by D V Wolfe
“This is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done with you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Even including the exploding Rawhead?”
“That’s a close second,” Noah said, his face white as he looked at the severed leg on the ground. He stumbled back from it and sat down hard on a headstone. “Do you mind…”
“I’ll get the last one,” I said. I kicked the corpse onto its side and in a few seconds, the last limb was separated from the torso. I heard the sound of puking and I turned to see Noah hunched over, throwing up. I crossed to him. “You ok?”
Noah shook his head. “No, but yeah.”
“That explains it.”
“I mean, no, I’m not ok in this second, but yeah, I will be.” He put a hand to his head. “Do you think I have a concussion?”
I was sure he had a concussion. “Maybe,” I said. “Probably best to keep you awake for a while.” I glanced back at the corpse. “Which is good, because the night’s work isn’t over yet.”
Noah puked again and I looked down at the mess on the ground. It had all fallen on a little garden box in front of the headstone he was sitting on. I ran the penlight over the name carved in the stone. “Sorry Gertrude,” I said to the stone. “The kid didn’t mean any disrespect. You’re welcome by the way. I doubt you would have appreciated being woken up after fifty years and forced to maim and kill. Though, maybe it would have been a nice change. Can’t say for certain, since we only just met.”
“Are you done?” Noah asked.
I patted him on the back. “Yeah. I’ll go pick up before we have company.” I handed him the penlight and the machete. “Take these back to Lucy?”
Noah took them and as he walked away, I realized my mistake. Now I was going to be feeling around for body parts in the dark. My foot was touching the severed torso. I had to start somewhere. I gritted my teeth and bent down to pick it up. The torso was writhing in my arms like a potato sack full of raccoons and I had to squeeze it against me to keep a hold on it.
“Don’t forget to lift with your legs!” Noah called back to me.
“Don’t forget to look down!” I called back as Noah tripped over the first severed arm and stumbled.
It took about twenty minutes to pick up all the pieces and make the cemetery look like we’d never been there. Well, except for the puke on Gertrude’s headstone.
I assumed the witch would be throwing together a bag of tricks and coming after us, so I knew we needed to hurry. Who knows though? Some necro-witches were cowards. One of the reasons that acting through a headless corpse appealed to them. They didn’t have to literally get their hands dirty if they didn’t want to. And I had a feeling this one was a newbie. Everything about it screamed amateur. Still, better to get down the road in case someone in one of the nearby houses heard something. Noah was already in Lucy when I threw the shovel and the last arm into the bed.
I hopped in the cab and turned the engine over. I could feel Noah’s eyes on me as I backed up and turned around, squinting in the dim glow of distant street lights so that I wouldn’t have to turn my headlights on yet. “What?” I finally asked as we cruised past the first block of houses and I flipped my lights on.
“We’re taking the body with us?” Noah asked.
I nodded. “Since the witch is working her hoodoo on that cemetery, the ground is already desecrated. We need to find somewhere else to lay our friend to rest.”
“Goodie,” Noah said. “Two graveyards in one night. You sure know how to party.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I tossed the map into his lap. “Just direct me to the furthest of those other two big cemeteries.”
It took us about twenty-five minutes to get to the other side of Louisville. We coasted into the cemented and line-painted parking lot. Beyond the lot, the cemetery had a single way in and out beyond a pair of iron gates that were padlocked and connected to the iron-spiked fence that enclosed the graveyard.
“Wanna try the other one?” Noah asked.
“Nah,” I said. “Safest to have it buried in the furthest one from the witch. It really only has to be under consecrated ground until the spell breaks, then it’s just a corpse again.
“Well, how are you at lock-picking?” Noah asked, narrowing his eyes at me. “I seem to recall Stacks saying that you sucked at it.
“I don’t suck at it,” I sighed. “It’s just not a resume-grade skill for me.”
Noah shook his head. “I don’t know if tonight is a good night for me to try it for the first time.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We have a finite amount of time before sunrise.” I peered out at the fence. “I think we’ll have to climb it.”
“And what, throw the body parts over first?” Noah asked, staring at the fence. I didn’t say anything and he slowly turned to look at me. “We’re going to ‘shot put’ those legs and arms and that...torso over this six-foot spiked fence?”
I nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
“Fuck,” Noah whispered.
It wasn’t as bad as either of us thought it would be. One of the legs kicked me in the face as I was about to throw it over and one of the hands kept trying to strangle Noah, but we were able to clear the fence with all of them.
“I think it’s going to take both of us to get the torso up and over,” I said, staring at it. It had to weigh over fifty pounds. And worse, it was still wriggling.
“I’m gonna barf on this thing,” Noah said, as we lifted it out of the truck. “How come you got the shoulders and I got stuck with the crotch?”
“Consider it payback for the meatball sandwich earlier,” I said as we carried it to the edge of the fence and began swinging it back and forth to try to get enough momentum to make it up and over.
“One,” I said. “Two...three!” We let go and the torso sailed through the air. It almost cleared the fence, but one of the spikes at the top snagged in what was left of the jeans and left the torso dangling from the top of the fence.
“Shit,” Noah said.
“We’ll have to unsnag it when we climb over,” I said. I grabbed the shovel out of the truck bed and threw it over the fence before turning to Noah. “Want a leg up?”
Noah scurried up the fence, and with me keeping a platform for his feet to rest on, he was able to shove the torso the rest of the way over. It hit the ground with a sickeningly wet sound. He carefully climbed over the spikes and slid down the other side. I followed, but less gracefully and when I made it over the top, I lost my balance and landed ass-first on one of the arms trying to crawl away. I felt the hand trying to dig into my ass and I jumped up.
“Careful,” Noah said. “That’s probably more action than this guy has seen in a while.”
I closed my eyes. “Shit.”
“What?” Noah said.
“His head. We forgot his head.”
I heard Noah sigh. “I’ll get it. I think I’m a better climber anyway.”
I couldn’t argue. “I’ll start looking for a hole.”
Noah muttered something where I distinctly heard the words hole and ‘your head’. Noah braced himself on a headstone near the fence and started climbing.
I squinted around the cemetery. There were decorative lamp posts that gave off soft light along cement walkways between the neat rows of headstones. In the distance, I saw a white tent had been erected. Bingo.
I grabbed the nearest body part, which happened to be the arm I’d fallen on, by the elbow and started across the cemetery. Inside the tent, there was a black rug and three rows of black padded chairs. I looked at the hole next to the tent. The vault was installed and I felt a little guilty as I chucked the arm into it. We would have to fill it in and hope that the time it would take them to empty it, would be long enough for the consecrated ground to break the spell. Rosetta had told me the first time I’d done this that it would depend on how strong the witch was. If she was a newbie and I could find her tomorrow and end her powers, it would break the spell. Tight schedule, but we were kind of used to that
. Not we. Me. Just me. My tight schedule. Noah was going home tomorrow.
“Any luck?” Noah called. I could see him dragging something behind him. I turned and retraced my steps.
“Yeah,” I said as I got closer, motioning over my shoulder. “There’s a fresh grave over by that tent.” I glanced down to see him dragging the ripped garbage bag in one hand and a leg by the sneaker with the other. “Just chuck them into the hole. We’ll have to fill it in. It’ll be a pain in the ass for the funeral home tomorrow, but it should be long enough for the consecrated earth to keep him down until we can take care of the witch and break the spell.”
“Can she…” Noah’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Can she still hear and see us? I mean as the body’s head?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. I think it depends on how strong she is, the range on her spell, and whether or not she loses contact because we’re on consecrated ground. Regardless, best to work fast.”
I moved past Noah, heading back for the other arm and leg and I heard him continue on, dragging the body parts. We got everything into the vault. I made Noah take the head out of the garbage bag before he tossed it in and then using the shovel and our hands we worked to dump all the dirt back into the hole. It took a couple of hours, working as fast as we could.
“How ya feeling?” I asked as I hoisted the shovel back onto my shoulder and we started back towards the gate.
“Ok,” Noah said. “Bushed and I have a massive headache, but ok other than that.”
I could tell he wasn’t being entirely truthful and that he was trying his best not to show how freaked out he was. I suspected he was worried it would make me bring up sending him home on a bus again. My stomach twisted into a guilty knot. That’s what I was going to have to do in a few hours anyway. Drive. Buy the ticket. Boot him out. Rosetta was right. Of course, I would never admit that to her. I bent and made a cradle with my hands to hoist Noah over the top and then threw the shovel over after he’d backed up. I debated keeping the shovel but decided against it. We’d throw it down an alley somewhere between here and the Motel 6. I climbed up and caught my jeans on the top of the fence, ripping the ass out of them as I made it over the top.
“Damn it,” I said as we climbed in the truck and Lucy rumbled to life.
“What?” Noah said. “Are those your favorite jeans or something?”
“No,” I said, watching a car turn onto the street behind us as we made our way back towards the motel. “My ass is cold.”
Noah snorted and looked out the window. “So we’re going back to get the witch now?”
I cut my eyes to him. “Nope. We’ll call it a night. We’ll get a little shut-eye and go after her later this morning.” The guilty knot tightened. I didn’t like lying to the kid. I should have said, ‘I’ll go after her later this morning,’ but I knew that would have started a fight and if this was going to be our last night breathing the same air, I didn’t feel like fighting. Noah helped direct me back to the motel. Traffic was light but I noticed several people heading the same way we were. It was a Thursday and probably these were commuters. I checked my phone and saw it was almost five in the morning. I tried to shake the paranoia again. We parked and stumbled across the lot. I carried the duffle bag of guns with us. The night manager was standing outside having a smoke and the cigarette fell out of his mouth when he saw us. We waved and trudged up the stairs.
“Good thing we’re only staying the one night,” Noah said.
I let Noah have first crack at another shower when we got back into the room. We looked like we’d just risen from the grave ourselves, covered from head to toe in mud and dirt. I stared in the mirror over the outer sink while I listened to Noah drop stuff in the shower. I still wasn’t used to this body. It had been four years and I’d done my best to keep it in the shape I’d gotten it in. I couldn’t help the extra scars. Sorry, whatever your name had been before the body came to me. But I’d kept the shaggy purple hair. I actually was starting to like it. I looked to be late twenties, early thirties. The frame was boyish, and this Empty House was the closest to my original body type that I’d had.
Much better than the curvy gal that had been my first Empty House. I’d attracted a lot of attention in that body and this wasn’t a line of work where attention was helpful. Then there had been the elderly Black man’s body which hadn’t lasted long. This was definitely the best one I’d been assigned. If I could just keep it in one piece long enough to finish... My thoughts slowed. How much longer would that be? I didn’t have time to lose. My final ticket punch was less than five months away.
I needed to find Festus. As my Hell-appointed accountant, he was the only one who could tell me what the soul market was doing and how many I had left to save. I knew Sister Smile and her crew had him. If he was still alive, he was tied up somewhere or, more likely, rotating on a spit over a fire with an apple in his mouth. The carnage in St. Louis, after the big showdown, told me that cannibals weren’t picky if the flesh they ate was human or demon-inhabited. The shower shut off and after a couple of minutes, Noah emerged, fully dressed again with the towel turban on his head.
“You laugh and I’m going to tell Rosetta about what you made me use her hedge clippers for,” he said, pointing a finger at me.
I held up my hands in surrender. “Fair enough.”
We changed guards and I stood under the hot spray of the shower. When I came out with the single remaining dry towel, it was to see Noah passed out on his bed, the towel still wrapped around his head. He was snoring and I debated waking him up and trying to keep him awake in case he did really have a concussion. I listened to him mutter in his sleep and decided to let him be. I pulled a cleaner pair of jeans and a fresh a-shirt out of the bottom of the duffle and dressed. I sat up against my headboard and listened to Noah, listened to the last time I’d hear him snoring.
3
“Noah, get out of the truck.”
“Screw you, Bane,” Noah shouted. “I’ve told you before. I’m not going.”
We were at the Greyhound bus stop in Louisville and it was bustling for ten in the morning on a Thursday. I got out, walked around the side of the truck, and yanked his door open before he could lock it. “Look,” I said as calmly as I could. “This shit is dangerous. You could have been killed last night. It was shitty of me to ask you to help with the Rawhead in the first place.”
“You needed my help,” Noah said. “You told me it was a two-person job.” Noah’s face was red and I could see his eyes becoming glassy. God, was he about to cry?
I looked down. “Noah, I already lost Gary to this suicide mission.” I couldn’t seem to muster the same kind of anger or volume as Noah. “I can’t be responsible for the death of another person I care about.”
He was quiet for a second. Then he said. “What about Rosetta or Tags or Stacks?”
I shook my head. “They’ve all been hunters as long as I’ve known them. They work solo most of the time too.”
Noah threw up his hands. “What, so just because I haven’t worked as a solo hunter for years, you’re just going to shove me on some bus and forget about me?” I took a step back and Noah automatically slid off the seat and stepped towards me, getting in my face. “Oh I’m Bane,” Noah began mocking me. “Poor tortured soul who has to save all these people, who by the way, where were they when you were trying to save your dad and your farm? Huh? Maybe you should just leave the assholes in the pit.” His words stung but I could only give him half my attention. A woman was moving quickly through the cars coming towards us. A large white bag on her shoulder. Behind her, I saw a red car and some pieces started clicking into place. “Bane!” Noah barked. “Are you even paying attention to what I’m saying? Am I already nonexistent to you? You’ve already put me on that bus and are thinking about your next hunt now, right? Trying to figure out how to stake out the witch? Wondering if you’ll have to shoot her in front of her neighbors? And me? I’m just a distant memory to you already, aren’t I?!”
&nb
sp;