5 - Ungrateful Dead

Nick paced back and forth in front of Reg’s desk. His aura burned brighter, painting the surrounding walls in a sickly, chartreuse glow. The air was thick with the stench of sulfur and burnt electricity. “I died in my own bedroom?”

“Technically the bathroom.” Tera was on the floor slumped against the newly reorganized bookshelf. The open journal in her hands went unread. Her apprehensive stare was fixated on Nick’s pacing form, unable to look away. The spirit’s ominous glow was noticeably stronger than it had been that morning. The information provided from their sleuthing didn’t appear to be helping, either.

“The bathroom had claw marks on the walls and some broken tiles near the door,” she continued. “We think you were attacked in the bedroom and then staggered into the bathroom and collapsed.”

“You are basing all of this off of claw marks and broken tiles?”

“No. I’m basing it off the fact that whatever spell took you out, almost did the same to me.” Reg spoke with his sleeve covering his nose and mouth to keep from breathing in the sulfurous air. He’d let Tera do most of the explaining so far, to avoid having to speak and, by extension, flood his lungs with the hot crackle corrupting power. Spirits and spells were his area of expertise, however, not hers.

Reg’s meager outburst was insufficient. The dark look from Nick demanded further explanation.

Reg leaned back in his chair and sighed. “All magic leaves vestigial residue. Sometimes it's smell, a feeling, a cold spot, whatever. The more powerful a spell is, the more noticeable the vestige will be. You’ve been dead for weeks and the magical residue in the bedroom was still active.”

“Meaning what?”

“It means that whatever killed you is terrifyingly strong. Tera and I are lucky we got out of there with our lives.”

Nick’s voice rumbled in his chest, like a growl. “So you are giving up then?”

The audacity! Reg had risked life and limb, put his best friend in danger, and was now actively suffering through a skull-splitting migraine to keep Nick’s translucent form manifested, and still, it wasn’t enough.

Talk about ungrateful dead.

Riled, Reg flung his hands wide, gesturing to piles of books, boxes, and overall disarray. “Does this look like giving up to you? We are researching, alright? It takes time. And I would appreciate it if you calmed down and let us do our thing. It’s not going to do anyone any good working yourself up into a vengeful state.”

Nick’s expression darkened.

Reg returned the frown, with interest. Was challenging a corrupting spirit stupid? Yes. Absolutely. One-hundred percent. But it also made him feel a tiny bit better. Right up until the point he remembered what happened when you pushed a corrupting spirit too far.

Nick’s glow lessened after a moment of quiet contemplation. “I apologize.” He grimaced as if the very words tasted like an underripe lemon. “I can see that you are doing all that you can with the information you have, meager as it may be.”

Reg wasn’t so sure that counted as an apology. “Thank you.”

“Disappointingly meager, if I am being honest.” Nick sighed, the full-bodied kind of sigh commonly associated with teenagers and not giant ghostly apparitions. “How can I be of assistance?”

The words slid right off Reg’s tongue before he could snap them back up into his mouth. “You can try not blowing up my apartment, for starters.”

“I would never.”

“You’re polluting the air with sulfur dust as we speak! Do you know what happens when sulfur dust and fire mix?” Reg mimicked an explosion with his hands. He incorporated sound effects as well, including the tapering screams of Nick’s victims as they were slowly consumed by the resulting fire. It was, admittedly, a step too far, but Reg couldn’t help it. He and Nick’s personalities meshed like an open flame to lighter fluid.

Nick’s yellow glow doubled, as did Reg’s splitting headache.

“Okay, that’s it.” Tera tossed the journal back into the nearby pile and rolled to her feet. “You two clearly need a break from each other, and I need coffee. Come on, Nick. Let’s go. Time for some fresh air.”

“Fresh air?” Nick repeated, unconvinced.

“Yeah. You and I are going to pop down to the shop on the corner and grab some supplies.”

Nick trailed after her apprehensively. “Why is it I must accompany you? I require neither fresh air nor coffee. And outside of this room, you will not be able to see me.”

“And for a short while, neither will Reg. Which, believe me, is going to benefit everyone.”

Reg mouthed ‘Thank you’ at Tera as the pair disappeared out into the hallway. Might have been ‘I love you’, actually. Who knows. He was stretched too thin to care. Exhausted, Reg collapsed over the desk, relishing the feel of the cold wood against the side of his face. He heard the front door close a few seconds later. On cue, the throbbing ache in his head eased. Sweet, blissful silence settled over his apartment.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

It lasted for all of ten seconds before his blasted phone rang.

Grumbling, Reg fished the annoying contraption from his pocket and checked the number. The word ‘Dad’ illuminated the dark screen. Ordinarily, Reg would have ignored it and gone back to brooding but his father, the esteemed field researcher Henry Harrows, was the one person he desperately needed to talk to.

Reg pressed the earpiece still jammed inside his ear. “Hey, Dad.”

“Hello, Reginald. Everything alright? You sound…tired.”

That was his father’s polite way of saying Reg sounded as if he’d been run over by a bus. To his credit, Reg felt like he’d been run over by a bus. Multiple buses, in fact. Over and over and over again. He probably looked like it, too. Reg lifted his head and ran a hand down the side of his aching face with a sigh. “It’s been an interesting few days.”

“It wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with the urgent voicemail you left me, would it?” Henry added, “I thought you were finished with casework.”

Reg could hear the frown in his father’s voice. “I am. This one fell in my lap unexpectedly and it’s not going away until I deal with it.”

“And Tera knows?” Henry’s tone hinted that she would be his next phone call.

“Yes, Dad. She’s working on it with me.”

Formalities finished, the pitch of Henry’s voice changed. It was the vocal equivalent of someone eagerly rubbing their hands together. “Alright, tell me what you’ve got.”

Reg started from the beginning, taking care to skirt around some of the more lawfully incriminating details. His father didn’t notice, too enthralled with the thrill of the unknown to bother asking whether Reg had considered the full consequences of breaking and entering into a monster’s lair.

“Sounds like you have a mimic on your hands, my boy. A doppelganger.” Most humans spoke of monsters with fear. Henry spoke of them as if they were old friends. His tone took a nostalgic turn as he recalled yet another unforgettable adventure from his years spent as a field researcher. “I met one once out near the Salpar Pinnacles, you know. Mimics are very crafty and very powerful. Meticulous about the hunt.”

“Hunt? What do you mean by hunt?” Reg searched his drawers for paper and something to write with. “Mimics don’t eat their victims, do they?”

“Don’t be insensitive, Reginald.”

Yes, because he was the insensitive one here. Him. The one working pro bono to solve a murder case. Certainly not the monster that had killed his client and taken over his house! Reg rolled his eyes, stating, “You’re the one who insists there’s no such thing as stupid questions.”

Henry spared Reg from pointing out that stupid and insensitive were not the same. “Traditionally, mimics hunt to replace, not to feed. The one I interviewed was an older member of the species. She’d spent the last ten years incarcerated for impersonating a local heiress. She was ill, on her deathbed, and agreed to see me. She explained that her kind picked a target as a means to live. Once the mark was taken out, they’d assume their victim’s life. The better off a victim was, the longer they could stay hidden in their skin. For this reason, mimics often target those with moderate means of wealth, a predictable schedule, and a solitary lifestyle to avoid being caught.”

Before Reg’s eyes, the final pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. Everything fit. The nagging little itch in the back of his brain flooded his veins with the insatiable need to keep going. It was all coming together. His answers were finally within grasp and all Reg had to do was jam the clues together.

He jotted everything down as quickly as he could. “What else? Do you remember anything about their magic? Strength, ability, type, maybe?”

How effectively it could be used to hunt down pesky little trespassers and murder them in their sleep?

“I don’t remember the minutia, I’m afraid. It’s been so long.” Henry paused, adding, “It’s all written down, of course. A field researcher is only as good as his notes. Which I believe you still have, by the way.”

Reg was thankful once more for his inability to return anything in a timely manner.

“When did that interview take place again?” Reg’s gaze swept the room. His former excitement turned swiftly to dread. There were so, so many boxes, each bursting at the seams with his father’s hand-written field journals. It would take Reg forever if he had to skim through each book individually. “You took lots of notes.”

“It was summer,” Henry recalled. “About ten years, I want to say, before I had you. The journal should be labeled ‘Salpar Pinnacles’.”

Reg’s dread eased, allowing a brief smile to tug at the corner of his mouth. The way Henry said it made it sound like the old man had given birth himself, as opposed to having a half-monster newborn forced upon him because no one at supernatural services knew what to do with it.

“Oh, I do remember one other thing,” Henry said. “Mimics possessed an unusual power. They could glean information from personal items. The one I interviewed took my wallet and, without even opening it, told me my age, health, economic status, and all the recent locations I’d visited. It was unbelievable, Reginald.”

“I think you mean terrifying.” Reg sifted through the box of journals on his desk, skimming the titles inked along the spine. The older ones were faded and difficult to read.

The front door opened and shut. Tera’s voice hailed from the living room area. “It’s me.”

“I’m where you left me,” Reg shouted back. The journal he needed wasn’t in the closest stack. He swiveled around in the chair and selected another box from the floor. He heaved it onto the desk and started his search anew. “What about weaknesses, Dad? How do I defeat one of these things?”

“That’s not normally a question I asked during interviews, Reginald.”

“Would have been helpful if you had.”

Tera poked her head through the doorway and Reg waved her inside. He pointed to his ear, indicating he was on the phone.

“If there is anything, it’s going to be in the journal,” Henry said. His voice changed, slightly panicked. “Oh, there’s your mother. She’s not going to be happy I’ve been on the phone this long. I’ve got to go, my boy. Good luck. I want to hear all about it when I get back.”

“Bye, Dad. Love you.” Reg ended the call and commenced digging through the box. Nick must have been back as well because the suffocating stench of musty basement plagued the air. Reg snatched a journal at random and pressed it closer to his face, breathing in the welcoming aroma of dust and old ink. As luck would have it, the book provided more than a temporary reprieve from the surrounding smell.

The faded lettering along the spine read: Salpar Pinnacles.

“Ah-ha!” He was so happy he almost kissed it. “Found it!”

Tera moved closer. “Found what?”

“Everything we need to know.” Reg laid the journal onto his desk and opened it to the first page. The high of the hunt coursed through his veins, banishing his former sense of exhaustion. It wouldn’t last. He knew from experience that it was a short-term burst of energy. He’d have twenty, maybe thirty minutes, to skim the journal for information, before his body crashed from the strain.

“That was Dad,” he explained, eyes skimming the page. “He thinks we’re working with a—”

The front door slammed so hard it shook the house. “I’m back!” Tera shouted. “Now get your butt in here. I went overboard at the store and I need help putting all of this away.”

Reg’s gaze darted from the open office door to the person standing in front of him. His eyes dropped from Tera’s face to her hands. She didn’t have coffee.