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With its thumping bass and hammering beat constantly pounding you in the head, the term “club music” couldn’t be more perfect. The assault on the senses is even worse when you’re in a crowd of gyrating tarts and sweaty metrosexuals. But if it leads me to the red-haired demoness looking to cause irreversible destruction to the big city and her undead teen minions, it is a price I am willing to pay. I’ll just cleanse my senses at the apartment later with some Motown vinyl.
I opened my casket a couple of hours earlier to the sound of my cell buzzing on the night stand. The caller ID read Dominic, but I picked it up a second too late and the voicemail kicked in. The screen on the phone indicated that it was Dominic’s fourth attempt to reach me, making me immediately fear the worst—Stefanie!
I didn’t even bother checking the voicemail. I just dialed back. Dominic picked up halfway through the first ring. “Where are you? I’ve been trying to call you.”
“Hey dumb ass,” I snapped back. “The sun just went down. Dead guy, remember?” I then asked the dreaded question. “Is it Stefanie?”
“No, no, it’s not that. It’s your redhead. I sensed her early this morning before daybreak. She’s in the Soho area!”
“Soho! That’s where Travis and Donny’s club is. She’s coming right at them. Why didn’t you call me before the sun came up?”
“My battery was dead. I called as soon as I got back and charged it.” Dammit, he did. His calls were at 6:42, 6:47, 6:52 and 6:58, all a.m.
“Shit! I must have been in the shower when you called.”
“You shower?”
“What do think, because we’re dead, we’re slobs? Of course, I shower! I shower every night just before sunlight.” This week, the sun’s been coming up around 7:00 a.m.
“All right, never mind that. I feel her close by. She’s definitely in Soho right now and she’s got two others with her.”
“Two? There are supposed to be three, aren’t there?”
“Who knows? Who cares? Just get your dead ass down here.”
I reached for my jacket. It’s a mid-length, dark brown, suede one that I bought in the eighties. It has a deep enough pocket to conceal my Filipino blade. “Okay, I’m coming. Meet me at The Hindquarters.”
“I’m already here,” said Dominic.
“What! Dominic, don’t you dare try anything stupid if you see her. She will kill you.”
“I can protect myself. Just get your ass over here.”
Thankfully by the time I arrived, Simone still hadn’t materialized. Otherwise my dumb ass brother-in-law’s high-cholesterol blood might have already been layering the Hindquarters’ dance floor. Instead he’s now beside me suffering today’s latest beats while maneuvering through this horde of hip-thrusting airheads.
To be heard I have to yell over the auto-tuned muck playing overhead from some singer whose better known for the size of her ass than her voice. “Anything?” Dominic shakes his head, yelling back that it’s hard to hear with all this shit playing so loud. “Well, she’s got to be somewhere around here if you sensed her in the area.”
Dominic gestures to the far corner of the dance floor where the kitchen is. “Let’s go in there for a minute.”
Communicating out here isn’t as much of a problem for me as it is for Dominic. Years of sorting out sounds picked up by my hypersensitive hearing enables me to make out what he’s saying over the techno thumpety-thump. It is he who can’t take in anything that I say back.
That being said, a moment in the kitchen does bring a much welcome break from the anarchy out on the dance floor. Only the sound of the workers defrosting and microwaving what will soon become overpriced “fresh” Buffalo wings and burgers, clanks around in there. The occasional profanity-laced hip-hop only bleeds in when the swinging doors open.
Dominic’s uncomfortable about something. He’s led me in here because he wants to get something off his chest. “We gotta talk.”
“Okay, what’s up?”
He points his finger at my chest. “If I do this for you, you gotta do the right thing.”
“Uh, Dominic, we’ve already had this discussion.”
“Bullshit! You’re telling me you’re not like them, right? That you’re genetically resistant and that you’re still Nicky, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, the Nicky I remember, my brother-in-law, my best friend, he’s a Christian.”
“Not anymore, Dominic. I’m dead. If I stop walking this Earth, you know where I’m spending my eternity. And it sure as hell ain’t with Christ.”
“How do you know? This could be your way to seek forgiveness and repentance.”
“Forgiveness and repentance? Listen to you. There is no forgiveness for what I am or what I’ve done. If your Dr. Gunder needs help, she ain’t getting it from me.”
He grabs me by the collar. Is this fucking guy nuts? “Mira maricón! You know what’s right. You know what the right thing to do is. It’s the least you can do given the way you died.”
Low blow, fucker.
Now it’s my turn to grab Dominic by the collar and push him against the kitchen wall. “What is that supposed to mean? Who are you to tell me what’s right, huh?” Perhaps Mr. Righteous needs a little reminder. “What about you and Colleen Ryan? Was that the right thing to do? Banging your partner’s wife?”
An entire spectrum of colors rainbows through Dominic’s face, he’s a breathing Peter Max print. It finally settles on a very pale white. What’s the matter, buddy? See a ghost? “Y-you-you knew? ¿C-c-como tu sabiste eso?”
I let go of his collar. He doesn’t move. It looks like he’s still pinned against the wall. “I didn’t know, Dominic. I found out after I was dead. What’s wrong with you? Not only were you cheating on Patti, but damn, your partner’s wife? Really, man.”
“Hey, fuck you, what about you and that redhead!”
“Hey, don’t you go there! You know that wasn’t my fault!”
“Really? Are you sure about that? Because, you know, even
though I defended you all these years, it was because I didn’t want to believe you could do something like that. You know how screwed up it was between me and Patti. But you, you and Stef, I looked at you guys like you were perfect. It was everything I wanted me and Patti to be. So when that shit happened, it made no sense to me ‘cause all you did was talk about Sis and how much you loved her. So then what happens? You’re downtown with two friends that know how much you love your wife, and you go disappear with some redhead? No, no, there was no way. It made no sense. That’s why I defended you. I went out and I checked around, asked around, looking for answers. But the truth? You wanna know the truth? The truth is I have no idea what happened. I have no idea why you died in bed with some redhead after being married all those years to my little sister. So why don’t you tell me?”
The silence in the kitchen is paralyzing, cold. Only the drumbeat from outside the swinging doors brings any indication that there is anything going on outside of the staring showdown between me and Dominic. He’s crossed a line and he knows it. Instinctively he remains stoic, but by now he probably knows that I can smell fear. What stands before him is not his brother-in-law but an anomaly that has no place in God’s world.
“Okay Dominic, pick up that big knife on the table behind you and bring it here.” The Hindquarters’ kitchen employees, paying no mind to the brotherly spat, ignore the sight of Dominic lifting the chef’s knife that was sitting on the kitchen island. “Good. Now take the pointed edge and press it against your neck.” Without a second of hesitancy, Dominic agreeably pushes the sharp edge to the right of his Adams Apple. “Press it a little harder.” With no fear or indication of any pain, the knife presses forward, breaking skin. A burst of blood colors the tip of the blade. “Okay, stop.”
Blood oozes a path down my brother-in-law’s neck as he stands quietly, knife in hand. Conveniently, there is a First Aid cabinet on the wall where I can access a Band-Aid. Before the blood reaches the white collar of his shirt, I intercept it with my finger.
No reason to let it go to waste.
Rather than wipe it off with one of the nearby napkins I lick the blood off my fingertip. The taste settles on my tongue as I tear open the Band-Aid. “Ugh, Dominic, you really need to cut down on your drinking.”
Dominic shakes the haze out of his head and looks at the chef’s knife in his hand as I place the Band-Aid over the puncture wound. He reaches for his neck with his other hand and feels the bandage over the wound.
“Any more questions about that night, Dominic?”
His expression is one of raw disgust. “You sick fuck.”
“No, Dominic, not sick. Dead.”
How can his mind even process this? I keep trying to imagine what this must be like from the other side; a dead brother-in-law standing before him, a dead brother-in-law that feeds off of humans, something that people dress up as for Halloween. A ridiculous figure of fantasy facing him as a horrifying reality—one that has taken a tragic toll on all the lives around him.
The thumping bass seeps back through the swinging doors as Dominic storms back out to the dance floor. Before they swing back shut, Travis passes Dominic and notices the wound on his neck.
Travis approaches me with an expression that almost passes as a laugh. “Did you just...?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Okay, if you weren’t feeding off the detective, did he at least offer some intel about our friend, the doctor?”
“No, we were discussing family matters.”
“Family matters?” Travis reverts to his sour demeanor. “Listen, amigo, you have got to reevaluate your priorities.”
“I know, I know.”
The hip-hop beat blasts its way back into the kitchen as Dominic bursts through the door. “She’s here!”
“What?” Butterflies! I actually have butterflies! Are they dead, I wonder? “How do you know?”
Travis eyes light up. “Did you see her?” This is a man who loves confrontation.
“No,” says Dominic. “But she’s here, with two others.”
“Just two? Where is the other?”
“All I know is what’s here right now,” says Dominic. “There are six of you freaks right here, right now, in this building.” Dominic nods towards Travis. “There’s you and your sweetheart, the thing that calls himself my brother-in-law, the redhead, and two others.”
We have to bring Travis’ mate up to speed. “Dominic, does Donny know?”
“No, I didn’t see him.”
“Donny’s up on the balcony watching the floor,” says Travis. “Let’s go tell him.”