“There must be some mistake,” Dr. Pierre Gardere said as the Haitian lawyer scrutinized the deliverymen removing the cargo from the van.
            The lawyer, a small, dark man in a clean white suit, marked off each item from his manifest with a flourish. He’d been standing resolutely as Gardere tried his best to send the deliverymen away, but they wouldn’t be deterred from their duty. They moved languidly in the sun, carrying boxes that seemed much too heavy for each man to lift and staring at him from time to time through shaded glasses. Gardere watched them carefully stack the crates on the fine, manicured lawn spread regally before his nine bedroom manse in the Beverly Hills countryside and knew, just knew the neighbors were peering disapprovingly from behind their curtains.
            “I’m very sorry about your father,” the lawyer said, still watching the progress of the Haitian work crew. “He was a well-respected man, a brilliant Houngan.”
            “My father died three months ago,” Gardere said, rubbing his mouth nervously. My God, the Chief of Medicine of his hospital lived three doors down. What would the man think of this circus? “I already sent my regrets for not attending the funeral. He died during the busy season, you know.  I had three rhinoplasties that week. Surely you understand?”
            “No doubt your father was watching from beyond,” the little man said with a wink. “He was a talented man.”
            He was a loon, Gardere thought, but kept it to himself.
            “Wasn’t my father’s estate already disposed of?” he said instead. “Why am I only receiving these things now?”
            Immediately the little man dropped his clipboard and fell to his knees, bleating loudly into the stale southern California air.
            “Please don’t blame me for the delay,” he moaned, grabbing at Gardere’s pant leg. “I beg you not to curse me for my tardiness!”
            Gardere hurriedly pulled the man to his feet, smiling humorlessly for the neighbors. “Some decorum, please! I’m not going to curse you.”
            “It wasn’t my fault! Please don’t turn my brethren into insects for the crows!”
            “Listen, I’m not a priest! For God’s sake, I’m a cosmetic surgeon! I have no training in the black arts.”
            “Indulge my unworthiness with your mercy!”
            “All right, you’ve got my mercy, just stop groveling!”
            In a few minutes the crew finished stacking the last of the crates onto the lawn. The five deliverymen stood in a line before Gardere, perhaps anticipating a tip.
            Gardere turned to the lawyer, resigned to receiving his father’s mortal possessions. No doubt the crates were filled with vinegar-soaked chicken bones and endless jars of freeze-dried goat’s blood. Better to move them quickly into the garage and dispose of their embarrassing contents later.
            “That will do it,” the lawyer said, signing the manifest and having Gardere do the same. The little man closed the back door of the moving van, then walked to the cab and climbed aboard.
            “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Gardere said, pointing toward the crew.
            “No, Dr. Gardere,” the lawyer said, leaning from the window. “They are part of your inheritance.”
            “What?”
            “Your father was a wealthy man,” the little Haitian said, wiping his forehead with a cloth. “To own five zombies—such affluence! My congratulations on your good fortune!”
            Before he could properly protest—and protest loudly—the van vanished down the winding streets.
            Dr. Pierre Gardere, his mouth left open in surprise, turned toward the five men standing on his lawn. They stood unmoving, ostensibly waiting for his next command. This must be some elaborate joke, he thought, halfway smiling. Abruptly one of the zombie’s arms slipped from its socket and fell onto the grass.
            Then he knew he had a very real problem.
#
            “Well?”
            “I’ll be damned,” Lester Weill said as he gazed through his Otoscope into the ear canal of the lifeless body sitting alertly on one of the Morgue’s examination tables. He regarded Gardere through thick eyeglasses. “I think I see cobwebs.”
            “Beautiful,” Gardere said as he studied the flat lines on the display of the electrocardiogram connected to another of the Haitian delivery crew. “This one has all the cardiac activity of road kill. By the way, thanks for helping me sew his arm back on.”
            “I’d love to get one of them into the CT unit,” Weill said enthusiastically. “That might show something—”
            “No, no!” Gardere said. “It was difficult enough getting these guys down here unnoticed. I don’t want anyone seeing them, let alone Dr. Thomas. If this gets back to him, I’ll be out of a job. Hell, my entire career will be over.”
            “And you say your father bequeathed these fellows to you?” Weill asked, tapping his patient’s unresponsive knee. “I know you’re from Haiti, but I didn’t know you practiced voodoo.”
            “I’ve never practiced voodoo!” Gardere said, perturbed. He always became irate whenever he heard the term mentioned in association with his heritage. “Look, my mother and I left the island when I was a little boy, I don’t know anything about my father’s interests. I’m Episcopalian, Lester. I don’t know anything about raising the dead.”
            “Your father certainly seems to have been comfortable with the practice.”
            “My father was a witch-doctor. I’m a man of science. And this—this—”
            He motioned to the five naked Haitians sitting, standing, and stumbling around the cramped quarters.
            “This is impossible!”
            “They seem to qualify as the living dead to me,” Weill said. “What are you going to do with them?”
            “I guess I could ship them back to Haiti.”
            “As freight or people?”
            “They’d never pass inspection. I can only imagine they were smuggled into the country by unlicensed cargo boat. Since they’re already dead—no, damn it, I can’t bury them if they’re moving around during the funeral. What the hell do I do?”
            Weill leaned back in his chair.
            “Have you ever considered reversing the curse?”
            “Pardon me?”
            “Well, I’m assuming your father cast a spell on these unfortunate men to do his bidding after death. Surely if the curse is lifted they’ll go back to being regular old corpses and your troubles will be over.”
            “Think so?”
            “Why not?”
            Gardere shook his head. “You don’t understand, Lester. When I came to this country I swore I would never delve into the superstitious nonsense my father indulged in all his life. Why do you think my mother left Haiti in the first place? He wanted me to be his acolyte. I was just about to ask Becky to marry me, too. What do you think she’ll say when she sees I’m the proud owner of five pristine examples of voodoo?”
            “I see your point. But what other options do you have?”
            Gardere’s eyes widened as he considered the question. Nothing came immediately to mind. Perhaps if he learned only enough to release the spell—
            “Hey!” Weill said. “Get away from there!”
            The portly technician ambled over to where one of the zombies had stumbled against a tray of shiny bone cutters.
            “For crying out loud, I just washed those!”
            Gardere sighed, resigned to the task before him. He helped collect the instruments at the clumsy Haitian’s feet before dressing them all again and hustling them out the back.
#
            Gardere spent the next few weeks studying the books in the crates, texts full of rich illustrations and bizarre incantations. He was mildly amused at the thought of his father being a Sakpata, an expert on diseases, and wondered if this had anything to do with his own choice of professions. Healing the sick, though, seemed a far cry from liposuction and chin lifts. He carefully compared the texts to the healthy supply of bottled liquids and powders that accompanied them. It its own quaint way, it was an interesting religious practice, though he equated it only with primitive psychology. He kept the zombies free of scrutiny by dressing them in greens and claiming they were his new gardeners. That they were fairly proficient at topiary was an unexpected windfall.
            When he was finally ready for the emancipation ceremony, he dressed in the priestly robe and gathered the five zombies on the lawn by the gardening shed. Under the light of a full moon, he danced, chanted and slung secret powders into the faces of the undead Haitians, consulting his notes only occasionally before uttering the final prayer.
            In a moment, all five Haitians fell dead—unequivocally dead—beneath the shimmering moon.
            “There,” he said, wiping ceremonial paint from his face, “that should do it.”
            He was wondering what to do with the corpses—perhaps Weill could give him a deal on bulk cremations—when the Beverly Hills police came to his door.
            “Excuse me, Dr. Gardere,” the officer said, “but we’ve had reports of some sort of orgy taking place in your back yard.”
            Gardere, still trying to rub powdered rooster’s blood from his cheeks, smiled weakly.
            “No, nothing of the sort,” he said, thinking of the five dead bodies by the shed. “I was just giving my gardening crew their instructions for tomorrow.”
            “Your instructions wouldn’t include loud chanting and dancing naked, would it?”
            “Not to my knowledge.”
            “Well, just keep it down,” the officer said, dubious. “We have enough crazies in this neighborhood.”
            After the police left, Gardere quickly pulled on his ceremonial robe, ran into the back yard and surveyed the corpses on the grass. Disappointed that he hadn’t processed the five bodies into his post-ritual plans, he acquiesced to his panic and reversed the spell. As the moon fell below the eaves of his fine house, the five Haitians once again became animated and marched dutifully into the shed.
#
            “What in the hell am I going to do?” Gardere said.
            Weill leaned back in his chair, contemplating Gardere’s recent experiences.
            “You could always drive them into Death Valley and leave them by the side of the road.”
            “I’ve taken the Hippocratic oath.”
            “Oh, well, pardon me. You’ve got five dead guys in your shed. Of course the ethics of the matter take precedence.”
            “Hell, Lester, for all I know they’ll just walk all the way back to my house.”
            “Yes, I guess the heat wouldn’t be a problem for them.”
            Weill leaned forward and clapped his hands.
            “Have you ever thought of flying them back to Haiti yourself? I’m not certain about the local laws, but if your father was a respected voodoo priest then I think releasing the spell there wouldn’t create the same problems it would here.”
            “Lester, you’re a genius!” Gardere said, smiling. “But do you really think I could get them to Haiti?”
            “Sure. I know a guy who prints up fake identification and passports. You can pass the guys off as your cousins or something. With you as their chaperone they’ll be easy to control.”
            Gardere considered traveling all the way to Haiti with five zombies and lost his smile. But if he could get them off his hands without any complications—
#
            Three weeks later, Lester Weill received a postcard. After admiring the scantily clad Haitian locals on the front, he read his erstwhile colleague’s message on the back:
            Sorry to take so long to write, but when I got here the people received me as some sort of celebrity. I guess my father’s reputation preceded me. Anyway, after dispatching the zombies I spent the next couple of weeks ministering to the people. Lester, they positively worship me! I mean, literally! Now I know what my father loved about the religion. I’m sending for his materials and selling the house. Tell Becky I’m sorry, but I’ve found my true calling.
            PS. This may sound paranoid, but if he wasn’t dead and buried I wouldn’t have put it past my father to have orchestrated the entire trip.
            Weill nodded sagely and dropped the postcard onto his desk. Then he opened a drawer and removed the talisman he’d received from Haiti months before.
            “No,” he said in a spellbound voice, “I wouldn’t, either.”