Welcome to the Spookshow: (Book 2)

by Tim McGregor

  She could see them now, hands reaching out of the dark mass, desperate and pleading. More souls. She gripped the nearest one and tugged. A woman slid out, screaming the whole way, and flopped to the floor. The woman she had seen cowering in Mockler’s bathtub.

  More hands stretched out and she pulled another and another, souls tumbling out of the rip in the darkness and the undertaker man shrieking and wailing in an obscene howl and the insects scattering. The dead kept coming, clawing and scratching their own way out, one tumbling over the next until a hundred souls filled the old mortuary room.

  The pests dispersed, confused and scattered, buzzing into the ceiling and the walls and the undertaker man withered and shrank until there were no more souls, just him squatting alone in a pool of darkness. His dark eyes locked onto hers and his expression shifted and then his hand reached out to her, as if he was just one more poor soul to be saved.

  “Go to Hell,” Billie said. She meant every word.

  Her ears popped, as if plunged underwater and the world went silent. She saw the dead shamble silently around her and then all at once they looked up, as if a noise had called to them from the trapdoor above. The souls shuffled forward, climbing the steps to meet it.

  She wanted to go too. Her ears registered absolute silence but she wanted to know what it was, this sound that was calling to them. She rolled onto her knees and got up slowly and she would have followed were it not for the tugging on her wrist.

  The boy without legs clung to her arm to keep her from following the others and when she looked back it was too late. The assembled dead left without her. And then even the boy was gone.

  40

  THE SMACK TO her cheek stung. Billie blinked and Gantry’s face swam into view.

  “Up and at ‘em, Lazarus,” he said. “Time to go.”

  She sat up stiffly and shivered. The mortuary room was cold and dark. “Where is it?”

  “Gone,” Gantry said. “Along with the rest of them.”

  Everything seemed jumbled together in her head. “What happened?”

  “Search me,” he said. “Everything was quiet when I came to.”

  “Where’s Mockler? And Christina?”

  He nodded to something behind her. Billie rose and limped over to where Mockler lay on the floor. His cheek was bloodied but he was breathing.

  Christina sat on the bottom step with her knees tucked to her chest. Her eyes looked blasted.

  “Christina?” She approached the woman slowly. “Are you hurt?”

  “She’s out of it.” Gantry came alongside her. “Shell-shocked.”

  She felt dizzy and took his arm to stay upright. “We need to call the police. Or an ambulance.”

  She dug out her phone but Gantry snatched it from her hand. “No cops.”

  “They need help. Give me the phone.”

  “And what are you gonna tell them, Billie? You had a rumble with a ghost? Dickhead’s girlfriend here was possessed?”

  She wanted the police and the ambulance and the fire trucks here, anyone who could help and make the world safe and normal again. She didn’t want to admit he was right. “We can’t just leave them here. They need a doctor.”

  “Cuts and bruises.” Gantry stepped back and looked at the detective and the woman on the step. “We’ll take them home.”

  “And that’s it?”

  He shrugged at her. “They’ll wake up with a nasty hangover. That’s all.”

  She knelt before Christina again. The woman’s eyes were glazed and unseeing. “I don’t think she’s okay, Gantry. It’s like she checked out.”

  “She has. Her mind has shut down. It’ll wear off.”

  Billie studied the woman’s face. It was downright spooky the way her eyes registered nothing. “Was she really possessed?”

  “This bastard was strong. God knows how long he’d been feeding off the two of them.” Gantry sneered at Mockler on the floor. “I almost feel sorry for the son of a bitch.”

  The damp rot seeped into her bones. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Gantry bent low to examine Christina. “Let’s get her up. See if she’ll walk.”

  Billie eased the woman up to her feet. Christina complied, docile as a lamb.

  Gantry looked down at his nemesis on the floor and then up at the stairs. “Christ. Look at this sod. He outweighs me by ten stone.”

  “Put your back into it,” she said, mimicking his accent. “Luv.”

  “Maybe we can just, you know, leave him here?”

  She fired a withering look at him before leading the woman up the stairs. Gantry flicked his cigarette into a corner and rolled up his shirtsleeves, cursing a blue streak into the stale air of the mortuary cellar.

  ~

  Christina came quietly as Billie led her upstairs to the bedroom. She did a cursory once-over to make sure the woman wasn’t injured and then eased Christina into bed. She lay quiet as Billie drew the covers up, her eyes staring at the opposite wall. Billie whispered to her to close her eyes and sleep.

  Gantry was collapsed in a chair when she came down, red-faced and spent and still uttering obscenities. Detective Mockler lay halfway in the backdoor, sprawled across the threshold where Gantry had dropped him.

  “Gantry!” Billie fumed at him. “You can’t leave him like that.”

  “Screw that. He’s good where is.”

  “We have to get him upstairs.”

  “Dream on, sister.” Gantry rose unsteadily and teetered to the kitchen. “You wanna drink?”

  “Water.” She didn’t realize how parched she was until now. She scooped her hands under Mockler’s arms and hauled. “Up we go.”

  He weighed a ton, all dead weight. She blew hard just dragging him to the couch. No way was she getting him up onto it alone.

  Gantry reeled back into the living room and handed her a bottle of water then flopped back into the chair and popped open the can of lager he’d found in the icebox. “Nice place. Guess the missus does the decorating.”

  “Help me get him on the couch.”

  “Talk to my union,” he said. He motioned at the couch. “Sit down for Christ’s sakes.”

  The cushions were soft and deep and the moment she collapsed into it, Billie knew it would be torture to get up again. She guzzled down half the water and stared up at the ceiling for a long time. Gantry’s smoke polluted the air.

  Neither party spoke. After a while, the detective on the floor began to snore.

  “He needs to know,” Billie said, prompted by nothing.

  “Who?”

  “Mockler,” she replied. “I told him about the ghost. He needs to know the rest of it. Not just about the undertaker but about you too. Once he knows the truth, he’ll stop chasing you.”

  Gantry laughed. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Lifting his head from the chair, he squared her with a look. “Do you think he’d believe you? Even if he knew the truth, he wouldn’t accept it. Leave it. It’s better this way.”

  The idea of Mockler being left in the dark appalled her. She stuck her neck out for him. She wasn’t crazy. She needed him to know that.

  “That’s the way it goes, Billie. Go on and tell him the truth. See how the idiot takes it. He’d have you locked up faster than you can say police-brutality.”

  He watched her face fall flat. The girl was hurting, that was plain enough to see, and it only bit harder when her eyes fell to the man on the floor. He set the can on the wood floor and pushed himself out of the chair. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get the bastard onto the couch.”

  It took two attempts but they hauled the detective onto the sofa. Mockler stirred once but didn’t awaken. Billie went to the kitchen to dampen a cloth and clean the blood from his face. Her pulse quickened and slowed, emotions warring with each other inside her as she dabbed the filth from his face.

  He’ll never know, she thought. Kept from the truth, Mockler will wake up and still think she’s a crazy woman who believes in gho
sts. If he thought about her at all. She knew that she shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts but she was tired of scolding herself. She indulged her heart while she dabbed at the dirt from his face, wondering why it was that her thoughts always drifted back to this man. There was a familiarity she couldn’t explain.

  Billie folded the cloth. She wished he would wake up, even for a second, and see her but the detective remained dead to the world. She gathered a blanket and draped it over him.

  When Gantry came back from the kitchen, he heard noise coming from the sunroom. He leaned against the door frame to find Billie inside the studio, pulling down sketches and paintings from the wall. “What are you doing?”

  Billie tugged a sketch down and showed it to him. Another rendering of the horrid face of the undertaker man. “We can’t leave these here.”

  “But she painted those.”

  “Neither of them need to see this again.” She added the rendering to the pile she had made.

  Gantry nodded. “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Take them outside and burn them. See if you can find some barbecue fluid.”

  He reached into the pieces she had gathered and slid one out. “I’m keeping one.”

  “What for?”

  He shrugged, rolling the paper into a tube. “Sentimental reasons.”

  ~

  After returning the Alpha Romeo to the garage, she walked Gantry up the alley to the street.

  “You look tired,” he said.

  “I’m exhausted.” Everything seemed to hurt at once and the three flights up to her flat loomed like Everest. “How do you feel about piggy-backing me up the stairs?”

  “I’ve had my exercise for the week, thanks.” He patted his pockets until he located the pack of cigarettes.

  “You should quit,” she said.

  “Thanks. I hadn’t thought of that.” A truck rumbled past, the traffic warming up for the new day. He looked at her. “Will you be all right?”

  She nodded her head. “How do I get ahold of you?”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  “What if something happens?”

  “Then you’ll deal with it,” he said. “I’ll be out of town for awhile.”

  A twinge of panic rang out. As much as she disliked Gantry, she didn’t like the idea of being completely cut off. “Where are you going?”

  “Home. There’s stuff I need to sort.” He turned away. “I’ll pop in when I get back.”

  Gantry walked to the end of the alleyway then turned back. “Will you take a bit of advice?”

  “Depends what it is,” she said.

  “Steer clear of your detective friend. No funny business, yeah?”

  “He’s a friend, Gantry,” she shrugged. “That’s all.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Please. You’re a tad obvious, ya know. Just watch out.”

  Billie folded her arms. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of discussing it further.

  “Christ, Billie.” Gantry smirked at her. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You two have known each a long time.”

  “What are you talking about?” The Englishman’s riddles were running her patience thin. “I’ve known him less than two weeks.”

  Gantry called back just as he turned the corner. “I didn’t mean this lifetime.”

  What?

  Billie ran to the corner and out onto the street. Gantry, of course, had vanished from sight.

  41

  THIRTY-TWO DOLLARS and seventy-three cents.

  That was the balance printed on the slip of paper the ATM spit out. She was broke. What had she expected? She hadn’t been to work in almost two weeks. Mario, the grumpy bar owner, had told her to heal up after the accident, promising she’d have a job when she was back to normal. Normal was something she’d never get back to but she needed to work and rode her bike down to the bar. Mario grumbled about re-working the schedule but she was rotated back into the line-up, taking a shift the next night.

  Tuesday nights at the Gunner’s Daughter weren’t the busiest but she was grateful for the slower pace, wanting to ease back into it rather than get slammed by a packed house. The fatigue in her bones never left, worsened by the nightmares that jolted her awake. It was the same thing every night; the undertaker man waiting for her, his awful face popping from a shadow or around every corner. The broken sleep left her irritable, making her startle at any abrupt noise. The few regulars who were happy to see her back behind the bar were stymied by her scowling eyes and subdued nature.

  She broke a glass when an ashen face leered at her through the window. One of the dead, looking into the bar like something had captured its interest there. Billie closed herself off to it and the phantom squinted, as if confused before drifting away. One side effect of being over-tired was losing the focus it took to keep her abilities closed off to the dead. She would weaken and get sloppy and then the lost souls would sniff her out like a bloodhound and demand to be heard. Sometimes all she needed to do was close herself and the dead would cast about in confusion as if she had vanished. The more tenacious ones would cling to her until she barked at them to leave her alone. The living souls around her would step away, suspecting she was disturbed.

  It was a bit of a lose-lose scenario.

  There was, however, one member of the deceased class that she didn’t mind seeing. The legless ghost child that she still cruelly referred to as the half-boy. She had screamed the first time he re-appeared, scuttling out of from under the sink. Once the fright had worn off, she had been initially saddened at his return. She had assumed that he had gone with the rest of the dead that night, pulled along by the same glow that had almost led her astray. Why hadn’t he gone with the others? Had he had missed his chance because of her? By staying behind to save her, she feared that he had sacrificed his own chances at the hereafter. Whatever that happened to be. Why had he done that? Why did he care if she had foolishly wanted to drift off to her own demise?

  The second time Billie ran into him, she stayed calm, not wanting to spook him away again. She smiled at him, to show that she meant him no harm. Half-boy scuttled across the ceiling, curled up in a corner and watched her. Protective of his territory, he had even chased off another lost soul that had wandered into the building, drawn by Billie’s beacon.

  Now they acknowledged one another without conversation or alarm and the half-boy seemed content with the extent of their relationship. They shared the apartment like roommates who worked opposite shifts; he vanishing when the sun rose and she leaving for work just as he became active. If he could somehow scrounge up rent money, he’d be the ideal flatmate.

  At work the following Thursday, she was surprised to see Jen and Tammy plant themselves at the bar. She managed to not drop any glassware. “Hey,” she said, beaming.

  “Hey Bee,” Tammy said, nudging the man next to her for some elbow room. “Glad you’re back to work. That guy they got to cover your shifts was a total drip.”

  “That’s the owner. He hates customers.” She looked at Jen, scrambling for something to say. She settled on simple honesty. “Hi. It’s good to see you.”

  “Same here. We missed you.” Jen smiled, then there was a pause, as if she’d lost her train of thought. “How’s work?”

  “It’s all right. I’m just glad I still have a job. Where’s Kaitlyn?”

  “With Kyle,” Tammy said, rolling her eyes. “Picking out furniture or some shit.”

  Billie laughed and then the conversation withered. “What do you guys want? First round’s on me.”

  “Margarita please,” Tammy said. “A dirty one.”

  Billie served it up and pushed the glasses forward. The mood felt unsettled, as if the air needed clearing. “Listen, about my outburst the other night—”

  “Ooh,” Tammy perked up and cut her off. “Jen has some good news! Tell her.”

  The smile that broke over Jen’s face was bright and contagious. “I’m re-launching the Doll House next week.”r />
  “That’s great!” Billie had wanted to ask but didn’t want to touch a nerve this early in the conversation. “The repairs are done?”

  “Yeah. Wasn’t as bad as we thought at first. Dad recruited some cousins to help us. Anyway, the re-opening party is next Monday. You’ll be there, right?”

  “Of course.” A flush of gratitude bloomed on Billie’s cheeks. Maybe life would settle back into some normalcy now. “I’ll even work bar if you want.”

  “See?” Tammy rabbit-punched Jen’s shoulder. “I told you she’d offer.”

  Billie laughed. Normalcy, whatever that was, would be too tall an order to fill but hearing the laughter of friends was close enough for now. It felt good to be back.

  ~

  All of the damage to the shop had occurred in the basement and, although the old wiring had been stripped out, nothing had been done to alter the charm of the shop floor. Jen swore that she could still smell smoke lingering in the place and went overboard with the incense.

  As promised, Billie set up a makeshift bar for the re-opening party so Jen was free to greet everyone as they came in. She was happy to see Jen’s dad, who was chatty as usual and, if he had any lingering doubts about the cause of the fire, he kept them to himself. Kaitlyn arrived early with her boyfriend, Kyle, in tow.

  Neither Jen nor Tammy made any reference to Billie’s outburst about seeing dead people. They simply didn’t bring it up and Billie was relieved to let the matter slip under the carpet for now. The only one who said anything was Kaitlyn. Alone with Billie at the little bar, Kaitlyn leaned in and whispered in a conspiratorial tone.

  “For the record,” Kaitlyn said, “I think it’s totally wicked. My great-grandma had the same thing. Nobody believed her either. It was her cross to bear, she used to say. You should really do something with this. Like charge people for it. Ooh, you could get your own TV show!”

  Once the initial rush at the bar was over, Billie asked Kaitlyn to take over for a minute. There was something she needed to do, she said, and slipped away to the basement door. She needed to know if the true cause of the fire was still lurking in the shadows of the cellar.