Dead Things

by Stephen Blackmoore

  She presses herself into my side. “Thanks for that. That was nice.”

  It was. I’m not sure how I feel about it now, but it was. I don’t know what to say. Thanks? Glad you enjoyed it?

  “It’s been a long time.” Jesus. Did I just say that out loud?

  She rolls onto her stomach and props her head up on her hands. “Yeah? How long?”

  “Honestly? I don’t remember. I, uh, move around a lot.”

  “You said. Home’s an illusion, right? How come?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  She doesn’t say anything for a minute and then, “Because of the dead people?”

  “Partly, yeah. I mean, they’re always around.” She looks around her, a frown of worry creasing her face.

  “What, right now?”

  “No. We’re good here.” I tossed some half-assed wards on the room before things really got heavy between us. “But I can feel them in other rooms of the motel, down on the street. I can’t get away from them.”

  “Jesus. I’d go crazy.”

  “I do from time to time,” I say. “It changes your point of view. I don’t really know how it is for other people, but for me death is, maybe a little less complicated? More complicated? I’m not sure.”

  “Different?”

  I laugh. “Yeah. Different. It’s like, well, dead’s not always dead, you know?”

  “It’s not a big unknown for you,” she says. “Like it is for most people.”

  “It is. I mean, I don’t know where everybody eventually winds up, but I think I have a better idea than most. It’s more I know there’s a waiting room for some people. Just because somebody’s dead doesn’t mean they’re gone, if that makes sense.”

  “Sure,” she says. “I’ll be honest, though, it’s kinda creepy.”

  “Oh, hell yeah,” I say. “Took me years to get used to it. Before I left—”

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she says.

  I think about that for a second. “Actually, yeah, I do. Is that okay?”

  She nods. “Sure.”

  “Before I left I wasn’t very good with it. Weirded me out more than anything else. I was born with this. I was a freak in a world full of freaks. You’ve got talent, so you know there’s more going on. But the thing is nobody, mages, normals, doesn’t matter, nobody wants to deal with the dead. They want to not think about it. They want it sterilized and live with their dreams of people being in a better place.”

  “And they’re not?”

  “Fuck no,” I say. “It’s cold and empty. And the dead are always hungry. They want their lives back. And if they can’t get theirs they’ll be happy to take yours.”

  Tabitha shudders a little. “You really know how to turn a girl on,” she says. “I always love following up a roll in the hay with an existential crisis. Thanks.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Joking. If I didn’t want to know I wouldn’t have asked. I mean, I can’t do much of anything and I don’t think I even have a knack, but to be a kid with that kind of power? It couldn’t have been easy growing up with that.”

  “It wasn’t,” I said. “And it wasn’t until after I left that I really learned some real control over it.”

  “Has it helped? Being able to do that? I mean, it can’t be a curse all the time. It’s got to have its uses.”

  I think back to the night I murdered Boudreau, to the life I’ve been living for the last fifteen years. “Ups and downs,” I say, “But yeah, it’s useful.” I let my thoughts wander.

  After a moment Tabitha says, “You kinda drifted off there.”

  “Sorry. Thinking. Would it be terribly rude of me to—”

  “Kick me out?” she says finishing my thought, a small smile on her lips. “No. I mean, I’d love to stay, but I think you’ve got too much on your mind for another go.”

  “Thanks. Yeah, things are going to get a little … weird in here pretty soon.”

  “Weird like you regretting we slept together and not talking to me later weird?”

  “Weird like a parade of the Dead tromping through my hotel room drinking drops of my blood so I can get them to answer my questions weird.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I don’t think I’m ready for that,” she says.

  “Kinda figured,” I say.

  “Okay. No problem. Can I take a shower first?”

  “Sure. I’ve got some prep to do in the other room.”

  “Fifteen minutes and I’ll be out of your hair.” She flounces out of bed, heads to the bathroom, stops. She turns around jumps up to put her arms around me and kisses me.

  “Be careful,” she says and disappears into the bathroom.

  I stare at the closed door for a couple of minutes, listening to the shower run. Interesting woman. I find myself wondering where she came from, who she is. Why she jumped me. I shake myself out of it. I can think about that later.

  I put some pants on, move the furniture in the other room around to clear a space. Set up my candles, pour out my circles in salt. It all feels like I’m going through the motions. I’ve got too much on my mind.

  I pull the Browning and a cleaning kit out, feel the gun radiate menace. I take it apart, laying out all the pieces on a towel on the coffee table. Scrub each piece, oil the action.

  The Browning isn’t like the Sangamo Special. It’s got energy I can tap into, but it’s not magic the way the watch is. Sometimes I think the watch might even have a mind of its own.

  Cleaning the gun is a meditation. I get lost in the meticulous nature of the task. Tabitha comes out while I’m in the middle of it. She watches a few minutes, but says nothing to disturb me. She leaves without making a sound.

  Yes, a very interesting woman.

  I put the Browning back together, take it apart, put it back together again. Empty the clip, reload it. Check the action, weigh it in my hand.

  I put it back in its holster. I step into the circle with the straight razor and the cup, light the candles and get to work.

  I have better results this time around. I know who I’m looking for. I know who to ask. I call the men and women who died homeless, forgotten, unclaimed. Separate them into the recent dead and dismiss the rest. Bludgeoned, stabbed, raped, shot. A few run over by cars, some set alight. Their lives were hard, their deaths harder.

  Henry Ellis is a burnt out mage who’s gone hobo and the dead tell me he hangs out in Long Beach a lot, alternating between three or four encampments near the freeway, behind a warehouse, at the edge of the river.

  “Yeah,” one of them says, an overweight woman with stumpy, sore-ridden legs. “He was there when I got stabbed.” She points to a gaping wound in her belly, loops of intestine hanging like garland off a Christmas tree.

  “How long ago was that?”

  She cocks her head to the side, thinking. “Half an hour? Little more?”

  Jackpot. I get the location, a strip of land where the 405 and 710 Freeways converge. I get dressed in my own clothes, leaving the outfit Alex gave me over a chair. He’ll be crushed.

  I see the bottle of Balvenie on the counter as I head to the door, a note stuck beneath it. “LET’S HAVE THAT PARTY SOMETIME SOON,” it reads, with a phone number. I pocket the note. It makes me happier than I expected.

  —

  At this hour on the South 405 there’s little traffic, though it’s slow going past Sunset. I know I’ve got the right place when I see the flashing blue and red lights of the police and paramedics.

  I park nearby, reach into the glove compartment for the Browning and a roll of stickers that read “HI! MY NAME IS:”. I write DETECTIVE CARTER on one of them in Sharpie. I blow on it, whisper a charm over it, think of a badge, Hawaii 5-0, Adam-12 episodes, stern looking policemen. Serpico.

  I slap the sticker on, clip the Browning to my belt and get out of the car. The cops let me through the police line when they see my nametag. As far as they’re concerned I’m a Long Beach detective, or maybe it’s LAP
D. I don’t know who’s got jurisdiction, but it doesn’t matter. They’ll fill in the gaps themselves.

  I ask one of the officers for an update. I stay away from the other detectives. I might have a badge but chances are they know all the other detectives who should be out here. Don’t need questions.

  He points out the body of the woman I spoke with a little while ago underneath a white sheet on a gurney. She’s come to this place when I released her and recognizes me. She waves halfheartedly, staring down at herself with resignation.

  “Any suspects?” I say.

  “Seriously?” He points to a spot where the camp residents are sitting, each one being called up to talk to a detective. “We got about fifty of them.”

  “They’re all there?” I say.

  “Every last one of them.”

  “What about him?” I cock my head toward one bum sitting on the edge of the camp watching the scene with interest.

  “Who?” the officer says, looking right at him.

  “Never mind,” I say. “Trick of the light.” I think I’ve found Mister Ellis.

  I turn and head toward him. His eyes go wide when he sees me. Wider still when I wave at him. He’s an older guy, unshaven, wearing a torn-up parka, mud-crusted jeans, a Dodgers hat. He stands up, looks for an exit. He’s got two choices. Run over a small hill of ice plant and jump into eighty-mile-an-hour traffic, or come through me.

  I don’t say anything because that might draw attention to him and it might break his camouflage spell. Having him in police custody will make it even harder to talk to him. I smile at him, hands out to show I don’t mean to hurt him.

  He jumps for the freeway.

  “Oh, come on,” I say. Am I really that scary looking?

  I tramp after him, my shoes slipping in the slick bed of plants. Ellis hits bottom, starts climbing over a retaining wall. My feet slide underneath me and I go the rest of the way on my ass. I get hold of his ankle before he tops the wall and yank. Heavier than he looks. He scrabbles, lets out a holler and falls back into the ice plant.

  “The fuck, man,” he says. “The fuck.”

  Jesus. With that stink he doesn’t need defensive spells. This close and I’m gagging.

  “Henry Ellis?” I say.

  “Fuck you, man. Cops always hassling me. I know my rights.” He looks at the nametag on my coat, blinks, sees it for what it is. “Goddammit,” he says.

  I stand, reach out to help him up. He stares at my hand, takes it like he’s holding onto a snake.

  “You’re Henry Ellis, right?” I say, trying to only breathe through my mouth. “You worked for Jean Boudreau.”

  He freezes. Then yanks down on my hand hard, throwing me off balance. My face hits his waiting knee. Pain explodes in my nose with a sound like a bag of broken glass. I hit the ground, half blind.

  He heads back up the wall. I pull the Browning, shove it against his ass hard enough for him to notice. He freezes.

  “Keep going and I’ll give you a push.”

  “I didn’t mean nothin’. Just, you know, got scared.” He slides back down the wall. “Please, don’t kill me.”

  I manage to get to my knees, wipe the tears from my eyes. “I’m not going to kill you,” I say. “I don’t even fucking know you, Henry.”

  “But I know you,” he says. “Eric Carter. I know you killed him. Now you’re gonna kill me, too, aren’t you? Oh, god.”

  I don’t remember him there that night, but then things were pretty chaotic. “Henry—”

  “Not my fault. I didn’t know. Not my fault.”

  “Henry!” He stops the second I shout at him. “I’m not going to kill you. I need to talk to you. I need to know some things about Boudreau. I’ll even pay you. Get you some food.” My eyes are watering being this close to him and it’s not just the pain in my nose. “And a shower.”

  “Don’t want no shower,” he says. “Water. Water’s bad. It drowns you. Swallows you up. Fish fuck in it. But I’ll do bourbon. Since you’re buying.” Great. The Caddy’s going to smell terrific for a month after this.

  I find a nameless Mexican bar over on a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway that cuts through the docks of the Los Angeles harbor. The outside is a garish fuchsia, the word CERVECERIA hand-painted on the side. The parking lot is full of beat-up pickup trucks, sedans held together with baling wire. This is where the immigrant workers who get brought in to haul cargo against union rules come to drink.

  I go inside leaving Ellis sitting on the curb. I don’t think he’ll run, not if the way his eyes lit up when I told him I’d buy him that drink was any indication. I buy a bottle and a couple of glasses. I get some looks but nobody messes with me. I take it outside, slide down to the curb next to Ellis and top off his glass.

  “Before you start asking your questions,” he says, “I got some of my own. How’d you see me?”

  “Your camouflage spell’s too weak. Fooled the normals, sure, but come on, man. Anybody with talent could see through that.”

  He sighs, mutters something under his breath. Takes a pull on his beer. “I put everything I had into that,” he says. “I’ll barely be able to light one of my own farts with what I have left.”

  “I heard something happened to you. You can cast, but you can’t tap into the pool? Something like that?”

  “Yeah, something like that. Goddamn Boudreau. Fucking cocksucker. You want to know about Boudreau, sure. Fat lot of good it’ll do you.”

  “Hey, man. Anything will help.”

  “Why you want to know? And after all this time?”

  “Somebody killed my sister and I think Boudreau left something behind that maybe has something to do with it.”

  “Then you want to talk to Ben Duncan. He got everything. If Boudreau left something behind, he’s got it.”

  I point at my bandaged nose. “I did. He’s changed his name. Goes by Griffin, now.”

  “Just a broken nose? He was in a good mood then.” He tosses back his bourbon, holds out his glass for a refill. I pour him another. “So ask. What do you want to know?”

  What do I want to know? Now that I’ve got him I don’t know what to do with him. I knew he wouldn’t just pull something out of his ass and say, “Here ya go, sonny.” But I honestly don’t know what to ask him.

  “Uh—You worked for Boudreau. Directly?”

  He nods. “Yep. Chance of a lifetime. I’d been teaching in Prague. Visiting scholar sort of thing.” He gives me a look that I think is supposed to be piercing, but just looks drunk.

  “You know anything about,” he pauses letting the tension build, “necromancy?”

  It hurts to laugh but I can’t help myself.

  Chapter 13

  “What?” he says, indignant. “I know what I’m talking about. Necromancy’s very serious business.” I’m trying not to laugh, really I am. But having this stinky hobo intone about dead shit like a cartoon villain is too ridiculous.

  “I know,” I say. “Believe me, I know. How the hell do you think I found you? That dead fat woman told me where you were.”

  He looks at me considering. “You know the other side,” he says.

  “Kind of my thing. Yours?”

  He shakes his head. “No. I know a few things, but I prefer research. That’s what Boudreau hired me for. Knew he was going to die some day. Wanted to find a way to capture his spirit and preserve it in the hopes that he could come back to life.”

  I chew on that for a second and already I can see holes in it. “Ghosts fade. Can’t stop it. Might last a while, but he’d head off eventually.”

  “I know, but he wouldn’t listen. Over time they degrade. Lose their memories, their identities, right? Do you know why?”

  I open my mouth and realize I don’t. Not really. I’ve never been much on theory. Everything I’ve learned I’ve picked up from other mages or learned on my own. Now he’s got my interest. “Always figured it was just them heading over to wherever they go. Heaven, Hell, Elysium, Valhalla. Places like t
hat.”

  “Sort of. But they don’t do it all at once. They’re draining away like water. Every day they lose a little more of their substance. But their identities are shot through the entire thing. A person loses a thumb, he loses a thumb. A ghost loses a thumb and there goes its memories of kindergarten.”

  I’ve watched ghosts degrade over time. I know what he’s talking about. They grow less substantial. Their memories less clear. “Interesting theory.”

  “That between place is just as toxic to them as it is to us. It strips away layers the way it saps life from us.”

  The land of the dead is one big waiting room. You can call it Purgatory or Gehenna, if you like, though I hear those are places in their own right. The theories I’d heard all centered on the idea that ghosts were strong enough to resist the pull that would take them to their final destination, not that they were all slowly circling the drain. It’s an idea I hadn’t run into before.

  “And Boudreau wanted you to figure out a way to stop it? How would you even do that?”

  “The environment is the key. At best it’s an irritant that wears away the ghost. When a piece of grit gets into an oyster it wraps it in layers of material that eventually makes a pearl,” he says.

  I think I’m beginning to understand. “So, you’d wrap the ghost in something that the environment—” I search for the idea, “eats instead?”

  Then it hits me. “Other ghosts.”

  “Exactly.” Ellis throws up his hands and his eyes sparkle.

  I feel like I’m in school again. The first real teacher I had was the ghost of a dead Brazilian guy I met in a jail cell in Vegas after I left L.A. Spent a month picking his brain, so to speak. Then he started breaking down. He was useless after that.

  Ellis reminds me of him. Makes me wonder where he ended up.

  “That’s exactly right,” Ellis says. “I created a series of spells that would, when he died, attract more ghosts to him. When they got close enough, they’d stick like flypaper.”

  I’m not sure, but I think I see a hole in that. “You wrap the ghost to protect it, but what happens before it gets protected? It’d still have lost some of itself, right?”

  “That’s the beautiful part,” he says. “The enwrapped ghost feeds off the others, using them to rebuild itself. Everything is already there, it just needs more substance to grow back the original personality.”