Secrets of the Hanged Man (Icarus Fell #3) (An Icarus Fell Novel)

by Blake, Bruce

  “It’ll be okay,” Shannon said.

  “P...p...please.”

  The tone in her voice brought a knot to the back of Shannon’s throat. She swallowed hard to dispel it for fear it might bring her own tears. A few seconds later, Dr. Albrecht burst through the doors, the teenage girl right behind him.

  “What’s going on?”

  Shannon leaned back to make room for the doctor and he kneeled beside the woman, put the back of his hand on her forehead first, then lifted the hem of her dress and looked under. Shannon stood and took a step back.

  “I’ll get a gurney,” she said.

  “No, time,” Dr. Albrecht said. “This baby is coming now.”

  He shuffled around on the floor to situate himself between Meg’s legs. Shannon stared for a moment, all her years of schooling and experience lost in the tumultuous reeling of her mind. The woman screamed and the sound of it brought Shannon back to reality. She kneeled beside Meg, clasped her hand and wiped sweat off her forehead.

  “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay. Breathe for me. Breathe.”

  “Good, good. The baby’s coming,” the doctor said and Shannon noted his voice didn’t hold its usual calmness. “Push for me.”

  Meg closed her eyes and grunted, pushed for five seconds, then her mouth opened and she screamed again. Shannon heard the teenage girl behind her sobbing.

  “Again,” said the doctor.

  “No, no,” the woman pleaded between sobs. “I can’t. It hurts.”

  “You have to,” the doctor said, a stern tone to his words. “Push.”

  “It’s okay, honey. You can do it. It will all be over soon.”

  “I can’t,” she sobbed and shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “If you don’t push, your baby is going to die,” the doctor said, the sternness in his tone replaced by anger. “Now push!”

  Meg shrieked and sobbed, but didn’t push.

  “Come on, you can do it.” Shannon struggled to find composure to pass along to the patient. She wiped her forehead again. “You can do it.”

  “Push,” Dr. Albrecht yelled and the woman finally did what he told her.

  She grunted and screamed again. The teenage girl screamed in unison. Shannon was vaguely aware of other people around them now, nurses and orderlies, but she ignored them, except for the ten year old boy who stood beyond Dr. Albrecht, peering over his shoulder. He looked neither concerned nor appalled by the sight; instead he wore an expression of mild fascination that, on a boy his age, could so easily become boredom. Shannon wanted to tell him not to look, to go away, but then Meg squeezed her hand hard, pulling her attention back to the birth. She held her breath along with the woman as she pushed. A moment later, the doctor leaned back on his haunches and held up the baby.

  “It’s a boy,” he said.

  Shannon turned her head away from Meg to look at the newborn, a smile and words of comfort and encouragement at the ready, but they were cut short when she saw the child.

  Blood streaked the baby’s flesh, but neither that nor the infant’s lack of crying were what caught the nurse off guard.

  The baby had no face.

  She gasped and opened her mouth to shriek before she realized what she was seeing. Never before had she seen a child born with a caul and, upon recognizing it, she became more concerned about the lack of crying. Behind the doctor, the boy pointed at the baby, showing his grandfather, while stifling a laugh with the back of his hand. Angry heat rose in Shannon’s cheeks and she wanted to say something to him, but the woman interrupted.

  “Is he...?” she asked. She sobbed and squeezed Shannon’s hand tight enough to hurt.

  “He’s fine,” the doctor said. “Don’t worry about this, we’ll remove it. It happens sometimes.”

  “But why isn’t he crying?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Don’t know, but he’s breathing. Now let’s get you taken care of.” He handed the baby off to a nurse who’d shown up without Shannon’s notice. “Where is the boy’s father?”

  The bones in Shannon’s hand grated together as Meg gripped harder and let out a wail. Her head fell back and tears flowed down her cheeks. The sound she made tore at Shannon’s heart and she sobbed herself.

  At her feet, Dr. Albrecht stood, wiped his hands on the front of his scrubs and turned to issue direction to the nurses. His mouth opened and he took a breath that stuck in his throat before his eyes went wide and his face bleached. He grabbed his chest, gasping.

  Surprised, an orderly caught him by the arm before he hit the floor. Shannon stretched to look, but Meg had struggled herself up to her elbows and began shouting.

  “Where’s my baby?” she wailed between sobs. “Where’s my Cory?”

  “Sshh, he’s fine,” Shannon said looking past the woman toward Dr. Albrecht.

  A nurse who’d come and stood by watching the excitement in the ER leaned on the doctor’s chest, compressing and releasing his ribs, then breathing into his mouth. Beyond her, Shannon saw the old man with the twisted ankle watching, his face contorted with concern.

  His grandson was gone.

  Chapter Six

  I looked at the bottle of Grey Goose sitting on the floor between my knees, the cap on, the seal unbroken. No matter how long and hard I stared at it, my situation remained unchanged.

  And my guardian angel remains in Hell.

  Beating myself up wouldn’t bring Poe back or ease my guilt, I knew that. Nothing would, except possibly the alcohol sitting on the floor between my legs, and that only for a short time. I stared at the blue plastic wrapping covering the cap to ensure no psychos slipped poison into the world’s best-tasting vodka, watched the v-shaped flock of tiny geese to see if their wings might flap, carrying them off the label to head south for the rest of winter. If they did, it might be enough miracle for me to believe things would be normal again someday.

  But enough to believe I didn’t make one of the biggest mistakes of a life filled with monster fuck-ups?

  I raised my eyes and looked across the motel room at Dallas—sorry, Dido—asleep on the bed and I shook my head, as surprised as anyone to find out a disembodied soul needed sleep. But she did, and she was. She lay on her side, one hand under the pillow, her shoulder rising and falling with her breath, and it struck me how she looked smaller, younger than earlier in the day. A trick of the light.

  What do I do with her?

  This whole death thing had proven difficult enough without baby sitting, too. After the trouble I had taking care of myself, how could I manage her as well? Most of the time, I had a guardian angel to ensure I didn’t do anything too stupid, and that never seemed to help.

  Stop thinking about guardian angels.

  I absently stroked the side of the bottle, my fingertips caressing the smooth, cool glass as my brain whirled through eight-year-old girl spirit possibilities.

  1. Leave her where she died to scare the next people who buy Trounce house.

  2. Ditch her. Where? Anywhere.

  3. Pawn her off on Gabe or Mikey. Yeah, that’s going to happen.

  4. Hang on to her and make sure she’s okay until I figure out how to get her to Heaven.

  She shifted, sighed a sleepy sigh, then settled. None of the options struck me as the right one. I couldn’t see how to keep her with me, but couldn’t imagine abandoning her to an afterlife alone. Since it happened sort of that way for me, I didn’t wish it on anyone else. Am I getting soft in my old age?

  No...lonely.

  My bladder interrupted my contemplation of baby sitting and the condemnation of guardian angels with an urgent request.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to my vodka. None of the geese honked in response.

  I climbed to my feet and found a knot in my calf insistent that I hobble a few steps before stooping to give it a rub. Fuck, it hurt. I rolled up my pants leg and found no wound, no bruise, no welt, just the usual hair, and flesh in need of sun.

  Weird.

  The pain resided i
n the exact spot where a creature bit a chunk out of me in payment for entering Hell. Some people get cramps, I get bitten-by-a-denizen-of-Hell pains. Happens to everyone, right?

  I flexed my ankle a few times and worked the pain out enough to get to the washroom with a minimum of limping. While a hitch in my giddy-up seemed a cool conversation starter, my current profession harvesting souls sometimes required I beat hasty retreats from some pretty mean nasties; having to do it like a man with one leg shorter than the other might be a definite disadvantage. I made a mental note to ask Gabe about it the next time she visited.

  I shuffled to the loo and had my fly unzipped before I remembered the necessity of closing the washroom door. Years on the street and living alone broke me of the habit and, in my afterlife, I’d enjoyed the freedom of leaving the door open. Guess I’d have to resume the habit if Fido Dido was going to hang around.

  I went back and closed the door then, because I was one of those well-to-do gentlemen able to afford to pay monthly at a motel where the cleaning staff dropped in once a week, I stepped over a heap of used towels on my way to the toilet. Truth be told, I suspected the only cleaning they did was to swap ‘clean’ towels for dirty ones, or merely refold them.

  Standing stoically in front of the toilet, I noticed the ache in my left shoulder. I flexed it and windmilled it in an imitation of Pete Townsend hammering out ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again,’ though I did it slower so I didn’t pee on everything. As I did, I realized this was another spot in which a creepy underworld creature punctured me. Since my return from Hell, all four spots I’d been accosted—shoulder, calf, chest and gut—caused problems off and on. If it continued, I’d have to seek medical assistance, meaning the archangel Raphael, not some overworked intern they made go sleepless for days. Who trusts those guys?

  With the emptying of my bladder, contemplation of my Hellish injuries, and mental complaining about a motel that cost thirty bucks a night complete, I stepped back across the ruins of my shower habit and pulled the door open.

  Dallas—oops, Dido—stood at the end of the bed, her fingers strangling the neck of my vodka bottle.

  “What’s this, Icarus? I thought you gave this up.”

  “Ric,” I said, frowning. “Give it back. It’s not for kids.”

  “Do you know how many alcohol-related deaths there are in this country every year? Over fifty thousand in 2005.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “First, it ain’t 2005. Second: I’m already dead, so why should I give a sh...care?”

  “Over half of marine deaths are alcohol-related and more than a third of suicides involve booze.”

  “Where are you getting these stats?” Know it all.

  “What kind of example are you setting for a child like me?”

  “You’re dead, too.”

  She put her hands on her hips, sloshing the clear liquid against the glass, teasing me. Her lips pressed into a flat, colorless line; she tapped her foot, expectant.

  “What about Trevor?”

  On our trek from the pickle factory to my motel, the little motor-mouth did all the talking, preventing me from even turning a word on end and jamming it between two of hers. In other words: I didn’t tell her about my son. How did she know about Trevor?

  “How do you know about Trevor?”

  She shrugged. “I know a few things.”

  I bit down hard on the seething comments I wanted to spew. Despite her actions, she was a little girl...a little girl who made me suspect a set-up. This stank more than a thirty-year employee at the pickle factory. And what did it reek of? Pumpkin pie, which means the right hand of God: Michael. He’d been scarce since I returned from Hell—which I appreciated—but he’d pop up out of nowhere if I rocked the old apple cart. I narrowed my eyes and decided to choose my words carefully.

  “Are you working for Michael?” I’ve never been good at careful.

  She looked at me, tilted her head to one side. “Who’s Michael?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me.” I raised my hand, fully intending to shake my fist at her for dramatic effect, but then I thought better of it—again: an eight-year-old girl. It made me think, though: did I ever shake my fist at Trevor when he was younger? “Big guy, blond hair, archangel. Sound familiar?”

  “My parents never took me to church.”

  “Hmph. You’re lucky.”

  “And you’re avoiding the issue.” She raised the bottle and shook it at me, bruising my vodka. “What about this?”

  I stared at the alcohol, more than a bit embarrassed by the longing saliva flooding my mouth. She was right: I should be past this. As I looked at the shimmering liquid, a flicker behind the bottle caught my attention. I looked up and thought for the briefest of seconds that my new friend’s hair was a different color, lighter, but then saw my mistake: brown curls, like always.

  “It’s not open,” I said, gesturing at the cap.

  “Not yet. Should I believe you’re a collector?”

  She dropped her arm to her side and glared at me, tapping the bottle against her leg. I sniffed but detected only the dank air of a motel room I spent too much time in, not the aroma of Grandma’s fresh baking that often accompanied the higher level angels. Suddenly overcome with the certainty I’d disappointed someone, I looked at my feet.

  “I was going to drink it,” I said, mumbling so even I had difficulty understanding what I said.

  “What?”

  I looked up, cheeks burning with embarrassment. Why? A freaking kid stood in front of me, not the principal who’d called me to the office after being caught jerking off watching the girls’ volleyball team practice. Not that anything like that ever happened.

  “I was going to drink it,” I repeated, louder this time, but still a whisper.

  “Not anymore.”

  She pushed past me and into the washroom. I spun to follow, gripped by an ache in my gut either caused by the residual pain of a goring by a hellacious bore-thing, or worry over what she’d do to a perfectly good bottle of vodka. I bent at the waist for a second, catching my breath, before shuffling after her. A lot of potatoes gave their lives to relieve my guilt and I didn’t want them to make the ultimate sacrifice for nothing.

  Dallas/Dido kicked aside my pile of dirty towels on her way to the bathtub and twisted off the cap. The seal broke with the familiar crack often responsible for starting my mouth watering, but not this time. Mild panic tightened my throat, preventing me from telling her to stop as she spun into the tub and upended the vodka over the drain, giving it a gentle twirl to expedite the quicker escape of its contents.

  I reached her in time to see the colorless fluid pirouetting away into the sewer like the last remnants of bath time, but it didn’t have the soapy aroma of bubble bath; instead it smelled of a missed opportunity to drown my sorrows and forget my mistakes for a while. She shook the final drops out of the bottle, then handed it to me before storming out of the room. I considered licking the rim, but it wouldn’t be enough, so I set the vessel on the sink with an empty clink that rattled my teeth.

  Dido returned to the bed and laid down, her back to me, so I stared daggers at her. Option number two—ditch her—jumped to the top of the list.

  Chapter Seven

  The scroll sat on the table between us. I stared at it for a few seconds, then moved my gaze away to the golden eyes of the archangel Gabriel. As usual, I struggled to suppress the shiver and lusty thoughts her gingerbread hair and freckled cheeks stirred within me, but they were weaker than normal. This time, wishing Poe sat across the table from me and the nagging presence of an annoying eight-year-old girl’s homeless soul distracted me.

  “I have to do this?”

  She nodded. “You know you do.”

  I sipped my coffee and tore my gaze away to look out the window. The swallows that escorted Gabe everywhere perched on the garbage can outside the coffee shop, the tables and chairs, the bike rack. Their iridescent blue feathers glimmered in the mid-morning sun, their shimmer maki
ng it equally as difficult to remove one’s gaze from them as from Gabe’s endearing sprinkle of freckles.

  “What should I do with her?”

  I nodded toward my unexpected companion seated alone at the coffee bar. No one noticed her, of course; no matter how many times she waved at the busy barista or how much she chatted, she remained drinkless. Sucks not to get a coffee when you want one.

  “Not my department.” Gabe shrugged. “Take her with you, I guess.”

  “But she’ll get in the way.”

  “Stop worrying, Icarus. She is a spirit. What could happen? You might find her useful.”

  I doubted it. “So you think I should keep her around?”

  She nodded and smiled, an expression bright enough to alleviate a New York blackout. Usually, it lit me up like a Roman candle, too, but today it lifted my mood marginally more than a helium balloon tethered to a brick. I leaned toward Gabe and inhaled the aroma of baked goods clinging to her that smelled so good it might cause a streak of jealousy in the treats for sale at The Caffeinated Cowboy.

  “If I leave her,” I whispered, my gaze flickering to Dido to make sure she wasn’t watching me, reading my lips, “what will happen to her?”

  “Nothing. She will become a wanderer, roaming the world alone.”

  Dido: the wanderer. More of a smarty-pants than I realized. “Forever?”

  Gabe answered with another shrug. “You would not let her, Icarus.”

  “Ric,” I said, distracted. I glanced over at the girl at the coffee bar, talking and smiling despite the inability of everyone around her to see her. “I guess not.”

  “Good.”

  I drained the remainder of my coffee and thumped the porcelain mug that was big enough to drown a rat in on the table. “Are you sure you can’t take her with you? You must know someone at the pearly gates. Slip him a fiver.”

  “There are no pearly gates. Some comedian created them.”

  “A lie. Like angel’s wings.”

  She nodded and smiled; I fiddled with the mug, spinning it around, picking it up and considering the last drop of morning nectar at the bottom that never seems to make it out, and thought of Poe, and Piper, and Dido. It seemed I possessed as little luck with women in death as in life. I put the coffee cup down and sighed.