Kill the Dead

BRIGITTE PICKS ME up in a very new pale blue Porsche Targa. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, plus a leather jacket for protection. She greets me with a deep kiss when I’m inside. I kiss her back, but keep an eye open. I have to admit that after Lucifer and Wells, I’m starting to feel black helicopters circling. Ritchie seems like the kind of control freak who might have Brigitte followed. Or the Vigil could be back there. I can slap Ritchie into shredded wheat or hex him into a bowling trophy, but if Wells gets a bug up his ass, the world will get ugly fast. Brigitte uses her thumb to wipe lipstick off my lower lip. Maybe Romany are psychic after all because she says, “Relax. No one is watching. You’re not the only one trained to look for these things.” “Point taken.” “Where are we going?” I read her the hospital’s address on South St. Louis Street off my phone. She punches it into the GPS on her dashboard and we head out. I always thought those boxes were for losers, but it shows us a quick, direct route through the traffic. I make a mental note that in the future I should only steal cars equipped with the boxes. There are TV trucks parked across the street from Linda Vista. Can you go ten minutes in this town without seeing some idiot running down the street in a Steadicam rig like he has a giant robot hard-on? I hope the hospital is haunted so when the director has the cinematographer zoom in on a really interesting bloodstain on the floor, he gets a late-night Christmas-carol visit from the blood’s owner. “There will be security if they’re filming. How do we get in?” asks Brigitte. “I found a map of the place online. We can use a trick I have for getting in places without using the door. But you don’t get to ask any questions about it.” “Now you absolutely have to show me.” We walk across the street, pointing at the building like a couple of tourists. I get Brigitte to snap pictures with her phone while I look for out-of-the-way shadows. We find some by the old emergency entrance. “Take my hand and don’t let go until we’re all the way inside.” “All right.” She resists a little as I pull her into the shadow. And then again when I pull her out of the Room and through the Door of Restless Ardor. “What was that place?” “What did I say about questions?” “You’re no fun.” “Yes, I am.” We follow the map to the rear of the hospital, beyond where the crew is filming. We’re on a side hall and can see the lights and cameras where they’re shooting in the wide central corridor. The director yells, “Action!” A woman screams. Voices moan. A bloody nurse runs by, chased by a mob of filthy, groaning patients. Fuck me. They’re making a zombie movie. One more turn and we’re in the morgue. The white tile walls are cracked and streaked with grime. There’s a banged-up gurney against one wall. Someone went at the padding with a knife and left it scattered on the floor like white tumbleweeds. I don’t want to know what’s inside the pullout coolers in the walls. We head into the big freezer. It’s dark inside and—surprise, surprise—the lights don’t work. Just as I’m trying to think of some hoodoo that makes light without blowing something up, the place brightens. Brigitte’s turned on a small LED flashlight she had in her pocket. She asks, “What are we looking for?” “We’re not. I am. Unless someone left the door open, you need to be Sub Rosa to find these things.” I feel along one wall and then another. It’s between the seams running down one row of tiles. The wall swings open silently. Brigitte coos. “I love magic. You must show me more.” “I think you’ll see plenty before this is over.” The door swings shut behind us and we’re in a low stone passage. Yellow light outlines a curtain up ahead. I go through first and hold the curtain back for Brigitte. Cabal understands Sub Rosa chic. This location is even shittier than Springheel’s shack. The place looks like the house of the month in Better Homes & Monsters. It’s all dark stone walls. There’s a huge fireplace with andirons the size of parking meters. The furniture is made of old stained mahogany. Most of the varnish has been worn off the armrests on the chairs and they’re covered with water stains and glasses and cigarette burns. Traces of half-eaten food and empty liquor bottles are scattered on every surface of the room. There are tapestries of hunting parties and war scenes hanging on the walls. One shows horsemen with scimitars slicing up a village of women and children. The men are already dead, tossed on a bonfire in the lower right corner of the tapestry. Cabal is going for a Vlad the Impaler look, but he’s ended up with a Slayer album cover. Cosima, Cabal’s sister or wife or both, comes through a curtain that runs the length of one wall. On the curtain is an image of a Black Sun wheel. Ancient, hard-core hoodoo that supposedly gives dark mystics power over the material world. The Nazis loved the Sun wheel. Of course, things didn’t work out so well for them, so maybe they forgot to plug theirs in or something. “You can’t just walk in here without an appointment. Cabal won’t like it,” says Cosima. “We met at the Geistwalds’ party.” “I know who you are and he still wouldn’t like it.” “I don’t like having to walk in here and I’ll like having to walk out even less, so you can let him know I’m here or I will.” Cosima looks Brigitte up and down and goes back through the curtain. Brigitte and I follow. The next room is similar to the one we just left, but the furniture is a lot more comfortable. Plush sofas, love seats, and pillows on the floor. At least a dozen people are passed out asleep around the room, some dressed and some not. They were really living it up. Wonder what they were celebrating? Cabal comes out of a door that looks like it was looted from Lucifer’s broom closet. He’s wearing a stained floor-length black robe, a little like a cassock. He looks skinny out of his rags and is cleaner than he was at the Geistwalds’, but he still smells like he uses sewage for aftershave. He’s holding a half-empty wine bottle in one hand. Cabal smiles, showing big yellow teeth, and holds out his hand. He knows I don’t want to shake it. I’ve met guys like this before. Everything is a test with them. Will I shake his hand? Do I get mad when he makes a dumb joke at my expense or weepy when he insults me? Alpha-male bullshit. But I can’t get too mad. I’ve done it plenty myself. I take his hand and shake like we just bought Manhattan for some M&M’s and a carton of Luckies. Cabal waves us back into the other room and away from his snoring guests. He stumbles and sways trying to step over them and almost dumps his wine on a naked kid sleeping in golf shoes. Cabal waves us over to the big table and drops down into the head seat. Brigitte and I sit next to each other. He offers us the bottle. Brigitte puts up a hand and I shake my head. “To what do I owe the honor of such an unexpected, but charming visit?” “I wanted to ask you something.” “Goodie. I love twenty questions.” “You can drop the drunk act. If you were drunk, I could smell it in your sweat. All you did was take a hit off the bottle and swish it around your mouth so your breath would smell of wine.” He gives me a wink. “Clever boy. Cuts right to it, doesn’t be? We can’t put anything past this one, can we, young lady? I didn’t catch your name.” “Brigitte Bardo.” “Of course. Ritchie’s darling. Forgive me, my dear. I only know you from your work and I didn’t recognize you without a cock or two in your mouth. It’s lovely to finally meet you in the flesh.” “And you.” “If you don’t mind me inquiring, do you have just the tiniest bit of Gypsy blood in you?” “I don’t mind you asking. And yes, I do.” “I thought so. You people play some glorious music. Of course, you weren’t so appreciated where I’m from. Most likely it was all the stealing.” “If there’s anything missing after our visit, send a bill to Simon’s and I’ll have it taken care of.” He laughs and takes a swig from the bottle. “Love your Nazi curtain,” I say. Cabal turns in his chair and looks at the Black Sun like he’s never seen it before. “Oh, that. One has to keep up appearances. Clients expect a bit of the scary-scary when they call on me.” “Is that why you have a slaughtered village hanging on your wall?” He moves his eyes to look at the tapestry. “Sadly, no. That’s more of a family portrait. We’re not the ones on horseback but the ones on fire.” He has a pretty strong magic barrier set up around his thoughts, so I can’t tell if that’s a sad damned story or a pretty effective lie. “I wanted to talk to you about Drifters.” Cabal shakes his head. “It breaks my heart to disappoint you, but the resurrected are not within the purview of my business dealings. I toil in the more prosaic fields of demons and elementals.” “But you’ve used them, haven’t you? Maybe you don’t use them on a regular basis, but how about in some kind of rent-to-own deal?” He shrugs. “As I said, one has to keep up appearances. When a competitor or social upstart oversteps the clearly demarcated boundaries of my sphere of influence, they must and will be dealt with swiftly and in as decisive a manner as it takes so that they might serve as an object lesson to others with similar rash inclinations.” “So, you have used Drifters against your enemies.” “Once or twice. I won’t deny it.” “When was the last time?” “I can’t recall with any great clarity. One gets old. Many of the things that were so crystalline clear in one’s youth become misty and difficult to plumb from the depths in our later years. Though I work hard to keep up appearances, I’m afraid I’m not the man I once was.” Brigitte says, “In my experience, that’s what men say when they’re exactly the man they used to be, but hope to deny it with age and excuse it with youth.” Cabal claps his hands in light, quick applause. “Well said, young lady. You’ve ensnared me in a petite prevarication. Which, unhappily for you, doesn’t alter the fact that I have not consorted with the resurrected, either deliberately or inadvertently, in many, many years.” I say, “It doesn’t help Regina Maab that it was a long time ago. Eaten is eaten and dead is dead.” “Regina? What does she have to do with this?” “Nothing, other than the fact that when she stepped on your toes you sent some Lacunas over with a jar of barbecue sauce and charcoal briquettes.” His eyes narrow and he sits up. All traces of the drunk act are gone. “Listen to me closely, young man. That’s not the kind of thing I’ll tolerate being murmured about me, not by you or any other soul in this sunny burg. Regina and I had our differences, yes. And there came a moment when she required the administration of a lesson that she would remember on a molecular level. And yes, I vainly and foolishly employed a gaggle of resurrected in what you might term a professorial manner to deliver said lesson, but when Ms. Maab took leave of Los Angeles, she was most exceedingly and annoyingly alive.” “Why should I believe you when everyone else is positive you had her snuffed?” He leans back in his chair and takes a box from his pocket, opens it, and pulls out what looks like a wriggling earthworm. “Do you have a light?” he asks. I reach for Mason’s lighter and Cabal picks up the earthworm, running a grimy finger along the length of its body several times. The worm straightens and stiffens until it looks like a pink chopstick. I hold out the lighter and flick it. Cabal leans in, holds my wrist, and puts the worm’s head into the flame. He puffs a few times and the worm catches, the end glowing cherry red. As Cabal smokes, he takes out a small black book and a pencil. He flips through the book, writes something down, and slides the piece of paper across the table to me. “That is Regina’s number in Mumbai. That’s far away in a country called India. You might have heard of it. If you adjudge to ring her, please give the old girl my best.” I hand Brigitte the number and she looks it over. I let her hold on to it because her clothes probably don’t get destroyed as often as mine. “What kind of problem did you have with the Springheels?” He looks genuinely puzzled by that. It caught him off guard and I can feel the edges of his mind sifting through old memories. “None. They were like water buffalo shitting in the streets of Kathmandu. Like any lifelong resident of that fair city, they were something I neither noticed nor particularly cared about.” “They were an important family once.” “Virgin sacrifice and bloodletting were considered of the utmost importance once, but when they outlived their efficacy they were abandoned along with the other discarded refuse of an earlier, though in some ways more graceful, time.” “You old Sub Rosa families are pretty concerned about your place in the social pecking order. The Springheels were the first family in America. You didn’t think that kind of history might overshadow you just a little?” “The Springheels were a dusty diorama. A museum display illustrating Neanderthal man’s first crude efforts to control fire and not shit themselves at every opportunity. The only reason the Springheel family still existed was as a concession to nostalgia and sentimentality. They might have begun their days well in this green and verdant land, but through shrewd planning and incandescent gamesmanship, they managed to metamorphose from ancient royalty into dirt-scrounging hillbillies. They threatened my house as much as this luminous worm.” He holds up his pink cigarette. “What happened to them?” “Time. The world. Charles Springheel, the one who repatriated the family to California, designed and constructed exquisite charms, protective objects, talismans, and the like. He was, at heart, a tinkerer. And a brilliant one, but sitting in your ivory tower fiddling with Lilliputian cogs and thingamabobs is no way to maintain one’s standing in the world. Many of us purchased Charles’s contraptions over the years, both to bolster the old boy’s sense of purpose and to add a bit of lucre to the family’s dwindling fortune. But there’s only so much one can do. A fool determined to saunter off a cliff will find his way around even the most formidable barricades.” I’m learning to really hate Cabal. I don’t want to believe the words coming out of his skull-white face, but after seeing the pathetic and maybe deliberate death scene at the Springheel house, I can’t argue with what he’s saying about the family. “Since you’re our resident demon expert, did Enoch Springheel ever ask you for advice on how to summon or control them?” “Enoch seldom discoursed with anyone. Certainly not with me. The few times a year he would deign to appear at Sub Rosa soirees, he left the distinct impression of a man marooned in the Sahara of his own psyche.” “Who would we go to if we wanted to learn about Drifters or perhaps hire one?” Brigitte asks. Cabal shakes his head. “No one mucks about with the resurrected these days. Too dangerous. You’d be making yourself vulnerable to a veritable avalanche of peril, both from the families and our lovely local Inquisitor, Medea Bava.” “So, there aren’t any Drifter experts in L.A.?” “There are a number; however, by publicly acquiescing to such a dubious practice, they would be aiming a gun to their own precious skulls. To put it in blunt terms that you’ll understand, they won’t talk to you. I’m not so rude as to call myself an expert, but I have more than a passing knowledge of the resurrected. Is there something specific you wish to know?” “Unless you know someone in town who runs with them, no.” Cabal drops the last few inches of the burning worm on the floor and crushes it out with his bare foot. “I’m curious about the depth of your knowledge concerning our hungry friends. If I had a sense of your understanding, perhaps I could speed you along in your investigations.” “Out of the kindness of your heart?” He smiles. “To get you off my fucking back.” I look at his eyes. It doesn’t look like he’s lying. And he’s genuinely interested in hearing what I’ll say. “Brigitte is the expert, but she’ll talk longer and I’m in a rush, so here’s what I know. There are Drifters and Lacunas. One is dumb as dirt and one is maybe as smart as a house-trained poodle. They bite and they won’t stop until you rip out their spines.” Cabal looks at Brigitte. She clears her throat. “I could recite a thousand years of lore and list the anatomical and biological differences of the species, but for the purposes of our mission, James is right.” Cabal kills off the wine and drops the bottle on the floor. “I see that I can aid you children with your quest, after all. When I place this bauble of knowledge into your greedy hands, I’d be immoderately grateful if you would quietly exit the way you came and leave me to my guests.” “Deal.” “Most Sub Rosa don’t have any greater understanding of revenants than you. They memorize a few salient facts and drop them into conversations at cocktail parties to make themselves sound more interesting than they really are. I know this because most people believe that the resurrected are a binary species, but the truth is they are tripartate. You mentioned golems or Drifters, as you call them, and Lacunas. They are a formidable pair but there is also a tertiary species known to those with a deeper knowledge as Saperes and to the man in the street as Savants. The peril with this particular resurrected is that you will often not perceive its true nature until it’s eating your guts au gratin. Savants appear to be fully functional members of the brotherhood of man. They can chitchat, hold a job, dress themselves, and they possess, or seem to possess, the power of thought as clearly and intoxicatingly as you or I.” “So, a Savant is a Lacuna that can call for pizza delivery. I don’t get it. Why are they so special that no one knows about them?” “The first, most obvious reason, is panic. Admitting the existence of a strain of resurrected invisible to even adept Sub Rosa would have dire consequences. Human history is strewn with the corpses of those entangled in the panicked slaughter of mobs. This is especially true if the person or people perceived by the general population is different. Wouldn’t you agree, little Gypsy?” “Definitely.” “That was the obvious reason. What’s the other?” “Saperes are special because nature or God or some other entity has chosen to make them so. You see, at any one time there are exactly twenty-seven of them in the world. No more. No less. If one is destroyed, a new one appears somewhere else. It then becomes the burden of those of us, as you say, in the know, to find it. It’s not unlike Buddhist monks searching for each new incarnation of a Lama subsequent to the death of the old one.” “Is that all?” “You’re one of those dark souls impossible to satisfy, aren’t you?” He wants to start an argument. I just smile and shrug. “The number of Saperes appears deliberate. If you add two and seven, you get nine. Nine is a holy number. Three times three. The Trinity times the Trinity. I could go on, but you see the pattern.” “What does it mean?” “I have no idea. No one does. And that’s another reason Saperes are such a closely held secret. We haven’t a clue as to how they befit the everyday workings of the world.” “How does knowing any of this help us find last night’s Drifters or who’s controlling them?” “We care for Saperes by seeding them strategically around the globe. If one is destroyed in Sumatra, the others remain safe while we scour the globe for its replacement. The three most proximate Saperes are in New York and Mexico City. Can you guess the location of the third one?” “In Los Angeles,” says Brigitte. “Bellissima. I assure you, the twenty-seven cities were not chosen willy-nilly. Each is a magical crossroads. Each is a power spot, Los Angeles being a distinctly active one.” “You think if we find the Savant, it can help us?” “If it wants to.” “How can we make it want to?” Cabal grins like a naughty little boy. “Give it what it wants. What all the resurrected want.” “You’re fucking joking.” “I’m not telling you to gut some hapless soul. Go to an abattoir. Go to a boucher. Their desire is simply for fresh flesh. Human is the preferred fare, of course, but pig is close enough to man-flesh.” “How do we find the Savant?” asks Brigitte. “Call the number on the piece of paper I gave you.” “You said that was Regina in Mumbai.” “I lied.” “Where is Regina?” “Well, she’s certainly not chained up in my basement. That would be wrong of me. Still, Regina does tend to inspire the desire to lock her away somewhere deep and dark and full of more than an immoderate amount of spiders.” I look at Brigitte. She shakes her head. I look back at Cabal. “If you’re sending us into a trap, it’s not going to work. And even if it does work, just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I can’t get to you.” “I’m exceedingly aware of your reputation, Sandman Slim. The phone number is true and leads to no trap that I know of. You’ll want to call soon. If anyone can point you to true north, it’s Johnny Thunders.” “The singer?” “No. The zombie, you dunce. Johnny Thunders is your Savant.” He waves a tired hand in my direction. “Johnny’s minders will explain.” If Cabal is lying, he deserves a teddy bear from the top shelf and the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. I’ve heard world-class whoppers and told a few of my own, but this guy is spinning sable from shit. Or he’s just let Brigitte and me in on one of the world’s weirder secrets. If he’s lying, it would be a fun excuse to come back and punch holes in Castle Grayskull. But if he’s telling the truth, it would make life a lot easier. “One more thing,” says Cabal. “There’s someone else you might chat with concerning the resurrected. Rainier Geistwald, Jan and Koralin’s son. He’s a clever boy, and while a genuine brat, his brains are more acute than he cares to let on. He’ll be an important man one day.” Cabal stands up. This time he doesn’t offer his hand. “I could say it’s been enchanting, but I’ve already told you one lie today. I couldn’t bear it if you lost all faith in me. You know the way out. Feel free not to linger. Ta-ta.” He turns and disappears through the Sun wheel curtain without looking back. Brigitte asks, “Do you think he is sending us to people who will try to kill us?” “I don’t know. What would be more fun for him? Killing us right away or watching us bump into things and skin our knees?” “True. Would you like me to call the number?” “Let me. It’s my town. I should be the first one through closed doors.” “How chivalrous.” “That’s French for stupid, isn’t it? That’s okay. If we have time, I’ll give you a demonstration of naked jousting.” We leave through the Room and back to her car. She doesn’t ask any questions this time.