Spookshow V: Half-Boys and Gypsy Girls, page 7
Billie watched the woman’s eyes glaze over as she spoke. “Did they attack you, too?”
“No. I just didn’t want to be alone anymore. Clarice was gone and everyone I knew treated me like a leper. My family disowned me. So, I went home and mixed myself a drink. I used to try my hand at making new cocktails. This one was special. I ground an entire bottle of pills with a mortar and pestle and jazzed it up with a quart of gin and some lime. It did the trick.”
The woman wiped the bloody foam from her mouth and grimaced at the foul red it left on her fingertips. She looked up at Billie. “I keep hoping to find Clarice out there. Wandering the streets of this city the way I do, but she’s not here. I guess she moved on. Without me.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Billie replied. She handed back the lash. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Why don’t you move on?”
The woman lowered her eyes. “I’m not sure anymore. I guess I’m afraid.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“How would you know?” The dead woman reapplied the false lash. “I’m afraid of what happens to suicides on the other side. I’m afraid Clarice won’t be there to meet me.”
With no answer to the question, Billie remained quiet. Useless. She took a metal shaker and filled it with ice, lemon mash, syrup and whiskey and shook it vigorously. Pouring it into a heavy rock glass, she topped it with lemon rind. “Take my hand,” she said.
A quizzical look came over the dead woman’s face, the false lashes fluttering. She reached out and took Billie’s hand.
“This one’s on me,” Billie said. She pushed the glass forward. “Go on.”
The woman laughed it off at first, but saw the level gaze of the bartender. She reached for the glass and her eyes lit with surprise that it was solid in her hand. Raising it to her lips, she tasted it and her eyes closed in relief as the tart bite of lemon flushed the awful taste from her mouth. She drained it dry, the ice clinking in the glass. Her voice was brittle when she spoke. “Thank you.”
Her cold hand slipped out of Billie’s and the rock glass fell to the bar, rolling over the lip to the floor.
~
It was almost 4 AM when Billie trudged up the two flights of stairs to her small apartment on Barton East. The climb murdered her lats after being on her feet all night and the only thing pushing her on was the thought of collapsing into bed. Even if the bed was empty. Curling up beside a warm body would have been ideal, but beggars can’t be choosers, as her aunt was fond of saying.
Pushing through the door, she saw that her flatmate was up. Half-Boy squatted on the floor near the window.
“Are you waiting up for me?” she said, dropping her bag at the door.
The legless ghost turned and dragged himself away on his hands into the other room, leaving a fresh trail of dark blood on the floor.
Someone was in a bad mood, she thought. Her flatmate could be oddly temperamental sometimes. Brushing it off, Billie crossed the room to fetch a glass of water before heading to bed, but stopped at the doorway to the kitchen. A glass lay broken on the tiled floor, shards of it scattered everywhere. That’s why the little ghost had skulked off like a guilty dog.
“Another glass?” she fumed. “I barely have any left.”
For a phantom that could scale walls like a spider, the Half-Boy was oddly clumsy in the kitchen, often knocking things from the counter as he scuttled through the room. Sweeping up the splintered glass, she dumped the mess into the waste bin, wondering how much glassware she had left. Opening a cupboard, she saw that she was down to three water glasses, all mismatched. Maybe it was time to buy the plastic kind that wouldn’t shatter when knocked aside by a clumsy spirit.
Glancing over the narrow kitchen sparked an ember of disgust. She lived like a college student. None of her dishes or glasses matched, everything gleaned from flea markets and second-hand shops. The place was a constant mess and it was haunted. She thought again about Mockler’s offer to move in together and halfway reconsidered. If it was some other house, she’d agree in a heartbeat. The thought of starting fresh in a new place seemed like complete fantasy as she lingered in the cramped confines of this worn down kitchen.
Falling into bed, she pulled the duvet up to her chin to get warm after the cold bike ride home. A shadow moved across the ceiling. Half-Boy scuttled down the wall to the chair opposite the bed. He perched there and watched her like a housecat. Blood from his amputated thighs dribbled from the edge of the chair and spattered to the floor in a slow drip.
Billie watched the blood pool under him. By morning it would be gone. “Will you try to be more careful? Or at least clean up if you break something.”
The boy didn’t move, his small eyes narrowing under the brim of his cap.
Watching him, Billie thought back to the woman in the go-go boots at the bar and how she was afraid to move on, stuck here on this side and doomed to haunt the streets of the city looking for a lover who would never return. She thought back to the spirit of the newly dead man outside his own funeral. He, too, had been afraid to move on. Like the woman in the kicky boots, he would have been left behind to haunt the streets if she hadn’t guided him back to the light. Studying this child across the room with his shorn limbs and tongue cut out, she wondered if he, too, had been afraid to move on and, thus, became trapped on this side of the veil. Judging by his garments, he had haunted the streets of Hamilton for a long time. A hundred years, maybe more?
He’d had a chance once to cross over. Back in the summer when she was still learning to deal with her abilities. Half-Boy had been swallowed whole by a monstrous phantom she had nicknamed the Undertaker. In a hidden mortuary room, Billie had pulled the Half-Boy out of the monster, along with a hundred other souls that the Undertaker had devoured. A light had appeared from above and the lost souls made their way to it. She had felt its pull and would have wandered into it had it not been for the boy stopping her, but, in doing so, he had missed his own chance to go with the others. The warmth had receded, leaving Half-Boy behind.
Something clicked together in her scattered thoughts and stray puzzle pieces linked together. Billie slid her hand out from under the covers and she patted the bed next to her. “Come here.”
The boy dropped to the floor and sprang onto the bed. She patted his cold hand. “We’re going to sort it out. You and me.”
The small ghost looked at her, but the woman was already asleep.
Chapter 10
NO ONE LIKED the morgue, least of all Mockler. Arriving late for the viewing, he hurried through the doors into the examining room. Detectives Hoffmann and Latimer were there, lingering by the door, well away from the wheeled gurney holding centre stage in the middle of the room. Both men nodded a hello.
He didn’t have to be here. As primaries on the case, Hoffmann and Latimer were obligated to examine the deceased. As secondary, Mockler could have skipped the procedure altogether, settling for a quick update by the primary investigator afterward. Odinbeck was absent, having the good judgment to stay away.
The door swung open and a woman in a lab coat swept into the room. Marla Tran was the deputy coroner. Her cheery smile was a marked contrast to the grim features of the assembled officers. “Morning, gentlemen. Sorry I’m late.”
“No worries,” said Hoffmann. “I just want to get this over with.”
“Of course,” Marla said. She nodded to Mockler. “How are you, Ray?”
“Good,” Mockler replied. “You look tanned. Did you go away?”
“Conference in Key West. The weather was gorgeous.” The coroner lifted away the sheet to reveal the body on the table. “Shall we get started?”
“Please,” said Hoffmann, a slight impatience to his tone.
Mockler held back a little and let the other detectives take charge. Hoffmann was a good detective, but he was a little territorial for Mockler’s liking, especially when he was primary on an investigation.
“As you can see,” Marla began, “we have a white male, approximately 20- to 30-years old. Five eleven, 173 pounds. Brown hair and eyes. The fingerprints and dental shots are complete so you can start running for matches there. Physical characteristics, a scar over the thorax, about six centimetres long. Possibly from surgery at a younger age.”
Hoffmann nodded. “That’s the details. What’s the cause of death?”
“It’s a bit of a toss-up at the moment, between blood loss and hypothermia.”
“You don’t know?” asked Latimer.
“Not precisely.” Marla pointed to a long wound along the abdomen. “We have major trauma here. The wound was caused by a blade, penetrating seven centimetres down where it punctured the liver. At the same time, we have signs of hypothermia. Both would have caused death; it’s just a matter of figuring out which one got to him first.”
Hoffmann moved around the table. “What about the horns?”
Marla wheeled in a small cart. Atop the stainless steel tray lay a set of antlers. “A ten point rack of your common cervidae. A white-tailed deer.”
“Jesus,” Hoffmann uttered. “These things were growing out of the victims head.”
Mockler leaned in for a better look. Up close, the rack was big and lethal looking. “How were they attached, Marla?”
Hoffmann fired a dirty look at him and Mockler backed off. Leave the questions to the primary, he reminded himself.
Marla tilted one of the racks to show the root. “The base of the antler was fixed to a band of crimp metal. The metal band was attached to the victim with six millimetre surgical screws.”
Latimer winced. “They drilled it into his skull? Wouldn’t that kill him?”
“No,” the coroner answered. “The screws went into the bone without piercing the meningeal layer. They didn’t hit the brain.”
“That must have hurt.”
“It would have,” Marla said, “but we found a number of narcotics in the tox screen. He may not have felt it too much.”
Latimer sighed. “Why the hell would they do that?”
The million dollar question. No one present had an answer and the question lingered over the room.
Hoffmann pointed at the victim’s left arm. “What about all these scrapes and cuts to his limbs?”
“Some of these may have occurred at the scene if the victim was dragged through the brush.” Marla indicated a spot on the chest where the skin was scarred in tiny markings. “Some are intentional. Here, it appears that the skin was lacerated with a sharp instrument, like a razor blade, into a pattern or figure.”
The detectives bent over the body for a closer look. Obscured by the scrape marks, there was a pattern to the hairline cuts that formed a strange design.
“I can barely make that out,” Latimer said. “You sure it was intentional?”
“It’s too precise to be random. The flesh has been cleaned up, but, at the time it was done, it would have been more noticeable. There are seven occurrences of these on the body. Here on the throat, the lower abdomen and the right knee. The remaining four are on the back.”
“This one looks like a triangle.” Latimer squinted at the hatching marks on the stomach and then looked up at his partner. “What do you make of it?”
“It’s like they doodled on the guy with a knife,” Hoffmann said. “God knows what these figures are. You sure that’s a triangle? Maybe it’s a letter.”
“Like the perp cut his initials into him?” Latimer asked.
“It’s a sigil,” Mockler said.
Hoffmann and Latimer straightened up. “A what?”
“It’s like a signature, but with a design. It’s an occult thing.” Mockler pointed out the cuts on the throat and chest. “This one means the devil. The one over the heart means life. Or birth.”
“Devil?” Latimer scoffed. “Are you shitting me?”
Detective Hoffmann’s eyes hardened on the younger detective. “How do you know that?”
From Gantry, Mockler recalled. The symbols painted over the cellar of the Murder House, more of them scrawled in the notes of a dead pulp writer who had mysteriously vanished. Gantry had explained what some of the glyphs signified. It had seemed like malarkey to Mockler at the time, but seeing the same marks on the victim here brought it all back. “I’ve seen these before. The last case Odin and I worked.”
Hoffmann raised an eyebrow. “You sure these are the same?”
“They look the same. Given the nature of the crime, the way the victim was bound, I’d say it’s the same weird occult stuff.”
Latimer shook his head in disgust. “I hate spooky shit.”
“That makes two of us,” Hoffmann replied. “Good thing we got the spooky expert on our side.”
Mockler gritted his teeth at the nickname but let it go. He turned to the medical examiner. “Marla, have you photographed all of these marks yet?”
“All done. They’re attached to the report.”
“I’ll forward them,” Hoffmann said as he turned for the door. “Mock, can you take a look at them? Tell me what you think?”
He should have kept his mouth shut. Now, he was going to have to delve back into the creepy stuff just when he’d thought it was all behind him. Mockler nodded. “Sure.”
~
Seated at the kitchen table in her pajamas, Billie warmed her hands around a mug of coffee. With the laptop opened before her, she scrolled through a list of funeral homes downtown and began calling each one. It was past noon and she’d already missed one service, but there was another this afternoon at Dunwich Funeral Chapel on Cannon. Seven blocks away. That just might work.
The real question was whether or not the boy would come.
They had a routine, these two odd roomies. The Half-Boy emerged after the sun went down, creeping out from the shadows in the room. They would spend their evenings together or a shorter time when Billie came home from work. The boy would often return to the shadows when the sun rose on the new day. Occasionally, he would spend the day with her, typically if she was ill. The recent experience at the house on Laguna Road had left her weak as a foal. The ghost child had watched over her.
Billie slid the phone onto the table and crossed to the other room. It appeared empty. “Where are you?”
A book fell from the shelf, but the living room still appeared to be unoccupied. It was too bright in here, too much sunlight from the windows. She drew the blinds, dimming the room. Half-Boy materialized on the floor, leafing through the pages of the fallen book.
“What is that?” She came around and knelt at his side. The book was a pictorial history of old Hamilton, something she’d found at a church sale last spring. Black and white photographs from a time before the automobile. The unpaved streets of mud crowded with shanty stalls and horse-drawn wagons. Stern-faced men in waistcoats and derbies, the women lifting the hems of their long skirts out of the mud of the streets.
“I like these old pictures,” Billie said, entranced by the images. “It’s hard to imagine what life must have been like back then.”
The boy turned another page. He didn’t react, as if unaware of her presence. With most spirits that Billie encountered, manipulating objects in the physical world took a great deal of effort. Many were unable to move so much as a feather. The boy was different. He could move things with ease, often with great force. She had once witnessed him hurl John Gantry across the room. The boy seemed unaware of his own strength.
She watched him turn the pages. The women in their hobble skirts, the boys in short pants. “What do you see in those pictures? Is there something you recognize?”
The lad came to the last page and closed the book. He pushed it away.
“Look at me,” Billie said.
He turned his head partway. His pale face was dirty, smeared with soot and dried blood. With her ability to make the ethereal real, physical contact could make a ghost as solid as she was. Billie had once tried to wash the grime from his cheeks but the stains would not come clean.
She reached out and took his hand. Cold as stone in winter. “I want you to come with me today. There’s something I want to show you.”
He didn’t meet her gaze. He never did this close, but he nodded slowly.
“Okay,” she smiled. “Let me get dressed, then we’ll go.”
She didn’t have a lot in the way of proper attire, but Billie cobbled together an outfit that was basic, respectful and black. The shoes were nice, but they pinched, her feet unused to walking in heels. Mercifully, the Dunwich Funeral Chapel wasn’t that far away. The wind chilled her bare legs.
“We’re almost there,” she said.
The Half-Boy hobbled along on his hands, keeping pace with his peculiar trot. His eyes darted around nervously, as if wary of danger. She wondered if the boy saw the same streets that she did or if he perceived the city differently, from his era. Everything about the little ghost was a mystery.
The covered portico of the Dunwich Funeral Chapel rose up before her. The boy stopped in his tracks when Billie climbed the front steps.
“It’s all right,” Billie said. She didn’t think he’d balk so soon. She hadn’t even gotten him inside yet. “Come on. I want you to see this.”
He looked up at the building and then scratched his head, tipping his cap askew. He reminded Billie of a reluctant child on the first day of school, curious, but scared. She held out her hand and he scuttled up the concrete steps to take it.
There was a signboard in the lobby, indicating that the wake for Lucretia DiNotta was in the east wing. Billie led the way down the corridor to a spacious room filled with flowers, some real and fragrant, the others false and odourless. Less than a dozen mourners present, standing or seated on folding chairs about the room. A small table to her left held a guest book and a few framed photographs of the deceased. One was a recent shot of a frail woman with white hair and a thin smile. The other was greyscale from another era. The deceased as a young woman in saddle-shoes and a pleated skirt. The woman’s smile remained thin in both photographs, as if afraid to show her teeth.
