Ghosts of Christmas Present: A Dead Detective Short Story (The Dead Detective)

by J. R. Rain

  “Oh, holy hell,” I muttered and skirted the three of them, only to find myself face-to-face with a half dozen more. Most wore suits and ties, although their clothing hung loosely, sharp with bony knees and elbows. At least a couple of ugly holiday sweaters were represented among the really fresh ones. Guess they did get caught dead wearing those things after all.

  These fuckers were strong, and so I had to avoid their grasp at all costs. Of course, knowing that there was a very good chance I might be eaten alive in the next few minutes, spurred me forward, and sharpened my reflexes.

  I dodged and wove and leaped and generally ran faster than I ever had in my entire life.

  A mostly intact man with a sunken face and the devil light emanating from empty sockets managed to reach out and grab my arm just as I thought I made it through. How something dead for God knew how long had the reflexes to grab me as I was rushing past, was beyond me.

  But grab me he did.

  And firmly, too.

  I turned again and looked the bastard straight in his deteriorating face… and saw my history teacher, Mr. Dingly, who had died of a heart attack months earlier. I knew it was him. In fact, he was even wearing the same bow tie.

  “Mr. Dingly,” I said, tugging on my arm.

  But my now-dead teacher held on even tighter. Now that I was stopped, the undead converged upon me.

  “Mr. Dingly… let go. Please!”

  My zombie history teacher cocked his head to one side in a manner that suggested it had heard me, but a second later, the light in his dead eyes flared brightly and it opened its mouth wide and lunged at me.

  “Mr. Dingly!”

  I fell back, and his snapping jaws just missed my face. As I fell, I raised my foot and launched him up and over me. He went sprawling somewhere behind me. As I tried to scramble to my feet, a clawing hand reaching up through the ground—someone got to the party fashionably late—grabbed my shoulder, but I rolled to my right and broke loose, and broke off a few fingers, too.

  I soon found my feet—and saw a clear path to the Haunted Tree.

  I took it, running hard.

  I was at the tree.

  Except I couldn’t see clear enough to look for the keys. Yes, there was a full moon out, and yes it enabled me to see the zombies presently closing in on me, but unfortunately a fat lot of good the full moon did under this massive oak. My phone had a flashlight app…

  Oh, holy shit!

  Tommy had it. We’d swapped earlier.

  But I had his iPhone and I swiped it on. Immediately the area under the tree was lit in a soft, bluish glow. I ignored the fact—or tried to—that just outside of the bluish glow was an approaching nightmare. Many approaching nightmares, with their own eyes aglow.

  “Help me, Lord,” I whispered, sweeping the phone around.

  There! Shining in the dim light was his wad of keys, partially hidden under some leaves, no doubt kicked up from our desperate flight to the truck. A truck that suddenly seemed very far away.

  I grabbed the wad and faced what I knew was coming.

  And there were a lot of them. More than I had anticipated. Worse, I didn’t see an opening through them.

  Tommy’s cell phone rang.

  I nearly shit my pants, but managed to hang on to it. I fumbled with it, swiping it on.

  “Jesus, man. What’s taking you so long? The fuckers are everywhere. They’re banging on the glass.”

  “I’m surrounded, too.”

  “Well, figure a way through, dammit.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I said, and stared at the closest zombie, who was now not more than twenty feet away and closing in fast. Well, kind of fast. There were others behind him. Dozens and dozens of others, and they formed a formidable wall of the undead. Very soon I was about to experience what it would be like to have something take a healthy bite out of me.

  “Oh, fuck fuck fuck!” Yeah, that was me.

  I ran to the other side of the tree. More undead. A wave of them, in fact, all lurching toward me, all gnashing their teeth, all with that bizarre light in their eye. I had a feeling that the last thing I would see on this earth were those fucking lights staring down at me, before I was consumed alive.

  There had to be a way.

  “Hurry, Billy!” screeched Tommy. “One of them just picked up a rock. Who knew zombies could problem solve!”

  Why I still had Billy pressed to my ear, I didn’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to be left alone before I died. Maybe I wanted company. Maybe I had forgotten I was holding the phone because a wave of the undead was rolling toward me.

  But I looked at it now.

  And had an idea.

  “If there’s an app to raise the dead,” I said. “Maybe there’s one that will send them back, too.”

  “Yes, sure. Look for it. Geez. Why are you fucking telling me?”

  And so I did… doing my best to figure out the damn iPhone… so different than my own Samsung. There. I was in the App Store. Something grabbed my shoulder, chomping loudly in my ear, and I screamed like a girl. I did the only thing I could think of, I turned and punched it in the face with everything I had.

  Turns out this had been someone’s little old grandma. She went down in a heap, but was soon picking herself up again.

  I typed quickly in the app store search bar, fingers fumbling: “Return the undead.”

  Nothing came up.

  “Fuck.”

  The sound of chomping filled the night air.

  “Zombie reversal.”

  And there it was. And it was from the same makers of the original app. Something powerful grabbed my shoulder, squeezing. I dropped and rolled and saw them above me, closing in. From the ground, I clicked “download.”

  It asked for a password.

  “Oh, fuck! Tommy, what’s your password?”

  “You need my password?”

  “Yes, goddammit, I need your password!”

  “Why do you need my password?”

  “I’m downloading the reversal app, you idiot!”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Goddamit, tell me your password.”

  “Um…”

  “Tell me dammit!”

  “It’s, ah, Billysmomhassexylegs. All one word.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. And she does. Just ask anyone—”

  “Nevermind that.”

  A hand grabbed my ankle. Another grabbed my hair. I screamed as I finished typing in the password, even as I was lifted off the ground… and pulled toward the open mouth of a living skull.

  And from the iPhone issued out a man’s voice. The same man’s voice we’d heard earlier, speaking the same unintelligible nonsense.

  The skeleton lowered its face to mine, intending, I was certain, to take a bite from my cheek and forehead. And, indeed, I was looking deep into its ghost eyes, alight with hellfire.

  But then the zombie paused.

  In fact, the entire graveyard went silent. The gnashing teeth stopped. Hovering just inches above me, the light in the creature’s eye socket winked out.

  And then I was dropped to the ground, where I witnessed the second strangest thing I’d ever seen. The zombies went back to their graves. Whether or not these were the correct graves, I didn’t know. But I watched as one by one, they each stepped down into their respective pits and even had the common courtesy to rebury themselves.

  “Sweet mother of God.”

  We were in Tommy’s Ford Explorer.

  The cemetery was quiet. We probably should have headed out of there as fast as we could, perhaps only stopping when we ran out of gas. But… the worst seemed to be over.

  “Someone’s going to know something,” said Tommy. “All the grave sites will have freshly turned soil.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I mean, word is going to get around that something happened here.”

  I nodded. My upper arm still hurt where a skeleton had recently gripped me tightly. Had this
hillside really been filled with the walking dead? “Am I dreaming?” I asked.

  “No, brother. That shit was real, and I’m going to complain about that app, leave it a bad review or something.”

  “It’s gone,” I said. I had been looking at Tommy’s phone a few minutes earlier.

  “What do you mean it’s gone?”

  “Both the summoning and reversal app are gone.”

  We both thought about that, looking at the now-empty cemetery. The Ghost Christmas Tree swayed in a small wind, multi-colored streamers hanging limply.

  “So what do we do?”

  “Play dumb,” I said. “And never talk about it again.”

  “I’m good at playing dumb,” said Tommy, and started his SUV.

  I glared at him. “And you’re never to look at my mom again, dammit.”

  Tommy grinned and pointed the Explorer out of the cemetery. “Like that’s ever going to happen.”

  ou know you’ve had a really bad night when you wake up inside a chalk outline.

  That’s my first big clue. That and all the colored police flashers silently strobing outside through the dirty windows. It takes a few minutes for the fog inside my head to clear, but I finally figure it out: I’ve been dumped at a crime scene. I’d probably gone out drinking with some of the guys and passed out—then they’d brought me here and carefully arranged me for a gag. “Presenting”, we call this in Homicide when we see it in a murder.

  At least I hope that’s what’s happened. I don’t like to think they’d slipped me a roofie or something. Or to consider any other possible alternatives. At least my clothes are still on. Always a good sign in a situation like this, though admittedly there haven’t been that many for me, you know, where I blacked out totally. Not since college, anyway.

  In fact, I don’t usually go out drinking at all. I’ve been “working to save my marriage” lately, which means going home whenever a shift ends and not spending much of my downtime socializing with other police. And it means going to couples counseling twice a week. That had been my husband’s idea. Anyway, I’d better come up with a good excuse for tonight.

  Next, I sit up. This sucks. The big one. Then I try to stand. Both of these take some doing; my limbs feel like they’ve had lead poured into them. This place sure looks like a murder scene. It’s some kind of warehouse or big shipping garage. Cement floors, grey brick walls and two-story high bare ceiling. And a row of tall, sooty windows, some with boarded panes and bars, through which the red and blue and white police lights flash. There is a small pool of blood on the filthy concrete next to the chalked outline of a sprawling human figure—me—that’s already soaked into the floor. Blood… or maybe fruit juice, just to make the punking look realistic. A little ways off from my right hand, is a second, much smaller cartoon-like outline, that of my handgun. I realize my back is probably covered in crap from the floor, and now I’ll have to get my suit dry-cleaned. Again.

  The outline of the gun is there—but my department-issue Glock 9mm isn’t. It isn’t in my shoulder holster, either. Crap. If the bastards are really going for realism, my sidearm’s probably already back at the stationhouse on somebody’s desk. The “Chalk Fairy’s” already been at work drawing the outline; cops love to do that to victims they have a grudge against, even though it’s the ME’s job.

  So now whoever did this to me is pretending that SID—forensics—has already been in and mocked everything up, and they probably took photos of me for prominent display in the muster room or kitchen while I lay passed out. Now they’re waiting around outside for the ERV to show up and take me to the city morgue. The plan is obviously for me not to fully come to until I’m in the ambulance or even strapped in the gurney down at the morgue. So I’ll screw with them. I’ve never seen this warehouse before, but I bet there’s another way out.

  There is. A back entrance down a hallway past a dark and empty locked office. So I don’t hang around. I am so out of there. Once out on the sidewalk, I start walking toward the city center. I have no idea what time it is; I don’t wear a watch, and my cell phone is gone, probably in an evidence bag. I stop and check my pockets. Damn! No wallet. No badge; I’ve got nothing to wave at a cabbie except lint. If I can even find a cab this time of night. Even for a woman.

  That’s when I notice they’ve even taken my wedding ring. Okay, that’s taking a joke too damn far, and despite my hangover, I finally lose it. For real. Somebody is going to pay for this…

  If I’m honest, the real reason I’m so pissed is because losing the ring seems like a bad omen. For my already-shaky marriage, I mean.

  Did I say “hangover”? That’s an understatement. This is the mother of all hangovers; I feel it in my gut, in my eye sockets, even in my joints and the roots of my teeth. All over. And there’s something badly wrong with my vision, too. Everything is thermally haloed, like in a video game or one of those ghost-hunter reality shows on TV filmed with a night-vision scope. There seem to be motion trails around the street-lights and what look like the transparent shells of old buildings and advertising signs superimposed over the real ones. Which is an improvement, considering the part of town they dumped me in—it’s a hell of a long walk back to the stationhouse, and my regulation boots are already pinching my feet. My hands and feet both feel swollen. Maybe it was some kind of drug, after all. I’d been put on an SSRI when the D-word had first been mentioned at one of our counseling sessions; could antidepressants cause me to forget? Or have blackouts?

  I can’t find a pen or my notepad in my jacket pockets, either, so I can’t jot the questions down for later.

  A car passes by on the broad cross-street ahead, followed by the outlines of a second, greenish and ghostly, that looks like it’s been boosted from a museum or antique car show. It makes a faint putt-putting noise. Great. Now I’m hallucinating. And not just cars, either; more buildings that aren’t there, blinking neon signs, an old movie theater, even pedestrians, all pale green and ghostly and looking like something out of an old flick. Leaving vapor trails behind them. And walking through things.

  Yes, through things. And by things, I mean walls and doors and buildings.

  Luckily, there aren’t many real ones around tonight; real pedestrians, I mean. Just the imaginary ones. Anyway, in this part of town, there are plenty of thugs and gangbangers who would’ve been happy to settle old scores if they’d spotted me out alone and unarmed. So it must be even later than I thought if the hookers and the drug-dealers have all gone home for the night.

  By the time I finally get back to the stationhouse, I’m feeling radioactive, like I’ve been swimming in heavy water all night. I can barely stand to keep my eyes open. Hell, I can barely stand at all. All I want to do is find a couch or empty desk somewhere and rack an hour or two of sleep. Or wait until I wake up, since I was no doubt dreaming this whole damn mess. But on the off chance that I am awake―and this is the world’s worst hangover―I figure I better retrieve my personal effects and then phone home with my apologies.

  Me groveling is all that’s keeping us together at this point, pretty much.

  What I can’t figure out is exactly how I turned into the bad guy in my marriage. The bad wife. Sure, I keep lousy hours and worked crazy shifts. Sure I’m married to the job. That’s what cops call the Police Department: “The Job”. But I haven’t cheated; in fact, I’ve been totally faithful. I don’t even do drugs or drink.

  Well, unless you count tonight.

  But I still don’t know exactly what went down tonight, do I? Maybe I wasn’t drunk or stoned or in the middle of a nightmare. Maybe I’m just going crazy. I prefer the first explanation, and that’s the story I’m sticking to. A few beers with some buddies, then maybe a drug interaction and a particularly tasteless practical joke.

  Then it occurs to me that maybe I should cover my lily-white ass by writing it up, like I would a case-file or an IAD report. Because whatever just happened, it isn’t going to look real good on my permanent record―my jacket, as we ca
ll it.

  Finding my wallet and police shield is a piece of cake; just as I suspected, all my personal shit is sitting inside a bag on Ayon’s, my partner’s, empty desk in the detective bureau, the one right across from mine. No Glock, though—maybe it’s in her locker. The big room is deserted. I’ve probably come in between shifts. I don’t even remember seeing a desk sergeant on duty downstairs. In fact, nobody buzzed me through the front doors; I must have followed the cleaning crew in. Not being able to remember this is not a good thing; maybe I’m having mini-blackouts again. Glancing up at the big Westclox on the wall, I see it’s five past five; everybody must still be downstairs getting coffee.

  And laughing at those crime scene photos of me, probably. I guess I should go down there now and take my licks. No, what I should really do is call home and face the music. But I notice there’s a light on in the boss’ office across the hall. Captain Ed Quirk. He’s been sleeping on the broken-down couch in there all week because his wife just threw him out of the house again. And deservedly so—he cheats. And drinks. And God knows what else. But in a police station, the captain is God.

  So after I finish typing my notes into the Dell, I get up and go knock on his door. His office walls are glass from halfway up but covered by closed blinds.

  “Come,” he yells.

  I go inside. And find him staring at me like he’s having a heart attack; purple-faced, open-mouthed, eyes bugging out of his head.

  Like he’s just seen a ghost.

  e was running like all the hounds of Hell were after him. Muffled by the fog that had rolled in from the river, his footsteps clattered on the bricks of the path leading from the tomb, and his breath came in ragged gasps. A big, compactly-built man in perfect physical shape, a former professional athlete, he was covering the ground at great speed. But he wasn’t fast enough. The thing pursuing him was far faster.