Oddly Enough, page 9
But that was progress for you.
It was almost three a.m. when Gertrude came back in, dragging a large bin bag full of chicken carcasses in one hand and an enormous storage crate in the other, the top firmly bungeed down. There was a lot of scraping and muttering coming from inside the crate as she bounced it up the stairs, but she really didn’t care. So far the slick plastic had resisted their attacks, and that was all that mattered right now.
She was on the first landing when she heard the door to the street bang open below. She froze as the lights came on, pale and sickly but more than bright enough to see that the bag of chickens was bleeding onto the tatty wooden flooring. Maybe it was someone from one of the downstairs flats? But no, she wasn’t that lucky. She could hear footsteps coming up, not entirely steady, and she hurried toward the last set of stairs, the ones that led up to her own apartment, already knowing she wasn’t going to make it. She could carry an awful lot, but that didn’t mean she could carry it quickly.
The steps behind her had stopped, and she knew whoever it was could see her. She didn’t turn around, just dragged the crate up one more stair.
“Do … do you need some help?”
Gertrude peeked over her shoulder, the hood of her robe hiding her face. It was her. 2B. She was standing with one hand on the wall, a handbag dangling in the other. She wasn’t exactly smiling, but she didn’t look panicked, either. “Ah, no. Thank you.”
The woman looked at the puddle of chicken blood on the landing, then at Gertrude’s hunched form. “The … your cakes. I really love them.”
Gertrude straightened, her grip on the crate easing. “Really?”
“Yeah. They’re amazing. Better than anything we sell at the cafe.” The woman took a step forward. “Are you sure you don’t need any help?”
Before Gertrude could answer, one of the ghoulets launched an attack on the roof of the crate, making it jump and almost slip out of her grip. She grabbed it with both hands, dropping the bag, which promptly fell sideways and disgorged badly wrapped chicken carcasses. They thumped fleshily down the stairs, noisy in the silent stairwell. She closed her eyes, hoping 2B wouldn’t notice the scuffling coming from the crate.
The woman looked at a chicken that had come to rest by her feet, then crouched to pick it up. “Either I’m more drunk than I thought,” she said, “or you’ve had a few, too. Who bulk-buys whole chickens at three in the morning?”
“They were on special,” Gertrude said, which was actually true. “They put all sorts of things on special in the middle of the night.”
“I guess they do,” the woman said, and picked up another chicken. “I’m Emma. Pass me that bag.”
And Gertrude did.
Of all the strange things that had happened since Gertrude became a reaper, she was fairly sure that none of them were as strange as brewing tea for Emma at half past three in the morning, the chickens stuffed into her fridge and the crate of ghoulets deposited in the spare room.
Judging from the mystified expression on Emma’s face as she stared around the pink, ruffled living room, she was finding it a little strange, too. But she drank a cup of tea and ate four chocolate chip cookies, while Gertrude brought a rose-decked cup up to her lips and took it away again, untouched.
“So do you sell your cakes?” Emma asked, poking one of the surviving doilies on the coffee table with a slightly unsteady finger.
“No, not really. I just make them for me.”
Emma abandoned the doily and looked pointedly at the untouched cookie on Gertrude’s plate. “I can see that.”
“Oh, well. I can’t eat them all myself.” Gertrude could feel her ears getting warm, and wondered, with something like astonishment, if she could actually still blush.
“You should sell them,” Emma said. “I’m serious. Open your own place.”
“Well, I’m not good in the days. I’m highly photo sensitive. But that’s really nice of you.”
“It’s not nice. It’s true. You’re lucky to be so good at something.” Emma looked down as she spoke, her shoulders hunching forward over her tea. “I’m not much good at anything.”
“I’m sure that’s not right.”
“It is, though.” She shrugged and took another sip of tea. “I’ve never done anything, or been anything. Now I work in a coffee shop with kids half my age.” Her voice was flat, accepting, but the skin of her face was drawn taut with the hurt of it.
Gertrude looked down at the table, scarred by the ghoulets’ claws, and said, “No one has ever given me anything back for my cakes. Most people don’t even bother to say thank you. And no one’s ever knocked on my door before. Not once.”
Emma was silent for a moment, then she laughed. There was a sour sort of sadness running under it, but it was genuine. “What a pair,” she said. “What a perfect pair.”
It was early evening a week later, and Gertrude was chasing a ghoulet around the living room with a tea towel. The creature had got chicken skin stuck in its teeth three days ago, and it was starting to stink. Well, stink more. There was still no more word from the secretary, although Gertrude had to admit that Reaper Central had been generous with the funding. They had to be, really, considering that she now had twenty-three ghoulets living between the bathroom and the spare room. She’d solved the breaking out problem by lining the bottom half of the doors and walls with sheets of metal, and both rooms were knee-deep in graveyard dirt. If this was going to carry on, she really needed to move somewhere bigger, but it was hard enough moving on her own at the best of times. Moving twenty-three ghoulets and who knew how many cubic metres of graveyard dirt unnoticed was going to be tricky.
A door slammed downstairs, and she paused in her pursuit, frowning. She thought she’d heard something else. A cry? The ghoulet scrambled up her bookshelves and grabbed a winking porcelain cat, hefting it gleefully. She touched a bony finger to her lips, and the ghoulet stared at her, confused. A thud, faint through the door, the sound of someone falling on the stairs or crashing into a wall. She stepped to the door, slipping the latch and easing it open to let in the muddy scents of damp and dust and boredom. She really should move. She could afford somewhere nicer on ghoulet nanny wages.
There was a cry, bitten off, and she pulled the door wide at the sudden thunder of running feet, flight and pursuit. She hurried to top of the stairs as Emma lurched onto the landing below with blood on her cheek. She lunged for her apartment door, but someone out of sight around the turn of the stairs grabbed her, jerking her backward and almost out of sight. Gertrude stared at the woman’s fingers clawing at the stained boards, and heard a man snarl something ugly and violent behind her. The fingers vanished, and Gertrude followed, feet bare and silent and fast.
From the landing she could see Emma. She was halfway down the stairs, pinned to the wall and clawing at the man’s hand on her throat. Her eyes darted to Gertrude, and she shook her head minutely, the message clear. Don’t. He’ll kill you too.
Gertrude nodded understanding, then spun her scythe with an oddly brutal elegance. It whispered through the air, sharp enough to sever a soul from the world, and she brought the blade to a halt resting against the man’s throat. He froze.
“Put her down,” she said pleasantly.
The man released Emma and she skittered away, wide eyes fixed on Gertrude.
“Turn around.” Gertrude didn’t move the scythe, so he turned in the hook of it, his face twisted with fury.
“You—” he began, and she tutted.
“I have no interest in what you have to say. You can go quietly, or I can reap you. Your choice.”
The man hissed something wordless, and she let the scythe drift across the skin at the back of his neck, raining severed hair across his collar, blood beading on the skin.
“No,” she said, her voice mild.
After a moment he said carefully, “I’ll go.”
“There we are, then.” She dropped the scythe away and stood watching him, her face hidden in the depths of her hood. “Run along.”
He took a wary step across the landing, then turned back to spit at Emma. She flinched as if he’d thrown a punch, and he glared at her, then started down the stairs. Gertrude watched him go, thinking that he’d be back. He was the sort of person who would convince himself she hadn’t scared him, that he’d just let her think she had, that he’d left of his own free will to wait for a better time. She sighed. She couldn’t kill him. Reapers don’t kill people. They merely hold the door.
So she just held a hand out to Emma and helped her to her feet.
“Are you alright?”
“What … is that?” Emma asked, and for a moment Gertrude thought she meant the scythe, which seemed fairly self-explanatory. Then she heard a joyous, hairball-hacking cough, and she spun around to see the ghoulets pouring down the stairs and across the landing, teeth bared and legs flailing wildly. One lost her balance and tumbled into her siblings, setting up an avalanche of ungainly limbs and snapping mouths and hungry bellies.
“Oh dear,” Gertrude said, without any great concern, as the man on the stairs below them shrieked. “Bad ghoulets.”
Hungry ghoulets are terribly efficient, and the man didn’t manage more than the one scream. Clearing up the blood splatters took longer, but it was done before dawn, and Gertrude personally thought the most suspicious thing was how clean the hallway actually was now. She made Emma another hot lemon and honey, and watched her top it with a generous glug of brandy that she’d brought up from her own apartment. The sated ghoulets were sleeping in a pile-up of pale fur and bulging bellies in the middle of the floor.
“So you’re stuck with them until they grow up.”
“Yes.”
“And become ghouls.”
“Yes.”
Emma pressed the ice pack against her cheek again. “And you still have to go out and reap souls.”
“If the system fails, yes.” Gertrude had pushed her hood back – it seemed a bit pointless keeping it up now – and her hair hung flat and pale against her hollow cheeks.
“This is so … goth,” Emma said.
“What?”
“Just – scythes, and ghouls, and grave dirt in the tub.”
“Well, I can’t help that,” Gertrude said. “We’ve been doing it longer than them, anyway.”
Emma put the ice pack down and stared at the lemon drizzle cake, pale golden and soft as clouds. “And you’re getting compensation because no one knows how long till the ghoul situation gets sorted out.”
“Yes. Did you get hit quite hard on the head? Only you keep repeating things.”
“Quite hard, yes. But I also have an idea.”
“An idea?” Gertrude said doubtfully.
“Yes. Listen.”
Gertrude listened.
“Reaper Leeds? Please hold for GR Yorkshire.”
Gertrude stared at the secretary. “Ethel, you’re right in front of me. He’s right in front of me.”
“Oh. Yes. Right. I’m not very good in person.”
Gertrude patted the secretary’s shoulder, feeling bones shift beneath her robe. “Never mind. Come in. Come in, sir.”
“Reaper Leeds – wonderful to see you again!”
“Yes, sir.” Wonderful. It had been a few hundred years since the one and only time they’d met in person, and it had been strictly business. Only Grim Reapers can reap those who become reapers. She had been given a choice, of course, but when it came down to reaping or being reaped – well. Not many reapers said no.
“So, explain this place to me again,” GR Yorkshire said.
They’d come in the back door, and Gertrude led them past the office and the storeroom to one side, her tidy kitchen and the stairs up to the apartment on the other. It was small, but that was okay. It didn’t need to be big.
“It’s a cafe,” she said.
“A ghoulet cafe.”
“The ghoulet cafe.” She couldn’t help feeling a thrill of pride as she said it. “Dead Good Cafe. Coffee, cake, and ghoulets.”
GR Yorkshire frowned and stopped in the doorway as the cafe opened up before him. The windows were draped with heavy layers of curtains in shades of purple and grey, and the walls were rendered in rough stone. The chairs and sofas were low and soft, and more heavy curtains and decorative hangings turned clusters of tables into semi-private alcoves. Red and orange lamps lit the room in a dim glow, candles burning on the tables. Music pulsed and groaned around them, and most of the customers had a clear preference for black clothes and piercings. Ghoulets snored among the stacked cushions, or accepted snacks from the clientele, and a few were having a wrestling match in a clear patch of floor.
He stopped short. “You have ghoulets and humans in here together.”
“Yes, sir. Hiding in plain sight, sir.”
“But—”
“Cat cafes are very popular these days, sir. No one sees the ghoulets for what they are.”
“But—”
“And you did want a solution to the ghoulet problem, sir.”
“Yes, but—”
“Imagine if GR Lancashire saw this,” the secretary said in a wondering voice. “Making an asset out of ghoulets!”
Gertrude grinned. “My thoughts exactly, Secretary Reaper.”
“Well, yes, but—”
A woman in a brightly coloured sundress hurried to meet them. She should have looked out of place in the gloom, but she had bones sticking out of the pocket of her apron and a tray of coffee mugs in one hand. “Hello! Mister Grim Reaper, sir. I’m Emma.”
“Emma?” GR Yorkshire said weakly, as she shook his hand enthusiastically.
“My human business partner, sir,” Gertrude said. “And friend.”
“But—”
“Never mind Lancashire – Grim UK will be so impressed,” the secretary said. “Talk about moving with the times! Gertrude – I mean, Reaper Leeds, this is setting the standard!”
“Why, thank you. What do you think, sir?”
GR Yorkshire heaved a sigh that blew out two candles and made a couple sitting at a table nearby shiver in alarm. “I wish I could still drink whisky,” he said, a little sadly, and Gertrude patted his arm.
“I’ll get you a glass, sir. The smell’s still the same.”
She led him across the Turkish rugs and showed him to a coffin-shaped table. He sat down, watching the couple drinking cocktails from skulls.
“How come they don’t leak?” he asked.
Gertrude followed his gaze, but Emma answered before she could.
“Oh, they’re fake, sir,” she said. “If enough things are fake, no one notices the things that are real.” She plucked a bone from between the sofa cushions and flicked it to a ghoulet, who caught it and crunched it down eagerly.
“Oh.” GR Yorkshire said. “Well. Always good to have some human insight, I guess.” He watched a woman with a top hat crowning her extravagantly green hair stoop to rub a ghoulet’s belly. It wriggled and grunted in delight, and he shook his head. “Gods know, I don’t understand them.”
“We don’t understand ourselves,” Emma said. “But everyone knows you can’t ever go wrong with good cake.” And she smiled up at Gertrude, who smiled her bony smile back.
That, at least, was a truth that held for both the living and the not-technically-so, and everyone in between.
You Can Get Anything at the Market
Sometimes I have reasons for stories.
Sometimes I don’t.
This is definitely a don’t.
Although I do believe in politeness even with cold callers – unless they’re trying to scam people. In which case I say all sorts of nasty tricks are permissible.
“Speak English,” Gareth demanded, his knuckles white on the phone as he held it out in front of him.
“Sorry, sir,” the person on the other end said, a little fuzzy through the speakerphone function. “I will speak more clearly. My records indicate you were involved in a vehicle accident that wasn’t your fault—”
“Can’t understand a word you’re saying,” Gareth said, with some satisfaction. “Where’re you calling from? Bangladesh?”
“Glasgow. Were you involved in such an accident?”
“Glasgow? Likely story. If you want to talk to me, you’ll have to find someone who can speak English. Where’s your manager?”
“If you’ll just let me adjust my headset, sir, I can—”
“No, forget it. If you want to talk to me, get someone English to call me next time.” And he hit disconnect, then turned around to grin at his wife. “That’ll teach them.”
“I’m sure it will, dear,” she said, tugging a little more wool free of the skein.
“If you’re trying to scam someone, you should at least have the decency to do it in your own country.”
“I’m sure you’re right, dear.” She personally though the caller had sounded Scottish. But she supposed that was still another country, if not the sort Gareth meant.
“The cheek of it! And as if I’ve had a car accident. As if.” He considered it for a moment. “You haven’t, have you, Lou?”
“No, dear,” she said, holding her knitting up and frowning at it. She’d missed a stitch somewhere, and now everything was going a little wonky.
“It’s bad enough that I can’t even call the bank without being put through to Bombay or somewhere.”
Louise wondered if that meant he preferred the scammers to the bank. He certainly seemed to relish telling them all how wrong they were. “I think it’s Mumbai now,” she said, mostly to her knitting.
