Copyright © 2009 Shiloh Walker
All rights reserved — a Samhain Publishing, Ltd. publication
Talking with the Dead
Too late. He was always too late. This was the story of his life. He came in after the horrors happened and tried to piece things back together again.
It was destroying him.
The tiny chiming of a bell over the door intruded on his brooding and he glanced up automatically before returning his attention back to the plate in front of him. It held no appeal for him, but he knew if he didn’t eat, he’d never rebuild the strength he had drained tracking down Watkins.
Energy crackled through the room as a cool breeze from the outdoors came gusting through the door just before it closed. Like static electricity, the energy danced down his skin, shocking him, sizzling under his flesh, bursting through his mind like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
Slowly, he raised his eyes from the unappetizing food and found himself staring at a snug little backside covered in khaki as a woman boosted herself onto a stool at the café counter. Her hair was golden brown, caught in a thick braid that hung more than half way down her back. As he watched she shrugged out of the rather official looking jacket, Michael cursed the blood that was suddenly running hot through his veins.
This was a distraction that he didn’t want and didn’t need.
First the dark cloud that had taken hold of his mind and now all he could smell was the faint tropical fragrance that drifted from the woman’s hair and the soft vanilla of her skin.
And the purpose that filled her entire being. It was like she was walking around wrapped with neon, but only Mike could see it.
Anger.
Frustration.
Rage.
Bingo. The woman was all but a walking, talking cry for help and Mike just didn’t know if he could take any more on right now. Then he blew out a breath and muttered, “You can handle it. You always do.”
Rolling his eyes skyward, he thought silently, But it would be so nice to actually be able to have a relaxing vacation.
A soft, familiar voice echoed in his mind, “Then maybe you should try some remote cabin in Alaska. Might be a few less unsolved murders out in the middle of nowhere.”
Years of practice had taught him not to flinch, not to jump, not to even look directly at the man speaking to him. Nobody else would see him. He had been dead for twenty years. “How’s the afterlife, Lucas?” he asked dryly, arching a brow as he nonchalantly turned his gaze to stare at his brother.
“Ever the smart ass, Mikey.” A slow smile tugged up Lucas’ lips in a grin that haunted Michael’s sleep. “You know, you could move into one of those glacier caves. I bet not too many people have been murdered in one of those. You can get some peace there.”
Lucas’ face was forever young. Some movies painted ghosts as grisly images, but it had been Michael’s experience that a ghost was an echo of what the ghost remembered seeing in life. Lucas looked exactly as he had the last time he’d seen himself, standing in the bathroom, running his hands through his hair. Wavy brown hair, a little too long, blue eyes surrounded by spiky lashes that both of the brothers had inherited—and hated. Thin to the point of being bony, with big hands, big shoulders. Exactly as Michael had looked at that age. Mike had grown into his body—Lucas hadn’t been given the chance.
Forever young. Forever handsome.
“You’re becoming pretty damned moody, Mikey.”
A tiny smile lit his face. Nobody but Lucas had ever called him Mikey. And even though he had most likely passed the age where Mikey was an acceptable name, hearing it from Lucas was oddly comforting. Just like seeing him was comforting. But at the same time, Mike hated seeing him.
He interacted with ghosts on a regular basis and they only hung around the living for as long as they had. Once their business was finished, they passed on.
Lucas had been waiting for twenty years to finish his business and he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to move on now, either.
“When are you going to move on, Luc?”
“When I make sure I keep a promise. Promise is a promise, Mike. I told you I’d make sure you were happy. That’s when I’ll move on.”
With a sigh, Michael shoved a hand through his hair. This was an old conversation, one they’d had a hundred times. “There is something wrong here.”
Lucas lifted one shoulder in a restless shrug. “I know. I felt it this morning. Young people. A lot of blood. Some old. Some fresh. But something is definitely not right in Smalltown America.”
Michael suspected the lady sitting on the stool in front of him had answers. He could see it in her weary, bitter eyes and the way she sat. Although she sat tall and straight with her shoulders pulled back, there was an invisible weight bearing down on her.
He didn’t need to see the shiny brass badge on her jacket to know what he was looking at.
Cop.
From under the fringe of his lashes, he sat back and studied her. It was there in the purposefulness of her walk, the way she held herself, in the tense frustration he felt rolling off of her. “Go ask her,” Lucas suggested.
“Stranger in town, asking if there’s something odd going on in her town. Oh, yes, excellent way to not attract attention.” Michael shot that idea down as he shoved the sandwich on his plate around.
“If you don’t eat that, you’re going to be sorry later.”
Michael curled up his lip and slowly lifted the sandwich, trying to tune his brother out as he bit into the pile of meat, cheese and bread. It had about as much flavor and appeal as a sawdust sandwich would, but he knew he needed it.
“That’s a good boy,” Lucas teased, reaching out to pat Michael’s head.
Michael felt the touch like a cool wind on his scalp. It didn’t bother him anymore when the dead touched him. But he still slid Lucas a look and silently said, “Fuck off, man.”
Lucas might be dead, but he was still Michael’s brother.
Vicious Vixen
The walk down memory lane was just the beginning.
A shadowy figure, hooded, covered from head to toe in a concealing robe, appeared before Graeme. The being’s presence suddenly made everything more substantial. Graeme could hear again, feel again, speak. When he shoved a hand through his hair, he felt the wiry curls cropped close to his scalp. Automatically, he touched his face, ran a hand across his chest, cracked his knuckles.
Just feeling something again was beyond description. Too bad he didn’t realize there would be a cost.
“It is time.”
“Time for what?” Graeme asked, wary. But somewhere inside, he already knew.
Judgment. What else? Why else would he be here?
“No. The time for judgment is not yet upon you. I speak of something else—but it will affect your day of judgment, Graeme.”
“What are you talking about?” Graeme couldn’t see his—her—its—face and he hated that. He wanted to see the eyes. A ghost from the past whispered in his ear, “The eyes are the gateway to the soul.”
“It’s time to make amends. To save one such as you. To redeem yourself.”
Although Graeme didn’t remember leaving his home, he was no longer within that obscure cocoon. He was in what appeared to be the afterlife’s version of a movie theater.
The star of the show was Vixen herself.
He couldn’t exactly see any kind of screen, any kind of projector, but he could see her, life-size, lovely and sleek, walking by. The image of her was so real, at first he tried to reach out and touch her. That was when he realized it was some sort of illusion, maybe a hologram. Something.
Except he could smell her. Almost even feel the silken glide of her hair as it blew across his face.
“What is this?”
“Salvation. Redemption.”
This afterlife business was a pathetic joke and this had better be another humorless little torture, a way for the beings around him to amuse themselves. Time had no meaning in this place, and for all he knew he could have been there for centuries. He was guessing a couple of years, though, going by how Vixen looked. Her hair had grown out—the last time he’d seen her, right before she stabbed a knife into his heart, her pale, silvery blonde hair had been cropped to chin length and now it was well past her shoulders. It had always grown fast, but not that fast, so he figured it had to have been at least a few years.
He looked away from her and faced the being that had brought him to this place. Being—because there was something completely androgynous about the cloaked and shadowed figure. A sexless voice, a sexless affect. A seriously annoying manner of refusing to answer anything Graeme asked—but that didn’t keep him from asking another question.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Under the cloak, its shoulders rose, fell. From under the hood, its voice rang out, clear, pure and bell-like. Gentle, but firm. “We do not kid in matters of salvation and redemption, Graeme.”
Graeme snorted.
The being, as though puzzled by Graeme’s derision, cocked its head. Graeme didn’t need to see the being’s face to know he was being scrutinized. Shit, he could feel the weight of that stare. Feeling somebody’s stare was the closest he’d come to physical sensation in far too long. “So which is this? Redemption? Salvation? Or just plain torture?”
The cowled head swung back and forth. “We do not torture. Your own guilt is torture enough, is it not?”
“Guilt?” he asked. “Guilt isn’t something I waste time on.”
“No? I feel a great deal of guilt coming from within you.”
Simple statement.
True enough.
But it infuriated him.
The ability to physically feel again wasn’t a blessing just then. He was too damned pissed off and it would have been easier if the fury had that softening haze to it. Hands closed into fists, he glared at the cloaked being in front of him and demanded, “What did I ever do to Vixen to feel guilty about? I loved her.”
“Oh, Vixen isn’t the one you feel guilt over. Indeed, if you hadn’t met her, you wouldn’t be here.”
Graeme grunted and glanced back over his shoulder at Vixen’s image. It was like whatever had captured her image had changed, moving in for a close-up as she walked down a street. All he could see was her face, her eyes, so dark in her pale face. “You got that right. If I hadn’t ever met her, she couldn’t have stuck a knife in me and I’d still be alive.”
It laughed. There was nothing mocking in the sound, though. It was more sad than anything. “No, Graeme. You would have died long before now…but nothing you had done in your life before meeting Vixen would have awarded you one last chance. She changed you. She made you better. Make no mistake, Graeme, her presence in your life and the changes you made for her are why you are here. Instead of…”
These beings didn’t spend a lot of time on special effects or anything, which made it all that more effective when something freaky did happen. As the silvery white light surrounded Graeme went orange-red, the air blistered fire-hot. The heat threatened to melt the skin from his bones. It seared his lungs and stole his voice.
Then it was gone.
“You really don’t want to live eternity like that, do you?”
Instinctively, he reached up and rubbed his burning eyes. That was when he noticed his hands. That was when he saw his hands. They were red from the heat, blistering, but already the blisters were fading away into nothingness. “And some wonder why in the hell a lot of people don’t choose to believe in God, in heaven or in hell. If He is such a decent, loving-type God, He wouldn’t threaten to send people there.”
The air in the room grew weighted, heavy with sadness and the being sighed. There was censure in that unseen gaze, Graeme could feel it. “Graeme, He sends nobody anywhere. He gives them the choice. Gives all of us the choice.” A long, slender arm lifted, the belled sleeves obscuring everything but the fingertips from view as it passed over Graeme’s hands.
Even the faint, lingering itch of heat faded. Just like that. “She changed you, Graeme. Meeting her unlocked a door inside of you that nothing else could do—but even with that door opened, it couldn’t erase the darkness within you.”
He hissed in surprise when the being touched him—and he actually felt it. He was still reeling over being able to feel, but being touched—it was almost painful. The being touched him on the back, in the exact spot where Vixen had plunged a six-inch stiletto—one that Graeme had given her. In response to the being’s touch, Graeme felt an icy-cold pain tear through him, brutal in its intensity—hell. It hadn’t hurt that much when Vixen had killed him.
“This is salvation. This is redemption.”
The voice was changing, deepening. A hand came up, closed over Graeme’s shoulder and squeezed—and Graeme felt it. Its hand was warm, too warm, painful in contrast to the ice rushing through his system. “I’m a little past salvation,” Graeme said, trying to pull away.
But he couldn’t move.
“It isn’t your salvation, Graeme. It’s hers.”
Then the being let go and glided away. The shadowed face glanced in Graeme’s direction and then away, nodding to the panoramic view of Vixen on the hunt. “Her salvation.” Then its gaze cut to Graeme and it added, “Your redemption.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
View Cart
Checkout
