Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

“Whoa! You and the dog understand each other?”

“Different rules apply when you’re dead. Yes we understand each other. He’s pissed off at me for telling you about Hell. It doesn’t matter. You’d better go see your friends. I’ll get the beers.” He went to the bar and I left the room.

Sure enough, Brooks and Zin Zan were standing just on the other side of the open doorway. They lit up when they saw me. I gotta admit I was happy to see them too, considering everything that had been happening.

“Hi guys, what are you doing here?”

Both opened their mouths and started talking but I didn’t hear a thing. Their faces and hand movements were busy, too, but came with no soundtrack. After a while I pointed to my ears and made a face that said nothing’s coming though. They seemed to understand and gestured for me to step outside.

Just as I was about to do exactly that, Mel Shaveetz’s voice said from about five inches behind my ear, “I wouldn’t go out there if I were you.”

Still looking at the Brothers, I asked why not? I don’t like being told what to do; especially not by dead people who live on movie sets with burning dogs.

“Because once you do, you can’t come back in here again.”

“Why would I want to?”

“Because the answers you need are in here, not out there with them.” Mel’s voice was snotty and know-it-all, all “You dumbbell-I’m smarter than you are” tone. Which I hate. Without even bothering to look back at the asshole, I stepped toward the Brothers. I heard a terrible savage growl from back in the house. The hairy Devil dog was coming for me again.

Adding to that, the Brothers’ eyeballs widened till they almost popped out of their heads at whatever it was they saw coming up behind me. Then those holy cowards turned on their four heels and ran. Me too. Not that I expected to get very far. I knew how that giant could run. I’d felt its weight pressing down on my back. Now I knew any second it’d be on me again doing a lot worse than before.

I’m running and know I’ll be caught but I’ll fight back. What else could I do? For the first sprint I ran looking at the ground. That’s how I always ran fastest as a kid. No distractions, just watch the ground straight in front of you and move like lightning in front of thunder.

But eventually I realized even through all the fear that nothing had caught or eaten me yet. So I looked up, wondering why not? The Brothers were a hundred feet ahead, standing still now and facing me. Why had they stopped when a moment ago they were so scared? And where was that Posafega?

I looked over my shoulder cringing because it might just be waiting to give me a nasty shock. But the only surprise was that that dog wasn’t there. “What is going on?”

“We were afraid we wouldn’t be able to get you out of there, sir. That would have been big trouble for all concerned. But here you are-you made it!”

Zin Zan looked like he was about to kiss me, he was so happy.

Instead of answering, I looked at Rolfe’s house again to make sure we were talking about the same thing. Only when I was bringing my eyes back around to the Brothers did I see a street sign: Pilot Hill. That’s where we’d been planning to go in the first place before all this other shit started happening.

“Is this what you wanted to show me? Rolfe’s house? Is that what this is all about?”

“No sir, actually it was someone else’s house we wanted to show you up here. But I don’t think you need to see it now to believe what we were saying before.”

“True. So who else lost their house on this street?”

They looked at each other to see which of them was going to drop the bad news bomb. Zin Zan said, “Everyone.”

“What?”

“That’s right.” Brooks moved his arm in a way that took in the whole area. “Every house on Pilot Hill has been taken over.”

“I don’t believe it.” I looked around again to make sure that dog wasn’t sneaking up on me from some secret angle.

“It’s true, Mr. Gallatin. If you’d like, go look in anyone’s window here and you’ll see.”

“I will do exactly that.” I crossed the street to my friend Carl Hull’s house and looked in his window because I knew exactly what it looked like inside. What I noticed first was everything was black and white in there. Or I should say in black and white. I knew Carl’s house and this wasn’t it. I stepped back and looked at the façade. This was Hull ’s house, all right. So I looked in the window again. Carl’s wife Naomi loves yellow things-furniture, pillows, rugs. But there wasn’t an inch of yellow anything in there. No couch, curtains, nothing-only black and white.

The living room was full of old fat furniture; most of it covered in some thick material like velvet. Like your Grandma’s house. Pure old people’s furniture. The Hull house I knew had a few pieces of cheap yellow furniture, a round “ Garfield ” rug in front of a TV set as big as you could get. That machine was Carl’s pride and you had to give the man credit-he didn’t scrimp when it came to home entertainment. But where was that big Sony screen today?

“Sherlock Holmes.”

I jumped. “Don’t do that, Brooks! Don’t sneak up on me. My eggs have been scrambled enough for one day. Besides, what are you talking about?

“This house-the woman who moved in here chose the décor of the first Sherlock Holmes film. Starring Clive Brook, Ernest Torrence-”

“Where’s Carl and Naomi?”

“At Lake of the Ozarks on vacation. They’ll be coming back soon to this ugly surprise.”

“Where’s their stuff? Their belongings?”

“The new tenant had it hauled away this morning.”

“Why is everything black and white in there?”

Brooks seemed surprised at my question. “Because that film was in black and white. The new occupant wanted things to look exactly like the film.”

“Well, Casablanca was black and white too. But Mel’s house was in color. You saw it.”

Brooks nodded. “He chose the colorized version. He’s not a purist. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Mr. Gallatin, but it would be very good if we got a move on.”

“Where to now?”

“Back to your house.”

“What’s at my house that wasn’t there an hour ago?”

“A moving van.”

Three sets of eyes bounced back and forth, back and forth like Flubber for a while before any of the mouths connected to them had more to say.

“They’re taking over my house now?”

“Yes sir. That’s why we came to warn you this morning.”

“You knew about this? You knew it would happen?” We started walking-fast.

“We always know it’ll happen-just not when. We didn’t think it would be so soon and in such large numbers. That’s why we go door to door. The problem is no one ever believes what we say until it’s too late. So Beeflow decided to change the way we do things because the situation is now getting critical.”

“Was that really Beeflow who talked to me back in the truck?”

“Yes sir. Was Cyrus there too?”

“How do you know about that? I thought was my soul!”

“It is. Did it lick your hand in the dark?” He smiled and shook his head like he’d just found a fond memory in his pocket. “That’s its way of greeting you, telling you it’s there. It happens that way to us all. But ‘Cyrus’ is only Beeflow’s nickname for it. The real name of the human soul is Kopum, pronounced Coe-poon. You’ll learn all about that later.”

“Then why does he call it Cyrus?”

“It’s easier to accept in the beginning. The name sounds a lot less strange than Kopum. People like feeling safe, especially when it comes to their souls.”

We hurried back and only when we were halfway home did I think about what I was doing or the fact I had accepted everything they’d told me as cold hard fact. The name of my soul was Cyrus, but not really because it’s actually Kopum. Okay. Dead people were moving into my house? If you say so. The craziness of it all made me slow some but not stop. I’d seen and heard enough in the last hour to know parts of my world had suddenly gone seriously damned wobbly, but this? Could it really be true?