Nothing Left to Lose--A Novel

by Dan Wells

  The woman next to me spoke again. “Are you from Cottwell’s?”

  “Cottwell’s?”

  “Yes, genius, Cottwell’s. ‘Lewisville’s oldest funeral home,’ or whatever garbage tagline they’re using these days. You’re not a spy or anything?”

  “I’m not from Lewisville,” I said. “But I am from a mortuary, kind of. I apologize again for being rude about your friend.” I paused then, thinking for a moment. Why would she be so bothered by Cottwell’s, or think they were sending a spy? I could only think of one reason. “Do you work here, at this mortuary?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “How do you know that if you’re not a spy?”

  “Why would one mortuary spy on another one?”

  “I don’t know, what did they tell you when they hired you?”

  “They didn’t.… Look, I’m sorry I was rude, okay? I insulted your friend who passed away, and I also apparently insulted your friend who works as the makeup artist—oh crap.”

  She flashed a smug smile, watching the realization hit me. “Yup.”

  “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the makeup artist.”

  “Fill-in makeup artist,” she said. “Normally I’m just an embalmer. It’s kind of funny to watch how slowly you figure all this out.”

  “I bet it is,” I said. I needed more information and this woman was my only lead so far, so antagonistic or not, I tried to draw out the conversation. “So, who’s the permanent makeup artist?”

  “Don’t worry; you’ll get this one too.”

  I closed my eyes as yet another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “It’s Kathy Schrenk.”

  “Amazing.”

  “That’s why a twenty-year-old is friends with an old lady,” I said. “You’re coworkers. And that’s why the makeup is wrong, because the only person who knows how to do it is dead, and none of you wanted to ask the Cottwell’s makeup person for help.”

  “Does that make us sound petty?” she asked. “Because I want to make sure we sound petty.”

  “I’m not a spy from a rival mortuary,” I said, “as thrilling as that BBC miniseries would be.” I looked around the room quickly—no one was looking at the body but us. “But I am a mortician, and I can help you fix this.” I looked at the young woman again. She had bronze skin—not super dark, but dark enough. “Do you have some makeup handy?”

  She raised her eyebrow. “You want to mess with her makeup right here?”

  “It’ll take me sixty seconds at the most,” I said. “Close your eyes.”

  “Hell no.”

  “I’m not going to hurt anything,” I said. “The problem is the shading—like here, and here. You did a pretty good job on her, but the shading thing is unique to dead bodies, which is why you didn’t think to do it. It’s super simple, but I need some dark brown makeup, and I’m guessing that your eye shadow will be perfect. May I please look at it?”

  She stared at me, probably trying to decide if I was crazy, then sighed and closed her eyes lightly, so the eyelid rested over the eyeball without wrinkling. I studied it a moment, then looked back at the dead body.

  “Yeah, that should be perfect,” I said. “Do you have it on you? I can fix this in sixty seconds, tops.”

  She dug in her purse and pulled out a small makeup compact, but when I reached for it she pulled it back slightly, tightening her grip. She glanced around the room, seeing Harold still locked in conversation with a crowd of displeased future customers. The girl sighed and looked back at me. “Sixty seconds?”

  “At the most.”

  “And I get to stab you if you screw it up?”

  “With the pointy implement of your choice,” I said. She hesitated another moment, and then surrendered the eye shadow. I opened it up. The color looked good. I picked up the sponge, brushed it over the makeup, then dabbed a little on my arm to gauge how easily it transferred from brush to skin. I didn’t want to smear a huge blob on the dead woman’s face. It went onto my arm fairly smoothly, so I started dabbing small, subtle lines on the body’s face—lightly at first, then more confidently as the old muscle memory took over. The crevices around the nostrils; the philtrum above the upper lip; the line below the lower lip; a dot or two on the chin. I paused partway through, breathing deeply, savoring the unexpected intensity of my emotions as I worked—it was shocking, almost embarrassing, how right it felt to be working on a dead body again. This is who I’d been for years, and who I’d always hoped to be for the rest of my life. A mortician. I felt a reverence for death, and for the caretakers who guided the bodies of the dead into their final repose, so to be here again, in this place, touching this body, was …

  I realized that a tear had tracked down my face and I wiped it quickly, hoping the girl hadn’t seen it. I looked at the body one last time, moving my head to see it from different angles, and dabbed one last bit of makeup on the chin. I clapped the box closed and handed it back to the girl. But before she could take it, Kathy Schrenk’s twin sister inserted herself between us, leveling her finger at the body in a sign of accusation and said:

  “See! Look how … oh.”

  “Let me see,” said another woman, her voice stronger than the others, and I turned to see a whole group walking up behind me: Harold; a gaggle of old, frail women; and the large woman I’d seen earlier in Kathy’s photo. Margo, I assumed. The funeral director. She stepped forward, looked at the body, then looked back at the women.

  “She looks fine to me.”

  “Are you blind?” asked one of the old ladies. “She looks like you dredged her out of a river.”

  Margo stepped aside, allowing more of the old women to approach, and one by one their eyes softened as they looked at their friend.

  “She looks wonderful,” said one.

  “So peaceful,” said another.

  “It must have been our eyes,” said the sister. “Or the light.” She looked at Margo and smiled. “We’re so sorry to have bothered you. I think maybe one of these lights was malfunctioning before, but she looks wonderful now.”

  “Thank you,” said Margo. “And thank you for coming.”

  As the women crowded around the casket, Harold looked up, confused, and Margo pulled the Mexican girl aside. “That’s not what she looked like when we wheeled her out of the back,” Margo whispered. “What’d you do?”

  “Calculated risk,” said the girl, and pointed at me. “If I can’t trust some rando off the street, who can I trust?”

  Margo glanced at me, sizing me up, then looked back at the girl and raised her eyebrows. “You let someone touch a body? Without consulting me?”

  “It worked,” said the girl. “You saw what a good job he did.”

  Margo sighed, then looked at me again, raising her chin in a way that made her look abruptly open and professional. “Thank you very much for your help.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Margo Bennett.”

  “Robert,” I said, and shook her hand.

  “Where’d you train?”

  “Family mortuary,” I said. “No formal training.”

  “You do good work,” she said, and turned back to the girl. “Next time, ask me first.”

  “I will.”

  Margo nodded and left, and the girl looked at me again. “Well then. I guess I don’t get to stab you.”

  “It’s not as fun as people expect,” I said, handing back her compact. I wasn’t much for small talk, or really any talk for that matter, but I still needed information, and this was probably my best chance to get it. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Jasmyn,” she said. “With a Y.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jasmyn.” I almost said “Jasmyn with a Y,” but small talk or not, I still had some self-respect. “So you’re, um, training as an embalmer?”

  “I am,” she said. “About a year now.”

  I nodded, and then wondered if I was nodding too much, and stopped. I had the opportunity to ask questions, but I didn’t know which questions to ask. “So.” I hesitated way too lon
g, trying to think of a follow-up. “How do you like it?”

  “You’re definitely not a spy.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you suck at it. This is seriously, like, the worst small talk I have ever heard.”

  “To be fair, I hate talking to people.” It was a risk, but if I was reading her right she’d respond to it.

  She smirked and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, tell me about it. People are the worst.”

  Bingo.

  “I’m going to drown my sorrows in cookies,” I said, and pointed to the side table. “Want one?”

  “They’re also the worst,” she said. “But why not?”

  We walked to the food table and I picked up a cookie. It fell in half partway to my mouth, the bottom falling back onto the tray.

  “See?” said Jasmyn. She took a crumbly bite. “Margo insists on them, but she won’t pay for good ones.”

  “Our mortuary never had cookies,” I said.

  “That’s exactly what I tell her,” she said. “Nobody has cookies at a viewing, unless the family brings them or something.” She took another bite. “Maybe she has stock in the cookie company.”

  “Does Cottwell’s do cookies?” I asked.

  Jasmyn shook her head. “No. So maybe that’s why Margo does—she’s trying to stand out.”

  “So, um…” I wanted to ask about the body, and I thought I’d finally come up with a normal way to do it. Well, normal-ish. “So Kathy Schrenk drowned, right?”

  “So they say,” said Jasmyn. “Nobody knows how, though. She was in her backyard, and she doesn’t have a pool or anything. And she doesn’t live anywhere near the canal.”

  This was where I relied on her inexperience as an embalmer. “Drowned bodies are so weird,” I said. “You always get that weird black goop.” This, of course, was a lie, and a fairly transparent one. Nobody who drowns has black goop, unless they literally drown in a pool of black goop. I mean, the goop wouldn’t have come from the drowning, it would have come from a Withered. They called it soulstuff, and it was like a kind of greasy ash that got left behind at a lot of their attacks. I think it’s what their bodies were made of, under their human-looking disguise, because every time I killed one they dissolved into a noxious little pile of it. If Schrenk was killed by a Withered, Jasmyn might have seen some soulstuff during the embalming. And if not, well, she was new enough at her job that she wouldn’t necessarily call me on the lie.

  I looked back at Jasmyn, feeling a surge of hope—could this be it?

  Nope. She looked confused. “Really?” she asked. “Black goop?”

  I sighed. “Sometimes,” I said. “I figured it didn’t hurt to ask.”

  “Hey Jazz,” said Harold, “can you help me with something?”

  “Sure,” said Jasmyn, and she hurried after him. I retreated to the wall, wondering what to do next but mostly just happy to be in a mortuary again—not because it was especially wonderful, but because it was familiar. The people and the wall hangings and the music and the casket and the body. I didn’t really know how to hunt monsters, though I’d been doing it for years. I didn’t really know how to hitchhike and be on the road and evade the police and how to do all the things my life had forced me to do. But I knew how to be in a mortuary. I was never more comfortable anywhere else than there.

  A movement caught my eye, and I looked across the room to see another woman had just come in through the doors. She looked about thirty, but she wore an old-style, A-line dress, so filthy it looked like she’d been wearing it for years. Her hair hung in ratty tendrils around her face. The other guests shied away from her as she stepped in, looked around, and then focused on me. I glanced around for the mortuary staff—for Jasmyn, or Harold, or Margo—but they’d all stepped out for something. The ragged woman walked toward me, and I could see that her face and arms were as dirty as her clothes; her nails were chipped and crusted with old blood; and her feet were bare and streaked with grime. She walked strangely, like she was unaccustomed to it, and kept her eyes locked on my face. She stopped a few feet in front of me, staring.

  “I know you,” she said at last.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Do you know me?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  The woman stared again, then leaned in close.

  “Run from Rain,” she whispered.

  Then she turned around and ran out the door.

  CHAPTER 2

  Run from Rain.

  It was one of the last things Brooke had told me, one of the last leads she’d dug up from the recesses of her memory. Ten thousand years of dead girls and a supernatural killer, and all of them were terrified of “Rain,” though we’d never figured out who or what Rain was. Another Withered, we’d assumed. Maybe one of the last ones left.

  And now, after months of searching, I’d found another piece of the puzzle.

  I ran outside, looking for the dazed, dirty woman who’d said the words, but she was gone. Homeless, maybe? Unbalanced, almost certainly. Or maybe it was something more sinister—was she a victim of Rain, somehow? Someone who’d been enslaved to a paranormal monster, or who’d been attacked and managed to escape, or maybe just someone who’d seen an attack and been broken by the thought of it. Withered attacks could be horrifying, mind-shattering things, upending everything you thought you knew about the world and the way it functioned.

  Or maybe she’d survived a different kind of Withered attack—not by Rain, but by Nobody. Nobody killed by possessing young girls and using their own bodies to commit suicide; Brooke had lived through it, but she’d gained an untold horde of Withered memories as a result. That’s how she could remember things like “Run from Rain.” Now here was another girl with the same dark memory and the same broken, disorganized mind and … in ten thousand years, Brooke can’t have been the only person to survive an attack from Nobody, could she? Maybe this lost girl was another.

  Whoever the girl was, at least one connection seemed obvious: a Withered named Rain, in a city where someone had drowned without water. It couldn’t be a coincidence. I had to stay in Lewisville and I had to learn everything I could about this killer, starting with the body of Kathy Schrenk.

  And the best way to do that was to wait.

  There was a bus stop nearby, on the heat-blasted side of the cracked asphalt road, and I sat there in the sun and waited. My backpack containing all my worldly possessions was back in the bus station where I’d showered after hitchhiking into town; storing it had cost me a dollar, which probably meant that I couldn’t eat dinner that night, but it was better than bringing the whole dusty thing with me to the mortuary. Nothing said “ignore and/or suspect this person” like showing up in a clean, well-kept place with an old, dirty backpack bursting with clothes. That marked you as a drifter, and I needed these people to trust me. Now more than ever.

  The viewing had started at four in the afternoon, was scheduled to last until six. After a funeral the morticians would be off to the cemetery and out in the hearse and running all over for another few hours at least, but after a viewing they simply wheeled the casket back into the fridge and locked up for the night. I waited at the bus stop, waving each bus past as they trundled by my bench, and watching as the people moved in and out of the funeral home, paying their respects, sharing their gossip, eating their crumbly cookies, and going away. At 6:10 the last few mourners hobbled out to their cars—a sixty-year-old son holding the door for his eighty-year-old mother—and I stood up and walked back into the building. The AC was an arctic storm after so much time in the Arizona sun, and I shivered as I stood in the doorway and looked for the workers. Harold was closing the viewing room door, kicking a doorstop out of the way with his foot, when he looked up and saw me.

  “Viewing’s just closed, I’m afraid—” and then he stopped, squinted, and recognized me. “You were in here earlier. Forget something?”

  “I was wondering if I could speak to Margo,” I said. Harold may
have been an Ottessen Brother, but it was clear who made the decisions around the mortuary.

  Harold closed the door and tested the handle, then turned back toward me. “What’s this pertaining to?”

  “I’d like to apply for the job.”

  “Job?”

  “The makeup tech,” I said, gesturing toward the door. “Your last one died, and none of the rest of you know the work.” I shrugged. “I do.”

  Harold stared at me a moment, then bobbed his head up and down and up and down, like a chicken. “Okay,” he said. “I guess that’s true enough. I won’t be able to hire you myself, though. You’ll have to talk to Margo.”

  I hid the confused frown that tried to creep over my face: why would he say that when I’d asked for Margo in the first place? Maybe he was bitter about his lost authority. He didn’t seem bitter, though. Just … lost.

  “Come with me,” he said at last, and I followed him down the hall toward an office. Harold was tall and lanky in a way that looked like he’d probably been skinny in his youth, though now he was sagging and hunched, like his body was old glass slowly flowing to the bottom of a pane. He opened the office door without knocking, and I waited in the hall while he stepped inside. Margo was sitting behind a broad, wooden desk that was covered with papers, a monitor, and keyboard—not the fancy desk where she held meetings with the families of the deceased, but the real desk where actual work got done. Jasmyn was sitting across from her, looking more than a little downcast, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was getting chastised for my brazen, midviewing corpse makeover.

  “Excuse me, Margo,” said Harold. “But that boy’s here to see you.”