The Axeboy's Blues (The Agents Of Book 1)

by Andy Reynolds

  Edith straightened herself up and approached the table again, with Mars following suit behind her.

  “I'll give her my memories,” said Adelaide. “Julius, let me take Edith with me. I'll train her as well as I can while we're hunting The Axeboy, and before I go back I'll let her see my memories.”

  Julius twisted his neck until it cracked. “It's ultimately her decision. She is not an Agent, so there is no reason for her to help.”

  Adelaide turned to Edith, who looked down at the chisel and asked: “So this 'axe-boy' is going to bring sorrow and destruction to New Orleans? Is that how you put it?”

  “Worse than anything you can imagine,” said Adelaide. “If you go with me, I'll do my best to keep you safe.”

  Julius flinched as Edith's eyes stayed locked on the chisel. She seemed to have an idea of how dark the object was. Gods knew what she was seeing when she looked at it. “I'm in,” she said.

  “Good,” said Roman. “Thank you, Edith.”

  “Adelaide,” said Julius. “I will be your backup, understand? So when you get close to The Axeboy, you call me in. And if you find or expect any danger, you come get me.”

  “Done.” It wasn't Adelaide's safety that Julius was worried about, and he could see in her eyes that she knew that. Julius nodded to her, then looked to Roman, who went back to the map.

  “Alright,” Roman said, “so Mars, Julius and I will scour The CBD, trying to find the radius of the skips.”

  “Wait,” said Mars. “So if you and Julius are old as... uh... really old... then you gathered up people from this time period back in 1934, right? And then you sent them back?”

  Roman raised his hand to Mars and spoke slowly. “We cannot talk about such things in front of Adelaide. Especially details that will directly affect her if she gets back to 1934.”

  Adelaide pushed her chair back. “Edith and I should start hunting The Axeboy.”

  “In a moment,” said Roman. “First we need ideas, and we should all have a general idea of what's going on. So Mars, Julius and I will scout for time skips and people from '34. We will try to determine a radius and an epicenter, so that we can round the people up for when we fix the time skip and keep them near the center. When the fluctuations calm down, the time skips will only happen near the center. But when we find it, we'll need to quarantine off the area, which will prove complicated – as it always does.”

  “Construction always works,” said Julius.

  “Yes,” said Roman, “but it's expensive and sloppy. And we'll lose construction workers to 1934, as well as putting people crossing over from '34 in danger, walking directly into a construction zone.”

  Mars stood up, looking down at the map. “So how large do you think this center point might be?”

  Roman looked at her and sighed. Julius could have answered, but since the memories he held of 1934 were from a few lifetimes back, they were much more vague than the memories rattling around in Roman's head, so Roman would have a much more precise idea – that is, if he felt he could answer the question in front of Adelaide.

  “It's uncertain,” said Roman. “Perhaps a city block or a block and a half, perhaps less.”

  Mars nodded. “Shoot a movie.”

  Roman shook his head, but Julius – the part of Julius that was a 40-ish-year-old resident of New Orleans – saw the spark in what she said.

  “She's right,” said Edith. “Movies are roping off streets all the time, all over the city. Just say it's a 1930s period piece.”

  “Yeah,” said Mars. “It'll be less expensive and not sloppy. There are already production assistants and Hollywood trucks in the city, just make up a fake movie and hire them to rope off the area and not let people in or out. It'll make our jobs that much easier.”

  Roman looked down at the map, then nodded. He looked up at Julius.

  “It's brilliant,” said Julius, then shrugged. “If anything will work, that will work.”

  “Ok,” said Roman, “then I will look into getting movie trucks and employees, as well as funding. Mars...” He unhooked a device from his belt and tossed it to her. “Figure out how that works, and use it while you look for time skips and '34 people. Julius...” He looked into Julius' eyes and Julius nodded. “Alright – Mars, Adelaide and Edith. You have your assignments.” He pulled from inside his coat three pieces of paper and handed them to the three women. “These are maps of The French Quarter. As you may know, working with the Agency greatly hinders your ability to use cellular phones. You may also know that payphones are becoming ever more rare.”

  “What is a cell-ular phone?” asked Adelaide.

  Mars pulled hers out. “A magic phone that fits in your pocket. These days everyone's got one.”

  Adelaide nodded and Roman continued. “The dots on these maps mark the current location of working payphones, and dots with an 'X' through them are phones that are no longer operational. I suggest you memorize these locations, as well as the phone number for the Agents headquarters.”

  Mars put her hand in the air.

  “What's wrong?” asked Roman.

  “I think she has a question,” said Julius.

  “Oh,” said Roman.

  Mars placed the business card for The Agents of Fateful Encounters on the table and pointed to where the “Fateful Encounters” part was scratched out. “What are we? I mean, what are we called?”

  Roman looked to Julius, whose eyes scanned over the card – the name scratched out like nearly every Agent on that team. Like so many Agents before from all the other teams. “That's our name.”

  “The Agents of Fateful Encounters?” said Mars. “Isn't that a little anticlimactic?”

  Julius shook his head, reached down and pressed his finger over the scratched out words.

  “The Agents of what?” asked Mars.

  “We're done with tag lines.” Julius thought of all the Agents who'd fallen beside him, thought of all his own fallen lives, as well as his future lives would no longer come into being. “We're done fucking around. We're The Agents Of.”

  File 26 :: [The Axeboy]

  The Axeboy made his way through the altered downtown streets with their strange automobiles and absence of streetcars. He didn't even see streetcar tracks anywhere. Where the hell had he gotten to? It was definitely the world of the living, but it was like an alternate reality of some kind. He knew he'd been pulled through time, but the place he ended up didn't look anything like the future he'd imagined.

  He caught his reflection in the window of a parked car – blood dripped from his nose down his chin and onto his shirt.

  He wiped his face with the back of his hand and ducked into an alley, leaning back against a wall behind some trash cans. He lifted the axe to his ear to hear the trumpets, which helped focus his mind. Holstering his axe, he felt around to see if any of his bones were broken, but he just seemed to be really banged up.

  It was that damned Agent of Karma! And she had the chisel now, too. At least she'd brought it with her through time. Maybe this future New Orleans didn't have any Agents of Karma – then he'd only have the one to deal with. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the blood from his face. At least if there weren't any Agents, there wouldn't be any repercussions from killing the woman.

  The Axeboy held his bruised ribs and began feeling woozy. He needed to get out of the living world. He let go of his physical form and the world around him slowly did the same, becoming gray and incorporeal, the people walking past the alleyway becoming vertical beams of white light. He shifted backwards into the first world of the dead, then shuffled past the second and third and into the fourth, the Tartarus Realm.

  The Axeboy stretched his limbs and took a deep breath, feeling the near-weightlessness of his body. The alley around him was similar to the alley in the world of the living, if the alley had the color sucked out of it. The whole Tartarus, in fact, had always looked like it was a copy of New Orleans made out of solidified smoke. The Tartarus had also always c
onsisted of a mix of buildings from the present and from the past. He stepped out onto the sidewalk, looking around at all of the new buildings, the buildings from his time and buildings that were long gone before he'd been born. Already he could feel his body mending and stitching itself back together. He gazed up at the churning mess of dark gray and pale white that was the sky of Oblivion, and his hand rested on the top of his axe. He could feel his father up there, looking down on him. Waiting. “It won't be long,” the boy whispered.

  Something was wrong and it took him a moment to realize what it was – that the Tartarus Realm seemed to be completely devoid of ghostly activity. Of the ghostly realms, the Tartarus was always the least inhabited, but he'd never seen the streets completely empty. Of course, the inhabitants of the furthest realm before Oblivion were never the most social of ghosts – usually contemplating the end of their earthly existence or lamenting their lost lives. Maybe he'd see someone in The Quarter.

  The Axeboy walked down the middle of the street, listening to the winds of Oblivion howling high above. He'd be healed up soon and begin his hunt once more.

  As he made his way into The Quarter it started to dawn on him that the whole Tartarus Realm was empty. He shifted into the third ghostly realm and then into the second[17], which was teeming with ghosts. He shifted back through the worlds to the Tartarus Realm as he walked down Bourbon Street, which some street signs called Calle de Borbon, or Rue Bourbon, and then into the only inhabited place he could find – a place called Aleix's Coffee House. There were a few ghosts playing chess in a window with the gray light of Oblivion filtering in to light their game while a few more ghosts stood at the bar. The Axeboy took note of the instrument cases at the chess players' feet. One of them was a trumpet case.

  The Axeboy walked up to the bar. The bartender was dressed in a suit that would have once been nice, but now looked like it had been dragged through the street and run over by horses couple of times. His brown hair stuck up in odd angles and he needed a shave.

  “Whiskey, neat,” said The Axeboy.

  The bartender looked him up and down. “How old are you, kid?”

  “I was born in 1920,” said The Axeboy.

  The bartender turned, grabbed a bottle of Jameson and poured him a shot. He watched as The Axeboy sipped it. It was obvious that the bartender was going to kick him out if he coughed. Ghosts never quite knew what to make of him, since to them he looked to be a ghost and not a ghost at the same time. The bartender turned, picked up a towel and began drying glasses.

  “I've been gone for a while,” said The Axeboy. He said it loud enough for the other patrons standing at the bar to hear him. “How come this realm is so empty?”

  One of the men at the bar laughed. He was burly and bald and looked like a laborer of some kind, maybe a dock worker. “Oh, you have been gone a while. Decades back now The Angel of Death lifted the restrictions in New Orleans on the dead traveling between the worlds. So ghosts can freely go to the world of the living or the Land of the Dead, without a shred of paperwork or stamps or identification. Turns out ghosts just don't care as much about these farther realms anymore. Myself, I like it here now that it's less crowded. Those other ghosts, they can all keep Necropolis and the damned world of the living.”

  “Why in the hell would she do that?” The Axeboy said.

  “Some say it was for budgetary reasons. That the city kept giving her less funding every year, and she just needed so many employees to monitor the traffic between the ghostly worlds and the living world, and so she shut it down. The city stopped funding her altogether, trying to force her to put the system back in place, but she completely cut ties from them.”

  The bartender walked up, putting some glasses away beneath the bar. “I still believe it was a power play. People had stopped fearing her, thinking of her as a city employee. Now she answers to no one but herself, and everyone knows it. If people see her, or think they see her, they get anxious. They worry for their ghostly existence.”

  The ghost farthest from The Axeboy, a woman standing at the bar and drinking a cocktail, spoke up then. “You're both wrong. The real reason has to do with us. She knows something we don't. Why else would she flood the living city and Necropolis with ghosts? She has some kind of control over us that we don't know about, some kind of control that she'll use one day. That's why I'm staying the hell out of the living world. She can have the living world and the dead world for all I care.”

  The bartender raised an eyebrow and nodded towards the lady. “Conspiracy nut,” he whispered.

  “Boy,” said the burly ghost suddenly, glaring down at The Axeboy's silver axe. “You best not walk around with that axe on your hip. Being born in '20, you might not know that such a thing will likely get you noosed on this side of life.”

  “I'll be fine,” said The Axeboy, sipping his whiskey.

  “No, you don't understand. You may have never heard of The Axeman, or think he's some kind of fucking fairytale. But some of us lost dear friends and loved ones at the hands of that maniac, and people strutting around with axes gives a bad impression.”

  “He's right,” said the bartender, shrugging. “Sorry, but axes are a weird thing over here. I'm sure you have your reasons for carrying it around. I can rustle up a bag or something for you to put it in.”

  The Axeboy pulled out the silver axe and set it on the bar, the quiet hum of trumpets emanating from deep within it. To the burly ghost, he said, “Maniac, huh? Do you believe every piece of propaganda that The Agents of Karma plaster onto telephone poles? Do the Agents tuck you in at night, too?”

  The burly man slammed his drink onto the bar. “I will not let you speak of the slaughter of my friends as if it were a damned joke!”

  “Hey!” said the bartender. The burly man shut up and the bartender turned to The Axeboy. “Your drink's on the house. Now get the fuck out.”

  The Axeboy slowly picked up his shot glass and finished his whiskey. Then he picked up his axe and turned around, but was suddenly grabbed from behind and picked up.

  “No fighting in my bar!” the bartender yelled.

  “He's not moving fast enough,” said the burly man, who was now bear-hugging The Axeboy from behind. He threw The Axeboy onto the floor, his axe tumbling to the ground next to him.

  The Axeboy grabbed his axe and hurled it through the air. It embedded into the frame of the door next to the head of one of the musicians, who had been trying to slip out. “Sit back down,” said the boy.

  He turned and the burly man's massive hands were on his shoulders, picking him up into the air. The Axeboy looked into the ghost and saw the different layers of spirit and life braided together like rope. The different pieces of the ghost swirled around, pulsing and sparking. “This looks important,” said The Axeboy, reaching into the burly man's chest and squeezing one of the lights in his small fist.

  The burly man screamed out and let go of him. The Axeboy landed on his feet, turned and walked towards the door as the burly man collapsed onto the floor behind him, moaning. He nodded to the musician that was sitting closest to the trumpet case. “That you're trumpet?”

  “Ye... Yes it is,” said the man. He wore a tan suit and had a thick mustache. The Axeboy grabbed the trumpet player's arm and set his shoe onto the trumpet case. He raised his other hand and the axe pulled itself from the door frame and flew towards him. He caught the axe as gray shadows slithered over the both of them, sucking them into the third ghostly world. The building, which was now empty, changed its color and shape around them.

  The trumpet player stepped backward and then fell onto the ground. The Axeboy picked up the trumpet case and tossed it to him.

  “He wasn't a maniac,” he said. “Just a victim of propaganda.” He looked down at the musician, who was muttering for The Axeboy not to hurt him. “But that's for me to worry about. Not you.”

  He flipped the axe into the air, caught it, and swiped down at the trumpet player.

  File 27 :: [Edith Downs] />
  Edith quieted her mind and concentrated. She felt the mechanisms sliding into and against each other inside of the massive Extraction Glove which was strapped to her arm. She looked quite ridiculous, she was certain, with the sleeve of her blouse pushed up to her shoulder and this contraption of metal, leather and multi-colored vials covering her left hand and arm up to her elbow. The glove had obviously been made so that it could fit someone much bigger than her, so it looked almost like she had a huge robotic arm like in one of those Japanese comics.

  Roman had insisted that she and Adelaide go back to the headquarters so that he could give Edith a quick run-through on the glove. Currently she was experimenting on extracting the memories instilled in an antique gas lamp, while Roman and Adelaide were going through equipment across the room and putting various devices into a duffel bag.

  The glove was strange – it seemed to create a kind of shield around her while it was activated, barring mems from penetrating her consciousness at all. Normally her interactions with mems was so fluid and dream-like, but the glove seemed to have a way of organizing the memories. While looking into the lamp, Edith saw all the memories stacked up in chronological order. Also, it was like she could read the Cliff Notes version of each memory, like an outline of what the memory was about and what kinds of emotions it contained.

  She'd never felt such utter control when dealing with mems before. Though it wasn't really mems she was dealing with, was it? These were not so much the personification of memories – it was like she was bypassing the mems altogether and going to the source of the mems. What she was dealing with now were much more like documents or files. Edith picked one of the files from the middle of the lamp's stack of memories and let it enter her mind. Once it opened up she found herself standing in a dim and dusty room with dying sunlight sifting in through murky windows. A Victrola in the corner played opera and there was a man hunched over a desk carefully painting figures and patterns onto the lamp. He was happy and hummed along with the opera as he painted. Edith found that she had the power, the control to let the happiness into herself if she wished, and she did so. She was then overcome with such euphoria that she began to smile and laugh.