Mr. Dombey, the Zombie

Mr. Dombey, the Zombie
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GEOFFREY DRAYTON

Mr. Dombey, the zombie, took the 8.10 train every morning of the working week. On the way to London he read a newspaper, carefully digesting the spate of words so that its essence might be spewed up again in a form acceptable to his hounsi(a voodoo priestess, according to Haitian Houngan rites.) His hounsi was always interested in the latest murders and rapes, but her interest was never sufficient to let her read through whole columns for the sake of the few sharp thrills they might provide. Anyhow, it was to save herself such bother that she had gone to the trouble of acquiring a zombie. Mr. Dombey not only read the newspapers and books--Crime Club for the most part--but he kept her garden tidy, mowed the lawn, washed the dished. He could not, of course, earn very much money because, being a zombie and capable only of habitual action, he was forced to work at mechanical tasks, under orders from a superior.

At times this annoyed her and she berated him for it; but since it was not really his fault--and, in any case, he could not argue back--she was restricted in her displeasure. Usually she vented it by imposing on him some especially disagreeable task-- like cleaning out the chicken-coops or scrubbing the kitchen floor. The chickens were an unfriendly lot, perhaps because they knew that they were only kept to serve as sacrifices at the right time of year; then never appeared to lay eggs--or so Mr. Dombey would have been led to presume if he had been capable of presuming anything. They pecked him when he came near; but by his nature he was oblivious to the pecking of hens. No doubt if he had been human he would have been less oblivious, perhaps even fearful.

As it was, his only fear was of the woman who had charmed his spirit out and obtained control of his body. His spirit was now imprisoned in a large, curiously carved and decorated gourd which reposed on the mantelpiece in the sitting-room. Until the gourd was broken, and the spirit rejoined the body, Mr. Dombey would be incapable of dying, would have to continue in serfdom indefinitely.

This state of affairs had gone on for more than thirty years, when suddenly one day the hounsi fell ill. She tried various herbs and remedies of her own concoction, even certain spells that she had inherited from the mamaloi of her faith; but all to no avail. Eventually she was forced to take to her bed; and since she could not trust anyone else in the house, Mr. Dombey no longer caught the 8.10 train to his daily task in the city. He remained by her bedside, fetching and carrying. She grew worse. At last she decided to summon a doctor. Obviously the god Damballa was angry with her. She had gone through the rites necessary for his placation, but all had failed; she could now do herself no further harm by resorting to the sorceries of Science.

But the hounsi had waited too late. The doctor discovered her in the final grimaces of life. In the post-mortem he diagnosed death by arsenical poisoning.

It was all a ghastly mistake. The hounsi had been in the habit of taking a stomach-powder--for some strange disease of her kind known as flatulence. The last time he had been sent to purchase this commodity, Mr. Dombey had been ordered to buy arsenic as well--for killing rats. A malignant hand of Providence--Damballa's no doubt--had substituted the arsenic for the stomach-powder, with the result that the hounsi had been attempting to cure her flatulence with arsenic.

The newspapers blamed Mr. Dombey, the zombie. They were, of course, quite mistaken; but neither the journalists concerned nor, later, the police knew anything about voodoo and zombies; and Mr. Dombey was incapable of informing them. The result was a gross miscarriage of justice. Mr. Dombey was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death by hanging.

Had matters proceeded in an ordinary fashion there would be no merit in recounting this old tale. But at that point what had seemed straightforward suddenly became bizarre. The newspapers screamed with delight and Mr. Dombey was transformed, overnight, into a sort of hero. Some even found proof that he could not be hanged. On the first occasion the trap-door failed to open. The rope broke on a second attempt. But--great climax of all--when the apparatus finally worked and Mr. Dombey had been seen to swing in orthodox fashion, the corpse showed a most unexpected co-operation in helping his executioners to lift itself down.

Mr. Dombey's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was said to be nearly sixty at the time, and judging by his gauntness, the death-like pallor of his face, and the fact that he had recently undergone unnerving experiences, everyone who thought about it decided that the State would not have to support him for long. At that point the newspapers turned their attentions elsewhere, though keeping the matter in mind, anticipating an obituary in which the sensational hanging might again be used to edify the public.

But newspaper men die, and their dreams die with them. Mr. Domby, on the other hand, persisted in living. He was still alive seventy years later--growing parched and withered to be sure, but by no means an invalid. He had seen many prison wardens, many convicts come and go. But as he did nothing to bring himself to their attention, he was successfully forgotten and his age attracted no comment.

Mr. Dombey was, in fact, a hundred and thirty years old when his great-great nephews decided to spring-clean their attic.

After the death of Mrs. Dombey and the imprisonment of her supposed murderer, Mr. Dombey, the zombie, relatives had taken over the ill-omened house, the chickens and the gourd. They had slaughtered the chickens; but not knowing what to do with the strange sitting-room ornament, they had put it in the attic along with several other inherited monstrosities. There the gourd had remained, for two generations, growing wizened and dusty, but with Mr. Dombey's spirit safe in its bowels. Now, on the day of spring-cleaning, it was again brought forth. Quite unceremoniously--since who was to know it had a value above that of a cremation-urn?--it was thrown on the bonfire. Without a murmur it dissolved into ashes.

And so Mr. Dombey, the zombie, again cheated the newspapers and the seekers after truth--and, to be exact, the police records. If a little pile of ashes in a prison courtyard had been able to speak it might have related that Mr. Dombey had felt a sudden raging fever. The next moment he was dust. Then the wind blew and Mr. Dombey was dispersed among the other particles.







[I like the Zombie role, Zombie on the train to London, unhappy chickens, where the spirit of Zombie's is saved, newspapers role, great-great nephew's spring-cleaning, felt a sudden raging fever]