Half-Resurrection Blues

by Daniel José Older

  “He ever mention who he was working with?”

  “He had a sister, a halfie like him. Never met her though. And . . .”

  “And?”

  “Someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “He only said the name one time, and I’m sure it was by mistake, barely even mentioned him out loud, in fact.”

  “Out loud . . .”

  “It was all over him, Carlos. You couldn’t miss it. Fear. Well, fear mixed with something else: a certain admiration almost, or an eagerness to please, better put. Like the guy was a messiah of some kind, some great prophet.”

  I control the urge to interrupt Mama Esther. When she’s finished, she just looks at me, a challenge.

  “The name?”

  She sighs. “Sarco.”

  Sarco. It doesn’t mean anything to me. I shrug and shake my head.

  “I don’t know either,” Mama Esther says. “The name pops up here and there in some old tomes, but nothing useful. One of these archaic old souls that vanishes and reappears throughout history.”

  “Like an overgrown ngk. The research was for him?”

  “Seemed like some of it was. But I couldn’t tell how much. He was definitely following his own intuition for part of it.”

  For an uncomfortable moment, I see Trevor immersed in Mama Esther’s library, poring over ancient tomes, scribbling notes. This man was more like me than I want to think about. A moment returns to me, unsolicited and obnoxious: Trevor out on that chilly Park Slope street; his eyes suddenly becoming sharp and focused, he looks at me and sees me exactly for who and what I am.

  He recognized me.

  It’s time. Let’s go.

  He wanted to show me what was going on. Maybe wanted my advice. He knew what I was and he wanted to bring me in. The whole stupid setup with the Brads and David could’ve been a ruse to lure me in and then talk to me about whatever the hell they were working on.

  Or kill me. Or worse . . .

  I wonder again if in some other version of this universe, one where I didn’t take the Council so seriously, Trevor and I would’ve been friends.

  “Carlos?”

  I shake off the thought. It’s too awful. “Esther, why didn’t you tell us this before?”

  Her shining bluish hue flashes toward crimson. “You think you and the Council the only ones out there, Carlos?”

  “No! Of course not . . .”

  “I know things are tight right now. I know things’ve spun out of control. But what I don’t know is who to trust.” I’ve never seen Mama Esther’s rage. Never known her to be anything but overflowing with affection. Nothing I can say makes any sense, so I stay quiet. “Mama Esther doesn’t take sides. Not for the Council, not for the free-swinging spirits out there. Not for halfies or fullies or nobody. The dead want to come take shelter in these stacks, revive their weary souls within the protection of my warmth, that’s what I can offer. But don’t demand of me that I pick sides . . . Don’t do that.”

  “I wasn’t. I mean . . . I didn’t mean to.”

  Her whole giant frame sags. “I know, Carlos. I know. There’s so much you don’t understand. You can’t. Hell, there’s plenty I don’t understand.”

  “Do you . . . know what’s going to happen?” I’m kind of cringing while I say it, because I don’t want her to get all fiery again, but instead she just sighs.

  “No. I wish I did. I really do. I knew there was trouble brewing, but quite honestly, sometimes trouble can be a good thing. The world needs a little trouble to keep moving forward. Seems this trouble may have gone a little above and beyond that though.”

  “It does seem that way.”

  “Carlos!” Riley calls from downstairs. “Getchyo shit together! We movin’ out!”

  Fuck. I don’t like any of this. Too much swirling through my head to focus on this fool’s mission we’re about to go on.

  “I suppose,” Mama Esther says wryly, “it just doesn’t make much sense keeping a dead man’s secrets anymore, and I know you’re doing everything you can to deal with those creatures.”

  “We are, Mama Esther. We are.”

  “Here.” The old ghost gestures to a pile of ancient books sitting on the floor. Post-it notes and scribbled-on scraps of paper stick out of the pages at unruly angles. “Trevor’s stack. You can take them if you want.” She’s frowning at this breach in her own rules about privacy.

  I load the books into my satchel. “Thanks.” Doesn’t seem like quite the right word, but it’s all I got.

  She gives me the saddest smile I’ve ever seen and then quickly turns away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It’s worse. Like it knew we were coming. Or maybe each new ngk builds on the strength of the previous ones. The second certainly came in fiercer than the first. Whatever it is, I seriously doubt anyone’s gonna make it seven minutes, let alone ten. Five would be impressive.

  This building’s a littler cleaner and better kept than the other two. There’s a newly installed door-buzzer system and fresh doormats. But the noise, the feeling of fast-forward deterioration deep down inside, the utter degradation of being near that little screeching, panting monster . . . It’s almost too much to bear as soon as we walk in.

  “Jesus,” Dro says, throwing his hands over his face as if that would do anything to relieve the feeling. “What the hell?”

  “I know.” Riley’s playing the reluctant lieutenant, stifling his terror through gritted teeth. “Let’s get this . . . the fuck . . . over with.”

  The ngk is in a shadowy corner of the basement, cackling and panting away on his little bike just like his brothers. Again I have to stifle the urge to draw and slice the damn thing into a million pieces.

  “I gonna make a grab for the machine,” Riley says. “You two cover me.” Better him than me. Dro and I draw our blades, mine vividly steel and solid compared to Dro’s shimmering ghost blade. I don’t even know what we’re preparing for, since we can’t . . . whatever. The screeching had stopped for a minute, but as Riley goes in, it comes back strong, almost knocking me to my knees. The ngk, ever focused, keeps its squinty little eyes straight ahead as it pants and chuckles to itself on that stupid stationary bike. Little patches of hair dot its pale shriveled body like weeds on a vacant lot. I steady myself and watch out the corner of my eye as Riley reaches for the bike. The shriek gets noticeably worse as he closes in. I check the stairs, squinting through the pain to make sure no one’s coming.

  When Riley gasps, I swing back around, blade poised to strike. There’s no one to strike at though. Riley’s skidded away from the ngk, shaking his hand like he wants to fling it into a corner. “Fuck! The thing burned me!”

  “You okay?” Dro yells.

  “I think so,” Riley says. Then he collapses. He’s lying there, flickering and fading like ghosts do right before they cease to be. I go to grab him, but Dro gets there first. Only instead of getting Riley, he lunges at the little grinning creature in the corner. I open my mouth, but the words haven’t come out by the time Dro brings his sword down full force on the ngk, slicing a clean, maroon laceration into the thing’s head.

  For maybe a half second, nothing happens.

  We both just stand there, staring like idiots at the ngk as its dark blood pours freely from the brand-new gaping mouth Dro made in its forehead. Then it falls over itself like a sack of potatoes that just realized it was an inanimate object. There’s a moment of peace; the screeching stopped the second Dro’s blade hit its mark. Relief flushes through me. I’m reaching down to grab Riley, who’s looking slightly better, when the screeching returns in force. Not only is it twenty times worse, but it’s coming from all around us. Carrying Riley’s trembling, barely there form, I turn and stumble toward the stairs. It takes all my inner strength not to come crashing down and give up, but I can’t. There’s no Moishe to call nine-one-one this time, and Riley’s unconscious ass is depending on me.

  I’d figured Dro was right behind me, but then I hear
him scream. At least six ngks are on him. I have no idea how they moved so fast or where they came from. All I know is, they’re swarming over Dro’s translucent body like maggots on meat. I take a weary step toward him, almost pass out, and then realize it’s useless anyway. What am I gonna do—slice them and get myself eaten too? If that’s what they’re doing. I see one reach a tiny hand into his ghost flesh and twizzle its fingers around. Dro screams in agony, but I can barely hear it beneath the ngk shrieks. And then he’s quiet. Because he’s gone. The ngks finish whatever sick cleanup ritual they have and then turn their hungry eyes to me.

  And I’m gone. I don’t know if I’ve ever moved so fast in my entire short, weird half-life. The stairs are a blur beneath my uneven legs. The door slams behind me. I’m through the hallway out onto the street, Riley a quivering pressure against my back. I’m surprised I didn’t go straight through the glass windowpane on the way out. I keep going, tearing around the corner in an oblivious frenzy, up the block, ’round another corner, and then straight on into the night.

  I pause at Eastern Parkway, where cars are still bustling back and forth. It’s a comfortingly large thruway. There’s trees, big apartment buildings. A little up the way, I can see the Brooklyn Museum, brightly lit on this cold, cold night. I collapse on one of the benches lining the shadowy jogging path beside the service road. Every breath reignites the fire into my chest. Riley lies flickering beside me: still there but only barely. He doesn’t have much left in him.

  There’s only one place I know where he’ll be sure to heal, and unfortunately, it’s back in the direction I came from. I exhale a frosty curse into the winter night, hoist Riley on my shoulder, and slump back down Franklin Avenue toward Mama Esther’s.

  PART TWO

  At the crossroads

  where her spirit shocks

  she comes sweeping

  through the night,

  spirits and hounds

  baying behind her.

  her wings keep me warm.

  three jackals

  watch with me.

  I am the gate

  demons and vanquished gods invade

  then pass into this world to get to you.

  —Gloria Anzaldúa

  “Canción de la diosa de la noche”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  After the sounds of the city night faded to ambience, the predawn creaks and cracks of this old house kept me company. Some plaster would crackle above me and to the left; then a few dozen seconds would slip by and a clack would sound out across the room. I used to trace imaginary lines between each tiny beat, draw constellations in my head from pop to clank. Then an old engine somewhere would sigh to life, fans spinning, belts whirring past. Its entrance was always a grand pronouncement, but in a few minutes it would blend with the scattered night orchestra.

  The best, though, my all-time favorite, was when someone in the adjacent building would take a shower. The piping was connected to Mama Esther’s, so as soon as they turned on the faucet, you’d hear the torrent of water race up one wall, across the ceiling, down another side, and then rush off toward the neighbor’s. You could imagine the water joyously swooping across the building, up and down pipes and finally exploding out of someone’s silver faucet. I thought about how the building was very like a living thing, how a whole system of ticks and tocks and whirring sounds and circulating fluids kept it all in working order, flushed out the garbage, spread life through the pipes. The clicks and clacks and murmuring rush of water became a song, a call-and-response with my own slow-beating heart and the fluid rushing through my pipes, and the song was about life.

  But now I’m too worried about Riley to fuck around with found-sound symphonies. Mama Esther plays her part, the old ghost, carrying on and dithering over Riley’s depleting shadow. I play mine too, waving off her concern for me, slumping glumly in the corner while she works on him. I gaze on with dazed interest as those huge, see-through hands slide over my partner, working that ancient magic, pulsing life back into him.

  And Dro. Dro is gone. I can’t linger in that emptiness too long or it will swallow me.

  At some point in the night, Mama Esther rouses me from a half-assed nap to send me on my way. “There’s nothing else that you can do for him, Carlos. You already saved his life.” A flicker of doubt in her old eyes: provided he lives . . .

  And it’s true. After she leaves, I just stand here in this room that I know so well and try to chart the odd progress of my life up till this point. It’s mostly been a series of encounters with the dead, a few wild drunken nights, and many long walks across Brooklyn. And now the man who pulled my mostly dead ass off the street and brought me here to become whole again is on the brink. And all I can do is pace the room. “Go home, Carlos,” Mama Esther had said. “Rest yourself. You’ve had a long and terrible night.”

  * * *

  She was right, of course, but I don’t go home. I’ve had a long and terrible night. Home means nothing to me. I have no interest in wallowing, and I know Herodotus and the poets will never eclipse the image of Dro falling to the ngk swarm. And then the ngk swarm turning to me as one, those myriad hungry eyes glaring through the darkness of the basement.

  No.

  Home is not the place for me. My mind knows where it wants to go, but I let my feet carry me on their own. It’s easier that way, not allowing the conscious desire to surface. Do what you have to do, feet, and soon we’re ambling through the park, and the thousand late-night spirits and birds howl their creature songs and the songs mingle with my crooked heart and its off-tempo scampering, my swirling fears and the regrets and wonders, my aching head. I’m just a park spirit too, at the end of the day. Housed in this crooked body with its crooked heart, off-tempo gait, and deathlike swagger. But inside, I’m just a ghost like the rest of them. Don’t be fooled.

  It’s so dark here. I’m sure I’m a holy terror to any late-night sojourner, this limping half phantom fleeing from a long and terrible night into the arms of some unknown disaster. Fuck. I haven’t even drunk anything and my mind’s moving too fast for its own good. I forsake the path for those blessed with the full breath of life and trundle through the underbrush, upsetting a family of birds. And then I’m out in the sudden clutter of Flatbush and then I’m on Ocean Avenue and my finger’s on the buzzer of her door and I’m slumped against the wall, waiting, trying not to think too hard.

  “Carlos?”

  She’s in pajamas. A light. She’s probably not really glowing—I just haven’t seen anything that could make me smile in what seems like years but is really only hours. I find I don’t know what to do with myself, how to carry this strange body. Fortunately, my face says it all. Sasha takes one look at me and opens the door. It’s startling, how instantaneous her decision is. I see it flash across her face. It’s not that she didn’t think about it at all, but . . . she brings me inside, leads me to an elevator, down a hallway, into a cozy little dim one-bedroom. She helps me out of my jacket, collapses me into an easy chair that seems to have been waiting there just for me, and puts on some water to boil.

  I’m doing everything I can not to look like a complete zombie when she comes back in the room. “Do you want to talk about it?” she says very softly. I have no words for what happened. And I’m not in a storytelling mood. And the more I say, the more likely I’ll fuck up, and this night will come crashing around me even more than it already has. I shake my head. She nods and goes back in the kitchen to fuss with the tea.

  “Milk and sugar?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  She returns with two steaming mugs. “I hope peppermint’s okay. It’s all I got.” She’s wearing flowy pajama pants and a tank top. You can just make out the shadow of her nipples through the shirt. Her clavicles slide beneath the straps and meet at her neck, where the tiny shadows of her jugular veins triangle up and away toward her ears. I stand and take the teas out of her hands. She reads my expression and, with the slightest of smiles, says: “No.” I give one of the t
eas back to her and sit.

  “You can show up at some ridiculous hour of the morning with death etched across your face and I’ll lend you my couch. I don’t even know why I trust you that much, but I do. But don’t overplay your hand, Carlos.”

  “Fair enough.” I’m elated just to be here and not in some delirium of sorrow. I sip at the tea, which is pretty bland, and allow contentment to displace confusion. I don’t know how we settled into a conversation, but we did. She knew I was lost and took the initiative, talking about the park and how different it was at various hours of the day. I was quiet at first, but she ignored it like a pro. We stick to larger universal topics—the smell of coffee, waking-up routines, and soon it feels natural, like what normal people do. Our eyes say plenty more, but soon even all that gets lost in the winding conversation. And then I find I’m fading; the night with all its longness and terriblosity, has caught up to me. I’d’ve been perfectly happy sliding into unconsciousness on this comfortable-ass easy chair, but instead Sasha lays me down on the couch—me mumbling total nonsense like an old man and her cooing and shushing me, covering me with blankets till everything becomes dim, and then there’s nothing at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It’s snowing when I wake up. I have no idea what time it is, a few hours from dawn maybe. The heater’s clanging incessantly like some angry troll got trapped in there on the way to his cave. Sasha is apparently quite the movie buff; stacks and stacks of videotapes and DVDs crowd around her television like a fragile entourage. Besides that, you’ve got your standard van Gogh coffee shop painting, a portrait of Frederick Douglass looking surly, a few dangly plants and some framed photos that might very well be the same sample ones they use in picture frames all over the place. It’s a nice spot, altogether, and seems to be keeping my demons at bay.