Zombies

by Otto Penzler

  “But I begin to share the suspense you must be feeling, my dear fellow. Let us, as the vernacular saying has it, get down to brass tacks!” Smiling in hideous enjoyment of his own miserable joke, Beswick indicated the blade suspended over Stuart’s heart. “I have no literal brass tacks to stick in your flesh, to be sure; but perhaps this little device of mine will substitute.

  “No, no—don’t cringe and turn pale, just yet, Stuart. You must save a little emotion; because you don’t quite yet know the full extent of my subtlety. I had intended to do the obvious thing, I will admit; to kill you simply and directly with my own hands. But then I had the inspiration which led me to construct all this elaborate equipment.

  “I shall not kill you myself; instead, Wanda shall do the deed. It will not be difficult to persuade her to pull the cord, and release the suspended knife. Her mentality is hardly suggestible, I will admit; but she happens to find bright objects irresistibly attractive. This is a common tendency for idiots and small children, as you doubtless know. My watch, for example . . .” He removed his large, sparkling silver watch from his pocket, and dangled it on its chain before Wanda’s gaze. Instantly, her features were animated with a kind of childish desire; she reached out eagerly to take the shining object in her fingers.

  BUT DR. BESWICK lifted it high, keeping it just beyond her reach, and yet still in plain view, so that she continued to regard it with simple-minded interest. “You see, Stuart,” he continued, “how easy it will be to make Wanda play the role of your executioner. I have only to tie my watch-chain to the trigger-cord of my little apparatus; and she will grab the watch in a twinkling. The sword will drop, and you will be skewered like an insect in a collector’s frame. . . . Now, frankly, my friend, looking at the situation quite impersonally, doesn’t my scheme have a charming irony? You injure me by attempting to steal my wife; and I get my revenge by watching her slaughter you with her own lovely hands. . . . I flatter myself for the idea; I really do.”

  Very gently, Dr. Beswick restrained Wanda, while he fastened his watch to the dangling trip-cord. “Be patient, my dear,” he murmured. “You may play with the pretty watch in a moment; you may play with it to your heart’s content . . . !”

  While Beswick was occupied, Tom Stuart at last began to regain the use of his vocal cords. Speaking in a voice that came with difficulty, yet still managed to convey sheer desperation, he addressed himself neither to Wanda nor Beswick—but rather to the Negro servant, who still remained in the room.

  “Kandru,” he whispered. “Kandru—you must prevent this, do you understand? He’s mad—your master is mad, crazy, out of his mind. Get help; call the police; do something, for God’s sake. You—can’t let this—happen. . . .”

  Kandru might have been a sinister wooden sculpture, for all the response he showed to this plea; it was obvious that no hope lay in that direction. While his master continued to live, he would have ears for the voice of none other. Unless commanded by Beswick, he would take no part in the grisly drama, but neither would he dream of hindering or questioning his will.

  Beswick himself, however, chose to notice Stuart’s desperate supplication. “You consider me insane—a madman, a lunatic? Quite the contrary, my dear fellow; I assure you that I’m fully responsible for my actions. If I believed in your theories about the survival of the soul, it might even deter me from my course—because I’m quite convinced that I should be condemned to everlasting punishment. Certainly I should deserve it. But I fear I must remain a confirmed materialist, until I’m presented with some tangible proof of the reality of supernatural values; and so I mean to proceed without further interruption. . . .

  “Now, Wanda, you can reach for the pretty watch, if you like. See—it’s swinging back and forth on the long string. Isn’t it lovely and shiny? Do you think you can grab it with your fingers, Wanda?”

  As she saw the watch dangling on the trigger-cord, Wanda’s expression of interest brightened. Tentatively, she stretched forth her lovely arm to seize it. With diabolical cunning, Beswick had tied it at such a height that she could barely touch it, while standing on tip-toe. She tried, but she could not quite grasp it.

  SHE WOULD HAVE continued her efforts; but Stuart, in his extremity, managed to regain full use of his vocal organs. He suddenly shrieked at her, “Wanda! No, for God’s sake! Don’t let him make you do this, Wanda! It’s Tom, Wanda, Tom Stuart; Tom, who loves you!”

  Stuart’s voice was fraught with desperation, not so much from physical fear as from the pure horror of watching the woman he loved about to commit this senseless and grisly butchery—but when Wanda recoiled from the watch at his words, it was only the sheer harsh volume of the outcry that caused her reaction. Plainly, she was utterly insensible to the pleading of the man she had once adored; she was nothing more than a small child shrinking away from a loud noise which it does not understand.

  A shade of annoyance crossed Beswick’s pallid countenance. “You’ve frightened her,” he snapped. “Well, there’s a way to prevent that. . . .” And he busied himself for a moment to find a strip of cloth in a nearby cabinet. With this, he approached Stuart, intending to gag him, and prevent any further outcry.

  However, as he bent over his victim, Stuart’s blue eyes caught his own with a glance that made him pause in spite of himself. And when the huge man began to speak once more, Beswick could not avoid attending to his words. They were uttered in a low, even tone, free now from any trace of the wild hysteria which a moment past had frightened Wanda. It seemed that Stuart, by a huge and abrupt effort of the will, had in the space of a few seconds conquered all fear, and had resigned himself to his fate.

  “Beswick,” he said, “you’ve won this round of the game. There’s nothing on earth I can do to prevent you from committing this murder. You can torment and mutilate my body; but the real me won’t be changed—any more than you could change or injure the real self of Wanda, with your abominable drugs and radiations. You drove her soul out of the shell of her body, as you will presently drive out mine; that her flesh continues to live, as a mere automaton, whereas mine will be killed outright, makes no difference at all. Presently our two souls will be joined in the consummation they were never able to find in this world. I shall find Wanda, and we shall be as one for all eternity, in the world of spirits. I shall have only one duty, Beswick—one duty which I must fulfill, when I am released from my body, before I can fly to my soul’s desire. . . .

  “According to the laws of Karma, which regulate the course of every atom and every spirit in the universe, I must punish you for your misdeeds. I must follow you down the endless corridors of eternity, until at last you are trapped and helpless. I who am your victim now, must in the end play the role of executioner. There is no escape for you, Beswick; no hope—in all the shadows of eternal night, no hope. No hope . . .”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE FULFILLMENT OF KARMA

  Now, for the first time, the ghoulish ecstasy of hate in the heart of the scientist was shot through with a tremor of fear. Somehow, these calm words of the man he was about to murder carried such a note of conviction, of utter and fatal certainty, that even Beswick’s ingrained materialism was shaken. He could not repress an outward reaction to this qualm that disturbed his inward orgy of malice; and this reaction, strangely enough, was a flare of sudden and violent rage.

  An ugly snarl contorting his full lips, Dr. Beswick gagged his helpless victim cruelly, so he could not utter a further sound. And not content with this violence, he struck the face of the huge man savagely with his hand.

  “Liar,” he hissed. “Liar, and fool! Suppose you did live on as a ghost or a spirit—why should I be afraid of a mere puff of wind, conscious or not? You wouldn’t have any body; what could you do to injure me?

  “But even that is impossible. There’s nothing on the other side of death. Nothing, do you hear? Blackness, oblivion, nothingness! You’re going out like a light; your body will rot in a tank of acid; and that will be your finish,
for ever and ever! Do you hear that, Stuart! For ever and ever . . .”

  Beswick was so absorbed in his own words, as he hurled these taunts at Stuart, that he failed to notice the actions of Wanda. She had forgotten her fright of a few moments past, and was renewing her interest in the bright dangling watch. Standing on tip-toe, she made a supreme effort to reach the shiny object which so fascinated her crude remnants of intelligence. At last she was able to clasp it between the very tips of her slender fingers; and with a little sigh of satisfaction, she pulled it down towards her.

  There was a click of the trigger mechanism, and the heavy sword hurtled downward. Beswick was leaning close to Stuart as he spoke, and the evil weapon barely missed his head as it buried itself in the huge man’s chest. As it was, a leaping fountain of warm blood spattered the face and clothes of the scientist, before he could draw away. . . .

  After he had recovered from his shock of surprise, Beswick’s main feeling was one of angry disappointment, which only increased the black rage already aroused in him by Stuart’s threatening words. In a sense, he had fulfilled his long-cherished plan of revenge; things had gone exactly as he had intended; Wanda, with her own hand, had killed her former lover. And yet Beswick was not satisfied. There had been no time to gloat over the agony of the man he hated—indeed, Stuart’s expression in death, as he lay there transfixed and bleeding, showed no agony at all, but rather a profound and entire peace. Somehow, the gaunt, gray-haired scientist had pictured the consummation of his plot in different colors; he felt cheated.

  However, seeing that Tom Stuart was at last beyond his power, he wasted no time in carrying his scheme through to the end. With Kandru’s help, he prepared a great vat of corrosive chemicals; and then he began to dismember the inert and mutilated body on the operating table. One grisly chunk of flesh after another he dropped into the fuming, seething hell-broth.

  Finally, after he had removed every trace of blood on the laboratory floor and furniture, he turned to his Negro servant. “All right, Kandru. You can go to your quarters now. I shan’t need you any more tonight. We’ll empty the tank of acid in the morning. . . .”

  WHEN KANDRU HAD passed silently to his quarters in an adjoining room, Beswick took Wanda by the hand, and led her out of the ghastly laboratory by another door.

  “The fool,” Beswick muttered. “Did he think I would ever let him take you from me, Wanda? You’re mine, my white lovely Wanda; you belong to me alone, and nothing will ever make me let you go. . . .”

  He led her into the adjoining bedroom, and made her lie down on the brocade covers of the wide bed. She followed quite docile and willing; plainly she was tired and sleepy, after all the excitement of the evening, and was only too glad to be put to bed. Beswick watched her long lashes close over her liquid dark eyes; her breathing grew deep and slow; soon she was lost in sweet and innocent slumber.

  He told himself that, everything considered, it had been a most satisfactory evening—at least it seemed so now, in retrospect. Quickly he had commenced to scrub away some bloodstains that remained under his finger-nails—when he caught a sound that made him pause and wheel abruptly away from the wash-stand. The dry little tune choked to silence in his throat. He could have sworn that he was not mistaken: a voice, a man’s voice, had spoken his name. It had sounded from behind him, from the bedroom—not loud, but clear and distinct.

  With a single stride, Beswick was at the door, peering into the softly lighted chamber. It was quite empty; there was no one present except Wanda, who still lay quietly on the bed. There was no possible place of concealment for anyone else; he had been mistaken then, after all. . . .

  Almost angrily, as he returned to the washbasin, Beswick told himself not to be a fool. There was nothing to get jumpy and nervous about; it was absurd to imagine things like that voice, sounding from nowhere. At this rate, he would soon be as bad as that fool Stuart, with his talk of Oriental mysteries, of ghosts and spirits floating around without any bodies. . . . Nevertheless, Dr. Beswick did not resume his humming, as he went on with the task of cleaning his hands.

  He had removed the last trace of blood, and was wiping his fingers on a towel, when he heard his name spoken once again.

  “Beswick!” It sounded, distinctly and evenly, in deep-throated masculine accents; and this time, he knew there could be no possible error. It was very close, too; as if the speaker stood framed in the door between the bathroom and the bedroom.

  On the previous occasion, Beswick had whirled in sudden alarm; but now he felt a chill of fear that almost paralyzed him. Slowly, slowly, he forced himself to turn in the direction of the voice, hardly daring to guess what he would find confronting him in the doorway.

  WHEN HE SAW that it was only Wanda, his relief was almost overwhelming in its intensity. It was so great, indeed, that he forgot for an instant to wonder how his wife had been able to leave the bed and approach him so silently behind his back; and also he forgot the fact that his name had been spoken in a man’s voice, rather than a woman’s.

  But Beswick’s respite from terror was only momentary. As Wanda stood there before him, superbly beautiful in her long white silken robe, he realized that in some subtle and indefinable way, she had changed. She kept her right hand behind her back, as though it held something she wished to conceal. And in her eyes, the vacant look had given place to an expression of insight, of sheer intelligence, that was almost more than human.

  Beswick checked himself from almost automatically ordering his wife back to bed, as if she were a disobedient child; the strong sense that she had undergone some weird psychic metamorphosis, kindled again the embers of his fear until the flames of panic leaped dangerously. He could not have told why; but he felt a strange impulse to flee, to escape at all costs from the level gaze of those dark eyes; and almost without conscious volition, he began to sidle toward the other door of the bathroom—the one that led to the gleaming scientific laboratory.

  But then, Wanda’s lips parted; and the sound of spoken words came from her throat. “It’s no use, Beswick. You can’t escape. It won’t do you any good to run away. . . .”

  As he heard these syllables, Beswick’s heart seemed transformed to cold stone in his body; the paralysis of his terror became complete, and he was rooted to the spot where he stood. It was not so much the meaning he got from the grim phrases that terrified him, as the actual tones that pronounced them.

  There was no doubt whatever that the voice he heard, issued from Wanda’s soft, feminine lips; and yet it was most certainly not a woman’s voice. It was the unmistakable utterance of a man, a powerful man, virile, deep-chested and forceful. . . .

  The increasing realization that froze Dr. Beswick’s soul prevented him, for the time being, from moving a limb; but he did manage to speak a few syllables in a dry, croaking and almost toneless voice.

  “Stuart . . . You told—the truth. You have come back—from the dead. . . .”

  “Correct, at the very first guess, Beswick.” The effect of that stern baritone coming from Wanda’s body might conceivably have been ridiculous under other circumstances. As things were, the very grotesqueness of the phenomenon, its shocking and profoundly unnatural quality, added the final touch of horror to a situation already fraught with soul-shaking implications.

  TOM STUART’S VOICE continued:

  “Already you are reaping the harvest sown by your abominable deeds. . . . Do you remember your taunt, that you made only a short time ago, Beswick? While you spoke, I was already separating my consciousness from the body you were about to destroy—an ability I acquired in the remote mountains of Tibet. But I heard you distinctly, nevertheless. These were your words: ‘Suppose you did live on, as a ghost or a spirit—why should I be afraid of a mere puff of wind, conscious or not? You wouldn’t have any body; what could you do to injure me . . . ?’

  “You were quite correct, Beswick, in a certain limited sense; my disembodied spirit could not affect you in any way, so long as you remained in the
flesh. But you failed to realize one thing, in your conceited scientific ignorance. There, at hand, ready and waiting, was a sound physical body; the flesh and blood which once belonged to Wanda; the earthly vehicle through which I am speaking and acting at the present moment. You are a connoisseur of ironies, Beswick, so permit me to point out this one for your delectation.

  “It was your own abominable treatment with drugs and electric rays that drove Wanda’s soul out of her body, leaving it a mere empty shell without a guiding intelligence. I had only to wait until the right moment to take possession of its untenanted brain and nervous system. For the time being it is my body, the body of Tom Stuart, to be used in obedience to my will. And now, James Beswick, it becomes my duty, in fulfillment of the inscrutable laws of Karma, to punish you for your ghastly and deliberate crimes. . . .”

  Slowly, as Tom Stuart’s voice spoke those grim words, Wanda Beswick’s slender arm came into view, the hand grasping an object that until now had remained in concealment behind her back. It was a heavy silver candlestick, one of a pair that graced the dressing table in the bedroom: a formidable bludgeon, with its long shank and leaded base.

  “It becomes my duty,” the voice of Stuart intoned, “to shatter and destroy the house of flesh in which lurks your miserable soul. Your unclean spirit shall be driven forth from its earthly refuge, to be seized as it deserves by the owl-eyed demons of the Nether World. . . .”

  The sight of the heavy candlestick, raised slowly and menacingly before his eyes, had the effect of breaking at least partially the paralysis of terror which had gripped Beswick. Whining in a perfectly inarticulate excess of fear, slobbering and wheezing, he began to inch backward, through the open door that gave entrance to the laboratory.