Scare Tactics (12 page)

Yes, Your Honor, I have traveled out of my body since I was a small child. We all do, of course, but few of us remember the experience; or else we choose to recast it as a dream ...

No, what he learned at the Sheriff’s home would not be of immediate or practical value. Still, Hero thought, one had to start somewhere.

It took him only a few minutes to prepare to leave his body. There was always the potential of danger: his body might be moved in his absence, so that he would not be able to find it when he returned. He dismissed the possibility. Carverstown was a small place, with a population of not more than fifteen thousand. Obviously he would not have to travel far in order to find the Sheriff’s residence. In his absence from jail, if the sphere around his body was disturbed he could return in a fraction of a second. He would risk a seizure from the speed of re-entry, or a few hours of acute discomfort should he slide back into his body at a bad angle.

Hero, lying on his back, closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and meditated on the address, 322 Georgia Avenue, SW. It was always best to know exactly where he wanted to go. Wandering about once he was free of the body could mean trouble. Violation of the ethereal envelope around this world would instantly plunge him into netherworlds, dimensions frightening for the creatures they contained, and frequently incomprehensible to the human mind. But Hero was a skilled out-of-the-body traveler, always careful.

Tonight extra precautions had to be observed, so that he wouldn’t be seen by someone—Sheriff Stone, for instance—who could recognize him. The
döppelganger,
although it was not composed of flesh, was never invisible and appeared quite real to the untutored eye.

With a slight tickling sensation, then a little
pop
in the region of his breastbone, Hero separated from the flesh-and-blood body and hovered momentarily, radiant, above the still form on the bunk, connected to it by a thin bluish cord of pure energy, like a laser beam but flexible. Although he would be on the street in a few moments, only animals and those rare individuals with clairvoyant powers would realize that he was a wraith; they would be able to distinguish the light-cord that connected him to his body in the basement cell at the Sheriff’s station.

In the next instant he had left the building and was standing on the corner opposite the courthouse. Traffic was slow. Next to Hero there was a glass-sided bus shelter with a route map on it. He looked up the street and saw a sooty bus coming toward him. On the side of the bus there was a placard advertising a local mortuary: Daimler Brothers.

The bus doors wheezed open in front of Hero. He looked at the driver, a husky black man wearing shades with sapphire-blue lenses.

“Come on,” the black man said. “What is you waiting for? Ain’t no more buses tonight, this here’s the only one.”

“Are you going to Georgia Avenue?”

The black man laughed. “If you say so. I’m just driving this thing wherever it is the two of you wants to go.”

“The two of us?” Hero said, looking around. He seemed to be alone.

“Sho’. Why else ride the bus? Y’all don’t need me to where it is you’re going.” He snapped his fingers. “Man, you can go anywheres, just that quick.”

“I don’t think I’m allowed to go with you,” Hero said. “Don’t worry none about that pretty blue cord.” Hero never worried about the cord, which took care of itself. The cord didn’t become wrapped around lamp posts, tangled in bushes, caught in revolving doors. It was always just
there
,
unobtrusively. “You is safe, long as you stays on the bus,” the black man assured him. “And she do need to talk to you, hear?”

“Where is she?” Hero asked.

The black man jerked a thumb over one shoulder. “Right back there. Let’s get on with it, now; I got a schedule to maintain.”

As soon as Hero was aboard he saw Taryn Melwood on the bench seat in the rear of the bus. She was doing her nails. She put down the bottle of polish and gestured cheerily.

At the mortuary they had washed her body and closed all the wounds. Dressed her in something pretty, a shell-pink dress. With two strands of cultured pearls. Fixed her hair, re-shaped and made up her face. But the Daimler brothers hadn’t done her nails for her. And, Taryn explained, she liked for her nails to look good.

“We’re not supposed to be meeting like this,” Hero said.

The bus pulled away from the curb. Outside, the courthouse and all the other buildings along West Fourth Street began to vanish in a thick, dismal fog.

Taryn waggled the nails of her left hand so the polish would dry faster. “Listen, we have a problem, and we need to do something about it.”

“
I
need to do something,” Hero corrected. “And I’m not in a very good position to do anything.”

“I’m going to help you,” Taryn said.

“How?”

“Karma. Don’t you recognize me yet? I mean, who I was back then?”

“Back when—?”

“Here’s a clue. Babylonia, 1354
B.C.
I was employed in the household of a merchant in the tin trade, but I, uh, got it on with the Master, and his wife decided to have me, what’s the phrase?
Nun’ sha telgrit.
”

“Turned into a zombie for the slave trade.”

“Now do you remember me, Tawn L’uit?”

“I remember ... a young nursemaid too beautiful to be ... disabled so cruelly. So I ...”

“Pressed a little too hard and broke my neck. Hey, don’t give it another thought! You did me a favor. Now I’m doing you one.”

“Why are you still here, Taryn?”

“I’m not, really.” She grimaced and glanced out the rear window of the bus, at the gray void through which they were traveling. Not entirely a void, because it was occasionally punctuated by little streaking lights, like meteor showers. “I mean, where is
here,
for Chrissake? Anyway, I have a Dispensation, I think they call it, but only for a couple of days. Exactly two days, because once that first shovelful of dirt hits the coffin, that’s it, I’m gone. You know what I mean. I hear the light’s better over there. No old buses, either. Anyway, I’m trying to help
you.
I don’t need any help. The nice thing about being dead is, there’s nothing left to be afraid of.”

“Why did he kill you, Taryn?”

“Do you like this shade of nail polish? It doesn’t exactly match my dress, but I don’t think it’s too bad.”

“Can’t you answer any of my questions?”

“It won’t help you if
I
answer them,” she said matter-of-factly. “It won’t help
her,
either.”

“Who?”

“The next one he’s going to kill, sure as God made little green apples.”

“There’s going to be another one?” Hero said, horrified. “No bout a’ doubt it,” Taryn chirped. “Unless you’re really on your toes.”

“But I—I don’t know what to do.
Help me,
you said you’d help me!”

The black bus driver looked over his shoulder at them and called out, “Georgia Avenue! This is the next and only stop.”

Taryn, tongue between her teeth, concentrated on drawing a line of polish around the lower rim of her pinky nail. “Perfect! Okay, reckon I’m ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Ready for what?”

“For my funeral.” She looked him sternly in the eye. “Be there. That’s where we’ll get him.”

“How?”

“I’m still working on that one,” Taryn admitted.

Taryn lifted her chin and showed him her profile. Despite artful applications of mortician’s wax, knife wounds were faintly visible.

“Don’t you think they did a pretty good job?” she said wistfully. “I ought to be in pictures, huh?”

“Boss,” the driver moaned. “Time for you to de-part. This ain’t no taxicab. I got me a schedule to maintain.”

“Go on,” Taryn said, giving Hero a psychic push. Close as they were, there was no possibility of them touching each other. “But stay out of his mind, Hero. It ain’t pretty in there.”

The bus doors whooshed open. Hero got up. When he looked again Taryn was lying down on the seat, wearing her pleated pink dress, hands folded below her breasts, a slight permanent smile on her face. Her eyes were closed. He walked to the rear doors and stepped down into the gray void. There was a twinkling-of light like starfall and he felt himself tilting, as if he were standing on the deck of a ship in heavy seas. He instinctively knew he couldn’t fall, but he reached out anyway as the neighborhood of Georgia Avenue warped into focus all around him.

He looked the other way and saw a pretty blond girl on the sidewalk a dozen feet away, staring at him. She was out walking one of those squat snitty little dogs with too much hair. The dog was barking its head off at the end of a glittering leash.

Hero discovered that he had a death-grip on a stop sign. He hung his head as if he were drunk. The girl scolded her noisy dog but quickly jogged him to the other side of the street. Hero continued to lean on the stop sign until he heard her well down the block, talking to the dog, whose name, apparently, was Cheezit. He looked up then, in time to see the girl dragging Cheezit up the walk to the front porch of the house at 322 Georgia Avenue—

The home of Sheriff John Stone.

Edie and Roberta

“U
ncle, there’s a drunk man on the corner. I don’t think he lives around here. Anyway, I never have seen him before. Cheezit, now hush! I’ll get you your bedtime snack.”

“What was he doing?” Stone asked the girl. “Sitting on the curb? Lying down?”

“No, sir, he was sort of leaning against the stop sign like he was fixing to collapse.” She shuddered eloquently. “He gave me the willies. Just sort of appeared out of nowhere. Cheezit and me was almost on top of him before we even noticed him.” Edie went up on her toes to reach a box of the crackers her Pomeranian doted on and had been named for. She was a slender girl just into puberty, but her figure was developing fast.

Stone came up behind her, braced her lightly at the waist, and reached over her head to get the box down for her.

“Thanks, Uncle John.”

“You’re not feeding him too many of those things, are you?” Stone had bought Edie the Pomeranian as a Christmas present, banishing the faithful but failing Beauregard to his office.

“No, sir, I’m real careful about his diet after what the vet had to say.” She scooped up her pet from the floor and nuzzled him. “Don’t want to upset his tummy-tum, do we? No-no-no.”

“Believe I’ll go outside and have a look around for this drunk you saw.”

Edie said disapprovingly, “The way he looked, he’s mostly bum. Cinch he doesn’t belong in this neighborhood. Now looky here, don’t be biting my fingers half off. Okay, here’s your treat, you bozo.”

Stone took his roast beef sandwich with him and had a couple of quick bites on his way to the porch. The roast beef was delicious. Edie wasn’t fourteen yet, but already she could cook with a flair that would be the envy of most housewives. She knew how to can jellies and vegetables, and was looking to win a prize in her age group at the county fair in September. Cooking was just one of Edie’s God-given talents. She sang in the church choir and painted pretty watercolors and also ran the household, supervising the nigger who came in to clean and do the washing. Most importantly, Edie had taken on much of the responsibility for Roberta. Stone could afford to have a practical nurse only two full days a week, half day on Saturday.

Outside he scanned the street but didn’t see anyone. Apparently the drunk who had startled Edie had moved on.

Stone heard Edie whistling as she left the kitchen and bounded upstairs. Although at the moment his spirits were weighted with rocks and sunk in dark waters, Edie was a ray of light even at those depths. She called him “’Uncle,” but they were not related. She had been a runaway from Tumblestone Mountain, Georgia, whom he had plucked off the streets two years ago, then taken into his own home. Edie had worked out far better than Stone dared to hope. Roberta adored her. And his own feelings—

Stone sat wearily on the edge of a glider with the Italian-bread sandwich in his hands. He had not eaten all day. In the kitchen he had thought he was ravenous, but after a couple of bites he just couldn’t swallow any more. He blamed this lack of appetite on strain and fatigue. On arriving home from work he’d shut himself in his bedroom and had such a shaking fit he was frightened it would bring on a heart attack. Now he had difficulty focusing his thoughts on the girl, his angel whom he had rescued from the brink of Perdition. A young girl, forced out of her home, with no place to go—he had been in Law Enforcement for most of his life, and knew the terrible statistics, the fate of poor girls like Edie. He was so proud of her now—but when he thought about all that she meant to him, something corrupt and sickening welled up in his throat, he nearly gagged.

Taryn. Taryn was still in the way, though she had left his house more than eight years ago. He could never be truly happy with Edie until—but she was dead, damn her,
finally—
how long must he continue to suffer for Taryn's sinful ways, how long would he be cast down in the prime of his manhood because of what she had done to him?