Dead Things

by Stephen Blackmoore

  The door behind me opens and an older guy steps through. Black guy, in pretty good shape, but definitely getting on in years.

  “Mister Carter,” Ben Duncan says in that same reasonable tone he used when he told me to leave L.A. fifteen years ago or he’d kill my sister. “Glad you could join us.”

  “Ben Duncan. Sonofabitch.”

  “There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while,” he says. “It’s Griffin these days.”

  They have to punch me a couple more times before I stop laughing.

  “Not the reaction I was expecting,” he says. He crosses to the desk in front of me, slides into the chair behind it.

  “Must be punch drunk,” I say, my voice thick and nasal. Blood is running down the front of my shirt. One of my molars is loose. My left eye is starting to swell shut. Jesus, one busted nose and I sound like a commercial for cold medicine.

  “You’re lookin’ good,” I say. “Well, better than last time.”

  “Last time I had second degree burns on half my body because of that little stunt you pulled.”

  There was no way I was going to get close enough to Boudreau to take him out, so I had followed him to a warehouse he had in San Pedro and rigged a car to drive in through the front door. It went in as he came out. Then I remote triggered the fifty feet of detcord I had wrapped around a dozen propane tanks. It had been surprisingly easy.

  “You gotta admit, though,” I say, “it looked pretty fucking cool.”

  He shows me how good his right hook is. It’s pretty good. I spit out that loose molar.

  He wipes my blood off his hand with a handkerchief one of his men hands him. “Yes, well. From your vantage point I’m sure it did,” he says. “I understand you came back to find out what happened to your sister.”

  “Yeah. Seeing as she’s dead and all. I figured our little agreement was, you know, kind of quits.”

  “I wasn’t responsible for your sister’s death. You should know that.”

  “Yeah, actually,” I say. “Kinda figured. You know who did it?”

  “No.”

  “Fair enough. So, any particular reason you decided to beat the crap out of me and bring me here?”

  “Eric—Can I call you Eric?”

  “Only people who don’t beat the shit out of me get to call me Eric. So that’d be a no.”

  A small frown creases his face. “Eric. You were a dangerous boy when you killed Boudreau. You’re more dangerous now.”

  “Nah, your guys are just pussies is all.”

  He fixes his men with a cold stare. Particularly the guy whose arm I broke.

  “Oddly enough I agree with you. Be that as it may, you’re still a dangerous man. And I can’t have someone like you causing more problems than you’ve already caused.”

  “Oh, man, you haven’t begun to see the problems I can cause.”

  “My point. And seeing as you’ve come back I doubt there’s much that will keep you out again. I had been hoping this meeting would have gone better, but things got a little out of hand. I’m sorry about that.”

  “Yeah, me too.” I can see where this is going and when one of the goons behind me puts his gun against my head I’m not surprised.

  “Interesting way of showing gratitude,” I say.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Gratitude. You know, for clearing the way for you. Come on. If it hadn’t been for me taking out your boss you’d still be begging for scraps.”

  “I was never grateful,” he says. “Yes, you moved up my timetable, made it a little easier for me to take over, but I already had everything in place. If you’d come in and torched the place before that night it would have all fallen apart. As it was I had a hell of a time picking up the pieces.” He pauses, like something’s just occurred to him.

  “If it helps, this is nothing personal.”

  “Gee, thanks. Awful magnanimous of you.”

  I’d figured as much. Going to all this trouble to beat the crap out of me wasn’t going to end in him giving me a lollipop and saying sorry.

  I know if I make a move the gorilla behind me will pull the trigger. I have an idea, but I don’t have enough power, yet. If I can keep him talking, maybe I can stay alive long enough to get out of here. But what will grab his attention enough to want to know more? In a moment I have it.

  “You know Boudreau’s not dead, right?” It’s a long shot and I know it’s not going to work, but every second will help.

  There’s a flash of something on his face and for a split second the mask of hard competence crumbles away before coming back.

  It takes me a second before I realize what I’m seeing in that look. Fear. He’s scared.

  “Why do you say that?” He’s trying to not show it, but I’ve got him hooked. Interesting.

  I tell him about Lucy, about how her death brought me home, about the message. I fudge a little and say the dead helped me track him down, confirmed that he’s on his way back from the dead.

  “He’s gunning for me. And when he’s done with me, I’m willing to bet that he’ll come for you.”

  Griffin sits for a long moment looking at me. “Thank you,” he says finally. “That actually explains a few things.”

  Wait, what? Explains a few things? What the fuck? He’s not really buying this, is he?

  “Well, when you run into him I’m sure the two of you will have a lot to talk about,” I say. Almost ready to go. Just another few seconds. I shape the spell in my mind. Pull in the different threads of energy I need. “Out of curiosity, how’d your guys find me? I mean, I didn’t exactly advertise I was in town.”

  “I have sources,” he says. “Interesting thing. Did you know your friend Alex doesn’t actually own most of his bar? Bad debts. Almost half a million dollars. Sold me a sixty percent stake in it a few years ago. We’re business partners.”

  Where punches couldn’t shut me up, that does. I can’t believe that Alex would sell me out. That doesn’t make sense. But my brain runs with it, anyway.

  I find myself wondering if he used Lucy’s death as an excuse to lure me back, then quash that thought as hard as I can. I can’t believe he would do that. I won’t believe it.

  Griffin nods at his lackeys and I know I’ve run out of time. I’ve been slowly pulling in energy and tying together my own spell. It was touch and go there for a while when they were beating the crap out of me, but I was able to hold on to that thread of the magic, letting it leech into me. And now I’ve got plenty.

  I give reality a hard shove and toss out a variant of that lightning spell that I used earlier. More shield than blast. Good thing, too. I let it loose a second before the gun goes off.

  A wall of blue light pulses out from me in a hemisphere, expanding through the room with lightning speed. Shoves the gorilla to the floor and his hand goes high as the gun fires, sending the bullet meant for me into the ceiling. The shield expands outward with enough force to slam Griffin’s desk a foot back, pinning him against the wall and knocking back the other guys behind me.

  If you can avoid it, I really have to recommend not having a gun go off next to your head.

  My hearing goes to a high-pitched whine. If it weren’t for the beating I’ve already taken I’d probably notice the headache. I lurch out of the chair, hit with a sudden wave of dizziness. I ignore it and weave my way over the stunned bodies of Griffin’s men, grabbing my straight razor and the gun from Gorilla Boy. His eyes are crossing and he’s trying to catch his breath.

  I point the gun at his forehead and he gets the message. Stares at me with cold fear.

  I say, “Bang,” and leave him shaking on the floor pissing his pants in fear.

  Outside there’s a hallway and a staircase leading down. Path of least resistance. I head downstairs.

  It’s a big house. I’m not really sure where the door is. But I’ve got a lot of motivation to find it fast. I can hear noises upstairs as Griffin and his men pick themselves up off the floor.

  A door ahead of
me bursts open. Of course Griffin would have more than five guys working for him. Cocksucker. I pop off a couple rounds in their general direction and the men coming out of the room ahead of me duck back in fast.

  I double back, head down a side corridor. This place is a fucking maze. Every hallway looks the same. Who lives in a place like this?

  I feel the gunshot before I hear it. Shooter behind me. Bullet grazes my right forearm. There’s a flash under my shirt. I have a tattoo for protection against gunfire. Without it I’m betting he’d have drilled me in the head.

  My arm is a searing lance of pain. I drop the gun. Trip over my own feet. I roll over to get a better look. It’s the gorilla who tased me. Stupid me. I let him live. The gun’s too far away for me to reach it before he can shoot or get to me.

  I reach into my coat pocket with my left hand, pull out the pocket watch, thumb the dial. The watch is a masterwork of engineering and magic. I don’t even understand how it works. Beautiful in its complexity. And horrific in its operation.

  I focus my will at the guy coming for me. I feel time compress around me. Compress, stretch, turn into a thin lance that bursts out and wraps around the man trying to kill me.

  I’m shooting for a day or two. Maybe a week. That usually slows people down from the shock, but it doesn’t kill them. But the watch has other ideas.

  Instead of a week the energy bursts in a bubble of eighty years or so. He shudders, stumbles. Screams in unholy terror. Years tack onto him in seconds. He drops the gun. Muscles waste away, hair grows gray, long, brittle. Skin sallow and spotted. His eyes cloud over, his teeth fall out.

  I try stopping it, jabbing at the crown with my thumb, but it just keeps going.

  He drags himself forward. Keeps coming, anyway. His mummified fingers, nails like claws, reach for my foot. His raisin eyes stare at nothing. By the time he reaches me he’s been dead ten years.

  This is why my watch freaks Alex out. I pull myself up, grab the gorilla’s gun in my left hand, the right almost useless from the pain. I tell myself I hadn’t wanted to kill him, but I have to wonder if maybe I had.

  The hallway leads into a foyer. I run to the door, jump back as machine-gun fire stitches a line in front of me. I duck back into the hallway, look for the shooter.

  The foyer has a larger staircase in it than the one I came down at the back of the house. I’m betting the shooter’s up there. I can’t get to him from here and I can’t get to the door.

  My arm’s starting to feel a little better, if you count numb as better. Some of my tattoos are helping with the pain. I flex the fingers, the pain burning in my forearm. I doubt I’ll be shooting with that hand, but at least I can use it.

  Options? Run out there. Try to shoot a guy I can’t see with a gun in the wrong hand. Brilliant idea. Think I’ll pass. I put the gun on a side table, place my hand on the wall, close my eyes and concentrate. There. I can feel him. Up on the balcony. Crap. I can feel them.

  Three guys. I can handle three guys. I pull in more power, which just gives away my position to any of the mages in the house, but it’s not like they don’t already know I’m here.

  I think of the wood in the stairs, visualize complex knots. Say a charm of shaping. Last time I used it was to straighten out a bent axle. This time I do the opposite. There’s a wrenching sound as the banister tears out of its base on the stairs and whips around like a snake. Screams, thuds as the wood twists around in a spiral clearing the staircase.

  I grab the gun, run out, hope I got them all. Find out the hard way that I hadn’t.

  It’s not gunfire this time. An inferno of angry, green flame bursts from a side room, blocking off my path to the door. I jerk back, firing blindly into the room, realizing too late that the bullets will vaporize before they come close to a target.

  “You’re surrounded, Eric,” Griffin says. He steps from the doorway, his hands ringed with flames. I should have known. I was paying so much attention to his lackeys it didn’t occur to me that Griffin might have talent.

  He’s right. I can hear running footsteps behind me closing in fast. I’ve got Griffin waiting to fry me in the front, half a dozen guys with automatics coming up my ass. No windows, no doors. The trick is, as they say at Disneyland, to find a way out.

  I’ve got one. It’s not fun and it might just kill me. But it’s an option rapidly rising to the top of the list the closer sudden death gets. If they want to send me to the other side, the least I can do is accommodate them.

  I close my eyes, take a deep breath, block out the sounds of running and gunfire, the swell of heat from Griffin’s flames searching me out. This is one of those spells I’ve never been able to do without blood. I know a couple folks who can, but whether it’s a psychological block or just the fact that this is more closely connected to my particular knack, I don’t know.

  Good thing I’m already bleeding. I wipe my hand across the wound where the bullet grazed me, scatter a fine spray of blood into the air. I spin a series of images through my head like a visual mantra. Each one clicking into place like the tumblers on a safe. Scenes of burn victims, murders, suicides. Grief, mourning, the emptiness of death.

  I pull myself from the land of the living to the land of the dead and the bullets punch through empty air.

  Chapter 11

  I haven’t gone anywhere. Physically I’m in the same place. I’ve punched through the barrier between worlds, but they occupy the same location. Same house, same walls, but gray and shadowed. All the color has been sucked out.

  Like being able to see the dead on the living side, I’m able to see the living on the dead side. Griffin’s men are still coming down the hallway, gray blurs of indistinct light. I don’t get out of their way fast enough and they run through me, a cold wash as our bodies intersect, leaving me nauseous and dizzy.

  I stumble away from them, fighting the nausea until I get to a side hallway then puke my guts out. Between the broken nose, gunshot, and vertigo-inducing flip between worlds I spend a good couple of minutes emptying my stomach.

  I pull myself up, wipe my mouth with the sleeve of my coat. This is a temporary respite at best. If I stay too long here I’ll die.

  This side of the fence isn’t designed for the living. Everything here is dead and drained. The very air sucks at your energy, saps your memories, your will, your life with a creeping inertia. The place itself will kill me in short order. Provided the ghosts don’t do it first.

  The walls look insubstantial, but they’re solid enough. This is an old house. Been around long enough it’s become a part of the landscape. The furniture’s another matter. It’s too recent, too transient. It’s barely visible and I can step through it with ease.

  The rules are different for me over here than they are for the Dead. They’re the predators, I’m the prey. I won’t be walking through the walls of this place, but they won’t have a problem.

  I pick my way past Griffin’s searching men. They can’t see me, but it doesn’t mean one of them might not be sensitive enough to pick up I’m here. I’m one monster of a roving cold spot.

  The front door’s going to be a challenge. I can move things on the other side from here, but it’s not easy. I take a look out the window. It’s going to be tougher than I thought.

  I’m a beacon for the Dead at the best of times. And that’s on the other side. Over here I’m a fucking bonfire barbeque with a blinking neon sign that says GOOD EATS.

  They’re lining up to get a taste. The yard is filling up fast with Wanderers. Clusters of them are already at the door and piling up at the windows. When they spot me a mob of them start hammering on the glass, howling and screaming.

  They’re not coming in despite the fact that most of them could slide on through without even knowing there’s a building here. I crane my neck over to get a look at the outside of the door, catch a pulsing purple glow. So that’s what wards look like on this side. That’s good. Means I’ve got some more time to figure out how to get out of here.


  I hear a snarl behind me and realize I’ve spoken too soon. I turn and there’s Gorilla Boy. What’s left of him, anyway. He stands there as he died; thin, emaciated, ancient. But that’s just a look. He’s just as dangerous and vicious as any other ghost.

  He leaps at me, mindless with need and hunger. There’s really not much left of him in there. There probably wasn’t much to start with.

  I duck and jump to the side, thankful he hasn’t been around long enough to figure out he doesn’t have to move like a living man, anymore. He hits the ground, rolls, kicks off for another pass. His bony fingers rake across my back as I dodge past him, a searing cold tears across my skin.

  I hit the ground in a flash of agony. The cold spreads like an explosion over my body and just as quickly it fades, leaving me shaken and numb. All that from one touch.

  He comes at me. I’m easy pickings now. Feeling’s starting to return to my legs and hands, but I won’t be able to get out of his way fast enough.

  There’s not a lot I can do over here. I have to preserve what power I have left. I’m cut off from the pool of power on the other side and I used a lot with that spell in the office and jumping over here. I’m running off my own reserves and those are draining rapidly. Would suck if I didn’t have enough left over to get back home. Fortunately I’ve got a couple wild cards.

  I’ve got so much ensorcelled ink on my skin I’ve forgotten what some of it is for. I had it written all down once, but I lost the list in a car fire about five years ago.

  There’s one in particular I picked up on an Indian reservation in Montana; a murder of crows on my chest. They’re constantly shifting color and formation, number and size. One day they’re in a V pattern on my chest, the next there’s only one and the rest have migrated to the spaces in between other tats. They like to move around. And they really like to be let loose.

  I give a low whistle, a short tune the artist taught me. There’s a tearing sensation on my chest like I’m losing a layer of flesh and I cry out from the pain.