Dead Jack and the Case of the Amorous Ogre

by James Aquilone

appetites, but this looked bad.

  I stopped before the heavy iron bars of the cell. I couldn’t believe my bloodshot eyes. Fancy tapestries hung on the walls. A gigantic bed with a silk canopy took up almost half the room. And in the middle of the chamber, on a chaise lounge, sat a plump, short girl with wings. They fluttered like mad. Her mouth was fluttering like mad, too, as it tore through a turkey leg. The moaning was coming from her. Obviously she liked to eat.

  She looked up, took another bite of the turkey leg, swallowed, and then said, “Jeez, another hunchback handyman. Don’t you guys ever do anything else?”

  “Are you Willa?”

  She picked a piece of turkey not quite the size of my fist out of her teeth and said, “What’s it to ya?”

  She resembled her mother, if Gwen had a serious food addiction. I finally had an answer to my question: Yes, there are pixies who are not so goddamn cute.

  “I’m here to rescue you,” I said.

  Her eyes widened and then she screamed, “What the hell is coming out of your nose?!”

  I panicked for a split second. As a member of the undead, I often find myself in embarrassing social situations, such as when worms exit my body during interrogations or body parts fall off at dinner parties. Unsurprisingly I don’t find myself on many guest lists. Then I felt a tickle in my nose cavity and I relaxed. But just a bit.

  “That’s just my associate,” I said.

  Oswald’s soft, gelatinous body oozed out of my right nostril. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation; probably the only thing that wasn’t unpleasant about Oswald. He dropped onto the floor with a heavy plop and instantly began to transform, tightening and twisting into the shape of a tiny man.

  “Oswald, where the blazes have you been?”

  He didn’t answer right away. He was busy inching toward a potato chip under the chaise lounge.

  “I thought you were mad at me,” the homunculus said.

  “I am mad at you. I’m always mad at you.”

  “What the hell kind of hunchback are you?” Willa said.

  I leaned closer to the bars and whispered, “I’m not really a hunchback. I’m a detective. A zombie private eye, in fact. And let’s keep it down. We don’t want to arouse the ogre while we’re trying to rescue you.”

  “You don’t think Reginald will let you walk right out the door with me, do you?” Willa said.

  “Listen, we need to get you out of here. Reginald—who the hell is Reginald?”

  Willa pointed over my left shoulder.

  “He’s the ogre standing behind you.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, and then experienced the closest thing to sleep possible for a zombie.

   

  PLAN B

  Zombies don’t usually get headaches. So the throbbing in my skull must have been a delusion. I was praying that the straps across my chest and legs were a delusion, too, but I didn’t have much luck convincing myself.

  Thick leather belts held me to a steel table, not unlike those slabs on which corpses rest in the morgue. As if I’d know anything about that.

  The room was cozy, if you happened to be a ghoul. To my right, surgical tools were neatly laid on a long, low table. A shelf above that held various bottles and jars containing glass eyes, ceramic horns, and various other fake body parts. Stuffing lay in heaps in the far corners of the room. Another table, directly in front of me, held a padlocked wooden box and more stuffing. To my left, next to the window, hung a plaque from one of those correspondence courses, certifying one Reginald Belial Madgogg for taxidermy. So the big oaf has a middle name, too.

  Something tickled my right ear.

  Then I heard a little whiny voice. “That was your brilliant plan, huh? Just waltz in, grab the pixie, and waltz out?”

  I couldn’t see Oswald’s face, but I was sure he had that condescending look he always gets: head cocked to the side, eyes rolled up, lips pressed together. The best way to describe Oswald? Imagine a marshmallow with a mouth and X’s for eyes. I had to scratch those eyes in. If you can speak, you should have eyes. Otherwise, it’s damn creepy.

  “The best plans, Oswald, are the simplest ones,” I said.

  “Well, my dead friend, do you have a Plan B?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  Oswald hopped onto my chest. He stared at me. Now, he was wearing his I-know-something-you-don’t expression. If Oswald had pants, he’d be wetting them.

  “Well, don’t strain your worm-eaten brain thinking anymore. I learned something very interesting after that ogre clobbered you and you fell like a sack of dead kittens.”

  “He surprised me! How was I supposed to know there was a hidden door behind me?”

  “Anyway, I hid in the cell after transforming myself into a puddle of goo. And after stowing you away in here, Madgogg came back and, boy oh boy, what a smooth-talker this guy is. He’s sweet-talking our pixie, promising her everything under the moon: jewels, midget dragons, silks, those golden fish that grant you wishes. Then get this—he promises her his soul. But he means it, literally. He tells her his soul isn’t in his body. It’s hidden on some place called Black Rock, which is suspended over the Undead Sea.”

  “Of course!” I said. “It’s an old ogre trick. They remove their souls from their bodies, because it somehow makes them invulnerable, and they hide the soul in some hard-to-reach place. Oswald, I get that soul, I hold all the cards. Either he gives me Willa or I crush his soul. It’s the perfect plan.”

  Oswald was starting to get bent out of shape, literally. His gelatinous body bulged and warped, going in and out from little man shape to blob shape. That was a bad sign.

  “There are a few problems, Jack.” It was even worse when he called me Jack.

  “Problems are my business.”

  “First of all, the soul is inside an egg...”

  “Okay.”

  “...which is inside a box...”

  “Big deal.”

  “...which is inside a goose...”

  “I can deal with a goose.”

  “...which is inside a jackal.”

  “Okay, so there are some livestock issues.”

  “That’s the least of the issues. The jackal is protected by five demons.”

  “So what? Oswald, scoot up to this Black Rock, retrieve the soul, and get back here pronto. I’ll handle the rest.”

  “Me? You want me to get the soul? I can just untie you and we’ll go—”

  “There’s no time! Go immediately!”

  “You’re still afraid of the water, aren’t you?”

  “Listen, you little freak, I’m not afraid of anything. There’s simply no time.”

  “I’ll just untie you—”

  “If you don’t leave this instant, you are out of the agency!”

  “How am I even supposed to find this stupid rock?”

  “How many rocks can be suspended over the Undead Sea? Ask around, dunzy.”

   

  THE SOULMAN COMETH

  Afraid of the water? I might not have minded that from anyone else. But from a homunculus?

  Who wouldn’t be afraid of the water after having been trapped in it for a week? One of the many disadvantages to being a zombie is that you can’t die—and that was one time when I would have welcomed it. Zombies and sailing do not mix.

  I was beginning to look fondly on that time. The damn wig was itching worse than the maggots on Corpse Hill, the hump was digging into my back like a drunken succubus, and my hunger was growing. I fantasized about thick waitress thighs and fat lawyer bellies and grad-student brains. I know it’s a nasty habit, but I’ve been able to control it, mostly. Of course, most zombies aren’t known for their control. So I guess I’m not your typical zombie.

  Through the window at my left, I could see the firestones pouring from the crimson sky. The weatherghoul was right again! The demons would be out now. They always come out during inclement weather, blackening the skies over ShadowShade, swooping and dipping and snatching a lonely
fairy or unicorn.

  Then I saw Oswald’s head coming over the windowsill. He was smiling like a lunatic gnome. I didn’t know what was worse: Oswald failing, or Oswald succeeding and rubbing it in my face.

  He hopped into the room. He was dragging a large sack behind him.

  “I got it,” he said. His body glowed with an internal devil’s fire.

  I shouted, “What the blazes took so long? It must have taken you at least four and a half hours!”

  “For your information, there were three rocks suspended over the Dead Sea, which, I should remind you, isn’t just a hop, skip, and jump away. And did you forget the five demons?” He glowed brighter. “It was pretty rad, actually. Let me tell you how I vanquished them—”

  “Put it in your report. Now hurry and untie me.”

  “Couldn’t I have done that before?”

  I glared at the runt. Homunculi don’t know the first thing about respect. That’s why they’re little men. “Okay, okay,” he said and jumped onto the table, where he began to cut the straps with a scalpel.

  “So, anyway, I used a feather slathered with peanut butter—”

  “Peanut butter? If you used the petty cash to buy yourself food, I’m taking it out of your salary. Now stop wasting time! File a report and maybe I’ll read it. But proofread the damn thing this time and don’t embellish.”

  The sack glided across the floor.

  “Oswald?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why is the soul gliding across the floor?”

  “There was a bit of a problem.”

  “There’s always a problem with you!”

  The homunculus finally freed me. I sat up. I was so stiff I thought my rigor mortis was acting up again. I stood and stretched. I think I heard a vertebra snap. Then I ripped off the wig and hump. I felt