Dead Things (23 page)

I can sense the ghosts now, but I’m still not getting a read on Boudreau. Not like I can’t see him standing right there, but why can’t I feel him?

I don’t have time to think about it. He sees Vivian and I, raises his hands. I can feel energy collecting around us. I yank a fire extinguisher off the wall, throw it at his head before he can get a spell off. The blow glances off his head, knocks him down.

I grab Vivian and pull her around the corner. Alex is halfway down the hall, helping somebody to their feet. He sees us. Doesn’t need us to tell him what to do.

“I’m going to eat your fucking soul, you sonofabitch,” Boudreau screams down the hallway. The voice is a weird synthesis of his and Ellis’. He’s shuffling after us, slow and unwieldy. As possessions go Ellis probably wasn’t the best choice.

We hit the exit door right after Alex, take two steps down and the door blows off its hinges. It’s not heavy, but it’s moving fast. It slams into me and Vivian, throwing us ass over teakettle down the stairs. I feel a crack in my chest. That rib’s never going to heal.

I feel like a cat in a dryer. Tumble down the cement steps. Alex barely manages to jump out of the way. We hit the landing on the next floor down, Vivian half on top of me, the door beneath us.

Alex hangs over the side of the railing, trying to pull himself up. As he scrambles for purchase Boudreau steps through the doorway, grabs him by the wrist, twists.

What Boudreau lacks in speed he makes up for in strength. The snap of bone echoes in the stairwell. Alex screams as Boudreau hoists him up, yanks him back onto the stairs.

I push Vivian off of me so I can draw the Browning. I focus all the gun’s hatred into that shot, pull the trigger. But Vivian grabs my arm and the shot goes high. Instead of blowing his head off it tears into Boudreau’s shoulder. It’s a lot worse than any 9mm should do. Blood erupts from the wound, the shoulder a ragged mess of meat and shattered bone. He almost drops Alex, staggers.

Is that worry on his face?

“What are you doing?” Vivian says.

“Killing him. The fuck does it look like?”

“But he—”

“Wants to kill us, yes.”

It occurs to me that she can’t see what I see. She doesn’t see Boudreau, or all the swirling, screaming ghosts that surround him like a swarm of bees.

She just sees some old man in a hospital gown that she’s been treating for years when he comes in off the street looking for something to ease his pain.

“That’s not Ellis. Trust me on this, okay? Please?”

I readjust my aim and Boudreau grabs Alex off the floor with his good arm and I don’t dare take the shot.

“You want him?” Boudreau says. Blood is pouring out of the shredded wound in his shoulder, the arm hanging limp. “I’ll trade. Him for you. I’ll even give you some time to think about it.”

The ghosts swarming around Ellis’ body spin faster, spiral tighter. I can see Boudreau’s face over Ellis’ pinch, recede into a point. I can’t let him get away. But I don’t want to hit Alex. I take the shot, anyway.

A blast of light and sound bursts outward from Boudreau as I pull the trigger filling the room with bright light. When it clears Alex is gone, a bullethole the size of a dinner plate in the wall where he was standing. But Ellis is still there. Or his body is. He lies motionless on the steps. An empty, broken old man.

Vivian yells, pulls herself to her feet, runs up the stairs. “Where is he? Where’d Alex go?”

I limp up after her, holstering the Browning. My ears are still ringing from the gunshots, but I think the overall chaos in the hospital has stopped.

“Boudreau’s got him,” I say. “I don’t know where.”

She leans down to check on Ellis while I look at the bullet hole. There’s no blood, thank god. If I’d hit Alex on top of the rest of this clusterfuck—

I don’t finish the rest of the thought. “How’s Ellis?”

Vivian looks up at me shakes her head. “He’s gone.”

“Probably been gone for a while,” I say. I reach under him, hoist him up over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. My chest screams at me and I almost fall over from the pain.

Boudreau probably moved in as he was dying and kept things working in his body long enough to not trip off any monitors. Would I have sensed him if he was hiding in Ellis’ body? I don’t know.

“We need to get him out of here,” I say. “Go downstairs, get a gurney. I’ll meet you there. I need to ask Ellis some questions.”

“He’s dead.”

“Never stopped me before.”

—

“Do you have a garage?” I say.

“A carport in my building,” Vivian says. “Why?”

“That won’t work. I need somewhere we won’t be disturbed. This could take a while.”

We’re heading north in an ambulance. I fried the radio and GPS when I stole it. We’ll be fine for a while.

Ellis’ body is strapped into a gurney in the back. Vivian slapped some gauze bandages over the gunshot wound so he wouldn’t leak all over the place. Couldn’t find a body bag.

“Alex has a garage. We can go to his place. He’s got a place in Hancock Park. Will that work?”

“Yeah, that’ll do fine.” Hancock Park’s old money, big houses. Wilshire Country Club shit. “I need to hit a hardware store first.”

“I know one on Robertson,” she says. “We can hit it on our way. What do you need?”

Been a while since I’ve done this. I’m not sure I remember all of it. “Hammer. Iron nails. Pliers. Dropcloth. Hacksaw would be good. Duct tape. Definitely duct tape. Maybe some rope. Couple 2x4s.” I’m missing something. “Oh, and razor wire.”

She stares at me, horrified. I can feel the gulf between us widening.

“I’m remembering something you said to me last night,” she says. “About not knowing the kind of shit you deal with.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re right. And I don’t want to.”

—

I find everything but the razor wire. The kind gentlemen at the store directs me to a fencing and lumber place up the street where I’m able to grab a spool. I shouldn’t need much. Ellis isn’t that big a guy.

“Jesus, this place is huge,” I say as we pull into Alex’s driveway. Spanish style with terra cotta roof tiles and a jacaranda tree in the yard.

“He got it a few years ago before the market went to hell,” Vivian says. “I—”

“What?”

“I was going to move in next month. Now—”

“Hey. We’ll get him back.”

Before we drag Ellis’ body out of the back of the ambulance I pull out a can of Krylon I picked up from the hardware store and spray paint “NOTHING TO SEE HERE” on all four sides of the car, casting a don’t-see-me spell as I make each pass. Vivian helps me wheel the gurney into the garage. I flick on the overhead fluorescents, close the door behind us.

I’ve heard you can tell a lot about a person by looking at their garage. What I can see from this one is that Alex is a neat freak. The cement floor is spotless. What few tools he has are put away in drawers or hanging from pegboards. A few cardboard boxes are stacked neatly in overhead racks. Most importantly, there’s plenty of room.

“What can I do?” Vivian says.

I pull out the 2x4s, the hammer, nails and rope. Pull on a pair of painter’s coveralls. “Not much at the moment. I have to get this frame set up. Ropes attached. Sling them over the rack up there. Might need your help nailing Ellis up.”

“Come again?”

I lay the beams one on top of the other in a crude cross. “We’re crucifying him,” I say. “Sort of.” I stop when I notice her horrified look. “And then we’re going to get him to answer some questions.”

“Crucifying him?” She shakes her head. “Jesus, Eric. What kind of sick shit is this? Why don’t you just talk to his ghost?”

I throw the hammer and nails down. “You know what, I’m getting fucking tired of this. I can’t ask his ghost because he didn’t leave one. Ellis has either moved on or Boudreau grabbed him before he could. Either way, there’s no ghost for me to talk to. This is what we’ve got. So either shut up and help me or stay out of my way.”

I know she’s not squeamish. You don’t make it through med school having a problem with corpses. So what gives?

“I’m sorry. This is just really far removed from what I do and—” Vivian swallows hard. “I’m worried about Alex. All right?”

She’s been holding it together, but the veneer is starting to crack. “We’ll find him,” I say.

“Okay. I’ll lay down the drop cloth and get Ellis off the gurney.”

With her help it doesn’t take long to get the old man’s ravaged body onto the cross. Positioned upside down, one foot crossed behind the other, hands behind his back nailed and duct taped to the wood. Vivian helps me hold the nails in place as I get them through his wrists.

“Tell me you didn’t try this spell when we were dating,” Vivian says.

I laugh. It’s dry and hollow. “No,” I say. “This is old magic. Learned it in New York. Had some help from an old Algonquin spirit. Michabo? I think? Looks like a big rabbit. Kind of like Harvey.”

“You know, people like us, we hear stories about these things. I know they exist. I know they’re out there. But this still sounds crazy.”

“Yeah,” I say. I finish wrapping a layer of duct tape around Ellis’ left wrist. “I know. I thought so, too. Even with the shit I do. There’s so much more out there I didn’t know about.”

I tape a couple of quarters to his eyes. Rigor’s beginning to set in and it takes some work to pry his mouth open. There’s a cracking sound as we pry his jaws apart. Vivian’s a professional the whole time. I don’t know why I thought she might not be. She’s a doctor for fuck’s sake. She knows dead bodies better than I do. I’ve never given her enough credit.

By the time we’ve hoisted Ellis up to the rafters he’s a fairly decent approximation of The Hanged Man. A half naked homeless guy with burns and scrapes, face swelling purple from pooling blood. A cut-rate Christ thrown together by mad monks.

I take a second, hang my head and give him a moment of silence. It’s not a prayer. What the hell would I pray to? I’ve met gods. They’re nothing special. But I want to give him this one last moment of respect before I turn him into a freak show.

I slide an oil pan under his body, slice a couple wide gashes into his chest to thread the razor wire through. I say a spell of binding as I unspool it around his torso, through the cuts, over his shoulders. Dark blood, dead and beginning to fester, drips into the oil pan. I slice his throat to drain him faster.

Vivian stands at the other end of the garage, watching me, arms wrapped tight around herself. I make a slice in my arm with the straight razor. With the wards Alex has on his home, I’ve left the ghosts outside. Good thing. Though they won’t come in without an intentional summoning, any that are just hanging around would be drooling all over me and I don’t need the distraction.

I drip the blood from my arm onto my fingertip, smear it on Ellis’ forehead, above his eyes, around his lips. Draw a charm on his chest.

“I hate this bit.” I say.

“All that and
this
is the part you hate?” Vivian says.

I flip her the bird, get on my knees, bring in a big gulp of air and clamp my mouth over his. I fill his lungs with air. Gag on the taste of bad teeth, rotting blood and bile. I pull away, force my stomach to stop doing handstands, spit as much of the stink out as I can. I step back, bind all the different pieces of the spell together, snap my fingers.

The razor wire flashes like a magnesium flare, the coins drop from Ellis’ eyes and fall into the pan of blood with a dull plop. His body jerks, twists, tries to yank itself off the cross. This goes on for a few seconds then stills. One nail from his wrist falls to the floor.

“Can you hear me?” I ask.

Nothing for a moment, then a labored, “Yes.” Voice a reed-thin wheeze that drags its way past decaying vocal chords. I look into Ellis’ empty eyes. Okay. Now I’ve got a dead guy ready to answer questions. So what do I ask him?

“Where’s Alex?” Vivian says before I can say anything.

Ellis grunts, but that’s pretty much it.

“Why isn’t he talking?”

“Probably because he doesn’t know. Gotta remember, he’s not in there. We’re just, I don’t know exactly, pulling shit out of his brain? Something like that. And it’s probably already starting to rot. So don’t expect much.”

“Then why are we talking to him?”

“I’m hoping Boudreau left behind some memories or thoughts behind. Happens with possessions some times. Here, let me try.” I snap my fingers in front of Ellis’ empty eyes a few times to get his attention. They track, after a fashion, and point in my direction.

This isn’t reanimation as such. More like hooking a frog leg to a battery to make it twitch. This is all about the right questions to ask. Simple questions give simple answers but they don’t always give you what you’re looking for.

“Let’s start off slow,” I say. “Tell me your names.”

“Henry Jean Walter Ellis Baptiste Boudreau.”

“And there we go.”

“What happened?”

“Bits of Boudreau got mixed up with bits of Ellis, I think.”

“Why did he possess him, though?”

Good question. “Dunno. Whatta ya say, Sparky? Why’d Boudreau pop his ugly mug in there?”

“Waiting for you,” he says. “Saw the woman. Decided to take her to get to you.”

Vivian regards the hanging corpse with an uncomfortable intensity. It’s not fear. Disgust, maybe? Fascination?

I find myself wondering if Boudreau had grabbed her instead of Alex, would I have traded myself for her? The answer comes immediately. Abso-fucking-lutely. And if I have to I’ll do it to save Alex, too.

“What does he want with me?” I ask.

“You’re important.”

“I don’t understand. Important how?”

“He needs you so he can come back. You are bonded.”

Takes me a second to connect the dots. “Sonofabitch.”

“What does he mean by bonded?” Vivian says. “Or come back?”

“He’s looking to come back here. To the side of the living. That’s why he was after Griffin. That’s why he’s after me.”

“I’m not following you.”

“He wants a body,” I say. “He wants mine.”

Chapter 22