Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives

“You should have talked to me first, Taylor! I could have told you all about her. You aren’t the first stranger she’s approached. Look, you know the old urban legend, where the guy’s just driving along, minding his own business, and then sees a woman in white signaling desperately from the side of the road? He’s a good guy, so he stops and asks what’s up. She says she needs a lift home, so he takes her where she wants to go. But the woman doesn’t say a word, all through the drive, and when he finally gets there; she’s disappeared. The guy at the address tells the driver the woman was killed out there on the road long ago; but she keeps stopping drivers, asking them to take her home. Old story, right? It’s the same here, except our woman in white keeps telling people that she’s been murdered, but doesn’t remember how. And when our good Samaritans find out the truth, and tell her; she disappears. Until the next sucker comes along. You ready for another drink?”

“Can’t you do something?” I said.

“I’ve tried all the usual shit,” said Maxie. “But she’s a hard one to shift. You think you could do something? That little bitch is seriously bad for business.”

I went back to my table in the corner, to do some hard thinking. Most people would just walk away, on discovering the ghost was nothing more than a repeating cycle… But I’m not most people. I couldn’t bear to think of Holly trapped in this place, maybe forever.

Why would a woman, with apparently everything to live for, kill herself in a dive like this? I raised my gift, and once again pastel-tinted semi-transparent images of the living Holly darted back and forth through the dimly-lit bar, lighting briefly at this table and that, like a flower fairy at midnight. It didn’t take me long to realize there was one table she visited more than most. So I went over to the people sitting there, and made them tell me everything they knew.

Professor Hartnell was a grey-haired old gentlemen in a battered city suit. He used to be somebody, but he couldn’t remember who. Igor was a shaven-headed kobold with more piercings than most, who’d run away from the German mines of his people to see the world. He didn’t think much of the world, but he couldn’t go back, so he settled in the Nightside. Where no one gave a damn he was gay. The third drinker was a battered old Russian, betrayed by the Revolution but appalled at what his country had become. No one mentioned the ice-pick sticking out the back of his head.

They didn’t know Holly, as such, but they knew who she’d come here after. She came to the Jolly Cripple to save someone. Someone who didn’t want to be saved — her brother, Craig De Lint. He drank himself to death, right here in the bar, right at their table. Sometimes in their company, more often not, because the only company he was interested in came in a bottle. I used my gift again, and managed to pull up a few ghost images from the Past, of the living Craig. Stick thin, shabby clothes, the bones standing out in his grey face. Dead, dead eyes.

“You’re wasting your time, sis,” Craig De Lint said patiently. “You know I don’t have any reason to drink. No great trauma, no terrible loss… I just like to drink, and I don’t care about anything else. Started out in all the best places, and worked my way down to this. Where someone like me belongs. Go home, sis. You don’t belong here. Go home, before something bad happens to you.”

“I can’t just leave you here! There must be something I can do!”

“And that’s the difference between us, sis, right there. You always think there’s something that can be done. But I know a lost cause when I am one.”

The scene shifted abruptly, and there was Holly at the bar, arguing furiously with Maxie. He still smiled, even as he said things that cut her like knives.

“Of course I encouraged your brother to drink, sweetie. That’s my job. That’s what he was here for. And no, I don’t give a damn that he’s dead. He was dying when he walked in here, by his own choice; I just helped him on his way. Now either buy a drink or get out of my face. I’ve got work to do.”

“I’ll have you shut down!” said Holly, her voice fierce now, her small hands clenched into fists.

He laughed in her face. “Like to see you try, sweetie. This is the Nightside, where everyone’s free to go to Hell in their own way.”

“I know people! Important people! Money talks, Maxie; and I’ve got far more of it than you have.”

He smiled easily. “You’ve got balls, sweetie. Okay, let’s talk. Over a drink.”

“I don’t drink.”

“My bar, my rules. You want to talk with me, you drink with me.”

Holly shrugged, and looked away. Staring at the table where her brother died. Maxie poured two drinks from a bottle, and then slipped a little something into Holly’s glass. He watched, smiling, as Holly turned back and gulped the stuff down, just to get rid of it; and then he smiled even more widely as all the expression went out of her face.