The Vengeful Dead (6 page)

“Can you hear that? I swear it sounds like crying.”

Nick nodded, his grim face staring at her curiously now. “That’s the babe, I think. You can hear that?”

The cleaning man edged around behind Jackie and quickly walked toward the back door. Jackie turned around in a slow circle, until she finally determined a direction. It was above them. She pointed at the ceiling. “It’s up there.” Jackie then dropped her hand and turned back to Nick. “What’s going on here, Nick? Why can I hear that?”

“Not sure,” he said and put a hand on her shoulder. “You OK? You’re looking pale now.”

“’Cause I’m fucking freaking out here, Nick. Why can I hear a crying baby? I don’t have psychic abilities. I don’t!”

“Maybe you do now,” he said. “Let’s go up and check things out. This could be very important if it’s true.” He headed up the stairs, but Jackie balked. Halfway up, Nick turned. “It’s safe, Jackie. It’ll do little more than scream its lungs out at us. Annoying, but hardly dangerous.”

Easy for you to say
, Jackie thought. Could something have happened to her on the other side? Could it be more than just Laurel? Could it be every fucking thing out there? “It needs a damn off switch,” she said, and marched up to find the screaming dead baby.

The temperature dropped with each step up. The smell of blood and death ramped up a notch. By the time she reached the landing, it wasn’t just cold, it was freezing.

Jackie frowned and began to breathe through her mouth. The odor had grown incessant, cloying at her stomach. If she didn’t know better, Jackie would have sworn someone had just been gutted. The landing wrapped around the stairs, the four doors going back all closed. She walked toward the back, feet silent on the runner stretched the length of the floor. There was no doubt where the screaming was coming from. Nick was already there, opening the door, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to do. When he opened the door, Jackie’s stomach lurched but nothing changed. The noise level remained constant, and the smell still gnawed at her stomach.

Nick waited for her, just inside the doorway. “Bloodstained bed, Jackie. That’s all. A lot of blood though.”

She walked up and stopped next to Nick. Even breathing through her mouth wasn’t enough. The stench of blood and human insides filled the room like a cloud, thicker than normal air. “God. You’d think we were wading in it the way it smells.” She tried to hold her breath.

“Tell me if you see the babe’s ghost,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to be materialized.”

The room looked like what you’d expect from any suburban master bedroom: a long dresser against one wall, a queen-size bed with matching head and footboards, matching bedside tables, a chair and ottoman beside the window. From there, the rest was in total disarray. Lamps were broken on the floor. The mirror above the dresser had fallen behind and there were shards of glass strewn over the dresser’s top. Pictures were broken and torn on the floor. Someone had taken a knife to the chair and ottoman, with stuffing billowing out of its many wounds. The bed had been stripped, but the bloodstain remained. It was enormous. Blood spatter from the gunshot wound to the head adorned the headboard and splashed the wall behind.

There was no baby to be seen. Yet the muffled wailing continued, persistent and distressing. Jackie squatted down and peered under the bed. Her breath was already beginning to run out and her stomach would not deal with another lungful of the fetid air. She walked quickly over to the dresser, opening the drawers, only to reveal a scattering of rumpled clothes. Jackie could not localize the sound. It emanated from every part of the room. Across the room from the bathroom, the closet door was open, and Jackie ran over to look, only to find a neatly ordered space filled with shoes and suits and dresses.

Finally Jackie had to walk over to one of the windows and slide it open in order to suck in some of the cool fall air. “How the hell am I supposed to investigate crime scenes like this? Walk around with a goddamn gas mask on?”

“You learn how to tune it out. It takes some practice,” he said. “Is the smell of blood really that strong?”

Jackie sucked in a lungful of good air. “It’s like someone’s guts have been baking in the summer sun for the past three days. It’s bad.”

When she walked back over, her gaze froze upon the middle of the bed. The blood there did not look soaked in but now glistened like it truly had been freshly spilled. Jackie blinked and rubbed at her eyes only to find the stain appeared to be seeping back out of the bed, a fresh pool burgeoning up from within the mattress.

“Jesus-fucking-Christ,” she said, staring in rapt horror. A moment later it sank back in, leaving the normal, dark, day-old stain. “Did you see that, Nick?”

“No, but I felt something. The wail is a bit clearer too,” he said. “What did you see?”

Jackie pointed at the mattress. “The um, the blood was seeping up out of the bed.”

He raised an eyebrow and walked over to the bed. “Curious.” Nick reached down and touched the mattress. He closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, his mouth drawing into a thin, grim line. “He’s here all right. Just on the other side.” He stood back up and looked at Jackie. “Recent deaths tend to make the wall between a bit thinner.”

Jackie stared down at the brick-red stain, about four feet across. It took a lot of soaking blood to make a stain that big. “That’s nice to know.”

“Touch it and see,” he said, giving her a nod toward the bed. “Please. I’d like to know if you’re able to make any sort of contact.”

She took a half step back.
Contact?
“What do you mean?”

“Just if you get any greater sense of the spirit of the babe. Its voice should be sharper, like it literally is just a few feet away. You may almost feel like you can reach out and touch it.”

A shiver ran down Jackie’s spine.
Touch it? Are you fucking insane?
Despite the apparent ease with which Nick had performed the action, this was not a normal thing to do. This was downright creepy. Jackie slowly leaned forward half expecting the blood to come surging up at her once again, but nothing happened. In what must have looked like slow motion to Nick, Jackie reached down with the tip of her finger and touched a small splotch of blood near the edge of the bed.

The wailing cries pierced her skull in full-on surround sound, eardrum-ringing rage and terror. The blood repooled upon the mattress, churning and splattering across the surface as though something lay there, squirming in the gore.

Jackie staggered back, mouth agape, her ears ringing. The feeling of death swam through her like a tidal surge, colder than ice, and flashes of memory flooded her brain. The bone-eating cold of Deadworld. Her stomach revolted, and Jackie stumbled to her knees, retching up the morning coffee onto the carpet.

Jackie clutched at her head and screamed, “Get out! Get out, get out, get out!”

A moment later Nick was at her side, arms around her. His cool, calm voice in her ear. “It’s gone, Jackie. The door’s shut. It’s gone now.”

She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and tried to listen between her own ragged breaths. The babe’s cries were distant once again. “Nick? Can we get the hell out of here? Please? Now?”

He pulled Jackie up to her feet and walked her toward the door until she had regained her equilibrium. At the bottom of the stairs, the cleaning crew stared at her with wide-eyed curiosity. Nothing to see here, not a fucking thing. Jackie hurried past them and out the door into fresh nondead air.

Chapter 8

At the top of the stairs to her apartment, Nick said, “I’ll make some coffee or will that be too harsh on your stomach?”

Jackie had not considered that he would want to come in. She thought he was just getting her to the door and making sure she didn’t throw up yet again. He had refused to let her pay for getting the floor of the Porsche cleaned. There weren’t many things more humiliating than losing it in a guy’s car, unless of course you were so drunk you didn’t even remember doing it. Regardless, she did not want Nick fussing over her in her apartment. Fussing was the start of a slippery slope that Jackie did not want to consider right now. She just needed some time to collect herself and calm down.

“Nick.” She stopped and looked up at him, her hand resting on the doorknob. “I’d rather be by myself for a bit, if you don’t mind. My brain is fried. My stomach hates me, and I just need quiet for a while.”

“That’s fine,” he said, with no hint of disappointment. “We should probably talk about what happened some more. Get Shelby and maybe Laurel if she’s available. I don’t want you running around thinking you’ve gone insane, Jackie.” He offered her a faint, wry smirk. “You’re just psychic.”

Jackie opened the door. “God. Please don’t call me that. I’m not a psychic.”

“But you do have some psychic abilities. We can help you figure it all out, Jackie.”

She gave him a wan smile.
But I don’t want it figured out. I just want the fucking stuff to go away.
“Thanks. I’ll call you later, Nick. And I’m really sorry about the car. I still can’t believe I did that.”

“Don’t worry, Jackie. It’s fine. Don’t hesitate to call if you have any questions or just want to talk about things.”

Jackie nodded and closed the door, leaning back against it with a sigh of relief. If he’d pressed, she probably would have let him in. He was just so damn polite about everything. Nothing she said or did or wanted to do put him out of sorts. It made you not want to say no to him, and that feeling had the butterflies in Jackie’s stomach doing handsprings. Bickerstaff waltzed up and rubbed himself against her ankles and Jackie picked up the tabby, holding him tightly against her chest and rubbing his ears.

“Hey Bickers, baby. Guess what Mommy saw today?” He purred and rubbed his face against hers. “That’s right, a ghost. Can you fucking believe it?” Bickers pulled back to look at her and then rubbed the other side of his face against her. “I know. Freakiest fucking thing ever. Mommy would just as soon never do that shit again.” She dropped him down to the floor where he trotted toward the kitchen. “Hungry? Well, let’s see what the hunky old vampire has for you today.”

She served Bickerstaff up his dinner and grabbed a beer from the fridge. Probably not the best thing for her stomach, but the tequila would kill it.

“Laur? You around by chance?” she yelled out into her apartment. “Could use your help with this one. Kind of important.” The only sound was the cat hungrily slurping up cat food. She could sense no dead people either, but Jackie wasn’t sure if that meant anything or not. “Laur!” After a minute, Jackie finished off the first beer and walked to the bathroom. She needed a shower badly. Even though she hadn’t vomited on herself, she felt as though the stench of blood still clung to her, had coated her skin and soaked into her clothing.

A shower, another beer, and she was at least cleaner. Still no sign of Laurel. Jackie had really hoped she might hear or at least somehow be aware of what had happened.

“Laurel!” Jackie yelled for the seventh or eighth time. She had lost count. “Where the fuck are you?”

Why wouldn’t she come? Jackie needed her now more than ever. She needed someone to explain what the hell had happened back there in that house. She wanted to know if that was a normal experience and more importantly how you stopped doing it. Even after two hours and a hot shower, she could still sense the cold that lingered in her body. Her joints had a faint, arthritic ache to them. It didn’t hurt, but she could tell it was there. The dead had seeped into her bones. Pouring herself a glass of wine, Jackie wrapped up in a blanket and flipped through channels on the television, completely at loose ends.

Bottom line, she was terrified. Sensing the dead was Laurel’s forte, not hers. The psychic radar she had so fondly poked fun at over the years was not equipment she possessed, nor did she want to. So what the hell had happened back there? How did a visit with the dead make her psychic? What she needed was Laurel, and more information on the crime, neither of which she could just call up. Belgerman would have her flagged on the computer and he would want to know why she was snooping around on a case she was not supposed to be involved in. Hearing dead babies and seeing blood-surging mattresses would not go over well. Hello, loony bin.

She channel-surfed for a few minutes but quickly realized she was in no mood for television. Instead, Jackie got up and walked over to her piano. Bickerstaff quickly joined her, hopping up on top to sit and look down upon her. Something about her fingers moving across the keys enthralled him for some reason.

“What would you like to hear, Bickers? Something slow and relaxing?” She reached up and scratched under his chin. “My thoughts exactly.”

Jackie began the single quiet notes of Tchaikovsky’s
Romance in F Minor,
remembering how Laurel used to stand beside the piano, leaning over the edge with her chin resting on her hands. She thought the look and smile had been for the playing, but Jackie understood now that the look had been directed at her not the music. A look of love that she had failed to recognize. Nobody had ever looked at her in such a way, so how was she to know what it really meant? She heaved a sigh and continued to play, closing her eyes and letting the notes tumble through her body, letting them take away the stress and anxiety of earlier in the day. Much as she played, however, the music failed to eliminate the image of a squirming, ghostly mass smothered in blood. Like a train wreck, her mind refused to look away.

She stopped and opened her eyes. “Fuck. I can’t work like this, Bickers. I can’t do it. How the hell did Laur deal with this every day?”

A cold breeze tingled at the marrow of her bones. The familiar ache bloomed inside her once again, and Jackie could almost hear the doorway to the other side opening up. A moment later, Laurel stood in her familiar spot beside the piano, the television screen glaring through her gray, translucent form.

The smile on her face was even more hesitant than her voice. “Hi, hon. I heard your song. I had to come see you.”

Jackie blinked a few times to make sure she wasn’t just imagining it. Had she come for her song? What about the million other times she had called out for her when she was drowning in tears and cursing the rising sun for letting her see another day? She did not hide the sarcastic bite in her voice. “Hello, stranger. Nice of you to drop in.”

Laurel winced. “I’m sorry, Jackie. I am. It’s just . . .” She raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “I can’t help you right now, but I’ve missed you so much. I wanted to let you know I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Jackie stared at her best friend, trying to pull apart the feelings of relief and outrage. She didn’t try too hard. “Except over to Shelby’s maybe? Latch on to those sweet, vampire lips or . . . or just what the hell does a ghost and vampire do together?”

“That’s unfair, Jackie, and you know it.”

She shrugged. “So? Fairness isn’t too high on my list when I’m balling my fucking eyes out because you’re dead, only you’re not . . . really, but now I get to see dead people every day apparently. Yea, me! Because something happened to me when cowboy vampire saved my sorry ass and I got to play with all the ghost people and now I’m fucked, thank you very much.”

Laurel’s translucent figure straightened. “My death isn’t the real problem. Shelby and I decided—”

“Shelby?” Jackie slammed her hands down on the piano keys and Bickerstaff made a mad dash for the bedroom. “Since when has she got any business deciding anything regarding my life? What the fuck, Laur! Just a little help over the past two weeks would’ve been nice. Hell, even popping in to say hello. But she’s got no right to be deciding anything. She’s not my goddamn mother!”

Laurel closed her eyes for two seconds. “She didn’t decide anything for you, hon. It was for me. I can’t help you get over me. These first steps need to be yours. If I help . . .” She gave Jackie a pained smile, looking on the verge of tears. “I won’t stop. I can’t be your crutch anymore.”

“Crutch.” Jackie crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. “I thought you came over to hear me play? Now we’re going to talk therapy, which by the way, I didn’t need until you died.”

“You did,” Laurel said, her voice quiet and sad, “but I wanted to be your therapist.”

“What? What bullshit is that?”

“I couldn’t not help you, Jackie. I wasn’t capable of saying no to you. For anything. Don’t you see?” Laurel threw up her hands and turned away from the piano. “You’re too pissed off at me to see anything.”

“Yes, I’m pissed,” Jackie yelled. “My best friend said she would stick around for me, make sure my life was back on track, and she’s been gone since day one. All it’s done is make me more fucking miserable.”

She turned back around and gave Jackie a plaintive smile. “You have to be able to help yourself, Jackie. You need to—”

“Get out,” she snapped and waved Laurel off. “I don’t need you here if this is what I’m going to get.”

The smile faded and Laurel nodded. Her voice was tearful. “I see. It’s not the time then.”

Jackie didn’t look at her. “Good-bye, Laur. Go bonk your vampire.”

She said nothing and when Jackie finally looked up Laurel was gone. The mood to play had been stamped out. Jackie got up and went to the kitchen for a sweet, double shot of tequila. Maybe it was time for two or three.