The strange manuscript had been hidden away for years — maybe even a decade — by the time Ben Rubin stumbled upon it in the spring of 2019.
Rubin oversees the Horror Studies Collection at the University of Pittsburgh Library System, which houses the archives of one of the most revered scare-masters of all time: George A. Romero, the writer-director whose 1968 film “Night of the Living Dead” kicked off a zombie zeitgeist.
Five years ago, not long after Romero’s death, his papers were donated to the University of Pittsburgh (Romero lived in the region for years). The archives feature tens of thousands of documents, including screenplays for some of his most beloved films — like the 1977 bloodsucker drama “Martin” — as well as rough drafts for several unmade Romero projects, including a big-screen remake of “The Mummy,” and a goofy sci-fi romp titled “Nuns From Outer Space.”
Yet the collection’s most intriguing artifact, Rubin said, was waiting for him in an plain-looking container marked “T-Box 7, SL15.” That’s where he found the manuscript of a sprawling supernatural novel — one Romero had clearly worked on extensively, and apparently in secret. Titled “Pay the Piper,” it follows a young girl as she fights a monster haunting her impoverished Louisiana hometown.
Rubin, a longtime horror aficionado, had never heard of “Pay the Piper.” Neither had Romero’s widow, Suzanne Desrocher-Romero. And the author had left behind few clues as to the novel’s origins: The 348-page printout was undated, with no explanatory notes.
Even more frustrating: “Pay the Piper” wasn’t finished.
“It was hard to read that much, and not get a payoff,” Rubin said.
Years later, Romero’s ambitious novel finally got its ending. “Pay the Piper,” co-written by best-selling author Daniel Kraus, was published this month by Union Square & Co.
The result is likely to surprise even the director’s most devoted fans. Though “Pay the Piper” features many of Romero’s creative hallmarks — creepy creatures, icky deaths and under-the-surface social commentary — it resembles little else from his decades-long career.
For starters, there’s not a zombie to be found. And while Romero’s films were often shot around western Pennsylvania, “Pay the Piper” unfolds amid the swampy, foggy bayous of the South.
Perhaps most crucial, the novel demonstrates a knack for the kind of patient, expansive storytelling Romero couldn’t always squeeze into his big-screen efforts. “Pay the Piper” unites many of the filmmaker’s far-flung interests, from pulpy pirate tales to golden-age Hollywood lore to centuries-spanning American history. To those who celebrated (or perhaps derided) Romero as the dean of the dead, the completed novel offers a chance to reconsider his legacy.
“People only know a sliver of his work,” said Desrocher-Romero, who was married to the director from 2011 until his death in 2017. “It’s important people realize George Romero is more than zombies.”
Over the course of more than 40 years, Romero directed more than a dozen feature films, including “The Crazies,” from 1973, about a small town torn apart by a deadly bacteria, and the EC Comics-inspired anthology “Creepshow,” from 1982.
Still, he was best known for his brainy, violent zombie films, which served as gory allegories for everything from racism (“Night of the Living Dead”) to consumerism (1978’s “Dawn of the Dead”) and wealth inequality (2005’s “Land of the Dead”).
“For me the gore is always a slap in the face, saying, ‘Wait a minute. Look at this other thing,’” Romero said in 2008.
Throughout his life, Romero was a prolific writer, knocking out numerous screenplays, TV pilots and the occasional short story. According to Desrocher-Romero, while the director was grateful for the career afforded by his zombie films, he also felt they limited his opportunities in Hollywood. “He just got put in a box,” she said. “He would have liked to have had an opportunity to expose his diverse interests.”
In his later years, while living in Toronto with Desrocher-Romero, he’d reach for his computer the moment an idea struck, and then type for hours in solitude at a living room coffee table. “He’d say, ‘I have a story in my head, and I’m going to write till I’m done,’” she recalled. “And two or three days later, it would be done.”
“Pay the Piper” certainly demanded more time than that, though it’s unclear when Romero produced it. Based on the type of paper used to print the manuscript — as well as some references within the book — Rubin estimates “Pay the Piper” was written between the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Not long after discovering the manuscript, Rubin showed it to Kraus, who’d worked with the filmmaker’s estate in the past, turning an unpublished zombie story by Romero into the 2020 novel “The Living Dead.” Kraus had grown up studying the director’s films — “George helped raise me,” he said with a laugh. As he began reading “Pay the Piper,” Kraus was struck by how little it resembled anything else in Romero’s filmography.
“His excitement is tangible in his prose, because he was doing something different,” Kraus said. “‘The Living Dead,’ as good as his manuscript was, is a book George probably felt he had to write. And ‘Pay the Piper’ was the book he wanted to write. It’s just filled with his own idiosyncratic enthusiasms.”
The novel is set in the tiny, fictional town of Alligator Point, La., whose few remaining residents are either dying, drifting or being driven out by an oil man who is buying up what was left of the town. It’s also home to the Piper, a mysterious shape-shifter killing off residents and seeking vengeance for long-ago atrocities. After the Piper murders her best friend, a young swamp-rat named Renée Pontiac confronts the beast once and for all, aided by a small group of oddball locals, including her alcoholic father and a sheriff with a John Wayne obsession.
“George felt so free with this writing, he had a tendency to get bigger, adding more characters and more situations,” Kraus said. “And then the book stops.”
To pick up where Romero left off, Kraus traveled to Louisiana for research. “We went as far as you can go into the bayou, until the roads run out,” he said. “Louisiana in the summer is steamy in a way that really puts its stamp on you. And you can work that into your writing — you don’t forget that kind of heat.”
Kraus then began paring back and reworking Romero’s manuscript. One character’s death was handed to another, while an entire chapter about a 1948 John Wayne film, “Wake of the Red Witch,” was jettisoned altogether.
“I had to study what he’d written for clues about where he was going,” Kraus said. “And I had to think about George’s perspective: How would he feel about this decision? Does it fit into his philosophy of life and death?”
“Pay the Piper” isn’t the first once-lost Romero project to be brought back to life in recent years. A hard-to-find 1973 short film, “The Amusement Park,” was unearthed in 2020. And according to Desrocher-Romero, a new zombie film, “Twilight of the Dead,” is set to go into production soon, based on a screenplay Romero had been working on before he died.
That still leaves the blueprints for more than 100 unfinished films and TV projects waiting in the Romero archives. Desrocher-Romero said she has been meeting with entertainment-industry executives to discuss more posthumous projects.
“You have to tread softly — you can’t be exploitative,” she said. “But you need to shine a light on the man’s talent.”
For now, Rubin — the librarian who first came across Romero’s manuscript — is grateful that “Pay the Piper” has at long last been completed. And he’s hopeful it will prompt the filmmaker’s fans and critics to resurrect their own opinions of the filmmaker.
“We’ve all had this idea of Romero,” he said, “and we’re going to need to revise it.”
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