Dead To Me sc-1

by Anton Strout

  I threw down the phone and ran for the door, heading for the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, but not before dialing Tamara’s number for the first time since our breakup.

  By the time I reached the Lovecraft Cafй, I still hadn’t been able to get Tamara on the phone. I raced through the coffee shop, down the aisle of the theater, and back into the offices. Connor was at his desk, making a tiny dent in his paperwork. He stood as he saw me running toward him.

  “Kid, what’s wrong?” he said.

  “Did we get any packages from a messenger?” I asked, breathless. I started picking my way through my in-box.

  “Yeah,” he said. “One came earlier. Why?”

  “I just got a call from Faisal’s corporate headhunter,” I said, throwing aside two boxes on which I recognized the return addresses. “He said there’s something here.”

  “Faisal’swhat?” Connor said. I forgot I hadn’t mentioned any part of this to him.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said, still frantically searching.

  “Try that one,” Connor said, pointing toward a box about the size of a watch case. I grabbed it and pulled it free, knocking over the rest of the pile.

  There was no return address on the box and I cautiously slit open the tape across the top of it with a letter opener. I used the tip of the opener to flip open the sides of the box and looked inside. A letter was folded neatly across the top of whatever was in the box and I pulled it out to read it.

  To Whom It May Concern,

  In lieu of delivery of the Sectarian Jane Clayton-Forrester, please accept this token as to the seriousness of my intent to reclaim her as part of my contract. She will be downsized whether you like it or not.

  Sincerely,

  The Management

  I looked down into the box and my face went white.

  “What’s in it, kid?” Connor said.

  “It’s a clay pot,” I said. “Like the ones we found in the back of Cyrus’s shop. It’s got Tamara’s name on it.”

  There was a prolonged moment of silence as we stood there.

  “You okay, kid?” Connor said finally.

  “He killed her,” I said, stunned. “Theykilled her.”

  “Yeah,” Connor said, trying to comfort me. “Well, they wouldn’t be evil if they did nice things, would they?”

  27

  Connor said he’d have Haunts-General and Greater amp; Lesser Arcana see if they could do anything to free Tamara’s spirit from the tiny clay pot, but I didn’t think anything would come of it. No spirit had ever been successfully recovered from a Ghostsniffing operation. The Inspectre even went so far as to dispatch a Shadower team to check out Tamara’s apartment, but as I feared, there was no trace of her. The Inspectre let me leave early to regroup, as well as look through my trashed apartment for any clues. I was useless at the office and racked with guilt that my cowardly avoidance therapy with Tamara had gotten an innocent woman killed. I returned home, hoping that at least Irene had reappeared, but she was still missing. I busied myself as best I could changing the locks and cleaning the living room-gloves on, of course. Actually experiencing my apartment’s destruction would be even more painful than throwing out the fragments of some of my most beloved possessions. Around midnight, I had only managed to deal with half the clutter but I was tired to my soul and barely stumbled to my bed before passing out.

  Sleep, however, didn’t last long, as the sounds of a woman shrieking at the top of her lungs filled the room.

  “WHO IS SHE, SIMON?” I heard Irene yelling.

  Not the way I would choose to be woken up. I was more of a nuzzling sort as far as rousing goes, but as I rose to consciousness, I was met with the sight of Irene silhouetted by the moonlight in the center of my bedroom. It was more eerie a reappearance than I had hoped for.

  “Irene?” The sleep was thick in my voice. “Irene, what’s wrong? You disappeared again. Do you remember what was pulling you away from here?”

  “Who is she, Simon?” Irene hissed. There was rage in her words, pure and full of venom. Was this the degradation of the spirit Connor had been talking about? This reaction was so out of place, so over the top, that I almost laughed.

  “I know there’s another woman. Who is she?” Irene’s anger caused her to phase in and out and I could see through her to the far wall.

  “Calm down. What are you talking about?”

  “On your answering machine,” she said. “JUST NOW. Who is she?”

  The alarm showed that it was just shy of 3 a.m. I hadn’t heard the phone ring, not even once. But if someone had called, it was either a wrong number…or else Jane calling from wherever she was staying. It certainly wasn’t Tamara anymore. I jumped out of bed and made my way to the answering machine. One message. I pressed play. It was Jane, all right, and from her tone I could tell she had been drinking. I had totally forgotten to call her back and make up with her after I’d left her in such a huff earlier today.

  “I keep going over it again and again in my head, Simon,” she said. “So that was it back at the storage place? You just leave me with an armful of balloon animals to fend for myself? I thought you were helping to protect me! You’re not a real man. A real man would have stayed. A real man would have had the guts…”

  I didn’t need to hear the rest of it and hit the erase button. The words hurt, even though I discounted them given the drunken slur of her voice. I turned to Irene. “That’s just this girl…she’s part of this project for work.”

  “WHO IS SHE?” Irene screeched, causing me to step back. Her reactions were pure over-the-top emotion, with none of the checks or balances that humanity normally provides. She wasn’t making sense. It was true that I had found a lot to like in Irene from our talks. I had even found myself attracted to her, but…she was a ghost. Where could that possibly go for either of us? True, my mixed feelings about both her and Jane were strong enough that I’d been keeping information from Irene. And there was guilt stemming from my attraction to both of them, but even so, this reaction to one tiny answering machine message was way out of proportion. There was no reason for her to behave this way.

  “I told you she’s a work thing,” I said. “Not that it should matter. What’s the problem?”

  “You have got to be kidding!” Irene said. “You expect me to believe that?”

  I was starting to lose patience. “I fail to see how that’s any of your concern.”

  Irene’s eyes flared with anger and a cold mysterious force wrapped around me. It lifted me up and flung me across the room. These old buildings were built with endurance in mind and my impact with the solid plaster knocked the wind right out of me. People talk about seeing stars when they suffer trauma to the head. I saw constellations, maybe even a few planets.

  My knees buckled when I tried to stand. Dizziness had me and I teetered back against the wall, using what remaining strength and determination I had to keep standing. Irene’s anger was manifesting itself as an unseen physical force, and for the first time, I felt scared.

  Still, the fear wasn’t enough to stop me from getting angry myself. Everything was getting to me. I was sick of it. Tamara was dead. Jane’s life was in jeopardy, and right now in the darkness of my bedroom, there was a miniature tornado forming with Irene going all Glenn Close in the middle of it. I had to get control of the situation, and fast.

  “May I remind you that you’re a guest in my home?” I said civilly.

  “And you’re off running after other women,” she spat out from the center of the room. The bed sheets had blown free and were swirling around her figure hauntingly.

  “So what if I am?” I yelled. I didn’t want to, but I was feeling cornered, hurt, and pissed at the same time. I pushed away from the wall, using one hand to steady myself. “So what, Irene? You’re a guest here because ofmy generosity. You’re not my girlfriend, not my wife, not anything. You’re dead! The only thing I owe you is my hospitality, and barely that.”

  In the darkness, someth
ing the size of my storage bench at the end of the bed-possibly the bench itself-flew within inches of my face and hit the wall with an explosive crash. I squinted my eyes shut as shards of wood flicked across my face, and I felt the tiny sting of several pieces biting into my skin. If I didn’t do something proactive, this was how I would die.

  I covered my face and moved for the bedside table. I groped in the darkness until I found my cell phone while I tried to assess the room. Irene was between me and the door, blocking it completely. But before I could decide what to do, a book hit me squarely on the side of my head and another white-hot flash of starlight welled up behind my eyes. Not wanting to endure any further damage, I dashed across the room and into my closet, slamming the door behind me. The heavy clumping of my belongings rained down hard against the closed door. I looked down and was relieved to see that I would be able to hold the door shut by the knob on the inside of it.

  I flipped open my phone, grateful for the little bit of light it gave off. Connor had earned the honorable position on my speed dial as number one and I dialed him up.

  Although it was nearly 3 a.m., he answered almost immediately.

  “This call may be recorded to assureexcellent customer service,” he said. “Please state the nature of your emergency, kid.” It was a joke, but thankfully it was also to the point.

  I talked as loudly as I could as the thumping against the door and the howling of the wind in the bedroom grew louder. Connor listened intently as I explained the situation.

  When I was done, the doorknob was slick with sweat, but I held on tight.

  “Where are you now?” he asked.

  “In my closet,” I said.

  Irene’s voice assumed a high-pitched wail on the other side of the door and I pressed my head against some of my clothes to drown her out.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Get dressed and get the hell out of there, kid. You’re not going to be able to rationalize with her spirit.”

  Just like Tamara, I thought, and look what had happened to her. Dammit, I had to get her out of my mind. There would be time for being racked with guilt later.

  “You get out of there and meet me down at the Odessa on Avenue A, all right?”

  I fumbled in the dark for a pair of pants, using the keypad lights on my phone to help. I grabbed a pair but lost my balance attempting to put them on. My head thumped solidly against the wall and this time I felt the world fall out from under me.

  “Kid? Kid?” Connor called out when I didn’t respond. “You there? The Odessa, okay?”

  “Ow. Yeah. I’ll meet you there.”

  “I can’t stress how careful you should be getting out of there, Simon. You know the expression ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Times that by ten,” he said. “Ghosts start to degrade in personality over time, and become more like raw emotion. You’re now dealing with an entirely irrational creature, a degraded spirit experiencing rampant mood swings. The logic of regular human conversation is beyond her right now, so don’t think you can talk her down or reason with her. Course, it doesn’t help that she has that telekinetic ability to throw stuff at you.”

  “You’re telling me,” I said. “She’s gone totallyTwister over here.”

  Tiny blasts of wind began shooting through cracks in my rapidly deteriorating closet door.

  “Trust me,” Connor said, “you’ll wish you were only dealing with a scornful woman if she gets ahold of you.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, grabbing a shirt as I prepared to make my escape. “I’m a pretty fast runner when panic sets in.”

  “Time to come out of the closet,” Connor said. I could hear him laughing as he said it.

  “Sonot the time to make with the funny, boss.”

  I threw open what remained of the door just as it ripped away from its hinges and blew right out of my hand. The sound of it tearing to pieces as it smashed against the opposite wall sent me running. I had no desire to be the next thing torn apart.

  28

  When I breathlessly entered the Odessa Diner, I noticed a flurry of movement coming toward me and my first panicked thought wasMy God, I’m about to get swarmed by ghouls. After the night I had been through, anything was possible, and I did a double take. Upon closer examination, it was merely a group of Greek waiters eager to seat me. They were simply enthusiastic, not the walking dead. I spotted Connor next to a table of plaid-clad punks at the rear of the restaurant and headed back.

  Even though it was now 4 a.m., the diner was packed with Alphabet City residents and NYU students trying to take the edge off their binge drinking with a late-night infusion of food. That meant it was loud, but I didn’t mind. Right now, I felt safer in a crowd.

  I sat down across from Connor as a waiter clunked down a four-inch-thick binder that I assumed was the menu. I ignored it for the moment and looked Connor over. He was far more composed than I was. To be fair, Ihad dressed in a dark closet while attempting to flee for my life, so the lemon yellow pants and purple shirt should be forgiven. Hell, I didn’t even know I owned lemon yellow pants! I looked to the next table and the punk rockers gave my outfit a thumbs-up.

  “Were you followed?” he said. I shook my head. “How ya holding up, kid?”

  “Well, Tamara’s still dead,” I said frankly, “and now another room of my apartment is getting trashed just after I put the place back together.”

  “At least you got out of there alive,” Connor said encouragingly, “if not with your dignity.”

  “With all due respect, Connor, shut up.”

  “Oh, and don’t forget Cyrus,” he added. “He might be missing and his warehouse burned down, but several more Ghostsniffing junkies were brought in after you took off. It’s going epidemic. It’s all the rage.”

  Someone cleared his throat nearby and I turned to see the curly haired waiter looking down at me. He tugged at the edge of his black polyester vest and flipped open a pad. “You ready?”

  Connor was already eating some sort of sampler platter that had one of everything in the diner on it, all of it battered and deep-fried. I looked at my yet unopened menu, felt deterred by its girth, and shrugged.

  “You’re not gonna eat?” the waiter asked. He sounded like I had just disgraced his whole family or slept with his wife. All shock, with a little disgust mixed in for good measure.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “You’ve got to sit at the counter then.” The waiter sighed and stared off at the far wall as he spoke. “That’s the rules. If you’re not going to eat anything, you have to sit at the counter. Tables are for our customers who are eating.”

  I shook my thumb at Connor. “He’s sitting at a table. I’m sitting with him.”

  “He’s eating,” the waiter said as if he had been having this argument since the dawn of time. “You’re not. Those are the rules.”

  I looked to Connor, incredulous, but he merely shrugged. He popped something deep-fried but unidentifiable into his mouth.

  I flipped the menu open. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll have a grilled cheese and a bowl of matzoh ball soup. Oh, and a chocolate milkshake…and a coffee.”

  The waiter snapped my menu shut before I had a chance to say anything else and scurried away.

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “You know what I can’t believe?” He popped another deep-fried unidentifiable into his mouth. “I can’t believe they charge eight bucks for a grilled cheese! That’s without tomato or bacon even!”

  “Do you mind if we talk about something more pertinent?” I asked testily. “How about, say, Irene going all Amityville on me?”

  Connor looked at me seriously for a second, and then laughed. “Simon, listen, I’m sure whatever happened was bad. But the Inspectre taught me that any situation where you make it out alive and have the opportunity to sit down and bitch about it is, comparatively, a good situation.”

  I mulled that one over until my milk shake
arrived. A long sip and a bit of brain freeze later, I was noticeably calmer.

  “I don’t want to beat an old departmental horse,” Connor said, “but there’s a reason why Other Division doesn’t shelter any of our clients, kid. They’re simply too unstable for us to deal with. Besides, we really don’t have any good way to contain them even if we wanted to. This isn’t likeGhost-busters. ”

  “What about the way you were able to bind Irene?” I asked. “Or something similar to those jars in the secret room at Mandalay’s shop but bigger?”

  Connor shook his head. “Binding Irene with a potion was an extremely temporary measure. As far as those jars the Ghostsniffers use, I wouldn’t wish that fate on any spirit. Any containment like that means absolute destruction of the soul, kid. Never forget it.”

  My food arrived with a side order of mild disdain (courtesy of our waiter), and I dug in, determined to get at least eight dollars’ worth of enjoyment out of this grilled cheese. As I ate, I told Connor how I awoke to Irene screaming at the top of her lungs, how she seemed upset over the idea that I was chasing another woman.

  “Well, that’s a little unexpected,” he said. “Spirits are known to be emotional over things, sure, but usually there’s some basis in truth with what’s upsetting them. I mean even though we know Irene’s got a thing for you, it’s not like she had anything to be jealous of…right?”

  I pretended to find something at the bottom of my soup bowl and avoided eye contact.

  “Simon…? There’s not something you want to tell me, is there, kid?”

  “No,” I said. “There’s nothing Iwant to tell you.”