Yup, she was fearless.
The cowboy deathmark hesitated for a fraction of the time it takes to breathe in, but that was enough for Shadow to dive into the ground and for me to hurl a broken bottle at its head. The bottle sailed through, but the distraction and the disappearance of one of its victims made it pause, its featureless face swivelling towards me.
“Run,” Lee yelped as she dashed into the building. I was right behind her.
I didn’t have to look behind to know Ghost Eater was following us. Lee stumbled but kept running. The corridor was dark, dank and stunk like a urinal (at least, according to Lee, it did and I trust her janitorial judgment); it became darker still. I wondered if Ghost Eater had Shadow’s power to dim the light. The only bit of brightness was the glowing white door of The Ghost Post, with its crudely painted sign dripping down the door. In the gathering gloom, it was a beacon of light. We headed for it.
Lee threw herself against the door. It banged open, smacking into the wall and rebounded back, but Lee was already inside. I focused energy against the door and it slammed closed, the noise reverberating around the empty, white room. Empty apart from three other ghosts. DD, Faye and Timmy were staring at us.
“Is there an exit to this place?” I yelled at them.
“It’s okay, Axe, just go,” Lee called out. “It can’t do much to me, except throw candles at my head. Fly down to the sewers.”
“What can’t do much?” DD asked, her normally bulging frog eyes even more bulgy. Her fat lips were stretched into a very straight, very hard line.
“Ghost Eater. Our pet deathmark…” I began, but Timmy started blabbering something while Faye screamed.
“Why isn’t it coming in here?” Lee asked, staring at the door. “It was right behind us.”
We all turned to look, as if the answer was about to magically appear on the door. Timmy and Faye were quiet long enough to hear DD’s response. She shook her head and turned back to her invisible desk. “Because, ignorant living person, it can’t.”
“Really?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine a place safe from a deathmark, apart from the sewers.
“Really,” she said, her voice disinterested. “It wouldn’t dare come in here.”
Before any of us could ask why, she waved a hand towards the Chief’s office. The door was, as usual, closed. As far as I knew, no one had ever been in there and come out again, apart from me. Nor had we seen the Chief come out, for which I was eternally grateful.
But whatever was in that office had the power to keep a deathmark outside. While that was a good thing, I guess, it didn’t make me feel any more comfortable about my mysterious and apparently powerful employer.
“So we’re safe here?” Faye breathed out, her hand waving in front of her face like a fan.
“Very much so,” DD said, clearly bored with the conversation. “I’ll see you lot later. I’m off on an assignment.” She glanced towards the Chief’s door. “Of sorts.” She drifted out the window.
No sooner had she left, then Shadow popped up at the window. Floating outside and peering in through the broken window, he shuddered. “Sewers are disgusting places.”
“A safe place,” Faye said in a dreamy tone.
“Yes, but still disgusting,” Shadow said.
“I meant here. Ghost eating deathmarks can’t come in here,” she retorted.
“Which is why we want to ask you to come out with us,” I said, smiling in what I hoped was a convincing, reassuring way.
“NO,” Timmy shouted with the force and volume of a foghorn.
“Not you,” Shadow sneered and gestured towards Faye. “Her.”
“OH. OKAY.”
“You want me. To go out there. With you?” Faye demanded, her eyes squinting in suspicion as she jabbed a finger towards the window.
“I don’t,” Shadow corrected her as he glared at me. “Axe does.”
Faye floated to the door, poked her head through it and yanked it back in with a screech. “It followed you here. Did you know that? You led that thing. Right. Here. It’s going utterly bark raving mad in the hallway.”
“Yeah, we know,” I said.
“That thing ate Bob!” she howled.
“We don’t know that,” I said.
“DD doesn’t know where he is either,” she argued back. “So what else could’ve happened?”
Lee rubbed at her temples and sighed. Her eyes widened and she perked up. “Faye, do you have a car?”
Distracted, Faye blinked slowly, her blue eyes glazing over slightly. “No. Yes. I mean, I think so. I do. Or rather, I did. Since I am now…”
“Can we borrow it?” Lee asked, smiling in a way that made me think of a sweet, little Chinese granny until I remembered I was looking at Lee.
Tugging at a thick curl, she nodded. “Sure. Of course, but…”
“Perfect,” Lee said. “Now we don’t have to steal a car. We just need a driver.”
“Faye.” Shadow smiled, his elbows leaning on the windowsill. He looked like an African version of the Grim Reaper. “You know how to drive, right?”
“Yes, but…”
“How would you like to go for a drive out in the country?”
Faye’s big blue eyes twitched towards the door, towards the hallway where Ghost Eater stalked. “I…”
“Lovely,” Shadow murmured. “It’s all settled. We’ll borrow a car and the poltergeist can drive.”
I nodded. “Agreed. Where’s your car, Faye? And what is it?”
“Oh. My car. It was the cutest red car. Such a great colour.”
Shadow growled and pushed away from the window with a hiss. “So we’re looking for a red car. That should be easy to find.”
Faye glared. “It’s at the garage near my old office. I’d taken it in for servicing and…”
“So we have to break into the garage to get it,” Lee groaned.
Shadow grinned. “Now we’re talking. It’s down to the sewer and away.”
“How do I get out of here?” Lee demanded. “I can’t exactly sink down to the sewer, even if I actually wanted to do that.” She looked Shadow up and down, as if searching for evidence of wastewater on him.
“Out the window,” I suggested, also not relishing a trip down the drain. “We’re on the ground floor.”
Leaving a blubbering Timmy at the office, we all went out the window. Faye was still twitching and shivering, but she may have been more scared of Shadow than of the deathmark at that point. Together, we pushed a very full garbage can under the window, to give Lee something to climb on. She needed all the help she could get. She isn’t exactly tall.
As she jumped off the can, it tottered and fell with a metallic crash that echoed around the quiet, unlit alley. She bit her lower lip, looked at me and shrugged. I waved her forward.
“Ah… Axe, old buddy,” Shadow murmured while leaning towards me. “I don’t want to panic the ladies, but I think we’ve got company.”
I glanced toward the entrance of the alley and groaned.
Car Thieves & Getaways
We were headed towards the entrance of the alley when the beams of a car’s lights swung around the corner and illuminated us, or at least Lee, for all to see.
“Company, alright,” I muttered.
“Ooo,” Faye trilled, thoughts of the nearby deathmark evaporating for the moment. “It’s your handsome friend, Axe. And his ugly sidekick.”
I squinted against the bright light. Sure enough, Cal and Frankenstein were exiting the car. The ugly sidekick had his shotgun out and started waving it at us, or at Lee.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Lee complained.
“Change of plans,” I decided. “Faye. The ugly one. In the dumpster.” I pointed to a bent up, rusted metal bin hulking against the side of a building near Cal’s car.
Faye smiled and giggled. “On it.”
I didn’t see her do it, but I heard a bellowing noise that was quickly muffled. I focused on Lee’s garbage can, levitated it until it
was just above Cal, who was staring at Frankenstein’s steel toed boots sticking out of the dumpster.
“Would you stop playing around and get out of there,” Cal growled, right before I dropped the can on him. His head and torso disappeared in a cascade of trash. Lee ran past him, whacking the can with her shovel. A pleasant gonging note rang out in the alley, echoing off the dark buildings.
“Jump in,” I ordered Lee, pointing to the empty car as Faye slipped through the steering wheel.
“Axe, we have more company,” Shadow noted.
“I hate company,” I grumbled.
I was already floating through the backseat when I saw a quivering bundle of shimmering shawls. Aurora.
“Shouldn’t I pretend to be driving?” Lee asked as Faye gestured to her to take the front passenger seat.
“I am not sitting on your lap,” Faye huffed.
Frankenstein had extracted himself from the dumpster, while Cal was wiggling out of the garbage can. “Any time you want to start driving is just fine with me,” I said, eyeing the two thugs.
“I really think I should be sitting in the driver’s seat,” Lee added.
“Who are you talking to?” Aurora wailed, poking her head up from underneath one of her numerous shawls.
“Ach. It’s you,” Lee said it like she had just noticed a blob of sewer on the seat.
Cal and Frankenstein were heading towards the car.
“Anytime, Faye,” Shadow hissed.
“I can’t concentrate with all this racket,” Faye yelled. “And I don’t like backseat drivers.”
Shadow leaned over and whispered in her ear, “I can come to the front seat, if that’ll help your concentration.”
Waving her hands in front of her, Faye closed her eyes. The car lurched forward with a howl. Cal gaped at Lee, whose hands were clearly visible and not on the steering wheel. Lee smiled and shrugged her shoulders, just as the car slammed to a halt.
“I thought you said you could drive!” I yelled.
“I think I have whiplash,” Lee muttered, rubbing her neck and glaring at Faye.
“It’s been a while, okay?” Faye cried, just as Cal got over the shock of seeing his car move without a visible driver.
Motion caught my attention. Ghost Eater was hovering above the garbage can that Cal had abandoned. Unlike Cal, it (the deathmark, not the can) could see all the occupants of the car. It crouched down slightly, like a black panther about to pounce on its prey.
I really didn’t want to get eaten.
“Faye,” I said in a soft, singsong voice, “I don’t want to pressure you or disturb your concentration or anything like that. But Lee isn’t the only one in mortal danger right now. So please, pretty please, drive the damn car.”
She glanced out her window, screamed, and floored the pedal. The car exploded into movement, heading straight for Cal and Frankenstein. Cal jumped to one side. Frankenstein jumped onto the hood of the car. Ghost Eater leaped and sunk through the trunk. I glanced back to see it chasing us.
“Faye, this is a dead end alley,” Lee warned in a quiet voice as she fiddled with the windshield wipers. Water sprayed up, splattering the windshield and Frankenstein.
“So?” Faye shouted.
“So you need to turn us around,” Shadow snarled. “Unless you want to practise crashing against a brick wall, which I don’t think Lee will appreciate very much.”
“Who’s driving?!” Aurora screamed, grabbing Lee’s shoulders and shaking them.
Faye swung the wheel. There wasn’t any room to turn a car around without driving up a set of stairs, so that’s what Faye did. Tyres squealed, rubber burned, metal scratched against concrete, Lee’s head hit the window, Frankenstein slid off and we were now driving straight towards the deathmark. Faye swerved slightly, and Lee’s side of the car drove through Ghost Eater, scraped against a building and knocked over another garbage can. I guess the buildings at the other end of the alley weren’t as abandoned as they looked, because this can was also full of garbage. Trash flew up and rained down on the car. A gun fired and the mirror on Lee’s side exploded.
“Why my side?” she demanded, looking upward as if the answer would be written on the ceiling.
“You’re crazy,” Aurora shrieked, slapping Lee’s head.
Lee spun around and leaned over the seat. “And you’re in a car filled with dead people. So unless you want to join them, you sit back and shut up. You’re more fake than your fake ancestral factory made tablecloth.”
Aurora’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly and she sunk back into her seat. Faye jerked the wheel and the car flew around the corner and onto a sidewalk. Another jerk and we lost the other side mirror, along with a lot of paint, to a lamppost.
“Whoever is driving,” Aurora blurted out, “your driving stinks.”
At the next corner, we lost Aurora. Faye slammed the breaks hard enough to send Shadow and me through the front windshield. The back passenger door flew open. Aurora took the hint and scrambled out. The car tyres squealed as the car bolted forward.
After several moments of silence, apart from the rattling of the car’s engine and Lee’s lungs, Shadow turned to me, grinned and said, “We should do road trips more often.”
A Guide to Grave Robbing
On the map, it clearly shows a smoothly drawn line representing the Trans-Canada Highway, or Highway #1, linking Vancouver, BC to Canmore, Alberta, a mere distance of around 870km.
Maps are so deceiving.
What the map doesn’t show are all the curves, bumps, plunges, inclines, steep drops and cliffs along that smooth line. The road linking the West Coast to everything east of the Rockies is 870km of road like you’ve never seen anywhere else. Leave one full and very long day to drive, because you’re going to need it. The road twists and turns more than your intestinal tract, so trying to calculate how long it’ll take based on distance is useless. When you’re driving over that mountain range, remember what it’s called: The Rockies. They are well named, believe you me.
By the time we’d actually reached Highway #1 from Vancouver’s city centre, I was already fed up with our little road trip, and we hadn’t even reached the mountain range. I almost wished we’d get pulled over by the cops. Fortunately or unfortunately, the windows were tinted, and at night, while speeding along the highway, no one could see in clearly enough to tell that the car was seemingly driving itself.
Not that anyone would bother to look inside, despite our lack of side mirrors and Faye’s rather erratic driving habits. There was the occasional honk or shouted curse, but apart from that, we drove along the highway with no further incidences.
It was the constant back and forth between Faye and Shadow that had me sinking into the back seat, literally, and wishing we’d left one of them behind.
“Are we there yet?” I asked, about a hundred kilometres out of Vancouver.
Lee huffed, twisted around to face me, and said, “Don’t you start. And Shadow, I hear one more word out of you and I’ll tell DD.”
“What will you tell her?” His voice slid out like a knife but I thought I detected a quiver in there.
“All about you.” Lee stared at Shadow with that dentist drill look, and when there was no further verbal response, she turned to face the road, closed her eyes and fell asleep.
With Lee asleep, Shadow sulking and Faye focusing on driving in a reasonably legal manner (or something approximately legal), it was a quiet trip. Long. But quiet. I thought about Canmore and Jacob and what we had really been up to. Unfortunately I could still remember enough of that period in my life to know what I’d been and done. Stuff I wasn’t proud about now. At the time, it hadn’t seemed that bad. More like a game or contest.
Making friends and encouraging them to be drug addicts was no game.
And Amos had died for it.
As we drove closer to our destination, I could remember more. And I was pretty sure it was Amos’s body we were digging for. Isn’t that what Cal had asked at th
e séance? Where his body was? But why?
Not far from Canmore, Lee mumbled something about a fortune cookie and a shovel, then woke up. “Where are we?” she asked in between a yawn and a stretch.
“Bow Valley Wildland,” I said.
“Hm. Looks more like Tree Land,” Lee commented, squinting against the rising sun and waving unnecessarily at the thick trees surrounding the highway and spreading out in all directions. “How’re you doing, Faye?”
Faye smiled without her normal, sparkling energy. She looked paler than usual, her child hands faint and shaking. She’d driven through the night, somehow not plunging us over the numerous steep cliffs or missing the sharp turns that cut around the mountains despite the speed she’d kept the car at.
“Good job,” I said. While three of us were already dead and the car could crash headfirst down a gorge for all I cared, I was rather relieved we had made it for Lee’s sake. She must’ve been thinking the same thing, for she nodded encouragingly at Faye.
“Now what?” Shadow asked softly.
“You’ve still got the shovel?” I asked. Lee raised it up from where it had slid down between her seat and the door.
“How about those fortune cookies?” Shadow asked.
“Huh?” Lee looked at the two of us and I shook my head.
“It’s about ten minutes down the road, past town,” I told Faye.
We passed through Canmore. It didn’t take long. Although bigger than the last time I’d been there, it was still a small town.
“What were you doing here?” Shadow asked, with the same tone he had used when describing the sewer.
“Scouting.”
“You don’t strike me as the Boy Scout type, Axe,” he said in a tone that always reminded me of a knife scraping against another knife right before both are used to carve up a turkey, or something.
“Nope, I’m not,” I agreed.
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