What October Brings Read online

  “Tommy?” He squeezed a bit tighter. “Which way do we…?”

  The sudden shriek of rubber was his only warning. He looked up at the last moment, in time to see the grille of the police car bearing down on them, coming at impossible speed down the highway. He reached for the gearshift just before impact, the crash and crunch and scream of two cars shattering.

  Just a few feet away, through the storm of exploding glass, he saw the blazing blue gaze of the man in the uniform. His red face was lit up like a Jack-o’-lantern in the early morning light, on fire with a familiar madness, the mouth wide open and twisted ugly with rage.

  James closed his eyes and turned his face away from his enemy as the car tumbled, clutching the man in his arms with all his strength.

  Until the very last moment, he held love close.

  The Immortician

  Andre E. Harewood

  I: Talitha Cumi

  6:56 PM, Friday October 30, 2020: Devil’s Night

  “Sorry. I thought an old woman died in here.”

  The young doctor wandered back out of Room 11 and walked next door to watch an orderly cart out a human-sized blue box to the elevators.

  With the minor interruption over, Anaea Robinson went back to the conversation the police detective and the hospital administrator were trying to have with her. The two women talked at her about what had happened to her grandfather a few hours before: Buchanan Robinson was murdered via lethal injection in this hospital room by a nurse at the age of one hundred and twenty years and seven months. Anaea had been at work when it happened, where she always was when all the important things in her life happened. Her daughter’s last three birthdays, her last three boyfriends breaking up with her, now her grandfather’s death all went by while she was running around being a good and overworked guest liaison manager at the most expensive hotel on the Caribbean island. Quay Way was frequented by anonymous billionaires, loud musicians, sloppy starlets, unfaithful footballers, incontinent Counts, and the occasional doomsday cult out for some fun in the sun before committing mass suicide in the hotel’s fifty room private villa. Cleaning up that mess took her staff the better part of last week and killed her latest boyfriend’s patience and interest.

  The women continued to talk at her but Anaea just stared at and stroked the edge of the soiled blue sheet her Papa Buck died on.

  “Your grandfather put up a fight and shouted for help, Ms. Robinson,” the detective said. “That’s how we found out about all this. The nurse… responsible is in custody. Doctor Greaves?”

  “Thank you, detective Bosch. The hospital will be working closely with the police to…”

  She paused, scoffed, and continued, “Fuck it. We’re going to make sure that sick bastard gets exactly what he deserves, Ms. Robinson. I’ve spoken with the police, the prosecutor’s office, and our board… and we have a unique proposition for you.”

  Anaea finally looked the administrator in the eyes, a turn that shook her curly black hair.

  “What could you people possibly offer me?”

  The look of shock on Dr. Greaves’ face quickly turned to resignation. “Mr. Robinson was here under observation for his persistent cough… and one of our people murdered him. There would be nothing we could do beyond paying millions in a pre-emptive settlement but, as you already know, there may be more victims. Hallowmas starts tomorrow, Ms. Robinson. After our pathologists finish his autopsy, we can send him to an immortician.”

  “I don’t have money for resurrection,” Anaea said angrily. “Buck was a boxer but there hasn’t been any money left since before I was born.”

  “As I said, the hospital would end up paying you millions anyway, Ms. Robinson. The unique timing and nature of Mr. Robinson’s… passing doubled with the police and prosecutors wanting at least one first-hand account equals a chance for you to say goodbye to him. It’s literally the least we can offer you.”

  ***

  “But you said Papa Buck was dead, mom,” Vanessa stated in confusion.

  And Anaea thought the next difficult thing she had to explain to her eight year old daughter would be sex.

  The living room looked pristine, straight out of a housekeeping digest, because no one did any living in it. Anaea was always at work or in her backyard gym, Vanessa was always at school or extracurriculars or bouncing between friends’ homes, and Buck was usually either in his room or the garden or the kitchen. Mostly murder happened in the living room since Jack Marsh, Anaea’s best friend and Vanessa’s godfather and Buck’s nurse, played hours of violent video games on the wall screen TV. There was no running over prostitutes who owed him money with his ’67 Chevy Impala hardtop tonight, though. Jack sat on the large blue couch beside Vanessa and Anaea being a responsible adult, not a drug-addicted ex-con on a virtual rampage.

  “He is, Van,” Jack explained, “but being dead is more complicated than it used to be.”

  Anaea closed her eyes and sighed silently, thanking him for taking the lead.

  “Everybody dies, Van,” he continued. “Some people come back. It doesn’t happen often, sweetie, but it’s what’ll happen with Papa Buck. We all have something in us. Some people call them souls. I don’t know what they really are. I… Anaea, the immortician should be the one to explain it to her.”

  “The immortician can explain it to me, too,” Anaea replied.

  “Uncle Jack told me that babies come from sex, then people live, then they die,” Vanessa stated, much to her mother’s horror.

  “You told her about sex, Jack?!”

  “Only age appropriate information. She asked, I’m a medical professional, and you tense up every time she mentions it.”

  “Jesus, Jack.”

  “What’s an immortician, mom?”

  “Like Uncle Jack said,” Anaea happily got the derailed conversation back on track, “people can sometimes come back from the dead, and the immortician helps.”

  “Come back like zombies?”

  “No, honey. Not like zombies.”

  “But Uncle Jack’s always killing zombie hookers.”

  Anaea shot Jack another stern look to which he replied with a shrug.

  “Zombies aren’t real, Van,” Jack explained. “They’re just made up monsters in video games and movies.”

  “I thought people coming back to life was made up, too,” the girl countered.

  “We all did until a few years ago,” he explained. “If the timing of someone’s death is right and their soul wants to come back…”

  “And if their family has enough money…” Anaea grumbled.

  “…and a few other conditions are met,” Jack continued while shooting Anaea his own dirty look, “the dead person can come back to life for three special days starting on Halloween morning.”

  “And Papa Buck will come back tomorrow morning?”

  “We hope so, Van. He can help make sure the bad nurse who hurt him never hurts anyone else ever again… and we and Papa Buck can say our goodbyes to each other.”

  “Will he be all rotten?”

  “No, he won’t be rotting. He’ll look just like he did when we last saw him, maybe even a bit stronger.”

  “You’re sure he won’t try to eat my brains?”

  “Positive, Van.”

  “You should bring a console controller along to protect us, Jack,” Anaea joked. Neither Jack nor Vanessa laughed.

  “Can I watch Papa Buck come back to life with you and Uncle Jack, mom?”

  “I don’t think children are allowed, sweetie.”

  “I’m almost nine!”

  “I’ll call the immortuary and see if they’ll make an exception in this case,” Jack offered.

  “We should all be there for him, mom. We should all be there when Papa Buck comes back.”

  Jack and Anaea were still on the couch a while later talking and occa
sionally looking into the kitchen where Vanessa had been suitably distracted with a kids show on her tablet and some pre-Halloween candy after a very early dinner.

  “She’ll need you a lot more now without me and Buck here,” he said.

  “You’ll still be around.”

  “As long as you have that wall screen and surround sound.”

  “Thank God for you, godfather.”

  “My goddaughter barely sees her mother.”

  “If she saw me more, she’d be seeing food less.”

  “Anaea…”

  “I’ll excuse you. You’ve got to call the immortuary.”

  “That isn’t how you speak to someone doing you a favour.”

  “No. It’s how I speak to family doing their job. Later, godfather. I’ve got things to kick.”

  The garden shed she’d converted into a gym was Anaea’s sanctuary. Gloves and shin guards were the armour she put on every day, weights were every burden she had to bear, the skipping rope was every obstacle she had to overcome, the free-standing black punching bag was everyone she wanted to kill. She jabbed her right fist forward, threw a left hook, ducked, brought her right knee up, then kicked the dark obelisk with her left foot. She kept her hands up, ducking, squatting, lunging across the fluorescent bright interior of the gym. It took an hour before she realized what she kept wiping from her eyes wasn’t only sweat.

  “I put Van to bed,” Jack announced from the plastic door. “You’ve been out here awhile. I’m not coming in so you can kick me in the nuts.…”

  “It was an accident.”

  “…again. I’ll stick to the shooting range.”

  “I’m not going to break down, Jack. I’ve been prepared for this since before Vanessa was born, since before my parents died and Buck moved to the island to live with me.”

  She uppercut empty air.

  “He was old, Jack, as old as people can get. He couldn’t live forever!”

  She grabbed the back of an imaginary opponent’s head, bringing it down onto her rapidly rising left knee.

  “He just had a cough.”

  She stopped fighting, fists still raised and ready, knees apart and slightly bent, redistributing her weight from side to side as she looked at Jack.

  “He just had a fucking cough…”

  They stood in silence for a bit.

  “Phil called a few minutes ago, Anaea. He wants me to come over, thinks I need a hug.”

  “He should know by now you’re not a hugger.”

  “Neither are you,” Jack said as he walked in and hugged Anaea who reluctantly and sweatily hugged him back, “and we’re not big criers, either. Old Buck was like family to me, too. I’ll be back in the morning around four to help you and Van get ready for the rising.”

  “You cared for us almost as much as you cared for Buck.”

  “Just family doing their job.”

  Jack released his embrace but Anaea held on for a few extra seconds.

  “Get off me, MILF. I love you but I’ve got a boyfriend to go special hug.”

  “I can’t believe you told my daughter about sex.”

  They laughed.

  “See you at four, Jack.”

  “See you, budget Ronda Rousey.”

  She raised her right knee dangerously close to his groin, causing him to deflect it with his hands.

  “You’re learning,” she said with a smile.

  II: The Green Treatment

  5:45 AM, Saturday October 31, 2020: Halloween

  In daylight, the infinity pool deck of the Coal Ridge Immortuary had a breathtaking view of the island’s rugged and mostly undeveloped east coast. In the early morning, however, darkness extended from the somber lights of the immortuary over the dense tropical forest and rocky promontories jutting up through the rough Atlantic Ocean to the stars and full moon above. Now that it was approaching six, the sky brightened considerably, and the sounds of animal life grew louder.

  “I’m still surprised work gave you time off,” Jack whispered to Anaea.

  “My grandfather was murdered and he’s about to be resurrected. Work didn’t have much choice. And I think that’s my cue,” she replied while adjusting the flowing white robe she wore for the ceremony then walked to the water’s edge.

  Jack, Vanessa, and representatives from the hospital, police, and prosecutor’s office sat in wicker chairs at mahogany tables arranged in an arc around the large circular pool’s near edge. Rising ceremonies were all essentially the same, varying only in the amount of money you wanted to invest to make sure they actually worked. Most were lavishly catered affairs like this one with incense, exotic sweets, expensive alcohols, and cooked meats in abundance to entice the recently released spirit temporarily back to its former carcass prison. There was no need for this extravagance, though. The centuries-old original way with participants smoking tobacco while eating raw sugar, drinking cheap rum, and slaughtering livestock worked just as well sometimes if the spirit was truly eager to return. And the spirit had to be willing. There were reports of souls being dragged back to their corpses and trapped there, but immorticians denounced such tales as malicious rumours.

  Two attendants in black wetsuits helped immortician Yewande Ayodele bring the white shroud-covered body of Buchanan Robinson through the small crowd and down a ramp into the pool. Ayodele, a middle aged, thin woman with light brown skin, wore a top hat and a well-tailored tuxedo into the pool where Anaea joined her. The mistress of ceremonies’ watch vibrated with her two minutes to sunrise warning, and the attendants left her and Anaea holding Buchanan’s body in the water.

  “The souls of the departed can always hear us but today, All Hallows’ Eve, when the walls between the living and the dead become fluid,” immortician Ayodele pronounced, “we can also hear them. There are many words that can be said to the dead, and none will move them except words from those they loved.”

  Anaea leaned down and whispered in her dead grandfather’s ear, “Come back to us, Papa Buck. Just for a little while. Please.”

  As dawn threatened, the two women submerged and surfaced his body once, then again. On the third submersion, immortician Ayodele let go of the body, leaving Anaea alone holding him. As the sun broke over the Atlantic with a green flash at 5:52 AM, Anaea saw a similar tongue of green fire appear on Buchanan’s head underwater, then his eyes and mouth opened to show verdant energies burning within. Steam rose and the infinity pool’s water bubbled and roiled as Anaea raised Buchanan’s head and shoulders into the light of a new day. The young man in her arms who had seconds before been a supercentenarian shouted his last words first, “Keep that damned needle away from me!”

  “Papa Buck! What does that mean, Uncle Jack?” Vanessa asked.

  Jack remembered his distant Sunday school lessons, furiously made the sign of the cross, and mumbled, “He’s had too much wine.”

  III: Harlem Smoke

  2:00 PM, Saturday October 31, 2020: Halloween

  “How did he die?”

  Seated in the living room, detective Bosch cleared her throat before answering Anaea’s question.

  “We found Herb Easterman dead in his cell two hours after your grandfather identified him as the nurse who caused his fatal cardiac event. You know Easterman confessed to using an ajmaline and lidocaine cocktail.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Easterman had brain hemorrhaging, bits of his glasses embedded in three skull fractures, a shattered eye socket, multiple cracked ribs, a punctured lung, ruptured spleen, bruised kidneys, and a broken collarbone.”

  “Someone beat the shit out of him.”

  “Someone beat the life out of him. He looks like he went ten rounds with Mike Tyson but the irony is the coroner thinks Easterman died of cardiac arrhythmia.”

  “And Buck used to be a boxer.”

  “Yes, a wor
ld champion nicknamed the Harlem Smoke, and you’re one of this island’s best amateur mixed martial artists.”

  “We went with you to the hospital and the police station after the ceremony, then you made sure we got back here safely.”

  “Can anyone vouch for you after I left?”

  “It was just me, Buck, Jack, and Vanessa here for hours. Buck’s been following the immortician’s orders: meditating and contemplating and all that.”

  “I’ve heard of risings where paraplegics come back able to walk again, Ms. Robinson. No one has ever heard of one where the dead returned a century younger.”

  “Immortician Ayodele is just as shocked as the rest of us, detective, and she’s researching it right now. If she can look up the esoteric stuff, why can’t you just look at video to see who killed that pale bastard?”

  “Our cameras in that part of central station haven’t worked in weeks. We’re fully staffed so security hasn’t been a problem… until now.”

  “The regular police beatings were fine but this one got out of hand? The thirty six murders Easterman confessed to were too many?”

  “Stop that ‘arrest and molest’ foolishness. We don’t abuse our prisoners, Ms. Robinson,” detective Bosch said sternly, “despite what people may think. Look, we have no idea how someone could have gotten into the station, slipped past a dozen officers, beat the nurse to death, then escaped without anyone seeing or hearing anything.”

  “Sounds like you’re here trying to find a way to blame this on anyone but fellow officers,” Anaea said as she got up and opened to the front door. “If you have any more questions or accusations, we can speak in the presence of the most expensive lawyer the hospital’s blood money can summon. Until then, please leave.”

  The unmarked police car backed out of the driveway, and Anaea watched it disappear down the palm tree-lined avenue. Plastic skeletons and papier-mâché gravestones decorated the house across the street, a sign of the more Americanized tastes of her upper middle class area. The neighbourhood children would be trick or treating in a few hours so Anaea had a jack o’lantern bucket filled with candy by the front door to be neighbourly even though she wouldn’t allow Vanessa to go door to door begging almost strangers for confectionery. She unwrapped and munched on a mini-Uranus bar as she walked to the backyard gym. Some local priests decried anything to do with Halloween as pagan but most people simply saw it as another opportunity to get drunk and dress up provocatively.