Blind God's bluff bf-1

by Richard Lee Byers

  It’s the part of the cemetery reserved for circus and carnival workers. A little bit famous, at least to us Tampa natives, although it didn’t look any different than the rest of the graveyard. It was just a field with a low sandstone wall around it, and the markers were just little rectangular slabs. They weren’t shaped like tilt-a-whirls or elephants or anything like that.

  As we got out of the car, A’marie fluffed up her tousled black curls, maybe to make sure they hid her horns. I didn’t think she needed to. There was nobody else around.

  Which wasn’t all that encouraging, really. Where was the help she’d promised? I’d relaxed a little on the way over, probably because I felt that at least I was on my way to rescue Vic, but now worry and impatience sank their teeth into me again.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “This way,” said A’marie. She headed toward the garden mausoleum at the south end of the graveyard. As I followed, I wondered if she was going to introduce me to another walking dead man like the Pharaoh, or if she had some useful gadget like Frodo’s ring stashed inside the crypt.

  When we were most of the way across the field, somebody whistled.

  I turned around. I didn’t see anybody, but the shrill sound came again. I pulled the pistol out of the back of my jeans and said, “A’marie! We’re not alone.”

  And I guess she answered me. But not with words.

  Soft piping started up behind me. It sounded like Zamfir. But the few snatches of his music I’d heard on late-night TV commercials had never started my feet skipping and hopping to the beat like I was dancing some kind of folk dance.

  I couldn’t stop, but I still had enough control over my legs to dance around to face A’marie. Her cheeks bulging, she was puffing away on a set of panpipes, and her left hand was also holding a white handkerchief. I couldn’t see the spot of my blood on it, but I was pretty sure it was there.

  I know what you’re thinking: For somebody who’s been telling you what a kick-ass poker player he was, I hadn’t done very well at picking up tells on A’marie. She’d conned me from the moment she claimed to have burned the handkerchief right up until a second ago, when the whistles had given her the chance to pull the pipes out of her coat without me seeing. What can I say? I liked her, I was so worried about Vic that I wasn’t thinking straight, and besides, people who want to set you up don’t generally hand you a loaded pistol.

  Which I now pointed at her as best I could. Even with her hexing me, I didn’t know if I had it in me to shoot her. I hoped she’d back down so we wouldn’t have to find out.

  She didn’t. She kept playing, and suddenly my arm bent. I aimed the gun at my temple.

  That was when I remembered that for the past couple days, I’d had magic powers, too. I called for the Thunderbird, and there it was, instantly, in my eyes, anyway. I only wanted to get back control of my body, but the ward sent A’marie staggering backward, too, like someone had shoved her.

  She was game, though. As soon as she caught her balance, she sucked in a breath to start playing again.

  “Damn it, don’t!” I said. “I swear-”

  Something boomed like an anti-aircraft gun. Startled, I turned my head, and an object slammed into me. The impact knocked me at least ten feet, and then I slammed down on the grass.

  As I lay there stunned and hurting, I realized I was spattered with scraps of filth and chips of bone, with more littering the ground around me. After a second, they started floating up into the air, drifting toward a spot a couple paces away. I realized that A’marie had brought me to meet a living corpse like the Pharaoh, and the dude had smashed himself to pieces flying into me. But no big deal. He knew how to put himself back together.

  I needed to pull myself together before he did. I tried to lift the gun and realized it wasn’t in my hand anymore. I rolled onto my hands and knees to look for it. That brought me nose to empty nose hole with A’marie’s next surprise.

  And I do mean nose. He rushed me wrapped in a rotting-fish stink that made Timon’s funk seem like Chanel No. 5. His legs ended at the knees, and he swung himself on his stumps and hands like an ape or a man on crutches. The hands were deformed, too, with just two thick fingers each that made them look like crab claws. The fingers were mostly bare bone now, just like the skull with the bullet holes in it.

  I threw the Thunderbird at him. It didn’t stop him. I’d burned through a lot of mojo helping Rufino, I was still half dazed, and this time the magic just didn’t take. The zombie, if that was the right word for him, plowed into me and grabbed me by the throat.

  We rolled around the ground tangled together. Those claws were strong. I managed to break his stranglehold on my neck, but couldn’t shake him loose entirely. Partly because I was teary-eyed blind and gagging on his stink.

  A bass voice with an Italian accent said, “That’s enough.” I turned my head to see the Model 439 pointed at me.

  The zombie holding it looked like the Pharaoh might have looked if he’d let himself go. In other words, on the surface he was pretty much all mushy-looking rot. But you could see that he’d been a big, strapping guy when he was alive, with a big curved mustache that looked like fungus now.

  He was too far away for me to make a grab for the automatic even if the crab guy hadn’t been holding onto me. I froze.

  “You can let him up,” said the Italian zombie. I figured he was the same one who’d smacked into me, then needed to put himself back together. “Just stick close to him.”

  The crab did what his partner wanted. At least it gave me a little relief from the stink. I stood up.

  “Can you handle him?” asked A’marie, still holding the panpipes and handkerchief near her mouth.

  The crab guy smiled up at her. Some of his teeth had fallen out, and the ones that were left were black and brown. “No problem,” he said. “Get back to the hotel before they miss you.”

  She looked at me and said, “I’m sorry. I… I wouldn’t really have made you shoot yourself. I just wanted to scare you into letting go of the gun. Lorenzo and Georgie won’t hurt you, either, unless you make them.”

  “Just shut up and go,” I said.

  She looked hurt. That was stupid, considering what she’d done to me, and what was even stupider was that it gave me a twinge of guilt.

  “I could have just let you walk into the lord’s trap and hoped you wouldn’t make it out again,” she said. “Doing it this way, there’s a good chance we’re actually saving your life.”

  “What about Victoria’s life?”

  “I told you before: We have our own problems to solve. We can’t worry about humans we don’t even know.” She turned back to Lorenzo and Georgie. “Thank you for this.”

  “There’s no need to thank us,” Lorenzo-the Italian zombie-said. “We need change even more than you do. Who sleeps and dreams more than the dead?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A’marie gave me a last troubled look, then headed back to the Miata. Lorenzo waved his off hand, motioning for me to walk farther south. Both he and Georgie followed along behind me.

  And all of this was happening in an open field in the middle of a city on a sunny afternoon. I was sure the boom had rattled some windows, and that Georgie looked strange even at a distance. But nobody was rushing to my rescue.

  “So, Lorenzo,” I said, in the faint hope that chitchat would distract the zombies, make them like me, or something, “you were a human cannonball.”

  “One of the first,” Lorenzo answered with surprise and pride in his voice, “and nobody ever flew farther.”

  “And now you don’t even need a cannon.”

  “No. I admit, it’s a funny sort of gift. I never heard of another Lingerer with anything like it. But it’s what Fate chose for me.”

  “And you, Georgie,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve actually heard of you.”

  “I guess you watch that Death Row show,” he growled. “Well, guess what? It was all true. I was a drunk. I beat up my family. I shot a
nd killed my daughter’s boy friend. Finally my wife hired a guy to shoot me so I couldn’t hurt her and the kids anymore. Happy?”

  “Right now?” I replied. “Not really.”

  “I’m not that person anymore,” Georgie said. “At least I’m trying not to be. But it’s not easy when Timon thinks it’s funny to make me go through all the worst moments over and over again in my sleep.”

  “Look,” I said. “I realize something needs to be done about him-”

  “No,” said Lorenzo, “you don’t. You’re just saying anything that you think might help you. But it’s too late for that. We’re here.”

  “Here” didn’t look any different than the rest of the graveyard. Still, it seemed like the zombies wanted me to stop walking, so I did.

  Then the strip of ground in front of a headstone grumbled and split. In seconds, it was an open grave with the stained, decaying remains of a cheap pine coffin at the bottom. Loose dirt pattered down on the lid, and the symbols scrawled there in blue and purple chalk.

  “Home sweet home,” Georgie said.

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Lorenzo asked. “There’s a lot of daylight left.”

  “He’s got magic,” said the crab. “Somebody has to stay awake and stand guard. And it’s easier to hide when you’re built low to the ground.”

  That was probably why I hadn’t spotted him after he whistled, not that it mattered anymore. I whirled and threw myself at the zombies.

  It probably would have gotten me shot, too, except that before Lorenzo could pull the trigger, Georgie threw himself against my legs and tackled me. I fell down, and Lorenzo cracked me over the head with the Smith and Wesson. It hurt a lot. Enough to make me stop resisting.

  “Georgie’s going to let you go,” Lorenzo said, “and then you’re going to climb down. If you don’t, I swear I really will shoot you.”

  Head pounding, I clambered down into the grave. “You want to get inside and close the lid,” Georgie said. “If you don’t, you won’t have any space between you and the dirt.”

  “I could still run out of air and suffocate,” I said. “You know that, right?”

  He grinned. “Maybe I’m not as different from the old Georgie as I like to think. Blame your friend Timon. And get in the box.”

  I pulled up the squeaky, rickety lid, got in the coffin, and closed it again. One of the hinges had corroded away, and it didn’t shut very well. It also had holes in it, which gave me another second or two of light. They also gave me streams of grit and dust when the ground closed over the top of me. I coughed and struggled not to panic. I didn’t really think the box was going to fill up completely, but there was a trapped-animal part of me that did.

  When I got the fear under control, I had to deal with my stomach, at least if I didn’t want to lie there covered in my own puke. The coffin stank as bad as Georgie himself. Not surprising, considering that he’d rested and rotted in it every day for twenty-five years.

  It helped when my head stopped throbbing. Then I remembered the new cell phone. Clumsy in the tight space, I dug it out of my pocket and got a lonely, empty feeling when I realized I didn’t know who to call. I didn’t have a number for Timon or the Icarus Hotel. And as far as the rest of the world went, I knew a lot of people, but nobody who’d hop right to it if I claimed I needed him to rush to a cemetery and dig me out of a grave. Oh, and watch out for the zombie who’ll try to stop you.

  That left 911. Ordinarily, when you make your living gambling, mostly illegally, you hesitate to call the cops for anything. Timon sure didn’t want them anywhere near his business, and I couldn’t imagine how I was going to explain what had happened to me. But I’d worry about all that after I got out of the hole. I flipped open the phone.

  No bars.

  Okay, I told myself, okay. The phone wouldn’t work, my physical body was trapped, but I could still spirit-travel. I could fly to Timon and get him to rescue me.

  I pictured the lobby of the hotel and wished I was there. I felt a kind of loosening, as ghost me came uncoupled from flesh-and-blood me. I rocketed upward.

  For maybe a sixteenth of an inch. Then I felt multiple stabs of pain, from the middle of my forehead down the center of my body, and jerked to a stop. It was like I had invisible spikes sticking in me, nailing my spirit in place, and I’d hurt myself yanking against them.

  I remembered the symbols chalked on the coffin lid. They were probably to blame. And if I actually understood anything about magic in general or my own gifts in particular, maybe knowing that would help me.

  Come to think of it, maybe it could anyway. If I destroyed the designs, wouldn’t that break their power?

  I hooked my fingers in a couple of the holes and pulled with all my strength. I tried not to think about the fact that I was doing my best to tear apart the only thing that was keeping six feet of dirt from pouring down on top of me. I told myself there’d still be a little air to breathe, somehow, someway.

  As it turned out, I didn’t find out one way or the other. Not right then. The soggy, decaying wood felt as solid as an up-armored Humvee, not that my buddies and I had actually seen many of those. The same magic that locked my ghost self inside my body was protecting itself against me. I didn’t even end up with any splinters, just stinging spots where I’d rubbed myself raw.

  Another wave of fear swept through me. Not for myself, or at least not mainly. I wasn’t having any fun, but I guessed I might have enough air to last until midnight. And even after she’d double-crossed me, I trusted A’marie to dig me up as soon as I no-showed for poker and Timon had to forfeit. But I was scared for Vic.

  I told myself that the lord pulling Rhonda’s strings wouldn’t want Vic seriously hurt. Not as long as she was the bait in the trap. But I couldn’t count on a monster thinking the same way I did, and besides, accidents happened. If Vic screamed for help, and a big, mean creature like Gimble or Wotan used too much force to shut her up-

  So think, damn it! I was a lord’s champion. In theory, I had magic out the yin-yang. Georgie was just a stinky dead guy with no feet. I should be able to get through or around whatever he put in my way.

  Which was what, exactly? Despite Timon’s coaching, I still knew so little about magic that I pretty much had no clue. But it was something meant to hold me in the coffin in at least a couple different ways.

  But it didn’t give Georgie any trouble. He’d unzipped the ground and unlocked the box with less effort than it took to pop the top off a beer can.

  Possibly that was just because it was his jail and he had the key. But maybe it was because the magic was made to chain down a particular kind of prisoner. Maybe it was made to hold the living but not the dead.

  At first, that was an idea that, even if it was true, seemed to lead nowhere. What was I going to do, die and turn into a zombie myself?

  Well, maybe. Sort of.

  I remembered how Shadow looked in the Egyptian temple. Literally, like a shadow. Not exactly like a ghost, but not like a living person, either. What if I turned into all him, the same way I’d turned into all Red?

  I guessed I’d still look like normal me. When I brought Mr. Ka to the surface, nobody said anything about me glowing red. But I hoped Georgie’s hex didn’t see me in the way that a person sees. How could it, when it was just a force, and didn’t have any eyeballs?

  I reached inside, found Shadow, and almost flinched away. He felt nasty. But I pumped him up anyway, until he was the only thing inside my skin.

  And then I hated everyone.

  Mainly, I hated A’marie for tricking and trapping me, and Georgie and Lorenzo for helping her. I had to get out of the grave so I could torture and kill them all.

  Then I’d do the same to the other players in the poker game. They’d all tried to hurt me in one way or another. Then I’d get Timon, for bossing me around. And Vic, for dumping me.

  And after that, I’d go after everyone else who’d ever messed with me.

  I hooked my scraped, b
loody fingers back into the holes and tore at the coffin lid again. It still felt solider than it had any right to be, but not as hard and heavy as before. Who knew if I’d really figured out anything about how Georgie’s magic worked? But somehow I’d guessed my way to an answer. The hex was still trying to tie me down, but with Shadow filling me up, suddenly there was a little play in the rope.

  Unfortunately, my answer didn’t seem quite as smart when I finally managed to rip a big chunk of coffin lid away from the rest. Then dirt avalanched down into my face just like I’d worried it would.

  Forget spirit-traveling to ask Timon or anyone else for help. I only had a minute or two before the dirt smothered me. I clawed and burrowed my way upward.

  It helped that the dirt was loose. It also helped that I was Shadow. He didn’t have amazing strength like Red had superhuman energy. But he was a vicious, relentless fighter, and now he was fighting the ground.

  One of my hands punched out into air, and then the other. I dug my fingers into grass and soil and dragged my head up into the sunlight. I gasped and coughed for a couple seconds, then finished crawling out, leaving what looked like a big gopher hole behind me.

  Georgie had said he was going to stand guard. As I stood up, I looked around for him and imagined his dead slimy flesh in my fingers. It felt good. For all I knew, he knew how to put himself back together like Lorenzo after the human cannonball trick. But even if he did, I’d find a way to rip him to pieces and keep him that way.

  Or I thought I would. But then the part of me that wasn’t Shadow woke up. I still felt all that hate, but knew it was sick and wrong. It was also likely to get me killed if I let it hang on now that it had served its purpose.

  I struggled to push all the rage and spite away. Shadow shrank back down more reluctantly than Red had. But he did let go, and left me feeling ashamed that he was any part of me.

  But before I could even promise myself I’d become a better person, Georgie chimp-walked out of the patch of shadow underneath a stand of oaks. The little bastard really was good at hiding. I’d looked right at the trees without spotting him.