Habeas Corpses

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  It roared like a wounded elephant and bucked like a rabid mustang. Deirdre and the poker both went flying. My computer preceded her as she skimmed the top of the desk, both ending up impacted against the outer wall, just below the shattered window. The poker smashed through the heavy glass of the giant aquarium like an elongated bullet and the whole thing exploded. A miniature tsunami of water swept me off my feet and just out of the monster's reach.

  But only for a moment.

  Kneeling on the newly made beach of rocks and sand and broken glass, I gazed across the tableau of flopping, dying fish and gingerly reached for the red, brown, and white striped Scorpaenidae that some aquarists call a lion-fish. The Pterois volitans looks like a three-dimensional lace doily with candy-cane coloring and fins of gossamer. I picked it up by its fragile tail, careful to avoid the Tinkertoy scaffolding that spread its saillike appendages in multiple directions. The spines were barbed and hollow and capable of delivering painful if not lethal doses of poison and neurotoxins.

  I looked up at the monster's blind and bloody face towering above me. "Stay for dinner?" I hissed. "We're having fish!" And I snapped the lion-fish up so that it imbedded in the creature's right cheek like a giant sticky burr.

  The monster instinctively swatted at it with its hand which only made matters worse. It howled and I scrambled, pulling myself up to the fireplace and reaching for the glass jar with the heart, sitting on the mantel. I figured a shattered glass jar was better than no weapon at all.

  Then I looked a little higher.

  I caught the jar one-handed as a battering ram shaped like an arm smashed into the brickwork just below the mantel. The other arm was thrusting forward just inches to my left. "Scraps!" it yelled: "Scraps!"

  I danced a complicated two-step, trying to avoid the deadly grab and sweep of those giant limbs as I reached up with my free hand and grasped the hilt of Brother Michael's great sword. The monster cocked its head as the blade came free of the scabbard with a serpentine hiss. A moment later I was knocked on my back and sliding across the floor as one of its flailing arms connected. It was hard to tell whether the broken glass from the aquarium was doing more damage to the hardwood floor or my nether regions in the process. I suspected both would require refinishing if I survived.

  The jar was still intact as I'd cradled it to my chest with the fall. The sword clattered off to my right, just out of immediate reach.

  The thing cocked its head again, listening for anything that would give away my position or disposition. I lay still, fighting to get my wind back and trying to reach for the sword without making any further sounds. The jar against my chest was a hindrance and the sword was just out of reach. The back of my shirt was in tatters as, I was sure, was my skin past the subcutaneous layer. The floor was already wet so it was tough to tell how much blood I was losing.

  "Scraps!" it bellowed again. "I need visuals! Help me or the precious blood is lost!"

  If it were possible for this to get any weirder, well I just didn't want to know. I turned my attention to slowly setting the jar down off to my left.

  "Scraps! To me! Tick-Tock is winding down . . ."

  I twisted just enough to settle the jar a couple of feet to my left and then started twisting to the right to reach for the sword.

  There was a sound from the front of the house.

  The front door closed.

  Then the sound of footfalls as someone followed the trail of destruction toward the library.

  It smiled in anticipation of reinforcements, the curve of its fanged lips ghastly on that sightless, ruined face.

  I turned further, my fingers brushing the sword's hilt . . . and a small shower of loose coins fell from my pants pocket to chatter and roll across the hardwood floor.

  Its head snapped forward and I scrambled amidst the loose change and glass debris to grab the weapon and get out of reach.

  "What the hell is going on?" asked the wrong voice as a massive hand clutched my ankle. "Some big boat down by the dock takes off like a bat out of hell as I'm makin' my approach. Then I come up here and find someone's started a party without me. The door's off the hinges, there's a bunch of fresh stiffs littering the joint, and oh shit!"

  The Kid had finally noticed the monster.

  "Betrayal!" the thing hissed as it turned toward the new arrival, dragging me with it. "Father was right; she could not be relied upon. May each piece of her rot on earth and again in Hell!"

  "Hey, it talks!" He produced his ancient .38 police special like a magician's card trick: one moment his hand was empty, the next it was pointing a blunderbuss of a revolver at the fearsome intruder. "Put 'em down and dust, High Pockets, or I'm gonna start squirtin' metal!"

  "Get back, Kid!" I yelled. "This thing's fast!"

  "So'm I. An' I ast ya: how fast can somethin' that big—"

  These were the last words The Kid ever uttered in the flesh. The creature's other great hand fell upon J.D.'s head, enclosing it in a giant five-fingered cage. The Kid was fast, as well: he got off four shots, the large-caliber slugs notching grooves across the massive torso as they were deflected by something denser beneath the outer sheath of gray flesh. Then the hand clenched and, like Beau's, the scrappy little vampire's head was crushed. It and then the rest of him dissolved in a silent explosion of chalky dust.

  "Nooo!" I shrieked. I was still on my back, my leg trapped in the creature's bear trap grasp, but I'd kept the sword. I pulled a sit-up and swung the blade down across the forearm that held me prisoner. The bright metal sheared through that tree trunk of muscle like a hot knife through whipped cream. The monster screamed, raising its stump of an arm that was now spouting greenish ichors like a Halloween drinking fountain. I screamed along as the hand that was still locked around my lower leg spasmed, crushing my tibia and fibula.

  "Ruin!" the monster moaned, clutching the dribbling stump to its armored chest. "I should kill you but my master needs your blood."

  "Where?" I gasped, struggling to my knees. "Where can I find your master, you son-of-a-bitching fiend?" I didn't think it was any more likely to give up that information than Theresa, but hey, as long as I was still talking I wasn't blacking out.

  "High above the world, O wretch," it answered. "In his eagle's aerie he watches over us all. You need not search for it: he will come to you, soon. Or bid you come to him. And you will, you know."

  "Count on it," I hissed, shuffling forward on my knees. "Just give me the address."

  "He will send it with your wife and daughter." He leaned toward me. "His power will remake the world."

  He was close enough. I whirled the sword and chopped off the creature's loathsome head. "Not if I rock his world, first," I said as the huge head went bouncing across the room.

  Somebody put hinges in the floor: it suddenly rose up to hit me in the face.

  I slept and dreamed of bat-headed demons.

  Chapter Eight

  Aside from feeling ravenous, waking up was not the nightmare I expected it to be.

  I was in bed. I was clean. And the only immediate discomfort associated with my crushed left leg was that it was encased in a makeshift traction-splint.

  Deirdre was sleeping in a chair next to my side of the bed. The other side of the bed was still empty.

  I turned my head and studied her face as she slept. She must have washed up hurriedly for there were still flecks of river mud here and there and she had failed to get all of the twigs and leaves out of her tangled auburn tresses. There were shadows on her face, neck, and arms, as well—the last remnants of bruises that would have lasted for weeks on human skin. A faint line marked the divide where her lip had been split. An eye that had started to swell and close now appeared to have nothing more than the casual application of eye shadow.

  The sound of footfalls on the stairs woke her and her eyes fluttered open as Dr. Mooncloud entered the room carrying a pair of goblets on a bed tray.

  Taj was short, round, and brown. Her jet-black hair and eyes reflec
ted the fusion of her American Indian and East Indian heritages. Likewise her professional pedigree was a fusion of medicine and mythology with a degree from Johns Hopkins and an internship in her father's medicine sweat lodge.

  Nothing about her suggested that she worked for a vampire enclave in the Pacific Northwest.

  "Ah, you are awake, finally."

  "How long have I slept?" I asked, trying to sit up. Deirdre reached behind me and arranged the pillows to give me some back support.

  "Two days."

  "Two—?"

  "You were in a healing trance," she explained, settling the tray across my lap. "You should be very hungry, now. I didn't know whether to bring you warm or cold, so I brought you both."

  I looked down at the goblets, both filled with blood. It took all of my self-control not to grab one and start greedily gulping it down. "How's Suki?"

  "Sleeping. As is Dr. Burton. I've got the day shift, he's got the night. Now, drink."

  "Have you seen Lupé?"

  "A Ms. D'Arbonne is going to take me to see her this afternoon. You need to drink before your body pulls you back down into shock."

  "I have questions."

  She nodded. "I'll talk while you drink."

  She anticipated nearly every question so I didn't have to ask them. The bodies of Kyle, Lance, and Beau had been cremated in the backyard. Clay was currently laying brick to replace the scorched earth with a barbeque pit. The windows and the doors had been repaired or replaced. There was still some work to be done on the fireplace in my study and the wall separating the living room from the den. A new fish tank had been ordered—acrylic instead of glass—and Deirdre had picked up a new computer for me—a laptop. She had spent the better part of the last two days watching over me and reinstalling software and files from her bedside post.

  Kurt was insisting on our immediate relocation to New York or he was coming down with a small army to fetch me.

  And the dusty remnants of The Kid had been gathered and placed in an urn. They now waited on the fireplace mantel downstairs in the study. Billy Bob Montrose was coming by after dark to discuss funeral arrangements.

  I felt an unaccustomed surge of emotion as I thought about The Kid. Was this what grief felt like? I couldn't quite remember. Since I parted from Lupé a big hollow bubble had swelled inside my chest, numbing all feelings except for a slow pulse of anger. That pulse was quickening, now.

  Anger was a fine emotion. Strong and sharp and pure. It motivated. It sought results and resolutions. Grief paralyzed. It muddled the mind. I couldn't bring the little twerp back but I could avenge his death. This Dr. Pipt might be some sort of mad scientist but now he was dealing with one very pissed off lab rat!

  "And the monster?" I asked as I finished off the second glass and dabbed at my mouth with a napkin.

  "Gerald and I performed crude, sectional autopsies in the downstairs bathtub. You, um, might want to use the upstairs shower for another day or so." She pulled back the covers and began to unfasten the splint around my leg. Apparently two days were sufficient for my accelerated healing factors. "I think it will be easier to show you, than tell you," she said, extending her hand to help me up.

  * * *

  The damn thing was a cyborg—a creature that was half living organism, half machine. Well, not half and half, actually; more like seventy/thirty. But that thirty percent of hardware made all of the difference.

  "I've sent tissue samples back to Seattle for more detailed workups," Mooncloud said as I considered the sectional samples encased in Tupperware in the basement freezer. Other components of metal, plastic, and wire—grafted with bits of flesh and pieces of bone—were laid out on available surfaces. Deirdre wasn't going to be using the weight bench or the tanning bed for the next couple of days.

  "Organs, skin, limbs," she catalogued as I closed the lid on the gruesome assemblage. "I also sent on some of the finer cybernetics and implants but I wanted you to see this." She handed me a skull. Once upon a time it had been a human skull; large, but not large enough. Surgeries had been performed to enlarge and reinforce it with steel bands and plates. And the jaws had been outfitted with hydraulic fangs. Fangs that were actually extendable hypodermic needles.

  "The plastic tubing ran from here," Mooncloud used her pen to tap the nozzles at the back of the hollow spikes, "through twin pumps surgically implanted beneath the pectoral muscles. From there they would carry . . ."

  "My blood," I offered.

  She nodded. " . . . your blood down to collection reservoirs in the abdominal cavity. The actual containers were plastic but they were shielded with steel and Kevlar."

  I handed the rebuilt skull back to her. "So, this thing wasn't really a vampire of any sort. It was just a giant syringe on legs."

  Mooncloud nodded. "Sent to collect, store, and safely transport your blood."

  "And I guess its vital organs were shielded with armored implants. No wonder it was so hard to kill. There must have been a half-inch steel plate in front of its heart!"

  "Well, not exactly . . ." She handed me a metal ovoid the size of a cantaloupe with four nozzled openings. "This was its heart."

  I hefted the mechanical pump and turned it over in my hands. Something was stamped along a nearly invisible seam. "What's this?"

  "Do you have a magnifying glass?"

  "Up in my study."

  "Let's go."

  We went.

  Pulling a small magnifying glass from my desk drawer, I placed the artificial heart under a lamp and moved the lens until I had the best resolution. The stamped letters read Ozymandias Indust.

  "Ozymandias Industries?" Mooncloud said when I showed it to her.

  "Like the poem?" Deirdre asked. She had shadowed us all the way but hadn't spoken until now.

  "Poem?" Mooncloud repeated.

  "By Percy Bysshe Shelley," I explained. "It tells the story of a traveler in a distant land who comes across a giant statue, shattered and half obscured by the desert sands. The face on the statue is cold and haughty; the inscription on the pedestal is haughtier still."

  "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair," Deirdre murmured.

  "It is quite an accomplishment," Mooncloud said, picking up the mechanical marvel.

  "The point of the poem," Deirdre elaborated, "is that this great king's mighty works were already forgotten, disappeared into time's oblivion."

  I had nearly forgotten that Damien had first met Deirdre in a library.

  "So," mused the good doctor, "does this Pipt fancy himself the great king? Is he supposed to be Ozymandias?"

  "If you'd seen the email he sent me, you'd be thinking more along the lines of Ozzy Osbourne." I felt my lips twitch toward a smile in spite of my mood.

  "Or maybe Oz, the great and powerful?" offered Deirdre. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"

  "'Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man,'" I muttered, "'that he didn't, didn't already—'" My blood suddenly ran cold. Given my unique biochemistry, that phrase was probably more than a euphemism. I set the magnifying glass down very carefully.

  "What?" Deirdre wanted to know. "What is it?"

  I fumbled for the chair behind me so I wouldn't end up on the floor. Again. "I think I just cracked the code."

  * * *

  "You see, the problem is that most people's familiarity with the works of Lyman Frank Baum is relegated to an MGM musical motion picture released back in 1939." I spread a series of colorful booklets across the dining room table and picked up the first one. "That movie was loosely based on the first Oz book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."

  "When I was a little girl," Deirdre said, picking out a volume from the latter third of the series, "I always wanted a pair of ruby slippers."

  "Hollywood revisionism." I laid the book back down. "They were silver slippers in the book but Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer wanted to make the most of the new Technicolor process. That change was just one of many." I began sorting the books into distinct groups. "There are forty offici
al Oz books, dating from 1900 to 1963. Baum wrote the first fourteen. Confining ourselves to the official oeuvre alone presents us with hundreds of characters. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion seem pretty normal once you get deeper into the series."

  Dr. Mooncloud picked up a copy of The Magical Mimics in Oz by Jack Snow, published back in 1946. "I didn't realize you collected children's books."

  "Professor Cséjthe teaches American Lit," Deirdre said without raising her eyes from her 1937 copy of Ruth Plumly Thompson's Handy Mandy in Oz. She turned another page.

  "I'm on sabbatical this semester. Hope it's not permanent. Anyway, I kept thinking this name Pipt was familiar but I just couldn't place it. The first association that always came to mind was Pip in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations."

  "And then there's Gladys Knight," the redhead said absently.

  Taj smiled. I just ignored her. "But it just occurred to me that there is a 'Pipt'—a Dr. Pipt—and he's a character from Baum's Oz stories."

  Dr. Mooncloud cocked a skeptical eyebrow. "Coincidence? What does he do?"

  "Well, he's more of a sorcerer than an actual doctor. His main claim to fame is the Powder of Life, a magical residue that bestows living status on any inanimate object it is sprinkled on."

  "Any inanimate object?"

  "Well, it worked on his phonograph. Made it dance around the room. More notably, it was responsible for animating some significant citizens of Oz: Jack Pumpkinhead, the Sawhorse, the Gump, the Glass Cat, and—" I held up the seventh book, "—the titular character of this adventure."

  Deirdre glanced up, did a double-take, and grabbed the book for a closer study of the cover. "It's her!" She jabbed a finger at the young woman frolicking on the tattered book jacket. It's a caricature, of course, but it's her!"

  Dr. Mooncloud moved to where she could read the title: "The Patchwork Girl of Oz?"

  I nodded. "She was created to be a servant for Pipt's wife, Margolotte. Her name was supposed to be Angeline . . ."

  "Angeline?" Deirdre asked.

  "Yeah. But the Glass Cat called her Scraps."

  * * *

  I was lying on my bed, waiting for sunset.