by Tim McGregor
It was ghastly to behold. A puppet of dusty bones sitting upright on the metal table. The skull tilted to one side and the empty eye sockets seemed to stare at something on the floor.
Billie felt the table vibrate under her hands as the energy passed through them. The metal grew frigid against her palms.
The skeleton moved. A series of clicks sounded, as if animated by gears, and the skull rotated slowly and those sightless sockets drew a bead on the young woman. The jawbone fell open.
Sharp as a razor, the terror in her blood was paralysing. Billie felt her tongue turn dry, unable to speak. She felt Gantry at her side.
“Tell us your name,” Gantry said.
The jaw squeaked as it moved, the bone grinding in its dry socket. Billie…. Is it really you?
Her knees became jelly. Gantry drew in and whispered to her. “Hold fast, Billie. Don’t let go.” Then he addressed the deceased. “Are you Frank Riddel?”
Billie, it creeched. Step into the light. I can’t see you.
“He won’t speak to me,” Gantry said. “You have to talk to him.”
Billie shook her head. “I can’t.”
You’re all grown up now, said the dead man. “So much time…”
Billie swallowed hard and forced herself to look at the thing before her. “What did you do to mom?”
The skull dipped. “Don’t ask me that.”
“I have to know,” she said.
“Tell me about you. Are you happy?”
“You took my mom away when I was eight. What do you think?” Her molars gritted together. “Now tell me what you did. You owe me that much.”
“I did something bad, Billie. I can’t undo it.”
“What happened to you? Who buried you in that house?”
The bones rattled, as if the corpse had felt a sudden chill. “She did. The lady of the house. She reached into my chest and crushed my heart with her bare hands.”
“Why?”
“I disappointed her. She promised me so many things. And I let her down.”
The chill from the table crept up Billie’s arms and numbed her hands. She felt her warmth draining out of her. “Why did you take mama away?”
“She wanted her.”
“Who? Evelyn Bourdain?”
The bones flinched. The dead man covered his skull with his bony hands as if to protect himself. “Don’t speak her name. It will only draw her out.”
With her knees buckling and the iciness stinging her hands, she didn’t know how much longer she could keep this up. Billie took a breath. “What did she want with her?”
The bones of Franklin Riddel said nothing. Billie tried again. “What happened that night? When you took mama from me?”
“It all went wrong. She didn’t understand. I tried to convince her but she wouldn’t listen. We fought. That woman had a temper on her.”
“You killed her,” Billie said.
The corpse lowered its head. “I tried to convince her. Mary lashed out. I went too far.”
“What did you do with her?”
“I buried her. In the ruins of a church.”
“What church? I need to know.”
“Come closer. Let me see you.”
“Tell me where you buried her. Please.”
The empty sockets raised up. “It’s so awful here. So cold. Billie, give me your hand.” The skeletal fingers reached out for her. “If only for a moment, let me feel some warmth.”
The finger bones clicked as they stretched out. A fine dust fell from the dry phalanges grinding together. Billie felt her insides churn, nausea coming on quickly.
“Please, Billie. Forgive me.”
Her father’s hand reached for her. Was it too much to ask? She tore her right hand from the table and reached out to him.
“No!”
She felt herself scooped up by powerful hands. She caught a glimpse of Mockler’s face as he pulled her away. Her hands slipped from the metal table with a soft popping sound and the skeleton collapsed in on itself. The bones of Franklin Riddel tumbled from the gurney and clattered across the tiled floor.
Gantry watched the brittle pieces scatter over the room. A fragment of bone knocked against his shoe and he kicked it away. “Cor,” he grumbled.
“Gantry!”
He turned to see the young woman on the floor, cradled in the arms of the detective. Billie was convulsing wildly, her whole frame twisting and jerking.
“What’s happening to her?” Mockler bellowed. The detective was a big man. Powerful, yet he was struggling to keep the woman still as her body quaked in spasms.
Gantry took hold of her head and thumbed open one eyelid. “She’s having some kind of fit.”
“I can see that!” Mockler’s eyes flashed in rage. He snatched the Englishman by the collar and shook him. “How do we help her?”
“This is new, mate. I don’t have a clue.”
“Fucking useless!” Mockler hurled him across the floor and gathered up the woman again. The seizure hit harder and he struggled to keep her still. “Easy, Billie. Easy.”
Gantry cursed but he scurried back. He fumbled something from a pocket. “Open her mouth,” he barked.
“How is that going to help?” Mockler fumed, but he forced open Billie’s jaw all the same.
Gantry took his wallet and jammed it between Billie’s teeth. “We need to keep her from biting her tongue off.”
True to form, Mockler released her jaw and Billie chomped hard into the leather. “There’s gotta be something we can do.”
“I’m out of tricks. I’m sorry, Mockler.”
The detective seethed harder but when he looked Gantry in the eye, he could see that the man was earnest.
“Just hold her still like that, so she doesn’t bash her head on something,” Gantry said. “She’ll just have to ride it out.”
Mockler pulled her tighter into himself but he could already feel the woman’s tremors losing strength. He fired Gantry the most hateful look he could muster. “If anything happens to her, I will tear you into pieces and feed you to the dogs.”
Gantry swallowed, believing every word.
Chapter 19
LARS CRANSTON DID NOT have a lot of friends. The few that he had were quiet, unsociable types like himself, unlikely to ring him up unannounced. That’s why he jumped when the doorbell rang. The only person he thought it could be was the spooky English dude, back to rummage through his private collection of pulp fiction.
Lars was a trusting sort. The kind that didn’t bother looking through the peephole before opening the door. “Who is it?”
As soon as he turned the latch, the door burst open against his face. He tumbled back as three figures rushed inside and overpowered him. The punch to the nose stung so hard he was unable to open his eyes. He heard the door slam shut, then hands grabbing him and dragging him back up the stairs.
Thrown to the floor, he rolled onto his knees and wiped the tears from his eyes but his vision was blurred. He saw three men in dark clothes.
“What is all this shit?” said one of them.
A second one picked through his collection, flinging the vintage publications across the room. “Old magazines and junk.”
“Like Playboys and shit?”
“Nah,” said the one tossing magazine after magazine into the air. “Not a titty picture in the bunch.”
“Stop!” Lars cried, blinking his eyes to clear his sight. “Please. I have a little money on me. Take it. Just don’t wreck my stuff.”
“Is this shit worth something?” grunted the second man.
“It’s vintage stuff,” begged Lars. “Please.”
“We don’t want your shit, dude. We’re looking for a friend of yours.”
Lars wiped a hand across his eyes. In his blinded state, he had thought the intruders were wearing masks. Leering caricatures in black and white. He could see now that these men were wearing make-up. “What friend?” he whimpered.
“Nasty fucker named G
antry.”
Lars backed away. “I don’t know where he is. I swear.”
All three of the men were wearing old police boots. The kind with steel-toes and hard rubber soles. The kind meant for maximum damage. The first kick walloped his guts and stole his breath. Gasping for air, the vintage pulp collector was unable to even beg for mercy.
It didn’t last long. The invaders trashed the entire place, kicking over every stick of furniture and tossing his collection across the room. Shreds of musty old magazines floated through the air like confetti. One of the men giggled like a buffoon when his companion produced a bottle of lighter fluid and sprayed the accelerant over the mess. He saved the last dregs of the bottle for Lars himself, curled into a ball on the floor.
“If you see that limey fuck, tell him we’re looking for him,” said one man, snatching up one of the magazines.
Lars noted the cover. True Detective, number seventy-three. May 1940. It’s lurid cover was warping under the drizzle of combustible fluid. Lars heard the flick-flick of a cigarette lighter but never saw which of the three had started the fire.
~
Mockler felt unglued from all of reality. Everything he knew to be true and real was collapsing under his feet like rotten floorboards, dropping him into a dark rabbit hole.
The morgue attendant had burst into the room, wondering what all the racket was about. He stammered when he saw the young woman seized in a fit and the bones of the deceased scattered across the room. Gantry covered for them, rattling the attendant with a tale that Billie was an epileptic who went into seizure seeing her father’s remains. Her flailing had knocked the bones about and he apologized as Mockler lifted Billie off her feet and carried her out of the room. The last thing Mockler heard was the attendant barking at Gantry to put out the cigarette he’d just lit.
He didn’t know what to do with Billie. The seizures had stopped and she had passed out. Gantry’s wallet fell from her mouth but Mockler just kept moving, banging out the exit door to the street. He bundled her into his car and drove off.
Fifteen minutes later, he ferried her up the three flights of stairs and set her gently down onto the bed. He eased her out of her jacket, slipped the shoes from her feet and covered her with a blanket. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he brushed the hair from her face and spoke her name. She didn’t respond. Checking her pulse and feeling her brow for fever, he determined that she was simply asleep.
A rattle of dishes sounded from the kitchen, then a scratching sound behind him. He looked but there was nothing there. Billie had mentioned a cat once, but he’d never seen it. Maybe he was imagining things. Considering what he’d witnessed tonight, there was a good chance he was simply losing his mind.
Planting his elbows on his knees, he rubbed his eyes and tried to clear his head. Had he really just witnessed the unconscious woman next to him raise the bones of her dead father? Had the dead man actually spoken to her? How was it possible for someone to have that power? He looked back at Billie. Asleep, she looked guileless and peaceful. An innocent in a very bad world. Did that even exist anymore? Did he really know who she was? He had fallen for Billie, then denied it was happening and then fell harder. They had slept together two nights ago, something he’d thought of a million times before then. He had come to know her in a whole new way and he was hungry to know more. Or he was until he had seen her raise the dead.
Who was she?
And then there was Gantry. Gantry, with whom she was friends with, whom she had defended. He, of all people, had gone along with John Gantry’s screwy trip to the morgue to speak with a man long dead these twenty years. For Billie’s sake he had agreed to an unseen truce with a wanted murder suspect that he’d been chasing for two years.
How the hell did everything get so turned around and mucked up? Insanity, no matter how he cut it, didn’t seem that unlikely after all.
He heard the door open, followed by footsteps in the other room. Gantry materialized in the door, leaning against the jamb.
“Thanks for waiting for me back there, mate.”
“Go to hell,” Mockler said.
“She all right?”
“She’s sleeping.”
“She’ll sleep a good while, I imagine,” Gantry said. “That kind of thing takes it out of you.”
Mockler tore his eyes from the woman in the bed and rolled them over to the abhorrence in the doorway. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t ring your motherfucking neck.”
“You need me, sonny Jim. Our friend there is up to her eyeballs in trouble.”
The detective grumbled under his breath. He knew the English prick was right but his hands still itched for the man’s throat.
Gantry wiped his mouth. “Do you have my wallet? The one she was chomping on?”
“Lost it.” Then with another sneer, he said, “Did it have your I.D. in it?”
“It had someone’s info.” Gantry leaned over to take a look at Billie. “She’s out like a light, isn’t she?”
Mockler stood up and moved aside. He disliked being this close to the man. “Are you sure she’ll be okay?”
“She might need a day or two.” Gantry looked out the window for a moment. “Her old man mentioned some ruins. Where he killed her mum. Do you know where they might be?”
“No. It could be any place between here and her hometown.” Mockler scratched his chin. “You think he buried the body there.”
“Probably. Hard to tell with a nutter like that though.”
Billie stirred and both men shut up. She rolled onto her side but did not wake.
Gantry piped up. “D’you think if we got a map, we could find this place?”
The detective turned the idea over in his mind but didn’t answer. That’s when he knew he was going batshit crazy; contemplating the idea of working with John Gantry.
~
The service entrance to the Murder House lay on the east side of the building. It was here that servants and delivery men had once passed to and fro when the house was alive and bustling with life. A strip of yellow police tape stretched across it now, barring the public from its rotting interior. It was pulled away by the two men as they passed inside.
The flashlights came on as they picked their way over the debris-strewn floor. Owen passed his light over the peeling walls and crumbling frescoes painted on the ceiling of the great house. “She’s not gonna be happy about this,” he said.
“She’ll know what to do,” said Justin.
“Or she’ll tear our heads off,” Owen griped. “Literally.”
To his credit, Owen was aware enough to be scared. The woman, although beguiling and fascinating, could flip between hot and cold in an instant and he didn’t want to witness that again. It had been almost three weeks since he and Justin had encountered the woman and nothing had been the same ever since. Anything before that time seemed vague and hollow, memory a fog bank where his old life was recalled only in haze.
They had been ghost hunters once. Investigators of the paranormal and the unexplained. They filmed and produced their own web series called Paranormal Trackers. They were obsessed with finding proof that another world existed beyond this one, that death was not the end and that contact with the other side was possible. It seemed almost funny now, when he thought about their old obsession to uncover proof of the paranormal. They had it in spades now, here in this house, under the tutelage of a woman who had been dead lo these past eighty years.
The house was decrepit with filth and rot, utterly dark save for the twin beams of the flashlights. Justin came to a stop and called out. “We’re here!”
His voice bounced over the walls and echoed through the vast chambers of the dark house. Then a light appeared, further down the corridor. Justin marched for it. Owen followed but then stopped.
“Do you hear that?”
Justin stopped. “Hear what?”
A sound filtered down from the room ahead where the light emanated. Music. An old jazz number from another er
a. The sound of it was muffled and tinny, as if amplified through a hollow tube.
“Come on,” Justin growled impatiently.
They went on, moving toward the light in the darkness. When they came to the threshold of another chamber, Owen’s breath was stolen at what he saw. Gone were the peeling walls and warped floor and noxious smell of decay. They stood before a grand ballroom, brilliant with light and festooned with fresh flowers. Twin chandeliers twinkled overhead from the vaulted ceiling, casting light over the paintings on the wall and a floor of polished granite. Sideboards were aligned down two sides of the ballroom, all overflowing with platters of food and bottles of wine. Crystal glassware was set up before buckets of ice-chilled champagne.
A small stage held command at the far end. Chairs and music stands were set up, instruments left out and waiting as if the band had stepped away for a moment. The music lingering through the room came from an old Victrola near the stage. A thick wax platter spun on the crank-driven turntable, the sound amplified through the wooden horn that bloomed from the deck of the Victrola.
Owen hesitated outside the door. Justin entered the room and hissed at his colleague to follow. Owen stepped over the threshold and a heady feeling of glee tickled his belly. The air was fragrant with the smell of lilacs and the food on the boards. The fire in the immense hearth warmed his skin. It was like being high, he thought. Only better. Magic.
The song whirling on the Victrola ended in a crackling hiss as the needle bumped against the final groove. Both men turned to see the shapely figure of a woman bent over the phonograph. Their jaws fell open and a heady combination of lust and wonder flashed hot in their eyes.
“This music,” said the woman without turning around. She moved the needle and lifted the wax disc from the table. “It becomes cloying after a while. I am so tired of hearing them all.”
The men shared a nervous glance before looking back to the woman. Justin cleared his throat.
“Well,” the woman said. “Is she dead?”
“No.”
“Pity.” Evelyn Bourdain spun about with a liquid grace. The jewels of her dress caught the light from the chandelier, dazzling the two scruffy men before her. Her dress was emerald in colour, straight cut with bare arms and the waistline cinched just below her hips. Her dark hair was bobbed short and tucked beneath a headband of diamonds. “Where is she?”