by C. L. Bevill
“The dead deadie?”
Tavie nodded. She was tired of people repeating her questions. Who else would she be asking about?
“No. I don’t think I met him before. At least, not looking like that. Too white bread for my taste.” Gilbert giggled. “And he wasn’t even white.”
“Who else did you see before you went into the alley?”
“Let’s see. There was an Eagle Scout. All those badges, my goodness. I think he liked all those badges an awfully lot. And he wouldn’t even talk to me.” Gilbert fluttered his eyes. Tavie noticed the fake eyelashes had glitter on them.
“Eagle Scout,” Tavie said. “Who else?”
“Just deadies. One guy had a rebar through his chest.” Gilbert touched his chest dead center to indicate the location of the rebar. “You’d think he wouldn’t want to carry that around, but who wants to trade for rebar?”
“Who else?”
“There was a construction worker, a yuppie, and a priest.” Gilbert brightened. “There was also some guy in a top hat. Don’t see those around here much.”
“Are you sure you didn’t see the Village People?”
“No Indian. And there wasn’t a cop.” Gilbert frowned.
“Okay, go see Annie now,” Tavie said. “If I need to talk to you, you’ll be around?”
“Maybe. You just never know what will happen.” Gilbert smiled tentatively and showed a wealth of white teeth. “That man wasn’t really murdered, was he?”
“I think maybe he was,” Tavie said.
Gilbert shook his head, stopped to pet Pudd, and swished off, his hips swaying provocatively.
Enoch said, “I don’t get that. That was a seventies thing, right?”
“It went into the eighties and nineties. My grandmother talked about it. Nana saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show 205 times, which means Gilbert was slacking.”
“Did your granny dress up like that?”
“No, but she threw toast. Toilet paper, too. Sometimes rice.”
Enoch appeared confused.
“Do you recognize anyone who was here who was also at the other place, Enoch?”
“You, me. Coco. The elders. I told the elders on my way to find you.”
“Did I leave a trail?”
“Kinda. Pretty much everyone knows you now.”
Tavie stepped out of the alley. Pudd followed closely. She handed the lantern back to Enoch. He did something interesting with it and it vanished into a pocket. The people outside of the little alley made a path for her in the larger alley. She systematically scanned the area and the people. “Tell me about these dark places.”
“No one likes them much,” Enoch said. He rubbed his forearms briskly. “I figured it was just something that dint want people there.”
“Do they move around?”
Enoch tilted his head as he clearly thought about the question. “I don’t think so.”
“Anything else happen around these dark areas?”
“I don’t think so,” Enoch repeated. He rubbed at his chin. “But let me think about that a bit.”
Maximillian said, “Some people have said the dark places were doorways, if we could just figure out how to use them.”
“No one has ever figured that out,” Lillian said with obvious skepticism. “That’s a very large assumption.”
“Who would know about the dark places?” Tavie asked.
“A reaper?” Coco suggested. “I saw one about a half-hour before I found you. I think it was a half-hour. You know about time.”
“Anyone else see a fella in a top hat?” Tavie asked. “He’s wearing a tux. He has a white face and smokes a cigar.”
Nearby a tall dark skinned man suddenly laughed. “You’re kidding, right?” he said.
Tavie shook her head. “I don’t kid much these days.”
“Top hat. Black tuxedo. White face, almost like a skeleton. Smokes a cigar. Drinking rum?” the man asked.
“I didn’t see any rum.”
“I’m from New Orleans,” the man said. Tavie could see it. He was wearing a Tulane sweatshirt and he had about a dozen colorful sets of beads hanging from his neck. He also carried a half-empty hurricane glass garnished with a slice of orange and a cherry. His face appeared bluish from asphyxiation but it was difficult to tell because his skin was a polished shade of mahogany.
“Laissez les bons temps rouler,” Tavie said immediately. She liked Mardi Gras much more than she had ever liked The Rocky Horror Picture Show. “Too much to drink?”
The man shrugged. “Baron Samedi is who you saw. If you’re into Voodoo, he’s the head loa, or god. He’s the master of death.”
Chapter 11
Death does not blow a trumpet. – Danish Proverb
“Whoa, that guy’s gone done dead.” – Gilbert on the death of Minh
~
“Where’s a deadie psychopomp when I need him?” Tavie muttered. She had several pieces of information that didn’t add up. Some of it didn’t add up because she was dead and in Deadsville, where normal rules didn’t apply, and there wasn’t a calculator in existence that was going to help her out. But she knew a certain psychopomp, and she suspected that the psychopomp would know more than most of the other deadies.
Two men had “died” in Deadsville. They both had Latin etched on their skins indicated that revenge was a motive. They both died in dark places. No one else witnessed the actual event. Their bodies disintegrated in a way that normal deadies did not do. A big question was whether it was more likely that they were killed because of something they had done in Deadsville or something they had done in the living world.
Eventually Tavie got tired of questions percolating in her head. But she did admit that thinking about Darren and Minh was much better than thinking about her mother crying in front of a neatly folded flag in a shadow box hanging on a wall. She was tired, however, and took a nap at the Deadsville Jail.
When she woke up after a dreamless nap, Enoch had added another person to the mix. A man who had tried to crack as many skulls as he could with a decorative mace wasn’t the kind of person who needed to be free to do more damage to people’s noggins. When Tavie walked past the cell block, she could hear the new guy arguing with the misters, Holey Head, Slit Throat, and Bullet Holes.
“I’m not giving up the mace!” New Guy shouted. “It’s an ecclesiastical and heraldic mace from the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge! It’s made of silver!”
Tavie wondered how someone could keep a British accent while they were in Deadsville. The Russian kid hadn’t had an accent and neither had the bluish, Canadian Thérèse. Obviously, Deadsville wasn’t infamously known for its consistency.
“For the love of St. Nicholas, can you please shut your big wide pie hole?” one of the misters asked.
“You don’t have to give it up if I shove it up your tuckus,” another one observed.
“Say Professor, how did you happen to die with a fancy mace like that in your hand? I mean, that isn’t exactly something that happens to every guy. Exactly what were you doing with it?”
The other two chuckled luridly.
“It was entirely proper!” New Guy said indignantly. “Heart attack and I fell into the case!”
Tavie stepped in and all four men shut up.
Pudd stepped in beside her and Mr. Holey Head gasped. Tavie had an idea it wasn’t because she suddenly resembled Ursula Andress wading out of the surf in the white bikini with a sea shell in one hand. Au contraire, it was all the canine who held the spotlight.
Tavie ignored the misters and looked at the fourth man. The new guy looked like a professor. He wore a tweed suit with a blue bow tie. His hair was neatly combed over to minimize the bald spot on top. He wore a round pair of glasses and held the mace under one arm, as if she had come to snatch it away from him. He didn’t have a cover and she could tell he’d had a heart attack and there were some glass cuts across his face and his arms.
“So why were you bopp
ing the field mice, Little Bunny Foo Foo?” Tavie asked him.
“My name is Harry Radford,” New Guy said in an imperial manner.
“I don’t think Little Bunny Foo Foo had an eggtastical thingymabob to bop the field mice,” Mr. Holey Head remarked. “Is that a real dog or a ghost dog or is it a deadie dog?”
“Didn’t Little Bunny Foo Foo just bop them with his fist?” Mr. Bullet Holes asked. “If the dog is here, then it’s a deadie dog.”
“Little Bunny Foo Foo should be in here with us,” Mr. Slit Throat said. “And I haven’t seen a dog in such a long time.”
“You people are not real,” Harry Radford proclaimed. “This is hell and I don’t have to take it.”
“So you didn’t take it,” Tavie said.
“Enoch said he smashed in four people’s heads,” Mr. Holey Head said. “All we did was threaten that girl.”
“Was she the first person you threatened?” Tavie asked.
“No,” Mr. Bullet Holes said. “But usually threats work just fine. We hardly ever have to do anything else.”
Tavie looked at Mr. Slit Throat. “Have you given up the knife?”
“You didn’t make Mistress Nightshade give up her razor,” Mr. Slit Throat protested.
“I have a thought,” Tavie said. “I shall take the knife and insert it where you suggested the mace should go in the professor’s anatomical area. Then you can keep it.”
Mr. Slit Throat abruptly slid the steak knife through the bars. “I didn’t suggest that. He did.” He nodded at Mr. Bullet Holes.
Mr. Bullet Holes said, “Squealer.”
Tavie turned her attention back to Harry Radford. “You’re new?”
Harry nodded.
“Okay. You know you’re dead, right?”
He nodded again.
“This is Deadsville,” Tavie said and motioned around her. “It doesn’t make sense. The best I can figure is that we’re in a holding area until something can be done with us.”
“Limbo,” Harry breathed. “Limbus patron. The limbo of our patriarchs. It’s where those who have sinned die while in the friendship of God. I thought I was in hell. I was getting the demons before they got me.”
Tavie thought about it. “Maybe it is limbo. I thought about it being purgatory, too. I don’t think it really fits into either of those categories exactly. Those people aren’t demons, as far as I know.”
“God is testing us,” Harry said. He waved the mace around for emphasis and then tucked it back under his arm.
“I can’t say for sure, Harry,” Tavie said. “You’d have to find some kind of expert to tell you.” She thought of Nica. She wanted to find an expert and he wasn’t to be found. Something occurred to her. “You said limbus patron. The limbo of our patriarchs. Is the first part in Latin?”
“Latin is the mother of all the romance languages,” Harry said haughtily.
“Okay, that’s a yes,” Tavie said. “What about lex talionis? Or vindicta?”
“Lex Talionis is the law of retribution,” Harry said, plainly using his best educational voice. “It refers to the principle where some individual is given the same fate as he has dispensed upon another.”
“If you killed someone, then you would be killed,” Tavie said.
“That is correct, but there is more to that.” Harry adjusted the mace and straightened his tweed jacket. “The original principle came from ancient Babylonia. The Babylonians believed that vengeful actions could be no worse than the actual crime itself. A type of ‘mirror’ effect, you see. The Romans converted such actions to monetary compensation, which of course, lends itself to helping the wealthy, because the wealthy could well afford the fine of their consequences. Inevitably it comes to a dramatic close. It was the Americans’ Martin Luther King, Jr. who said, ‘The old law about an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.’”
“And vindicta?”
“Ah, somewhat more interesting. Vindicta in Roman law was the rod or the stick, the instrument of retaliation. Or it could simply be vengeance.”
Tavie paced in front of the cells. The three misters watched her like they were watching the tennis ball in a Wimbledon match. Harry played with his mace. Pudd sat in a corner and chewed on his leg.
The information wasn’t surprising. Tavie had already come to the conclusion. If a third body were to suddenly appear, it would likely have another annotation in Latin on its back, referencing the act of revenge.
“What’s this all about?” Harry asked.
“Apparently, someone who likes Latin isn’t very happy with a few other people. Dead people, who they want to be deader people,” Tavie said. “Where were you a couple of hours ago, Harry?”
“Bopping heads in with my mace,” Harry replied. “I just got here and I’m not very happy, either. This place needs organizing. Bloody lot of you are blinkered.”
“Think of me as the good fairy,” Tavie advised. “You can’t go around bopping people on the heads. You’ll have to give up the mace.”
Harry clutched the mace to his chest. He turned his body halfway around, protecting the mace from Tavie’s evil tyranny. “You can’t have it. Heraldic. Ceremonial. Silver. It’s all I have left.”
Tavie gestured at the misters. “Did you tell him?”
“You can’t get out of Deadsville Jail until you give it up,” Mr. Slit Throat said. “Hey, I can get out now, right?”
“And you have to promise you won’t hurt or threaten anyone,” Tavie said.
Mr. Slit Throat glowered.
“I promise!” Mr. Holey Head said. “I promise!”
Tavie sighed. “I’ll check with the elders.”
“When will you be contacting my solicitor?” Harry asked in his highfaluting way. “Since you’re American, don’t I get a phone call?”
“You’re British,” Tavie said. “Do you get a phone call there?”
“I’ve never been in the nick before,” Harry said, as if he had just touched a particularly vile cootie.
“There isn’t any phones here, dumbass,” Mr. Bullet Holes said. “We’re dead. Do you think AT&T had a monopoly here, too?” His face contorted into a frown. “Could AT&T have a monopoly here? Could AT&T be in charge here? A monopoly in the afterlife? That’s just horrible.”
“I could really use a smart phone,” Tavie said. She longed for the Internet. A little online research was better than digging for fossils with a plastic picnic spoon.
Mr. Holey Head said, “They do have a few phones here.”
Mr. Slit Throat said with a distinctly warning tone, “It’s not like they have cell phone towers here.”
“I know this one girl,” Mr. Holey Head said tentatively. “Her smart phone works.”
“Dude!” Mr. Slit Throat said.
“I so want out of here!” Mr. Holey Head snapped back.
Tavie had turned away, thinking she could scout around Deadsville looking for Nica and hold him down until he squealed. She turned back to Mr. Holey Head. “I’m going to let you out and you’re going to take me there,” she said.
“Okay,” Mr. Holey Head said. “Can we stop for a shot of ecto?”
“No.”
* * *
The girl’s name was Peony. She dated from sometime in the first decade of the 2000s. Her cover was a sweet faced twenty year old college student wearing a blue popcorn shirt and faded cigarette legged jeans from some trendy clothing shop. Under the cover was a woman without any hair, eyebrows, or eyelashes and as skinny as someone who had not eaten for weeks. She even had an IV connected to one arm. Her hospital gown was parted in the front and Tavie could see a shunt taped to her upper chest.
“Motormouth,” she said to Mr. Holey Head. “Can’t you not tell people everything? Is that a dog?”
Mr. Holey Head gestured at Tavie. “She’s the sheriff. She knows stuff. Plus she caught us. She shot us.”
Peony looked at Tavie with marked incredulity. “She shot you.” Then she looked at Pudd, who sat on the floor near Tavie’s f
eet. “She’s got a dog.”
Tavie looked around. It was a typical shack in Deadsville. The outside was constructed from parts of a ship called the Sultana. One wall used the stacks from the boat as the corners. The gigantic side wheel made the back wall. Planks with the faded name of the ship, had been used to complete the walls and the ceiling.
“I was going to bring you a diamond tennis bracelet, baby,” Mr. Holey Head said.
“Then trade for it next time,” Tavie said. “You remember our deal?”
“Motormouth,” Peony protested and Tavie realized that Mr. Holey Head’s name actually was Motormouth or thereabouts. “You were in Deadsville Jail?”
“Yeah, the dudes are still there.”
“They’ll get out sooner or later,” Tavie said. “Say, was this a steamboat?”
“It sank in the Mississippi,” Peony said. “Its boiler blew up.”
“I wonder if the Titanic is around here somewhere,” Tavie said reflectively. “I saw parts of the Hindenburg, but I thought about it and I figured it was impossible since the whole thing pretty much burned to ashes. There was nothing left.”
“Yeah, well, someone died before it burned to ashes,” Peony said. “That’s why it came then. Just like there’s probably next to nothing left of the Sultana in the present day world, or when I died. But someone died on the ship and it came with them here. It doesn’t always work that way.”
“Yep. Those rules keep sliding around, don’t they?” Tavie shrugged. “Wish I could figure them out.”
“Uh, babe,” Motormouth said to Peony. “I told the sheriff about the phone.”
“You did not.”
“Well, she was going to leave us in the jail for like, forever.” Motormouth grimaced. “It’s tight in there. Little places give me the heebie jeebies. And you know Roy still farts. Ghost farts but I swear I can smell them.”
“Which one is Roy?” Tavie asked.
“The one with the slit throat,” Motormouth said. “His brother did it. I mean, his real brother.”