Ungrateful Dead (2 page)

He shook his head. “She’s never actually manifested, so the cameras don’t show anything useful.”

I eyed my own collection of electronics ruefully. “Then there’s no point setting up my video camera?”

“The polariod might work?” Charlie suggested. “The local paper ran a whole two pages last Halloween on ghosts captured in photos.”

I remembered it. Two damn pages of double-exposure, bad photography, and crappy journalism, not to mention the follow-up article where readers wrote in to share their own experiences with the supernatural. I found it pretty unimpressive, but nobody asked me. I put the digital camera and video camera back with Jack and pulled out the polaroid. It was really hard to get polaroid films nowadays, but I liked the vintage PI flavour that came with the old thing. I bet C Auguste Dupin would have had a polaroid at the Rue Morgue if he could.

I took a few establishing shots of the morgue, made a note of the time and temperature in my notepad. About ten minutes after that, boredom kicked in. Charlie isn’t one of nature’s great conversationalists. He sat in his swivel chair and went through his paperwork, apparently immune to the cold, while I sat on the edge of the desk and doodled in my notepad. Every now and then I made an actual note, but they were starting to look pretty much the same:
11:05, nothing’s happening. 11.15, nothing’s happening. 11.25, still nothing
.

“You want a drink?” I asked Charlie finally, reaching for my Jack. I’d reached the point in the investigation where drinking seemed like the best way forward.

“No, and I don’t think you should either,” he said sharply, snatching the bottle from me. “It’ll interfere.”

“With what? Nothing’s happening, Charlie. Your ghost girl isn’t showing.” I stood, stretching. “You think she’s camera-shy?” I rapped loudly on the desk. “Hey – what was her name?”

“Esther Wallis,” Charlie supplied, eyes darting around the chamber nervously.

“Hey, Esther!” I called, rapping again. “Come out, come out wherever you are! Don’t be all coy, now.”

“Ethan!” Charlie jumped up, grabbing my hand. “Don’t taunt the dead!”

“Or what? She’ll curse me? You think ghosts can do curses?”

“You’re thinking of mummies, I think.” Charlie slouched down in his chair again, eyes fixed on the lights overhead. “Did you see that flicker? That was a definite flicker, Ethan. I think you annoyed her.”

I glanced at the light. It was definitely buzzing, but the thermometer was still steady at four degrees, so I didn’t think I could intepret it as supernatural phenomena. I made a quick note in my pad though, just for the sake of novelty.
11:27, lights buzzing
. It wasn’t going to be my most exciting case ever. I could just feel it.

Charlie made a trip to the vending machines upstairs, supplying us with coffee and chocolate, and then we returned to our respective filing and doodling. “Why d’you think they called the place
Cloth Encounters
?” I asked Charlie. “
Brief Encounters
would be a better pun, right?”

The lights flickered again, plunging us into complete darkness for a few seconds before coming up again. Charlie twitched, splashing coffee on his papers. “Look at that!” he whispered. “She doesn’t like you talking about the shop. Maybe it reminds her of how she died?”

The lights went off and stayed off. I frowned at Charlie’s silhouette. “Maybe talking about how she died reminds her of how she died?”

There was a great clank, like something rammed into one of the steel drawers. We both jumped then, and I reached for my digital camera. Creeping over to the source of the noise, I ran my hand over the metal. There was a small dent, like someone had punched it, and it was warm, which kind of struck me as the opposite of ghostly, based on Charlie’s comments. “What’s the temperature over there?” I asked him.

“Minus four and dropping.” Charlie’s voice was squeaky with nerves. “She’s here, Ethan.”

Frigid air rushed past me, through me, and for a second I saw stars flash in the dark. It didn’t feel like faulty air conditioning. It felt fucking awful, like my bones had been plunged into ice water. I mean, it didn’t convince me we had a phantom on our hands, but it did convince me this wasn’t a maintenance problem.

The drawer at my knees flew open, slamming me onto my ass. Pain cracked up my legs and spine and I yowled pretty unmanfully, clutching my battered knees. “Son of a ...”

Cold air slapped at me, hard, like a physical blow now, shutting me up pretty effectively. Okay. I could be converted. Something weird was definitely going on here.

“She’s mad at you,” Charlie whispered. The lights flickered on and off, buzzing like a jar of wasps.

I picked myself up with a grunt. “What are you, her interpreter?”

“The temperature’s still dropping,” he reported. “Do you think she can freeze us to death?”

“Why would she?” I wondered, zipping my jacket up. My breath fogged in the air, and the chill of the room made my muscles ache. I tried to put myself in a dead girl’s shoes. I could get being pissed off about being dead, especially if I’d died in a bungled robbery at a fucking underpants shop and then got stuck haunting the morgue, but if that was my fate, what would I want? What would I expect the living to do about my predicament?

I snapped a couple of pictures of the dented drawer while I considered it. Call me cynical, but people are pretty basic. Feed ‘em, fuck ‘em, and pay ‘em, and most will be happy. Especially if you do it in that order.Take those things away, throw in being dead, and yeah, I’d have issues too. But was Esther trying to take her frustrations out on Charlie and me, or did she think we could do something for her?

“So, Esther,” I said, kneeling to take some snaps of the drawer she’d opened into my knees. “What’s the deal? Are you taking revenge on the living?”

The lights snapped on. I looked up to see Charlie staring at me, pale and sweaty. “Do you think she really is?” He hugged himself, shivering. “Do you think she blames us?”

“Us?” I echoed. “I only just got here. You had her cremated.”

The lights snapped off again and another drawer opened, clipping my shoulder and spinning me away. “Fucking hell.” I rubbed my shoulder. “What is her problem?”

“Maybe she doesn’t like you talking about cremation?” Charlie offered.

Another drawer flew open right on cue, this time without hitting me. The lights flicked back on, glowing on the waxy, blue-hued skin of the corpse in the drawer. I flinched, remembering Charlie’s tale of Esther possessing bodies. This guy didn’t look like he’d get far even if our ghost girl could move him – he’d obviously been in a car crash or something, body mangled and pulped – but Charlie’s story was a lot more believable now than it had been an hour ago. I could buy into possesion and ghosts right now.

Funny how quickly you can be convinced in these circumstances.

Charlie crept up behind me, footsteps echoing on the white tiles. He clutched my jacket sleeve. “I feel sick,” he whispered.

So did I. I put that down to the corpse in front of me. Even if the damn thing wasn’t moving, it still wasn’t pretty. I went to kick the drawer shut. It jammed with a nasty scrape of metal and the body twitched. Charlie gasped and ducked behind me. The air filled with a sickly scent, like flowers and puke. The body twitched again, more definite this time. The toes wriggled, like the dead guy had cramps he was shaking off.

And then it sat up.

I won’t lie, I yelped. I didn’t
scream
, like Charlie, but I still let out a strangled yelp, all shocky and high-pitched. Charlie gripped me tight enough to hurt, his weight threatening to pull me over. I pushed him away, transfixed by the corpse sitting in front of me.

He twisted his neck and stretched his jaw, like he was limbering up after a long sleep ... Well. Maybe that’s exactly what it was, when you think about it. It didn’t look real. His eyes were bloodshot, skin bloodless. He looked like a crappy, over-made-up corpse from a low budget B-movie. I chewed my lips, trying to think of something to say. Nothing witty came to mind, so I settled for, “holy shit,” which didn’t really seem adequate.

“Esther,” Charlie whispered over my shoulder, “is that you?”

The corpse’s jaw worked, but nothing came out except a nasty rasping sound. I held my breath, waiting for the vocal chords to kick in. Finally, in a voice like a forty-a-day smoker, the corpse spoke.

“I shouldn’t be here.”

It was definitely a guy’s voice but there was a weirdly feminine tone to it. Charlie’s fingers flexed on my arm, grinding through the leather. “Lady, I’ve been thinking the same thing all night,” I told the corpse. Now the inital fright of seeing the corpse rise had passed, the scene had become so fucking surreal, I didn’t feel scared anymore. I mean, sure, talking corpses. Why not? Ghosts. Why not? There were more things in heaven and all that shit, right?

“I shouldn’t be here!” the corpse screamed, clenching his fists. “I’m twenty-five years old and I work in a fucking underwear store! I wanted to be a fashion designer!”

The lights went on and off like an illegal rave, dazzling me. The temperature roared between so cold I couldn’t catch my breath and so hot I was sure I’d melt. Charlie clung to me like a drowing man, teeth chattering loudly. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” he whimpered.

“Look, Esther,” I said, shading my eyes. “It sucks that you died, I get that. And you know, condolences and shit. But hanging around here isn’t the most productive way to deal with it, is it?”

The corpse glowered at me and another drawer shot out, hitting me in the knees again. I crumpled, knocking Charlie over, and we both went down in a tangle of flailing limbs and curses. “Esther, come on!” I yelled, shoving Charlie away from me. He rolled across the tiles with a moan. “What are we supposed to do, huh?”

“I don’t want to be dead!” she screamed through the corpse. “You can’t fix that, can you? So fuck off and leave me alone!”

“I work here!” Charlie protested, clambering to his knees. “I can’t be expected to focus with a ghost in the building messing with the lights and the bodies – not to mention the temperature. Do you know what happens to human bodies above four degrees centigrade? They rot! It’s disgusting! And the families get really upset!”

Esther’s mouthpiece turned to face him, wet popping sounds echoing through the room as the neck moved. “And I’m supposed to feel bad? I got shot in the chest by some adolescent idiot with a hard-on for silk panties and
my
family doesn’t even know! And then you just burned my body!”

“We tried to find your parents,” Charlie said, guilt flashing across his face. “Or any family, but nobody came forward to claim the – you.”

“I wanted a proper funeral!” the body snapped. “A real funeral with music and mourners and flowers!”

The temperature was climbing steadily. Sweat dripped down Charlie’s cheeks and I felt like my leather jacket was grafting to my skin. Charlie’s words about rotting bodies drummed around in my head. How long did it take a cropse to start decomposing? Like, hours? Days? Could the rocketing temperature in here speed up the process? Ghosts were one thing, but I didn’t want to be stuck down here with rotting bodies. The pro-golfer’s garbage was bad enough.

I sat back, scooting away from the drawers in case Esther lashed out again. “Okay,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow. “Okay, let’s all calm down, okay?” I reached automatically for my smoking tin, then realised if Charlie frowned on drinking in the chamber, he’d definitely disapprove of smoking. Which was a shame, because I felt like everything would be a lot better if I could drink or smoke right now.

“Okay,” I said again. “Look, Esther, why haven’t you just ... moved on? Like, to heaven or hell or wherever? Why are you staying here if you hate it so much?”

It seemed like a reasonable question but Esther just screamed, the corpse thrashing around, smashing his fists against the sides of the drawer. Charlie flinched. I’d kinda figured by now that this was pretty much the worst Esther could do though. Lights, messing with the heat, and doing the ventriloquist thing were her limits. And I wasn’t crazy about the zombie routine, but I figured if it came to it, I could take out a dead guy.

“Esther, cut it out!” I yelled, leaning forward to grip the edge of the drawer. “This isn’t helping.”

“Nothing will help!” she screamed. “I’m dead, that’s not curable!”

“Well, maybe there’s something we can do to make your ... afterlife ... a more enjoyable experience?” Charlie offered.

I shot him a look. “What did you have in mind? Nice music, pretty flowers?”

“Flowers,” Esther repeated wistfully. “I really would have liked flowers on my grave. If I had one.”

“We can get you flowers,” Charlie said eagerly. “What were you favourite flowers? I could keep some down here for you.”

She growled, the corpse making an ugly burbling sound deep in his throat. “I don’t want to be down here!” The temperature plummeted, taking us from fever-hot to sub-zero cold in seconds. “Aren’t you listening to me?”

“So what do you want?” I asked. I was starting to lose it with this shit. I was sober and tired and I wanted to be drunk and asleep. I was sure Esther wasn’t going to hurt Charlie – couldn’t, in fact – and I was just as sure Charlie’s boss wasn’t going to believe me if I told him this story. So I was done. Really done.