Undead to the World

by DD Barant

  “That sounds like a quote.”

  “It is. You said it to me last week.”

  “Well, that makes me a genius and you a thief. Let’s go inside and celebrate the great success we’re enjoying in our respective fields.”

  We pull off our usual banter—it’s practically a reflex, at this point—but there’s a certain hesitation underneath it, a little strain from forcing ourselves to be so casual. As soon as we get indoors, we stop trying.

  “Why are there cop cars down by the church? I saw them but I didn’t stop.”

  I walk into the kitchen and unwrap the steak I picked up on the way home. We may be a small town, but our local butcher is top-notch—I think he knows all the cows he sells personally. “Father Stone apparently hanged himself from the eaves.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Three stories up, no ladder around, no hatch in the roof. I walked up there with Gally and got a look as they cut him down—there was something really weird about the noose. Not the one around his neck, the one looped around the eaves. The knot was … I don’t know, really intricate. Would have taken a long time to do.”

  Charlie sinks down onto my couch. “Damn. Guilt, you think?”

  “One local religious leader kills another and then suicides out of remorse? Nice theory, but it leaves a few questions unanswered—like how he tied that damn knot without being seen, or even how he got up there in the first place.”

  Charlie leans forward, hands clasped, elbows on his knees. “He could have tied the knot in the middle of the night. Used a ladder that was taken away afterward by someone else.”

  “Okay, but why?”

  He shrugs. “To make it seem mysterious? An act of God, maybe? Or maybe because a murder attracts more attention than a suicide, and Stone wanted Longinus’s little cult exposed.”

  I put the steak in Galahad’s bowl, which he promptly attacks. “One type of crazy bouncing off another? I guess that’s possible—but you’d think Stone would leave something a little more incriminating behind.”

  “Maybe there’s a note inside the church.”

  I nod. “Could be. In which case the police are going to be showing up on Longinus’s doorstep really soon—and we just sanitized the crime scene.”

  Charlie looks up at me. “I know what we did.”

  “Yeah, but do you know why we did it?”

  “Because you’re the obvious prime suspect. Those photos and that book indicate Longinus had some kind of obsession with you. You have a history of violence and mental illness and you’re the one who found the body. How am I doing?”

  “Better than me. Are you sure I didn’t kill him? ’Cause I’m starting to wonder.”

  “You been having blackouts?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Then you didn’t kill him. But there is one thing I’m a little unclear on.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why were you there in the first place?”

  “That’s … complicated. I think you need to take another look at Longinus’s notes, first.” I pull them out from their hiding place and hand them over before sitting down beside Charlie on the couch.

  I let him read them over himself, first. Then we go over them together, helping each other decipher bits of scrawled handwriting. He doesn’t comment on any of it, just asks the occasional question about a specific word or letter he can’t make out.

  When we’ve gone through the whole thing, he puts down the notes and leans back. Frowns.

  “So,” I say.

  “So,” he says. “Longinus was a loony toon.”

  “Um,” I say.

  “Vampires? Werewolves? He really believed all that? Makes the Satanic cult part look almost rational.”

  “Yeah…”

  “So why were you there, Jace?”

  I look at Charlie. I take a deep breath, and then let it out. “Before I tell you, promise me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “That if I’m locked up in the psych ward, you’ll bring me food. Good food. The stuff they have stinks.”

  He doesn’t hesitate. “I promise.”

  “You know that show I’m not supposed to watch anymore?”

  I tell him the whole thing. About the first time the Sword of Midnight spoke to me, and the second. I tell him what she said, emphasizing the “this is all real” aspect. He listens, very carefully.

  “And that’s about it,” I say. “I know how it sounds. I’m not going to try to convince you I’m not crazy, because I’m not sure myself. But at least you know I’m not lying, because who the hell would try to use a story like this to justify anything?”

  He nods, slowly. “Hmmm. So, the next step is obvious.”

  “Oh, it is, is it? Enlighten me.”

  “We watch some Bloodhound Files. See if I see the same thing you do. And even if I don’t, maybe you’ll get another message.”

  “Wait. You’re not seriously suggesting any of this is real, are you?”

  “No. But the Sword of Midnight is—kind of—and the first piece of information she gave you was the trigger that kicked all this into motion. I think that’s earned her further consideration as a source, don’t you?”

  “Sure. If, you know, I’m not batshit insane.”

  Charlie sighs. “You seem pretty rational to me. In fact, if anyone’s getting closer and closer to an asylum it’s yours truly—mainly because I can’t handle you questioning your sanity every thirty seconds. Let’s just pretend you’re normal and proceed from there, okay? For my sake?”

  I study him for a second. Suddenly I feel a whole lot better—because if someone as hardheaded and down-to-earth as Charlie is willing to take my side, then I must be better off than I thought. It’s like my feet finally found solid ground to stand on.

  “Okay,” I say quietly. “No more crazy talk.”

  Galahad gives a little bark of encouragement, then goes back to devouring his steak.

  I play the last few minutes of the episode where the Sword mentions Longinus right at the end. I’m tapping my fingers nervously on the side of the remote as the scene begins to play, sure that either she’ll say something else or Charlie won’t hear what I hear.

  But it happens exactly the way I heard it the first time. And when I turn to look at Charlie, he nods. “Yeah. I heard it, too. But it’s only one word—could be a coincidence.”

  “That’s what I thought. But then the whole corpse/cult/pictures-of-Jace thing happened, and I kind of gave up on that.”

  “All right. Let’s check out the DVD—the one with the explanation.”

  It’s still in the player, so all I have to do is find the scene. I’m sure that this time, nothing weird will happen.

  But I’m wrong again. The whole thing happens just like I remember it—including the two little gaps in her dialogue when I responded to what she was saying.

  Charlie’s leaning forward on the couch, frowning. He doesn’t say anything, not at first.

  “That’s really weird,” he finally says.

  “You think?”

  “She’s talking directly to the camera, not anyone else in the scene. The break in the action makes no sense from a story point of view, not that I can see. Those pauses were when you answered her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t see any signs of editing, either. No cutaways to another camera angle. It looks legit to me.”

  “So what does it mean?”

  He leans back, puts one elbow on the back of the couch. “Well, two things come to mind. The first involves a vast conspiracy that includes the actors on the show, the evil cult that Longinus ran, and a part-time waitress. Frankly, it’s not really holding together for me.”

  “Me either. What’s the second?”

  “That this is what it appears to be. Which isn’t a lot better, because all it does is remove the Hollywood conspiracy angle and replace it with magic. Real, actual sorcery. Or some kind of advanced technology that imitates it—but then we’
re getting into science fiction territory as opposed to the supernatural. Aliens, time travel, top-secret government agencies, that sort of thing. Not really an improvement.”

  “You sure you don’t want to reconsider the cee-arr-ay-zee-why thing?”

  He gives me a look. “So let’s stick with the magic explanation for now, all right? We’ve got a dead cult leader and a book of what seem to be spells.”

  “Plus a dead priest hanging from the roof of his own church, with no explanation of how he got there.”

  “I want to give something a try, all right? Go in the kitchen and stay there until I call you back.”

  “Why?”

  “Just humor me.”

  I shrug and do what he says, taking the opportunity to make a fresh pot of coffee. Galahad comes in and watches me, as usual. I hear the DVD start up again, but it must be another scene—all I hear are sounds of combat and action music.

  “Huh,” Charlie says. “How about that … you can come back in.”

  I do. He’s paused the DVD. “Well?”

  “Hang on a sec.” He hits PLAY.

  The Sword of Midnight shows up and starts talking again. Same spiel. Charlie lets her finish, then hits STOP. “Yeah, that’s pretty strange.…”

  “What is? It’s the same as before.”

  “Sure. As long as you’re in the room. When you were in the kitchen, she didn’t break the fourth wall. You came back, and she did.”

  “So…”

  “So congratulations. You’re not nuts. Oh, and apparently magic is real.”

  I sink down on the couch. My brain feels overloaded. Turns out I’m not crazy, the rest of the world is.

  Magic. That’s a big word. It covers everything from alchemy to Zeus, with a lot of stops in between. Does this mean leprechauns are real? Or Santa Claus? Or—

  “Vampires,” I say.

  “And werewolves,” Charlie adds.

  “I used to think this was such a nice town.”

  “No, you didn’t. You hate it here.”

  “Well, yeah, but that was because of all the niceness. The horrible, small-minded, boring … man, do I hate it here.”

  “That’s nice.” He smiles.

  “Shut up. No, on second thought, keep talking—you’re like a walking antidote to niceness. You’re an irritation on two legs.”

  “Gee, thanks. Now, what are we going to do?”

  “About the vampires and werewolves?” I get back on my feet, stalk into the kitchen, and pour two mugs of coffee. Take them back to the living room and hand Charlie one. “Well, let’s see. We could go door to door with garlic, stakes, and silver crucifixes, or we could watch TV.”

  “Got any popcorn?”

  “No, just coffee.”

  “Even better.”

  So we settle in for a Bloodhound Files marathon, but as it turns out we don’t have to wait for very long. I choose episodes with the Sword of Midnight in them, naturally, and the first time she’s on screen—in a scene where she’s lurking in a darkened alley—she turns directly to us and says, “Good choice of episode. I don’t interact with anyone else in this scene for another minute, and I think I can stretch that out by staying on the move. Who’s the hunk?”

  “Um,” I say. “This is—”

  “Jake,” Charlie says. “Just call me Jake.”

  I frown, but don’t contradict him. Charlie’s instincts have been good so far. “Let’s skip the formalities and get down to it, all right?” I say. “Vampires and werewolves—go.”

  “You’ve only got two to worry about: the master vampire and the alpha wolf. Kill the alpha before the next full moon and anyone he or she has bitten won’t become a were. It doesn’t work that way for pires, though—you’ve got to stop all of them or it could spread. That would be bad—right now, these two are the only two of their kind in your reality.”

  “My reality? What does that mean?”

  “It means—”

  “Hey!” a man’s voice shouts. “There’s someone out here!”

  “Crap,” the Sword sighs, and then she’s fighting for her life.

  Leaving me, presumably, to do the same.

  * * *

  That’s where we stall out. We watch a bunch more episodes—all the ones with the Sword of Midnight in them—but she fails to strike up another conversation. Either she’s said all she means to, which seems unlikely, or there’s some kind of limit to when or how often she can communicate.

  “Makes sense, kind of,” Charlie says. “Magic always has arbitrary rules, doesn’t it? Only three wishes, be home by midnight, never get them wet.”

  “That was Gremlins, Einstein.”

  “And don’t tell them your true name—names have power, right? That’s why I gave her an alias.”

  “Brilliant. Your use of a pretend monicker makes her ability to communicate from another dimension seem childish and pathetic. Next time, tell her your last name is Smith—that’ll show her just how outclassed she really is.”

  “Another dimension, huh?”

  “Reality, dimension, realm—whatever you want to call it, she ain’t from around here. And apparently neither are werewolves or vampires, which I find oddly comforting.”

  “Sure. Because a whole dimension full of them is much less disturbing.”

  “As long as they stay there, yeah. But it looks like Longinus was issuing his own diplomatic visas.”

  Charlie shakes his head. “Maybe. But maybe he was trying to stop them, and that’s why he was killed.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “I guess it’s possible. But we still don’t know what I have to do with all of this.”

  “Well, let’s see. Sorcery, cult, altar, attractive young woman. I’m guessing human sacrifice.”

  “Terrific,” I grumble. “I’m the extra who’s supposed to die in the first scene. Nothing like knowing your place in the universe.”

  “This isn’t television, Jace. It’s extremely weird and I have no idea what we’re going to do next, but this is happening. We’ve gotta deal with it.”

  He’s right. And while I’m still a little freaked out, I don’t feel like I’m going to have a breakdown. I can handle this. For the first time in a long time, things feel right.

  “I know what we have to do,” I say.

  “What?”

  I smile. “We find the trail. And then we follow it.”

  FIVE

  “We need information,” I tell Charlie. “On as many players as we can.”

  “Players?”

  “People who are involved. Who was Longinus, and what was the purpose of his cult? Who are the other members? What was Father Stone’s involvement?”

  Charlie frowns at me. “I thought we were supposed to be hunting vampires and werewolves. And maybe whoever killed Longinus and Stone in the first place.”

  I’m on my feet. I’m moving, restless, but I feel like I need more caffeine. I head for the kitchen to rectify that, talking as I go. “Those are the ultimate answers we need, yes, but we need more than that. We have to understand the bigger picture—and what with magic and other realities and supernatural baddies, that picture’s got to be pretty freaking huge. We go rampaging into the middle of it without any information, we’re dead. Or undead. Or howling at the moon.”

  “Don’t forget dangling at the end of a rope.”

  “Need a larger mug,” I mutter. I find one and fill it. “Yeah. What about the Gallowsman? We haven’t even considered that particular monstrosity yet.”

  “What, you think he’s real, too? Come on, that’s just a local urban myth—”

  “Father Stone wound up hanging from the eaves of his own church under very mysterious circumstances. What we can decipher from Longinus’s notes seems to indicate they were trying to invoke some kind of entity. What if it was the Gallowsman? What if that myth is based on fact?”

  I stride back into the living room and grab my coat. “Let’s go. We’ve got some research to do.”

  He shrugs and
points at my laptop. “What, Google isn’t good enough for you?”

  “It’s broken. We’ll use the one down at the library.”

  We leave Galahad in the yard and walk into the center of town—thankfully, in the opposite direction from the church. Thropirelem’s town square is picturesque, in an unimaginative sort of way, with a fountain, a statue, and a gazebo in the middle and plenty of brick storefronts loaded with gables and turrets and other architectural quaintness around the edges. There’s a little park surrounding the gazebo, and a few weeping willows mourning over a single park bench.

  It’s a nice day, the first crispness of fall in the air, the turning leaves caught halfway between green and orange-red. A kid rides his bike past us, and an old couple nod at me as they stroll by going the other way. Nice, normal, mundane.

  Except that old couple might have two black, hooded robes hanging in their closet. That kid might be running around on all fours come the next full moon, or sucking on someone’s jugular. And the same goes for every single person I see on the street.

  The library is one of the buildings fronting the square, a red brick structure with a peaked roof that looks like it could have once been a schoolhouse. The doors are large, old, and heavily varnished to a brown so dark it’s almost black. We go inside.

  The interior is considerably more modern. Fluorescent lights hang from the ceiling, the carpet is a tasteful gray, and there’s a computer workstation in the back. The librarian gives us an inquiring glance from her desk when we come in, which hardens to a barely tolerant stare when she recognizes me. Gretchen Peters is the kind of librarian who would gladly approve capital punishment for speaking above a whisper in her domain, and is about as welcoming as a cold shower. We’ve probably exchanged all of a dozen words, eleven of which were mine. Hers was “No.”

  We tiptoe to the back and see that no one’s at the computer terminal. I use my library card to log us on and then we do a little surfing.

  We find nothing.

  Nothing on the Gallowsman. Nothing on the word at all.

  “That’s impossible,” Charlie mutters. “It should show up on a dictionary site, at least. I mean, it’s a real word, isn’t it?”

  “Far as I know.” I stare at the monitor. Zero matches for your search. I’ve never seen that happen before, not for a single word. It’s somehow far more creepy than Longinus’s basement with its altar and black curtains.