Oh, yeah, and there are monsters that rule the sky, just waiting for an excuse to come down and shred you to bits. So, basically, this is the most horrifying place you could possibly imagine spending eternity. And this girl, Kristen, she wanted me to save all of the souls that have ever lived on earth, ever.
She told me I was the reincarnate of St. John the Divine. That I was a savior. And . . . that she and I were in love in my forgotten past life. And I believed her. I wanted to save her. I would have done anything just for her. The fact that I was going to save all of us from our horrible fate, that was a bonus.
So we all loaded up into Ricky's father's private jet, and headed for Damascus. I used the book as a key, inserted it into a dusty old wall, and opened a large invisible door. All of it while being technically dead. The whole crossing over thing is something that you just don't get used to.
Anyway, as this door opened, flooding the Land of Sorrows with color and life, I noticed that only a few people wanted to leave. In fact, it was only 23—Kristen, my dead librarian friend Rupert, and 21 other souls that I had seen here and there. Nobody else wanted to get anywhere near the doorway.
As you might imagine this was rather alarming. I had figured that there would be a mass exodus through the door since they had been couped up in that awful place for millions of years.
Then, the love of my forgotten life—Kristen—she dropped a bit of a bombshell on me. She said that we were in love, but that I killed her in our past. Apparently she still held a bit of a grudge for that. I tried to apologize, but she wasn't hearing any of it.
Some people just can't forgive some things.
Then she heads off into the colorful world beyond the doorway with her 22 other friends, and I am suddenly surrounded by flying monsters and a bunch of big mean guys who turn out to be angels. On the plus side I now believe in Angels. So that's neat.
This one Angel—Uriel—he explains to me how I'm pretty much the biggest idiot in the entire history of time. How I've been played from the start by this girl, and how I just basically spit in God's face by opening that door. Turns out there were missing pages to the Book of Sighs that I hadn't read.
Those pages explain, in very clear language, that the book is never to be used to open this gateway back to earth, from the Deadside. Those pages tell anyone who has passed the first grade that they should not be messing with things they have no business messing with. But see, I didn't read any of those pages.
Uriel tells me that I've just let 23 evil souls escape back to earth where they will do all sorts of unpredictable, horrible things . . . and it's all my fault. All because I had the hots for a dead chick that I apparently offed in my former forgotten life. So, I'm a douche-bag of epic proportions.
Uriel very bluntly explains to me that I've made a huge mistake, and that I will be damned if I don't go back to earth and hunt down each and every one of those 23 escaped “Evils,” he calls them.
To win back my salvation I must track down these 23 evil souls. This is my only chance at an afterlife. I work for the other side now. I'm a dead-tracker. Think of me as a bounty-hunter, or a skip tracer, or a detective . . . or even an agent. An Agent of the Dead.
Oh yeah, and he doesn't give me a choice in the matter. He just says to basically go back to the Earth plane and wait for him. One of those don't call us, we'll call you kind of deals. And now that's what I'm doing, as I shovel in pizza like there might not be a tomorrow.
Because, really, there might not be.
Nothing is certain, right now.
And I feel this uneasiness in the air. A kind of negative electricity. Ms. Josephine warns me to pay close attention to those little tingly feelings I get. She's always reminding Ricky and I that those strange feelings—the ones we live our whole lives trying to ignore—those are defensive systems that our bodies developed over millions of years of evolution.
Those cold shivers, and half breaths, and apprehensive glances—all of that is to let you know that the monsters are coming .
And all of those nuanced alarms that I just mentioned . . . I've got them all going off. If this pizza wasn't so damn good, I'd probably be in a full-blown freak-out right now.
2
The Omni Business Park, Dallas.
2:42 pm . . .
“We need legitimacy, dude,” Ricky says as we ride the elevator upwards. He's dressed all businessy, wearing dark grey slacks and a blue sweater. So out of character. Normally he's sporting baggy jeans and a shirt with some silk-screened drug symbol on it. He's purchased a new office location for us in a very nice business park in North Dallas, so I guess he's focused on making good impressions.
If it's any representation of the rest of this building, the inside of this elevator is awesome. Dark-tinted mirrors run from the floor to the ceiling, the floor numbers are illuminated in blue and green on this hi-tech screen, and there appears to be granite tiles on the floor. Fancy in a way I can't even imagine.
“A place like this,” he explains, “it makes people feel like you've been vetted. Instant accreditation.”
His theory is that a place like this is so expensive to office in, that people would just assume we were a legitimate, revenue producing company. He has been selling me on the idea of opening up our own place for several weeks, and I finally caved in.
Ricky, I guess he got his business sense from his parents—who are probably rich enough to loan Donald Trump money. He's decided to succeed at our new venture.
“Raw materials, for a finished product, for profit,” he says. “ . . . it's the American dream.”
That seems a little simplistic, I say. What are our raw materials? What is our product? How do we make a profit?
He scoffs at my silly musings, as if I'm some child trying to understand particle physics. Simpleton me, I'm just not seeing where we rake in the dough.
“Dude,” he says as the elevator door slides silently open, “you and Ms. Josephine and me, we're the raw materials.”
I would scratch my head if I didn't think it would be too cliché. We walk across this super soft, grossly expensive grey carpet on our way to probably the nicest office on the 7th floor. I'm still wondering how the three of us somehow equal profit. But then, I never took fancy economics courses in college. At least, not that I can remember.
We walk past a large reception desk with a girl who looks like she came right off the cover of Sport Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue. She's got shoulder length black hair, dark exotic skin, and piercing green eyes. Ricky struts on by and nods, while I try and keep the bottom of my jaw from dragging along the carpet.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Chamberlain,” she says. Even her voice is sexy.
“Hi, Sara,” Ricky says.
And you don't have to be clairvoyant to know that he's already got designs on her.
“This is Mr. Pagan,” Ricky introduces as we slow to a stroll. “He's one of the associates at A-L-G.”
And I'm just going with the flow at this point. Being around pretty girls is still fairly difficult at this state of my life. I don't know if six and a half months of social awareness is enough to prepare you for close interaction with attractive females.
“Hi, Mr. Pagan, I'm Sara,” she says, extending her hand. Of course, it's perfectly manicured. Why wouldn't it be.
I just kind of nod and shake her hand gently. I hope it wasn't too gently. Ricky's always telling me that you want to make a good first impression. That people read you in the first six seconds they come into contact with you. Like a book. And you only have that first six seconds to make a statement about yourself. If you mess it up, it takes like infinity to fix it. And I don't have that much time, I don't think.
Luckily, before I have time to say anything monumentally retarded, Ricky asks her, “Did they install the routers yet?”
Sara finished shaking my hand, very thoughtfully, and then turned to Ricky as she checked an appointment register in front of her. Her wonderful eyes lifted, “The guys from Cisco left about an h
our ago. They said they'd be back in the morning to do the testing on the equipment.”
Ricky smiled, looking at me, “How perfect is she?”
Very, I said.
Then we headed toward our new office. I'm sure Ricky and Sara were both trying to decide how long would be the appropriate amount of time before asking each other out. We made our way to the last office in the corridor. And on the doors, in big professional gold metal plates, were the letters 'ALG'.
A-L-G, I said to myself. And I'm curiously chewing on my bottom lip.
Ricky is just about beaming with excitement. Like he might explode into a bunch of tiny balls of glitter and light, with like happiness goo or something.
He slides a card across this black box on the side of the wall near the door handle, and a green light flashes a couple of times. Without speaking he hands me one of these magical cards, and for real, I feel like I'm James-freakin'-Bond.
This is space alien technology, I tell him, staring at my new magnetic card like a caveman holding a Zippo lighter.
“This,” he says, pausing for effect, “ . . . is the offices of the After Life Group .”
And then he opens the door.
And as I walk in and take a look around all kinds of questions and ideas are bouncing around in my head. But the only words I can think to say are, Holy shit!
3
Omni Business Park (ALG Office), Dallas.
13 seconds later . . .
“What is all of this stuff?” I say, my eyes trying to figure it out. There are all kinds of large screens, computers, scanners, monitors, and gadgetry I can't even figure out. The walls are pristine white. Spaceship white. There is stuff here that I will never understand no matter how long I have to learn.
This is like being inside some secret nuclear lab.
Some discrete military project.
“Money was not an object when I had my dad's contractor do the designs,” Ricky said as he led me to a large floor-to-ceiling window that faced down into the interior of the building. Several floors below us was a garden, and several restaurants where people could relax during their lunch break, or on their way in and out of the bank on the first floor.
On the different screens on the walls there were all sorts of things floating by. CNN here, MSNBC there. We even had Al-Jazeera— you know, that middle-eastern news station that shows westerners getting their heads chopped off and stuff.
There were screens scrolling words in languages I'd never seen before. It was like the whole world was streaming by us, in real time.
I turned to Ricky, What is this place?
“This is our H-Q. Our headquarters.” He walked in pointing to several computer terminals that were covered in plastic. “These babies here aren't even available to the public. My dad knows this dude over at Apple, ” he shrugged.
What's so special about them?
“They're the fastest computers on the planet earth.”
I laughed, but Ricky didn't. He nodded, his eyebrows raising. “No, seriously, Jack. This technology is at least three or four years from being made public. It's all stuff they were working on for the military, and some budgeting bullshit put the project on hold.”
So, I said, it's better for surfing the web?
Ricky sighed like I'm the dumbest dumbass that has ever walked the planet. “This gives us a competitive advantage.”
Over who?
“Over the monsters we're hunting for.”
Ricky really is a cunning bastard some times. I smiled, looking at the dormant computers as if they might be the first step in us saving the world. Technology will be on our side, this time.
“We're going to need to be able to do research on a global level, as fast as possible. These Evils, or whatever, they probably won't be making too much noise. But they have to leave footprints somewhere. We find out what their footprints look like . . . ”
He clapped his hands together suddenly, “Bam! We got their asses.”
For the next couple of minutes I just walked around looking at the different screens and interesting devices. There were large unopened cardboard boxes from Best Buy and Circuit City, and near them were smaller, plastic bags and containers that had electronic components and gadgetry that could probably be used to develop a nuclear fission program.
How much did all of this cost?
“Lots,” Ricky said as he knelt down and played with some electrical box that had several flashing lights on it.
Who paid for it all?
It's all investor money, he tells me as he stands up and walks toward the west-facing wall, which is the giant window that goes from carpet to ceiling. And Ricky's glancing upwards at something.
Investor money? Who are the investors?
Ricky's looking down, then up, then down again, staring at something I obviously can't see. “Oh, uh . . . my parents. They're the investors. They own fifty-one percent. You, me, and Ms. Josephine, we own the other forty-nine.”
But I never put up any money, I told him. I don't even have any money. Seriously, I only get like five-hundred and twenty-nine dollars a month from County Services. That barely keeps me in pizza.
“Our money is Sweat Equity,” Ricky says as he touches some button near the window and it suddenly turns black. Like pure magic. One second you can see through it, the next, it might as well be a black mirror. He looks back at me with a devilish grin, “Liquid crystal.”
I don't understand about sweat equity. I don't even understand much about equity.
“Don't stress, dude. Our investment is our time and effort. Thus, sweat .” He touches another button and the giant black mirror becomes a window again. Somebody should get Ricky a television series.
“This is our new business. We are the After Life Group . A-L-G.”
So . . . what do we actually do to turn a profit, again?
Ricky walks back to me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “We are going to rid people of unwelcome supernatural forces and negative spiritual entities.”
Like Ghostbusters ? I ask, kind of warming up to it. I just saw Ghostbusters 2 the other night, so I'm kind of experienced in this field.
His eyes rolled, “No, Jack. Not like Ghostbusters . This will be for real. We are going to investigate hauntings, and possessions, and anything phantasmic that comes our way. This will be our excuse to ask the kinds of questions we will eventually have to ask in order to find the twenty-three Evils. You get it?”
I have to admit, Ricky is way smarter than me on lots of things. “So,” I say nodding, “ . . . this is just our cover.”
He smiles, nothing but pearly white teeth.
What happens when we actually get jobs? I ask him kind of nervously. What do we do then?
He shrugs, “We'll just have to wing it. Heck, most of them will probably be swamp gas and old plumbing. And if we do come across a bonafide haunting, well . . . you and Ms. Josephine can figure it out.”
I ask him, Do our other ' investors ' know what we're up to?
His lips seem to lower over his teeth as his eyes dart around a bit. “Thing is, it's hard to convince people that we have a mission assigned to us from the land of the dead. The whole, you die, and wake-up, and die again thing . . . it's hard for people to wrap their minds around.”
Fair enough, I said. But I hope nobody expects us to turn a profit.
“You'd be surprised,” he said, walking across the room to a small table with a bunch of paperwork on it. As he's thumbing through some technical stuff he says, “We need to get more oranges. We're out of oranges.”
“I didn't eat the last one,” I explain. “I left it for you.”
He nods to himself, “Well, we need to go shopping, anyway.”
I figure now is as good a time as any to tell him about the guy in our building. I tell him, “Hey, you know that kind of young guy that we see on the way into the elevator every now and then? The one who lives below us a couple of floors, I think he's single?”
Ricky looks up, c
onsiders my question, then nods, “Yeah, the attorney guy.”
Right, well, he's on his way out. His apartment will probably be on the market soon.
Ricky stops shuffling through his papers and turns his head slightly, “I doubt it, Jack. That guy runs marathons and stuff. He was voted as one of Dallas's most eligible bachelors last year.”
Well, I say, as many spooks as I saw around him, he's probably going to stay a bachelor.
Ricky turns towards me, “Shit. That sucks. I was going to try and put that guy on retainer for us. Supposedly he's some badass attorney.”
I fold my arms, “Unless he's going to represent us from the Land of Sorrows, I'd say we need to keep shopping.”
I shrug.
He shrugs.
And then we hear a knock at the door.
4
Dallas Tollway, North.
Tuesday evening . . .
As Ricky coasts in and out of traffic, playing what feels like a game of Leap Frog with our lives, I'm trying to study the Texas Drivers Handbook. This is the one that is dirty yellow, with large red, yellow, and green dots on the cover. I have to learn all of this stuff if I ever want a chance at getting a driver's license.
Even though Ricky says he doesn't mind taxiing me around, I have to get my license for personal reasons. I need to have my freedom. I want to be able to drive to the grocery store on my own, without risking going to jail. All kinds of horrible things happen in county jails. Not to mention that the place is probably crawling with spooks and gatherers.
Anyway, I need to get something other than my hospital ID card so that I don't look like a damn mental patient when I try to cash a check. It's all part of me becoming a functioning member of society . . . at least until I find and kill the 23 Evils that escaped the Land of Sorrows when I thought I was the savior of all mankind. Once that's done, I dont really care what people say.
I'm on page 5-6, reading the section on WARNING SIGNS . All of these little signs are yellow with a black border. Inside are a variety of arrows and squiggly lines and skidding cars to alert the driver to, “ . . . conditions which lie immediately ahead and tell them what to look for.”
See Jack Hunt (See Jack Die) Page 2
