Beyond Dead

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

  “Yeah, I’ll bet it was.” I knew I shouldn’t revel in someone’s infidelity, but I really liked being right. “So, other than the pittance he left you, why do the police think you did it?”

  “Because no one saw him after he left here.” She took another long drag on the cigarette and blew three perfect smoke rings. “And I don’t have an alibi. So. I need you to spy on Porscha for me.”

  “Right. Because I have nothing better to do with my time.”

  “Not to be indelicate, my dear, but you don’t.” She pointed to me with her cigarette trapped between two fingers. “You’re dead.”

  “I might be dead, but I still have a job like everyone else.” For some reason her assumption that I floated around all day with nothing to do and no responsibilities irritated me. Maybe because that’s what I’d thought being dead would be like. Not that I’d given it all that much thought when I’d been alive.

  “Oh, yeah?” She arched an eyebrow at me. “What do you do?”

  Despite Eleanor’s warning zipping through my mind, I was tempted to tell her and wipe the smug expression off her face. But then again I figured she’d find out soon enough the way she was sucking on those cigarettes, so why ruin her life by telling her she’d have to work when she was dead? It was unnecessarily cruel, even for me.

  “Stuff.”

  “Riiiiiight. Well, if you can find time in your oh-so-busy schedule to do this for me, I’d appreciate it.”

  I couldn’t tunnel yet so it would mean walking to wherever this Porscha lived, and we hadn’t even touched on the walking through walls thing in the GA meetings. Even if I agreed, it wasn’t going to be the easiest task in the world.

  “Who’s Porscha?” I asked.

  “The fiancée.” Madame Zorina bit the words out, looking like she was trying very hard to keep her temper under control.

  “The blonde in the photo? The same one you were encouraging him to marry?”

  “Finally you see my problem.” She lit a new cigarette from the butt of the old one. “If it gets out that I encouraged him to marry her and she killed him, it’s the end of my career.”

  “But if nobody saw him after he left here then he won’t have told anyone that. So how could it get out?”

  “I don’t know, but if she didn’t kill him then that still leaves me in the frame.”

  I frowned at her. “Wait, so … do you want her to be guilty or not?”

  “Both!” Madame Zorina reached for the sky in frustration. “I want her to be both.”

  “Right.” I knew I should’ve kept walking. “Why don’t you summon Barry and ask him what happened?”

  “I’ve tried but I can’t reach him.” Madame Zorina sighed and sat down opposite me, slouching like a puppet who’d had her strings cut. “I don’t know if it’s something simple like I’m too stressed to focus properly or that he doesn’t want to come.”

  “Why wouldn’t he want to come? If I was murdered I’d be jumping at the chance to tell someone who did it.”

  “How am I supposed to know?” She rested both elbows on the table and covered her eyes with one hand, still holding her lit cigarette between her fingers.

  “Well.” I leaned forwards, got a lungful of second-hand smoke for my trouble and leaned back again. “How’d he die?”

  “He was hit on the head. Porscha supposedly found him this morning by the pool. He’d been there all night.”

  What were the questions Sabrina had asked me about Jim? “Was that where he was killed or had he been moved?”

  “I don’t know, Miss Morbid. The police didn’t exactly give me all the details. What with me being a suspect and all. Can’t you go and ask him yourself?”

  “Oh, sure, because all local ghosts meet in this big ghost canteen and have lunch together and chat about their day.”

  “Look, can you just help me out here?” Madame Zorina’s hand trembled slightly as she sucked down another lungful of nicotine. “Please?”

  “I’ll see what I can do, okay?” I stood up and fanned some of the cigarette smoke away from my face. “But you have to promise you won’t ever summon me again.”

  “Absolutely.” She drew her finger in a cross over her heart. She was a terrible liar.

  I headed for the beaded curtain but paused before going through. “Oh. How’s my shadow?”

  “Totally gone. Whatever’s happened since yesterday must have rectified the situation.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It happens like that sometimes.” She nodded and waved her hands down me, shaping a silhouette. “You are officially shadow free.”

  “Right.” Like I said, she was a terrible liar.

  ∞

  “Why are you walking here?” Sabrina met me halfway down the hill from the fort, looking behind me for an explanation. “And where’s Fenton?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Did he abandon you?” Her voice took on a motherly tone, which made me smile since it promised all sorts of painful retribution.

  I adjusted my fringe against the breeze then dug my hands into my pockets. “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly? Are you going to tell me what happened or will I have to drag it out of you?” She leaned forwards and sniffed me. “Why do you smell of cigarette smoke?”

  I glanced around, making sure there was no one who could eavesdrop, especially Oz since he had a habit of overhearing conversations he wasn’t supposed to.

  “I got summoned.”

  Sabrina's mouth formed an ‘o’. “That’s bad, Bridge. That’s really bad.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper but I was sure there was the slightest hint of excitement underneath. “Did you answer it?”

  “From where I was standing, it didn’t feel like I had a whole lot of choice. And how is it that you know what that means and I don’t?”

  “I eavesdrop.” She shrugged “It’s a habit from my life. And what do you mean you didn’t have a choice? You just refuse it.”

  “Oh, you just refuse it.” I mocked, waving my hand in the air as if waving away the summons like it were a mosquito. “Have you ever been summoned?”

  “No.”

  “When it happens to you, you let me know how the whole refusing it thing goes.”

  “Huh.” Sabrina pressed her lips together in thought. “Maybe it’s because you’re new to it. Wait. When you introduced yourself you didn’t give her your life name, right? You gave your professional name?”

  “My ‘professional name’? I’m not a stripper.”

  “Facilitators all have working names so mediums can’t summon them.”

  I stared at her. “What?”

  “You pick a name and introduce yourself by it so if they do summon you, because that’s not your name, you can choose to reject …” Sabrina trailed off when she saw my expression.

  “You think that would be the kind of pretty important thing you’d tell someone on their first day, huh?”

  Sabrina’s mouth dropped open. “Fenton didn’t tell you?”

  “No …” I dragged the word out and shook my head. “I may kill him tomorrow. Or at least seriously maim him.”

  Sabrina nodded. “Seems like a fair response … since …”

  “Since what?”

  “Well, since you were summoned outside of official channels …”

  “It’s classed as a haunting,” I guessed with a sigh. “Even though they summoned me?”

  “That’s bureaucracy for you.”

  “And did you just say ‘outside of official channels’?”

  “When a medium requests an audience with one of us, it’s hotlined down to the relations and social media teams who decide whether to grant it or not, usually not, but if they approve it they allow the summoning to connect.”

  “Relations and social—” I shook my head. I didn’t want to know. “Do the people getting summoned have any choice in the matter?”

  “No, but like everything else around here it’s not really a hard and fast rule. Sometimes, if
the people being summoned are concerned about their living relatives they can hear the summoning anyway.”

  “Hear it how?”

  Sabrina shrugged. “Hear it, feel it, sense it, I’ve no real idea.”

  “Well, I wasn’t concerned about the person who summoned me.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.” Sabrina held her hands up in surrender. “Maybe because you’re a facilitator you’re easier to summon, hence the professional name.”

  “Am I going to be arrested for unauthorised haunting?”

  Sabrina shook her head. “From what I’ve gathered, the job of the relations and social media team ends with denying the request. Anything that happens after that they wash their hands of.”

  “What?” I held up my hand as if that could halt the craziness. “What’s the point in having a team of people to refuse the requests if it doesn’t actually stop the summonings taking place?”

  Sabrina shrugged. “I just work here.”

  I shook my head and sighed. “I hate this place.”

  “Never mind, only an eternity left to go,” Sabrina said cheerfully and nudged my shoulder with hers. “Now why do I get the feeling there’s more to this story?”

  “Because you’re perceptive.”

  “Hit me with it.”

  “Madame Zorina wants me to help her solve a murder. And by ‘me’ I mean ‘us’.”

  Sabrina stared at me for a long moment then flung her arms around me in a tight hug. “The very first moment I saw you, I knew we’d be the best of friends.”

  I patted her back. “I’m glad you’re so pleased.”

  She released me but linked her arm with mine as we walked up hill to the fort. “Tell me everything.”

  I filled her in on the little information I had. We settled ourselves on a patch of grass near the entrance of the fort and soaked up the evening sunshine.

  “It’s not surprising her request to speak to Barry got knocked back,” Sabrina said. “They never grant them for things like that. I’ll see what I can find out in the records. Maybe even get a location for him. Simply asking him would ruin the fun a bit, though.”

  “Maybe for you.” Personally I could do with a lot less “fun” in my afterlife. “Oh, did you find out anything more about Jim?”

  “Nada.” She shook her head. “I’m telling you, that guy was under cover. You?”

  “I don’t really know who to ask.”

  “Everyone. You never know who’ll provide the key piece to the puzzle.”

  “Ladies?” Eleanor called from the wide open doors of the fort, her southern belle accent sounding so out of place. “I’m sure whatever topic you’re discussing is immensely fascinating, however, we’ve already started, so if you please?” She gestured into the hall and waited as we both hurried inside with a contrite dip of our heads.

  The hall was painfully silent as we walked in, our light footsteps deafening in the silent blanket of concentration. Everybody was already in their groups, eyes shut tight. Sabrina and I hovered at the back of the hall.

  “We’re practicing tunnelling again,” Eleanor whispered. “Aim for the stone marker on the top of the hill outside, please.”

  Sabrina and I nodded and joined hands as Eleanor, bare foot and silent, circled the room. It was difficult to judge how long we’d been trying when I first felt it. It was like stepping out on the plank of a ship, nothing but that small piece of solid footing beneath you and wind whistling and gusting around you. I felt free, like a leaf dancing on the breeze. The thought that I might get caught up in that breeze and blown who knew where was enough to have me clinging onto the image of the stone marker for all I was worth.

  The air changed around me. Fresh, salty, the smell of newly cut grass. Before I could fully appreciate the warmth of the sun on my back, Sabrina’s hands started jerking violently. I opened my eyes to see an opaque shoulder jutting out through Sabrina’s equally opaque chest. Eleanor was waving frantically at us, possibly yelling but I couldn’t hear. All I could see was Sabrina bonding on a molecular level with the idiot Martin.

  I needed to get her away from there. The first place that popped into my head was Madame Zorina’s reading room. I focused on recreating the room around me so hard my head began to throb. The smell of the sea faded into old incense and stale cigarette smoke while the ground became flat and even beneath my feet. I squinted, checking Sabrina had no more body parts protruding through her, then promptly passed out.

  “You okay? Want some water?” Sabrina helped me sit up and rest my back against the wall before offering me the glass. When I took it my hands were shaking so badly I sloshed most of it out over the floor.

  “Okay, I think I’ll take that back.” Sabrina raised the glass to my lips for me so I could take a few sips, though I noted her hands were shaking too. “Found these. Want to go halves with me?” She held up a six-pack of chocolate bars.

  “Most definitely.”

  “That’s my girl.” She slapped my thigh gently, sat down next to me and offered me the first bar.

  After almost inhaling two of the chocolate bars I checked the calories on the third. “Did we ever ask Eleanor if we can get fat if we eat too much?”

  Sabrina stared at me. “I’ve just merged on an disgustingly intimate level with that idiot from yesterday and you’ve just tunnelled us who knows how many miles away. I think we’re entitled.”

  I nodded and unwrapped the last bar. “Fair point.”

  “I’m guessing we’re at that psychic’s place?” Sabrina looked around the room and smiled. “That’s a very pretty crystal ball.”

  “You’re not stealing the crystal ball.”

  “I wasn’t going to steal it. Just borrow it. Long term. I always wanted a proper crystal ball.”

  “Why?” I wondered if the tunnelling mishap had scrambled her brain.

  She shrugged. “It’d make a super interesting paperweight.”

  “And on that note.” I collected my chocolate wrappers and stood up. “I think it’s time for us to go.”

  “Actually, while we’re here …”

  “While we’re here what?”

  “We could snoop around a bit.” Sabrina wandered casually around the room as she spoke, looking behind the wall drapes. “See what we can find.”

  “Like what?” I discarded the wrappers in a small wastebasket near the beaded curtain. “A signed confession?”

  “Or a bloodstained heavy object.”

  “Right. A heavy object she took all that way to beat poor Barry over the head with, then brought back here to leave lying around, still covered in blood. Yeah, let’s look for that.”

  Sabrina shook her head at me in mock disgust and examined all the hangings and statues in the room anyway. “So, we walking back to the fort?”

  “You want to tunnel back? Be my guest.” I stepped back to give her some room.

  She made a show of thinking it over then patted her tummy. “I think the walk will do me good.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Sabrina followed me out of the reading room, the bead curtain swinging behind us, and into the shop. There was still enough light from the setting sun for us to make our way along the aisles without incident.

  “‘Wishing powder. Dissolve a pinch in a free-flowing body of water while casting your wish’.” Sabrina turned the small packet she’d picked up from a shelf over in her hand. “I notice there’s no guarantee on this.”

  “You should call Trading Standards. Are you coming?”

  Sabrina pocketed the wishing powder then looked from the locked door to my extended hand. “Thought you wanted to walk?”

  “I do, but currently I feel our options are somewhat limited.” I gestured to the locked door blocking our exit.

  “Oh, I can fix that.”

  I held up my hand to slow her down. “How?”

  The door was a single glass pane framed with a border of painted wood. I could fix our no exit problem too. Just not in an ideal way.

&
nbsp; “Relax.” Sabrina pulled out two paperclips from her pocket and unfolded them. She’d undone both locks within a matter of minutes.

  I’d hovered over her shoulder watching, but it just looked like she was jiggling the wires round. “I didn’t know private investigator was synonymous with locksmith.”

  “It’s synonymous with a lot of things.”

  With the door relocked from the outside, we made our way through the centre of town. It was just getting busy with students out early for the cheap Wednesday night drinks, girls in skirts so short they barely covered the necessary parts and tops so low everything was on show.

  “I don’t ever remember dressing like that,” Sabrina commented on a brunette in an electric blue band of material she was using as a dress.

  “Me either. What about that one?” I pointed to a girl with pink and green hair and a red lace halter neck dress, which had mostly likely been pretty until she’d added her own rips to it and teamed it with heavily studded biker boots.

  “Yeah, that’s eye catching, but not as interesting as the guy behind her.”

  I leaned to the right to see who she was referring to. “Is that Fenton? Who’s he talking to?”

  Sabrina bobbed to the left to try to peer around the pedestrians. “Can’t see.”

  Fenton was waving his arms about, clearly agitated, but the recipient of his anger was hidden by a throng of slightly drunk students milling around in front of them.

  “Oh! I caught him arguing with Pete earlier today.” How had I forgotten that? Maybe the tunnelling mishap had addled my brain.

  “Really? Where? After lunch?” Sabrina glanced at me as we carefully navigated around the students to try to see who Fenton’s companion was without him catching sight of us and without us bumping into any of the alive people.

  “Yeah, I’d just finished my last assignment and interrupted them arguing. Well, it sounded more like Pete was threatening him, actually.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. What was Pete doing around here?”

  “He said the office had added some of my assignments to his list while I was training.”