Undead as a Doornail

by William F Aicher

  For me, when I die, I just kind of stop being here and end up somewhere else. A dark place that’s here, but also not here. Another plane of existence parallel to our own. It’s where true darkness lives, and I think it’s the place where souls go when they’re lost. When you see a ghost, what you’re really seeing is one of those souls breaking through the layer of Eitherspace into our reality. But they never quite break through all the way … that’s why they appear so ethereal.

  Me, on the other hand, I do come back all the way. Somehow, I’m able to do it. My soul goes off into wherever the hell souls go to when they don’t go anywhere else—where they go when they’re stuck in the almost here. The difference is, I can come right on back. That’s what I did in your apartment … and why I begged you to let me die. I know you meant well, but all you really did was make me suffer. And it sucked.

  So next time, when I ask you to let me die, just let me die. Okay?

  And if I tell you to kill me … you don’t hesitate to put a bullet in my head. My brains’ll blow out, and it’ll make a goddamn horrible mess. But I’ll be back.

  Like I said, I always come back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What was it?” Sofi asked. She still hadn’t touched her breakfast, and from the look on her face, I didn’t think she ever would. “Did you find out what the monster was? What was the screaming? How did you get away?”

  “Stories for another time, my dear. Now you know enough about me. Enough at least to have a bit of an idea of what you’re getting in to. It’s time for you to tell me what I am getting into. I could just as easily do the rest of my job alone. In fact, I could do it much better alone.” I finished off my coffee and reached to my pocket for a cigarette, realized I had none, and eyeballed Sofi.

  “There is no smoking here, Phoenix,” she said dryly. “You are a strange fuck of a man, and I have nothing to tell you that is “special” about me. I wanted to be a model, but I am not. Or not yet. There are many beautiful women in Paris. So, I do what I do, and what that is, is no concern of yours. What you must know is that I am coming with you. It is my sister we are after—”

  I cut her off right there. “Now get this straight, little lady. I’m not after your sister. I’m after Nancy, and I’m after whoever these bastards are who took her. Turns out they took your sister too, so if we find her, we’ll save her. But she’s not my top priority.”

  “No, she is top priority,” she said, clutching her butter knife in her hand. “We will save her, and you are going to help me. I helped you, and I will continue to help you.”

  “All you did was knock me over the head, tie me in a chair, get me stabbed, pump me up with drugs, and extend my suffering until I died.” I squeezed my coffee cup so hard it cracked. “You didn’t help me a damn bit.”

  “You will be quiet now and listen to me,” she scolded. “I have a friend. A friend here in town. I send a photo of this.” She reached into the bag and removed the talisman we recovered from the dead man in the catacombs. “My friend may know what it is. But we must bring it so it can be examined.”

  “A friend of yours is a specialist in supernatural artifacts?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yes. A friend. One you have not killed yet. And you will trust me to go there. He will help.”

  “You’re full of shit,” I said.

  “I am full of nothing. Who did you think I was texting here while you were figuring out what crepe is best? Now you will sit there and let me eat my waffles. Then we will go see my friend.”

  I almost stormed out of the restaurant then and there, but somehow managed to keep my cool. All my life I’d been doing this thing alone. Some research online and some time spent in chat groups and subreddits, along with plenty of lessons from boots-on-the-ground experience had taught me quite a lot about hunting monsters. And none of it taught me to go make friends. A lot of the times I saved people. But never when someone was with me. Saving people was one thing—without my interference, they’d probably be monster chow. Having a partner or a sidekick was out of the question. This lone wolf hunted alone.

  But that amulet. And all those bodies down in the catacombs. How that dapper vamp tracked us down … and turned Sofi’s drug dealer. How the hell they got into the apartment uninvited. I was wrong. None of this was following standard vampire protocol. Besides, other than lodging a bullet in my head and taking the Eitherspace Express back home in defeat, I had no idea where to go next or what to do.

  A few more hours in Paris couldn’t hurt. Worst-case scenario, I’d have the chance to eat a few baguettes and snarf down some escargot. Maybe see the Eiffel Tower or take in The Louvre. A little bit of culture.

  I interlocked my fingers behind my head, leaned back, and watched as Sofi tucked into her plate of waffles. She was very pretty, I had to admit. I could see her being a model. As she delicately chewed each bite, my mind wandered back to the city of lights and what I should try to take in before finally heading back home to my daily life of dogcatcher and raccoon patrolman.

  Of course, I never got to do any of my planned sightseeing. Because soon after, shit got even worse.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On our way to meet with her friend, we took some time passing the amber artifact back and forth between us, scrutinizing it closely for any indication of what the thing might be. The murderous familiar had kept it close, and it sure as hell looked old. But other than some carvings of characters I couldn’t recognize—possibly Egyptian--there was nothing all that spectacular about the thing. Just a chunk of amber about the size of a golf ball lodged in a larger piece of brass or copper on a similarly constructed chain. At first, I’d thought the housing had been made of gold, but that had been under the poor lighting of the catacombs. Now, out in daylight, it still shone and sparkled some, but there was a dullness below the sheen, and the spaces deep in the crevices of the carving had tarnished considerably with age.

  “Do you think it is magic?” Sofi asked.

  “Could be. Though it sure doesn’t seem very magical.”

  “It looks like a piece of junk.”

  “Yeah, it does,” I conceded. “But I still think it’s important. Funny as it sounds, I think this is whatever they were after when they came to your apartment.”

  “They asked for Donal. I think he is what they wanted. Not this hunk of garbage.”

  “I think Donal was the name of the guy I killed,” I replied.

  “You mean, I killed.”

  “You, me, whatever. He’s dead, and we took this thing from him. Maybe they were looking for him because they thought he’d have it?”

  “But why would they think he is in my apartment? I do not think anyone followed us.”

  “No, you’re right.” I conceded. “I don’t think anyone followed us. At least not while we were down in the catacombs. Maybe they tracked you after we got out though. I was pretty delirious at the time.”

  “I am a beautiful woman living in Paris. I have learned to recognize when I am being followed. Otherwise, I would be a beautiful dead woman in Paris. There was no one following us. I would have known.”

  She had a point there. Paris, I’d already discovered, wasn’t much different from any other city. Sure, it was beautiful and held tremendous history, but the same people filled the streets here as any other major metropolitan area. Unless you were in a tourist spot, the place didn’t look all that safe. And to be honest, I couldn’t even say the tourist spots were very safe-looking since I still hadn’t had the chance to check any of them out.

  “Maybe it’s magic.”

  “It is ugly magic.”

  “Maybe that’s part of its charm,” I paused, waiting for a laugh, or a groan. “Charm. Get it?”

  “I get it. But I do not want it,” she replied, tucking the amulet back into her bag. “There is our destination. You will follow me, and you will not speak French. I will take care of us.”

  I grunted in dissatisfied agreeance and followed her through the front
doors of Musée des Arts et Métiers. As we first entered, I had to admit I was a bit underwhelmed. For such a fancy name, I honestly expected a bit more. Especially given the grandeur of the stone architecture of the building’s exterior. Instead of opulence, we were met with a bit of surprising modernity. Bold red display cases dotted the far wall of the front entrance, meeting up with a cherry-bomb-red information desk, marked clearly in English as Information, and the gift shop.

  “So, do we wait? Or—”

  Before I could finish speaking, a mouse of a man scurried our way between the security gates separating the entrance to the gift shop from what I assumed was the museum, proper. Dressed in an ill-fitting tweed suit with a pair of full-moon glasses perched on the tip of his nose, he couldn’t have been more of a stereotype museum curator if I’d made him up myself.

  “Bonjour, Sofi!” he exclaimed and leaned in to give her a small kiss on the cheek.

  “Hello, Ralph. It is good to see you again.”

  “Ah, we are speaking English!” he exclaimed, then turned to behold me as if he hadn’t noticed me standing beside her when he first came over to greet us. “Who is your friend? American?”

  “Phoenix,” I replied. “Phoenix Bones.”

  “Ah, it is excellent to make your acquaintance Monsieur… Bones. We do not get many Americans here at Musée des Arts et Métiers. They seem to prefer The Louvre and our Eiffel Tower. So happy to greet you. Though you may find you are one of the few “bones” in our museum today.”

  “And why is that? Are they on loan?”

  “No, no, no, Monsieur,” he replied, nodding his head vigorously. “Surely Mademoiselle has told you? We are a museum of art and science!”

  I turned and glared at Sofi, disappointed she’d bring me to an art museum. We needed a real museum. With real curators and experts. Not someone who liked to gawk at pretty pictures.

  “So, you’re an expert on vampires?”

  “Moi? No. I am no expert. I am only a student of scientific history. I research and catalog older scientific instruments, like the calculators we have of Monsieur Pascal or our wonderful astrolabes and telescopes,” he replied. “I am a friend of Sofi, but I do not know anything about your vampires.”

  “Why the hell’d you bring me here, Sofi? I thought you said your friend could help us.”

  “My friend can help us. But not this friend. I have many friends,” she replied. “Ralph, can you take us to see Rousseau?”

  “But of course!” Ralph turned and started off back through the security gates and into the museum.

  “Pas de problème. Ils sont avec moi,” he said to the woman behind the information desk.

  Sofi and I followed closely. And as soon as we left the gift shop and entered the museum, I finally saw what all the fuss was about—and why we were here.

  As we snaked our ways through the hallways, I became aware this was unlike any museum I’d been to before. No dinosaur bones or sarcophagi or collections of ancient weapons. But also, not an art museum, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, this museum more closely represented a steampunk fever dream. Various items from throughout our technological history sat safely encased in glass, but rather than purely historical artifacts, these items all possessed a deeper beauty inherent in their design. Early model cameras, vintage typewriters, printing presses and looms marked the more recent progressions in our civilization’s technology, while beautiful brass astrolabes and telescopes and calculators marked our earlier days. These, juxtaposed with more modern advances such as a moon rover and even a DVD player showcased how far we’d come in such little time. As we passed a full recreation of a late 18th-century chemist’s laboratory, I found myself pausing to explore the details—only to be rushed along by Ralph on his hurried trot to Rousseau’s office.

  While truly a remarkable collection, what struck me most was the innate beauty each of these objects possessed. More than pure function, they were built with an eye toward aesthetics that imbued more value in these items than their pure utilitarian qualities—something possibly lacking in our culture today, though perhaps renewed through the devices companies like Apple had built their modern empires around.

  Even the museum itself felt much different than any other museum I’d visited. No dark, dusty hallways. But also no modern blank minimalist chic. These spaces were open and filled with light, but built primarily around core elements such as stone, plaster, natural wood, and industrial metals. With each corner we turned, I expected to discover one of Da Vinci’s famous machines, as they would not be out of place in this collection of curiosities.

  As we made our way through the various exhibits, Ralph and Sofi chattered on in French. Clearly, the two were old friends, but nothing more. They’d exchanged kisses earlier, true. But only in greeting. The fact I kept peeking back to them to see if anything more than a friendship existed, something I could perhaps pick up in their body language if I couldn’t understand their actual language, gave me pause. The girl was considerably younger than me … and remarkably beautiful. Despite the sturdy exterior walls she’d erected between her and I, it was clear she possessed much more love and empathy than she cared to let on. She could have let me die down there in the catacombs—not that it would have mattered to me—but she didn’t. Yes, I brought value to her. Or at least hope. But seeing her with her friend, those walls were nonexistent.

  Eventually, our tour took us to a closed doorway which required Ralph’s keycard to open. He held the door open and we passed out of the main exhibits, into a plain narrow hallway marked with closed doors. “She is down there, Sofi. You know the room.”

  “Merci, Ralph,” Sofi replied. “À la prochaine.”

  And with that, the door swung closed behind us, and we were once again, alone.

  “Friend of yours?” I asked.

  “Yes. A friend for many years. Since children.”

  “But he’s not who we’re here to see?”

  “No. He is a smart man, but he does not know what we are asking. Rousseau. Rousseau will know.”

  “How can you be so sure about that? This place is remarkable, but it’s also not quite the same type of collection I’d expect to have curators who are experts in the occult or paranormal. This is all… science.”

  “Do you truly believe there is a world beyond science, Phoenix? Maybe what you think is magic is science you do not yet understand.” Sofi took my hand in hers and pulled me along behind her as she continued down the hallway. At the third door on the right, she stopped, rapped her knuckles loudly on the door, and entered.

  Loud rock music blared through the room at such a volume I doubted Sofi’s knock had even been heard. In sharp contrast to the rest of the museum, this room was dark, aside from a single lamp perched on a desk. Between us and the desk, crouched over an array of brass and gold instruments in one state of disassembly or another, sat a silhouetted figure.

  Sofi put her finger to her lips, smiled, and crept forward. Why she felt the need to be quiet in this racket was beyond me since I don’t think anyone could have heard an elephant fart in all this noise. But she tiptoed forward until she stood mere inches from the stranger I assumed to be Rousseau, leaned in close to the person’s right ear, and shouted, “Boo!”

  The figure leaped from its seat, clutching a screwdriver like a knife, and revealed the closest thing to a mad scientist I’d ever come across in my life. Dressed in a dirtied white lab coat, she stood about six feet tall, though a few inches of that were disorganized tousles of bleached blonde hair that shot out in every direction—much like Einstein in the famous photo with his tongue sticking out. Unlike Einstein, however, she appeared to be much younger—likely in her mid-30s, though it was difficult to get an immediate gauge with the pair of magnifying goggles strapped to her head. They gave the appearance of bug-eyes when she blinked I half-expected to see one set of eyelids close over the other. Of course, they did nothing of the sort, and once she removed them from her face, the aura of mad scientis
t diminished a bit. But still not much.

  “Sofi!” she shrieked, and the two exchanged a quick hug. “Are you hurt? Let me get a look at you.”

  “Not hurt. But definitely shaken. Back at the flat, there was such violence. But I am safe.”

  “And you,” Rosseau continued, now speaking to me, “I suppose you are to blame for the danger of my poor Sofi?

  “Sorry, ma’am, but I had nothing to do with it. All I did was save her life.”

  “After I saved yours,” Sofi interjected.

  “That’s… debatable,” I resisted the urge to explain to her again how my whole dying isn’t that bad thing worked and instead addressed Rousseau. “Sofi tells me you’re an expert in the supernatural. We were hoping you could help us crack a little riddle we have.”

  Rousseau rolled her eyes at Sofi and replied, “I am no such thing. I am a scientist. But I do know about things others do not. Such things that the science in our books does not attempt to describe, for fear of ridicule.”

  “So, you’re a supernatural scientist,” I replied.

  “You do not understand me,” she paused. “What was your name again? I seem to have forgotten it.”

  “Phoenix Bones, ma’am. And we don’t have time for idle chat. Either you can help us or you can’t.”

  Sofi let out a little huff and glared at me. “When I sent you the photographs, you said you might be able to help.”

  “Might? I thought you said she was an expert! If you dragged me here on a might, then we’re wasting our time.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” asked Rousseau. “Some other plan to find your… what did you call them, Sofi? Vampires?”

  Sofi nodded, and Rousseau continued, “There is more to reality than what you might think, Mr. Bones. Much more.”

  “Trust me, I already know.”

  “What you do not understand are the complexities. Sofi tells me you are some sort of… chasseur de monstre.”