The Voodoo Killings

by Kristi Charish

  I held my breath as we passed by the food stalls that catered to zombies and ghouls. It wasn’t the smell that bothered me, but the fact that it reminded me of chicken noodle soup. I did my best not to look, either. I can handle dead bodies, but not a lot of unidentifiable hanging…things.

  We passed by zombies who looked almost normal and others where no way they were passing topside without a gallon of paint. I almost lost Cameron once when he stopped to stare at a ghoul, a type of zombie, sitting on a bench.

  “Sorry,” I said to the ghoul in apology, and towed Cameron back along the boardwalk. “You wouldn’t have stopped to stare if you knew what the serrated teeth were for,” I said.

  Halfway down the boardwalk, I turned down one of the narrower side streets, and after five more minutes of weaving through the foot traffic, we reached our destination: a dusty, gold-coloured shop window next to a set of saloon-style red doors. Gold Chinese characters decorated the doors and the edge of the window, and hanging above the entrance, also written in gold letters, was a sign announcing Damaged Goods.

  I noticed a pair of Chinese paper lanterns hanging just inside the window, white with red characters. Hunh, those were new. Either Lee got bored with the old ones or there’d been another fight. I was betting on the fight.

  “Well, Cameron. Here we are. What do you think?”

  Cameron examined the shopfront painstakingly. Then he turned to face me, confused. “You’re taking me to a dive bar?”

  I shrugged and pushed him ahead of me through the red saloon doors. “Depends on what you consider a dive bar.”

  CHAPTER 4

  DAMAGED GOODS

  We stepped straight into a set of beaded curtains suspended over the entrance—not your classic hippie beads, but strings of bamboo painted white and decorated with red Chinese characters. Hmm, those were new too, and, oh…phew.

  I covered my mouth with the sleeve of my jacket; the air was loaded with paint fumes. Well, that explained why the place was empty for a Friday night. As I stood there giving my eyes a chance to adjust to the newly dimmed lantern light, I took in the scene that lay before me. Lee really had been redecorating.

  White Chinese paper lanterns had been strung across the entire ceiling, in the windows, and wrapped around the wood pillars, all of them covered with the same red characters that decorated the bamboo curtains. Each lantern gave off a warm yellow glow much dimmer than the gas lamps Lee had been partial to, which were nowhere to be seen. Besides the addition of the lanterns and beaded curtains, the walls, table, chairs and bar stools had also been given a new coat of bright red paint—from the smell of it, exterior enamel.

  “Hunh, Lee’s been spiffing the place up,” I said. The wisdom of that was suspect in my mind. The underground isn’t what I’d call a haven for interior decorators. It reminds me of a living, breathing thing more than a place, and tends to rebel against any and all change. Think of bathing a cat: there’s a good chance it’ll bite you.

  Lee was nowhere to be seen in her white and red extravaganza, and barring a handful of sketchy patrons clinging to recessed corner booths at the back, the place was dead—no pun intended. Then again, any human practitioner with any respect for their lungs would be taking their business elsewhere tonight. Even most zombies wouldn’t put up with these fumes. While they didn’t have to breathe them in, the fumes still smelled bad.

  I’d have turned tail, but I needed brains from Mork and I wanted Lee Ling to see Cameron. And then there was the small problem of Nate, my prima donna roommate. Just maybe he’d actually show up.

  I caught Cameron covering his mouth. “You can just stop breathing and you’ll be fine,” I told him. “Trust me.”

  He frowned at me then gulped twice as the muscles in his throat and chest fought with the idea before all motion in his chest stopped.

  I focused on the smells filtering through my sleeve. Turpentine, paint…and was that tar? Yup. Paint, solvents, tar and next to no ventilation.

  I glanced at Cameron as he started to pull his hood up and shook my head. Best not to hide your identity in the underground. The zombies like to know whom they’re dealing with.

  “Well, what do you think?” I asked Cameron, my voice muffled by the sleeve of my jacket.

  He scanned the bar from one end to the other, and then his eye was caught by a red and gold poster taped to the wall behind the bar and obscured by a string of white lanterns. One of Lee Ling’s wards against evil spirits—a real one, loaded with Otherside. Unnerving if you were dead. “It’s harmless,” I said, half expecting an argument. I’d been telling Cameron an awful lot of things were harmless.

  Cameron only stared at the ward, hypnotized….

  “Cameron?” I said, touching his arm and taking one big step back, just in case.

  At the sound of my voice, he tore his eyes off the ward and turned a face, void of any recognition, towards me.

  Shit. I took another step back. I did not want to pull another globe tonight to undo Cameron’s bindings, unless I really had to. Tapping the barrier for a fifth time in one night meant I’d stand a good chance of knocking myself unconscious. Cameron took an unsure step towards me, and I reached behind me and found the back of a chair.

  That’d do. I readied to swing if Cameron didn’t snap out of it….Damn it, Lee was going to be pissed with me bringing her a dead body. Speaking of which, where the hell was she?

  Cameron’s chest began to move again as he picked up a scent. Sniffing the air, he took another slow step towards me. I lifted the chair and got ready to strike. No time to feel sorry for him now, I could do that later….Damn it, this was going to be messy.

  “Kincaid, to what do I owe this pleasure?” Lee’s low, throaty voice carried through the bar. Her voice had too rough a texture to be feminine, but it was refined with a hint of a British accent.

  It wasn’t much of a distraction, but it was enough. Cameron turned to stare at the petite silhouette standing behind the bar, backlit by the lamps in her office. The blank expression disappeared as he turned back to me, frowning at the chair I still held. “I don’t think this is the kind of place I hang out,” he said.

  I exhaled and put the chair down. “Cameron, you have no idea how close you just got to having a very short afterlife.” I turned to Lee. “Nice timing,” I said.

  She snorted and ducked back into her office.

  “And when did you start redecorating the place?” I called after her.

  No answer.

  I grabbed the nearest bar stool and double-checked to make sure the paint was dry before sitting down. Cameron reluctantly came to join me.

  “Hey, Lee, what the hell do I need to do to get a drink around here?”

  “Patience is a virtue, Kincaid,” Lee yelled back. I heard the sounds of rustling papers and a desk drawer closing.

  “What I was saying—earlier—about this place not being somewhere I’d go?” Cameron interrupted.

  I glanced at him.

  “You don’t seem like the kind of person who hangs out here either,” he said, glancing back down at the bar.

  “Six months ago I’d have agreed with you, Cameron.” I propped my elbows on the bar and craned my head to get a better look in the office. “Hey, Lee? How about a whisky sour?” I sat back, but my elbows met with glue-like resistance. Damn it, I’d forgotten about the tar smell. The entire wood beam that made up the bar had been coated in creosote, a tacky preservative Lee Ling used to hold back water rot. I tried wiping my elbows off on the side of the stool, to no avail. “I knew there was a reason no one was sitting at the bar,” I said.

  “Yet here you are,” Lee said, stepping out of her office and into the bar’s lantern light. Tonight her hair was tied in a low knot and she was wearing a red silk Chinese dress. The colour was a lovely contrast against her pale skin and dark hair. It also drew attention away from the scars that ran across her face like cracks in porcelain—grey rivulets that were difficult to camouflage. The pale green-blue eyes, howeve
r, ruined any chance Lee had of passing for the living. Granted, her eyes had been bought and paid for. Dearly. The originals had been ruined more than a hundred years ago, after all.

  I held up my creosote-covered sleeves. “Would it kill you to put up a Wet Paint sign?” I said.

  She arched a single, perfect black eyebrow. “Everyone else figured it out. I fail to see why you should receive special treatment….” Her voice trailed off as her eyes moved to Cameron. It didn’t matter that he didn’t show any outward signs of decay. Any dead worth their salt can spot another dead; unlike the living, they don’t need to tap the barrier to see Otherside. Her eyes narrowed as she continued to examine Cameron, at the same time as she mixed my whisky sour with the deft grace that came from a hundred years of practice.

  She passed me my drink without betraying any of her thoughts. Only a few of the muscles in her face still worked; Lee had turned that state of affairs into a gift of sorts.

  “Nice zombie, Kincaid,” she said, the unspoken question heavy in each word.

  I took my first sip. Lee made the best whisky sour in Seattle, topside included. “So you caught the same binding anomalies I did?”

  “Your work?” she asked, her face still unreadable as she searched my eyes.

  “Not mine, Lee, and you won’t believe where I found him. Outside Catamaran’s.”

  Cameron cleared his throat. “I’m sitting right here.”

  “Yes, but I have to explain it to Lee as you currently have the memory of a goldfish—”

  Lee cut me off. “And who are you?”

  He pushed his mind to pull the detail up. “Cameron Wight,” he said.

  Wonders never ceased, he remembered his name.

  Lee flashed Cameron a smile. “Somehow that strikes me as appropriate,” she said, and continued to ignore me as she studied his bindings. I wondered if Cameron could see Lee Ling’s bindings yet and, if he could, what the hell he’d make of them.

  At last, Lee turned her attention back to me. She inclined her head towards Cameron and lifted a frozen draft glass.

  I nodded. “Yeah, on my tab—and top shelf, Lee, no formaldehyde. He’ll need more than one glass.”

  “He’s new. Best to start slow. It is also less intimidating than a pitcher,” she replied.

  “Just keep them coming,” I said. I polished off the remainder of my whisky sour.

  As she stepped out of the cooler carrying a grey, frothy concoction reminiscent of a milkshake and topped with a red umbrella, I asked, “Hey, have you seen Maximillian lately?” Lee liked to make all of the zombie and ghoul mixtures look like tropical drinks. She placed the glass in front of Cameron, who leaned as far back from it as he could without toppling off the stool.

  “No, I have not seen Maximillian Odu in quite some time,” Lee said.

  I slid two twenties across the bar. The bills disappeared into Lee’s dress. Without another word or glance at me or Cameron, she left to handle the other patrons. Sparse as they were tonight, they still expected something resembling service.

  Cameron eyed his brains.

  “Cameron, there’s an easy way or a hard way to do this.”

  He still didn’t touch the glass.

  “Right now, you’re doing it the hard way.”

  His nostrils flared and the muscles in his throat contracted as he involuntarily began to salivate. A big part of the new Cameron wanted to drink it.

  I shook my head. “Stop thinking.”

  He closed his eyes, grabbed the glass and slammed the drink back, forcing the grey liquid down his throat with the commitment—if not the enthusiasm—of a frat pledge. He made it halfway through before something between a gag and a whine escaped him, but he finished it all. He set the glass back down and wiped the remnants off his mouth with his hand, then coughed as he began to breathe again. “That was disgusting,” he said, staring at the glass.

  “Less chugging, more sipping: this isn’t a kegger.”

  He coughed again. “You try sipping it, then.”

  I’d have come up with something witty to say, but just then Lee stepped back behind the bar well and began mixing drinks. I caught a whiff of formaldehyde. I’d been right: only zombies putting up with the fumes tonight, probably ones who couldn’t pass for human anymore.

  I figured Lee would offer her opinions about Cameron when she was ready to, so I switched topics. “Care to tell me what the redecorating is about? And don’t tell me you found the undead, Chinese version of IKEA.”

  She glanced around, as if seeing the lanterns and paint for the first time. “I had a premonition of bad luck. Red and white will help to change that.”

  I looked around the bar. Considering what happened the last time Lee had a premonition, luck was something she had to take very seriously.

  Lee Ling Xhao had died during the summer of 1889, the year the great fire destroyed most of Seattle. An entire city built of lumber on wooden stilts—even the drainage pipes were made of wood. Add to that the driest summer in fifty years and a carpentry shop full of turpentine. The surprise wasn’t that the city burned down; it was that no one had seen it coming.

  Lee didn’t die in the fire, though. She had been murdered three weeks before the carpenter had the bright idea of downing a bottle of whisky and striking a match.

  At the tender age of fifteen, Lee had had a flourishing career as a high-end courtesan in Shanghai. Known for her gold-coloured eyes, a coveted symbol of freedom from worldly cares, she expected to have a long and illustrious career…until her twin brother, Lou, was exposed as a practitioner of the dark arts. Perfectly acceptable in China at the time, but not so much so with her predominantly foreign and very Christian clientele. A witch hunt ensued, and the two fled to San Francisco, where they once again set up shop, Lou selling his talents and Lee selling hers. They eventually followed the gold rush up the coast to Seattle.

  To hear her tell it, Lee had quite the distinguished clientele, all of whom she and her brother planned to extort and blackmail into comfortable retirement. Things probably would have gone exactly the way they’d planned if it hadn’t been for Isabella, the wife of one of Lee’s more ardent customers, who got wise to where her husband’s money was going.

  Stories of Whitechapel’s infamous Jack the Ripper murders had reached the northwest coast by then, and had inspired Seattle’s own copycat, who was attacking crib girls—indentured Chinese prostitutes—by the Seattle docks.

  I shivered, remembering how Lee had described for me the way the merchant’s wife had drugged her with chloroform in the dark of an alley, her single scream muffled by the noise of the crowds out enjoying an unusually warm summer night.

  She’d still been lucid when the woman began slicing into her beautiful porcelain face with a paring knife. The last thing Lee saw before she died was the knife coming towards her golden eyes. She’d been found in pieces the next day and carried to Lou. Lee’s brother did his best to stitch her up before raising her as a zombie. The grey china cracks running over her beautiful face were what was left of his handiwork.

  I asked her once why she hadn’t found a pair of golden eyes, like the ones she’d lost.

  “I like green,” she’d said. “It is a good reminder that I am not free from worldly cares. And Isabella had such beautiful green ones.”

  I know when not to push for details.

  I lifted my empty glass. Lee mixed me a second and then held it just out of my reach. “Quid pro quo, Kincaid,” she said, and nodded at Cameron. “You want your drink, you tell me about him.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  I told her everything, including my suspicion that Cameron was either one of Maximillian’s or a botched murder cover-up…or, however strange it might sound, both. Lee listened intently, stopping me only for the odd clarification. This time Cameron made no protest, but listened as if it was all news to him.

  “The amnesia and slow regeneration is the strangest part, along with how he reacts to Otherside.”

>   Lee nodded. “As if his bindings are tentative at best. Are you certain Max is involved? It seems…” She tilted her head to the side and chose her words carefully. “Unlike him.”

  “I know. But who else would it be? Unless you know of any other practitioners hanging around Seattle, down here or otherwise, who could rig those symbols. Have you ever seen anything like them? I mean, they look like a clock.”

  She pursed her lips, considering. “With the lines set so precariously over the anchors, I’d say they were meant to destabilize, which doesn’t sound like Max. But there are traces of his work. If you were not telling me this story, I would have added you to that list of who could have done this.”

  “Why would anyone want to set up a zombie like that?”

  Lee eyed Cameron. The muscles around her eyes twitched with indecision and I realized she knew more than she was letting on. “Lee? What are you not telling me?”

  “It is none of your concern, Kincaid.”

  “Lee, I have an unstable zombie here—”

  But she only shook her head. “It is irrelevant and of no value to your current predicament.”

  Like hell it wasn’t relevant.

  “My advice to you, Kincaid, is to find Max and soon. Cameron’s bindings are unstable. If he didn’t raise Cameron himself, he will know who did. That is all the advice I can offer.”

  “Bullshit.”

  I didn’t get the chance to press my argument. With more grace than most professional dancers, Lee picked up another tray of formaldehyde-laced drinks, pivoted and headed over to the corner-pocket zombies.

  “Great. Back to exactly where we started,” I said. Find Max, who wasn’t returning my phone calls.

  I sipped the whisky sour. If Lee wasn’t going to part with the information, there was no chance anyone else in the underground city would, whether I was willing to pay or not. Zombies are worse than a secret society that way.