Undead to the World (5 page)

The body goes into Charlie’s trunk, along with the knife.

“What are you going to do with it?” I ask him.

“Better you don’t know,” he says. “But don’t worry—nobody’s going to find it.”

I nod. “Thank you,” I say. “I don’t know what I’d—”

“Go home. Don’t talk to anyone. I’ll come over tomorrow and we’ll hash this all out,
okay? It’ll be all right.”

I want to hug him, but I just nod. “Yeah. Okay.”

He gets in and drives away, carefully.

I’ve got a lot to think about on the walk home.

*   *   *

“
Jace
!”

I jump three feet straight up and my eyeballs bug out six inches from my skull. Okay,
not really, but that’s what it feels like.

I’m a block away from my house. I’ve got the book—wrapped in a plastic shopping bag—clutched
to my chest. And standing directly in front of me on the sidewalk, blocking my path,
is Vince Shelly.

Vince is, not to put too fine a point on it, the town drunk. He’s got a crappy little
house I think he inherited and some sort of disability pension, which is enough to
keep him inebriated pretty much all of the time. He’s more into beer than the hard
stuff, though, which means he’s usually just wobbly as opposed to falling-down wasted.
He’s bald on top, with long, greasy gray hair to his shoulders, and a ridiculous pair
of muttonchop whiskers that seem to go with the Harley-Davidson hoodie he’s wearing,
though I’ve never seen him on a bike. Stained gray sweatpants and scuffed loafers
finish off the outfit, no doubt handy when you don’t want to fiddle with anything
as complicated as zippers or laces.

“Hey, Vince,” I say. He’s not all that bulky, but the way he’s swaying from side to
side keeps me from darting either way around him. “Uh, excuse me.”

“Why? Did you fart?” He grins at me, blinking bloodshot eyes. “Fine evening, ain’t
it?”

“Sure.”

“Yeah. Sure is.” He’s studying me like a drunken cat trying to focus on a mouse. “But
you can never tell, right?”

“I—what?”

“Might not be so nice.” He nods, giving me an exaggerated look of secrecy. “You look
under things, they’re not always nice at all. Sometimes they’re
nasty.
”

I stare at him. “What are you—are you trying to tell me something?”

He stares back. Suddenly he doesn’t seem all that unsteady on his feet. “Maybe,” he
says. “Maybe I am.”

We’re frozen like that for a few seconds, just studying each other, until he abruptly
says, “You like tattoos?”

I’m rapidly approaching non sequiter overload. “I … guess?”

He yanks up his sleeve. His arm is covered with tats of superheroes—Spider-man, Superman,
Batman, the Hulk. Lots of others. It looks like a ten-year-old’s idea of heaven. “Cool,
huh?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

He beams at me with pride. “I know. But lately, I’ve been having problems with ’em.
See?” He points at a tattoo of Thor swinging his hammer. “They’re
running.
”

“From what?” I’m only half joking.

He shakes his head. “Not running away. The colors are bleeding out … see?” He points.
I’m no expert, but some of the lines look a lot blurrier than others.

“Something’s pushing the ink out,” Vince says. “Something
underneath.
I don’t know what it is yet, but I can feel it.
Inside
me.”

“I … I have to go,” I say, and push past him. Whatever it is inside him—other than
Coors and cheap pizza—I just can’t have this conversation right now. I need to get
home, lock all the doors and windows, and hide in a pillow fort. With my dog.

Vince doesn’t chase me, or say anything as I hurry away. I’m afraid to look back.
I’m afraid he won’t be there anymore. Or worse, that something else might be standing
in his place.

When I get home, the very first thing I do is turn on the TV.

The second is to dig out my stash of
Bloodhound Files
DVDs from where I’ve hidden them under the fridge. Nobody looks under a fridge, unless
they’ve desperate to add to their dust-bunny-and-moldy-Cheerios collection. I put
a DVD in at random and hit
PLAY
.

While I’m doing this, Galahad regards me with a very concerned look on his face. I
grab the remote before he tries to bury it again, and he lies down on the floor beside
the couch with his chin on the floor as if to say
Oh, crap, here we go again.

And then, as the opening music kicks in over the credits, I pull the grimoire out
of the bag and sit down to take a long, hard look at it.

“Okay, Jace,” I say out loud. “Let’s get to work.”

*   *   *

One of my favorite things about
The Bloodhound Files
is the golems.

Most people have heard of golems. They’re basically men made from clay, sort of mineral-based
Frankensteins brought to life with magic. That’s the traditional kind, from Jewish
mythology.

On the show, they’ve been updated; they’re mass produced, made from sand poured into
human-shaped, thick-skinned plastic bags, and animated by the life force of an animal.
They come in a variety of colors, and are largely used for their muscle power.

There are no golems in Longinus’s notes, or his supposed book of spells. I find that
oddly reassuring, though I’m not sure why.

But there is something else, something I missed on my first reading.

A drawing of a hangman’s noose.

It’s in the grimoire, which is somehow worse than being in the notes, but at least
there’s no mention of my name on that page. I just wish I knew what it meant—is it
a reference to the Gallowsman, or are creepy drawings of nooses just the kind of thing
that pop up in tomes like this, like doodles of a happy face in a kid’s notebook?

I glance up at the TV screen. It’s showing a fake commercial at the moment, coincidentally
enough for a golem product. A smiling golem wearing boxer trunks is demonstrating
a polish called Gleam Cream, which apparently gives your plastic skin the kind of
supple, shiny, and clear appearance all golems desire. I guess you can sell anyone
beauty products, if you try hard enough.

The doorbell rings. Galahad pads over and sniffs at the door, but he doesn’t bark.
He’s pretty laid-back as far as being a watchdog goes. I hit
PAUSE
and open the door a crack, hoping it’s Charlie.

It’s not. It’s one of my neighbors, a kid named Billy. He’s around eleven and a born
salesman.

“Hi, Jace!” he says with a big smile.

“Hi, Billy. I’m a little busy right now—”

“Too busy for chocolate?” He holds up a bar you could club someone to death with.
Damn it, the kid knows my weakness.

“I’ll get my wallet,” I say.

Billy hangs out in the foyer with Gally as I scrounge up some cash. If he notices
the paused image of Jace Red Dog on my TV, he doesn’t comment on it.

“Here,” I say, giving him a bill. “What’ll that get me?”

He grins. “Two of these bad boys.” He digs into his satchel and hands over the bars.
Extra Dark—like I said, the kid knows me.

“Thanks. You’re going to college on my dime, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” he says with a shrug. “But what I really want to do is drive a truck.”

I frown.
Déjà vu
, but not quite. Because …

“Thanks, Jace,” he says. “See you later!”

It’s gone. I wave goodbye as he trudges off down the sidewalk to his next sales pitch,
and then I sink back into the couch.

Which is when I notice the screen is no longer frozen on an image of Red Dog.

The Sword of Midnight stares at me calmly, a digital onscreen statue. I pick up the
remote, study her nervously, then unpause the image.

“Thanks,” she says. “That’s a weird feeling, you know? Like your whole body is on
hold.”

She’s talking directly to me.

“You’re welcome,” I say.

I must sound a little stunned, because the Sword frowns and says, “Okay, Jace, get
it together. Communicating like this isn’t easy, and I can’t do it for long. I need
you to listen, resist making smart-ass remarks, and trust me, okay?”

“Uh-huh,” I say faintly.

“First of all, you’re not crazy. This isn’t a hallucination, or a dream, or anything
simulated by technology or magic. It’s going to get strange before you’re done, but
it’s all
real.
You with me?”

I swallow, and nod my head.

“Good. Because—
Jace, look out!
”

I scream and dive for the floor. Galahad starts barking. There’s a sudden swell of
dramatic music—

Wait.

I look up. The Sword and Red Dog are battling a vampire street gang that call themselves
the Lugosis—they all wear black capes and talk in ridiculous accents. I watch the
fight for a few seconds, but I’ve seen it a dozen times before.

“Um,” I say. “Hello?”

No answer. I’m talking to a DVD.

“Now
that
is just goddamn annoying,” I say. Gally comes over and licks my face in a vain attempt
to put a positive spin on things.

I watch until I fall asleep, but the Sword doesn’t talk to me again.

Not even at midnight.

*   *   *

I wake up the next morning on the couch in the blue glow of the TV. I yawn, turn it
off, and do my best to pretend it’s just another morning. I stash my DVDs—putting
the grimoire and the notes in with them—shower, and get into some fresh clothes. I
feed Galahad and pour coffee in me, then take him out for his morning walk.

Which is when normal crashes and burns.

I can see the flashing red and blue lights before I reach the end of the street. I
wonder if something went wrong and Charlie’s been arrested, but he lives in the opposite
direction. The lights don’t seem to be coming from anywhere near the Longinus house,
either.

I walk toward them. I probably shouldn’t, but I’m not the only one; a police car with
its flashers going is a relatively rare sight in town, and I’m not the only citizen
strolling down the sidewalk and trying to look casual.

The police car is blocking the entrance to the church’s parking lot. A deputy is trying
to keep people back, but it’s impossible to hide what’s dangling from the third-story
eaves of the church.

It’s Father Stone. And even from here, I can see the distinctive knot of a hangman’s
noose in the rope around his neck.

FOUR

There’s a small knot—sorry, unfortunate choice of words—of people gathering on the
sidewalk outside the church. I join them. Nobody’s saying a word, we’re just all standing
there in shock.

“Folks, you should really go home,” says the deputy. It’s Quinn Silver, the guy I
was serving coffee to this time yesterday. He was just another customer, then. Now,
he’s …

Someone who could send me to prison.

But none of us leave. We’re hypnotized by the sight of the black-clad body, swaying
and spinning in the wind. I wonder how he got up there—I don’t see a ladder. Maybe
there’s a hatch in the roof.

“Awful,” someone finally mutters.

Me, I can’t stop looking at his shoes. I keep expecting them to fall off, but they
don’t. “Are those lace-ups or loafers?” I say. “I can’t tell.”

I get a glare from a woman in a jogging suit.
Uh-oh, what’s the crazy lady going to say next?
“Well, I can’t,” I mutter. There, that’ll show her.

Thropirelem has two police cars. The other one pulls up, with the town fire truck
right behind it. The sheriff gets out and confers with the two volunteer firemen about
exactly where he wants the ladder.

A few words here about the sheriff. He’s the town’s most eligible bachelor, and probably
the only guy who could take Charlie in a fight. He grew up here but went to school
back east, all on scholarships; his brain is apparently as muscular as the rest of
him. He’s a lot better than we deserve—though there are rumors that the reason he
took a job in his hometown was because of some sort of trouble he got into while he
was away. That’s probably just the usual small-town whispering, but I do know you
don’t want to make him mad. I’ve seen him lay out a belligerent drunk with a single
backhand slap, and the drunk wound up losing a tooth, too.

He doesn’t much care for me, though. Too bad, in too many ways.

And then the sheriff spots me in the slowly increasing crowd. The look on his face
is hard to read, but it’s not the usual mild irritation or restrained tolerance. If
I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked confused.

Oh, wait. I don’t know better. In fact, I don’t know much of anything at this point,
other than I’m looking at my second dead body in twenty-four hours. That, and—according
to that always-reliable source of hard data, Voices from the TeeVee—all this is really
happening. Whatever it is.

I tug on Galahad’s leash and step forward. The sheriff sees me coming and tries to
retreat behind the yellow tape that Deputy Silver’s putting up, but he doesn’t have
it taut yet and Galahad and I just hop over.

“You can’t come any closer, Ms. Valchek,” he says. “This is a crime scene.”

“Is it?” I say. “Looks like a suicide to me.” I keep my voice low—I don’t want this
conversation broadcast all over the town grapevine.

“It’s the subject of an ongoing investigation, which as far as you’re concerned is
the same thing.” He’s studying me intently as he talks—as if he’s decided that if
he has to talk to me, he’s going to pay attention.

“Of course, if it was a suicide, you’d expect to find a ladder,” I point out. “Since
the fire truck’s here, I guess you didn’t. Is there a hatch in the roof? I don’t see
one.”

“We don’t know how he got up there. Not yet.”

I’m looking up as we talk, taking advantage of being a little closer than the rest
of the crowd, and now I can see that the other end of the rope is tied around a rafter
at the corner of the roof. There’s something strange about the knot, though.

“Any idea why he’d do such a thing?” I ask.

“I can’t speculate at this point, Ms. Valchek. Now, please, step back behind the tape.”
He takes my elbow and leads me there as he talks, and there’s nothing hesitant about
his grip.