Christopher Moore - A Dirty Job

“There are Forces of Darkness —we don’t know what they are,” Charlie said. “What we’ve seen are giant ravens, and these demon-like women, we call them sewer harpies because they’ve come out of the storm sewers. They gain strength when they get hold of a soul vessel—and they’re getting really strong. The prophecy says they are going to rise in San Francisco and darkness will cover the world.”

“And they are in the sewers?” Audrey said.

Both Death Merchants nodded.

“Oh no, that’s how the squirrel people get around town without being seen. I’ve sent them to the different stores in the City to get the souls. I must have been sending them right to these creatures. And a lot of them haven’t come home. I thought they just might be lost, or wandering around. They do that. They have the potential of full human consciousness, but something is lost with time out of the body. Sometimes they can get a little goofy.”

“No kidding,” said Charlie. “So is that why iguana boy over there is gnawing on the light cord?”

“Ignatius, get off there! If you electrocute yourself the only place I have to put your soul is that Cornish hen I got at the Safeway. It’s still frozen and I don’t have any pants that will fit it.” She turned to Charlie with an embarrassed smile. “The things you never think you’ll hear yourself say.”

“Yeah, kids, what are you gonna do?” Charlie said, trying to sound easygoing. “You know, one of your squirrel people shot me with a crossbow.”

Audrey looked distraught now. Charlie wanted to comfort her. Give her a hug. Kiss her on the top of the head and tell her that everything was all right. Maybe even get her to untie him.

“They did? Crossbow, oh, that would be Mr. Shelly. He was a spy or something in a former life—had a habit of going off on his own little missions. I sent him to keep an eye on you and report back so I could figure out what you were doing. No one was supposed to get hurt. He never came home. I’m really sorry.”

“Report back?” Charlie said. “They can talk?”

“Well, they don’t talk,” Audrey said. “But some of them can read and write. Mr. Shelly could actually type. I’ve been working on that. I need to get them a voice box that works. I tried one out of a talking doll, but I just ended up with a ferret in a samurai outfit that cried and kept asking if it could go play in the sandbox, it was unnerving. It’s a strange process, as long as there’s organic parts, stuff that was once living, they knit together, they work. Muscles and tendons make their own connections. I’ve been using hams for the torsos, because it gives them a lot of muscle to work with, and they smell better until the process is finished. You know, smoky. But some things are a mystery. They don’t grow voice boxes.”

“They don’t appear to grow eyes, either,” Charlie said, gesturing with his teacup at a creature whose head was an eyeless cat skull. “How do they see?”

“Got me.” Audrey shrugged. “It wasn’t in the book.”

“Man, I know that feeling,” said Minty Fresh.

“So I’ve been experimenting with a voice box made out of catgut and cuttlebone. We’ll see if the one who has it learns to talk.”

“Why don’t you put the souls back in human bodies?” asked Minty. “I mean, you can, right?”

“I suppose,” Audrey said. “But to be honest, I didn’t have any human corpses lying around the house. But there does have to be a piece of human being in them—I learned that from experimenting—a finger bone, blood, something. I got a great deal on a backbone in a junk store in the Haight and I’ve been using one vertebra for each of them.”

“So you’re like some monstrous reanimator,” Charlie said. Then he quickly added, “And I mean that in the nicest way.”

“Thanks, Mr. Death Merchant .” Audrey smiled back and went to the nearby desk for some scissors. “But it looks like I need to cut you loose and hear how you guys got into your line of work. Mr. Greenstreet, could you bring us some more tea and coffee?”

A creature with a beaver’s skull for a head, wearing a fez and a red satin smoking jacket, bowed and scampered by Charlie, headed toward the kitchen.

“Nice jacket,” Charlie said.

The beaver guy gave him a thumbs-up as he passed. Lizard thumbs.

The Emperor was camped in some bushes near an open culvert that drained into Lobos Creek in the Presidio, the land point on the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate where forts had stood from the time of the Spanish, but had recently been turned into a park. The Emperor had wandered the city for days, calling into storm drains, following the sound of his lost soldier’s barking. The faithful retriever Lazarus had led him here, one of the few drains in the city where the Boston terrier might be able to exit without being washed into the Bay. They camped under a camouflage poncho and waited. Mercifully, it hadn’t rained since Bummer had chased the squirrel into the storm sewer, but dark clouds had been bubbling over the City for two days now, and whether or not they were bringing rain, they made the Emperor fear for his city.

“Ah, Lazarus,” said the Emperor, scratching his charge behind the ears, “if we had even half the courage of our small comrade, we would go into that drain and find him. But what are we without him, our courage, our valor? Steady and righteous we may be, my friend, but without courage to risk ourselves for our brother, we are but politicians—blustering whores to rhetoric.”

Lazarus growled low and hunkered back under the poncho. The sun had just set, but the Emperor could see movement back in the culvert. As he climbed to his feet, the six-foot pipe was filled with a creature that crawled out and virtually unfolded in the creekbed—a huge, bullheaded thing, with eyes that glowed green and wings that unfurled like leathery umbrellas.

As they watched the creature took three steps and leapt into the twilight sky, his wings beating like the sails of a death ship. The Emperor shuddered, and considered for a moment moving their camp into the City proper, perhaps passing the night on Market Street, with people and policemen streaming by, but then he heard the faintest barking coming from deep in the culvert.

Audrey was showing them around the Buddhist center, which, except for the office in the front, and a living room that had been turned into a meditation room, looked very much like any other sprawling Victorian home. Austere and Oriental in its decor, yes, and perhaps the smell of incense permeating it, but still, just a big old house.

“It’s just a big old house, really,” she said, leading them into the kitchen.

Minty Fresh was making Audrey feel a little uncomfortable. He kept picking at bits of duct-tape adhesive that had stuck to the sleeve of his green jacket, and giving Audrey a look like he was saying, This better come out when it’s dry-cleaned or it’s your ass. His size alone was intimidating, but now a series of large knots were rising on his forehead where he’d smacked the doorway, and he looked vaguely like a Klingon warrior, except for the pastel-green suit, of course. Maybe the agent for a Klingon warrior.

“So,” he said, “if the squirrel people thought I was a bad guy, why did they save me from the sewer harpy in the train last week? They attacked her and gave me time to get away.”

Audrey shrugged. “I don’t know. They were supposed to just watch you and report back. They must have seen that what was after you was much worse than you. They are human, at heart, you know.”

She paused in front of the pantry door and turned to them. She hadn’t seen the debacle in the street, but Esther had been watching through the window and had told her what had happened—about the womanlike creatures that had been coming after Charlie. Evidently these strange men were allies of a sort, practicing what she had taken on as her holy work: helping souls to move to their next existence. But the method? Could she trust them?