Dead Jack and the Soul Catcher: (Volume 2)

by James Aquilone

  “Sorry. We don’t help Nazis.”

  “Technically, it would be neo-Nazis. But they don’t like us using the N-word too much. We’re advocates for Pandemonium’s human population. So, you can call us ‘humanists.’”

  “No, I’ll call you Nazis. It’s easier to remember.”

  “Is that you, Jack? I’ve heard so much about you from Ratzinger. He really misses you, you know? He feels like you’re a son to him.” My skin crawled. “Oh, Jack, dear, do me a favor and open the doors before my men break them down. I’d hate to see them dirty their uniforms. It would get me really steamed. They’re such smart-looking outfits. You’re going to flip when you see them in good lighting. We can fix you up in nice duds, too. Were you buried in that suit you’re wearing?”

  Nazis. Fookin crazy Nazis and their uniforms. I could hear it in her cocky, psychotic voice too. “I’d rather go naked.”

  She laughed, a sharp, biting laugh like a wolf baying. If I had blood in my veins, it would have drained out of my body.

  Garry returned, out of breath. He whispered, “There’s a back door, Jack, but it’s blocked.”

  “Show me.”

  Wally and Zara followed us to the back of the lab, mostly, a storage area with more books, boxes, and beakers.

  “Here,” Garry said, and stopped. A large wooden chest sat in front of the door.

  “I tried to reason with you,” Ilsa said. “Knock the fookin door off its hinges and then bash these badly dressed losers.” Something crashed against the front doors―a Nazi zombie, no doubt.

  Me and Zara got on one end of the chest and pushed. Damn it was heavy. When we got it out of the way, I grabbed the knob and yanked. It came off in my hand. Another crash rattled the front doors.

  Boom-Boom-Boom. The front doors sounded like they’d give out soon, the hinges cracking and bending.

  “Move out of the way,” Zara said.

  The second I stepped to the side, her hammer came whistling through the air and blew apart the door. We ran back into the labyrinth. Without warning, my satchel felt heavy and weighed down, like I was carrying a dozen bricks.

  jackjackjackjackjackjackjackjack

  The voice practically shouted.

  I took the lead and we ran around the outer perimeter of the lab until we came to a passage.

  Was the runt finally coming out of his coma? I lifted him out of my satchel. He must have quadrupled in weight. I needed both hands to hold him up. His weight wasn’t the only thing different about him. He throbbed like a beating heart and glowed so brightly it burned my eyes.

  jackjackjackjackjackjackjackjack

  “Are you waking up or about to explode?” I asked. I remembered Lucifer’s words: You’re carrying around an A-bomb, Jack.

  I’m fine, Oswald said, loud and clear inside my head. I had known, on some level, that the static came from him, but not until that moment did I admit it. He had been warning me, guiding me this whole time.

  We turned right and plunged down another corridor. I instinctually knew the path. Did I know because he knew?

  The banging from the Nazis faded off to silence. Not even footsteps chased us. I wasn’t stupid enough to think they had given up.

  Oswald, how do you know what you know? I asked in my mind. You weren’t so bright when you were alive.

  I’m still alive.

  Then wake up. I’m tired of carrying you around. If this was all a scam to get me to lug you everywhere, I’m going to be pissed.

  I’m not ready to wake up.

  Fookin prima donna.

  We made another right, and Oswald glowed brighter. I had to close my eyes. When I opened them, we stood face to face with the Nazi fooks.

  Zara pressed next to me. Garry and Wally held back.

  “Hi, Garry.” Ilsa Hellstrom waved. She wore a cheery smile, exposing ivory white teeth. “Your hair looks like shit, by the way. You really need a new wig.”

  Garry harrumphed.

  “You told them we were here, Garry?” I demanded. “You traitorous bag of bones!”

  “Not me, buddy! I swear.”

  “If you idiots don’t want your secrets out, you shouldn’t talk to snakes,” Ilsa said.

  She wore the same black mirror-shiny jackboots and form-fitting black slacks as the undead soldiers. Her shirt, however, was a crisp white topped with a short red tie. Her hair had been pulled into a tight ponytail and a little black hat sat atop her head, askew. Half a dozen zombies in―I had to admit―boss uniforms stood behind her. All black. Well-tailored. White piping. High stiff collars with lightning bolts in red. Caps too. Next to Ilsa stood the biggest, baddest zombie I had ever seen: an undead Goliath with a face only a Nazi could love. Half of it had been obliterated. Exposed muscles bulged from his neck.

  The Nazis had taken me by such surprise that I had forgotten I held Oswald.

  The zombie King Kong made a beeline for me. I tried shoving Oswald back in my satchel, but I was too slow. The undead beast drove his shoulder into my stomach, slamming me against the wall. Oswald went flying. The glowing white ball dropped right into the Nazi bitch’s hands.

  “That was much easier than I thought it would be,” she said, and chuckled to herself.

  Zara swung at the zombie henchman, who turned with supernatural speed and caught the head of the sledgehammer in his meaty hands. Panic etched her face as she tried to pull the hammer away. The zombie held on to it. Zara tried to yank it back, but her feet slid along the ground as he pulled the weapon toward himself.

  I stood and punched the galoot in the head. He didn’t notice. I pulled back my fist in pain. It felt like punching an anvil. I looked back at Wally and Garry, who gave me “we’re fooked, aren’t we?” looks.

  For no apparent reason, Zombie Goliath’s head twisted to the left as if he’d been socked on the jaw, then jerked to the right. A look of confusion washed over the half of his face still there. He spun, doubled over, and flew into Ilsa.

  “Lucius!” Wally shouted. “You came back!” The wizard jumped for joy.

  I still didn’t see Wally’s imaginary friend, but I finally believed in him.

  “Auf Wiedersehen,” the Nazi doctor said, before she made a gesture with her right hand and vanished along with her henchmen and Oswald.

  Wally ran over to an empty spot in the middle of the corridor. “Lucius! You saved us!”

  I fell back against the wall, a heat rising up my body. I couldn’t move. I kept thinking, “They got Oswald. They fookin got Oswald.”

  “We’ll get him back.” Zara put her hand on my shoulder.

  “We still need to find the souls,” Garry said.

  I punched him so hard his wig flew off.

  CHAPTER 13: Where Is My Soul?

  When we returned to the surface, hunger and despair tore at my insides. I had never felt anything so black―and I’ve been tortured by a psychotic Nazi scientist. All seemed lost and pointless. I had no will to continue. I didn’t give a gremlin’s arse about the souls, no matter what Garry said about them. I hated that skeleton more than I have ever hated anyone before. Well, maybe not as bad as that Nazi bitch and her pet zombie, but pretty close.

  Zara kept saying that we’ll get Oswald back, we just needed to find the souls first. We had come so far already. “You understand, right?”

  I felt like a gutted and filleted merman. It had been months since Oswald wasn’t beside me. Old habits die hard. I pulled off my satchel and threw it away.

  The world spun. I sat on a boulder away from the others, trying to communicate with Oswald, but received only a dreadful silence. A memory of our first meeting flashed in my mind. The bastard had just oozed from a hole in my skull. A puddle of white liquid pooled at my feet, then morphed into a little man. For months, I had been suffering from the worst migraines in my undead life. The pain had gotten so bad I took a chisel to my pate and opened a hole. That’s when Oswald decided to reveal himself. He leaked out of my head like pus out of a pimple.

  When he
first spoke, I nearly jumped out of my skin. He told me he had been living in my head for six months because he found it warm and cozy in there. He prattled on like he knew me my entire life.

  I wanted nothing to do with the creep, but he wouldn’t leave me alone. He followed me everywhere, even on cases, which had been scarce back in those days. Eventually, I let him tag along with me, mostly because he seemed so pathetic. Besides, I needed an assistant and he worked for free. He had no name. So I named him Oswald. He had no eyes either. So I scratched two X’s in his head and called him a homunculus, a little man. Soon, I’d call him a thorn in my fookin side.

  Wally dug another hole in the ground, bent over it, and whispered, doing his old snake bit.

  “Why the hell would you trust a snake, Wally?” Zara grabbed the wizard by the shoulder.

  He brushed her off. “Trust me. She won’t say a thing.”

  Zara stepped back. “You better be right.”

  I had the yellow powder half out of my pocket when the snake came slithering toward Wally.

  “Sorry, Neba,” he said. “We need to find something else.”

  The snake hissed.

  “I know you just helped us, but we’re looking for souls that are most likely buried here. They’d be in clay jars.”

  The snake hissed.

  “She wants something,” Wally said.

  “Like what?” Zara asked. “Not another tonsil manipulation?”

  “She wants something shiny this time.”

  “How about my watch?” Garry said. “I’m not going to need it.”

  “Perfect.”

  Garry dropped the timepiece beside her and she swallowed it. Why? I had no idea.

  The snake slithered away. Wally and Garry ran after her.

  “I’ll wait here,” I said, but Zara had other ideas. She grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled me up.

  She pushed me along a narrow path flanked by strange brown roots that waved like seaweed underwater. Skeletal tree branches formed an intricate latticework above our heads, blocking off the sky. No wind blew.

  Though I had taken dust only a few hours ago, my hunger rolled around in my gut with tsunami-sized waves. My throat burned and my stomach knotted. The snake looked fat and juicy. She’d probably taste like taffy. I even thought of breaking open Garry’s bones to get at the marrow.

  The snake stopped beside a rotten tree trunk covered in those strange roots, and hissed at Wally.

  “She says it’s here.” Then to the snake, he said, “Let me thank you.”

  Wally pursed his lips and lowered himself toward the snake. The serpent rose to receive her thank-you kiss, but instead the wizard snatched up the creature and bashed her against the tree trunk.

  “Fookin Nazi traitor,” he said, as blood spilled onto his hand. He dropped the dead snake on the ground. “You can have your watch back, Garry.”

  “I’d rather have my soul.” The skeleton dropped to his knees before the tree trunk and dug with his hands. I watched with no interest. I hoped he didn’t find the souls. They only led to trouble.

  Thoughts of what the Nazis had planned for Oswald entered my head and I had to drive them out.

  Garry stopped digging. “I think I found something!” His glee made me want to vomit. “This has to be it.” He dug more furiously and soon he lifted up a filthy wooden box about the size of a chessboard. “The fookin souls!” he yelled maniacally. “My fookin soul!”

  He laid the box on the ground and carefully lifted the lid. It contained dozens of small clay jars like eggs in a carton. Garry lifted one out and turned it over. He put it back and picked up another. Each had a series of numbers etched on their bottoms, as they did in the journal illustrations.

  Garry’s eyes went wide. “This is mine! One-one-two-three!”

  “Yippee, arsehole!” I said.

  “Jack, aren’t you excited?” Wally asked. “You’re getting your soul back.”

  “Yippee!” I repeated.

  “And here’s Jack’s,” Garry said. He held up a clay jar that looked like all the others. Except this one had 1134 written on it.

  “Are you going to kill yourself now, Garry?” I asked, hoping he’d answer in the affirmative.

  “Jack, what’s the matter? After all these years, we found our souls. You don’t have to be a zombie anymore.” He put my soul back in the box.

  “Maybe I like being a zombie.”

  “That’s your choice, buddy. I don’t like being a skeleton.”

  “Then open your jar.”

  “I will.”

  “Good.”

  His nervousness showed. After all this time, he was unsure. He had been a zombie/skeleton longer than a human. And he had never been much of a human.

  He held up his soul vessel and studied it.

  “A word of warning,” Wally said. “There won’t be any turning back once you reunite with your soul.”

  “I know what I want,” he said.

  “You don’t even know what’s going to happen,” I said. “It might not be pretty.”

  “You’re not talking me out of this because you’re afraid.”

  Garry took a breath, tilted his head back, and cracked open the jar over his gaping mouth. An ethereal orb of purple light poured out. Garry sucked it in like the ultimate bong hit.

  Purple light poured out of every orifice in his skull, and then slid down his body, the light burning through his zoot suit.

  Soon a purple glow bathed him and a beatific expression appeared on his face. In a flash, Garry turned human. Flesh and all. A magnificent thick mop of curly blond hair covered his head.

  “I’m free,” he said, smiling dumbly. “Finally free.”

  “Your hair looks fantastic,” Zara said.

  “I know.” He stroked it. His blue eyes sparkled. I thought he was about to orgasm. Then his flesh turned transparent and he gently hovered over the ground. I knew that look. My secretary, Lilith, is a ghost, too.

  “I guess this is goodbye, buddy,” Garry said, “I’m off to the great beyond. I hear it’s nice. Good luck finding Oswald.” He waved and faded away. Only his elf-hair wig remained, flopped on the ground like a dead beaver.

  “Good riddance,” I muttered.

  “Jack!” Zara slapped me in the back of the head.

  “If it wasn’t for him, Oswald wouldn’t be a Nazi toy now.”

  “Not his fault, Jack.”

  “He wanted to find the souls.”

  “And you found them. What are you going to do with yours?”

  I thought about it. I could join Garry in the afterlife. Give up the life of a two-bit detective in this hellscape. It was never much.

  Zara handed me my soul jar. It felt a bit lighter than I expected. But souls don’t weigh much, do they?

  Maybe I could release the damn thing. Send it on its way. What did I need it for?

  I examined the vessel. And that’s when I noticed a hairline crack around its circumference. I grabbed the top of the jar with one hand and the bottom with the other. A slight twist and the two ends came apart.

  Empty.

  CHAPTER 14: Souls. What Are They Good For?

  How did I get here?

  Nazis stole my soul during WWII. It was the low point of the war. For me, anyway. They had a bit of trouble extracting it. The bastards had to kill me in the secret bunker known as Room 731, over and over, until I finally gave up the ghost. Once Dr. Josef Ratzinger, Nazi psycho extraordinaire, had possession of my lifeforce, I became his obedient zombie slave. Sort of like that Bela Lugosi flick White Zombie. But poor old Bela had nothing on the Nazis. What would a Nazi do with a zombie, you ask? If you have to ask, you don’t know anything about Nazis. The scum were losing the war, so they created an army of undead and unleashed us on the enemy. Though the war was in its final stages, we had time enough to do some nasty things. Our first stop: a small village in the French countryside. The place had no strategic value. No enemy soldiers. It should have been left alone. But
the village had been marked to serve as a training ground for Ratzinger’s pet project, and we did exceedingly well. I’ve returned to that village many times in my nightmares. But that place was just the beginning of the nightmare. Our band of undead brothers burned through France and Poland and even made it to Germany as the Russians closed in. We pushed the Russkies back. With the Germans gathering other supernaturals to their cause, it looked like they could turn the tide of the war. But the Allies zapped us to Pandemonium.

  Once free of Ratzinger and trapped in this infernal dimension, I didn’t miss my soul. Not really. A soul is a burden. It weighs you down. A soul holds on to all your hurt and misery. I did all right without it, regardless of what Oswald says. Souls are for losers.

  The homunculus always made a big deal about souls. He seemed to think they mattered. I didn’t give it much thought until Ratzinger came back into my life. I only agreed to look for mine because I didn’t want Ratzinger and his band of psychos to get their hands on it. I didn’t have any intentions of getting re-enlisted in his stupid outfit.

  But I have to admit all of Garry’s talk about souls had gotten my hopes up. I thought getting back my lifeforce would be the answer, that it would change everything. For the positive.

  I should have known better.

  CHAPTER 15: Tripping the Light Fantastic

  What a kick in the soft parts. My dark despair turned darker. My despair turned despairer. I was one fookin sad zombie.

  I had lost Oswald and my soul, for the second time.

  What did I have left?

  Where could my soul have gone? Was it destroyed? Was it wandering around Pandemonium like a lost puppy? Had Ratzinger gotten his hands on it? Did it not want to be found?

  And had I found it, what would I do with it?

  Would I reunite with my lifeforce and shuffle off to the great beyond like that dimwit Garry? Do I want to leave Pandemonium? To be honest, I feel more at home here than I ever did in the Other World. At least in the Five Cities, I know where I stand: at the very bottom of society.