Afterlife Crisis

by Randal Graham

  “Zey are coming for us,” he said, inching toward me in a disconcerting manner. “For all of les Napoleons. I do not know where zey are taking us.”

  “Who is taking you?”

  “I do not know. But zey ’ave Nappy.”

  “Let’s work together to find her,” I suggested, for if I’d ever learned anything from Oan’s Sharing Lessons, it’s that nothing promotes mental health better than team-building exercises, and here was a chap who could use all the mental health he had coming to him.

  He eyed me narrowly, as if sizing me up for some unknown purpose.

  “I remember you,” he said.

  “Well of course you do. Rhinnick Feynman, esquire, at your service. We were inmates together in the hospice. We spent many an hour revelling in each other’s society, playing Brakkit, hearing Sharing Room lessons, trying—”

  “No!” he shouted, or quite possibly “non,” for the difference is subtle and I was distracted by the knife. “I remember ze last time I saw you.”

  “Oh, quite,” I said, hoping for a quick change of subject. I mean to say, I for one might have preferred to leave our last interaction unventilated, lest the blighter be reminded that he’d failed to finish the job of using Alice to conduct an exploration of my insides.

  “Your friend . . . zis, zis ZEUS person. ’E attacked me!”

  “To be fair,” I said, diplomatting like nobody’s business, “he may have perceived some provocation. You had threatened to—”

  Here I broke off, not so much because I’d finished what I’d been about to say, but because the uncouth wretch had suddenly lunged at me, Alice aimed directly at what I believe is called my central body mass.

  I won’t say that I actually charged headlong into the fray, because that would be deceiving my public. What I did do was shriek a good deal, wave my arms wildly, and wish that in my younger days I’d gone in for martial arts instead of stamp collecting. I can’t precisely recount the ensuing string of events in perfect detail, as the fracas didn’t vouchsafe me time for detached reflection. At various points in the skirmish I did find myself lying prone on the floor, and at other times clinging to Jack’s back with my arms twined around his neck. In one particular sequence I recall grabbing at Alice’s blunt ballerina hilt. But at some point that immediately preceded what we might call the climax of the proceedings, we found ourselves essentially where we’d begun, with Jack blocking the door, brandishing Alice in what I perceived to be a threatening fashion, and self backing away toward the toilet.

  What happened next caught both of us off guard. For while we had both been focused intently on what might be achieved through defensive use of shower curtains, toilet brushes, and other handy items, neither of us had noted the presence — in the vicinity of Jack’s immediate rear — of a certain fortune-telling woman with strong wrists bearing a ceramic piggybank, which she brought crashing down on Jack’s head with what some call a dull, and others a sickening, thud.

  Jack collapsed on the floor. Well, I mean, of course he did. It’s not as though he would have collapsed on the ceiling.

  Having completed its task the piggybank broke up into several shards, the largest of these raining down on Jack, followed by coins.

  All the while, Jack just lay there looking peaceful.

  “Vera!” I cried.

  “Heya,” she said.

  “Thank Abe you were here!”

  “Where else would I be?” she asked, which was a fair question. “I heard you shrieking and came running back in as fast as I could.”

  I paused for a moment to ensure that Fenny had been unharmed, fearing that the little chap may have been caught in the crossfire, as it were, having been nestled in my inner pocket throughout my recent altercation. Seeing that he was sleeping happily as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, I turned back to Vera.

  I would have said something about having the matter well in hand before her advent, but I do like to give credit where credit is due, and was dashed grateful for her assistance in what had threatened to become a rather painful slice of the Feynman biography. I thanked her again.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, once I was through with my bit of thanking. “Though presently crushed to earth, Jack is sure to rise again. And from what little I know of him I think he might be the sort of fellow who wakes up cross.”

  “Do you think he’ll come after us?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

  “The least we can do is slow him down,” said Vera. “Why don’t we cut off his head or something? It’ll probably take weeks for him to regenerate, and by then we could have everything sorted out. Maybe send the police to collect him.”

  “Abe’s drawers!” I cried, staring at Vera with a touch of wariness. “You can’t go about decapitating chaps simply because they go about acting as fiends in human shape. Isn’t there something or other in the book of rules about ‘doing unto others’?”

  “He did attack you with a knife.”

  “Twice in recent memory,” I said. “But still — we Feynmen do not crush the vanquished beneath the iron heel, nor do we go about the place chopping heads or rending people limb from limb.”

  “Don’t be such a chicken,” she said.

  I drew myself up. “A man isn’t a chicken merely because he balks at dicing a fallen foe!”

  Here she made a sound that reminded me of maracas.

  “What are you gargling at?” I asked.

  “Not gargling. Laughing,” she said. “At you. You said ‘chicken.’ And then ‘balk.’ That’s very funny.”

  “Is this the time for merrymaking?”

  “It’s just that chickens say ‘bawk.’ You know, ‘bawk bawk bawk,’” she added, punctuating the remarks, if you can call them remarks, with another of her silvery laughs.

  This whole exchange was starting to make me pretty dubious about the young shrimp’s eligibility to be at large from the hospice and circulating among the masses.

  “Do try to remain on task,” I said. “We have to decide what to do with Jack. And we’re not going to butcher him.”

  “Well, you at least have to let me tie him up.”

  “Tie away, and may Abe speed your knotting.”

  “All right then,” said Vera. “Just give me a minute and I’ll get to it.”

  She then crouched down beside the recumbent Jack and initiated a rather personal search of the corpus delicti, as the expression is. She searched through every pocket, unfastened every button, and unzipped every zipper until she’d produced a pair of items she deemed useful. These were, in the order found, (a) a set of car keys, and (b) a crumpled note.

  The keys she pocketed. The note she uncrumpled and flattened out on the countertop beside me.

  The note was written in lipstick — a lipstick that, if I was any judge, precisely matched an exhibit found in Nappy’s medicine chest. And it was written in a script that, if the undersigned was any judge, could not have proceeded from Jack’s hand. Having received several IOUs from Jack following hospice Brakkit tournaments, I was aware that this chap’s handwriting, if popularized as a typographical font, would be more likely to be called “Psychopathic Sans Serif” than “Cursive Script.” The hand that had written the crumpled note was light and fluid, more accustomed to writing out formal invitations than ransom notes and threats.

  “That’s Nappy’s handwriting,” I said.

  And what the handwriting wrote was this:

  TO NORM STRAD.

  THEY’RE TAKING ME.

  “What’s it mean?” said Vera, and I was pleased I was able to put her at least partially abreast.

  “Someone took Nappy!” I said. “As for who, I cannot say, for the pronoun ‘they,’ taking the place of a proper name which might provide more information, has laid me a-stymie. But I can help with the first bit. You see
the note is addressed to ‘Norm Strad.’ This must mean none other than Norm Stradamus, another member of your soothsaying circle and one who serves as Grand Poobah of a cultish gang of princks who call themselves the Church of O. His flock not only believes in the beforelife but also worships someone called ‘the Great Omega,’ some sort of self-help guru who resides in the beforelife. I met Norm at the outset of that apocalyptic cavern sequence which has become such a topic of interest at the hospice. That cavern, or grotto if you prefer, was the seat of Norm’s church, complete with scripture-quoting, robe-wearing loonies, a chorus who shouted things in capital letters in praise of the Great Omega, and plans to chuck my pal Ian into the Styx with a view to wiping his memory.”

  “You do have interesting friends.”

  “No friends of mine!” I protested. “This Norm is a relative stranger, and struck me as one of those bug-eyed, bearded weirdos who wear sweaters woven of hemp and perceive messages from beyond whenever they eat alphabet soup — no offence meant to the more level-headed and sensible members of the future-scrying fraternity. But he did, I’m forced to admit, have a relatively important speaking part in my last quest.”

  It was at this point in the conversation that the recumbent Jack groaned. At least he seemed to stir a bit, and make a noise that was in the ballpark of the groan. Vera oh-goshed in his direction, gave him a solid, nonchalant boot to the upper slopes, and once again knelt down beside him. This time she removed his belt and shoelaces and began the important work of trussing him up like an Abe-Day hen.

  “And Nappy knew him?” she said, somehow unruffled by recent events.

  “Nappy knew who?” I said, goggling.

  “Do try to keep up,” said Vera. “Norm. You were telling me about Norm. Was Nappy involved with him in some way?”

  “She knew of him. She was present at Detroit University when, after a certain amount of gunfire and generalized panic, she stayed behind to tend to my pal Zeus while self and others were chivvied away toward this Norm’s lair. She might have heard us mention our destination.”

  “Or maybe she already knew him. You did say she was a princk. All Napoleons are. Could she be a member of his church?”

  “It’s possible,” I said, tapping a skeptical finger or two on the countertop, “but I doubt it. You’d think she’d have mentioned prior association with another fortune teller when we first introduced her to you. It stands to reason, I mean to say. It’s not as though Detroit has honest-to-goodness prophets camping on every street.”

  “Maybe,” said Vera. “But we know she knows of him now. You don’t write a letter like this to just anybody.”

  “An excellent point well made,” I said, eager as ever to give credit where it was due. “She knew she was being taken by unnamed persons, and she addressed this warning or cry of help to Norm.”

  “She must have wanted him to see it.”

  “True. And the letter implies Nappy expected Norm to know who it was who took her. I mean to say, you don’t write a letter saying to Norm saying ‘they’re taking me’ if you don’t expect that Norm Strad will know at a g. who ‘they’ are. No point in being opaque when being kidnapped, I mean to say.”

  “It stands to reason,” said Vera, tearing a strip or two from Jack’s clothing and deploying them in the trussing. “So what’s the plan?” she added, tightening a knot.

  “We take this letter to Norm!” I said. “We find out who ‘they’ are, and why they’ve taken Nappy, and solicit Norm’s assistance in tracking her down, thus pushing along the quest to help Isaac and find Zeus.”

  “But how do we get the letter to Norm?” Vera asked, getting straight to the nub. “Where do we find him?”

  “There you have me. Things grew a little apocalyptic in his little grotto-getaway when last we put our heads together, and a certain amount of earth quaking, stone melting, and geographic upheaval seemed to have dropped property values in the vicinity. I doubt he stayed put. But I’ll bet—”

  Here I broke off. And in doing so, I must’ve become somewhat greener about the gills, for Vera turned to me and asked me what was the matter.

  “I think I know who can lead us to Norm Stradamus,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The one person I know who mentioned hobnobbing with Norm ex-post-grotto.”

  “Who’s that?” said Vera. And it pained me to give the answer.

  “Oan,” I said, dully. “We have to go back to the hospice to speak to Oan.”

  Chapter 14

  “Oh, good!” said Vera, and if this causes you to flip back to the last sentence of the preceding chapter just to see what she was oh-gooding about, I won’t stop you. I’d have done the same thing in your posish. For not only did this “oh, good!” arrive hot on the heels of a break in chapters, after which you may have turned in for a night, done a spot of shopping, turned to a neighbour to recommend picking up this book, or whatever it is you do when chapter X transitions to chapter X plus 1, but it also followed a revelation — if revelation means what I think it does — that had nothing jolly well worthy of an “oh good” about it.

  Allow me to amplify, just in case you’re listening to the audio version and can’t face rewinding. I had just told Vera that, if we were to track down Norm Stradamus with a view to handing him Nappy’s note and pushing along our quest to find this lost Napoleon, we would first have to pop by the hospice for a vis-à-vis with Oan, she being likely to have information re: where in Abe’s name Norm Stradamus might be found. And for a man in my posish, viz, a man who finds himself engaged not only to this Oan, but also to the Vera travelling with me, the prospect of bringing these two fiancées together for a conference was an undertaking calculated to bleach the Feynman hair.

  “Of course it’ll be a bit awkward for you,” said Vera, arching an eyebrow at me, and this also surprised me. What surprised me was that she had an eyebrow to arch at all. At the beginning of our travels this Vera had resembled little more than a walking scab as a result of her recent dust-up with Socrates. Her recovery, within the last few hours at least, seemed to have stomped the accelerator and started working on all twelve cylinders. She was almost recognizable, and now equipped to convey emotion through facial expression.

  One thing I’ve always found tricky to navigate is the extent to which one should comment upon another person’s injuries. There are some folks who respond well to sympathy and encouragement, and others who’d much prefer that you didn’t mention their convalescence at all, preferring to put on a brave face, cope privately, and carry on as though they’d never been torn limb from limb, exploded by a bomb, digested by alligators, or otherwise inconvenienced by the vicissitudes of life. Judging Vera to be settled somewhere near the open-bookish end of the distribution, I ventured a vague comment.

  “Err, your eyebrow,” I said.

  “What about it?”

  “You have one, I mean to say. Or rather two. They’ve grown back.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s two fewer things to worry about I suppose,” she said, breezily.

  “And you arched one of them, just now.”

  “I did.”

  “Sardonically, I gather.”

  “Maybe a touch sardonically. Sorry. I just can’t imagine what it’ll be like for you to deal with Oan now that she’s gotten herself convinced that the two of you are engaged.”

  “What do you mean, ‘gotten herself convinced’?” I asked.

  “Don’t play coy with me,” she said, and her eyebrow got a bit more arching done to it. “It’s obvious that you hadn’t any intention of getting engaged to Oan. Some misunderstanding, I suppose. And now you’ve got to go dig yourself out of it.”

  “But dash it, how can I?” I asked. “When a bird’s gone and convinced herself that you’ve bunged your heart at her feet and are ready to take her for richer or poorer, you can’t just haul her aside and tell her, ‘Oh, sorry, you’v
e gone and made a bloomer, and I haven’t the slightest intention of hitching up with the likes of you.’ Embarrassment on all sides, I mean to say. I can’t say for certain that such a discussion would fall within the bounds of scorning a woman, but it’s most certainly in the same zip code as a scorn, and you know what they say about scorned women.”

  “That’s a difficulty. Like I said. It’s going to be awkward.”

  “Have you anything to suggest?”

  “You’ll have to wing it. Or maybe you can convince her to chuck you aside.”

  “But how can I?”

  “I dunno. Say something rude about the Laws of Attraction. Or tell her you’ve taken up smoking cigars. Get a weird tattoo or start learning the bagpipes. Anything that’ll drop your appeal as husband material.”

  This was, I could see, a thought — but on reflection, not one that had a snowball’s chance in mid-July. This Oan, as fatheaded a goop who had ever worn a beehive hairdo, was convinced I was a figure of myth and legend — the Hand of the Intercessor, she called me — and one who, whatever his bad habits or views on Sharing Room philosophy, was pretty hot stuff matrimonially. It would take a lot more than a few cigars to wriggle myself out of this spot of soup. I was about to relay this bit of reasoning to Vera when she, now putting the last few finishing touches on the binding and gagging of Jack, resumed speech.

  “I suppose you could just tell her you’re marrying me.”

  I winced.

  “No good,” I said. “We’re back in the realm of women scorned.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Vera. “Unless she’s fond of bigamy, in which case you aren’t any further ahead. No, you’ll have to think of something else. I’m sure you’ll manage. You’ve wormed your way out of tighter spots than this.”

  “Nothing to do but trust the Author,” I said, mopping the brow.

  “All right then,” said Vera. “Jack’s not going anywhere soon. Let’s get out of here before he comes to.”