Chapter 4
Buckle Up, Buttercup
Every building has a back door, including the morgue at Memorial. In LA, there were so many doctors and staff at the hospital, no one ever cared if a new face showed up in scrubs to wheel a dead body. But even in the bigger city outside of Hinnewatcha, someone would’ve said something about a newcomer pushing a cadaver.
Which is why Shane ignored the guilt in his gut as he picked the lock under Emily's scrutiny. In her defense, she was alarmed at the breaking-and-entering part. But she was oddly calm about the seeing-a-dead-person bit of the night. Emily scanned the loading dock area, turning her head at every noise, but they were alone except for a few large trash cans and an empty gurney. Fortunately, the exterior security camera was still askew thanks to Shane's nudge during his "official" visit earlier in the day.
The lock clicked, no alarm sounded, and the pair walked into the well lit hallway, clipboards in hand in case someone approached them. He led Emily to the unmarked bright yellow door and used the key fob he’d swiped earlier to get inside. The office where Shane had read the medical examiner's notes with his TV crew earlier was dark.
Emily whispered, "I thought morgues kept their dead people in a bunch of drawers in the wall?"
Shane shook his head, trying not to inhale the warring smells of formaldehyde and disinfectant. "Small and old hospitals like this one just use walk-ins. Not too far off from what a supermarket uses." He pointed to the cooler in the corner, "They pulled Dave from the second one earlier. Give me a hand."
The pair wheeled the nearest gurney over and opened the stainless steel fridge aptly labeled "The Chiller" per an old placard at its side. "D. Fever" was scrawled on a tag outside of his black body bag on the bottom shelf. Shane and Emily half pulled, half pushed his heavy body onto the gurney, its wheels squeaking in protest.
Shane said, "Grab my bag and meet me by the examiner's table. Remember what we practiced?"
"We didn't practice anything about the Raising!" Emily whisper-panicked. Her fair skin took on a translucent glow under the harsh medical lighting and lime green tiled walls. The blue windbreaker with the "Integrity Transport" patch on the arm kept slipping off her slim shoulders.
"No, not the Raising," Shane said, trying to keep her calm. "What do we say if someone walks in?"
"Oh right. We're with Integrity Transport, here to take Dave Fever's body to the cargo plane so he can be buried in New Jersey.”
“You can be bored, agitated, annoyed, or indifferent. But you can't be guilty," he said.
Emily rolled her eyes, "I'm not an idiot."
"That's the face, Buttercup, good job." He wheeled the body and said over his shoulder, "Now bring me the salt."
Shane tried not to gag as he opened the body bag to Dave Fever's pallid, naked body. He checked the ankle ID, Won't make that mistake again, and reached for the large ziplock bag Emily handed over.
"K, kiddo, a few basics. First, freshly grated black sea salt works best but you can make do with some Morton's in a pinch." Shane piled the black salt in a thick line from Dave's weak chin down his chest, making a face at the lint gathered as he pooled more salt into his belly button.
"What's the difference between Morton's and this stuff?"
Shane motioned to the bundle of herbs while answering. "Longevity. Morton's will only give you 10 seconds or so. This stuff, which has charcoal in it and some other ingredients I probably should know, gives us a full minute, if we're lucky." He pried open Dave's stiff mouth just wide enough to shove the flat leaf in.
"White sage, just one piece, goes in the mouth. Too much and they'll spend the full minute coughing it up. Not enough and they won't remember how to speak. Now, crushed sumac goes on every fingertip," he said as he put the ziplock bag of red powder on Dave's forehead. "This is so they keep their hands at their sides."
Emily's eyes were wide as she scribbled notes with a fluffy purple pen, its tip catching in Dave Fever's dark arm hair. "What happens if you forget it?"
Shane looked anywhere but Emily's eyes. "Mom always told me it's because they're clumsy and knock everything off the table."
"And?"
Shane frowned deeper, raising his shoulders in a protracted shrug.
"You're doing the face," she said, jabbing the fluffy pen at him. "What are you not telling me?"
"Well, it uh–” He struggled with balancing telling her too much and having her flip out, and not telling her enough, which could set her up for a disaster later. She needs to remember this . “It helps remind the dead person not to hurt you.” He wiggled his own sumac coated fingers at the corpse and spoke in the cartoon pitch that always had her cackling as a little girl, “Helloooo there Mr. Fever, we’re friends! Don’t hurt us!”
It didn’t work.
Emily's eyes widened even further and she took a step back. "Hurt us? You never told me that they could hurt you. Has that ever happened before? Is it gonna happen this time?"
Shane dusted off the sumac on his pants and raised a hand, trying to calm Emily. But they were short on time and he needed to get Dave talking.
"No," He lied, grabbing the bag of sumac off Dave's face and zipping it closed. "Never. But I don't ever forget the sumac and I never go cheap on it either, just in case." Shane sprinkled ashes on the table around the perimeter of the body. "Last one. Focus. Any ash works, but cigarette ash tends to distract them, so I’d avoid it. This is to ground their soul back into their body one more time."
Emily nodded, sprinkling ash on the other side of the table. "And the chips? What are those for?"
He popped open the top. "I didn't eat lunch."
"Gross," she said, eyeing the can as if he intended to eat the Pringles off Dave's belly. He shoved a slim stack of Pringles in his mouth and tossed the can back into his bag behind him.
"Okay, here we go," Shane said over the last few chews. He raised his hands over Dave's chest, hovering them above the small mound of salt. "Now remember, the murdered ones always describe their killer first. Names if they have them."
"Maria," Emily said, without hesitation.
"We don't know it was the wife."
She crossed her arms. "Ok. Probably Maria."
"Enough. The murderer will be described first. Everyone wants to be vindicated, even after death. If they don't know who it was, or if it wasn't murder, they'll describe any and all details their soul grabbed on the way out."
"You think he'll be as chatty as that old biddy we brought back last time?" She asked.
"Always. I've never been around one that didn't want to talk as long as they're able to." Shane nodded to his trusty timer shaped like a tomato by the sink. "Put 60 seconds on the tomato."
"Sure I can't film this?" Emily asked, while twisting the bright red timer.
"Positive," Shane said as his hands began to emit a glowing white light.
"Record it?" She actually looked serious. "Like, just audio."
Shane lifted his hands, the glow faded. "I will send you to the car. You do not have to be part—"
Emily rolled her eyes again, "Ugh fine. Do the thing." She set the timer on the sink with a clink.
Shane's hands tingled as if he’d dipped them in menthol, the thrill and the fear rushing in as if this were his first Raising decades ago. He rushed through the words in a sing-song voice the way his mother taught him from rote memory. He could never get them quite right when he tried to write them down.
These words are only meant for our mouths, my Bolley boy. Not even paper can hold them.
The words and phrases fell out of his mouth, each one heavier than the last until he felt like he had to gag the final syllable out.
Dave Fever, dead a solid two weeks, sat straight up, sucking a giant gush of air into his hairy, pale chest. He pivoted his torso towards Shane, arms stuck against his sides, and the mound of black salt scattered to the ground. His naked lower half remained unmoving on the stainless steel gurney thanks to the perimeter of ash. He looked unblinkingly at Shane, but opened and closed his mouth like a fish gasping for air.
Shane knew something wasn't right in the seconds Dave just watched him, unspeaking.
"Did you mess it up?" Emily asked, popping out sideways from the other side of Dave.
The question just left her mouth when the first light bulb shattered by the door. She yelped, startled. Shane jumped too, nerves on high alert. Then suddenly every bulb burst in quick succession in the room until the only one left was right above Dave’s body.
Shane fisted the sumac in his pocket, ready in case Dave moved, as glass rained down, "Emily, get out of here! Run to the car, lock the…"
Dave Fever's voice was high, his Hinnewatchan accent thick: "Tha. Bitch." But he was cut off less than a second later as his back arched into a grotesque backbend. It was as if an invisible thread pulled his chest towards the ceiling until only the tips of his hairy toes and his shoulders touched the table. The corpse of Dave Fever opened and shut his mouth, but no more sounds emerged.
Shane and Emily both stumbled back, away from the sight before them as someone, or something, spoke out of Dave Fever’s mouth. It spoke with a deep raspy voice, and syncopated cadence: " Two more. Two more deaths to. Come before the darkened. Moon, meets the canine."
Dave Fever's body slammed back down on the steel gurney just as the tomato timer rang out its first tinny bleat. Shane looked up to see Emily backed up to the counter as far as she could go.
"We leave right now," Shane ordered. He grabbed the timer, but left everything else on Dave's stiff corpse. When Emily didn’t move, he yanked her into the empty hallway. Pushing her ahead of him, they bolted for the double doors and out to the loading dock area where his car waited.
The rental car tires squealed and Shane eyed the rear view mirror, half expecting Dave Fever's body to stumble out after them like every zombie movie he'd ever watched. But no body, alive or otherwise, came outside, and soon the light from the Memorial Hospital was replaced with the interstate lights.
Neither spoke until Emily finally said, "Soooo…that wasn't normal?"
"Uh nope. That, um. That was something new." Shane's heart still pounded, the voice on a repeat track in his head. "I'll be honest, kid. I have no idea what that was."
"I'll tell you what it sounded like on my end," Emily said, turning her body towards Shane in the car. "One. Maria definitely killed him. No one says "that bitch" about a man, and you said so yourself that the angry detective didn't have any other female suspects." She counted the rest on her fingers. "Number two, Dave Fever was taken over by someone not Dave Fever to give us a warning about more murders. And number three, Maria is about to go on a murdering spree and kill two more people. Now the only question is how do we stop her without her killing one of us?"
"Well I have a lot more questions than that," Shane said.
“Oh right,” Emily replied. “Who was the voice? Of course.”
“No, kid. Not where my head was.” He thought about Maria's odd behavior the day before in Mama Cate's. She certainly is acting guilty. But why would she agree for me, and my TV crew, to look through the evidence if she murdered him? Maybe she knows who the murderer is and is afraid to come forward? But to Emily’s point…who took over Dave’s body?
He shook his head. "We can't be sure it was Maria. And the voice just said 'Two more deaths.' That doesn't mean there will be two more deaths here, let alone two more murders by Maria." Shane drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, trying to convince himself of that last statement even as he said it. "And anyway... why would she want to kill Dave to begin with?"
"Did you see that guy? Dave looked like the kind of guy happy to punch his wife in the face. I don't blame her for murdering him."
"Can we not? We already talk to dead people, kid. We can't go around thinking murder is no big deal."
Emily snorted, folding her arms at her chest. "Cheaper than a divorce."
"You are never getting married if that's your rationale."
She waved him off, silent for the moment. "What if we Raise Dave again?"
"You want to bring Poltergeist back? No. First, someone is bound to see Dave's body by now so there will already be too many questions about what looks like a satanic ritual. And I don't even know if it's possible to Raise someone twice." He shook his head again. "No kid. No matter what happens, Dave needs to stay dead."
"Then it's good ole' fashion detective work to prove it was Maria before she can strike again," Emily said, rather too giddy given what she'd seen that night. "Let's go to her house."
"Oooh, hard pass. Confronting a potential murderess at night with my kid when I know zero self defense? No, we're going home. We're not telling my Dad what happened, and I'll come up with a game plan tomorrow."
"You mean 'we'," Emily said. " We will come up with a game plan. I'm here. If I can learn to Raise the dead, I can help you solve an easy murder mystery."
Shane knew Emily meant gathering a plan to solve Dave Fever's murder. But the only plan he intended to make was how to get out of this case and out of this town as fast as possible. The Eastern European voice from LA popped back in his head, " Don't go far, Bravo. We'll need you again soon."
We leave tomorrow, Shane thought as he turned the heat as high as it would go. The chills stuck to his body regardless. He drove as fast as possible away from Dave Fever's body and the threat of more murder to come.