by R. E. Vance
“But Linda said that people leave bowls of organs out on their doorstep for children.”
“What?! Who the hell is Linda?” I ask, sliding ever closer to the edge of my own sanity.
“My friend from the library. She is very nice. She has been teaching me human customs.”
“Nobody leaves organs out for children!” I say.
Morty looks to Azrael for confirmation. He nods solemnly.
“She definitely said to leave out sweetbreads for the kids!” Morty argues. “And a burning head!”
“Wait. Sweetbreads? Did she definitely say sweetbreads?” I ask.
“Yes. Well, no. She said ‘sweets’. But I knew what she meant.” Morty says.
“Morty,” I sigh, “Is Linda British?”
“I think she is from Wales. Is that British?”
“’Sweets’ is what British people call candy, Morty. We put candy out for kids!”
“And the burning head? The Jack lantern?”
“Jack-o-lantern!” I shout. “It’s a carved pumpkin with a candle in it!”
“Oh. Oh!” she says, suddenly walking quickly for the front door. “I will be right back.”
As often happens, I sit down, exhausted from explaining to Santa Muerte what she can and really, really can’t do in the human world. I hear the front door open and close, twice, and smell something burning. I decide it’s better if I don’t look.
After I calm down, I realise our first mystery is still a mystery.
“Az – that means…”
“We’re still missing a body,” he finishes for me.
“Morty!” I shout.
The skeleton reappears in the doorway. It’s hard to tell on a skull, but I think she actually looks sheepish.
“Si?”
“Did you take this order for Mr. Callar?”
I hand her the sheet.
“Ah, si!” she says. “He called this morning. His voice was strange. I thought maybe he was not human. But he said he was.”
“You didn’t think to mention that to Az before he went out?”
“I did not,” she says, simply. “Should I have?”
“Well, the coffin is here, but it’s empty. And Az swears it was full when he picked it up an hour ago.”
“That is odd,” she says. “The body is gone? Do you think someone ate it?”
That had not occurred to me.
“What is it with you guys and eating people?” I ask.
“It’s not possible,” says Azrael. “I was with it almost the entire time. And none of us eat bodies. Not even on All Hallows’ Eve.”
Mostly, I think I’m OK with living with Others. Now and again, I am not. In this moment, as I do a quick mental check to decide if one of my employees could have eaten one of my customers, I definitely am not.
“OK,” I say. “We need to do a check of the whole building. Make sure there’s nothing here that shouldn’t be.”
“If I may,” Azrael says, “Why not divide our efforts? Santa Muerte can handle checking the house. Why don’t you and I go back to the pickup address and see if we can find anyone?”
“That is fine with me,” says Morty. “What am I looking for?”
“Something about the weight of a body,” I answer.
Azrael nods in agreement.
“OK!” Morty says cheerfully, as if we’ve just asked her to keep an eye out for a lost toy.
“Ok, then, I guess,” I say. “Let’s go see if the real ‘Mr. Callar’ is home.”
I grab my car keys from the sideboard and pull my jacket off the hook on the way out the door. Azrael and I are almost at the front gate when I hear the growl. Low and threatening. To our right, a hulking, shaggy beast about the size of a small bull steps from the shadows.
The huge dog’s green fur stands on end - the same fur that would easily identify it, even I didn’t already know that shape like the back of my hand.
“Seòras!” I shout, relieved. “What are you doing?”
“What is that?” our resident cù-sìth asks, the growl underlying his voice.
I open my hands, looking for the ‘that’ he means.
“What?” I ask, starting to feel a little uncomfortable.
“That,” he repeats, gesturing with his head.
I look where he’s pointing. There’s only one ‘thing’ there.
“What do you mean?” I ask him. “That’s Az!”
Seòras fixes Azrael with a black stare, teeth bared. I’m instantly 13 years old again, looking into Benji’s eyes, seeing the guard dog that saved my life.
“Harmony, come to me,” he says, slowly, deliberately. “That is not Azrael.”
“What?” I ask, confused. I wait for Azrael to explain that of course it’s him. But when he finally does speak, it’s not an angel’s voice I hear. It’s not the voice of the Other who has become one of my closest friends; the angel I’ve sat up half the night drinking wine and laughing with.
The voice is dark and nasal and makes my skin crawl.
“Baaaaaad doggy.”
My stomach flips and I fight the urge to throw up. My heart pounds in my chest. And I’m suddenly horribly, acutely aware of the thing I didn’t pick up on the way out – my gun.
I turn my head to look as I step away from not-Azrael. His face contorts into a hideous leer, mouth opening to show a jagged mess of fangs where his teeth should have been. He reaches for me. He’s quick – so quick.
Thank the Void, so is Seòras.
His great jaws clamp down on the thing’s arm, pulling it away. Its fingers still brush my neck. They’re cold. Like the dead.
It howls in pain and its disguise falters. What’s underneath is something like a cross between a goblin and an elf, but its eyes – its eyes are pure malice.
Seòras howls in pain, and I see that, with its other hand, the thing that isn’t Azrael has stabbed him with… Void, with its other hand. Its nails are like spikes, dripping in Seòras’ blood. He whines, but bites down harder. I’m still trying to get my bearings when it raises its arm to strike him again … but it never comes down.
A pair of bony hands holds it in place. Despite the lack of actual muscle, Morty is deceptively strong. With one arm each, my friends wrestle with my would-be kidnapper. It looks at me, hungry, disappointed, amused – it’s hard to tell.
I sprint for the house. I make it to the steps, but I’m in such a hurry I don’t quite get enough of my foot on the second step. My toes slip off and I feel a stab of pain as they bend back too far. I fall, hard, banging both shins. I barely feel it through the adrenaline, just a throbbing in my foot.
I look back to see Morty has wrapped herself around the thing’s upper body, encasing its neck and face with her skeletal limbs. Seòras has released its arm and is snarling, biting at the thing. It uses its wounded arm to fend him off, while struggling furiously to free itself from Morty.
It finally gets a purchase on her head, and in one move, throws her back at the house, into the wall. There is a sickening crunch as bones break on impact. She lands in a heap and doesn’t move.
With a shudder, I pull myself up, through the open door and limp into the front room. My whole body is shaking as I open the drawer. I can barely even flick the safety off. I hear the sounds of the struggle. My friend, fighting for my life – and his own.
I will not lose him. Not again.
I hear an agonized whimper, and then nothing.
Damn it! I hobble towards the door, turn the corner into the hall and walk straight into it. Its hideous, jagged grin is smeared with blood.
I instinctively step back, putting my hands up to defend myself, and my bad foot gives way. I fall, landing hard on my ass. The jolt of pain almost makes me drop my gun.
Almost.
Trembling, I point it at the thing pretending to be my friend.
It looks at me with what I guess is amusement.
“You thiiiiiink you can hurrrrrrt meeeeee?” it sneers, cracking that grotesque, toothy smil
e. “I ammmmmm not humaaaaaaan.”
That voice. Void, it’s terrifying.
I point the gun squarely at its chest. That’s what Dad taught me after that monster broke into Lucy’s house; aim for the biggest target.
“I don’t know what you are,” I say, “but I do know there are some things that even powerful Others just don’t like. Silver. And wax. So a friend of mine gave me these bullets, see?”
I display the gun, hoping I sound a lot more confident than I actually am.
“Silver, with a wax core. Want to see if these’ll hurt you, you ugly bastard?”
The thing’s face changes from amused to angry. Somehow, it’s even scarier.
“Hmph,” it snorts out air in a derisory laugh. It looks over its shoulder, back out the door.
“Your friends won’t alwayyyyyys be heeeeeere…”
I’m about to squeeze the trigger when a clunk from behind me makes me snap my head around. Nothing there. When I look back, it’s gone. Without a sound.
It takes me a minute to get my wits together. When I stop shaking enough to stand up, I make it back to the door, constantly scanning around, waiting for the thing to reappear. Seòras is down. He has a huge, bleeding wound in his hip and another at the back of his neck. I think he’s conscious. Morty still isn’t moving.
I help Seòras into the house and bandage his wounds as best I can with my basic medical knowledge. Paradise Lot hospital tell me to sit tight and wait for help, when I call. Then I run back outside, carefully lift Morty and bring her in. As I thought, several bones are cracked. Thankfully, not her skull. As I understand it, that would be a problem. I lay her out in one of the coffins – the oddity of that strikes me, briefly.
I lock all the doors and try not to think about that thing coming back.
Seòras lifts his head – his eyes are faded, weak.
“What was that?” I ask him.
“A fae,” he says, quietly. “Samhain is their night.”
“What’s Samhain?”
“It’s what Halloween was called before, when there was something to be scared of. On Samhain, the fae kidnap the unwary, the weak and the orphaned. That’s why children disguised themselves as monsters – to hide from the fae,” he explains.
Shit.
“What are they?” I ask.
“Kin to the fairies, but evil.” He takes a deep, wheezy breath. “They play with your mind; drive you insane with fear, or jealousy, or whatever. Then they kill you.”
Knowing what I just escaped is not making me feel less terrified.
“How did it change the way it looked?” I ask. “Was it using magic? Burning time?”
“Aye. The fae are very long-lived. A glamour like that is easy for them. Barely dents its life.”
Seòras grunts and closes his eyes, wincing at wave of pain. I hear a distant siren; the ambulance. I need to keep him awake. I’ve seen a lot of medical dramas and I know I need to keep him awake.
“Seòras? How come you can see through the disguise?”
“I can’t,” he says quietly, eyes fluttering. “I could smell the bastard. That’s what my people do on Samhain – warn locals about the fae.
“‘Seek shelter when the cù-sìth howl thrice.’”
The siren’s getting closer, but Seòras is fading. His last words were barely audible. I’m desperately trying to think of something, anything I can do.
And then I remember.
“Azrael!” I gasp. “Seòras, could the fae hurt an angel? Could it hurt Azrael?”
His answer is quiet, barely more than a breath – but I’m certain it’s “yes”.
“Oh no. Not Az. Please not Az!” I beg of nobody, because there are no gods left to beg.
I’m 35 years old. It’s Halloween. Two of my closest friends are seriously hurt and one is missing. Everything hurts and I can’t stop shaking. Something tried to kidnap me – again. And I feel exactly like that terrified, vulnerable, 13-year-old girl, wishing Mom and Dad were here to protect me. But nobody’s coming to save me. I’m an orphan.
We all are.
I stare out the window, willing the lights of the ambulance to appear. But all I can see is the dark. And twenty-two years later, I finally know.
I know what’s in the dark.
And that makes it so much worse.
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Paradise Lot
Presents
“The Curious Case of the Bone Flute Troll”
by
R.E. Vance
Prologue
Last night—
“Dig, dig, dig... digs alls through the night,” the troll sings to himself as he shovels massive mounds of dirt with his powerful hands. “Dig, dig, dig... digs until first dayslight.” With one more handful of dirt thrown aside, he unearths the coffin that cuddles a dead body within its wooden embrace.
He squats and knocks on the lid. “Oak,” he says, putting both his hands into the hole, and opens the casket. The smell of putrid, rotting human flesh meets him. He takes in a deep breath, savoring its enticing aroma. “Good,” he murmurs.
He considers eating the body but knows he should not. It is not allowed. Not in this GoneGod world. It is... What was the word his caseworker said? Ill-eagle. He’s not sure what a sick eagle has to do with it but accepts that eating the dead is one of the many, many things he must not do.
Careful, he selects one of the corpse’s legs and pops it free from its decaying body. It comes off with almost no effort. He looks at the leg that still wears a black shoe and faded pants, and wonders why humans insist on burying their dead fully clothed. After all, you’re not born with clothes, so why should you die with them? It just doesn’t make sense!
Oh, by the GoneGods he wishes he was smarter. Then maybe he’d be able to make sense of it all. Everything here is so different. So confusing, and as it stands, he is often unsure what’s good and what’s bad. All he really knows is what he is told, and what he is told doesn’t nearly cover everything that confuses him.
He pulls off the shoe and rips off the pants’ leg. He looks at the appetizing flesh of the leg, now bare, and licks his lips. Then with a heavy, disappointed sigh, he strips the rotting flesh off the bone and throws the lump of distracting muscle and tendon, sinew and skin, back into the casket. Clean, the bone is a little more than a foot in length. The perfect size.
Now that he has what he’s come for, he refills the hole with dirt and burns a minute or two of time to make the grass grow over the spot he disturbed.
He burns more time to make the earth look undisturbed. Then another couple minutes to hide his footprints. He knows he has limited time and that when he burns it, he is closer to death, but he’s not sure what death is or why he should be afraid of it. It sounds like sleeping, except with this kind of sleep, you never wake.
You just sleep.
Forever.
Before the gods left, no one slept forever. Either never died or when you did, your soul goes somewhere else like Heaven or Hell.
But with the gods gone, no one lives forever and, as for your soul, it goes nowhere.
He once asked his caseworker about that, and she said that things were what they were, and we all had to make the best out of a bad situation.
No one should sleep forever. At least, that’s what the troll thinks. And so the troll digs up dead bodies to do exactly what his caseworker told him to do: make the best out of a bad situation.
He looks at the tombstone and sounds out the name written on it: “Jane Doe.” That’s not her real name. He knows this because his caseworker told him so. Jane and John Doe are the names given to those whose real names are lost.
But the troll knows their real names. Well, that’s not exactly true, but he does know how to find out. And that’s exactly what he plans on doing.
He packs the bone in an old canvas bag and looks at the sky. Three more hours until the sun rise
s. If he hurries, he can dig up six more graves before the sun comes up and turns him to stone—not that the sun does that anymore. At least, that’s what his caseworker told him. Still, once-upon-a-time the sun did turn trolls to stone and it might again, and this troll is smart enough to not take chances.
He lumbers over to the next grave and starts to dig. “Dig, dig, dig... digs alls through the night,” he sings. “Dig, dig, dig... digs until first dayslight.”
This morning—
Officer Steve Gruff looks in his closet. He’s unsure which uniform to wear today. Today is a normal Monday. A day filled with typical Other drama, the occasional mis-burnt bit of time and human complaints. A day when his fellow officers drag themselves into the precinct after a long weekend of their chosen debauchery.
Usually on Mondays he wears his Dick Tracy uniform, complete with 1950s vernacular. It’s a high-energy uniform and one that gets a smile or two from his fellow officers. But he’s not in the best of moods and doesn’t know if he can do Dick Tracy today, so he puts the double-breasted, zoot suit jacket and wide-brimmed hat back in his closet and examines his choices one more time. He could put on his Loose Cannon costume, complete with leather jacket and toothpick. That’s the persona he wears when he’s determined to get the bad guy. But there’s no bad guy to get, so Loose Cannon isn’t the way to go.
Sherlock? If so, which version? Classic Sherlock? Old Sherlock? Benedict Cumberbatch or Robert Downy Jr.? Too many nuances for a Monday, so Officer Steve dismisses his London Fog double-breasted trench coat and wood pipe.
OK—not Sherlock. Then who? Miami Vice? Canadian Mountie? Paranormal Detective à la Agent Mulder or, perhaps, Scully?
RoboCop?
In the end, he decides on his go-to uniform—the one costume that never fails him.
Why go for anything else? After all, today is going to be a typical Monday.
↔↔↔
“Hey, Columbo,” a voice brays.