Orion shook his head. “Now mind you, this is just a rumor. But there’s supposedly a ghost bar hidden in a secret basement under a magical place called Red Lobster in Times Square.”
“Bar?” I asked.
“Tavern. Pub. Drinkery—”
“OK, OK. Just wanted to make sure I understood you correctly.” Beside me, Garfunkel was pumping his fist and saying, “Called it!”
“Times Square?” I asked with a frown. Like many New Yorkers, I hated Times Square AKA “Tourist Central.” It’s difficult to get through the congested area during the day and it’s not exactly the best representation of the city, being watered down with advertisements and overpriced chain businesses everywhere. “That’s a pretty populous area. How come no one knows about it?”
“Well,” Orion said hesitantly. “This ghost pub supposedly doesn’t admit the living.”
I scoffed. “Oh? Their ghost bouncer ejects them if they try?”
“No,” Orion said. “There’s no door to get in. You have to be a ghost to physically reach the place.”
I thought this over. Times Square wasn’t too far away. “I don’t care if there’s a door or not. I need to get into this place and ask around for LK. Meet me there?”
“Of course, Theo. But I hope you know most ghosts are kind of jerks.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll do the talking. Pro negotiator here.”
“Hah,” Orion laughed. “You’ll definitely need me. Be there soon.”
“Cheddar Bay Biscuits and Crawl Spaces”
Orion beat me to Times Square, professing that he could find it blindfolded in the dark. When I reached him, he stood in front of the restaurant’s awning, marveling at the giant red lobster insignia.
“It smells very good,” he said. “I haven’t had lobster since the gods left and I landed on this earth.”
I raised my eyes at him. “You’ve never eaten at Red Lobster before?” I smiled. “You’d love the cheddar bay biscuits … Maybe after a successful mission tomorrow night we can celebrate there.”
Instead of going inside Red Lobster, we went around the side of the building, searching for a side door. We found one but it was locked from the inside without a door knob or a key hole, and we had to wait for a restaurant worker to step out for a smoke break to slip inside.
It was dark, and a door just inside led to the restaurant, judging by the smells coming from it. There was also a stairwell that led downward to a dark empty corridor with a burnt-out light bulb in the ceiling. Orion pulled out a pen light, illuminating a section of the brick wall that didn’t quite match the coloration of the rest. It was in the shape of a bricked-over doorway.
Orion gave me a knowing nod. “The ghosts are on the other side.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
Orion just tapped at his ears.
“Right. So how we gonna do this? Sledgehammer?”
“Theo, I sincerely hope you are joking.”
“Eh. Mostly. We’re running out of time.”
Orion stabbed a finger at the bricked-over doorway. “You bust through there, you’ll gain the ire of many ghosts. Ghosts may be dead but they can still harm or kill the living. And these ghosts love their anonymity; they wouldn’t be dwelling in a sealed room otherwise.”
“OK … so we go in through the floor above, through the restaurant. Maybe find a ventilation shaft or something.” I pressed a finger under my nose to stifle a sneeze. There was so much dust down here. “What was this place?”
“Probably a speakeasy during Prohibition.”
“So we’re crashing a ghost speakeasy,” I said. “What could go wrong?”
“With you two?” Garfunkel said. “A lot.”
“Gee. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
I led Orion inside the darkened restaurant through the back door, walking with the purposeful strides of two people searching for a friend in the dining room. The first place I thought to look for a way to the secret basement was the public bathroom. The plumbing inside had to go downstairs, but a guest entered the women’s restroom just in front of us, and I wasn’t going in the men’s restroom.
It was quite loud in the restaurant. Voices and the chinking of silverware on plates and the crunching of crab legs and lobster shells. I was glad for the nicotine gum with its scant amount of stimulant to keep me focused.
We found a utility closet next to the kitchen (the garlic shrimp smelled so so good!) and we sneaked inside. It was cramped with a couple of mop buckets and other cleaning supplies but we had some room to search around with the aid of Orion’s penlight. The clanging of pots and pans and the shouting of cooks in the kitchen beside us masked most of our actions. Against one of the close walls, I saw a crack in the floorboards. Upon closer inspection, I was able to pry up a partially rotting floorboard which led to a crawlspace under the first floor. Orion crouched down beside me, swiping a hand through the layers of dust and forgotten spiderwebs.
He shook his head. “It’s too small for me. Looks like you’ll be on your own after all on this one.”
“Fine by me. Now climb out of there so I can get to it.”
“Whoa whoa whoa,” Simon said. “You’re not seriously thinking of going down there, are you?”
“Dude, where’ve you been this entire time we’ve been scoping the place out?”
“But there could be asbestos. And rats. And spiders. And monst—”
“Get in your shoulder pads. Both of you.”
“But, Theo. Asbestos …”
I’ve found myself in some pretty unbelievable locations over the years. I’ve never, however, been in the crawlspace above an underground speakeasy for ghosts.
From the scant glimpses I caught of it from the holes in the floor, I could see it was a brightly lit establishment, not at all the cold-stone-and-tapestries place I’d imagined, although the floor was made of stone. And were those neon lights down there? There were definitely a bunch of those old-time Edison bulbs hanging from the ceiling. I had to blink my eyes against the pinpricks of light shining upward from below.
A polished wood bar sat against the far wall in the wide-open room below me and transparent figures hovered about, some standing at dusty bistro tables, others in front of the bar. They wore all manners of transparent clothing ranging from suit coats to Western dusters to t-shirts and jeans.
I shimmied along, progressing inch by inch, as silently as I could. Now I knew what it felt like to be a snake. The floor creaked in a few places, and I feared it might drop out beneath me like a trap door at any moment.
I stifled another sneeze as dust tickled my nose and throat. Apparently ghosts don’t mind a little (a lot of) dust. A perk of being dead, I guess. It was a close thing, but I kept the sneeze in. I didn’t know what a gaggle of freaked out ghosts might do if they heard a living being sneaking along in the ceiling above them. And I didn’t want to find out. If I could only find LK down below, I figured he would vouch for me and the rest of the ghosts wouldn’t try to … make me into a ghost too.
Slithering up to another tiny hole in the floor, I stopped to sneak another peek. I was still too far away to recognize any of the transparent faces on the ghosts, but these all looked like human ghosts. No green-tinted lich kings that I could tell.
I scanned the ghost pub from above as glasses chinked and liquid sloshed upon the stone floor. There were also voices. Some lazy and rolling. Others high pitched and shrieky. Sounded like ghosts of all shapes and sizes and backgrounds, but I didn’t hear LK’s stilted stuck-up Olde English vernacular.
Crap … I’d been counting on LK being here. I was running out of time and didn’t have time to chase down ghosts (pun intended).
I could just pick up the conversation of two ghosts directly beneath me, dressed in suits.
“So then I says to him, I says to him … Boo! … And the man goes running!”
The other ghost slammed his translucent fist upon a tabletop, his hand alternatingly pounding the surface and slidin
g through it. “Har har har!” The ghost lifted a glass bier stein and threw it back, the sudsy amber-colored liquid sloshing over the glass’s lip, down the ghost’s transparent throat and through the rest of his body, splattering upon the stone floor like a waterfall.
So it seemed that ghosts liked beer … Good to know … Also, they couldn’t hold their liquor … (Sorry I had to …)
From the corner of my eye, a new ghost slid through the wall and into the room. I didn’t have a good line of sight on it, so I repositioned myself around the peephole in the floor.
“Pardners, looks like we got a snooper lingerin’ outside the door.”
Pardners? Lingerin’? Sounded like an old ghost. Maybe from the Old West. All different kinds of ghosts …
“Ya don’t say?” a slow confident gentlemanly voice drifted over from behind the bar where the bartender was wiping out the inside of a glass.
“I say we scare em!” a belligerent voice thick with an Eastern European accent came from somewhere off to the side.
“I say we eat them.”
Eat them? EAT THEM? What was this place? The cannibal ghost club …?
I was about to press my eye closer toward the peek hole when an eyeball pressed itself up into the pinprick hole, squeezing up and through it like a worm.
“Ah!” I muttered and slid back inside the shaft. My head connected with the top. “Ow!” And then I sneezed, a vicious blast like a bellows that splattered the interior of the crawlspace.
A hand slithered over my neck and through my chest, gripping at my jacket.
“Uh guys, we gotta problem,” the ghost said, still clutching my jacket in one hand. His bald head surfaced through the floor momentarily before bobbing back below.
“W’as tha?” an obviously very drunk ghost said from beneath me.
“We gots us a pa’ty crasher …”
Crap. Cover’s blown …
Oh well, Orion’s the stealthy one. I’d do the rest of this my way.
I gripped at the ghost’s hand still clutching my jacket. I’d expected it to be cold—it was lukewarm and clammy. And the ghost’s breath smelled of … rosemary. How odd.
“Wheeere do ya think yer goin?” the ghost before me said.
I sat back and pushed my palms against the floor, my back against the shaft. Then I kicked out, my first kick passing through the ghost before me, and my second kick …
Crashing through the bottom corner of the crawlspace. The floor beneath me swung open in an asbestos-laden dust cloud, and I pitched downward into the neon glow of the spectral speakeasy …
“Transparent Patrons”
I was feeling light-headed now, not because I’d hit my head in the fall but because the Jack and Coke was so stiff. Note to self: ghosts like their drinks strong.
But it was good. Seems ghosts used only top tier stuff. It also seemed that there were two different types of ghosts. The self-respecting kind that sipped their liquor, and those with the sole intention of getting sloshed with their every existing moment of life—er, death.
I glanced around at the patrons gathered in the establishment. Some stood; some hovered. Some sat at decaying high stools and chairs and booths while others, sat partially through the seats as if unaware their transparent butts had slipped through the solid surface.
They stood and sat with glazed-over, unseeing eyes. They chatted and shot the bull, oblivious to the cruel world outside. In here, in their sealed tomb of a tavern, all was safe.
Sad to say, this was my kind of place. Low key. Strangely ambient. And some of these old ghosts had worse fashion sense than me. I knew Orion would like it here, too. Too bad they only allowed the dead. (Or were they considered undead?)
The bartender, a pallid roly-poly man in an old-fashioned barman’s attire: black vest, starched white shirt, slicked-back hair and moustache had confirmed with me that the rumors of ghosts being bloodthirsty beings were greatly overexaggerated. He also said there was a certain lich king who was new to the place and he’d go fetch him.
“Sharon, will you watch tha’ bar?” he asked as he threw a bar rag over his shoulder.
A transparent, pretty woman in a crimson bodice, an alluring smile and dark curls stepped out of the back room and surveyed the patrons.
I sighed in relief as I sipped my drink and turned to the ghosts beside me, who, oddly enough had been fighting for my attention ever since I’d picked myself up off the floor.
“And yes, even though the gods left, we’re still dead. But we can … die again, it seems,” a portly gent in a bowler hat said sitting next to me at the bar. He threw back a shot of gin that splashed right out the back of his see-through neck.
“Yez, yez,” a man said beside him. He was comically tall and thin, and had a monocle resting between his cheekbone and brow bone. “Ain’t inhabiting zis mortal plane a real eh bitch?” Except he pronounced bitch like “beetch.”
The ghost of a cowboy strode up to the bar and tipped his hat at me. “Uh sir, Ima gonnna hafta ask ya to watch yer language. We got a lady with us today.” He turned to me, his thumbs looped into his belt. “Apologies, Miss …”
I started to blush. Stupidly. “Theo,” I said. “Theo Apollonia.”
He reached out and took my hand with his own warm—very solid—hand and kissed it gently with warm lips. What hasn’t pop culture gotten wrong about death? Coffin burial depth, ghosts being cold to the touch, ghosts loving their liquor … Oh, and not to mention Casper not being the only friendly ghost …
“Pleased ta meet ya, Miss Apollonia.” He removed his hat. “My name is Wyatt Earp.”
My eyes grew wide. The legendary Wild West lawman immortalized by his gunfight at the O.K. Corral … This place was the shit!
A hand touched my shoulder and I turned.
“LK!”
The lich king bowed humbly. That seemed appropriate and somehow regal considering the dusty environment. His pale greenish face had repaired itself, as had his crimson robe.
“At thy service. Thou rangst for me?”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. It was true what they said of New York: it truly was a melting pot of cultures. My best friend was a mythical hunter who spoke in a Mainer accent, my tech girl was a half-spider beauty who spoke in teenage text-slang and now I had a lich king acquaintance who’d once tried to kill me and spoke Old English. And they were all endearing in their own little way.
Gotta love life.
“Yes, I was looking for you.”
The lich king opened his mouth wide in what I took for a grin as he turned to the spectral bartender. He held up a finger. “I shall have what this fetching lass is having.” And then he turned back to me. “Come, let us parley.”
“So the artifact in this underground, shall we call it a storeroom, it really is verily important to thee?”
I nodded. “Very much so. I am indebted to others,” I said, trying to match his vernacular. “And this will help me pay off … thy debtors.”
LK scratched his gaunt chin. “I see.”
“But you don’t need to worry about that. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to steal two tickets and keep them handy for Orion and me until the event tonight. We can’t actually touch the tickets or they’ll ignite and, well … self-destruct.”
There was a hard look to LK’s stare. “You wish to enslave me to guard another item? Nay, two items? And after I was only just freed of my burden?”
“You tried to kill me though,” I said.
LK thrust up his chin. “And I said I was sorry.”
“And the werewolf ghosts—”
“A simple misunderstanding—”
“You owe me,” I said.
“Nay.” LK threw back his drink which splashed upon the table behind him. “That is not the system ghosts abide by.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Abide by? What?”
The ghost of Wyatt Earp leaned in toward me. “Ma’am, you’ll have to challenge Mr. LK to a game to win his allegiance.”
A game? I could tell by the honest slant of Earp’s eyes that he was telling the truth. So that was a ghost’s weakness. Without a thought as to what kind of game a ghost might play, I thrust out a finger at LK and said, “I challenge you to a game!”
LK glanced back at me as he pushed his glass across the bar top for a refill. “You what?”
“A game,” I said, injecting as much confidence as I could into the words.
The bartender poured LK a fresh glass.
“I ought to decline,” LK said. “I want to rest my weary shade for a while. This new GoneGod World is tiring.”
“I’ll do it, Theo!”
I turned. It was one of the drunken ghosts who’d been chatting me up at the bar. Definitely not a trustworthy ghost.
“No, pick me! Pick me!” another of the ghosts at the bar said.
Behind them, more ghosts started raising their hands and spilling their drinks as they vied for my attention. Who needed LK when you had twenty other ghosts volunteering? I just needed to pick one whom I could entrust my life to …
The chatter of ghosts’ voices had become so loud now that I could just barely make out the sound of a fist beating on the other side of the brick wall at the front of the ghost pub. It was coming from the section of mismatched bricks in the rough shape of a doorway.
“What’s going on in there?” Orion cried out in a muffled voice. He must have left the Red Lobster utility closet and gone down the dingy steps near the restaurant’s back door. The ghosts didn’t seem to hear him.
“Me! Pick me! I’ll help you, Theo!” a whiny ghost said.
“No, me! Pick me, Theo!” said another.
Man, these ghosts were giving Simon and Garfunkel a run for being the most annoying beings in existence. I wasn’t used to being the center of attention like this, let alone from a gang of somewhat handsome suitors. How come they had to be dead?
“Theo!” Orion said, his fist thudding against the thick wall of bricks. “Theo! Are you OK?”
Axes and Angels: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Novel (Better Demons Series Book 1) Page 13
