Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

When he struggled and cried out I released him and he fell across the bed. Suddenly I was very tired and wanted to be far away from this house of death. I spoke quietly.

“Her dream world was so real she could not leave it, not even after death. So . . . so . . . she haunted her own corpse. Some personality fragment was able to delay decomposition, simulate the need for nourishment and dominate you, the necessary attendant. I don’t know how much longer this pretence could have gone on. Until you died possibly, for only you could maintain the great illusion. But before I go, satisfy my curiosity. How long has she been dead?”

Jenkins got up and wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket. “Thirty years, I think. Her decline was gradual, but I have not detected a heart beat for at least twenty years. But I never really admitted that, sir. I couldn’t.”

I left Bramfield Manor and made my way towards the main gates without so much as a backward glance. I did not pay a visit to the inquisitive post mistress, but caught the first train to town. I told Frazer the truth: Caroline Fortescue had been dead for years and there was no story worth writing.

A week later Bramfield Manor burnt to the ground. Whether this was the result of an accident, or Jenkins had decided to turn the house into one vast pyre, including himself as a funerary sacrifice, is a matter for interesting conjecture. Certainly two charred skeletons were laid side by side in Bramfield churchyard.

I sometimes wonder if Jenkins would have considered this arrangement disrespectful.

DAVID J. SCHOW’S COLLECTION of essays from Fangoria magazine, Wild Hairs , won the 2001 International Horror Guild Award for Best Non-fiction.

The author’s more recent books include a new collection of living dead stories entitled Zombie Jam , the short novel Rock Breaks Scissors Cut , and a new mainstream suspense novel, Bullets of Rain. His earlier collections Seeing Red and Crypt Orchids have been reissued in new editions, and he edited Elvisland , a landmark collection of John Farris’s short fiction for Babbage Press.

Schow lives in the Hollywood hills and continues to collect anything and everything to do with The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

As the author observes: “Zombie fiction has become a subgenre. People know zombies, now, the way everybody knew what a vampire was, twenty years ago. Zombie fiction, like it or not, for better or worse, has arrived . . . and this probably isn’t the last you’ll see of it.”

I OPENED MY EYES. It hurt. Someone was speaking.

“Welcome to Phase Two debriefing, Mr Maxwell.”

Here is my last memory:

Not drunk, and in compute possession of my senes, I perform the ritual. That’s what it feels like – a ritual. Thousands before me have executed similar moves under comparable circumstances, in an equivalent state of mind. First consideration: hardware. I had chosen a classic, the military-issue Colt. 45 semi-auto, a golden oldie with a venerated history. For those of you who don’t know much about firearms, this pistol, originally made for the US Army, is designated the Ml 911Al. The standard clip is seven-plus-one, though larger magazines are obtainable. “Seven-plus-one” means seven cartridges in the clip with an extra round already chambered. If you wish to find out more about the damage index of various bullet types or need a lot of tech stuff, that information is abundantly available; I know enough to make the device work. Second consideration: The note. The inevitable note. The who, what, why and where of suicide. I had a single glass of white Bordeaux while composing it. Whoever discovered my reeking corpse, exsanguinated, cheesy clumps of hair and brain stuck to the walls and hardening on the carpet, would have to reconcile the ghastly display with my carefully-considered farewell memo. The stench of evacuated bowels and exposed organs, the nakedness of decay. Humidity and maggots. What farewell prose could out-vote that sad horror? I checked my gun a dozen times, finished my wine, and completed my note, blaming no one. Then I stuck the muzzle in my mouth and blew off most of the back of my head with a soft-nosed hollow point, for maximum reliability.

Then I woke up.

“Mr Maxwell? Ah. Glad to see you’re back with us. My name is – it’s okay, Mr Maxwell, you can open your eyes. It might sting a little bit. But it won’t harm you.”

I tried to track the voice and realized I was strapped into a sort of dentist’s chair, reclined, with a lot of leads trailing to beeping machines. But this was not a hospital. I could taste blood in the back of my throat.

“You’re probably a little bit thirsty, too,” said the voice. Sitting on a stool overseeing my position was a young woman in a smock. She had brilliant grey eyes, strawberry blonde hair, and an abundance of freckles. Her face was compressed and her haircut was not complimentary – she was more of a sidekick type, short and a bit stocky, cute instead of attractive. Eyeglasses on a chain. A bar-coded ID tag dangled from her pen pocket. “My name is Bonnie and I’m your caseworker. This is your preparation for what’s called a Phase Two debriefing; you might have heard of it, or read about it.”

She tipped a pleated paper cup of water to my lips. My wrists were restricted. The water tasted too cold and invasive. I felt weary.

“I know you feel like you want to go to sleep Mr Maxwell—” she consulted her clipboard. “Orson. But you can’t become unconscious as long as you’re hooked up, and we need to review a few details before we move on.”

“I don’t understand.” My voice felt arid and abraded. I felt around inside my mouth with my tongue. No hole. I fancied I could still taste the lubricant and steel of the gun barrel. The egress where it had spit a bullet into my head was patched with something smooth and artificial.

“That’s why we’re here,” said Bonnie. “Standard orientation for wake-ups. That’s what we call revised suicides – wake-ups.”

“Revised?”

“Yes. All wake-ups are selected on the basis of their stats and records. I’m not here to judge, just to prepare you for your reinsertion into the work force. You’ll have a meeting with an actual counselor later.”

“Excuse me, Miss . . . Bonnie, I haven’t heard about this, or read about it, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. I do know that I feel terrible; I feel worse than I’ve ever felt in my life, and I don’t want to answer any questions.”

She smiled and attempted to soften her manner by about a third of one degree. “Please try to understand. I know this is confusing and you probably are in some bona fide physical pain. But by killing yourself – committing suicide – you have forfeited any protest. You have to co-operate. It’ll seem difficult, for example, when you walk for the first time. But if you don’t want to walk, they’ll force you to walk, anyway. It helps to think of yourself as a newborn, not whatever person you used to be. You do not retain rights, as you understood them.”

“I forfeited them.”

“Correct. Now we try to minimize the discomfort of wake-up as much as we can, but ultimately, you’ll have to do what they’ll say until your obligations are discharged.”

“Wait, wait . . .” My skull felt like a crockpot of acid, broken glass and infection. “What about my head?”

“That’s sealed with a polymer cap. Your structural damage has all been repaired.”

“What obligations? Do I have to pay for all this?”