Dead Things

by Stephen Blackmoore

  I don’t want this. Every fiber of my being tells me that this is wrong. Know that I’m fucking myself six ways to Sunday. She knows it, too. But, hey, if I’m going to fuck myself might as well go all in.

  I take her hand. The skeletal fingers are dry and cool to the touch. “I do,” I say.

  And fire burns through me as she brands my soul.

  Chapter 24

  I wake to the sound of a blaring horn, the smell of smoke and gasoline. I pick myself off the ground, road gravel embedded in my cheek, my hands scraped and raw. The light’s too bright, the air too thick. The Mercedes lies in a smashed heap behind me, a small fire in the cab, chunks of cement and metal debris scattered around it. I squint up at the freeway fifty feet above me and see the break where the car went over the side.

  I’m lying on the ground in front of the car. Thrown clear? Not possible. Deposited, maybe, just to show me who’s boss. I should be dead with a steering column through my chest. Hell, maybe I was. When the sign said EXIT ONLY it had meant it.

  The sunlight is too bright. My mouth tastes like smoke and blood. In a week full of headaches and gut punches, this is the worst by far. My left hand feels like it’s been slow roasted, the bandages on it tattered and blackened. I peel them off, expecting to see charred skin underneath, but it’s no worse than it was the other day.

  But the wedding band is new. It would be funny if this were the tail end of a weekend bender in Vegas, but that ring is a hell of a lot scarier than waking up married to a hooker.

  Legs are wobbly, hands shaking. I hobble under the freeway to a city maintenance yard through a hole in a chain-link fence.

  I stumble out between a row of parked buses, half blind from the glare. The sun feels like it’s burning holes in my retinas. I close my eyes, press the heels of my hands against them. When I open them I wish I hadn’t. Pain stabs back into my skull like hot needles.

  The pain is fading a little. My head’s clear enough that I can see where I’m going. Why my eyes are fucked I’ll figure out later. Right now I need to get a car and get out of here. I can already hear sirens. I turn back to the maintenance yard, spy a pickup truck on the other side. The light’s still painfully bright. Maybe I got a concussion in the crash?

  I pop the pickup’s lock with a spell, go to open the door and stop short. I can see myself in the glass of the driver’s side window and besides the expected wear and tear I’m mostly okay. Except for my eyes.

  They’re gone.

  Pitch black marbles stare out at me from my reflection. No iris, no whites. Well, shit. She did say she’d mark me. Just didn’t think it’d be quite so obvious.

  —

  I’m still having trouble seeing. But it seems to be getting better. I almost crash the truck pulling out onto Figueroa as a fire truck, two cop cars and a paramedic speed by toward the crash I just left behind. I park the pickup on a side street near USC after almost sideswiping a motorcycle and taking out two kids on skateboards.

  I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. Take a couple of deep breaths. I can handle this and take control. I don’t know what she’s done to me, but I’ve been thrown for loops my whole life. This is just one more thing to add to the pile.

  Ten years old, summer day. Walking down an alley after buying a comic book and a pack of Now and Laters at the 7-11. Then gunshots, screaming. Watch a man get taken down in front of me as he runs out a garage.

  Then he does it again. And again. And again. I watch in horror as this scene plays out in front of me, pants wet, shaking. My first Echo.

  Grow up in my family you hear about magic, you learn what it is, how it works. But dealing with the Dead’s a different matter. My parents weren’t really the gutting-a-sheep-to-read-the-entrails type. Had an easier time talking to me about sex.

  I do now what I did then. Accept it. Work with it. Tease it apart. I check my eyes again in the rearview mirror, but they haven’t changed. Something tells me they’re not going to. I try to pull off the wedding ring. Doesn’t budge. I’m not sure if it’s a symbol, an artifact, a reminder of my new status, or just Muerte’s fucked up sense of humor.

  I lean back in the seat, close my eyes. Exhaustion threatens to overwhelm me. I need sleep and unconsciousness doesn’t count. But I don’t have time for that. I pull together a spell for wakefulness. At most it’ll be like a cup of coffee. Enough to keep me going until I can find a case of Red Bull.

  I open myself up to the pool of magic around me and suddenly I’m drinking from a firehose. The shock of that much power slams into me like a 2x4. I push it back, get a handle on the flow. I’ve never felt this much power before. It’s different from when I downed that bottle of demon piss. That was like shoving a hundred gallons into a five-gallon jug. But this is different. It pours into me and I can handle it, hold onto it. Never been able to hold so much.

  My brain is buzzing with it. I can feel it in my skin, my bones. Guess I don’t need that case of Red Bull after all. I think I might almost be ready to take on Boudreau.

  Two hours of traffic later I stand outside Boudreau’s old house looking at the curtained-up windows, the Land Rover in the driveway, bills and letters peeking out of the overstuffed mailbox.

  There’s magic here. Similar to the spells I put on the ambulance and on the name tags I use to disguise myself. Less “Don’t look at me” than “Everything’s fine, move along.” Without it the cops would be swarming over this house. The smell alone would have the neighbors running.

  I can feel him in there. And I can feel all of the ghosts he’s pulled into himself, too. More than I ever could. I know who they are now, know their names, how they died. How much agony Boudreau’s putting them through. That’s one power I wish Santa Muerte had kept for herself.

  I pull out a prepaid cell phone I bought at the grocery store, dial the number I got off Tabitha’s phone. And get ready to lie through my teeth.

  “Well, hello sailor,” I say when it picks up.

  “What do you want?” Griffin says.

  “What, no ‘How ya doing?’ —‘How’s your head?’—‘Has your soul been ripped apart by a power-mad, psychotic ghost, yet?’ I’m hurt.”

  “I’m hanging up.”

  “But if you do that, then I won’t be able to tell you how I’m about to make your day.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “So, I’m standing outside a house,” I say. “Nice place. I hear it’s got a family with 2.5 kids and 3.2 dogs and everything. Very Americana. Also, and I’m just guessing from the stacked up mail and the stink of rotting flesh, they’re kinda dead.”

  “So you found him. Good for you,” he says. “Why don’t you charge on in there? I’ll try to remember to thank him when he kills you.”

  “Oh, I like my plan better. I’ve got two options. Option one is that I take him down, but I need some help to pull that off.”

  “L.A.’s full of day laborers. Try a street corner.”

  “Or,” I say, “I can go with option two. See, I’ve been talking to Ellis.”

  “Ellis is dead.”

  “Yeah, the dead are awful talkative around me, in case you hadn’t noticed. And boy is he a talker. You know that spell that’s kept Boudreau around so long? There’s a hole in it. It won’t let me kill him, but it will let me get control of him for a while.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I can do that bit all on my own. And if I do you know where I’m gonna send him. It won’t last long and he’ll tear me apart when I lose him, but so help me I’ll have him chew through your soul like a fat man through a Vegas buffet before he does.”

  “And this is supposed to make my day?”

  “Yep. Because if you help me kill him I won’t have to have him kill you.”

  “Hard bargain.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  “All right, say I agree to this. How does it work?”

  “First, we have him possess someone.”

  —

  I meet Gri
ffin at a café on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills full of what pass for socialites in L.A. Impeccable hair, designer labels, conspicuous shopping bags. The hostess looks at me like she’s about to call the cops. At first I think it’s my eyes, but I’m wearing mirrored sunglasses. So it’s either my roguish good looks or the fact that I look like I’ve been through a mulcher.

  “I’m here to see him,” I say, pointing at Griffin sitting alone at a nearby table. I push the sunglasses a little higher up on my nose to better hide my eyes. Griffin stands, nods his head. The hostess isn’t convinced, but walks me over to the table, anyway.

  “I didn’t think it was possible,” Griffin says, “but you actually look worse today.”

  Griffin had suggested we meet at his house. I told him to go fuck himself. I wanted public and busy. He’d either shoot me to get me out of the way or try to beat how to control Boudreau out of me. And after he figured out I was blowing smoke up his ass then he’d shoot me. Pretty much a lose-lose situation all the way around.

  “Been burning the midnight oil,” I say.

  “So I gathered,” he says. “Tell me.”

  Time to start dancing. I tell him what’s happened. Most of it, anyway. The hospital, Ellis being possessed. I leave Alex and Vivian out of it.

  I keep the story as wide and vague as I can. Enough room, I hope, to slide some whopper lies in here and there.

  “When we got there Ellis was still just Ellis. Conscious, but just barely. Then Boudreau popped up. Tried to possess him.”

  “Did he succeed?”

  I nod. “Funny thing about that, though. Right before he moved in, all those ghosts he’d been piling onto himself did a runner.”

  “Really.” He leans forward, hooked.

  While I’m shoveling bullshit like I’m fertilizing crops, I catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of two of Griffin’s men I hadn’t seen when I came in. Booth in the back. Clear line of fire. Either to protect him or shoot me. I’ll know in a little while, I guess.

  “Yeah. Even if I’d been ready for it, I don’t think I could have taken him. But you and me together? I think we have a shot.”

  He leans back. Thinking. “What happened to Ellis?”

  “I shot him,” I say.

  “You killed him?” Griffin says, somewhere between impressed and appalled.

  “He was gone already. You think Boudreau was going to move in and let the previous owner hang around? No, he kicked Ellis out, but he bailed when he realized he was in possession of a corpse. By the time I could react he’d already gotten his ghost swarm back.”

  “So if he possesses someone and leaves he’s just as powerful.”

  “That’s my thinking,” I say. “If we want to hit him we need to hit him as he’s possessing a body. And killing whoever he grabs doesn’t do any good.”

  “So what’s your plan, exactly?”

  “We get him to come after someone and when he lets his guard down we hit him.”

  “That simple?”

  “That simple. Look, so far he’s been at places that are important to him. The warehouse, for example.”

  “What about the hospital?”

  “He was going after Ellis. And you said yourself he’d been attacking you.”

  “Feeble attempts, yes.”

  “But still attempts. And he’s getting stronger. He can’t pop up just anywhere. He has to have a link to the place or something in it. That’s why he showed up at the hospital. He had a link to Ellis.”

  “Why go after a dying man?” he asks. “Why not you or me?” A spear of anger flashes through me. I want to jump on the table and scream, “Just go with it, goddammit,” but kill the impulse before it fucks everything up.

  “Ellis was prepped. All that time he was down in that hole? It wasn’t just to get the spell right. It was to make him a receptacle. He went after Ellis because he was the only one who he could go after.”

  Griffin leans back in his chair. Eyes clouded over in thought. “That’s a lot of supposition. And even if it’s true this has been a waste of time,” he says.

  “What are you talking about?” I say. “We can get him.”

  “How? Harsh language?”

  “The same way I took him out the last time. He’ll be weakened as he’s moving into a new body and I can pull him out and shred him.”

  It’s bullshit and I can tell he’s not buying it. I try to keep my cool.

  “So do it yourself. You don’t need me for this. You need bait. You need a body prepped like Ellis for him to move into.”

  “I already have that. I’ve figured out how he prepped Ellis and I’ve got that all handled. But I’ll need you to distract him.”

  “What stupid sonofabitch did you get to sign up?”

  I lower my sunglasses, give him a full look at my new, pitch black eyeballs. He startles, taken aback.

  “Me,” I say. “The ritual leaves a bit of a mark.” Please believe this. Please don’t ask how I really got these eyeballs.

  I push the sunglasses back up. “But just because I’m going to look like a lamb at the slaughter doesn’t mean I am one. I have no intention of letting him take over. But I can’t kick him out of me and take him out at the same time.”

  “So what, I run interference? How exactly? Shoot you? I’d be happy to.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of an attack dog.” I pull out the bottle of Stoli with the drunk ghost I got from Darius’ bar in it. He squints at it.

  “There’s something in there. What is it?”

  “Nature spirit,” I lie. “Let it loose as he’s trying to take me over and it’ll go after him like a Doberman. Won’t hurt him much but it’ll give the chance to take him down. Between that and you and,” I nod at the men in the corner, “a couple of your goons sucking up some of the local magic pool, he won’t get a chance to fight back.”

  I can almost see the gears turning in his head. Wondering if I’m telling the truth, maybe figuring out how to fuck me over, get rid of Boudreau and me at the same time.

  “I don’t like this,” he says. “There are too many variables. And I don’t trust you.”

  “I don’t trust you, either. But we both want him gone. We have a shot if we do it together.”

  “And if we don’t you take control of him and send him after me?”

  “More or less.”

  “I don’t believe you can do that.”

  “Want to find out if I’m bluffing?”

  “I’m tempted, but you’re right. We have a better chance working together than against each other. It’s a deal. When and where?”

  “Give me a few hours. I’ll call you with the address. Be ready.” I slide out of the booth.

  “Why not give it to me now?”

  “Because I think you’ll go over there without me and get yourself killed and then where will I be? That and if I don’t tell you now it’s an extra incentive to not have your thugs over there try to shoot me.”

  “Point,” he says. “I’ll wait for your call.”

  Chapter 25

  It’s a horrible plan. Even if it weren’t all lies it’s a horrible plan. The only reason I can think Griffin bought it is because he wants it to work. I don’t know what kind of crap Boudreau’s been throwing at him, but it’s been enough that he’s worried.

  I need to get a better handle on these powers Muerte’s given me. I haven’t seen or heard from her since the temple. If I’ve read her right I’m not going to. This is a test. See how I handle things. I know I can see the Dead better. I know I can pull in a hell of a lot more power than I’m used to. Can I do anything else?

  I think about the toughest spell I’ve had to pull off recently. Cost a lot of money and took a lot of prep. I want to see if I can do it on my own. I drive out to a cemetery in east L.A. off the 110 Freeway. Gentle slopes with teetering gravestones encrusted with grime, pitted from smog and acid rain.

  I stop at the gates, engine idling. Do I really want to do this? It’s not what I
’m about to do that gives me pause, it’s the venue. It’s the people.

  If things work the way I hope, at best there will be screaming. I can’t see any way around it. I put the car in gear and drive into the cemetery.

  Two funerals going on at opposite ends of the grounds. One is a massive affair. A crowd of mourners, wailing relatives. A wreath next to the casket shows the picture of a kid. High school football uniform, big smiles. The future so goddamn full of opportunity he doesn’t know where to start. I drive past, leave them alone in their grief. I’m a bastard, but I’m not that big a bastard.

  The other funeral is a small, somber affair. A handful of bored looking mourners, a droning preacher. Far off in a corner of the cemetery. Perfect.

  I park the car a little ways off and walk to a grave far enough from the funeral to be unobtrusive, but not so far that I can’t see what’s going on. The spell I have in mind would normally cost me a small fortune in precious stones, energy and time. The work on the front end is exacting and takes a toll. I used something like it in Texas to make a corpse my puppet.

  Now to see if I can do it cold.

  I close my eyes, reach out with my senses. I can pick up some wanderers, a few haunts, but they’re pretty far away. Nobody dies in a cemetery. It’s just a place to bury meat. But some of who we are lingers. It’s hard to find, harder to grab hold of. Like talking to Ellis last night, only a lot more complicated. Doing it on my own is impossible.

  Well, yesterday it was impossible.

  The tiny glimmers of personality hanging onto the corpses in the cemetery flare in my mind. A few already underground. The strongest are the boy across the way and the man in the coffin nearby. I can feel the edges of him, like handprints left in sand, blowing away with each passing moment. Little more than an imprint of dust. I tease at the threads, pull them apart, strengthen them with my own power.

  A loud thumping comes from the casket. I open my eyes to see it shake as I make the grisly puppet inside dance. The mourners back away, appalled, unsure what to do. I flail the body around some more, make the casket bounce, rock back and forth on the stand, tilt. It falls over with a crash. The latches locking it shut pop open, the corpse barreling out to roll on the ground.