Justin Gustainis - Those Who Fight Monsters Tales of Occult Detectives

“Can’t you do something?” I said.

“I’ve tried all the usual shit,” said Maxie. “But she’s a hard one to shift. You think you could do something? That little bitch is seriously bad for business.”

I went back to my table in the corner, to do some hard thinking. Most people would just walk away, on discovering the ghost was nothing more than a repeating cycle… But I’m not most people. I couldn’t bear to think of Holly trapped in this place, maybe forever.

Why would a woman, with apparently everything to live for, kill herself in a dive like this? I raised my gift, and once again pastel-tinted semi-transparent images of the living Holly darted back and forth through the dimly-lit bar, lighting briefly at this table and that, like a flower fairy at midnight. It didn’t take me long to realize there was one table she visited more than most. So I went over to the people sitting there, and made them tell me everything they knew.

Professor Hartnell was a grey-haired old gentlemen in a battered city suit. He used to be somebody, but he couldn’t remember who. Igor was a shaven-headed kobold with more piercings than most, who’d run away from the German mines of his people to see the world. He didn’t think much of the world, but he couldn’t go back, so he settled in the Nightside. Where no one gave a damn he was gay. The third drinker was a battered old Russian, betrayed by the Revolution but appalled at what his country had become. No one mentioned the ice-pick sticking out the back of his head.

They didn’t know Holly, as such, but they knew who she’d come here after. She came to the Jolly Cripple to save someone. Someone who didn’t want to be saved — her brother, Craig De Lint. He drank himself to death, right here in the bar, right at their table. Sometimes in their company, more often not, because the only company he was interested in came in a bottle. I used my gift again, and managed to pull up a few ghost images from the Past, of the living Craig. Stick thin, shabby clothes, the bones standing out in his grey face. Dead, dead eyes.

“You’re wasting your time, sis,” Craig De Lint said patiently. “You know I don’t have any reason to drink. No great trauma, no terrible loss… I just like to drink, and I don’t care about anything else. Started out in all the best places, and worked my way down to this. Where someone like me belongs. Go home, sis. You don’t belong here. Go home, before something bad happens to you.”

“I can’t just leave you here! There must be something I can do!”

“And that’s the difference between us, sis, right there. You always think there’s something that can be done. But I know a lost cause when I am one.”

The scene shifted abruptly, and there was Holly at the bar, arguing furiously with Maxie. He still smiled, even as he said things that cut her like knives.

“Of course I encouraged your brother to drink, sweetie. That’s my job. That’s what he was here for. And no, I don’t give a damn that he’s dead. He was dying when he walked in here, by his own choice; I just helped him on his way. Now either buy a drink or get out of my face. I’ve got work to do.”

“I’ll have you shut down!” said Holly, her voice fierce now, her small hands clenched into fists.

He laughed in her face. “Like to see you try, sweetie. This is the Nightside, where everyone’s free to go to Hell in their own way.”

“I know people! Important people! Money talks, Maxie; and I’ve got far more of it than you have.”

He smiled easily. “You’ve got balls, sweetie. Okay, let’s talk. Over a drink.”

“I don’t drink.”

“My bar, my rules. You want to talk with me, you drink with me.”

Holly shrugged, and looked away. Staring at the table where her brother died. Maxie poured two drinks from a bottle, and then slipped a little something into Holly’s glass. He watched, smiling, as Holly turned back and gulped the stuff down, just to get rid of it; and then he smiled even more widely as all the expression went out of her face.

“There, that’s better,” said Maxie. “Little miss rich bitch. Come into my bar, throwing your weight about, telling me what to do? I don’t think so. Feeling a little more … suggestible, are you? Good, good… Such a shame about your brother. You must be sad, very sad. So sad, you want to end it all. So here’s a big handful of helpful pills, and a bottle of booze. So you can put an end to yourself, out back, in the toilets. Bye-bye, sweetie. Don’t make a mess.”

The ghost images snapped off as the memory ended. I was so choked with rage I could hardly breathe. I got up from the table and stormed over to the bar. Maxie leaned forward to say something, and I grabbed two handfuls of his grubby T-shirt and hauled him right over his bar, so I could stick my face right into his. He had enough sense not to struggle.

“You knew,” I said. “You knew all along! You made her kill herself!”

“I had no choice!” said Maxie, still smiling. “It was self-defense! She was going to shut me down. And yeah, I knew all along. That’s why I hired you! I knew you’d solve the elemental business right away, and then stick around for the free drinks. I knew the ghost would approach you, and you’d get involved. I needed someone to get rid of her; and you always were a soft touch, Taylor.”

I let him go. I didn’t want to touch him any more. He backed cautiously away, and sneered at me from a safe distance.

“You feel sorry for the bitch, help her on her way to the great Hereafter! You’ll be doing her a favour, and me too. I told you she was bad for business.”

I turned my back on him, and went back to the drinkers who’d known him best. And before any of them could even say anything, I focused my gift through them, through their memories of Craig, and reached out to him in a direction I knew but could not name. A door opened, that hadn’t been there before, and a great light spilled out into the bar. A fierce and unrelenting light, too bright for the living to look at directly. The drinkers in the bar should have winced away from it, used as they were to the permanent gloom; but something in the light touched them despite themselves, waking old memories, of what might have been.

And out of that light came Craig De Lint, walking free and easy. He reached out a hand, smiling kindly, and out of the gloom came the ghost of Holly De Lint, also walking free and easy. She took his hand, and they smiled at each other, and then Craig led her through the doorway and into the light; and the door shut behind them and was gone.

In the renewed gloom of the bar, Maxie hooted and howled with glee, slapping his heavy hand on the bartop in triumph. “Finally, free of the bitch! Free at last! Knew you had it in you, Taylor! Drinks on the house, people! On the house!”

And they all came stumbling up to the bar, already forgetting what they might have seen in the light. Maxie busied himself serving them, and I considered him thoughtfully, from a distance. Maxie had murdered Holly, and got away with it, and used me to clean up after him, removing the only part of the business that still haunted him. So I raised my gift one last time, and made contact with the elemental of the sewers, deep under the bar.

“Maxie will never agree to the deal you want,” I said. “He likes things just the way they are. But you might have better luck with a new owner. You put your sewer water into Maxie’s bottles. There are other places you could put it.”

“I take your meaning, John Taylor,” said the elemental. “You’re everything they say you are.”

Maxie lurched suddenly behind his bar, flailing desperately about him as his lungs filled up with water. I turned my back on the drowning man, and walked away. Though, being me, I couldn’t resist having the last word.