The Wrong Goodbye tc-2

by Chris F. Holm

  “Look, I–” I said, and then I paused, narrowing my eyes appraisingly at the man before me. He was growing paler by the moment, and he appeared a little green as well. I worried he was going to faint again. If that happened, this meat-suit was toast —and if this meat-suit expired, God only knew where I’d end up. Which meant I had to keep this guy calm enough for him to stay conscious —and to do that, I had to keep him talking. “Hey, you got a name?”

  “Ethan,” he said. He swallowed hard, took a few gulping breaths. "Ethan Strickland.”

  “Look, Ethan, I understand this is a bit of a shock for you, but I could really use a hand.”

  “Yes, of course!” he said, rallying a bit. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital!”

  “Not an option,” I replied.

  “But you’re hurt!”

  “I’ll live. As long as you stitch me up, at least.”

  He shook his head emphatically.

  “What’s the problem? You’ve got needles, right? You’ve got thread.”

  “I can’t. I’m not a doctor —I’m a mortician!”

  “I didn’t ask to see your degree.”

  “But I don’t have any anesthetic!”

  “You got any whiskey?”

  He looked down, said nothing.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Get it, and get it quick.”

  The pale man clambered to his feet, and disappeared from the room. Said room seemed to swim a little bit, and I wondered if he’d be back before I passed out. Then I wondered if he’d be coming back at all, or if he was off calling for an ambulance. But come back he did, with a pair of reading glasses in one hand and a bottle of Michter’s in the other.

  “Hey,” I said, “far be it from me to criticize, but if you need glasses, shouldn’t you have been wearing them already?”

  “Most of my, uh, patients, aren’t in a position to complain,” he said, handing me the whiskey. I took a long swig straight from the bottle, and then offered it to him.

  “That’s probably not the best idea.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but at this point, it probably ain’t the worst.”

  He pursed his lips for a second as he considered what I said, and then he took a pull himself. “All right,” he said, as much to himself as to me. “Let’s get started. I’m going to need you to sit as still as you can. This is probably going to hurt.”

  That, it turns out, was an understatement.

  I’m not saying it was the worst pain I’ve ever felt, but that’s more a commentary on the sum total of my life experience than it is on the matter at hand. What I can say is that from the moment he disinfected the wound to the tug of the last stitch being pulled into place, sitting still was a task akin to resting your hand atop a hot burner and keeping it there. To his great credit, my mortician friend soldiered on until the wound was sealed. When he finished, I collapsed sweating and exhausted onto the stainless steel mortician’s table, but I’ll be damned if the world didn’t seem a little more solid than it had before.

  Then again, I guess I’ll be damned either way.

  “Are you all right?” he asked as I lay panting on the table.

  “I will be,” I said.

  “Yes, I think you will. The bleeding’s slowed considerably, and you’ve got a little more color to your face than you did when you… awoke.”

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling. “You, too.” I took another slug of whiskey and passed the bottle on to him. This time, he didn’t protest.

  “I’m guessing you’d like some clothes,” he said.

  Truth be told, I had forgotten I was naked, what with the more immediate concern of not dying and all. But the air in the mortuary was cold and damp, and the chill of death still lingered in my meat-suit’s bones, so all the sudden, clothes sounded like a fabulous idea. “I wouldn’t turn them down,” I said.

  He nodded toward a garment bag hanging from a hook on the wall beside us. I unzipped it and found a black pinstriped suit, a dress shirt, a buff and blue tie. At the bottom of the bag were a pair of boxers and some socks, as well as a set of loafers.

  “This stuff gonna fit?”

  “It should,” he said, surprised, “it’s yours.”

  I dressed in silence. The suit fit well. The tie I skipped.

  “So,” he said once I was dressed, “is there someone I should call? If not a doctor, then your wife perhaps?”

  “What? No! I mean, I’d hate to bother her this late.”

  “I think she’d like to know as soon as possible, don’t you? After all, your return is nothing short of miraculous. I swear, in all my years, I’ve never seen anything like it! I expect the medical journals will be chomping at the bit to write about you —and let’s not forget the media! No doubt they’ll be sure to growf!”

  I’m guessing the media wouldn’t be sure to growf —that’s just the noise the guy made when I snatched the sheet off the mortician’s table and wrapped it around his head. He struggled against me, but I held it fast, twisted tight over his mouth like a gag. Eventually, he caught on he wasn’t getting anywhere with his thrashing about, and he dialed it down to the occasional token kick.

  “Listen,” I said, my lips scant inches from his ear, “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you force me to, I will. See, I can’t have anybody knowing I’m alive, which means you aren’t calling anyone, you understand?” At that, his thrashing increased, and he shouted some muffled mmm-mmm-mmmms into the sheet around his mouth. I tightened my grip on the sheet and forced him to the floor. With the gag in his mouth, and my knee in the center of his back, the fight once more drained out of him.

  “That’s more like it,” I said. “Now, you’ve been decent to me up until now, and I appreciate that. But I’ve got some business to attend to, and I’m pretty sure the second I walk out that door, you’re going to be on the horn to the cops. Maybe they believe you that I up and walked out of here, and maybe they don’t —but either way, this body’ll be missing, and they’re going to want to find it. Which means I’m going to have to tie you up.”

  More thrashing and muffled screams.

  “Hey hey hey,” I said, yanking back on the twisted sheet like a rider reining in a horse. “No need to get touchy, OK? It might not seem like it right now, but I’m doing you a favor here. One way or another, I’m walking out of here, and you’re keeping quiet. My vote’s for tying you up, but if you’d rather I left you laid out on a slab, it’s your call. No? OK, then —put your hands behind your back, and keep still.”

  He did as I said. I left the sheet around his mouth, and wrapped each end a couple times around his wrists. Then I moved down to his feet. “Lift ’em up.” He bent his knees so that the soles of his black loafers pointed skyward. “Attaboy,” I said, wrapping his ankles as I’d wrapped his wrists, and then tying off the ends. The result was more or less your basic hog-tie, though I confess it probably wasn’t as tight as it ought to’ve been. But like I said, the guy’d been decent to me, and besides, all I really needed was a few hours’ head start.

  “Can you breathe OK?” I asked. He nodded —or tried, at least. “Good. Now my guess is, you can work your way outta that in a couple of hours, and if you manage to, then good on you. In case you don’t, though, I’ll put in a call to the cops as soon as I get to where I’m going, and let ’em know where they can find you. Sound good?”

  “Mmm-mmmm!” he replied, wiggling around in a manner that suggested he thought there wasn’t much about this situation that sounded good to him. I tried not to take it personal.

  “All right, then. Oh, and Ethan?”

  “Mmm?”

  “I’m afraid I’m gonna need a car.”

  6.

  Scalding water beat down on my face, my chest, my injured stomach, pinking up my borrowed skin and washing the grit of this God-awful day from my weary limbs. Going on two days now, I supposed, since the midday sun was high overhead by the time I’d arrived at this shit-hole of a motel. But I hadn’t slept a wink since the bus ride to Bog
otá, a meat-suit and a continent ago, so the last thirty-odd hours bled together into a tangled mess of pain and guilt and shame. Then again, I guess the same could be said of the past sixtyodd years.

  Snippets of my conversation with Danny kept running through my head like a record on repeat. Lilith’s admonitions about the straight and narrow aside, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have done something more to help him. But there wasn’t anything I could do —and besides, Danny’s problems were his own. After all that had passed between us, I didn’t owe him a fucking thing.

  Thing is, if I really believed that, why couldn’t I stop thinking about it?

  When the shower finally ran cold, I shut it off and grabbed the coarse white towel that hung from the ring beside it. The motel was a run-down little momand-pop place on the outskirts of Springfield, just off of Highway 55 —The Land of Lincoln Motor Lodge, according to the sign around front. The room was courtesy of one Mr Ethan Strickland, a little object lesson about the perils of leaving one’s wallet in the center console of one’s car. The car in question, a faded blue Fiesta two-door with all the roominess and pickup of a riding mower, was in a spot out back, out of view of the street in case ol’ Ethan managed to wriggle free of his constraints and notify the authorities of its theft. The room I wasn’t as worried about —the desk clerk wouldn’t run Ethan’s credit card until checkout, and since I planned on skipping out before then, I’d be long gone by the time the charge posted to his account. I know I told him I’d put in a call to the cops once I got where I was going, to let them know where they could find him, but after the day I’d had, I didn’t think Ethan would begrudge me a few hours’ grace for a shower and a little shut-eye. OK, that’s not entirely true. I was pretty sure he would begrudge me that, but truth be told, I didn’t care.

  At least today’s collection had gone well enough. Guy was a big muckety-muck at the local state house who, after an unsuccessful gubernatorial run back in ’98, cut a deal with a demon to curse anyone elected to the post. He was allowed to stick around for long enough to see the next two dudes go up the river on corruption charges, but he won’t be around to see what happens to the third. The guy was a politician to the last: when I showed up to collect him, he tried for half an hour to talk me out of it. Once he saw that it was useless, though, he didn’t put up much of a fight. Eh —if it’s true what they say about hell being a committee, I’m sure he’ll feel right at home.

  Once the job was done, exhaustion hit me like a cartoon anvil, and I set out looking for someplace to lay my head. Even when I’ve got the cash —which for the record ain’t that often —I tend to avoid your nicer hotels, because their staffs are typically friendly and attentive, and I’ve got no use for either. Hence my shabby motel digs. But hey, the shower was plenty hot, and the bed looked soft, so shabby or not, it was good enough for me.

  I dried off, and padded naked to the bed. Then I slipped my boxers back on and switched on the TV. CNN was covering a ferry accident somewhere off the coast of Maine. A dozen bodies had thus far been recovered, their skin stripped from their flesh by the force of the blast that had caused the ship to founder. The survivors they plucked from the chilly waters of the bay reported that immediately prior to the blast, two passengers had been heard arguing atop the upper deck. One of them was a local named Larry Thibodeau, though those who’d spoken to him that day claimed he hadn’t been himself, and one obviously distraught witness said there was something wrong with his eyes —she claimed they flickered with black fire. I’m sure the authorities just assumed she was in shock, but my guess was, she’d caught a glimpse of a demon walking around in Larry’s skin. The other man was a stranger to them, and apart from the fact that he was of average height and build, not a one of them could remember what he looked like. That’s pretty much standard operating procedure for angels working out in the open; they’re far too dignified to take human form, opting instead for a sort of vague sketch of a person that human eyes slide right off of.

  Lily was right: these skirmishes between the demon realm and their angelic counterparts were getting out of hand. But right now, I was too tired to care, so I changed the channel in search of something I could ignore. By the way, you know there’s a whole channel dedicated to game shows?

  Anyway, I turned down the comforter and pulled back the sheets, wanting nothing more than to collapse into a nice, warm bed. And I would have, too, if the damn thing wasn’t already occupied.

  The occupant in question was a fat black beetle about as big as a deck of cards, sitting in the center of the bed as if I’d interrupted it mid-nap. Although on closer examination, it wasn’t really sitting at all —it was sort of standing on its head, its ass-end propped up on what looked to be a wad of dirt. As I watched, its rear legs kicked out behind it, propelling the small earthen ball pillow-ward. Then the creature shambled backward after the ball, pressing onward until its ass was once more propped atop it.

  The beetle looked like it was getting set to start its little maneuver all over again, but I’d seen enough. I grabbed the trash bin from the corner and used it to scoop up the critter and its payload both. Then I dumped them in the bushes outside my door and returned to my room, setting the chain behind me.

  I thought about calling the front desk for a new set of sheets, but I really didn’t want the attention —and besides, when you make your living inhabiting the bodies of the recently departed, bugs sort of come with the territory. Last year, on a job in Oxford, I found a dude on a tip from Lilith who’d been laid out on the floor of his apartment with the heat cranked for the better part of a week. Fucking meatsuit was crawling with flies by the time I got to him, and to make matters worse, in life the guy’d apparently been scared shitless of bugs. A phobia that deep-seated goes well beyond memory —that shit lives in your bones. So when I woke that meat-suit from his big sleep, he had a full-on, grade-A panic attack. I had to park my ass in the shower for an hour before my meat-suit calmed down, and even when I got those fuckers off, his skin never stopped crawling. I guess the moral of the story is one beetle does not a freak-out make. Well, that, or Lilith has one sick sense of humor.

  Anyways, once I climbed into bed, the beetle was forgotten. Exhausted as I was, I fell asleep in minutes. Would’ve stayed that way, too, if the goddamn tapping hadn’t roused me.

  It was an odd, irregular sort of noise, quiet but persistent. At first I thought it was the television, which still prattled on quietly atop the dresser and bathed the room in eerie, blue-white light. When I shut the TV off, though, the room was plunged into darkness, but the tapping kept right on going.

  I flicked on the bedside lamp and looked around. Nothing. Pissed now, I tossed off the blankets and swung my feet down to the floor, determined to find the source of the noise. But the faucet wasn’t dripping, and as far as I could tell by pressing my ear to the wall, the rooms on either side of me were vacant.

  That’s when I realized it was coming from the window.

  I yanked open the curtains, half-expecting to see a couple prepubescent pranksters, merrily tapping at the glass so they could rob me of my sleep. What I did see rocked me back. It was my little beetle-friend, paying me back for the kindness of not killing it by bouncing off of my window, over and over again. And the bastard had brought reinforcements. There were dozens of them —not just beetles, but also massive flying roaches, as well as moths and locusts, wasps and mayflies. The largest of them ricocheted off the glass only to regroup and try again, while the smaller ones slammed into the window like tiny kamikazes, splattering into oblivion against the pane.

  I confess, the scene had me a bit unnerved, but what the hell could I really do? Persistent though they were, the little fuckers were outside, and so long as they stayed that way, they were all right by me. I shut the curtains and snatched my still-damp towel from where I’d let it fall beside the bed, twisting it up and laying it along the seam between door and floor by way of insurance against any future six-legged visitors. Then I cl
imbed back into bed and pulled a pillow over my head.

  This time, sleep didn’t come so easy, but it eventually did come. I awoke hours later, my face still buried in the pillow, to the persistent buzzing of the alarm clock. Fucking thing must’ve been set by whoever stayed here last. After the night I’d had, they’d be lucky if I didn’t hunt them down and throttle them for their thoughtlessness.

  I pulled the pillow down tighter over my head, but it wasn’t any use —that buzzing refused to be ignored. Fine, then —I’d just have to shut it up. I took a blind swipe in the general direction of the bedside table. A swing and a miss. I tried again. My hand whacked the corner of the table and came back smarting. The third time, I managed to give the alarm a good wallop, but the buzzing didn’t stop, and why the fuck was my hand sticky?

  I tossed off the pillow and looked around. Then my whole body clenched as revulsion washed over me. Every surface of the room was coated in a shifting mass of bugs —crawling, scrabbling, flitting back and forth with the electric hum of a thousand insect wings. They covered the floor, the ceiling, the bed on which I laid. A thick smear of snot-green flecked with shards of black encrusted the top of the alarm clock where I’d smacked it, and as I watched, the smear and then the clock itself disappeared beneath a teeming swarm of scratching, hissing, buzzing things.

  It was then I realized that I was covered in them, too. Their tiny legs pricked against my arms, my chest, my back. I could feel them winding through my hair. When one sought refuge in my ear, I shuddered, thankfully shaking it free. I tried in vain to brush away the rest, but there were too many, and they just kept on coming. Thousands of them. Millions. They were pouring into the room from a vent high above the bed, its louvers bent out of shape by the sheer magnitude of the invading force. From the thick paste of carnage the creatures pushed through to enter the room, it was clear that thousands of them must’ve died in their attempt to gain entry —but why? What in God’s name were they doing here?