The Wrong Dead Guy

  Sally watched the house. “I’d still feel better with a lock man.”

  “Will you forget about the locks? This is going to be all ghouls and fireworks. Besides, I have my picks with me.”

  Coop watched through the binoculars as the Fitzgeralds got into their limo and headed down the circular driveway to the front gate.

  “Let’s get ready to go inside.”

  “Then you’ll take care of the cameras?”

  “The moment Daddy Warbucks and the missus are on the road.”

  “I hope Fitzgerald has some Caravaggios. I always wanted one of those. Have you ever seen his little naked Cupid or John the Baptist? Pure art porn.”

  Coop stopped. “Since when do you want naked guys on your wall?”

  Sally shrugged. “I went to Catholic school. You end up with complicated fetishes.”

  “With luck, we can feed your habit.”

  Coop and Sally came to the gates just as they swung open. They grabbed each other’s arms and waited for the black limo to pass. The moment it went by, they dashed up the middle of the driveway as the gates swung closed. Inside, they kept running until they reached a stand of oak trees and hunkered down. They smiled at each other.

  “That was fun,” said Sally. “Like sneaking into the back of a movie theater.”

  “Sometimes simple is the best way.”

  “Where do we head now?”

  Coop pulled a printout of the mansion grounds from inside his overalls. “We circle around the main house to the one in the back. You can’t miss it. It has a moat.”

  Sally looked over his shoulder. “I remember that. I wonder if the Fitzgeralds ever get drunk and go skinny-dipping. I would if I had a moat.”

  “Not in this one. My bet is that it’s loaded with something you wouldn’t want to be naked around.”

  “Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my,” she said.

  “But please no spiders.”

  “Or nuns.”

  Coop looked at her.

  Sally looked sheepish. “I told you. I’m Catholic. But don’t get hung up on my neuroses. The cameras?”

  Coop held up the small box Giselle had used at the museum. “You ready?” he said.

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “If it works, not much. I’m cutting all their power. Worst-case scenario, some people will start wandering outside to check wires.”

  Sally looked the box over. “Is that a fed machine?”

  “Your tax dollars at work.”

  “You bad man. Using it for nefarious purposes.”

  “My skin is not nefarious. It’s very personal to me,” said Coop, taking a quick look around for mummies.

  “What are you looking at? Pull the switch, warden.”

  Coop pushed the button. The lights flanking the front door blinked off. In the upstairs windows, bulbs shut down and the glow of a television vanished as the whole house went dark.

  “Let’s move,” said Coop.

  He and Sally walked briskly across the mansion’s manicured grounds, past Greek statues and marble fountains. The printout of the Fitzgerald estate didn’t quite prepare them for the scale of the place. It was really two Beverly Hills estates that Fitzgerald had turned into one. Sally clearly loved the place. She ran a hand through the cascading fountain and touched each statue as they passed. Coop, on the other hand, panted as they went. Not from exertion, but from a slowly mounting fear that something dead and very old was hiding in each shadow. It would be a long way to run to get out of the Fitzgerald estate. In fact, from what he’d seen, the best way out, if things went sideways, was to keep going deeper into the estate and follow a stream at the rear of the place back to the road. That’s assuming Fitzgerald hadn’t loaded that with goblins or flamethrower-wielding guppies.

  “You okay?” said Sally. “Your allergies getting to you?”

  “Yeah,” he puffed. “Allergies.”

  Sally pointed into the distance. “Thar she blows,” she said.

  The library was about fifty yards straight ahead. It had a round central room and four wings that spread out in each direction. In the dim light, they could just make out the moat and the drawbridge beyond it.

  “Wow. It looks like someone has a hard-on for Disneyland. What do you think?” said Sally.

  He had to admit there was something about it that reminded him of cartoon haunted mansions. That should have made him feel better, but instead it brought images of a rotting army of Mickey Mouses and demented Goofies in Death-like cloaks swinging razor-sharp scythes.

  “It sure is cute,” he said. “Okay, you keep us out of sight and I’m going to get started on getting us in.”

  “We’ve got to get over that drawbridge,” said Sally.

  “That’s plan one. There’s a key-card reader up ahead. It should lower it.”

  “Do you have the code?”

  “Of course not,” said Coop, feeling a little of the fun coming back. “But I have more technology.” He held up a generic key card attached to a small gray box with the DOPS logo on the side. He smiled, but Sally took a couple of steps back.

  “Fuck your little boxes. What are those?” she said. Coop turned to where she was pointing.

  Six women in flowing white gowns rushed toward them across the green grass. They were beautiful, with long straight black hair and delicate, porcelain features. All you had to do was overlook their sharp teeth and scalpel-like fingernails and they looked like they be fun to take to dinner and a movie.

  “They’re Pontianaks,” said Coop.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Mostly, they want to eat our innards. But worse, they’re screamers. They must be Fitzgerald’s alarm system.”

  “Screaming isn’t worse than innard eating,” said Sally. “If anything is going to eat me, it’s going to be my cat.”

  Coop handed her the duffel. “Wait here,” he said, happy that there was finally something to work with that wasn’t wrapped in moth-eaten linen.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Sally whisper-screamed. “Get back here.”

  Coop strode forward.

  “Evening, ladies,” said Coop. “Would any of you be interested in a subscription to Sports Illustrated? You get the swimsuit issue and a paperweight shaped like a traumatic brain injury.”

  The women formed a semicircle around him. They were so pale it almost looked like they glowed in the dying twilight. When the first one raised her head to scream, the others followed suit. Coop reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag of black powder. As they women drew in a long prescream breath, Coop held his nose and threw to bag at them. It hit in the middle of the group and burst. The Pontianaks staggered back, rubbing their eyes. Furious now, they opened their mouths to shriek . . . but sneezed instead. A few coughed, but mostly they stood around sneezing. Their noses ran and it got onto their flowing dresses. With their eyes watering, they bumped into each other and were generally extremely grumpy.

  Coop grabbed Sally and made a wide circle around the shoving, sneezing group.

  “What the hell did you do?” she said.

  “I seasoned them with a little pepper. It’s good for muggers, screamers, and rib-eye steaks.”

  Sally shoved him. “That’s your plan to deal with innard eaters? Give them allergies?”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Please tell me you’re not going to try and solve all our problems with condiments.”

  Coop took back the duffel and patted it. “Relax. I have everything we need in here,” he said. “If that’s the best Fitzgerald has, we’re going to be fine.”

  “Okay. But you might have just killed me for Goth girls. From now on I want tan lines, straight teeth, and not a fingernail in sight.”

  Coop pointed into the dark. “The card reader is straight ahead.”

  He led the way across the lawn, feeling like this bullshit, thrown-together, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants nonplan might just work. But there was still the one lurkin
g fear in the back of his head.

  “If you see anything mummy-shaped, or vaguely mummy-shaped, or just plain dead and ugly, give me a holler, okay?” he said.

  “Shriek if I see a corpse. I can handle that,” said Sally. “You know, I’m a lot more used to banks and penthouses than this Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors stuff.

  “It will be fine.” At the card reader Coop said, “See? we’re practically inside. Piece of cake.”

  Sally nodded at the moat. “Yeah? We already had snotty emo chicks. What are we going to find in there? Rockabilly sirens? Giant dubstep spiders? Maybe a barbershop quartet of sea serpents.”

  “Let’s find out,” Coop said. He slipped his card into the reader and hit a button on the DOPS device. It began computing all possible permutations of entry codes as Coop and Sally waited.

  Sally looked around. “Is this going to take long?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve never used it before.”

  “Did you have to say that?” said Sally. She took a can of pepper spray from her pocket.

  “I’m not sure that works on sea serpents,” said Coop.

  ‘It’s not for them. It’s for you, dumb-ass. I swear, if we get eaten, you’re getting a faceful of mugger juice.”

  Coop glanced at the device as it ran through random number sequences.

  “By the way, how is Purr J. Harvey?” he said.

  Sally looked at him. “She’s fine. She has a playdate tomorrow with a boy cat downstairs.”

  “Really? I didn’t think cats had playdates.”

  She watched the device compute codes. “They met at the vet and got along. Her owner and I thought it might be nice to have kittens.”

  “That does sound nice,” said Coop.

  Sally stared into the dark. “If cat chatter is supposed calm me down, it’s not. It’s just reminding me how thrown-together this whole thing is.”

  The gray box pinged. Lights went on across the card reader.

  “Does that make you feel better?” said Coop.

  “A lot,” replied Sally. She put the pepper spray back into her pocket.

  “Were you really going to squirt me with that stuff?”

  “In a hot second.”

  They watched the drawbridge lower like a fairy-tale castle.

  “This is pretty,” Sally said.

  “It is, isn’t it?” said Coop.

  “But I can’t help feeling that something bad is about to happen.”

  “You’re probably right, but you let me worry about the library. You look around for—”

  “I know,” she said, cutting him off. “Anything that looks like a walking dirty-paper-towel dispenser.”

  “Exactly.”

  Sally looked past Coop. “I think the bad thing I was afraid of happening is happening.”

  Clinging to the top of the drawbridge were what looked like a horde of hairy, bearded old men. They were small, but there were a lot of them and their eyes glittered in the dark. As they whispered to each other, Coop listened as intently as a man about to fall over in a fetal position could listen.

  “Coop?” said Sally.

  He shoved the card reader into her hand and pulled a book out of the duffel. As the drawbridge lowered, Coop frantically turned pages. Finally, the bridge touched the ground. The old men crawled toward them across the pitted wood, moving slowly, knowing that they were close enough to their prey that they couldn’t escape. Coop thumbed through the book ever more frantically.

  Sally got her pepper spray out again. “This is it, Coop. I’m turning you into Cajun barbecue.”

  At a silent signal, the little men rushed forward. Coop held the book close to his face and whispered something long and complicated, with a few stutters and stammers along the way. The little men kept coming forward, but they weren’t rushing now. They were listening. Coop kept reading and Sally kept the pepper spray up to his head. Finally, Coop turned and pointed to the mansion. With a whoop, all the little men ran off to the house.

  “What the fuck did you do to them?” said Sally.

  “When they were talking earlier, it sounded like Russian. I took a chance that they were Domovoi.”

  “I take it that you’ve dealt with Domovoi before?”

  “I’ve never even seen one,” said Coop.

  Sally put the pepper spray away again. “Let me emphasize one more time: fuck you. Where did you send them?”

  “To the mansion. I think.”

  “You think?”

  “With Domovoi, the trick seems to be that, while they can be a real trouble, they’re not so bad if you invite them inside.”

  “Now you speak Russian all of a sudden?”

  Coop shook his head and held up the book.

  Sally squinted in the dim light. On the cover was a cartoon devil riding the shoulder of a spiny demon. Monster to English Dictionary with Handy Phrases and Emergency Spells, Revised Edition. She took the book from Coop’s hands and hit him with it. When she was done she handed it back.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, and tossed the book back into his bag.

  Sally looked at the library. “We’ve survived those assholes. I wonder what’s waiting inside that?”

  “Nothing,” said Coop. “Do you think Fitzgerald is going to leave his booty with a lot of sprites and Munchkins running around? Nope. We get inside and it’s easy street from there.”

  Sally half smiled. “I hope you’re right. How do we get in?”

  “Right up here. It should be easy. Nothing was supposed to get past the alarms and the little men.”

  They crossed the bridge and came to the library door. It was a simple wooden panel with a knocker, a small window at the top, and on the side what looked like a spiral conch shell.

  “Crap,” said Coop.

  “What?” said Sally, getting out her pepper spray.

  “Put that away. It’s not more monsters. It’s this,” said Coop, tapping the conch shell.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s a ghost lock. To open it, you need the ghost of an actual key that’s been destroyed. And it can only be used by a poltergeist or wraith of some kind.”

  “You brought me all the way out here, almost got me eaten and trampled by tiny ZZ Tops, and we’re stuck?” said Sally through gritted teeth. “I told you we should have brought a lock man.”

  “A lock man wouldn’t help,” said Coop. “This isn’t designed for humans. Fitzgerald must have some pet spooks back at the mansion.”

  “So, my point stands. We’re stuck.”

  “Nope,” said Coop. He pulled a small case from the duffel and set it on the drawbridge. Inside was a collection of tools that looked like the play set of a particularly cruel demon dentist. “I can open it. It’ll just take some time.”

  “Tell me the truth: Morty couldn’t do this faster?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die. Now, why don’t you sit down and keep watch?”

  Sally sat cross-legged on the drawbridge with her back against the library. “I had a date tonight, you know. I blew her off for this.”

  Coop slid a small pick into the edge of a tiny screw and worked the top with a tool that resembled a terrified squirrel. “Yeah? Anyone I know?”

  “I doubt it,” said Sally. “You know Minerva, the fortune-teller? She set it up. A cute dental assistant, she said.”

  While pulling off the first screw, Coop said, “Then you ought to buy me a thank-you card. She would have eaten you and not in the nice way.”

  Sally’s eyebrows went up. “How do you know?”

  “’Cause she almost ate Morty.”

  Sally hung her head down. “Great. Someone with a career, only her career is eating people.”

  “Sorry.”

  She looked up at the sky. “It’s okay. It just sucks being single in L.A., you know? Everybody lives fifty miles and an hour away from everybody else. We might as well be fucking hillbillies and not see another human being for months at a time.”

  “I remember
,” said Coop. “And if you do meet someone in your area, they can’t hold a job or they want to lay eggs in your brain.”

  “Love is weird.” She rested her head on the library and looked at Coop. “How’s it going over there?”

  “All right, actually. There’s just a lot of parts to get through. I’ll be another hour at least.”

  Sally chuckled. “Morty almost get eaten by the dental lady?”

  “That’s what he said. What he didn’t say is how far along they got before he realized she had eight legs. I like to think he was buck naked when it finally hit him.”

  “Kind of like you mooning all of Hollywood the other night?”

  “I was trying to scare a mummy. It’s not the same thing,” said Coop.

  “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, tiger.”

  A few minutes of silence passed while Sally stargazed and Coop worked on the lock. Finally, she mumbled something.

  “What was that?” said Coop.

  “I said ‘shit,’” she whispered. “I see headlights. The Fitzgeralds are coming back.”

  Coop looked at his watch. “It can’t be them. They haven’t been gone long enough.”

  “Maybe the cotillion or whatever got canceled. Maybe the prince turned into a pumpkin, but I’m telling you they’re coming in.”

  “Goddammit,” said Coop. “I can do this. I just need more time.”

  “You don’t have it. Wrap your shit up. We have to move.”

  Coop started throwing his tools back into the duffel, but stopped. “Wait a second. They can’t be coming in. Without power, they can’t open the gates. They’re just sitting outside.”

  “Great. That means we can’t get out either.”

  Zipping up the bag, Coop hoisted it onto his shoulder. “I can get the power back on, but we’ll have to time it right.”

  Fifty yards away, the lights in the mansion flickered and came back on. Floodlights across the estate grounds lit up, catching Coop and Sally in a pool of light.

  “Did you do that?” said Sally.

  “No. They must have a backup generator.”

  “Shit.

  In the distance, voices shouted at them. They could see men and flashlights heading their way.

  “Are you still doing you’re Marilyn thing?” said Coop.