Deadsville

by C. L. Bevill

  “It’s such a cute house,” Thana said. “If I were human, I’d have a kitchen like this.”

  “It’s a little out of date. Granite countertops and stainless steel are in.”

  “They’re cold and unfeeling.”

  “Where’s the reaper?”

  “He’s cold and unfeeling, too. He’s not allowed in my kitchen.”

  He wasn’t cold and unfeeling when we— uh, oh.

  “Really?” Thana asked. She picked up her own mug and looked at it. “Was it you or he who—? Ah, so.” She approached the table, pulled out one of the chairs and sat down. “Any progress on the case?”

  “Are we trading anything?” Tavie asked meaningfully.

  “No. Can’t fool you, can I?”

  “Once anyway.”

  Thana took a drink of the coffee. Then she waved at Tavie. Tavie shoveled sugar into the mug and looked around for a teaspoon to stir it with. Thana handed her one that hadn’t been there a moment before. Tavie stirred it and put the teaspoon on the table. She drank some of the fragrant brew and sighed. The coffee she’d had in Deadsville hadn’t been half as good.

  “Thank you,” Thana said. “It’s Kopi Luwak. Sometimes it’s called civet coffee.”

  Tavie finished another long drink before she absorbed what Thana had just said. She looked down at the mug and then up at Thana. “This is from the kind of beans that civets eat and then poop out?”

  “I know it’s supposed to be incredibly unpleasant,” Thana said, “but I buy only the free-ranging civet kind. It costs twice as much as some of the others, but it is cruelty free. You have to give credit to people who roam around the jungle picking up monkey-cat poo.”

  “I’m drinking something a rodent ate and then pooped out?” Tavie asked. “I think I can legally shoot you for that. Somewhere there’s a law against that. And if there isn’t, I could plant a throwaway weapon on you.”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s something very natural. Birds poop out seeds all the time. It’s how the earth gets all kinds of new brush and trees. Very apropos. A god of the dead enjoying something that was just beginning. By the way, I don’t think a civet is a rodent.”

  “How do you know it’s cruelty free? Did you watch them?”

  “I’m a god of the dead, dear,” Thana said with a chilly smile. “I know. I don’t eat veal, either. I’m not particularly happy about foie gras, for that matter.”

  Tavie stared at her. “I wouldn’t turn down a nice steak,” she said.

  “I’m not a complete monster,” Thana said. “There’s nothing like a good Angus steak grilled on charcoal.”

  “I’m not making much progress,” Tavie said, trying to get Thana back on subject and also trying to ignore the mug of coffee in front of her. “There’s a connection or two between the two men who ‘died.’ They both lived in New Mexico at very nearly the same time, although it was about sixty miles apart. They both had Latin words on their backs indicating someone wanted revenge. One was a lawyer. One was a doctor, so they were both professionals. It’s not inconceivable that they knew each other.”

  Thana sipped the coffee and considered Tavie’s words. “What else?”

  “I’d like to know why you went to see Minh Thanh,” Tavie said.

  “I tried to warn him, like I tried to warn Darren Tucker,” Thana said. “I was trying to be proactive. It might have been possible to avoid their deaths. Sadly, it was not.”

  “We have two choices,” Tavie said, digesting what Thana had said. “One is that someone from Deadsville wanted to kill them for revenge and has figured out how to do it. I have a working theory about how it might be done, but it’s sketchy at best.”

  “And the other choice?”

  “Someone wanted revenge from their time in the living world.” Tavie stared at Thana. “I don’t know how being dead works. I haven’t met anyone I knew in the living world and I find that the coincidence of three people with that kind of connection being in Deadsville is remote. It would be like winning the lottery.”

  “Do you know how many humans die in a day?”

  “No.”

  “It ranges, of course, due to natural disasters or acts of terrorism and whatnot. One could say reasonably anywhere from 150,000 to 300,000. You won’t find an exact number on the Internet, because no one really knows. It would be almost impossible to deduct how many people die on any day on Earth.”

  Tavie thought about the math. “If it was 150,000 and I divided that by 24 hours, I would get…”

  “About 6,000,” Thana answered. She shrugged. “Another perk of being a GOTD.”

  Tavie looked confused.

  “A nice acronym, don’t you think? God Of The Dead? GOTD?”

  “And if it was 300,000, that’s about 10,000 an hour?”

  “12,500.”

  “And if you divided 6,000 by 60 minutes, you’d get…”

  “100 per minute.”

  “That’s handy.”

  “And for the higher figure it’s 208 per minute, give or take.”

  “The point is that a lot of people died,” Tavie said. “You don’t get all of them in Deadsville?”

  “Not even close. There are so many variations of Deadsville that your little mind can’t conceive of it.” Thana appeared smug.

  “You’d be surprised what I could conceive.”

  “What makes you think the reason for the murders existed in the living world?”

  “I don’t know. I talked to many of the deadies. There are reasons that someone would have wanted the two men out of the way.”

  “As someone wanted you out of the way.”

  “Someone who has access to one of the portals.”

  “You should know that I don’t know who is doing this,” Thana said precisely. “I can’t give you that answer. This is why I needed you.”

  “You knew something was going to happen before I died?”

  “The universe has a certain consistency,” Thana said. “When someone or something messes with it, then it reverberates and it’s like a broken bell. It sounds sick and twisted. The very fabric of existence begins to move and then tear. No one will ever really be prepared for it.”

  “You said I was hard to find.” Tavie stared hard at Thana. “You were looking for someone that could do a job for you.”

  “I was looking for the right person to be the sheriff of Deadsville.”

  “How could you know that the elders would want me?”

  “I know how they act. I have an idea that they would want a police officer with experience. I knew something was going to happen.” Thana waved fingers in the air. “I might have pushed the situation a tad. GOTD, remember?”

  “You’re in charge of all of the other gods,” Tavie said. “It’s your game, am I right? How can you not know what’s happening?”

  Thana shrugged delicately. “I’m a god of the dead, not the God. I don’t have all the answers. If I had all the answers, I wouldn’t need you.”

  “What happens if the murders continue?” Tavie asked. There was dismay mounting within her. She would get to speak with Thana, but Thana didn’t have all the answers and furthermore, Thana didn’t have the answers that were key.

  “Remember what I said? The universe has a certain consistency.”

  “Meaning that these murders make the universe inconsistent?”

  “More than that.” Thana pushed her mug away with a chubby hand. “It means the universe starts to unravel. It means that the gods of the dead start to fade away. The portals between the living world and the dead one begin to open. ‘Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!’ ‘Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…!’ ‘The dead rising from the grave!’ ‘Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together…mass hysteria!’”

  “You’re really digging the whole TV/movie thing,” Tavie observed. “The last sixty years have been good for you.”

  “HBO had Ghostbusters on it ten times last month, but you know cable
sucks here. I really love Ghostbusters, but they got the ancient Sumerian god completely wrong. Gozer the Gozerian, pul-lease.”

  “I don’t stop the killings and find the murderer, then the world goes buh-bye?” Tavie asked, aghast.

  “Yep. That’s it. I’m not exactly permitted to mess with all things living. I’m permitted to judge the dead and take them where they need to go, or I direct the reapers. I get to be in charge, but the other GOTDs get to do their part. Otherwise we’d have a hellish backup. No pun intended.” Thana considered. “Oh, never mind. I like that pun.”

  “There are two important things here,” Tavie said slowly. “One is how this person is ‘killing’ the dead. A professor in the jail suggested exorcism. Do you have any thoughts about that?”

  “Exorcism,” Thana repeated. “Interesting. That would require a special person to do it. A minister. A man of the cloth. Someone who knows how to expel the nonliving from the living world.”

  “A priest?”

  “Yes, I suppose. Exorcism isn’t exactly meant for deadies,” Thana said, “but I suppose it would work.”

  “And then there’s the whole why thing,” Tavie added. “Say you had a priest, you’d have to get him to do it.”

  “If there was more than one person, perhaps the priest is being blackmailed,” Thana suggested.

  “Or the priest has a reason for revenge,” Tavie said. “I’ve found that when more than one person is in on a crime, there’s usually a lot of blabbing. So far, that’s not the case. The witnesses are seeing lone deadies. Not pairs. Not groups.”

  “I love the way you think,” Thana said.

  “You recruited me,” Tavie said.

  “I needed someone like you,” Thana said.

  “Do I belong in Deadsville?”

  “Yes. You do belong in Deadsville. You know why.”

  “Why didn’t you use that memory for the test?”

  “It would have made you dig your heels in, instead of simply scaring you.”

  “If I was recruited, then was the priest recruited, as well?”

  Thana looked surprised. “Of course. Someone has been planning this for a long time.”

  “This whole thing is a power play?”

  “Oh, I think you figured that out a long time ago,” Thana said with a little smile. “Donut? Éclair? Beignets? There’s this place on Bourbon Street in New Orleans that makes the best beignets. They’ll make you lose your religion.” She giggled and covered up her mouth. “I love those kinds of jokes.”

  “What does a priest need for an exorcism?”

  Thana sighed. “Back to business I suppose. It all depends on the religion. If you’re talking about strict Catholicism, then a priest, a bible, a method, faith probably helps a great deal. If you talking about Pentecostal’s, then it’s something else. Probably a rattlesnake.”

  Tavie couldn’t help the smile. “Not all Pentecostals handle snakes.”

  “There was one who came through Deadsville years ago. With snakes on both arms. Guess how he died? I didn’t think deadies could revolt. There’s nothing like snakes to make people freak out, as you are well aware.”

  “You really don’t know who it is?” Tavie asked, knowing that Thana would understand she was referring to the killer.

  “I don’t.” Thana took a deep breath. “My eyes are covered. I know that one of the other gods is up to something. He or she probably searched for the right soul for decades or more. It all comes down to here and now in Deadsville.”

  “This person, this priest or minister or whatever, waited an unknown amount of time and then started up now? Just as I showed up? It doesn’t make sense.” Tavie forgot herself and took another drink of coffee. She remembered and winced, putting the mug back on the table.

  “Time in Deadsville is not like time in the living world,” Thana said.

  “I’ve realized that.”

  “Think of it as a series of lines. Each line is a person. In the living world some of these lines connect by virtue of time and space. In the dead world, all the lines connect sooner or later. The deadies in Deadsville are there for a reason. One cannot escape it.” Thana took another one of her great sighs. She brushed a few gray hairs back from her forehead. “I can’t help you. You’ve already found a working link to the living world and that didn’t help you much.”

  “You mean the smart phone.”

  Thana shrugged. “You have to figure out how and why. Once you’ve done that, the die will have been thrown and it all ends. If the killer finishes his acts, it will be the end of Deadsville and much, much more.”

  “How many more people has the killer targeted?” Tavie asked rhetorically.

  “That would be the kicker,” Thana said.

  “I suppose this is the end of my session with you,” Tavie said.

  “Unless you want a beignet?” Thana asked. The black cat on the fridge hissed and Pudd yipped.

  “No, I don’t want—” Tavie started to say and the world was all black.

  * * *

  “Crap,” Tavie said when she opened her eyes. “I hate it when she does that.”

  Pudd nudged her face and licked her with his doggy tongue.

  “I love you, Pudd, but don’t lick me. Your breath smells like poop.”

  Pudd whined.

  Fortunately, there wasn’t a clown around trying to mug her. She was lying on a street with another one of those killer headaches. No one else was about and goose bumps suddenly broke out along her arms. “Find the killer,” she muttered derisively. “Save the world. Save the dead world. Save the living world. Sorry about this but you’re just a tool, and not the good kind of tool.”

  Pudd whined again.

  Tavie climbed to her feet and brushed off her jacket and jeans. “Didn’t even get to change clothes,” she griped. “I could have the Hugo Boss blazer that’s tailored for the Glock. Plus I would love to change my underwear. I may not need to do it, but it feels like I need to do it. Don’t get me started on my bra.” She ran fingers through her hair. “And my hair needs washing. It doesn’t really feel dirty, but it’s like I have to do it. Where’s a bottle of TRESemmé when I need it?”

  Tavie glanced around her. It looked a lot like the first street she had woken up in. But there wasn’t a clown named Arnold or a bluish woman named Thérèse or a Russian teenager on a bicycle. What had been his name?

  A few bluish lanterns hung on posts a distance away. One swung from the roof of a shanty constructed out of the sides of an 18-wheeler. The great large red word, Piggly, was visible as was the smiling pig’s head and shoulders. The pig wore a paper butcher’s cap. “Piggly Wiggly,” she muttered. She knew it was a grocery store. Clearly someone had died while driving a Piggly Wiggly truck to market.

  Tavie turned slowly in a circle. She didn’t know if she had been here before. It felt a little like a patch of cold air, kind of like the place where Darren and Minh had been found. Hopefully it was Deadsville again and not any of the other places that Thana had hinted about. Why Thana would put her somewhere else would have been more mystifying than figuring out who was doing what to deadies.

  Someone whistled nearby and a man strode past her on a side street.

  “Hey!” Tavie yelled and the man stopped, looking at her inquisitively. She stepped closer and realized the man was covered with hundreds of stings. He had swollen up and almost burst before succumbing to anaphylactic shock. His cover was a man in his twenties with blonde hair and a handlebar mustache. His shirt dated from the 1970s with its psychedelic swirls and the bell bottoms with the Birkenstocks pretty much gave it away.

  “Bay-bee,” he said.

  “Which way to Deadsville Jail?” she asked.

  “That way,” he said and pointed. His face crumpled in confusion and then suddenly cleared. “Oh, you’re her. The sheriff.” He nodded approvingly. “Groovy.”

  “Thanks,” she said and left him behind.

  “And that’s the dog!” the man said, staring at Pudd. �
�I can totally dig it! I had a schnauzer named Choo Choo MaGoo!”

  “Great,” Tavie said. Pudd followed at a trot.

  “Catch you on the flip side!” the man yelled after them.

  ​Chapter 18

  If one could know where death resided, one would never stop there. – African Proverb

  ~

  “I thought that when I died, I would step into the light and everything I wanted to know would be answered. But that was a stupid thought.” – Octavia Stone

  ~

  “Tavie!” Coco yelled. She burst forth from the Deadsville Jail. “You just, like, vanished! No one saw where you went! Someone said you went to a dark place! Then a reaper came for the dog! I cried, like, gross me out to the max, I hate red eyes!” She ran over and hugged Puddles A. Lott.

  Tavie was very nearly disappointed she didn’t get a hug. After all, what deadie didn’t need a good hug?

  Other deadies hurried out of the jail. Enoch grinned broadly. Maximillian, Lillian, and Sternstein appeared worried and relieved at the same time.

  “Dang, girl,” Enoch said. “I thought you’d done disappeared forever. Especially when that tall fella with the red eyes came and took the dog. But here you are. Here’s the dog. Good dog.”

  “I had a little thing going on,” Tavie said. A crowd of deadies gathered to see what was up. She scanned the audience but she didn’t see anyone with a white collar that would give anything away. Then she looked for Nica. He was absent, as well. She couldn’t help the little pang of disappointment.

  I’ve got a crush on a reaper. Oh-kay, that can’t be a good thing.

  “Maybe we should discuss this inside,” Tavie suggested.

  * * *

  Tavie systematically checked her Glock and counted bullets, sitting at one battered desk, while Fritzi, Enoch, Maximillian, Lillian, Sternstein, and Coco stared at her.