by Gary Jonas
“Or maybe that Zach guy isn’t dead.”
“Walter did a remote viewing and saw that he was buried.”
“And you think Walter is one hundred percent accurate?”
I shrugged. “No clue.”
“Maybe Zach is alive down there? Maybe it’s not him at all?”
“I’ll know tomorrow. We’re going to dig his ass up.”
“Nice distraction. You maneuvered me away from the real subject at hand: you.”
“Look, I’m not suicidal, so let it go.”
“You’re my best friend, Jonathan. You gave my life purpose. You did that. Without you, I’d have been destroyed.”
“You might have escaped.”
She shook her head. “We both know better. My point is that you need to stop taking stupid risks.”
“I always take risks.”
“You’ve been taking unnecessary risks. Trying to fight an army of skeletons? Really?”
“At least I’d have gone down fighting.”
“For no reason.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to snap the fuck out of it, dumbass. Have you really tried to help Miranda?”
“Help a dead girl? That’s my purpose now?”
“If she’s dead. You should probably check with DGI to verify that they left her out of the spell.”
“I’ll call Von and ask.” I pulled out my phone.
Kelly took the phone away from me. “Call her later. Have you really tried to help Sharon?”
“Sharon isn’t here.”
“I talked to her yesterday, Jonathan. Do you know why she left?”
“Because Persephone and the folks in the Underworld want to kill her.”
“They don’t want to kill her.”
“The dead folks are all after her. I know Persephone says she doesn’t want to kill her, but that’s not the impression I got.”
“They want her back, Jonathan. They don’t care who they have to kill to get her back. At first, they tried to get to her through us, but we thought they wanted to kill her. She left because she thought we’d be safe if she were out of the picture. She doesn’t want to go back.”
“Being Charon would get pretty boring after a while. Ferrying souls to and fro and playing catch with Cerberus might be OK for a time but not forever.”
“They have a replacement for Charon.”
“Good ol’ Bob,” I said. “Nice enough guy.”
“They don’t want her back to take that position again.”
“So why do they want her? I don’t buy the whole Persephone just misses her crap.”
“She didn’t say.”
“What did she say?”
“She wanted to know if you were all right. She wanted to know if she needed to come back. She felt it might be dangerous for us, but if we needed her, she’d do what she could to protect us.”
“That’s it?”
“She had more she wanted to say, but she told me she’d only tell you. And only in person.”
“So she’s coming back?”
“Not yet.”
I felt disappointed, but I was used to that. I pushed it down. “Fine. Are we done here?”
“That depends.”
I sighed. “On?”
“You. Are you going to stop taking stupid chances?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“I’m serious. You’re no good to anyone if you’re dead.”
“I’ve died before. It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s a huge deal. I need you here. I need you to be the man I respect. I need you to be the man I know you are deep inside.”
I moved over and sat down. Kelly watched me but didn’t speak. She’d said more to me in the past few minutes than she’d said to me in the past six months. She didn’t understand that when Naomi died, part of me died too. She didn’t know what I’d dealt with when I died several years before that. Yes, she was there, but she didn’t know what Charon had told me. I tried not to think about it myself. Most of the time I could handle it, but after Naomi died, too much of what Charon had said rose to the surface. I pushed it all aside. I didn’t want to face it now. There were times when I wished Charon hadn’t spoken to me on that boat made of bones. There were times I could believe it was all a bad dream. When Charon had asked me that stupid question, I should have said no.
Of course, if I’d said no, I wouldn’t be telling you any of this. I’d have been dead for three and a half years now.
Who knew that one three-letter word could bring so much misery?
And this was only the beginning.
If I survived.
I drew a deep breath. I had to survive. It wouldn’t be fair to pass the buck to some other sorry sap. I let the breath out slowly and closed my eyes, trying to steel my nerves. I had two choices. I could let myself fall further into depression and keep putting myself into situations where I could be killed, or I could accept my lot in life and try to be the man Kelly and Sharon both believed I could be. If only I could believe it too. I wasn’t there yet, but I hoped I could grow into that role.
When I opened my eyes, I met and held Kelly’s gaze.
“Can I have my phone?” I asked.
She must have seen something in my eyes because she smiled. She tossed me the phone. “Welcome back.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As you may have guessed, Von and the necromancer nerds had intentionally spared Miranda. That was good news on one level, but not so good on another. When Zach died, his magic would die with him, so the spell he cast to keep Miranda’s heart beating should have stopped working. In that case, Miranda should have dropped dead or at least been taken over by a spirit from the Underworld. But she was still the same Miranda.
Could Walter have been wrong? Maybe the remote viewing was as hit and miss as the government claimed. If so and he just got lucky when he checked out Kelly’s dojo, then Zach might not be buried and might be living it up in Arizona. If that were the case, at least he’d be warm. I wondered if he’d trade places.
I went to bed early, but it took a long time to fall asleep. I kept thinking about my purpose in life. I’m not a religious man, so I wasn’t going to find the answer in some silly Rick Warren book. I used to think my purpose was to help people who were in big trouble, people who could not help themselves. Lately I felt like a failure in that department. Who the hell did I think I was? Why should anyone count on me? Naomi counted on me and paid for it with her life.
Until Kelly forced me to face it, I didn’t realize how deeply her death had affected me.
The old me would have been determined to save Miranda.
The new me felt that was impossible. If we found Zach six feet under (or less if whoever buried him was lazy), there was no way to save Miranda. While I hadn’t allowed myself to get emotionally attached to her, I wasn’t sure I could take another failure this soon. I found myself hoping Walter and his remote viewing were wrong. I hoped that Stalker Boy Zach was still alive. If so, maybe I could force him to give Miranda’s heart back to her.
After that, I could find a way to help Sharon and all the fluffy puppies in the world would have warm beds and boyfriends wouldn’t hit their girlfriends and bad guys would put down their guns and alcoholics would put down their drinks and people would love each other and be kind. What was the point? None of that would happen. I knew Miranda was doomed. I knew I couldn’t do anything to help Sharon. Any enemies she had in the Underworld would be so far beyond me in terms of power that I’d be a bug smacked on their windshield. Then again, maybe if I splatted in just the right place, I could at least make them use up their washer fluid.
Sorry, fluffy puppies, you’re going to be homeless tonight, I thought as I finally drifted off to sleep.
#
We stood in Zach’s backyard at oh-dark-thirty. I wasn’t even in my body at that hour and if I’d had my way, I’d have stayed in bed. No such luck.
Fortunately Brand carried the shove
l and we had only one. I figured it was best to let him dig since he was still trying to curry favor with Kelly and I was naturally lazy, especially at an hour that should never be seen by my eyes.
Walter glared at Miranda, but I’d explained her dilemma, so he didn’t say anything nasty this time. He walked over and pointed at the ground toward the back fence where Zach might have grown tomatoes during the summer. At the moment, the ground was covered with snow, and at that inhumane hour, the temperature hovered in the single digits. At least I had a good coat this time.
Brand started digging.
I pulled Walter aside.
“What about her heart?” I asked. “The first coordinates I gave you to check out.”
“Inside. Down in the basement.”
I glanced at Esther and nodded. She moved ahead of us and phased through the sliding glass door. I stepped up to the door. I turned my back to it, bent my arm, and slammed my elbow into the glass.
The impact sent a shudder of pain through my arm, and my hand went numb. The glass didn’t even crack. I wondered if my coat was too padded. “Kelly?”
She walked over. “Problem?”
“Strong glass.”
She laughed. “So don’t break it.”
She reached over and pulled hard on the door handle. The metal lock bent and snapped as the door slid open.
“It will be cheaper for someone to replace the lock than the glass.”
“They might want a better lock,” I said and stepped inside.
“I’m coming with you,” Miranda said.
Again, Walter glared but didn’t argue. He took the lead…well, except for Esther, who was fifteen feet ahead of us.
“It’s down in the basement.”
We followed him down. Esther gave me an all-clear signal and popped away.
“Since I didn’t know exactly what you were looking for, I focused on the target as I perceived it to be,” Walter said as we descended the stairs.
The finished basement smelled of formaldehyde. “Damn,” I said wrinkling my nose. “I think I’m back in science lab.”
The main room was open and had shag carpet. Zach’s decorator took a time machine back to the 1970s. A couple of beanbag chairs sat off to one side of the room. A folded-up Ping-Pong table stood in the corner. There were a few stacked chairs and some crates and boxes. A large wooden cabinet took up most of the far wall. Off to the left were two bedrooms, but one of them looked to be stacked floor to ceiling with banker’s boxes. The other had a bed and dresser with a large mirror. A woman’s clothes lay on the floor. Zach’s wife’s?
Walter stood in front of the cabinet, which stretched across most of the wall. It was clearly custom built but looked similar to an entertainment center except it had cabinets all along it.
“What you’re after is in this one,” he said, pointing to a cabinet on the far right.
“What’s in the others?” Miranda asked.
“I don’t want to know,” Walter said.
I figured it didn’t do us any good to wait, so I opened the far right cabinet door to reveal a row of shelves lined with jars. Inside the jars were various organs and some reptiles and amphibians. A frog stood next to a snake coiled in its own jar filled with formaldehyde. The critters were all dead and preserved. In a jar on the top shelf, I could see a human heart.
It was not beating.
I took it down. It looked fresher than the other organs, most of which I couldn’t identify on sight. I knew the kidney, but beyond that, I’d have to refer to a textbook. My apologies to my high school biology teachers. I didn’t see any other hearts on any of the shelves, so unless Zach had somebody else’s heart here, it had to be Miranda’s.
“I believe this belongs to you,” I said. I handed the jar to her.
She took it and stared at it. “It’s not beating,” she said. She looked at me. “What does that mean?”
“It means what I said when I first met you. You’re no longer among the living.”
“But I was so sure it had to be…” She shook her head and stared at the heart. She held the jar with one hand and touched her chest with her other. Then she sank to her knees.
If this had been yesterday, I’d have made some remark about how at least she didn’t have to pay taxes anymore, but instead I placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You did warn me. And you did find it. Are you sure it’s mine, though?”
“You think he keeps other people’s hearts here too?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “I’m at least ninety percent sure it’s yours.”
“Just so we’re clear here, I’m the one who found it,” Walter said.
I half expected him to ask for a finder’s fee.
Miranda didn’t acknowledge him. She just stared at the still heart.
“What do I do?” she asked.
“We take the heart to DGI and see if Von can work some magic to restore it.”
“Will that work?”
I doubted it, but I said, “Can’t hurt to try.”
“I feel like I should be crying but I can’t.”
“Your tear ducts aren’t working,” I said.
“My mouth has been dry for days too, but I hoped that would change once I had my heart back.”
“We’ll see if they can do anything for you.”
She looked up at me but didn’t rise. “Thank you.”
“I wish there was more I could do.”
“You’re a man of your word, Jonathan. You told me what to expect, and you were right.”
“Can we get out of here?” Walter said. “This place is creeping me out.”
“Don’t you want to know what else Zach has down here?” I asked.
Walter shook his head. “Can’t say as I do.”
“You’re not the least bit curious?”
“As long as those other doors stay closed, I can pretend it’s his mother’s china settings.”
I walked over and opened the next door: more shelves with larger jars containing cats, rabbits, squirrels, a raccoon, a small dog, and a fox.
I stepped to the left and opened the next door.
This one held a large tank filled with formaldehyde. A skeleton floated inside the tank.
“Holy shit,” Walter said.
I stepped back in case the skeleton tried to attack, but it simply hung there in the filthy liquid. A gooey foam residue floated at the top of the tank, and I realized that until yesterday, this would have been a preserved person. “His wife?” I asked.
“Gina? Height is about right,” Walter said. “Damn. I’m never going to get this image out of my brain.”
There were two more cabinets. I opened them and each had a tank like Gina’s, and each contained a skeleton. Of course, we were only guessing about which, if any, was Gina.
“Should I call the cops?” Walter asked.
“I’ll call it in later,” I said. I looked at the skeletons and didn’t see anything to indicate murder, no cracked skulls or bullet holes. I also didn’t see signs of the rib cages being damaged, though I couldn’t say for certain that Zach hadn’t killed these people. Von didn’t think he had that kind of power, but he’d managed to get Miranda’s heart, so I wouldn’t put it past him.
“Jonathan?” Kelly called down the stairs. “You’ll want to come check this out.”
I turned to Miranda. “Are you ready to go back upstairs?”
She nodded.
I helped her up.
We returned to the backyard. It was still dark outside. Brand stood by the hole he’d dug and shined a flashlight down into it. I approached the hole and looked.
Brand had uncovered part of a skull. Beneath the dirt, I could see a business suit. There was an indentation on the chest. Brand saw where I was looking and moved the light to that spot.
“Shovel went right through the right side of the chest when I found him. I was careful after that.”<
br />
“Did you check for an ID?” I asked.
“I haven’t dug him out that far. Give me a minute.”
He handed me the flashlight, jumped into the hole, and started digging around the waist and hip region.
Since it was a skeleton, it meant either it had been here for a while, though the suit didn’t look old, just dirty, or it meant Zach was dead yesterday when Von and the team at DGI cast their spell. I suspected the back of the suit would be wet and nasty with liquefied remains.
Brand stood up, holding a leather wallet. He opened it and pulled out some cash, which he kept, then handed the wallet to me. I pulled the sleeve of my coat down over my fingers so I could hold the wallet without getting prints on it. It’s not that easy to leave fingerprints in the dry climate of Colorado compared to say, Kentucky, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. Brand wouldn’t be in the system but I would.
“Stealing from the dead?” I asked. “Not cool.”
“Like I give a shit if you think I’m cool. This guy’s not going to spend it. Call it my fee for digging him up.”
I flipped the wallet open. The driver’s license was in the first plastic picture sleeve. I shined the flashlight on it.
“Zachary Edward Banner.”
Brand counted the bills. “Eighty-four dollars. Thanks, Zach.”
I tossed the wallet back to Brand. “Put this back, you thief.”
Brand pocketed his cash and shoved the wallet back into Zach’s pocket.
“Search him to see if he has anything else.”
“Good idea,” Brand said. “He might have a money clip in his pocket too.”
Brand patted him down and dug in the pockets.
“Fifty-one cents is mine,” he said. “He has some keys, a cell phone, and a tin of Altoids. You want those?”
I ignored his joke and wondered if we should take the keys but couldn’t think what he might have locked up anywhere. He hadn’t locked the cabinet with the bodies, so it seemed pointless. “Give me the phone. Put the rest back.”
“I’m keeping the change,” Brand said.
“Whatever.”
“Money found is better than money earned,” he said.
“Other than where you broke the bones with the shovel, is there anything else to indicate how he might have died?”
