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He’d been here before, lying with a woman he liked, who with a little thought and nudging he could perhaps be in love with, except that what they had would never be entirely mutual, or equitable. And he still didn’t know what to say. I could take from you for the rest of your life, and you’d end with . . . nothing.
He said, “If you’d like, I can vanish, and you’ll never see me again. It might be better that way.”
“I don’t want that. But I wish . . .” Her face puckered, brow furrowed in thought. “But you’re not ever going to take me on a trip, or stay up to watch the sunrise with me, or ask me to marry you, or anything, are you?”
He shook his head. “I’ve already given you everything I can.”
Except for one thing. But he hadn’t told her that he could infect her, make her like him, that she too could live forever and never see a sunrise. And he wouldn’t.
“It’s enough,” she said, hugging him. “At least for now, it’s enough.”
THE LADY IS A SCREAMER
by Conn Iggulden
Historical novelist Conn Iggulden is the author of the bestselling Emperor series— The Gates of Rome, The Death of Kings, The Field of Swords, and The Gods of War—detailing the life of Julius Caesar, as well as the Conqueror series—Wolf of the Plains, Lords of the Bow, Bones of the Hills, and Empire of Silver—exploring the life of Genghis Khan. He is also the coauthor of the bestselling nonfiction books The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Dangerous Book of Heroes, as well as Tollins: Explosive Tales for Children. His most recent book, written with Lizzy Duncan, is Tollins 2: Dynamite Tales.
In the flamboyant story that follows, he takes us on the road with a raffish con man who discovers a new profession—ghostbuster—but who learns that some ghosts are harder to bust than others.
I SUPPOSE I THINK OF MYSELF AS RUNNING A SMALL BUSINESS, PROVIDING a necessary service. I’m just one of a hundred million guys, paying the bills with the talents God gave them. I don’t have a fancy name for what I do. I’m not a stage magician and to be honest, the kind of clients I get aren’t impressed by that sort of thing. If I called myself Afterlife Inc., or something, well, it wouldn’t get my car there any faster. Not that car. I’m part of the backbone of America, my friend. Anyway, out of the four of us I’m the only one drawing a salary, so my costs are pretty low.
I started this to make a record of a few odd years, but I’m not really interested in passing on my pearls of wisdom. Not so someone else can wade through this kind of crap on a daily basis. If I had kids, I wouldn’t recommend it as a line of work, you know? It was all right in the beginning, when it was just checking the obits and knocking on doors. Everyone wants to say a few last words to the recently departed. If you’re interested, the number one choice was “Sorry,” closely followed by second prize: “I should have told you I loved you more often,” and my personal favorite, which was always some variation on “Are you happy?” No, my dear grieving widow with the sprayed hair still up from the funeral, he’s dead, of course he’s not happy. I’ll admit I hadn’t the first idea back then whether he was happy or not. I know a bit more these days, but I’ll get to that. I just used to assure her that poor Brian was just fine, that he missed her and he was looking forward to seeing her in heaven. If I handled it right, I’d also get a couple of juicy hits. S
ure, as I’m already talking, I’ll tell you. Hits are when you get a detail right that they think you couldn’t possibly know. “He says he remembers that time in the Maldives, does that mean anything to you?” It’s a golden moment and you never get tired of watching the last trace of cynicism drain away from them. All it takes is a couple of Barnum statements and a little research.
Maybe I do have a little knowledge worth passing on, at that. P. T. Barnum made them famous, but it all started with a lecturer named Forer, back in the forties. I can start the list from memory, so here it is:
“You have a great need for others to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.” And so on. You get it? They apply to everyone. Couple a few of those to some personal research and you have a cold reading they’ll remember forever.
They never think I could do some actual work before turning up at the door. The Internet is good for that, though my favorite was the old microfiches they had in libraries. Newspaper records were useful, but the gold was often in court records and voting rolls. It’s all public. These days, half the people I read about are still the Google and microfiche crowd—too old to have heard of Facebook. The rest are low-hanging fruit. Facebook don’t dump a page for about a week after a death and their privacy policy is, well, the difference between me scoring and not, most of the time. You’d be amazed what you can find out in ten minutes.
You only need one proper hit and it’s all they remember when you’re gone. You’re in their house and you’re reading like crazy, taking in every tiny detail. With the old ladies, you ask to go to the bathroom and you check the meds. I had a lovely one at the beginning when I found a collection of insulin bottles and needle packets. I checked her name on the unopened boxes, then all I had to say was, “John says to remember your injections,” and she was a goner, full-blown tears like it would never stop. When it was over, I’d made a sweet two hundred for an hour, including the drive. I think it was then I realized I didn’t really need to go back to work. I could do it full-time.
It didn’t work out exactly the way I wanted, not at first. That day’s pay was more than I saw again in a month of trying, but I had to learn the trade and I made enough to keep me going. I could do the research in local libraries, which cost me nothing.
Well, this story isn’t going the way I thought it would. As I seem to be passing on my years of wisdom after all, I’m going to tell you the best bit and let you judge if your job is anywhere near as much fun. Are you ready? This is the good part. If you work for a sandwich shop, you’ll never starve. If you visit widows, you get a surprising amount of postfuneral sex. There is no greater aphrodisiac than grief. From experience, I can tell you Day Three is the winner, just when all the relatives have finally asked each other to let her mourn in peace, meaning they really want to get back to their own lives.
I can tell the best ones almost as soon as they open the door, sometimes just by reading the obituary. Big, strong husband gone too soon, sons who live in a different state. Those girls are like pressure cookers, all that raw emotion just waiting to blow. I’m telling you, just seeing the word cancer gave me a rush of blood after a while. Nothing gets the juices going like a long dry spell. Bless their hearts for trying, but cancer guys aren’t up to much in the sack.
It all went wrong, or went right, or changed my world, however the hell you want to say it, when I met the Lady. I still don’t know her name, and if she can talk, she never does to me. It’s usually my curse that I have to deal with women every day. They’re the ones who don’t mind finding a fifty in the purse for a few words and my best soft voice. I can’t say I don’t understand them, like some rummy guy in a bar you might meet. I do understand them. I just don’t like them all that much. They don’t think like us, you know? If it wasn’t for money and sex, I don’t think I’d talk to them at all. Crazy, every last one of them. I grew up with a strict mom, and maybe she turned me against them all, I don’t know. A man might write poetry to them or send flowers, but that doesn’t last for long once he’s cleared the bases, does it? Marriage is just making sure it’s still there when you get the itch and maybe making a warm nest for your kids. You’ll hate yourself for nodding along with me, but you know old Jack Garner speaks the truth. And, no, of course it isn’t my real name. Well, I’ve had it all my life, but it isn’t the one I was born with.
With the Lady, all I get is her blowing in my ears, like the wind. As it happens, that has turned out to be surprisingly useful, but I’ll get to that too. Look, you have to let me tell the story in my own damn way.
In those days, I used to advertise. I still do sometimes, though the rates have gone way up and, frankly, there’s a lot of competition. If the stock markets go down, my business goes up, I don’t know why. Oh, you could probably make some change about sharks feeding on grim times, but the way I see it, I spread a lot of goodwill when people really need it. I’m a philanthropist and, yes, I know what it means. I usually left them smiling. Crying too, but smiling through the tears, mostly.
My method of starting with a local paper and checking the deaths kept me in gas and jackets and paid for the cell phone. But every now and then, maybe if I was starting in a new area, I’d put a couple of ads in the locals. There just isn’t any point buying space in a specialist magazine, so let me save you a few dollars. They’re full of fakes—well, obviously—but the customers you want don’t get Spirit World delivered to their nice mailboxes, you know?
I had the kind of call that still gives me a thrill. I couldn’t tell her age from the phone and there was some kind of accent, I couldn’t tell which. I thought it was maybe Dutch, so I was imagining some big apple-strudel type, maybe with blond braids, just amusing myself with pictures in my head while we talked. I got out my maps and put the phone against my chest while I grinned. Penacook, New Hampshire, some godforsaken place in the middle of Merrimack County. Nice names and not a part of the world I knew that well. I told her it was four hundred miles and that I’d have to default on another job to reach her. I was sounding her out on the money, you know? But she was a good one, for all her funny vowels. I named a price and she just paused a moment, then agreed. No negotiation, which was exactly the sort of client I liked best.
After that, it all went a bit odd. I asked her who she wanted me to reach on the other side and she said, no, she wanted me to get rid of a spirit. She said she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in hearing what it had to say, she just wanted it out of her house.
I nearly told her to call Ghostbusters and put the phone down. I swear, if she hadn’t already agreed to a rate for gas mileage that was just ridiculous, I might have done it. Perhaps I was a bit short that week, I don’t remember, but I told her I’d be there in two days and she clicked her tongue and huffed and then agreed, as if she wasn’t the one who’d come calling. They don’t think like us. They don’t do logical. I had the idea even then that there wasn’t going to be much weeping on my shoulder from that one. I was right too, but then I am a bona fide psychic. I should be right every now and then. Did you notice the Latin? Self-educated, but I could still kick your ass.
Penacook is one of those pretty mill towns, couple hundred years old and proud of it. There’s a river, a few churches with high steeples, and a nice old Civil War memorial, like a thousand other places. I don’t go near the churches, though you’d think we’re in the same basic business, wouldn’t you? It’s all about giving a little hope. I found the address on Fisher Street and took a room at the cheapest hotel I could find to put on the black suit and kill a few hours. What I do doesn’t go so well in bright sunshine. Evening is best, with the shadows growing longer. It makes them just that bit more suggestible, in my experience.
I can tell you I was disappointed when Mrs. Weathers opened the door. She was tall, taller than me even, but there was no sign of blond braids and she was thin and kind of bony. Her hair was near white and she had it scraped back so tight it must have taken years off her face. She took a look up and down the street like she was embarrassed to be seen opening the door to me, then hustled me into the house.
This isn’t even the meat of my story, you know, not really. I always get caught up in the details when I’m thinking about the time I first met the Lady. I can still remember the way the door shut and I still wonder what sort of airlock door Mrs. Weathers had, because the silence was intense. It felt like I’d been wrapped in wool, like the thick carpets soaked up all the noise until I wanted to speak just to be sure it would come out. I recall there was an antique clock as tall as the old girl, but the pendulum didn’t move then or any other time. I guess you would call it tasteful, but I call it rich and my money gland began to squeeze a little.
