nods and hands her the judgment slip. She turns it over and reads where the judge has written six o’clock in the ENFORCEMENT TIME box.
Carmen wouldn’t miss it for anything.
WITH LITTLE TIME for red tape and no money or manpower for prison, the system has restructured dramatically. Justice is swift and sure, and what crime exists in the city is born of size and sheer desperation. The Code of Law is simple, ancient and vicious: An Eye for an Eye. Because Susan McDunnah Atgeld has been convicted of shoplifting the Code of Law will claim her hands. Still, the legislators had been unable to agree on the appointment of workers to perform such barbaric tasks as were needed—after all, could a person who was willing to commit such atrocities actually be allowed to roam freely within society? Was not such a person basically like one of the . . .
Dead Things?
But everything has a function now, nothing is wasted. Even the Dead Things have their roles.
Enforcement #3 is a concrete room in the second level basement with rigid security; anyone, alive or dead, attempting to escape is shot on sight. Because she is the convicting officer, Carmen must witness the punishment, the flames inside her flaring with ecstasy at the sight of the hold-down device. Consisting of matched pieces of steel with cut-outs for hands, the device is set into the wall below an unbreakable slab of one-way mirror that looks into a narrow cubicle which sports a steel sliding door of its own. Near the ceiling is a small speaker. The device has been cleaned but the stains of former thieves remain, dark, ominous blots around the openings as though it has been splattered with rust-colored ink. Revived, Mrs. Atgeld is led into the room and at the sight of the device begins screaming anew, gibbering with fright and foreknowledge. Her pleas fall upon deaf ears as two guards force her forward and shove her flailing hands through the openings, then lock them in place and wind a complex series of leather straps around her upper body and arms. When they retreat, Susan Atgeld is bound to the hold-down device so tightly that her chest is pressed to the device’s steel front and her straining elbows jut backwards past the ribs of her back. Although her right cheekbone is plastered against the cold mirror, her words are still understandable.
“Lying bitch!” she screams. “You framed me! Burn in hell, you whore—”
Her words choke away as the door beyond the mirror makes a ratcheting sound and slides open; a snarling Dead Thing, trussed by steel poles with loops, is pushed inside. Grunting and stumbling, the Dead Thing, once a woman, falls to its knees, then pitches forward as the cable looped around its neck yanks it forward, then expands and lifts. Freed, the Dead Thing is too slow to successfully turn before the poles are withdrawn and the door shuts behind it. It finds its footing and stands uncertainly, wobbling and looking around the cubicle. Its eyes are runny and white and blank; still they sweep the empty room until they fixate on the only thing that stands out.
Susan McDunnah Atgeld’s hands and wrists.
As the Dead Thing begins to salivate, Susan whimpers, her eyes glassy and spit smearing the mirror and dribbling down to one shoulder as she bucks futilely within the leather harness.
It is over quickly though not quietly, barely lasting long enough to satisfy the hunger within Carmen. Susan Atgeld is unconscious, her grayed skin already streaming perspiration from the parasitic invasion caused by the Dead Thing’s bite. Her bleeding stumps are tied off with rubber bungee cords as the Dead Thing in the other room chews on its delicate, manicured meal with single-minded determination. Mrs. Atgeld is left to die beneath the holding device; in under an
hour she will rise with her own hunger, then die a second time. CPD will not decapitate and burn the body until it ensures that Susan McDunnah Atgeld has become a Dead Thing herself, but when this happens, she will be dispatched even quicker the second time around. As Carmen leaves the department preacher to mutter his harried prayer over the pre-corpse, the two Enforcement guards are readying their poles and running a leather sharpening strap along the length of the machete that will bring a final end to the Atgeld shoplifting case. Hurrying to the next Enforcement room, the preacher pushes past Carmen before she is two steps outside the door; when she glances back, she notes that the so-called man of God has not even closed Susan’s eyes.
Carmen returns to her locker with lazy steps, moving slowly like a snake made sluggish by a full belly, collecting the evidence tape on her way. She takes the fingerprint photos out and studies them momentarily, then drops them off at Records and Research. All service workers are fingerprinted and by tomorrow morning the only prints on the tape, as well as the others she brought to the station this morning, will be identified as belonging to her brother-in-law. She has been very careful and while Walter is certain to claim he was framed, she knows there is no written record of the Dead Things she has given him to play with, while he has left a blatantly traceable legacy to tie him to the deaths of nearly a dozen women. Susan McDunnah Atgeld was the last of those, and the sense of nearly orgasmic fulfillment Carmen felt will be refilled to a new level when Walter is charged with premeditated murder, the Enforcement for which will be particularly fine and grisly. The law mandates a punishment equal to the crime, thus her brother-in-law will meet his final end locked weaponless in a cell with eleven Dead Things, and Officer Valensuela hopes they will all be dead women. At least he will leave a sizeable pension for Carmen’s sister.
And Carmen will find other ways in which to feed the Dead Inside.
SIR CHARLES LLOYD BIRKIN, 5th Baronet (1907–1986), was the son of Colonel Charles Wilfred Birkin and Claire Howe of a historic old family. He was educated at Eton College and served in the Sherwood Foresters during World War II.
Although a short-story writer of great repute in the world of horror fiction, both under his own name and the pseudonym Charles Lloyd, he is mostly remembered today as the editor of the legendary Creeps series published in London by Philip Allan, beginning in 1932. Most of the books in the series were anthologies, but there were also a few novels and single-author collections as well, including Birkin’s own Devil’s Spawn (1936) as Charles Lloyd. Although this very successful series of books has largely been dismissed as second-rate, collectors and aficionados of old-fashioned tales of terror avidly seek them. The first book was titled simply Creeps, giving the series its unofficial name. After his deep immersion in the horror genre for less than a decade, other commitments forced him to retire from it in 1936, but he returned to it in 1964 with the short-story collections Kiss of Death (1964) and Smell of Evil (1964). His stories are so dark, and his own worldview so bleak, that a critic once said that “five minutes with him and the most devoutly practicing Pollyanna would have cheerfully slit her own throat.”
“Ballet Nègre” was first published in The Smell of Evil (London: Library 33, 1964); it was reprinted in 1965 by Tandem Books, which is usually cited as the first edition.
THEIR SEATS WERE in the eighth row of the stalls, well placed in the exact center. Simon Cust and David Roberts had arrived early, earlier than they had intended, for the traffic had been less heavy than they had anticipated, and they had misjudged the timing.
The theatre was filling up, but although it lacked only five minutes to the rise of the curtain, the audience continued to obstruct the foyer rather than take their places. It was the premiere of the Emanuel Louis’ “Ballet Nègre du Port-au-Prince” and the majority of the seats had been allotted to those on the First Night list of the management. These favoured personages included politicians, duchesses of a slightly raffish nature, kings of the property market, shipping moguls, and gentlemen who had amassed vast fortunes by sagacious take-over bids. There were also members of the theatrical profession, both on their way up, and also down, together with a sprinkling of model-girls and of those “confirmed bachelors,” who take such an immense pleasure in the display of black and muscular torsos.
The first warning bell rang in the foyer, and there was a movement in the direction of the aisles. The Duchess of Dumfries and her tiny simian escort took their places in front of the two men, Her Grace demanding in plaintive tones to be told in what precise section of Africa Haiti was to be found.
Simon Cust looked up from his programme. “What language do these people speak?” he asked David.
“In the country districts, a kind of French-Creole patois.”
“Intelligible to a Wykhamist?” the young man asked.
“Yes, if you try and take it slowly,” said David. Simon gave a sigh of relief. He was covering the evening for a colleague who was away on holiday.
“It should be good,” David Roberts said comfortingly. “They’re natural dancers and absolutely uninhibited. Or they used to be when I was there before the war. Of course it’s more than possible that their travels have degutted them,” he said, surveying the sophisticated audience.
The token orchestra, which was white, and composed largely of earnest ladies, was playing a spirited selection from recent American musicals which sounded oddly at variance with the evening which lay ahead. The bell gave a second and more imperious summons and the audience began a belated jostling in the gangways to claim their places. In order that they might be able to do so, the music continued for a further period before the house lights dimmed.
A tall young man stalked to a seat near to the front, stepping as delicately as a flamingo, and David nodded in his direction. “James Lloyd,” he said, “the impresario.”
The curtain rose on a riot of color. The backcloth was of a nebulous plantation, sugar-cane or banana. The front of the stage was a clearing in the jungle. At either side a group of musicians squatted in loin cloths crouched over their drums and primitive instruments. After a studied pause to erase the former tinklings, the drums began to throb.
The first number was spectacular but unexciting, a dance concerning the cultivation of the crops, stylized and formal, and accompanied by muted chanting. Next came a homage to “Papa Legba,” one of the more benevolent of the voodoo hierarchy. This was succeeded by a tribute to “Agoue,” the God of the Sea, with a magnificently-built Negro playing the part of the deity, a scene during which the company warmed up, and which ended to considerable applause.
The final item of the first half of the bill was devoted to the propitiation of “Ogoun Badagris,” the most feared and powerful of all the Powers of Darkness in the sinister cult of Voodoo. The scene had been changed to the interior of a “houmfort” or temple. Against one wall stood a low wooden altar bearing feathered ouanga bags, a pyramid of papiermache skulls, and a carved symbol of a hooded serpent in front of which burned coconut-shell lamps with floating flames. On the floor before the altar were calabashes brimming with fruit and vegetables, adding a deceptively peaceful note.
Simon had been able to study the programme with its explanatory notes, and so recognized the characters as they appeared, such as “Papa Nebo,” hermaphroditic and the Oracle of the Dead, dressed as part man, part woman, top-hatted and skirted and carrying a human skull. This figure was accompanied by “Papaloi,” crimson-turbaned and sporting a richly embroidered stole, and by “Mamaloi,” glorious in her scarlet robes, and surrounded by their male and female attendants and by dancers disguised in animal masks as the sacrificial victims, sheep, kids, goats and a black bull, that had surely but recently taken the place of human beings.
The stage was crowded with a motley of old and young, weak and strong, and the tom-tom drums increased the pace of their rhythm and their volume, building up into a crescendo. “Damballa oueddo au couleuvra moins.” It came as a mighty cry.
Simon glanced s
ideways at David. “Damballa Oueddo, who is our great Serpent-God.” He whispered the translation.
And now came the offerings of the sacrifices and the complicated ritual of voodoo worship, in which terrified animals had been substituted for the boys and girls of yesterday. The propitiation over, there came the celebration dances to the deafening clamour of the drums and gourd rattles, the tempo ever increasing, ever mounting, until the scene was awhirl with lithe black bodies, some practically nude, others with flying white robes and multi-coloured turbans centred round “Papa Nebo,” curiously intimidating, the smoked spectacles which were worn emphasizing the significance of the blind and impartial nature of death.
The dancers were becoming completely carried away, shrieking and sweating, degenerating into a beautifully controlled but seemingly delirious mob, maddened into a frenzied climax of blood and religion and sex.
The curtain fell to a thunder of appreciation, and the house lights went up. As they struggled towards the bar, David Roberts said: “I have to admit that they still appear to be totally uninhibited!”
The second and final half of the programme consisted of a narrative ballet based on a legend lost in folk lore. The story was that of an overseer who, with the help of his younger brother, hired out workers to till the fields. In order to augment his labour force he took to robbing the graves of the newly dead to supplement the quota of the living men with zombies, their identity being no secret to their fellow workers, who were themselves little better off than slaves and so too afraid to inform.
