Authors: Patrick E. McLean
On the other side of the door was a hallway. It was painted a particularly industrial shade of light green that was made worse by the lightly buzzing fluorescents. The kind of lights that when moths die and go to hell, they spend eternity slamming against. From the other room, I could hear the detective repeating, “Look at me. Look at me. I’m right here. I’m right here,” over and over again.
By walking on the ball of my foot and the thick rubber stopper on the edge of the leg brace, I was able to move down the hallway silently. At the end of the hallway was a T-intersection. To my right was a set of stairs, to the left, more hallway. More lights. I tried to listen for sounds of people. But as I paused, I heard Marsten’s voice from the morgue. It sounded strong and angry.
“Oh, no, honey, there’s not a corpse walking around. Somebody played a trick on you, and I’m going to catch them. I’m going to catch them and when I do, I’m going to play a trick or two on them.”
The end of the hallway was no place to hide I turned to the right and started climbing. At the top of the stairs was a door, so I opened it. On the other side was every cop in the city, or at least that’s what it looked like to me. Y’know those big rooms they have in 70’s cop TV shows where there’s a whole bunch of desks and phones and cops and bad guys being processed? Yeah, it was that room.
One thing was certain, there was no going back. So I stepped through the door and closed it behind me. I started across as if it was a minefield. In life, I’d never been a very confident person, and if I was trying to pull this kind of stunt off while I was alive, I’m sure I would have pissed myself three steps in. I also would have tripped over something or started sweating profusely or gotten a case of the hiccups, or screwed it up in any one of a thousand other ways. But I wasn’t nervous.
Don’t get me wrong, I was scared – intellectually terrified – but my gut felt cool and solid. I walked across the room, like I owned the place. Like I had a reason for being there. On the far side of the room, I saw the duty Sergeant take notice of me. Not good. I stumbled over to the nearest desk and picked up a stack of papers, then I made right for him. A nervous-looking woman came up to the rail and distracted him with a request. I pushed through the wooden railing and thought I was home free until I heard, “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”
I turned around and looked at the Sergeant. I walked right up to him, brandishing my papers like a talisman.
“I’m dropping these off and then I’m going to go home to sleep like the dead.”
I saw him soften, but there was still a skeptical look in his eye.
“Don’t ever work undercover buddy, that’s all I can tell you.” And then I turned and limped out the front door.
Across the street, Bruce was waiting in a large black hearse. As I got in I asked him, “What did you do with the Bluesmobile?”
“What?” said Bruce.
“The Caddy? What happened to the Caddy?”
“We’ve never had a Cadillac hearse,” said Bruce, obviously not catching my movie line reference.
“You traded it for a microphone,” I said, attempting to prompt him with the next line.
“A microphone?” asked Bruce as he failed his straight man audition.
“Never mind,” I said. “Just drive.” The hearse rolled.
* * * * *
We drove through the dark canyons between the buildings that were the long shadows cast by the early morning sun. One moment, we were in darkness. The next we were transfixed by light. And then, like a gasoline-powered cockroach, we scurried back into the shadows once again.
The extremes made it impossible for me to focus on the world as it slid by outside my window. It was all too fast, too pointless. The ordinary people of the world going about their ordinary business, but none of it mattered. None of it seemed to touch me. I was out of phase.
What they cared about was foreign to me. Their urgencies seemed so petty. I looked at Bruce. Blissfully, he was silent. He was driving with that hyper focus he had when he was stoned. At least I think he was stoned. Who knows what cocktail of stuff was running through his system? What do you call it when you huff embalming fluid?
But I didn’t care what he was on. And really, how bad can it be if you crash a hearse? This thing was a tank anyway. Even if we ran somebody over, we could scoop ‘em right up and be on our way. A hearse may be the only vehicle that comes with a built in murder alibi.
“Whaddya doing with this body in the car?”
“What do you mean, officer? It’s a hearse.”
“What’s that funny smell?”
“It’s embalming fluid.”
“Oh, right. I guess I knew that. In that case, I’m gonna let you off with a warning. But slow it down a little bit, hotshot.”
Bruce lit up a cigarette. I asked, “Can I have one of those?”
He handed them to me. It was a crumpled softpack, Lucky Strikes. I tucked one into the corner of my mouth. I was feeling anything but Lucky, but what the hell, it’s not like they were going to kill me. As I thought about it, I had spent so much time while I was alive, being afraid of things that were supposed to be bad for me, I had never stopped to enjoy… well, anything.
Bruce’s lighter made a pleasant metallic sound when I opened it. I lit the cigarette and sucked it into whatever was left of my lungs. It wasn’t like food. It didn’t sit inside me uncomfortably and uselessly. The smoke spread in my chest and made me feel warmer, lighter -- just a little bit better. It felt good. And it was the first thing that had really felt really good since I had died.
“We’re gonna need more cigarettes,” I said.
Bruce kept driving. Every time I looked outside the car, the sun was impossibly bright. It hurt my eyes to look at the world, but at the same time, it was important. Everything was indescribably beautiful. I noticed a tree, some kind of a tree, with bright red leaves that were just starting to fall. With the light behind it, it seemed as if bits of fire were dripping off the tree. The wind whirled the leaves in wild, pyrotechnic arcs.
We plunged into the shadows again. The vision was gone and I was left with the cold truth of Autumn. Right now, everything in the world was dying. With every moment, the darkness grew and grew, all part of the carefully orchestrated dance of the seasons. But what was I doing? I was neither waxing nor waning. I was not becoming or undoing? At best I was static, and at worst, I was just falling apart. There was nothing organic about it at all.
I flipped down the vanity mirror. Yeah, the hearse had a vanity mirror. If any vehicle should be a caution against vanity…
I looked at myself in the tiny, silver square. What I saw was not pretty. The left side of my head had road rash, and it seemed like one of my cheek bones was out of place. I sucked smoke and compared the sides of my battered face. Then I realized that there was smoke leaking out of a couple of the holes in my chest. It was the old cliché, though somehow it didn’t strike me as funny. And my clothes, what were left of them, were just shredded. No better than rags.
“Ugh,” I said.
“Yeah, you look like hell,” said Bruce. What a cheerleader. I didn’t care. I pulled hard on the cigarette until the flame hit the filter. Then I flicked it out the window. Maybe it would light a pile of leaves. Maybe it would catch the whole world on fire.
“You know what my Grandfather used to call those?” asked Bruce.
I just looked at him. Not knowing. Not caring.
“Coffin nails,” said Bruce. “I think it was an undertaker joke.”
I thought about it for a minute and then said, “Yeah, but am I pounding them in, or pulling them out?”
* * * * *
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” I’ve said those words so many times since I died they’re starting to wear thin in the middle. But what else do you say when your buddy drives up to a storefront that reads, “Momma Oya’s Authentic New Orleans Voodoo Store and Emporium,” complete with neon skeletons?
“Now just calm down, man,” said Bruce, “This is the woman I was telling you about. She’s beautiful. She can help you. You know what I’m saying?”
“No, Bruce, I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“C’mon man, you got to feel me on this one. Use your heart. Lead with your heart.”
“Bruce, my heart is dead as a stone.”
“Okay, man,” Bruce said, really frustrated now, “You don’t want to go see her, fine. You just tell me where else we can go. You got any better ideas?”
I didn’t. Against my better judgment, I followed Bruce inside. What the hell, it wasn’t like my better judgment was getting me anywhere I wanted to go.
Inside, the shop was steeped in the smoky smell of new-agey bullshit. Let’s call it
ass
cense. There are people who think asscense smells good. They are wrong. They are also the people who don’t shower often, and refuse to use soap unless it is made by some horribly backward people living in the middle of an impenetrable jungle. You know, the same kind of people who refuse to eat anything that has a face? But I digress.
The front of the store was small. But that didn’t keep it from being packed, floor to ceiling, with shit. There was shit everywhere. In the brightest, gaudiest colors you could imagine were plant roots, little voodoo dolls, wax candles in the shape of skulls, and let’s not forget a variety of essential oils and other asscense producing paraphernalia. As the door closed behind me, I heard the rattle of something against the glass. A small skeleton made out of wood was hung on the top of the door as a shop bell.
It was like they had gone to the same bastard who did the interior design for chain restaurants and asked, “Can you do that Voodoo that you do? But seriously, with a Voodoo theme?”
“You have got to be shitting me,” I said, again.
Bruce held up a hand that meant ‘just wait a second.’ He was trying to peer through the beaded curtain into the back of the shop, but when he heard footsteps he quickly retreated. A young woman entered through the curtain. She looked too young to be Momma anything. But girl she was -- and then some. She walked in a way that seemed to reduce other women to a collection of lumps of flesh riding on levers and pulleys. I could tell that she felt every inch of her caramel skin as it rolled beneath the white fabric of her dress.
From somewhere the lyrics to a song came unbidden to my mind, “I took her to a funeral. The dead jumped up and run.”
This was worse than smelling bacon. I mean, I loved bacon, but for the first time in my life I felt I understood the meaning of the word erotic, and my life was over. I couldn’t do anything about my desire. I felt an urge to slam my fists into something. My teeth hurt.
Bruce just stood there with his mouth open. We were both just kind of stunned. She reached towards me and gently touched a rip on my cheek. When she felt that my flesh was cold, her eyes grew wide. She sucked in air, and then screamed. In terror, she stumbled backwards until she hit a wall. Cheap trinkets and smelly bits fell to the floor around her. She collapsed, hugging her knees and sobbing.
“Great,” I said, “this is very helpful.”
“Stop,” said Bruce, “Can’t you see that she’s terrified. She could have a heart attack or something”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, “I have this effect on all women.”
Bruce ignored me and went to her aid. Big chivalry. But when he touched her she freaked out more. She kicked and slapped at him as she crab-walked into a corner. More bits of smelly merchandise fell to the floor.
“C’mon, asshole, leave her alone,” I said.
Bruce looked down at her. After a minute he said, “Sorry.”
After another minute she replied, “She told me you were coming.”
“Who told you we were coming?” I asked. Sure she was distressed, but I didn’t care. I was sick of not knowing what was going on. If she had answers, I wanted ‘em.
“Momma Oya told me that a pale man would come for me. A cold man. She saw it in her dream.”
“Where is she? I need to talk to her.”
“She saw it in her dream and then she died.”
Bruce wore a look of pity on his face. It made me sick. I said, “Well your Mom’s not going to be very much use to me now is she?”
“Hey,” Bruce said, “Have some respect for the dead!”
“I am the dead, asshole, and I’m sick of this.” I walked over and jerked the girl up by the front of her dress. “Tell me about Momma Oya. Tell me what you know.”
Her head lolled over to one side in a rag doll kind of way. She gave a laugh from low in her abdomen. Her tongue flicked out between her lips very briefly and then she said. “Are you gonna hit me? It might be more fun if you hit me.”
“What do you know?” I screamed. Or as close as I could get to a scream. My lungs weren’t pushing air very well with bullet holes in them.
“I know my Momma Oya was evil.” And with that she went limp again. I dropped her on the floor and she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. She sucked in air as if the only reason for her to breathe was to expel pain. Bruce felt sorry for her, but he still checked out her legs. Her skirt had ridden up as she slid down the wall into her private oblivion.
Only after Bruce got his libido under control did he say, “You’re an asshole.”
“I told you I didn’t want to come here.”
“Man, why do you have to be like this. Just ‘cause you’re, you’re whatever you are doesn’t mean that you have to be like this.”
“I didn’t want to be like this. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Yes you did,” said Bruce, “that rat gave you a choice. You could have stayed dead and everybody would be happier. Even you!” shouted Bruce.
“He’s not a rat,” said Marie. Bruce and I turned to face her. She raked the mess of her thick, black hair back with one hand and wiped the tears off her face with the other. She looked back and forth between the two of us. Then she came to some kind of decision. She said, “C’mon,” and disappeared into the back. We followed her through the beaded curtain.
* * * * *