Stealing Life, a short story

a modern day not quite zombie story based on Voudon.  Not for the squeamish; you have been warned.  It wanted to be written.

Stealing Life

It was only the dreams of skulls that spoiled things. 

René Lefevre was a local celebrity in the south of France.

“You have to work at wealth,” he told a local reporter, eying up her trim figure with approval.  “I am the most successful importer-exporter in the region, and it’s all down to my own hard work.”

“Not the work of the workers who complain that you underpay and overwork them?” asked the reporter.

René regarded her with disfavour; she was not as pretty as he thought.

“There are always malcontents in any organisation,” he said, loftily.

“Is it true that you have paid off the Union Corse to make sure you stay in business, and they beat up anyone who complains? And use the same tactics to make small businesses sell out to you?”

“Where you hear such things I cannot imagine,” René’s tone was contemptuous.  “I don’t ask anyone to work harder than I do.  You are jealous of my success.”

He believed his own words.  It made it easier to sleep at night.

He also had a word with the Union Corse to make sure that the reporter’s paper did not misrepresent him.

The article was much less hard-hitting than its originator had hoped, but it had an unexpected side effect.

René received a letter.

“My dear Cousin René,

You cannot imagine how delighted I am to discover that I have a living relative!  I saw an article about you in ‘L’Heralde du Sud’.  My name is Henri LeFevre, and I live in Haiti, where I have a factory, canning fruit.  Perhaps we might some day meet each other?

Henri.”

René made enquiries, and travelled to Haiti as soon as he might conveniently manage, once a little matter of degats contre la personne corporeale, offences against the body of a person, had been made to go away by a present to the local Gendarmerie.

He was met at the airport by a voluble and admiring Henri, who hugged the startled René.

“René, I cannot believe how successful you look!  Why, is that suit actually silk? I declare, you will dazzle all the girls, man!” Henri laughed.

René twitched his immaculate Chinese knock-off Armani suit back into shape with distaste.  He claimed not to be racist but he did support the more right-wing political parties in France, and many generations had passed since his ultimate ancestor in France had been a page boy to Rose Bearnhais, better known as Napoleon’s Empress Josephine.  The generations had left René’s own skin tone no darker than many tanned residents of his native Marseilles. Henri was very black, and though he was a good-looking man, René had the distaste of a man who had buried his roots for any reminder of his genetic heritage.  René frankly despised blacks and made sure to hide his own origins.

“It pays to wear the best,” said René, who thought Armani suits were priced largely for the name. His diamond-studded Swiss watch was genuine, and that he did feel worth it, if only for the investment and portable wealth.

It had not been so very long ago, after all, when having portable wealth was a wise precaution, before he could afford to pay off the Union Corse and the local police.

He must make the most of Henri, however, and hoped that the man at least knew how to make cocktails.  It was damnably hot here, and even one inured to the heat of summer in the South of France noticed it.  The beaches looked inviting though.

Henri had not got his own car, René noted with disapproval, as he ushered his guest into a dilapidated taxi.  This drove past fields of half-naked and ragged labourers, who hardly looked a step removed from the slavery of the past.  René shuddered, feeling as though he had been caught in a time loop from the page boy’s past.  What a foolish fancy!

Henri chattered non-stop, on the way to his home and as the taxi rounded the corner in a cloud of dust, René stared, aghast.

The place was, in his opinion, a shack.

“I thought you were doing well in the canning business?” he asked, sharply.

“Oh I am, very well,” said Henri.  “I can afford to employ many indigent families who might otherwise starve.”

“Ah, and who have to accept the terms and conditions you lay down?” René smiled; Henri was a man after his own heart after all. 

Henri looked outraged.

“I am no such exploiter!” he declared. “I pay them a fair wage for as much as they can do.”

“Henri, are you saying that you employ freeloaders?  That is not good business practice,” René chided.

Henri shrugged.

“Maybe not,” he said, “but I have enough for my own needs, and for a wife and family, when I marry, and the satisfaction of knowing that others may eat because of me, and what man needs more?”  He grinned happily.

René was appalled.

He had come out to Haiti with some idea of offering his cousin a partnership, with the injection of some capital to expand, and somehow forcing Henri out of the partnership at some point in the future.

His plans were going to have to change.

Henri would have to die before he married and bred an heir.

As clear heir, the only living relative, René could then modernise the canning factory, get rid of the dead wood, and make it profitable. 

The dream evaporated as Henri, still chatting on, said,

“I have drawn up my will to make the factory a co-operative with all my workers, they are to own half the shares and the other half for my own family.”

“You’re insane,” said René.

Henri looked perturbed.

“You think I am greedy to will half of it to any family I might have?” he asked.  “Natissia, my intended bride, is a lovely girl but not very practical at business.  And we shall have children.”

René bit his tongue.

Plainly there was more work needed here than he had anticipated.

It did not take René long to discover that everyone on Haiti, even those who attended Mass, believed in Voudon, what he called Voodoo.  René had parted from religions when the verger had caught him, as an angelic-looking choir boy, helping himself to the collection. Thrown out on his ear, René had visited the church one last time, but not during Divine Service.  He had returned one night to help himself to as much silverware as he could carry, which he melted down in a makeshift smelter to avoid any of it being recognised. The value of medieval treasures might have been higher than the scrap silver value, but so was the concomitant risk, and René had few contacts in those days. He had never been officially accused of the crime, but he had been excommunicated; the priest knew who to blame.  Not that René cared for that, to him it was immaterial.

He sneered at Voudon as he had at the religion to which he was reared.

Until, that is, he saw a man who had been buried a few days before, working in the factory.

He spoke to Henri.

“That man, Guillaume Dubois; I thought he died?”

Henri nodded, smiling.

“Oh yes! But his wife, Jacquette, is pregnant, and could not afford to live without her husband’s wage.  She considered it an investment to pay the Mambo, what I think you would call a witch, to bring back Guillaume as a zombie, and I assure you, Guillaume would have urged her to do so, for he doted on Jacquette.  His death was so sudden!  No-one knew he had a heart condition.”

“Can you only turn willing, er, corpses into zombies then?” asked René, casually.

Henri laughed again.

“Oh, the consent of the corpse is not necessary, but Jacquette would not wish to discommode Guillaume, and I would not wish you to think me so unscrupulous as to employ zombies, as it is rumoured some do, and without pay, too, if you can believe such iniquity!”

“Terrible,” said René, thinking how many overheads might be cut in the use of such.  “How do, er, Mambos learn their trade?”

“From another Mambo or a Houngan, the male counterpart,” said Henri.  “Some say that anyone can do it, others that it runs in families.  I try, so far as is humanly possible, to steer clear of Voudon.”

“Probably wise,” said René, who was busy making plans.  Guillaume looked no different to a living man, save that he was a little jerky of movement, and his eyes stared at nothing.

It could be done.

There was nothing jerky about the movements of Henri’s fiancée, Natissia, when Henri threw a dinner party in René’s honour, and invited his intended bride and her family to meet his cousin.

Natissia was a slender reed of a girl but she had enough curves for René to appreciate them.  Her face was a perfect oval, with a sweet and placid expression on it, the sort of contentment that might be found on the best icons, if only René had recognised it.  René associated such an expression with absolute brainlessness, a trait he admired in women.  Especially when they had lips that were full and kissable without being too pouty.  Her almond-shaped eyes were exotic enough to arouse him. Her skin was flawless and her face as beautiful as the famed Josephine Bearhnais was said to be, and René thought her too beautiful for Henri.  But then, she, too, figured in his plans.

“Sweetie, you are something else,” René admired her.  “My cousin is a lucky man to have won you as his bride, he surely is!”

Natissia smiled.

“You are too kind,” she murmured.  “Henri is so happy to have relatives, and what makes Henri happy, makes me happy too.”

“You must be mighty proud of Henri,” he said to Natissia’s father, Mattheu.

“He is a good boy, and has done well for himself, and for the community,” said Mattheu.  “We are proud for Natissia to marry him.  And we are so happy to meet you!  Henri has always wondered if he had family in France, there being a family tradition that this was so.”

“I should like to visit France; perhaps we might make a reciprocal visit one day,” said Natissia.

“Sure thing, baby,” said René, who felt that women liked to be talked to in an American idiom. He had no intention of presenting his Haitian relatives in France, but there was no need to mention this!

It took months for René to find a witch who was prepared to take him as an apprentice.  He finally found one venal enough to take his hard currency and not make too much insistence on his learning of all the basics before progressing to the making of zombies.

“You will need a Loa as a patron,” she warned.

“Loa? They are just useless figureheads like the saints the priest said we needed to intervene with his useless God,” sneered René.

The Mambo, Mother Amatiste, shrugged.

“Suit yourself,” she said. “But don’t be surprised, honey, if one comes calling, one day.”

“Don’t call me ‘honey’,” growled René, not for the first time.

Killing Henri was easy, and René almost split his tongue in two, chanting the incantations to make him into a zombie.  

And then it was downhill all the way.

‘Henri’ changed his will, making René sole beneficiary, and fired all his workers, including Guillaume, who had families.  The rest, by stages, became Zombies.

Productivity rose; and so did the profits.  ‘Henri’ bought a car, which René planned to rig to crash spectacularly in a fireball, because he doubted that the resources of the Haitian authorities would equal those of the Surêté in terms of forensic ability.  René did not think that they would readily discover that the burnt corpse at the wheel had been dead for some weeks.  He would have liked to have left it longer, but Natissia was becoming a nuisance, wanting to see Henri, to find out why he was refusing to see her.

Being busy with plans for expansion with his cousin’s money only took care of some of the time ‘Henri’ spent away from Natissia.  René sent her expensive gifts instead, in Henri’s name, but Natissia still turned up at the door.

“I want to see Henri; why is he sending me stupid things, instead of talking to me?” she demanded.

“Sweetheart, he told me he was afraid you’d be offended and wanted to send you gifts, so you’d know he hadn’t forgotten you,” René temporised.

“It’s not like Henri at all,” she bit her lip.  “René, please tell me!  Is it someone else?  Has he stopped loving me?  Only I can’t see why he would send me junk if he still wanted to see me.”

René bit off the comment that rose to his lips that French perfume, orchids, couture dresses and fine wine were not junk.  Apparently this simple country girl was not like the sort of girls he had known in Marseilles, where an expensive gift was often preferable to personal attention. 

“Now, honey, don’t you fret your pretty head,” he said. “It’s nobody else, just Henri feeling guilty at the time he is spending at the factory.”

“I don’t understand why he has laid off so many people,” Natissia persisted.  “Many of the families are in real distress, and people are saying that if Henri, who is the kindest employer there is, has sacked them, it must be for dishonesty, and I would vouch for all of them!”

“Oh, my, didn’t he tell you?” René assumed a look of shock.  “There had been a planned takeover of the factory; one of them objected to Guillaume being dead, and they feared that Henri would see how well he worked and ask to have them made into zombies.  It was better to let them go, when they had offered violence.”

“They should know better than that!  I will talk to them, and if they apologise for such foolishness, then they can return to work?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, it’s too late.  I wouldn’t talk to them if I were you, they were very angry and I fear they might offer you violence.”

“I cannot believe that they would do so,” she declared.

“Nevertheless, I would feel happier if you did not do so, I would hate to think of you being unsafe, and so would Henri.”

“I wish he will tell me all this himself, and look me in the eye to do so,” said Natissia.

“Well, as it happens, he was planning to come over to see you this Saturday,” said René, coming to the decision that the time had come for ‘Henri’ to make his final exit.  He had not learned enough to recognise that Saturday, Samedi, was the province of the Loa known as Baron Samedi, who was known, at times, to be whimiscal.

Henri crashed the car, and René was the first to call on Natissia, and to hold her, sobbing, in his arms.

“It’s all right, honey,” he murmured.  “Poor Henri!  I told him he was working too hard, that he was overtired.”

“Why didn’t he walk over?”

“I think he wanted to show off his new car, honey.”

“Oh, but why?  Such things are not important!  Oh how he has changed lately!”  she sobbed harder.

“I am sorry if the ambition he gained from knowing me has caused this,” said René, stroking her hair.  “But be assured I will not forget Henri’s obligations.  He has trusted me with seeing that all is carried out as seems best to me.”

René assumed control of the factory, and employed the sort of tactics he had learned in Marseille to make sure other canning factory owners sold their businesses to him at giveaway prices.  He usually employed them as managers, so little changed  save that his managers were dead, as were, very quickly, the employees.

René was very pleased with himself, although he did not enjoy the dreams of skulls, one of them horribly burned.  Otherwise life was good.

He continued to visit Natissia, who was very quiet after the funeral. He left it a decent two months before he said,

“My dear, I know Henri would have wanted me to care for you. And I have become very fond of you on my own account.  Will you marry me?”

She regarded him thoughtfully.

“Yes, René, I shall,” she said.  “You have been good to us and my family think the world of you.  I am no good at business, but I will always mediate in the factories if need be.  I am good at that.”

“You are so very good with people,” said Henri, thankful that she had not managed to be good with the people he had sacked, since he had had them run out of town before she had the chance to visit them.

She was decorative enough to keep him amused while he consolidated his position in Haiti, and when he left, he would arrange a quiet divorce so that he could take his wealth to buy himself into an old family.  Then at last he would have social position as well as wealth, and well worth spending a year or two in the hell-hole that was Haiti.  Especially with a pretty girl to while away the time.

Of course he would need to find a manager prepared to continue in the same way, making more zombies, and replacing the manager-zombies when they started to look dead.  He had a man in mind, who would expect a large cut, but it would be worth it.  That man happened to be in Marseilles.  René, however, was certain that he could leave things running themselves in Haiti, and make a business trip to Marseilles, so Natissia was not suspicious until she received her decree nisi.  Then he could prepare  his protégé to come out to Haiti.

Meanwhile, the marriage took place, and René managed not to sneer at the sad devotion of the locals to the old religion.  Natissia looked beautiful, if a trifle wistful and lost in a dress from River Island.   René was looking forward to taking it off; Natissia had been quite firm in how far she would permit him to go before the Catholic church had planted its seal of approval on the union.   Once they were married, Natissia was a good and pliant wife, and if she did not initiate any lovemaking, well, that made her a better wife for not having too many ideas of her own.  René did not believe in the concept of women thinking.  It was, to his mind, unnatural.  He was just thankful that she never even mentioned Henri’s name, nor spoke again about the conditions at the factories he owned.  She was plainly a real woman after all, who was content with a comfortable life and no need to think or worry.

Once everything had settled to a routine, and René was beginning to be bored with his bride, he called Natissia over to him.

“What can I do for you, husband?” she asked.

“I will need to go back to France, briefly, to sort out some matters there,” he said.  It was no less than the truth, as well as training a protégé he also wanted to look over his businesses based in Marseilles.

“That will be fun,” said Natissia.

He flicked a careless finger down her cheek.

“I was going to leave you here to see nothing goes wrong,” he said. “You’d be bored; I won’t have time to show you about, I’ll be in meetings all the time.  Business in France isn’t like business in Haiti, where meetings happen over meals. I’ll be stuck in board rooms for hours with people who don’t even know what outdoors smells like.”

“It sounds horrible,” said Natissia.  “Why don’t you sell your businesses in France and then you won’t have to visit?”

“Oh, I’ll think about it,” said René, mendaciously.  “But I will want a manager here who can leave me more time to spend with you, honey, and I believe I know someone who could do the job well, who deserves a promotion.  But I wasn’t planning on wasting time talking about my trip; I wanted to throw a party, invite all the local notables.  Can you organise that, sweetheart?”

“Oh yes!” said Natissia.  “That sort of thing I do very well.  Watermelon for the last course, I think.”

“Yeah, grand.  I’ll leave the details to you,” said René.

“You’ve become a big man locally, René,” said Hercule Froissart, who grew much of the fruit that René’s factory canned.  René preened. People who would not have given him a second look when he first arrived, now sat at his table, eating the excellent food, and drinking the imported wine.

“Henri was very excited about all the expansion, it’s a shame he bought a car that was too powerful for him to handle,” René said.  “We could have been sharing in all this.”

“I wonder if the idea of all that wealth went to his head?” M. Guizot spoke up.  Nobody could imagine M. Guizot having a personal name; his gravitas was too great, and all the other plantation owners deferred to him.  He went on, “He was acting uncharacteristically, I thought.  Of course it has been to the ultimate good of the firm, but I did wonder what had got into him.”

“Oh, Henri just needed some Old World advice,” said René.  “Time for the watermelons, I think!”

Natissia gave the word, and two smiling houseboys brought in … a crate.  René tutted impatiently.  He would have liked to have had nice obedient zombies, but he dared not risk it around his wife; she might notice.  One of the house boys cracked open the seal on the crate to reveal the watermelons, rich, green-rinded fruit, still inviting, even if not prettily cut and displayed.

Inviting, that was, until they started to move.

“Snake!” cried M. Guizot, in lively alarm.

But it was not a snake that burst out of the melons.

It was a grinning, black skull.

And then around it, the melons were decaying, stinking and rotten.  Maggots, worms and beetles seethed and crawled amongst the foetid mass.

The guests fled intemperately.

René started to try to rise, but somehow he was held in his seat.  Only his wife remained in the room as the servants joined the mass exodus.

“Natissia ….” He croaked.

She smiled brightly.

“Won’t you greet our final guest, husband?” she gestured to the skeleton which had been clothing itself in living flesh even as the melons decayed, and had climbed out of the crate.

“Henri ….” René gasped.

“Erzuli has granted me one hour of life, Cousin René,” said Henri.  “And if the one-way plane tickets in your pocket had been for Natissia as well as for yourself, then I might have merely made you sign over your Haitian goods to her father, who could sort things out, for I would have understood if you had killed me for the love of her.  But you have used her too.”

“I am no sentimental fool,” said René.  “What do you intend to do?”

“I intend to kill you,” said Henri.  “Your guests will remember nothing but that you had an apoplectic fit over a practical joke played on you by the servants.  It’s easier to convince people to believe something with some basis in truth.  All I require you to do is to sign a will, stating that you leave everything you own to your wife, Natissia.”

“I will not,” said René.

Henri shrugged.

“Then Natissia will make you into a zombie to right the wrongs you have done,” he said, simply.

René stared at his wife.

Natissia smiled.  It was a brittle smile.

“Henri never told you that the Mambo who created Guillaume was me,” she said.  “I follow the Loa, Erzuli, who only permits the making of zombies for good purpose.  I knew when you had killed Henri, but one cannot denounce Voudon to the authorities; they take a dim view of such reports. So, I placed my unborn son by Henri into a limbo, so he might bide his time before being born; and I waited for a chance of revenge.  That time has come.  I shall be a tragic rich widow and my posthumous son assumed to be yours.  If you sign, your death will be quick, merciful and eternal.  If you do not, then you will know the torment of being a trapped soul as my abject slave.”

Her tone was almost indifferent; no hatred, no anger.  Somehow that made her words more chilling.

René had never considered how any of his tractable zombies felt.  The idea of being aware that one was a zombie filled him with horror beyond the atheist fear of death.

He signed.

And then he prayed fervently for the first time in his life as the face of his cousin drew near, partly the handsome, ebon features of Henri in life, and yet somehow carrying the semblance of the charred remains of the burned skull laid over the jovial face.

Henri’s hands were at René’s unresisting throat, and all the teachings of the priest came back to René, who knew he was excommunicate, and that there was no heaven for those who did not repent.

With a despairing wail as Henri exerted pressure on René’s carotids, René realised that regret for consequences did not constitute repentance.

Henri kissed Natissia lightly on the lips.

“Alas, you already grow cold, my love,” said Natissia.

“The grave calls me.  Rear our son to be a good man.”

“I will.  I will teach him to wield the power with compassion.  And when he is grown, I will join you.”

“Fare well, my love.”

The flesh was already melting from his bones, and the melons restored to their former shapes, rather over-ripe, perhaps, for no power comes free, and some payment must be made for the transformaton.

The skeleton slumped in the box of melons, held together with wire, like the practical joke it had been supposed to be, and Natissia telephoned for an ambulance for her husband, her hand protectively on her belly as her son, released from limbo, began to kick.