Ghost Mortem (Bordertown Chronicle Book 1)

by Gavin Masters

  For the next few days, I set myself up in my home office—i.e. our living room—with a twofold plan. The first was to do all the research I could online, and dig up all the articles, photos and materials I could on Darius Danko, AKA Nefarious Darius, and his victims. The second part of my plan was simply to wait by the door with Raven’s passive aggressive note, so I could make this right. I still wasn’t sure I knew how I’d make it 'right' exactly, since really, I just felt like shouting at her.

  When Raven didn’t come home for several days, I grew angrier still.

  Then I thought better of it, and grew concerned. I asked dad about it.

  “Dad, you’re sure you don’t know where Raven is? There’s a fucking serial killer out there, preying on girls her age. And you expect me to believe you haven’t heard from her, and somehow you're not worried?”

  My dad dropped the act and rolled his eyes.

  “Fine. I know exactly where she is.”

  “Well then, where is she?” I demanded.

  “She’s with a friend.”

  “What friend, dad? She doesn’t even know anybody here.”

  “Of course she does. She’s in college now. Making…lots of…friends…”

  “Oh, horseshit, dad. Raven’s terrible at making friends. She got called over by a couple of girls at the Samhain festival, and obviously, they must have bored her, because she took off home five minutes later. I mean, she basically judges everyone. There’s something about just about everyone she meets that she says makes her stump itch. She’s obsessed with being alone.”

  “Fine, you wanna know the real reason I’m not telling you?”

  “Dad, for the love of god, yes!”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you right now. In fact, she barely wants to see my face either. She basically calls once a night to check in, tell me she’s fine and then do her own thing.”

  “Is she ever going to come home?” I said.

  “Probably, Gavin. Just give her time.”

  “Pff…fine,” I sighed.

  I decided to take a walk, rather than pick a fight with my dad. I needed a break from the research and the house, and the screaming silence inside my head. And every room of the house was giving me flashbacks of the things I did with Vikki—things I would presumably never get to do with her again.

  Chapter 33

  I took a walk past the cemetery. I hadn't realized there even was a cemetery in Bordertown until this point, though it figured there had to be one. The town cemetery is just around back from the courthouse, which made sense, given it used to be a great cathedral. Tall hedges surrounded the cemetery.

  Ominous, I thought to myself.

  I noticed a few people standing around the tombs. Were they visitors, or were they the dead themselves? It can be difficult to tell at times. And more awkward when you find two people, one a ghost, one corporeal, and you speak to the wrong one. But I was beginning to think there was little risk of that now.

  That's when I saw a small furry creature with its back to me. And in front of it, two incredibly large, furry balls.

  That…damned…cigarette-stealing…tanuki…

  I thought about shouting at it again, but recalled how well that had worked out last time. God knows what he'd find to huck at my crotch this time.

  I wanted to sneak up on him and strangle him. I wanted to know why he was so obsessed with stealing my cigarettes. But seeing him here, in a place like this, and…was he crying?

  He was. Or at least, it sounded like sobbing. He was speaking in Japanese—this much I realized when I checked E.E.R.I.E. for its entry on tanukis. The tanuki is a mythical Japanese creature. Part raccoon, part dog, part fertility god. But seeing him here, like this…he didn't look godly. He just looked sad. And though he was speaking in Japanese, it was to a tombstone. He didn't appear to have an interlocutor. No person. No ghost. No nothing.

  I walked a little closer, until I was within his range of vision, beside him. He was indeed crying. I had half a mind to ask him what was wrong, but Japanese wasn't among my narrow pool of languages. Japanese was Raven's department. Or Vikki's, apparently. But not mine.

  The tanuki turned suddenly and eyed me suspiciously, with tears streaming from his eyes.

  He backed up a few steps.

  “Whoa, hold on,” I said putting out my hands to placate him. “Truce?”

  He threw his oversized ball-sack into the air, and suddenly, as if on a hang-glider, he was coasting up and away over the courthouse-cathedral, then presumably over the town square, off into obscurity again.

  I wanted to call after him to wait, but thought better of it. I still couldn't tell if it was more animal than person. Or some kind of trickster figure, or what. Maybe that wasn't for me to know.

  I took a look at the tomb he was apparently mourning at. I knew it was the right headstone because its inscription was written in Japanese. Unfortunately. So I couldn't read it.

  I idly wondered who was buried there.

  I bet Vikki could tell me, I thought bitterly. But how am I going to get back to things not being weird between us now? I liked Vikki way more than I had any right too. There was just something about the way people around her reacted to her. Everybody seemed to love her. She seemed to really love them too. She really belongs in this community. I, on the other hand, feel like I perpetually never fit in anywhere. You know the guy no one wants to be friends with, no one wants to work with, no one wants to hire? Well I'm basically the guy even that guy won't talk to. That's the truth of it all. Vikki just smiles at me all the damn time. Like she's actually happy I'm there. Or at least she used to. I guess that's part of it. I wasn't used to it, and I didn't want that to change.

  The only other person who ever seemed that happy to see me was my own mother. And really, wasn't she obligated to?

  Thinking about my mom made me want to light up, of course. So I did, leaving the cemetery first, half out of respect, and half expecting the Japanese ball-blimp to come back and steal all my cigs again.

  To my chagrin, I noted I was down to my last cig again anyway. I'd need to buy more.

  I lit it up and puffed away on my last cigarette as I walked down the street. I spied the payphone by the Heaven-Eleven, and decided maybe it was time to make that call.

  Chapter 34

  I walked up to the payphone and looked it over while puffing away on my cig. I recalled what Vikki had told me about it that first night we met. This wasn't just any regular payphone. It lets you talk to the dead. And there was one particular person I'd been itching to talk to for a long, long time.

  I picked up the receiver and looked at the rotary dial.

  Of course it has to be a rotary phone, I mused. Doc Braunstein invented it.

  There weren't any instructions, or a phone book or anything, so I just twisted the rotary dial around to zero, let it rotate back, and waited with the old school receiver by my ear.

  “Operator,” came an oddly low, yet feminine tone.

  Then silence.

  “Hello?” I asked.

  “Hello.”

  “How does this work exactly?”

  “If you give me an extension, I can connect you through to someone.”

  “I don't have an extension,” I said.

  “Who are you trying to reach, sir?”

  “My mom,” I said, feeling a little vulnerable at the admission.

  “What is her name?”

  “Sarah Mas—well, probably Sarah Masters, but maybe Sarah Cohen. That's her maiden name.”

  “Birth date?”

  I had to think about that one. I knew my mother's birthday well enough. But the year was trickier. It's not like I was there for the big event, right?

  “August second…nineteen seventy…three?” I said. “I'm not sure of the year.”

  “Death date?”

  That one, I didn't have to think about. Not a day goes by that I don't think about what happened on that day.

  “November fifth, twenty-twelve,
” I said.

  “Hold please.”

  My ear was accosted by cheesy elevator music. It was just like being on hold at any regular phone service, I thought. I wondered if the operator was a lady who lived in town, or if it was someone 'living'…elsewhere…perhaps in the land beyond.

  “I'm sorry, sir,” she said. “I've checked against our records, and we have no extensions associated with that description.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So, what does that mean?”

  “It means she isn't here, sir.”

  “What do you mean she isn't there?”

  “What do you mean what do I mean she isn't there?” she replied. “She isn't here, sir.”

  “But how can she not be there?” I asked.

  “She must still be somewhere on your plane of existence,” the operator said.

  “But…she died like five years ago,” I said.

  “I'm sorry, sir. She isn't here. I don't know what else to tell you.”

  “But…then…why…why didn't she…”

  Why didn't she ever come to visit us? I mean, we all could have seen her.

  “I'm sorry, sir. I'm getting another call. If that's all, we'll need to free the line.”

  “Fine, whatever,” I said.

  Thanks for nothing.

  Then I got the dial tone. I listened to it for a while, wondering why my mother hadn't visited, and wondering why, for the love of god, did the guy who invented the dial tone decide it needed to sound so damned creepy!

  I hung up the receiver, troubled. It didn't make sense…if my mom never made it to the netherworld, where was she? I was getting this really sick feeling. Like something was about to go really wrong. Like things had maybe been wrong all along, but I'd somehow been lying to myself.

  “Nothing makes sense!” I shouted out into the street, at no one in particular.

  There were people there, though. Well, ghosts and werewolves to be exact. The three youths and the smoking monster were puffing away on fags by the Heaven-Eleven.

  I decided I actually wanted to join them. I was jonesing for another cigarette after all.

  “Oh shit, here comes hell-boy,” I heard one of them say.

  “Hell-boy?” I said.

  “Yeah. 'Cuz you're always giving us hell and shit.”

  “Yeah. You really kill our buzz, man. So we're taking off.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Look. Guys, I'm sorry about that, all right? I've got a temper like everyone else. Sometimes I get triggered. I'm not here to pick a fight. I'm really just here to smoke.”

  “Okay,” the one with the baggy pants said.

  The others seemed placated by this.

  I was going to have to fit in eventually. I might as well start with these three…

  Can I call them 're-teens'?

  I went into the Heaven-Eleven and got myself yet another pack.

  I swear to god if that goddamn creature comes along and takes my cigs again, I'm cutting its nuts off even if I have to do it with a god-damned claymore!

  “Got one o' those for me, kid?” asked Ash.

  I produced a cigarette for him, placed it more or less where I remembered his mouth to be, and when it stayed, lit the tip, carefully trying to avoid lighting the rest of him. I mused about whether it would be possible to light up the whole creature. Best not to find out…

  “So…” Ash said, speaking out the side of his tiny mouth, so as to keep the cigarette in place. “Why so glum, chum?”

  Not ready to open up directly just yet, I opened with another question instead.

  “What's with that tanuki?” I asked.

  “With what?” asked Ashley.

  “You know, the tanuki…the raccoon-dog with the big balls?”

  “Oh, yeah. I seen that thing around. Weird, huh?”

  I shrugged. “You're a talking pile of cigarettes.”

  “I know. So coming from me, that's really saying something!”

  I thought about that for a moment. This thing steals cigarettes. This guy literally is cigarettes. Cigarette butts, anyway.

  “Has he ever attacked you or anything?”

  “Why would he attack me?”

  I shook my head and shrugged. “I dunno. He's always stealing my cigarettes.”

  “Yeah, he's been known to be a bit of a clepto. Especially since old Mister Nakamura died.”

  “Who's that?” I asked.

  “Who was that,” he corrected. “Yoshitaka Nakamura used to be a professor at the college. Taught linguistics and Japanese literature. Hell of a karaoke singer, too.”

  I realized something.

  “That's his tombstone in the graveyard behind the courthouse!”

  “Is it?” he said. “I don't know. I don't get out there much. I'm not much of a walker.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “So…what does he have to do with that tanuki?”

  “I think it was his pet,” said Ashley. “Weird pet, if you ask me.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “What, the tanuki? Nothing. You still see him.”

  “No, this…Professor Nakamura.”

  “Oh, well, you know, he smoked. Lung cancer. So it goes.”

  I always have that moment when my heart starts to race when someone brings up lung cancer. Because at times, especially times like this, when I'm actively and consciously smoking a cigarette, unable to stave off my cravings, I know I'm actively running towards my own death.

  “Damn,” I said.

  I found myself suddenly feeling a lot of sympathy for the little guy. And then I realized something else.

  “You know,” I began. “When I was little…well okay, maybe not so little, but in grade school. Maybe I was eleven or twelve. They had a constable come into my classroom to talk about addiction and stuff. He talked about the worst drugs people got into back in the eighties, when he was young. He said there was this bigger war on drugs back then. But now…now he'd found the really bad drugs were the ones that were already legal. The ones he couldn't actually do anything about.

  “He gave us some stats on smoking and alcohol, and peer pressure and addiction on young people. And then he turned to me and said 'you want to smoke, kid? You want to be cool, don't you?'

  “And I remember nodding my head like a fucking idiot. Before I realized his point. Before I realized how it started.”

  “Is that how you started smoking?” asked Ashley.

  I shook my head. “I remember being so young, and so certain after that, that smoking was stupid, and that I'd never do it. So I vowed I'd never do it.

  “I used to hide my mother's cigarettes, after that. At first, it didn't even occur to her it was me. She just thought she misplaced them. But then she started to get mad. Then, one day after school, I came home and she was waiting with all the packs I'd stashed away in my room.

  “She was furious. Fuming—metaphorically I mean—though as I recall she was also literally puffing away on cigarettes. She'd been smoking them all day. The house was so cloudy. And she yelled at me until she was in tears, saying she didn't want me to start smoking, and that she couldn't help herself.

  “So I broke down and told her I wasn't planning on smoking them. I told her about the police constable, and how he'd told the class about the effects. About the short term and long term effects, and how I knew she would ultimately die. And I didn't want my mommy to die.”

  “You keep talking about your mother in the past tense,” said Ash. “Is that, um…is that how she uh…”

  “No,” I said. “She was in a car accident five years ago. My whole family was. That's how…” I looked at the boys, who were patiently listening. “That's how Raven lost her arm.”

  I took another drag, exhaled, then sighed.

  “And that's when I started smoking.”

  “Really? After all that?” said one of the boys.

  I nodded. I thought a while before answering.

  “I guess in my way this is how I wanted to honor my mother.”

>   I took a long drag, feeling the smoke cook my lungs just a little more. Knowing I was consciously, constantly, bringing myself—not just metaphorically closer to her, but literally—closer to being dead like her.

  I've had years to think about it, and I think the smoker's philosophy is basically this: we're not stupid. We know what we're doing. But we do it anyway. Why? Same reason people deny climate change, or say, believe Trump's presidency isn't a complete disaster. Same reason we take so much comfort in the idea of an eternal afterlife, even though no one really knows what happens there, or if it's permanent, or if it even exists at all. It makes us all feel better in the otherwise-shit-show of the moment. But we're just lying to ourselves. We humans seem to be exceptionally good at this.

  “Stupid isn't it?” I said finally.

  Stupid, and extremely ironic. Why hadn't I made this connection before? The tanuki had been stealing my cigarettes the same way I once had from my mother. He doesn’t try to steal them from anybody else. Why just from me of all people? Surely he's been traumatized by the death of his former owner, but…why me? What made me so damn special?

  “Do you believe in reincarnation?” I asked.

  “If we did, you think we'd still be hanging around here?” said the boy with the backwards ball cap.

  “If I believed smoking would kill me,” I replied, “and I do. Smoking will eventually kill me. So why do I still do it?”