The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL) (6 page)

The thought made him look down at his legs just to make sure he’d
actually
put his pants on. Yep, they were on. At least, he’d remembered to do that this morning.

Ever since his wife, Flora, had died six months ago, he’d been getting steadily worse. He had moments of lucidity—like right now—but those didn’t last and they were always followed by long stretches of lost time.

Lost time. He wondered where it went? He knew it had to go somewhere…he just couldn’t put his finger on where that might be.

He looked around the room, his brain trying to remember how he’d gotten to the recess room, but for the life of him he couldn’t fathom how. He knew he was safe, that the other denizens of the Shady Glen Row Home For The Aged were all around him, enjoying the extracurricular activities and supplies
that abounded in the recess room: cards, board games, books, painting supplies, clay to mold…even a television set for the lazy ones. There was a wealth of things to do if you wanted to participate—and he wanted to participate.

He looked down at his gnarled old hands, the skin coated with liver spots the size of silver dollars, and was disgusted. When had he gotten so old?

It was a question he asked himself on a daily basis.

He sighed, wishing he were anywhere but in the old, worn down body he was in—and that’s when he noticed the lightness. It was in his fingers and toes, inching its way up his arms and legs toward his core. He’d never experienced anything like it before. He tried to speak, to let the woman sitting beside him (he had no idea what her name was) know there was something wrong with him, but words just wouldn’t come.

A stroke? Was he having a stroke?

Not long before Flora died, they’d watched an old woman having a stroke at lunch. It’d been awful, the woman’s face going slack as her body shook, then she was pitching forward into her plate of oatmeal. The aides had run over as quickly as their crepe-soled shoes could carry them, but the woman was already dead. He’d known it, Flora had known it, all the other old people around them had known it…because being so elderly themselves, when Death came to cull one of the herd, it tipped its hat to all of them.

He tried to get a word out, any word, but his vocal chords weren’t working. He looked around, eyes fluttering in their sockets, trying to catch someone’s gaze, let them know he was in trouble, but no one seemed to be paying him any attention.

The lightness quickly overtook his body and he knew there was no coming back from it. Whatever had ahold of him wasn’t going to let him go.

Liddy had noticed Howard nod off, but she hadn’t thought much of it. He usually fell asleep halfway through gin rummy, leaving the others to finish the hand without him. But the game had ended now and Howard was still asleep, his chin resting against his concave chest.

“Howard…?” Liddy said, reaching out a stick-thin arm, the skin hanging off the bone like a flesh drape.

She poked Howard in the fatty part of his upper arm, but
instead of a startled, sleepy response, Howard remained inert, his chin continuing to rest against his chest. Liddy didn’t need to poke him again. She had a pretty good idea Howard wasn’t going to be playing gin rummy with them anymore.

“It’s all right, Liddy,” Howard said as he stood above her, the sight of his own, lifeless body a bit hard to take.

He reached out a hand and placed it on Liddy’s shoulder, but it just went right through her like a shadow. He lifted up his hand, surprised to see that the skin was still old and liver spotted. He’d hoped his ghost would be in the image of his younger self.

“Oh, well,” he murmured, just glad the pain from the rheumatoid arthritis he’d been battling these past five years was finally gone.

He waited patiently for Liddy to collect herself. It took her a few moments of deep breathing before she was calm enough to sound the alarm. Her voice came out in a tight, nervous curl, but the two on-duty orderlies heard her and ran toward the table, their dark eyes sad with the foreknowledge that their efforts would be futile—and then, as the two men in their crisp white orderly uniforms began to probe his dead body, looking for his nonexistent heartbeat, Howard slowly backed out of the room.

*   *   *

freezay and his
charge didn’t make it to the car. They were attacked the moment they set foot outside—well, the moment
Freezay
set foot outside; the kid was a ghost, whether he knew it or not, and didn’t have a corporeal form.

The assailants moved so quickly Freezay didn’t have time to prepare for the onslaught, instead, all the years he’d spent as a human policeman, and then as a detective for the Psychical Bureau of Investigations, kicked in. Slamming his fist into the face of the first man who’d dared to step into his personal space, he watched the man’s nose explode into a Rorschach of blood. The man dropped to his knees, cupping his ruined nose in his hands as if this would stop the blood from flowing out.

Freezay didn’t have time to feel bad about ruining the man’s face. Someone else was already grasping his shoulders and trying to knock him off his feet. Keeping his weight on the balls
of his toes, he sent a back kick into the guts of the new attacker, his heel connecting solidly with the man’s solar plexus. Instantly the pressure on his shoulders slackened and he turned around to catch the shocked look on the other man’s face as he tried to draw breath, his eyeballs nearly popping out of his eye sockets.

To his consternation, a third attacker descended on him now—this one bigger and more lethal looking than the first two combined. Freezay tried to fend the larger man off, but his blows only seemed to antagonize the giant. The fight—if you could call the undefended pummeling Freezay gave the giant’s chest—only lasted a moment or two and then Freezay was airborne, the man’s meaty hands gripping him around the middle and hoisting him heavenward.

The giant began to spin in circles, his feet as nimble as a dancer’s, the forward motion making Freezay’s stomach lurch—and then the giant sent him flying. Unprepared for the abrupt dismount, Freezay’s back and head slammed into the brick wall separating his property from his neighbor’s and he saw black. But his vision cleared pretty quickly when he realized the giant was on the move again. Ignoring the throbbing in his head, he used the wall to drag himself back onto his feet.

His front doorway was obscured from the road—and his nearest neighbors—so there was no chance someone would see the fight and call the police. Besides, the fog had already begun to roll in, coating the world in a thin film of cloudy gray. Even if the attack had happened farther out on the driveway, the likelihood of anyone noticing them would still be slim.

Freezay couldn’t count on the kid to help him, either. The boy was merely a ghost without any ability to affect human reality. Which meant Freezay was entirely on his own. With that realization, he quickly decided that, yes, the best defense was really going to have to be a good offense. Rather than waiting for the giant to make his next move, he would have to get the jump on the big man first. And that meant he was going to have to make a full-frontal assault on the giant if he was going to have any chance of taking him down.

He steeled himself for the pain he knew was about to come, and, head bowed, burst off the wall like a swimmer, crashing
into the big man with enough force to knock them both off their feet. The giant didn’t know what hit him. He landed hard on his back, cracking the brick on the paved walkway. His body was so overgrown with steroid-created muscle he flailed like an upside-down turtle as he tried to right himself.

Freezay used the pause in action to reassess the situation. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the ghost boy taking off down the driveway.

Good luck with that, kid,
he thought, then turned his attention back to the fight already in progress.

The giant was out of commission and the goon with the ruined face had beat a hasty retreat, but Solar Plexus was still lying on the ground trying to catch his breath. Freezay walked over to him and placed his large black boot on the man’s chest. He pressed down, lightly at first, and then with more pressure. The man started wheezing, eyes wide with fear. He had red hair and a weasely face boasting two protruding front teeth that made him
seem
dopey—though Freezay knew looks could be deceiving.

“Who sent you and what do they want?” Freezay demanded.

His head was pounding and he’d somehow managed to knock a front tooth loose, so it wiggled helplessly in his gum as he spoke.

Weasely Face shook his head.

“Get…off…me.”

Freezay increased the pressure and the man cried out as one of his ribs cracked.

“I don’t want to dispatch you, but you’re pushing it, buddy,” Freezay said, shaking his head.

Out of his peripheral vision, he saw the giant struggling to get up.

“Don’t even think about it or I’ll come over there and put you permanently out of commission,” Freezay shouted and the giant ceased his struggles, a hangdog expression on his face.

“Now, you,” he continued, grinding the heel of his boot into Weasely Face’s chest. “Tell me what I want to know before I crack another rib.”

Weasely Face raised his arms in supplication and Freezay eased up with his boot. A shudder ran through the prone man’s body.

“Supposed to take you…” he wheezed, “back to Death, Inc. Someone there wants to talk to you about something.”

Freezay slid his boot off the man’s chest.

“Why didn’t you just say that?”

Weasely Face coughed and sat up, cradling his side. It was apparent it hurt him to even draw a breath.

“The President and CEO of Death, Inc., requested your presence personally.”

Freezay nodded. He’d expected Calliope to come harass him about the job offer she’d made him up at the Haunted Hearts Castle—Head of Death Security or something equally as nebulous—though he wouldn’t have pegged her as the kind of gal to send out the Goon Squad to pick him up.

“If Calliope wants to talk to me, she can just wormhole herself over here and say hi,” Freezay replied, offering Weasely Face a hand up, which the other man took hesitantly.

Behind them, the giant had begun to struggle again like a bug on a pin.

“Calliope?” Weasely Face said, his grip tightening on Freezay’s hand. “You must be mistaken, brother, there’s no Calliope…”

“No Calliope?” Freezay echoed, confused.

“There’s only Death and his name is Frank.”

With that, Weasely Face grinned, revealing those dopey-looking buckteeth of his again. Then all pretense of submission dropped from his face as he reached out and slammed his fist into Freezay’s gut, penetrating the flesh and sliding into warm, gooey innards. Freezay blanched, the pain unbearable as he felt the goon’s fingers maneuvering inside his guts.

“Fuck…off,” he wheezed.

Which only made Weasely Face laugh.

“Not so much fun when the shoe’s on the other foot, is it?”

He began to tug on Freezay’s small intestines as if he could extract them in one long, sausage-y string.

“You like the gift we left you?”

“What…gift?” Freezay grunted, his body in agony.

“The body in the bedroom.” Weasely Face giggled. “Poor kid didn’t know what hit him.”

“Bastard,” Freezay growled—and then he spat at Weasely Face.

The gob of saliva and mucus hit the goon square on the cheek, soft as a kiss. Weasely Face started, but the surprise didn’t last long and was quickly replaced by raw anger. Freezay watched the rage build inside of the other man, hatred boiling over as he reached up with his free hand and wiped the spittle away, smearing it against his jeans.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Weasely Face said—and now he was grinning, but there was no mirth in his cold, dark eyes.

“Why not?” Freezay said, arranging his face into the smuggest expression he could muster.

Trying to beat the smirk off of Freezay, Weasely Face backhanded him; the blow was hard enough to make Freezay’s head snap to the left with a sickening
crunch
—and then he saw stars as Weasely Face yanked at his guts with the hand that was entrenched in Freezay’s innards.

“Too bad you didn’t know it was a ‘dead or alive’ kind of invitation,” Weasely Face said, his jack-o’-lantern grin splitting his face in two.

The last thing Freezay saw before he blacked out was Weasely Face leaning in toward him, his hot breath sweet and sour as he spoke:

“Sayonara, buddy. Long live the rightful Reign of Death!”

*   *   *

jarvis opened the
door, once again expecting only the Realtor, but instead, found himself staring at a trio of very powerful-looking women. Obviously, he knew Clio because he’d been her father’s Executive Assistant (as he was her sister’s now) and had known her all her life, but the other two women were strangers to him. Though, there was something strangely familiar about the girl with the long, dark hair and the livid scar running across her face.

“Where are your manners, Jarvis?” Clio said. “Are we supposed to stand on the doorstep all day?”

“Yes, of course, come in,” Jarvis said, flustered as he opened the door wider so the women could step inside.

“I think you’ve meet Callie’s best friend, Noh, before”—that was why the girl looked so familiar; she’d just grown up since the last time he’d seen her—“and this is Jennice…the
Realtor
you called to sell Sea Verge?”

The annoyed question mark at the end of her sentence was a not-so-subtle demand for answers.

“Hi,” Jennice said, sticking out her hand for Jarvis to take.

As her warm fingers slipped in between his own, he decided Jennice wasn’t at all what he’d expected from a Newport real estate agent. She was young for one thing—in her early twenties, if that—and she had a round, pleasant face. Her dark eyes were fringed with thick black lashes and her mouth was pleasingly full and bow shaped. She was wearing a long, cotton dress in a rich mulberry color that did nothing to accentuate her curves, but, instead, hung like a potato sack on her Rubenesque frame.

What a shame to hide all that beauty under a bushel,
Jarvis thought, his appreciation for the larger-bodied woman no secret to anyone who knew him. If his heart hadn’t already been attached to another, he would’ve most definitely given Jennice the masculine attention she richly deserved. As it was, he was taken, so all he could do was give her a warm smile and tell her it was lovely to meet her.