Category: Horror Publisher: Books Unbound, Inc.
ISBN-10: 1592010180
Type: Fiction
Copyright: October 2003
The dead can and do come back. How unfortunate for you!
Be warned: The ending may leave you believing the dead can and do come back. And praying they won't.
Excerpt
"I pulled on his arm and I heard that sound," she managed to continue. "I shall hear it every day and every night the rest of my life. I don't know how to describe it. Something like the sound of a rotten tree branch, wet, fibrous, being pulled apart. There was not much resistance. It tore. I could feel it leave its socket. Then, it sort of swiveled and came lose. I stood there, the arm in my hand."
Why do coffins have lids? I mean, after we view the body, the undertaker could lay the box in the ground, and shovel the dirt on top of the corpse. Only the vanity of those living, and not the lid, keeps the corpse safe from the fateful exposure to soil. It?s all going to decompose anyway.
?The Remigrants? begins as a fast paced suspense novel. Alice tries to remain calm as she waits for her husband, Nicolas, to return home on a snowy winter night. The police call, and she quickly drives to the scene of an accident. Her husband?s car, protruding under a bridge, had started to disappear into the bay, but the police could not find his body. Hours later at home, after Alice notifies relatives and close friends of the accident, Nicolas knocks at the front door. He acts distant, doesn?t have an appetite, and he?s ice cold. Alice confronts him "...at the front door, and ever since you've been here, you're someone else. You are not Nicholas Keene. You're not the old Nicky I knew so well.? (pg 31)
Nicolas had died, but his postmortem body could not rest. Remigrants ?possess the blind determination to keep on walking, talking, seemingly functioning as live human beings.? (pg. 49) Alice felt confused by her husband?s changed demeanor, and soon learned of her impending danger. She realized, ?He wanted me to die so that I could be with him, so that the two of us could go there and be together always.? (pg. 62)
Joseph E. Wright weaves a remarkable tale. I revisited the copyright page, to remind myself of the disclosure, ?Any resemblance to actual events or locations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.? My mind raced as I thought of the known accounts of people who rose from the dead. I recommend ?The Remigrants? for those who could use a semi-scientific explanation for a corpse returning to life after death.
So, why do coffins have lids? I surmise the lid hinders the cadaver from completing any unfinished business.
Pray for the light. Pray that you last that long. The Long Hour Before Light is a classic collection of Horror tales, re-mastered by Champagne Book Group
The fortunate inherit riches, prestige, positive notoriety. Those not so lucky bear legacies filled with poverty, infamy or, worse yet, the unhinged insanity and murderous urges of their ancestors.
