“It’s not old Windle. Old Windle was a lot older!”
“Older? Older than dead?”
“He’s said he wants his old bedroom back, and I don’t see why I should have to move out—”
“Did you see his eyes? Like gimlets!”
“Eh? What? What d’you mean? You mean like that dwarf who runs the delicatessen on Cable Street?”
“I mean like they bore into you!”
“—it’s got a lovely view of the gardens and I’ve had all my stuff moved in and it’s not fair—”
“Has this ever happened before?”
“Well, there was old Teatar—”
“Yes, but he never actually died, he just used to put green paint on his face and push the lid off the coffin and shout, ‘Surprise, surprise—’”
“We’ve never had a zombie here.”
“He’s a zombie?”
“I think so—”
“Does that mean he’ll be playing kettle drums and doing that bimbo dancing all night, then?”
“Is that what they do?”
“Old Windle? Doesn’t sound like his cup of tea. He never liked dancing much when he was alive—”
“Anyway, you can’t trust those voodoo gods. Never trust a god who grins all the time and wears a top hat, that’s my motto.”
“—I’m damned if I’m going to give up my bedroom to a zombie after waiting years for it—”
“Is it? That’s a funny motto.”
Windle Poons strolled around the inside of his own head again.
Strange thing, this. Now he was dead, or not living anymore, or whatever he was, his mind felt clearer than it had ever done.
And control seemed to be getting easier, too. He hardly had to bother about the whole respiratory thing, the spleen seemed to be working after a fashion, the senses were operating at full speed. The digestive system was still a bit of a mystery, though.
He looked at himself in a silver plate.
He still looked dead. Pale face, red under the eyes. A dead body. Operating but still, basically, dead. Was that fair? Was that justice? Was that a proper reward for being a firm believer in reincarnation for almost 130 years? You come back as a corpse?
No wonder the undead were traditionally considered to be very angry.
Something wonderful, if you took the long view, was about to happen.
If you took the short or medium view, something horrible was about to happen.
It’s like the difference between seeing a beautiful new star in the winter sky and actually being close to the supernova. It’s the difference between the beauty of morning dew on a cobweb and actually being a fly.
It was something that wouldn’t normally have happened for thousands of years.
It was about to happen now.