Death & Stilettos

by Jason Krumbine

  “Oh, here’s an idea, why don’t you bring Steven the bartender around?” Avery suggests. “I’m sure Mom will love him. She’ll love him so much that I’m sure she’ll drop everything else and suddenly accept you for who you are.”

  Brooke gets out of the car, not saying anything. Avery follows her, grabbing their tapping sticks from the backseat.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, did I strike a nerve there?” Avery asks her as they walk up to the house.

  Brooke ignores the question, changing the subject. “Why are we here now?”

  “Lori said its most active after sunset,” Avery replies, letting the issue slide. “Did you really want to visit a haunted house after dark?”

  “Good point.” Brooke takes her tapping stick and gently raps it against the front porch.

  Nothing happens.

  “Now that’s interesting,” Avery says.

  “Maybe she’s crazy?” Brooke suggests.

  “Did Lori seem like the crazy type?” Avery asks, grabbing the house key Lori had given them.

  Brooke uses her tapping stick to scratch her back. “Yes. Yes, she most definitely did. Blood on the walls? Creepy sounds? Come on, she’s off her rocker.”

  “I don’t think people actually say that anymore.”

  “What?”

  “‘Off your rocker,’” Avery says.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Well, what’s the alternative?” Brooke asks.

  "I'm not really sure," Avery replies. "I don't stay hip with the lingo."

  "No, I mean what's the alternative to her being crazy?"

  “That’s she’s telling the truth,” Avery says.

  “And if she’s telling the truth, do you really want to go in there?” Brooke nods at the front door.

  “Of course not,” Avery answers, unlocking the door.

  “And yet, you’re going inside,” Brooke points out as her sister steps over the threshold.

  The house smells like chocolate chip cookies and looks like a hurricane took up residence inside for a couple of days.

  “That smells good,” Brooke says.

  Avery navigates around a small table lying in the middle of the hallway. The floors are dark wood and the walls are painted a light brown.

  “Do you smell that?” Brooke asks Avery, following her into the living room. “She didn’t strike me as a baker.”

  The living room’s a mess. Furniture is flipped over and smashed. Something crunches beneath Avery’s shoe. There are ceramic pieces of what looks to be a couple of different vases spread out over the floor.

  “Where do you think the kitchen is?” Brooke asks.

  “Can you focus?” Avery finally says. “Stop with the stupid cookies already.”

  “They smell really good,” Brooke says. “I think it might be that time of the month.”

  Avery pauses. “Oh, now you want to talk about your period?”

  “Not if you’re actually going to talk about it,” Brooke mutters.

  Avery shakes her head and gingerly picks up one of the pillows off the floor and sniffs it. She drops the pillow and smells the sofa.

  “Huh.”

  “What?” Brooke asks.

  “The cookie smell,” Avery says. “It’s in the furniture,” she walks over to the wall and sniffs it. “It’s on the wall, too.”

  “That looks so weird,” Brooke says, watching her sister. She waves a hand around the living room. “I don’t see any blood on the walls.”

  Avery scratches the side of her mouth. “I was thinking the same thing.” She taps her stick against the wall and, again, nothing happens.

  “Nobody’s here,” Avery says. “We should be picking up on something, though. Right?”

  She steps over the coffee table and touches the small holes in the wall. “Where are the photos?”

  “What?” Brooke looks up from the Victoria Secret catalog she had found; Her attention was glued to some very sparkly bras she had found on page six.

  Avery taps the wall. “There aren’t any photos, but you can still see where they were hanging. Why aren’t there any photos?”

  Brooke shrugs. “Maybe she took them all down when they started weeping?”

  “Maybe,” Avery says.

  Brooke shoves the catalog into her back pocket. “Hey, do you have the doohickey?”

  Avery looks at her. “The doohickey?”

  “Yeah,” Brooke mimes a square with her hands. “The box thing.”

  “The spectral analysis device that we got from Messor and Decessus?”

  “Whatever. I don’t care what it’s called.”

  “Now you want to use it?” Avery asks.

  “Well,” Brooke says, twirling her tapping stick. “These aren’t exactly working.”

  “A minute ago you thought Lori was crazy.”

  “And she might be,” Brooke agrees. “I’m just saying that we should probably be absolutely sure before we tell Mom that her friend’s daughter is some kind of schizophrenic who likes to rearrange her furniture.”

  Avery just shakes her head and pulls out the black box from her purse. There’s a switch and two lights: red and green. Red means there’s nothing around. Green means somebody’s home. She flips the switch.

  The green light comes on immediately.

  The Graves sisters stare at the steady green light in silence.

  “Well, that is interesting,” Avery says, dropping the box back in to her purse.

  Brooke looks around. “I don’t know about you, but there’s something extra creepy about this place now.”

  Avery nods her head. “Yeah, I’m with you on that.”

  “Why aren’t our tapping sticks picking up Lori’s dead mommy?” Brooke says.

  “That is a very good question.”

  Brooke peeks around the corner at the stairs again. “Oh, that’s nice.”

  Avery follows her sister. Brooke’s standing at the foot of the stairs. There’s a railing on the right and on the left, there’s a wall covered in blood.

  “Damn,” Avery mutters.

  There’s a message written in the blood. It reads, in shaky letters, GET OUT.

  Brooke raps her tapping stick against the blood letters. There’s no response. And there should have definitely been a response. She quickly takes a step back. “Okay. Well, I’m officially creeped out.”

  Avery gingerly touches the blood.

  “Ew.” Brooke makes a face.

  “It’s dry,” Avery says. She sniffs it. “And it smells like chocolate chip cookies.”

  The sisters look at each other.

  “Seriously?” Brooke asks.

  Avery holds a hand out to the wall. “Smell it yourself.”

  “Okay, well, there’s the line,” Brooke says. “In case you were wondering. Right there. I’m not going to sniff blood.”

  “Please,” Avery says. “I’ve seen you stick your nose in worse.”

  Brooke shakes her head. “Nope. I’m pretty sure that mysterious, creepy blood on a wall is definitely at the bottom of the barrel.”

  Avery grabs her sister and drags her over the wall. “Just smell it already.”

  “Hey,” Brooke shrugs off Avery’s hand. “No means no.” But she leans in anyway and takes a gentle sniff, as if the blood was going to jump off the wall and up her nose.

  Brooke looks back at her sister with an expression of surprise. “It smells like the best chocolate chip cookies ever made.”

  Avery nods. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  Brooke looks up the stairs. “I’m going to ask if you want to keep looking around, but frankly, I’m kind of hoping the answer’s ‘no.’”

  “That is a definite no,” Avery says, heading for the front door. “Not, at least, until we get some answers.”

  seven

  “Cookies? I know nothing about cookies.”

  “We’re not asking you about cookies,” Avery replies. "We're asking you about a cookie-like smell.

>   “I don’t know anything about how cookies are supposed to smell.”

  “That’s still not the question,” Brooke sighs.

  Adam Harris scrunches his sharp, angular face up. It makes him look like a wrinkly arrowhead. He’s a skinny man with a buzz cut and a taste in preppy clothes, like sweater vests. Adam's an unofficial digital historian for the grim reaping community. Appalled by the Council's idea of data storage (heavy paper tomes that are on the brink of turning to dust from age) Adam took it upon himself to assemble a digital archive of all the grim reaping data and history. It's unsanctioned by the Council of Reapers, but the waves he makes are tiny, so no one has bothered to shut him down. Yet.

  The sisters are meeting him at a small outdoor deli on the corner of Rivers Ave and Lincoln Street. It's about as close to an actual office as Adam has. His table is located on the east side of the restaurant, only a few feet away from both the restrooms and the fountain drinks. There's a seventeen-inch laptop on the table and a small tablet computer propped up beside it. Headphones run from his ears to his smartphone and the sounds of 80's hairband rock help him focus.

  Adam scratches the side of his nose. "What are you asking about again?"

  Avery yanks the headphones out of his ears.

  "Ow," he says.

  Avery and Brooke grab seats from neighboring tables.

  “Please,” Adam says sarcastically. “Join me.”

  “What is that?” Brooke points to a half-eaten sandwich.

  “Mine,” Adam replies a little defensively.

  “That’s a little rude,” Brooke says.

  “I’ve seen what you do to food,” Adam responds, pulling the sandwich a little closer. “I’m just protecting my interests. Why are you guys here again?

  "What leaves behind the smell of freshly baked cookies?" Avery asks.

  Adam shrugs. "I dunno. Freshly baked cookies?"

  Brooke rolls her eyes. "Other than that."

  "Freshly baked cookie scented air fresheners?" Adam suggests.

  "Think more supernatural," Avery replies.

  "Hey, I'm not a machine," Adam says, bristling with light offense. "I don't know everything."

  Brook taps his computer. "No, but you've got one of these."

  Adam holds his hands out. "What am I supposed to do? Type in 'What leaves behind a smell of freshly baked cookies?'"

  Brooke nods her head. "That's pretty much my understanding of what you do."

  "Okay, it's not like a web search engine," Adam starts.

  "Then it sounds like you're making your work a lot harder than it needs to be," Avery observes.

  "That's because half the stuff I archive needs to be transcribed," Adam explains. "I need to write individual algorithms. to pick out the data you're looking for from what basically amounts to regular jpeg files."

  "Jpeg?" Brooke replies.

  Adam frowns. "It's the Twenty-First Century. How do you not know what a jpeg is?"

  Brooke shrugs. "I'm very simple woman. Shoes, clothes, food and sex."

  Avery shakes her head at Brooke. "Please don't talk like that in front of Adam."

  “What’s so bad about shoes?” Brooke asks.

  “That’s not the part I meant,” Avery says.

  “I’m pretty sure Adam here knows about sex already.” Brooke looks at him. “You do know about sex, right? I mean, you’re a bit of a nerd with all the computer stuff, but nerds are in these days.”

  Adam ignores her question. "It's a picture. A scan, really. Rather than transcribing all of the data I get into regular digital text, I simply scan certain documents right in."

  "Which documents?"

  Adam pauses. "Pretty much just the documents I get on the weekends."

  Avery raises an eyebrow.

  "Hey," Adam says. "I want to have a life outside of all this, too."

  "So what you're saying is," Avery continues. "You can't pull up anything for us."

  "At least not right now and not without a little more data." Adam shrugs. "A freshly baked cookie smell? That's not going to get you anything."

  Avery looks at her sister.

  "What do we do now?" Brooke asks.

  "I've got an idea or two," Avery says. "But it's getting late. And like Adam says, some of us want to have a life outside of all this death."

  "Mom's not going to happy with us pushing this off for a day," Brooke says.

  Avery shrugs it off. "Lori's staying at a hotel. Nobody's at risk."

  "Speaking of parents," Adam cuts in as his fingers dance along the keyboard of his laptop. "Did you ladies know that your dad had special powers?"

  Avery and Brooke do a double take.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Okay, well, not like super powers," Adam clarifies. "I mean, he had special voting powers on the Council."

  "Dad wasn't a Council member," Avery says.

  "That's what makes it special." He spins the laptop around so the sisters can see the screen. There’s a scanned collection of older documents laid out for them. "You know Greg Langely?"

  "He sounds familiar," Brooke says.

  "Greg's that old reaper down at the Tombstone who's always going on about his glory days," Avery tells her.

  "Ah," Brooke nods her head. "Creepy Old Perv."

  Avery sighs. “He’s not a creepy old perv.”

  "Well, maybe if he tried looking down your shirt all the time you'd think differently."

  "And maybe if you didn't always wear such low cut tops," Avery points out. "Men wouldn't try to look down your shirts all the time."

  "Okay," Adam says, little too loudly, trying to get the focus back on him. "Well, anyway, after buying Greg a few rounds, he was kind enough to drop off four boxes of documents about a week ago. Old Greg used to work down at the Council's main offices in Austin, Texas almost twenty years ago. Apparently he was fond of taking work home in the good old days and never got around to cleaning out his garage."

  "And the Council didn't have a problem with him just handing these over to a non-reaper?" Avery asks, not quite believing it. The Council was notorious for not wanting to share too liberally with outsiders.

  "None of them were marked sensitive," Adam replies. "And, honestly, it's been over twenty years. There's not much that would be considered classified after twenty years."

  "Are you familiar with our nation's government."

  "A lot of it is pretty boring stuff. Minutes to meetings, mostly. However, in one of those minutes I found a reference to something called the Veto Council," Adam continues. "I don't know if that was an official term or not. It sounded interesting, so, twenty-fours though, I dug up everything on them.”

  “That you can find,” Brooke cuts in. “But you can’t help us with a freshly baked cookie smell?”

  Adam ignores her. “Basically the Veto Council was made up of ten grim reapers that aren't official Council members. They’re just regular old guys, working their beats and hunting down the renegade souls. You know, normal guys. These reapers are usually spread throughout the country and they're empowered, if they reach unanimous vote, to overturn any Council decision."

  Avery and Brooke don't say anything for a moment, letting the implications sink in.

  "Wow."

  "Yeah, I can’t figure out where it started or who even empowered the group,” Adam says, spinning the laptop back around. “They’re official. I emailed Sandy Boyd at the Council’s office, she’s a cute girl I friended on Facebook. We flirt online, she helps me out. Sandy pulled up the Council charter and, sure enough, the Veto Council is listed on it. They’ve been around for a while. I found references to the Veto Council going back at least a hundred years.”

  “That’s not a lot when you consider that people have been dying since, you know, forever,” Brooke points out.

  “Well, not a lot of people were documenting things back at the beginning of forever,” Adam replies with a bit of snipe in his voice. “Typically a hundred years is about as far back as I can go without dippin
g into the Council’s deep archives, which we all know the Council won’t let anyone do without, basically, authorization from God Himself.” Adam pauses to help himself to a bite from his sandwich. "Anyway, when your father died, that veto power was passed down to the both of you."

  "It's inherited?"

  "Kind of," Adam explains. "It looks like the veto power gets passed down as long as the children are authorized grim reapers, otherwise it's out in the open and the Council needs to reassign it."

  "How come nobody ever told us about this?" Brooke asks. "Eight months in certification classes and almost five years working the reaping beat and nobody’s ever mentioned it."

  "It's probably not something the Council's fond of," Adam says. "It’s a hell of a failsafe program, when you think about it. Basically, the point of this Veto Council is to keep the Reaper Council from getting too powerful. We’ve all met Council members before. Are you really surprised that none of them went out of their way to let you know about your inheritance? Although, after your dad died I am surprised that nobody else told you about it."

  "Yeah," Avery says. "Like Mom."

  Brooke's eyes widen. "Like Mom."

  Avery frowns. "Don't say it like that."

  "Like what?"

  "Like Mom's some kind of evil mastermind,” Avery says.

  Brooke does a palms up. “Well, who else was going to tell us about the veto power?”

  “Like you need another reason to be upset with Mom,” Avery mutters.

  “Anyway,” Adam cuts in again. “I haven’t found any reference to any recent vetoes.”

  “I can’t even remember the last time the Council rolled out any new laws,” Avery says.

  “Three years ago,” Adam tells her. “The new apprentice structure. But the last time the Veto Council did anything? It’s been a while.”

  “Longer than twenty years?” Avery asks.

  Adam doesn’t answer right away. He stares at something on his computer. “Yeah. Longer than twenty years.”

  Avery taps her fingers against the table. “Interesting.

  Adam clears his throat. “Anyway, thought you guys should know.” He points to the laptop. “I’ll look into that the cookie stuff for you.”

  “Freshly baked cookies,” Avery clarifies.

  “Right,” Adam says. “Cookies.”