Deadsville

by C. L. Bevill

  “Big crucifix around his neck,” Lillian said. “Irish-American name. References to confession occasionally.” She nodded. “I’d say yes.”

  “Did he used to be a priest, by any chance?”

  No one answered.

  “How long ago did anyone see him?”

  “I saw him a few minutes before you came back,” Mr. Bullet Holes volunteered. “He went out the back.”

  Tavie shoved the panic she felt deep inside her. She needed to keep frosty, to keep calm, and to think it out before she jumped. Sternstein knew that she knew. He had Nica somewhere, if he hadn’t already done in the reaper in the way that he had done to the others.

  “Bernie was a priest?” Maximillian asked. “How could he have been a priest? He had a wife. He had two wives. Didn’t he?”

  Fritzi said, “He told me once. He found his one true love and he left the priesthood.”

  That was enough for Tavie to fill in all the answers for the story. Once upon a time Coco had taken Sternstein’s one true love away from him. Then the emergency room doctor hadn’t saved her life. This was followed by the lawyer, Minh Thanh, getting Coco off the hook without so much as a slap on the wrist. Of course, once Sternstein had gotten to Deadsville, he discovered a whole other level upon which to lay blame. For example, the psychopomp who had escorted his one true love and the GOTD who had overseen it all, would be prime beings at which to point Sternstein’s judgmental finger.

  Furthermore, one of the GOTD had given Sternstein a little push, perhaps suggested that if he died, he could bring certain things with him when he died, and he could have all the vengeance he so desperately wanted. He was the perfect candidate to start a war in the world of the dead. All he needed was the suggestion that he could do things that other deadies could not; he could obtain the revenge he wanted.

  “Bernie told you that?” Lillian asked Fritzi with obvious disbelief. “But you don’t like talking to anyone.”

  Fritzi shrugged. “I don’t think he thought I would tell anyone. I told him about my cats. We had a little moment.”

  “Where’s Coco?” Tavie asked urgently.

  Enoch said, “She was here. I brought her back from the wall and she went in the back and, well, that was about the time you showed up.”

  “At the same time Bernie went out the back.”

  Mr. Bullet Holes said, “There was a little scuffle back there, but I couldn’t see anything.”

  Tavie dashed. The two cots were turned over and the back door was cracked open.

  Not only did Sternstein have Nica, but now he had Coco.

  ​Chapter 21

  Death carries a fat tsar on his shoulders as easily as a lean beggar. – Russian Proverb

  ~

  “Don’t piss off the sheriff of Deadsville.” – Common saying in Deadsville

  ~

  “Where, where, where?” Tavie repeated the word like a benediction. She searched desperately through her mind, trying to figure out where the deadie would have taken Nica and Coco. Sternstein had taken Darren to a dark place. Sternstein had taken Minh to a dark place. He had taken Tavie to a church inside a dark place. Her personal vote was a dark place. When she woke up after Thana had done a number she had been in a new area; it had felt like the other two dark places.

  “Enoch,” she snapped.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “We’re going to all of the dark places. Leave the ones where Darren and Minh were found until the last.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “Enoch,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “What kind of weapons do we have in back?” Then she thought about where she had been before. Inside the church in the dark place, the rules weren’t the same as they were in Deadsville. She looked around the office that had cleared out of deadies upon seeing the terrible expression on her face. Only Enoch and Fritzi remained.

  The rules aren’t the same in the dark place, Tavie thought and her gaze settled on the old, iron pot-bellied stove. It was possible that she might have an opportunity to do something that a god of the dead wouldn’t expect. A set of Enoch’s words drifted back to her and a scene from a movie she’d seen when she was ten years old followed.

  * * *

  Tavie led Enoch to the dark place where she had woken up after her experience with Thana. Pudd trailed behind them, occasionally making unhappy canine noises. She had a very good idea that he was aware that all was not well.

  “Piggly Wiggly,” she said with a little note of triumph, pointing at the sign with only Piggly on it. The piggy mascot grinned into eternity while wearing the paper butcher’s cap.

  “Yep,” Enoch said. “I remember this one now. It ain’t very big.” He shivered involuntarily.

  The dark place was located just off the corner of a street. There were a few bluish lanterns around, but none too close to the actual area. It was like walking into a cold zone, an area that was even deader than the remainder of Deadsville. She stepped inside and thought about Nica and Coco.

  Nica was still an unknown quantity, although Tavie would have turned her back on him and not blinked. Coco was a teenager who had messed up. She probably hadn’t meant to kill Mrs. Patrick Byrne, but she had done it all the same. Then she had gone home to be murdered and buried somewhere where her body wouldn’t be found. It was irony waving a big ironic stick cut from the irony tree and smacking folks with it.

  Everyone made mistakes. It was the one who tried not to repeat the mistakes who were worth saving, and Tavie knew very well that it wasn’t up to her to judge.

  Tavie turned around slowly. Look…and…see came into her mind. She could see the dark place like a great black cloud floating around her. It was a doorway, a portal just as Nica said, but it wasn’t something that one could use anytime at one’s whim. Tavie had used it not long before and it was still closed. Enoch said something about dark places using ectoplasm at a rate not equal to the rest of Deadsville. It could be that the portal was drained of energy.

  No one had come this way.

  It made Tavie think in a way that made her brain hurt. Sternstein had used two different dark places. There could be several reasons for it. One would be that he couldn’t use the same one twice. However that wasn’t true. He had used the one where Darren’s body had been found to transport Tavie into the area where the old church was located. Then he had come out. Perhaps he had come out somewhere else.

  The second reason might be that he believed that if he was too predictable, he would be caught. Of course, that meant that he had brought their bodies back with him into Deadsville. He could have simply left them there. Or someone else had directed Sternstein to do it, in order to topple Thana’s empire of the dead.

  The latter reasons sounded more plausible. Sternstein wanted revenge, but he was under an obligation to do it in a way that would hurt Thana. Did Sternstein know what would happen if he accomplished his horrible vengeance?

  Maybe the former priest could be persuaded to change his mind?

  “This isn’t it,” Tavie said to Enoch. “Take me to the next one.”

  * * *

  They went over a hill, past a tanker ship, through a grocery store with empty shelves (and the back half of the store was missing like a tornado had torn through it or possibly Godzilla had decided to look for Little Debbie Oatmeal Crème Pies), and crossed the only stream in Deadsville.

  “Huh,” Tavie said as she leapt from one side to the other. “It is a crick.”

  “In Texas that’s a crick,” Enoch confirmed. Abruptly he dropped the hoe he’d been carrying. He lifted his hand up and there was nothing there. “Tavie, I think I’m close.” He looked over his shoulder and winced. Pudd yipped in a way that indicated nothing good was coming.

  Tavie looked and saw a reaper headed for them. Sinead had told her that the reapers weren’t collecting souls from the living world, but she hadn’t said anything about what was or wasn’t happening with souls in Deadsville.
>
  Enoch passed over the hoe when his fingers became solid again. Then he pulled the mysterious and compacted lantern out of a pocket and gave it to her. He also gave her a beat-up Case knife and a battered cat toy. “I’m right sorry, Tavie. That fella who kilt me is dead. Just now. Knew it was soon. Give the toy to Fritzi. She’s awfully lonesome for her cats.”

  Tavie glanced at the well-chewed plush mouse with a string tail. “I will. I don’t know what you did that brought you to Deadsville, Enoch, but I hope you’ll go to a better place.”

  “I am,” Enoch said. He smiled. “My wife and baby girl are waiting for me. That will always be a better place.”

  “Enoch Jeremiah Green,” the deep voice said from behind them.

  “Thank God,” Enoch said with a sigh that moved his entire chest like it was powered with a bellows. “I’m ready to go.”

  “Wait,” Tavie said. “I need him for a little more time. You can have him when we’re done with this. I’m working for Thana, and you know she’s large and in charge, so my need trumps yours. Sorry, Enoch.”

  Enoch’s face contorted. He was ready to go. He looked at the reaper and said with manifest reluctance, “You heard the lady. She needs me. Thana needs her, ain’t that right?”

  Tavie looked and could see a man underneath the reaper form. He wasn’t all that old, and his face revealed his inexperience. He wasn’t used to deadies who were really ready to go to the next phase. He also wasn’t used to ones that wanted to argue with him. He surely wasn’t used to the sheriff of Deadsville wanting to get into a debate with him.

  “Enoch Jeremiah Green,” the reaper said again. “Accept your judgment.” The end of the scythe leaned toward him.

  Tavie simply reached out and grabbed the end of the scythe. She wrapped her hand around the blade and winced as it bit into the palm of her hand. “I said, wait,” she said and it was a dark voice brooking no refusal. For a very long moment she looked into the eyes of the reaper and he looked back. She might have blinked but she didn’t. The reaper was gone and her hand was touching nothing at all.

  Enoch still stood beside her, looking disappointed. “I ain’t never seen that before. And well, there’s another thing I ain’t seen before.” He pointed.

  Very strange deadies surrounded them. Their expressions were just as dark and clouded as their eyes and she didn’t think she could take them all out with her Glock before they overwhelmed them.

  Pudd growled and unmistakably looked for an exit strategy that wasn’t there.

  * * *

  “I don’t suppose any of you have a healthy respect for the law,” Tavie said. “Also, I need directions. It’s a matter of life and death. No pun intended. I swear.”

  They were all dressed in black, and if the clothing had actually matched, instead of being dyed by some unknown and messy method, Tavie might have been more concerned. They looked scruffy and put together at the whim of someone who thought they should all be dressed in the same color. However, an errant thought popped into her head; it was something she’d heard. “Them peoples down at the crick think the gods of death are out to get us.” Enoch had said it once when he was referring to the trickle of black water flowing from someplace unknown on its way to somewhere else unknown. It was the same trickle she was now standing beside.

  “Ain’t no reason to get riled up,” Enoch warned them.

  “It’s the new sheriff,” a tall man said. Tavie could see under his cover that he had once been hanged. He still had the noose looped around his neck, which had broken in the initial drop. Periodically he used one hand to lean his head back into an upright position.

  Another man said, “Which side is she on?” Under his cover was a man who had a good-sized, ragged hole in his chest where a pacemaker had once kept his heart going. A microwave in a convenience store had done him, and his pacemaker, in.

  A woman said, “She needs to be on a side.” Tavie winced when she realized the woman’s brain had melted into a puddle of goo, some of which had leaked out of one ear. There had been a radiation incident in a laboratory or something of its ilk. “Which side is the dog on?”

  Tavie said, “I’m on my side, as is the dog, and there’s two deadies who desperately need my help. I think one of the gods of the dead has gone bad.”

  They all stopped moving and talking, all at once, in a way that was very weird. Pudd made a curious yip as if he was saying, “What the hell?”

  “I need to go to the nearest dark place,” Tavie added. Enoch nodded from beside her.

  “Is she saying she’s against the gods of the dead?” the noose man asked.

  The brainless woman nodded. “She is.”

  The man with a pacemaker-no-more pointed away from Tavie. “Two streets down,” he instructed. “Take a left at the windmill. It’s on the right. Gives you the giddy-up goose bumps. At least it does me. I wouldn’t go there for all the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in the universe.”

  “Thanks,” Tavie said. Enoch sighed loudly.

  “Are you really going up against a god of the dead?” the noose man asked.

  “Pretty sure,” Tavie said. Pudd whined. She took that to mean that he didn’t really want to go up against a GOTD but he’d go where she went. At least she didn’t have to worry about getting the dog killed.

  With Pudd and Enoch at her heels, Tavie ran down two streets and nearly tripped over the windmill. It was no larger than five feet tall, and planted in the middle of the street. On the right was a little area that the residents of Deadsville had patently avoided building in. In fact, they had built around it. There was a low fence constructed of mismatched pieces of picket fence that curved in a half circle around an area that looked dead even to a deadie.

  Tavie jumped the fence and Pudd squeezed through two of the pickets. She stood there for a moment, uncertain. Behind the fence, Enoch approached with apprehension and then stopped at the fence.

  Look…and…see. It was as if Thana was speaking inside her head, and perhaps she was in a manner of speaking.

  Tavie looked. Then she saw.

  The dark place was a rough semi-circle about ten feet by fifteen feet. The ground was dirt and rocks, as if no one had even tried to build anything there. They had instinctually known what it was and avoided it. Invisible fingers skittered up the hair on her arms and gave her a silent warning in the form of goose bumps. Even the hair on the back of her neck stood up as she looked.

  The meager light from the bluish lanterns seemed to be sucked into the dark place like it was a black hole. It simply was absorbed and existed no more.

  On one level of her vision she saw a simple location, where no one went. On another level there was a rough opening, beyond which was a darkness that was tangible. Or it could have been a darkness that was able to reach out and touch her in turn.

  It was open and ready for her to pass.

  But was Tavie ready to go through?

  One hand came up and touched the edge. It was as cold as anything Tavie’d ever felt. It was the steel wall of a freezer set on high in the Arctic Circle in the witching hour. The coldness tugged at her and pulled things out of her that she hadn’t thought about for decades, or in one case, minutes. All the things she’d ever done that she considered bad flowed through her head. Once she’d called a girl fat because of a boyfriend’s interest in the girl, but she hadn’t been fat. She’d hidden her brother’s package of condoms on a night where he had meticulously planned a big event with his girlfriend of six months. She’d toilet papered an ex-boyfriend’s car, using eggs, corn syrup, and food coloring as the glue that would hold the toilet paper onto the car. She’d systematically planned and executed the murder of a man because he was a coldblooded pedophile who had killed three girls under the age of ten and the courts let him off because of a problem with the original search warrant on his house. The law clerk had misspelled his name and transposed two of the digits in his address. The evidence was ruled fruit of the poisonous tree and excluded. He killed another girl b
efore Tavie acted. She would never forget the fourth girl. Her name had been Farah.

  It was true that the former two events didn’t compare to the latter.

  Prepare to be judged.

  Octavia Glynnis Stone took a deep breath. With her hand on the grip of her Glock, she stepped through the portal.

  * * *

  Tavie came to herself an unknown amount of time later. Everything was quiet and relatively dark. After a moment, she could see that there was a bluish light coming from one side, and there was another yellowish light, as well. A dark shape loomed over her and she flinched for a split second until she realized it was a badly warped pew.

  Was it too late?

  Pudd nudged her hand and she automatically put it on the back of his head. He didn’t make a noise and that, more than anything else, warned her that all was not well. However, Enoch was nowhere to be found, and she realized, with dismay, that he had been left behind. Perhaps it was that he hadn’t been standing close enough to her or to the dark place.

  Tavie realized she was back in the antiquated church, stuck in the middle of nothingness. It was a place set out of time and possessed its own set of rules, for which she didn’t have a guide, nor did she have the time to figure them out.

  Gingerly she rose up and peeked over the pew. There was a figure at the front of the church, standing at the pulpit, paging through a large bible. His cover was that of a modern day priest. He had simple black clothing and the white collar at his neck. A large crucifix hung there, glinting a little with the light of the single blue lantern sitting on the same table that it had been before. He prayed aloud, “Saint Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.”

  Tavie slowly stood up straight and pulled out her Glock, keeping it pointed somewhere between the floor in front of her and the figure in front. She didn’t need to seat a round in because it had already been done. She froze as she saw the two figures lying on each side of the podium upon which the pulpit sat. Each was tied with duct tape and taped into place. There were candles burning around them. One was Nica. The other one was Coco.