Aggie tucked her tie into the vest of the worsted grey suit she wore. With the necktie carefully held in place with the platinum tiepin, the action was entirely unnecessary, but for once Aggie was uncertain what to do. “Thanks, Gladys,” she said to her assistant, hoping her sarcasm wouldn’t be detectable to the young boy accompanying her.
Aggie sat at her desk, which held a nameplate that read the same as the pebbled glass of her office’s door: “Aggie McGee, Spectral Analysis.” In between the door and the desk’s expanse stood Gladys and a boy who appeared to be no more than 10 years in age. The two could not have been more different. Gladys was tall, beautiful, blonde, and loved more by Aggie than any living person on Earth. The boy was short and could have been pulled from a Dickens novel, dirty from the top of his cap to the worn soles of his shoes. He mostly avoided eye contact while Gladys would not look away from Aggie, imploring her friend and boss.
“He just wandered in off the street,” Gladys continued. “Have you ever seen such a thing?”
Aggie pushed the bob of hair out of her eyes and stared hard at Gladys, knowing full well the other woman knew the answer. “Yes. There are all sorts of historical and recurring reasons that such an event would happen.”
Gladys placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “He’s not an event Aggie.”
“That’s a matter of some debate.”
“You know what I mean.” Gladys dragged out the syllable of the last word in a way that Aggie felt was both juvenile and impossible to resist.
In response, she raised her head and let a long sigh, blowing out her cheeks. Emission complete, she took her boots off the desk and leaned forward, examining them both. “Fine,” she replied a moment later, and stood up.
Aggie moved to the outside wall of her office which, despite being on the 6th floor, was almost entirely composed of tall casement windows. She unlocked one and opened it, letting in a cold wind. After taking a moment to enjoy the rays of the setting sun on her face she turned to face the pair. Walking to the boy, she bent at the waist so they were eye-to-eye. The child dropped his gaze to his shoes.
Perhaps cruelly, this made Aggie smile, but she only said, “Follow me.”
A tone of caution in her voice, Gladys said, “We want to help him.”
Aggie stared at her friend, eyes only dulled by their callousness. “I am helping him.” Smoothing her tone, she said added to the boy, “Close your eyes and follow me.”
As frightened as he might have been, the boy followed instructions, stepping up to the opened window. After a few moments, Aggie instructed him to stop walking. “Now open your eyes.”
The rays of the fading sun passed through the young boy as he stood hundreds of feet above the city noise and traffic. On some intellectual level, Aggie wondered if he could smell the exhaust. Instead, though, she focused on the blossoming wonder in his eyes.
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button below.
Atwell began to protest even as he reached for the ignition. To get him to shut up I added, “Jesus, Atwell, you were following them anyway. Just keep going. I can explain on the way.” His displeasure at my appearance only hampered his desire to keep up with Sartre for a second. He released the parking brake and we went.
Having displayed a near-complete disregard for clandestine activity in the past, I was surprised that Atwell had actually managed to follow Sartre without being spotted, but the Citroen sped out without attracting attention. It was another surprise that Atwell apparently knew how to handle the car.
He slowed, keeping Sartre’s convoy just in sight. There was very little traffic on the road at that hour of the morning, making it that much harder to follow without being noticed. As we caught up, though, there wasn’t any change in the rear car’s behavior. I watched the cars turn onto the Promenade’s motorway, disappearing into what little early morning traffic there was.
With as much concentration as I had seen him muster, Atwell was focused on the road as he followed onto the main drag, trying to find the target. Through clenched teeth he asked, “What are you doing?”
I took my eyes off Atwell to join him in staring ahead. “Same thing you are – following Sartre.”
I heard the displeasure in his voice warring with his concentration as he prodded for more information with, “Why?”
“I think he’s going somewhere that I need to know about.” I felt the car slow down, Atwell’s foot off the accelerator, so I added, “And you probably need to know as well.”
Like most professional cheats, Atwell didn’t like being lied to and he wasn’t sure I wasn’t lying to him now. After a moment’s deliberation, the car began to speed up again. “Why do you need to know where he’s going?” Up ahead, a series of blue-white lights were probably Sartre’s cavalcade.
Distracted as he might be I didn’t have an abundance of time to develop an alternative answer for that, so I went with the truth. “He’s going to dig up a body.”
Closer to the harbor now, Sartre’s cars began the slow bank around the World War I monument at the base of Chateau Park, letting us back off without fear of losing them. The stretch of roads had no exits, sandwiched as it was between the steep hill of the memorial and the sea. With a moment to breathe Atwell asked a clarifying, “What?”
“One of Mitnick’s men went missing a few days ago. I think Sartre knows where he is.”
It was no time to be clever, but I tried anyway. “I don’t know.” It was possible that Sartre had lied to me about that. In picking up speed out of the long curve between the 20th century dead and the harbor with its 21st century yachts, I discovered I didn’t care if Sartre had lied. It didn’t make a difference to me. So I said, “But everyone is going to think so. And Mitnick wants to know where the body is.”
“How do you know that?”
“Mitnick told me.” It felt close enough to the truth.
The straightaway banked away from the port and plunged again into the nettle of criss-crossing side-streets and alleys of Old Town. Sartre’s cars took a sharp turn inland. Atwell jerked the wheel in the same direction, jumping the car off the causeway and down a side street, scattering trash and alley cats. “Why?” His focused interest in my statement only seemed to improve his driving.
“He may not know his man is dead. Or he may want the body to ship it back home.” Atwell hit a bump, big enough and fast enough that it felt like it sent the Citreon airborne. I crunched back into my seat as we landed. Sorting myself out as Atwell continued to speed along I added, “But I don’t think that’s why Mitnick wants the body.”
Atwell doused his lights as the car catapulted out of the alley, causing a yell and some swearing from some near-missed pedestrians. Back on a causeway, he spun the Citroen in the direction that the convoy had headed. We set our sights on some red rear lights up ahead, hoping they belonged to Sartre.
From behind clenched teeth Atwell muttered, “Why?”
“I think,” emphasizing those words, “I think Mitnick wants the body found.”
Given how much of his mind and hands were occupied it was impressive Atwell managed to persist with a, “Why would he want his man’s corpse found by anyone but him?”
Watching a pair of the xenon lights up ahead zip in and out of traffic I worried that we’d been spotted. I re-focused on what I could control and told Atwell, “Because everyone will assume the same thing you did – that Sartre killed him. It could strip away some of his political protection if it caused a big enough stink.” Imagining Sergei’s bloated corpse washing up on a beach to be found by screaming tourists, I thought, yeah, that would do the trick.
Outside of the Fox Hunt country club the royalty of East Tennessee golf society slowly begin to gather, waiting for the long summer day to die, for the darkness to become sufficient to allow for the fireworks. With the catering, bartending, and the massive pyrotechnic setup, it’s one of the few events of the year that the rarified citizens of Fox Hunt mingle with the common folk who serve their food and clean their houses and, on this occasion, blow stacks off of deliberately constructed black powder tubes.
All of that is forgotten to the young Tim Hanes, though, as he sneaks behind the safety cordon the fireworks team has put up to keep out the curious. Tim watches the rockets launch into the air with some indifference until something goes wrong. He knows something is amiss before it happens, watching the firebugs scramble in a panic for a few seconds before leaping away from a shadowed pile that is nothing more than a silhouette to Tim.
But then the pile transforms into a burning explosion, all of its stars hurling burning the ground instead of the night air. It’s as close as Tim has ever been to real danger and it freezes him solid, the heat of the chaff flying by him, phosphorous flares raining down around him, inches from his face. He’s not hurt by any of it, but it burns him nonetheless, the placidity, the privilege, the comfort of his position peeling away from him as the shockwave washes over him.
When he plunges into war, years later, against the protests of parents, priests, and peers, he thinks of that moment, never really having left it, and never tells anyone of it.
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button below.
I only stared at Satre, wondering if he had lost his mind. Outside of the horsewhipping that he gave to Mitnick, this was the most emotion I had ever seen out of him. Both instances, some part of me noted, involved the other gangster.
After an uncomfortably long minute, Sartre wiped a tear away and said, “Perhaps they are smarter than I thought. How would they do such a thing?”
I tried not to stare at Sartre, but to just report with the same feigned indifference of a soldier making report to an insane dictator. “They think if they get a message to her on behalf of Lanzo she’ll sneak out and come to them. But instead of a romantic rendezvous they grab her.” I guessed at that last part, but it suited their style.
“And hide her away somewhere in our fair city while Mitnick loses his mind.” Sartre covered his lips as he said this, stifling more laughter.
“Until he gives up some prescribed amount of money.” With Sartre returning to a reasonably sane state, I still felt like the adult in the room. I didn’t like it.
Sartre peered out his window into the night’s blackness, recovering his composure. “And what does Lanzo think of this plan?”
The same question had occurred to me and I wondered what Sartre’s motivations were for asking it. Was it because the Corsican might be a possible complication? Or because he felt something for the boy? Unsure, I answered honestly, “I don’t think he knows about it. I suspect his buddies may do their best to dress it up as a rescue attempt if that’s what it takes to get him to go along.”
Face in profile against the distant lights of the loading dock, Sartre gave a ghost of a smile. Whatever that meant, he kept it to himself. “And what do you think of this plan?”
“I think it’s dangerous.”
A sardonic specter of Sartre’s grin floated its way over to me. “All profitable efforts are.”
I nodded, acknowledging the truth of the statement. “I think it’s doomed to failure without your assistance. It might be doomed anyway and I think you need to be prepared for Mitnick finding out you were involved.” Partly out of not wanting to be presumptuous and partly out of the hope he might not I added, “If you decide to get involved.”
Sartre turned to stare at me with his grey eyes, piercing in that half-light to a level of physical discomfort. That was something I was accustomed to, though, so I waited until Sartre gave a final laughing grunt that shook all of him but his gaze. “It would be great fun,” he concluded, presumably speaking of tweaking Mitnick’s nose. “C’est pas le moment. Tell them ‘no’.”
I nodded, trying not to show my relief. Thinking of the Citroen, I decided to throw in another wrinkle. “What do you want me to tell Atwell?”
Sartre eyes flared up, the ghost of his expression becoming a heated reminder of his anger from the casino. “He must know of this?”
I shrugged, letting my powerlessness work to my advantage for once. “If he becomes unhappy with me, I go back to prison.” I was, after all, receiving payment for services rendered. In that way, I wasn’t all that different than the other players in this fiasco.
In an echo of Mitnick’s actions, Sartre reached into his blazer pocket and removed a large wad of euros. Peeling off a number of bills, he held them out in the air between us. “Atwell does not need to know for now. Perhaps what you have learned about Mitnick will keep him happy for a time.”
I eyed the money then brought my stare back to Sartre, feeling an old familiar anger begin to simmer inside me. I had liked him once – his old school cool that swung to a crazy angry, his insistence on remaining his own man, his indifference to rumors that the town produced about him. But this was a good reminder he wasn’t any different than Mitnick, or Atwell. I was the same as the women, or the police, or anyone else in this town, a thing to be bought and sold. I sat there and let myself feel that anger until it might have been dangerous to not do something else.
I took the money, folding the bills into a wad I could fit in my pocket. I noted it was large enough that it would still produce an “are you happy to see me” bulge for anyone paying attention. The money secured away, I nodded at Sartre while I made multiple decisions at once. Instead of voicing any of that I said, “OK. I’ll let Jasper know when I’ve spoken to them.”
Sartre nodded, smiling a smile that was meant to indicate happiness, but held none. “Good, good.”
Sensing that was all that Sartre wanted for now, I spoke before the car door opened. “Mitnick asked if I knew where Sergei was. He knows he’s not in that pipe anymore.”
The specter of anger rose back into Sartre’s eyes, a hostility at a perhaps not unexpected wrinkle. “What did you tell him?”
“I didn’t. I asked about Nika and got these bruises.” I shrugged, finally giving into the urge in a calculated move to seem ineffectual. “Besides, I think he knows where he is.”
Sartre passed over my comment about Nika, his grey eyes becoming lidded with suspicion, uncertain of this new information. “Why do you say this?”
“Just in the way he asked.” I shrugged again. Now that I had given in, it was impossible to control the impulse. “I mean, he asked if I knew where Sergei was. How did he even know I knew about Sergei?”
Sartre gave this a long, slow thought. “It is good you told me this.” He gestured to a rook, unseen beyond the tinted glass, standing in the night. The car door popped open with the sound of a vacuum seal.
I grinned, an idiot happy to help. Stepping out of the car, I turned around to give Sartre a grin, patting the money in my pocket. “I think I’ll take the rest of the night off.” Without waiting for a reply I started to walk down the road instead of back to the casino. Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I tried to put a spring into my step, like any loser done good.
A minute later, perhaps enough time for some hurried consultations and instructions, the blue-white headlights of all three sedans sped by me, splashing me slightly from the water that had collected on the road. I stood there, watching the cars fade away, feeling the dirty water soak into my work pants. Cheryl’s voice mentioned that it might stain.
If I had any second thoughts about what I was going to do next they evaporated right there, covered as I was by others’ inconsideration. Once I was certain that there was enough distance that I wouldn’t be seen, instead of running home or going inside to wash the leg out, I broke into a sprint, headed towards the yellow Citroen.
Atwell was too busy watching Sartre’s party leave to notice me until I had ripped open the passenger side door and dropped in like a wrecking ball. I would have liked to take a moment to enjoy his surprise, but instead I growled at him, “Follow those cars.”
Lazarus of Bethany, Saint Lazarus, Lazarus of the Four Days, Righteous Lazarus, hated Halloween. It wasn’t that he didn’t like candy or children or costumes. On the contrary, he found all of those things delightful. However, in his long association with the Earth, the celebratory night had only recently taken on any of those characteristics. The Celts, those stubborn and troublesome people, had long ago laid the foundation of All Hallow’s Eve to mark the darkening of the year. In their blasphemous veneration of the dead, they had weakened the veil between the awake and the sleeping. And someone had to clean that mess up.
As someone who had stood in both the land of the living and the dead, it had been decided that Lazarus was the one to do it. As the new order of the Nazarene came to pass, the old traditions were viewed anew, but even the transformation of the pagan holiday into a Christian vigil hadn’t swayed its unearthly powers. In the end, moving around the globe to sweep up old martyrs and spirits back into the rightful place of the dead wasn’t any easier than helping families put grandma back in the ground.
Worst of all, Lazarus couldn’t start work until after midnight. He had always been a morning person.
It always ended where it began, though, and so he took his bare feet and walked the old roads of Eurasia. He headed west, making his usual visit to Lady Catherine and the other caoineag. Their incessant wailing could only be bested by bagpipes, which he picked up from the Glencoa boys long ago. Fortunately, those old soldiers were only too happy to see Lazarus and be put back in the ground. The old Continent certainly had its share of the headless or handless. Countless centuries of butchery had given rise to ghosts that only Lazarus’ lifetime of experience under the Romans had prepared him for.
The First People of the Americas rarely needed any help from him as they had been shouting restless spirits into the Western sky long before Lazarus was born. The rest of the population had stubborn and disjointed ghosts, particularly the East Coasts’ Puritan ancestors. A few recitations from the Book of Common Prayer, though, particular one inscribed by the angel Malak, sent those old killers packing.
Around the Pacific, the qaitu were involved in everyday life, so All Hallow’s Eve wasn’t special for them, but the thinning of the veil meant that sometimes a bygone mother could become a bit overbearing. Sitting down with those old matrons and asking for images of their grandchildren that had passed was usually enough to make them wistful to return to the Legendary Place.
Asia had the most terrible ghosts, at least to Lazarus’ reckoning. Avenging ghosts, drowned ghosts, hopping ghosts, cannibal ghosts, baby ghosts, vampire ghosts, and every ghost with a gaping wound. Fortunately, this meant the land was filled with peoples that had spent generations acquiring knowledge of how to dispel such angry dead, so typically Lazarus only needed to escort the defeated back through the veil.
It was only towards the end when he arrived in the Mohandiseen district that he found the one he venerated. Down narrow Egyptian streets he found an establishment with Japanese lanterns hanging outside. Inside was a well traveled man competent with chopsticks after years of practice. Lazarus only smiled at the old one and said, “How is it that you always get out?”
The old man finished chewing and then raised his eyes to the ceiling. “From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.”
“You’re a long way from Nineveh.”
“So was the ocean,” the eater replied with a knowing smile. He respectfully set down his chopsticks and wiped his mouth. “But I suppose I should get ready to leave.”
Lazarus smiled, and leaned forward to whisper in the other man’s ear in a conspiratorial tone. “Well, I might need your help.”
“How do you mean?”
“There’s a weird one out on this Allhallowtide. An etemmu on the loose. An old slain god that was left in human flesh, so he thinks he’s human.”
“Hard to banish a ghost who thinks he’s human.”
“Exactly.”
The sushi-eater raised his eyes towards the ceiling again. “What a strange world.”
“Indeed. Can I get your help?”
“Of course. Let me finish my kujira and we can go.”
