“WHO?” Timmy boomed, glancing around expectantly.
“Faye Random, Shadow, Bob Esquire, Timmy,” I said, gesturing to each in turn with an unenthusiastic wave.
“Shadow,” Faye gushed. “What a lovely name. Where’d you pick up that one?”
Shadow responded with a dagger-filled look that would’ve shut up pretty much anyone else, living or dead. Being a poltergeist and paparazzi, Faye was oblivious to glares, rude finger gestures and other means by which people communicate irritation or deep dislike.
“Oh, dear,” she pouted. “You’re behaving just like Axe. He won’t tell me about his name either. How terribly impolite of you two, keeping secrets from me. But I will find out eventually,” she warned with a wag of her finger.
We ignored her and kept moving. The streets were fairly empty, apart from a few drug addicts shooting upon the sidewalk. In this part of the city, that’s normal. Actually, I’d think it strange if I didn’t see it.
“My word,” Bob suddenly interrupted Faye’s monologue about façades and shape shifting. “In the name of all that is holy, what, pray tell, is that?”
Given Bob’s rather blob-like physique, he couldn’t actually point a finger at what he was referring to. So for a few seconds, everyone looked off in different directions and answered accordingly.
“LIGHT. BULB,” Timmy said in awe as he waved to the lamppost looming above them, its light scattered by the misty rain.
“That’s a car,” Shadow said with a snicker, his dark eyes glowing with spiteful humour.
“It’s my façade.” Faye gestured to her child-like, red clothed form and spun about so her curls fluttered out from her pixie face. “Axe is SO old fashioned. He insisted I stay in only one, so this is the one I use. Do you like it, Shadow?”
I looked at Bob. What I really wanted to ask was the location of his eyes. I settled for: “Where’re you looking?”
“Over there on the street corner. There’s something lurking there. Do you see it? I do believe it’s watching us.”
That shut even Faye up. We all peered through the thin veil of rain towards the end of the street. Sure enough, there was a vaguely humanoid form leaning against the wall of a four-story apartment building. It resembled artistic graffiti in the form of a silhouette, except it twitched about and shifted from leg to leg. For a second, I thought it was the shadow cowboy stalking me, but the thing was hatless and didn’t move from its wall.
“Looks like that shadow without a cowboy hat,” I answered without actually listening to how crazy that must’ve sounded. I was still wondering why Bob didn’t have a humanoid shape, and what he used for eyes.
“DEATHMARK,” Timmy whispered in a voice that trembled like a jet engine about to take off.
“What did you say, honey?” Faye asked, looking at Timmy for the first time.
“DEATHMARK.”
“Very illuminating,” Bob commented dryly as Faye rolled her eyes and flung her arms up in disgust. “But I believe what the young lady was hoping to hear was an explanation.”
“It’s like a birthmark, in a way,” Shadow explained, as Timmy was now blubbering incoherently. “You get a birthmark when you’re born. You leave a deathmark if you die violently.”
I immediately thought of the shadow I’d seen near my body, the shadow that was mine.
We all swivelled to face the moving silhouette, watching it as if it was acting in a fascinating horror movie. Except Timmy. He wasn’t fascinated. He was just horrified and started blabbering even louder, his sausage fingers twitching and tugging at his shirt. We were now close enough to see that the deathmark wasn’t actually leaning against the wall. Like a shadow, it was firmly plastered on the wall. Unlike a shadow, it was moving about restlessly, as if its human owner was pacing about on the sidewalk, but there was no one around.
“Can it see us?” Faye whispered as she floated a bit closer to the rest of us.
“Seems like it, the way it’s moving,” I answered softly. “What’s it doing here?”
“Deathmarks always hang around close to where they were killed,” Shadow said in a flat voice, his face expressionless. “They actually can’t move very far from the spot, so we’re safe. They’re usually pretty slow, but they can be sneaky, so you definitely don’t want to get close.”
We skirted silently around the corner, staying far away from the wall. Even Faye managed to keep quiet, and that’s saying something. The free spirits were nowhere near the area; I could see their colourful light dancing far ahead. I wondered if they too feared being caught. The deathmark swivelled its featureless shadowy head, as if watching us. Only when the thing was out of sight and we were half way down the block did we relax.
“So I guess I have a deathmark,” I said, almost as a question, even though I already knew. I gazed into the distance, searching the shadows for the deathmark with a cowboy hat. What did it want from me? And how come it didn’t seem restricted to one place?
Shadow shrugged his slim shoulders. “Probably. It must be floating around Chan’s, watching them fry up noodles and pile on the MSG.”
“Lucky it,” I mused. No cowboy hats up ahead.
“I should say not,” Bob protested. “MSG is dreadful. My dear boy, I hope you weren’t actually planning to eat the poison?”
“Nope. I was just hanging out there, enjoying the smells and waiting to be murdered.”
“Thank heavens,” Bob breathed out.
Shadow snickered while I raised an eyebrow.
“Bob, my friend,” Shadow said, the snicker lurking in his eyes, “you’ve got many admirable skills, but detecting sarcasm is not one of them.”
“That is quite true, my dark acquaintance,” Bob conceded graciously. “However, detecting deficiencies in building design and maintenance is a little hobby of mine, and I am rather concerned about the status of the buildings we are currently travelling past.”
Shadow and I exchanged a look and laughed. Faye shook her head and made a sympathetic noise.
“So a war zone must be just crawling with deathmarks,” I said, changing the topic.
Shadow shuddered, and clucked. “Axe, you do NOT want to go there.”
“Can we drop the topic, sugar beats, before I smack the both of you?” Faye demanded.
“Can ghosts really do that?” I asked, but then remembered the concrete molecules pummelling my head. I made a mental note to ask Faye about it later; it might come in handy to learn how to smack other ghosts around.
We floated along in silence until we reached the decrepit building housing The Ghost Post.
“Surely we aren’t entering there?” Bob asked as we floated towards the entrance. It was pretty clear what ‘there’ referred to, even without a finger or limb pointing in the right direction.
“Surely we are, sugar,” Faye giggled.
“You jest.”
“We don’t.”
Bob stopped moving. “The structural integrity seems to be seriously compromised.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Shadow said with a wicked grin. “As for the cleaning and maintenance… Now those are extremely compromised. Come on, big guy. DD’s probably having a fit, wondering what’s taking you so long.”
I made it a point to go through the office door rather than the wall. I could still feel the place where the concrete molecule had blasted through my brain. Timmy came in last and filled up a whole section of the room. Shadow was nowhere to be seen.
DD pointed at Timmy with a chewed up nail and screeched, “Who’s that?”
“Nice to see you too, DD,” I answered. “This is Timmy. He needs a job.”
“And what are we, an employment agency?”
I shrugged. “Figured he could be the bouncer.”
“And that thing?” DD peered towards Bob, her thick upper lip curled with distaste as if she was studying a pile of toad turd.
“That thing would be your new star reporter,” I answered dryly.
“Pleased to meet you, Madam
e,” Bob said politely. Either he hadn’t seen her expression or chose to ignore it.
She stared at him a while. “But that’s not what his photo looks like at all. He’s a short, fat guy with a bald head. What happened to his body?”
“Not sure,” I said, still wondering that myself.
“I believe I can explain,” Bob said. “Right before my demise, I was contemplating my weight issue along with my vertically challenged body. My last thought was ‘I’m such a blob.’ And that’s what I am now left with.”
DD huffed and kept glowering at Bob, who might have been staring back or he might’ve been looking around his new employer’s premises, wondering where his new cupboard / crypt / office and desk were. Whatever the case, he never did tell me or anyone else, and eventually DD had enough of the staring.
“Right,” she barked so loudly that I wasn’t the only one to jump. “Faye, Bob, come with me. The rest of you—get out.”
I looked at Timmy, who was gazing at DD like he wasn’t sure if he should sit on her or drown her in ghost tears. “Yeah, she’s a friendly one. Let’s go, big guy.”
When we exited the office and Shadow suddenly appeared, I wasn’t too surprised, so I managed to stay close to the ground instead of planting my head in the ceiling. Timmy didn’t have enough imagination to be surprised or scared. He just gazed around with all the intelligence of a concrete block.
“What now, Axe? Did she give you another assignment?” Shadow asked, smoothly floating along beside me.
“I’m going to see my deathmark.”
“Whoa. Slow down there, janitor.” Shadow slid in front and stopped. “She didn’t ask you to do that.”
“Nope. I decided all on my own.”
“You can’t to do that.”
“Sure I can,” I said firmly, ignoring Timmy’s desperate head shaking. “I’ve been deciding things ever since I learned how to walk.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Let me repeat. I. Am. Going. To see. My deathmark.”
“No. Really.” Shadow rubbed the back of a hand over his mouth. “It’s never very pretty when a lost spirit tries to meet up with its deathmark. I strongly suggest we do something else.”
“Suggestion noted. I’m going. How bad can it be, eh?”
Shadow shuddered. For a split second, he actually looked nervous. It was a look that definitely did not suite him. “Bad. It can be really bad.”
“Bah.” I floated past him. “You coming or you gonna hang around out here, avoiding DD?”
Shadow’s dark eyebrows shut up. “Who…? I’m not avoiding anyone. Why would I do that?”
I smiled. Being nervous may not suite him, but I enjoyed it anyways. “Don’t know, but you are. Let’s go.”
Shadow shifted after me and muttered, “I don’t avoid anyone. They avoid me.”
Together we left the building, with Timmy towering over us like a highway overpass.
“Want to fly?” I asked.
“I’m not avoiding her. Where do you get off, saying I’m avoiding her? I don’t avoid…”
I grinned. “Hey, Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome, we flying or walking?”
Shadow snorted. “The way you fly, we’re faster walking.”
“HEIGHTS BAD,” Timmy boomed out and waved his hands in front of his chest. “NO FLY.”
“Well, that settles that then,” I said, ignoring the venomous glances that Shadow was shooting at me.
When we turned into Gore Avenue and approached the entrance to Chan’s Chinese Chow, I slowed down, glancing around, searching for a cowboy hat. A steady downpour glowed silver under the streetlamps. Outside the puddle of light, shadows gathered.
“You’re not quite so cool now, are you, janitor?” Shadow snarled. “Feeling a little edgy, are you?”
“So why’s it so bad to see a deathmark?” I asked, my eyes searching the shadowy alley near the entrance to the diner. All the shadows stayed still.
Shadow crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. His form blended into the darkness and he almost disappeared. “The problem isn’t seeing one, it’s being touched by one. A deathmark can’t move much. It can’t leave the area where the murder happened.”
Shadow abruptly pushed himself forward, so that his face was visible in the pale overhead light that splashed down with the rain. “The thing is, it doesn’t like being stuck there. It wants to move. And if it gets a chance, if it can catch a ghost, any ghost at all, it’ll stick onto that ghost like a bank manager sticks to money, or mould to bread.”
Timmy started whimpering, clenching and unclenching his giant hands together.
“And so?” I demanded, my hands tightening into fists. My eyes twitched to watch out for moving shadows. My wrist buzzed with the memory of my close encounter with a deathmark.
“And so”—Shadow leaned closer and lowered his voice—“once the deathmark catches a ghost, it doesn’t let go. It wraps itself around like a boa constrictor. It drains the ghost of its energy, absorbs everything the ghost has until there’s nothing left. After that, the deathmark is free to move.”
There was a moment of deep, scary silence as Shadow and I stared into each other’s eyes: stony grey and black slate. Rain tinkled as it splatted on a nearby car. The streetlamp behind us flickered briefly.
“GO HOME NOW,” Timmy wailed.
I scoffed, breaking eye contact with a shake of my head. “You tell a good story, my friend.”
Shadow shrugged and straightened up, his dark face calm and unreadable. “I’m glad you think I’m your friend, but it’s no story, janitor. It’s the truth. Ghosts have to watch out for deathmarks. They may be slow, but they’re sneaky. If one of them catches you, you’re history. And in there,” he jabbed a finger at the entrance of the restaurant, “is at least one deathmark who would just love to get acquainted.”
“Then what’re we waiting for?” I flashed a grim smile. I was pretty sure the smile didn’t reach my eyes.
Shadow stared at me. “Did you understand what I just told you?”
“Yup.” I headed for the entrance.
“I STAY.”
“Good idea, brainbox,” Shadow sneered. “You guard the door, okay? That’ll be helpful.”
“Lighten up on him,” I ordered and glanced around. Chan’s Chinese Chow was at the corner of a somewhat busy road and a quiet, narrow, uninviting alley. On the other side of the alley was Donut Delight, so after you near killed yourself on MSG and oily vegetables, you could finish off with a fatty, sugar jolt to your arteries.
I jabbed a finger at the curb where I had fallen. “The killers were hiding in the alley. I was killed right here as I walked across.”
“A memorable place,” Shadow said. “Can we get to the point?
“Well, shouldn’t it be right here? You know, my deathmark?”
“Maybe it didn’t like hanging around outside on its own.”
I scoffed and floated into Chan’s Chinese Chow. The last time I’d been in there was to find Faye, and I hadn’t seen any psycho shadows then. Chan Junior was still leaning on the counter, absently serving a customer while shouting out a conversation in Chinese with the kitchen staff. A couple delivery guys were slouched against the wall, waiting. A few students gulped down the food like it was gourmet cooking. The light was still dim, the walls and floor still grungy.
“Can you see something?” Shadow hissed in my ear.
I waved him away. The grimy walls had some shadows, but all of them were connected to a physical person or thing. I glanced towards the kitchen, but from what I could see, it was also normal, as normal as it ever could get with bits of vegetables and chunks of unidentifiable meat flying around as the cooks expertly used guillotine-sized knives to flick the food off cutting boards and into pots and pans while shouting back at Chan Junior. “It isn’t here.”
“You sound disappointed.”
I rubbed my chin. “Maybe it’s in Donut Delight.”
Shadow frowned. “As far as I kno
w, they don’t have dietary preferences.”
“Let’s go check.”
“Oh goody. Let’s.” Shadow paused, glaring at me. “Not.”
“I didn’t ask you to babysit me,” I said, my jaw tightening up as I floated outside. “You can wait for me out here and look after Timmy.”
Shadow hesitated and shook his head. Without another word, we entered the donut shop, which was smaller, brighter and slightly cleaner-looking than Chan’s Chinese Chow. It was definitely better lit.
“Nope. Looks clear.”
Shadow breathed out sharply. “Great. We came, we saw nothing, we can go now.”
Not sure if I should be disappointed or relieved, I turned to go and froze.
Lurking around the entrance was a deathmark.
“Hey, that kinda looks like me,” I observed, tilting my head to the side, half expecting the deathmark to mirror me. It didn’t.
“So we know which deathmark’s going to be eating you for supper,” Shadow snapped. “Out through the back wall.”
We spun around, preparing to zip through the wall, but a second shadow crept up from behind the cash register. A third one was on the ceiling, gently spinning around the light bulb just above us; it looked like a flat, malevolent chocolate donut without the white sugar on top.
“Blast, those things really are sneaky,” I said, zipping away as the ceiling shadow started to lower a stretchy arm towards me.
“Blast, you’re so screwed.” Shadow leaned against the counter where an oblivious woman was ringing up someone’s order. He watched as I dodged another squirming tentacle.
“So are you. Why aren’t they pouncing?” I asked, joining Shadow. The shadow guarding the door left its post and slid along the wall to the counter.
“Do you want them to?”
“Nope, just wondering.”
There was something else I was wondering about, but I couldn’t quite tack it down.
“Well, stop wondering and keep moving,” he snapped. “This is crazy. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you.”
“CRAZY.”
“Timmy,” I exclaimed as I darted away from tendrils of darkness waving at me.
“Great. The fake security guard arrives. We’re saved,” Shadow sneered as he followed me around.
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