by Russ Linton
On the left side of the building was the tearoom. No bar there, just an assortment of wingbacks and artsy footrests completing the hipster feng shui.
The pub was busy for a weekday night. They had a full bar with the TV playing a ball game, but the tea crowd had long gone home. Another scan through the window and I noticed a pair of shoes beneath a high wingback. My contact.
Heads turned when I walked in. Not that I blame anybody. In the land of flannel and beard wax, I was a rarity.
Or it might’ve been the sword on my hip.
I’d thought about inviting Araceli. She could even play the role of the anonymous Internet client, Titania. We could run a sting operation. Play good cop bad cop. I needed a partner, for sure, but she’d been distracted. By the time night rolled around, I’d decided to go in solo, all search and seizure.
So I’d come strapped. Gun under my jacket, sword looped through my belt, Atofo’s knife on my wrist. By law, the concealed knife presented more problems than the sword - I’d checked. But I hadn’t intended to stay long enough for the 911 response.
“Uh, sit anywhere you like,” called the bartender. I gave him a nod and stepped toward the tearoom.
“Nice cosplay,” said a guy sitting in one of the leather chairs at a round table just big enough for two. “You’re Blade, right?”
Only thing I had in common with Wesley Snipes was the tax evasion. But, yeah, I was a black dude who killed monsters in my free time. Guess I had to give him that much.
“That’s right.”
He beamed, proud of himself for making the right call or whatever. “Where’s the convention? I’m seeing more costumes than usual! Must be one somewhere!”
I gave him a pained smile. “Next weekend, or something. Look it up. Online.” I dipped before he could ask any more questions.
A full wall and a sunken floor separated the tearoom from the bar. Chandeliers glowed with a dainty elegance that had no business in a pub. The left wall held locked glass cabinets with wine and other spirits. Opposite that was the emergency exit.
The occupied seat I’d seen from outside held the only other person in the room. Caliban. Had to be.
Dude didn’t look like some deformed monster. I wasn’t getting any Otherworldly vibe off him either. He was just...strange.
His outfit helped explain the other guy’s convention remark. The double-breasted storm gray suit had come from another century. Top hat over a head full of lank, greasy hair, he didn’t look like he’d showered recently. He had a chubby face and large, watery eyes. One scrunched to hold a monocle in place.
I didn’t wait for him to offer the seat across the whiskey cask table. His monocle dropped as I unhitched the sword and placed it in front of me. I settled into the open chair, an armless, egg-shaped mauve thing made to look at not sit in. Keeping up the intimidation got tricky as my knees rose past my waist. But I don’t think he noticed.
He swallowed and his butter cream face went all sour. “...Titania?”
So this was the black market maestro of protective custody? Things were not adding up.
“Caliban.”
He glanced around. The tearoom empty, nobody in the bar would overhear us. I’d already scanned for any obvious cameras. But this cat was spooked.
“I’ll need...I’ll need the money upfront. I can get you on the schedule as early as tomorrow.”
Damn, Human J. Trafficker here worked quick. No questions, no details, sounded like he’d already planned the destination and spent my money.
“Scheduled for?”
He licked his lips, slow and reptilian. His nervous glances this time included a full swivel up and out of his seat to check the emergency exit. Caliban here didn’t appear to have the nerves to move stolen goldfish, never mind people.
“Schedule for your, uh, relocation.”
“You never asked me where I wanted to go,” I said, leaning forward. “How much I’d be willing to pay. Lots of little details, Cal.”
His hands fidgeted. He wore white gloves clutching a mahogany cane. No match for the Mickey D.
“The location is the same. Same for everyone, I —”
“You got one safe house for every client?” I asked, pressing into his space, my feet firmly planted again, my hands on the edge of the cask and close to my blade. “Sounds like a bad plan.”
“Efficient,” he squeaked, slinking back into his chair, the skin around his neck drew into folds. “But, yes, uhm, we should discuss...how much do you have?”
I didn’t back off. He writhed uncomfortably, his worry about whoever else might be around, forgotten. “How long have you been at this game, Cal?”
“My reputation certainly proceeds me,” he stuttered. “I am Caliban, finder of lost things and concealer of secrets.”
He reached into a front pocket of his jacket and produced a business card. Thick card stock, the lettering matched the turn of the century vibe he was going for.
I swatted the card to the table. “Sounds like you’re working both ends.”
He pulled further into himself, practically a turtle in the starched collar, a shaky grin flickering on his lips.
“No! No! Nothing like that!” his gloved hands trembled. “But when you find things lost, it only stands to reason you learn how to hide them.” He waited for approval from my stony gaze. “Yes?”
“And how exactly do you find these things.” Our noses practically touched. He hadn’t blinked since the interrogation began.
“I, well, I am a...uh...medium of some renown.” He kept plowing on into my blank stare. “In certain circles at least. I speak to the...” his voice cracked and he swallowed again, his Adam’s apple flexing somewhere under his scrunched neckline, “dead.”
That had me surprised. I slumped back into my seat. “You know The Below?”
“Is that...a club? A...ummm...band perhaps? Yes, I’ve heard of them! Rap is it?” he stammered desperately.
“You’re no medium,” I said. With a flick of my wrist, I released Atofo’s knife and drove it into the tabletop. “Show me a ritual, anything, please, before I take your fool head off. Because me? I am a shaman. For real. And I can commune with your corpse.”
Caliban continued his downward slump, his knees wobbling, backsliding until he’d gone to the floor. He clasped his gloved hands together, lips trembling.
“PLEASE! No, PLEASE! I swear, I didn’t know! I mean, I always told people I could do these things for the, you know, the theater of it all! I don’t...I, I couldn’t speak to the dead! Only now, I can! And OH, GOD!” he pleaded, reaching across the table and grasping for my hands like a drowning man. “PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!”
Now I was the one scanning the bar, the windows, to see who was watching. I grabbed his elbow and yanked him up, aiming for the chair. Unsteady, he had to nearly turn and crawl to get seated again.
“What the hell are you going on about?”
“The dead!” he whispered, eyes still darting. “They’re haunting me! I see them everywhere!”
Him and me both.
CHAPTER TEN
Caliban held his teacup in trembling hands. The rattling would stop as he tried to steel himself and then start up again soon as he lost focus. I could see why he and Kitterling might get along, but Cali here at least pulled out a silver flask and spiked the tea. The warm tea and shot of bourbon seemed to bring his volume off ten.
“Tell me again how it is you see the dead.”
“How?” he whispered. “I don’t know. I’d been a dabbler. An aficionado, really, of the dark arts. Then they started to work.”
“When?”
“A few weeks ago. It all became too real. I was conducting a seance and noticed...I noticed someone in the window, watching.”
“You mean the dead spirit you were calling out of their comfortable grave?”
He shook his head and took a sip, holding the tea under his nose and inhaling the fumes. “I thought it was somebody who’d arrived late. Nobody at the table se
emed to notice. They stood outside, staring, dressed in some sort of costume...”
“Costume?”
He came forward, eyes darting. “A soldier,” he whispered.
Here we go. Losing him again.
“Congrats, or whatever. You’re no longer committing fraud.” Wait. He’d said this started a couple weeks back. Kitterling disappeared around then. Tish had seen things. Coincidence? Yeah, no. “You saw a ghost at a seance. Where else?”
“After that, I saw them everywhere! I couldn’t pass a cemetery without the dead glaring at me over their tombstones. And the other night, I could swear the town was ablaze! Fire consuming everything...people screaming.” He looked away. “You must think I’m crazy.”
I could relate. At Fenwick Manor, I’d been forcibly pulled into the past through the ghost of someone who might’ve been a dead relative or at least a kindred spirit. Of course, my initiation under Atofo had already taken place. A guy like this? Such a non-believer he’d accepted the fact he was committing fraud, preying on those who did believe. Must’ve been a shock to find out it was all real.
This also meant I wasn’t the only one seeing some strange sights at the local cemetery these days.
“You’re about as crazy as I am,” I said. “What I still don’t understand is how this means you go from seances to making people disappear. They aren’t the same line of business.”
“Before...before the dead really spoke to me, I’d often get requests to ask where they’d left things. Money. Wills. Heirlooms. If I wanted to prove my bona fides, I needed to have those answers. So I did my research first.”
One more thing this fool and me had in common. “And so you figured why not make people disappear too?”
“I got to know public records. The typical responses from authorities and relatives when a person was no longer with us.” He gave a helpless shrug and took a swig.
“You ever make any people disappear for good?”
He started to shake again, tea sloshing near the rim of his half-empty cup. He noticed and carefully set the cup down before answering.
“If you are speaking of murder, I am offended.”
“You wanna take off one of them gloves and slap my cheek or whatever? Go ‘head. But being offended and being innocent isn’t the same thing.”
His eyes went to the sword. I’d pulled Atofo’s knife out of the table before the bartender showed to take our order. The gleaming steel though was plenty warning.
“I helped people. Women trapped in abusive relationships. People unjustly wanted by the authorities.” He managed to raise his chin, a sense of pride rising from somewhere. “I harmed nobody.”
The lady doth protest too much — a bit of Shakespeare’s lyrical truth every cop knew. Caliban might not have hurt anybody but didn’t mean he hadn’t done wrong. He’d already admitted he’d been scamming marks.
He stiffened. The confessional, the drink, he’d maybe thought his sins had washed away. He tugged at his gloves and reached for his cane.
“If you won’t be in need of my services, then I’ll just—”
“You’ll sit,” I said. I pinned him with a stare, following him as he slowly lowered. “I’m not here as a client, I’m here to find one. Edward Kitterling.”
He licked his lips again. A nervous tick. “Never heard the name.”
“Aight,” I said, taking up the sword. His wide eyes followed the glinting tip. “We’ll play it this way. If you were to make somebody disappear, how would you go about it?”
“I can’t expose my secrets,” he said.
I nodded. Encouragingly. “You can.”
He glanced at the sword. “In the past, you see, I’d help them live a more anonymous life, if you will. Cash transactions to start. And no more being connected online. Back to basics, you see?” He idly toyed with the monocle tucked into his vest. “Then there were documents. You become very familiar with those when dealing with the departed.”
I was starting to see more about how Kitterling and this guy had met. They maybe went way back.
“Let’s assume I know all about how you make fake identities and let’s skip to the where. Do you have a safe house? Send them to a Caribbean beach to sip piña coladas for a few weeks? Cement shoes in the Matanzas?”
“Nothing of the sort. And I said that was all how it worked before.”
“Tell me about now then. Show me.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
I gave that some thought while I snatched a napkin off the table and started polishing the sword blade. His eyes followed every stroke. “Yeah, I know better than you.”
“Very well,” he said, nose upturned like he’d put me in my place. “I’ll need some blood. I know that might be hard to—” I’d already run my forearm along the edge of the demon blade and opened a small cut. He swallowed. “Right then...”
He fumbled in his pocket for a box of matches and dared to raise up enough to scan the room. Finding what he was looking for, he held up a gloved finger and got a candle from another table. He placed it on our half-cask table, taking pains to find dead center before he lit it.
He’d gone all professional, nerves buried, sliding into his own ritual. If he’d been a fraud before, I noticed the elements, the motions, they were adding up to actual spell casting. But he’d learned it somewhere. This hadn’t just happened to him.
“This part was always for show before. I had to retain the mystery, you see?” He took the napkin from me and without hesitating, grabbed my arm so he could get to the cut. He dabbed the blood and stared at the stain with a strange longing. Shaking out of it, he drew a circle around the edge of the table. A pentagram came next, the blood smearing, not completely transferring.
Inside that, he added symbols. Alchemical symbols. Like the ones I’d seen during my prison correspondence.
Old World magic. Not the stuff of backwaters and bayous. He started into the Latin and I wished I’d brought Araceli.
Then? Nothing happened. Caliban here had been watching too many horror flicks.
“Breaking out the Ouija board next?” I asked.
He went twitchy again, nervously flicking glances toward the emergency exit.
“One of the first items I recovered was a book. It had the right words to say for seances, channelings, summoning the dead. It was where I got my original schtick from. People ate it up. Those pages made me who I am you could say. Only it never actually worked. Until two weeks ago.” He started to rise with his full attention on the exit. “And now.”
Dark shapes moved in the windows outside. There was an alley back there. Employees? I wanted to explain it away but I was getting to my feet too. No creep from the Below or the Above had followed his spell. Nothing but a bad feeling itching up through my scalp.
Caliban started to slip toward the pub. “You asked! You made me do it!”
I didn’t try to stop him. Bad news was coming. He’d brought it here. As sketchy as the guy was, I could tell a practitioner who’d gotten in over his head. I’d been that guy. But what had he done?
A heavy knock came. Shouts. Was it a SWAT team called to bust the black guy walking around with a sword? If so, I’d need to drop the blade quick or else I’d be the next ghost.
The door flew open. Not the boys in blue I was expecting.
They wore deep blue long-tailed coats, folded at the hems to show a red underside. A double row of gold buttons ran down the front and the bling continued on their waistcoats and down the sides of their pants. White stockings ran from their knees to their clunky black shoes.
Three burst inside, red ribbons on their folded hats bouncing. Talk about flawed entry technique. Longer even than a modern rifle, the bayonets added an extra six inches. The smoothbore muskets slowed them up as they came single file through the door.
Was there a convention?
Their officer came in last, a mustache which would put the hipsters next door to shame. His impressive, bristly ‘stache bristled
as he shouted commands. Spanish, but the message was pretty universal.
Halt! Drop the weapon!
They fanned out with an unsteady rhythm. I kept the high leather wingback between us as a shield. Something seemed off. Movements. Mannerisms. Were they high?
“Dónde está Edward Kitterling?” I didn’t know much Spanish, but I could swap out Kitterling with ‘toilet’ easy enough.
The guy in charge scowled, his mustache the focal point for all that attitude. He pointed to my sword and made a sweeping motion to the ground. Sure, I could join the role play. But one little detail had me raising the sword not dropping it.
Captain Crunch had a hole in his forehead.
The others had pale faces. No visible wounds, but one had powder burns radiating out from under his collar. No signs of life in their eyes.
The closest soldier lunged, his bayonet inbound for a killing blow. I almost sidestepped into another incoming deadly point. No mano y mano movie bullshit, these guys had been trained to kill as a unit. Training they’d taken to the grave.
The second attack caused me to pivot and swipe awkwardly with my sword. Lucky for once, I turned away the musket, chopping a deep groove in the stock. Inside the long reach of the musket, my sword flashed and I ran a clean swipe right through the soldier’s neck.
No blood came fountaining out. His musket fell loosely as he clutched his neck. The long coat, his flesh, all shredded into a fragmented haze. When the musket hit the wooden floor the shock sent it flying into a rusted, splintered mess.
The other soldier raised his musket and pulled the trigger.
Less precision munitions and more a directed IED, at this range even the antique weapon had a chance to hit. On reflex, I dove for cover. Noise roared through the parlor. Smoke billowed. I felt a thump on my chest. A pressure which didn’t let up. One of the wine cabinet’s doors exploded and gushed a fountain of foam.
One round, that’s all he had.
I flipped the empty cask table I’d ducked behind and stayed scrunched behind the hollow cavity. A follow up bayonet thrust knifed through the top slats. I exploded upward, carrying the whole table on one upturned palm and a shoulder.