by Tim Waggoner
"Papa's not going to be happy when we come knocking on his door." Papa Chatha had done a number of various repairs on me over the years – reattaching body parts from ears all the way up to arms. But I'd never asked him to reattach something as complicated as my head before. I feared it might be beyond the houngan's skill, but he was someplace to start. "Do you think you can manage to carry my body by yourself?" Devona may be petite but her half Bloodborn physiology makes her stronger than an ordinary human and I'd learned not to underestimate what she was physically capable of.
"Maybe," she said. "If you'll just tell me where it's at, I'll give it a try."
I blinked in surprise. "Excuse me?"
"Your body. It's not here. Just tell me where to find it and we can…" She broke off. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
I thought of the sounds I'd heard after my head had been cut off: shuffling footsteps, rustling cloth, grunts of exertion… There was a good reason my body wasn't anywhere in sight.
It had been stolen.
"I've heard of body snatchers before," Papa Chatha said, "but this is a new one on me."
Papa was a dignified, handsome black man in his early sixties with a tattoo of a blue butterfly spread across his smooth shaven face. At times the edges of the butterfly's wings seem to ripple, but it's probably just a trick of the light. He sat on a simple wooden stool, tapping his bare toes on the wooden floor as he considered my predicament, Devona sitting across from him on a second stool, my head cradled in her lap.
While Papa thought, I scanned the shelves in his workroom, taking in the multitude of materials that a professional voodoo practitioner needs to perform his art: wax-sealed vials filled with ground herbs and dried chemicals, jars containing desiccated bits of animals – rooster claws, lizard tails, raven wings – candles of all sizes and colors, varying lengths of rope tied in complicated patterns of knots, small dolls made of corn shucks and horsehair, books and scrolls piled on tabletops next to rattles and tambourines of various sizes, along with pouches of tobacco, chocolate bars, and bottles of rum. Papa says he uses the latter three substances to make offerings to the Loa, the voodoo spirits, and while I have no reason to doubt him, I've noticed that he tends to run out of rum before anything else.
Papa frowned, smoothed his loose white pants which matched his pullover shirt, and then sighed.
"I suppose the first thing we need to do is find out where your body is," he said. "Assuming that it hasn't been destroyed already. Or eaten." He rose from his stool and walked over to one of his worktables and began rummaging through the bits and pieces of voodoo paraphernalia scattered across its surface.
"You really need to work on your bedside manner, Papa," I said.
He replied without turning around to look at me. "You want a reassuring bedside manner, go visit the Fever House. You want someone who can sling a little goofer dust for you, I'm your man."
"What I don't understand is why someone would want a zombie's body," Devona said. I couldn't turn my head to show her the withering look that was on my face, but she must've realized how her words sounded, because she immediately added, "Sorry, Matt."
"A corpse is a useful ingredient in any number of spells," Papa said. He picked up an object that resembled an inside-out geode covered with chicken beaks, considered it for a moment, then shook his head and put it back down on the table. "A man who's been resurrected from the dead has even more uses, and considering how rare Matt is…" Papa shrugged. "I don't fully understand the magic that animates him, but I understand enough to know that he's one of a kind. And the more unique an object is, the more power it has."
I died destroying something called the Overmind, a psychic weapon created from the combined brains of powerful psychics, and I'd used a magical device called the Death Watch to do it. I died the precise instant the energies of both the Overmind and the Death Watch were released and somehow they'd combined to resurrect me as a fully intelligent, self-willed zombie. I was no drooling mindless thing shambling about on an endless quest for fresh brains to devour, nor was I the undead slave of a sorcerer. I was my own man, albeit a dead one. The Overmind had been, you'll pardon the expression, the brainchild of the Darklord Talaith, ruler of the Arcane, and I'd been on the top of her shit list ever since. And that gave me another suspect to consider in my bodynapping.
"Maybe Talaith is responsible," I ventured, but I immediately realized my mistake. "No. Even if for some reason she wanted to decapitate me, she'd never take my body and leave my head behind. Revenge is personal with her and she'd want my head if for no other reason than to rub my nose in the fact that she's finally gotten even with me."
"Probably," Papa said. "Then again, Talaith's crazy. Who knows what she might do, or why?"
"You know, Papa, you may be a good houngan, but it's your optimistic worldview that keeps me coming back," I said.
Papa grinned as he glanced over his shoulder at Devona and me. "All part of the service." He continued speaking as he turned back to his worktable and resumed rummaging through its junk. "By the way, Matt, I caught your interview with Acantha on the Mind's Eye tonight. You have a real knack for dealing with the media."
"You know me," I said. "Always gracious and cooperative during an interview."
I considered the possibility that Acantha might have been the one who attacked me – or at least arranged for the attack to be carried out. I'd embarrassed her on her own show in front of thousands of viewers and there was no way the gorgon would ever forgive that. But as with Talaith I had a hard time seeing Acantha carrying out her revenge anonymously. Not only would she want me to know she was making me pay for humiliating her on the air, she'd want to broadcast her payback for the whole city to see. The more I thought about it the more unlikely a suspect Acantha seemed. Still, I couldn't rule her out, just as I couldn't rule out Overkill or Talaith or several dozen others who'd I'd managed to piss off since I'd arrived in Nekropolis. You know the old saying about how you can judge a man's success by how many enemies he has? Well, right then I felt like the most successful dead man in Nekropolis.
"Aha! I thought I had one of these lying around somewhere." Papa turned back around to face us once more, holding out his hand to show us the round flat object resting on his palm.
"It's a compass," Devona said.
"Yes, indeed," Papa confirmed. "And when I'm finished with it, it'll lead you to Matt's body."
I gazed doubtfully upon the compass. "It doesn't have a needle," I pointed out. "And even if it did it wouldn't work in Nekropolis, would it?" When the Darkfolk decided to leave Earth they'd chosen to build their new city in a dimension of darkness called the Null Plains. I'm not sure the place is even a planet… not like Earth, anyway. But from what I understood the Null Plains didn't have magnetic poles, so a compass wouldn't function.
"It's not that kind of compass," Papa said. "Instead of magnetism it employs sympathetic magic. In particular, the Law of Contagion."
"What's that?" I asked, but it was Devona who answered.
"'Once connected, always connected,'" she said, sounding as if she were reciting from memory. "It means that once two things have been in contact they're forever after bound on a magical level. The longer they've been in contact the stronger that connection will be."
Papa nodded. "We're lucky. Since your head was left behind we can use it to locate the rest of you."
I glanced at the compass. "I hate to break this to you but my head's too big to fit inside there."
"We don't need your whole head. Just part of it." Papa grinned as he showed me what he held in his other hand: a pair of pliers.
"Head east, Lazlo."
"You got it, Devona." Lazlo hit the gas and his cab swerved alarmingly as he rounded a corner.
"Take it easy on the curves, OK?" My voice was stronger now, louder and clearer, thanks to some of Papa's hocus pocus.
"Relax, Matt," Lazlo said. "No need to lose your head." He guffawed, a sound something like a cross between a sho
tgun blast and a whoopee cushion's fart.
Lazlo's a demon cabbie who works the Sprawl, though he'll drive you to other Dominions if the fare's right. In my case the ride was always gratis because Lazlo refused to take any darkgems from me after I'd helped him out of a jam not long after I'd first become zombified. Whenever I needed a ride Lazlo would appear as if by magic and ferry me to my destination. Once when I'd asked him how he knew whenever I needed a lift, he just shrugged – at least, I think that's what he did. Lazlo looks something like a cross between a mandrill and a ferret, with a little carp around the edges, and with his inhuman physiognomy it's sometimes hard to read his gestures. "I keep a close eye on you, pal," is what he told me.
His answer might be a bit on the stalkerish side but Lazlo's always been there when I needed him, so I did my best to ignore the creepiness factor.
Lazlo's cab is a patchwork monstrosity cobbled together from metal and swaths of what I hope is animal hide and I've seen the vehicle open its hood to reveal a very large mouthful of sharp teeth. I'm careful to avoid walking too near the front of the cab just in case it isn't too picky about what it eats.
Given the bizarre nature of Lazlo's ride I wasn't sure it had anything resembling a suspension but, if it did, it was in dire need of new shock absorbers. I felt every little dip and bump in the road as if they were major seismic events and if Devona hadn't been holding me in her lap and steadying me by keeping her hand on top of my head, I'd have been bouncing around the cab's interior like a giant pinball covered in rotting meat. In her other hand Devona held the compass Papa Chatha had given us. In place of its missing needle it now had one of my back teeth. As we navigated the twisting, winding streets of the Sprawl the tooth spun slowly around as it tried to get a fix on my missing body.
I thought back to Papa's extraction of the tooth. It had taken him several minutes to pry the thing loose from my jaw and the entire time I was giving thanks to whatever deity might be listening that the nerve endings in my mouth were as dead as the rest of me.
We weren't simply relying on the tooth compass to locate my body, though. Papa had also promised to put the word out on the street that someone had stolen my body. I might've made my fair share of enemies over the years but I've made plenty of friends, too, and Papa would make sure they were all keeping their ears to the ground for any word of what might've happened to my body or who might be responsible.
"Magic's all well and good," he'd said. "But sometimes friends are more help than the most powerful spell."
Devona – always security-conscious – had worried that putting the word out about my current condition would let my enemies know that I was vulnerable to attack, but Papa had promised he'd be discreet about who he spoke to and we decided to leave it at that.
Lazlo glanced in the rearview mirror at us, an action which never failed to alarm me. The way Lazlo drives it's never a good idea for him to take his gaze off the road.
"What's the range on that thing?" he asked.
"Papa wasn't definite," I told him. "A couple miles, give or take, was his best guess. We'll just have to drive around until the compass gets a hit."
"No prob. I'm at your service for as long as it takes. We may have to stop and refuel, but maybe we'll get lucky and my cab'll find something to snack on along the way."
"I hope you're joking," I said.
Lazlo burst out with another of his deafening laughs.
"You're a funny guy, Matt!"
Thankfully I was spared from having to learn anything more about his vehicle's dietary needs when Lazlo turned on the radio. A DJ's voice full of exaggerated enthusiasm blared from the tinny speakers.
"You're tuned to Bedlam 66.6, Nekropolis's hit machine! Coming up this hour we'll have tunes from Hard Rock Zombies, The Crypt Kicker Five, and Jude's Hammer, but first here's a blast from the past from Kakophonie, in honor of Scream Queen not losing her voice tonight. Better luck next time, Overkill!"
I groaned as the band's so called music blasted through the cab. Sometimes Nekropolis is more like a gossipy small town than a large city and word about any scandal – the juicier the better – travels more swiftly than a flock of vampire bats equipped with jet packs.
"I hope Overkill didn't hear that," Devona said. "She'll be more determined than ever to get back at you." She paused. "That is, if she isn't the one who stole your body in the first place."
It was true. As pissed off as Overkill undoubtedly was at me, the last thing I needed was for people to start gossiping about how I'd stopped her. The bad publicity would only turn her already fiery fury to a white-hot incandescence.
"I'll worry about that later," I said. "First, I have to find my other half."
"I thought I was your other half," Devona said.
"No, you're my better half."
Devona gently ruffled my hair. "You're sweet. Hopefully we'll be able to locate your body soon. But if we don't… well, things won't change between us. You know that, right?"
"Yes."
As I might have mentioned earlier I'm not anatomically functional in certain areas but, with Devona's ability to create a mindlink between us, I didn't need to be. We're able to join on the astral plane, merging spirits in a way that's more deep and profound than any physical lovemaking could ever be. As long as my mind was intact we'd still be able to bond psychically, although the prospect of Devona carting me around in a hatbox the rest of our lives didn't exactly appeal to me. I forced myself not to think about that. Back on Earth I'd never been the type to borrow trouble and my time in Nekropolis – where living, dead, or somewhere in between, existence is precarious at best and fleeting at worst – had only strengthened that trait.
Instead I turned my thoughts to the conversation Devona and I had before I'd left the Midnight Watch. I'd been telling myself that I kept apart from Devona's business so as not to interfere, but now I wondered if that wasn't just an excuse. Maybe I hadn't gotten to know her employees because I hadn't wanted to bother. Not long after we'd first met Devona told me that I'd died inside a long time before my physical body did. Her observation had hurt at the time, all the more so because she was right. I'd been trying to be more emotionally available – as a therapist might put it – ever since, but I still wasn't very good at it. The next time any of the Midnight Watch team invited me out for a drink after work maybe I should accept, I thought. Unless it was Bogdan.
"Devona, about the things I said earlier…"
I felt her hand atop my head tense.
"Don't worry about that now, Matt," she said, just a little too quickly. "For now, let's concentrate on finding your body."
Her words were delivered in a calm, rational tone, but through our link I could feel how much she was still hurting. As strong and intelligent as she was I still sometimes forgot how much she depended on my support and tonight I'd failed to give it – or at least, it seemed that way to her, and that was all that mattered.
But she didn't want to talk about it right then and I had to respect that. And truthfully, I was grateful to postpone what promised to be an uncomfortable conversation a little while longer. So I tried to send a psychic message through our link, a combination of I'm sorry and I love you. I didn't know if she received it or not, but she patted my head and even though it made me feel a bit like a cute pet sitting on his owner's lap, it reassured me.
Lazlo drove on and Devona and I continued to watch the tooth compass, waiting for it to indicate where my body was.
It was well after midnight but the Sprawl is always open for business. The streets were thick with traffic and Lazlo wove erratically in and out of lanes with disturbing regularity, earning a multitude of raised middle fingers – many with claws on the tip – horn blasts and snarls from the more feral drivers. At one point he nearly sideswiped the Headless Horseman and ended up with splattered pumpkin smeared across his rear window. I was just glad the Horseman hadn't glanced into the cab and seen me or else the specter might've been tempted to replace his missing head with mi
ne. Then again, if he had, at least I'd experienced a smoother ride on the back of his ghostly steed than I would've in the backseat of Lazlo's nightmare conglomeration of a cab.
We crisscrossed the Sprawl, cruising the main drag of Sybarite Street and passing such well-known landmarks as the Freakatorium and the Grotesquerie, as well as the House of Dark Delights and Pandemonia. We even circled the high rise of Demon's Roost, the seat of Varvara's power. But no matter where we went my tooth continued its slow rotation around the compass's face, never once indicating my body might be near.
We drove past the crystalline pyramid that was the Eidolon Building where the city's major media outlets were housed. The Daily Tome, Bedlam 66.6 and Mind's Eye Theatre all have offices there and I wondered if even then Acantha was inside, seething over how I'd humiliated her on the air and planning revenge – assuming she hadn't already taken it by stealing my body, that is. But if she had orchestrated the theft of my body it wasn't located anywhere near the Eidolon Building, according to the compass.