Lillian clasped her thick fingers together. “Yes?”
Now was the time for me to mouth some greeting-card platitude. I opened my mouth and shut it.
Lillian strained closer. She was so vulnerable, so desperate. “Yes?”
I cleared my throat. “Your mother is here, Lillian, and she wants to tell you…”
“Stop eating like such a pig, you fat, ugly whore.”
I clamped my mouth shut. Did I say those horrible words out loud?!
No. Thank God. It was clear from Lillian’s face she was still waiting to hear the “message.”
The Painted Door was glowing. Fast as a roach, something darted out and filled the kitchen with malevolent weight. It solidified into the form of a huge, mottled woman in a muumuu. She was screaming like a Brazilian in a traffic jam.
“You make me sick, you fatso! You make me wanna barf! I hate you! Why are you alive and me dead? Shoulda been the other way around. You were the death of me, that’s what. So fucking demanding, so fucking annoying. I never wanted you! I shoulda strangled you the day you were born, that’s what.”
I fell out of my chair. The screeching was unbearable. The waves of hate, far worse.
The screeching was real, and it wasn’t coming from inside me, but it wasn’t like a normal voice, either. I could tell from Lillian’s bewilderment, her worried question, “Are you okay…?” that she couldn’t hear the screaming woman.
The ghost.
I’d never seen a ghost before in my life, but I had no doubt.
She was more of a shade than a glow. She flickered. Like a bad fluorescent light about to blow. Yet, though I was certain she wasn’t physically present in any way understood by modern science, she looked solid. Pretty hefty, in fact, considering the hypocrite was calling her daughter fat. Her hips were like two walruses fighting under her skirt, her arms were so thick she had no visible elbows, and the nose on her face bulged out like a prize potato. Her skin had the texture of a toad’s back, warty and green. If she’d been an avatar in an online game, instead of a kitchen ghost in a floral muumuu, I’d have called her a goblin.
Lillian followed my gaze, but it was clear she didn’t see the goblin. She asked eagerly, “Can you hear my mother?”
Could I hear her? She wouldn’t shut up. She didn’t have one single nice thing to say to her daughter, either.
“Are all those pies in the kitchen for you, fatso? I bet you gonna eat all five. You greedy pig, no wonder nobody ever gonna love you!”
The goblin leaped across the floor, faster than a human could have moved. Suddenly she was on the table, throttling Lillian, slapping Lillian, screaming in her face. Lillian trembled, as if, at some level, she could feel the attack, even though the blows passed right through her. Her face buckled into despair.
“You’re ugly, you’re useless, you’re fat, I hate you! You’re ugly, you’re useless, you’re fat—”
“Shut up!” I shouted. “Leave her alone!”
The goblin ghost blinked at me, shocked. Lillian blinked at me, shocked. For a moment, I could see the mother-daughter resemblance. It didn’t last, though. When I looked at Lillian, I saw another form flicker, like a flame on a candlewick, another body. It wasn’t a body, though. Awe filled me. It’s her soul.
Lillian’s soul was as skinny as her flesh was flabby. It wasn’t a good skinny, it was famine skinny, concentration camp skinny, starved-to-death skinny. Her skin hung off her bones, chalky white, and her head was a hairless skull, filled with two huge eyes, and no mouth at all. No mouth. She couldn’t eat; she couldn’t speak; she couldn’t scream. She couldn’t defend herself against her dead mother. The goblin couldn’t hit Lillian’s flesh, but she was smacking her soul around, thumping it the way a jackhammer hit cement. Purpling bruises spread on the frail soul.
What are you telling this bitch about me? Don’t you dare tell her anything! Shut your mouth, fatso! Shut your filthy face!
“Leave. Her. Alone!” I yelled again.
“Roxy?” Lillian quavered.
“I’m sorry, Lillian, but your mother is not sweet, and she is not loving. She is not a nice ghost! She is one mean bitch, and she is here trying to tear you down after death just like I bet she did while she was alive, but you know what? You don’t have to take it!”
“Stop it, stop saying those things about my mother!” wailed Lillian. “She loved me! She’s in heaven now, watching out for me…”
“She didn’t love anyone but herself, and she sure as hell isn’t in heaven. She’s a … a foul-mouthed, green-skinned troll!”
Lillian leaked tears over the rolls of her cheeks. She clutched her purse to her bosoms. “I’m sorry, Roxy, I don’t think I can see you anymore.”
She waddled away, weeping.
Goblin-ghost-from-hell grinned evilly at me through rotted teeth. Her breath stank.
“You gonna get it now, girl. You invited me here. You opened the Door. I’m not going back to that place I was before, that’s for sure. I’m here now, I’m staying. You can’t do anything to me, and I can do anything I want to you.”
The goblin crawled toward me quick as a spider and thrust her beefy paw into my chest. I collapsed in pain. It felt exactly like someone squeezing my heart. The goblin cackled.
“I taste your pain! It’s the best fucking food ever! Better than twinkies, better than ice cream! More, more, gimme more!”
She shook me like a dishrag. Agony roiled through me. She salivated.
I pulled out the gun. Even though I knew a physical weapon couldn’t hurt a ghost, it was the only weapon I had, and I wasn’t going down as goblin chow without a fight. She laughed when I shoved it up against her chest.
“Hahaha, that’s a human weapon, that can’t hurt—”
I fired point blank.
It only lasted a millisecond, but that was long enough for me to see the surprise on her face just before her body exploded into a million gory bits and then vaporized into wisps of smoke. The smoke dissipated. Nothing at all remained.
“Damn,” I said to the exorcised room. “I think I’ve got me a ghost gun.”
Chapter 5. I See Green People
I collapsed onto my butt and sank against the wall. I admired my weapon. It had a kick, and the muzzle radiated heat, yet there was no sign of the bullet. It should have blown out the window. Maybe it was a spirit bullet. (Where did one buy clips of spirit ammo?) I waited until the pain in my chest and the wobbliness in my legs subsided before I attempted to rise.
The good thing about keeping busy is that there is no time to ask yourself pesky questions like: “Did I just kill a ghost, thereby overturning every fucking thing I thought I knew about how the universe works?” Not as long as there are more pressing questions, like: “Have I missed my appointment with Harry Wood?”
The answers, by the way, were “Yes,” and “No.”
I headed back to Casa Juanita.
The restaurant was a very different place from this morning. The lunch crowd I expected. The ghost crowd, not so much.
They were everywhere, floating in the aisles, trying to give unhearing human chefs advice on the tamales, sharing booths with unsuspecting humans. I could often tell the era the ghost was from by the clothes they wore. Then there were the humans—I could see into their souls. Sometimes it wasn’t a pretty sight.
Harry Wood waved at me from his favorite booth. “Hey, Roxy!”
Juanita, in the kitchen, caught my eye through the viewing window. She shook her head.
Bryn and I shared one car. That doesn’t work well in LA. Harry Wood had a car, and he was a member of our church, though he obviously didn’t go often, since I’d not seen him there. He may have made that part up to impress me. He definitely had known Dad, though.
Harry Wood had a beer belly and a comb over. He wore plaid shirts, corduroy pants, and spectacles. His aftershave had a sharp tang that made me want to sneeze.
I slid into the booth across from him.
“Hey, Harry.”<
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“Your grandmother’s house, right?” he asked. “Do you have the address for me?”
“Yup and gas money.” I slid a slip of paper and a twenty across the table.
“Oh, not necessary, my dear.” He handed the twenty back to me.
Something flickered within him. I grew still, concentrating on it out of the corner of my eye while I pretended not to stare. It was more than soul voyeurism. There was something weird about his soul. Admittedly, I didn’t have a huge repertoire of souls to compare it too, but it was flailing around a lot more than those I’d seen so far.
For any task in life, trivial or epic, there’s a smart way to do it, and there’s a dumbass way to do it. The problem is, I can’t tell the difference. So, my foolproof approach: Always start with the Dumbass Way. Then, several disasters later, I figure out the Smart Way, as it must be the exact opposite by process of elimination. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy! The great thing about my approach is that I never know the Right Thing To Do when I need to do it, but I always know five days too late. I learned this deep wisdom from Dad, who followed the same system, which is probably why he had to flee the country using a fake passport.
Getting a ride from Harry Wood would be the easy way. The way I’d usually do it.
“Actually, Harry,” I said. “I don’t need a ride.”
“Has the Bake Sale been called off?”
“Nah, I just, uh… something’s come up. I think I’ll just take the bus.”
Harry pulled off his glasses and wiped them with a paper napkin. “Honestly, I’m glad, Roxy. I didn’t want to let you down, but I have another appointment too. I thought I wouldn’t be able to make it, and now I can.”
“Great,” I said. “Win-win.”
Navigating the buses with my new picnic basket, loaded with five pies and a gun, nicely occupied my mind for a while. On the bus, though, I had nothing else to do but sit and notice how public transit serviced a lot more of the undead than I had ever noticed before.
I saw a flickering zombie with a gaping chest wound, two softer ghost ladies rather frayed about the edges, a hooker who had demon horns and shiny red skin, and something naked, male, and gray that had a hard-on and the head of a squid. Ew.
Those spirits had no bodies, so I noticed them first. The passengers looked different too, though I had to peer deeper, past the flesh suits, into their souls. Sometimes the souls mirrored the body; just as often, not. The lady across the aisle for me turned to watch me watching everyone else. Her soul had no color and her eyelids had been sewn shut.
I shuddered. Did my soul look like that? Willfully blind?
In the interest of science, experimenting, I took off the red leather jacket. The ghosts and the souls disappeared. The bus looked a lot emptier and a lot less freaky. But now that I had seen the other reality, it made me itch to sit there blindly. What if one of the spirits decided to creep up on me? What if another one thrust its claw into my chest? I’d never know until I doubled over with a heart attack.
I slipped the red jacket back on. I could see the ghosts now. One of the monsters turned and winked at me, leering. I sank into my seat. The world is a more crowded place when you see spirits, but surprisingly, it also makes a lot more sense.
I put my hands in my pocket. The gun was packed inside the false bottom of my picnic basket, but there was something in the pocket. The little black business card.
Domitian Drake, you sly scoundrel. This jacket is worth more than $100,000. I bet that line you fed me about it belonging to your momma was bullshit. It had to be. He’d claimed my mother bought the jacket from his mother’s estate sale, but I had noticed my grandmother wearing this jacket in the photo taken in the 1960s. I knew both my grandmother and my mother had worn special clothes while speaking to the dead, though I’d never been allowed in the room during those sessions. Now I was 99% certain they’d worn this jacket.
I’d always thought they were ashamed of how they fooled gullible people, and that was why they’d never let me watch them conjure the dead. Now I realized they kept their work secret because it was honest-to-God necromancy, if that wasn’t an oxymoron. The dead were scary bastards.
Had Dad known that Mom was a real necromancer, daughter of necromancer? I thought of his insistence that I take martial arts, knife-throwing, sword-fighting and archery, of how he’d take me to the shooting range, the jokes he made about how you never knew when you might have to stake a vampire or blow a zombie’s head off with a shotgun. I also learned my first funny accents from him. I’d always thought it was because he wanted me to get bit parts in Hollywood. He was an actor, always disappearing weeks at a time for “shoots,” but never able to point to any production he’d actually appeared in.
Did Bryn know about this? I couldn’t imagine my straight-laced sister having anything to do with necromancy or magic. I’d only scoffed at Mom’s psychic career; Bryn had despised it. She thought it was all fakery, and she hated scams.
Which reminded me how badly she was going to kick my ass next time she saw me. Metaphorically speaking. We never fought physically, but she had a colder shoulder than a snowman. I had to assume we weren’t on Speaking Terms anymore. If she’d ever suspected the truth about Mom, I’d lost my chance to discuss it with her.
Granny Rose was another matter. I had a feeling she knew a lot more about all of this than Bryn did, or I did, or even than Mom had. Soon as I reached her house, I intended to grill her like a patty at a summer barbeque.
Chapter 6. Granny, What A Big Pension You Have
The city of Los Angeles lies along the bottom of a smoggy ditch between the mountains and the sea. I live by the sea. My godmother lives by the mountains. LA is made for cars. And by cars, I mean, “not buses.” It’s a three bus trip from Venice Beach to Altadena. Granny Rose lives past that. In fact, technically, she lives in the Angeles National Forest. It took me two and a half hour hours of waiting at stations and riding on sticky seats to go from palm trees to pine trees.
Granny Rose lived in a wood cabin (I kid you not) in the back hills behind Los Angeles, the places movie producers go to film scenes that are supposed to take place in war-torn Third World countries or distant, uninhabitable planets. Granny’s cabin used to belong a Boy Scout camp, until the year all four scouts were eaten by bears. I guess they weren’t all that prepared. I had to park at the bottom of a dirt road, which was closed off by a chain. There was sage green Forest Ranger truck parked along the gravel shoulder of the road, right next to Granny’s friendly sign: TRESSPASSERS WILL BE SHOT, BEHEADED AND BURNED. I hiked the rest of the way up to the cabin.
I arrived and let myself in with my key. The shag carpet, worn chairs, small refrigerator and wood-paneled walls were perfectly at home in their 70s palette of Harvest Gold, Avocado and Pumpkin. Precious porcelain shepherdesses leaned toward porcelain shepherds on the mantle over a fireplace, doilies draped over stout Lazy-Boys arranged around a small, boxy television, also draped in a doily. The television screen was caked with dust. A sit-down treadle wheel spindle and an original 1880 slender black and gold Singer 27 treadle sewing machine (both antique devices still worked—Granny was big into treadles) occupied one corner; a HAM radio dominated another. There were at least a dozen afghans, all knitted by her own hands from yarn she’d spun and dyed herself. A trap door in the floor, hidden under an orange and yellow throw-rug, descended a steep stairway into a cramped bomb shelter I knew to be lined with locked metal cabinets. Lord knows what she kept inside. Homemade jam? Gold bullion bars? Heads?
The cabin smelled marinated. Granny is a Prepper. You know, one of those people who think that next Thursday the world is gonna be overrun by demons from Hell and so ya better pickle your own sauerkraut, because apparently there’s nothing you crave while battling the unleashed armies of Hell like home-fermented sauerkraut. You go, Granny!
“Yoo-hoo!” I yodeled. “It’s me, Roxy! I come bearing pies!”
No one answered me. I set my basket down in the kitchenette.
A three-ring binder and several glossy brochures had been spread over the kitchen table. The brochures advertised some kind of real estate development. Was Granny Rose thinking of selling her beloved cabin in the woods? Or did she plan to become a camel jockey in Abu Dhabi? One was as likely as the other.
I flipped through the three-ring binder. Spreadsheets, mimeographed (yes, mimeographed) bills and receipts, long lists of expenditures balanced against small sums of income. Super boring stuff. Until I came to the page labeled “Savings & Pensions.”
I have never before whistled in surprise before, but this seemed like the perfect occasion to try it. I whistled. I could see why it was popular, it felt like the right response. I whistled again. Then I found myself humming a Top 40 song and forced myself to return to ogling Granny Rose’s unbelievably well maintained investment portfolio.
I re-evaluated the statistical likelihood that Granny Rose might want to trade in her rustic cabin in the woods for a McMansion in the woods. I examined the brochures more closely, which listed in tedious detail all the amenities of a place called Blazing Sunset Home for Seniors.
At this point, my brain sat down and had a Serious Talk with me. It said: Roxy, the time has come for you to remember the two other people who mentioned this name in conversation. One was Lillian Gorm.
The other was hairybeast1855.
I needed to get Granny Rose the hell out of here.
Like, NOW.
If you screw me, you will regret it, I promise you, hairybeast1855 had warned me. He knew my name. He knew about Mom. He defrauded seniors in some scam that I still didn’t quite understand, but that must somehow involved lying to insurance companies and burning down houses. Why stop there? What about murder? I remembered how Lillian had gushed: The place they rebuilt for her after the fire was amazing! A real mansion! It’s a pity she didn’t live very long to enjoy it.
My hands trembled as I slipped my Spirit Gun out of the bottom of the picnic basket and into the back of my jean shorts. Which reminded me that I had totally forgot to change clothes into something nicer. Under the red leather jacket, all I had on was a bikini top. Of all the days to leave my Kevlar bodysuit behind.
Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles: Multi-Author Bundle of Novels & Novellas Page 74