Pillar of Fire

He emerged from the ground, filled with hatred. Hate was his father; hate was his mother.

It felt great to walk again. It felt amazing to spring up from the ground, off your back, and stretch your stiff arms energetically while trying to take a deep breath!

He tried. He shouted.

He couldn't breathe. He covered his face with his arms and tried to catch his breath. It was impossible. He walked on the ground, he emerged from the ground. But he was dead. He couldn't breathe. He could take air into his mouth and force it halfway down his throat, with shaky, long-unused muscles, frantically, desperately! And with that little bit of air, he could shout and cry! He wanted to cry tears, but he couldn't make them come, either. All he knew was that he was standing up, he was dead, he shouldn't be walking! He couldn't breathe, and yet he stood.

The smells of the world surrounded him. In frustration, he tried to catch the scents of autumn. Autumn was scorching the land into decay. Across the country, the remnants of summer were everywhere; huge forests blazed with fire, scattered timber lay among bare, leafless trees. The smoke from the fires was deep, blue, and almost invisible.

He stood in the graveyard, filled with hatred. He walked through the world but couldn’t feel or smell anything. He could hear, though. The wind howled in his newly opened ears. But he was dead. Even though he walked, he knew he was dead and shouldn’t expect too much from himself or this awful living world.

He touched the gravestone over his own empty grave. He remembered his own name again. It was a well-done carving.

WILLIAM LANTRY

That's what the tombstone said.

His fingers shook on the cool stone surface.

BORN 1898—DIED 1933

Born again...?

What year? He stared at the sky and the autumn stars shining slowly across the windy darkness. He interpreted centuries in those stars. Orion this way and that, Auriga here! and where’s Taurus? There!

His eyes narrowed. His lips formed the year:

"2349."

An odd number. Like a math problem. They used to say a man couldn't handle any number over a hundred. After that, it all became so abstract that counting was pointless. This was the year 2349! A number, a calculation. And here he was, a man who had lain in his dreadful dark coffin, hating being buried, resenting the living people above who just kept on living and living and living, hating them for all those centuries, until today, right now, born out of hatred, he stood by his own freshly dug grave, the smell of raw earth in the air, maybe, but he couldn't smell it!

"I," he said, looking at a poplar tree swaying in the wind, "am an anachronism." He smiled slightly.

He looked at the graveyard. It was cold and empty. All the stones had been ripped up and stacked like flat bricks, one on top of the other, in the far corner by the wrought iron fence. This had been happening for two long weeks. In his deep, hidden coffin, he had heard the ruthless, chaotic noises as the men stabbed the earth with cold shovels and pulled out the coffins, carrying away the decayed ancient bodies to be burned. Twisting with fear in his coffin, he had waited for them to come for him.

Today they had reached his coffin. But—too late. They had dug down to within an inch of the lid. The five o'clock bell rang, time to call it a day. Off to dinner. The workers had left. They said they would finish the job tomorrow, shrugging into their coats.

Silence had settled over the deserted graveyard.

Carefully and quietly, with a soft rustling of dirt, the coffin lid had lifted.

William Lantry stood shaking now, in the final cemetery on Earth.

"Remember?" he asked himself, staring at the bare ground. "Remember those stories about the last man on earth? Those tales of guys roaming through ruins, all alone? Well, you, William Lantry, are a twist on that old story. Do you know that? You are the last dead man in the entire damned world!"

There were no more dead people. Nowhere in any land was there a dead person. Impossible? Lantry didn’t smile at this. No, not impossible at all in this foolish, sterile, unimaginative, antiseptic age of cleanings and scientific methods! People died, oh my god, yes. But—dead people? Corpses? They didn't exist!

What happened to dead people?

The graveyard was on a hill. William Lantry walked through the dark, fiery night until he reached the edge of the graveyard and looked down at the new town of Salem. It was full of lights and colors. Rocket ships shot flames above it, streaking across the sky to all the distant ports on Earth.

In his grave, the fresh violence of this future world had penetrated and soaked into William Lantry. He had been immersed in it for years. He knew all about it, with a bitter dead man's understanding of such things.

Most importantly, he knew what these idiots did with dead people.

He looked up. In the middle of the town, a huge stone finger pointed at the stars. It was three hundred feet high and fifty feet wide. There was a wide entrance and a driveway in front of it.

In the town, William Lantry thought, let’s say you have a dying man. In a moment, he’ll be dead. What happens next? No sooner is his pulse gone than a certificate is produced, filled out, and his relatives load him into a car and drive him quickly to—

The Burner!

That working finger, that Pillar of Fire directing us towards the stars. Incinerator. A practical, awful name. But truth is truth in this future world.

Like a stick of firewood, your Mr. Dead Man is thrown into the furnace.

Flume!

William Lantry stared at the massive pistol reaching toward the stars. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the top.

There's where your dead loved ones go.

"Take care of yourself, William Lantry," he whispered. "You're the last one, the rare find, the last dead man. All the other cemeteries on earth have been destroyed. This is the final resting place, and you're the last dead man from the ages. These people don't believe in having dead people around, let alone walking dead people. Everything that can't be used gets burned up like a matchstick. Superstitions go up in flames too!"

He looked at the town. Fine, he thought quietly. I hate you. You hate me, or you would if you knew I existed. You don't believe in things like vampires or ghosts. Labels without meaning, you shout! You scoff. Fine, scoff! Honestly, I don’t believe in you either! I don’t like you! You and your Incinerators.

He shook with fear. It had been way too close. Day after day, they pulled out the other dead bodies, burned them like firewood. A decree had been announced worldwide. He had listened to the workers talk as they dug!

"I think cleaning up the graveyards is a good idea," said one of the men.

"Guess so," said another. "Gross tradition. Can you imagine? Being buried, I mean! Unhealthy! All those germs!"

"Kind of a shame. Romantic, in a way. I mean, leaving just this one graveyard untouched all these centuries. The other graveyards were cleared out, what year was it, Jim?"

"About 2260, I think. Yeah, that was it, 2260, almost a hundred years ago. But some Salem Committee got all high and mighty and said, 'Listen, let's keep just ONE graveyard left, to remind us of the customs of the barbarians.' And the government scratched its head, thought it over, and said, 'Okay. Salem it is. But all other graveyards have to go, got it, all!'"

"And off they went," said Jim.

"Sure, they pulled them out with fire and steam shovels and rocket cleaners. If they knew a man was buried in a cow pasture, they took care of it! They evacuated them, for sure. Pretty harsh, if you ask me."

"I hate to sound old-fashioned, but there were still a lot of tourists who came here every year just to see what a real graveyard was like."

"Okay. We had almost a million visitors in the last three years. It was good revenue. But—a government mandate is a mandate. The government says no more issues, so we need to get rid of it! Here we go. Pass me that spade, Bill."

William Lantry stood in the autumn breeze on the hill. It felt nice to walk again, to feel the wind, and to hear the leaves scurry like little mice on the path in front of him. It was good to see the sharp, cold stars almost swept away by the wind.

It was even nice to feel fear again.

For fear flooded through him now, and he couldn't shake it off. Just the fact that he was walking made him an enemy. There wasn't another friend, another dead person, in the entire world to turn to for help or comfort. It was the whole drama-filled living world against one William Lantry. It was the entire vampire-skeptic, body-burning, graveyard-destroying world against a man in a dark suit on a gloomy autumn hill. He stretched out his pale, cold hands into the city lights. You’ve pulled the gravestones, like teeth, from the ground, he thought. Now I’ll find a way to bring your damnable Incinerators down to ruins. I will bring the dead back, and in doing so, I will make friends. I can’t be alone and lonely. I need to start making friends very soon. Tonight.

"War is declared," he said, and laughed. It was kind of ridiculous, one guy declaring war on the whole world.

The world remained silent. A rocket shot across the sky in a blaze of flames, like an Incinerator taking flight.

Footsteps. Lantry rushed to the edge of the cemetery. The diggers, coming back to finish their work? No. Just a guy, walking by.

As the man reached the cemetery gate, Lantry quickly stepped out. "Good evening," the man said with a smile.

Lantry hit the guy in the face. The guy went down. Lantry quietly leaned down and delivered a fatal blow across the neck with the side of his hand.

Dragging the body back into the shadows, he took off its clothes and swapped outfits with it. It wouldn't be smart for someone to roam around this future world wearing old-fashioned clothes. He discovered a small pocket knife in the man's coat; not a great knife, but useful if you knew how to use it. He did know how.

He rolled the body into one of the already opened and dug-up graves. In a minute, he had shoveled dirt over it, just enough to cover it up. The chances of it being discovered were slim. They wouldn’t dig the same grave twice.

He got comfortable in his new loose-fitting metallic suit. Great, great.

Hating, William Lantry walked into town to confront the Earth.

II

The incinerator was open. It never closed. There was a wide entrance, all lit up with hidden lights, a helicopter landing pad, and a beetle drive. The town itself was winding down after another day of activity. The lights were dimming, and the only quiet, well-lit spot in the town now was the Incinerator. Man, what a practical name, what an unromantic name.

William Lantry walked through the large, bright entrance. It wasn’t really a door; there was nothing to open or close. People could come and go, whether it was summer or winter, and the inside was always cozy. Cozy from the fire that quietly rushed up the tall, round flue to where the whirlers, the propellers, and the air jets carried the leafy gray ashes off for a ten-mile journey through the sky.

There was a cozy warmth from the bakery here. The floors were made of rubber tiles. You couldn't make a sound even if you tried. Music played from somewhere hidden. Not somber music, but lively tunes that felt like the sun living inside the Incinerator; or at least something like the sun. You could hear the flames dancing inside the thick brick wall.

William Lantry walked down a ramp. Behind him, he heard a whisper and turned just in time to see a beetle come to a stop at the entrance. A bell rang. The music, as if on cue, soared to thrilling heights. There was joy in it.

From the beetle, which opened from the back, some attendants stepped out carrying a golden box. It was six feet long, adorned with sun symbols. From another beetle, the man's relatives emerged and followed as the attendants carried the golden box down a ramp to an altar. On the side of the altar were the words, "WE THAT WERE BORN OF THE SUN RETURN TO THE SUN." The golden box was placed on the altar, the music soared, the Guardian of this place spoke just a few words, then the attendants picked up the golden box, walked to a transparent wall with a safety lock, which was also transparent, and opened it. The box was pushed into the glass slot. Moments later, an inner lock opened, and the box was drawn into the Flue's interior and vanished instantly in a quick burst of flame.

The attendants walked away. The relatives silently turned and left. The music played.

William Lantry walked up to the glass fire lock. He looked through the wall at the massive, glowing, endlessly pulsing heart of the Incinerator. It burned steadily, without a flicker, humming to itself calmly. It was so solid, it was like a golden river flowing up from the earth toward the sky. Anything you tossed into the river was lifted up and disappeared.

Lantry felt once more his irrational hatred of this thing, this monster, cleansing fire.

A man stood next to him. "Can I help you, sir?"

"What?" Lantry spun around. "What did you say?"

"How can I help?"

"I—that is—" Lantry glanced quickly at the ramp and the door. His hands shook at his sides. "I've never been in here before."

"Never?" The Attendant was shocked.

That was the wrong thing to say, Lantry realized. But he said it anyway. "What I mean is," he continued, "not really. When you’re a kid, you don’t really pay attention. I suddenly realized tonight that I didn’t truly know the Incinerator."

The Attendant smiled. "We never really know anything, do we? I'd be happy to show you around."

"Oh, no. Forget it. It’s a great place."

"Yes, it is." The Attendant was proud of it. "I believe it's one of the best in the world."

"I—" Lantry felt he needed to explain more. "I haven't had many relatives pass away since I was a kid. Actually, none. So, you see, I haven't been here for a long time."

"I see." The Attendant's expression appeared to cloud over a bit.

What have I said now, thought Lantry. What the hell is going on? What have I done? If I’m not careful, I’ll end up thrown right into that damn fire trap. What’s wrong with this guy’s face? He seems to be sizing me up more than usual.

"You wouldn't be one of the guys who just got back from Mars, would you?" asked the Attendant.

"No. Why do you want to know?"

"No worries." The Attendant started to walk away. "If you want to know anything, just ask me."

"Just one thing," Lantry said.

"What's that supposed to be?"

"This."

Lantry delivered a powerful strike to his neck.

He had been observing the fire-trap operator with keen attention. Now, with the limp body in his arms, he pressed the button that opened the warm outer lock, placed the body inside, heard the music start, and saw the inner lock open. The body was launched into the river of fire. The music faded.

"Great job, Lantry, great job."

Barely a moment later, another Attendant walked into the room. Lantry had a look of happy excitement on his face. The Attendant scanned the area as if he was looking for someone, then approached Lantry. "Can I help you?"

"Just browsing," said Lantry.

"Pretty late at night," said the Attendant.

"I couldn't sleep."

That was the wrong answer, too. Everyone slept in this world. No one had insomnia. If you did, you simply turned on a hypno-ray, and sixty seconds later, you were snoring. Oh, he was just full of wrong answers. First, he made the fatal mistake of saying he had never been in the Incinerator before when he knew very well that all kids were brought here on tours every year, starting at four, to instill the idea of the clean fire death and the Incinerator in their minds. Death was a bright fire; death was warmth and the sun. It wasn't a dark, shadowy thing. That was important in their education. And he, the pale, thoughtless fool, had immediately blurted out his ignorance.

And one more thing, his paleness. He looked at his hands and realized with increasing fear that a pale guy just didn’t fit in here. They would question his paleness. That’s why the first attendant had asked, “Are you one of those guys just back from Mars?” Now, this new Attendant was as fresh and bright as a shiny penny, with rosy cheeks full of health and energy. Lantry tucked his pale hands into his pockets. But he was fully aware of the way the Attendant was examining his face.

"I mean to say," Lantry said. "I didn't want to sleep. I wanted to think."

"Was there a service held here just now?" asked the Attendant, glancing around.

"I don't know, I just got here."

"I thought I heard the fire door open and close."

"I don't know," Lantry said.

The man pushed a wall button. "Anderson?"

A voice responded. "Yes."

"Can you find Saul for me?"

"I'll check the hallways." A pause. "Can't find him."

"Thanks." The Attendant looked confused. He started to make small sniffing motions with his nose. "Do you—smell anything?"

Lantry sniffed. "No. Why not?"

"I sense something."

Lantry grabbed the knife in his pocket. He waited.

"I remember when I was a kid," said the man. "We found a cow lying dead in the field. It had been there for two days in the hot sun. That's what this smell is. I wonder what it's from?"

"Oh, I know what it is," Lantry said softly. He extended his hand. "Here."

"What?"

"Me, obviously."

"You?"

"Dead for several hundred years."

"You're a strange joker." The Attendant was confused.

"Very." Lantry pulled out the knife. "Do you know what this is?"

"A knife."

"Do you still use knives on people?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—killing them, with knives, guns, or poison?"

"You are a strange joker!" The man chuckled awkwardly.

"I'm going to kill you," Lantry said.

"Nobody kills anybody," the man said.

"Not anymore they don't. But they used to, back in the day."

"I know they did."

"This will be the first murder in three hundred years. I just killed your friend. I just pushed him into the fire lock."

That comment had the intended impact. It stunned the man so completely, it shocked him so thoroughly with its absurdity that Lantry had time to step forward. He pressed the knife against the man's chest. "I'm going to kill you."

"That's ridiculous," the man said, sounding indifferent. "People don't behave that way."

"Like this," Lantry said. "Got it?"

The knife sliced into the chest. The man looked at it for a moment. Lantry caught the collapsing body.

III

The Salem flue exploded at six that morning. The massive chimney burst into countless pieces, scattering itself into the ground, into the air, and into the homes of the sleeping people. There was fire and noise, more fire than autumn's burning in the hills.

William Lantry was five miles away when the explosion happened. He watched as the town lit up from the massive fire consuming it. He shook his head, chuckled softly, and clapped his hands together enthusiastically.

Relatively simple. You walked around killing people who didn’t believe in murder, who had only heard about it indirectly as some vague custom from the ancient barbarian races. You walked into the control room of the Incinerator and asked, “How do you operate this Incinerator?” The control guy told you, because everyone told the truth in this future world, nobody lied, there was no reason to lie, there was no danger to lie against. There was only one criminal in the world, and nobody knew HE existed yet.

Oh, it was an incredibly beautiful setup. The Control Man had explained exactly how the Incinerator worked, which pressure gauges controlled the flow of fire gases going up the flue, and which levers needed to be adjusted or readjusted. He and Lantry had a lengthy discussion. It was an easygoing world. People trusted each other. A moment later, Lantry had stabbed the Control Man as well, set the pressure gauges for an overload to happen thirty minutes later, and walked out of the Incinerator halls, whistling.

Now even the sky was darkened by the massive black cloud of the explosion.

"This is just the beginning," said Lantry, gazing at the sky. "I’ll take down all the others before they even suspect there’s someone unethical roaming their society. They can’t comprehend a variable like me. I’m beyond their understanding. I’m incomprehensible, impossible, so I basically don’t exist. My God, I could kill hundreds of thousands of them before they even notice that murder is out in the world again. I can make it seem like an accident every time. Honestly, the idea is so massive, it’s unbelievable!"

The fire burned the town. He sat under a tree for a long time, until morning. Then, he found a cave in the hills and went in to sleep.

He woke up at sunset with a sudden dream of fire. He saw himself being pushed into the chimney, cut into pieces by flames, burned away to nothing. He sat up on the cave floor, laughing at himself. He had an idea.

He walked down to the town and entered an audio booth. He dialed OPERATOR. "Connect me to the Police Department," he said.

"I’m sorry, what did you say?" asked the operator.

He tried again. "The Law Force," he said.

"I'll put you in touch with Peace Control," she said at last.

A little fear started ticking inside him like a small clock. What if the operator recognized the term Police Department as outdated, took his audio ID, and sent someone out to look into it? No, she wouldn't do that. Why would she even suspect anything? Paranoids didn't exist in this society.

"Yeah, the Peace Control," he said.

A buzz. A man's voice replied, "Peace Control. This is Stephens."

"Put me through to the Homicide Detail," said Lantry, smiling.

"The what?"

"Who solves murders?"

"I’m sorry, what are you talking about?"

"Wrong number." Lantry hung up, laughing. Good grief, there was no such thing as a Homicide Detail. There were no murders, so they didn’t need any detectives. Perfect, perfect!

The audio rang again. Lantry paused for a moment, then picked it up.

"Hey," said the voice on the phone. "Who are you?"

"The man who called just left," said Lantry, and hung up again.

He ran. They would recognize his voice and might send someone out to check. People didn't lie. He had just lied. They knew his voice. He had lied. Anyone who lied needed to see a therapist. They would come to pick him up to figure out why he was lying. For no other reason. They suspected him of nothing else. So—he had to run.

Oh, how carefully he has to act from now on. He knows nothing about this world, this strange, straightforward, honest world. Just looking pale makes you suspicious. Just not sleeping at night makes you suspicious. Just not bathing, by smelling like a—dead cow?—makes you suspicious. Anything.

He has to go to a library. But that was risky, too. What are libraries like today? Do they have books, or do they have film reels that project books onto a screen? Or do people have libraries at home, making big main libraries unnecessary?

He decided to take a risk. Using old-fashioned words might make people suspicious of him again, but it was crucial for him to learn everything he could about this terrible world he had returned to. He stopped a guy on the street. "Which way to the library?"

The man wasn’t surprised. “Two blocks east, one block north.”

"Thanks."

Easy as that.

He walked into the library a few minutes later.

"Can I help you?"

He looked at the librarian. "Can I help you?" What a world of helpful people! "I'd like to 'get' Edgar Allan Poe." His choice of words was intentional. He didn't say 'read'. He was too worried that books were outdated, that printing was becoming a lost art. Maybe all 'books' now were presented as fully detailed three-dimensional movies. How on earth could you turn Socrates, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud into a movie?

"What was that name?"

"Edgar Allan Poe."

"There’s no author like that in our records."

"Can you check, please?"

She checked. "Oh, yes. There's a red mark on the file card. He was one of the authors in the Great Fire of 2265."

"I'm so ignorant."

"That's okay," she said. "Have you heard a lot about him?"

"He had some intriguing outsider ideas about death," said Lantry.

"Horrible," she said, scrunching her nose. "Disgusting."

"Yeah. Terrible. Disgusting, actually. Good thing he was burned. Unclean. By the way, do you have any of Lovecraft?"

"Is that a sex book?"

Lantry burst out laughing. "No, no. It's a guy."

She flipped through the file. "He got burned, too. Just like Poe."

"I guess that includes Machen, a guy named Derleth, and another guy named Ambrose Bierce, right?"

"Yeah." She closed the file cabinet. "Everything's gone. And it’s about time." She gave him a strange but warm look of curiosity. "I bet you just got back from Mars."

"Why do you say that?"

"There was another explorer in here yesterday. He had just completed the Mars hop and back. He was also interested in supernatural literature. It seems there are actually 'tombs' on Mars."

"What are 'tombs'?" Lantry was learning to keep his lips sealed.

"You know, those things they used to bury people in."

"Barbarian custom. Horrible!"

"Isn’t it? Well, seeing the Martian tombs made this young explorer curious. He came and asked if we had any of those authors you mentioned. Of course, we don’t have even a hint of their stuff." She looked at his pale face. "You are one of the Martian rocket men, aren’t you?"

"Yeah," he said. "I got back on the ship the other day."

"The other young man's name was Burke."

"Of course. Burke! A good friend of mine!"

"Sorry, I can't help you. You should get some vitamin shots and a sun lamp. You look awful, Mr. ——?"

"Lantry. I'll be fine. Thanks so much! See you next Halloween!"

"Aren't you clever." She laughed. "If there were a Hallows' Eve, I'd make it a date."

"But they burned that, too," he said.

"Oh, they burned everything," she said. "Good night."

"Good night." Then he went outside.

Oh, how carefully he was balanced in this world! Like some kind of dark gyroscope, spinning without a sound, a very quiet man. As he walked down the eight o'clock evening street, he noticed with particular interest that there weren’t many lights around. There were the usual streetlights at each corner, but the blocks themselves were only dimly lit. Could it be that these remarkable people weren’t afraid of the dark? What an absurd thought! Everyone was afraid of the dark. Even he had been afraid as a child. It was as natural as eating.

A little boy sprinted by on fast little feet, followed by six others. They yelled and shouted and rolled on the dark, cool October grass, in the leaves. Lantry watched for several minutes before speaking to one of the small boys who was briefly catching his breath, as a boy might blow to refill a popped paper bag.

"Hey, take it easy," said Lantry. "You'll tire yourself out."

"Sure," the boy said.

"Can you tell me," the man asked, "why there are no street lights in the middle of the blocks?"

"Why?" the boy asked.

"I'm a teacher, and I thought I’d test your knowledge," said Lantry.

"Well," said the boy, "you don't need lights in the middle of the block, that's why."

"But it gets pretty dark," said Lantry.

"So?" asked the boy.

"Aren't you scared?" asked Lantry.

"About what?" asked the boy.

"The dark," said Lantry.

"Ha ha," said the boy. "Why should I be?"

"Well," said Lantry. "It's black, it's dark. And anyway, street lights were created to get rid of the darkness and the fear."

"That's ridiculous. Streetlights were put there so you could see where you were walking. Other than that, there's nothing."

"You’re missing the whole point—" said Lantry. "Are you saying you would just sit in the middle of an empty lot all night and not be scared?"

"About what?"

"About what, about what, about what, you silly person! About the darkness!"

"Ha ha."

"Would you go out into the hills and stay there all night in the dark?"

"Of course."

"Would you spend the night alone in an empty house?"

"Of course."

"And not be scared?"

"Of course."

"You're lying!"

"Don’t you call me nasty names!" shouted the boy. Liar was the wrong word, for sure. It felt like the worst thing you could call someone.

Lantry was totally furious with the little monster. "Look," he insisted. "Look into my eyes...."

The kid looked.

Lantry grinned slightly. He extended his hands, forming a claw-like gesture. He leered, waved his arms around, and twisted his face into a horrifying mask.

"Ha ha," said the boy. "You're hilarious."

"What did you say?"

"You're hilarious. Do it again. Hey, everyone, come here! This guy does funny stuff!"

"Forget it."

"Do it again, sir."

"Forget it, forget it. Good night!" Lantry took off.

"Good night, sir. And watch out for the dark, sir!" called the little boy.

Of all the nonsense, of all the ridiculous, slimy, clueless nonsense! He had never seen anything like it in his life! Raising the kids without even a hint of imagination! What’s the fun in being a kid if you can’t imagine things?

He stopped running. He slowed down and, for the first time, started to check himself out. He ran his hand over his face, bit his finger, and realized he was standing in the middle of the block, feeling uneasy. He walked over to the street corner where there was a glowing lantern. "That's better," he said, stretching his hands out like someone warming them by an open fire.

He listened. There wasn’t a sound except for the night-time hum of the crickets. Faintly, there was a whir as a rocket shot across the sky. It was the sound a torch might make being waved softly in the dark air.

He listened to himself and for the first time realized what was so unique about him. There was no sound inside him. The little nostril and lung noises were gone. His lungs neither took in nor expelled oxygen or carbon dioxide; they didn’t move. The hairs in his nostrils didn’t flutter with warm air. That faint purring sound of breathing didn’t resonate in his nose. Strange. Odd. A sound you never noticed when you were alive, the breath that sustained your body, and yet, once dead, oh how you missed it!

The only other time you ever heard it was on those deep, dreamless, sleepless nights when you woke up and listened. You first heard your nose gently taking in the air, and then the dull, deep, dim red thunder of blood in your temples, your eardrums, your throat, your aching wrists, your warm loins, and your chest. All those little rhythms were gone. The pulse in your wrist was gone, the pulse in your throat was gone, the vibration in your chest was gone. The sound of blood flowing up, down, around, and through, up, down, around, and through. Now it felt like listening to a statue.

And yet he lived. Or, rather, he went about his day. But how was this possible, beyond scientific explanations, theories, and doubts?

By just one thing, and one thing only.

Hate.

Hatred was like blood in him, flowing up and down, around and through, up and down, around and through. It was a heart inside him, not beating, but still warm. He was—what? Resentment. Envy. They said he could no longer lie in his coffin in the cemetery. He had wanted to. He never really had any desire to get up and walk around. It had been enough, all these centuries, to lie in the deep box and feel but not feel the ticking of the million insect watches in the earth around him, the movements of worms like deep thoughts in the soil.

But then they came and said, "Out you go and into the furnace!" And that’s the worst thing you can say to anyone. You can’t tell him what to do. If you say he’s dead, he’ll want to prove he isn’t. If you say vampires don’t exist, by God, that guy will try to become one just to spite you. If you say a dead man can't walk, he’ll test his limbs. If you say murder isn’t happening anymore, he’ll make it happen. He was, in every way, all the impossible things. They had brought him into existence with their terrible practices and ignorance. Oh, how wrong they were. They needed to be shown. He would show them! The sun is good, so is night; there’s nothing wrong with darkness, they said.

Darkness is horror, he shouted silently, looking at the little houses. It is meant for contrast. You have to be afraid, do you hear? That’s always been the way of this world. You destroyers of Edgar Allan Poe and the grand, wordy Lovecraft, you who burn Halloween masks and wreck pumpkin jack-o-lanterns! I will make night what it once was, the very thing against which humanity built all its lit-up cities and raised its many children!

As if in response to this, a rocket flew low, leaving a long, stylish trail of flame. It made Lantry flinch and pull back.

IV

It was only ten miles to the small town of Science Port. He arrived by dawn, on foot. But even that wasn't great. At four in the morning, a silver beetle pulled up on the road next to him.

"Hello," shouted the man inside.

"Hey," said Lantry, wearily.

"Why are you walking?" the man asked.

"I'm heading to Science Port."

"Why not ride?"

"I love to walk."

"Nobody enjoys walking. Are you feeling unwell? Can I give you a ride?"

"Thanks, but I prefer to walk."

The man paused, then shut the beetle door. "Good night."

When the beetle went over the hill, Lantry moved back into a nearby forest. It was a world full of well-meaning but clumsy people. Seriously, you couldn't even walk without being suspected of being unwell. That only meant one thing. He couldn't walk anymore; he had to ride. He should have taken that guy's offer.

The rest of the night he walked far enough off the highway so that if a beetle hurried by, he had time to disappear into the underbrush. At dawn, he sneaked into an empty, dry water drain and closed his eyes.

The dream was as perfect as a frost-covered snowflake.

He saw the cemetery where he had rested deeply through the centuries. He heard the early morning footsteps of the workers coming back to complete their tasks.

"Could you hand me the shovel, Jim?"

"Here you are."

"Hold on a second, hold on a second!"

"What's going on?"

"Hey, we didn't wrap things up last night, did we?"

"No."

"There was one more coffin, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, here it is, and it's open!"

"You're in the wrong place."

"What's the name on the gravestone?"

"Lantry. William Lantry."

"That's him, that's the one! He’s gone!"

"What could have happened to it?"

"How would I know? The body was here last night."

"We can't know for sure; we didn't check."

"God, people don’t bury empty coffins. He was in his box. Now he isn’t."

"Maybe this box is empty."

"That's ridiculous. Can you smell that? He was definitely here."

A break.

"No one would have taken the body, right?"

"What’s it for?"

"A curiosity, maybe."

"Don't be ridiculous. People just don't steal. No one steals."

"Well, then, there's only one solution."

"And?"

"He stood up and walked away."

A pause. In the dark dream, Lantry expected to hear laughter. There was none. Instead, the voice of the gravedigger, after a reflective pause, said, "Yes. That’s it, exactly. He got up and walked away."

"That's interesting to think about," said the other.

“Right?”

Silence.

Lantry woke up. It had all been a dream, but wow, was it realistic. How oddly those two guys had acted. But not in a weird way, oh no. That was exactly how you’d expect men from the future to talk. Men from the future. Lantry smirked. That was a throwback for you. This was the future. This was happening now. It wasn't 300 years from now, it was now, not then, or any other time. This wasn't the 20th century. Oh, how calmly those two men in the dream had said, "He got up and walked away." "—interesting to think about." "Isn't it, though?" Without a quiver in their voices. Not even a glance over their shoulders or a quiver of the spade in hand. But, of course, with their perfectly honest, logical minds, there was only one explanation; certainly nobody had stolen the corpse. "Nobody steals." The corpse had just gotten up and walked off. The corpse was the only one who could have possibly moved the corpse. From the few casual, slow words of the gravediggers, Lantry knew what they were thinking. Here was a man who had been in suspended animation, not really dead, for hundreds of years. The jarring around, the activity, had brought him back.

Everyone had heard about those little green toads that remain sealed for centuries inside mud rocks or ice blocks, alive and well! And how when scientists dug them out and warmed them like marbles in their hands, the little toads would jump around and blink. So, it made sense for the gravediggers to think of William Lantry in the same way.

But what if the different pieces came together in the next day or so? If the missing body and the destroyed, exploded incinerator were linked? What if this guy named Burke, who returned pale from Mars, went to the library again and told the young woman he wanted some books, and she replied, "Oh, your friend Lantry was here the other day." And he’d say, "Lantry who? I don’t know anyone by that name." And she’d say, "Oh, he lied." And people these days didn’t lie. So everything would start to come together, piece by piece. A pale guy who was pale and shouldn’t be pale had lied, and people don’t lie; a man walking on a lonely country road had walked, and people don’t walk anymore; and a body was missing from a cemetery, and the Incinerator had blown up and and and—

They would come for him. They would track him down. He’d be easy to locate. He walked. He lied. He was pale. They would find him, capture him, and throw him into the nearest Burner’s open fire lock, and that would be your Mr. William Lantry, like a Fourth of July display!

There was only one thing he had to do efficiently and completely. He jumped up with violent movements. His lips were stretched wide, and his dark eyes were flaring. He felt a shaking and a burning all through him. He had to kill and kill and kill and kill and kill. He needed to turn his enemies into friends, into people like him who walked but shouldn’t walk, who were pale in a world of pinks. He had to kill and then kill and then kill again. He had to create bodies and dead people and corpses. He must destroy Incinerator after Flue after Burner after Incinerator. Explosion after explosion. Death after death. Then, when all the Incinerators were in ruins, and the hastily set-up morgues were packed with the bodies of people shattered by the explosions, he would start to make friends, his enrollment of the dead in his own cause.

Before they tracked him down and killed him, they would have to be killed themselves. For now, he was safe. He could kill, and they wouldn't retaliate. People just don’t go around killing. That was his safety net. He climbed out of the abandoned drain and stood in the road.

He pulled the knife from his pocket and signaled the next beetle.

It was like the Fourth of July! The biggest damn firecracker of them all. The Science Port Incinerator split in half and blew apart. It triggered a thousand small explosions that culminated in a larger one. It descended upon the town, destroying houses and setting trees on fire. It startled people awake, only to put them back to sleep again, forever, just a moment later.

William Lantry, sitting in a car that wasn't his, casually flipped through the radio stations. The collapse of the Incinerator had claimed around four hundred lives. Many had been trapped in crushed homes, while others were hit by flying debris. A temporary morgue was being set up at—

An address was provided.

Lantry made a note of it with a notepad and pencil.

He could keep doing this, he thought, moving from town to town, from country to country, taking down the Burners, the Pillars of Fire, until the entire pure, impressive structure of fire and destruction was brought down. He made a rough calculation—each explosion caused about five hundred deaths. That could add up to a hundred thousand in no time.

He pressed the floor pedal of the beetle. Smiling, he drove off through the dark streets of the city.

The city coroner had commandeered an old warehouse. From midnight until four in the morning, the gray beetles hissed down the rain-slick streets, pulled in, and the bodies were laid out on the cold concrete floors, covered with white sheets. It was a steady stream until around four-thirty, then it came to a halt. There were about two hundred bodies there, pale and cold.

The bodies were left alone; no one stayed behind to look after them. There was no point in caring for the dead; it was a pointless task; the dead could take care of themselves.

About five o'clock, with a hint of dawn in the east, the first few relatives started arriving to identify their sons, fathers, mothers, or uncles. The people moved quickly into the warehouse, made their identifications, and hurried back out again. By six o'clock, while the sky was still getting lighter in the east, this stream of people had also passed on.

William Lantry walked across the wide, wet street and stepped into the warehouse.

He held a piece of blue chalk in one hand.

He walked past the coroner who was standing in the entrance talking to two others. "...take the bodies to the incinerator in Mellin Town tomorrow...." The voices faded.

Lantry walked, his footsteps faintly echoing on the cool concrete. A wave of unexplainable relief washed over him as he moved among the covered figures. He was with his own people. And—better yet, thank God! he had created these! He had made them dead! He had given himself a whole bunch of friends lying down!

Was the coroner watching? Lantry turned his head. No. The warehouse was calm, quiet, and shrouded in the dark morning. The coroner was walking away now, across the street, with his two attendants; a beetle had pulled up on the other side of the street, and the coroner was crossing over to talk with whoever was in the beetle.

William Lantry stood and drew a blue chalk pentagram on the floor beside each of the bodies. He moved quickly, silently, without a blink. In just a few minutes, checking occasionally to see if the coroner was still occupied, he had marked the floor by a hundred bodies. He straightened up and put the chalk in his pocket.

Now is the time for all good people to support their party, now is the time for all good people to support their party, now is the time for all good people to support their party, now is the time....

Lying in the ground, over the years, the thoughts and actions of people who came and went had gradually seeped into him, like water into a deep-buried sponge. From some memory of death within him now, ironically, a black typewriter clacked out steady lines of relevant words:

Now is the time for all good people, for all good people, to come to the aid of—

William Lantry.

Additional terms—

Arise my love, and come away—

The quick brown fox jumped over.... Paraphrase it. The quick risen body jumped over the tumbled Incinerator....

Lazarus, come out of the tomb.

He knew the right words. He just had to say them as they had been said for centuries. He just had to gesture with his hands and speak the words, the dark words that would make these bodies tremble, rise, and walk!

And when they got up, he would take them through the town, they would kill others and those others would rise and walk. By the end of the day, there would be thousands of good friends walking with him. And what about the naive, living people of this year, this day, this hour? They would be totally unprepared for it. They would fall easily because they wouldn’t be expecting any kind of war. They wouldn’t believe it was possible; it would all be over before they could even convince themselves that such an absurd thing could happen.

He raised his hands. His lips moved. He spoke the words. He started with a quiet chant and then increased his volume. He repeated the words over and over. His eyes were shut tight. His body swayed. He talked faster and faster. He began to move forward among the bodies. The dark words poured from his mouth. He was captivated by his own incantations. He bent down and drew more blue symbols on the concrete, like ancient sorcerers, smiling, full of confidence. Any moment now, the first stir of the still bodies, any moment now, the cold ones rising, jumping up!

His hands shot up in the air. He nodded his head. He talked and talked and talked. He gestured. He shouted above the crowd, his eyes blazing, his body tense. "Now!" he yelled, forcefully. "Get up, all of you!"

Nothing occurred.

"Get up!" he yelled, with a deep anguish in his voice.

The sheets lay in white and blue-shadowed folds over the silent bodies.

"Hear me and take action!" he shouted.

Far away, on the street, a beetle hissed past.

Again, again, again he shouted, pleading. He knelt by each body and asked for its specific violent favor. No answer. He moved frantically between the neat white rows, throwing his arms up, bending down repeatedly to make blue symbols!

Lantry was really pale. He licked his lips. "Come on, get up," he said. "They have, they always have, for a thousand years. When you make a mark—like this! and say a word—like this! they always rise! Why not you now, why not you! Come on, come on, before they come back!"

The warehouse filled with darkness. Steel beams crisscrossed both ways. Inside, beneath the roof, there was complete silence, except for the ranting of a solitary man.

Lantry paused.

Through the large doors of the warehouse, he saw the last cold stars of the morning.

This was the year 2349.

His eyes became icy and his hands dropped to his sides. He didn’t budge.

Once upon a time, people felt uneasy when they heard the wind around the house; they would raise crucifixes and wolfbane, believing in the undead, bats, and prowling white wolves. As long as they believed, the dead, the bats, and the prowling wolves existed. Their minds created and sustained this reality.

But...

He looked at the bodies covered in white sheets.

These people didn't believe.

They had never believed. They would never believe. They had never imagined that the dead could come back to life. The dead went up chimneys in flames. They had never heard of superstition, never felt fear or disgust or doubt in the dark. Walking dead people couldn't exist; it just didn’t make sense. This was the year 2349, after all!

Therefore, these people couldn’t rise, couldn’t walk again. They were dead and flat and cold. Nothing, chalk, curse, superstition, could revive them and get them walking. They were dead and knew they were dead!

He was by himself.

There were real people in the world who moved around, drove their cars, enjoyed quiet drinks in small, dimly lit bars along country roads, kissed women, and had meaningful conversations all day, every day.

But he wasn't alive.

Friction provided him with the slight warmth he had.

There were two hundred dead people here in this warehouse now, cold on the floor. The first dead people in a hundred years who were allowed to be corpses for an extra hour or more. The first not to be immediately taken to the Incinerator and ignited like so much phosphorus.

He should be happy with them, being with them.

He wasn't.

They were totally dead. They didn't know or believe in walking once the heart had stopped and rested. They were deader than anyone had ever been.

He really was alone, more alone than any man had ever been. He felt the chill of his solitude creeping up into his chest, quietly choking him.

William Lantry turned abruptly and gasped.

While he was standing there, someone had come into the warehouse. A tall man with white hair, wearing a lightweight tan overcoat and no hat. There was no way to tell how long the man had been nearby.

There was no reason to stick around. Lantry turned and began to walk slowly out. He glanced briefly at the man as he walked by, and the man with the white hair looked back at him with curiosity. Had he heard? The curses, the pleas, the shouting? Did he suspect anything? Lantry slowed down. Had this man seen him make the blue chalk marks? But then, would he see them as symbols of an old superstition? Probably not.

Reaching the door, Lantry stopped. For a moment, he just wanted to lie down and feel cold and truly dead again, carried quietly down the street to some far-off burning furnace, where he would be reduced to ashes and whispering flames. If he was truly alone and there was no chance to gather an army for his cause, what reason was there to keep going? Killing? Sure, he could kill a few thousand more. But that wasn’t enough. You can only do so much of that before they pull you down.

He gazed at the cold sky.

A rocket sped through the dark sky, leaving a trail of fire.

Mars burned red among a million stars.

Mars. The library. The librarian. Conversation. Returning astronauts. Graves.

Lantry almost shouted. He held back his hand, which desperately wanted to reach up into the sky and touch Mars. The beautiful red star in the sky. The star that filled him with sudden new hope. If he had a beating heart right now, it would be racing, sweat would be pouring down him, his pulse would be racing, and tears would be in his eyes!

He would head to wherever the rockets launched into space. He would reach Mars, one way or another. He would visit the Martian tombs. There, by God, he was sure there were bodies that would rise and walk and work alongside him! They had an ancient culture, vastly different from that of Earth, modeled after the Egyptian, if what the librarian had said was accurate. And the Egyptians—what a mix of dark superstition and midnight terror that culture had been! Mars it was, then. Beautiful Mars!

But he couldn't draw attention to himself. He had to be careful. He wanted to run, absolutely, to escape, but that would be the worst decision he could make. The man with the white hair kept looking at Lantry now and then, from the entrance. There were too many people around. If anything went down, he’d be outnumbered. So far, he had only faced one man at a time.

Lantry made himself pause and stand on the steps in front of the warehouse. The man with white hair also stepped onto the stairs and stood there, gazing at the sky. He seemed like he was about to say something at any second. He fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

V

They stood outside the morgue together, the tall pink, white-haired man, and Lantry, hands in their pockets. It was a cool night with a white crescent moon that illuminated a house here, a road there, and further on, sections of a river.

"Cigarette?" The man offered Lantry one.

"Thanks!"

They lit up together. The man looked at Lantry's mouth. "Nice night."

"Lit."

They shifted their feet. "Such a bad accident."

"Awful."

"Too many dead."

"Too many."

Lantry felt like a fragile weight on a scale. The other man didn’t seem to be looking at him, but rather listening and sensing him. There was a delicate balance that created a huge sense of unease. He wanted to step back and escape this weighing, this measuring. The tall man with white hair said, "My name's McClure."

"Did you have any friends in there?" asked Lantry.

"No. Just a casual acquaintance. Terrible accident."

Terrible.

They complemented each other. A beetle glided by on the road with its seventeen tires spinning softly. The moon illuminated a small town beyond the dark hills.

"I say," said the man McClure.

Yes.

"Can you answer a question for me?"

"Sure thing." He tightened his grip on the knife in his coat pocket, prepared.

"Is your name Lantry?" the man finally asked.

Yes.

"William Lantry?"

"Yeah."

"Then you're the guy who came out of the Salem graveyard the day before yesterday, right?"

Yes.

"Good Lord, I'm so glad to finally meet you, Lantry! We've been looking for you for the last twenty-four hours!"

The man grabbed his hand, shook it, and patted him on the back.

"What, what?" Lantry said.

"Good Lord, man, why did you run off? Do you realize how important this is? We need to talk to you!"

McClure was smiling and glowing. Another handshake, another slap. "I knew it was you!"

The man is crazy, thought Lantry. Totally crazy. I've destroyed his incinerators, killed people, and he’s shaking my hand. Crazy, crazy!

"Will you come to the Hall?" the man asked, taking his elbow.

"What hall?" Lantry stepped back.

"The Science Hall, of course. We don't get a real case of suspended animation every year. In small animals, sure, but in a man? Hardly! Will you come?"

"What's going on?" Lantry demanded, glaring. "What's with all this talk?"

"My dear friend, what do you mean?" the man was shocked.

"Never mind. Is that the only reason you want to meet me?"

"What other reason could there be, Mr. Lantry? I'm so happy to see you!" He almost did a little dance. "I had a feeling. When we were in there together. You looked so pale and all. And then the way you smoked your cigarette, there was something about it, and a bunch of other things, all on a subconscious level. But it’s you, right? It is you!"

"It's me, William Lantry." Dryly.

"Hey there! Let’s go!"

The beetle zipped through the early morning streets. McClure talked quickly.

Lantry sat, listening, amazed. Here was this idiot, McClure, laying everything out for him! Here was this clueless scientist, or whatever, seeing him not as a potential threat, a dangerous person. Oh no! Quite the opposite! He was only seen as a case of suspended animation! Not as a risky guy at all. Far from it!

"Of course," McClure exclaimed with a grin. "You had no idea where to go or who to ask for help. It all seemed unbelievable to you."

"Yeah."

"I knew you'd be at the morgue tonight," McClure said, feeling pleased.

"Oh?" Lantry tensed.

"Yeah. I can't really explain it. But you, how should I say it? Ancient Americans? You had strange beliefs about death. You were among the dead for such a long time that I thought you'd be pulled back by the accident, by the morgue and everything. It doesn’t really make sense. It’s kind of silly, actually. It was just a feeling. I dislike feelings, but there it was. I had what you might call a hunch, right?"

"You could say that."

"And there you are!"

"There I was," Lantry said.

"Are you hungry right now?"

"I've had something to eat."

"How did you get around?"

"I thumbed a ride."

"You what?"

"People gave me lifts on the road."

"Awesome."

"I guess it sounds that way." He glanced at the houses passing by. "So this is the age of space travel, huh?"

"Oh, we've been traveling to Mars for about forty years now."

"Amazing. And those huge funnels, those towers in the center of every town?"

"Those. Haven't you heard? The Incinerators. Oh, of course, they didn't have anything like that in your time. They had some bad luck with them. An explosion in Salem and one here, all within a forty-eight hour period. You looked like you were going to say something; what is it?"

"I was thinking," said Lantry. "How lucky I am to have gotten out of my coffin when I did. I could have easily been thrown into one of your incinerators and burned up."

"That would have been awful, wouldn't it?"

"Totally."

Lantry fiddled with the dials on the beetle dashboard. He wasn’t going to Mars. His plans had changed. If this idiot just refused to acknowledge an act of violence when it was right in front of him, then let him be an idiot. If they didn’t link the two explosions to a man from the tomb, that was fine by him. Let them keep fooling themselves. If they couldn’t fathom that someone could be malicious, cruel, and murderous, then good luck to them. He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. No Martian trip for you just yet, Lantry. First, let’s see what we can do from the inside. There’s plenty of time. The Incinerators can wait another week or so. One has to be subtle, you know. Any more immediate explosions might stir up too much thought.

McClure was rambling on.

"Of course, you don't have to get examined right away. You'll need some rest. I'll have you stay at my place."

"Thanks. I'm not in the mood for being poked and prodded. There's plenty of time in a week or so."

They pulled up in front of a house and got out.

"You'll naturally want to sleep."

"I've been asleep for hundreds of years. Be happy to stay awake. I'm not tired at all."

"Great." McClure let them into the house. He walked over to the bar. "A drink will sort us out."

"You have one," Lantry said. "I'll wait. I just want to sit down."

"Please, have a seat." McClure made himself a drink. He glanced around the room, looked at Lantry, paused for a moment with the drink in his hand, tilted his head slightly, and put his tongue in his cheek. Then he shrugged and stirred the drink. He walked slowly to a chair and sat down, sipping the drink quietly. He seemed to be waiting for something. "There's cigarettes on the table," he said.

"Thanks." Lantry took one, lit it, and smoked it. He stayed quiet for a while.

Lantry thought, I'm taking this way too lightly. Maybe I should just kill him and run. He's the only one who's found me so far. Maybe this is all a trap. Maybe we’re just sitting here waiting for the cops. Or whatever they have for cops these days. He looked at McClure. No. They weren't waiting for the cops. They were waiting for something else.

McClure didn’t say anything. He stared at Lantry’s face and his hands. He focused on Lantry’s chest for a while, calmly. He took a sip of his drink. He glanced at Lantry’s feet.

Finally he said, "Where did you get the clothes?"

"I asked someone for clothes and they gave me these items. Really nice of them."

"You'll see that's how we are in this world. All you need to do is ask."

McClure fell silent again. His eyes darted around. Just his eyes, nothing else. Once or twice he raised his drink.

A small clock ticked somewhere in the distance.

"Tell me about yourself, Mr. Lantry."

"Nothing much to share."

"You're humble."

"Not really. You understand the past. I know nothing about the future, or I should say 'today' and the day before yesterday. You don't learn much while you're in a coffin."

McClure didn't say anything. He suddenly leaned forward in his chair, then reclined and shook his head.

They'll never suspect me, Lantry thought. They aren't superstitious; they just can't believe in a dead man walking. So, I'll be safe. I'll keep delaying the physical checkup. They're polite. They won't push me. Then, I'll find a way to get to Mars. After that, the tombs, in my own time, and the plan. God, how simple. How naive these people are.

McClure sat across the room for five minutes. A chill had settled over him. The color was slowly draining from his face, like the way the color of medicine fades when you squeeze the bulb at the top of a dropper. He leaned forward, saying nothing, and offered another cigarette to Lantry.

"Thanks." Lantry accepted it. McClure sank back into his comfy chair, his knees crossed. He didn't look at Lantry, yet somehow seemed aware of him. The sensation of weighing and balancing came back. McClure resembled a tall, slender master of hounds, tuning in to something that nobody else could hear. There are tiny silver whistles that only dogs can hear. McClure appeared to be listening intently, sensitively for such an unseen whistle, paying attention with his eyes, his slightly open, dry mouth, and his flaring, breathing nostrils.

Lantry inhaled the cigarette, inhaled the cigarette, inhaled the cigarette, and, just like before, exhaled, exhaled, exhaled. McClure was like a thin, red-haired hound, attentively listening and listening, with a quick glance to the side, holding a sense of nervousness in his hand that was so subtle it was almost imperceptible, felt like an unseen signal, sensed by a part of the brain deeper than sight, smell, or hearing. McClure was all about precision, all antennas.

The room was so quiet that the cigarette smoke created some kind of invisible noise rising to the ceiling. McClure was a thermometer, a chemist's scale, a listening dog, litmus paper, an antenna; all of these. Lantry didn't move. Maybe the feeling would go away. It had gone away before. McClure stayed still for a long time, and then, without saying anything, he nodded at the sherry decanter, and Lantry silently declined. They sat there looking but not really looking at each other, again and away, again and away.

McClure slowly stiffened. Lantry noticed the color draining from his lean cheeks, the grip on the sherry glass tightening, and an understanding finally settling in his eyes, a realization that wouldn’t fade away.

Lantry didn’t move. He couldn’t. Everything was so captivating that he just wanted to watch and hear what would happen next. It was McClure’s show from now on.

McClure said, "At first, I thought it was the most amazing psychosis I’ve ever witnessed. You, I mean. I thought, he's convinced himself, Lantry's convinced himself, he's totally lost it, he's made himself do all these little things." McClure spoke as if he were in a dream, kept talking, and didn’t stop.

"I thought to myself, he’s intentionally not breathing through his nose. I watched your nostrils, Lantry. The tiny hairs didn’t even twitch in the last hour. That wasn’t enough. It was a detail I noted. It still wasn’t enough. He’s breathing through his mouth, I thought, on purpose. Then I handed you a cigarette and you puffed and exhaled, puffed and exhaled. None of it ever came out your nose. I reassured myself, well, that’s fine. He doesn’t inhale. Is that bad, is that suspicious? All in the mouth, all in the mouth. Then, I glanced at your chest. I observed. It didn’t rise or fall, it did nothing. He’s convinced himself, I thought. He’s convinced himself about all of this. He only moves his chest slowly when he thinks you’re not watching. That’s what I told myself."

The words flowed in the silent room, not stopping, still lost in a dream. "And then I offered you a drink, but you don't drink, and I thought, he doesn't drink, I thought. Is that awful? And I watched you all this time. Lantry holds his breath, he's deluding himself. But now, yes, now I understand it completely. Now I get everything just as it is. Do you know how I know? I don’t hear anyone breathing in the room. I wait and hear nothing. There’s no heartbeat or breath. The room is so quiet. You might call it nonsense, but I know. At the Incinerator, I know. There’s a difference. You walk into a room where a man is lying on a bed and you instantly know whether he will look up and talk to you or whether he will never speak to you again. Laugh if you want, but you can tell. It’s a subconscious thing. It’s the sound a dog hears that no human can detect. It’s the ticking of a clock that has ticked for so long that one stops noticing it. Something is in a room when a man is alive in it. Something is missing from the room when a man is dead in it."

McClure closed his eyes for a moment. He set down his sherry glass. He paused briefly. He picked up his cigarette, took a puff, and then placed it in a black tray.

"I’m alone in this room," he said.

Lantry stayed still.

"You’re dead," McClure said. "My mind doesn't accept this. It’s not a rational thing. It's driven by the senses and the subconscious. At first, I thought this guy believes he’s dead, like a vampire risen from the dead. Doesn’t that make sense? Wouldn’t anyone, buried for centuries and raised in a superstitious, ignorant culture, think the same once they came back from the grave? Yes, that makes sense. This guy has hypnotized himself and adjusted his bodily functions so they don’t disrupt his self-deception, his deep paranoia. He controls his breathing. He tells himself, I can’t hear my breathing, so I must be dead. His subconscious blocks out the sound of his breathing. He doesn’t let himself eat or drink. He probably does those things in his sleep, with part of his mind, hiding the evidence of his humanity from his deluded self at other times."

McClure wrapped it up. "I was wrong. You're not crazy. You're not fooling yourself or me. This is all really illogical and—I have to say—kind of scary. Does it make you feel good to know you scare me? I don't have a label for you. You're a very strange guy, Lantry. I'm glad I met you. This will definitely make for an interesting report."

"Is there something wrong with me being dead?" Lantry asked. "Is it a crime?"

"You have to admit it's pretty unusual."

"But, is it still a crime?" asked Lantry.

"We have no crime, no criminal court. We want to examine you, of course, to figure out how you came to be. It’s like that chemical which, one minute is inactive, and the next is a living cell. Who can say what happened to what? You are that impossibility. It’s enough to drive a person completely insane."

"Will I be let go when you're finished touching me?"

"You won’t be held. If you don’t want to be examined, you don’t have to be. But I really hope you’ll help us by offering your services."

"I might," Lantry said.

"But tell me," McClure said. "What were you doing at the morgue?"

"Nothing."

"I heard you talking when I walked in."

"I was just curious."

"You're lying. That's really not good, Mr. Lantry. The truth is much better. The truth is, isn't it, that you're dead and, being the only one of your kind, you were lonely. So, you killed people to have some company."

"How does that make sense?"

McClure laughed. "Logic, my friend. Once I knew you were really dead, just a moment ago, really a—what do you call it—a vampire (silly word!), I immediately linked you to the Incinerator blasts. Before that, there was no reason to connect you. But once that one piece fell into place, the fact that you were dead, it was easy to guess your loneliness, your hate, your envy, all the petty motivations of a walking corpse. It took just an instant to see the Incinerators blown to pieces, and then to think of you, among the bodies at the morgue, looking for help, looking for friends and people like you to work with—"

"You're too damn smart!" Lantry jumped out of the chair. He was halfway to the other guy when McClure rolled over and dashed away, tossing the sherry decanter. With a deep sense of despair, Lantry realized that, like a total idiot, he had wasted his one chance to kill McClure. He should have done it earlier. It had been Lantry's only weapon, his safety net. If people in a society never killed each other, they never suspected one another. You could walk up to any one of them and kill him.

"Come back here!" Lantry threw the knife.

McClure moved behind a chair. The thought of escaping, of being safe, of fighting, was still fresh to him. He grasped part of the concept, but there was still some luck favoring Lantry if Lantry decided to take advantage of it.

"Oh, no," McClure said, holding the chair between himself and the approaching man. "You want to hurt me. It's strange, but true. I just can't get it. You want to stab me with that knife or something like that, and it’s my job to stop you from doing something so bizarre."

"I will kill you!" Lantry blurted out. He cursed himself. That was the worst thing he could have said.

Lantry jumped across the chair, grabbing at McClure.

McClure was very rational. "It won't help you to kill me. You know that." They struggled and grabbed each other in a chaotic, stumbling dance. Tables tipped over, scattering items. "Do you remember what happened in the morgue?"

"I don't care!" yelled Lantry.

"You didn't raise those dead, did you?"

"I don't care!" shouted Lantry.

"Look," McClure said calmly. "There will never be anyone like you again, it’s pointless."

"Then I'll wipe all of you out, every single one!" yelled Lantry.

"And then what? You'll still be alone, with no one like you around."

"I’m going to Mars. They have graves there. I’ll discover more people like me!"

"No," McClure said. "The executive order was approved yesterday. All of the tombs will be emptied of their bodies. They'll be cremated next week."

They crashed to the floor together. Lantry grabbed McClure by the throat.

"Please," said McClure. "You see, you’ll die."

"What do you mean?" shouted Lantry.

"Once you kill all of us and you're left by yourself, you'll die! The hate will fade away. That hate is what drives you, nothing else! That envy pushes you. Nothing else! You’ll die, inevitably. You're not immortal. You're not even truly alive; you're just a moving hate."

"I don't care!" shouted Lantry, as he started choking the man, pounding his head with his fists while crouched over the helpless body. McClure looked up at him with fading eyes.

The front door swung open. Two men walked in.

"I say," said one of them. "What's happening? A new game?"

Lantry jumped back and started running.

"Yes, a new game!" McClure said, getting up with some effort. "Catch him, and you win!"

The two men grabbed Lantry. "We win," they said.

"Let me go!" Lantry screamed, flailing and hitting them in the face, drawing blood.

"Hold him tight!" shouted McClure.

They restrained him.

"A tough game, right?" one of them said. "What do we do now?"

The beetle hummed along the shiny road. Rain poured down from the sky, and the wind howled through the dark green, wet trees. In the beetle, with his hands on the half-wheel, McClure was talking. His voice was soft, whispery, almost hypnotic. The two other men sat in the back seat. Lantry was in the front seat, reclining with his head back, his eyes barely open, the glowing green light from the dashboard dials illuminating his cheeks. His mouth was relaxed. He didn't say anything.

McClure spoke softly and rationally about life and movement, about death and stillness, about the sun and the massive sun Incinerator, about the empty graveyard, about hatred and how it thrived, bringing a clay figure to life and making it move, and how absurd it all was, it all was, it all was. One was dead, was dead, was dead; that was just it, all, all. One didn’t try to be anything else. The car whispered along the road. The rain lightly tapped on the windshield. The men in the back seat chatted quietly. Where were they headed? To the Incinerator, of course. Cigarette smoke floated slowly into the air, curling and weaving into itself in gray loops and spirals. One was dead and had to accept it.

Lantry didn’t move. He was a puppet with the strings severed. There was only a small hatred in his heart, in his eyes, like two faint coals—weak, glowing, and fading.

I am Poe, he thought. I am all that’s left of Edgar Allan Poe, and I am all that’s left of Ambrose Bierce and all that’s left of a guy named Lovecraft. I am a gray night bat with sharp teeth, and I am a solid black monolith monster. I am Osiris and Baal and Set. I am the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead. I am the house of Usher, going up in flames. I am the Red Death. I am the man bricked into the catacomb with a cask of Amontillado.... I am a dancing skeleton. I am a coffin, a shroud, a lightning bolt reflected in an old house window. I am an empty autumn tree, I am a banging, flinging shutter. I am a yellowed book turned by a clawed hand. I am an organ played in an attic at midnight. I am a mask, a skull mask behind an oak tree on Halloween. I am a poison apple bobbing in a tub of water for kids to bump against, for kids’ teeth to snap.... I am a black candle lit before an upside-down cross. I am a coffin lid, a sheet with eyes, a footstep on a dark staircase. I am Dunsany and Machen and I am the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I am The Monkey's Paw and I am The Phantom Rickshaw. I am The Cat and the Canary, The Gorilla, the Bat. I am the ghost of Hamlet’s father on the castle wall.

All of these things are me. And now these final things will be burned. While I lived, they were still alive. While I moved, hated, and existed, they were still here. I am everything that remembers them. I am all of them that still carries on, and won't go on after tonight. Tonight, all of us—Poe, Bierce, and Hamlet's father—we burn together. They'll pile us up and set us on fire like a bonfire, like things from Guy Fawkes' day, with gasoline, torches, screams, and everything!

And what a cry we will make. The world will be rid of us, but as we leave, we'll wonder, oh what is the world like, free of fear, where is the dark imagination from the bad times, the excitement and the build-up, the suspense of old October, gone, never to return again, flattened and smashed and burned by the rocket people, by the Incinerator people, wiped out and erased, to be replaced by doors that open and close and lights that switch on and off without fear. If only you could remember how we used to live, what Halloween meant to us, and what Poe was, and how we reveled in the dark and morbid things. One more drink, dear friends, of Amontillado, before the burning begins. All of this, all, exists only in the last mind on earth. A whole world dying tonight. One more drink, please.

"Here we are," McClure said.

The Incinerator was brightly lit. There was soft music playing nearby. McClure got out of the car, walked around to the other side, and opened the door. Lantry just lay there. The conversations and the logical discussions had slowly drained the life out of him. He felt like nothing more than wax now, with a faint glow in his eyes. This future world, the way the men talked to you, how they used logic to reason away your existence. They wouldn’t believe in him. The weight of their disbelief completely paralyzed him. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. All he could do was mumble incoherently, coldly, with his eyes flickering.

McClure and the two others helped him out of the car, placed him in a golden box, and rolled him on a roller table into the warm, glowing interior of the building.

I am Edgar Allan Poe, I am Ambrose Bierce, I am Halloween, I am a coffin, a shroud, a Monkey's Paw, a Ghost, a Vampire....

"Yeah, yeah," McClure said softly, interrupting him. "I get it. I get it."

The table moved smoothly. The walls shifted around him, and the music played. You are dead, you’re logically dead.

I am Usher, I am the Maelstrom, I am the MS Found In A Bottle, I am the Pit and I am the Pendulum, I am the Telltale Heart, I am the Raven nevermore, nevermore.

"Yeah," McClure said quietly as they walked. "I know."

"I’m in the catacomb," shouted Lantry.

"Yeah, the catacomb," said the guy walking above him.

"I’m chained to a wall, and there’s no bottle of Amontillado here!" cried Lantry weakly, eyes shut.

"Yeah," someone said.

There was motion. The fire door opened.

"Now someone is sealing up the cell, trapping me inside!"

"Yeah, I know." A whisper.

The golden box slid into the flame lock.

"I'm being trapped! That's a hilarious joke! Let’s get out of here!" A wild scream and a burst of laughter.

"We get it."

The inner flame lock opened. The golden coffin burst into flames.

"For the love of God, Montresor! For the love of God!"