Writer's tricks - Test Bite

The Walking Dead

"The eyes were the worst. It was not my imagination. They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, unseeing. The whole face, for that matter, was bad enough. It was vacant, as if there was nothing behind it. It seemed not only expressionless, but incapable of expression. I had seen so much previously in Haiti that was outside the ordinary normal experience that for the flash of a second I had a sickening, almost panicky lapse in which I thought, or rather felt, "Great God, maybe this stuff really is true...".

This is how William Seabrook described his encounter with one of the most horrifying creatures ever to step from the realms of the supernatural. For Seabrook was face-to-face with a zombie - a walking corpse. And in that moment he was prepared to believe all that he had heard about zombies since he first arrived on the island of Haiti.

The zombie's fate is even worse than that of a vampire or werewolf. The vampire returns to his loved ones. He may be recognised and laid to rest. The werewolf may be wounded and regain human form. But the zombie is a mindless automaton (robot), doomed to live out a twilight existence of brutish toil (animal-like labour). A zombie can eat, move, hear, even speak, but he has no memory of his past or knowledge of his present condition. He may pass by his own home or gaze into the eyes of his loved ones without a glimmer of recognition.

Neither ghost nor person, the zombie is said to be trapped, possibly forever, in that "misty zone that divides life from death". For while the vampire is the living dead, the zombie is merely the walking dead - a body without soul or mind raised from the grave and given a semblance (appearance) of life through sorcery. He is the creature of the sorcerer, who uses him as a slave or hires him out - usually to walk on the land.

From 'The Book of Great Mysteries' edited by Colin Wilson and Christopher Evans.