Habeas Corpses

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  And more: part of me felt singed, scorched where the darkness had struck me.

  I got to my feet with the sobering thought that there might be deaths beyond death. And that, as vulnerable and fragile as the flesh might appear, it may be what insulates us from the greater shocks and dangers beyond our temporary, cocooned state of existence.

  I stumbled to the chapel entrance and cautiously poked my head through the wall next to the doors.

  Play Misty For Me was back and swarming about the woman in the pew. So much for being a good spookmaritan. I was a newbie in a very ancient realm and hardly qualified to mind my own business, let alone anyone else's. I started to pull my head back out but hesitated as I heard a soft sigh.

  The woman had stopped crying.

  Granted, she still looked well down the road to Despairsville but, even from the back of the room, she seemed a little less tormented. And the bands and strands of negative energy that roiled and coiled about her gave the impression of struggling to find a foothold.

  Maybe that's all it took under some circumstances: a chance to catch your breath. Or a foot momentarily struck from the stirrup, the saddle loosened from your back . . .

  Perhaps some hospital chapels would be better served by moving the candles off the altar and replacing them with cable television showing Comedy Central or Cartoon Network. God may loose the fateful lightning with His terrible, swift sword but some kids in the oncology wards might be better off watching Gallagher loose the fateful melon with his terrible, silly sledgehammer.

  I looked over at the two luminous creatures who seemed distracted from their little tête-à-tête with a pair of humans holding hands. Maybe they were consulting God or, perhaps, just each other but I figured it was way past time for them to join the party. "You guys work strictly on assignment or are you allowed to freelance?"

  They looked at me like I was a little mad.

  I was more than a little mad; I was edging into seriously pissed-off territory. Maybe I could feel proud that, in distracting the Thing, I might have helped this situation. Maybe I could withdraw, now, and go on my way, having learned to keep my mouth shut until I knew more about the stuff I was tempted to mess with.

  Maybe I could have.

  But I didn't.

  "Hey, Creepshow," I called to the miasma of malevolence that was trying to renest about the mourning woman, "why don't you pick on someone of your own dimensional corporality?"

  It bunched up like a gathering thunderhead and suddenly arced across the chapel to go splat against the wall. Leastways, that was what it sounded like on the other side as I jerked my head out just in time. Lucky for me the wall wasn't as permeable for the Shadow-thing as it was for me.

  Or was it?

  Wisps of dark smoke began to bleed through the outer wall and into the corridor. The Thing had readjusted its focus. Now it was time for me to readjust mine: I started off down the hall at a lope.

  "Thanks for the help, fellas," I muttered at the chapel doors as I passed by, "or ladies." Or whatever the hell they were supposed to be. If they actually were angels, then to hell with them. There was a hissing, sizzling sound in the corridor behind me.

  Time to get the hell out of here.

  * * *

  I worked my way up two floors via the stairways. I didn't trust the elevators. I wasn't fond of them when I was technically living and now that I was technically dead I could finally understand why.

  Trust me, you don't want to know: you'll find out in your own good time.

  By now I was running across more people wandering the corridors. Well, what used to be people, anyway. Most were in transit and all but a few were recent sojourners. A couple, however, looked like they had been wandering about the hospital for a very long time and were more than a little spooky.

  But nothing as unsettling as the Darkness that strode along the passages behind me. It was showing no sign of giving up the pursuit though the well-lit hallways seemed to slow it down a bit.

  I wasn't exactly running the decathlon, either. Fluorescents aren't in the same league as solar radiation but the flickering phosphors were exerting a leadening effect on my arms and legs all the same.

  I snuck a look over my transparent shoulder. The Darkness was vaguely man-shaped now, loping along on two shadowy legs, swinging a pair of shadowy arms with a rhythmic determination that was somehow more frightening than the inhuman spin of the gimbaled Threshers. Was it the vague anthropomorphism that made this thing more threatening? Or the really strong impression that, with the Threshers, it wasn't personal . . .

  . . . while this Thing was anxious to hurt me.

  And I was running out of hospital.

  Even if I could stay ahead of Mr. Route 666, my body was presumably somewhere up ahead and, sooner or later—around the next corner or maybe three more floors up—I was going to arrive. And then what?

  Maybe I could crawl inside and use my flesh like a bomb shelter. Hunker down and wait for Tall, Dark, and Nasty to go away.

  If he'd go away.

  Maybe he'd follow me in—like poor Corporal Barrett's barracks mates.

  And then it would be a battle over who got to sit in the driver's seat.

  Uh-uh.

  I was going to have to lose this joker or have it out with him right now.

  I stopped.

  Turned.

  Raised my fists.

  "Okay, Donnie Darko; that's it! No more Follow-the-Leader. Let's play a new game. It's called—"

  The Thing was so anxious to play that it didn't wait to learn about the new game or any of the rules. It rushed toward me. When it smacked into where I was, I was already gone.

  I had gotten pretty good at this "now it's solid/now it's not" approach to walls and floors. I essentially dropped down a floor, hoping that Satan's Little Helper would miss the direction of my sudden departure. It should have worked. I found myself down in an OR with full-blown surgery going on all around me.

  "Suction," said the surgeon.

  "BP is going up," a nurse announced.

  "What are you doing in there?" a balding little man demanded. "Get out of my wife's chest."

  I looked down. I was standing in the middle of the operating table and the patient. I looked up. The little, bug-eyed, balding guy was somewhat indistinct. So was one of the surgeons.

  "See that?" said Dr. Invisible, standing at the surgeon's right shoulder. "Just to the right of the aorta. You'll need a little more light."

  "A little more light here," demanded the surgeon.

  "And ease the tissue back a little for a better look," murmured the ghost doc in the surgeon's ear.

  "Get out of there!" the little spook insisted. "Have you no respect!"

  "Sorry," I said, trying to step out of the table and patient without walking through an actual human being. The surgical team had me pretty effectively hemmed in. "I'll be out as soooooooon—"

  I was out, up, and away.

  My through-the-floor dive had just turned into a delayed bungee jump: the silvery cord jerked me back up through the floor I had just departed. The Darkness was still there, casting about, trying to figure out where I had gone to. We got a quick gander at each other as I was jerked on upward through the ceiling and into the next floor up.

  And the floor above that.

  And then two more.

  I came to a stop halfway through the sixth and seventh floors. It took a little squirming—mental and otherwise—to get the rest of the way up and back on my feet. I was in the middle of another corridor. Now which way do I go?

  How about toward the sound of familiar voices?

  "Why would I lie to you now, Uncle?"

  "That is a very good question, my little spook," I heard Kurt answer. "Unfortunately, you did lie to me. You told me you didn't know anything about the Doman's whereabouts last night nor my brother's death. Then I find out that you lied about both!"

  "And I've told you, Uncle, that the Doman swore me to secrecy. I had no idea he wa
s going to kill Uncle Malik."

  "The Asian demon claims that the plan and its execution were your doing. That Cséjthe didn't even know that I had a brother."

  "Of course she would say that; she works for him! She is his creature! She would say anything to protect him!"

  "And what would you say to protect yourself, eh? You've already lied once to cover your tracks. Have there been other occasions? And are you still lying to me now?"

  "This is ridiculous! I have ever done your bidding."

  "Except bring me the ashes of the traitor Cairn."

  "No. And I haven't quite mastered the knack of walking on water, either. Look, I thought the Doman had business with Uncle Malik. When he suddenly turned around and assassinated him, it caught us all by surprise. If I hadn't sworn a blood-oath right then and there, I would have been next!"

  "You are a Tween, Darcy. Blood-oaths have no power over you."

  "But he doesn't know that."

  "I doubt he even knows what a blood-oath is. The point is you covered for him against your own flesh and blood. And don't tell me that you feared for your life: he was already in a coma when you claimed you had been asleep in your room."

  "Since there was nothing I could do to bring Uncle Malik back, I thought it best to bide my time until I could discern the Doman's true intentions."

  "Then you should understand what I must do now. Give me your gun."

  "What? Why?"

  "Why? You ask me why when my Doman lies near death in a room down the hall with a bullet in his chest? Of the two people that I know were present near the time and place of the shooting, one of them is 'his creature' who 'would say anything to protect him' and the other is you. So, I'm sure you understand why I must ask for your weapon until more is known about this incident."

  "And if I hand my weapon over to you, Uncle, who will protect our Doman from his real enemies while you hallucinate me as an imaginary one?"

  "Sundown is minutes away. There will be an abundance of security around his room and about this floor within the hour."

  "And until then?"

  "He is in a more secure location than the ICU and in the hands of his own people."

  "Perhaps, Uncle, your motives are the ones that are impure in all of this."

  "We've already had this discussion, Great-grandniece. As divisive as Cséjthe's ascension is proving to be, his assassination could be disastrous, triggering a bloody war for clan power and political advantage that might destroy us all. Particularly if the other demesnes perceive us as vulnerable at this time. I have no ambitions to rule over the shattered remains of a once great empire."

  The cord gave a strong tug and I was suddenly propelled down the hallway, my seneschal and my murderer flashing past like highway markers on the autobahn. Suki and Deirdre were at the far end of the corridor having their own huddled conference.

  "—lost contact. All they can get now is that the lines are down or the phones inside the house may be out of service."

  "What?" the redhead asked. "As in ripped out of the walls and marinated in body parts?"

  "Pagelovitch is putting together a team to go down there and check it out but there's a dearth of willing volunteers. The word's gotten out that uninvited guests have a history of not returning from Domo Cséjthe's hospitality. If Burton and Mooncloud have met something nasty—well, then, not even the Doman's friends are safe, are they?"

  Deirdre looked like she was trying to decide whether to laugh or cry. "Safe? It's funny now that I think about it. I suppose I've never been less safe than these past few months and yet, never felt more so." She turned and looked at the door that they were standing beside. "Even now I keep thinking that he's going to wake up and figure out a way to turn this all around. Not because he's especially clever or smarter than everyone else. Just because he has the damnedest . . . luck . . . of anyone . . . I know . . ."

  And then she made her decision: she started to cry.

  "He may pull through this, yet," Suki said, folding her cell phone back into her purse and reaching out to hug Deirdre. "Vampire hearts don't function in any way like a living human's would. And the fact that the EKG says he's brain dead doesn't necessarily mean anything either."

  "Why? Because he's neither living nor undead? Just because he can get away with breaking some of the rules doesn't mean that the laws of physics can't catch up with him. He's been living on borrowed time and now time has run out! If he was a vampire, that bullet in his heart would kill him just as surely as a wooden stake would. If he was alive, his heart would tear itself apart around the bullet's fragments. What did the surgeon say? That it appeared as though the cardiac muscle was paralyzed between heartbeats."

  "The key word is 'appeared'," Suki reminded.

  "Oh, yeah. Because if the blood wasn't circulating at all then he would be dead instead of in a permanent vegetative state! That's not good! But as bad as that is, if God ever takes His finger off the pause button on the VCR, he'll tip one way or the other and end up as a pile of rotted meat or in a permanent dust-itative state!"

  Okay, this wasn't helping. Time to go and form my own opinion. I squeezed between them and pushed on through the door into the room on the other side.

  There were curtains around the bed. After walls of steel and stone, I slipped through these without even blinking.

  Inside the circle of linen, the treatment station area was dark except for the phosphor ribbons on the readout monitors and a small, soft spotlight that framed the patient's upper torso. All else was in shadow.

  The body in the bed looked dead.

  The ventilator pushed air in and out of his (my?) lungs with a mechanical single-mindedness. The monitor eeped and showed a sine wave that bore no resemblance to any kind of a heartbeat I'd ever seen on ten seasons of ER. Other than that there were no signs of life connected to the body in the bed.

  The arms and the parts of the face that weren't obscured by the ventilator were as white as the sheets of the bed. The skin, waxy and almost translucent.

  I was as pale as a ghost.

  Okay, there's a potentially redundant analogy . . .

  So, what now?

  Duh! Get back in my body, of course!

  I crawled up onto the bed and rolled over onto my carapace of flesh. Then, relaxing my tenuous cohesion a little, I willed myself to sink down into my body like a spa patron sinking into a luxurious mud bath.

  Unlike a luxurious mud bath, however, the clay was cold. And brittle.

  I submerged into darkness. Into a grave of sorts.

  Unlike my previous melds there were no shared thoughts, no internal tastes or touches or smells or memories. Did the experience recede because the mind was my own? Or because the mind was shut down?

  Or brain dead?

  I tried to move an arm. I felt nothing.

  I twitched my leg. Nothing moved.

  My eyes were glued shut.

  My body encased in lead.

  Dimly I heard the mechanical rasp of the respirator from afar but I could draw no breath. I was suffocating in the dark!

  I sat up out of myself with a cry of horror. Poe was an overrated hack: getting sealed up inside a wall was nothing in comparison with being entombed in your own dead flesh! I slid out of my body and off of the bed. I had to catch myself on rubbery ghost legs before I sank through the floor.

  All of that effort to return to my body, risking the Threshers and losing The Kid . . .

  "What's the point?"

  "That," said a strangely familiar voice, "is the central question of existence. And the answer—no matter how good or how true—never seems to satisfy for long."

  I turned and peered into the darkness on the other side of the bed.

  A figure began to emerge from the gloom. Someone hunched over in a chair. Doctor? Nurse? The white clothing was loose and draped like a robe instead of a hospital uniform. Patient? The massive head came up slowly revealing a stonelike visage.

  A large and scary patient?

&
nbsp; His face was human . . . and it wasn't. You noticed this after another moment. It came close but it was too proud. And too fierce. And the planes and angles came together as the result of a geometry that wasn't entirely of this world. The nose was prominent, beak-like. The brow like a mountain cliff. The eyes like lava flares in deep caverns.

  And, of course, the great white pinioned wings that arched up from behind his shoulders were a dead giveaway.

  "Michael!"

  The owner of the otherworldly sword that hung above my fireplace inclined his leonine head. "Cséjthe. I see you have returned from your wanderings."

  "Yeah, and don't think it's been easy!" I said, getting over my abashment very quickly. "Next time you get a chance to chat with the Big Guy? Tell Him that a few little kiosks with 'You Are Here' maps would be muy helpful." I was really happy to see him though you wouldn't know it from the tone of my voice.

  If he was happy to see me, you wouldn't know it from his tone, either. "Perhaps it would be best if you told him in person."

  "Is that why you're here? Are you pulling repo duty now? Gonna Swing Low, Sweet Chariot me?"

  "Actually, I am here to place my finger on the scales." And his arm moved into the light. The sleeve of his robe was pushed back to above the elbow and, as I watched, his alabaster flesh took on a solidity that made even the furniture seem indistinct. His right hand came into view holding a syringe. "There is not much time and the vessel must be brought back into balance."

  "Not much time?"

  "The helicopter is landing on the roof even now. I must depart within minutes." The needle slid into the perfect flesh inside his left elbow.

  "Oh, no you don't! I've got about two days' worth of questions. You can't just pop in and then rush right off again. Unless you're taking me with you. Are you taking me with you?"

  He shook his head slowly. "You cannot go where I go."

  "Well, then let's start with where I'm supposed to go."

  That massive brow rose a little at one corner. "Would it do any good to try to tell you?"