by Naomi Clark
“Sounds fine,” Baxter said, meaning sounds horrific. I got that. He’d just found out the love of his life was dead. I wouldn’t want to spend the evening talking to me either. Hell, I wouldn’t want that on a good day.
We agreed on a time and I hung up, turning my attention fully to the shopping channels. Some blonde chick and a bald guy extolled the virtues of some kitchen gadget that made mountains and mountains of coleslaw, saving time and money. I wanted one. I mean, I didn’t eat coleslaw–or cook, if I could avoid it, but I wanted one anyway. I kept buying shit like that and telling myself I’ll use it, get healthy, start eating properly, and then left it to gather dust in the kitchen cupboard.
I should probably get laid more.
I ordered the coleslaw thing and checked on Mutt. He’d cleaned up the curry and was pawing at the back door. Smart dog. I let him out into the rain, and he ran around happily in my tiny, pathetic garden, barked at the wall, then came back inside again and stood there giving me that goofy dog-face.
“Tomorrow we’re going to the vet,” I told him, scratching him behind the ears. “I bet you’re crawling with fleas and parasites, aren’t you? Yeah, you are.”
He lolled his tongue in agreement and padded through to the lounge. I left him asleep on the couch, while I changed into dry clothes for my meeting with Baxter. If I was lucky it would be a short one. I’d offer my condolences, he’d write me a check, and we’d move on with our lives. I could move on to the next case, if I’d had one lined up.
I didn’t have one lined up. I didn’t have anything lined up except more stupid kitchen gadgets, coffee, and listening to the Voice. Oh, and cleaning up Mutt, I guess.
See, this was why I became a PI. The glamour.
Chapter Two
Actually, the Coburg Bar was pretty glamorous. For me, anyway. All red paint, black wood, and brass. A piano player performed in the corner by the bar, and an open fire crackled away like it was midwinter, not the height of summer. I shrugged out of my leather jacket as soon as I stepped inside.
Baxter sat at the bar, nursing a bottle of beer and looking as miserable as sin. Which was fair enough, I guess. The guy bled despair and it stirred the Voice. The piece of demon lurking in my head loved that Baxter felt so fucking depressed. It wanted to curl up with that depression and wallow in it. I clenched my hands into fists as I approached Baxter, hoping I didn’t look happy or hungry, or whatever.
Why couldn’t I have been possessed by an incubus? I could live with a constant hard-on, but this need for other people’s suffering just felt fucking nasty.
“Mr. Baxter, good to see you again,” I said, leaning on the bar next to him. “Mine’s a whiskey.”
Baxter jumped, but recovered quickly. He was an investment banker, all sharp-creased shirts and tasteful ties. A man bent on climbing the career ladder all the way to the top. I figured he’d probably have a breakdown in his mid-thirties and end up feeding cats to ATMs or something.
“Mr. Banning.” He returned my greeting and ordered me a whiskey. Drinks in hand, we retreated to a booth at the back of the bar so we could talk in private about dead hookers.
Sitting opposite the guy, the sense of gloom and hopelessness felt powerful enough to choke me, and it fired up the Voice and sent it skittering around my head like it was high.
“So,” Baxter said, clearing his throat and staring at his beer. “How did it happen?”
“I can’t give you any details,” I said. “With the cops involved, it could get messy. I’m sure they’ll be in touch with you themselves anyway.”
He nodded. “She was beautiful, you know. A beautiful person, I mean.”
God, I wanted a cigarette. I tapped my foot on the floor nervously, soaking up his grief, tasting it at the back of my throat. It was like molasses, too thick to swallow. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Baxter,” I said, meaning it. “I wish I could have done more.”
He nodded again, not really hearing me. “I just don’t get who would want to hurt her. Rhian is…was…so sweet.”
The puzzlement on his face made the Voice laugh. “The sweet ones die easiest.”
“What did you say?” Baxter’s head jerked up with confusion in his eyes.
Did I say that out loud? Shit. “I said, I’m sure the police will find whoever did it.”
“They’d better,” he said grimly. A wave of anger hit me and the Voice lapped that up too, buzzing with the heat of it. “Mr. Banning, you didn’t find out about the… the stripping, did you? How she ended up doing something like that?”
I shook my head. I’d tracked Rhian to Hush, confirmed with the girls there that she’d worked there, but never asked them what a sweet girl like her was doing in a place like that. Rhian’s reasons hadn’t been my problem. Her whereabouts had been.
“I’d like to know. For closure. I mean…” Baxter waved his hands, flashing his designer watch at me. Probably not on purpose. “We were happy. We were engaged, talking about kids… We had a kitten, for Christ’s sake! And then one day she just breaks it off and disappears, and next thing I know, she’s stripping and…and dead. And I don’t know why.” He ran his hands through his hair, clutching at the carefully gelled dark spikes. “I don’t understand why.”
More misery, mixed with guilt and anger. The Voice chuckled. I took a swig of whiskey to stop the sound emerging from my mouth. “You want me to dig around, see what happened?” I asked. “I don’t know if that’s going to help you.”
“I need to know,” he grated. “Money’s not an issue.”
With a watch and haircut like his, I was sure it wasn’t. I shrugged. I needed the cash and he needed the closure. Win-win, except his fiancée was still dead. “Fair enough. I’ll see what I can find out for you. You should probably expect it to be ugly, though,” I warned.
“I can handle it,” he said. “I just need to know.”
* * * *
Mutt greeted me enthusiastically when I got home, all wet dog-kisses and excited yaps. I scratched his ears and told him he was a good boy, figuring his affection for me must mean I was still basically okay. I mean, animals are supposed to sense evil, aren’t they? If the Voice was making me a bad person, an evil person, Mutt wouldn’t be so pleased to see me, right?
“Or maybe it’s just cupboard love?” I mused, rubbing the dog’s ribs. “I’m gonna fatten you up for Christmas, you know that?”
Mutt licked my face and returned to the couch, settling down in one corner. I rolled a cigarette and switched on the TV. A muscle-bound beefcake was selling vitamin shakes guaranteed to turn you from zero to hero in six weeks. I doubted that, but the guy looked so fucking excited about it all, I ordered a case anyway.
I put off going to bed, even though I felt exhausted. My eyes burned with it, and the heat of the night didn’t help. I felt limp, wrung out; but the longer I stayed awake, the longer I could avoid the nightmares the Voice fed me. I hoped the mix of coffee, nicotine, and whiskey would keep me awake a while longer, but I got too comfy and the exertions of the day caught up with me. I drifted off while the beefcake shrieked like the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket about his glorious abs.
* * * *
I jerked awake much later, sweating and terrified. Mutt whined and jumped off the couch, coming around to my head to lick my ear. I released the breath I’d been holding as the room righted itself around me. My dream faded back into reality.
I didn’t know what I dreamed about, exactly. The images always disappeared as soon as I woke up. I know they’re bloody, violent, cruel, and vicious. I knew the Voice reveled in my night-terrors, laughing inside my skull like a psychotic clown. I was pretty sure the Voice caused the dreams, giving itself fresh fear and pain to feed off.
I sat up, running my hands through my hair and shivering in the dark, fighting to get a grip. “Just dreams,” I whispered to Mutt.
“I don’t even remember them, so why the hell am I so scared of them?”
I’m not fazed by much, really. In Shoregrave I faced down vampires, ghouls, and necromancers, and I came out pretty okay, relatively speaking, anyway. Sure, the undead population of the city shook me up a little, but I adapted. I’d seen enough human violence working as a PI to have become mostly immune to that too.
The Voice? The Voice scared the shit out of me. In the dead of night, when it was just me and the nightmares, me and the manic laughter rattling around my head, was when I freaked the fuck out, because I didn’t want to go crazy. Didn’t want to wind up strapped up in a padded room screaming about bugs eating my face off or whatever.
I was fine with vampires and ghosts, but being crazy scared me, and the Voice could drive me crazy.
I got up and went to the kitchen to brew coffee. Mutt followed, pressing close to my legs. His warmth felt comforting, and I fed him a biscuit to show him my appreciation. He chomped that down, while I stared out the kitchen window at the shadowed garden and contemplated madness.
My old man went crazy. Drink, you know? Couldn’t stay off the stuff, and honestly, he was such a fucking bastard when he was sober, it was better to have him drunk. It broke him in the end, and they carted him off to one of those padded rooms when I was sixteen. I visited him once. He had no idea who I was, and thought I’d come to steal his bone marrow.
I guess he’s probably still there, if he’s still alive. The image of him haunted me. Wild-eyed, red-faced, a screaming stranger who threatened to rip my throat out if I touched him.
Fuck, I don’t want to end up like that.
I poured myself a black coffee and went to find my cell phone. I’d sat around moping for long enough. It was time to take some affirmative action. I rang the wraith.
I hadn’t spoken to Yasmin Stoker since leaving Shoregrave. After all, it was more or less her fault I’d ended up with a demon in me. Sort of. She’d sucked most of it out and everything, but if I hadn’t met her, I wouldn’t have been possessed in the first place. Plus, I’d helped her out against some nasty, undead critters at great personal risk. She owed me.
The phone rang and rang. I glanced at the digital clock on my microwave: three am. Well, the dead didn’t really sleep, did they? Stoker might be out decapitating zombies or whatever she did in her down time.
Just as I was about to hang up, she picked up. “Hello?” She sounded groggy and pissed off. Maybe the dead did sleep after all.
“Stoker, don’t tell me I disturbed your beauty sleep.”
“Ethan? What the hell?” Now she just sounded pissed off. “It’s the middle of the night!”
“I had you figured for a night owl, Stoker. Roaming the cemeteries and streets looking for lost souls and stray spirits to snack on.”
“Are you drunk, Ethan?”
“Thinking about it,” I admitted. “I need some advice.”
“At three in the morning? Can’t it wait?”
“I wouldn’t have dragged you from your crypt if it could,” I snapped. “It’s about demons.”
She stayed quiet for a few seconds while I drummed my fingers agitatedly on the countertop and considered hanging up again. Then she spoke, voice low and compassionate, like she was talking me down from a ledge. “It’s about the cacodaemon, isn’t it?”
I don’t remember much of my brief possession, except a feeling of heart-stopping panic and chilling cold, a feeling of being a stranger in my body. If Stoker said it was a cacodaemon that was fine by me. “Yeah, that thing. It…I…”
“Part of it is still inside you,” she finished for me. “I could have told you that back in Shoregrave.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“You wouldn’t let me! You had to do the big tough man routine, didn’t you?” She sighed. “Are you okay?”
“Do you think I’d be calling you at three am if I was?” I paced the tiny kitchen and drank more coffee. “Fuck, I don’t know, Stoker. It’s…I don’t know, it’s horrible. Nasty. It likes violence and misery and it talks to me. Right in my head. I think I might go crazy. I was at this murder scene earlier and all I could think…” I broke off, shuddering at the memory, Rhian Ellis, dead and pale. The Voice sucked it up, loved it, and lived off it.
“I’m sorry, Ethan,” Stoker said.
I shrugged off the crawls creeping down my spine. “I guess you did what you could—”
“No, I mean, I’m sorry. I don’t know how to help.”
Her words felt like a kick in the balls. I’d picked up the phone expecting an instant solution from my undead expert. Stupid of me, really. She might be a few hundred years old, but Stoker bumbled around like a cut-price Inspector Clouseau, bouncing from one bad move to the next. Why would she be able to help me?
“I’m sorry,” she said again when I didn’t answer. “I just don’t know enough about demons to help you. Maybe if Emma was around, I could ask her…”
“It’s fine,” I lied, sitting down on the floor. Mutt came and laid his head in my lap and I stroked him absently. “I guess I’ll just have to go crazy. I’ll go out in style, go burn down a few churches or something. Maybe I can get myself committed.”
“A church might not be a bad idea,” she remarked.
“You want me to burn down a church?”
“No,” she said with heavy patience. “I think you should talk to a priest. About an exorcism.”
“Are you serious? I’m not going to some fucking Bible-basher so he can tell me I’m burning in hell for smoking and swearing. You can fuck that shit, Stoker.”
“Well, it’s the best I can come up with,” Stoker replied, managing to yawn and sound angry at the same time. “I don’t know anything about demons, Ethan, beyond that I don’t like them. If you don’t get rid of the cacodaemon, I don’t know what will happen to you, but I’m sure it won’t be nice.”
Mutt whined and I bowed over at the waist, resting my forehead on top of his mangy head. “I’m fucked, aren’t I?”
“I’m sorry, Ethan.”
“Stop saying that.” It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the sentiment. It was just that it didn’t make any difference, so she may as well save her breath. “I’ll go see a priest. Maybe a dose of holy water and a few Hail Marys will fix me up.”
“It’s worth a try.”
“Yeah.” It occurred to me I should make polite and ask her how she was, so I did. She sighed.
“I’m terrible,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter. I’ve got to go—call me after you’ve spoken to the priest.”
We said our goodbyes and hung up. I hugged Mutt and wondered if a trip to the House of God would really help. What if I couldn’t even get through the door? I might be struck by lightening on the threshold. I didn’t know if I believed in God. I didn’t know if mixing with demons and ghosts proved or disproved the afterlife. I did believe that if God did exist, knowing my luck, he was the Old Testament version, fire and brimstone and killing your kids, that shit.
The Voice chuckled at the thought of dead kids. I thought of dead hookers and Doug Baxter. Somewhere between getting Mutt de-wormed and myself exorcised, I had to figure out what drove his sweet little fiancée to stripping and death. Busy day.
Chapter Three
Mutt had fleas, worms, malnutrition, mange, and a strong dislike of vets. Luckily, most of those things could be cleared up with medication and a good diet. The vet thing, not so much. Half an hour after we arrived at the vet’s, I hauled Mutt off the poor guy’s leg by the collar, yelling at him to drop it.
The vet acted pretty understanding about it. I offered to replace his ruined pants, but he insisted it was all part of the job. At nine-thirty that morning, Mutt and I left the vet’s with a bunch of doggy pills, a few tins of special doggy food, and a small fortune in beds, toys, leashes
, and treats. “You don’t know how lucky you are,” I told Mutt as he jumped into the car with a squeaky lamb chop in his mouth. “I had to make do with a toy gun and a plastic sheriff’s badge when I was your age.”
Summer heat still crushed the city, and most people stayed out of the sun. I saw a few kids licking dripping ice creams on dead-grass play parks as I drove away from the vets. A few guys hung out on stoops with cold beers, but the rest of the world stayed locked away behind pulled shades.
I could have gone for a few cold beers myself, maybe even a case of them. Instead, I was heading to church. I still wasn’t sure Stoker’s exorcism theory had worth much, but I’d spent the rest of the night pacing the kitchen, high on caffeine and full of the Voice’s twisted little whispers. I felt exhausted, desperate, and running on empty. So church it was.
My folks didn’t raise me to be religious. Dad worshipped the bottle, and Mom kept her head down and her mouth shut. Not that Dad was abusive. I gotta make that clear. Dad was crazy and paranoid, not violent. Mom coped with it all remarkably well, by keeping her head down and her mouth shut. Anyway, we weren’t churchgoers.
So when I pulled up outside the Overture Church on the outskirts of town, the shiver that ran through me surprised me. I stared at the building, a low, modern affair that didn’t look like anything to do with God or religion. It looked like a youth center or a social club or something. No stained glass windows, no crosses with bloodied Messiah figures. Just white bricks with a big sign on the door reading, “Don’t let your worries kill you. Let the church help.”
I couldn’t decide if it was intentional irony or unintentional humor, but either way it didn’t make me feel any better. The Voice agreed, whispering in my head that burning the church down was the best way to go.
“Idiot men with their empty symbols. They know nothing of Hell, nothing of sin.”
Huh. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the Voice felt scared.
“Scared? Of this pathetic house of lies? I could show you real fear, Ethan. I could show you nightmares you’ve never imagined.”
