Dark & Disorderly

by Bernita Harris

  “ASP?”

  “Against Spirit Pollution. Any. All. Totally and finally. Send them up, send them down, wherever. Eliminate. Nathan took the knee-deep in alligators approach. Or the ‘let God sort ’em out’ attitude, if you prefer. Vehemently. Some older members, a minority, wanted to maintain the drain-the-swamp research. There was a fuss. Some left and joined SOS.”

  “SOS?”

  “Save Our Spooks. Don’t laugh. I have had run-ins with some of them, protests, coffins, the lot. That group may have started out as a satiric joke by college kids, but they’ve become almost as fanatical in support of spirit entities as Nathan’s bunch is against them. Now, of course, the letters stand for Save Our Spirits.” I stopped and looked at him suspiciously. “Both movements have grown and spread and are quite vocal. Sergeant, you must have heard of them.”

  “I’m interested in your take, your perspective.”

  “Oh, well. The SOS claim a physically deceased intelligence is still intelligence and has a right to exist. That Nathan’s people—and, of course, Talents like me—promote psychic murder, genocide, of the merely disincarnate. ‘Differently incarnate’ is the current popular expression, I believe. They even have an Endangered Spirits List, and they may have a valid point. About some entities, I mean. All ghosts aren’t malevolent eee-vil apparitions. It annoys me to hear them called the Godforsaken. But the SOS also has some weird ideas about the living.”

  I did not want to go there. The silence stretched until I suckered in and filled it. Maybe the wine wasn’t completely neutralized, after all.

  “They are against life support for the comatose or any form of extraordinary medical intervention,” I said finally. “If they had their way, every embryo that showed the Talent gene would be aborted. The ASP takes the diametrically opposite view.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on knees, his big hands loosely folded and relaxed between them. His eyes weren’t relaxed though. “Might these hard feelings of the minority group in ASP or the SOS extend to you?”

  “I have no idea. I’m probably anathema to both. I don’t know much about ASP’s internal agenda, since I’m not a member and I emphatically don’t ascribe to the new policies. Especially the idea that all apparitions are toxic waste. Besides, there is a conflict of interest.”

  “You mentioned that before. How so?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I was married to their freaking president. Look, Sergeant…”

  “John. Johnny.”

  So it was good-cop night. He’d call me “Lillie” again in a minute.

  “Look…Johnny… I only exorcise an entity formally designated by a proper authority as a public nuisance, a hazard, or inimical to the living. I am not a ghost-busting vigilante. Though I sympathize with people who are unfortunate enough to live near or on old battlefields and ancient massacres, I usually leave those cases to others. I try to avoid planning problems too. Usually unsuccessfully.”

  “Like the cemetery you mentioned this morning, Lillie? I didn’t quite get that. Seems to me there wouldn’t be a conflict there, at least not one involving you.”

  I liked the way he said my name, idiot child that I was. Nathan developed the habit of calling me “Lil.” I hated that, which was probably why he did. Nathan was never one to miss a needle.

  “Nathan was head of the finance committee for the church who owns the cemetery and wants to sell it. One of Nathan’s friends heads the company who wants to buy the property. The church offered me a contract to ‘cleanse’ the graveyard. I refused it.”

  “You live next door.”

  “Yes. Opportunity for a little under the table psychic vandalism, you think?”

  I got up and went to the window, as much to put a little distance between us as anything. Why hadn’t he phoned beforehand? Or had the hang-up been him? I pulled back the heavy drapes. The same few wraiths were clearly visible. Certainly to me. Dumbarton must be leaving them alone tonight.

  “Come and look. See for yourself.”

  He stood, but only moved a few steps. “I saw them on the way past.”

  I walked back to him. “I thought so. Tell me, do you dye your hair?” The dark waves didn’t look dyed, but these days how could anyone tell by looking? I couldn’t very well haul up his sweater and check his chest hair to see if it was silver, not black. Then I had to hammer the thought of his naked and muscled chest back where it belonged.

  “No.” He looked faintly insulted. I continued to stare up at him. “No,” he repeated, “I don’t.”

  So he wasn’t telling. I shrugged. Maybe he wasn’t a full, true Talent. If I was correct in my estimation of his age, he could well be one of those born before the genetic twist that produced types like me had completed its spiral dance, and would explain his curiosity this morning about how I saw ghosts…

  “Lillie, there’s…” He paused as if searching for words, as if he was unsure how to phrase his words, besides blunt. Not usual for him, I fancied. I never heard the rest. Dumbarton’s long, undulating howl, near at hand, drowned him out. We both swung toward the window.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Warning,” I answered.

  The door, which I had not locked because I thought it would be both impolite and impolitic, crashed open.

  And something wicked shambled in.

  9.

  Not sauntering this time. For this was the real thing. Not the creation I, in woeful ignorance, had mistaken last night for a zombie. Nathan, it must be Nathan, all torn clothing, rotting flesh and blind malice, all teeth and rictus. A day out of the cold ground and a colder coffin hadn’t improved him any.

  “Eeep!” I inhaled again like a paralyzed parakeet.

  The battered head on the semi-nude body swung from side to side, seeking. Centered on us. On me.

  Johnny snarled. One solid arm pushed me behind him. He pulled a pistol from the back of his belt and snapped off a clean shot. And another and another. Nice grouping. A white patch appeared on Nathan-zombie’s chest just below the autopsy stitches.

  Nathan-zombie staggered but kept coming. Whatever Johnny was using it wasn’t enough. We backed away.

  “Lillie, run!” Johnny gritted, and fired again.

  “Aim for the knees,” I yelled and ran.

  Through the dining room to the kitchen, banging off door casings and appliances, to the pantry. Unhooked the key from its nail and spent interminable seconds stabbing at the lock of the gun cabinet. I snatched the lone shotgun and jacked it open, fumbled one of the slugs I’d prepared earlier into it, listening all the while. I heard thuds, shattering glass and the peculiar muted crack of Johnny’s gun, but no banshee cry. Only Dumbarton’s continuous howls of rage. I didn’t understand Dumbarton’s reaction but I didn’t have time to think about it.

  I stuck the other doctored cartridge between my teeth and went back.

  My living room was a mess of overturned furniture. Johnny, discarding his handgun in favor of my baseball bat, held off the Nathan-zombie. The pair of them appeared almost equal in strength, for Johnny would back a step and then force Nathan-zombie back in turn. Nathan, living, had not been much stronger than I was. Reanimated was a different thing.

  Filaments of energy current surrounded and supported the zombie, surly red and purple like old blood. It seemed a good thing to me that Johnny used the oaken bat to keep it off. That malevolence of energy I would not dare absorb or try to disrupt in the usual manner—for one could trip a chain reaction or an overload, and be lost. It sucked power, and one could imagine the house lights growing dim.

  But there’s more than one way to shut down an appliance.

  I stuck the barrel of the shotgun over Johnny’s arm, straight into Nathan-zombie’s face and fired.

  It staggered back and folded slowly to the floor. I broke, ejected the spent cartridge, shoved in the other shell and waited. It twitched, pulsed, fingers clawed. I saw that all the fingers on the swollen hands were missing at the first joint. They oozed.

  �
��Fire two,” I said, moved past Johnny and aimed again, this time at its chest. Pulled the trigger. The strange aura-like energy faded, winked out.

  I made to kneel down and reached out a hand, to make sure in a different way. Johnny jerked me back.

  “Keep away from that!”

  The pair of us stood there, breathing heavily, staring down at the sodden, disgusting thing, dark on the hardwood floor. Now, it was just a mortal body unnaturally ripped from its rest. Just dead meat. A pitiful, ravaged body like any other victim found in a vacant lot or apartment stairwell. Human.

  “A corpse-pale…” I whispered.

  The smell hit us then and we backed away.

  “Sonofabitch!” Johnny said and rubbed the sweat off his forehead with a sleeve.

  “I told you to run,” he added fiercely, ejecting a clip and ramming in another. He did a press check before holstering his weapon. “It was after you. Kept trying to get around me. I was just in the way.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe at first. Not after. Wanted you too. Couldn’t you see?”

  “Identity? Do you recognize it?”

  “I suppose so.” The face, mangled by a couple of .38s besides my blast, didn’t resemble anybody now. “Nathan, my husband, I assume. He looks different double dead. The hair is right anyway.”

  I babbled on. “I didn’t lie to you about last night. I thought something wasn’t right. His face wasn’t battered for one thing—but the ring made me think it was him. I didn’t know what else it could be. I’ve never had anything to do with zombies. We’ve not had a previous case here.”

  He glanced at the mess on the floor. “I suspect a thought form, a golem, more likely, a simulacrum of some sort. A manifestation formed for a mission. The ring may have provided a homer. Did he normally wear it? When did you last see your husband’s ring?”

  “At the hospital, I suppose. I don’t know. He was in the habit of wearing it, that’s all I can swear to.”

  I tried to remember. Between the tubes and the bandages, had I really seen it? One doesn’t consciously note that sort of detail in the circumstances. With the oxygen mask, I hadn’t really seen his features. I couldn’t say. I shook my head. “I can’t be sure. I ordered a closed coffin at the funeral service. Because of the accident.” An excuse, the truth was I hadn’t wanted to see Nathan’s face again.

  “It’s likely the assault on Chief Secord was perpetrated by your husband’s zombie. Secord identified him by name. It’s the clearest explanation for him saying, ‘Strange, Strange,’ to the dispatcher. I was about to tell you that before we were…interrupted.

  “By the way, we checked over the cemetery. Your husband’s grave was the only grave disturbed. But the timing of the attack on you made it unlikely the same creature perpetrated both attacks.”

  “But that means this thing has been running around loose since last night?” It meant something else too that I wasn’t ready to analyze. It made my head hurt. I fastened on his earlier remark. “A thought form? Like a tulpa? I don’t understand. I thought those physical materializations, the thought-to-actual material form, took weeks and weeks of deliberate and intense concentration to construct.” The pain behind my eyes increased. My shoulder hurt. I hadn’t snugged the shotgun tight enough. I’d probably have a bruise.

  “Stashed in someone’s garden shed, likely, until its animator sent it here. As for your thought form entity, they are reputed to take time, yes, but I’ve read claims that an adept can create a functioning tulpa within a few days, if they are willing to endure the resulting prostration from the expenditure of energy.”

  An adept. Oh, great. All I knew was that I sure as hell hadn’t visualized Nathan back into existence.

  I looked vacantly at the shambles around us. “I need to sit down, if you don’t mind. I don’t feel well. I wasn’t certain the shells would work. I’ve never had anything to do with zombies.”

  I propped the shotgun against the arm the sofa. My favorite standing lamp canted across the cushions, its glass shade in shards. A maggot wiggled out of the zombie’s nostril. A breeze from the open door wafted gout of corruption. I retched and lost my dinner.

  Scratch the sofa as seating. I wavered over to lean against the cool wood of the archway.

  “Your shotgun shells. What the devil was in them?” Johnny slid his cell phone back in an inside pocket and picked his spent clip off the floor. He re-righted one of the chairs, shoving it back and away from the body.

  I noted the other chair had a broken leg. Modern junk. The little side table seemed intact though. The malachite figurine of the Shadow Woman, which had been on it, wasn’t. I had liked that carving.

  “Halite, rock salt, for the most part. Fine shot, copper filings, silver grit. Some ground herbs—just to cover all the bases.”

  “I had salt shells mixed with my regular load and they barely slowed him.” His voice seemed to cut in and out.

  “Table salt?”

  I think he nodded. He looked fuzzy.

  “Iodized. Might interfere with catalyst. Be slower. I dunno. I use rock salt. They don’t need treatment for goiter.”

  My knee muscles wobbled, so I latched my fingers around the door casing. “I dunno. I’ve never had anything to do with zombies.” Maybe I already said that. Dim and distant, a siren’s banshee wail spiraled the darkness and I spiraled with it.

  The next thing I knew I was flopped in a chair and having my face and brow wiped with something wet and cold. Someone bent over me, growling my name along with injunctions to snap out of it.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, blinking up at him. The man and the room solidified in pixilated blocks of color out of the black. John Thresher. The Nathan-zombie. Right.

  I pushed away the hand holding the wet thing. “I don’t usually fade out.” It seemed important to assure him of that.

  He dropped the dishcloth and got to his feet. “It happens. You’ve had a stressful twenty-four hours.”

  “Sorry,” I repeated. “Stupid. I’m okay.”

  “Good girl,” Johnny said. “Just sit and hang tight.”

  The wail of sirens cut abruptly. Red strobed through my front door and across the creature’s head.

  “He will have to be burned,” I croaked.

  “Steady, Lillie. I’ll take care of it.”

  A lot of people invaded my living room. I recognized two of the constables. I’d worked with them on missing persons. Neither cop had any problem with Talents. The older one nodded in my direction. The young one, PC Wiggins, came over and spoke. “Thought we recognized the address. Sonofabitch, eh, Lillie? Never seen anything like it. Good thing the federal guy was here, eh?”

  After the way I’d just conducted myself by passing out like a foolish female, I felt it was easier to be little woman and agree. Even though I resented Wiggins’s implication. Even though the door would not have been unlocked but for Johnny’s arrival. A visit by a marauding zombie makes you glad of company.

  Johnny hadn’t run. He could have, right behind me. Of course, he was a cop and maybe a Talent, but he chose to stand between that malevolence and me. I wasn’t used to anyone doing that.

  “Have you heard how the chief is doing?”

  “Not good. Life support, last we heard.” Then his partner, his two-way at his ear, yelled, “Bert!” and motioned a come-along before I could ask any more.

  A paramedic brought me a thermal sheet and questioned me about injuries. After I shook my head enough times, she went away. A forensic identification unit got busy. Cameras flashed. You’d think it was a murder scene.

  And maybe it had been a murder. Justifiable homicide, at least. The question had never been answered by the courts.

  Was self-defense an absolute out? It had been until lately. Could you kill something already dead? Did the deceased’s spirit repossess its body during animation? How responsible was an animator for the animus of his revenant? What if you harmed the animator in taking down a zombie or a ghost? The occasional civil case brought
up interesting angles. As well, the SOS bunch actively pursued such legal challenges. I was really glad Thresher had been here this time. I would have a righteous co-defendant if anything came of this.

  When someone shook out a body bag, I tottered off to the kitchen and leaned on the counter by the sink, afraid I would hurl again. Wimp. I stayed there until I heard the front door bang shut three or four times.

  When I crept back, most of the crew had gone with the body.

  Thresher stood hunched by the desk, hands rammed in his pockets, giving a statement. I crawled into the old brown leather recliner chair in the corner, dragged the blanket around me and watched Thresher’s giant shadow move and stretch against the tall bookcase behind the desk. Almost ogre size. Chancy creatures, ogres. I told myself I had to stop calling him “Johnny” in my mind. At least he couldn’t call this a hallucination.

  Lights bobbed outside as cops quartered the yard checking for signs. I hoped Dumbarton let them be. I turned my face into the worn brown leather and let the lights and voices fade. I drifted and searched among ice floes in the polar waters of my mind.

  One cold and bitter thought loomed like an iceberg in the mist. Second attack. Second try. Someone sincerely, definitely, wanted me dead. Maybe someone with one hell of a powerful Talent if they could send around a photocopy first and saved the best for backup. Unless there were two separate parties after my blood.

  I was so tired.

  No rest for the wicked. Voices grounded my drifting coracle.

  “That’s what she used? Is it registered? Thought all her type has to do was point and touch them.”

  Asshole. There’s a lot more to exorcism than merely interfering with a web of electrons and poof! It’s gone…

  Uh-oh. Was I on the hook for a firearms violation? I slitted open one eye.

  Desk type, overweight. Big brash man, almost as tall as Johnny. Busy bagging and tagging my shotgun. Name of Sullivan. Stanley. The Stanley Steamer they called him, because he spit when he talked.