A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 102: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

102 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY CHAPTER 3 Danger—With Tears NE morning a sniper splashed some bullets into the village and killed one of my men. That meant Charlemange was back in the vicinity. I tooled the alarm and sent out scouts to nail the assassin. They nabbed him up the mountain at noon and dragged him back to the village for public execution. Good work, but all the way through the village the black devil kept screaming that Charlemagne had promised Morne Noir a special vengeance. This is where the zom- bie angle comes in. That Caco screamed that Charlemagne was going to attack Morne Noir with a company of zombies. The Marines and everyone in the village were going to be wiped out because the Marines couldn’t shoot down creatures who were already dead. ' What’s more, the defenders of the vil- Jage would themselves be turned into zom- bies by the Caco witch doctors and be used against the white invader. That scared the local Haitians galley west. The village was in an uproar. It was no use assuring these ignorant natives that there were no such things as dead men brought back to life by black magic and enslaved as soulless stooges by the witch doctors. No! A zombie may be a drink on Broad- way, mister, but in Haiti it’s a revived corpse. The witch men are supposed to get hold of a corpse while it’s still recog- nizable and animate it by a lot of abaca- dabra. Then it’s dead, but it isn’t dead. It walks and talks, but it hasn’t any soul. It’s a slave to its evil master. If it should look like Boris Karloff to you, the Haitians believe it. Even the educated ones. That’s why there’s still a law against hanging around graveyards in rural Haiti, and why some Haitians drive a stake down into a coffin after burial The village was in a panic, and in no time at all half the natives were out of town. I had a company of loyal Haitians in the outpost, and by three that afternoon two- thirds of them had deserted. Well, it was a mess. I posted sentries and sent a patrol after the deserters and raced around town servicing machine guns. Wilfred, They’re afraid of him. They call we ne 3 EO g You may not believe in zombies, but there’s a creepy atmosphere in Haiti just the same; white men or not, a thing like that can twang your nervous G-strings. In the midst of all this hubbub, dust, and bugle-calls, Mrs. Peabody came flying. Where? Out of her tent where'd she'd been washing her hair. Terrence’s arms. I saw her hugging him under a palm tree where he’d been calmly skinning a bat throughout the furore. You can imag- ine the scene. Jenny Lou with that “save me, save me” clutch on the Irishman’s arm, McCoy patting her head and assur- ing her everything was going to be all right. I went riding by just as Mrs, Pea- body was appealing, “Do be careful, Terry.” “Sure, sure.” He was manful. “There’s nothin’ to worry about. The Marines will look out for us. Ask the captain.” She swung around wildly and grabbed my bridle. “Oh, Captain Glennon, do you believe in these dreadful zombie things ?” “Superstitious rot,” I snapped. “But there may be a Caco attack. Stick close to the stockade; and McCoy, keep your rifle handy.” “Sure, an’ in case of trouble I'll join the Marines,” he promised with a grin. “T wouldn’t mind a bit of action at all.” “But the zombies,” the woman gasped. “The un-dead dead! An old Norwegian doctor at Jacmel told my husband there might be such creatures.” : “Fiddlesticks!’ I could see Jenny Lou was going to be a case—that type always goes in for seances and spiritualism—and the last thing I wanted was a hysterical female on my hands. “If the Cacos hit us they'll be only too much alive. Say, where is your husband ?” So it turned up that Peabody wasn’t around. In the uproar I’d forgotten him completely ; now it seemed Mrs. Peabody and McCoy had forgotten him, too. He’d poked off into the jungle that morning. neglecting to say where he was going. It was no moment for the absent-mind- ed professor to be meandering around in the brush; I had to send a scout:-out. “Oh, but he'll be all right,” Jenny Lou assured me. “The natives won't harm Into handsome micbooks:.con?