Zombies

by Otto Penzler

  “As soon as I’ve time.” Bright would have promised more just then to rid himself of their locked smiles and their stale sweetish odor. He held open the door to the vestibule and shrank back as one floundered in the doorway while the other fumbled at the outer door. He held his breath as the second set of footsteps plodded through the vestibule, and let out a gasp of relief as the outer door slammed.

  Perhaps deodorants were contrary to their faith. He opened the window and leaned into the night to breathe. More of the building opposite was unlit, as if a flood of darkness were rising through the floors, and he would have expected to see more houses lit by now. He could hear more than one muffled hymn, or perhaps the same one at different stages of its development. He was wondering where he’d seen the face of the priest on the videocassette.

  When the smoke of a bonfire began to scrape his throat, he closed the window. He set up the ironing board and switched on the electric iron. It took him half an hour to press his clothes, and he still couldn’t remember what he’d read about the priest. Perhaps he could remind himself. He carried the radio to his chair by the window.

  As he lifted the cassette out of its plastic box, he winced. A sharp corner of the cassette had pricked him. He sucked his thumb and gnawed it to dislodge the sliver of plastic that had penetrated his skin. He dropped the cassette into the player and snapped the aperture shut, then he switched on, trying to ignore the ache in his thumb. He heard a hiss, the click of a microphone, a voice. “I am Father Lazarus. I’m going to tell you the whole truth,” it said.

  It was light as a disc jockey’s voice, and virtually sexless. Bright knew the name; perhaps he would be able to place it now that the ache was fading. “If you knew the truth,” the voice said, “wouldn’t you want to help your fellow man by telling him?”

  “Depends,” Bright growled, blaming the voice for the injury to his thumb.

  “And if you’ve just said no, don’t you see that proves you don’t know the truth?”

  “Ho ho, very clever,” Bright scoffed. The absence of the pain was unexpectedly comforting: it felt like a calm in which he need do nothing except let the voice reach him. “Get on with it,” he muttered.

  “Christ was the truth. He was the word that couldn’t deny itself although they made him suffer all the torments of the damned. Why would they have treated him like that if they hadn’t been afraid of the truth? He was the truth made flesh, born without the preamble of lust and never indulging in it himself, and we have only to become vessels of the truth to welcome him back before it’s too late.”

  Not too late to recall where he’d seen the priest’s face, Bright thought, if he didn’t nod off first, he felt so numbed. “Look around you,” the voice was saying, “and see how late it is. Look and see the world ending in corruption and lust and man’s indifference.”

  The suggestion seemed knowing. If you looked out at the suburb, you would see the littered walkways where nobody walked at night except addicts and muggers and drunks. There was better elsewhere, Bright told himself, and managed to turn his head on its stiff neck toward the portrait photograph. “Can you want the world to end this way?” the priest demanded. “Isn’t it true that you wish you could change it but feel helpless? Believe me, you can. Christ says you can. He had to suffer agonies for the truth, but we offer you the end of pain and the beginning of eternal life. The resurrection of the body has begun.”

  Not this body, Bright thought feebly. His injured hand alone felt as heavy as himself. Even when he realized that he’d left the iron switched on, it seemed insufficient reason for him to move. “Neither men nor women shall we be in the world to come,” the voice was intoning. “The flesh shall be freed of the lusts that have blinded us to the truth.”

  He blamed sex for everything, Bright mused, and instantly he remembered. EVANGELIST IS VOODOO WIDOWER, the headline inside a tabloid had said, months ago. The priest had gone to Haiti to save his wife’s people, only for her to return to her old faith and refuse to go home with him. Hadn’t he been quoted in the paper as vowing to use his enemies’ methods to defeat them? Certainly he’d announced that he was renaming himself Lazarus. His voice seemed to be growing louder, so loud that the speaker ought to be vibrating. “The Word of God will fill your emptiness. You will go forth to save your fellow man and be rewarded on the day of judgment. Man was made to praise God, and so he did until woman tempted him in the garden. When the sound of our praise is so great that it reaches heaven, our savior shall return.”

  Bright did feel emptied, hardly there at all. If giving in to the voice gave him back his strength, wouldn’t that prove it was telling the truth? But he felt as if it wanted to take the place of his entire life. He gazed at the photograph, remembering the good-byes at the bus station, the last kiss and the pressure of her hands on his, the glow of the bus turning the buds on a tree into green fairy lights as the vehicle vanished over the crest of a hill, and then he realized that the priest’s voice had stopped.

  He felt as if he’d outwitted the tape until a choir began the hymn he had been hearing all day. The emptiness within him was urging him to join in, but he wouldn’t while he had any strength. He managed to suck his bottom lip between his teeth and gnaw it, though he wasn’t sure if he could feel even a distant ache. Voodoo widower, he chanted to himself to break up the oppressive repetition of the hymn, voodoo widower. He was fending off the hymn, though it seemed impossibly loud in his head, when he heard another sound. The outer door was opening.

  He couldn’t move, he couldn’t even call out. The numbness that had spread from his thumb through his body had sculpted him to the chair. He heard the outer door slam as bodies blundered voicelessly about the vestibule. The door to the room inched open, then jerked wide, and the two overalled figures struggled into the room.

  He’d known who they were as soon as he’d heard the outer door. The hymn on the tape must have been a signal that he was finished—that he was like them. They’d tampered with the latch on their way out, he realized dully. He seemed incapable of feeling or reacting, even when the larger of the figures leaned down to gaze into his eyes, presumably to check that they were blank, and Bright saw how the gray, stretched lips were fraying at the corners. For a moment Bright thought the man’s eyes were going to pop out of their seedy sockets at him, yet he felt no inclination to flinch. Perhaps he was recognizing himself as he would be—yet didn’t that mean he wasn’t finished after all?

  The man stood back from scrutinizing him and turned up the volume of the hymn. Bright thought the words were meant to fill his head, but he could still choose what to think. He wasn’t that empty, he’d done his bit of good for the world, he’d stood aside to give someone else a chance. Whatever the priest had brought back from Haiti might have deadened Bright’s body, but it hadn’t quite deadened his mind. He fixed his gaze on the photograph and thought of the day he’d walked on a mountain with her. He was beginning to fight back toward his feelings when the other man came out of the kitchen, bearing the sharpest knife in the place.

  They weren’t supposed to make Bright suffer, the tape had said so. He could see no injuries on them. Suppose there were mutilations that weren’t visible? “Neither men nor women shall we be in the world to come.” At last Bright understood why his visitors seemed sexless. He tried to shrink back as the man who had turned up the hymn took hold of the electric iron.

  The man grasped it by the point before he found the handle. Bright saw the gray skin of his fingers curl up like charred paper, but the man didn’t react at all. He closed his free hand around the handle and waited while his companion plodded toward Bright, the edge of the knife blade glinting like a razor. “It helps if you sing,” said the man with the knife. Though Bright had never been particularly religious, nobody could have prayed harder than he started to pray then. He was praying that by the time the first of them reached him, he would feel as little as they did.

  R(ONALD HENRY GLYNN) CHETWYND-HAYES (1919–2001) was born in Is
leworth, West London. He left school at the age of fourteen, worked in a variety of menial jobs, including as an extra in crowd scenes in British war films, then served in the army in World War II.

  Known in the United Kingdom as “Britain’s Prince of Chill,” he began his writing career with a science fiction novel, The Man from the Bomb (1959), then sold a supernatural romance, The Dark Man (1964), which has had several film options. He sold his first horror story, “The Thing,” to Herbert van Thal for The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories (1966). Having noticed a great number of horror titles on the shelves of a bookseller, he wrote his own collection of horror stories and submitted it to two publishers simultaneously, embarrassing himself when they both accepted it. Becoming a highly prolific writer of short stories in the genre, he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by both the Horror Writers of America and the British Fantasy Society in 1989. His stories were adapted for the films From Beyond the Grave (1973) and The Monster Club (1980). His story “Housebound” was the basis for an episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery titled “Something in the Woodwork” (1973).

  “The Ghouls” was first published in the author’s short story collection, The Night Ghouls (London: Fontana, 1975).

  THE DOORBELL RANG. A nasty long shrill ring that suggested an impatient caller or a faulty bell-button. Mr. Goldsmith did not receive many visitors. He muttered angrily, removed the saucepan of baked beans from the gas ring, then trudged slowly from the tiny kitchen across the even smaller hall and opened the front door. The bell continued to ring.

  A tall, lean man faced him. One rigid finger seemed glued to the bell-button. The gaunt face had an unwholesome greenish tinge. The black, strangely dull eyes stared into Mr. Goldsmith’s own and the mouth opened.

  “Oosed o love hore . . .”

  The shrill clatter of the doorbell mingled with the hoarse gibberish and Mr. Goldsmith experienced a blend of fear and anger. He shouted at the unwelcome intruder.

  “Stop ringing the bell.”

  “Oosed o love hore . . .” the stranger repeated.

  “Stop ringing the bloody bell.” Mr. Goldsmith reached round the door frame and pulled the dirt-grimed hand away. It fell limply down to its owner’s side, where it swung slowly back and forth, four fingers clenched, the fifth—the index finger—rigid, as though still seeking a bell-button to push. In the silence that followed, Mr. Goldsmith cleared his throat.

  “Now, what is it you want?”

  “Oosed o love hore.” The stranger said again unintelligibly, then pushed by Mr. Goldsmith and entered the flat.

  “Look here . . .” The little man ran after the intruder and tried to get in front of him, but the tall, lean figure advanced remorselessly towards the living-room, where it flopped down in Mr. Goldsmith’s favourite armchair and sat looking blankly at a cheap Gauguin print that hung over the fireplace.

  “I don’t know what your little game is,” Mr. Goldsmith was trying hard not to appear afraid, “but if you’re not out of here in two minutes flat, I’ll have the law around. Do you hear me?”

  The stranger had forgotten to close his mouth. The lower jaw hung down like a lid with a broken hinge. His threadbare, black overcoat was held in place by a solitary, chipped button. A frayed, filthy red scarf was wound tightly round his scrawny neck. He presented a horrible, loathsome appearance. He also smelt.

  The head came round slowly and Mr. Goldsmith saw the eyes were now watery, almost as if they were about to spill over the puffy lids and go streaming down the green-tinted cheeks.

  “Oosed o love hore.”

  The voice was a gurgle that began somewhere deep down in the constricted throat and the words seemed to bubble like stew seething in a saucepan.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  The head twisted from side to side. The loose skin round the neck concertinaed and the hands beat a tattoo on the chair arms.

  “O-o-sed t-o-o l-o-v-e h-o-r-e.”

  “Used to live here!” A blast of understanding lit Mr. Goldsmith’s brain and he felt quite pleased with his interpretative powers. “Well, you don’t live here now, so you’ll oblige me by getting out.”

  The stranger stirred. The legs, clad in a pair of decrepit corduroy trousers, moved back. The hands pressed down on the chair arms, and the tall form rose. He shuffled towards Mr. Goldsmith and the stomach-heaving stench came with him. Mr. Goldsmith was too petrified to move and could only stare at the approaching horror with fear-glazed eyes.

  “Keep away,” he whispered. “Touch me and . . . I’ll shout . . .”

  The face was only a few inches from his own. The hands came up and gripped the lapels of his jacket and with surprising strength, he was gently rocked back and forth. He heard the gurgling rumble; it gradually emerged into speech.

  “Oi . . . um . . . dud . . . Oi . . . um . . . dud . . .”

  Mr. Goldsmith stared into the watery eyes and had there been a third person present he might have supposed they were exchanging some mutual confidence.

  “You’re . . . what?”

  The bubbling words came again.

  “Oi . . . um . . . dud.”

  “You’re bloody mad,” Mr. Goldsmith whispered.

  “Oi . . . um . . . dud.”

  Mr. Goldsmith yelped like a startled puppy and pulling himself free, ran for the front door. He leapt down the stairs, his legs operating by reflex, for there was no room for thought in his fear-misted brain.

  Shop fronts slid by; paving stones loomed up, their rectangular shapes painted yellow by lamplight; startled faces drifted into his blurred vision, then disappeared and all the while the bubbling, ill-formed words echoed along the dark corridors of his brain.

  “Oi . . . um . . . dud.”

  “Just a moment, sir.”

  A powerful hand gripped his arm and he swung round as the impetus of his flight was checked. A burly policeman stared down at him, suspicion peeping out of the small, blue eyes.

  “Now, what’s all this, sir. You’ll do yourself an injury, running like that.”

  Mr. Goldsmith fought to regain his breath, eager to impart the vital knowledge. To share the burden.

  “He’s . . . he’s dead.”

  The grip on his arm tightened.

  “Now, calm yourself. Start from the beginning. Who’s dead?”

  “He . . .” Mr. Goldsmith gasped . . . “he rang the bell, wouldn’t take his finger off the button . . . used to live there . . . then he sat in my chair . . . then got up . . . and told me . . . he was dead . . .”

  A heavy silence followed, broken only by the purr of a passing car. The driver cast an interested glance at the spectacle of a little man being held firmly by a large policeman. The arm of the law finally gave utterance.

  “He told you he was dead?”

  “Yes.” Mr. Goldsmith nodded, relieved to have shared his terrible information with an agent of authority. “He pronounced it dud.”

  “A northern corpse, no doubt,” the policeman remarked with heavy irony.

  “I don’t think so,” Mr. Goldsmith shook his head. “No, I think his vocal cords are decomposing. He sort of bubbles his words. They . . . well, ooze out.”

  “Ooze out,” the constable repeated drily.

  “Yes.” Mr. Goldsmith remembered another important point. “And he smells.”

  “Booze?” enquired the policeman.

  “No, a sort of sweet, sour smell. Rather like bad milk and dead roses.”

  The second silence lasted a little longer than the first, then the constable sighed deeply.

  “I guess we’d better go along to your place of residence and investigate.”

  “Must we?” Mr. Goldsmith shuddered and the officer nodded.

  “Yes, we must.”

  • • •

  THE FRONT DOOR was still open. The hall light dared Mr. Goldsmith to enter and fear lurked in dark corners.

  “Would you,” Mr. Goldsmith hesitated, for no coward likes to bare his face, “would you go
in first?”

  “Right.” The constable nodded, squared his shoulders, and entered the flat. Mr. Goldsmith found enough courage to advance as far as the doormat.

  “In the living-room,” he called out. “I left him in the living-room. The door on the left.”

  The police officer walked ponderously into the room indicated and after a few minutes came out again.

  “No one there,” he stated simply.

  “The bedroom.” Mr. Goldsmith pointed to another door. “He must have gone in there.”

  The policeman dutifully inspected the bedroom, the kitchen, then the bathroom before returning to the hall.

  “I think it’s quite safe for you to come in,” he remarked caustically. “There’s no one here—living or dead.”

  Mr. Goldsmith reoccupied his domain, much like an exiled king remounting his shaky throne.

  “Now,” the policeman produced a notebook and ball-point pen, “let’s have a description.”

  “Pardon?”

  “What did the fellow look like?” the officer asked with heavy patience.

  “Oh. Tall, thin—very thin, his eyes were sort of runny, looked as if they might melt at any time, his hair was black and matted and he was dressed in an overcoat with one button . . .”

  “Hold on,” the officer admonished. “You’re going too fast. Button . . .”

  “It was chipped,” Mr. Goldsmith added importantly. “And he wore an awful pair of corduroy trousers. And he looked dead. Now I come to think of it, I can’t remember him breathing. Yes, I’m certain, he didn’t breathe.”

  The constable put his notebook away, and took up a stance on the hearthrug.

  “Now, look, Mr . . .”

  “Goldsmith. Edward. J. Goldsmith.”

  “Well, Mr. Goldsmith . . .”

  “The J is for Jeremiah but I never use it.”

  “As I was about to say, Mr. Goldsmith,” the constable wore the expression of a man who was labouring under great strain, “I’ve seen a fair number of stiffs—I should say, dead bodies—in my time, and not one of them has ever talked. In fact, I’d say you can almost bank on it. They can burp, jerk, sit up, flop, bare their teeth, glare, even clutch when rigor mortis sets in, but never talk.”