Good & Dead #1 (23 page)

Charlotte was frozen on the stage.  Her look of confusion and shock was set off by the grim theatrical makeup.  Her blue eyes found Michael’s.  She mumbled something to herself that she thought no one could hear.  But Michael made out every word.  “You had the scythe…and you had the costume.”

The harness gave an ominous creak and Michael dropped another sudden inch toward the floor.  The audience gasped.  He grabbed hold on his second try, dangling now from one hand, but upright.

When his head stopped swimming he found himself facing the sound booth, Randy’s ashen face horrified behind the controls.  A shape lurked in the dark corner of Randy’s tiny room, and Michael squinted to see what it was.

Joseph’s hulking form stepped out of the shadows, a giant fist raised, his brooding glare flashing silver across the distance.

Faster than he would have believed possible, Michael leapt to grab hold of the steady cable and swung himself to kick off of the catwalk.  He shot across the open space, catching Joseph around the middle.  Michael’s sneaker caught Randy’s knee as he shot past, sending him spinning in his swivel chair, the cord from his headphones wrapping him against the back of his chair.  Randy shrieked as Michael and Joseph landed in a heap in the dark corner.

Michael jumped up in front of Randy.  “He doesn’t know anything!  I swear!”

Joseph stood slowly and laughed, a dark gleam in his eyes.  “You really are a dumb kid, you know that?  Did you really think we didn’t hear you?  Bell and I heard every pathetic word you said to him.  We should have killed him right then.”

Michael blinked.  “Why didn’t you?”  Randy whimpered behind him.

Joseph cracked his neck quickly, a nasty sneer on his face.  “Because Bell, for some god-forsaken reason, is more concerned with your pathetic little
emotions
than the safety of the clan.”

“What do you mean?” Michael asked.  He could hear Randy trying to scoot his chair further away with the toes of his shoes. 

Joseph crossed his arms and leaned against the little half-wall that separated the desk from the ladder and sighed.  “How are you so stupid?  Do you think it’s normal for the leader of all the vampires in New York to spend this much time on one new turn? How’d the cops hear about the nursing home?  Or do you suppose we showed up to save you last night at random? How’d Bell get the clothes to send to the detective?  How’d you get home in your underwear last week?  Did you figure it was magic?”  The words tumbled out as though Joseph had been longing to say them for weeks. 

Michael frowned. Randy continued to wriggle behind him.

“How”—Joseph took a step toward Michael so quickly that a stack of papers on the desk next to him fluttered—“did you not question her when She transformed into that blonde girl a week ago?

“You’re just a pawn, kid.  A really,”—He rolled his shoulders.—“really annoying, stupid pawn, in a stupid game.  And we’ve decided we don’t want to play anymore.” 

Michael glanced down into the audience to scan the crowd for Bell.  She was gone. 

“Oh, you won’t find her there.  Tanish called her outside with an ‘emergency’.  She’s not going to save you this time.”  A sickening smile played across his wide face.  “I have really been looking forward to killing you.  But first,” he said, cutting his eyes at Randy, “the mortal.”

Randy shrieked and flailed.  His chair toppled to the floor. 

Joseph lunged at him, knocking Michael to the side with ease.  Michael jumped up and grabbed two fistfuls of the giant man’s hair and pulled him back as hard as he could.  Joseph barely had to take a half-step backward.  Michael flung himself onto his shoulders in desperation, kicking him in the back of the knees as hard as he could. 

“Are you kidding me?” Joseph roared, punching behind him like he was batting at a fly.  A fist caught him in the ear and suddenly all he could hear was a pulsating, shrill ring.  A strong hand reached around to clutch at the back of Michael’s costume.  Then he was flying.  He landed hard on his back on the tech board, knobs and buttons bruising his skinny shoulders. 

“We’re done playing!” Joseph’s fist came down so fast Michael barely saw it.  Pain exploded outward from his chest, the shock going through his whole body.  Stars burst across his vision like a kaleidoscope of dizziness.  He couldn’t move his arms or legs.  He lifted his head enough to see that his ribcage was concave; a dark crater filled with blood. 

He could see the looming shape of the vampire bending down to pick a struggling Randy up by the neck.  He held him out at arm’s length, the chair dangling underneath for a moment before gravity pulled it out of the cords.

“Stop!” Michael spluttered, but a spray of blood came out instead of sound.

Randy’s eyes were wide, his face purple.  He stared in horror at the massive wound in Michael’s chest.  His mouth opened in a scream, but it was like the sound had been turned off.  Michael’s senses were deadening.  He was falling into a vacuum in which only the pain existed.

His neck muscles gave out, and his head fell back, flopping over to the side as his vision began to dim.

Between the railing, Michael could see pandemonium breaking out below.  Dozens of nymphs were swarming the theater.  Tom and Charlotte were frozen on stage, their eyes glazed over.  Every mortal wore the same unseeing expression as they all, as one, began to move toward the exits.  The nymph’s eyes flashed merrily as they wove their way through the crowd, in complete control of their prey. 

No!
  Michael tried to call out for her to run, but no sound came out.  His vision wavered. 

The detective bumped into the toppled serving cart as he shuffled past, a look of blissful stupor on his hard face.  His uniformed posse followed, each with the same blank, mesmerized expression.

What is happening?

The last thing Michael saw before his vision failed was Charlotte, in her ghostly costume, waiting patiently for a wild, raven-haired Spanish beauty to open the giant double doors to the steps.

But I was going to save them!

Then the lights went out.

The pain vanished.

The sound was gone.

For a moment, Michael felt still inside an oppressive, crushing darkness.  Then he began to fall.  As though he had been pushed off the edge of some high precipice, he plummeted through a void of blackness. 

He caught a pinprick of light in the distance. Just as he squinted at it, it seemed to vanish.  He became aware of his own breathing, ragged and terrified.  The light twinkled again, miles away, but whipped out of sight again.  He realized then that the light wasn’t moving away; he was hurtling forward down some winding, unknowable tunnel.  He felt his body lean into the turns and tracked the little ball of brightness as it grew larger and larger on the nonexistent horizon.  The next time he caught sight of it, he reached for it.  And it blossomed open around him; enveloping every part of him.

Suddenly, he was standing on light.  Smooth, solid, bright and white.  He stared down at his own bare feet.  They were supported by nothing more than the steady pulsing of endless light.  He was stark naked.  He covered himself with his hands and looked around, embarrassed.  But there was no one there.  In fact, for a moment Michael couldn’t see anything but the light.  After the black out, he had to close his eyes against the shocking brightness.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a library.  Or at the edge of one; twenty feet ahead there were endless rows of towering bookshelves stuffed to overflowing with books of every kind and color.  They were surrounded by the same brilliant light that Michael was bathed in.  He looked around the otherwise empty space.

“Hello?” he called out tentatively.  There was no answer.  He looked around again, and ventured toward the nearest bookcase.  It was twice as tall as Michael, and even when he squinted he couldn’t make out where it ended.  Michael inspected the contents of the massive shelves.  There were enormous leather volumes and tiny spiral-bound journals, bright glossy binding and ancient-looking hand-sewn pages.  Michael reached out and pulled out a thin blue periodical.  There was nothing on the cover.  He flipped it open.  It was blank.

“What do you think you are doing?”

Michael jumped back in surprise, covering himself with the pamphlet.

A thin, gray-haired woman with a disapproving scowl and an arm full of books had appeared out of nowhere.

“I’m sorry,” he sputtered, looking for somewhere to hide.

“Just hand it over.” She held out a wrinkled hand.

Michael eyed the shelves.  He danced around the endcap and handed her the periodical from around the corner.

“What a jackass,” she snapped, snatching it from him and hurriedly putting it back in place.  She began replacing the other volumes with an annoyed air. 

Michael cleared his throat.  “I’m sorry.  Ma’am?”

She glared at him.  “What?”

“Could you tell me where I am?”

“Didn’t we just have this conversation?”

Michael blinked.  “Did we?”

“Yes,” she said, replacing a leather-bound tome almost as big as her torso.  “I caught you with Al Capone over in aisle two thousand twenty seven, and you hid your pale ass self in 2026.  Then you started blabbering about an alley and some dead lady.  The same old ‘I’m too young slash intelligent slash beautiful slash special to die’ that I always get.  I had to get your story out just to calm you down.”

“You had to…what?”

She forced the last book into the overstuffed shelf and put both her tiny hands on her hips.  “I’m going to have to do it all again, aren’t I?” she cursed under her breath.  “These are the life stories of every person that has ever lived and will ever live.”  She gestured around them like an especially bored tour guide.  “Welcome to the comprehensive record of the human experience.”

Michael stared at the bookcases that seemed to go on forever and his eyes grew wide.  “You mean, my whole life story is here?” 

She shot him a withering glare.   “Please step behind the yellow line.”  Michael hadn’t seen it before, but about three feet from the bookcases was a bright yellow line that pulsed with the luminous whiteness under his feet.  He glanced up at her uncertainly, and she glared back. 

“Surely your naked body is the most thrilling thing I have ever seen.  In the eternity that I have already served here, processing millions of souls forward, your scrawny, flaccid penis is the most exotic thing I will ever have the joy of knowing.”

Michael sprinted out across the line, covering himself as best he could with his hands and crouching to make himself smaller.  She snapped her fingers.  The bookcases became a blur as they whizzed past.  When they came to a stop, Michael couldn’t tell much of a difference.

“Aisle 75,998.”  She marched across the line and glared at him to stay there.  Michael watched her disappear down the aisle and return with a bundle of green composition notebooks tied together with what appeared to be shoestring. 

“It’s not one book like the others?” he asked, frowning.

“No,” she lifted the corner of the top notebook, which was thinner than all the others.  “When you come here, the story ends.  When you go back, the next begins.”  She pulled out a piece of loose-leaf notebook paper that was wedged between the first and second notebooks and handed it to him.  “This is the section you just finished.”

“It’s blank.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, pulling a pen from the pocket of her starched shirt. “Of course you can’t read it.  Have you no sense at all?  If you could read your own story it would change everything.  I can read it and that should be enough for you.  Now sign at the bottom.” 

Michael blinked and took the pen from her.  He scribbled his messy signature on the bottom.

He looked at the stack in her arms “So I’m going to die…” he began to count the notebooks but she turned so he couldn’t see them. 

“Alright, that’s enough.  Impertinent…” she turned the stack up so he was staring at the bottom of the last notebook, then started back down the aisle.

“Wait!” Michael called. 

She turned back with a withering glare.

“I’m sorry.  It’s just—why don’t I remember being here before?”

“I can’t tell you that!” She turned her back on him and continued down the aisle. “Who killed J.R.?” she asked in a mocking simper. “Was there a second shooter?  Was the moon landing faked?”  She turned back toward him with her arms crossed.  “I can’t tell you anything; you’re a semi-mortal!  There aren’t any answers here for you; you’re going back!”

“I am?”

“You hardly have a choice this time,” she said, stuffing his tome back into the bookcase. 

“Can you at least tell me why I chose to go back the first time?  You were here for that, right?”

“You just want to know everything, don’t you?”

“Please,” Michael said, practically on knees, “please.”

She pursed her lips, put her hands on her hips, and considered him for a moment.  “People ask me all sorts of things when they get here.  As many questions as there are entries.  Do you know what I’ve realized, listening to all these last wishes?”

Michael shook his head.

“You can tell a lot about someone from the question that they choose to ask.  You think your most burning question right now is ‘Why?’ but that’s not what you’re really asking, is it?”

Michael frowned.

“Come on, jackass, think about it.”

He felt pretty sure that that’s what he wanted to know. 

“You think on it when you get back,” she said. “The River has already started to flow.”

“The what?”

She pointed behind Michael with a bony finger.

He spun around and saw that a trickle of water was running across the whole space like some strange, clear ribbon caught in a strong wind.  If she hadn’t pointed it out, Michael wasn’t sure he would have seen it.  As he squinted at it, it began to widen, turning from a trickle to a stream, growing exponentially, until the edge of a raging river stopped just before his toes.