Grave Robber for Hire (2 page)

I gave Claudia a quick smile. “Ring around your husband’s relatives and ask them what writing from Clyde’s or that t
ime period, they may have. Tell them you’re cataloguing old family journals, diaries, and letters for future generations.” Unfortunately, every generation suffers storage shortages or aren’t interested in the past, and one by one the past gets trashed.

Many families had nothing.

Viggo and I left Claudia, hopped into Streak, my red hot 1938 Jaguar SS sedan I’d spent ten years having modified. Original on the outside, I’d had the once rusted hulk painted red and black and chromed to super shine. Under her hood sported a late 70’s Ford V8 engine. The interior was modern and heavy on timber and velvet.

With Streak running but still parked on Claudia’s Poinciana lined street, I thought of Clyde and internally quaked.

“Reading Clyde caused the hair on the back of my neck to go stiff. I don’t fancy many more encounters by facing him over and over through his writing.” If any more of his writing even existed. “But I want that Rembrandt, Viggo—bad.”

His pale blue Nordic gaze met mine. “Frightened you.”

“Yeah. But I’ll get this over quickly and go feel up his grave.” To speed the process I’d try the route I least liked to use, ever. It’s not the most successful way of sifting through the dead’s thoughts as I can’t aim for dates or even time periods. Once I receive their signal I get every thought ever—backwards from death. But luckily the painting had gone missing only three days before his early demise. On another plus, Claudia’s side of Clyde’s descendants hadn’t rolled far from the ancestral tree. Her suburb, Indooroopilly, is conveniently close to the Toowong Cemetery where Clyde was buried.

Even though his spirit was thick with evil, three days of thoughts should be a cinch.

#

Finding a parking space on a side street off Frederick Street proved easy. Midday sun beat onto the car in a white scald. I put my Tweety and Sylvester sun-shade across Streak’s windshield to prevent my hands
melting into the steering wheel on my return, and braced myself for what I might feel in Clyde’s grave.

Busy road exhaust fumes assaulted my lungs. Traffic whooshed behind me in a city-sized thunder as I strode through the cemetery’s four sandstone pillars in my kitty-paw print boots. I needed the old grave area, so I turned left and kept going. Ten minutes later, I stood at the base of Clyde Owen Jones’ grave.

A spindly guava bush hung over a large age-blackened cross. The granite cross’ left arm was shattered as if struck by lightning or smashed with a sledge hammer. Cross pieces studded the ground and glinted white and black in the harsh sun. Guava fruit filled the air with a tropical, slightly nauseating, fragrance. A crow cawed, a soft beat behind the cacophony of cicadas in their summer love chorus.

Sweat trickled between my boobs.

I glanced around. An elderly couple stood admiring a huge angel monument and a Labrador watered a palm tree nearby. Otherwise, I was alone. Just me, my guardian, and a few hundred dead spirits. Yep, same-old-same-old.

The old sections of cemeteries are the easiest for readings because the long dead don’t get many visitors to watch the freak feel up the grave. Me being the freak.

Vig leaned on the neighboring gravestone, crossed his arms and sunned his face.

I dumped my handbag in front of Clyde’s impaired cross. Heat shimmered in silver wraithlike vibrations off the faded grass and summer scorched soil. Hands on hips, I wrinkled my nose. This was so gonna suck. It would have been nice to find the grave steeped in shade. I readied myself for the burn and lowered myself till I lay face down. Shame my leatherette outfit didn’t include insulation.

Cross chunks and soil crystals seared the bare skin on my arms, chest and cheek. Dust burning my nose, I opened my sixth sense and called telepathically to the spirit lingering in the disintegrated coffin beneath. My version of knock, knock, who’s home.

I blew out a breath, creating an eye blinding dust storm. Eyes watering, I blinked them clean. “I’m not looking forward to meeting up with Clyde’s spirit again. He was creepy,” I told the ant near my nose and Vig.

“Creepy?” Vig speaks only a few decipherable modern words.

“Super creepy. Shrivel my ovaries to specks, creepy.”

He laughed, “That is bad.”

The thousand year old dead guy had a point.

A whisper tickled up the hot soil into my hands. I hate doing this sort of search. Since Clyde died just after the painting went missing, reading his spirit was probably the quickest and easiest way of finding said masterpiece—just not the most pleasant. I get all sorts of visuals from this sort of reading: personal, boring, sexual.
Everything
.

Clyde’s spiritual volt felt weak with age, but two years ago I’d done this with a six century old grave in Yorkshire, so I knew the spirit was still available. I just had to dig deeper. Literally. I wriggled my fingers back and forth, digging them further into the packed dry earth.

“I’m adding the cost of a fresh manicure to Claudia’s account,” I told Vig, although I doubted he understood a girl’s mangled nails angst.

A gentle abrasion nibbled my fingertips. Woot. “I’ve got him.” Through the dusty vapor, I saw Vig’s thumbs up. To gain a stronger connection, I dug down a few more millimeters. An electrical malignant slime bolted through my fingers, up my arm, and jolted my soul. I screamed, but nothing left my mouth except a puff of black smoke.

My heart hammering blunt spikes into my chest, I pulled and twisted, trying to extricate my fingers from the ground. Multiple savage stings told me something with mini claws had latched onto my fingers. I tugged and jerked and tugged but couldn’t pull them free.

Bloody hell.

Two broad, callused hands grabbed my wrists and ripped my fingers out. Vig dropped my hands, fisted his own and yelled in agony.

Black sludge dripped from my throbbing finger-tips into the impressions my fingers had left in the soil.

I pushed myself up to my hands and knees, and dry heaved until a trickle of black coiling mist escaped. What was that, and was it all out? God, I hoped so. I flopped down, rolled onto my back, and sucked air like I’d never before tasted oxygen.
What the fuck? Or was that, Holy fuck?

Never had I felt such malevolent evil.

A sizzling bubble darted around in my stomach in a painful cramp. Skin chilled, I wrapped an arm around my middle as my brain seized.

Whatever traveled up my arm, some of it now resided in me.

Definitely,
Holy fuck.

Chapter 2
.

Viggo slammed his hand on my chest and shoved me flat to the grave. His blue eyes brightened and lightened, drawing me into infinite depths until I squirmed under their intensity.

“Hayyel—still.” Through Vig’s palm, a cold frisson shot into my chest, icing a path to my stomach. It hit the boiling evil that had crawled inside me from touching the grave and sprang back, mimicking a bungee rope throwing its adrenaline junkie victim back toward the cliff he’d leapt off.

The evil exploded splintering into marble sized coals. My stomach knotted into a contraction worthy of expelling an elephant. My back arched until my feet and shoulders ground into the soil.

Sweat streamed down Vig’s tense face. The scar on his cheek whitened from strain, but he kept generating whatever came out of his hands.

Helpless and terrified, I tried to speak and gurgled.

Fear clasped my heart in a triumphant squeeze, pulsing my blood into a tidal wave. Blood pressure at a thundering high, my head throbbed, and I retched.

“Ferk,” Vig’s eyes nearly popped. He snatched his hand away and stared at his palm. His scowl appeared to be a whole pile of, what-the-hey? A low guttural sub-human growl vibrated from deep in his chest.

I fell flat and lay in a pain and evil riddled stupor.

Vig raised his palms above his head, tipped his face skyward and started a melodious chant. The descant’s rhythm built. My body acting as a tuning fork hummed with infinitesimal vibrations. Inside my head began to fizz as if carbonated. Body whirring, the balls in my gut began to spin.

I clawed at my stomach. Moaning like Frankenstein, I tried to disassociate myself from my body’s pain and failed.

Vig’s singing stopped.

My body twitched. As a way to die, this blew.

Viggo knocked my hands away from my stomach and slapped both of his palms on my chest, pressing the metal studs of my vest into my flesh. Cold, multiple degrees icier than before, sprinted down Vig’s earlier path to the evil lurking within.

The cold spread into my gut, flicked out icy tendrils, ensnaring the hot orbs in a fire on ice agonizing dance. I choked back a scream.

Cold chunks burbled up from my stomach and raced up my throat. I turned my head and vomited. Black balls of ice shot out of my mouth. Like tiny decapitated heads they rolled until they hit clumps of grass, and melted.

My stomach stopped spinning and cramping, but my heart still pushed my blood pressure towards explosion.

It was out.
Way to rescue a girl Vig.

My heart stuttered. Then stopped. Just stopped.

The chill silence hung hollowly in my ears. Shadows etched around my vision, stealing my sight.

Noooo
, Vig saved me, I can’t die
.

A cannon ball crashed onto my chest. Any spare molecules of air I held burst out in a rattling hiss. My heart pitched and followed up with a reassuring
ka-thud, ka-thud
.

I refocused and saw Vig’s massive fist poised and ready for another reboot. Not dead—unless Vig shattered my ribs with another less than gentle cardiac massage. I’d swear at him, except I couldn’t speak—or breathe.

To indicate I lived I gave him a weak ass thumbs up, rolled to my side, sucked air, and cursed the fact that air doesn’t come laced with pain meds.

Chest heaving and laboring for breath, Viggo stood. His limbs went rigid, his joints bent at funny angles, and he started to jerk as if his muscles didn’t work. He resembled a 1960’s B-grade movie Zombie.

My lungs deflated as if they’d collapsed under the squeezing coils of a python.

What did he do to himself by blasting that evi
l out of me?

Vig crashed to his knees and arched backwards until I thought I’d hear his spine snap. His red and blue tunic rode down, bunching under his arms, exposing the painful tautness of his convulsing muscles. Pale skin glowed in the sun, his bright near white hair thrashed in the ground’s filth.

My WTF meter already peaking on holy-shit red, hit explosive purple. I couldn’t bear his agony, the tortured wrenching of his body—the knowledge he suffered because of me.

I rolled to my knees. The world spun and whirled. I pitched forward and collapsed.

Stupid-traitorous-weak-ass-body.

A shaft of light blazed directly from the sky as if from the sun itself. The beam focused onto Vig’s chest and radiated until he turned luminescent.

Oh shit, what was happening? Could I stop it and save him?

He roared. Loud and heartrending. It sounded the way I imagine a dinosaur did millions of years ago—as the asteroid hit and stole its world. His body started to flop and squirm. Eternity or a minute passed before he stopped. He rolled to his side and hacked up huge
lungfuls of nothing.

Tears filled my eyes and overflowed, pooling in the dirt beneath my cheek. On my stomach still, the hot earth heated the metal studs on my vest and the dry grass scratched at my bare skin. I inched my hand toward him. “Viggo. You. Okay?” Could he croak it even if his human body died centuries ago?

Viggo nodded, reached over touched my face, and poofed out.

Shit.
Shit. Shit.

Although Vig’s not alive, he’s my family, and I love him. “Viggo?” I hissed through my horror. He’d better be okay. His job description had never been to save me this way. Of course, I’d never been occupied by evil before. Before today, the most he’d done was scowl or knock my hand off some writing or beat up my nasty-serial killing twin brother.

My brain couldn’t assimilate the facts into a coherent thought or identify what just happened—to either of us. The horror and pain and adrenaline still slithered around my body in a vile cocktail. I would definitely be skipping any re-enactments to find out how we could have fought such terrors more appropriately. Unlike the spider swallowing lady song, that evil shit had jiggled, but sure hadn’t tickled inside me.

“Viggo, come back.” A middle aged couple strolled towards me, so I spoke softly. Besides it hurt to talk since Vig had hit my chest with such enthusiasm. After nineteen years of cohabitating, he probably had some repressed anger issues.

I hacked up more black shit. It left my mouth tasting as if I’d sucked on the tail pipe of a seventy’s V8. I struggled to my feet and dusted myself down. With a quick finger comb, I hoped my blond mass was not too wild witch.

“Viggo?” Come back. Please come back. My legs trembled and bent as if they were made of sponge foam. I struggled to stay upright and whispered to the air. “Show me you’re okay.” Please show me. “I won’t leave until you do.”

The couple was closer now; the lady frowning. An elderly lady talking to a gravestone glanced over then continued her chat. Shit, I didn’t need the police called to arrest the Goth weirdo standing on a grave and talking to the sky. But I wasn’t leaving until I knew Vig was okay.

Having people stare wasn’t a new experience. Sharing a life with Vig often makes it hard to appear normal. Invisible to everyone but me, without thinking I talk to him, and we laugh at shit, and people stare.

Usually this embarrasses me. Right now, the whole of freaking Brisbane could upload it onto YouTube.

“Vig?”

A rumbling disembodied voice drifted from the sky, “Hayyel. I safe.”

I jumped, but grinned stupidly. “You’re safe?”

“Yes. Go, Hayyel.”

“Okay, Vig. See you at home—yes?” The couple stopped walking, and laughed nervously. What? Never seen someone talk to the sky before?

“Yes. Go.” He sounded exasperated enough that I imagined him rolling his eyes.

I grabbed my bag and rooted around for the water bottle and breath-mints I kept for sweltering days, and I-spy-a-hot-guy, emergencies.

I gulped water and shoved a handful of mints in my mouth to diffuse the leftover black sludge taste.

Feeling a little less ambushed, I teetered toward the exit on my stiletto spikes that I regretted wearing now that I’d been
eviled up. I wanted away from dead-freak-Clyde’s grave more than I wanted my next orgasm.

I gave the cemetery a quick glance and shuddered. Since Clyde croaked more than a hundred and forty years ago, today I’d faced only his residual evil. Alive, he must have been the Prince of Freaks, the King of Horror, the Lord of Nightmares. Yeah, the Lord of Nightmares—because tonight I’d be having a few.

Today sucked. And this was day one on the case. Day two should be awesome. If I was going to encounter more of such a rotten repast I’d need protection, and not of the latex kind.

Maybe I should learn witchcraft and cast protection spells before I touch dead people’s shit or maybe the cosmos was hinting I needed a new career.

But what? All other occupational choices ended with, “Do you want fries with your order?”

Surely I had better paid employment choices? Astronaut, short slightly chubby model, movie star, out of key rock star—I’d make a good rock star, I already had lots of outfits.

What exactly crawled through the soil from Clyde’s residual spirit? I shuddered against all the unknowns, sped up and checked the pavement behind my feet, to make sure I wasn’t leaving a burning trail.

Fast, that’s it
. A race car driver. I’d race V8 super cars.
Vroom, vroom, vroom.

Stuff it
. I could tell myself I had save thy-self ethics, but I’d be lying through my leatherette clad ass. I would find that stupid Rembrandt no matter how freaking evil Clyde the dead-dude was. Then with a time-jump middle finger salutation, I’d buy my farm with the money I earned and save hundreds of animals.

I needed cheesecake—bad. I had to find a café so I could drown my nightmare in a slab of baked raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake. Cheesecake soothes freaked-out Angels, and keeps her curves, well, curvy.

On the path ahead of me, a thousand year old lady tottered at the speed of a hung-over snail. A whisper of urgency touched my soul. I recognized the blue dress from the lady who’d been talking to the gravestone earlier. My humming nerves zeroed in.

“
Her,”
something said
, “Save her
.” Ah, hell.
That
internal voice was never good.

She hung a right and headed for the curb.

“Shit.” Frederick Street is busy. You wouldn’t cross it if you’d won the Olympic one hundred meter sprint. She must have lost her freaking marbles, or she’d made a dementia suicide pact and her time was nigh.

Suicide granny did the left right check first. A good sign she wasn’t looking to meet her creator yet. She stepped off the curb and started shuffling for the center line. A car zipped past, blowing her hair from her pink skull and plastering her blue floral dress to her boney bent frame.