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He starts down a long flight of marble stairs. There’s a wet breeze coming from below and the smell of salt. Seawater?
WE COME DOWN into the middle of a whole spa complex. Massages. Manicures. Hair salons. Skin salons. Probably designer blood transfusions too. But it looks more like we landed in Dracula’s forgotten root cellar. Mushrooms sprout from mist-covered cracks in the marble floor. Small, stunted palm trees and bromeliads sprout along the hall. It looks like this entire level of the mall is rotting in the salt air. The walls and ceiling have buckled from the moisture. Dripping vines dangle from the metal grid that once held ceiling tiles. In our feeble lights it looks like no one has been down here in a thousand years.
Underneath the vines and mold on one wall is a sign pointing the way to the Roman baths. As we head down there I move the bones from my pocket into the lining of my coat. Stick the SIG in my pocket. If I can’t throw any hoodoo, I’m sure as shit going be ready to blast every Shoggot and monster Morlock piece of shit in Kill City.
There’s a cool wind blowing between the doors to the baths. Maybe a hole that’s letting in a sea breeze. Thin, dawn light filters through filthy windows in the ceiling several floors above the main bath, turning it into a strange ceremonial space. Somewhere to come for a baptism or human sacrifice after getting a perm.
There’s a fake Roman temple at one end of the bathing area. The main pool is octagonal, with three tiered steps down to a foot of tea-colored water full of loose tiles and broken furniture. Delon heads for the temple. The others circle the pool, staring into the scummy water like maybe the 8 Ball will float to the surface like Excalibur and fling itself into our arms. I sit down on the top step of the pool and take out a Malediction. The flare from the lighter gets everyone’s attention, but when they see it’s just me, they go back to looking disappointed.
“What happens now?” says Traven. “Does anyone know how to summon the ghost?”
All their beady little eyes turn in my direction. I shake my head.
“Don’t look at me. I couldn’t pull a bunny out of a hat right now.”
“Anybody else?” says Traven. “Brigitte. You worked with the dead. Do you know anything?”
She squats at the top of the pool and flicks in a pea-size piece of concrete with her thumb.
“This is the wrong type of dead. I know nothing about ghosts.”
“Vidocq? Do you have any tricks or potions?”
Vidocq raises his hands and drops them to his sides, a gesture of exasperation.
“Rien. Nothing.”
“We can’t have come all this way for nothing.”
Candy comes over and hands me her water bottle. I didn’t even know I was thirsty, but once I start drinking, it’s hard to stop. I hand her back the bottle.
“Any ideas?” she says.
“One.”
“You better act on it before you have a mutiny.”
I take a puff of the Malediction.
“Hey, asshole,” I yell. “Come out, come out, or I’m going to burn Kill City down. Also, Aelita sent us for the Qomrama.”
A gust of wind stirs the water. The light from the ceiling dims for a moment.
“Liar,” comes a disembodied male voice. “Aelita wouldn’t let you pick up her laundry.”
“If I say your name three times, will you show us your pretty face, Bloody Mary?”
“Why? I’m happy this way.”
“Are you afraid of us?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“You’re afraid of something,” I say.
“So are you, sonny. Being afraid is one of the realities of existence.”
Delon is back by the pool. He looks around the room, trying to pinpoint the ghost voice. Brigitte and Traven are as wide-eyed as starstruck teenyboppers. Vidocq, Candy, and I have all run into ghosts before. The others have never been in a real haunted house. Welcome to the Loudmouthed Dead Club.
