Hex Appeal

HOW DO YOU FEEL? by SIMON R. GREEN

It’s not easy having a sex life when you’re dead.

I was sitting at the bar in Strangefellows, the oldest pub, night-club and supernatural drinking hole in the world; smoking and drinking and popping my special pills … Trying to feel something, anything at all. I don’t need to drink or eat, any more than I need to breathe, but I like to pretend. It makes being dead easier to bear. Without my special pills and potions, I don’t feel much of anything. And even with the pills, only the most extreme sensations can affect me.

So I drank the most expensive Napoleon brandy and smoked a thick Turkish cigar threaded with opium. Still, all I felt was the barest shadows of sensation, pinpoints of pleasure flaring briefly in my mouth, like stars going out. I was on the last of my pills, and my body was shutting down again.

I looked at myself in the long mirror behind the bar; and Dead Boy looked back at me. Tall and adolescent thin, wrapped in a heavy deep purple greatcoat with a black rose at the lapel, over black-leather trousers and calf-skin boots, the coat hung open to show a pale grey torso, pock-marked with bullet-holes and other wounds, old scar tissue, and accumulated damage. Including the Y-shaped autopsy scar. Stitches, staples, superglue, and the odd length of black duct tape, held everything together. A large, floppy hat, crushed down over thick, curly, black hair. A pale face, dark fever-bright eyes, and a colourless mouth set in a flat, grim line.

Dead Boy.

I toasted myself with the brandy bottle. I like brandy. It doesn’t mess about, and it gets the job done. With the pills to push it along, I can almost get drunk; and, of course, I never have to worry about hangovers. I indulge my senses as much as I can, for fear of losing them. I sometimes wonder whether my human emotions might start to fade, too, if I didn’t remember to exercise them frequently. I may be dead; but there’s life in the old carcass yet.

I put my back to the unpolished wooden bar and looked around me. The place was packed, and the crowd was jumping. All the flotsam and jetsam of the Nightside, that dark and magical hidden heart of London, where the night people come out to play. Lost souls and abandoned dreamers, gods and monsters, golden boys and red-lipped girls, all of them hot in pursuit of pleasures that might not have a name but most certainly have a price.

It seemed like there were lovers everywhere that night, and I looked on them all with simple envy, jealous of the everyday joys I could never experience. A young man sat smiling happily while a female vampire chewed hungrily on the mess she’d made of his neck. If he could see past her glamour, and see her as I saw her, he wouldn’t be smiling so easily. Any vampire is just a corpse that’s dug its way up out of its grave to feast on the living.

Not far away, a couple of deeply butch ghouls in bondage gear snarled happily at each other over a finger buffet, playfully snapping at each other’s faces with their sharp, sharp teeth. Two lesbian undines were drinking each other with straws and giggling tipsily as their water-levels rose and fell. And a very ordinary young couple, with Tourist written all over them, were drinking a glass of something expensive through two heart-shaped straws, lost in each other’s eyes.

Young love, in the Nightside. I wanted to shout at them, to tell all of them: do something, do everything, while you still can … Because at any time, any one of you can be snatched away. And then it’s too late to do and say all the things you meant to say and do.

Off to one side, my gaze fell upon an off-duty rent-a-cop, still wearing his gaudy private uniform. Huge and stocky, he’d clearly been using knock-off Hyde extract to bulk up his muscles. He was having a good time yelling at his girl, a slender blonde upper-class, up-herself, business-woman type. She finally shook her head firmly; and the Hyde slapped her. Just a casual blow, but more than enough to wrench her head right round and send blood flying from her mouth and nose.

The Hyde looked around, daring anyone to say anything; and then his gaze fell upon me.

“What are you looking at, corpse face?”

I wasn’t going to get involved. I really wasn’t. But there are limits.

I got up and strolled over to his table. People and others hurried to get out of my way, and a kind of hush fell over the bar. Followed almost immediately by an expectant buzz, as everyone started placing bets. The Hyde looked uneasily around him. He was new here. But he still should have known better. I stood over the Hyde and smiled slowly at him.

“Say you’re sorry,” I said. “Doesn’t matter what for. Just say you’re sorry, and you can still walk away.”

The Hyde lurched to his feet. His size made him awkward. He snarled some pointless obscenity at me and punched me in the head. The blow had a lot of weight behind it, but not enough to move my head more than an inch. There was a sound like a fist hitting a brick wall, and the Hyde yelled in surprise as he hurt his hand. I sneered at him.

“You’ll have to do better than that if you want me to feel anything.”

The Hyde hurled himself at me, hitting me again and again with fists the size of mauls. I let him do it for a while, just to see if he could hurt me. When you’re dead, one sensation is as good as another. But the pills were wearing off, and the blows were as distant to me as the sounds they made, and, soon enough, I got bored. So I hit him, with my dead hands and my dead strength, and he started screaming. His bones broke, and his flesh tore, and blood flew thickly on the smoke-filled air. We crashed back and forth among the nearby tables, and other fights sprang up along the way. With cries of “You spilled my drink!” and “You’re breathing my air!” the bar regulars cheerfully went to war with each other. Chairs and bodies flew through the air, and all through Strangefellows, there was the happy sound of fisticuffs and people venting.

And behind me I could hear the Hyde’s girl screaming at me, “Please! Don’t hurt him!” Which was typical.

The Hyde hung limply from my blood-soaked hands. I shook him a few times to see if there was any life left in him, then lost interest. I dropped him carelessly to the floor and went back to my seat at the bar. The business woman crouched, crying, over the broken Hyde. You just can’t help some people. The bar fight carried on without me. I couldn’t be bothered to join in. It’s hard to work up the enthusiasm when you can’t feel pain or take real damage.

I drank some more brandy, and it might as well have been tap-water. I drew cigar-smoke deep into my lungs, and they didn’t even twitch. The pills’ effects never last long. Which is why I always make a point of enjoying what I can, when I can. I was just getting ready to leave when Walker came strolling casually through the bar towards me. Walker, in his smart City suit and his old-school tie, his bowler hat, and his furled umbrella. The Voice of the Authorities, those grey background figures who run the Nightside, inasmuch as anyone does, or cares to. Walker moved easily through the various fights, and not a single hand came close to touching him. Even in the heat of battle, everyone there had enough sense not to upset Walker. He strode right up to me and smiled briefly; and if my heart could have sunk, it would. Whenever Walker deigns to take an interest in you, it’s always going to mean trouble.

“Dead Boy,” he said, perfectly calmly. “You’re looking … very yourself. But, then, you haven’t changed one little bit, since you were murdered here in the Nightside, more than thirty years ago. Only seventeen years old, mugged in the street for your credit cards and the spare change in your pockets. Left to bleed out in the gutter, and no-one even stopped to look; but then, that’s the Nightside for you. Very sad.

“Except, you made a deal, to come back from the dead to avenge your murder. You’ve never said exactly who you made this deal with … It wasn’t the Devil. I’d know. But anyway, you should have read the small print. You rose up from your autopsy slab and went out into the night, tracked down, and killed your killers. Very messily, from what I hear. So far, so good; but there was nothing in the deal you made about getting to lie down again afterwards. You were trapped in your own dead body. And so it’s gone, for more than thirty years. Have I missed anything important?”

Walker does so love to show off. He knows everything, or at least, everything that matters. In fact, I think that’s part of his job description.

“I killed the men who killed me,” I said. “They didn’t rise up again. And after all the terrible things I did to them before I let them die, Hell must have come as a relief.”

“Well, quite,” said Walker. “Except … they weren’t your everyday muggers. Your death was no accident. Someone paid those three young thugs to kill you.” He smiled again, briefly. “You really should have taken the time to question them before you killed them.”

I stared at him. It had never even occurred to me that there had been anything more to my death than … simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Who?” I said, and my voice sounded more than usually cold, even to me. “Who hired them to kill me?”

“A man called Krauss,” said Walker. “Very big in hired muscle, back in the day. You’ll find him at the Literary Auction House, right now. If you hurry.”

“Why?” I said. “Why would anyone have wanted me dead? I wasn’t anyone back then.”

“If you’re quick, you can ask him,” said Walker.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked him, honestly curious.

He gave me his brief, meaningless smile again. “You can owe me one.”

He tipped his bowler hat to me, turned away, and looked at the mass of heaving, fighting bodies before him, blocking his way to the exit. They were all well into it now, too preoccupied with smiting the enemy to pay attention to Walker. So he raised his Voice and said, “Stop that. Right now.” And they did. The Authorities had given Walker a Voice that could not be denied. There are those who say he once made a corpse sit up on its slab to answer his questions. Everyone stood very still as Walker strolled unhurriedly through them and left. And then they all looked around and tried to remember what it was they’d been fighting about.

I sat at the bar, pondering the nature of my dead existence, and my past. I’ve been dead a lot longer than I’d been alive, and it was getting harder to remember what being alive had been like. To have a future, and a purpose, instead of just going through the motions, filling in the time. Had it really been more than thirty years since anyone had said or even known my real name? Thirty years of being Dead Boy? I’d never made any attempt to contact my family or friends. It wouldn’t have been fair on them. They all thought I was dead and departed; but they were only half-right.

I had come to the Nightside looking for something different; and I found it, oh yes.

It’s hard for me to feel anything much, being dead … But with the right mix of these amazing pills and potions I have made up for me specially, by this marvellous old Obeah woman, Mother Macabre, voodoo witch … my dead senses can be fooled into experiencing all the sweet moments of life. I can taste the spiciest foods and savour the finest wines, ride the lightning of the strongest and foulest drugs, and never have to pay the price.

I even have a girl-friend.

I do still feel emotions. Sometimes. They are what make me feel most alive, when I can be prodded into experiencing them. Good or bad, it makes no difference. I savour them all, when I can. And avenging old hurts is still at the top of the list of the things that make me feel most alive.

There was music playing in the bar, clear again now the sounds of battle had died away; but it was all just noise to me. I can’t appreciate music any more; and I do miss it. I have to wonder what else I’ve lost that I haven’t even noticed. I don’t shave, or cut my fingernails, or my hair. I had heard they go on growing after you’re dead, but that turned out not to be the case. I wear brightly coloured clothes to compensate for my dead look, and I act large because I’ve lost my capacity for subtlety. I go on though I often wonder why.

I left the bar, walking unconcerned and untouched through the still-touchy crowd. Everyone gave me plenty of room, and many made the sign of the cross, and other signs, to ward off evil. I do try to be good company, but my people skills aren’t what they were. I made my way out onto the street, and there, waiting for me, was my very own brightly gleaming, highly futuristic car. A long, sleek, steel-and-silver bullet, hovering above the ground on powerful energy fields because it was far too grand to bother with old-fashioned things like wheels or gravity.

The door opened, and I got in. I announced our destination, and the car purred smoothly away from the curb. I settled back in my seat. I knew better than to touch the wheel. My car always knows where it’s going. I opened the glove compartment and rooted around in it hopefully. And, sure enough, there was just one special pill left. An ugly bottle-green thing, which left a chalky residue on my pale grey fingertips. I washed it down with a few swallows of vodka from the bottle I always keep handy. I like vodka. It gets the job done. My dead taste buds started to fire and flutter almost immediately, and I opened a packet of Hobnobs. I crammed a biscuit into my mouth and chewed heavily, the thick chocolate taste sending a warm glow all through me.

“So, Sil,” I said, spraying crumbs on the air. “How’s it going?”

“Everything’s going down smooth, sweetie,” said Sil. My car’s very own artificial intelligence has the rich and smoky voice of a very sexy woman. I never get tired of hearing it. She came to the Nightside through a Timeslip, falling all the way from the twenty-third century. She found me, and adopted me, and we’ve been together ever since. We’re in love. My lover, the car. Only in the Nightside. Nobody else knows; she only ever speaks to me.

“You really shouldn’t spend so much time in bars, sweetie,” said Sil. “All that booze and brooding; it does you no good, physically or spiritually. Especially when I’m not with you.”

“I like bars,” I said, finishing the packet of biscuits and tossing the empty wrapper onto the back seat. “Bars … have food and drink, atmosphere and ambience, bad company and good connections. They help me feel alive, still part of the crowd. And it’s not like I need to work. I only ever work to keep busy. To keep from brooding on the bitter unfairness of my condition.”

“You mustn’t give up,” said Sil. “You have to keep looking. There has to be a way, somewhere, to break your deal and come alive again. This is the Nightside, after all. Where dreams can come true.”

“Especially the bad ones,” I said. “What if … all I find is how to become completely dead, at last?”

“Is that what you want?” said Sil.

“It’s been so long since I could rest,” I said. “I’ve forgotten what sleep’s like, but I still miss it. Just keeping going … can be such an effort. Sometimes, I think of just how good it would feel … to be able to put down the burden of my continuing existence. If that was all I could find, could you let me go?”

“If that’s what you want,” said Sil. “If that’s what you need. Then yes, I could do that. That’s what love is.”

I perked up as Sil bullied her way into the main flow of traffic. All kinds of cars and other vehicles, from the Past, the Present, and all kinds of Futures, thunder endlessly back and forth through the Nightside, never slowing, never stopping, intent on their own unknowable business. I’m one of the few people who actually enjoys navigating through the deadly and aggressive Nightside traffic because you can be sure that Sil and I are always the most deadly and aggressive things on the road.

A lipstick red Plymouth Fury sped by, with a grinning dead man at the wheel, followed by a stretch hearse, with two men in formal outfits and top hats in the rear, struggling to force something back into its coffin. A car with far too much chrome and truly massive tail fins, and a highly radioactive afterburner, slammed bad-temperedly through the slower-moving traffic, occasionally running right over smaller vehicles that didn’t get out of its way fast enough. And something that blazed fiercely with an unnaturally incandescent light flashed in and out of the traffic at impossible speed, laughing and shrieking and throwing off multi-coloured sparks.

While I was busy watching that, an oversized truck pulled in behind Sil, sticking right on her tail. She drew my attention to it, and I looked in the rear-view mirror just in time to see the whole front of the truck open up like a great mouth, full of row upon row of rotating teeth, like a living meat-grinder. The truck surged forward, the mouth opening wider and wider, to draw Sil in and devour her. And me, of course.

Sil waited till the truck thing was right behind us, then opened up with her rear-mounted flame-throwers. A great wave of harsh yellow flames swept over the truck, filling its gaping mouth. The whole truck caught fire in a moment, massive flames leaping up into the night sky. The truck screamed horribly, sweeping back and forth across the road as though trying to leave the consuming flames behind, while the rest of the traffic scattered to get out of its way. The truck thing exploded in a great ball of fire; and, after a moment, chunks of burning meat fell out of the sky. I lowered the side-window and inhaled deeply, so I could savour the smell. Take your fun where you can find it; that’s what I say.

Sil finally drew up outside the Literary Auction House, in the better business area of the Nightside, and pulled right up onto the pavement to park. Secure in the knowledge that absolutely no-one was going to dispute her right to be there. She opened the door for me, and I got out. I took a moment to adjust my purple greatcoat fussily, and be sure my floppy hat was set at just the right jaunty angle. Making the right first impression is so important when you’re about to march in somewhere you know you’re not welcome … probably make a whole lot of trouble, and almost certainly beat important information out of people.

The Literary Auction House is where you go when you’re looking to get your hands on really rare books. Not just the Necronomicon or the unexpurgated King in Yellow. I’m talking about the kind of books that never turn up at regular auctions. Books like The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene, The True and Terrible History of the Old Soul Market at Under Parliament, and 101 Things You Can Get for Free If You Just Perform the Right Blood Sacrifices. All the hidden truths and secret knowledges that They don’t want you to know about. Usually with good reason.

I swaggered in through the open door, and the two guards on duty took one look at me, burst into tears, and ran away to hide in the toilets. Not an uncommon reaction where I’m concerned. Inside the main auction hall, the usual unusual suspects were standing around, enjoying the free champagne and studying the glossy catalogues while waiting for things to start. I grabbed a glass of champagne, drained it in one swallow, and spat it out. I never bother with domestic. Even my special pills can’t make that stuff interesting. There were platters of the usual nibbles and delicacies and flashy foody things, so I filled my coat pockets for later. And only then did I peer thoughtfully at the crowd, pick out some familiar faces, and head right for them. Smiling my most disturbing smile, just to let them know I was here for a reason and wouldn’t be leaving till I’d got what I wanted.

Deliverance Wilde was there, fashion consultant and style guru to the Fae of the Unseelie Court, tall and black and loudly Jamaican in a smartly tailored suit of eye-wateringly bright yellow. Jackie Schadenfreude, the emotion junkie, wearing a Gestapo uniform and a Star of David, so he could feed on the conflicting emotions they evoked. And the Painted Ghoul, the proverbial Clown at Midnight, in his baggy clothes and sleazy make-up. Chancers and con men, minor celebrities and characters for pay: the kind of people who’d know things and people they weren’t supposed to know. As I approached, they all moved to stand a little closer together, for mutual support in the face of a common danger. It would probably have worked with anyone else. I stopped right before them, stuck my hands deep in my coat pockets, and rocked back and forth on my heels as I looked them over, taking my time.

“You know something I want to know,” I announced loudly. “And the sooner you tell me, the sooner I’ll go away and leave you alone. Won’t that be nice?”

“What could we know that you’d want to know?” said Deliverance Wilde, doing her best to look down her long nose at me.

“You want a book?” said the Painted Ghoul, smiling widely to show his sharpened teeth. “I’ve got books that will make you laugh till you puke blood. All the fun of the unfair, with cyanide-sprinkle candy-floss thrown in…”

He stopped talking when I looked at him, the smile dying on his coloured mouth. Jackie Schadenfreude screwed a monocle into one eye.

“What do you want, Dead Boy? Please be good enough to tell us, so we can thrust it into your unworthy hands and be rid of you.”

“Krauss,” I said. “There’s a man here called Krauss, and I want him.”

“Oh him,” said Deliverance Wilde, visibly relaxing. “Don’t know why you’d want him, but I’m only too happy to throw him to the lions. Take him, and do us all a favour.”

“Why?” I said. “What is he?”

“You don’t know?” said Jackie Schadenfreude. “Krauss is the Bad Librarian. A booklegger. Specialises in really dangerous books, full of dangerous knowledge.”

“The kind no-one in their right mind would want,” said the Painted Ghoul, sniggering. “All the terrible things that people can do to people. Usually illustrated. Heh heh.”

I nodded slowly. I knew the kind of book they meant. After I came back from the dead and found I was trapped in my body, I did a lot of research on my condition, in many of the Nightside’s strange and curious libraries. I know more about all the various forms of death, and life in death, than most people realise. I’d acquired some of my more esoteric research materials from men like Krauss.

“Krauss is bad news,” said Deliverance Wilde, mistaking my thoughtfulness for indecision. “He deals in books that show you how to open dimensional doorways, and let in Things from Outside. Books that can teach you to raise Hell. Literally. The book equivalent of a back-pack nuke.”

“Books full of the secrets of Heaven and Hell,” said Jackie Schadenfreude. “And all the hidden places in between.”

“Pleasures beyond human comprehension,” said the Painted Ghoul, licking his coloured lips. “Practices to make demons and angels cry out in the night. Heh heh.”

“Knowledge of the true nature of reality,” said Deliverance Wilde. “That drives men mad because reality isn’t what we think it is and never has been. Take him and be welcome, Dead Boy. It’s bookleggers like Krauss that give people like us a bad name.”

“Where is he?” I said.

All three of them pointed in the same direction. None of their hands were particularly steady.

I headed straight for Krauss, and everyone along the way fell back to give me plenty of room. Krauss was a nondescript, elderly man in a tweed suit with leather patches on the elbows, wearing an old-school tie he almost certainly wasn’t entitled to. He was so immersed in his auction catalogue, circling things and making notes, that he didn’t even see me coming till I was right on top of him. He looked up abruptly, alerted by the sudden silence around him, and peered at me over the top of a pair of golden pince-nez.

“Hello,” he said, carefully. “Now what would the low and mighty Dead Boy want with a mere booklegger like myself? Can I perhaps be of service, help you locate something? Some suitable tome on the pleasures to be found in dead flesh, perhaps? Something explicit, on the delights of the damned? Satisfaction and complete discretion guaranteed, of course.”

“You don’t even recognise me, do you?” I said.

“But of course I do, my good sir! You’re Dead Boy! Everyone in the Nightside knows Dead Boy.”

“You only think you know me,” I said. “But then, it has been thirty years and more since you paid three young thugs to mug and murder me, down on Damnation Row.”

His jaw actually dropped, and all the colour fell out of his face. “That was you? Really? I can’t believe it … I helped create the legendary Dead Boy? I’m honoured!”

“Don’t be,” I said.

Krauss chuckled a little, relaxing now he thought he knew what this was about. “Well, well … I can’t believe my past has caught up with me, after so many years…” He tucked his catalogue neatly under one arm and looked me up and down, studying the results of his work. “I haven’t been involved in the muscle trade for … well, must be decades! Yes! That was a whole other life … I was a different person, then.”

“So was I,” I said. “I was alive.”

His smile disappeared. “But you can’t blame me for what I did, all those years ago! I’m a changed man now!”

“So am I,” I said. “I’m dead. And I’m not happy about it.”

“What … what do you want from me?” said Krauss. “I didn’t know … I had no idea…”

“Who paid you?” I said. “Who hired you to have me killed? I want to know who, and why. I wasn’t anybody back then. I wasn’t anyone special. I was just a teenager.”

Krauss shrugged quickly. There was sweat on his face. “I never asked why. Wasn’t any of my business. I hired out muscle; that was what I did! I never asked her why, and she never said.”

“She … She who, exactly?”

“Old voodoo woman,” said Krauss. “Called herself Mother Macabre. Spooky old bat. Not the kind you ask questions of.”

He had more to say, about how he shouldn’t be blamed for someone else’s bad intentions, that he just supplied a service, that if he hadn’t done it, somebody else would have; but I wasn’t really listening. Mother Macabre was the name of the old Obeah woman who’d been supplying me with all those special pills and potions, for more than thirty years. Could it really be the same woman? Why would she pay to have me killed, then help me out? Guilt? Not likely; not in the Nightside. It didn’t make sense; but it had to be her. She was why Walker had pointed me in this direction. I looked Krauss in the eye, and he stopped talking abruptly. He started to back away. I dropped one heavy, dead hand on his shoulder, to hold him still. He winced at the strength in my hand and whimpered.

“I helped make you who you are!” he said desperately. “I helped make you Dead Boy!”

“Let me see,” I said. “How do I feel about that?”

I closed my hand abruptly, and all the bones in his shoulder shattered. He screamed. I hit him in the head. The whole left side of his face caved in, and his scream was choked by the blood filling his throat. I hit him again and again, breaking him, watching dispassionately as pain and horror and blood filled Krauss’s face. Because the last pill had worn off, and I didn’t feel anything. I thrust one hand deep into his chest, closed my cold, dead fingers around his living heart, and tore it out of his body. He fell to the floor, kicked a few times, and lay still. I looked at the bloody piece of meat in my hand, then let it drop to the floor.

I’d killed the man who arranged my death, and it didn’t touch me at all. I sat down on the bloody floor, picked up Krauss’s body, and held it in my arms, cradling it to my chest. I still didn’t feel anything. I let him go and got up again. I looked around me. Even hardened denizens of the Nightside were shocked at what I’d done. Some were crying, some were vomiting. I smiled slowly.

“What are you looking at?”

I didn’t really care; but I had a reputation to maintain.

Outside, Sil was waiting patiently. She opened the door for me, and I took a rag out of the inner compartment and scrubbed the blood off my hands. There was more blood soaked into the front of my greatcoat, but that could wait. My coat was used to hard times. I got into the driver’s seat, the door closed, and Sil set off again.

“Where now?” she said.

“Just drive for a while,” I said. “And hush, please. I have a lot to think about.”

She drove on, cruising through the hot, neon-lit streets, while I looked at nothing and tried to make sense of what I’d learned. Mother Macabre, my trusted old Obeah woman, who’d helped me hang on to what was left of the real me for more than thirty years. Why would she have wanted me dead? I wasn’t anybody then. Nobody special. What … purpose could my poor death have served? The thoughts went round and round in my head and got nowhere. I’m not a great one for thinking. No. Much better to go to the source and ask some very pertinent questions, in person.

“Sil,” I said. “Take me to Mother Macabre. Take me to the Garden of Forbidden Fruits.”

You can find the Garden of Forbidden Fruits not far from the main business centre of the Nightside. It’s where you go when you want something a bit alternative to all the usual sin and sleaze. Just the place to buy an inappropriate gift, like a killer plant that will sneak up on the recipient while they’re asleep. Or seeds that will grow into something really disturbing. And very special drugs, to give you glimpses of Heaven and Hell or rip the soul right out of you. If it grows, if it fruits and flowers in unnatural ways, you’ll find it somewhere in the Garden of Forbidden Fruits.

I told Sil to wait for me and entered the Garden through its ever-open doors. It was just a long hallway, which seemed to stretch away forever, lined on both sides with the kind of shop or establishment you only ever enter at your own risk. I’d been here many times before, to pick up my special pills and potions from my old friend, Mother Macabre. The withered old black crone, in her pokey little shop, the traditional image of the voodoo witch, who smiled and cackled as she made up my packages with her clever, long-fingered hands, and only ever charged me what I could afford. That in itself should have been enough to tip me off that something was wrong. You just don’t get that, in the Nightside.

I strode past The Little Shop of Horticulture, with its window full of snapping plants, past The Borgia Connection (for that little something he’ll never notice in his food) and Mistress Lovett’s Posy Parlour (Sleep without dreams…). I ignored the hanging plants outside shop doorways, which hissed at me as I passed, or sang songs in languages I didn’t recognise. I ignored the familiar, hot, wet smells of damp earth and growing things, the powerful perfumes of unlikely flowers, and the underlying stench from the bloody earth their roots soaked in. I looked straight ahead, and everyone and everything in that long hallway shrank back from me as I passed. Till, finally, I came to the only shop-front I cared about, the one I’d visited so many times before and never thought twice about. Mother Macabre’s Midnight Mansion.

I stood outside the open door. It wasn’t any kind of mansion, of course. Just a shop. Dark and dingy and more than a little pokey. There was never anything on display, and the only window was blank. Mother Macabre’s patrons liked their privacy. I put my shoulders back and lifted my chin. Never let them know they’ve hurt you. I strolled into the shop with my hands buried deep in the pockets of my coat, so no-one could see that my hands were curled into fists.

It looked just as it always did. It hadn’t changed because I was seeing it with new eyes. The familiar four walls of shelves, tightly packed with tightly sealed jars and bottles, full of this and that. Some of the contents were still moving. There was High John the Conqueror root; and mandrake root in sound-proofed jars; vampire teeth, clattering against the inside of the glass; all kinds of raw talent for sale, with colour-coded caps, so the assistant could tell them apart at a glance; and a whole row of shrunken heads, with their mouths stitched shut to stop them from screaming. All the usual tat the tourists can’t get enough of. And behind the counter, as always, a tall, young, strong-featured black woman dressed in the best Haitian style, with an Afro and a headscarf, speaking in broad patois for the middle-aged tourist couple dithering over their purchases. Her name was Pretty Pretty, and woe betide anyone who ever raised an eyebrow at that. She had always been very kind to me; but I wasn’t sure if that would save her now.

I waited patiently, until she was finished with the tourists. They left happily enough, with their jar full of something that glowed with a sour, spoiled light; and I shut the door behind them and turned the sign to read CLOSED. Pretty Pretty looked at me curiously and started to say something in the patois. I raised a hand, and she stopped.

“Please,” I said. “I’m not a tourist.”

“Never said you were, darling,” said Pretty Pretty, in the polished voice of her very expensive finishing school. “Now what on earth are you doing here? You can’t have run out already, surely? I mean, honestly darling, you do get through those things at a rate of knots … You’re not supposed to pop them back like sweeties…”

And then she stopped, her voice just trailing away. There must have been something in my face, in my eyes, because she stood very still behind her counter. She must have had defences there, but she had enough sense not to go for them. I smiled at her, and she actually shuddered.

“Mother Macabre,” I said. “I want her. Where is she?”

“She just left, darling,” said Pretty Pretty. She swallowed hard. “Maybe half an hour ago? You just missed her … Is it important?”

“Yes,” I said. “Stay out of the way, Pretty Pretty. I’m prepared to believe you’re not involved. Keep it that way.”

I strode past the counter and kicked in the door that led to Mother Macabre’s private office. The lock exploded, and the heavy wood cracked and fell apart. I pulled the pieces out of the broken frame and threw them to one side. There must have been magical protections, too, because I felt them run briefly up and down my dead skin; but they couldn’t touch me. Pretty Pretty made an unhappy noise but had enough sense to stay behind her counter.

The private office looked very ordinary, very business-like. I tried the computer on her desk, but it was all locked down. And even I can’t intimidate passwords out of a computer. I tried all the desk drawers, and the in-tray and out-tray, but it was all just everyday paper-work. Nothing of interest. So I trashed the whole office, very thoroughly. Just to make a statement. Pretty Pretty watched timidly from the doorway. When I tore the heavy wooden desk apart with my bare hands, she made a few refined noises of distress. When I’d finished, because there was nothing left to break or destroy, I stood and considered what to do next, picking splinters out of my unfeeling hands. I looked sharply at Pretty Pretty, and she jumped, only a little.

“Where would Mother Macabre be? Right now?”

“I suppose she could be at her Club,” Pretty Pretty said immediately. Anyone else she would have told to go to Hell, and even added instructions on the quickest route; but I wasn’t anyone else. “She owns this private club, members only, called the Voodoo Lounge. Do you know it?”

“I know of it,” I said. “I can find it.”

“Should I … phone ahead? Let her know you’re coming?”

“If you like,” I said. “It won’t make any difference. I’ll find her wherever she goes.”

“Why?” said Pretty Pretty. “What’s happened? What’s changed?”

“Everything,” I said.

I’d heard of the Voodoo Lounge. Not the kind of place I’d ever visit but very popular with the current Bright Young Things, keen to throw away their inheritance on the newest thrill. Voodoo for the smart set, graveyard chill for those old enough to know better. Very expensive, very exclusive, very hard to get into, for most people. I told Sil to take me there, and she didn’t say a word. We drove in silence through the angry traffic, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I was getting close now. I could feel it. Close to all the answers I ever wanted, and one final act of vengeance … that even I was smart enough to realise I might not be able to walk away from.

Sil pulled up outside the Voodoo Lounge. I got out and told her to wait for me. She didn’t answer. She wasn’t sulking, or even disapproving; it was simply that she knew better than to speak to me when I was in this kind of mood. The risen dead don’t have many positive qualities, but stubbornness is definitely one of them. There were two guards on duty outside the black-lacquered doors that gave entrance to the Voodoo Lounge. Very large black gentlemen, with shaven heads and smart tuxedos. I put on my best worrying smile and strode right at them. They knew who I was, probably even knew why I was there; but neither of them did the sensible thing and ran. You have to admire such dedication to duty. They looked at me expressionlessly and moved to stand just a little closer together, blocking my way to the entrance.

“Members only, sir,” said the one on the left.

“No exceptions, sir,” said the one on the right.

“We have orders to keep you out.”

“By whatever means necessary.”

“On your way, Dead Boy.”

“Not welcome here, zombie.”

I let my smile widen into a grin and kept on going. One of them pulled a packet of salt from his pocket and threw the contents into my face. Salt is a good traditional defence against zombies, but I’ve always been a lot more than that. The other guard produced a string of garlic and thrust it in my face. I snatched one of the bulbs away from him, took a good bite, chewed on it, and spat it out. No taste. Nothing at all. And while I was doing that, the first guard produced a gun and stuck the barrel against my forehead.

“When in doubt,” he said calmly, “go old school. Shoot them in the head.”

He pulled the trigger. The bullet smashed through my forehead, through my dead brain, and out the back of my head. I rocked slightly on my feet, but I didn’t stop smiling. The guard with the gun actually whimpered as I snatched the gun out of his hand and tossed it to one side.

“That’s been tried,” I said. “I’ll have to fill the hole in with plaster of paris again.”

I punched the guard in the face, smashing his nose and mouth and jaw, and then back-elbowed the other guard in the side of the head. They both went down and didn’t get up again. Normally, I would have taken the time to do them both some serious damage, to make a point, but I had more important things in mind. I stepped over the broken guards, kicked in the black-lacquered doors, and strode into the Voodoo Lounge.

“Hello!” I said loudly as I strode into the entrance-hall. “I’m here! Come on, give it your best shot! Do your worst! I can take it!”

And the next level of defence came running silently down the hallway towards me. A short, stocky Chinaman, the tattoos down one side of his face marking him as a combat magician. A very powerful and frightening figure—to anyone else. He waited till he was almost upon me, then he gestured sharply and snatched a blazing ball of fire out of nowhere. Vivid green flames shot up around his hand, and he stopped dead in his tracks to thrust them at me. Emerald fires blasted me like a flame-thrower. But I was already turning, putting my back to him; and the searing flames slammed against my deep purple greatcoat. A terrible fire roared over and around me; but the flames couldn’t touch me. In my dead state, I couldn’t even feel the heat. And when the flames finally died out, I straightened up, turned around, and smiled at the combat magician.

“I had my coat fire-proofed long ago, on the quiet, for occasions just like this,” I said.

And while I was saying that, holding his attention, I surged forward, snatched the jade fire amulet out of his hand, and beat him to the floor. I heard his skull crack and break under the blows, but I hit him a few more times anyway, to be sure. I stood over him, listening to the bloody froth bubble in his mouth and nose, and felt nothing, nothing at all. I studied the fire amulet, a simple jade piece with a golden cat’s-eye pupil at its heart. You can buy them at any market in the Nightside, though learning the proper Words of Power to make them work costs rather more. I turned the amulet back and forth, admiring the quality of the workmanship, then I said the right Words, and set fire to the combat magician. His screams, and the sound of the consuming flames, followed me down the hall as I walked away.

The interior of the Club had been painted all the shades of red and purple. It was like walking through the interior of someone’s body. The air was thick with the scents of burned meat and spilled blood, and all kinds of illegal smoke. Smells so heavy even I could detect them. The air was hot and damp, and heavy beads of condensation ran down my face. I couldn’t feel the heat or the moisture, only noticed them when they fell down to stain my coat. There were doors on either side of the hallway, leading to very private rooms, for very private passions. I considered them thoughtfully. It might make me feel better, to kick the doors in and see what was going on behind them. It might make me feel … something. But then a voice came to me, through some hidden speaker, saying, “This way. Walk straight ahead. Come into my parlour, Dead Boy, and we’ll talk. I’ve been waiting for you.”

A calm, confident, female voice. Didn’t sound like my Mother Macabre. I walked on, into the belly of the beast, into the trap that had been prepared for me. And the cold in my dead heart was the cold of dark and righteous anger.

Didn’t take me long to reach the door at the end of the hall. It was standing just a little open, invitingly. I slammed right through it, almost taking the door off its hinges, and there she was, in her parlour. Mother Macabre’s sweet little home away from home was more than comfortable, full of every luxury and indulgence you could think of, and some you never even dreamed of. Tables full of drinks, bowls full of pills and powders, toys and trinkets to suit the most jaded sexual palates—decadence on display. All for the Bright Young Things … as they sat in chairs, or sprawled on couches, or lay giggling happily on the deep pile carpet. Young ladies and gentlemen from rich and powerful and well-connected families, still young enough to believe money could buy you satisfaction, or at the very least enough pleasure to convince you that you were happy. Spending Daddy’s money and influence on the very latest thing, the newest kick, on something dark and dangerous enough to make them feel they were important, after all. They stared at me with blank eyes and meaningless smiles, and limited curiosity. And the dozen or so naked men and women, standing around the parlour to serve the young people’s every need or whim, were all quite obviously dead. Well-preserved, even pleasant to the eye; but you only had to look into their faces to know there was no-one home. They weren’t dead like me; they were nothing more than animated bodies, moved by some other’s will.

I wasn’t interested in them. I fixed my gaze on the parlour’s mistress: proud and disdainful on her raised throne, like a spider at the heart of her web. Mother Macabre, sitting at her ease on a throne made of human skulls. Bone so old it had faded past yellow ivory into dirty brown, stained here and there with old, dried blood. There was a cushion on the seat, of course. Tradition and style and making the right kind of impression are all very well, but comfort is what matters.

Mother Macabre looked as she always had, a withered, old, black crone, in tattered ethnic clothes. Deep-sunk eyes, and a wide smile to show off the missing teeth. Very authentic. But I didn’t believe that any more. I concentrated, looking at her with the eyes of the dead, because the dead can see many things that are hidden from the living. And just like that, the illusion snapped off. And underneath the glamour, she was just an ordinary middle-aged black business woman, neat and tidy in a smart business suit, her well-manicured hands folded calmly in her lap.

“Took you long enough to work it out,” she said. ”Mistress Macabre is just a trade name. Handed down through the generations, along with the trade and the look, because that’s what people want when they do business with a voodoo witch. There were many Mother Macabres before me, and no doubt there will be many more after. It’s a very profitable trade. Because there will always be a need for women like us. But … this is the real me. You should feel flattered, Dead Boy. Not many are privileged to see the real me.”

“Flattered,” I said. “Yes. That’s how I feel, all right. Tell me: who did I really make a deal with?”

“And you’ve worked that out, too! Well done, Dead Boy. Yes, I’m afraid your memories of what happened after you died are as much a fake as anything else. You thought you made a deal with one of the voodoo loa, Mistress Erzulie; but everything you saw and experienced came from me. A show I put on to distract you while I did the many vile and nasty things necessary, to raise you from the dead. It was all just an illusion, another mask. Just me. It’s always been just me.”

“Why?” I said.

And there must have been something in my voice because everyone in the parlour stopped smiling and looked at me. Even Mother Macabre on her throne of skulls took a moment before she answered me. I fixed her with my unblinking eyes, and she actually squirmed uncomfortably on her throne.

“Why?” said Mother Macabre. “Because I needed someone to experiment on! Didn’t matter who. Could have been you, could have been anyone. I was just starting out in the Mother Macabre trade. I inherited it from my mother—after I killed her. She was so old-fashioned, couldn’t see the potential in the business I saw … Anyway, I had all these marvellous ideas for new pills and potions, but I needed someone to test them on before I introduced them to a wider audience. I needed someone young and strong and vital, new to the Nightside, without friends or protectors. I picked you out entirely at random and paid to have you killed. And then I brought you back again, to be my test subject. You took everything I gave you, every new drug and concoction I came up with, and never once questioned any of it. And because it was my lore that brought you back, your body had no secrets from me. I’ve studied you, from a safe distance, for all these years … And, oh, the things I’ve learned from you! You have no idea how much money you’ve made me down the years!”

“All the things I’ve been, and done,” I said. “And all along I was nothing but your lab rat.”

“Actually, no,” said Mother Macabre. “You’re a lot more than I ever intended you to be. I was just interested to see what would happen when I trapped a living soul inside a dead body, but you have made yourself into the legendary, infamous Dead Boy! You should be proud of what you’ve achieved!”

“Proud,” I said. “Yes. That’s what I’m feeling, right now.”

Mother Macabre looked at me uncertainly, unable to read my dead face or my dead voice. “You really shouldn’t take it personally, Dead Boy. It was only ever … business.”

“It was my life!” I said loudly.

She smiled. “It wasn’t as though you were doing anything important with it.”

“All the things I could have done,” I said. “All the people I might have been; and you took them away from me.”

“None of them would have been as important, or as interesting, as Dead Boy.” Mother Macabre sank back on her throne as though she were getting tired, or bored, with the conversation. “What does your life, or your death, matter, where there were fortunes to be made? I had a business to run! It’s all about the pleasures of the flesh, you see. Control them, and you have control over the living and the dead.” She looked fondly at the young people scattered around her parlour. “My lovely ladies and gentlemen. I give them what they think they want and take everything they have. And when they die … I raise them up again, to serve me. The dead always make the best servants. No back-talk, no days off. And the dead make the very best lovers because they can go forever…”

She gestured to a naked man and a naked woman, and they came forward to caress her face and neck with their cool, dead hands. She smiled happily.

“They feel nothing. The only pleasure is mine. But then, I never was big on sharing. I knew you were coming after me, Dead Boy. Knew it the moment you killed poor old Krauss. I could have had you destroyed anywhere along the way; but I wanted to have you here, so I could watch it happen right in front of me. I have the right to destroy you because I made you. You belong to me. You always have. And after you’ve gone, I’ll make another Dead Boy.”

She snapped her fingers, and all the dead men and women in the parlour turned their heads to look at me. And then they started forward, cold and implacable as death itself. All of them just as strong as me and as capable of taking punishment. They reached for me with their dead hands, and the young ladies and gentlemen laughed and pointed, enjoying the show. I looked around me. The way to the only door was blocked, and I was clearly outnumbered. So, when in doubt, cheat.

I reached into my pocket and took out the jade fire amulet I’d taken from its previous owner. I said the right Words, and set fire to all the dead men and women. They burst into bright green flames, burning with a fierce heat that consumed their flesh in moments. They kept coming as long as they could, reaching out blindly through the flames, bumping into the furnishings and fittings and setting them alight, too. They even set fire to the clothes of the Bright Young Things. Most of them just sat where they were, watching as the flames ate them up, and laughing. Giggling happily as they died, as stupidly as they’d lived.

Mother Macabre ran for the door the moment her servants started burning, but I was there before her. I took her in my dead arms, and held her to me, almost tenderly. She beat at me with her fists, but I couldn’t feel them, and she wasn’t strong enough to do me any damage. I held her with all my dead strength, and she couldn’t get away. The whole parlour was on fire now, burning the living and the dead alike, and the air was full of thick black smoke.

“You have to let me go!” shrieked Mother Macabre. “If we stay here, we’ll both die! This fire’s enough to destroy even you!”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said. “I’m tired. I want to rest. It will be worth it, to die here, as long as I can be sure I’m taking you with me. Thanks to you, I can’t feel any of the things the living feel; but dead as I am, I can still feel some things, even without your special pills. I’m watching you die, Mother Macabre, and that feels … so fine.”

“I can make you new pills, new potions!” Mother Macabre said desperately. “I can make you feel all the things you felt before!”

“Perhaps. But what have I got that’s worth living for?”

And then we both looked round as a series of explosions shook the front of the building. There was the sound of energy weapons firing, and repeated sounds of something large and heavy and very determined crashing through the walls between us, heading right for us. And I began to smile. I looked at the door, still holding firmly on to the fiercely struggling Mother Macabre; and my futuristic car came smashing through the door and into the parlour, bringing half the wall with her. She slammed to a halt before me, her gleaming steel-and-silver body entirely untouched by all the destruction she’d wrought. And as I watched, smiling … as Mother Macabre watched with wide-stretched eyes and mouth … my car rose and transmogrified, taking on a whole new shape, until my Sil stood before me. A tall, buxom woman, in a classic little black dress, cut just high enough at the hip to show off the bar-code and copyright notice stamped on her magnificent left buttock. Her frizzy steel hair was full of sparking static, and her eyes were silver, but she was still every inch a woman. My woman.

“Nothing to live for, sweetie?” said Sil. “What about me?”

“You were listening in,” I said, just a bit reproachfully.

“You were taking too long,” said Sil. “I became … concerned. You always go over the top when you go too far into the dark. You forget there are other feelings, other pleasures, than revenge.”

“Of course,” I said. “You’re quite right. You always were my better half. I never needed pills to feel the way I feel about you.”

“What the hell is that?” said Mother Macabre, staring at Sil with horrified fascination.

“I am a sex droid from the twenty-third century,” Sil said proudly. “With full trans-morph capabilities!” She shot me a smouldering look. “I have always loved my job. It took more than one man to change my name to Silicon Lily. But I never met anyone like you, my sweet Dead Boy. And I won’t let you die with her. She isn’t worth it.”

“You’re right,” I said. “You’re always right. You’re worth living for, inasmuch as I can. But … I can’t go on, I can’t just walk out of here and let her get away with what she did to me.”

“You don’t have to,” said Sil.

She raised one hand and morphed it into a glowing energy weapon. She shot Mother Macabre in the face and blew her head apart. I let go of the headless body, and it crumpled to the floor, still twitching. I swept blood and brains from my face and shoulder with one hand, then nodded briefly to Sil. She’s always been able to do the things I can’t do. She swept forward, discarding her human shape, melting into a wave of metallic silver that swept right over me. She wrapped herself around me like a suit of armour, covering me from head to foot. Embracing me, and protecting me, all at once. And, together, we walked out of the burning building.

Outside, Walker was waiting for us, watching the building burn. He barely twitched an eyebrow as Sil peeled herself off me, and resumed her human shape. She stood beside me as Silicon Lily, while I nodded politely to Walker. He tipped his bowler hat to both of us.

“Mother Macabre was getting a little too big for her boots,” Walker said easily. “But I couldn’t go after her, because of her … connections. So I pointed you at her. Well done, Dead Boy. Excellent work.”

“How long have you known?” I said. “How long have you known the truth about me, and Krauss, and Mother Macabre?”

“I know everything,” said Walker. “Remember?”

He smiled again, very politely, and walked off. Sil and I turned away, to watch the Voodoo Lounge burn.

“What am I going to do now, for my special pills and potions?” I said.

“There’s always someone,” said Sil. “This is the Nightside.”

“True,” I said. “If you’re going to be damned, this is a pretty good place for it.” I looked at her for a long moment. “Even with my pills, it takes more than an everyday woman to light the fires in my dead flesh.”

“Good thing I’m not an everyday woman, then,” said Silicon Lily. “I am a pleasure droid; and I do love my work! And it’s good to know I can even raise the dead…”

“How can I love you?” I said. “When I don’t have a heart any more?”

“I don’t have a heart either,” said Sil. “Doesn’t matter. Love comes from the soul.”

“Do we have souls?” I said.

She put her arms around me. “What do you think?”

It’s not easy, having a sex life when you’re dead. But it is possible.

“How do you feel?” said Sil.

“I feel … good,” I said.

Author’s Bio:

Simon was born in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England where he still resides. He obtained an M.A. in Modern English and American Literature from Leicester University, studied history and has a combined Humanities degree. His writing career started in 1973, when he was a student in London. He’s the author of the bestselling SF/Space Opera series: The Deathstalker Saga, a series of eight books, of which he himself admits that it kind of got out of hand, since it was supposed to be three 500-page books … His website may be found at http://simonrgreen.co.uk.