Secondhand Souls (5 page)

“I don’t know, Cassie. I’m trying to figure it out. Let’s put the book back and I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Thanks.”

Minty disconnected them. “With you and Rivera, that’s a couple of hundred souls uncollected right there.”

“And you think it might be thousands.”

“In the Bay Area alone.”

“We’re probably fine, all those souls and nothing has happened.”

“Banshee,” said Minty, holding a long finger in the air to mark his point. “She calls herself a
harbinger
of doom, Asher. You know what a harbinger is?”

“I’m really hoping it’s a brand of Scotch.”

“It’s a messenger that tells you what is
going
to happen. With a banshee, that message is that death is coming.”

Charlie shrugged. “Big Death or little death?”

Fresh shrugged, shook his head.

“Then you need to help me find a body,” said Charlie.

“What?”

“That’s why I called. You help me find a body, then I can help you fix whatever the banshee is warning us about.”

“Like a corpse-type body?”

“Not exactly. Someone who is going to be a corpse, but before they become a corpse.”

“Doesn’t that describe everybody?”

“I mean
right
before they die. Like we have to be there at the moment of death.”

“Are you asking me to help you kill someone, because no.”

“Let me get Audrey. She’ll explain.”

5

The People Under the Porch

C
höd,” said Audrey. The
d
was silent, it rhymed with “foe.”

“Chöd?” Minty Fresh repeated. He couldn’t stop looking at the surprised comma of her hair, for which he was grateful, because it kept him from looking at Charlie, which made him uncomfortable. When Audrey came in she insisted that Charlie come out of the pantry, so now they sat at an oak table in the breakfast room of the Buddhist Center, Audrey and he on chairs, Charlie sitting on his mixed nut can atop the table.

“Chöd’s the ritual I will perform to get Charlie a new body.”

When Minty had first seen her in his shop, several years ago, when she was rail thin, wore no makeup, and her shaved head was still in stubble, it would have been easy to believe she was a Buddhist nun, although he remembered at the time thinking she might be a chemotherapy patient, but now, with her drag-queen hair and a girlish shape filling out jeans and a San Francisco Giants thermal, it was hard to make the leap.
This
woman had been given the secret books of the dead by a Tibetan master? How could that be? She was dating a puppet!

“She can’t use the
p’howa of forceful projection
ritual that she used to put souls into the Squirrel People,” said Charlie.

“There would be no way to know that there wasn’t another soul in someone’s body,” Audrey said.

“We don’t know what would happen, but at best you’d end up with two personalities battling,” Charlie added.

“More likely two lunatics in one body, neither functioning,” said Audrey.

“And y’all can’t just use a corpse why? Your thingy of undying?”

“
P’howa,
” Audrey supplied.

“Because it’s not permanent,” Charlie said. “You remember the old ladies who were here at the Buddhist Center when you and I first came here, the ones that were in my book but who didn’t die because Audrey used the
p’howa of undying
on them?”

“Yeah, weren’t they living here?”

“Well, they’re all dead.”

“Six months,” said Audrey. “That’s the longest anyone lasted.”

“Really? Sorry. Why didn’t you call me?”

“The
Big Book
said we weren’t supposed to call you,” said Charlie. “I believe you said something like, ‘Don’t ever call me, Asher. Ever, ever, ever.’ ”

Minty bowed his head and nodded. He
had
said that. He said, “But you
did
call, and there you sit, you and all your little friends are fine, a year later, not even a stain on your wizard coat, while those old ladies died in six months.”

“We don’t quite know how they work—the Squirrel People,” Audrey said, wincing a little toward Charlie.

“It’s okay,” Charlie said, putting his claw out to comfort her. “I’m one of them.”

Audrey put her index finger in Charlie’s talon and looked into his expressionless black eyes.

“Wait,” said Minty Fresh. “Y’all aren’t . . . ?”

“No,” said Charlie.

“No way,” said Audrey.

“That would be creepy,” said Charlie. “Although, did I show you this?” He started to unbelt his robe, beneath which he appeared to be wearing an innertube wrapped around his waist.

“No!” said Minty Fresh. “I mean, yes, you showed it to me.” He held up a hand to block his view of Charlie and squinted between his fingers until the croc-headed puppet person retied his wizard robe. He found it easier to cope with the sight of Charlie if he pretended he was a really complex speakerphone, but a speakerphone with an enormous peen was a peen too far.

“Mister Fresh,” said Audrey, “we need you to help us find someone who will willingly vacate their body for Charlie.”

Fresh pushed back on his chair as if he needed distance in order to see her. “How the hell would I find someone like that, and if I did, why the hell would they do that?”

“Well,” said Charlie, “if they knew they were going to die anyway, that their soul was going to leave their body anyway, they might.”

And at last Minty Fresh knew why they had called. “Y’all want me to tell you when a new name appears in my date book so you can what, go talk someone into giving up their body?”

“Yeah, and it’s going to have to be the right person,” said Audrey. “It’s going to have to be someone who will die accidentally. If it’s someone who is terminally ill, I don’t know if the disease won’t just continue like it did with the ladies.”

Fresh shook his head. “You know the names don’t come annotated with a cause of death? Just a name and the number of days we have to retrieve the soul.”

“Right,” said Charlie. “But Audrey can go find the person. See if they’re sick. If they’re the right gender. I don’t think I could deal with being a woman.”

“Because being a woman would be a step down from what you are now?” Minty Fresh smiled.

“Because if I woke up in the morning and saw my breasts, I’d never get out of the house,” Charlie said.

“He does like breasts,” said Audrey.

“Although we only had the one night together,” Charlie said.

“But you were very attentive,” said Audrey.

“I’m always attentive. I’m looking at them right now.”

“Stop it!” Minty said. They
were
a couple. They were talking like a couple. The freaky-haired Buddha nun and the crocodile-wizard monster. It was wrong. Deeply, deeply wrong. Was he the only person on earth who had to be alone? “I can’t do it. You shouldn’t have called.” He stood.

“You’re the only one who can help,” said Charlie.

“It’s impossible. I have to get about finding out if the other Death Merchants in the city were replaced, if they’re doing their job.”

“Mr. Fresh,” said Audrey, standing. “When I thought the Death Merchants were somehow imprisoning human souls, when I was trying to rescue the soul vessels from you guys, the Squirrel People helped. They fanned out all over the city. I found a few of you, but they found others on their own. They can see the glow of a soul vessel. They can move around the city in the shadows. They could help. We could help.”

“No.” Minty Fresh turned to leave, bent to go through the door. He’d learned his lesson about the hundred-year-old doorways in this place before. There was still a forehead-shaped dent in the woodwork above the kitchen door from when he’d stormed in here to save Charlie the first time.

Charlie jumped off the table and scampered after the big man. “Fresh, my daughter needs me! She doesn’t even know I’m alive.”

“Well, go see her.”

“I can’t go see her like this.”

“She’ll be fine. Kids are resilient.” He didn’t know anything about kids, but he’d heard people say that. “She’ll understand. She’s the
Big Death
.”

“No she’s not. She seems to have lost her—well—powers; she’s just a normal kid. Her hellhounds disappeared, and
if
the Underworld is rising again, she won’t have anyone to protect her.”

Fresh stopped but didn’t turn. “I don’t mean to be critical, Asher, ’cause I know you got a lot on your mind, but that’s the part of the story you lead with.”

“Sorry.” Charlie stood in the entry to the parlor. Audrey joined him.

“Calling you was my idea,” said Audrey.

“So,” said Minty, “the one thing that was supposed to end all this light versus dark, manifestation of the Underworld on earth, crazy shit that went down a year ago,
the rise of the Luminatus
, that has been undone?”

“Apparently,” said Charlie.

Minty turned to them now and began to count on his fingers. “So there’s a banshee loose in the city, warning of coming doom. You, Rivera, and possibly many other Death Merchants have not been collecting soul vessels for over a year, and we don’t know what happened to the souls of all those who died in the city during that year. You don’t even have a shop anymore to exchange the vessels if you were collecting them. And the only thing that was keeping the forces of darkness at bay has been demoted to, what, a first grader?”

“Second,” said Charlie. “But she’s in the advanced reading group.”

“So, really, we are totally, completely fucked. And by
we
, I mean everybody.”

“Pretty much,” said Charlie, nodding furiously enough that his jaw flapped a little.

“Life is suffering,” said Audrey, cheerfully.

Fresh nodded. “All right, then. I’ll call you with the names.”

“Just like that?”

“I have to collect the souls anyway. I find someone in my book is young, healthy, male, and what else?”

Charlie started to untie his robe again, “One about this size if—”

Audrey interrupted, “Just the name and address if you have it. We’ll see if we can find any Death Merchants.”

“Yeah, you gonna have a hard enough time convincing someone they are going to die so they need to vacate their body so the wizard lizard there can move in.”

He turned to leave, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Oh, did I tell you that the Emperor is making a list of all of the city’s dead?”

“What for?”

“No fucking idea, I just didn’t want you to be the only one got to whip out a surprise.” He laughed—the resigned laugh of the doomed—as he walked out.

Outside on the street he paused by the door of the great bloodred Caddy as he fished in his jacket pocket for his keys. Fog had rolled up out of the bay at sundown and was drifting in a misty wave from the south. On
this
street they had come for Charlie, the Morrigan, snaking out of the sewer grates at either end of the block, singing their taunts even as Fresh was bearing down on them in the Caddy—screeching in anger and agony as he ran them over, the claws of one raking into the metal of the Caddy’s hood as she was dragged under the bumper, the other tearing at the rear fender as his tires burned across her back. The guy at the body shop said the fender looked like it had been attacked by a grizzly bear. He’d never seen anything like it. “Me either,” Minty had said. “Nobody has.”

He cocked his head, thinking he might have heard a female voice on the street above the jingling of his keys. Just laughter, maybe—girls out for dinner or drinks a block away on Mission Street, their voices echoing distant and diffused because of the fog. Probably.

T
hey stared at the doorway as they listened to Minty Fresh’s steps recede and the front door close behind him.

Audrey checked the clock. “I have to lead a meditation at seven. They’re going to start arriving soon. You might want to get out of sight.”

“I should have asked him about Lily.”

“He would have brought it up if he wanted to talk about it. Why don’t you go ask Bob and the others if they remember all the places they collected soul vessels? They really might be able to help.”

“I don’t really feel welcome down there.”

“Don’t be silly. They love you.”

“Lately it feels like they might be plotting to kill me.” Despite having been liberated from his beta-male DNA, Charlie still viewed the world with glassy-eyed suspicion, due in no small part to the fact that he had already been murdered once and hadn’t cared for the experience.

“Take snacks,” Audrey said. “They love snacks. There’s some trail mix on the counter.”

“Sure, snacks,” Charlie said, heading for the kitchen. “If only Jesus had thought to take snacks with him into the lion’s den.”

“Jesus didn’t go into the lion’s den, that was Daniel.”

“Well, Daniel, then. I thought you were a Buddhist.”

“I am, but that doesn’t make me an oblivious nitwit, too.”

“Is that any way for a nun to talk?” Charlie called back, but Audrey had already headed upstairs to change. He scampered into the kitchen, grabbed a packet of trail mix off the counter, jumped down, ducked out the dog door, hopped down the back porch steps, then through the little hatch under the steps into the sanctuary of the Squirrel People.

The city under the house was a maze of mismatched found objects patched together with zip ties, silicone glue, and duct tape, all lit from above by low-voltage LED lights strung along the floor joists of the great Victorian, which kept the entire space in a state of perpetual twilight. Audrey had purchased the lights at Charlie’s request, after he had watched several of the Squirrel People nearly burn the house down while trying to construct an apartment from discarded yogurt containers by candlelight.

There was no one around.

Charlie had spent very little time down here, choosing to spend his days on the upper floors of the Buddhist Center, either with Audrey or reading from the many books in the library. When he was reading he could fly away into the wildest skies of imagination, untethered to the reality that his soul was trapped in a wretched creature cobbled together from meat and bone, like us all.

Charlie entered the main passage, which was constructed entirely from automobile side windows. Once in it, he felt as if he were walking in a long, serpentine aquarium. Despite the disparate materials from which it was constructed, the Squirrel People’s city had a strange symmetry, a uniformity of design that Charlie found comforting, because it was built for someone his size, yet disturbing, because it was so unlike anyplace human beings lived.

“Hey,” he called. “Anyone home?”

He made his way along a street that was lined by old computer monitors, each gutted of its electronics and filled with a nest built from throw pillows and fabric scraps.

Still no one. The city had tripled in size since he’d been down here, and as he moved he encountered open, communal spaces, as well as what were clearly spaces meant to preserve privacy. The Squirrel People did not mate, as there were no two alike, no two made from the same sets of parts, but they paired off, each finding some affinity with another that Charlie could not see. The only thing they had in common beyond their size—which was chosen quite by accident when Audrey was studying to be a costume designer, long before she’d gone off to Tibet, and she had wanted to design and sew elaborate costumes without the expense of the materials for full-size models—was that each housed a human soul. The first of the Squirrel People had been little more than animated dress forms. Later, Audrey had scavenged the shops of Chinatown for animal parts, trying to give each of them a distinction, trying different parts for limbs, testing efficacy, using first fresh meat and later smoked for the protein that the soul would direct into forming a unique, living creature.