by Apex Authors
I took a deep breath of frigid air, and thought about my job. The endless procession of corpses. The dumb burglars, the drunks and nutters, the smug fraudsters you can't touch. The sour, overstewed coffee in the station canteen. Ten years of paperwork, so mind-numbing that if you catch a dealer you're tempted to bypass procedure and force-feed him his own wares until he chokes. Coping with all the crimes and killings, trying to keep head above water, and being pulled off the case whenever there's a bomb scare, a dole riot or a politician going walkabout. They say a woman's work is never done, but try being a policeman. As fast as you clean the scum off the streets, the gutter fills up faster.
Popping all that into the bottle took a real weight off my mind. Instantly, I felt younger, stronger, and as if I'd had a decent night's sleep this month. I smiled—how long since I'd done that?—and put the bottle away. A tiny evaporating thought said, Remember.... Usually Charley reminded me to reintegrate afterward, but without him—
I'd just have to manage. I couldn't avoid this; transfers always created leakage and residues. While I looked for evidence, a trace of me would backwash. And if the Yard's customers got the taste of cop, I'd never make it upstairs alive.
Or dead.
I went on, shivering. It was cold as a penguin's supper down here. The inhabitants of Ghost Town didn't need central heating, and their crowding auras froze my flesh like a blizzard. Many spooks had crisply defined shapes, as if newly dead or well fed; others were blurred and translucent. The ghosts flitted back and forth, roaming the basement's grubby corridors. This was their shopping mall, restaurant, and drug den, all in one. Breathing customers were tolerated, but not welcomed.
The spooks didn't bother to move out of my way. As I barged through them, my skin crawling, they stared at me with unfriendly eyes. Was that the natural resentment of the dead for the living, or something more? It occurred to me that if Charley had been eaten, any of these ghosts might have swallowed his mind, his memories. Anyone here could recognise me.
I walked faster until I reached a door stippled with mould. The ghosts just floated through the door, but I had to knock.
Another of the Yard's underling breathers opened the door. He wore a white shirt and black tie, like a waiter at an uptown restaurant, and I half-expected him to offer me a wine list. The recollections of many vintage wines and drunken evenings would be here somewhere. Everything was here somewhere.
The room stretched back and back, the walls glittering like Santa's grotto. The sparkle came from reflections of the harsh strip-lights upon thousands and thousands of tiny bottles racked from floor to ceiling. Ghosts crowded round the racks, sampling the contents, giggling, cursing, and sighing. At the far wall, a crush of spooks gorged on the memories of love affairs and sexual encounters. Other shelves contained anything from sporting triumphs to childhood fun with sand-castles.
On previous visits I'd joined the browsing throng, and Charley had steered me to likely bottles. But now I'd have to ask. I turned to the waiter flunky.
"What would Sir like today?” he inquired.
"Murder,” I said.
"The murders are on shelves fifteen to seventeen—or eighteen if you want to be the victim."
"I'm looking for something special."
He smiled. “Gunshot, poison, strangling?"
"Slasher."
"Ah, a connoisseur. There's nothing like the spurt of blood, the choking cough, the victim's frantic gasps for breath.... I believe we have several fine specimens.” He paused.
I paid him the browsing fee. “I want the fresh stuff,” I said.
The waiter sorted through the merchandise and passed me two bottles. “These are the latest in."
I sat on a grimy couch, then poured the first bottle into my head.
My husband shouted, “Get me a fucking drink.” I crept downstairs, my face throbbing with fresh bruises. In the kitchen I found a can of beer but didn't open it. Instead, I opened the cutlery drawer and grabbed a carving knife. It felt heavy in my hand, and the buzz of the fridge roared in my ears. I climbed the stairs—
I refocused my vision onto the endless shelves around me. “I'm bored with domestics,” I said to the waiter. I put that memory back and swigged the other.
Thwack. I saw blood trickle from the new gash, just below the cigarette burns on the pretty-boy cheekbone. I dropped the putter.
"Maybe I should try the nine-iron,” I said. “Or the driver. What do you think?"
The guy's eyes were closed. He was unconscious—or faking it. I reached into my golf bag and took out a random club. It was the sand-wedge. What the hell. I walked round and addressed the guy's left side. Thwock.
Prince Charming didn't scream or even twitch. This was getting boring. The cigarettes had been fun—it was a shame I'd run out—but now it was time to finish the guy. I exchanged the golf club for my knife.
I made a couple of practice cuts on his face, enjoying the smooth incisions as I tested the knife's sharpness. Then, digging deep into the flesh, I slashed right across his throat. The wound gaped like a moist red orifice. Blood puddled at either side.
Damn. It was running off the edge of the newspaper I'd put down, and soaking into the carpet—
I struggled to surface from the memory, blinking away afterimages of blood. “I'll keep this one,” I said.
Then I saw that the waiter had gone. A ghost stood in front of me. She had filmy scraps of clothes on a blurred body, as if she were fading. Yet, as I looked, her hair grew long, then short again. Her breasts flattened and vanished. A beard sprouted on the ghost's chin, then diminished into stubble and unfashionably long sideburns. The new face smiled.
"Charley?” I said.
"Hi there,” said the ghost. “How's things?"
I shrugged. “Same as ever.” No nearer to catching the killer, but I didn't want to say that out loud. Not here.
And not to Charley. Not now. “What's happened to you?” I asked.
"I was thinning,” he said. “And I didn't want to end up in bottles, or any of the quack sanctuaries. So a few of us with the same problem—"
"A composite,” I said.
"Yeah. Meet Rob, Duncan, Stephanie, and Grace."
As he named the others, the ghost flickered into different shapes. Then Charley returned, with a fuzzy outline. I tried not to wince at the sight. If the spook hadn't finalised its new form—if the fading fragments hadn't coalesced—then the composite was unhealthy, to say the least. It hadn't even settled on a joint name.
"Hello everyone,” I said, doing my best not to make it sound like goodbye.
"Can I get you anything?” asked Charley. As he gestured to the shelves, he saw his blurred arm. He tried to focus, and acquired small hands with silver nail varnish. His hair shimmered as if uncertain of its colour.
"I've got what I came for,” I said. “I'll leave the money here.” I stood up, and placed the purchase fee on the couch.
"Is that everything you need?"
It wasn't. I'd intended to get the victim's memories in case they contained a clue. But now I had to leave straight away. My friend, Charley, was only one fifth of the ghost standing before me. The other four weren't my friends at all, yet they shared the composite memory. They knew who I was. Right now I couldn't remember why that was a problem, but I knew it was bad—very bad.
"Yes, it's fine,” I said. “Good to see you again. Hope the integration works out for you."
I moved to the door. As I brushed past the phantom, its form shifted again. Breasts this time, and short dark hair.
"So long, Charley,” I said, stressing the name. I was probably safe while his personality had the helm. But the composite looked so unstable that Charley might submerge at any moment.
I left the Memory Hall and hurried to the stairway. As I climbed I expected a hullabaloo behind me, but I heard only the eerie silence of a crowd of ghosts.
The bouncers loomed at the top of the stairs. “Come back soon,” said one.
"Dead or
alive,” said the other, grinning.
Taking this as a threat, I reached into my coat and grasped my gun. But the pair moved aside and let me walk through the abandoned lobby. I barely restrained myself from running.
Back outside, rain pounded onto the rubbish-strewn road. I savoured the stinging drops on my face and hair, proof that I still had a body, that I wasn't a ghost just yet. The blustery wind felt fresh and clean after the unnatural cold of the spook-filled basement.
Foul weather soon loses its charm when you're on the wrong side of double glazing. I walked away from the ruined hotel until I found a sheltered corner by a tangle of concrete slabs. I made sure I could see the lobby entrance in case anyone followed me. Although I had made it out, I didn't feel safe. The encounter had unnerved me.
Poor Charley. Soon his composite would fall apart, triggering a feeding frenzy on the Knacker's Yard floor. Eaten, Charley would evaporate, all his traits and memories scattered among the inhabitants of Ghost Town.
I could only mourn him. “Rest in peace,” I whispered, my eyes welling up. I remembered the days we used to go jogging, then drinking—all the weight we lost in exercise we put back on in bar snacks. He liked his ale; now he'd no longer miss it.
The sharpening wind whirled scraps of paper like a presentiment of snow. The day had faded into gloomy twilight. No street lights shone—the ghosts preferred darkness. I couldn't stay here much longer, peering into the dusk while gusts of rain soaked into my hair and dripped down my neck.
I wished I'd got the murder victim's memories, if only to save his relatives from having to trawl the Yard for any relic of him. I wondered which bottles he'd ended up in. The Yard has many shops. Budding musicians and novelists visit the Skills hall. When exams approach, students flock to Knowledge. As for Feelings, let's just say there's always a market for true love. And all the fake kinds, too.
This was the killer's motive—murdering people so their ghosts could be captured, broken up, and sold in the Knacker's Yard.
And the slashings themselves were valuable. I reckoned the killer tortured the victims to spice up the memories and get a higher price. Selling the killings also removed the evidence from his head. If he were picked up for a traffic offence, he wouldn't want murder on his conscience.
For months I'd rushed to the Yard after every killing, buying up the memories to search for clues. Now I sifted through the latest again, reliving the cigarette burns, the golf clubs, the throat slash. The memory was brief and focused, with no hint of identity or location. I felt someone's presence, a shadowy figure waiting for the kill. There were other associations too—cross-references to the rest of the killer's mind—but I couldn't pin anything down. You know when you try to remember something, and it's on the tip of your tongue? It was frustrating as all hell.
I hated having the murder in my mind. It turned my stomach, as if I had personally tortured and killed the victim. And I worried that if I kept the killing in my memory too long, it might infect me. I might start thinking I'd really done it and feel the urge to confess.
Or I might get a taste for it.
Best to take the memory out and put it away with the rest. I searched my pocket for the other murders and found two bottles. What was in the extra one?
After some thought, I dimly recalled using it. I realised that the bottle contained my own memories, my police memories. Normally Charley reminded me to put them back in.
I lifted the bottle to the earpiece of my shades, then hesitated. I'd done all this before, with no success. Maybe those memories, that mindset, had been the problem.
I had to stop thinking like a cop and start thinking like the killer.
To do that, I'd have to ingest all the other murders. I loathed the prospect. The slashings had been bad enough individually, but experiencing all at once would be nightmarish.
And yet, if I didn't try it, this would just go on and on. More corpses. More profits for the Knacker's Yard. More futile hunts for the killer.
I put myself back in my pocket, and absorbed all the murders.
The deaths flooded my brain in a montage of beatings, slashings, and blood. Guys who screamed, guys who struggled, guys who tried to bribe me. Old women, fat women, and pretty girls who lost their looks real quick. My knife grew jaded, but to me it was fresh every time.
I almost retched. I felt dazed under the onslaught. The screams, the smell of burnt flesh, the carpet cleaning bills—
That was a clue. I could ring round carpet-cleaning companies, download their databases and look for repeat customers. But I had no enthusiasm for that now. Routine police work was too slow, too uncertain, too fucking boring. No, I wanted leakage. I had so many of the killer's memories that I hoped their associations might coalesce into ... something. Anything.
I walked back to the ruined hotel and stood near the exit from the Knacker's Yard. I imagined that I'd just come out, having sold someone's ghost for scrap, together with my own memory of the killing. I'd done this almost a dozen times. And from here—
I started walking, not thinking about my direction, letting my feet carry me. They knew the way. Whistling, I strode past the familiar looted shops and derelict houses. Rain thudded on the rusty shells of burnt-out cars.
As the evening darkened, more ghosts appeared on the street. A young woman approached me, carrying a wizened baby.
"Hey, mister—spare us a thought?"
"Fuck off and die,” I said. “Oh, you're already dead. Then just fuck off."
But the spooks wouldn't leave me alone. A gang of them mobbed me. “Bleeding breathers—"
"—this is Ghost Town—"
"—you shouldn't be here unless you're dead—"
"—we can arrange that—"
I stopped and addressed the haunt. “You want me to call the Knackerman?"
The ghosts drew back, huddling together, the rain falling through their hazy figures.
"Because I can arrange that. I can arrange for you all to end up in bottles.” I fished in my inside pocket and drew one out. “You want to try this on for size? Come on, who wants to be first?"
They fled. I kept walking, leaving the spooks behind. As I reached the edge of Ghost Town I heard traffic and footsteps and beggars shouting for spare change. Breathers filled the streets with their umbrellas, their jostling elbows. I looked at them and laughed. These people were walking ghosts: they just didn't know it yet.
My feet took me into a burger bar on Kellett Road. It's hungry work, killing people. I grabbed a Monster Burger and fries, and ate them as I started through the back streets. I was tired now, and just wanted to relax in front of the TV. I hoped The World's Dumbest Hackers was on.
As I approached my house, I smiled to see Oscar keeping watch from the chimney pot. But he didn't bound down to greet me. Instead he howled, then sank through the roof into the house.
That was odd. I looked around, but saw no-one else nearby. Maybe being dead was getting to him again. Some dogs find it hard to adjust.
I put my key in the keyhole, but it wouldn't turn. I took it out and looked at it. That wasn't my front door key—
Yes it was. But this wasn't my front door.
I snapped out of the trance. It had worked. I'd followed the killer's footsteps right to his door—
The door opened. Behind it stood a tall, thickset man with black hair and a scraggly beard. He had a metallic third eye implanted in his forehead. And he was pointing a gun at me.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"A customer,” I said, improvising desperately.
The ghost dog walked through him and sniffed my leg. The man—the killer—looked at me suspiciously, and past me into the street.
"You'd better come in,” he said.
Inside, the house smelled of pizza and cigarette smoke. At least it was warm. The killer kept me covered as he ushered me into the front room. I tried not to flinch as I recognised the scene of the murder memories. The carpet looked clean except for pizza crusts, but the white wall
paper had a dark stain near the floor.
He turned the television off. “A customer, huh? What are you looking to buy?"
"Ghosts, of course. Why sell to the Knacker's Yard when you could sell straight to their clients? Don't you know how much mark-up they add?"
"Shit!” he said. “How did you find me?"
I shrugged. “Word gets around."
"It better fucking not!"
"You can't keep a talent secret for ever, you know. You're too good at what you do. Now, aren't you going to offer me a drink?"
I hoped he'd relax a little, but he was too canny for that. He already had a bottle of Scotch open, and he poured me a shot using his left hand while he covered me with his right.
As I sipped the Scotch, he patted my coat and discovered the gun in my outer pocket.
"Isn't this what the police use?” he said.
"If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me,” I said.
"It's a piece of shit. Don't you know they only use it because it's cheap?” He laughed. “Are you a customer or just a very stupid cop?"
He tried to give me an intimidating stare. It worked, with his firepower backing it up. He said, “I could ask you. Or I could ask your ghost. Which do you think would give me an honest answer?"
"Me!” I said.
"No, I think the ghost will. You see, I'll suck out your memories. And then I'll know who you are, how you found me, and whether anyone else knows I'm here."
He whistled, and the dog came trotting through the door. “Oscar! Go fetch the Knackerman. Good boy! Fetch the Knackerman!"
Oscar barked once, then scampered away. I realised he was augmented, fed on human ghost scraps. He could probably beat me at Scrabble.
The killer stepped back. “Sit down and don't move. Any trouble—well, if you know so much about me, you know what I usually do to the meat. But if you sit still, I'll spare you that.” He pointed his gun at my heart.
I knew he only waited because the Knackerman could more easily capture my ghost when it was new-born—new-dead—and confused by the trauma.