Sudden Death

by Donald Hanley

  But I can talk to Mrs. Phipps, I thought, eyeing the jail door, and she can talk to Mrs. Kendricks. She’ll think I’m a complete nutcase, though, asking her to repeat what I say to someone who’s standing right there. Maybe I should just get her to pass along a message when Mrs. Kendricks gets here. There was no telling how long that was going to take, though, and I couldn’t do anything now with Sergeant Finney sitting right there.

  I wish I could manifest like Olivia, I grumbled to myself, flexing my insubstantial hands. She doesn’t have any problems talking to living people, not with the Dread Lord’s curse trying to make her human. Wait a minute. I straightened as I realized how to solve my problem. Olivia should be able to talk to other ghosts, right? I’ll get her to tell Mrs. Kendricks what happened!

  I still had to find her, of course, but odds were she was back at the apartment. She and Dara almost never went anywhere on their own, largely because neither of them had a car or knew how to drive one, Olivia’s one lesson in the school parking lot notwithstanding.

  My apartment complex was south of downtown, so I had another two- or three-mile hike ahead of me. I retraced my steps, wondering how I was going to explain all this to Olivia, and another officer stepped out of the squad room down the hall. I stopped in my tracks, surprised and relieved at the same time.

  “Cruz!” I exclaimed. “You’re alive!” She ignored me and walked away. I hurried after her, trying to think of some way to get her attention. “Cruz, can you hear me?” She glanced at her watch, muttered something I couldn’t catch, and went into the locker room at the end of the hall, letting the door shut in my face.

  I ghosted through and found her in front of her open locker, slipping the holster off her belt and laying it on the wooden bench beside her. I stepped around her and waved my hand in front of her face. “Cruz! I need you to tell me what happened in the library.” Nothing. She unbuckled her belt and stowed it in her locker and then sat on the bench to untie her shoes.

  I looked around the locker room for inspiration. In the movies, ghosts could write messages on steamed-up mirrors or arrange letters on a Scrabble board, but I couldn’t turn on the shower in the adjoining bathroom and the other officers weren’t known for their fondness for word games. I tried to remember if there was anything useful in my own locker but it didn’t matter anyway. I couldn’t undo the padlock to open it.

  “Cruz –” I turned just in time to see Cruz step out of her uniform pants. Her shirt was barely long enough to cover her butt and I caught a glimpse of silky panties dotted with tiny roses. Her legs were long and lean and brown, a perfect combination of DNA and suntan. “I, uh, I –” She folded her slacks and set them aside and then began unbuttoning her shirt, humming something to herself.

  I need to leave, I told myself. She’s a fellow officer, she deserves her privacy. My legs pretended not to hear me as my eyes followed her fingers downwards to the last button. She shrugged off her shirt, shook it out, and hung it inside her locker. Her white t-shirt clung to her modest curves and hinted at a matching bra underneath.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed as Cruz slipped a finger under the edge of her panties, while Little Peter proved he didn’t need a functioning nervous system or a blood supply to stand up and take notice. I wrenched myself away and fled through the nearest wall, finding myself outside in front of the station.

  What’s the big hurry? Little Peter protested. It’s not like she knew we were there or anything.

  That’s the point! I told him, checking around furtively before shifting him over to a more comfortable position.

  Come on! We’re dead, we can’t do anything anymore. Peeping is all we have left.

  No! We’re going to figure out what happened to me and deal with that demon or whatever and then we’re going to Heaven.

  Heaven is boring, he grumbled. There aren’t any naked girls there.

  Just deal with it, I ordered. He subsided reluctantly and I set off at a jog, bearing south, as I wondered if Little Olivia gave Olivia this much trouble.

  She’s a girl, Little Peter reminded me, she doesn’t have the necessary equipment. Unless you’re talking about her –

  Stop right there, I warned him. Olivia’s our friend.

  Oh, right, he retorted. If he had eyes, he would have been rolling them. As if you haven’t peeked whenever she’s in ghost form.

  I have not! Much, I amended. Her nightgown’s all torn up, it’s impossible not to look.

  Uh-huh, he said smugly and then thankfully fell silent for the rest of our journey.

  3

  Dungeons in Legends of Lorecraft are populated with all sorts of creatures eager to steal something from you, ranging anywhere from your belongings to your sense of direction to your life. Doppelgangers, for example, are malicious spirits that steal your identity, turning themselves into exact clones of your character, copying your name, your appearance, your equipment, and your spells and powers.

  The really annoying part about doppelgangers is that you usually don’t realize you’ve been cloned until much later, when your in-game reputation starts to drop for no apparent reason. NPCs start charging more for goods, they refuse to give out useful information, and they throw rubbish at you whenever you walk by. You have to abandon whatever quest you’re on and hunt down the doppelganger before other players notice the WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE posters on the castle walls.

  This happened to my guild-mate David, a.k.a. Sir Morgan Justarius of Alindale, a few months back. It took us hours to track down his doppelganger in the middle of a bandit camp and killing it turned out to be a lot harder than expected, because it kept jumping all around during the fight and I couldn’t tell which paladin was which. I ended up killing both of them just to be sure but then I accidentally revived the wrong corpse and we had to start all over again. Who knew that identity theft would be such a headache in the fantasy world too?

  Walking has been mankind’s primary mode of transportation ever since our distant ancestors first stood upright on the African savannah, but that didn’t mean it was a particularly effective way to get from Point A to Point B. By the time the iron gates of the Oakmont Village apartments appeared at the far end of the block, I’d been trudging along the streets of Hellburn for what had to be at least an hour. I wasn’t tired – one of the few benefits of being a ghost, I supposed – but I was bored out of my skull. Without a functioning smartphone or access to a car radio, the only thing I had to listen to were my own thoughts.

  What’s Olivia going to say when she sees me? I wondered gloomily. That’s even assuming she can see me. She’s hardly ever in ghost form these days. I guess she just prefers being with Dara. Or Dara’s tail, anyway.

  I walked along the tall wrought iron fence surrounding the property, heading for the entrance. Despite its name, Oakmont Village didn’t have a single oak tree within its bounds, but there was a plentiful supply of crepe myrtles and neatly-trimmed boxwood hedges to complement the concrete and brick. I stepped through the gate and followed the driveway winding past the main office and the community center.

  Most of the structures scattered around the property were traditional apartments but Building 5 contained three-story townhouses jammed shoulder-to-shoulder, overlooking the grassy park where kids could play soccer and throw Frisbees when it wasn’t too hot, which was never. The pool was well-occupied, though, mostly by young mothers trying to keep their offspring from drowning. I winced at a particularly shrill shriek of joy and eyed my designated parking spot in front of Unit 501. It was empty, of course, and I wondered where my car was now. Probably in a ditch somewhere, I sighed. I loved that car.

  The pavement sparkled as I got closer and I bent down to see why. Broken slivers of glass were scattered all over the parking area, as if someone had smashed a bottle on the ground, except all the pieces were flat. I checked the first- and second-story windows but they were fine. When I backed up to see the third story, though, I sucked in my breath. The glass door leading to the balcony was gon
e, leaving only a few jagged shards dangling from the frame.

  “Dara?” I called. “Olivia?” I ran to the door without waiting for a response, wasting a couple of seconds trying to turn the knob before phasing through the door into the entranceway. “Dara –”

  I stumbled to a halt. More shards covered the tiled floor, but these were plaster, not glass. The painted blue eye of Protego the enchanted garden gnome stared up at me accusingly from one of them, as if he blamed me for his demise. “What the hell?” I murmured uneasily. “Dara? Olivia? Are you here?”

  “Peter?” Olivia’s shaky voice came from upstairs. “Don’t come any closer!”

  “What’s wrong?” I took the stairs two at a time to the second floor landing. The hallway was empty and all the doors were closed. “Where are you?”

  “Stay away from me!” Her voice had a hysterical edge to it now. “I’m warning you, I’ll – I’ll – um.”

  “What’s going on?” I raced up the stairs to the third floor and found Olivia cowering behind the lounger in the living room, peeking around the side with wide, frightened eyes. “What happened?” I asked her anxiously. “Are you okay?”

  She ducked back out of sight. “Stay back!”

  “I’m not going to hurt you. What’s going on? What happened to the window?” I walked around the lounger and she jumped up with a squeak, backing away from me and clutching the remnants of her nightgown in her fists. I finally realized she was a ghost again. “Where’s Dara?”

  “I’ll never tell you!” She looked around frantically for an escape route and then tried to bolt past me but I grabbed her arm. “Let me go!” She tried to yank herself free before taking a swing at me, landing a solid punch on the side of my head. It didn’t hurt but it surprised me enough to loosen my grip.

  She ran for the dining room before remembering that it was a dead end. She spun around and raced for the stairs instead but that moment of hesitation gave me enough time to tackle her around the waist and bring her to the ground. She wriggled and bucked and clawed at my face but I finally straddled her hips and pinned her arms. “Olivia, stop!”

  She struggled for another few seconds and then subsided. “Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I assured her firmly but she clearly didn’t believe me. “Look, if I let you up, do you promise not to run?” She hesitated, looking around for some possible means of escape, and then nodded. I carefully released her arms and sat back warily, but she just rubbed her wrists, watching me. “Okay, I’m getting up now. Just take it easy, okay?”

  I got to my feet and held out my hand to help her up. She took it reluctantly and let me pull her upright. Then she suddenly shoved me backwards and fled for the stairs. Before I regained my balance, she was gone. “Olivia!”

  “Don’t try to follow me!” She was already halfway down the stairs.

  “I’m dead!”

  In the long silence that followed, I couldn’t be sure if she heard me. Then the top of her head poked into view. “What did you say?”

  “I’m dead,” I told her somberly. “I’m a ghost, like you. I couldn’t hurt you even if I wanted to.”

  She frowned at me as if I was speaking gibberish. Then she peered at me closely and her mouth dropped open. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “Did Dara actually kill you?”

  I blinked at her. “Wait, what?”

  “You tried to kill Dara and you were fighting and she jumped out the window and you went after her and – and – I guess she killed you,” she finished uneasily. “But where is she?” she asked worriedly. “Why didn’t she come back?”

  “Hold on, back up,” I told her. “Dara and I were fighting? When did that happen?”

  Now it was Olivia’s turn to look at me doubtfully. “Don’t you remember?”

  “No! I just woke up dead behind the library.”

  “The library? How did you get all the way over there?”

  “I don’t know, that’s the point! What happened here? Why is the window broken and where is everybody?”

  “I don’t know,” she said miserably. “I’ve just been waiting here for Dara to come back. I’m really worried about her. Are you sure you didn’t kill her?”

  “I didn’t kill anyone!” I insisted. “I wasn’t even here!”

  “Peter, I was right there! I saw you!”

  “Whoever it was, it wasn’t me. Look, let’s just start at the beginning,” I sighed. “I went to work just before midnight, right?”

  “Well, I was asleep then,” she pointed out.

  “Fine, that doesn’t matter. Cruz and I were on patrol and we got a call to investigate a break-in at the library. I found the intruder, she attacked me, and that’s the last thing I remember until this.” I gestured at myself.

  “No,” Olivia said carefully, “you came home around nine.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did!”

  I rolled my eyes with a sigh. “Look, just tell me what happened.”

  She eyed me askance, as if she suspected I was playing some sort of trick on her. “Well, Dara and I were having breakfast,” she waved a hand towards the kitchen, “and we heard the front door open. Then all of a sudden, the dwarves starting shouting Danger! Danger! Danger!”

  “What dwarves?” I asked doubtfully.

  “You know, those little statues Mrs. Kendricks gave us.”

  “Those are gnomes.”

  “Gnomes, dwarves, whatever,” she said dismissively. “Anyway, I heard something break and they just stopped. Then you walked in and Dara went berserk.”

  “What do you mean, berserk?”

  “She jumped out of her chair, grabbed her sword, and tried to stab you.”

  Several confused thoughts vied for control of my tongue. The one that won said, “She had her sword with her at breakfast?”

  “Yeah, she carries it around all the time now. She says she wants to be ready for the next demon attack. I think she’s getting paranoid,” Olivia confided softly.

  I looked through the archway into the kitchen. One of the chairs was lying on its back and the remnants of a plate of frozen waffles was stuck to the floor in a puddle of syrup. Melissa’s going to throw a fit when she sees that, I mused. “There’s no blood,” I observed aloud.

  “She missed. You’re very fast.” She eyed me warily, as if she thought I might jump on her again.

  “So then what happened?” I prompted.

  “You tried to take the sword from her and you two fought all over the place. You ended up in the living room and Dara finally got away from you. She shouted at me to run away and then she jumped through the window and off the balcony.”

  “Seriously?” I asked skeptically. “That’s a thirty-foot drop onto concrete.”

  Olivia spread her hands helplessly. “She wasn’t there when I went looking for her afterwards, so I guess she’s okay.”

  “So this guy went after her?”

  “I suppose,” she shrugged doubtfully. “I didn’t see what happened.”

  “Why not?”

  “You did something to me.” She edged away from me, rubbing her arms. “It felt like I was on fire, like when Susie cut my soul out of Dara’s head. I passed out or something and when I woke up, everyone was gone and I was a ghost again.” She looked down at herself and tried to rearrange the tatters of her nightgown to cover herself up better.

  “So why don’t you change back?” I asked her curiously.

  “I can’t,” she admitted, looking miserable. “I tried. It doesn’t work anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know, it just doesn’t! I’m stuck. I can’t do anything like this,” she complained.

  “Tell me about it,” I muttered. “Well, keep trying. You need to call Mrs. Kendricks and tell her what happened.” I waved my hand around us to indicate the destruction of our apartment. Melissa was definitely going to be pissed, although the fact of my death might distract her for a bit. />
  “How?” Olivia asked doubtfully. “Even if I was physical, I don’t have a phone.”

  “Well, maybe someone in the tenant services office will let you borrow theirs.” I raked my fingers through my hair, trying to make sense of everything and failing. “We need to find Dara.”

  Olivia backed away. “I won’t let you hurt her,” she warned me.

  “That wasn’t me!” I retorted in exasperation.

  “He looked exactly like you and he sounded exactly like you and he wore exactly the same clothes,” she insisted. indicating my uniform. “If that wasn’t you, then who was it?”

  “That’s what we need to find out, and sooner rather than later. He’s probably the one who killed me at the library,” I surmised. “He must have disguised himself as me. And stole my car,” I added ruefully. “I wonder if he was after the same thing Mrs. Phipps was looking for.”

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Phipps. She works for Mrs. Kendricks at the library.” Olivia shook her head. “The old lady who sees ghosts.”

  “Oh, her. You were killed by an old lady?” she asked doubtfully.

  “No, of course not,” I insisted, although I didn’t actually know that for sure. “It doesn’t matter right now. We need to find Dara and make sure she’s okay.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  That was a darn good question, actually. “You didn’t see which way she went?” Olivia shook her head. “You didn’t notice any footprints or bloodstains or anything outside when you looked?” Another shake. “What was she wearing?”

  “One of your t-shirts. The orange one with the three-headed dog.”

  “That’ll make her easy to spot,” I noted wryly. The Hellburn High mascot was nothing if not distinctive. “What did she look like? Human or demon?”

  “Demon,” she said, holding curled forefingers to her forehead to emphasize the point.

  “And she still had the sword with her?” Olivia nodded. “Great, so all we need to do is ask the neighbors if they’ve seen an armed succubus in an orange shirt.”

  “They can’t hear us, Peter,” she reminded me. “We’re ghosts.”