Nevermore

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Nothing.

  Emptiness. No longer tethered to Manfred’s house, no longer tethered to anything, no longer able to see or hear or touch or—

  Well, actually, she couldn’t do most of that stuff anyhow, but she had something. She had consciousness. Didn’t she? How else did the Reaper that looked like Uncle Cal talk to her if she wasn’t able to be talked to?

  But after those two guys shot her, pfft. Gone.

  She had to get herself back together. They were coming. She could feel it. She couldn’t feel much of anything, but she could feel that. They were coming. They were coming. She had to show them what was happening before they shot her again.

  So she tried to focus.

  That was a challenge—focusing was hard, even back when she was alive, and the more time passed after she died, the harder that got. She had no idea what it was that those two guys shot her with, but whatever it was was deadly stuff. Probably some kind of poison or something.

  No, that didn’t make sense. Poison? She was already dead. But it wasn’t regular bullets. Or buckshot, or whatever it was that shotguns shot. What the hell did she know about that, she was a girl from Morris Park, all she knew about shotguns was that guys in cowboy hats carried them in old movies.

  Uncle Cal always showed her those movies when he babysat her when she was a kid. Mom and Dad were off getting stoned somewhere every Saturday night, so Uncle Cal would take care of her, showing her his favorite old movies. My Darling Clementine. Calamity Jane. Rio Bravo. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The Magnificent Seven. A Fistful of Dollars. Unforgiven. Tombstone. All the men wore funny hats and all the women wore poofy dresses and they were just so cool, she loved it so very very much.

  They were coming.

  It needs to stop. Why won’t he love me?

  She gathered up everything she had, however she could, forcing herself to come together again as the two strangers who shot her walked through the door.

  There they were—she saw them. She couldn’t talk to them, though. Whatever they shot her with when they shot her last night was keeping her from talking, but she could see, dammit, and she saw that they were coming in, the tall one with the shaggy hair and the short one with the short hair. They both wore little black bracelets and dressed the same sloppy way kids in their twenties dressed these days. Dammit, when she was in her twenties, she knew how to dress cool, not like these post-Grunge losers.

  She’d show them. She’d show them real good.

  Concentrating harder than she’d ever concentrated in her life or in her death, she focused on that stupid picture of Manfred and his kids upstairs where Manfred had that stupid smile on his face and the kids were all squirmy like they wanted to be anywhere but with Manfred. Why did Manfred even have that picture anyhow? It was so pathetic. He didn’t raise them and they didn’t even care about him, so why have the stupid picture?

  The picture flew off the wall and headed straight for the tall one. Unfortunately, he heard it coming—and he had, like, killer reflexes—so he batted it out of the way with his forearm, which took all the fun out of it.

  “I think she’s pissed at you, dude,” the shorter one said.

  The tall one she almost hit said, “Pissed, period, I think.”

  She tried again. She had to hurt these guys after what they did to her.

  “Roxy, you there?” the tall one said suddenly. “Look, we don’t wanna hurt you.”

  How’d they know my name?

  And yeah, right, they didn’t want to hurt her. How could anybody say that with a straight face twenty-four hours after they shot you?

  Then the short one said, “But we will if you throw more picture frames at our heads. Look, this house belongs to a friend of ours, and—”

  She hadn’t been paying any attention to him, busy as she was trying to focus on the Fillmore East poster in its metal frame. Eventually she got it to fly free of the wall and hit the short one in the back of the head.

  The tall one helped him stand back up, and the short one put his hand to the back of his head and winced. “Okay—ow.”

  “You all right, man?”

  “No, I’m not freakin’ all right, some spirit bitch just hit me in the back of the head with a priceless concert poster!”

  She couldn’t help herself. She laughed at that. She laughed long, she laughed hard, and she laughed loud. It was even funnier than that time when her brother actually snorted glue, thinking that “sniffing glue” meant you took actual glue up your nose like you did cocaine.

  The walls of Manfred’s house shook, she laughed so hard.

  Both of the strangers lifted their shotguns, and suddenly she stopped laughing. She couldn’t face that again, not yet.

  Instead, she went away, like she always did once Manfred left. She’d bide her time, be patient, like they kept telling her to be in rehab, and then she’d show them what she was made of the next time they came back from that stupid bar. She had no idea when that would be—days of the week no longer meant anything to her, she just knew when all of Scottso were together at the Park in Rear—so she’d wait until it was time again.

  It needs to stop. Why won’t he love me?

  Dean stared down at the EMF reader and shook his head. “Nothing. There was that fit of the giggles, and then nada.”

  Sam lowered his shotgun. “Weird.”

  “Yeah. And those two shots she took at us were pretty weak.”

  Nodding, Sam said, “Yeah, I’m thinkin’ she hasn’t come all the way back from the rock-salt dispersal.” He knew that it was different for every spirit. Some only stayed dissolute for a few minutes. Others were permanently torn apart by the rock salt, though that was pretty rare.

  “Well, it looks like she’s gone,” Dean said. “We can tell Manfred it’s safe.”

  “Yeah.” Sam sighed. “Tomorrow, I’m gonna do a little digging online, then Monday check the libraries, see if I can find out anything about this house. I mean, we’re assuming it’s Roxy because of that King’s Reign T-shirt—”

  Dean winced and snarled at the same time. “It’s Queensrÿche.”

  “Whatever.” Sam managed not to break into a grin, since he’d messed up the band’s name completely on purpose just to annoy Dean. “But there may be another spirit here that we just don’t know about.”

  Giving Sam a dubious look, Dean said, “That happens to look just like one of Scottso’s ex-girlfriends, down to the same love for Queensrÿche?”

  Sam had to concede that point. “Yeah, it’s a stretch, but it’s not like the band’s been all that forthcoming. And I don’t know about you, but I can’t tell if she reacted to us calling her by name.”

  “Yeah, me either. Okay, we’ll try that. What about the Poe thing?”

  Sam shrugged. “Keep looking for Arthur Gordon Pym. I’ll make some calls tomorrow—or Monday, I guess, since tomorrow’s Sunday—and see if I can track down who owns the server space that website’s on.” Then something occurred to him. “Hey, didn’t McBain say she was with missing persons?”

  Dean tensed up. “Yeah, so?”

  “Maybe we can run Roxy’s name by her.”

  “We don’t need to bring her into this, Sammy.”

  Sam sighed. “C’mon, Dean, I think we can trust her. Like you said, she didn’t arrest us, and she knows Ballard.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with—”

  “If it weren’t for Ballard, we’d both be in jail right now, and you know it. She helped me dig up the body we needed to find, and she shot her partner and let us go. We trusted her, I think we can trust McBain. Besides, she is Missing Persons, and that means we can check for missing persons without having to make something up.” Dean was still antsy, so Sam came up with a compromise. “Look, we’re gonna need her help on Monday anyhow, so let’s ask her then.”

  Frowning, Dean asked, “Why’re we gonna need her help on Monday?”

  “There’s two more sites left to complete Samuels’s sigil, but we don’t kn
ow which one of the two it’ll be. Dad’s notes didn’t specify what order the points had to be drawn in. So unless you want me on one and you on the other—”

  Dean held up a hand. “Fine, whatever, we’ll get her to cover one, and then we can ask her about Roxy. Happy?”

  Chuckling, Sam said, “Thrilled beyond all possible imagining.”

  “Hey, fellas, can I come in yet? Freezin’ m’ass off out here!”

  Sam turned toward the front door, through which Manfred had yelled. It was much colder tonight than it had been the previous night, and there was no reason to keep Manfred out of his own place. “It’s clear!” Sam yelled.

  FOURTEEN

  Webster Avenue and East 199th Street

  The Bronx, New York

  Monday 20 November 2006

  Dean hated waiting.

  There were a lot of reasons why he had gone to Stanford a little over a year ago to fetch Sam, but at times like this he liked to think the main reason was because Sammy was actually good at the piddly crap.

  And the last two days had been chock full of piddly crap, ending now with the pair of them sitting in the Impala on Webster Avenue in the Bronx, waiting for something to happen.

  Sunday had been pretty dull. Sam left messages on several people’s voice mails, one of which was finally returned this morning, saying that the Poe website was paid for by a corporation called Pendulum Pit Incorporated (“Oooh, subtle,” Dean had muttered at the time). It took no time at all for Sam to use his research-fu to find out that Pendulum Pit Inc. was a self-owned corporation owned and operated by one Arthur Mackey.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t dig that up until after sundown, and they needed to try to stop their Poe nut—who Dean was still convinced was Pym or Mackey or whoever he was—from killing someone else.

  Dean and Sam had volunteered to take Webster Avenue and 199th, which was a major thoroughfare containing parking lots, auto parts stores, and mechanics, with three or four floors’ worth of apartments over many of the stores.

  McBain took Fordham Road and MLK Boulevard—which was a huge intersection that had the Church of St. Nicholas of Tolentine and Devoe Park, as well as several more apartment buildings. Webster was pretty quiet at night, whereas the other location was fairly well traveled. They all agreed that it was better for the two fugitives to take the quieter spot.

  The problem was, there were several spots where the next killing could take place, most of which were in apartments. Dean and Sam knew they couldn’t just wander around looking too much, as this was a predominantly Latin American neighborhood and they stood out.

  At least the car wasn’t as big a deal as it might have been. One of the mechanics had a couple of vintage vehicles, and a ’fifty-four Buick was in the parking lot down the street from where Dean had parked. Generally, the Impala was a bit conspicuous, and Sam once made the mistake of bringing up the possibility of abandoning the vehicle for something less distinct, since they were now on the run.

  Dean made it clear that Sam was never to even consider the possibility of bringing that subject up again. He’d sooner cut off his left nut than give up the Impala.

  Their third (and, God willing, final) excursion to the Park in Rear last night hadn’t been much of an improvement. They had pretty much run out of excuses to bring up Roxy, and besides which, they seemed to have gotten as much intel as they were likely to get on that score. Roxy was just one of a long line of girlfriends these guys had bagged and tossed to the curb over the years, and Dean was convinced that half the stories they told about Roxy were actually about some other chick.

  To make matters worse, Jennifer wasn’t working Sunday night, and all the other women in the Park in Rear were part of a couple or simply not his type. He’d been hoping that Jennifer would at least call—he’d given her his cell number before they left Saturday night—but so far, zip.

  Dean hadn’t bothered with the “hot” handle on his shower that morning.

  Roxy made the same cameo she’d made Saturday night—some cackling, some shaking, rattling, and rolling, and then disappearing. Both Sam and Dean agreed that she probably still hadn’t gotten over the dispersal yet, but that come Friday, she’d probably be back to full-tilt-boogie haunting mode.

  Sam had also found some lore about New York City ghosts, most of whom appeared to be famous people: Theodore Roosevelt, an NYPD commissioner before he was President, haunting the old police headquarters; Mark Twain haunting the place where he used to live at on West Tenth Street; Alexander Hamilton all up and down Jane Street, on the block where he died following his fatal duel with Vice President Aaron Burr; Burr’s own ghost in the Barrow Street restaurant that now stood where a carriage house he’d lived in was; and, of course, John Lennon in the Dakota, the apartment building where he was assassinated. Sam assumed, and Dean agreed, that a lot of this was New York hype. There wasn’t anything about Riverdale in general or this house in particular, or about women in band T-shirts screaming for people to love them.

  For lack of anything better to do while Sammy was researching, Dean had read up a bit more on Percival Samuels. He had to admit, for a con artist, the sonofabitch was good. He put on a great show for his clients—which was good, ’cause they paid through the nose for it. That show didn’t hold up if you paid attention, though. Even Dean knew that Hecate, Osiris, and Morrighan were gods from three different pantheons (Greek, Egyptian, and Celtic), and Loki was from a fourth (Norse) and wasn’t the god of love and redemption. But it probably sounded cool to the rubes who didn’t know any better, the same way that the psychics you saw on late night television sounded cool to the folks who missed all the reading tricks and leading questions.

  For the nine hundredth time he cast a longing gaze at the radio—he’d found a local classic rock station, and it didn’t even suck that badly—but he knew that blaring music would be a mistake. Headphones wouldn’t improve things, as he needed to be able to hear if something bad happened—like, say, Sam screaming for help, or demon noises, or some other damn thing.

  So he sat in silence, and waited.

  Dean really hated waiting.

  Finally, Sam came out of one of the apartment buildings, looked around to see if anybody was on the street, saw two people walking north on Webster, and then wandered slowly toward them, head down.

  The two people were talking to each other, and each had one ear bud from the same iPod in their ears. They didn’t even notice Sam, but he still waited until they turned up Bedford Park Boulevard before stopping, turning, and jogging across the street to the Impala.

  “Nothin’,” he said as he slumped into the passenger seat, slamming the large door shut. “I’ve checked both apartment buildings. There’s that one other place over the auto parts store.”

  “What about the store?” Dean asked.

  “Which one?”

  Dean shrugged. “Any of ’em.”

  “I don’t see it. Cars didn’t exist in Poe’s time. If it’s gonna be something that has an emotional connection to Poe’s life and work, it’d have to be in one of the apartments.”

  “A sidewalk near a college campus isn’t in any of Poe’s stories either, is it?”

  Sam frowned.

  Dean shifted in his seat so he was facing his brother. “The thing with the orangutan happened on a street—it was in an apartment in the book, though, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So obviously our nut job is willing to fudge it to get the location right. Hell, for all we know, that garage over there has a big-ass pendulum in it.”

  Sam rubbed his chin the way he did sometimes when he wanted to make Dean believe that he was thinking. Dean never bought that, because he knew Sam was thinking all the time. No, this was Sam stalling.

  “All right, then—why don’t you check out the garages, and I’ll take the last apartment building?”

  Dean just blinked and stared for a second.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I’m just shocked tha
t you came up with a plan that doesn’t suck.”

  “Hardy har har.”

  Grinning, Dean climbed out of the car, as did Sam.

  After making sure all the doors were locked, Dean jogged over to the garage with the big yellow sign saying manny’s car repair on the corner of 199th, even as Sam went around the corner—the entrance to the apartments over Manny’s was on the numbered street, perpendicular to Webster. Dean assumed that Sam would wait for someone to walk out and make like he was a resident coming in at the same time—or just ring a doorbell and do the “I’m your neighbor, I forgot my keys” routine. The speakers on these buildings were so crappy that Sam could probably pull it off without too much trouble. Besides, he had that whole earnest thing going for him. People trusted Sam, which was another reason he liked having him along for hunts.

  During the day, Manny’s probably had the door wide open so cars could pull in. Now, though, the big metal garage door—which was about three car lengths wide—was shut, with a chain securing a thick metal bolt on either side of the door. Looking up, Dean saw that the door raised and fell automatically, which meant that he would need a remote to open it, even if he could pick the lock securing the chain to the dead bolts. Squinting in the dim light provided by the streetlight several feet away—there was a closer one, but it wasn’t working—Dean saw that the chains were secured with one of the new special locks that were supposed to be harder to break. In the real world, that meant that with good light it would take him fifteen minutes to pick them instead of the usual two. He probably could pull it off, but he’d already had the cops called on him once, and this garage door was considerably more exposed than the side door to that house had been, and he’d have to pick two locks, which would take forever. Not worth the risk.

  Then he noticed the small door inset into the garage door, which only had a regular key lock for a standard dead bolt. He knew he could open that in half a second.

  As always, Dean marveled at how stupid people could be sometimes. They’d spend thousands of dollars on an alarm system, but then never change the code from the default provided by the company—or worse, would change the code to something obvious like their birthday or the house’s address or something. Or they’d have four locks on the door, but leave the front window wide open because it was too hot. People were better at the illusion of security than they were at actually being secure.