Bill of the Dead (Book 2): Everyday Horrors

by Gualtieri, Rick

  “My DNA would say otherwise. Besides, at no point did anyone ask if I’d come back from the dead in possession of another person’s body. So technically I didn’t have to lie.”

  “Yeah, but what if she ... what if we find a way to bring her...”

  It was a thought I’d toyed with but hadn’t dared to give much credence to. We’d already pulled off the impossible, bringing one friend back from the beyond. I had a feeling fate owed us dick-all going forward with regards to doing it again.

  “If we do, we do,” Tom replied, as if he couldn’t have cared less. “I’ll cross that bridge when it happens. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, I always say. Besides, better for me to have it than for it to sit around collecting interest for some fucking bank. You’re with me right, Glen?”

  Glen raised a portion of his gelatinous body in what I guessed was an indifferent shrug, before going back to ignoring us in favor of the TV. Smart blob.

  Tom sort of did have a point, but in his own twisted way, which I understood far too well. “Just be careful, man. If you don’t keep a low profile, someone is going to notice, like her family or...”

  Tom’s eyes opened wide but not with fear. He had that insane glee about him he seemed to only get when he was thinking of doing something cataclysmically stupid. “That’s a great idea! I should call her mom. Maybe I can get birthday and Christmas gifts out of the deal.”

  “That’s not what I...”

  He interrupted me mid-admonishment to double over, holding his stomach. “Ugh!”

  “That’s karma.”

  “No, dude,” he replied. “That’s dinner not agreeing with me. Hey, you don’t happen to know if Sheila was lactose intolerant or anything like that?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Oh well, then I shall suffer in silence until the god of epic shits calls upon me to make a sacrifice unto his porcelain altar.” He turned and started back toward his room.

  “Going to bed?”

  “In a bit,” he said. “First, I have some important work to do.”

  “Define important work.”

  “There’s an eBay auction I’ve had my eye on, and I want to make sure no fuckers outbid me. Christmas is only a few months away and I know a little girl whose room could use some Thundercats.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Sleep was a long time coming and not just because being a vampire made me naturally nocturnal. All at once, it seemed the moving parts of my life were spiraling out of control. Just a few weeks ago, everything had been so normal. I’d been so normal. Now I had no heartbeat, my sorta maybe girlfriend was a witch, and I was fighting prehistoric leprechauns in my spare time.

  Yet, amidst all of that mental baggage, I found my thoughts, oddly enough, turning toward Gan. Not in a fond way, mind you, and certainly not in a jacking off to way. No. She was still at the top of my shit list. Worst of all, she’d absconded with Ed for purposes that I would’ve bet my arms, legs, and even balls, were nefarious. With her the likely party behind these reestablished treaties – because who else would even know to do so – and with Ed the only neo-vamp capable of siring new ones, I could only guess her plans called for torturing him until he made her an army of minions.

  Then there had been the disturbing thing she’d said about a great destiny awaiting me – that fate was not as finished with my ass as I hoped. Well, okay, almost everything she said was disturbing in some form but, with magic now back, that had been extra freaky. Yes, it was possible she’d been doing nothing more than affirming her insane love for me, but it worried me nevertheless – especially now that the weirdness seemed to be ratcheting up again.

  I couldn’t help but have a sense of foreboding for the future as I finally drifted off to a fitful sleep.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Come the morning, I was able to shake off some of that baggage and focus instead on a bit of work. The cash Sally had bequeathed me from Village Coven’s old funds had been pretty sweet, more than enough to buy me some nice things and make a few solid investments. But it wasn’t quite inheriting the Getty fortune. Doing some light consulting helped keep the coffers full. Also, it was nice to not be tied to a 9 to 5 workday.

  Last time shit had hit the fan, I’d tried to juggle my commitments to my job with stopping the apocalypse – which had resulted in a global supernatural war, along with the added insult of being fired.

  I was about two hours into updating a client’s database architecture – not the most scintillating assignment I’d ever seen – when the downstairs bell buzzed. Almost immediately, I tensed up. Lately, unexpected company only served to remind me of the two neo-vamp goons who’d stormed into my place and beat the crap out of me – effectively kicking off everything that had followed.

  Fortunately, those assholes were dead and most of the new assholes in my life didn’t have my address, yet.

  If anything, it was probably for Tom. I wouldn’t doubt that the jackass had sprung for overnight shipping with his ill-gotten gains, likely for some useless piece of shit.

  I got up and hit the intercom button, expecting to hear that I needed to sign for something. “Hello?”

  “Bill?” a female voice replied.

  “Yeah?”

  “Let me in please. It’s Kara.”

  Kara?! As in Ed’s fiancée? Oh shit!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The cat was already out of the bag. She knew I was home. Why hadn’t I ignored the doorbell in favor of focusing on my work? I mean, it’s not like being paid wasn’t a valid excuse.

  I probably should have feigned illness or maybe answered back with, “no habla ingles,” but instead I panicked and hit the buzzer to let her in, backing away from it in horror a moment later.

  The truth was, Kara had been calling ... a lot. Most times I’d let it go to voicemail. The few times I’d answered, however, I’d been super vague – always lying about being on the way out so I couldn’t talk, with Ed either perpetually busy or always in the can.

  At first, I’d fed her some bullshit about him losing his phone. Then I’d told her he’d decided to stay out here a few weeks longer to help me with a contract. After that, it had been a string of minor bad luck – food poisoning and a late summer cold.

  At first, she seemed to accept it all with few concerns. But fast forward a couple of weeks and the excuses were starting to wear thin. It was one thing for him to miss the occasional call from his fiancée, quite another for him to blow her off completely for three weeks running.

  Truth be told, I’d been considering using the nuclear option of telling her that Ed had met someone else and they’d run off together. I mean, technically that wasn’t entirely untrue. It was just leaving out that he hadn’t been given much say in the running off part. Yeah, that would’ve been a total dick move, but it somehow seemed kinder than telling her that her husband to be was, in fact, no longer human.

  And I had a feeling that was going to be an issue. Kara knew about vamps, had even been one for a short while in the days before the magic got turned off. The thing was, despite her being okay with her undeadness at the time, she’d since soured on those days – quite a bit as a matter of fact.

  Had she been ignorant of the paranormal, this would’ve been a lot easier. But with her in the know, explaining Ed’s predicament was going to require some dancing around on my part.

  My foot brushed against something and I looked down, noticing the pile of matted fur on the floor. Shit! Forget mere dancing, I’d need Patrick Swayze level moves to get through this if the first thing she saw was Glen’s dog suit.

  Picking it up – eww, freshly washed or not, it was still gross – I carried it over to Glen’s bedroom by my fingertips, opened the door, and tossed it in.

  Okay, that was one hurdle crossed. Normal people typically didn’t keep things like that lying around. Now to just make sure she didn’t look in ... oh crap! The refrigerator.

  I had at least three quarts of pig blood on the top shelf, and t
here was little chance of disguising it as nothing more than tomato juice.

  My ears picked up the sound of footsteps walking up the stairs. Only another floor or two to go. Okay, I could do this. I raced to the kitchen nook and rearranged things in the fridge as best I could. Thank goodness Tom had picked up takeout last night, so I was able to stack his crap in front of mine.

  That done, I took one last look around. It wasn’t the neatest apartment on the planet but, unlike Christy’s place, it didn’t scream, “Hey, supernatural creatures on the premises!” I turned back toward the door, noting there was nothing in sight that might ... fuck!

  Tom had left his freaking sword hanging on the coat hook. Jesus Christ! That thing was like seven hundred years old. You’d think he’d maybe know to not hang it up like some half-assed umbrella.

  There came a knock at the door.

  Okay. No time to hide it, but that was fine. It was just a sword. Almost every gamer had at least one or two these days. Hell, I had a copy of Frostmourne still hanging on my bedroom wall.

  All right. All’s normal here, I told myself. All I had to do was play stupid with regards to where Ed was. If she pressed the issue, I’d ... I had no idea.

  Screw it. When in doubt, go with improv. I pulled the door open and plastered a fake-ass smile on my face. “Kara! What a surprise. What brings you back to the east coast?”

  She was in her early twenties, just a bit shy of the age I’d been when I’d first gotten indoctrinated into the ranks of the undead. However, it would’ve been easy to mistake her for being older. She wore her light brown hair much shorter these days and had minimal makeup on. The look complimented the light blouse and long skirt she wore, giving her a bit of a teacher vibe. It was a long way from the wild child she’d been during our time together in Pandora Coven.

  I’d considered her a hottie in my younger hornier days, and the truth was she still had it going on in the looks department, but now there was a much more reserved air about her. I guess being an ex-vamp had affected us all differently in the end. In her case, it had made her grow up a lot more quickly than she might’ve otherwise.

  Still, she and Ed had found common ground in the months following the end of all magic in the world, and an unlikely romance had blossomed – one which had survived the past five years.

  And, now, I realized, as she stepped in and gave me a curt hug, I was likely going to be at least partially responsible for destroying that fairy tale.

  Yay me.

  “Is he here?” she asked without preamble, her eyes hard. Obviously, she’d come prepared for this.

  I was debating the merits of asking, “Is who here?” when the other bedroom door popped open.

  Oh crap!

  In all my panic, I’d overlooked one major detail. Yes, Kara was Ed’s fiancée. But she was also Tom’s little sister and, as far as she was concerned, he was still quite dead.

  Tom, being somewhat less deceased than she assumed, stepped out of his room, wearing the same t-shirt and shorts combo from the night before.

  “I feel like shit,” he grumbled before noticing us both standing there. “Hey, Bill. Oh, hey, sis!”

  And just like that, things became infinitely more complicated.

  STAYFREE-WILL

  “Sorry, can’t talk ... about to blow.”

  Tom clenched his stomach and ran past us into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

  Kara stood there for a moment, shock upon her face, before slapping me on the arm.

  “Ow! What was that for?”

  “Jerk! Does Christy know about this?”

  Christy? “You mean about the fact that...”

  “That you’re back with your ex?”

  What?! “Wait. You know about me and Christy?”

  “Duh! We do talk, you know. I like to hear how my niece is doing.” She stepped further in, continuing to glare daggers at me. “I wasn’t sure what I’d find here, but this...”

  “There isn’t any this,” I replied, holding up my fingers in quotes.

  “So you’re saying you’re not back together? That you just so happen to be casually shacking up?”

  “We’re not shacking up. He, I mean she, needed a place to stay. That’s all. We’re done. There’s nothing going on here.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe you?”

  “You just saw her step out of that bedroom, not mine, correct?”

  That was impeccable logic even for an angry woman, at least enough so that she stopped shouting at me for the moment. However, then, just as I thought reason might’ve taken hold, allowing us to discuss this in a rational way – one that might give me a chance to come up with a suitable lie for Ed’s disappearance – her eyes opened wide.

  “What? Do I have something in my teeth?”

  She raised a hand to her mouth, as if unwilling to say what was on her mind, before finally asking, “Is he in there?”

  “He?”

  “Ed!”

  “Huh? Why would Ed be in there?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Bill. I know they were close at one point. Hell, he even ran that damned company of hers for a while.”

  “Um, yeah. That’s because we all thought she was dead at the time.”

  “So you’re telling me that if I go in there, I won’t find my ... my ... Eddie bear?”

  Eddie bear? Oh God. Don’t laugh. Do not laugh, Bill. Now is not the time.

  Too late. I couldn’t help the grin that broke out on my face.

  “This isn’t funny!”

  “Um, actually, it kind of is.” I quickly held up a hand. “But no. Ed’s not in there. I swear. Seriously! You’re free to look.”

  “Fine. Maybe I will.”

  She stepped to the door, hesitating for a moment as if waiting for me to admit I was bluffing, then flung it wide open – revealing nothing except for the fact that her brother, who she didn’t know was her brother, was every bit the slob he’d always been.

  “See? No Ed.”

  She turned back toward me. “Is he here?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Um...” Come on, convincing lie, where are you?!

  “Is he okay?”

  “W-why wouldn’t he be?”

  “I’m not an idiot, Bill. Do you think I didn’t notice that he came to visit you right around when things started getting weird again?”

  “Oh, you noticed that?”

  “I watch the news. People are saying the Strange Days are back.”

  “So I’ve heard. But you know reporters. They love their sensational headlines.”

  She stared hard at me, as if trying to discern if I was simply playing stupid, which I most certainly was. I swear, I really needed to invest in a poker face one of these days. Her glare intensified and I knew I was moments away from cracking. Goddamn, I was such a wuss. “Listen, maybe he ... stepped out for...”

  “I swear to God,” she said, “if you know something and you’re not telling me...”

  “Oh shit! What the fuck?!”

  Saved by the bell.

  We both turned toward the bathroom, where the cry had come from. What the hell was that idiot doing now?

  “Fuck me! Get in here, Bill!”

  What the?

  “No! On second thought, stay out there. You don’t want to see this.”

  “Is she okay?” Kara asked, concern overriding her anger at me for the moment.

  “Okay is a very subjective concept.”

  A moment later, the bathroom door opened and Tom peered out, a towel wrapped around his waist. “I need you to do me a favor, man. No questions asked.”

  “Okay. What do you need?”

  “Can you run to the store and buy me some tampons ... or maybe those pad things?”

  “What?!”

  He popped his head back in for a moment before peeking out again. “And maybe some detergent and cleaning supplies while you’re at it. Trust me. This shit is not pretty.
”

  Tampons? Oh! Just fucking great. It figures this would happen while Christy and I were having a spat.

  “Is everything okay in there?” Kara asked.

  Sadly, Tom was too far gone in his pity period party to answer rationally. “Fucking A, dude. Why the fuck did you have to bring me back in a woman’s body?”

  Son of a bitch. And there we were, back to complicated again.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Kara unzipped her purse and walked over to the bathroom door, pulling out a few wrapped objects of the feminine variety. “Here, I always carry a couple extra.”

  “Ugh, no fucking way,” Tom cried.

  “Why? What’s wrong with them?”

  Please don’t say something stupid.

  “I can’t use your stuff. That would be like us ... sharing dildos.”

  So much for that.

  Tom made as if to duck back in, then apparently thought better of it and grabbed Kara’s offering anyway. “Fine. Give me those, but I swear if you tell Dad about this...”

  He slammed the door shut, leaving Kara to turn toward me, looking kind of doe-eyed, not that I could blame her. “Did she hit her head or something?”

  “Let’s go with something.”

  “Goddamn it!” The bathroom door opened again. “I don’t suppose any of you know how these things are supposed to work.”

  “You’re on your own, man,” I said, a moment before realizing my slip of the tongue. “I meant, woman ... since that’s exactly what you are. Besides, aren’t these things ... y’know ... instinctual?”

  Kara turned and gave me a raised eyebrow that suggested she thought me an idiot, probably not far from the truth. Dear god, why couldn’t some fucking Neanderthal hobbits pick that moment to attack? Even better if they managed to kill me.

  “Fuck this noise.” Tom reached out and grabbed Kara by the arm. “You’re elected, but don’t think this means we’re going to start changing in front of each other at the gym or anything.”

  “You don’t go to the gym,” I replied, but he’d already dragged his confused looking sister into the bathroom and slammed the door shut again.