Grim

by Gavin McCallion

  'Mate, hurry up,' Tom said.

  'I c-can't, she's being difficult.'

  'What's she going to do? Flail you to death? She's a fucking ghost, man.'

  'Shut the fuck up!'

  'She can't hurt me?' Grim nodded his head at her, attempting discretion.

  'Why don't you know this already? Seriously?'

  'I fucking can hurt you! I will!'

  Tom, turning to the ghost, started to argue back, but something behind her caught his attention. Something moved. The wall swirled in on a point, pulling in around it and pushing out, like a whirlpool in reverse.

  'So I can just send her?'

  'No!'

  Tom had stopped listening. Something was coming out of the wall. He looked back at the ground behind Grim, and it was doing the same thing. Twisting and pushing its way up, three long spikes becoming a hand.

  'Stay away from me!' Jo shrieked, pulling Tom's attention back.

  Grim jabbed at the ghost with a gloved hand, interrupting her form, distorting the image. Jo started to swing as Grim kept jabbing and soon they became a terrible mess of purple and black, waving limbs around at one another. No one seemed to care about the things birthing themselves from the ground at their feet.

  ‘Here.' Tom said, trying to distract them.

  The clawed hand joined to an elbow.

  'Here!'

  Tom spun and grabbed Grim by both shoulders, hauling him back from the tangle and leaving Jo's ghost a deformity of purple smears, with arms in her head and her stomach pulled out to the right.

  She tried to correct herself. 'I'm not going anywhere, right??' she said, from her mouth caught in her forehead.

  'Thomas, I can't do it, she won't-'

  'Take your fucking glove off, ya clown!'

  'Aw.'

  A second hand pushed out of the floor. The wall behind Jo's broken ghost did the same.

  'Hurry the fuck up!'

  Grim removed his hand from the glove. It glowed with the same luminous, violet hue the ghost did.

  Suddenly, Jo's eyes widened. Her bravery collapsed. She shook her head. 'Please?'

  'I'm very sorry!' Grim reached forward.

  Behind Jo, the beginnings of a stretched, lipless, animal face formed in the wall between the arms.

  With one touch, the ghost of Jo McIvor exploded into a billion tiny, violet particles, and they disappeared into the air a moment later. Sent.

  Tom, rightfully wary, watched as each of the creatures realised there was nothing left for them in the room. They looked almost disappointed by the change in events.

  'Oh! What are you?' Grim said, discovering them.

  At double the speed they arrived, they let the wall and floor absorb them and left the room undisturbed.

  'Fuck was that?' Tom asked, pointing.

  Grim responded with a shaking voice. 'Contingencies.'

  ~

  They were ghouls.

  Basically, Death rarely fucked up, but when he did, he left ghosts lurking around the world. Every ghost story began with a failed sending.

  When he fucked off to live on the moon, because that actually happened, the affairs of life and death were left in the much more unsuitable hands of the human race. Death knew how unsuitable they were, and left behind an insurance policy to keep the population of unsent ghosts roaming the earth to a minimum.

  Y'know why there are no modern-day ghost stories? Because Death left us with the ghouls.

  They show up if a Reaper misses the mark. They pop out to drag spirits away against their will. The spirits suffer. The process is unpleasant, painful, and those ghosts do not go to Heaven or Hell. They go to the worst nightclub in all of existence - where the queue is endless, where the bar staff are never serving, where the DJ only plays one song, where the toilets are queued out forever, where the dance-floor is the stickiest: Purgatory.

  If a ghoul got hold of a ghost, it was bad news for everyone, but nobody more so than The Reaper.

  Feeding a ghost to a ghoul was grounds for disciplinary action, and termination for a Reaper still on probation.

  Grim didn't know this, but Judge Rabbit counted on the ghouls to do something he couldn't.

  ~

  Eighteen

  Bad Press

  Derek took another call from David - the second of many he would receive throughout the day - with another stressful revelation that added to Derek's worry following all that gunpowder unpleasantness.

  The Court had a dedicated staff of laptop jockeys who monitored the internet for sightings of Reapers. They were kept busy. People saw The Reaper every day, and every day those people took to their phones to freak out about the experience, in spite of how harmless it was.

  Amongst the dross, a cluster of comments flagged up on a video recently uploaded. The handler who discovered the video tried to call Matthew to no avail. After that, he called reception at the Courthouse, who directed him towards Wilson's Well's Writer, who phoned Derek and thoroughly confused him.

  Pacing the floor and rolling his toes in the carpet, he asked, 'search what?'

  David sighed. 'Search Reaper Punch. '

  'Why?'

  'Oh, you'll see.'

  ~

  I've seen the video, and it's fucking hilarious. Grim approaches Jo and has a bit of a chat with her. Two minutes in, she rushes him, and Grim crumples while yelling about his face.

  BANG.

  Down he goes.

  ~

  Before he computed the implications the footage held for him, Derek allowed himself a good laugh and a second viewing.

  He found it splendid.

  But alas, when the laughter died, Derek went back to worry. The Judge had to be told, so he put his shoes back on and reapplied his professional walk for the journey across the mansion. The mirror said nobody would know he was panicking, but his medicine caught his eye as he left.

  The bad news wasn't that a send had knocked Grim out. That was actually the plan. David selected a boxer because she might knock Grim out. No, the bad news was the recording of that awful performance going viral in the space of a few minutes. A bad send could be handled quietly, but the internet didn't do “quietly.”

  If one other Judge heard about the video, Judge Rabbit would come under fire for picking The Reaper in the first place. Then they would move on to ask why Matthew hadn't prepared him for his first send correctly, and then they would wonder why Matthew didn't have a head.

  The situation quickly got messy.

  Derek passed the entrance to The Judge's lobby and climbed the stairs to the GRAND OVERPASS, into the East Wing - the location of the GLASS ROOM.

  Rabbit manor had an excessive amount of themed rooms. Few of them served any real purpose. Derek would never say so to The Judge Rabbit's face (the rules and all that), but he had opinions about the spectacular space-wasting The Judge paid for while he - his faithful man-servant - slept in a modest room by comparison.

  I've mentioned the library, the one that was supposed to hold every book ever written, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. There was the COUCH ROOM (a lot of couches offering varying levels of comfort), the GIRAFFE ROOM (no real giraffes, but a tonne of ornaments), the LITTLE SLICE OF HAWAII ROOM (two poor, half-naked girls in leis and grass skirts who served drinks out of coconuts under a powerful artificial sun lamp that had them melting all day), the BIG ROOM (it was big), the SNAKE ROOM (there used to be a snake in there, but it vanished a few years back) - and so the list went on.

  So, Derek made his way to the GLASS ROOM. It was one of The Judge's favourite rooms for meetings. Sometimes he put a room in the manor and forgot about it in a days' time, but the GLASS ROOM was an institution.

  Derek, when he got there, knocked the magic mirror it had for a door.

  'Come in, Derek!'

  He entered the GLASS ROOM. The Judge sat cross-legged at a table made of glass on a chair made of glass on a floor made of glass. Sitting opposite him was a shifty-looking fellow with a tribal tattoo on
his face who only acknowledged Derek via sideways glance.

  The Judge introduced him with an open hand. 'Derek, this is Docta Vagine.'

  'Charmed to meet you, Mister Docta Vagine.'

  Docta Vagine nodded.

  'I'll just be a couple more seconds Derek, if you would kindly wait,' The Judge said.

  'Yessir.'

  Derek stood against a glass wall, beside a glass sideboard, beneath the light of a glass chandelier and opposite a glass statue of a jaguar. He could see through the glass walls into every other room surrounding them, where the unwitting occupants usually thought they had a mirrored wall, ceiling or floor in their room for the evening. The East Wing was primarily dedicated to guests, and each room around THE GLASS ROOM was a guest room. The idea made Derek uncomfortable, but perverse people-watching was a preferred pastime of The Judge's.

  'So we're clear,' The Judge spoke, pointing to some instructions laid out before Docta Vagine.' At exactly midnight, at the apex of my speech, the whores flank me from each end of the GRAND OVERPASS.'

  Docta Vagine muttered his response. 'If y'want.'

  'Now Docta, now Docta Vagine please don't take this lightly. Do not con me Docta Vagine. I need a hundred percent guarantee that at the swell of my glorious address, when I give the signal, I will be surrounded by half-naked women.'

  'Sure.'

  Judge Rabbit poured a measure of whisky from a glass decanter into a glass and toasted Docta Vagine with a bright grin. 'Well then, we have a deal!'

  After a destructive swig from their respective glasses, Docta Vagine left, tucking his contract into his jacket as he went. Derek offered to show him out, but The Judge waved off the suggestion. He remarked that Docta Vagine owned his favourite strip club, and if he couldn't trust the man who put the lap-dancers in his lap, then who could he really trust?

  Derek resigned the point and retrieved his phone from his jacket. He showed The Judge the video and oh, man did he enjoy it.

  ~

  Yeah, the murderer likes to watch people getting punched. Shocker.

  ~

  He laughed excessively, charging and emptying his glass twice as he did so. He must have watched it thirty times, and his reaction never faltered. Each time he kicked back in his seat, guffawing into the air and sloshing his drink down his throat. 'Another!' he cried, and Derek obliged, while his worry begged him to get to the point of the visit.

  At about viewing thirty, The Judge eventually broke the pattern. 'My boy,' he said, wiping tears from his eyes. 'I understand you're here to amuse me, but I have things to do. It's cruel of you to distract me so!'

  'Yessir.' Derek clicked the phone off and returned it to his jacket before The Judge asked him to play the video again. 'As amusing as the footage is sir, don't you agree it might attract us some unwanted attention? It is barely an hour old and picking up views at a rate of knots.'

  The Judge drained his glass once more. 'Mm!' he exclaimed, swallowing a mouthful of whisky. 'I don't doubt it!'

  'Indeed sir, what needs to be done?'

  The Judge shrugged.

  'Shouldn't it be addressed?'

  'Did he get the send in the end?'

  'Well... there has been nothing to say the ghouls claimed it sir, so I would assume yes.'

  'Then there's nothing to be done!' The Judge stood. 'Fancy a round of golf?'

  He had never played golf before in his life, but that was a point for another day.

  Derek stammered over his confusion. 'I, sir... I'm not sure you... the reputational damage such a failure-'

  'Oh-ho! Del-cat, I'm sure I'll take my lumps from the Court, but not today.' He winked, approached the door and waited for Derek to open it.

  Derek stayed still, baffled. Judge Rabbit most certainly cared about his reputation. The main reason he was hosting The Reaper’s Gala later in the evening was to be remembered as the man who revived the scandalous affair.

  Eventually, he wrapped a hand around the glass handle but stopped himself shy of opening it. 'Sir, I... I worry we may be in danger if- the... the enquiries that would be made-'

  The Judge placed a ring-clad hand on his very-nearly trembling shoulder. He used his soft tones and sweet eyes. ‘What did I tell you about worrying, my boy?' he purred.

  Derek nodded. His brain screamed at him, but his body was a professional; it opened the door for his employer as it should.

  Judge Rabbit took his leave, swaggering along like he didn't give a fuck. His half-pissed amble maybe a step or two off of colliding with the wall to his left, the same I-don't-give-a-tickety-fuck-about-anything walk he used every day, now seemed more genuine than ever.

  David's talk of escalation, carelessness and disregard for the future of his house; it was real. The Judge gave no fucks as to whether or not his career, along with the lives of his dedicated staff who enjoyed spending all his money - please note - went up in flames.

  Derek shuddered.

  Flames.

  'Oh, sir!' he called.

  The Judge spun on his heel. 'My boy!'

  'Your incredible amount of gunpowder arrived, sir.'

  Judge Rabbit grinned, walking backwards. 'Grand Derek! Simply grand! No party without gunpowder!'

  Derek shut the glass door behind him. Gunpowder to fire; and fire to death; and death to the collapse of his family and mental health. He could still hear screaming when it was quiet, and Rabbit manor was rarely loud.

  'Quite, sir,' Derek responded, swallowing. 'Quite.'

  ~

  Nineteen

  Things Tom Didn't Know

  'And there's one more thing, before I let you pop off, my new Reaper...' Judge Rabbit said, draining his drink. 'One more thing... one more thing of grave importance. Do not miss a send. Do not let a ghost elude you.'

  Grim sat across the table in Height, and his eyes shot from his still-full frappuccino to The Judge. 'That can happen?'

  'Oh yes. And while there are contingencies to pick up the mess, it would be defamatory to my reputation, it would be inconvenient for the poor soul stuck in Purgatory for the rest of eternity, and it would be devastating to your chances of spending the day with your daughter.'

  Grim nodded, painting the illusion he understood, but then he spoke. 'So... how - I'm sorry - but exactly how devastating would-'

  Judge Rabbit spanked the table between them, playfully, just enough to let his rings clack. 'Gross misconduct on probation, my boy! Termination! Back in the ground, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds!'

  'Ah. N-No paperwork there, then?'

  'No. Paperwork. Required.' The Judge leant in, grinning. 'Cricket?'

  'Thank you for-for the opportunity, Mr Rabbit.'

  ~

  After the ghouls had gone back to wherever they came from, Grim left the room above the garage.

  Tom didn't notice.

  He thought he knew everything about being a Reaper, right down to the send itself, but nowhere in his research was it ever mentioned that little, twitching creatures would ever come out of the walls.

  Grim didn’t know what they were either. He knew even less about being a Reaper than Tom did, and that didn't sit right with him. Something was going on, something Grim wasn't telling him about things the Court weren't telling him.

  It didn't matter, though, because then he remembered he had a Reaper to kidnap, and he had let him walk out the door.

  Tom hurried from the room, down the stairs and back outside with the rain that made an explicit display of his white t-shirt.

  Grim hadn't gone far. Past the ambulance and down the road a bit, he saw a cut-out of a Reaper's cloak in the rain, trudging on, about as ripe for kidnapping as a man could look, I suppose.

  Tom crossed Jo's garden, stepped over a small fence onto the pavement, and walked towards Grim, who faced the other way, completely unaware.

  But then something odd happened: Grim kicked a lamp post.

  'Hyah!' He cried, recoiling in pain, hopping around.

  Tom stopped
.

  The Reaper collapsed in a heap on the kerb with both feet planted in the puddle at its base.

  The display almost tugged at Tom's heart strings. Almost.

  It didn't take any of Tom's research to know Grim's first send went badly. Reaping was his job for the rest of his very long life, and he sucked at it. Tom understood how he might feel a touch demoralised. Grim shouldn't be The Reaper, anybody could see it, which begged the question: why did the Court choose him in the first place?

  So yeah, Tom felt a slight emotional pull, but that cloaked moron still needed to be kidnapped.

  He resumed his approach but slowed from a march to a creep. He didn't particularly want to scare Grim; he was freaking out enough already. Tom crept on, watching his mark shake his head, listening as he muttered nonsense to himself.

  Tom planned to grab him, knock him out and drag him off, but instead: 'Here, eh-'

  Grim snapped his head up, getting that fright Tom had been trying to avoid. 'Oh! Hello Thomas, sorry I...'

  Tom pointed a thumb over his shoulder. 'Here you... you alright? It got eh... mental back there.'

  'S-sorry.'

  Grim's vague response would've been less irritating were they not in the middle of a determined onslaught of Wilson's Well rain - sore rain where every drop dented his skin.

  'Listen, you want to sit in my car?'

  A minute later, he and Grim sat in his car. Cold, wet and increasingly hungover, but in the car.

  Kidnapping was easy.

  ~

  Tom found out, in the subsequent car journey, what had upset Grim.

  At first, he didn't say much. He didn't ask where Tom was driving them, for which Tom was thankful, seeing as how he couldn't think up a reasonable lie. He only sat in the passenger seat, dripping wet and staring at his own lap.

  Tom had been trying to shut him up since he appeared at his door that morning. He should have relished the silence.

  Sadly, he needed information, so he asked, 'what the fuck, man?'