by Gary Jonas
“What do you want me to do here? You wanted us to find your mother, and that’s what we’re working on.”
“I think she’s with Papa Simon,” Tara said. “That’s where we should go looking.”
Kelly leaned out the car window. “Are you coming?”
“What do you want to do, Tara?” I asked. “You want to catch an Uber home? We can call you with an update.”
“You’d leave me on the street here?”
“We’d wait for the Uber to arrive.”
“Why can’t you just come home with me? Let Kelly handle that guy.” As she spoke, she moved up close, brushed against me, and bit her lip. She left out the hair flip, and I wished Esther was here to see if Tara was alone in her body.
“What’s the story?” Kelly asked.
“Fine,” Tara said, pulling away from me.
“I guess we’re going,” I said.
Tara climbed into the backseat. I walked around the car and climbed in behind Hank.
Tara stared out the window, refusing to speak to me. I didn’t know what had gotten into her.
“Start driving, Hank,” I said.
He started the car, and an R Kelly song blasted out of the speakers at full volume.
Kelly punched the radio, shattering it, and the car went silent.
“Hey!” Hank said.
“Raise your voice to me again,” Kelly said, clenching her fist, and calmly staring at him.
Hank looked at the hole in his dash and the pieces of the radio on the floor.
“We’re good,” he said, his voice a shade above a whisper.
And we rode in silence through terrible traffic. Hank took us across some railroad tracks to a wharf on the Mississippi, and parked in an expansive parking lot.
“Our ride is waiting,” he said, and pointed to a speedboat moored behind a large freighter.
“Mind telling us where we’re going?”
“To see Madame Rousseau, of course.”
“And who has her?”
“My boss.”
“Emmanuel?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Guess again, Mr. Detective Man.”
“Paul Tanner.”
“Got it in two,” he said.
“So how does Papa play into this?”
“Tanner doesn’t have any kids.”
“Good to know,” I said.
Tara leaned close to me as we started across the parking lot. “If I die, it’s on you,” she said.
“I thought you wanted me to find your mother.”
“Not by putting my life at risk in an obvious set-up.”
“You’re extra nervous about this,” I said.
“Damn right I am. I don’t have Mama’s power.”
“Get on the boat,” Hank said.
“You heard the man,” I said. “Get on the boat. Or we can get you a ride home. Your choice.”
“Not anymore,” she said.
We piled into the speedboat, a Wellcraft Scarab 22. Kelly and I sat on the bench seat. I let Tara take the passenger seat. I sat directly behind Hank, who started the engine, and eased us into the current. I kept the gun trained on him.
“When the trap is sprung,” I said, “you die first.”
He glared at me over his shoulder. “You’re never gonna know what hit you.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “You’re definitely gonna know what hit you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
We rode down the Mississippi toward the Gulf of Mexico, but it wasn’t like Huck and Jim on the raft. For one thing, there were more of us, and for another, we moved a lot faster. The greatest hazard was dodging logs because even though most were between four and ten inches, they could break the motor casing and blow the engine if they hit the right way, but Hank knew what he was doing.
He cut the engine as we cruised up on a small town that grew around what looked like an oil field. Hank eased us over to a small dock, hidden among a strip of cypress and tupelo gum trees, and tied us off to a cleat.
“Let’s get the murder and mayhem on center stage,” Hank said, and motioned toward the trees.
We walked between the cypress trees to back side of a house. The front faced a small street with three other homes, and still more of the tupelo and cypress trees that grew in abundance.
The screen door on the back of the house was off its hinges and leaned against the siding. A white plastic lawn chair lay on its side with some ugly green and brown growth on the seat and legs. Hank hopped onto the back porch, and rapped his knuckles on the worn wooden door.
The door swung open to reveal Sarah in a sundress. Her legs were bones surrounded by rotting flesh that had mostly fallen off. Her arms looked okay, though she had a nasty rash. Her face had seen better days. Her gaunt cheeks and dead eyes made her look like an extra on The Walking Dead, and her hair hung in strings that looked ready to give way to gravity’s pull.
She didn’t speak, she simply held the door open.
“I don’t want to go in there,” Tara said.
“You can wait in the boat,” I said.
“I don’t want to stay out there, either.”
“Do what you want,” I said, and followed Hank into the house.
Kelly followed me.
Tara shook her head, but stepped into the house as well. Sarah closed the door behind her, the wedding ring on her finger glinted as she lowered her hand.
We walked through the kitchen, which needed to be torn down, burned, and rebuilt from scratch. I didn’t want to touch anything. Giant cockroaches stood on the counters waving their antennae as if itching for a fight, just daring us to come closer.
They could have the counters.
Pieces of the doorjamb had broken off over the years, and the place didn’t need a coat of paint, but a flamethrower.
Paul Tanner sat on a metal folding chair. He absently picked at the hole in his forehead, and flicked pieces of dead flesh onto the floor. An old boom box sat on a card table beside him. It played cassette tapes. The plastic trays that held the tapes looked gray and coated with years of dust and grime. One tray was open, the other closed. There was a bullet hole in one of the speakers.
Pieces of wood, a rolled up carpet, and various detritus covered the floor. A piece of plywood lay on the ground covering most of a hole that revealed pipes and dirt beneath the house.
“Love what you’ve done with the place,” I said.
“The maid took the rest of her life off,” Paul said.
He wore a dark suit and tie, but the pants looked like he’d been wading through mud puddles. He’d lost his shoes somewhere along the way.
“I want to go home,” Tara said.
“Unless he can control the cockroaches, I think this will be over in no time,” I said.
“Overconfidence will be your downfall, Mr. Shade.”
“If I had a dime for every time someone had told me that, I could buy a pack of chewing gum.”
“Stop wasting time,” Kelly said. “You want me to rip this guy’s head off?”
“Charming,” Paul said.
“Where’s Madame Rousseau?” I asked.
“Right behind you,” Paul said.
At the risk of falling for an old trick, I did look behind me. Madame Rousseau wasn’t anywhere in sight, of course. Tara stood right behind me, and Sarah leaned against the wall behind her. An ugly spider dropped down on a web in front of Sarah, and she reached out, grabbed it, and popped it in her mouth.
I made a face, then turned back to Paul. He hadn’t moved. Hank moved over to stand beside and slightly behind him, resting one hand on the boom box.
“So Madame Rousseau found Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak?”
Paul chuckled. “All right, Shade, that one amused me.” He pointed to Sarah. “Baby, it’s time for the reveal.”
Sarah nodded, and plucked a spider leg from between her teeth. She flicked it aside, and bent to pick up a piece of wood. It was an old broom handle, splintered on one
end.
Kelly moved between me and Sarah, and pulled Tara behind her.
“Bring it, sister,” Kelly said.
“She’s not going to attack you,” Paul said. “All of us together couldn’t defeat a first generation Sekutar warrior.” He rolled his hand in the air to Sarah. “Go ahead, my dear. It’s time for you to be free.”
Sarah balanced the broomstick on the floor with the splintered end angled toward her. Then she rammed her face down on it. The splintered wood went through her right eye, and pushed into her brain. The body stood there for a moment, then toppled sideways to the floor and lay still.
“That was your big reveal?” I asked.
Paul laughed. “Wait for it,” he said.
Tara moved behind me, and gripped my shoulders. “I’m frightened,” she whispered. “Please get me out of here. I’ll do anything you want.”
“Shh,” I said, still staring at Sarah’s corpse.
But nothing was happening.
I glanced over at Paul, who hadn’t moved. “Your firecracker looks like a dud,” I said.
“Give it a minute,” he said.
“Maybe I’ll just let Kelly tear off your head.”
Wood scraped against wood.
I turned, and watched as Sarah pushed herself up. She rose, the broom handle protruding from her right eye like a harpoon from a whale.
“Now,” Paul said. “Hank, will you do the honors?”
Hank leaned over and pressed a button on the damaged boom box.
Cyndi Lauper sang “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
And Sarah began to dance. She plucked the broom handle from her eye socket, and did a little tap dance twirl in time with the song.
Sarah spun the broomstick, and I dropped into a fighting stance, just in case.
I needn’t have worried because Kelly was on top of it. She stepped forward, and Sarah attacked.
Hank cranked the volume on the song, and Kelly had some fun taking the broomstick from the corpse. Kelly jammed the stick into Sarah’s other eye, yanked the stick free, drove it into her heart, pulled it out, spun and kicked the corpse into the kitchen. Sarah crashed into a counter, dislodged a bunch of pots and pans, scattering the roaches as she collapsed to the floor, twitched once, and went still.
Kelly twirled the stick and stopped with it braced along her right arm, balanced against the small of her back. She was ready for action. Her eyes widened.
Hank clapped.
I turned around.
Doris Tanner stood behind Tara with a rift closing behind her. Doris had her hands on either side of Tara’s head.
I started toward her, but a metal cage appeared around me. I ran into it, gripped the bars, shook them, but there was no way through.
Another cage encircled Kelly, though the bars were thicker because she was stronger, and as it appeared, it knocked the broomstick out of her hand, pinning it to the floor.
Tara screamed and her head crunched under the magical compression Doris exerted. The sound of her skull cracking filled the room in spite of the loud music.
“No!” I yelled, trying to break through the cage. But I couldn’t get to her.
The music played on as Tara’s body collapsed to the dirty floor. Blood and brains seeped from her skull.
I dropped to my knees. Even knowing it was a trap, I’d been overconfident, and now Tara was dead.
It was my fault.
And she’d practically begged me not to take her here. My stomach dropped out and I felt nauseated, and stupid.
Hank turned off the boom box.
“Why would you do that?” I asked, my voice cracking like Tara’s head.
“Because Madame Rousseau has lived too long, and killed too many,” Paul said. “Including me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. “Why kill Tara?”
“How stupid are you, Shade?” Paul pointed at Tara’s body. “That was Madame Rousseau right there.”
“You son of a bitch,” I said, pulling myself to my feet using the bars of the cage. “That was Tara.”
“Maybe he’s incapable of learning,” another voice said.
I spun in a circle inside my cage. “Who said that?”
Papa Simon stepped out from behind Doris. “I did.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.
“Trapping my ex.”
“By having your daughter killed?” Kelly asked.
“My daughter died in the year 2000.”
“And Madame Rousseau brought her back,” I said. “Even took Grady’s life-force to reanimate a body for her.”
“And whose body was brought back, Mr. Shade?” Papa Simon asked.
I shook my head, but it finally clicked home as truth. Grady saw what he saw, but that didn’t mean the body was for Tara. Even as she shaped the body into a child who could grow up.
Papa Simon smiled. “I see the light just came on in your eyes, Mr. Shade.”
“When she put her daughter’s spirit into the body, it was to animate the corpse, not to inhabit it. The vessel was just for her,” I said. “Just for Madame Rousseau.”
“She couldn’t quite bring herself to use our daughter’s full name. Instead, she called herself Tara while she grew the body back to what she wanted it to be.”
“So you guys just killed her?”
“I didn’t kill her,” Doris said. “I drove her back to her older body.”
“And even that one isn’t her original,” Papa Simon said. “Immortality comes at a price. She wanted a daughter to raise up in her new body, but had Emmanuel first. She didn’t want to be a man.”
“Speaking of Emmanuel,” I said, “where is he?”
“At Islande’s house. He was… How should I put it? Body-sitting her older vessel. When she was close enough, she could control both bodies. We’re outside her circle of power here, and she knew it.”
“If she’s so strong…”
“Why didn’t she take us all out?”
I nodded.
“Because she didn’t know we would be here. She knew something was up, but Paul wasn’t much of a threat.”
Papa Simon walked up to my cage and gazed in at me.
“I wouldn’t get too close to him,” Doris said.
Papa Simon laughed. “You can remove the cages. I still have these two under my spell. They can’t hurt me.”
“They can hurt us,” Doris said. “As in me, my boy, and his friend.”
Papa Simon smiled at me. “Simon says you can’t hurt anyone without my express permission.”
“Cute,” I said.
He walked over to Kelly’s cage. “Simon says you can’t hurt or kill anyone without my permission.”
“I don’t like you,” Kelly said.
“You’re hurting my feelings, pretty lady.” He turned to Doris. “You can get rid of the cages now.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like that idea. I tried to control him before, and I couldn’t.”
What the hell was she talking about? Had she tried using direct magic on me before? If so, I hadn’t noticed, and I always notice when wizards try to mess with me.
“I’m not leaving them here to die,” Papa Simon said. “I abhor killing.”
“Leave it to me then,” Paul said. “I love it.”
“Cool your jets, Paul,” I said. “I was hired to find you, and last time I talked to your mom, she wanted me to bring back your body.”
“Yeah,” Paul said, “but as you can see, I called her myself, so you’re fired, dipshit. Hank? Shoot them.”
Hank hesitated. “He has my gun. And that warrior chick has Derek’s gun.”
“Where is Derek?”
“He was tied up,” I said, unable to resist.
“Mr. Simon, tell Shade to give his gun to Hank.”
“That’s Papa Simon.”
“Whatever.”
“And I’ll do no such thing. It’s one thing to take away Landy’s extra body. That body died ages a
go. But I won’t be a party to murder.”
“So order them not to kill us,” I said.
Paul smiled. “He signed a contract saying he wouldn’t use his voodoo shit on me again.”
“Again?”
“He helped raised me from the dead. Thought he could use me to get to his beloved. Didn’t know I had magic in my veins. I may be zombified, but I have agency.”
“Well, I’m bored,” I said. “So if you’re going to kill us, get it over with. I’m tired of listening to you.”
“Fine,” Paul said. “Mom, get rid of the cages. And Hank, take the gun from that asshole and shoot him in the face.”
“Don’t do that,” Papa Simon said.
“Shut up, old man.”
“It’s all right, Papa Simon,” I said. “I’d rather die than listen to any more of his crap.”
“I’m against this,” Doris said. “Have him pass the gun through the bars.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I said. I tapped the gun against the bars.
“I don’t want to get shot,” Hank said.
“Who does?” I asked.
“He can’t shoot you. Papa Simon gave his command.”
“That’s right,” Papa Simon said. “And because he can’t hurt anyone, he doesn’t need to die.”
“Dude,” I said, “you’re on the wrong side of this thing. Switch sides. You haven’t strayed too far yet. Madame Rousseau won’t like losing the Tara body, but if what you said is true, she can make a new one.”
“Not without killing. A life for a life, Mr. Shade. Magic has a price.”
“Oh, shut up,” Paul said. “Mom, get rid of the damn cages.”
Doris raised her hands and waved her fingers around a bit. The cages disappeared, and I noticed something important.
Doris was wearing Sarah’s wedding ring.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I raised the gun and pointed it at Hank. “Stay where you are,” I said.
“You can’t do shit, Shade,” he said, and moved around the card table.
Papa Simon moved off to the side, to avoid any violence.
I smiled at Hank. “This is your lucky day. I don’t want to kill you, but Paul is already dead, and if you saw the movie Zombieland you might recall rule number two.”
I moved my arm to the right, leveling the gun at Paul, and I squeezed the trigger twice.
