by Ted Minkinow
That made me stop. And I’m not talking about the caller ID. Notice I said “retrieved it from my desk?” Hadn’t I left the phone plugged in on the windowsill? I glanced at Helmet. The ghost winked. Not the best time for Helmet’s antics. I pushed the answer button.
“What do you need, Sparcius?” I said.
A long pause and I thought about disconnecting. That would just delay things because he’d call back.
“I’m not in the mood,” I said.
A smooth feminine voice. Petulant and in English squeezed through a heavy Magyar accent.
“And here I thought the photos would change all of that,” Soyla said.
Raw fear shivered through my heart like the big wave that crashes to the winter shore and then recedes to hide among the smaller ones. My eggs also buzzed.
“I’m not talking to you,” I said.
Wasted breath, but ego demanded some display of displeasure over having my butt kicked by a girl.
“Ah,” She said. “Is my strong Gaius angry with Orsoyla?”
Maybe not angry, but certainly miffed. Of course she’d scored big points with the maestro-level sexting. And Helmet was looking like he agreed. I could tell by the way he stood with his head nearly touching mine.
I put the phone on mute and whispered, “I’ll put it on speaker.”
Mollified he wouldn’t miss anything, Helmet backed out of my personal space. Good. Maybe my left ear would take less than an hour to thaw. What is it about ghosts—both Helmet and Karl—consuming all the heat?
“I’m putting you on speaker,” I said.
Everyone can tell when you’ve put them on speaker by that sound of the conversation moving to the inside of a toilet bowl. It can make the other person suspicious, make them hold back or just hang up.
“It’s just me here,” I said. “So you can talk freely.”
“But my love,” Soyla replied, “you know that I always do.”
Good point. I’d sooner expect self-control out of a grizzly bear. Or maybe Karl.
“Hello Helmut,” she said in a purring voice you’d happily pay the five buck per minute charge just to keep on the line. “Have you come out to play?”
Soyla always used the more Germanic-sounding Helmut rather than the ridiculous Helmet. Made me wonder if Helmet had been one of the occupation troops in Budapest. Far-fetched, but enough of a possibility to allow the green-eyed monster an appearance from time to time. Crazy. I had to remind myself I was avoiding Soyla, not wooing her.
And Helmet? He did nothing to disguise his sophomoric crush. You’d think a man of his age could exhibit some measure of restraint. Look at me. I pulled it off. Why did it have to feel like two roommates after the same girl? And why was I spending so much time worrying about something that was never going to happen. I returned to business.
“Let’s hear it,” I said.
Wrong thing to say to a potentially psycho woman. But I’m being redundant. Soyla didn’t respond for so long a time I checked twice to make sure the connection hadn’t dropped. Helmet threw that slow shake of the head, disappointed look thing my way.
“I know,” I said to Helmet. “It’s not the way things are done.”
“Your apology is accepted,” Soyla said. “But only if the gift and flowers arrive tomorrow.”
She was joking but I didn’t think Helmet saw through it. By the morning there’d be flowers on the way to Soyla from an online florist. Along with a diamond trinket. I’d get to pay for it all, and the ghost would sign his name on the cards.
I whispered to Helmet. “She’s just kidding about the gift thing.”
I toyed with the thought of cancelling all my credit cards but knew he’d just sign me up for more and spend double the intended amount as punishment. And then he’d probably order a pallet of soy baby formula to be delivered to Oberursel customs.
“Of course I’m not, my love.”
“Soyla,” I said, “Will you quit yanking Helmet’s chain and get down to business.”
“But of course, my love,” she said.
I did the mute thing again and turned to Helmet.
“See, she’s not mad.”
Helmet looked dubious but I hoped he’d at least stop short of the diamond bauble. And the baby formula too.
Soyla said, “I have him.”
“Sparky, right?”
Nothing for a while and then Soyla said, “Nothing to say?”
Darn mute. I disengaged it.
“Yea, right. You have Sparky,” I said. “And you want something out of me before you let him go.”
“Yes, my love.”
“Soyla,” I said, “this isn’t how a Blood Feud is supposed to work. If you have him, you’re supposed to kill him.”
“So precise, my love,” she said. “And this talk of killing,” she added, “makes the paint melt off my body in all the places I couldn’t reach.“
Helmet’s face hit the floor. Good thing I was sitting down because I’d have ended up on top of him. Holy crap. But I couldn’t let that thought run away with my mind. Either one of them. But what harm in letting the melting paint thing settle for a few moments? It was Soyla who broke the spell.
“My employers offer redemption,” she said.
“For a price,” I said.
Soyla laughed. It sounded wicked, it sounded crazy, it sounded like a woman who could kiss you with genuine passion while she ripped your frilly bits from your body. It sounded just like Soyla.
“Yes, my love,” she said. “There is always a price.”
What I said next came without forethought. I could blame it on my normal disorientation when dealing with Soyla, or maybe the unprecedented incursion of No Face and his demon gang into my previously sleepy life in Germany. Now, I tend to think it was that begrudging hint provided by Sarah Arias. Well, maybe not so much begrudging as it was ultimately helpful…crucial in the way a rubber ducky is important to a drowning man. And of course, important to innocent souls caught in a demonic painting. Just the sort of thing you’d expect out of a guardian angel.
“Dry bones,” I said, using the title reference for Ezekiel 37.
Another laugh from Soyla. This one sounded more like a happy giggle.
“So my love already knows,” she said. Her voice changed to all business. “Bring them to the Niederwalddenkmal at midnight tomorrow,” she said. “Or not,” she added. “Because I will enjoy my time with Sparcius.”
The last comment came from a heartless psychopath. Good thing too. It reminded both Helmet and me of what we were dealing with. The calm murdering bitch routine tends to deflate things enough to bring a guy back to his senses. Happens to me all the time. I waited for more, but it didn’t come. She’d said what she called to say.
Soyla had disconnected.
Chapter 28
“Bring us what they want.” That’s what No Face ordered. The ever-mysterious they. Even if they stood up and identified themselves, there was the even more mysterious what. I reran the conversation in my mind. Gabbing with a psycho chick sits right next to mop-the-bathroom-floor on my list of fun things to avoid. I’d made an exception. Try as I might to make sense out of what Soyla had said, my mind fixated on the part about melting body paint. I needed to get control of my mind. Easier said than done.
Dry bones. I’d said something about dry bones. “So my love already knows,” Soyla had said. I pushed away thoughts of Soyla’s melting paint—all but a few—and concentrated on dry bones. The mental exercise got less fulfilling, but like all sacrifices, if it doesn’t hurt, it isn’t benefitting anyone. Dry bones linked Sarah Arias and Soyla.
Not quite right. Dry bones linked Sarah Arias’s master with Soyla’s leash holders. Opposite sides. I stood and opened the window to the balcony. I call it a window but it’s really one of those floor to ceiling doors from a couple hundred years ago. I stepped out on the tiny balcony that overlooked the street.
The last time I went through that window it was head first and my feet wer
en’t touching the ground. Courtesy of the diplomatic representative of The Seven. The little bastard had to stand on his tiptoes to reach my neck and gain enough leverage to heave me out of my own flat. BTW. Bastard isn’t a curse word. At least not according to Nellie.
Normal Saturday traffic passed below. I glanced at the park across the street, the one to the right. Late autumn had turned the grass brown and the chestnut trees stood cold and lonely. Bare of leaves. Dry bones. Sarah Arias didn’t ask me for anything. She just recommended I not give the others what they wanted. No Face wanted me to bring him what “they” wanted. Pronouns are slippery animals. I could have misunderstood “they” in a thousand different ways.
But I didn’t think so. No Face meant “they” as in others. Sarah Arias didn’t want anything. No Face wanted what someone else wanted. Soyla and her masters wanted something. Everyone thought I should do the work. It took a few seconds for my brain to register an icy prickling at my ankle.
At first I dismissed it as a spring gust but the wind wasn’t blowing anywhere else. And although the evening felt cool, it didn’t reach icy. I looked down into a translucent furry face and two loving eyes. The pant looked more like a grin as Karl completed what he’d been doing on my ankle and put his leg back down. He’d finally learned to go outside.
“Bad dog,” I said, and two things indicated I’d spoken louder than I intended. First, I heard a cough on the porch below followed in a few seconds by Herr Doktor waddling out to have a look at this unauthorized animal. Old faker understood English much more than he was letting on. The second bit of immediate feedback? Karl decomposed on the front balcony.
Of course Herr Doktor couldn’t see Karl. I waved at the old goat and he stood there for a few seconds gazing up and fighting the normal human DNA setting that would force him to wave back at me. Satisfied I was still a crazy American, Herr Doktor disappeared back under the balcony.
It would be a while until Karl felt confident enough to reconstitute, so I stepped over him and returned to the living room. Helmet took a glance out the door for his dog. Catching sight of rotting Karl, he stood up in outrage. Someday I hope to introduce Helmet to Herr Doktor. They’d love each other.
“I don’t need this right now,” I said to Helmet as I returned to the desk chair.
I’d been getting somewhere when Karl interrupted me with his trick, and I struggled to return my mind to the thread. Demons hadn’t entered my frame of reference until Soyla’s team kicked things off. They wanted dry bones. In exchange for Sparky. Not a fair trade, because the possibility existed you could strike up a genuine friendship with dry bones.
So Soyla wanted the dry bones. No Face wanted me to bring him what “they” wanted. The only “they” I could think of pointed back to Soyla. Logic said if I was right about the “they” then I could safely assume No Face also wanted the dry bones. Sarah Arias? She wanted me to avoid any presentations having to do with dry bones. Congratulations me. But I wasn’t there yet.
I still didn’t know what dry bones meant. Soyla and No Face could keep on wanting, and Sarah Arias didn’t need to worry about me handing anything over to anyone. Not until I solved the mystery of the dry bones. I examined my conclusion from different angles. No holes. They said the same thing about the Titanic. Five souls depended on me getting this right. Four, if I didn’t count Sparky.
On top of that, I had a command performance with The Seven in less than twenty-four hours. The Frankfurt Marriott. I hoped all the weekend rates were taken and they had to pay full price. I picked up the smartphone and set a reminder to go off an hour before the designated time. The Seven involvement. A big omission from the nearly-perfect equation I’d derived. It could reset all my progress back to zero.
The benefit of no time to spare is that you’ve got no time to spare. If I left The Seven out of the nearly perfect equation then that’s where they’d stay. I thought they were a wildcard anyway. Sure, the cute little man-eater did break into my house and beat me like he’d caught me stealing chickens. But that’s The Seven’s shtick. The thing that powers their mystique. But it just didn’t add up.
The Seven needed reasons to get involved. I mean, I’m sure they had more important things to do, like judging European Explorer cooking contests…and shrinking a guy’s head takes a lot of personal involvement. No way they’d mess up next year’s necklace with a trip to Germany just to kick my butt. The Seven wanted something. They could get in line. One thing became clear as I ran everything through my mind. I needed a beer booster.
“Hey Helmet,” I said, “Bring me a beer.”
The ghost stood from the chair and dumped the newly reconstituted Karl on the floor. He assumed the military attention pose and snapped a Nazi salute. Looked a lot like how the Romans used to do things. And with is arm still stretched nearly parallel to the ground he rotated his hand until his palm faced upward. He then raised the important finger in the kind of salute even the non-Nazis among us would understand. I don’t think the Romans would, though.
I walked to the kitchen.
Helmet had repositioned himself nearer the computer in the short time I’d been gone and I suspected he’d been opening up new web sites dedicated to Charlemagne. Can’t blame a dead guy for taking up new hobbies.
I wanted to get out the door and get things going. Thing was…where would I go? I could find my way out of the flat and downstairs. Once I left the building it would be like stepping off into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I knew I was getting close, but close never seems to get me there.
One thing I did know for sure. I had better things to do than wait around for my appointment at the Marriott. No time for a business meeting, a lecture on the best way to baste a human leg, or whatever the reason Bram Stoker’s version of the Seven Dwarves wanted my pink body standing in front of them the next evening.
Desperation often drives me to stupid acts. But then, stupid acts are different from acting stupidly. Or something like that. I looked on the desk for my smartphone. Not there. It was sitting in the windowsill and on the charger. Right. I checked it.
“Way to go, Helmet.”
Soyla’s latest pic waited on top. I navigated to the right screen and saw the message I wanted sitting in the queue. No surprise there. My normal couple of dozen texts from the bagger gang wouldn’t be dinging in. It was a sure bet the mini hell No Face suspended them in wasn’t covered in the roaming plan. Odd that Germany was, though.
I opened the text I’d received from The Seven, the one ordering me to the Frankfurt Marriott for a meeting the next day. Here’s what I typed:
“Unable. Call ahead next visit and we can do lunch.”
I pushed the send button and heard the noise indicating my little rebellion had begun. Big rebellion against little people might be more accurate. No way to tell if anyone ever refused a summons from The Seven. No way, I thought, because The Seven wouldn’t let the person live long enough to boast. Put that in your rusty black cauldron, I thought, and boil it.
Scheduling conflicts resolved, I sat back down at the computer, and to the notion of a ticking clock taped to a case of dynamite. How long could a person last in a demonic painting? Not long. Maybe about as long as the average nutcase criminal would be willing to put up with Sparky. Even if I did bring No Face “what they want” and he kept his end of the deal and released my friends? No guarantee they wouldn’t come back damaged.
Do the words Faustian bargain ring a bell? I’ve already said I knew demons existed. Not so sure about the red guy with a pointed tail and pitchfork, though. What I’ve seen of the natural and supernatural sways me towards yes. I mean, based on the demons I’d seen moving in and out of alternate dimensions? Denying the devil in command would be more a political statement than a demonstration of common sense. Back to the Faustian bargain.
If I believed all those novels, plays, and movies, No Face and company would honor the contract. To the letter. Sell your soul for a hundred million dollars? It’s wired into your ban
k account—contract satisfied. If the fatal heart attack hits a few seconds after transfer confirmation? Not covered in the fine print. But my choices were limited, unless I figured out how to storm a castle in an alternate world.
I glanced up at the computer screen without really seeing. Faulty contract or not, I’d use brute strength to power myself through the situation and let the chips fall where they would. Some comfort in knowing things don’t change. Good plan. Something else bothered me. The text I’d just sent, the one declining an order from The Seven.
Stupid. So stupid, I thought, that it would take careful planning to commit an act of greater idiocy. Unnecessary. I could have bought twenty-four hours with no worry of interference from them by just keeping my mouth shut. You bet they’d come after me with bare feet slapping and spears sharpened at five past nine. But that would be five past nine the next night. I checked my phone for the timestamp on the message I’d sent. Five minutes prior. No time, no space. Way to go Einstein.
A noise outside my window alerted me that either a flying cow made a large deposit on the little balcony, or someone just landed there. Since I held no American hostages I was confident it wasn’t a Navy Seal team come to collect on the bill with laser sights and silenced weapons. Much worse. I’d left the door open so I didn’t need to suffer the anticipation of a moving latch and creaking hinges.
The little guy walked through the door wearing jeans and a sweater. Probably bought in the children’s section. A flash of cold white from behind and I watched as Karl played the guard dog and flew across the room at the intruder. Furry moron went right for the face. If saliva really is the first step in the digestive process then Karl’s kissing attack would break down the man’s cellular structure. In about a thousand years. Brilliant.
“Care for a beer?” I said.
Dark eyes stared back at me with an intensity born in a harsh jungle where people hunted each other for food. I expected my death to begin with where the beating left off before the little guy left my apartment the previous night. It’s how things are done with The Seven. He didn’t respond. At least not in any audible way. I think he turned up the glare a level or two.