The Hatbox

© 2008 Peter W. F. Clines
All rights reserved.

A few particulars, ere I begin. My name is Gaspard L_____, and I am of sound mind and faculties, as one must be to be a student of anatomy and medicine like myself. You have my sympathies if this manuscript has found its way into the hands of a common man, for many of the matters I shall discuss are of a technical nature requiring a fair degree of medical knowledge and the moral and ethical ambiguity that such studies often call upon.

My tale begins almost six months ago, in the autumn of 1831. I was in my final year of university, studying under the approving gaze of Dr. W_____. My two published papers had received some polite notice, and my full emergence into the scientific community was an event much anticipated.

As a student, autopsies, preparations, and dissections were a standard part of my weekly routine. There is, as you are most likely aware, a quiet understanding among the scientific and medical communities that a steady supply of fresh subjects is required, and how they are found is rarely discussed. Each doctor and student has his own channels of procurement and the business is ignored in a gentlemanly way. For my own purposes, I had employed two thugs with experience in their field. They had been in the service of Dr. W_____ for several years before he began work on his book, and he had arranged a contact between us. While not educated men, in the strictest sense, they had a firm grasp on their required tasks and were punctual.

As such, it came as quite a shock when they arrived over an hour late at my medical theatre carrying a thrashing form between them, wrapped head to toe in the usual blankets and gunny sacks.

"M_____," I declared. "What madness is this?!"

"Evening, Professor," he said. "Have we got a treat for you."

"This is kidnapping," said I, looking at the slight form twisting between them.

M_____ snorted, a sound echoed by his pale companion.

"No more than it usually is," he responded, pulling the sack from his captive's head.

She was a young Negress, not much past twenty years by my estimation, and somewhat physically attractive in the way of her kind. She was garbed in a thin, simple dress of white cotton, almost a nightgown, stained by mud, and her dark hair was tangled down past her shoulders. Most striking, though, were her eyes. They had the cloudy, dull gaze of the blind, and despite her sluggish struggles, they never shifted in their sockets.

Upon being revealed, her movements became more focused as she tried to stretch her neck toward M_____. He seized a handful of hair, yanking her skull back and revealing the horse bit and bridle forced between her jaws. I reached to remove it, horrified to see such indignity against a woman, even one of the Negroid race, but M_____ pulled her back again.

"Careful there," he warned. "She's a savage. Took a chunk out of G_____ there, she did."

His partner raised his hand, revealing a swollen, bloody wound in his forearm. I directed him to the back room, where he would find warm water and clean bandages. G_____ shrugged and vanished into the storeroom. Once he had gone, I demanded M_____ explain himself and his actions.

He nodded. "It was just before midnight," he said, "and we were retrieving tonight's goods. We had packed away the item you had requested — which is still in the carriage, by the by — and we saw her as we were preparing to hide the evidence of our visit." As he spoke, he was tying the woman against a post that supported the upper balcony, binding legs, neck, and arms with the heavy line used for shipping luggage and cargo. The whole time she tried to twist her head to bite him, apparently unaware of the restraint wedged in her teeth.

"She was digging her way out of the earth, into the hole we had dug. I guess she'd been buried in the grave alongside the one we—"

I silenced him with a wave of my hand, disliking the details of my weekly procurements.

"Buried alive? She has most likely fallen to dementia. You should've taken her to a madhouse. Hospital at least. She has no place here."

M_____ nodded again. "As did we think, Professor. Then she had her taste of my friend and we were forced to keep her at length for a few minutes. Which is when we noticed."

"Noticed?"

"She ain't breathing, sir. Not one breath since we first set eyes on her."

I prepared to lambaste M_____ for his childish powers of observation and fixed my eyes on the woman's chest, waiting for the moment that would shatter his foolish statement. Yet the seconds ticked by and, despite her struggles against the rope, after a minute I had to admit that he seemed to be correct. He met my gaze and gave a sage nod.

"Touch her," he said.

"What?" Under other circumstances such a forward suggestion would result in him being hurled from the medical theatre, despite his outweighing me by a good four stone. Yet on this evening there was something altogether foreboding about the idea.

"She's cold," he said. "Cold as any other we've ever brought you."

I reached out and set my palm against her unclothed shoulder. She was indeed cold, and now that I looked I observed that her skin had a tint, a lividity not seen in the living. I slid my hand to the center of her chest, pressing it against the smooth depression of her bosom, and counted out another minute, waiting to feel a single a heartbeat against my palm. None came. As my hand moved across her torso, her neck twisted to follow, straining against the rope that stretched across her throat.

"She is dead," I said. The statement struck me with equal parts dread and fascination.

Another sage nod from M_____.

"Like I told you, Professor, a real treat. And one worth, I would say, double the usual price."

With my rent, my housekeeper, and my personal appetites, double was a steep amount. I would be without drink for a few weeks. But fascination was growing faster than dread, and I realized I would have to study such a creature or regret it for the rest of my days. As we began to negotiate, we were interrupted by a crash from the back room, where G_____ had gone to clean his bite. We discovered the youth prone on the floor, and a simple examination showed that he would no longer be part of the financial arrangements for this evening. At least, not as he had first entered into them, as M_____ now demanded payment for this new item despite my protests that he was of the wrong gender for this week's examinations and would merely go to waste. We haggled for several more minutes over the finer points and finally reached an agreement that satisfied us both.

In the basement below the theatre was a large enclosure; a cage, if you will, wherein we locked many of our chemicals and the rarely used items of considerable expense. Over the next two hours M_____ and I emptied out this steel structure, depositing items in a wide perimeter around the university cellar before transferring the woman into her new accommodations and releasing her. Once assured of her safe containment, we returned to the medical theatre where a new surprise awaited us.

G_____ was on his feet, stumbling back and forth across the chamber. However, both M_____ and myself noticed the unnatural similarity between his movements and those of the woman, and the dull, fixed stare that now marred his face. Whatever affliction kept her from the peace of the grave now was within the young man as well. It took only a few minutes for M_____ to subdue his former partner and deliver him to the basement, followed by another twenty minutes of heated negotiations that ended with me resigned to having not only no wine or spirits in my pantry for most of a month, but no good beef, either. Fortunately, my two new acquisitions so filled my time and sustained my fascination in the days to come that the lack of variety at dinner, on those rare occasions I returned to my apartments, was never noticed.

The woman and G_____ trailed me around the cellar room as I studied them, stopped only as they struck the walls of their cage, and even then their hands reached for me between the bars, groping and grasping. They stood for hours on end, their arms outstretched, tireless. While fascinated with me, they seemed to be unaware of each other, and I likened their single-minded nature to that of ants.

Truly they were enigmas. They did not breathe, sleep or rest, or eat or excrete. Not once in fourteen days did I see them blink. They became my obsession, and many was the time I considered over those long weeks asking Dr. W_____ to join me in my observations. And yet, I felt such conflicting emotions; shame at making any such purchases, guilt that my first two weeks of study had told me almost nothing, and a selfish desire to learn these things alone. And so, by the start of the third week, I decided to take a much more active stance in my investigations.

That evening, after the other students had gone home and left me to my work, a simple twist of rope left the woman bound in the cage. The revenant that had been G_____ was free to be lured upstairs from the enclosure and, with some bit of work, tumbled over and bound to an examination table, a wooden bit strapped between his teeth. What proceeded from there may have been one of the oddest surgeries ever committed by this doctor — nay, by any doctor anywhere. I attempted to administer a dose of arsenic to G_____, but realized it was pointless as he already had neither breath nor circulation. I therefore made my first incision while reminding myself that in the past two weeks neither of these subjects had shown the slightest indication of self-awareness and only the barest indications of even animal intelligence. A few slits to the wrists and ankles bled him white, though the liquid that trickled from his open veins and arteries was dark and stale. Over the course of the evening I proceeded to remove, in this order, eight ribs and the sternum by use of hammer and saw, both the large and small intestine, the kidneys, the liver, the stomach, the lungs, and finally the heart itself — it was a cold piece of meat that smelled of decay and was spotted with discoloration.

Throughout the entire process, G_____ remained conscious and active, straining against his bonds in the never-ending attempt to reach me, unaware of and unhindered by the loss of every major organ within his torso.

Finally, as the night stretched on, I set upon him with the cranial saw, removing the upper section of the skull and exposing the brain, and here, at last, did I make the discovery I had been seeking. As my scalpel began to sever his brain-stem, the body of G_____ went through brief moments of limp inactivity. Indeed, once the brain was removed, there was no doubt that what lay before me was, once again, nothing more than basic human remains. I cursed myself for my foolishness, as I had spent the night removing all those organs necessary for life, a state this poor wretch was long past, when the secret sat in the crown of reason and intellect. What other organ could be responsible for sustaining a man into and past the dark veil of death?

And, now alas, my tale must enter a darker chapter. Armed with this new information — a way in which the existence of these creatures could be brought to a close — I now allowed my mind to venture down certain other pathways of examination and research. While the commoner may find such realms of study to be horrendous, perhaps even sinful, I am sure the scientific and medical persons reading this work will understand my need to repeat the experiment and also to perform variations upon it in order to prove my hypotheses.

Over the course of the next several days, with promises of food and the last of my stored spirits, I lured the homeless vagabonds and urchins of the city back to my medical theatre and into the basement. Here, I began to test my working knowledge of the woman's unnatural condition. Could her bite re-animate (the term I had come to use, taken from the work of fiction by Lady Shelley) a second man, as it had once re-animated G_____? It could! Could this affliction, then, also be passed on from this woman to another female? Again, testing bore out my ideas.

It was during the third round of these experiments that I made, by sheer accident, a discovery of the most terrifying and disturbing nature. One youth was too frail to free himself from her clutches after being bitten, and by the time I leaped to aid the lad, several of the enclosure's new occupants had seized his arms and chest, dragging him back against the bars. While individually clumsy, their sheer numbers gave them a strength that I could not fight, and so I released the boy to their evil embraces. To my horror, the fiends proceeded to claw and rip the youth to pieces, performing acts of depravity and cannibalism that would shock the greatest of sinners. The Negress did not bite simply to pass on her affliction — she and her deathless spawn bit to to feed. I could not contain my horror, and my stomach revolted at the sight of the grisly feast, spreading my own sick across the cellar floor.

I fled from the school and hid in my apartments for several days. After the scene I had witnessed I could not dine on meat and subsisted on bread and broth. My housekeeper spread word that I was unwell and attributed it to my many sleepless nights at university; doubtless a sign of my complete devotion to my studies. If only she knew the awful truth. My mind reeled at the horror I had seen — that I had nurtured — in that dank basement.

By the start of the new week, both my nerves and stomach had calmed, and I had decided to take visitors. Indeed, one of my fellow researchers insisted on supping with me and brought along a close friend to dine and converse with us who he introduced as S_____, a student like ourselves, but of theologies and religion. The meal lifted a weight from my soul, and discussion with like-minded intellectuals began to reassure me of my mental state and the decisions I had made. I began to guide the conversation to my work, couching my questions and phrases in the warm, soft blanket of hypotheticals. What quirk of God or nature could cause such a thing to come into existence, I asked.

"How very odd," said S_____. "Just recently my own studies have come across the idea of just such a creature."

I was caught aback at such a declaration and asked him to explain himself.

S_____ helped himself to a generous glass of the port they had brought with them and settled back before the fire the housekeeper had stoked for us.

"Vudu," he explained, "is a superstitious religion of Africa which has migrated to the Americas with the importation of slaves. It is the faith of the new Negro nation of Haiti, and I am told was the guiding force behind their recent revolution. They are led by a shaman called a houngan or boukor, and with certain preparations and rituals these sorcerers have been known to make the dead walk. It is a mark of high office for them, the ability to create such a creature, which they call a 'zombie.'"

"How is it done?" I asked, trying to hide my excitement and interest.

"The boukor will remove the soul of a living person," continued S_____, "and with no soul they become naught but a walking corpse, forced to obey every command and wish of their creator. It is rarely done, however, for those who practice Vudu believe creating a zombie is exceptionally dangerous, and most boukor do it only once in their lifetime, and only then to prove their ability to do so."

"Why is it dangerous?" asked my friend. I was forced to bite my tongue, for I almost spoke out.

S_____ took a draught of his port. "The zombie is a creature without morals or ethics. It feels no pain or remorse, only hunger. If the boukor is to die or somehow, through an accident, release the creature from his control, its awful appetite is set loose upon those closest to it, as is its curse. For much like the vampyr of folklore, those who encounter a zombie become such a creature themselves, and so their numbers spread like weeds or vermin."

At this point, my friend, sensing the dark turn in conversation, interrupted with an amusing and ribald anecdote he had recently heard involving a vicar, an innkeeper, and the innkeeper's twin daughters. It was enough to break the mood, and the three of us spent the rest of the evening finishing the port with light-hearted discussion of matters financial and politic, despite our only rudimentary knowledge of each. Yet, in truth, S_____'s statements about Vudu and the zombie hung in my mind, and I found myself quietly devising new tests and hypotheses as we drank and discoursed.

The following evening I returned to the medical theatre and its basement, where my subjects — my zombies — still milled in their enclosure. On my arrival they stumbled forward, reaching and groping through the bars as they always had, but now I could see the intent, the blind hunger in these actions. No trace of the young boy was left save for a few scraps of linen shirt stained with dark blood and the leather sole of a shoe; their unending appetite had devoured him whole. The Negress was at the fore, her blank eyes staring past me, and I wondered who, exactly, this dark-skinned beauty had been during her life. Did she or her parents call the isle of Haiti their home? I put the thoughts from my mind as quickly as they came, for of all the answers I sought, they were the least likely to be answered.

A new series of experiments were required, for S_____ had said the affliction of the zombie could spread like a weed. Was it possible, then, that any of these creatures could create another of their kind, and not just their female progenitor? As the days passed, I discovered not only was it possible for her unnatural offspring to create new zombies of either gender, but also for their offspring, and the generation after that.

I was also struck with their cannibalistic nature, for how can such a condition spread if it is a creature's first nature to devour its potential offspring? The tests that followed took over a month, yet I determined that as long as two-thirds of the subject body escaped consumption, it would re-animate as a zombie, albeit a severely limited one. These mangled wretches, limited even more than their kindred, were often trampled in the enclosure, and only the more complete ones lasted more than a few days.

It was now well into winter, just a few weeks from the new year, and I faced three problems that limited my research. One was temperature. While the theatre above was heated by a pair of Franklin stoves, the basement was a chilly place where breath appeared as tiny clouds. The cold caused my subjects no apparent discomfort, but my own manual dexterity decreased sharply over time, making it difficult for me to hold a quill or tie a knot. The small lanterns offered brief respite, but work in the basement had become more and more taxing.

This was the cause of my second problem. Up until this point, I had kept the cellar population down with examinations and dissections, ending each zombie's existence with a practiced severing of the brain stem using a large scalpel at the base of the skull. However, the cold weather had made it more difficult for me to bind their arms out of the cage and safely remove a single revenant from the enclosure. Just over a score of the re-animated creatures now existed below my medical theatre, and I could see no way to lessen their numbers without waiting for spring. Yet it would be impossible to continue my research without adding to their population, and the incident with the boy had emphasized the danger of strength in numbers. Even now the cage bars gave small creaks and moans as the zombies pressed against them, straining to reach me as I made my circuits and observations.

My third problem weighed heaviest on my mind. An article had appeared in the weekly paper commenting on the dwindling numbers of beggars and vagabonds in the immediate area and suggesting that as many as one hundred may have gone missing (the actual number, of course, was little more than half that amount). The local inspector, although he did not consider the matter of much import, had promised an investigation in the seasonal spirit of brotherly love and human kindness. An extra constable would be put on patrol for the next month to patrol the streets around university. Ahhhh! My thoughts raced. The article was dated almost a week ago, and yet I had procured my latest subject just three nights past. Had he been put on patrol already? Worse, the gutter trash had become accustomed to my comings and goings, and many had seen their mates and neighbors wander off with the young doctor from university. My face was known and could be described by any of them. At best, the authorities might think my actions suggested the dealings of some of the thriftier, less scrupulous students who acquired their own subjects for the medical theatre. At worst, they might trace my paths and investigate the properties, and thus discover what was in the basement.

I would have to dispose of my zombies, but how could it be done? The matter vexed me for several hours until I saw the simplicity of it. I had become too used to my own finesse and delicate touch. The brain of these poor wretches needed only to be destroyed, and this could be done with a musket ball just as well as a scalpel.

For the first time in months I contacted M_____, knowing him to have been a soldier of the crown before his temperament ruined his career. He was surprised to hear from me and enquired as to my recent work and why I had not needed his services in so long. I assured him he had not been replaced and asked him to meet me at the medical theatre the following evening, and to bring a firearm with enough cartridges for at least two dozen shots. This request baffled him, to say the least, but did not appear to raise his suspicions, although the sum I mentioned would have quelled any other questions he had.

M_____ appeared at the theatre door the following evening, bringing with him an elderly West India Baker rifle wrapped in oilcloth and two small boxes filled with paper cartridges. I offered him a bottle of rum, which I had acquired for just this purpose, and suggested he fortify himself for the night's task. His curiosity had grown during the day, to say the least, and he enquired to know what manner of business we would be about.

"A matter of cleaning," I explained, taking a small sip of rum as a show of solidarity. This answer seemed to placate him, and he took a few more deep draughts from the bottle ere we headed down to the basement.

"It's her," he said as we reached the bottom step, "ain't it? You still can't kill her."

I shook my head as I unlocked the basement door. "She is not to be harmed," I told him. "It is her progeny you must dispose of."

At his first sight of the enclosure and its staggering occupants, even the brash and swaggering M_____ fell back in momentary horror, as most did when they were first exposed to it. Their sightless skulls turned as we entered, as was their way, and the zombies lumbered forward, pressing through the bars to claw at the air between us. M_____ swore a small oath to the Virgin and angled his head to me, although his eyes stayed locked on the cage. "All of them? She bit them all?"

I assumed the need and nature of my work would be lost on a man of his schooling, so I answered in the affirmative. I then explained how my research had led me to discover their Achilles heel, as it were, and warned him to stay clear of their wanting fingers. He in turn assured me that at this range, a shot from his rifle would most definitely destroy the brain of each creature.

While M_____ loaded the first cartridge into the barrel, I took a last look at my zombies. Each represented a small discovery, another scrap of knowledge gained, and in a way it saddened me to think of this abrupt end to their existence. Yet they were mindless, and I, who was not, faced grave peril if they continued, so there was no real choice in the matter.

M_____ placed the rifle to his shoulder and stepped forward, the end of the barrel just inches from the grasping hands. In the confines of the cellar, the report was akin to a cannon, shaking dust from the ceiling and making the lanterns flicker. His target, a male zombie with a half-eaten arm, went limp as a fist-sized hole appeared around his left eye, and the wretch behind him was soaked as black blood erupted from the back of the victim's skull.

My shooter nodded and returned to the bookshelf where he had set his tiny crates of ammunition. A second paper tube was loaded, a second target found, and another thunderclap dropped a zombie against the walls of the cage before M_____ repeated his actions yet again. The noise was deafening, and I was forced to press my hands over my ears each minute or risk possible deafness.

After the fifth shot, he paused to have another swallow of rum and to clean out the barrel of his rifle in a swift, methodical way I would've thought beyond him; necessary, he explained, to avoid misfires. A few moments later he had stowed the cleaning kit back in the rifle's stock, taken another drink from his bottle, and the process began again. He moved to the far side of the cage this time, taking a case of cartridges that he set down on a stack of books. The zombies shifted in the cage, following him.

M_____ fired off five more shots in his steady way before returning to my side. Almost half the enclosure's occupants were now eliminated, and the constant brutality of it seemed to be wearing on him. His gait was a bit unsteady now, his hands shook slightly, and it was not until he reached for the bottle again that I realized my mistake. As he cleaned the barrel, his actions not quite as smooth or practiced this time, I made a show of "finishing" the rum and setting the bottle out of reach and beyond his inspection. He glared at me but resumed his task, loading the rifle and turning back to the cage.

What happened next, however, was entirely unforeseen and unexpected. M_____ raised his rifle as he had ten times now, set his eye to the sights, and then stopped, his jaw slack with amazement. The barrel lowered as he fixed his eyes on the zombie before him, one of my earlier subjects, a ragged fellow with a thick beard and mustache. M_____ took the Virgin's name again, then also those of the Father and the Son.

"Surely it cain't be," he said over his shoulder to me. "This is E_____, my sister's husband. He has been missing for almost two months."

I felt my stomach twist, not from the rum, and looked at the thin band that decorated one of the grasping fingers. I swiftly assured M_____ I had no idea the man was known to him, let alone a relation, and would not expect him to perform this act of execution on such.

"How did she get him?" His eyes were wet, aided by the drink as much as the discovery, and yet I still saw the awful look there, an expression I would not usually think of on M_____, although our dealings told me better. It was the look of active reasoning, of logical processes. M_____ may have been an uneducated commoner, but he was no fool. "T'was you," he declared, turning his full attention to me. "You brought him here for her. You brought all of them."

I tried to argue, to reassure him, but he saw though my desperate excuses. I knew I walked the razor's edge, for his hands still held the rifle, and a single wrong word on my part would bring it to bear one more time. I backed toward the cellar door even as he took steps toward me, and then the matter was taken out of both of our hands.

M_____ was stepping alongside the enclosure, his attention focused on me and not on the zombies that reached for him, that hungered for him. They grasped his sleeve — his shoulder — his collar — dragging him close for their ripping teeth and tearing hands. However, M_____ was no small youth, and the pain of their savage bites gave him the great strength to pull free from their hold. In his rage he fired his rifle in their direction, not bothering to aim, and indeed his shot missed all of the creatures, instead striking the upper hinge of the cage's iron door and shattering it. The weight of their bodies, just shy of a dozen zombies leaning against the bars, twisted the door around and tore it free of the second hinge. They spilled out like lions into an arena, staggering toward M_____ with a speed that seemed somehow beyond them. He attempted to use his rifle as a club, but more than half of them fell upon him, including his brother-in-law E_____, and dragged him to the floor.

That I have taken the time to describe these events in any detail is not meant to imply that I was pausing to observe them. As M_____'s rifle went off, I pulled open the door to the stairs. A glance back showed me the tide of zombies and my hired man's final fate. A quartet of my former captives stumbled past the gruesome feast and toward me. I briefly considered going back to close the door behind me, certain it would provide a fair barrier for a few minutes, but my fear overwhelmed me and I raced up the steps to my medical theatre, chased by the screams of M_____. There I slammed the door, fumbling though my pockets for the key that served its lock. Only a minute after the bolt shot home came a thick noise, the sound of something senseless striking the door. The impact came again and again as the zombies shuffled on the stairs, each slamming itself against the slats of wood.

My mind was not functioning properly — in retrospect I can say this. Rather than reinforcing the door, my only thoughts were destruction and escape, and I looked about the theatre for the means of both. A spare lantern, unlit, rested on a hook until I hurled it to shatter at the base of the door and was rewarded with the liquid sound of lamp oil flowing down the cellar steps. I raced to the back room and returned with two bottles of cleaning alcohol and threw these beneath the trembling door, as well. The Franklin stove nearest the basement was fired, and I used the tongs to draw a blazing lump of coal from the hearth, sending it at the door with a swing of my arms. The fiery stone struck the planks and set the spills ablaze, washing flames up over the wood, and I was rewarded with a large rushing noise from behind the door, followed by a wash of light from between the slats and the acrid smells of burning flesh and hair.

Yet my joy was short-lived, for the pounding, the relentless pounding on the door, did not stop. Even as the fires grew and the wood blackened, it shook the frame, sending charred splinters across the theatre. I scampered back, away from the inferno, scuttling across the floorboards like a terrified hound with his tail between his legs. And well I did, for moments later the weakened door crumbled beneath the mindless blows of its prisoners.

The first zombie through the savage hole, already a charred nightmare of bone, gristle, and flaming hair, stumbled halfway across the threshold. One of the remaining slats, now a fire-hardened spear, slipped up through its stomach and out its back, pinning it like a grotesque black insect in a collection of horrors. The next through tripped over the first, sprawling across the floor next to the table I had used many times now to put these creatures at rest. A third tried to step across but leaned too far and fell back, taking a fourth and a fifth with it as it tumbled back down the steps into the basement, now as much an oven as the Franklin stove here in the main room.

The second zombie crawled toward me, rising to her feet, her blind eyes staring at me. Yes, her. Fate had seen fit to bring the Negress and I back together, now on more even terms, if not weighed in her favor. She had somehow escaped the worst of the flames, singing her hair and flesh, bubbling her skin in places, charring her dress to a few fragments of ash. She reached for me with her claws, now torn and rife with large splinters and I continued to slide and stumble away. We gained our feet at the same moment, giving me a slight advantage. As my mind was still preoccupied with destructive thoughts, the animalistic need to kill or be killed, I found myself grabbing the coal shovel and brandishing it in both hands. I thrust it forward even as the woman's stagger became an awkward lunge, and by the divine guidance of the Lord the thin edge of the shovel passed through her throat and between two vertebrae, severing her head from her body. The skull bounced away, hair swishing in the air, even as her body dropped in a heap.

As I stood flush with victory, with survival, the magnitude of my situation became apparent in the lucidity that followed. The flames were spreading, destroying all evidence of my crime, but also all of my work, as well. I realized the folly my secretive labours had caused here and vowed it would not be in vain. Ere the flames spread too far, I made a quick circuit of the theatre and the back room, retrieving my notes and journals, along with a number of other rarities, instruments, and special volumes that would not easily be replaced. I thought of the intellectual treasures burning in the basement and cursed my selfish pride once again. A few last items were grabbed and stowed in my bags and I slipped away to my apartments.

The building burned throughout the night, and by all account, alas, none of the zombies escaped. I say 'alas' for, you see, the discovery of almost two dozen charred, unidentified bodies in the basement of the medical theatre, so soon after the newspaper article of the missing vagrants, made a solid case against me in the eyes of the local inspector. Add in the number of gnawed bones found among the remains and the naked, headless body of the Negress that survived the bulk of the fire, and I swiftly became a folk legend on par with the greatest bogey or goblin. Dr. W_____ tried to preserve my name as long as he could, but at last even he was forced to admit that all the evidence pointed to my apparently deep and twisted dementia.

I, of course, was witness for none of this. The same night I fled the medical theatre I abandoned my apartments after the briefest of visits. In less than an hour, my trunks, bags, and hatbox were packed, my affairs put in order, and a private carriage arranged. I traded carriages at the next town, and then again in Whitechapel, before finally ensconcing myself at a less than reputable hotel near the docks. Three days later I boarded this ship headed for Virginia. I had only to mention an earthy scandal involving both the wife and daughter of a nobleman, and the captain laughingly agreed to log my passage under another name in exchange for the tale, thus adding to the levels of subterfuge and intrigue between me and the good inspector.

We have been at sea for two weeks, and the Americas grow close. From there I shall use my remaining funds to charter passage to Haiti, where I shall purchase lodging and attempt to begin my studies again. With the aid and support of the local populace, it is my belief that the mystery and nature of the zombie may be solved.

For, God willing, if the stories of S_____ are to be believed, I shall be treated as a great man on that island, a boukor, once they see the thing that still rustles and moves her jaws within my hatbox.