by Anton Strout
“In a sense,” Connor said. “That’s merely the very tip of an enormous investigative iceberg, Irene. Let me see if I can explain this a bit further, because at this point, you really don’t have a lot of avenues. You’re dealing with an autonomous agency that deals in the paranormal, but we’re still under all the constraints of an office. Half our investigative results contradict what they’re finding in at least two of the other divisions! On any given case, we’ve got monotheistic proof, polytheistic proof, and no proof whatsoever—all at the same time! It’s mind-boggling, even to me. I can’t even address some of the seemingly simple questions.”
“Such as?” Irene asked.
“Well,” Connor said as he pointed to Irene, “here’s a good one. I can’t tell you why your hand can pass through most solid objects, yet somehow you’re material enough to sit on that sofa without falling through it.”
Irene looked nervously at the sofa below her. “What exactly is your function here, Mr. Christos?”
Connor smiled. “I see dead people…for a living.”
“Meaning what?” Irene asked with persistence.
“Look around the room, Irene,” Connor said. “Most of the people in this room are trained specialists in some bizarre field or another. Most of them can’t even see you sitting here with us. Not everyone does what I do. Not everyone can see what I see. Hell, the kid didn’t even notice you were dead until I pointed it out to him.”
“Well, I noticed you,” I added. “But I didn’t notice that you were…recently deceased…”
Connor continued, “People like you, Irene, are one of my purposes for being here. I need to figure out why you’re still with us.”
“Maybe we all become like this?” she offered. “Maybe this is as good as it gets. What if all we have to look forward to is hanging around after death, being ignored by the living and occasionally spotted by some crackpot on the street!”
“Well, then, you’re in luck,” I said cheerfully, “because we’re just those types of crackpots!”
Connor ignored us, shook his head again, and continued.
“That’s extremely doubtful,” he said. “And I’ll tell you why. Manhattan is a city of over eight million residents, not to mention tourists and commuters. The amount of death that occurs daily in an energy center like this is astounding, but the documented occurrences of souls walking around are negligible in comparison. If what you’re proposing were the case—if all spirits hung around after dying—I wouldn’t be able to go two feet in any direction without tripping over someone’s soul. It’s just not the case.”
There was a moment’s silence as Irene thought it over. I watched her, looking for signs of comprehension, but only noticed the cute crinkle of her nose. She looked to Connor and quietly asked, “Why do you think I’m here?”
“Honestly, I haven’t a clue, Irene. But I need you to think. Think hard. Are there any words, any thoughts that spring randomly to mind? Anything at all? I want to see if you’re capable of free-associating any information that might be useful to us. Names…faces…an address, perhaps?”
Her brow furrowed with the effort of recollection, her nose scrunching up again.
After several moments of trying, she said, “Nothing.”
“Damn,” Connor said.
“Well, now what?” I asked.
“Wait a minute!” Irene said with a sudden burst of excitement. “That word. Now.”
“I think we’d need something a lot more specific there, Irene,” he said.
“Quiet,” she said, waving him away. “It triggered something, I’m not sure what. I have an image of that word floating in my head. I’ve seen it somewhere recently. I think it was on one of the movie posters out in the café.”
I leaned across the table wanting to reach out to her, but refraining. God only knows what part of her I’d accidentally put my hand through this time.
“Can you tell us which one?” I asked.
Her hands shook excitedly as she tried to recall. “It’s that one with Martin Sheen. Where he goes up a river…? And there’s this tribe of men dedicated to Marlon Brando!”
“Apocalypse Now!” I shouted, bouncing on my seat as if I had just won a prize on a game show.
Irene nodded. “Yes! That’s it. That’s the image I have in my head. That’s really not very helpful, is it?” Her face sank. “God, I feel so useless.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’ll come to you. Give it time. Right, Connor?”
When Connor didn’t respond, I turned to look at him. His eyes had narrowed considerably.
“What is it, boss?”
“I know that front room like the back of my hand,” he said. “There is no movie poster for Apocalypse Now.”
That put things in a different light. I rose from my chair. I didn’t want to leave Irene alone, but things were getting frighteningly interesting.
“I’ll tell the Inspectre,” I said. I leapt over my chair and raced for the curtains.
Connor’s voice faded as I climb the stairs two at a time, but I heard him telling Irene, “It may simply be a coincidence that you had an apocalyptic memory, or possibly…something more than coincidence.”
7
I sprinted up the stairs to the Inspectre’s office, eager to deliver the news of what was happening down below and I had butterflies. I had never had a reason to report directly to such a revered figure as the head of Other Division. I ran for his office door, where I found the following memorandum posted on it:
The Three Commandments
of D.E.A. Public Relations:
1) Say Nothing.
2) Acknowledge Nothing.
3) Deny Everything.
If you have any questions, please refer them to your Divisional Manager.*
That memo could have easily applied to the way I had handled Tamara last night, but now was not the time for those thoughts. I could deal with our breakup later.
I burst through the Inspectre’s door without so much as a knock. The blustery Argyle Quimbley sat behind a large oak desk sipping tea and he jerked to attention at my unexpected entrance, sloshing his tea in the process. His handlebar mustache absorbed most of it, but he winced in pain and slammed the cup down.
“Damn and blast!” he barked. The sound of his voice froze me in the doorway, panting and out of breath. His look softened to concern once he got a better look at me, though. “What’s the matter with you, my boy? Did the Devil chase you up the stairs?”
I nodded in response, still unable to speak, and wondered which of us would win the prize for most ridiculous in appearance—me, looking a fool for being so winded from a mere flight of stairs, or the Inspectre for his bookish tweed suit from the seventies, complete right down to the elbow pads. Our head of Other Division looked out of place in modern-day Manhattan. He would have looked more at home with Hemingway, toting some archaic blunderbuss while big-game hunting in the wilds of Africa.
His stuffy English accent had the odd habit of occasionally disappearing if the old man seemed to be distracted by something important. But as Inspectre, he not only headed Other Division but answered directly to the Enchancellors—so his eccentricities were forgivable.
When the fire in my lungs faded, I spoke. “We have a potential situation downstairs, sir.”
The Inspectre was now wringing his mustache out as if it were a miniature towel. “Something worth scalding my palate over, I hope.”
“Possibly,” I said. “Maybe…I’m not sure. It’s just…”
Clearly exasperated by my inability to articulate, Quimbley shouted, “Out with it, boy! What exactly is going on?”
Eccentric though he might be, Argyle Quimbley could be intensely intimidating at the same time. Caught like a deer in the headlights, I paused for a moment and gathered my thoughts. “We’ve got someone downstairs who’s had a vision.”
As he stared at me across the vast expanse of his paper-strewn desk, the Inspectre narrowed his eyes. “Well, visions are
something we trade in, lad. What sort are we talking about?”
“Oh,” I said. “She’s the pretty sort. Long brown hair, sparkling eyes you could fall into…”
“Not what sort of person, blast it!” Quimbley slammed his fist down on the desk. A cloud of papers flew off it and onto the floor. “What sort of vision?”
I was amazed how quickly I could feel like an utter ass in the Inspectre’s presence. He had been with the Department forever and commanded respect through all the divisions, even ones that didn’t answer to him.
Two weeks after I’d started, Connor had taken me aside and explained that Quimbley was also a member of the Fraternal Order of Goodness. F.O.G. was a secret society far older than the D.E.A. Though the D.E.A. had officially assumed many of the duties and investigations that the F.O.G.ies, as they called themselves, had traditionally undertaken, the Fraternal Order still existed. They worked both inside and outside the confines of the government, in that many F.O.G.ies were D.E.A. employees, but when a case was dire enough, they acted under F.O.G. directives, ignoring little trifles like filing forms in triplicate and liaising with David Davidson’s office.
The F.O.G.ies were secretive like the Freemasons, but unlike the White Stripes, F.O.G. was elitist in a way I actually approved of. They stood for Good. Being a part of them proved that the Inspectre was a man at the top of his field. In his youth, he had been a legend. He had stared The Un-Nameable down until it had been subdued. The Geismann Guard had fallen single-handedly at his hands. I thought about all those achievements…and here he was, stuck talking to a petty ex-con like me. It was no wonder I got nervous.
I pulled myself together. “It could be nothing,” I said apologetically, “but it could also be apocalyptically huge. Then again, it might just be sheer coincidence. I don’t know. We’ve got someone downstairs who’s having some form of Armageddon-based premonition.”
“Oh ho!” Quimbley exclaimed. “Well, that type of judgment call isn’t for you to make, my boy.
“Who is it?” the Inspectre demanded. “Is it Mrs. Teasley and her damned cat again? The old bat! You know, she came in here last week babbling on about some half-baked notion that a glacial mass was about to descend over North America, destroying life as we know it. After a little investigation, it turned out that it was simply her freezer needed defrosting.”
“It’s not a staffer,” I said. “It’s a dead woman. She was a walk-in and she seems so…alive still. Seems convinced of it, too. She keeps refusing to acknowledge the fact that she’s dead.”
Quimbley nodded knowingly as he folded his arms and raised one hand to stroke his mustache. It seemed to comfort him. “Yes, sometimes the recently living have trouble believing that they’ve passed away. Surprised you didn’t pick that up in the Dealing with the Dearly Departed seminar, my boy.”
“It was booked solid by the time I joined the Department, sir, and I haven’t had a chance to fit it in my schedule since taking on a full caseload.” He looked at me disapprovingly. “She wasn’t just having trouble believing she was dead, sir. To me, she still looks very much alive. I didn’t even notice she was a ghost until I spilled a drink through her.”
“You what…?” he said, not sure he had heard me correctly.
“That’s not really important right now,” I said, hoping we could gloss over my mishaps. “I mean, she was dead all right. All spirit. Pure soul through and through, but whatever her soul is projecting to give her a corporeal presence is stronger than anything Connor or I have encountered.”
The Inspectre moved to one of his bookshelves, pulled down a small leather volume, and began to thumb through it. It was full of scratchy, frantic handwriting. “My best guess, without talking to her, my dear boy, would be that she’s still on earth because something of great importance is keeping her bound to the material plane.”
“That’s what Connor said. And the thing is, we found her down in the café…having apocalyptic images,” I added. “Throw in her determination to still be among the living…”
“And we’d be fools to ignore it,” Quimbley finished. He walked around his cluttered desk. “Let’s check her out. Then I’ll see if we need to bring the Fraternal Order of Goodness in on this.” I swelled with pride. The inspector thought my case might be important enough to bring the F.O.G.ies in on, and he trusted me enough to tell me that.
Quimbley paused as we headed for the door and looked back at the now cold cup of tea he left behind. “Bollocks!” he shouted. “Another teatime shot to hell.”
I heard a shuffle in the hallway and looked up to see Thaddeus Wesker trying to linger inconspicuously by the Inspectre’s door.
“Hello, Thaddeus,” the Inspectre said, narrowing his eyes. “Did you need to see me?”
“Just passing by,” the Arcana director said. The smile on his face looked forced, yet diabolical. I made myself disappear against the wall as the two men locked eyes in a struggle for dominance.
“I see,” the Inspectre said. He motioned toward the floor and pretended to scatter something with his foot. “Well, make sure you pick up these eaves you seemed to have dropped on your way, won’t you?”
Wesker’s smile fell away and he clenched his fists at his side.
“Come along, Simon,” the Inspectre said. Wesker looked at me with sheer disdain, but I was already moving away toward the stairs. “Let’s get moving before he corners you into hearing his woeful story of injustice for the millionth time. He’s still angry,” the Inspectre said conspiratorially, “because he’s been denied entry to F.O.G. again.”
Wesker stormed off toward his office as the Inspectre and I headed downstairs. Once downstairs, I was pleased to see that the Inspectre had a gentle touch with Irene. He fired off rapid questions at her, but without a hint of the irritation he had shown with Wesker moments before. Irene recounted much of what she had told us. When Quimbley pressed her about her death, she said all she remembered was a yellow blur. Then she began asking questions of her own. Her frustration over being dead, something she still didn’t seem to be buying into, crept out and her questions began to get more belligerent and sarcastic.
To the Inspectre’s credit, he took them well. Quimbley had seen a world of wonders over the years, and I doubted if this one woman’s sarcasm would be his breaking point. As it turned out, Irene was not the Inspectre’s breaking point. I was.
“Dammit, man!” he barked at me. “Stop cringing every time the woman asks me a question! You’re trifling with my concentration. Now sit quietly and listen…or better yet, why don’t the two of you do something useful…like figuring out how the devil she died and who she is!
“Unless you want Haunts-General to take care of this?” the Inspectre asked us quietly.
Connor shook his head. “This isn’t just a simple ghost bust. I need to figure out why she’s so…lively. Something peculiar is going on in the spirit world. There was that peculiar ghost we came across last night and all those broken jars. Maybe there’s a connection.”
The Inspectre nodded.
“Then you two had better get on with it,” he whispered to us. “I want you to find out as much as you can regarding this dear soul here.”
Connor looked frustrated, but nodded. “I guess we can backburner the Shambler,” he said. “The zombies can wait also.”
“This is wrath of God apocalypse stuff she brought up here,” I said. “Surely that takes priority.”
Connor turned on me, and I could see annoyance in his eyes.
“Kid,” he said, “you realize how many Four Horsemen scenarios we get everyday?”
I shook my head.
“How many of the supposed Seven Seals do you think Greater and Lesser Arcana break weekly?”
This time I shrugged.
Connor snorted.
“This is just another apocalypse,” he said, “lowercase ‘a,’ as far as I’m concerned. It’s no big. Probably is just a harbinger that something really bad happened to keep Irene’s spirit sticking
around instead of crossing over.”
“Nonetheless,” the Inspectre said, moving our little powwow farther away from Irene. “I’m concerned that we’re getting this class of vision from a ghost, and a ghost so clearly full of life. I’ll have the Fraternal Order check her out, but my initial assessment is that, given Irene’s strong presence, you chaps make this a top priority.”
Connor swallowed whatever words were on his lips. “Yes, sir. We’ll figure out who she is and then check out her home, and get back to you.”
The Inspectre stood there waiting for us to leave. The final word had been his, and it was clear that, for now, any further discussion was over. As we walked away, I heard the Inspectre ask, “You don’t perchance recall if you were married, love?”
I turned to look and felt a wave of relief as Irene shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said and nervously tucked a lock of her dark brown hair behind one ear. “I wish I knew.”
Connor shook his head at me. I smiled guiltily. We stepped back through the curtain and stopped at our desks. I winced at the towering stack of files and reports sitting untouched in my in-box. I ignored my pile and looked over at Connors. His was just as tall and, like mine, getting taller. We divided up the most basic of tasks at hand. Connor called around to all the metropolitan area hospitals while I checked Google and the newswires for anything involving the disappearance of a woman named Irene. After a half hour, Connor hung up the phone.
“Anything, kid?”
I shook my head.
“Looks like we’re going to have to get off our asses…” he said and stood up.
“Too bad,” I said. “I was kinda looking forward to doing all this paperwork.”
I wondered if I had lighter fluid and matches somewhere in my desk.
“That can wait,” Connor said. “We need to figure out who this Irene is before her ghost starts degrading on us to the point she’s like that rogue spirit last night. I can think of only one place that might give us the answers we’re looking for. There’s this book—”
