by John Shirley
“She hit me in the head with a chair!”
“Ha, well, did she indeed? We shall see that the lady is, ah, given a good talking to and sent on her way.”
“And who are you to send me anywhere?” Claudine demanded, scowling at Doyle.
“My name is Doyle, madam, Arthur Conan Doyle—but it’s not just me, don’t you see, I represent the town council. Specific policies, that sort of thing. If you behave with grave, extreme violence, we will of necessity ban you from the town, until such time as we judge you’re . . . reformed. Violence is unpleasant, messy, briefly painful. Unsocial. We can’t have it, miss. It’s simply not the thing. I know a lovely town a dozen miles down the coast—they take in some new people having difficulty adjusting . . . we’ll get someone to escort you there . . . but I think a cup of tea, first, and some biscuits, don’t you? My wife will be delighted to have the company.”
He smiled, lifting his eyebrows, offering her his crooked arm. She blinked at him. At something of a moral disadvantage, she took his arm, giving Brennan a final glare.
Brennan snorted and stalked back into the house. “Got to fix the balcony . . . what a damned nuisance . . .”
Doyle started to turn away.
“Wait,” I blurted. “Arthur Conan Doyle? Creator of . . .”
I didn’t say the rest, suddenly feeling foolish. Creator of Sherlock Holmes.
He glanced at me, pretending embarrassment, but I could see he was pleased, too. “Yes, sir.” He chuckled to himself. “My vanity, of course, wishes you’d mentioned The White Company, something I esteem a bit more, but I’m lucky to be remembered at all and I owe a great deal to the imaginary Mr. Holmes. You are?”
“Nick . . . um, Nicholas Fogg, Mr. Doyle.”
“New arrival,” Bertram said. “Was a detective.”
“Was he indeed?” Doyle seemed unimpressed. He nodded to me. “Anon, Mr. Fogg. Dear lady . . . shall we?”
He nodded to Claudine and they walked off, her arm through his. She was quietly weeping, now, and surprisingly docile.
“Guess she got it off her skinny little chest,” Bertram said, when they were out of earshot.
“Arthur Conan Doyle!” I said wonderingly. “I thought I recognized him. Photos on the backs of old books . . .”
“Sure, he’s that Sherlock Holmes guy,” Bertram said, yawning. “Been here awhile. Scottish guy.”
“Actually his parents were Irish, but they emigrated to Edinburgh. Doyle was born and raised in Scotland, so he sounds Scottish.” Bertram gave me a look of surprise and I shrugged. “I read a biography of him. Big fan of his Holmes stories and his Challenger books.”
Bertram nodded. “Okay, Irish by way of Scotland. I figure he shaped this place, this town, in its present form—much as anyone. Well, come on, let’s find you some shelter . . .”
We walked on. I was a bit shaken, thinking, Murder that wasn’t murder. Violence, pain, but quick healing. And yet—some form of murder was possible, Bertram had said.
And Arthur Conan Doyle was the unofficial constable here . . .
Bertram pointed. “Well, here’s the town square.”
Main Street had run straight to the sun-washed town square. Treeless sidewalks edged the cobblestone commons. The road continued on the other side of the square, twisting crookedly, wending amongst the taller, older houses on the east end of town.
We paused here to look over the square. A few people ambled through. I glanced at an Asian couple in 1970s American clothing, smiling, hand in hand, passing a willowy brown-eyed teenager in a sundress. Anyway, she seemed to be a teenage girl. For all I knew she might’ve been here a hundred years. Was she still a teenager, in some sense, if she’d died in her teens?
A couple of leering young men called out to the girl from across the square.
“Hey baby!”
“What’s up, girl, you wanna drink?”
The young men, one black and one white, were both wearing sloppy hanging pants that showed their boxers. They wore Nike sneakers, too, and long white T-shirts. She thumbed her nose at them and went on. Thumbing her nose, and her hairstyle, seemed to place her chronological origins in the mid-twentieth century.
A man in breeches, buckled shoes, half glasses and long gray hair came out of a haberdashery. He was wearing a white Stetson that didn’t go with the rest of his costume, which was more suited for Ben Franklin. Could it be Ben Franklin? I looked closer, and felt some disappointment. It wasn’t him. My father had made me read Franklin’s autobiography. I’d seen lots of woodcuts of him.
My father. Was he here? My mother had outlived me. But my dad . . . lung cancer, dead at fifty-seven. Crusty ex-Marine begging for morphine at the end . . .
I glanced at my companion. “Say Bertram—you run into any relatives here?”
Bertram nodded, but sort of tentatively. “My ma, yeah. But it wasn’t a happy reunion. She was a suicide and . . . she was just passing through. We had a nice talk. But she just sorta wandered off one day. Sometimes people wander off, and sometimes they got someplace to wander to.” He scratched his head. “People aren’t particularly likely to find their dead parents here. Most don’t. But if you’re persistent and wander around this here world, keep them in your mind, eventually you can find them, and other people close to you. If they haven’t melted into the ocean or turned forgetter, or feral . . . any of the other stuff that can happen.”
I could tell he didn’t like the subject, so I dropped it. I was disappointed and relieved, both, to hear I probably wouldn’t run into my dad in Garden Rest. He always had that air of calm disapproval . . .
The town square was enclosed by good-sized brick buildings that seemed to contain small businesses. One of the shops across from us caught my eye with a neon sign, lit even now as the shadows shortened in gathering daylight. Brummigen’s Bar and Grill, it said. The neon glow worked its way along the handwriting-style name, from the B to the s at signature speed, as if the name was being signed over and over. Unsigned—and then signed again.
Next door to it was the Avalon Coffee Shop. “I see there’s coffee in the afterlife,” I said.
“It’d be hell for sure without it. Good coffee, too. Just like the real stuff. Mostly. People need to have a place like that, to sit around together and bullshit, or just, you know, stir their coffee, and not say anything but . . . just being around other people, someplace public, like on Earth.”
“I know what you mean.” The coffee-shop windows looked agreeably steamy. I could see blurred human figures inside, the misted windows making them look like ghosts, and that seemed apt. We paused on the sidewalk and I glanced at Bertram. “What do you think, Bertram—are we ghosts? I mean—what we just saw . . . how alive was that, getting your head cracked in and not caring much afterward . . .
“I look transparent to you, Nick? Misty around the feet and what have you?”
“Nah. Me?”
“Nope. I’ll tell you somethin’. Was I to punch you hard in the face, you would feel it, same as Brennan felt that crack on the head. You wouldn’t like the punch, either. Knock you on your ass, same as on Earth. “
I smirked. “Says you! How much punch you got?”
“Want to bet on it? Five Fi’s says I can knock you down.”
“Five what?”
“Look in your pockets.”
I fished in my pants pocket, found some folding money, and unfolded it. Fiona’s face stared back at me where Lincoln’s should be. She’s on all the money except hundreds. The hundreds have a picture of an old gent with the long gray hair—the Lamplighter. But I didn’t have C notes. Just four fives, a ten, and a twenty, in local money. It was reminiscent of American money, except for that half-turned face of Fiona’s. She looked impish. Seemed to me her image winked at me, as I looked at it.
“The money’s
called . . . Fionas?”
“Town council calls it Pass Cash. But Fionas, that’s a kinda nickname. They put some honored resident on it, every twenty years or so. The town council does, I mean. So—you wanta bet I can’t knock you down? I’ll risk double, you take ten if I don’t knock you down. You can have a swing at me . . .”
“You say it hurts when someone hits you, in the afterlife. I just died, man, that was enough pain for a while.” I put the money away. “That the boardinghouse?” I pointed at a two-story weathered brick building half camouflaged by an old growth of ivy. A wooden hanging sign projected over the open door read THE OSSUARY. A breeze gusted up Main Street from the sea, making the sign swing gently on its wrought-iron support.
“That’s it, yeah. Let’s see if they’ve got room.” We started across the square, and he went on: “If they’re full up, you can bunk with me if you want. I got a little place. Or maybe at Jocelyn’s—I saw her let her robe fall open for you.”
“Maybe it was for you.”
“Naw—it was you she was looking at.”
“Wouldn’t think they’d have sex here.”
“Sure as fuck do.”
I smiled. “People get pregnant?”
He grinned. “Nope. They sure as fuck don’t. There are some children here—but they’re kids who passed on from Earth. I hear eventually they can grow up. Now, about sex, everybody asks about that . . . it’s not exactly the same. It’s not so moist and sweaty and . . . heavy. Maybe it’s better in a lot of ways. But then again, some things are the same as in the Before. We have knuckleheads here, too.” He nodded at the two young men who flanked the doorway. One was a tall, lanky black man, his hair cornrowed, a gold grill on his front teeth; his pal was a freckled, pale young guy, his light brown hair cornrowed, too. I saw they had dirt on their shoes and hands. People can get soiled in the afterlife.
“You got any more of that frip there, cowboy?” the black kid asked. Looked about twenty-two.
“Nah,” Bertram said. “The shit grows wild—go pick some, Mo.”
The young black man frowned. “Just fucking call me Mohammed—I don’t like Mo. Told you that.”
Bertram shook his head. “Too many syllables in Mohammed. You got to earn more syllables. But I’ll call you ’hamm-ed if you want.”
The white kid snickered. “ ’Hamm-ed! Or how about Hammered!”
Mo shot him a glare. “Shut up, ‘Ran.’ ”
“Don’t call me Ran! It’s fucking Randy!”
“What’s fucking Randy?” I asked innocently.
Mohammed laughed at that. Randy leaned over and jabbed at his friend, who laughed again and blocked the fist. “Fuck off, ‘Ran.’ ”
Randy gave up, and pointed at me. “New guy?”
“Depends on what you mean by new,” I said. “I was feeling pretty old when I kicked the bucket. My name’s Nick. I get that you’re Mo . . . hammed. And Randy. I haven’t got any frip either.”
“Hey, you got—”
“No, dude, I haven’t got any cigarettes.”
“Already been there,” Bertram said, talking around the stalk of frip. “You can harvest frip down in the swamp that way there.” He pointed a thumb over one shoulder.
“I’m not going in that swamp,” Randy said, shaking his head. He looked at us like he dared us to accuse him of cowardice. “Too much weird stuff there.”
I shrugged. “See you guys later.”
“If we don’t see you first.”
I started through the door, but Randy stopped me with a hand on my wrist. It felt like someone touching you—in an unfriendly way— same as back on Earth. Maybe not exactly the same. Close—but it didn’t have that trace moistness that an Earthly body had. It had some warmth, texture, pressure. And there was something else about it, like another level of pushing besides the physical kind.
“We’re not done with you, newbie,” Randy said.
I stared at him—but spoke to Bertram. “Bertram, is it possible to pull a guy’s arm out of its socket here, same as on Earth?”
“You can get pretty much the same effect,” he allowed. “Want me to help you pull it? How about I hold it, you give it a good, hard—”
Randy abruptly dropped his hand. “We got to do a pocket check on any new guy. You got some money—if you just got here, you can spare some.”
Bertram snorted. “Town council told you two to stop that pocket-check bullshit.”
Mo turned him a hooded, sleepy look, supposed to be scary. “How they going to enforce that?”
“With exile. Mr. Doyle and some of us, we’d get together . . . you know how it works.”
“Don’t try it,” Mo said, shaking his head slowly.
“Then forget this pocket-check thing. Can’t have you strong-arming people. You don’t need any damned money, really. It’s not like you lack for anything here.”
“I lack for all kinds of stuff,” Randy said.
“You should have more self esteem,” I said. “You can’t help lacking what you were born without.”
Randy glared at me, and Bertram chuckled.
Bertram took his frip out of his mouth and looked at it, then stuck it in a coat pocket. “You can earn some money helping raise up a house or something. You could learn how to do it. Now get out of the way. Go listen to irritating music or something.”
“Don’t have no recordings here.”
“People play instruments, boy. Learn to play ’em. Do some of that rap stuff I hear about. I’d be curious to see what it’s like. Christ almighty, you two are lazy.”
Mo shrugged. But they didn’t try to stop us when Bertram led the way into the building.
We had to duck under the low door frame into the pleasantly musty smell of the boardinghouse. The place had lacquered dark wood floors, tattered throw rugs, well-worn old furniture in the sitting room off the foyer; paintings of people from various eras hung on the walls, and what looked to be tintypes. At the back of this comfortable anteroom was an old-fashioned hotel desk with a call bell on it.
Bertram rang the bell and called out, “Yo Ruby!”
A compact, large-eyed black woman came from a back room; she wore a purple low-cut dress, her hair straightened and pulled into a thick ponytail. She had wide hips and a wide mouth. She’d stopped aging at around forty-five. She glanced at Bertram, then spent more time looking me over. A long, frank, silent appraisal. Then she put her hands flat on the desk. She had dark purple polish on long nails. “Who’s your friend, Bertram?”
I stuck out my hand and she shook it, her touch warm and dry and somehow familiar. “Nicholas Fogg . . . Nick.”
“Nick. You heard Bertram’s big-ass noisy voice say my name already. You need a room, it’s thirty Fi’s first week, sixty thereafter. Just one room left, overlooks the square.”
“A week sounds good.” I fished out the money, counted thirty for her.
She glanced at it. “Fiona’s looking tired.”
She tucked the money into a drawer; the same drawer produced a room key. Number eleven. “Right up those stairs. You don’t like the room, I give you your money back and you can find someplace else to roost—all the rooms’re pretty much the same.”
I took the old iron key. It seemed larger than it had to be. “Thanks.”
She nodded. “You want some refreshments, look in the cupboard up there. Should be some. You probably do good to just lay down and take it all in.”
Bertram looked at her, pretending puzzlement. “Lay down and take it in? When you going to give that a try?”
She pursed her lips, but there was a merriness in her eyes. “Shame on you, always talking to me like that. I’d wear you out in a minute and you know it.”
He chuckled. “Like to make a bet on that? Ten Fi’s. Make it forty minutes.”
“See I wouldn’t bet on that because I’d be all up like a whore taking your money.” She pointed a warning finger at me. “We don’t go for that at the Ossuary. Women of the night.”
“No ma’am,” I said, wondering why whores still whored in the afterlife.
Bertram slapped me on the shoulder. “I’m going to see if I can find some fool to play cards with in Brummigen’s. Come over, say hello, when you get a rest. She gave you good advice. You need a rest.”
He walked out, waving to an older man in the sitting room, deep in an armchair. The old guy’s face seemed to waver between younger and much older. He frowned at Bertram and looked back at his paper.
I turned to Ruby, decided not to flirt—something in her face said, Don’t.
I nodded. “Thanks.” I went up the wooden stairs to the right of the desk. The worn stairs creaked under my tread.
The windowless upstairs hall was lit by bulbs in sconces shaped like Art Deco lilies. I looked at the bulbs, and saw no filament inside, no source for the glow. I walked past room seven, room nine—I heard someone singing distractedly in what sounded like Gaelic, through that door—and found eleven: an age-darkened door, with a brass knob and keyhole. The key seemed reluctant to turn in the lock—it was too big, awkward in my hand—but I finally got the tumbler turned, opened the door, and stepped through.
A bulb in a lily sconce lit a musty room about thirty by twenty. The room smelled faintly of vanilla and dust. I closed the door and strolled over to the curtained window. I parted the purple velvet curtains, and looked out on the square. It wasn’t what you’d call sunny out there, though it was broad daylight with only a few clouds. It seemed more like half an hour before dusk. But not gloomy—just sort of easygoing.
I could see Mo and Randy walking toward a bar I hadn’t noticed before—a seedy-looking tavern called the Sour Grapes—and Bertram just walking into Brummigen’s. I dropped the curtain and inspected the room. There was a brass bed, not quite queen sized, with a quilt comforter; a scarred old dresser with a circular mirror over it; an armoire, a cabinet. A framed oval painting appeared to be of a flaxen-haired woman in black standing beside the Purple Sea. There was a framed photo that somehow wasn’t exactly a photo. It showed a boy on a horse, riding away but turned on the horse to wave good-bye, and smiling. He seemed to be about to ride along a country road into a dense curtain of rain.