Sleeping Late on Judgement Day

five: haunted

“SERIOUSLY,” I told Clarence the junior angel as we waited to order, “it’s starting to freak me out a little. It’s been going on for days. First, there’s something scratching in the walls. Oh, and an intermittent smell of rotting meat. Love that. Then there’s the Monkey’s Paw or whatever that was.”

“Monkey’s Paw?”

Clarence brushed some lint off his sweater as I explained about the little gray hand on the windowsill. The kid had upped his game a bit lately, clotheswise—more GQ preppie, less Your Dad On His High School Debate Team. He was even rocking some cool wire-rimmed glasses, plus he had let his hair grow out a bit and had the floppy, just got off my sailboat look going on.

He was also, at least at that moment, wearing the facial expression of an astrophysicist who is listening to an anal probe hysteric explain why aliens are real. This pissed me off a bit because pretty much all the stuff I’ve told him has turned out to be true.

“Yes, it was a hand, damn it,” I said. “Don’t look at me like that. With little fingers and a little tiny thumb.”

“Maybe it was a raccoon.”

“Fuck your raccoon. Besides, there’s more. Last night, I start hearing something bump against my window while I’m lying in bed—like a really big fly, you know how they do, but this sounded huge. I kept trying to catch it, but every time I get up, I find nothing. Then, when I checked in the morning, I saw a kind of slimy smear on the outside. Like something really disgusting had been pressing its nose against it.”

The kid was still doing the slow nod. “So, you’re being stalked by Mormons, monkeys, and whatever the thing with the wet nose was—some kind of ghostly Irish Setter?”

“Yeah, see how funny you think it is when your apartment turns out to be haunted. Oh, wait, it is—by old people.” Clarence rented a room in some rich folks’ house. Living rich folks.

“Burt and Sheila are really nice, actually.”

“I’m sure that my visitor is a really nice cursed Monkey’s Paw, too. Kind to children and dogs and shit like that. But I still don’t want it hanging around my apartment when I’m not there, especially since the Mule told me I’m not allowed to move somewhere else, which would be the obvious solution. By the way, thanks for your words of support, Junior.”

“Look, I’m not making fun of you, Bobby, I just don’t know what to say. This is still a bit new to me, all these demons and monsters and stuff.” He stared at his menu, which he had been doing a lot since he’d come in. “Speaking of new to me, I don’t know what any of this stuff is. Seriously, I don’t recognize anything. Do they eat actual food in Indonesia?”

“Kid, kid. If you’re going to start hanging out with the big boys like me and Sam, you have to start eating big boy food. You live in San Judas, one of the best restaurant towns in the world. We’ve got people selling gyros and Vietnamese-Mex and even chicken and waffles out of street trucks! Not to mention a zillion different interesting ethnic restaurants like this one. You’re going to be dead a long time—hey, you might have been dead a long time already, for all I know—so you might as well branch out.”

“Yeah, but do I have to start with Indonesian? Look at what they’re eating over there. Rocks and bark!”

I shook my head. “First off, this isn’t Indonesian, it’s actually Javanese food. Java is only one of thousands of islands in Indonesia. Like all Boston clam chowder is American food, but not all American food is Boston clam chowder. Second, what those folks are eating is nasi gudeg, and it’s really good. The rock, as you so ignorantly called it, is a marbled, hard-boiled egg. The stuff it’s sitting on is not bark but gudeg, which is made from jackfruit.”

“Yeah? How about the fried washcloth?”

“Buffalo skin. Probably from a cow, actually. No, it’s good. Stop making faces. Just let me order lunch for both of us and try not to hyperventilate.”

While we waited for the food and Clarence watched various menu items go to nearby tables—the kid’s expression was like someone forced to watch ugly people have sex—I brought him the rest of the way up to date. Well, not about Anaita’s involvement: Clarence was still new to this whole disobeying-the-bosses thing, and Anaita was seriously high in the hierarchy. I wasn’t ready to drag him in that deeply. He listened, but he also seemed distracted, like there was something on his mind. He kept saying things like, “You know, Bobby,” and then kind of trailing off as though he’d chickened out on whatever he’d been about to say. Whatever it was, I figured he’d bring it up when he was ready, and besides, I had worries of my own—not just unexplained things-going-bump, but Foxy Foxy and his very obvious case of The Fear.

“Who is that Foxy guy, anyway?” Clarence asked. “How did he find out about your feather in the first place?”

“I don’t know, but once it had been stolen from Eligor I’m sure the word got around, and locating odd items for interested buyers seems to be what dancing Mr. Fox does.”

He frowned. “So the feather means Kephas made a deal with the Grand Duke of Hell.” “Kephas” was the angelic pseudonym Anaita had used setting up the Third Way.

“Eligor is a grand duke,” I told him. “I think there are a few.” But only one whose heart I personally needed to tear out of his immortal chest and squeeze like a ripe tomato, and that was Eligor the Horseman.

“But why would a high angel like Kephas do that?”

“Because no one could open up a new territory like this Third Way place without both a major angel and a major demon signing off. That goes all the way back to the Tartarean Convention.” I saw what looked like our order being lifted onto the pass-through, so I signaled the waiter to bring me another Bintang. (I said I was cutting back and I meant it. Bintang beer doesn’t have a lot of alcohol in it. Honest. But you need something cold and wet to wash down the peppers.)

“Yeah, I get that, but why?” Clarence asked. “The two of them made this big bargain and opened this new territory, I understand that. And I get that . . . Kephas wanted it for this experiment or whatever.” He had hesitated oddly before using Anaita’s pseudonym. Did he have suspicions of his own about the identity of Sam’s mystery angel? “But why would Eligor go along with it?”

“Actually, that’s a good question, and I don’t know the answer. So the angel would owe him a favor, maybe. That’s got to be useful if you’re a major player in Hell. The rivalries those guys have with each other are as bad as anything they feel about us.”

“Still, it seems weird.” His look of dissatisfaction turned into something altogether more perturbed as the waiter thumped a bunch of plates down on the table. “You ordered rocks.”

“Eggs, kid, eggs. And I don’t care if you sit there and starve, but if you keep me from enjoying my food I’m going to skull you with one of them, and it’s going to hurt.”

• • •

As we ate, I thought about what Clarence had said. I was beginning to think he was right: if I was going to find the horn that Eligor had given as a marker on the deal, it might help if I understood the deal better.

“Maybe it’s time I let Sam show me his new place.” I shoveled in a last wiggly fork full of bakmi Jawa. “There might be something about his Third Way that would put the whole thing in a different light. Because right now, I’m stuck.” The Third Way was what they called the alternative to Heaven and Hell that Anaita had put together. Sam had jumped ship to work for them, so he clearly thought it was a good idea, but I still didn’t entirely get the whole premise. I mean, yeah, Heaven and Hell are moribund and old-fashioned—why wouldn’t they be after eleventy-nine gazillion years?—but I wasn’t sure that creating a competitor for the two of them was a smart thing to do. After all, Heaven has a long memory and Hell has lots of lawyers.

“Where is Sam, by the way?” Clarence had tried a few things, but mostly he had been pushing his dinner around like a ten year old pretending to eat enough to earn dessert. “I thought he’d be meeting us.”

“I left him a message and asked him to, but maybe something came up.” At the table behind Clarence a couple of very American-looking teenage girls were sitting with their parents and an older Asian lady who was probably their grandmother. The girls looked about as happy to be here as my guest did, rolling their eyes at every new dish that came to the table. “But one way or another, I’ve got to get hold of that devil horn. It’s my only bargaining chip.”

To get Caz back, I could have said, but didn’t have to. Clarence knew. He’d been in the parking garage with me when it all went sour, when Eligor went home with the angel’s feather and I was left with nothing but a couple of gallons of dissolving fake Caz. Clarence and Sam had basically carried me home that night, then poured me back out of a vodka bottle a couple of weeks later.

The girls at the next table were ignoring their parents completely now. As the adults conversed quietly in what was probably some Indonesian dialect (if you think I know the difference between Balinese and Javanese you’ve definitely got the wrong angel) the girls giggled and squealed in English. “She says she’s getting an after-school job!” pronounced one of them with disdain.

“As a slut!” said the other. They both collapsed into laughter again. The parents and the old woman didn’t even look at them. They may not have understood English very well.

The grown-ups probably don’t know much about what their kids are getting up to here in the Land of the Free, I thought.

This sparked an idea, which distracted me enough that I missed part of what Clarence was saying.

“. . . Because if this Kephas stashed the horn in Heaven somewhere, you’ll never find it, Bobby.”

“No, I don’t think that’s where it is.” But I was focused now on what the girls behind him had said—after-school job. “If you had something that belonged to an important demon, the last place you’d want to stash it would be Upstairs. Talk about something sticking out like a sore thumb! It would be like trying to hide a chunk of uranium in a Geiger counter factory.”

“So you think the horn’s somewhere here on Earth?” He snorted. “Should be easy to find after narrowing it down so far.”

“Sarcasm is like training wheels for the humor-impaired,” I informed him. “You want another beer?”

“No, thanks. I’ve got something to do in a little while.” Suddenly he seemed to go a bit cagey. “But thanks. The buffalo washcloth thing was actually pretty good.”

“You’re a miracle of tolerance, Junior.” I flipped some money onto the tray to cover the bill and the tip. “I just thought of something I have to do, too.”

“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “I thought we might hang out a bit longer.”

“Why?”

“Nothing.” But he looked like it had definitely been something—the kid wore a mild but distinct air of disappointment. “I just wanted to talk to you about—never mind, it doesn’t matter. It can wait.”

“Good. Because I just realized I have another resource besides the fabulous Mr. Fox who can give me some information about auctions—especially auctions for exotic objects, like angel feathers. And possibly demon horns, too.”

• • •

There are very few activities that are going to make a guy look and feel more like a pervert than driving slowly past a Catholic girls’ academy when school lets out, examining all the young women. (You have to look closely, because the uniforms make them look alike, you see. Honest, there’s a reason I was doing this.)

I finally spotted her and eased up alongside the curb. Luckily for me, she was walking by herself. I had a suspicion she did that a lot. I rolled my window down.

“Hi. Can I buy you a milkshake, young lady?”

She looked up with a slightly unfocused expression, as though she needed to see me before knowing whether she was being teased or actually threatened. She pushed her glasses up her nose, then smiled.

“Mr. Dollar! Hi. What are you doing here?”

“Like I said, Edie, buying you a milkshake—if that’s okay. Can you spare me fifteen or twenty minutes?”

“Sure. Do you want me to get in?”

“Probably give people the wrong idea. The SJ Creamery’s just around the corner and down a block. I’ll meet you there.”

Because of slow traffic from all the people picking up their daughters, Edie actually reached the place before I did. I settled in on the other side of the booth, facing her and her enormous backpack. Despite her youth, Edie Parmenter was one of the most acute sensitives in Northern California, and her after-school job had nothing to do with rolling burritos or stacking jeans at the Gap.

We both ordered chocolate shakes. I was still fairly full from lunch, but it’s hard to turn down a serious milkshake, and that’s the kind they made there. “It’s weird to see you here, Mr. Dollar,” Edie said. “Not bad, I mean, just . . .” She laughed. “I totally didn’t expect you.”

“Me and the Spanish Inquisition,” I said. “Sorry—old joke.”

Edie gave me a stern look. “I know about Monty Python, Mr. Dollar. My dad quotes them all the time.”

“Ow.” I leaned back. “How’s life? How’s school?”

“Tenth grade completely sucks, but at least I don’t have to board at school this year. But I have to say I don’t think nuns make the best science teachers. Like, Sister Berenice was telling us the other day that humans only went to the moon to try to find God. And this other teacher told me that God hates San Judas because there are so many gay people living here.”

“Yeah, especially around the downtown fabric stores,” I said. “That’s a real problem for Heaven. Armageddon is supposed to start right here in the Pioneer District.”

She looked at me carefully. “I get it. You’re joking. There’s nothing wrong with gay people.”

“I agree. Not to mention that anybody who pisses off nuns is okay with me.” I paused while our shakes arrived, nodded thanks to the server, then unsheathed my straw. “Hey, I wanted to ask you something, Edie. The last time I saw you—remember?”

“Islanders Hall?” She pushed back her glasses again so she could see to force her own straw into the thick shake. “The auction, yeah. That was totes scary! All those people shooting! And you knocked me over on my bike.”

“It was quite a night, all right. But I wanted to ask you to tell me what you remembered about it. Mostly I want to know who else was there.”

I had picked the right girl. Edie reeled off a list—Japanese Crowleyites, some Jesuits, Scythian priestesses (Foxy had called them “Amazons,” I remembered) and more. But none of the names sparked any new ideas. I asked Edie in a roundabout way if she’d heard anything lately about a horn that might have the same kind of value as the feather, but she only shook her head.

“Oh, no! That feather—that was crazy! I’ve never heard of anything like that before. Not since then, either.” She paused for a moment, sorting something out in her mind. “The person who sent me that night, well, that person (she was walking around the pronoun, I noticed, protecting her client) wanted me to describe everyone else who was there, too, just like you.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble, but can you tell me anything about your client? Anything at all?”

She put down her milkshake. “You know I can’t do that, Mr. Dollar. It’s bad business.”

“I get it. Drink up, I understand. Okay, here’s another question. I have a real need to find out some things, and that night and the people who wanted the feather make a good starting point. Any chance your client would talk to me?”

Edie’s eyes went big. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, do me a favor. Contact him or her and ask, would you? Tell them it’s important to me and that I’d make it worthwhile to them.”

She still looked worried. “I don’t know.”

“It can’t hurt to ask. You’ve known me for a few years now, Edie. Have I ever lied to you about anything? Done anything crooked?”

“You hit that guy in the face that one time.”

“Are you talking about the jamoke who was trying to sell that bogus relic of Le Saint Prepuce? Come on, that was gross, and he totally had it coming. Let’s be fair—he threatened to pull a knife on me.”

She giggled. “Actually, it was pretty cool. Like a movie.” She slurped up the last of her shake and sat back, studying me through her slightly crooked glasses. She could have been Encyclopedia Brown’s cooler sister. “Okay, Mr. Dollar. I’ll check it out with my employer. How do I reach you?”

I wrote down my cell number on the receipt and pushed it across to her.

“I gotta go. I’ve got a crap-ton of math homework. Thanks for the milkshake!” She slid out of the booth and out the door, trundling her backpack on wheels behind her, just another tenth grader who could read ancient Akkadian and tell a genuine Stone of Giramphiel from a realistic fake at twenty yards’ distance.

• • •

Just as I was pulling up next to my apartment, my phone rang. This time it was my frequent co-conspirator, Sam. Finally.

“Sorry I couldn’t make lunch today, B. Things to do, people to irritate. What’s the good word?”

“The good word is gudeg, boychik, and you missed it.”

“Yeah, I know. Next time.”

“But I still need to talk to you. The shit is getting thick around here. And now, on top of everything else, my apartment is haunted.” I gave him the five-cent tour of my recent spectral happenings.

“Are you sure it’s not just a couple of your one-night stands still knocking around the place?” he said. “Judging by your past habits, I wouldn’t be in a hurry to call an exorcist.”

“Yeah, well, fuck you too.”

We passed a few more lazy insults and agreed to make a new lunch date in the next couple of days. As I went up the stairs toward my second-floor rooms, I was feeling like I might actually be making some headway with the four or five thousand critical issues hanging over my head. Then I got to my apartment, and even as I reached into my pocket for the keys, I noticed that the door wasn’t entirely closed.

You know how those alarms blare when a sub starts diving? That’s what I felt up and down my spine—danger, danger, danger! I left the keys where they were and pulled out my gun instead, then ducked down and slid through the door as quietly as I could.

I didn’t have to go far. Two young, pale guys in suits—yep, the same two I’d seen following me downtown—were pulling stuff out of my cheap pressboard book shelves, making a big old mess in the process. Worse, they had actually painted a big ragged swastika on the wall above the television set.

“Freeze!” I stepped in, gun up and braced, and swung it back and forth between the two of them. Both were young, probably mid-twenties. One had dark hair, one had light, but both were as Caucasian as Betty Crocker’s firstborn. They looked like student athletes, maybe a little older, but certainly less than thirty. And though they were equally wide-eyed as they looked at my gun, neither of them seemed particularly frightened, which was not a soothing thing. These weren’t just thugs or thieves, although I was pretty sure they were both human.

“So,” I asked, “you Jehovah’s Witnesses need to supplement your income these days, huh? You’re not going to get much for those old issues of Car and Driver.” I gestured to the swastika, but didn’t take my eyes off the men. “Or are you something else? The local Neo-Nazi Welcome Wagon?”

One of them started to lower his hands, but I gestured angrily for him to put them back up.

“If you just tell us where it is,” he said in a calm voice, “there’ll be no need for trouble.” He sounded American, that’s all I could tell you.

“And if you lie face down on the floor with your hands where I can see them, I won’t have to send you to Jesus with a bunch of holes in your face,” I pointed out.

Several things happened in the next second or so. I heard a noise behind me, then something hit me hard on the back of the skull. I staggered, and the only shot I took went wide and high of both the guys in suits. I fell forward onto my hands and knees, my head suddenly feeling like a broken cabin window at thirty-five thousand feet, all my thoughts rushing around and being sucked out into darkness. Also, and I realize I wasn’t a very reliable witness at that instant, but I swear that the swastika painted on my wall ran away.

As I crouched there in the silence following the echo of my shot, swaying, trying to find the strength to get up, I heard my upstairs neighbor start pounding on the floor again, as if a gunshot was no different than playing the stereo too loud. Then somebody kicked me in the head—yes, the same, hurting head—and I went off to sleepy-bye land, which was very, very dark.