Richard Kadrey: Dead Set

“I had a feeling those cat eyes of yours would lead you back here,” said Emmett. He was standing by the beaded curtain. Zoe hadn’t heard him come in and the beads were silent and still, like he’d come through without moving them.

“Most people walk right by this room. They can’t see it or they don’t want to and they stroll by as if it wasn’t even here,” he said, opening his hands. “But here it is.”

Zoe held up the strange LP. “What kind of record is this?” she asked. “There’s nothing written on it.”

“Actually, there’s quite a lot of information on the cover, but you have to know how to read it.” Emmett gently took the record out of Zoe’s hands. The heart seemed to beat faster when he touched it and he slipped it back into its case.

“These symbols, they tell names, places, incidents. The shape and texture of an individual’s life on earth,” Emmett said. “To answer your real question, these aren’t records of music. Each of these records is a life. Not the recording of a life, but a life itself.”

“I don’t understand,” said Zoe.

“I suppose it is a little hard to understand at first,” Emmett said. “These are the lives of people who’ve passed on. They’re what you might call souls. Or ghosts, but solid, not the wandering kind.” He leaned on the bins and looked down at Zoe. “When some spirits depart this world they leave nothing behind. Like a baby coming out of its mother’s womb, the transition is simple and complete and nothing more is necessary. Some spirits, though, get stuck. They get lost. Some don’t even know that they’re dead. And some of those spirits end up here.” Emmett nodded toward the records.

“How?”

Emmett shrugged. “They just do. Like you.”

“I don’t know if I believe that.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to. You’re a material girl living in a material world. See, I know some new music,” he said proudly.

Zoe didn’t want to be rude and tell him that the Madonna song was a standard on oldies stations.

“How can I show you what I’m talking about?” Emmett muttered. He clapped his hands together. “Would you like to see another life? Something old. Something from another time, so you can really feel the difference.”

“It sounds like a virtual reality ride I went on once at a museum. All it did was make me dizzy,” she said.

“I tell you what, try this and then you tell me if it’s virtual reality.”

Zoe thought about it for a moment. She’d already ditched school and lost a shirt. Maybe she could salvage something from this lousy day.

“Okay,” she said.

Emmett looked through the bins and selected an LP with a complex collection of symbols on the front-fish, birds, plants, and jagged lines that might have meant water. He went to the incense burner and opened a large box standing next to it. Zoe followed and stood behind him, peeking over his shoulder. Inside the box was a strange machine about the size of an orange crate. Brass fittings gleamed in the diffuse light. Under a rubbery turntable there were delicate gears, lenses, and faceted jewels like insect eyes. Zoe thought it looked like a Halloween spook-house version of the record player her parents had in their bedroom back at the old house. Emmett set the LP gently on the machine and positioned six silver legs on different parts of the disc. Each of the legs had a barbed needle at the end. They made Zoe think of giant spiders.

“This is an Animagraph,” said Emmett. “There are very few left in the world and fewer people who know how to use one. It’s how we can see, touch, and experience the life of these lost souls.” When he was finished setting up the Animagraph, he held up an elaborate set of headphones for Zoe.

She hesitated for a moment, then took the phones and slipped them over her head. They didn’t seem to fit right. There were extra wires and straps.

“Allow me,” said Emmett, sliding the phones off her. He put them back on her the other way around, with the part that looked like it should go over Zoe’s head covering her eyes. The ear parts fit snugly, but then Zoe felt Emmett pulling more straps across her face. They went across her nose and mouth and wrapped around her throat. What the hell? she thought. She started to say something but the strap across her mouth kept her from opening her jaw. She pulled at the strap around her throat just as she heard a familiar scratching: the sound of a needle sliding into a record groove.

And she was standing on a green lawn behind an enormous white house. There was a badminton net a little off to her left, which was funny because until that minute she’d never seen the game, yet now she knew exactly how to play it. There were people around her, all dressed in strange old clothes, like photos she remembered of Steampunk cosplay. The older men wore dark suits while some of the younger ones had on jaunty striped jackets and flat straw hats that she remembered were called “boaters.” The women, including Zoe herself, wore long, wide skirts that smelled faintly of some flowery perfume and starch. There was a tart taste in Zoe’s mouth. Lemonade. She looked down at her hands. She had on white gloves and her hands were too large. An adult woman’s hands. Then Zoe saw her belly. It was enormous. A man she knew to be her husband came over and laid his hand on her stomach. He smiled down lovingly at her.

“Are you comfortable, dear?”

“Yes,” she felt herself say.

Squirm . There was something inside her. She was pregnant.

Zoe heard a soft scratch. A second later she was back in the record shop with Emmett unstrapping the headphones. At first she couldn’t speak. She touched her stomach, relieved by its smooth flatness.

“You just experienced a few moments in the life of Caroline Lee Somerville from Manassas, Virginia. You were there right at the end of her life in 1904,” said Emmett. “She died giving birth to that baby you felt.”

“Holy shit,” whispered Zoe. “That was so cool.”

Emmett beamed. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He set down the headphones and returned the record to its slipcase.

Zoe could still feel the life moving inside her. She could see her husband and the mansion. She knew every room inside.

As Emmett returned the LP to the bins Zoe asked, “Can I try that again?”

“I was going to suggest that very thing,” said Emmett. He stepped over to another bin and picked up a record. “Would you like to see your father’s life?”

Zoe went cold inside. She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right, but she knew she had. There was a strange feeling in her stomach. Not fear exactly, more a feeling of being empty and queasy at the same time, like she might be sick.

“Your father is right here, with us,” said Emmett, weighing the record in his hands. “And I can let you see him. But, of course, this is a place of business and I’m a businessman.”

Zoe knew what he meant.

“How much do you want?” she whispered.

Emmett shook his head. “Money? I don’t want your money,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost closing time. You should be getting home.”

“How much?” Zoe asked, quietly and insistently. If Emmett was telling the truth and she could see her father, she’d find some way to pay whatever he asked. And she knew he knew it.

Emmett set down the LP and led Zoe to the front of the store. “I don’t want much at all, really,” he said. He opened the door and gently pushed Zoe through. “Come back tomorrow at the same time and bring me a lock of your hair. Then I’ll let you see your father.” He locked the door and turned around the little sign in the window from COME IN to CLOSED.

That night, when Zoe got to the tree fort, Valentine was on the roof looking at the mountains through a telescope. The telescope looked old, patched together with duct tape, rusting rivets, and lumpy, ragged welds. Zoe had never seen it before and wondered where it had come from, but there were other, more important things on her mind.