My plan, like all my plans, was simple:
1. Disguise myself.
2. Infiltrate Madgogg’s brownstone.
3. Rescue the captive pixie.
In and out. Easy-peasy.
I parked around the corner from Madgogg’s place, on West 92nd, nearly running over a careless succubus who was walking her pet midget dragon. As I walked toward the brownstone, I was having second thoughts about the disguise. The hump was biting into my back and the wig was itching like mad. The itching made me wonder where Oswald was. I hadn’t seen him in a while. And that worried me.
I knocked at the servant’s entrance on the ground floor of Madgogg’s brownstone, and a few minutes later an ancient-looking zombie opened the door. He must have spent a long century dead before being reanimated, which was good—because his brains would be mush and the dummy would be a pushover.
“Hey there, bones,” I said.
The dummy stared at me, his lifeless eyes wide and protruding from their sockets. He was a skeleton in a suit. Most likely imported from the Zombie Islands to be a domestic. These guys made me sick.
I said, “I’m the new hunchback handyman.” I pointed to the hump for emphasis. “The agency sent me over.”
The creature stood there silently, his exposed jaw hanging open. I wasn’t so sure if he was reanimated after all. Then he nodded and let me in.
The kitchen was huge. The cauldron in the middle of the room was huge. The three-headed dog inside the cauldron was pretty huge, too. The middle head looked particularly nasty, but none of them were gonna do me any harm. They were ogre lunch. It stunk worse than a zombie’s armpit in there.
I walked through the kitchen and entered a long hallway paneled with the heads of trolls, gremlins, and at least one goblin. There weren’t any zombie heads, so I stupidly felt safe. But then I figured zombie heads probably aren’t worth much as trophies.
I heard a series of low moans coming from behind the door at the end of the hall. The door was unlocked. I opened it.
It was the door to the basement. Nothing good is ever in the basement, so naturally I went down.
At the bottom of the staircase, the moans were clearer. I heard some grunts, too.
Another door stood before me, iron and heavy and unlocked, too. This Madgogg must be a real dunzy or real confident. The plan was working to perfection. I could already taste the fairy dust on my desiccated lips. I could also taste flesh and blood and brains—and without that fairy dust to kill the cravings, I was liable to eat half of ShadowShade. And most likely get a stake through the head, too.
I entered a long, brightly lit hall. On the right was a rough stone wall, and farther up on the left was a prison cell.
The moaning sounds were coming from inside the cell and now I could make out what they were. Someone was eating and they were enjoying it! I felt a pang of jealousy, but I curbed the zombie in me and rushed down the hall. I had to kick aside garbage that littered the floor—wrappers, empty containers, dirty plates. Ogres had mighty appetites, but this looked bad.
I stopped before the heavy iron bars of the cell. I couldn’t believe my bloodshot eyes. Fancy tapestries hung on the walls. A gigantic bed with a silk canopy took up almost half the room. And in the middle of the chamber, on a chaise lounge, sat a plump, short girl with wings. They fluttered like mad. Her mouth was fluttering like mad, too, as it tore through a turkey leg. The moaning was coming from her. Obviously she liked to eat.
She looked up, took another bite of the turkey leg, swallowed, and then said, “Jeez, another hunchback handyman. Don’t you guys ever do anything else?”
“Are you Willa?”
She picked a piece of turkey not quite the size of my fist out of her teeth and said, “What’s it to ya?”
She resembled her mother, if Gwen had a serious food addiction. I finally had an answer to my question: Yes, there are pixies who are not so goddamn cute.
“I’m here to rescue you,” I said.
Her eyes widened and then she screamed, “What the hell is coming out of your nose?!”
I panicked for a split second. As a member of the undead, I often find myself in embarrassing social situations, such as when worms exit my body during interrogations or body parts fall off at dinner parties. Unsurprisingly I don’t find myself on many guest lists. Then I felt a tickle in my nose cavity and I relaxed. But just a bit.
“That’s just my associate,” I said.
Oswald’s soft, gelatinous body oozed out of my right nostril. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation; probably the only thing that wasn’t unpleasant about Oswald. He dropped onto the floor with a heavy plop and instantly began to transform, tightening and twisting into the shape of a tiny man.
“Oswald, where the blazes have you been?”
He didn’t answer right away. He was busy inching toward a potato chip under the chaise lounge.
“I thought you were mad at me,” the homunculus said.
“I am mad at you. I’m always mad at you.”
“What the hell kind of hunchback are you?” Willa said.
I leaned closer to the bars and whispered, “I’m not really a hunchback. I’m a detective. A zombie private eye, in fact. And let’s keep it down. We don’t want to arouse the ogre while we’re trying to rescue you.”
“You don’t think Reginald will let you walk right out the door with me, do you?” Willa said.
“Listen, we need to get you out of here. Reginald—who the hell is Reginald?”
Willa pointed over my left shoulder.
“He’s the ogre standing behind you.”
“Wonderful,” I said, and then experienced the closest thing to sleep possible for a zombie.
PLAN B
Zombies don’t usually get headaches. So the throbbing in my skull must have been a delusion. I was praying that the straps across my chest and legs were a delusion, too, but I didn’t have much luck convincing myself.
Thick leather belts held me to a steel table, not unlike those slabs on which corpses rest in the morgue. As if I’d know anything about that.
The room was cozy, if you happened to be a ghoul. To my right, surgical tools were neatly laid on a long, low table. A shelf above that held various bottles and jars containing glass eyes, ceramic horns, and various other fake body parts. Stuffing lay in heaps in the far corners of the room. Another table, directly in front of me, held a padlocked wooden box and more stuffing. To my left, next to the window, hung a plaque from one of those correspondence courses, certifying one Reginald Belial Madgogg for taxidermy. So the big oaf has a middle name, too.
Something tickled my right ear.
Then I heard a little whiny voice. “That was your brilliant plan, huh? Just waltz in, grab the pixie, and waltz out?”
I couldn’t see Oswald’s face, but I was sure he had that condescending look he always gets: head cocked to the side, eyes rolled up, lips pressed together. The best way to describe Oswald? Imagine a marshmallow with a mouth and X’s for eyes. I had to scratch those eyes in. If you can speak, you should have eyes. Otherwise, it’s damn creepy.
“The best plans, Oswald, are the simplest ones,” I said.
“Well, my dead friend, do you have a Plan B?”
“I’m thinking.”
Oswald hopped onto my chest. He stared at me. Now, he was wearing his I-know-something-you-don’t expression. If Oswald had pants, he’d be wetting them.
“Well, don’t strain your worm-eaten brain thinking anymore. I learned something very interesting after that ogre clobbered you and you fell like a sack of dead kittens.”
“He surprised me! How was I supposed to know there was a hidden door behind me?”
“Anyway, I hid in the cell after transforming myself into a puddle of goo. And after stowing you away in here, Madgogg came back and, boy oh boy, what a smooth-talker this guy is. He’s sweet-talking our pixie, promising her everything under the moon: jewels, midget dragons, silks, those golden fish that grant you wishes. Then
get this—he promises her his soul. But he means it, literally. He tells her his soul isn’t in his body. It’s hidden on some place called Black Rock, which is suspended over the Undead Sea.”
“Of course!” I said. “It’s an old ogre trick. They remove their souls from their bodies, because it somehow makes them invulnerable, and they hide the soul in some hard-to-reach place. Oswald, I get that soul, I hold all the cards. Either he gives me Willa or I crush his soul. It’s the perfect plan.”
Oswald was starting to get bent out of shape, literally. His gelatinous body bulged and warped, going in and out from little man shape to blob shape. That was a bad sign.
“There are a few problems, Jack.” It was even worse when he called me Jack.
“Problems are my business.”
“First of all, the soul is inside an egg...”
“Okay.”
“...which is inside a box...”
“Big deal.”
“...which is inside a goose...”
“I can deal with a goose.”
“...which is inside a jackal.”
“Okay, so there are some livestock issues.”
“That’s the least of the issues. The jackal is protected by five demons.”
“So what? Oswald, scoot up to this Black Rock, retrieve the soul, and get back here pronto. I’ll handle the rest.”
“Me? You want me to get the soul? I can just untie you and we’ll go—”
“There’s no time! Go immediately!”
“You’re still afraid of the water, aren’t you?”
“Listen, you little freak, I’m not afraid of anything. There’s simply no time.”
“I’ll just untie you—”
“If you don’t leave this instant, you are out of the agency!”
“How am I even supposed to find this stupid rock?”
“How many rocks can be suspended over the Undead Sea? Ask around, dunzy.”
THE SOULMAN COMETH
Afraid of the water? I might not have minded that from anyone else. But from a homunculus?
Who wouldn’t be afraid of the water after having been trapped in it for a week? One of the many disadvantages to being a zombie is that you can’t die—and that was one time when I would have welcomed it. Zombies and sailing do not mix.
I was beginning to look fondly on that time. The damn wig was itching worse than the maggots on Corpse Hill, the hump was digging into my back like a drunken succubus, and my hunger was growing. I fantasized about thick waitress thighs and fat lawyer bellies and grad-student brains. I know it’s a nasty habit, but I’ve been able to control it, mostly. Of course, most zombies aren’t known for their control. So I guess I’m not your typical zombie.
Through the window at my left, I could see the firestones pouring from the crimson sky. The weatherghoul was right again! The demons would be out now. They always come out during inclement weather, blackening the skies over ShadowShade, swooping and dipping and snatching a lonely fairy or unicorn.
Then I saw Oswald’s head coming over the windowsill. He was smiling like a lunatic gnome. I didn’t know what was worse: Oswald failing, or Oswald succeeding and rubbing it in my face.
He hopped into the room. He was dragging a large sack behind him.
“I got it,” he said. His body glowed with an internal devil’s fire.
I shouted, “What the blazes took so long? It must have taken you at least four and a half hours!”
“For your information, there were three rocks suspended over the Dead Sea, which, I should remind you, isn’t just a hop, skip, and jump away. And did you forget the five demons?” He glowed brighter. “It was pretty rad, actually. Let me tell you how I vanquished them—”
“Put it in your report. Now hurry and untie me.”
“Couldn’t I have done that before?”
I glared at the runt. Homunculi don’t know the first thing about respect. That’s why they’re little men. “Okay, okay,” he said and jumped onto the table, where he began to cut the straps with a scalpel.
“So, anyway, I used a feather slathered with peanut butter—”
“Peanut butter? If you used the petty cash to buy yourself food, I’m taking it out of your salary. Now stop wasting time! File a report and maybe I’ll read it. But proofread the damn thing this time and don’t embellish.”
The sack glided across the floor.
“Oswald?”
“Yeah?”
“Why is the soul gliding across the floor?”
“There was a bit of a problem.”
“There’s always a problem with you!”
The homunculus finally freed me. I sat up. I was so stiff I thought my rigor mortis was acting up again. I stood and stretched. I think I heard a vertebra snap. Then I ripped off the wig and hump. I felt better then, except for the gnawing at my rotten innards. The hunger was reaching critical mass. All I could think about was fairy dust. I reached for my Lucky Dragon hellfire sticks, but they were gone. The ogre must have stolen them!
The sack was now banging against the wall.
“Let me show you the problem,” Oswald said and hopped down from the table. He ran over to the sack and untied the string that held it shut. Out tumbled a small, and terribly confused, white goose.
“I was able to make the jackal puke up the goose,” Oswald said. “But it won’t work on the goose. He won’t give up the box!”
I picked up the creature and knocked on its stomach. I heard a dull thud. Indeed, the box was there.
“Do you have any ideas?” Oswald said.
“Yes, of course I do!” I said and sunk my teeth into the goose. It squawked twice, perhaps three times, and then went silent. I tore through the creature, swallowing feathers and flesh. It was electric, life coursing through me and warming me. I felt like a phoenix burning back into existence. If Oswald hadn’t stopped me, I’d have eaten the box, too.
“What has gotten into you?” Oswald shouted. “I thought you were done with that! We don’t need another episode.”
I dropped the goose carcass, wiped the blood from my mouth. Already the rush was draining from my black veins. “I need that fairy dust, Oswald. I’m on the verge of eating all of ShadowShade and maybe even parts of the Red Garden.”
“Just hold it together. We’ll get the damn dust.”
I held up the box. It barely weighed a thing. But before I could ponder the insubstantial nature of souls, I heard a deep-throated grunt.
The ogre stood in the doorway.
Madgogg had to duck to get inside the room. He was green as a goblin, bald, and uglier than a vampire exposed to the sun. A gold earring dangled from one of his sharp, bat-like ears.
“Just the man I wanted to see,” I said.
The ugly sucker was trying to look mean—and doing a damn good job of it. Thank goodness I had this guy’s soul in my hand or I might have been petrified.
“Listen, you overgrown gnome,” I said, flipping open the box. Inside, nestled in velvet, sat a small white egg. “The dance is over. You’ve been outsmarted.” I held up the egg between my thumb and forefinger. “Madgogg, I hold here an egg—a very special egg—that I took great pains to retrieve.”
In my mind, I felt Oswald’s eyes roll.
The ogre remained silent, but he huffed and his face burned a bruised red.
“It’s gonna go like this, Reg,” I said. “You’re gonna give up this obsession of marrying a pixie—which, quite frankly, is pathetic. You’re gonna give up the girl and we’re all gonna march out of here unharmed.”
The ogre lumbered toward me.
“Let Willa go and I’ll return your soul,” I said. “Fair trade.”
I backed up, but just a dozen steps.
The ogre kept lumbering.
“I happen to know that if I destroy this egg, you’re finished. Walk another step and I’ll make myself an ogre omelet.”
The ogre walked another step. In fact, he walked quite a few steps.
I gave the dunzy
ample warning. “Buddy,” I said, “you’d think being eight feet tall you’d have some room for brains.” Then I reared back and hurled the egg at him. It exploded on his forehead. There was a bright purple flash of light and a release of brimstone. Madgogg stopped dead, his face covered in a thick, black yolk. It oozed down his chin and fell in fat drops onto the floor.
Then—
Madgogg grabbed me by the throat with his big, meaty hands and lifted me. Oswald made some snide comment about a zombie omelet, but I was too busy trying to keep my head attached to my body to pay him any mind.
“But I just destroyed your soul!” I shouted, though it sounded more like a whisper from a frog with laryngitis.
“Not my soul,” the ogre grumbled.
Oswald said, “But I went to Black Rock and got the goose from the jackal, like you said in the cell.”
“This jackal,” the ogre said, “did he have a bushy tail and a white-gray coat?”
“Yeah.”
“Your jackal was a coyote. I think his name is Sam.”
I sunk my teeth into the ogre’s arm—and nearly broke them. I had never tried to eat an ogre before, and I didn’t think I would be trying that again. Their skin is tougher than petrified troll.
I heard a sickly tear from the back of my neck. It was just a matter of time before I was beheaded.
“Reginald Belial Madgogg, take your hands off that disgusting corpse!” a voice squealed.
Instantly the ogre dropped me and I crashed to the floor. When I looked up, I saw Willa standing in the doorway. The ogre rushed over to her. She wagged a finger at him and he shuffled his feet.
I stood up.
“Willa, you’re free!” I said, too stupid to realize what was going on.
“Of course I’m free. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Why would I do that? We’re getting married. Right, Reginald?”
The ogre nodded, stared at the floor.
I saw my fairy dust blowing into the four winds, an imminent zombie rampage in downtown ShadowShade. “But, Willa,” I said, “your mother hired me to—”
Madness & Mayhem: 23 Tales of Horror and Humor Page 15