After a moment of silence, Shadow leaned slightly forward like a storm cloud about to send down a lightening bolt. “And what was that first job, Axe? Before you became an engineer and while you were young and stupid?”
I didn’t meet Shadow’s dark stare. I kept my gaze firmly fixed on a light fixture in the middle of the living room ceiling. “I did a bit of accounting work. For a family run business.”
“For Pete’s sake, Cooper,” Lee snapped at me. “Just spit it out.”
“Fine,” I spat back. “I did a small accounting job for the Calgary branch of the UN Gang.”
I was sure that only I noticed Shadow’s sharp intake of breath (done out of habit, since obviously he didn’t need that breath). The others were too busy responding to this announcement.
“UN Gang?” Faye exclaimed. “As in ‘United Nations’? Is that some kind of a joke?”
“You were in the clutches of the UN Gang?” Bob asked in his proper English style, something akin to awe in his voice.
“Wait,” Faye gushed. “This UN Gang is real?”
Bob nodded, as much as a giant blob of Jell-O can. It looked more like a quiver. “Yes, indeed, madam. It is thus named for the diversity of its membership, representing many nations. Most organised criminal groups are racially exclusive, but not the UN Gang. They are quite famous, or rather infamous, in Vancouver. I didn’t realise they were in Calgary. Fascinating.”
“And then…” Lee said with a ‘continue’ gesture. “Tell them the rest.”
I shrugged. “That’s pretty much it, actually. Figured I didn’t want to do accounts for a criminal gang. So I just left.”
Shadow shifted so fast that everyone flinched or sunk into a piece of furniture. He loomed over me, swirls of dark energy whipping around him like octopus tentacles on a high dose of adrenalin. His voice was a blade slipping softly out of its sheath. “No one. Just. Leaves.”
I was the first to recover from this visual revelation of Shadow’s abilities. Something about this unusual display tried to remind me about… something else. Something important, in a life or death kind of a way. Frowning, I scrabbled through my memories but came up with nothing.
Seriously, this fading memory thing was getting old.
Warily watching the dark swirls like they were venomous vipers, I extracted the back of my head out of the wall, trying not to wince as a ball of concrete energy smacked me.
Next to me, Bob oozed his way back onto the TV. He muttered, “That explains it. That’s why.”
No one else heard him or they just ignored him. I made a mental note to ask Bob what he meant later on, and what he’d wanted to talk with me about at the party, assuming I actually remembered the mental note.
“Shadow,” I commented, keeping my voice mild and even, “sometimes I wonder why I hang out with you.”
Shadow straightened up and tugged at his black blazer, the skin on his dark face smooth and expressionless. The black swirls faded away. “That makes two of us.”
“You’re right, of course,” I reflected. “No one ‘just leaves’, except in a coffin. That option didn’t really appeal to me. So after working accounts for a while and doing some engineering after that, I faked my death.”
“How thrilling,” Faye trilled, her torso sunk into the sofa backing. “How’d you do it?”
“Huh?”
“What kind of death did you pretend to have?” she insisted. “Drowning, burning, crashing, crunching, falling, shooting, hanging…”
“Okay, enough,” I gasped, glad I couldn’t get sick as a ghost. “I had to be quick, because of…”
I paused, trying to remember the details. They were fading. Everything connected to Dead Man’s Flats was getting blurry. I knew what it meant. There was some wrong deed, some bad karma or something, associated with that memory that I had to fix and make right. I think I knew what wrong it was, but that didn’t make me feel better.
There are definitely some memories I’d prefer to loose and this was one of them. Except loosing that memory would lead to other memories and then I’d be wandering around lost and memory-less for the rest of my ghostly existence. That appealed to me even less than dying.
“Something happened,” I continued, “and I didn’t have time to really plan it out well. So I drove my car over a steep cliff and it crashed into the river. I left the windows open, so people would assume my body was swept away. I left everything behind, and hiked over here.”
Shadow drifted away, peering out of the dark, wet window. He pretended to lean against the wall, one arm crossed over his midsection, the other arm propping up his chin. “Something’s missing from this story, Axe,” he murmured in a silky voice. “It’s not adding up.”
I didn’t move, didn’t blink. “Maybe you need to check your math. I left the Gang. No one leaves the Gang, alive. So I left dead.”
“And no one does one small, inconsequential accounting job,” Shadow said softly, “and then has to fake his death to escape. That’s not how it works.”
“How would you know?” Faye asked brightly and promptly sunk further into the sofa when Shadow glanced at her.
“I know.”
“And that’s as much as you need to know,” I said sharply. “The point is, these guys figured out I hadn’t really died in the crash and they tracked me down. Now they don’t believe I’m dead this time round.”
Shadow smiled slightly, his teeth a flash of light against the dark. “What did you steal from them?”
I opened my mouth and closed it firmly. Shadow smirked knowingly. Lee shook her head, sighed and poured herself a cup of green tea, the sloshing of the tea and the swishing of her outfit the only sound in the room. Faye and Bob looked back and forth between Shadow and me, like it was a tennis match. At least, we can assume Bob was watching, but given his lack of facial features, it’s usually difficult to know what he’s looking at.
“I didn’t steal anything,” I said, my mouth barely moving from a stiff line.
“But do they know that?” Faye asked breathlessly.
“I think so.”
“So why’d they track you down?”
I shrugged. I could think of several reasons, none of them pleasant.
“That’s quite some story, sugar,” Faye said, blue eyes wide and bright.
“Yes,” Shadow murmured. “It sure is. Sugar.”
“Is that where you got your name?” she pressed.
I nodded. “I was pretty good at axing numbers.” Not the whole truth, but it was true.
Faye pouted. “Is that all you axed?”
Everyone looked at her. I scratched my chin, rubbing over the jagged scar that the two-day old stubble couldn’t hide. “Is there something else I should’ve axed?”
“I was hoping for something more exciting, pumpkin,” Faye enthused breathlessly, arms waving to show just how exciting it should’ve been. “Something secret and wicked. I mean, axing numbers, even for a criminal gang, is hardly front page headline news.”
I studied her. I’m pretty sure I had that bemused crinkle around my eyes. “You are a very sick little girl.”
Faye beamed and twirled about, the blue of her dress flashing against the drab background of the dimly lit room. “Why, thank you, sweet pea. Are you very sure there isn’t something a bit more juicy and entertaining for the bloodthirsty masses?” She batted her eyelashes, as if that could convince me to dredge out of my past an axed up corpse or two.
Lee closed her eyes and drank tea, Shadow sneered, Bob kept quiet and I shook my head.
“That is a pity,” Faye said and she sunk into a chair up to her waist. “A very great pity indeed.”
The Boss I Don’t Want
I knew I was in trouble when I landed in the black hole.
You’d think I would’ve learned after the first time. I hadn’t believed DD when she’d warned me about what lay behind the white door. Who would? So I’d decided to check it out myself. I’d gone into the air vent leading to the Chief’s office and I can ass
ure you: you definitely do not want to go in or even near that place. Black hole or whatever it really is, you want to avoid the place and whatever lives inside it. I’d barely escaped.
But now, I was so determined to get away from the friendly Inquisition that I landed right back in there. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s where I’d landed.
But that was later in the evening.
Before the black hole and after that unpleasant interaction / interrogation with my friends, I decided I needed serious time out. It was just after midnight, Lee was chatting with Faye, Shadow had disappeared and I followed his example. I didn’t follow him. Just the disappearing part. I couldn’t do it with the cool shadow trick, but I managed well enough floating through the wall.
I drifted above the city, a soul who had stayed behind for inexplicable reasons. The rain had actually stopped and the clouds had cleared, a miracle for Vancouver in winter. Boat lights twinkled across the bay, reflecting the sky above. Short, choppy waves scurried ahead of the wind blowing in from the ocean hidden by darkness.
Alright, enough with the poetic distractions. I didn’t want beautiful views or reminders of romantic evenings never had. I preferred the rain. It matched my mood. I glared at the stars, like my death was their fault. I wasn’t into astrology, and I was pretty sure the alignment of one star with respect to another wasn’t to blame for all the crap in my life. Nope. Most of that crap was pretty much my own fault, landing square on my shoulders. Bad decisions, bad friends.
On second thought, I prefer to blame the stars.
Sulking wasn’t my style so after a few minutes of indulging in a moat of self-pity and star-blaming, I floated over to the one place that might have an answer or two, or at least a healthier distraction: the club for ghosts, the detective agency for those unable to rest in peace, our very own Ghost Post.
The Ghost Post was about two blocks from Lee’s apartment, at the dead-end of a narrow alley just off of Carrall Street, near the intersection with East Hastings. There was just enough space for a vehicle to squeeze past the large garbage dumpsters. And if anyone was crazy, stupid or drunk enough to drive to the end of the alley, they would pretty quickly realise they were in the wrong place and immediately leave. The only things there were trouble and a few buildings that were all abandoned and slated for demolition.
That’s where I was headed for: a building unfit for human habitation.
I decided to break habits and instead of heading for the front door, I entered the three-story building from the rooftop, floating down to the dilapidated ground floor. The floors above were in an even worse state, with internal walls smashed and crumbling into the corridors, anything of any value removed and everything else broken. In comparison, our Ghost Post office was a stellar example of orderliness and good hygiene.
Unfortunately, I never landed in our office.
I guess…
Scratch that. I know I misjudged. I landed in what could only be the Chief’s office, the one behind the permanently locked white door, the office with a black hole (or something like it), the one that no ghost enters and escapes from, the one above the evil air vent I’d stumbled into a month back. You get the picture.
So from the roof, I descended down through the floors and into a dark room. For a brief second, I assumed I’d landed in a janitor’s closet or inside the wall of the building. I waited for my night vision to kick in, so I’d see where I was. It never did. In every direction I tried, all I could see was a vast expanse of absolute darkness.
It was darker than dark and my ghost eyes weren’t working. It was the kind of dark that you can’t easily find on the surface of the planet, of any planet. I’d been in here before, and I couldn’t believe I’d been stupid enough to land in it again.
The good news: I knew where I was.
The bad news: I knew where I was.
I’d fallen into the Chief’s office, again.
I’d landed in hell.
Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. It wasn’t that bad. Almost, but not quite. That first time, I hadn’t meet the Devil, but I sure met his second cousin or some other not-too-distant relative, and I was not looking forward to a reunion.
This time around, I didn’t wait around to let the fear slowly build up. I just went immediately into pure terrorised panic mode. I screamed. The sound faded into a whisper the moment it left my throat.
Well, that sure wasn’t helpful.
I’ve been in the black hole before. I made it out before. I can do this. Really.
That’s me talking to myself in the black hole, trying to limit the damage from the meltdown my brain was experiencing.
It must’ve worked. I stopped my whispered screaming and remembered how I’d escaped from the vent. That first time, I’d been thinking how I was going to die (again) without ever having thanked Lee for everything she’d done for me. So I’d thanked her. Not to her face, obviously. She wouldn’t have walked into a black hole. She’s way smarter than that. I’d mentally thanked her and somehow that allowed me to escape.
If it worked before… I tried that approach, rather insincerely, I admit. I mumbled a repetitive stream of thank yous, waiting for a glimmer of light that never came.
“That won’t work this time, Axe Cooper.”
I screamed a whisper.
A large something glided beneath me. How do I know it was a large something if I couldn’t see a damn thing? The wave. I felt the wave. A wave made of air or energy lazily swept me up and slammed me into something big, thick and scaly that was now above me.
My brain went into stupid mode. That’s the only reason I can think of, because I asked the most lame and obvious question: “Who… who…”
Oh yeah. I first stuttered several times in attempting to ask the question. I finally managed.
“Who are you?”
“Your worst nightmares, your most terrible fears, all the evil that holds you back.”
“Is that all?” I demanded, fists clenched. At least, I thought of saying that in hindsight. Lots of hindsight. At the time, no witty retort slipped off my tongue. A bit of drool, maybe, but nothing more useful than that.
I’d like to tell you how brave and calm I was, how I gave it back as good as I got, how cool I’d been under severe duress.
Yeah, I wish.
You’re not stupid and I’m pretty truthful. Usually. At least, I don’t tell outright lies. So my total response at the time was about as intelligent as soggy cereal. I spluttered some more, then snapped, crackled and popped. In human terms, I fell apart, screamed and gurgled incoherently.
“Why are you still here, Axe Cooper? Why haven’t you moved on?”
The gender-neutral voice was calm, almost bored, like it really didn’t care one way or another, just wanted to know before it devoured me in several painful bites.
“I… I don’t know,” I squeaked out, my arms flaying about in a pathetic attempt to swim away from the thing.
The voice sounded from behind me. Right behind me. “What stops you?”
I pushed against it, my foot brushing what I assume was a gigantic tooth large enough to easily slice me in half with the slightest motion. “From what? Knowing?” I babbled.
“Moving on.” A long serpentine thing swished around me, tugging me downward before releasing me. Playing with me.
“Lee,” I blurted out.
“Lily Chan?”
“Yeah. I… she… can’t leave her alone.”
“Axe Cooper,” the voice murmured from all sides, echoing around me. “Of all the possible reasons you could come up with, that is the most pathetic excuse of a reason I’ve ever heard.” It paused. “And I’ve heard a fair share.”
“But…” I was grasping for some excuse that wouldn’t be so pathetic, that wouldn’t result in my immediate and potentially painful demise. “It’s the truth.”
“Hmmm,” the voice hummed. “Are you sure? Since when does Lily Chan need you?”
Ouch.
It had a p
oint though. Lee was about the most independently minded, self-sufficient human being I’d ever met. Despite her complaining that I’d died and left her to plan her own retirement party, she really didn’t need me.
“I…”
“The mind is a meddlesome thing,” the bemused voice continued. “It’s full of half-truths, faulty logic, self-deception and illusions of grandeur. The greatest lies are the ones we tell ourselves.”
I couldn’t disagree there, even though I didn’t understand it all. And even if I did disagree, no way was I going to say that out loud. But the lesson in philosophy (or whatever you call it) wasn’t over.
The giant voice moved around me, along with a massive wave. “A mind cluttered with false idols and vain imaginings distracts the soul from seeing clearly. Death usually sweeps away that clutter. Usually.”
I tensed, my fists clenching tighter. Here it was then, the moment I would be permanently eliminated from existence.
The thing chuckled knowingly. “Answer without thinking.”
Isn’t that what I’d been doing all along? I was pretty certain my brain was incapable of thought at that moment.
“What truly terrifies you?”
“Death,” I blurted out.
“Better. What about death?”
“Ah…” I floundered in my non-thinking. Surely, death was scary enough without having to go into the gory details. “Ceasing to exist?”
“Have you ceased to exist?”
“No.”
“Then?”
I really struggled with the no thinking idea. Ironic. The one time I’m told to answer without thinking, I actually start thinking. Focusing on not thinking, I spat out another word.
“Regret.”
Silence, memories and another wave sloshed over me. The silence and the wave I could handle. The memories… Them too, but they weren’t as pleasant. Memories of things not done and things done. Regret. Remorse. Lost chances. Bad choices.
“Now you know,” the voice boomed.
I was about to be stupid and ask what I now knew, but hesitated. I wasn’t feeling particularly curious. Something about nearly being swallowed up by a leviathan in a black hole killed the curiosity along with the cat, I guess. I remembered the first question the invisible, giant, talking monster had asked: Why are you still here?
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