“I stayed three months,” he told me. “Came out at night. Caught trillers, took them back to that room. Had a mighty fun time. Way better than that hitchhiker.”
I gripped my shotgun tight, fighting the urge to kill this evil man. “Why are you here?” I asked.
“Wanted to see if you'd told the others what you allowed me to do. Wanted to see. That's all.”
I didn't lower my shotgun as I told him to go up the road four miles and turn at the hidden driveway under the double oak trees. “They'll take you in,” I said. “Tell them I sent you.”
“I'll do that. And you're right, you know. Not to kill me. You'll need me in the days ahead.”
“Why?” I asked, looking down the road, praying Pastor Jones and a mob of trillers wasn't right behind him. “The trillers are calming down. The dream is easing.”
“Think about it. That dream and the way your pastor controlled people wasn't natural. Now that the sheepdogs and wolves are gone, the trillers are going back to being docile. That worries me.”
Victor pulled a new pair of handmade leather gloves from his back pocket and slid them on. The bright red hairs on the gloves glistened – laughed – full of Pastor Jones' words from the night we'd prayed together at church.
“Doesn't take another predator to know you attack the sheep when they're peaceful,” he said. “The creatures who tricked us with this dream of peace will be coming. I suggest keeping your eyes on the up and up.”
Victor waved goodbye with his gloved right hand – the shock red hairs peeking and wafting to the breeze – and walked on.
I gripped my shotgun and watched the road and waited for more to come.
Memoria
Slap Jack Pie shrieks with delight as, between gossamer-spanned worlds, the Marquis de Sade's ghost grabs him by the balls. Sally Moon Eyes snickers – her nipples erect to the crucified soul of Saint Wilgefortis – and rips her blue smock before falling to her knees in prayer, chanting how endless dimensions are the universe's orgasm unto itself. And me? I ignore my friends' ghost-headed nonsense and mime a banana cream pie, which I throw to the laughter of an obscure 20th century comedian named Andy Kaufman.
Poor me! Woe me! Why must I always ghost the unknowns?
Slap Jack and Sally Moon giggle at my misfortune as our ship breaches the radioactive muck of a new Earth.
“A new world!” Slap Jack squeals. “Skeleton skies and doornail dirt. And no more ghosts to copy. Which means the countdown's in…”
3…the sparkling sizzle of air on our ship's burned-flesh hull, and a scream from the living vessel's mind-link as it lands on this new-destroyed world.
2…the worry in Captain Couran's eyes as she unstraps herself and checks on the crew, and discovers half of us shields dead – brains frying and eyes glazing and ghosts flat-lining into their ultimate release.
1…and me and Slap Jack and Sally Moon rolling on the warm-flesh deck of our holding pen, moaning and laughing and stoking and crying and wanting no more and evermore to do with dimension jumps.
“Blast-offering,” Sally Moon Eyes intones beside me with a low, immodest sigh. But I'm more interested in the commotion to aft, where the ship's medical officer leans over someone who's hurt.
“Captain!” Dr Bonder shouts. “Lenner's hit.”
Len is the ship's biologist and Captain Couran's wife. Through my Andy-Kaufman-addled gaze I watch the captain race by, her black uniform shimmering electricals in tune with the nervous impulses of our living ship. Couran bends over her true love as Len seizes, her body shaking so hard her short dreadlocks rap the fleshy deck like rain. Then Len's green eyes grow wide and she stares right through me – and a ghost like none I've ever seen shrieks delight to my mind.
I roll face down and bite the deck, teething into the ship's blood. Scared by what I'd seen. Scared because this isn't some barrier-stored copy of a human who lived ages ago. No, this ghost is alien, and it's now ripping Len's mind apart piece by painful piece.
“Blessed be the saints,” Sally Moon Eyes prays beside me, having also seen what's within Len. “They truly are the blessed never blessed.”
All us shields love Len, so I bow my head for a moment in silent agreement with Sally's prayer. Afterward, I try to focus despite Andy Kaufman bending my consciousness to his needs. Try to cram reality back through my mind so I can warn the captain about Len.
But Andy, being Andy Kaufman and having little concern about others, decides at that moment to go traipsing through my memories. I suddenly see Len at our prejump briefing, standing in her brown coveralls as she announces that this is my last voyage as a shield. I almost pass out from joy when she calls me a good man. And when she says only the bravest people dare lose themselves protecting others, I want to fall at her feet and worship her everlasting glory. The ghosts within my mind melt before Len's kindness.
Praise of shields is simply not done but Captain Couran applauds Len's words, followed by grudging claps from the rest of the crew. Only Dr Kit Bonder, our medical officer, is outraged by Len's comments. He glares at me. I know the bastard's already plotting new ways to catch me alone and reload those old crimes back in my mind.
The last time Bonder caught me he restrained me in his medical bay and slammed memory after memory through my head, each memory intoned to the shimmering wrap of crime-scene testimony so I'd know these were copies of my own self-made deeds. That these were my own awful remembrances – the same memories which convicted me in the first place.
As I cried and begged Bonder to stop, he grabbed my stubbly cheeks. Forced me to look at him as he declared his solemn duty to keep men like me from evermore forgetting the evil they'd done. That once a baddie bad always a bad, no matter how many crews I shield.
Thankfully my ghosts tore away those memories after Bonder released me. But the discomforting knowledge that I've done horrible, forgotten things remained.
And with that the memories of Len praising me and Bonder hurting me fall away. But instead of being impressed, Andy gags. With a comedian's smirk he destroys my recollection of that briefing – shreds Len's kind words, peels the remembered happiness from my mind – before he jumps my body through shakes and unfunny jokes like a puppet to broke-threaded strings.
As the captain cradles Len, Andy stands my body up and kicks open the holding pen, which has been weakened by the landing. The crew panic, afraid I've taken the ghost of a truly baddie bad. The captain, though, simply orders people to step aside. She eases Len gently to the deck and stands protectively between me and her true love.
Andy salutes my right hand. “Here I come to save the day,” he says, lip-synching me through a Mighty Mouse imitation. “Although I guess Len won't be doing any more saving – or licking the captain's thighs anytime soon.”
Captain Couran's calm facade shatters. She cold-cocks me. Shoves me back in the holding pen and orders the ship to grow stronger restraints to trap us shields. As she turns back to Len, I collapse against the aft porthole, the ship's warm flesh both cushioning and nurturing my ghost-splintered soul.
Andy laughs even louder. In a voice mimicking Pearl Pureheart, he whispers, “Oil Can Harry, you're a villain!”
Through the porthole's living lens, the light of this destroyed world howls at Andy's unfunny joke. The wrecked skyscrapers titter. The sun-bleached skeletons giggle. And, as if sharing in the joke, Len's ghost talks to me. Says she's been waiting for this day. Been waiting oh so long.
Not knowing what else to do, I join Andy in laughing. Len is as good as dead. And without Len to protect I no longer care what happens to me.
* * *
Call me Oil Can. Each new ghost loves changing my name. Since Andy called me Oil Can, that's my name. Remember it when I'm rational. When Andy and the other ghosts give me a chance to see beyond their twisted views of reason.
And reason there is, or at least a reasonable joke. Like the endless Earths. Earths here. Earths there. Earths slapping themselves across the multiverse. Each slightly differ
ent. Each slightly the same. But getting off our bump of an Earth and into those others, aye, there's the rub.
And you'll rub yourself raw – over and over, rubbing and moaning and groaning and grinding – wondering why the ghosts of everyone who's ever lived surrounds our Earth, attempting to trap us there. Nefertiti, Alexander, Marc Antony, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Lincoln, you, me. The famous and the unknown, all swirling in a vast dimensional barrier separating our Earth from the others.
And if you try to leave, the ghosts have their way with you.
I've heard scientists swear up and down this system can't be natural. After all, why would our Earth be the only one surrounded by a barrier and ghosts? Are we baddie bads, not trusted with a multiverse? And what created the barrier? What causes the barrier to copy the essence of humans until it crackles to the replicated souls of every person who's ever lived?
And is there really a barrier god?
That last part's what ticks off most scientists. After all, why would they believe what a bunch of ghost-addled shields say? Never mind that each time we go through the barrier the barrier god whispers to us. Commends us for our bravery. Selects which ghosts to throw our way.
But in the end, only those who let the barrier have its way with them believe in the barrier god. I once tripped the dimensions with a famous atheist known for screaming how the barrier wasn't created by any damn God or god. I shouldn't have done it, but when our ship burst through and the barrier threw Thomas Aquinas at me, instead of embracing the saintly ghost I whispered how much fun it'd be to take the atheist.
The barrier god laughed its agreement and gifted the atheist with the saint. After that the bastard wasn't fit for anything. Kept muttering how he'd seen God. Or gods. Or been God. I forget which.
And that's the problem with the barrier – the barrier god wants the mind and soul of someone on every trip. So before each voyage the crews parade the prisons and poverty holes, swearing freedom and riches to us baddie bads if we'll sign by a dimension ship's blood and make five voyages. If we'll surround the crews and, in that brief moment when the ghosts swarm, offer ourselves as their playthings. Sacrifice ourselves for the ones who matter.
The ones like Len.
This is my fifth trip. While passing to and fro I've ghosted nine copies of long-dead people. When we return home I'm free and no more a baddie bad than Andy Kaufman.
Not that there's much of me left to free.
* * *
Prepare for impact. Brace head between legs. Kiss your act goodbye.
Slap Jack and Sally Moon and I are the only shields still living – the other three are dead, their eyes unlit and minds cracked, blood and synapses spilling across the deck for the ship to absorb. The crew wanders about in shock, both at the dead shields and at one of their own being hit. But for now, me and Slap Jack and Sally Moon are beyond caring. We buzz to our new ghosts and roll about the holding pen as the ship's eyes play ancient Mighty Mouse cartoons to entertain us.
As the texture of Andy Kaufman races my mind, I taste a childhood memory and realize I used to love Mighty Mouse. Somehow I understand this is a real memory and not one copied from Andy and the other ghosts. I once loved that ancient cartoon.
But even as the memory rises, Andy Kaufman explodes in my mind, outraged at our shared love. “No more truth,” he says as he stomps my memories, cutting them down like a lawnmower through daisies. He grows new memories within my mind of him on the Improv's stage reading The Great Gatsby. He sits there reading the damn book until the audience – angry at paying good money to watch such shit – pelts him with dinner rolls. I laugh even though it isn't funny. Most of the other ghosts inside me nod their long-gone heads, satisfied with their new neighbor.
Only poor Aquilia Maesa protests, not liking the addition of Andy to our mix. But then, Aquilia doesn't like me or any of my ghosts. When she first fell into my mind and experienced my crimes, this ancient Roman noblewoman – who'd once so lovingly cheered blood and guts at the Coliseum – tried to leave, crying “memoria, memoria” as if I was a bad recollection to be shunted away. She begged the barrier god to remove her from our midst. But stay she did, and that was that.
As I wonder yet again about the violence I can no longer remember, Captain Couran knocks on the clear barrier across our holding pen. The barrier swirls and sphincters open.
“I need to apologize,” the captain says. “I know you didn't mean what you said.” Her taut brown face and deep blue eyes click over me – razor spool eyes, I've heard Len say, reflecting the captain's tough Afghani ancestry.
“Maybe I did mean it,” I say. “But Andy Kaufman forced me to speak the words.”
Captain Couran glances into the distance, the ship's organic brain accessing this Andy Kaufman reference and feeding it to her senses. Whatever the captain finds satisfies her and she focuses back on me.
“Are you three well enough to work? We need to figure out what happened and how to get home.”
I look at Slap Jack – who bleeds from dozens of cuts after flagellating himself to the Marquis de Sade's desires – and at Sally Moon, who nailed her hands to the cabin flesh wall like Saint Wilgefortis on her cross. Sally Moon's blood dribbles down the wall, slowly feeding the ship.
“We're ready,” I say. Slap Jack and Sally Moon giggle as they wander to the infirmary for numb-numb and heal-heal. But Andy whispers that he'll behave, so I follow Captain Couran to the bridge.
Our ship is tiny, only thirty meters long, and was birthed two decades before. Andy is amazed by what he sees so I explain how the hard lines and beliefs of high tech – metals and plastics and nanotech and computers – can't breach the barrier around our Earth. To escape our planet we travel in the bellies of gened, hollowed-out beasts, and pray they won't take it in their minds to digest us one fine day.
Andy applauds the wisdom of not being digested, and swears to refrain from irritating the ship.
Captain Couran leads me to the bridge – a tiny bubble of transparent collagen fibers barely big enough to hold the ship's backup ganglion cluster. From there, Captain Couran and I watch a radioactive dawn rise on this new Earth. Or, I should say, this dead Earth. Above us orbits the rubble of a shattered Moon while all around new-burned towers and buildings point fingered obscenities at the sky.
“I can't remember how many dead Earths I've visited,” Captain Couran says. “But this one's different. Based on the radioactive decay, whatever caused these people to kill each other occurred barely a year ago.”
Stunned by the devastation around us, Andy asks in a weak voice – my own – why they destroyed themselves.
“There's the question, isn't it?” the captain says, being patient because she likely suspects this is one of my ghosts speaking. “The evidence suggests something infects the people of these Earths with a need to destroy one another. Once the infection starts, it doesn't matter if they use nukes or plagues or a billion machetes. The results are always the same.”
“So when are we running away?” I sing in an off-key voice, shaking my hips to one of Andy's inane white-boy dance moves.
Captain Couran breathes deep, struggling to stay calm. “We can't leave until we figure out what killed those shields,” she says, reminding me of my dead colleagues. “I don't want to risk more deaths.”
For a moment grief plays me like a broken guitar string. “It shouldn't happen,” I whisper. “Ghosts don't kill. They drive you fun-fun. They crack you open. They replace your memories and consciousness with their own. But they don't kill.”
Captain Couran nods, pleased I'm together enough to see her dilemma.
“So what do we do?”
I think of Len. She was hit by a ghost after we exited the barrier, which shouldn't have happened. Only our Earth – out of all the Earths we've visited so far – is enclosed within a barrier. So only ours contains ghost copies of the people living there. But despite this fact, Len's ghost seized her after we arrived on this world. Did that mean this alien ghost do
esn't need a barrier to live in – or a barrier god to control it? Has it been waiting for us?
Deciding to help, Andy hugs my mind – and whispers how the alien ghost twists to anger and hate. It tried living in the other shields but didn't like sharing a body with human ghosts, so it killed them before taking Len.
I shiver. Howl. Something scary has reached us here, something I don't want to confront. Andy giggles as he orders me to buck up.
“We must go and ask of this Len,” Andy says in the voice of an ancient TV immigrant named Latka. “She's a ghost, yes, but a ghosting like no other.”
* * *
There is a memory purely my own. A memory the ghosts always leave untouched. It's from the first time I breached the barrier – and the first time I spoke with Len.
From what I've been told, Captain Couran wasn't thrilled when I was assigned to her ship. My killing spree was well known and, shield or no shield, the captain wasn't taking any chances. Not only was I placed in the holding pen, the captain ordered the ship to bind me with tight chains of muscle cord. Captain Couran told me that while she believed in redemption, she also wasn't stupid.
“We'll see how it goes,” she said. “If your attitude changes after ghosting, you'll be free as the other shields.”
I lay prostrate on the fleshy deck as Dr Bonder checked my vital signs and could only nod to the captain's words. When she walked away, Bonder smirked and leaned over me.
“I've long followed your work,” he said. “Shame you won't remember what you've done. The ghosts trash your worst memories first.”
“Why?”
“I suspect they don't like living inside such evil minds. 'Course, with people like you, all you've got inside is bad. Probably won't be anything left after they scoop the bad away.”
I wasn't surprised by Bonder's anger – I'd heard whispers how his wife had been murdered while serving at some poverty hole's medical clinic. But Bonder's words also proved Captain Couran had been right to chain me. If I'd been free I'd have killed the man. Would have smashed his head to bloody nothingness.
Never Never Stories Page 15