by Alex A King
“You mean the Church’s money, yes?”
“You say Yianni, I say Yiannakis.”
John and Johnny are Greece’s to-may-to, to-mah-to. “Are you saying she swipes the donations?”
The mop swished back and forth. “It is expensive to be Kyria Sofia. All that blond dye is not cheap. Now, do you want to know what my eye saw?”
“Yes, please.”
“Too bad. I will tell you instead what my eye cannot see. The dead ones.”
“Probably because we bury them.”
Her one eye swiveled upward in its socket. “I am talking about the fantasmata.”
The etymology of phantom is fantasma. The etymology of etymology is etymologia. The father from My Big Fat Greek Wedding was right about Greek words.
Wait—was she saying what I thought she was saying?
“You can see ghosts?”
“Not as many as before. They are vanishing, and they have been for a long time now. Lately, faster.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you promised to spit on the money, and also because I know you are like me but with an extra eye and no hump—yet.”
Time to see my doctor and get my spine scanned. Preventative medicine. “How did you know?”
She touched a finger to her eye. “My eye sees many things. One night it saw you talking to Vasili Moustakas. Po-po, even now that man cannot put his poulaki away.”
My mind reeled the way it always did when I discovered someone shared my gift—or affliction, I wasn’t sure which. When the ghosts got yappy, I felt cursed.
“He disappeared last night when I was talking to him. Do you think whatever got the others got him, too.”
“Pah! Vasilis is fine. I saw him and his poulaki this morning.”
A trickle of relief ran down my spine. Kyrios Moustakas was a kook but he was a harmless kook.
“The others though,” she went on, mop slapping in time with her words, “they have not come back.”
“Maybe they went to the Afterlife and stayed.”
“Maybe yes. Maybe no. My hump says no, that something bad happened to them. You find things, yes? Find out what happened to the fantasmata.”
With that chore out of the way, and more questions than answers swirling around inside my already cluttered head, I rode toward home. To hold onto my sanity, I mentally organized the rest of my day. Most of my current workload involved Googling, which meant serious butt-in-chair time.
“Oi! What are you doing, you stupid bint?”
I yelped and fell sideways. My leg shot out, a makeshift kickstand that stopped me tumbling into traffic. I was this close to being trampled to death by sheep. The sheep were unfazed. One of them stopped to nibble on my boot.
Wilson’s ghost hovered in the middle of the road, his feet several centimeters above the hard-packed dirt. He sure looked hot under the collar, as though his favorite pub told him they were all out of cellar-temperature beer.
“Trying not to die on the backroads of a Greek island,” I said. “What’s a bint?”
“It’s what you are, that’s what it is. Anyway, you dying is not what I meant. I’m talking about you going to see that fooking charlatan about my funeral.”
“You were there?”
“I was hiding behind something gold.”
That was everything in Ayios Konstantinos, except Father Spiros’ heart. “Is there a problem?”
He drew himself into a stiff see-through column. “God never did nowt for me, so why should I believe in Him?”
“So you’re an atheist?”
“Not one of those, either. Do I look like a skinny jeans-wearing hippy to you?”
“Oh, well, if you don’t believe in God and you don’t want a funeral, there goes my idea.”
His eyes narrowed. “What idea?”
I scooted my boot forward, out of the hungry sheep’s reach. It farted once, then dashed after the herd. While that was going on, I told Wilson about my brilliant plan to smoke out his killer by throwing a funeral for him.
“It’s a stupid idea. It won’t work. Can’t you come up with anything better? Something not stupid.”
Ten … nine … eight …
“You know, I’m starting to understand why someone killed you. If you had a neck I’d wring it.”
“That’s insensitive, that’s what that is. You young people, always pretending to be tolerant of people what are different from you. And here I am, a ghost, and you’re acting like a bigot. A bloody great ghost bigot.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe I really wanted a cup of coffee and a slab of baklava to go with it—wait, there was no maybe about that last part.
“I don’t mind ghosts—I mind you! And obviously I’m not the only one because someone broke into my apartment last night and scrawled Vanquish Wilson across my living room wall in cold garbage! Do you know how long that took me to scrape off? My place still smells like the island’s worst coffee!”
He went pale, which was harder than it sounded when someone was both non-corporeal and as white as Wilson. “Are you going to do that?”
“Even if I wanted to, how would I?”
His beady little eyes zeroed in on my face. They were hard, mean little nuggets. “If I did know, why would I tell you?” Despite his lack of lungs, he coughed. “You want to do something useful with your life besides coming up with stupid plans and sitting about twiddling your thumbs while an axe murderer dances around the island, you could go to my house and pack up all my junk.”
“You know you weren’t killed with an axe, right?”
“Just do it—can you do at least one bloody thing right? Take what you want then burn the place down.”
“Don’t you have family who can commit your arson for you? Somebody in England? A sister? A cousin? A friend? How about an over-friendly neighbor back home? Maybe someone who digs fire?”
Each time I threw out a suggestion he shook his head. “There is nobody—only you, and what a fooking disaster that is.”
Bugger, as the English said. I was afraid of that. “I guess I could box things up and sell them. But I’m not playing with matches. My mother would be disappointed.”
“Your mother can stick her matches up her bum for all I care. Burn the place down, that’s an order.”
As if I’d ever take orders from an ass like Roger Wilson. “Fine. I guess I could swing by your place later.”
“What’s wrong with now? It’s not like you have a life.”
Rich coming from someone who was dead. “Fine. I guess I could go over there now. But only because I want you gone. So … you don’t want a religious funeral?”
“Bury me in a cardboard box, or toss me in an incinerator, I don’t fooking care. The church can’t save my immortal soul.”
He was a world-class jerk but he was still a murder victim, and while he was around I figured I’d get some more questions in before he disappeared again. “I don’t suppose you’ve remembered anything else about your murder or who might have done it?”
Wilson stiffened. “Blooming heck,” he spluttered. With a haunted expression on his face—pun totally intended—he glanced around, then, with an audible pop, vanished.
So much for that. Pinning Wilson down for more than a few minutes was proving to be impossible. This was a problem. As obnoxious as he was, I wanted him permanently out of my life. But to kick him to the curb I needed to figure out who killed him. With his insults and attitude he was no help at all.
Using my phone, I consulted my list of no suspects and added two names: Kyrios Fasoulas and his currently indisposed wife. The husband wasn’t high on my list but his wife was Roger Wilson’s lover. Maybe Roger Wilson had unleashed his winning personality on Kyria Fasoula and won himself a hot, fresh murder. God knows I wanted to wring his see-through neck.
Tornadoes aren’t a thing on Merope. We don’t get a lot of extremes, unless it’s heat or nudity, and we don’t have the plains for twisters. So
the funnel of dirt and debris spinning toward me was surprise. It was the height of a cottage. At the top, the circumference of that same cottage. In its moment of genesis, it had picked up anything lying around, including a bantam rooster, who’d had all his suspicions confirmed: he could fly, and this was proof. His ego would never recover.
Virgin Mary.
I jumped on my bicycle prepared to speed away when suddenly, the twirling stopped. The funnel held its shape, dust suspended in the air. The bantam rooster clucked; in his own mind his powers were growing.
Danger isn’t normally my thing, although the nature of my work occasionally throws me into the path of fast-moving seniors at a sale on the mainland. Most of the time I dodged trouble while respecting its might. But this was different. It wasn’t every day I encountered a static funnel of weirdness and wind. My curiosity spiked along with my fear. I could no more move than I could pole dance.
“Did you dump coffee on me?” I called out.
There was no one around to hear me talking to the wind—no one except the goats, and they were out of earshot.
The mini tornado resumed spinning.
Did it spin for yes or spin for no?
“Did you smash my television after making it dance around the living room?”
It spun faster.
Maybe yes. Maybe no.
“Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to replace it. But it would be nice to know who’s responsible.”
I was woefully unarmed in this situation. At the best of times all I ever had were my wits, and those had hot-tailed it out of town as soon as the mini twister began swirling this way. During my childhood, Twister and The Wizard of Oz had taught me that tornadoes were the quicksand of weather and were liable to be an omnipresent danger when I grew up.
Lies. Until day, I had never set eyes on one.
Then I remembered something—probably because I hadn’t bought it myself. I went searching for it now, my hand sliding down into my bag, my fingers hunting. They closed around a glass container with a metal lid. I carefully twisted the lid.
“You want something from me? Fine. I’m willing to listen if you find a way to communicate that doesn’t involve smashing my belongings or scaring the pants off me. If not … yia sou, goodbye, adios, adieu.”
Too bad I didn’t speak more languages.
The lid popped loose. I poured a generous pile of salt into my hand, and then flung it at the tornado.
Would it work?
I held my breath.
The twister hung there for a moment, a cohesive cloud, then—
Poof!
Dirt hit the ground, then rose again, sepia billows fading as they head-butted the sea breeze and lost. Twigs, pebbles, goat poop scattered across the road in a wide arc. The bantam rooster hit the ground with an indignant cluck. He took a moment to puff out his chest and rearrange his feathers, then he zipped off, probably to brag to the chickens about his superpowers.
Huh. Salt was more than just a portable forcefield. Apparently it also had the capabilities of a stink bomb and had the power to kick an invisible thingamabob in the whatzit.
Salt shaker in hand, I sagged against my bicycle, relieved that I didn’t get whisked away to Oz. Eventually, I remembered what I was doing and where I was going. Roger Wilson’s place.
Since the Englishman didn’t have family I’d throw a little something we called a yard sale back in the United States. Yard-slash-garage sales were a novelty in Greece, and they weren’t a thing yet on Merope, where people committed to their belongings for life and beyond. So a yard sale would be something new plus it would give the locals a chance to snoop around the outsider’s place.
It took minutes to ride across the island to the Wilson house. Everything was the same, except the door was closed and the package that had been sitting on his porch had vanished.
Maybe Merope had a mail thief … or Roger Wilson had organized for someone to collect his mail in case he dropped dead.
On the way, I’d stopped to buy a box of salt. To my surprise, the house was already surrounded in an unbroken line. I hadn’t noticed it the other day but someone had dug a narrow ditch around the house and filled it with salt. It would need to be replenished after rain but for the moment it was untouched. I walked the whole line, checking for breaks. Big scuff marks at the gate. People had been coming and going.
The front door was closed but not locked. Stagnant, stale air wafted out. I left the door wide and opened a window to let the ocean breeze work its magic.
Wilson’s house was the world’s lamest bachelor pad. He didn’t have much beyond the basics. No artwork. No family photos. When he did his sitting he did it in the same-old easy chair in front of a modest television. Whatever he spent his money on it wasn’t stuff.
The Wilson house contained two bedrooms. One held a narrow wardrobe, a small chest of drawers, a twin bed, and one bedside table with a pair of spectacles sitting atop a book about Winston Churchill.
The second bedroom wasn’t a bedroom. That would be too normal. Roger Wilson had used the space to be a weirdo. He had filled the space from floor to ceiling with shelves, each shelf containing dozens of opaque pink jars with flat cork lids, lined up like dumpy skittles. One had fallen from its shelf, shattering into thousands of sharp pieces on the marble tile floor.
The whole thing screamed serial killer.
Except murders weren’t that prevalent on Merope (although lately there had been a slight uptick) and as far as I knew, Roger Wilson hadn’t taken a single fake business trip to other islands to find less conspicuous hunting grounds. So chances were decent the jars didn’t contain trophies from his methodic and frequent killing sprees.
That didn’t stop me checking the freezer for a frozen heads.
No frozen heads.
Phew. Lucky, because I didn’t know what to do about frozen heads.
I went back to the jars. Constable Pappas mentioned an abnormal number of packages delivered to the Wilson house. He’d thrown around the word collector. Then Kyria Sofia mentioned addiction like she wasn’t compelled to watch dogs lick peanut butter out of places dogs and peanut butter had no business going. This—Roger Wilson’s jar collection—struck me as a benign variety of bananas. Not that I was a mental health professional.
As far as packing up the house, there wasn’t much to do or sell. Small furniture. A few basic kitchen utensils, pots, pans, flatware and dinnerware, nothing special. Except for the room full of pink jars, Roger Wilson had lived how he looked: beige.
I did another circuit of the house, searching for a dustpan and broom to clean up the broken jar in the second bedroom. My gaze snagged on a package sitting on the kitchen counter, pushed out of immediate sight. The same package that was on his doorstep yesterday. The label was torn. The wrapping tape, too. Someone had brought the box into the house and opened it.
I peeked inside.
Empty.
The thief had clearly thieved. On the bright side, at least they’d been considerate enough to bring the box in. I took a closer look at the label, curious about the package’s origins. The country and city I remembered—London, UK. The address was a PO Box belonging to a company that called itself S&P Exports. Not exactly revelatory. Oh well, Wilson was dead and the object in the box was probably another one of his funny little pink jars.
The air shifted behind me. I turned around expecting to see Wilson, scolding me for the crime of being a dumb cow and not pulling a viable plan to uncover his murderer out of my kolos.
It wasn’t Wilson.
Something brown and sticky swung at my head. Either a stick or the broom handle.
For the second time in as many days, I hit the ground.
Chapter Eight
There was a hand on my forehead, cool and warm and soft and firm. Who knew a hand could be so full of contradictions?
I opened one eye. Then the other.
“This is starting to become a habit,” I told the Man in Black. “I don’t even know your
name. Do you have a name? Heathcliff, maybe? Rochester? Darcy? You’re not a Bingley. Too moody. Bingley was downright cheerful.”
“You were struck.”
“I don’t suppose you saw the culprit?”
“You should go to the hospital.”
My head wasn’t bleeding and I didn’t appear to be dead. “I’ll be fine.”
He lifted me off the floor and set me upright, as though I was nothing heavier than a bottle of ouzo. “You have sustained an excessive number of cranial injuries lately.”
“That explains the constant headaches and the voices in my head.”
He didn’t lighten up. Men—if that’s what he was—like him belonged in the English moors, life-long masters of once-grand manor houses. They owned hunting dogs and let their inner suffering slowly turn their faces to stone.
“There are people who care about you, people who depend upon you,” he said in his deep, foreboding voice. “You are their connection to this world.”
“You mean dead people.”
“And the living.”
Now that he was certain my death wasn’t imminent, he began to wander through Roger Wilson’s house. I followed along, less puppy more shadow. He stopped when he came to the second bedroom, where its owner had unfurled his weirdo flag and let it fly.
“Wilson liked to collect jars,” I said. “Identical jars. It’s a bit weird but what do I know? I see dead people.”
Without commenting, he selected a jar. He lifted it up to the light, turning it this way and that. Then he set it back on the shelf with its clones. “Some creatures deserve to be put down.”
Wow. That wasn’t cryptic or strange. “What do you mean?”
He spoked without turning to face me. “Go to the hospital, Aliki Callas.”
He was right and I knew it. Lately I’d taken several blows to the head, any of which were powerful enough to loosen my screws.
“I’ll be back,” I told the Man in Black. “Wilson asked me to pack up his belongings.”
“Did he says what he expected you to do with his … belongings, once they were packed neatly in boxes?”
