A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  The man’s mouth dropped open as he recognized Liath.

  “You!” he cried, releasing the knife handle and stumbling back. “It’s really you!”

  He turned and ran and Liath would have given chase but for Toby, who was down on his knees, groaning with pain and clutching his bloody flank.

  And then the matter of Liath’s pierced forearm. Why didn’t it hurt more?

  Never mind that now. He turned to Toby. “We need to be getting you to a hospital.”

  “No! Miss Basemore can fix me.”

  “Well, then, what about Timbers? How do you think we’ll get both you and him all the way to Harlem?”

  Toby was staring at Timbers. “I don’t think he’ll be much use to you in Harlem or anywhere else.”

  Liath turned and saw the weasel’s blank staring eyes.

  “But I hit him only once!”

  “That was all it took, I guess.”

  “Do I not know me own strength then?” Liath looked at his pierced arm. “And why aren’t I bleeding?”

  Toby struggled to rise and Liath helped him to his feet.

  “Revenants are terribly strong. And they don’t bleed.”

  Liath grabbed the knife handle and pulled the blade free. He felt only mild discomfort, and not a drop of his blood had spilled.

  “You promised to keep him safe!” Rasheeda said through her teeth as she stitched up Toby’s flank.

  The young man lay on his side on the resurrection table while she worked on him. Scar’s knife had pierced the skin and underlying fatty layer—lots of bleeding but not deep enough to damage any organs.

  “Well, he’s safe enough now, isn’t he?” Liath said.

  “I’m fine,” said Toby. He winced as Rasheeda jabbed a curved sewing needle through the skin at the edge of his wound, but otherwise seemed to be enjoying his boss’s hands on him.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “He’s young,” Liath said. “Feed him a steak and he’ll be good as new in two shakes.” Liath raised his arm. “Meself, on the other hand . . .”

  He’d rolled his shirtsleeve up to the elbow and was inspecting his own knife wound, such as it was. The edges had sealed over, leaving two opposing seams on the upper and lower surfaces of his forearm.

  “I told you,” Toby said. “Revenants don’t bleed.”

  “How can you bleed?” Rasheeda said. “You have no blood.”

  “No blood . . .” Liath stared at his arm. “How is that possible?”

  He’d refolded Scar’s automatic knife down on Bleecker Street. Now he removed it from his pocket, found the button on the fancy ivory handle, and pressed it. The blade snapped out, bright and fine-edged. He pressed the point against the belly of his forearm. It felt dull rather than sharp. He pressed harder until it pierced the skin, causing only mild discomfort. He dragged the point toward his elbow, opening a four-inch gash that revealed the layers of the skin and the yellow fat beneath, but not a drop of blood.

  “Like cutting open a dead man.”

  He looked up to find Toby and Rasheeda staring at him.

  “Well?” she said.

  “But I’m not dead. I walk, I talk. I may not be knowing a lot about science, but I know that blood powers the muscles and the brain. Cut a man’s throat and he bleeds to death. If I’ve no blood, what’s powering me muscles?”

  Rasheeda frowned. “That has long puzzled me. The ancient Veda never explained it. It calls revenants khokhala and—”

  “What’s that mean?”

  She concentrated on knotting the thread of her latest stitch. “Hollow.”

  Liath looked at his bloodless wound, already healing. “Well, I guess I’m that. Hollow of blood anyways. What else am I hollow of now? A soul, perhaps?”

  She looked up at him. “Some philosophers say there’s no such thing as a soul.”

  “They’ll be heathens, then.”

  “Irrelevant. Lots of ‘heathens,’ as you say, believe in souls. I was raised a Hindu, and Hindus believe in souls.”

  “You say that like you no longer believe.”

  She shrugged. “When you’ve resurrected as many of the dead as I have, it gives you cause to wonder. Consider: If your soul truly traveled on after your murder, then how can you be alive again and still be you?”

  “Who else would I be?”

  “I don’t know. That German sailor’s life force went into you—why aren’t you speaking German and yearning for the sea?”

  “That so-called life force doesn’t pump blood through me veins.”

  “That’s because your heart’s not beating.”

  “What?”

  He pressed his hand against his chest and felt nothing. He pressed harder—still nothing. He’d not noticed.

  “Dear God!”

  “You don’t need to breathe, either.”

  “But I do.” He drew in a breath and let it out. “See?”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t. I said you don’t need to—except to talk, that is.”

  Liath felt as if the world were pulling away from him.

  Her earlier words came back.

  . . . if your soul truly traveled on after your murder . . .

  “I’ve been robbed of me soul!”

  Toby grimaced as Rasheeda again jabbed the needle through his skin.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she said. “Even if you had a soul, I didn’t send it on. Your murderer did.”

  Hollow . . . no blood, no heartbeat, no breath, no soul, and a hunger for human offal . . . he’d become an unholy thing.

  “You’ve robbed me of an afterlife then! I’ll never get to heaven!”

  She made a clucking noise. “Assuming there’s such a thing as a soul, and assuming there’s such a place as heaven, did you really believe yours would be welcomed there?”

  Liath opened his mouth, then closed it. Good point, but that still didn’t lessen the feeling that he’d lost something of infinite value.

  “What in God’s name am I then?”

  “A khokhala.”

  “Just a word! What allows me to move, to think?”

  “The Veda says a khokhala is animated by Ajñata.”

  “Another heathen word! And what, pray tell, would that mean?”

  She shrugged. “It translates to English as ‘Nameless,’ which I suppose is a way of saying they don’t know.”

  “Well, something is powering me muscles and me brain—such as it is.”

  “My theory is that it comes from the aether—Aristotle’s fifth element.”

  “Well, if you’re calling it ‘aether’ it’s not exactly nameless now, is it.”

  “Well, no . . .”

  For the first time since he’d met her she looked unsure. Liath found he preferred her usual supreme confidence.

  He waved the knife at her. “See, aether or not, something is fueling all your cocoa-holidays—”

  “Khokhalas,” she said.

  “Whatever the name, something is powering us all, and that means you’re running up a terrible bill.”

  She laughed. “It’s not like electricity!”

  “How do you know?” he said, feeling uneasy. “We’re tapped into something. Call it aether or fifth element or ‘nameless’—”

  “Ajñata.”

  “—or whatever you like, but someday the bill is going to come due. What then? What will the price be? And who will be paying? You? Me?”

  She shook her head. “You’re being silly.”

  “Nothing is free, luv. There’s always a balance to be struck. It’s a rule of the world—of the whole universe. Sure as the sun rises tomorrow, that bill’s gonna come due someday, and I’m fearing there’ll be hell to pay when it does.”

  3.

  Under a New Moon

  Rasheeda had been under the impression she’d be meeting with a bereaved widow wishing to arrange a funeral for her husband. With a shock, she recognized the woman as soon as she entered the room, and knew she wasn’t married.r />
  “Madame Louisa?” she said, rising behind her desk. “I don’t understand.”

  Louisa’s smile had a smug twist. “Don’t fuss at your assistant. I played the grieving new widow for him.” She faked a sob as she dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “And rather convincingly, if I do say so myself.”

  Rasheeda hadn’t grown up in the States, so she wasn’t familiar enough with American dialects to know if Louisa’s drawl was real or affected. The lady was dressed fashionably in a long-sleeved, form-fitting dress with a square neckline and a cuirass bodice. One never would have guessed that she ran a high-end bordello.

  “And now I understand even less.”

  Louisa laughed. “Y’all have some wine perhaps?”

  “I keep a bottle of brandy in my desk for some of my more fainthearted clients.”

  “That’ll do, I suppose. Pour us both a taste. You may very well need it before I’m through.”

  Rasheeda did not like the sound of that.

  “Whatever do you mean?” she said as she withdrew two snifters and a bottle of Armagnac from her bottom right drawer.

  Louisa lowered herself into one of the chairs on the far side of the desk.

  “The subject is the servant I hired from you.”

  “Katrina?”

  “Well, yes and no.”

  Rasheeda poured two fingers into Louisa’s glass and only a dollop into her own. “Again, I do not understand.”

  “Of course you do, Miss Basemore. You’re just being coy. Yes, I mean the servant I’m hiring from you, and no, her name ain’t Katrina. It’s Leni Schmidt. She’s the daughter of Otto and Margaretha Schmidt who emigrated from Germany in 1847. Or perhaps I should say, the deceased daughter of Otto and Margaretha Schmidt.”

  Rasheeda hid her shock. She’d feared this day might come. She added another two fingers of brandy to her own glass.

  “Wherever did you acquire such an outlandish idea?” she said, pushing a snifter across the desk.

  Louisa reprised her smug smile as she swirled the brandy under her nose. “Smells like the good stuff.” She tossed it back in one gulp.

  Rasheeda sipped. She didn’t enjoy brandy—didn’t like the burn—but she felt she needed the alcohol right now.

  “VSOP. But you were about to explain . . . ?”

  “Oh, yes. Well, just last week I was researching one of the newer, more affluent patrons of my establishment—I like to make sure they are who they say they are. I keep a file of Leslie’s because that seems to be the best source.”

  Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper . . . more like a magazine, a new copy appeared every Tuesday, and Rasheeda read it herself. It more than lived up to the Illustrated part of its name.

  Vetting her patron? Rasheeda wondered. Or setting him up for blackmail?

  “While I was perusing a back issue, I lay that you’d never guess what I found.”

  “I’m simply dying to know.” Quite the contrary, she was dreading to know.

  “A tragic story about the poor daughter of German immigrants, born soon after their arrival, who was caught in a cross fire between the police and some robbers outside a Harlem bank. A stray bullet pierced the heart of Leni Schmidt, killing her on the spot. Leslie’s printed a picture of the poor girl. Imagine my shock when I recognized my dear Katrina. And then my further shock when I read that the wake was to be held at the Basemore Funeral Home.”

  Rasheeda tossed back her own brandy and, coughing from the burn, began to pour a second.

  Louisa laughed softly. “I knew you’d need that.” She held out her glass. “Don’t forget the guest.”

  When they each had another two fingers’ worth, Rasheeda leaned back.

  “They say every person has a double. You must have seen Katrina’s.”

  “My thought exactly at the moment. Then I remembered the remark of a patron who bedded her.”

  Rasheeda wasn’t surprised, but reacted as if she were. “Bedded? That is not part of her duties.”

  She shrugged. “I dress her in that frilly little French maid outfit for show, but one of my wealthier regulars took a shine to her and offered a pretty penny for an hour alone. I ordered her to do whatever he told her. He returned shortly and was good and angry. He said he could probably expect more response from a corpse. I gave it no further thought. I did try to school her in the French style—you know what that means?”

  Rasheeda nodded. “I’m familiar with the term.”

  “Well, that failed too. She had no, shall we say, head for it. Some women are simply not cut out for the life. But I remembered that patron’s ‘corpse’ remark as I gazed at Leni’s photo, and I began to wonder.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  Louisa stared at her. “Must we continue this charade, Miss Basemore? Katrina, as you call her, doesn’t talk, never sleeps, doesn’t drink, and doesn’t eat—if she’s served a meal she simply pushes the food around on her plate. And now that I’ve been watching her, she doesn’t even breathe. Plus, she has a small round indentation on her left tit, just the size a bullet might make as it pierced through to her heart.”

  Rasheeda quaffed half of her second brandy, then stared straight back. “What is your point?”

  “My point is: when you brought her to me you said she was mute and mentally defective but could follow instructions. You didn’t tell me she was dead.”

  What to say? What to say?

  “She is obviously not dead if she—”

  “She was killed, she was buried in your cemetery, and shortly thereafter you hired her out.” Louisa fixed her with a narrowed gaze. “Somehow, some way, Miss Basemore, you brought her back to life.”

  “Madame Louisa, really—”

  Louisa waved a hand. “Rest easy. I ain’t here to report you to the authorities or blackmail you. We’re both women in business, and as such we must stick together. I’ve come with a proposition: I could use young, attractive women who are like Katrina in all ways except, well . . . they should be able to put Nebuchadnezzar out to grass.”

  Rasheeda gaped at her, perfectly confused.

  Louisa rolled her eyes. “Come on, now, sugar. You know what I mean. They should be sexually responsive—or at least be able to fake it.”

  Rasheeda drummed her fingers on the desk. She could see no way to win this showdown. Louisa had deduced all the important aspects of her resurrections except the how. The how was beyond ratiocination. But the more important how right now was how to play this shrewd woman . . .

  She leaned back and steepled her fingers.

  “Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that your accusations—”

  “I don’t feel I’ve been the least bit accusatory. I prefer to think of them as deductions.”

  “Very well. Let us assume that your deductions are accurate. You must then appreciate that I simply could not supply hirelings to order. I do not choose my clients. The dead must be brought to me, and I must work with what comes through my back door.”

  “I’ve thought of that. But nubile women who have, shall we say, suffered sudden death without disfigurement could be brought to you.”

  Rasheeda nodded. On the surface the plan had its merits, but Louisa was lacking some critical facts.

  “Again, just for the sake of argument, let us stipulate that the timing of these supposed resurrections is critical. Too late and they are barely animate. Too early and they retain a mind of their own and can be quite willful.” As Rasheeda knew all too well these days. “But if reanimated somewhere in the middle, they are docile and obedient without any original thoughts in their heads—like Katrina.”

  Louisa sighed. “The wonderful thing about Katrina is indeed her lack of will. I don’t have to worry about her running off or pilfering the silver or stealing the receipts.”

  “Renascence Staffing personnel are all like that. But I fear one capable of the faux enthusiasm you desire would be lacking in the traits you find so attractive in Katrina.”

  �
��Still . . . I would not be adverse to a trial.”

  Rasheeda saw disaster looming but did not want to antagonize this woman. She knew too much.

  “Continuing in the realm of supposition, perhaps there is a way the process can be modified to meet your needs.”

  Louisa’s smile was genuine this time. “That’d be wonderful. My current crop of girls’re so unreliable, so unprofessional. They tend to drink too much, and some are opium eaters. A few have tried to rob my patrons.” She shook her head sadly. “Good help is so hard to find.” She brightened after finishing her brandy. “But I’m trusting you will solve that for me.”

  Rasheeda showed her to the door and wished her well, while secretly hoping she’d fall out of the pneumatic on her way back downtown.

  But after closing the door, she realized that none of this would matter if that Irish scoundrel didn’t return her sustaining oil in time. Madame Louisa would then see another side of Katrina. One she never dreamed existed.

  Two weeks . . . two weeks from now and it would be too late.

  4.

  Under a Gibbous Moon

  The only way to recall was to relive that night and retrace his steps—at least the steps he remembered.

  So Liath stood outside the door to his rooming house on Fletcher Alley and started walking toward his sister Moira’s place just as he had done that night some three weeks ago. She lived on the far side of the ramp to the half-finished Brooklyn Bridge, an easy trip.

  He wore the same suit, he wore the same boots—although the hollow heel was empty this time—and across his shoulder, instead of fine velvet, he carried a bolt of cheap burlap. The velvet had been for her, as well as the tin of Canadian nutmeg in his pocket.

  The main difference was the moon—it had been high and bright and full that night, shedding its pale light on the docked ships and reflecting off the bridge towers jutting from the East River. Tonight it gave only half the light.

  He walked down the slope to Pearl Street and turned left, just as he’d done then. He continued north toward the ramp. The bridge builders had left space for Pearl Street to run beneath, but it was a dark place. Governor Westinghouse’s grand electrification project hadn’t reached the waterfront yet, and the underpass was a popular spot for low-end harlots to ply their trade. He remembered whistling, thinking of his sister’s kitchen and how she’d fill his bowl when she saw what he’d brought her. No public house in the city could measure up to the simple foods of Meath.