“I hope it doesn’t sound terrible to say things like that. It’s just that I worry about you on your own. You can get lost in your head and forget to come out for air.”
“I’m fine. Really,” I lie.
No one talks for a minute, then Candy says, “We should get together. Just the two of us.”
“For high tea and crumpets?”
“No, dummy. A date night. You and me.”
“Alessa is all right with that?”
“She knows you and I still have a connection. We can talk about the details on our date.”
Half of my brain wants to be happy but the other, more rational, part is wary of getting kicked around again. Still, I say, “That sounds great.”
“Cool. What do you want to do?”
“Want to come on spook patrol with me? Abbot wants me to check out some ghosts in Little Cairo.”
“Oh. An adventure,” she says. “Just like old times.”
“Just like old times.”
“When?”
“Around seven thirty. Before the sun goes down and things get hopping.”
“This is exciting. I’ve missed this.”
“Me too. I’ll come by the shop.”
“See you then.”
I go into the kitchen, pop one of my PTSD pills, and pour myself a bourbon, trying to drink away my nervousness.
It looks like I have a date.
I call Janet and we talk for a while. They want to get together, but I tell them I can’t and about the job I’m doing for Abbot. But not about Candy. It’s just all too complicated. I tell them we’ll meet for coffee the next day and hang up. It feels like I’m experiencing some kind of slow-motion whiplash. First, I have a love life with Candy. Then she’s with Alessa and I don’t, so I don’t have anything. Then I meet Janet and it might be something. And now Candy wants to be alone with me. I haven’t felt this popular since I was everyone’s favorite punching bag Downtown. I hope I don’t end up as bloody as I did then.
The sun is starting to dip in the sky when me and Candy enter Little Cairo.
With its pyramid and Sphinx-shaped houses, the neighborhood was wildly popular with Hollywood types in the thirties and forties, but the Egyptian fad faded by the early fifties, so the fashionable set moved on. In the midfifties and sixties, Little Cairo became a hipster and hippie hangout. The place was a dump by the late sixties, which made it even more popular with the groovy people. Charlie Manson and the girls lived there for a while. Blasted on acid, Jim Morrison climbed to the very top of the Great Pyramid and promptly fell off. He didn’t get a scratch. Little Cairo was remodeled in the ironic eighties and made a modest comeback. Now the neighborhood is mostly a curiosity stop for tourists, like Chinatown or snaky Lombard Street in San Francisco. Right now, Little Cairo looks like a drunk tornado stumbled through the place, tossing around cars and trees, peeling the skin off the pyramids and obelisks, and just generally shitting up the place quite nicely.
After a short look around, Candy says—in her best Bette Davis voice—“What a dump.”
We stroll to the edge of the neighborhood and I do a little hoodoo to reveal the wards and charms shutting Little Cairo off from the rest of the city. Abbot’s crew did a good job. There’s nothing getting in or out of here, and from the outside, the place looks normal, except for the police barricades and quarantine signs.
Candy and I sit on a curb. I take out a Malediction and she hands me a flask. I drink and pass it to her before lighting up.
She leans back on her hands and looks around. “I was wrong before. It’s not so bad here.”
I almost choke on my cigarette.
“Are you kidding? This is where junkyards go to throw their junk.”
She looks around.
“I’ve seen worse.”
“Fresno?”
She bumps me with her shoulder.
“Hell, dumbass. Remember when you took me there?”
“Yeah. That was brilliant. I almost got you killed.”
“You almost get everyone killed. It’s one of your charms.”
“Thanks, I guess?”
“What I mean is that even though things get scary, it’s never boring with you.”
I look at her.
“You’re bored?”
“I didn’t say that. I just mean that, with all of your problems, it’s nice having you back in L.A. again.”
“It’s good being back.”
“You never told me much about what happened when you were . . . gone.”
“Dead. I was dead. You can say it.”
“Right. You never talk about it.”
I take a deep puff of the Malediction.
“I spent a year on the road doing nothing but killing every single day. That’s all there is to tell.”
“I know there’s more to it, but I won’t press you.”
“Thanks.”
She turns and gives me a sly grin.
“Janet seems nice.”
I knew this was coming. I drop my head onto my folded arms.
“She is. They is. They are.”
“Interesting stutter you have there. Is there something you want to tell me?”
I look up as the light begins to fade. Hold out my hand and pull Candy to her feet. We stroll through Little Cairo’s trash-covered streets.
I say, “It won’t be long now.”
“Until the spooks come out to play?”
“That’s what I’m told.”
We turn a corner and Little Cairo suddenly gets worse. Dried blood on the pavement. Overturned cars. Luggage and furniture thrown out of windows. Smart Abbot. He didn’t tell me quite how bad it was so I’d have to see for myself. Smart, but an asshole.
Candy peeks in the windows of some houses as we walk. I wait in the street until she says, “Weird.”
I go over to her and look into a wrecked living room.
Blood. Blood everywhere, especially on the walls.
“Abbot said the spooks had killed some people, but nothing like this.”
I put a hand on Candy’s back.
“You want to get out of here? You didn’t sign up for mass murder.”
“First off, no, I don’t want to leave. But look beyond the blood. What else do you see?”
All I see is debris from destroyed rooms, but Candy shakes her head.
“Look in here. The dining room table and chairs aren’t touched, but everything is ripped off the walls.”
“Maybe the ghosts haven’t gotten to the furniture yet.”
“Maybe.”
She goes around to the side of the house and says, “It’s the same thing here. Pictures and mirrors are on the floor. The clothes are all shredded.”
“The bed is a bloody mess.”
“But it’s not destroyed. And see that chair in the corner? It hasn’t been touched.”
“What do you think it means?”
“Let’s look in another house.”
We stick our heads in through the shattered windows in a couple more houses. They’re about the same as the first ones. Some things utterly destroyed, but others untouched.
“See the connection?” says Candy.
“I think so. Beyond the blood, everything that’s destroyed is personal stuff. Photos. Clothes. Mementos.”
“Someone is very angry.”
Shadows are getting long in the street.
“We’ll know soon enough, I guess.”
We move back out into the street, walking around piles of ripped books, smashed dishes, and flipped cars.
“She,” Candy says. “They. Them. Sounds like someone is having pronoun problems.”
I scratch my ear.
“Have you ever heard of non-binary?”
She squeezes my hand and lets go.
“God, Stark. You’re such a babe in the woods.”
“This is so humiliating.”
“What is? Meeting someone who’s different?”
“No. My whole ridiculous life. I
know everything about monsters but nothing about people.”
Candy hugs me.
“It’s going to be okay. It’s funny how things change. Alessa and I have been together for a while now. You and me even longer. In a way.”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
She lets me go and we walk some more.
“I mean, with the way things are with Alessa and me, if you wanted, you know, to get together with Janet, it’s okay with me.”
I stop and look at her.
“I’m not running off with Janet.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“It’s just not going to happen.”
“Have you kissed her?”
I hesitate.
Candy nods, knowing. Keeps walking.
“I thought so. I have to admit that I was a little jealous seeing her pressed up against you at the party.”
“It’s nothing serious.”
“Stark, let me be clear: I felt jealous, but under the circumstances I don’t have any right to be.”
I put my hands in my pockets. I don’t want to be talking about any of this. So I say, “People feel what they feel. I know that much.”
Candy stops and brushes a fly off my coat.
“I just want you to know that I love you and want you to be happy.”
“I’m happy right now here with you.”
“You don’t look it.”
“Happy-ish. Can we leave it at that?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Because ghosts are going to show up in a few minutes and I don’t want some dead psychos eavesdropping on my love life.”
“Maybe they’re not psychos. Maybe they’re just, I don’t know. Sad and acting out.”
“Then I don’t want to see them truly pissed.”
With the sun gone, a couple of streetlights flicker on as Candy steps in front of me. When I bump into her she puts her hands around my neck and kisses me like she means it.
When it’s finished I say, “What was that for?”
“I don’t know. For taking me on an adventure? I love Alessa and the shop, but sometimes I miss fucking shit up.”
“I’m always here for that.”
We sit on a curb again and Candy takes my hand. We stay like that for a few confusing minutes.
Something moves in the air.
I say, “Did you hear that?”
“No. What?”
“I don’t know. Let’s get behind some cover.”
There’s a wrecked armoire leaning against a palm tree nearby. We get behind them.
The street is dim, lit only by the couple of functioning streetlights.
Halfway down the block, a glowing pinpoint spins in the air. Soon it becomes a spectral rip that hovers just above the street. The rip expands, turning bright and hot, running down onto the pavement like molten glass. When the rip has dilated to the width of a bus, Little Cairo’s dead explode out in a mad, furious rush.
There are a lot of different kinds of ghosts. Some are hard to tell from regular people until they pull their heads off or vomit maggots all over you. If those things happen you know you’re dealing with a ghost—or possibly a parole officer. Anyway, these ghosts aren’t the subtle kind. They’re the kind that are dead and know it, barely here at all. Very pale and a little transparent, like people-shaped fog. But don’t let that fool you. These see-through fucks have destroyed a dozen streets and emptied a whole neighborhood. Don’t waste your pity on them. Save it for the poor assholes who are going to come home and find their secret porn stashes thrown all over the house. Then hubby or wifey gets to explain to the other what pony play is.
I throw a glamour on Candy and me. It makes us fuzzy and indistinct, kind of like the foggy ghosts. We follow the running horde to the edge of Little Cairo, where they slam headfirst into the wards. Some linger, clawing and gnawing at the barrier, while others run through the streets to continue wrecking the place.
Two even stranger things happen. We both notice an odd rhythmic murmuring coming from the direction of the spooks. Neither one of us can figure out what it is until Candy says, “It’s singing.”
I stare at the ghosts. None of their mouths are moving.
“It’s not them, but there’s definitely a sound coming from somewhere.”
The other strange thing is even stranger.
One of the last ghosts is a tall black woman in seventies Stevie Nicks drag. Long flowing faux-Gypsy dress and beads. As she exits the spectral rip, she casually raises her hand in the air. Stars are visible above the dim streets. As her hand rakes over them they tremble, like I’m looking at the stars reflected in water.
I say to Candy, “Did you just see that?”
“Yes. What the hell was it?”
“I don’t know.”
I put a hand up to tell Candy to stay put and creep out into the street.
“Stark!” she whispers.
I look back and put a finger to my lips to quiet her. With my head down, I trot slowly to the edge of the spook parade. The glamour must be working because they don’t do anything.
The ghosts who left the barrier spread out across Little Cairo, disappearing through walls and shattered windows. In no time, the street is full of the sounds of things breaking, being pulled off walls and out of closets and systematically destroyed. One house at the end of the block is just about gone. Doors off. Windows ripped out. Part of the roof collapsed. It doesn’t look to me like there’s much left to destroy there and the spooks seem to agree. Instead of going inside, a few of them get together and flip a Prius sitting in the driveway. These fuckers are stronger than I expected.
Candy creeps up beside me and holds on to my arm. Together, we follow several ghosts to different houses. It looks like she was right: one or two spooks run inside the house and tear the place apart—but selectively. Heading straight for bloodstained photos, paintings, small things on bedside tables, but leaving most of the other furniture alone.
“See? I told you,” Candy says.
I nod and put up my hand again for her to be quiet.
When I look back, there’s one lone ghost in the middle of the street by himself. He’s short but handsome. Like Tom Cruise good-looking. He doesn’t run like a maniac, just stands there trembling like he’s cold or having some kind of seizure. A minute later he stumbles forward right under a streetlight and I get a good look at him.
“Holy shit. I know that guy.”
“Is he a friend?”
“I mean, I don’t know him know him, but I know who he is. He’s Christopher Stein. An actor in the fifties and sixties. Mostly did B movies, but he was in a couple of big ones at the end. He was being groomed for the big time, but something happened and he dropped off the map.”
“This is a hell of a place for a matinee idol to end up.”
“He looks lost. Like he’s not sure where he is.”
“I don’t know,” says Candy. “That shaking could mean there’s something wrong with him, but it could also just be rage. I’ve seen Jades get paralyzed like that before they change.”
Soon, Stein moves off. He’s shaking less now but still clearly tense. At the end of the block he turns left. Me and Candy follow him. He walks another half block before stopping in front of a house that looks like a half-excavated Egyptian royal tomb three stories tall. It’s one of the few untouched houses on the street. Maybe it was just waiting for someone with a connection to it to come home.
Sure enough, after staring at the place for a minute or two, he stumbles forward, passes through a tall window, and disappears inside the place. I start after him. Candy stops me.
She says, “Where are you going?”
“After Stein. I get the feeling he’s new here. Maybe if I can see what he wants it will give us a clue to what’s really going on here.”
“Why bother? Why not just do some magic and get rid of the ghosts right now?”
“I just want to see . . .”
“Oh my go
d. It’s because he’s a movie star. You want to hang around with a dead movie star.”
“I just want to see what he does.”
“You’re such a terrible liar. Go on and follow your drive-in boyfriend. I’ll stay here and shout if anything weird happens. Well, weirder.”
“Thanks. I’ll be back in just a minute.”
I step inside the house through a shadow. Candy is half-right. I am a little curious about what a has-been star is looking for. Does he miss his Emmy or that tux he wore to the Oscars that one time? But it’s funny when I get inside. The house doesn’t look like anywhere I imagine an actor would live in, even a B one. It’s just an ordinary house. There’s nothing inside remotely movie related. No set photos or souvenirs. No scripts. It’s just, well, a house. Boring, but decent furniture. A nice TV. There are some books around, but they’re all just cheesy bestsellers. Also, there’s no blood anywhere. Who lived here and what’s Stein looking for?
On the other hand, maybe Candy is right. Maybe I’m getting distracted because I know who this guy is. Still, maybe if I can figure out what one spook wants I can figure out what they all want and send them home without getting rough.
Speaking of rough, Stein finally gets down to it.
The shaking stops and he goes right for the walls. Like the ghosts in all the other houses, he grabs paintings, hangings, and photos off the paneling, rips them up, and throws them in every direction. He knocks everything off a mantelpiece above a fake fireplace and crushes it under his expensive ghost shoes. The glamour continues to do its job. He either can’t see me or he’s too focused to care. When Stein starts upstairs, I follow him.
It’s the same act there. He tears the bedroom apart, concentrating a lot on the bed itself. From underneath, he pulls out a chest full of cuffs, leather collars, and floggers. That’s something, at least. Maybe he used to party here and, for some reason, has bad memories. I keep trying to remember how Stein died, but I don’t have a clue.
When he’s done with the bondage gear, he goes straight to the closet. It’s all women’s clothes. I get the feeling he must have known whoever lived here because he rips everything off the hangers and shreds it.
I haven’t seen many angry ghosts in my time, but this is starting to get a little tedious. I mean, every spook here has the same act. Get in. Run for the barriers. Fail. Shit the place up. After that, well, I don’t know about that yet. I haven’t seen what they do when there’s nothing left to break. With luck they go out the way they came, but from the sounds echoing in from the street, I don’t think that’s how this works.
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