Get Zombie: 8-Book Set (56 page)

“Do you need mouth to mouth?”

I thought about it; was it a joke? I laughed it off.

When we felt it was safe, we continued posting our fliers. A part of
me called me a dummy. I had a chance to kiss a girl, and I blew it.
Lynn was much older than me – by at least ten years – and
that made the idea kind of weird. Shouldn't people have “relations”
with others their age, yes? I wasn't sure why I thought that way, but
something in me said I was wrong.

As we went around putting up fliers, and the more I thought about
her, the more I wanted her. So what if she was older. Age. Hmph!
Didn't make much sense to put a number on love. Was I in love? I felt
good. Maybe that was enough to know.

An old Japanese fellow in a Hawaiian shirt, wearing a red bandana,
walked up to us, holding one of our fliers. He pointed at me.

“Are you the one in this flier? The one with the eye patch?”

I looked at the flier, then to him.

“Yes. What can I do you for?”

The old man sighed.

“I need your help on something. My daughter is possessed by a
demon.”

I put my hands up in surrender.

“Demon? I'm sorry. I don't do demons, if you know what I mean.”

The old man sighed again, loudly, looking like someone just walked
over his grave. He looked like he wanted to cry.

“But I thought....” he paused. “Please?”

I was going to say something, when Lynn stepped in front of me.

“Of course he'll do it!” she said, smiling.

The old man began moving his body up and down in joy, trying to jump.

“He will?”

I looked at her.

“I will?”

Lynn put her arm around me.

“This fine fellow needs our help. You can handle a little
exorcism.” She looked at the old man. “What we have here
is a bonafide demon hunter. A damn demon destroyer!”

I frowned.

“We do?”

The old man was in awe. He stared at me. He examined my hair, touched
my face, tapped on my eye patch, squeezed my cheeks together (on my
face).

“Amazing,” he said. “Of course! It makes perfect
sense. For what is a zombie but a demon driving around in a corpse!”

Lynn nodded.

“Right! And Boss here has killed many a-zombie, which means, by
default, he killed many a-demon. He's a goddamn expert!”

The old man looked worried.

“I don't want my daughter killed. Promise me you'll be so
gentle with her.”

Lynn assured him his girl would be fine, and the old man nodded,
reaching into his back pocket for something. Lynn tightened her arm
around my neck in excitement. The old man pulled out a ball of
hundred dollar bills. My one good eye almost popped out of my mouth.

For a second, I almost believed her little lie.

I was an exorcist that day.

I need a break from writing
Ghost
City
. That stupid-ass biography is wasting my time. There's
no one to read it. Here I am in a ghost city. I'm alone in the world,
and I'm writing a book. Why? Why am I doing that?

Therapy.

Every now and then I catch myself talking to...myself. I'm even
doing it now. It scares me. Maybe if I write all my thoughts
down...maybe I can get normal. Makes sense enough. I think?

Funny thing about writing a book....

I'm starting to feel scared.

I hope it's not too short or too long. A novella is perfect. Not
overdone like a novel, but also not underwhelming like a short story.
Novellas are perfect. I think I'm enjoying this whole writing thing.
I may do more – audience or no. Just for my own entertainment.
Who knows? Maybe one day someone will find my books – and enjoy
them! I like that idea: Of pleasing someone. It's already working.
Writing is allowing me to learn more about myself. I should keep my
books safe. Put them on a shelf in Ziploc bags. Maybe put them in a
freezer, or maybe I should bury them? Yes! I'll do something to
preserve my books, starting with this one.
Ghost
City
. I never thought about it before, but that title makes
more sense now.
Ghost City
.
I don't wanna get geeky on you, but I think you can figure out what
it means. What it
really
means
.

I'm so afraid of this book being boring. I need to add more
adventure into it. And more heart! Yes, that's the ticket. I should
tell people about the time I saved a young kid – a girl. That
was a tough one to go through. I buried it deep in my brain a long
time ago, but maybe it's time to dig her up again. I need to face it
for good. Get it out of my system. Take this thorn out of my mind.
Own that sad period of my life.

Who knows.

Maybe I'll be stronger for it.

Shells. That was that little girl's name.

I wonder if she's in Heaven.

Maybe I should kidnap one of these ghosts and ask.

The old Japanese man was named Jichard, and he lived in Kaimuki. We
got out of his car. The neighborhood was a quiet one – except
for this ongoing scream. I assumed it was his daughter. He took us
into his house, and the place was a mess. Furniture had been thrown
through windows, tables were sticking out from the walls, and a big
hole was in the ceiling. He said his daughter's room was through
there – right above us. I saw someone poke their head through
the hole. The little girl was staring right at us, so surprised! She
must've been just seven.

She spat and growled at us and called us terrible things.

A part of me died inside.

That demon in her was turning her into a real beast. The father
looked at us and begged for our forgiveness.

“Please,” he said, “it's not her fault.”

“I know,” I said. “How do you think this happened?
Was your daughter playing with a Ouija board or trying to read tea
leaves in a bowl?”

He said, “No.”

One day he came home, and she was just all messed up, drawing dicks
on the walls and crawling on the walls like a spider and spitting on
his head from above. I looked around and saw the dicks on the walls.
They were all flaccid. The father began to cry. I felt sorry for him.
I always wanted a daughter. I always saw myself as the sort of dad
you'd find sitting in the dark with a shotgun on his lap, just to
scare the boyfriend when he came over for the first time. But that's
just me.

The little girl was named Sheala.

She was still looking down at us from that hole. She began to throw
socks at us. They were
stained
. I said I had enough and ran up
the stairs to confront the demon. Lynn grabbed my arm and told me to
relax. If I were to beat this demon, I had to be in control of my
emotions and think clearly. Demons were tricky, she said. I had to be
cool. Stop and think about my moves. I agreed, nodding for a long
time with my eyes closed, taking in deep breaths, and then I
continued up the stairs...calm and collected.

Jichard walked up to Sheala's bedroom door.

He told us to be careful. That once this door opened, and we walked
in, Sheala would start spitting again. I said we could handle
it...and he opened the door...and we crept in.

Jichard was right.

Sheala began spitting like a machine gun, even making the sounds. We
just stood there with our mouths and eyes zipped. Her spit was
freezing cold, then hot, then cold again, then normal. She continued
spitting. This went on for approximately five minutes on the second.
Sheala said she was done, and we opened our eyes and mouths.

Sheala – or Shells, as her father called her – was on her
bed, slithering around like a snake. It was like she had no bones. It
was disturbing and sensational at the same time. I asked Lynn if she
brought tools to handle this situation. She didn't know what the heck
I was talking about. I had to use my wits to win this fight.

“What is your name, demon?”

“Shoehorn,” it said. “And I come from Hell!
Blahhhhhhhh!”

The thing stuck its tongue out as it said that last part. I,
surprisingly, wasn't disgusted.

I asked it politely to leave the little girl's precious body, but the
demon just laughed and farted in my general direction. NOW I was
disgusted. I wanted to strangle that demon out. How dare it just come
on in here and torment Shells? I was filled with a sudden rage, the
likes I had never felt before. I kept thinking about how this demon
wasn't paying for rent, how it could just stay in that place and not
PAY. It was a slap in the face for the rest of us rent-paying humans.

I grabbed a wooden chair and threw it at Shoehorn, hitting it right
in the face. The little girl cried and called for her daddy. Jichard
ran up and put me in a headlock. Lynn protested and jumped on his
back – on him like white on rice. I then had TWO people on my
back. I spun around and backed up into walls to get them off. It was
only when I fell back into a dresser that they let go. We all hit the
floor, which was covered in a thick layer of clear spit. It felt like
I was on jello. Jichard rolled around in pain and fell through the
hole. We heard a giant crash and crawled to the hole to see the news.
We saw another hole. Jichard had fallen into the basement. He sat in
a washing machine that was in the middle of a wash cycle, unconscious
and spinning around. His head was tilted back with his mouth open.
Shoehorn looked over my shoulder and spat into Jichard's mouth.
Disgusted all over again, I punched the demon in the face and sent
that beast flying back onto the bed. Shoehorn bounced up and down.
Laughing!

I began laughing, too, just to prove that I was not afraid.

Lynn joined in, but her laugh was different. Unhappy.

Shoehorn laughed louder, trying to win. I picked up a wooden desk and
made to throw it, but it just made that demon laugh
faster
.
Its eyes were burning with power and humor. Those eyes. Those
giggling eyes. They sent shivers up my front. I was losing it! I had
to get a grip! I yelled out as loud as I could – the demon put
its hands over its ears – and I threw the chair at Shoehorn. I
got the monster right in the face. And then I jumped on it,
strangling it, wrestling with it, putting it in headlocks and many
wrestling holds, like the Camel Clutch, the Reverse Chin-lock, the
Cobra Clutch, the Mandible Claw, and of course, the Bite of The
Dragon.

Shoehorn tapped out and promised to never enter this child – or
any child – again. I had won the fight. The demon flew out from
the girl's eyes, and she was all normal again. I let go of her. She
asked for her dad, and I explained that he was washing clothes and
would be with her in a minute. Tucking the little girl into bed, Lynn
and I ran down to the basement and tried to wake Jichard up from his
mighty slumber. I prayed that the fall hadn't killed him. I was lucky
that night. The man woke up and cried. He had a dream about his
daughter, that she was dead. We assured him that in fact the opposite
was true. We took him up to his daughter's room as proof of her being
cured of the demon. He went over and kissed her on the cheek,
whispered something into her ear. The cops were on their way.

He shoved his hand down his crotch and gave us a bunch of money, even
some quarters.

To celebrate, I treated Lynn to a night out on the town.

We went to every single taco place in Honolulu.

Then we went home to shower off all that spit.

It was good night.

When I woke up, I gathered everyone together – all those
hippies – and showed them all the money I made from my exorcism
job. They all drooled over the money. It was rent money, I explained.
It would hold us off for a little while. In the mean time, everyone
needed to get jobs to help out. The hippies all went, “Yeah,
yeah, yeah,” and went back sleeping on the floor and doing yoga
and singing songs and stringing flowers together to make leis.

There was a knock on the door. As I went to answer it, a hippie said
that SHE was going to go work as a waitress somewhere in Waikiki. I
was impressed. I told her how happy it made me feel to hear her
finding work, and we smiled at each other. Sadly, a week later, she
would be hit by a truck transporting pigs. It was one of the few
times I cried in that month.

I opened the door and was greeted by a fat woman in a red dress. She
was holding a briefcase. The first thing she said was, “There
are five hundred dollars in here.” But it wasn't a zombie
hunting job. It was another exorcism. My first instinct was to not do
it. It wasn't my expertise. The fat woman, whose name was Tish,
begged me to do it. She was a friend of Jichard. He told her all
about my healing his daughter, Shells. Tish trusted me. She didn't
want to go to all those
other
exorcists. They charged too
much, and, according to people she chatted with, these exorcists made
a mess. In one instance, a whole boat blew up. The exorcist in charge
said, “I didn't do it! Blame the demon!” There was no
responsibility. People with demon possession problems were desperate,
in need of help – they needed someone trustworthy.

Word was spreading fast about me.

Still, I didn't want to do it. I wasn't THAT experienced. I didn't
want to let anyone down, especially well-meaning folks. Better I
direct them to someone better. A
better
exorcist that knew
what the Hell they were doing. Maybe they should talk to their local
priest?

And then I thought of something: My zombie business was just picking
up, but the demon thing was already in high demand. For now, I could
use this exorcism money to move out – move out into my
own
place. I liked that idea. I'd make enough money to leave these
hippies behind. I'd just have to play this exorcist game for a little
while, and I'd have Lynn move in with me, of course.

Before I left, I put the money in an envelope and gave it to the
landlord. I didn't trust those hippies in paying the rent. I had an
image of them running off with the money and buying marijuana or
hashish or opium or potatoes or whatever it was hippies got off on.