Home Improvement: Undead Edition

by Harris, Charlaine

  “Well, yeah.” He’d been dead for a couple of weeks.

  “I mean he’s dead again.”

  I could have corrected her once more—technically Gottfried was dead still, not dead again—but I figured it would go faster if I let her explain. The problem was that Gottfried was no longer moving or responding. That might be normal behavior for most dead people, but no matter what some of my fellow houngans might think, I’m pretty good at what I do.

  I raise the dead for a living.

  THIS PARTICULAR JOB had started out well enough. The work crew had nearly unearthed the coffin by the time I got to the cemetery the day before, so I just said hello-how’s-it-going and let them keep digging. A foursome—two women and two men—showed up a few minutes later, and I voted the distinguished woman in a navy skirt suit and sensible heels most likely to be my client.

  “Mrs. Hopkins?” I asked. “I’m Dodie Kilburn.”

  I know she was surprised—she and I had handled all the advance work via phone and e-mail—but she was too well bred to comment on the fact that I don’t look much like a typical houngan.

  As soon as I got my ring and license from the Order of Damballah—the houngan version of a professional organization—I’d dumped the wannabe voudou queen look: hair dyed jet-black, loose cotton skirts, low-cut peasant blouses, and a tan-in-a-can. That meant I was back to my natural strawberry-blond hair and freckles and was wearing jeans and a turtleneck sweater.

  Mrs. Hopkins introduced the other three, and they all shook my hand somewhat reluctantly, but I didn’t take it personally. A lot of people freak when they meet a houngan, and it’s even worse when said houngan is about to raise a revenant. So it was no surprise that they stuck with weather-related chitchat while we waited. For the record, it was unseasonably cool for fall in Atlanta.

  Once the workers got the coffin out of the ground and next to the open grave, they had me sign their paperwork and took off. Unlike Mrs. Hopkins and company, they weren’t bothered about what I was about to do—they just wanted to get home in time to catch the Falcons game. They’d be back the next day to take the coffin to a storage shed and temporarily fill in the grave.

  Once they were gone I said, “I’m ready to get started.”

  “Already?” asked Elizabeth Lautner, the other woman in the group. When Mrs. Hopkins had said she was the dead man’s assistant, Elizabeth corrected her—she’d been his associate. Elizabeth’s dark brown hair was in a short, asymmetric cut, and she was wearing more mascara than I use in a year. “I thought that you had to wait until midnight to raise a zombie.”

  “Number one, we don’t like to call them zombies. Revenant is the PC word. And honestly, it doesn’t matter what time of day it is. We only work nights because the cemetery managers don’t want us working while they’re trying to have funerals. Go figure. By the time a cemetery shuts down for the day and the crew gets the coffin out of the ground, it’s usually close to midnight anyway. We just lucked out tonight.” Not only was there the football game, but the man hadn’t been buried very long, so the ground was fairly soft.

  One of the men nervously asked, “Do you open the coffin now?” He was Welton Von Doesburg, and I think he’d picked his suit to live up to the name. He’d identified himself as Von Doesburg Realty, giving the impression that anyone in the known universe would know what that meant.

  “I won’t open it until I’ve brought Mr. Gottfried back,” I said.

  “Just Gottfried,” Elizabeth said.

  “Right, like Cher or Gallagher.” I didn’t get so much as a snicker in response. “Anyway, the coffin doesn’t affect the ritual.”

  “I read about that,” said C. W. Ford, a man with a solid build and worn jeans. “Loas can go right through a coffin.” Mrs. Hopkins had said he was Gottfried’s construction chief.

  I said, “I don’t really have much to do with the loas. I’m more of a force-of-will kind of gal. You know, like the Green Lantern—I’ve got the power ring and everything.” I held up my right hand with the golden signet ring. The engraving was of an ornate cross, the vévé of Baron LaCroix, the Order’s mascot. “ ‘In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight.’ ”

  I waited a second to see if anybody would finish the Green Lantern oath, but all I got were blank stares. “Green Lantern from the comic book?” I prompted. “Or the Ryan Reynolds movie?”

  “We should let you get to work,” Mrs. Hopkins said with a hint of impatience.

  “You bet. If you folks wouldn’t mind stepping back a bit . . .”

  They did so, and I got my carton of Morton’s salt out of my satchel and started walking around the coffin, pouring it as I went. “Be sure not to break this line.”

  “What happens if we do?” Von Doesburg asked.

  “Nothing dire. I just won’t be able to raise Gottfried. Now I’ll need the sacrifice.”

  “I’ve got it,” Mrs. Hopkins said, reaching into a leather briefcase.

  “I read that houngans used to cut the throat of a rooster,” C.W. said.

  “They do still do in some parts of the world, but it doesn’t work here. If sacrificing a chicken meant that you were going to go hungry for a week, that would be meaningful. But giving up a chicken isn’t a big deal for you or me. We need a real sacrifice. It could be anything valuable, even just sentimental value, but it’s handier to use something with a known price tag.” If for no other reason than because it made it easier for the Order to set standard rates.

  “Here you go,” Mrs. Hopkins said, handing me a velvet pouch. I poured a quarter-carat diamond onto my hand, and even in the dim evening light, I could see the sparkle. I slipped it back into the pouch and then put it on top of the coffin.

  Von Doesburg said, “What’s to keep you—I mean, an unscrupulous houngan from pocketing the diamond when nobody is looking and then pretending that the loas took it?”

  I wanted to tell him that if I’d pocketed a diamond every time I raised a body, I’d have a better car than my six-year-old Toyota, but he wasn’t the first one to ask, so I restrained myself. “Tell you what, why don’t you come over here next to the coffin? Just be sure to step over the salt line.”

  His eyes got wide, and I think he’d have made an excuse if C.W. hadn’t snickered. That was when he stomped over. “Now what?”

  “Hold out your hand.”

  He obeyed.

  I reopened the pouch and let the diamond fall onto his palm. “Now make a fist and hold it over the coffin while I do the ritual. If that rock is still there when I’m done, you can keep it.”

  Papa Philippe, my sponsor at the Order, wouldn’t have approved of my letting a civilian get involved, but I figured it was the best way to prove my point.

  Once Von Doesburg was in place, I began the ritual, which really isn’t that much to see unless you throw in the voudou special effects and dance numbers some of my fellow houngans favor. First I knocked on the coffin three times. With some jobs, I add a knock-knock joke at that point, but this didn’t seem like the right crowd. Then I gathered my will and reached into the body of the man in the coffin, though to the onlookers it probably just looked like I had a real bad headache. That was pretty much it.

  When I felt Gottfried stirring, I started unscrewing the fasteners holding the lid shut.

  Von Doesburg stepped back in such a hurry that he broke the salt line, but I didn’t need it anymore anyway. It would have been nice if he’d helped me get the lid open, but I managed on my own and looked inside. The mortician had done a good job with Gottfried. He looked fairly natural.

  The revenant blinked up at me, and when I held my hand out toward him, he let me help him out of the coffin. His skin was cold to the touch, of course, but I’m used to that. Fortunately he was wearing a real suit, not one of those backless things. A dead man’s ass isn’t particularly appealing to me.

  “Gottfried?” I said.

  “Yes, I’m Gottfried,” he said, showing the usual amount of new revenant confus
ion.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “I’m . . .” He looked around the cemetery, then at the coffin he’d climbed out of. “Am I dead?”

  “Yes, you are.” Back when houngans first went public, it had been tricky to convince a fresh revenant that he was actually dead, but I’d never resurrected anybody who hadn’t already known it could happen to them. That made it easier for everybody concerned. “I brought you back to finish your last job. Do you remember what that is?”

  It’s important for a revenant to know why he’s back in this world. Houngans, at least licensed ones, don’t just bring people back for fun. First off, we need the permission of the next of kin. Second, there has to be a compelling reason for us to take on a job. It was okay to bring back Grandma to tell the family where she’d hidden the Apple stock certificates, or Dr. Bigshot to finish a research project, but not to bring back Marilyn Monroe for a reality show. Third, the revenant has to be willing to take on that task. Once Gottfried’s was done, he’d have to go back to the grave.

  It’s like Papa Philippe says: we just raise the dead, we can’t bring ’em back to life.

  Gottfried hesitated just long enough to worry me, but then said, “The house. I was renovating a house. I’ve never done a house before. It’s special. It’s going to be my famous house, like Frank Lloyd Wright had Fallingwater.”

  It wasn’t the explanation I’d been expecting. According to Mrs. Hopkins, the house was special because after Gottfried fixed it up, it was going to be sold to raise money for the Stickler Syndrome Research Foundation, of which she was the chairman. But as long as it was important to him, the ritual would work.

  “Are you willing to stay long enough to finish the house? Because if you’re not, I’ll lay you back to rest right now.” I could tell Mrs. Hopkins didn’t like it when I said that, but I’d explained to her that no houngan could make a revenant walk the earth if he didn’t want to.

  So we both relaxed when Gottfried said, “I want to finish the house.”

  “Awesome. Now do you remember these people?”

  That was another test: to be sure Gottfried had come back with enough of his faculties to finish his work.

  Gottfried focused on them, his reactions getting closer to normal every second. “Yes, of course. Hello, Shelia.”

  “I’m glad to see you, Gottfried,” Mrs. Hopkins said, but she didn’t come any closer. No surprise there. No matter how determined my clients are, they still tend to freak when they see a dead man walking.

  Gottfried went on. “C.W. Elizabeth. Von Doesburg.” He looked at me. “I don’t know you, do I?”

  “No, I haven’t had the pleasure. I’m Dodie Kilburn. I’m going to help you get that house finished.”

  “Good. I want to finish the house.”

  Revenants aren’t known for their conversational skills—once one has focused on a task, that’s all he’s interested in. Gottfried must have had a strong focus even while living to have already fixated on his.

  I said, “Gottfried, I’m going to take you to a special hotel for the night.”

  “Because I can’t go home anymore.”

  “That’s right.” We started down the path to the cemetery exit, and I said, “Mrs. Hopkins, I’ll bring Gottfried to the work site tomorrow.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “And Mr. Von Doesburg, you can open your hand now.”

  He did so, then stared at his empty palm. The diamond was long gone.

  THERE WAS NO need for me to stick around once I’d checked Gottfried in at the Order’s Revenant House. It was the job of the apprentice houngans working there to explain what he’d need to know about being a revenant: stuff like him not having to eat or go to the bathroom, though drinking water would help him speak; how his sense of touch wouldn’t come back completely, which meant that he wouldn’t feel much pain but would have to be careful to keep from damaging himself, since he couldn’t heal anymore. Of course, he’d likely seen a revenant at some point, so he might remember how it worked, but it was different when you were the dead one.

  I was walking back to the parking lot when I saw a shadowy figure waiting for me. I stopped, and a man dressed in a shabby top hat and a tailcoat worn over a bare chest sauntered toward me. He was carrying a cane with a silver skull for a knob, and there was a chicken foot sticking out of his hatband. His black skin gleamed as if it had been oiled, which it probably had been.

  “Dude,” I said.

  He didn’t respond.

  I sighed, then said, “I see you, Papa Philippe.”

  “Dodie Kilburn,” he said in a husky voice, “I hear you raised a man for no good reason.”

  “Says who?”

  “The loa be telling me.”

  “Don’t the loa have better things to do?”

  “They do,” Philippe said, dropping out of his voudou patois, “but Margery doesn’t.”

  “I should have known.” Margery, the woman who ran the office of the Order, knew the business of every houngan in the Atlanta area. “Then she should also have told you that I had an excellent reason to bring Gottfried back.”

  “Actually, I should have heard it from you, what with being your sponsor.”

  “Since when do I have to get approval for a job?”

  “Since you took one that three other houngans turned down.”

  I had wondered about that—it wasn’t like I had clients busting down my door. Most newer houngans get referrals from established ones, but most older houngans think I’m a flake. “I don’t know what their problem was, but I did my homework. The next of kin signed off on it, and the job fits Order guidelines.”

  “Bringing back a world-famous architect to fix a house?”

  “It’s a special house, like one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses.”

  He didn’t look impressed.

  “And it’s for charity.”

  No response.

  “Am I in trouble with the Council?”

  “There’s been some talk, which could have been avoided if I’d known ahead of time.”

  “I’m sorry—the client was in a hurry, and—”

  “And you haven’t had much work this month.”

  “No, not so much.” I hadn’t had much the month before, either. If things didn’t improve, I was going to have to either go work with my father’s insurance agency or go work for another houngan, which would probably mean doing the whole voudou queen thing, including trying to make Dodie sound appropriately exotic. If I’d had any dealings with the loa, I’d have sacrificed my autographed photo of the cast of The Big Bang Theory to get them to throw more work my way.

  Philippe said, “Just give me the details.”

  I told him what Mrs. Hopkins had told me, that a supporter had left a dilapidated mansion to the Stickler Syndrome Research Foundation in his will, and how she’d gotten the idea of reimagining the place in order to sell it for mucho bucks. Somebody knew somebody who knew somebody who knew Gottfried the architect and talked him into taking on the job pro bono. Unfortunately, midway through the project, Gottfried fell down a flight of stairs at his condo and broke his neck, which left the project in limbo.

  “Couldn’t somebody else finish the job from his plans?” Philippe asked.

  “Gottfried wasn’t big on planning. They had some rough sketches, but Gottfried is famous for adding things as he goes, and without all those special touches, they won’t be able to get nearly as much money. Not to mention the fact that Gottfried started the crew doing some things without telling them what he was aiming for, so there’s all kinds of work half-finished. They really do need him.”

  “And he’s willing to do the job? You asked him?”

  “Duh!”

  “Okay, I think I can spin it the right way. But if you get another job like this one, please run it past me first.”

  “You bet.”

  “ ’Cause Papa Philippe think you make master houngan someday if even it kill you—if it do, he be br
inging you back hisself.”

  THE APPRENTICES HAD Gottfried all ready to go when I got back to Revenant House the next morning, and they had found him a pair of khakis and a polo shirt to wear instead of his burying suit. Though he told me good morning when he got in, he didn’t say anything else for most of the drive. I took that to mean that he was ready to hunker down and work.

  The house he was working on was part of a gated community in Dunwoody, one of the pricier Atlanta suburbs, and the security guard didn’t look impressed by my beat-up car. Then he saw Gottfried and did a double take before letting me drive into the Emerald Lake development.

  The town houses and lawns looked nauseatingly perfect, and Gottfried must have agreed, because he blurted out, “Cookie-cutter crap.” I saw several signs proudly proclaiming that Emerald Lake was a Von Doesburg development, which explained why the man had been at the cemetery the night before.

  The mansion being renovated was at the end of a road, right on the lake, and obviously predated the cookie-cutter crap. It had three stories, wide white columns, a balcony on the second floor, and a veranda that stretched all across the front of the building. There were tarps and piles of supplies everywhere and a Dumpster in the middle of the front yard, but I could see it was going to be a showplace. No wonder Gottfried had been willing to come back to finish.

  As soon as I parked, Gottfried got out and started walking toward a trailer parked on the edge of the lot, so I followed along. A sign on the door said CONSTRUCTION OFFICE, and when Gottfried opened it, we saw the four people from the previous night plus another guy.

  “Good morning, Gottfried,” Mrs. Hopkins said, but Gottfried went right past her to go to the desk and start flipping through papers.

  “Well!” said the newcomer, a scrawny man with his nose hiked up in the air.

  “Dodie,” Mrs. Hopkins said, “this is Theo Scarpa, the president of the Emerald Lake Homeowners’ Association.”

  I said pleased-to-meet-you.

  “Mr. Scarpa has some questions about . . .” She glanced at Gottfried. “About your work.”