CHAPTER 18

“Nobody touch nothing!”

“I think he’s missing some toes.”

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

“Just wait till he gets here.”

“What the hell is he going to find?”

“He’s gifted.”

“You really believe that? You really making this decision while thinking with your baby maker?”

“My what?”

“You heard me. You’re thinking with your Easy-Bake Oven.”

“Wow. You’re full of pleasant analogies this morning. I think he is gifted when it comes to this. I think this is an opportunity for him to get us information we could not otherwise obtain. Anyway, we’re about to find out one way or the other.”

“This is so fucking not a good test situation.”

“We’re fine.”

“We are not fucking fine. We’re leaving traces at a scene. I can tell you right now that we’ve already made six mistakes that we aren’t even aware of. Hey, I said do not touch anything!”

“So fix it.”

“Fix it!? You think I have that kind of pull? Christ! Hey, you two—wonder twins. Out on the front lawn, now! Or I’ll bash your empty skulls together.”

“All right.”

“Yeesh!”

Simon hears the voices as he approaches the open door. The Corbies cackle loudly in his head, the wormwood tree vibrating his spine to their cawed chorus of, “Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes!” Simon does his best not to giggle in anticipation.

He steps through the door just as Kenny and Zack are leaving. They stop and follow him back inside.

“Man of the hour,” says Officer Polhaus, unenthusiastically. “Meeks, you at least know what a bad idea this is, right?”

“Yes,” Simon says, trying not to drool and grin.

“Tell these folks not to touch anything.”

“He’s right.” Simon hardly notices anyone else, anyone but the body, anyone but his next patient. “Everyone should wear these.” He passes around a box of blue latex gloves and snaps on a pair himself. Four other pairs of snaps follow: Polhaus, Nyx, Kenny, and Zack.

The call woke Simon up at a little after 4:00 A.M. They told him to come and to bring his gear.

Simon licks his lips.

The ritual.

“Subject: Gregory Mitchell,” says Simon. “Male. Caucasian. Early forties. Cosmetic surgery.” Simon says that last with a frown.

“Why’s that important?” Kenny asks. Nyx hushes him.

“Subject has been dead over forty-eight hours.”

“This is how I found him,” Polhaus says. “I came to talk about Apex Consumers with him and—well, here he is. Looks like someone cut his throat. Cut off some fingers and toes and cut his throat. And over there—looks like he had a baseball bat as a weapon when they got him.”

“No,” says Simon. “The throat has been bitten out. The fingers and toes . . . were bitten off. Some of the fingers and toes were bitten postmortem.”

“Simon, can you do your, uh, thing?” Nyx asks.

Simon nods.

“Christ,” Polhaus mutters, “that’s going to be a mess. That’s going to be all over the crime scene.”

Simon nods and opens his case, removing a length of plastic tarp. They lay the body on the tarp and carry it into the bathroom, laying it in the tub.

“Rub-a-dub-dub,” the Corbies sing. “Rub-a-dub-dub, dead man in the tub. Dive in, Simon. The Dead Water’s lovely!”

Simon guzzles the absinthe from his Thermos.

The mirror in the bathroom bends and the tiles leak into one another. The wormwood nuzzles into the cracks of his brain, finding their old niches.

“Scalpels and brain knives and cranium chisels. These are a few of your favorite things,” sing the Corbies. Simon silently mouths the words along with them.

“May I?” Simon says, almost panting.

Nyx looks to Polhaus. They all look at Simon—differently.

What did they see, Jane?

“Fuck,” says Polhaus, deflating. “Yeah, go ahead. We’ve already fucked ourselves.”

Nyx nods to Simon.

“Oh, thank you,” Simon says with a sharp sigh as he falls on the corpse, the Corbies screeching in carrion glee at the appearance of the red, red Y.

“Thank you.”

* * * * *

Where are we?

Sleep has no place to call its own.

* * * * *

Simon comes to on his knees in a world bleeding green. Everyone looks a little pale. Wide eyes. Kenny is in the front yard vomiting.

Something large and meaty slaps Simon’s face.

“Meeks,” says Polhaus, “you with us?”

“How’d it go, Simon?” says Nyx, more gently.

“It’s good,” says Simon, vaguely noticing the blood on his gloved hands and down his shirt. “It’s so good—it’s good—it’s good—it’s good . . .”

Polhaus lets go of Simon. “Jesus.”

The drunken scarecrow tumbles to the floor with liquid, inebriated grace, rolling on his back, catnip drunk and swatting at phantom yarn balls.

“He looks like a goddamn heroin addict,” says Polhaus. “What the hell were we thinking?”

Simon giggles on the floor. He rocks on his back. So relaxed. So good. The Dead Water plays demon fiddler tunes on his nerves.

“Scalpels and brain knives and cranium chisels. These are a few of my favorite things,” Simon sings.

“This is what he has to add to the Sanctuary?” Polhaus asks.

“Greg was expecting them,” Simon slurs.

“Oh, so it’s ‘Greg’ now?” says Polhaus.

“Yes, we shared,” Simon says.

Nyx notices Polhaus’s immense fists tightening and a grinding noise coming from his mouth. She puts a restraining hand on his shoulder, saying, “Simon? What did you learn?”

Despite him still rolling on the ground, Simon’s voice turns sober and clinical. “Members of Club Wendigo committed the murder. Greg was not surprised. He expected retribution from them. Hector was with them. He is a member of the club.”

Hector: the Hanging Man. Jack of diamonds.

“How do we know this is true?” asks Polhaus.

Simon looks at his hands, fascinated by the cold, thick blood. “Greg managed to strike Hector in the face with his bat before they killed him. You might find a gold tooth near the couch.”

“Got it!” calls Zack after running up the stairs. He holds up a gold-capped tooth, like one of Jolly Roger’s, only larger. It tapers to a ridiculously sharp point—a predator’s tooth.

“Oh, what big teeth you have,” Simon says. They’re the Corbies’ words, but they use Simon’s mouth. “The Big Bad Wolf fed her strips of human flesh. The moral: children who stray from the path get their innocence devoured.”

“Okay, so Club Wendigo and Apex Consumers are connected,” says Nyx. “What now?”

“I might have a little more information, but it’s just fragments right now.” Simon chuckles. “Strips of human data, not yet digested.”

Polhaus shakes his head, looking at the mess in the tub. “Too deep. We’ve gone too deep into this thing. Already.”

“John?”

“Fuck!”

“What?”

“No, I’ve got this,” says Polhaus. “Get everyone else out of here.”

“You can clean this up?” asks Nyx. “How?”

“Get everyone and go. I have to call in a favor,” says Polhaus coldly.

“John, I—”

“I—have—got—this.”

“All right.”

“Go.”

Nyx and Zack help Simon gather his gear. Together they leave the home of Gregory Mitchell.

“So I figured out what Simon does,” says Zack.

“What?” asks Nyx.

“He does what I do. He hacks for information. He’s a hacker.”

Simon laughs long and hard at the joke, laughs all the way back to the car.

No one joins him.

* * * * *

“You folks look lost,” says the muscular man with the shaven head. His two cohorts, equally well muscled but dangling with dreads, nod their agreement. Then all three draw guns and point them at Simon and Nyx. “Tour bus don’t go this way.”

I do not like guns, Jane. They’re loud and obscene.

Nyx seems unfazed. She looks up for a moment at the fattening moon, hanging over the South Side like a fist, then back at the trio. “The person we want to see isn’t on the standard tour. From that purple skull on the back of your hand there, I’ll bet you know where we can find Mama Bone-digger.”

Mama Bone-digger: the Crone. Queen of spades.

The name had come to Simon as they were driving away from Mitchell’s place the previous night. It was one of those undigested bits of data he was still processing, the largest one. The only one, it turned out, that wasn’t just mental detritus.

It happens sometimes, Jane. Stray dreams wander into the Dead Water—dreams that have nothing to do with my patient.

Nyx had told Simon to sleep on it. She knew the name, but would do some more digging. The two of them would then pursue whatever leads she discovered. And that pursuit had brought them, just one day later, here.

After their brief shock at Nyx’s bluntness fades, the three men holding the guns laugh, and that’s the moment that Nyx’s hands flash. Suddenly she’s holding a very large, very military-looking pistol and a red laser dot burns, menacingly, between the eyes of the man with the shaven head. Simon can’t decide from where she produced such a large gun.

She pulled out that big gun almost as fast as I can produce a scalpel. Eh, Jane?

The shaven head smiles, once again surprised. “That’s a nifty trick, Goth girlie, sexy even. But there’re still three of us. We still win. Now, I like you, but that just means we shoot your friend in the head and give you a warning shot—in the arm or leg, maybe—before we drag you in the alley there and take turns with that little ass of yours.”

“Huh,” says Nyx. “You and boyfriends think you can keep it up while I’m bleeding all over the place?”

“Why not? Be just like when my girlfriend’s on the rag.” They all three laugh, the sound harsher still.

Nyx grins. The red laser dot travels downward, from the shaven head to the man’s crotch. Then something in her tone goes mean.

“You’re right, Mr. Potato Head,” says Nyx. “I can’t imagine a variation on this scenario where my friend and I win. You’ll kill us or hurt us bad. But not before I explode your crotch like a melon. Rehabilitation will be painful. Years from now, you’ll still tell the story of how you ‘won,’ but you won’t be able to say it was worth it. Some in the neighborhood won’t be able to keep a straight face if you do. They’ll know. They’ll know that every time you’re nodding hard, you’re fantasizing about going back in time so you can change that one moment and keep your balls.”

The red dot glows, unwavering.

Tension.

Silence.

And then it’s all broken by the laughter of the man with the clean-shaven head. “Oh, I really, really do like her.” He raises his gun and waves his dreadlocked fellows’ weapons down. “Come on, Goth girlie. You want to play with voodoo—we take you to see Mama Bone-digger.”

Simon smiles, saying, “I’m with her.”

They all walk deeper into the neighborhood.

In whispers, Nyx tells Simon bits of Mama Bone-digger’s mythos. She’s an old voodoo mambo. They say she controls this neighborhood—a patriarch feared and loved. Everyone—criminal, citizen, and gangbanger—follows her lead. “Loved and feared,” she whispers to Simon, “They say if she licks your shadow, you die.”

Nyx pauses and says a little louder, “I thought she died years ago.”

“Doesn’t matter,” says the shaven head man. “Heaven and Hell don’t let Mama in. So she stays here.”

Alleys and doors and eyes and guns all watch their passing. Simon and Nyx travel through corridors of pungent scents—of sewage and sweet rot, of spices and meats and peppers.

Finally, they are led into a darkened tie-dye shop. “Mama teaches the little ones a trade,” says the shaven man. Simon looks at the shirts and sheets and colors. Some are abstract patterns, other pictures. A skeletal man in a top hat, a cigar in one hand, a bottle in the other, stares at Simon with crazed eyes from a sheet on the wall.

“Who d’at?” says a voice from a back room. “Who d’ere? James? D’at be you?”

“Yeah, Mama,” says the shaven man. “You have visitors. Pale pilgrims want to speak to the Bone-digger.”

A lithe little girl with dusky skin emerges from the shadows. In that same voice she says, “Who is this? Who wants to see Mama?” The speaker is only eight years old, at most, but the voice is not a child’s, the eyes are not a child’s. Simon watches her hands—he’s better with hands—and they are not the flighty hands of a child. They have poise and purpose.

“I’m Nyx. This is Simon.”

“Why do you bother Mama Bone-digger, huh?” says the little girl. “Dangerous ju-ju to come to me. Didn’t you know that? What you come for—a Petro curse on an enemy? Love potion for the one d’at snubbed you? Or maybe you looking for some necromancy, huh? Dangerous ju-ju if you want to commune with the restless.”

Smiling, James leans his head down, between Nyx and Simon, whispering in their ears, “Once upon a time, Mama Bone-digger was dying. She coughed up a black stone. When she died, her great-granddaughter swallowed the stone. Mama remains.”

“Mama Bone-digger,” says Nyx. “My friend Simon needs to talk to you. He is a necromancer, too.”

“Really?” says the little girl, suddenly interested. She walks toward Simon, her little hips swaying in a practiced, sensual manner. She sways like the tide, sways so fluidly it is easy to forget, for a moment, that she’s a little girl. Her hand reaches up with serpentine grace, grabbing Simon’s black, tattered necktie and pulling him slowly down to her level. Her full lips part a little, breathing him in. Simon can smell her, smell the sweat and jasmine and vanilla. Her hands caress Simon’s face, reading it like a blind woman’s hands, like a snake’s tongue. She removes his cracked glasses and stares into those malachite skull windows.

“Your handsome scarecrow can come in. You stay out here, girlie. This way,” she says, turning toward the back room. She pauses and turns back. “Come on, now. Or are you afraid I’ll lick your shadow?” She licks the air suggestively, then enters the back room laughing hard and loud.

They say, Jane, that you should never walk toward Mama Bone-digger in the evening, with your shadow striding before you. And they say that you should never, ever walk away from Mama Bone-digger in the morning, with your shadow trailing behind you.

Simon follows into the back room, where the jasmine and vanilla overpower. The little girl’s long black fingernails click-clack, like spider legs, across an altar that dominates the room. On the altar rests an obsidian cross and a clay bowl filled with oil and a single stone sprinkled with mirror shards.

The scratch-flare of a match, and several purple wax skull candles are lit, their faces melting into strange expressions. Illuminated in the flicker-flame is a scattered deck of playing cards, in various piles on the altar. The two upturned piles catch Simon’s eye: queens and jacks.

“I’ve been playing that game,” Simon says, removing his deck from his pocket.

“You playing jacks and queens?”

“Yes.”

“How goes the game?”

Simon pulls out the torn-up queen of hearts and lays her fragments on the altar.

“I don’t know what happened to her,” he says.

Simon lays the queen of clubs on the altar.

“I found my queen of clubs.”

Simon lays the queen of spades on the altar.

“And now I’ve found my lovely queen of spades.” Simon kneels and kisses the girl’s hand—doing the latter and using the word lovely because the Corbies whispered to him, telling him that she’d like that.

The girl gently touches Simon’s cheek and smiles. “Oh my. My handsome scarecrow says such things.”

“See,” whisper the wraith crows.

“And so,” says the girl, “you can’t find your . . . departed queen of hearts?”

“This is all I have,” Simon says, lifting up the card piece with the queen’s head. “She’s Jane Doe. She’s the golden-eyed cadaver.”

The girl nods. “I can help you with that. But first—first you gotta tell Mama about your necromancy. Sit.” She points to a chair. Simon takes the seat, and she slithers into his lap. “Now, whisper in my ear, sweet scarecrow. Tell me what I want to know. Tell Mama all about your necromancy.”

Simon whispers, explaining as best he can, the Dead Water, his addiction, his patients, and all the joys and loves and secrets and heartaches one can find in that Y-shaped door.

The girl listens. When Simon finishes, she looks at him with a wicked grin.

“I can help you, Simon Meeks,” she says. “But you gotta show Mama your necromancy.” She hops off his lap and rummages through a trunk, carefully extracting something large and leather. Then she gently lays the bundle—one almost too big for her little arms to carry—on the altar.

“This is my Henry,” she says, opening the leather bag. Inside, arms crossed, rests a shrunken body. It’s mostly bones held together with tendons and decayed skin.

“Hello, Henry,” Simon says.

“My Henry died many years ago. Though I’ve tried, I cannot talk to Henry. I never found out who did this to him. Some move on, past the station, across the water. Some souls are beyond my necromancy. But you, handsome scarecrow, your necromancy be different. Maybe your necromancy be not exactly necromancy.”

“I don’t . . . I’ve never worked on a body this old.”

“Expand your horizons, child,” she says, handing Simon a dagger. Simon feels the blades heft.

It wasn’t a scalpel, Jane, but it was sharp.

Simon takes a flask from his pocket and drinks down all the green witchfire from inside. The ghost tree bends and grows and the Corbies caw and sing at the unexpected treat. In the back room the little girl watches with that wicked grin built of many, many more years than those lips or teeth. She watches as Simon feels the Dead Water enter his body with a shudder—as he cuts into the papery skin and the withered guts.

* * * * *

Where are we?

Sleep has no place to call its own.

* * * * *

Simon comes to, full of dead love.

The girl stares at him, mouth hanging open, utterly fascinated. She looks at him in a new light. He looks at her differently, too, seeing her through Dead Water eyes. And they stare at each other: the girl with a crone in her belly, the man with a ghost tree growing in his head.

“Henry says, ‘Hi.’”

“What . . . what did he say?” asks the girl, for the first time faltering, off her rhythm.

“LeRoy killed him. Did it for the money. But he never got the money.”

“Where—?”

“It’s buried in Hyde Park. Henry said you would know where.”

“Did you tell Henry that I—?”

“I did.”

The girl giggles and laughs. “Thank you, Simon. Here—” She rummages through another trunk, pulls out a bit of cloth. Simon steps forward, making a faint sound in his closed mouth.

“That’s—”

“Yes, honey. D’is belongs to your golden-eyed cadaver—your queen of hearts.”

Folded in the cloth is a left arm, the stump sewn shut, the flesh persevered in some peculiar manner. The bluish tint to the dry skin is even deeper than Simon remembered.

“May I?” Simon says, trembling arms extended.

“You may, my handsome scarecrow, my ragdoll lover, my Rada doll. You helped Mama and she help you.”

“Who?” Simon whispers. “Where did you—?”

“From what you say before, you know the man—Reeves. When I need things for my practice, I buy from him.”

“Did he offer you any other . . . parts?”

Mama shakes her head slowly. “No. I was hoping it be the left arm of a sorceress—good for mighty powerful ju-ju. The body man said it was, but he lied. She something special, sure, but she not a sorceress, not exactly. When you was telling your story, I realized what I had, what that liar had brought me.” An awful light flashes in her eyes. “He pay for that dishonesty, honey. He pay big.” And then it is gone and another, more feral look takes its place. “I think I want to be helping you anyway. Mama think, maybe you’re not a man at all. Mama think, maybe you’re a ghede spirit taken flesh.”

The girl hands Simon the arm, and then wraps her arms around his waist, gently, expertly, rocking her pelvis against Simon as she speaks. Through his Dead Water eyes, Simon finds it harder and harder to see the little girl, instead, underneath, finding a full-grown, seductive woman. And underneath that, something far, far older.

“Spirits of sex and death,” she chants, “sex and death. We at our most human when we’re birthing, dying, fucking—all on our backs and the jazz-skull laugh. I’ve been ridden by many ghede during many ceremonies. Did you come down to earth to ride Mama physically, Simon-skull-spirit? You make me moan? Do you have what ghede have? What Papa Ghede got? What Baron Samedi got? Wicked-rictus-grin humor and a great, big—”

Mama Bone-digger’s hand snakes between Simon’s legs, groping. Simon shudders and takes a startled step backward.

“I’m sorry. I can’t . . . I—” he stammers.

“Oh. My handsome scarecrow, my ragdoll lover, has a sweetheart.” Mama Bone-digger looks at the door as if through the door. “But it ain’t your queen of clubs.” She looks at the arm in Simon’s hand and points. “It’s her.”

“Yes,” Simon says.

The girl claps, maniacally laughing. “Oh my, oh my, oh my! What to do when the romance don’t die? How ghastly. How romantic. You go, Simon Meeks. You finish your love story. You’re finding your queens . . . but what about your jacks?”

“I’ll find them, too,” Simon says.

“Tell me—your queen of clubs, she and her friends like you, don’t they?”

“Yes,” says Simon, a smile manifesting.

I’d never felt that, Jane—camaraderie and friends. I liked it. I liked it an awful lot.

“That’s because, my handsome scarecrow, you’re a Rada doll. Soon though. Soon you must be a Petro doll, and that will scare them.”

I didn’t know what she meant then. I do now. Eh, Jane?

Simon leaves, holding Jane’s hand.

INTERLUDE:

The Cookbook

“Gotta move on, Alex,” he said. “This is a whole new level. Don’t be sad. Be a multitude. We’ve got to lead by example.”

Gabe had been trying to cheer me up.

“What do you call that?” I ask.

“Moloch.”

“Really?”

“Moloch, Moloch, Moloch.”

“Smells good.”

“Wait till you get it in your belly.”

I look at the stove.

“Uh, Gabe—do you even know the meaning of the word satire?”

“No,” he says foolishly and then grins.

I finally laugh. It feels good, and I can’t stop.

And that explains the dog-eared copy of Swift’s essays, open to “A Modest Proposal,” resting on his kitchen table while the little legs and hands bobbed up and down in his stew pot.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOSHUA ALAN DOETSCH once built a flesh golem out of grave-robbed parts and leftover Halloween candy. By strange chance, this golem is fueled by rejection slips. Every day it begs and it pleads, “Please, kind sir, keep me alive!” And so Joshua writes. You can thank White Wolf for making the poor golem go hungry for another day.

Joshua is from October Country, Illinois, but currently writes video game dialogue in Montreal. He has a fondness for fedoras, does a mean Christopher Walken impersonation, and, once upon a road trip dreary, wrote a blues song about necrophilia.