Dead Set: A Novel

by Richard Kadrey

  She pulled out the glass stopper and sniffed. “I can’t smell anything.”

  Caroline gave a silent chuckle. “And why should you? This is a folly for the dead. Something to make a ghost feel a bit less like a ghost.”

  Zoe held the bottle to her chest. “Thank you.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” said Mrs. Somerville graciously. “Go back to the world. Be happy. Be sad. Be whatever you want to be. Just be.”

  Zoe’s father took the bottle from her hands and said, “Put on my coat.” Zoe did as he said. Her father came over and splashed perfume on the coat and her head. A little trickled down into her eye. She expected it to burn, but it felt like water. She wiped her eye with her finger.

  “Is that it?” she asked.

  “That’s it,” her father said. He handed Zoe the rest of the bottle. “Keep it with you. If anyone notices you, just put on more.”

  “Thanks.”

  Caroline took a roll of gauze from the pocket of her floor-length skirt.

  “Now, your father told me that you have a bad ankle, so take off that filthy shoe and let me see it. My brothers were athletes one and all. I know all about injured joints.”

  Her father brought the chair from the window and held it out for her. She sat and pushed her sneaker off with the toe of the other one. Caroline took her foot in her hands and moved it up and down and around. Zoe winced. Caroline nodded.

  “Lucky you, I don’t think anything’s broken. It’s just a sprain, is all. This should help.”

  Caroline took off Valentine’s rag and dropped it on the floor. When her father picked it up and threw it in the trash, Zoe almost stopped him, but how would she explain wanting a filthy rag without explaining that it was from her brother? She couldn’t, so she sat and said nothing as Caroline wrapped a bandage tightly around her foot and her father threw away her last physical connection to Valentine.

  “There. That should do it. Try standing on it,” said Caroline.

  Zoe got it. The foot felt good. She put her weight on it. The bandage was tight and there was almost no pain.

  “It’s great. I’ve been hobbling around here for days.”

  “Well, if we couldn’t make your time here comfortable, the least we can do is make your exit a bit more bearable.”

  Bearable, Zoe thought. What a funny word when she was never going to see her father or brother again. There was nothing very bearable about it. “Thanks,” she said.

  Zoe’s father gently put the sneaker back on her foot, stood, and turned to Caroline. He took her hand in both of his. “Thank you again,” he said.

  “I’m glad to help.” Caroline nodded and briefly laid a hand on his shoulder. She looked at Zoe. “And you, young lady, have a fast and unexciting trip home,” she said, and walked out of the room, leaving Zoe and her father alone.

  “You’ll be safe now,” said Zoe’s father. He let out a low sigh. “So, now it’s really time for you to go.”

  “Dad—” Zoe started.

  Her father cut her off. “Listen, we’ve had way too damned many good-byes at this point. Agreed?”

  Zoe smiled a little and nodded. “Agreed.”

  “Then all I’ll say is this: have a safe trip home, and I don’t want to see you again until you’re white-haired and wrinkled.”

  “Okay,” she said, wanting to say more, but nothing would come.

  “Now get out of here before I get disgusting and start tearfully good-byeing all over.” They held each other for a moment, and then he pushed her gently away. “Go on,” he said.

  Zoe gave him a quick peck on the cheek and ran from his room, not looking back. It was the hardest thing she had ever done.

  Zoe made it to the beach without anyone paying the slightest attention to her. A pack of Hecate’s black dogs passed her on the boardwalk. One stopped to sniff the air as it passed, but didn’t turn around before moving off to catch up with the others.

  She went down to the beach, all the way to the waterline, turned right, and kept walking. The sea left white foam trails on the sand ahead of her, like the snowy peaks of distant mountains.

  A chilly wind that blew in off the sea had replaced the rain from earlier in the night. There was no one else on the beach. Even the broken-down amusement park looked deserted. They’re probably all out looking for me. So, this is what it’s like to be one of the popular kids, she thought.

  The drainpipe that Mr. Prosper had told her about was there by the waterline, but still half submerged. The idea of wading an unknown distance up to her waist in seawater and whatever else might be floating or skittering in the pipe wasn’t very appealing, so she decided to wait awhile and let the tide continue to pull back from the shore.

  She really envied Absynthe right then. Absynthe smoked, and when you smoked, you always had something to do. When you were outside with a cigarette, people knew why you were there. You weren’t waiting for a ride home or standing nervously on the corner, hoping your date hadn’t stood you up. No, you were taking a moment to indulge your nicotine addiction. Besides, smoking always gave you something to do with your hands, she thought. Zoe thrust hers deep into the pockets of her father’s coat. Maybe I’ll start smoking again when I get home. Mom would love that.

  There was nothing to do now but wait. She didn’t want to attract attention by pacing, so she sat in the damp sand behind the ruins of a collapsed pier a few yards from the pipe.

  She was so tired from running around being afraid. Zoe thought about what her father had said about her and her mother. That they were alike. That no one could tell them anything. She thought again about her mother. What was she thinking? What did she do when she realized that Zoe was gone? Did she call the cops or was she playing it cool, expecting Zoe to come home snarling and high on something some strange boy had given her at a party she was too young to be at? Wouldn’t she be surprised if she knew the truth. What the hell am I going to tell her when I get home?

  Or did she know anything at all? Did time work the same way in Iphigene as it did back in the world? Maybe only an hour had passed back home. She felt a quick jolt of relief at the notion that she might not have to explain any of this when she got home, but it would be frustrating after having seen what she’d seen and done what she’d done that, at home, it amounted to little more than the running time of a couple of sitcoms. She felt a twinge of guilt, too, but dismissed it. Guilt was just a natural by-product of thinking about her mother at all . . . in any world. Zoe took a breath of cool salty air to clear her head. Don’t lose it now, she thought. Not when the way out is so close.

  A few minutes later, she checked the pipe again. A few inches of water still pooled at the bottom. Fuck it. She couldn’t stand waiting any longer. She splashed into the pipe and plunged into darkness.

  The dark gave way to a thin gray light as her eyes adjusted to the interior of the pipe. The pooled water reflected the moon and stars far enough inside that she could keep moving in something like a straight line without too much trouble. After two or three minutes the light changed. The anemic glow was now in front of her, not behind. She kept walking, slower now, straining her eyes to see where it was coming from.

  She found an old wooden door. A couple of steps leading up to it had been chiseled into the drainpipe. Dim light leaked from where the bottom of the door didn’t quite meet the floor. Zoe walked up the steps and stood before the door. It was warped and pulpy from the dampness in the pipe. She didn’t need to see the crest in the door’s center to know where it led, but the image of twin snakes supporting the moon on the back of a great black she-wolf confirmed it. This was Emmett’s door, the one he used to get from Iphigene to the world.

  Zoe thought about Valentine fighting the wolf men. How he’d kept her behind him, protecting her. He was probably in there right now, she thought, somewhere behind this door. She put her hand around the doorknob and just held it for a moment, feeling the weight of the cold brass against her palm. Then she slowly turned the knob. She heard the la
tch give. The door swung open.

  Inside was a small, tidy room, like an oversize closet. There were shelves and bins holding stack of neatly folded men’s clothes. This is where he gets ready to travel back to the record shop, she thought. She went to one of the bins, touched the shirts and jeans, and picked up some of the black Nikes. Next to it, like a sick Halloween joke, lay a pile of human faces. Men’s. All the same. Emmett’s disguises, Zoe thought. She reached out a hand and touched one. It was warm and soft, like real flesh. There was even beard stubble along the chin. If this is real skin, she thought, where did Emmett get it? She thought again of what Mr. Prosper said about the other people who’d tried to find their way to Iphigene and failed. Is this what’s left of them? She pushed the thought out of her head.

  Zoe picked up a shirt, took off her coat, and dropped it on the floor. She put the shirt on over her hoodie. It was made of worn red flannel and was much too big for her. She took a clean pair of pants from an adjoining bin and slipped them over her jeans. There were belts hanging from a peg on the wall. She used the straight razor to cut a new hole in the leather, allowing her to pull the belt tight and keep Emmett’s pants reasonably on her hips. She put the coat back on and looked around.

  A broom stood near the exit to the drainpipe. The door had hidden it when she’d come in. Zoe picked it up and opened the door that led into Hecate’s palace.

  She remembered that the palace had once been Iphigene’s city hall. She expected something like the basement of Show World High, a collection of dull cinder-block corridors dotted with anonymous storage rooms and covered at the top by white acoustic tiles. An elephants’ burial ground for wobbly desks and steam-powered PCs. What she saw, however, took her breath away.

  The interior of Hecate’s palace resembled a vast subterranean cavern with tunnels branching off in all directions. The walls weren’t smooth like cinder blocks, but were sliced from soft soil and sloped gracefully to the loamy floor. Arthritic-looking fingers of roots trailed down the walls in twisted bundles, tangling themselves in outcrops of limestone and glistening quartz.

  Though the palace seemed to be underground, the ceiling overhead was the night sky and it luminesced with the same stars she’d seen over Iphigene. The moon hovered over it all, shimmering high in the star field. The light was a quivering milky blue that drained the color from all objects, leaving them and everything that moved in the cavern looking as if they were made of mist and ice.

  Zoe took the broom and pulled her collar up. She felt like an idiot sweeping the packed dirt and stone floor, but reasoned that if there was a broom around, someone must use it. She made her way around the wall, sweeping quietly and trying to look as boring and blank as possible. She glanced down each staircase and corridor as she came to it. There were no markings or signs anywhere, and all the other rooms looked the same to her.

  As the excitement that had pushed her into the palace began to fade, she kept up a slow mantra in her head, repeating it over and over again. Valentine is brave. He would do this for me.

  It hadn’t occurred to her until she was inside and sweeping that there might not be any humans in the palace. All the residents could be wolves and black dogs. Her face flushed with fear. Some of the little snake-things, like the ones at the café, flew in lazy circles around the ceiling.

  When she finally saw a man and woman walk by, Zoe let out a long breath. The perfume still seemed to be working. No one paid any attention to her, including the black dogs that roamed the place, pissing and shitting where they wanted, marking their territories as they went. Still, she had no idea where to go from here, and she knew she couldn’t keep sweeping this one room forever.

  A few minutes later, three of Hecate’s wolf-headed enforcers came in and fell into deep conversation with two human men. The men were both large, like wrestlers on TV, and wore identical blue uniforms that looked vaguely like something you might think a cop or prison guard would wear if you hadn’t seen one in a hundred years. Their thick leather belts caught Zoe’s eye. Dangling from each belt was a set of heavy old-fashioned keys, the kind she’d seen in a dozens of old movies, whenever a princess was being held prisoner in a magic tower.

  Soon the wolves and the two human men walked off in opposite directions. Still sweeping, Zoe followed the human guards into one of the room’s side tunnels. There was a spiral staircase carved from pink quartz that gave everything a faint reddish glow as she followed them down.

  When she reached the bottom of the steps, the guards were gone. Human souls, wolf men, and black dogs roamed the corridor. Zoe wasn’t sure she could just turn around and go back up the stairs without someone noticing, so she started sweeping, hoping she’d catch sight of the guards.

  She went into the nearest open room off the main corridor, and immediately wished she hadn’t. The room was too hot and it stank of something wet and rotten. The walls were made from large interlocking gray stones, like a massive jigsaw puzzle, and were covered in strange hieroglyphics. Giant black cobras, like the ones she’d seen in Hecate’s procession, slid quietly around a set of low stone enclosures filled with straw and large white eggs. Nests, thought Zoe.

  A moment later, one of the eggs cracked open and a small hatchling, not much bigger than a pencil, wriggled out. It spread its wings and hissed and the big snakes hissed back. Another egg opened a moment later and another snake slithered out, wet and glistening. It was much larger than the first hatchling. As other eggs began to crack, it slid across the straw to the first young snake, reared back, exposing its fangs, and struck. Once, twice, three times, until the smaller snake lay dead. The large cobras twisted around the nests faster, hissing excitedly. More eggs opened and the scene repeated itself over and over. The larger hatchlings attacked the smaller ones and killed them. When all the smaller ones were dead, the young snakes began to feed. The black cobras reared up over the nests, hissing and tasting the air with their tongues. Proud parents, thought Zoe. She backed out of the room as quietly as she could.

  She clutched the broom to her chest and went to the end of the corridor, hoping to find the guards. A group of wolf-men enforcers and human souls stood before a wall-size map of what she was sure was Iphigene. The humans pointed to spots on the map with wooden or rusted metal stumps of hands. Each time they did so, one of the wolves would mark it with an X. I wonder if those are for me? These are souls who thought they’d seen me and are trying to collect Hecate’s reward, Zoe thought. One of them might be the one who saw Valentine and me going to Mr. Prosper’s apartment and told the wolves.

  “Hey, you.”

  Zoe squinted at the map, trying to see if there were any marks on the beach near the drainpipe. Please don’t be following me already, she thought.

  Someone grabbed her arm. Zoe looked up into a man’s face.

  “You. Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

  He wore an old uniform like the guards, but he didn’t have a belt and the insignia on the front was different.

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind that. Clean up this mess over here.”

  He led her to another room and pointed to a pile of clothes and shoes that filled the corner of the room.

  “Gather these up and take them to the incinerator,” he said, and left.

  Zoe leaned the broom against the wall and went to the clothes. Coats, dresses, and pants were scattered across the floor. Children’s clothes, glasses, and jewelry. Zoe didn’t know what to do, so she began sorting things into piles.

  At the far end of the room was a big screen showing the image of a woman laughing. It looked almost like a music video at a club. The woman had dark coffee-colored skin and bright eyes. In front of the screen another woman was strapped to a chair. Wires ran from her head to a big brass device with spiderlike legs moving over a spinning platter. The machine reminded her of the Animagraph but was much larger. The woman screamed.

  “Please. No. It’s mine. You have no right.”

  This is it, she thought
. This is where they make the records for the secret room of Emmett’s shop. Images of the woman’s life flashed on the screen as the machine transcribed them all.

  A couple of men and a woman in white lab coats clustered around the brass machine, making tiny adjustments here and there.

  “Queen Hecate will enjoy this one,” said the woman.

  “A lovely specimen,” said one of the men.

  The woman strapped to the chair cried quietly as every small moment of her life was transcribed onto the record.

  Hecate will enjoy this one? What does that mean? wondered Zoe. Is that what the records are really for? Not just traps for idiots like me, but things for Hecate to play so she can feel like she’s back in the living world?

  The screen was dark now. Another body, covered in sweat, moved over the woman. Hands and lips caressed her. Memories of sex. The three technicians laughed.

  “Please,” said the woman. “Let me have something for myself. I’m not chattel. I’m not here for your amusement.”

  “Yes, you are, my dear,” said the taller of the two men.

  Four more souls stood in a line against the wall. Three women and a man. At the front of the line was a girl not much older than Zoe. Over the collar of her shapeless overcoat, Zoe could see her wide brown eyes and bleached-blond hair. The girl was holding her hands over her mouth, as if stifling a scream. Zoe continued sorting the clothes.

  Without warning, the blonde bolted from the line and ran for the exit. Before she’d gone six steps, a black hound leaped from the door and sank its jaws into her throat. Another dog followed and grabbed her legs. The girl screamed as the dogs tore into her. The other woman’s life, the life of the woman who was strapped to the chair, flashed by on the screen. She was eating cake and people were singing “Happy Birthday.” The song mixed with the blond girl’s screams. Zoe’s stomach churned. She wanted to throw up. She grabbed the broom and a handful of clothes and headed for the door.

  Out in the corridor, she fell back against the wall. She wanted to curl up on the floor, close her eyes, and scream like the woman strapped to the chair. She wanted to throw up or to cry. Instead, she kept her head down and looked for a sign or mark, anything that might point to an exit.