Secret Dead Men

by Duane Swierczynski

  I knelt down next to Brad and scooped some water onto his face. I needed a better look at him. “Listen to me,” I continued. “You’ve been murdered. I’m here to investigate. Your full cooperation will help bring your killer to justice.”

  His eyes rolled down at his body; his eyelids fluttered. Typical reaction. The victims are always curious, even after being pulled back from the dark wonderland of discorporation. A few check to see what they are wearing. Some even try to fix their hair. Brad tried to say something, but his throat was apparently blocked. I scooped another handful of water into his open mouth. He choked, then coughed up a dollop of mud and insects. I scooped more water onto his face, wiping the mud away. He was a handsome guy.

  “We’re in this together,” I told him. “All you have to do is look at me.”

  “Sh-Sh-She…” he sputtered.

  “Who?” I asked, but instantly regretted it. Clearly, he was talking about his dead wife, Alison. Shit. I had to switch gears. No sense having him freak out now.

  I said, “I need to ask your permission for this.” Not true, but I always made it a point to make this soul-collection thing sound like a matter of free will. “Will you join me to avenge your murder?”

  “Sh-Sh-She’s … c-c-cut…” Brad said, shaking.

  Good enough. I snapped my fingers, which caught his attention, and then I collected his soul.

  How, exactly? An excellent question. And I’ll admit that I don’t know.

  Maybe this analogy will be useful: You probably drive a car, right? And you know how to use the gas pedal, and the brakes, shift into reverse and neutral, and operate the air-conditioning and the radio and windshield wipers and window crank?

  Of course you do. But I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts you wouldn’t be able to explain the mechanical functions behind those operations. You probably don’t even know how an internal combustion engine works. Which is fine. Neither do I. Nor do I understand the technical details of my soul-collection abilities. But rest assured, I know how to drive a soul, just as well as you know how to drive your Datsun.

  I’ve been driving souls for five years, and I’ve gotten good at it.

  In an instant, Brad Larsen became part of me: We were now Farmer-Larsen. I allowed Brad momentary control of my body so he could get whatever he needed to get out of his system. Kick at the mud, punch the air, curse God, whatever. Better to have his psychic anger dispelled on the banks of Woody Creek than inside my head.

  Surprisingly, Brad didn’t do a thing. I couldn’t even guess what he might have been thinking. The connection was too new. All he did was use my eyes to stare down at his own dead body.

  Me? Back when I was first soul-collected—after the initial exhilarating rush of being absorbed had passed—I cried. I was faced with a voyage into dark, terrifying turf. My collector, Robert, spent hours calming me down, explaining things to me.

  But Brad only looked at his corpse as if he were looking at an interesting piece of modern art. I felt my head cock. He didn’t ask a single question, or voice a single complaint. Which was fine with me, as I didn’t have time to explain it all to him.

  “Relax, Brad,” I told him, unnecessarily. “You’re gone, but not forgotten.” Then I regained control of my body.

  Usually, next came the tricky part: stealing the victim’s face. Thank God I didn’t have to take Brad’s right then and there.

  A soul has its own momentum; it can propel itself anywhere, given the push or shown the right image. After all, a soul is built for travel. You can trick it back into its body, you can collect it and stick it in your own mind, no problem. A face, on the other hand, was dumb meat, stretched and burned and replenished and readjusted over a period of many, many years. Which meant, to steal Brad’s face, I had to stretch and burn and replenish and readjust my own face.

  I knew it would be worth the effort, however. Whatever priceless information Brad Larsen had locked away in his mind would become a more powerful weapon if I became Brad Larsen. On the day I confront The Association, I want to wear a face they fear. The fact that they had sent somebody 1,200 miles to smash Larsen’s face meant I’d found one.

  But there was no time to do a full reconstruction here in the creek—plus, my FBI friends would be sure to hear my hellish screams—so I whipped out my trusty Kodak Instamatic and used an entire roll of 110 film on Larsen’s corpse, for later reference. I also tried to memorize the features (just in case): The stiff, bony forehead and the high cheekbones and short, upturned nose. He had a strong jawline, but not so strong as to detract from his boyish good looks. This was definitely going to be an improvement over Special Agent Del Kennedy. No offense to the dead.

  Three

  Brain Hotel

  I placed Brad Larsen’s soul in one of the rooms inside my head, then thought up a mild brain sedative. He took it without complaint. In fact, he didn’t even seem to be aware I gave it to him.

  These “rooms” are simply mental constructs, built to house the souls I collect. Consider it a Holiday Inn of the brain. How would you like to be plucked from death, only to find yourself floating around some ethereal space inside somebody else’s skull? For souls to retain a sane, working version of their earthly memories—and not be corrupted by the strange limbo of my brain—they had to retain a semblance of earthly surroundings. So, I had a hotel in my brain.

  From the soul’s point of view, it’s a sweet deal. Each soul receives a two-bedroom apartment, and is allowed to furnish it as desired. After all, it’s their own mental power doing the creating; I merely supply the guise of walls, floors, water, gas and electric. They are free to pursue any kind of art or hobby they wish, or consort with the soul of a prostitute named Genevieve I’d absorbed a few years back. If they want a professional oak pool table, it’s theirs. A wet bar, a color television set—not to mention whatever programming they desire—presto, bingo, there it is. Not a bad afterlife at all.

  I do my business on the first couple of floors of the Brain Hotel. There’s the lobby, reserved for social functions and meetings. I have my office to retreat to when the need arises. I’ve resisted the urge to absorb the soul of a secretary … though it is tempting. There is a series of interrogation rooms—ranging from a clean, comfortable lounge to a shithole dungeon with a scratchy, houndstooth couch—depending on the suspect. It helps with the acclimation process.

  I had 6 souls in residence in my Brain Hotel. Brad Larsen made it 7. I suppose I made 8, since I also lived in the hotel—that is, whenever I wasn’t busy controlling my real, physical body.

  I don’t keep the souls locked up in the Brain Hotel all the time. Once in a while, as a reward, I’ll allow one of them to take control of my physical body, so long as it doesn’t interfere with my investigations. Most times, the soul will merely want to experience the taste of real food again.

  Unfortunately, I’m the one who pays the gastrointestinal tab. Once, I allowed a tub-of-lard ex-bookie named Harlan to take control of my body. He promptly stuffed it with three Gino Giants, two cans of Campbell’s baked beans (with bacon strips), six large Grade-A scrambled eggs, a half a loaf of Stroehmann’s bread, two cans of B&M chili con carne, and an entire New York-style cheesecake. I had been resting in my Brain Hotel office, and hadn’t noticed until it was too late. I spent nearly three hours in the men’s room of the nearest motel, rotating my rear end and head into the business end of a white porcelain toilet.

  As punishment, I made that fat bastard move into the dungeon with the houndstooth couch for a month.

  It is necessary to stress that the entire Brain Hotel—from the interrogation rooms to the restaurant to the Olympic-sized swimming pool to the Irish-themed pub—exists for a single purpose: to the destroy The Association. It had been my mission for quite some time, and it even predates my current occupation of this body and management of the Brain Hotel.

  The details aren’t too important, but regarding my previous life: I was an investigative reporter during the late 1960s. It was a g
reat time to be a reporter; people still took you for an authority figure. My most prized possessions were my Underwood portable typewriter and General Electric tape recorder with detachable interview microphone. Pens and paper you could find anywhere, but a reporter without his typewriter and recorder was truly lost.

  I had been checking into a case of election fraud, which I was sure was linked to earlier incidences of bribery, extortion, drug dealing and DJ payola. A single name kept popping up—a mysterious “J.P. Bafoures”—as well as the same methods. Even to a wet-behind-the-ears kid like me, it sounded like a crime syndicate. I nicknamed it “The Association,” and I was sure one of these days I’d find the link that tied it all together. It would be my way out of the desert and into a real newspaper.

  But before I had a chance to break the election story in The Henderson Bulletin, I had a run-in with members of what I could only assume was The Association, sent by this “J.P. Bafoures.” Even though I’d been writing about their activities for more than two years, it was my first physical encounter with any bona fide member of the organization. And my last.

  They had picked me up as I was leaving a bar. Three of them. “Farmer?”

  “Yeah?”

  A quick punch to the gut; they grabbed my car keys. A few more shots to my kidneys and head. I was shoved into my own backseat. One of them started driving. Another went to his own car and followed us.

  “Wh-Where we headed, guys?” I was trying to sound nonchalant, but it’s awfully hard to sound nonchalant when you’re sniffing blood up your nose.

  The one to my left said, “For a drink.”

  Which, for some reason, terrified the shit out of me. My imagination started running away with me. Were they going to drown me? Force booze on me and send me driving off a cliff? Cut my wrists and make me drink my own blood?

  Not quite.

  When we reached a seemingly random destination in the desert, they threw me out of the car and served me my cocktail in a rusty gasoline canister. “Bottoms up, college boy,” someone said, forcing the plastic siphon to my lips.

  A shot of fuel rushed past my mouth and down my throat. I vomited it back up two seconds later. While I was on my knees, retching, they poured gasoline over my head and back. I reached out to steady myself; one of them snapped two of my fingers back, breaking them. I bawled like a baby and was force-fed more gas. Again I fell to my knees, puking. I received another shower and a few kicks to my ribs. I hadn’t had that much fun drinking since my freshman year of college.

  Soon, I was back in my car, behind the wheel. I couldn’t see anything—my eyes were burning too much to register images—but I knew what they were going to do. I imagined them fumbling for the matches, and pouring a thin trail of gasoline far enough away to be safe. I remembering hoping my dentist kept good records. I didn’t want to be forgotten, my work to go unnoticed forever.

  Mercifully, before I could feel myself burn alive, I vomited one final time—blood, I think—and my head hit the steering wheel and I died. Possibly from the beating, maybe from gasoline poisoning, but most likely from sheer terror.

  Not long after, my soul was collected.

  One moment, I was trapped in a useless, burnt pile of flesh. The next, I was looking back down at it, full of pity. Was that me? That broken, pathetic skeleton-man at the wheel of a baked Chevy Nova? It’s quite amazing what a change of perspective can do for you. You feel it in tiny ways. When you look at photograph of yourself, for instance. Distance gives you power. Or at least it allows you to place yourself in the past, where you didn’t know any better.

  I heard a voice in my head, and that’s when I realized I was in someone else’s body.

  Relax, Del Farmer, the voice said. You’re gone, but not forgotten.

  An odd thing to say, don’t you think? But to this day, I can’t think of anything more appropriate. So that’s what I say whenever I collect a new soul.

  Later, after I’d had a chance to settle down, my collector introduced himself. His name was Robert. He too was interested in the criminal organization I called “The Association,” and had collected my soul (after trying in vain to save my life, of course) to see if I would be willing to help him.

  Are you kidding? Me, a kid raised on Shock Suspense-Stories and Vault of Horror comics, turn down a chance to avenge myself beyond the grave? Please. I was happy to tell him all that I knew, even to the point of re-typing some of my stories on a Brain Underwood he’d provided. In time I came to be much more than a source; I became a vital part of Robert’s investigation. For three years, Robert showed me the ropes—how to collect a soul, how to build additional rooms in the Brain Hotel, and much more.

  Eventually, Robert allowed me to assume control, before he left the hotel for the nicer neighborhood of the Great Beyond. He didn’t explain why, or give me any kind of warning. All I found was a note taped to the door of my Brain room:

  Del:

  Took a bunch of the souls on to a better place. It was time. But not for all of us.

  Keep up the good work, will ya?

  Yours,

  Robert

  I understood that Robert was leaving me with a mission: to continue soul-collecting until I had enough information to stop “J.P. Bafoures” and his Association, once and for all. And after two years of dogged investigation, I thought I had finally collected the right soul for the job: Brad Larsen.

  Robert would have been proud.

  Four

  Fieldman’s Trip

  With Brad Larsen’s soul safely checked into the Brain Hotel, I started back toward the deck. I figured I would thank the Feds for their Midwestern hospitality, catch a free ride back to Chicago, use the bureau files to enhance my own Association case file, enjoy a tender slab of porterhouse steak somewhere near Lakeview Drive, then catch a plane back to Vegas and drink a couple of those miniature bottles of free booze they give you.

  A few steps away from the house, I heard voices above me:

  “Where is he?” (I recognized it: Nevins.)

  “Nobody’s seen him. He must have jumped into the creek.” (Unidentified male.)

  Oh boy. I slunk back beneath the deck, and wedged myself between two wooden supports.

  “I don’t believe this,” Nevins said. He paced a few steps, directly above my head. I could make out his stocky shape between floor slats. “You telling me this guy just sailed through your office? Without any of the usual…”

  “He had clearance.”

  “Had being the operative word, asshole.”

  Damn. They knew. A voice in my head taunted me: I told you they’d find out, jerk! The voice belonged to the real Special Agent Kevin Kennedy.

  “Be quiet,” I muttered.

  Take it from me—Feds don’t enjoy being dicked around. They’re gonna skin you and hang your skeleton out to drip-dry.

  “Quiet,” I repeated, then heard the footsteps above me stop. A whisper I could barely make out: “He’s nearby.” Then, the snapping sound of pistols being removed from their standard issue leather holsters. Cautious steps to all sides of the dock.

  This was beautiful. I tried to put together some options. I soon realized I didn’t have any. My only chance was to sneak around the 20-man FBI team, steal a car, then motor my ass out of here.

  I stepped through the mud, using the dock supports to brace myself, trying to not make a sound. Once I reached the edge, I looked up, and saw a single leg swing over the side of the dock. Someone was coming down to have a look. My eyes scanned the ground for anything weapon-like—a stick, a rock, a chewing gum wrapper, anything. But no luck. I balled up a fist, wondering if I could hit fast and hard enough to knock the agent out before he could cry out—and without the sound of the blow reaching above. Not likely.

  I shrunk back against a support, then slid myself around it. The agent hung from the rail for a moment, then dropped to the muddy ground, just as I had. He removed his pistol from its holster.

  I sucked in my gut and tried to make like
a pole.

  The agent spun around, checking his surroundings. He missed me on first pass. Then, he started walking away, down the creek, toward the recently-reanimated body of Brad Larsen.

  Okay, this was it. Fight or flight. In about thirty seconds this guy was going to see the body, yell for his buddies, and I would be swarmed. I wouldn’t be missed a second time. So I took a chance and started a slow jog upcreek, hoping nobody was looking. Each step felt a week. I sensed eyes behind me, watching me dance up the mud like an idiot. Any second now I was going to hear Nevins bark, “Freeze” and I’d turn around to see the sun glinting off 19 shiny pistols, each one pointed my way.

  I dove behind the first shrub I encountered. Looked back; nobody had spotted me. I had to run further ahead, ducking trees until I found a way to the main road. I tried to remember it from the ride down. There weren’t too many houses around, which meant not too many cars. I thought about tuning out for a second, and checking the files in my office—you see, back in my Brain office, everything I see is instantaneously recorded in the form of typewritten logs, for later study. Consider it a highly organized version of the human subconscious.

  But there was no time for that now. What would Robert have done?

  Then it came to me.

  I closed my eyes and pictured a phone. I dialed a nonsense number, and thought about who I wanted to reach: Harlan, the gluttonous bookie. Deeper, somewhere beyond my ordinary range of hearing, I heard a phone ring.

  Then a voice answered the phone in my head.

  Yeah?

  “Harlan,” I whispered. “It’s me. You’ve gotta do me a favor. But hold on first.”

  What?

  I opened my eyes, then peeked over the top of the shrub. Nobody looking. I shut my eyes again.