Dead Things

by Stephen Blackmoore

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “Try to summon him at the place he died. His old warehouse down in the harbor. Nothing’s going to come of it, I know. But I have to try. Otherwise I’ll have this nagging at me.”

  “You can’t do it somewhere safer?”

  “I could try, but if Ellis is right and Boudreau’s still around it means he’s different. Doing it from my hotel room might be safer, but it might not work. I want to be sure.”

  “What will you do if he shows up?”

  “I’m more likely to get a blowjob from the President.”

  “Eric, seriously. If Boudreau is really out there and he was able to kill Lucy like that, he’s not someone to fuck around with.”

  “If he killed Lucy he had to have possessed someone. Whoever was there was alive. If he shows up he’s still dead. He can’t do fuck all as long as I’m on my side and he’s on his.”

  “I’m coming with you,” she says.

  “Viv, you don’t need to do that. I’ll be fine.” I wiggle my nose a little with my finger. “See, new nose and everything.”

  “I’m serious. You know as well as I do that shit happens, and you might need a hand. I know I’m not as powerful as you, but you’re not the only one who’s learned a thing or two over the years.”

  “Okay.” I stand up, it’s after two in the morning and I’m too tired to fight her about it. “Tomorrow, eight sharp. I’ll pick you up.”

  She walks me to the door. “Eight a.m.?” she says. “You still don’t sleep much, do you?”

  I keep waiting to say she’ll call Alex and have him come along, but she doesn’t. I hope she’ll ask me to stay, but know she won’t.

  “Sleep is for the weak. Earlier I get this handled the better.”

  “I’ll be ready,” she says. She stops at the threshold. “It’s good to see you, Eric. I’ve missed you.”

  “Missed you, too, Viv. Get some sleep. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  —

  Vivian balks when she sees the Eldorado. She’s wearing Doc Martens, loose jeans, a t-shirt with a denim button-down shirt left open over it, sunglasses, a red and blue Angels cap.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Hey. This is Detroit ingenuity. We’re talking tons of good, old American steel in this thing. Get your ass in there.”

  She slides into the passenger seat looking overwhelmed. The only thing keeping her from sliding across the seat to my side is the small, fold-down armrest. She taps it, pushes it a little.

  “You got life preservers? I feel like I’m on a boat.”

  “Everybody’s a fucking critic. Here.” I hand her a cup of coffee I stood in line twenty minutes for. “I don’t know if you’re still into lattes. Two sugars, right? With cinnamon?” Everything else has changed, why not that?

  She takes a sip. I can see her trying not to make a face. “This is great, thanks.”

  “Sure.” Probably drinking soy milk now.

  I pull the car out onto the parking lot that is Wilshire Boulevard. Drum my fingers on the steering wheel. I should say something. About last night. About my leaving. About her and Alex. I don’t.

  “You like doing the doctor thing?” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Makes me feel like I’m doing something. Making things better. How many of us do that?”

  “By us do you mean people in general or people like you and me?”

  “You and me. Alex. Magic doesn’t make it better. It makes us lazy and selfish.”

  “We’re not that bad,” I say, for some reason feeling defensive. “Not all of us.”

  She looks at the Caddy’s empty ignition slot. I pulled the screwdriver out the night before. “When’s the last time you saw the key for this monster?”

  “Never. Stole it from a guy I killed in Texas last week.” I sit there slack-jawed for a second. Did I just say that out loud? Vivian stares at me in horror, pulls back in on herself.

  “It’s not like that,” I say. “He was a really bad man. Really. He was kidnapping children and doing really nasty things to them. Honest.” I leave out the fact that they weren’t human. Or strictly alive.

  “Children?”

  “It’s a long story,” I say.

  “I don’t want to hear it.” She’s shaken, but she doesn’t push.

  I try to get the conversation back on track. “I just made your point for you, didn’t I? About magic.”

  “A little more extremely than I’d meant, but kind of, yeah.”

  “Okay, what about Alex? Does it make him lazy and selfish, too?”

  She looks away out the window. “That’s different.”

  “Different? He runs a bar and sells bottled demon piss. You honestly think he’s selling that stuff to philanthropists?”

  “Okay. Yes, he makes my point, too. But he’s a good guy. He takes care of his employees. He took care of Lucy.”

  My fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “Yeah. I heard.” We drive in silence for a few minutes.

  “Before I left,” I say, “Alex was running short cons at gas stations and doing street magic to gather a crowd so he could lift people’s wallets. What happened?”

  “Your parents happened.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Come on, Eric, we don’t have a community. We’re a bunch of selfish, narcissistic assholes. We get a little power and we want more. Fuck the other guy. Your parents weren’t like that. They tried to pull people together, not tear them apart. You were too busy being a self-centered prick to notice. Maybe you didn’t pick up on that lesson, but Alex did.”

  “They weren’t saints, Viv,” I say, but my words don’t have much conviction.

  “None of us are. But they knew they had power to make a difference. Why do you think Boudreau went after them the way he did? They were a threat to his power base. God, you can be so dense, sometimes.”

  “That why you became a doctor?” I say, hoping we can get off this line of discussion. I’ve got enough on my plate without thinking about it.

  She snorts a laugh. “Like it’s that simple. No,” she says, “not quite.”

  “Okay,” I say after a moment. “I’ll bite. Why then?”

  “I was already pretty good at patching you up,” she says. “And I’d been thinking about it a while. But what really cinched it was my mom got brain cancer a couple years after you took off. I couldn’t do anything about it. She was gone in a few months.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I had no idea and it hadn’t even occurred to me to ask. Vivian’s father had died when she was a kid before I met her. I never got to know her mom very well. But I know they were close.

  She waves it off. “That was a long time ago,” she says. I don’t have anything to say to that. We drive the rest of the way in silence.

  Chapter 15

  The Port of Los Angeles sits on the edge of an industrial pit called Wilmington that stinks of diesel, burnt oil and dead dreams. Everything’s covered in a layer of soot from fuel depots, docking ships and refineries. The roads are pocked with holes like war-torn Europe.

  We pull off the 110 at Anaheim and head south to the docks. Outside the gates I pull off a few nametags from the roll in the glovebox and write GRAY HONDA CIVIC TOTALLY NOT A CADILLAC on one, slap it on the outside of the windshield.

  Then THE GUY WHO’S SUPPOSED TO BE HERE on another for me and one for Viv that reads HOT, VAGUE LOOKING CHICK WHOSE CHEST YOU KEEP LOOKING AT. She glares at me but puts it on anyway. I say charms over all three and feel the disguises settle over them.

  “What are you doing?” she says.

  I let my eyes stay firmly fixed to her chest. “Just following instructions.”

  She laughs and hits me. “Jackass.”

  “Never claimed to be anything but.”

  The bored looking security guards wave us through, giving Vivian an appreciative glance that turns into confusion as they can’t quite recall what she looks like. We drive between rows of red and blue shipping con
tainers stacked stories high like city blocks made of Lego bricks, even taller cranes standing above them. We pass trucks, longshoremen loading or unloading them.

  The last time I saw the warehouse the front was on fire and I had a car stuck through the doorway. I never got a good look at the inside. Just enough to grab Boudreau and drag his ass outside.

  It looks pretty much the same. Long, free-standing building. A few stories high with massive air conditioning machinery on the roof. Stacks of boxcars sit lined up like cordwood along the sides. Waiting to be loaded, unloaded, used all over again.

  I pull up behind a stack of shipping containers far enough away to hopefully not grab much attention and close enough to bug out fast if we have to. Then I realize where I’ve parked.

  I reach over Vivian, open the glove box. I pull the Browning, try to ignore her stare.

  “What the hell is that?” she says.

  “It’s a gun.”

  “Noticed that,” she says. “Why do you have it?”

  “I told you this might be dangerous.”

  “I know,” she says. “I just want to get a feel for how dangerous.” She unzips her knapsack, pulls out a holstered SIG Sauer P220 Compact. Racks the slide, thumbs the safety off. It’s a small gun with a lot of punch.

  “Alex buy that for you?”

  “I bought it myself. Alex hates guns.” She glares at me, throws her door open and gets out. “And fuck you for thinking that.” She slams the door as punctuation.

  I follow her out of the car. Was a time she hated guns, too. I suppress the urge to ask her if she knows how to shoot it. She might decide to show me. I turn my attention to the warehouse.

  “What?” Vivian says.

  “Sorry?”

  “You’ve got this look on your face like a dog trying to figure out physics.”

  “Just thinking. Looks different in the daytime.” And when it’s not on fire with a burning Toyota jammed through the front.

  “Who owns it now?”

  “No idea,” I say. “Griffin, maybe. If he took over the organization he might have gotten hold of the assets.” I’m less worried about who owns it and more about who’s here.

  “Do you see anybody?” I say.

  “No,” she says. “Shouldn’t there be workers? Cars in the parking lot?” There might not be people, but there are cameras. Lots of them. Spaced at ten foot intervals. Okay, that’s going to be a problem.

  “Front door’s not really an option, is it?” Vivian says.

  “I’m thinking not.” A sound grabs my attention. A shoe scuffing on pavement? Vivian hears it, too. Freezes.

  “I know you’re over there, goddammit,” Ellis says on the other side of the shipping container. “You’re making more noise than a cat in a bag.”

  I catch Vivian looking at me. I’d drawn the Browning without realizing it. I slide it back into its holster.

  “Over here,” I say. Ellis pops his head around the corner of the shipping container. Stops when he sees Vivian.

  “Doc?” he says.

  “Hi Henry,” Vivian says, not missing a beat. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay, I guess. What are you doing here?” His eyes are playing ping-pong between Vivian and I. “Didn’t know you knew this guy.”

  “You know how it is. Small world. Especially for us. I heard you had some trouble the other night,” she says. “Eric here mentioned you might show up. Was hoping I’d run into you.”

  Some magic isn’t magic. When she wants Vivian’s got a voice that could calm a rampaging bull. I can see on his face that he knows it’s a lie. How much does he trust her?

  A lot, apparently. He nods. Turns to me. “You’re looking to get in,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “You know a way that won’t walk us in front of the cameras?”

  My paranoia tells me not to trust him. Why have such a change of heart? He was pretty scared last night. But if he has a way in, I don’t want to poke him too hard and spook him.

  “Maybe. Boudreau built a contraband tunnel under the warehouse. I don’t know who else knew about it.”

  “How do you know about it?”

  “That’s how he’d bring the—” he falters, a shadow passing over his eyes. “Sacrifices. One branch of the tunnel goes up into the warehouse and another goes to the ritual room I was held in.”

  “It’s still around?” Vivian says.

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  “Henry, why are you here?” Vivian asks.

  “I—” he looks lost for a moment.

  “I think I know,” Vivian says. “I think you’re here because you’ve got a chance to put some things behind you. I think that’s a good thing.”

  “I don’t want to go back in there.”

  “I know. And I’m not saying you have to. But if you could show us where it is, that would help Eric and it might help you, too.”

  He looks between us with furtive eyes, chews on his lip. Eventually he nods. “I don’t know if it’s still there, but we can look. It’s not far.”

  “Thank you, Henry.” Vivian looks at me expectantly.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I say. “Appreciate it.”

  “Uh huh,” he says and heads back the way he came. We follow as he zigzags between shipping containers, checking labels, looking at doors. Raps on the side of a couple of them. Eventually he stops at one stack that’s eight stories tall about a hundred yards from the warehouse and simply stares at it.

  “Problem?”

  “Don’t know. Things have changed a little,” he says. “Looks different in the daytime.”

  “What do you mean?” I say.

  “I only saw this side of it the night Boudreau died. With everything going on I was able to get loose and find my way through the tunnel. Glad I took the right fork and not the left.” He lifts a well-worn padlock on the shipping container’s door. “Can you do anything with this?”

  It’s a pretty standard padlock. Master. A simple spell spins the tumblers and it pops open. I grab the handles, stop when Ellis grabs my arm.

  “Hang on,” he says. “Look. The edge of the doors.” I would have missed it if he hadn’t pointed it out. And that would have sucked for all of us. Wards drawn in very thin paint strokes, and so subtle I have to stretch my senses to pick up the magic.

  “What is it?” Vivian says.

  “Fire wards,” I say. “A lot of them.” Tiny spells, not much more than a flash of heat and light. But they all interlock with each other.

  “Didn’t trigger them when I came out,” Ellis says. He squints. “They’re not new.” He traces a finger above them, careful not to touch.

  “They only go off if you open the door from this side,” he says. If I’d opened the door we would have had a few hundred thousand tiny bursts of flame that would have made one big kaboom.

  You have to admire the work that went into creating them. Whoever did it was very good. Thousands of miniscule explosives all knit together like an afghan made out of detcord.

  “I’ve seen similar, but never one this complex,” I say. “This could take a while.” With spell weaves like this there’s usually a stray thread in the pattern. Some loose piece of a spell that isn’t tied tightly enough to the others. It’s like counting out tiny rosary beads. I go down a path, lose count a couple of times, have to start over.

  “This is going to take all day,” I say.

  “No, it won’t,” Vivian says, studying the wards.

  “You got an idea?”

  “Yeah. Figured this trick out in school. It’s a lot easier to futz around with organic chemistry when you can actually pick apart compounds.” She mutters a spell. The edges of the doors flash a deep red. The whole thing unravels like a sweater thread caught on a nail.

  “Nice,” I say.

  “Thanks. Easier to do in New York when I was in school. L.A.’s magic isn’t good for complex.”

  “Oh, come on. L.A.’s plenty complicated.”

  “There’s a differ
ence. Like I’m complex, you’re complicated.”

  “Point.”

  “So, it’s safe?” Ellis says.

  “Yes,” Vivian says. “Don’t know what’s on the other side of this door, though.”

  “Let’s find out,” I say, pull the latch and yank. The door opens with a groan of metal gone to rust in the salt air. The air inside is stale, floor covered in dust. No one’s opened this door in years. Guardrails flank a wide hole cut into the floor, leading through the bottom of the crate and down into a tunnel dug into the pavement. Heavy bolts line the floor, securing the container in place. Fluorescent tubes hang from the ceiling.

  Ellis finds a switch on the wall, flips it up and down a couple of times before one of the old tubes sparks to life with a loud hum. “It goes down at an angle for a while before leveling out,” he says. “There are two branches. One leads to the chamber. The other to a freight elevator that goes up to the warehouse.”

  He turns to leave. Vivian puts her hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

  “I know you don’t want to do this,” Vivian says. “But it might not be bad to see it again.”

  “No,” he says. “I got you this far. I’m not going in there again.”

  “You have nightmares about this place,” she says.

  “Often enough.”

  “Then come with us. See it and see that it’s just a place.”

  He looks from her to me. “You think it’s safe?”

  “With wards like that on the door? No. But do I think Boudreau’s on the other side waiting for me? No. But I have to be honest with you, if I was certain I wouldn’t be here.”

  “We could use your help,” Vivian says. “Can’t we?”

  I think about it for a second. I understand what Vivian’s doing, helping the old man exorcize some demons. I can empathize.

  “I don’t know,” I say, “but we wouldn’t have found that door without you. Or those wards. What I said last night still holds. You know this place.”

  Ellis takes a deep breath. “All right. But anything goes pear shaped and I’m out of here.”

  “We’ll be right behind you.”

  We close the doors, throw an internal latch to secure them. About half the fluorescent tubes in the tunnel are out, but there’s enough light to see by. Our footfalls echo loudly on the dusty concrete.