The Laughing Corpse

Bruno stood in an awkward-looking stance, halfway between an x and a t. It looked like someone had taken his long legs and crumbled them at the knees. But as I moved forward he scooted backwards like a crab, fast and out of reach.

“Jujitsu?” I made it half question.

He raised an eyebrow. “Most people don’t recognize it.”

“I’ve seen it,” I said.

“You practice?”

“No.”

He smiled. “Then I am going to hurt you.”

“Even if I knew jujitsu, you’d hurt me,” I said.

“It’d be a fair fight.”

“If two people are equal in skill, size matters. A good big person will always beat a good small person.” I shrugged. “I don’t have to like it, but it’s the truth.”

“You’re being awful calm about this,” Bruno said.

“Would being hysterical help?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“Then I’d just as soon take my medicine like, if you’ll excuse the expression, a man.”

He frowned at that. Bruno was accustomed to people being scared of him. I wasn’t scared of him. I’d decided to take the beating. With the decision came a certain amount of calm. I was going to get beat up, not pleasant, but I had made my mind up to take the beating. I could do it. I’d done it before. If my choices were a) getting beat up or b) performing human sacrifice, I’d take the beating.

“Ready or not,” Bruno said.

“Here you come,” I finished for him. I was getting tired of the bravado. “Either hit me or stand up straight. You look silly crouched down like that.”

His fist was a dark blur. I blocked it with my arm. The impact made the arm go numb. His long leg kicked out and co

His foot came for me again. I caught it with both hands. I came up in a rush, hoping to trap his knee between my arms and pop the joint. But he twisted away from me, totally airborne for a moment.

I dropped to the ground and felt the air pass overhead as his legs kicked out where my head had been. I was on the ground again, but by choice. He stood over me, impossibly tall from this angle. I lay on my side, knees drawn up.

He came for me, evidently pla

The leg buckled, and he screamed. It had worked. Hot damn. I didn’t try to wrestle him. I didn’t try to grab his gun. I ran for the door.

Gaynor grabbed for me, but I flung open the door and was out in a long hallway before he could maneuver his fancy chair. The hallway was smooth with a handful of doors and two blind corners. And Tommy.

Tommy looked surprised to see me. His hand went for his shoulder holster. I pushed on his shoulder and foot-swept his leg. He fell backwards and grabbed me as he fell. I rode him down, making sure my knee ground into his groin. His grip loosened enough for me to slip out of reach. There were sounds behind me from the room. I didn’t look back. If they were going to shoot me, I didn’t want to see it.

The hallway took a sharp turn. I was almost to it when the smell slowed me from a run to a walk. The smell of corpses was just around the corner. What had they been doing while I slept?

I glanced back at the men. Tommy was still lying on the floor, cradling himself. Bruno leaned against the wall, gun in hand, but he wasn’t pointing it at me. Gaynor was sitting in his chair, smiling.

Something was very wrong.

Around the blind corner came that something that was wrong, very, very wrong. It was no taller than a tall man, maybe six feet. But it was nearly four feet wide. It had two legs, or maybe three, it was hard to tell. The thing was leprously pale like all zombies, but this one had a dozen eyes. A man’s face was centered where the neck would have been. Its eyes dark and seeing, and empty of everything sane. A dog’s head was growing out of the shoulder. The dog’s decaying mouth snapped at me. A woman’s leg grew out of the center of the mess, complete with black high-heeled shoe.

The thing shambled towards me. Pulling with three of a dozen arms, dragging itself forward. It left a trail behind it like a snail.

Dominga Salvador stepped around the corner. “Buenas noches, chica. “

The monster scared me, but the sight of Dominga gri

The thing had stopped moving forward. It squatted in the hallway, kneeling on its inadequate legs. Its dozens of mouths panted as if it couldn’t get enough air.

Or maybe the thing didn’t like the way it smelled. I certainly didn’t. Covering my mouth and nose with my arm didn’t block out much of the smell. The hallway suddenly smelled like bad meat.

Gaynor and his wounded bodyguards had stayed at the end of the hall. Maybe they didn’t like being near Dominga’s little pet. I know it didn’t do much for me. Whatever the reason we were isolated. It was just her and me and the monster.

“How did you get out of jail?” Better to deal with more mundane problems first. The mind-melting ones could wait for later.

“I made my bail,” she said.

“This quickly on a murder involving witchcraft?”

“Voodoo is not witchcraft,” she said.

“The law sees it as the same thing when it comes to murder.”

She shrugged, then smiled beatifically. She was the Mexican grandmother of my nightmares.

“You’ve got a judge in your pocket,” I said.

“Many people fear me, chica. You should be one of them.”

“You helped Peter Burke raise the zombie for Gaynor.”

She just smiled.

“Why didn’t you just raise it yourself?” I asked.

“I didn’t want someone as unscrupulous as Gaynor to witness me murdering someone. He might use it for blackmail.”

“And he didn’t realize that you had to kill someone for Peter’s gris-gris?”

“Correct,” she said.

“You hid all your horrors here?”

“Not all. You forced me to destroy much of my work, but this I saved. You can see why.” She caressed a hand down the slimy hide.

I shuddered. Just the thought of touching that monstrosity was enough to make my skin cold. And yet...

“How did you make it?” I had to know. It was so obviously a creation of our shared art that I had to know.

“Surely, you can animate bits and pieces of the dead,” Dominga said.

I could, but no one else I had ever met could do it. “Yes,” I said.

“I found I could take these odds and ends and meld them together.”

I stared at the shambling thing. “Meld them?” The thought was too horrible.

“I can create new creatures that have never existed before.”

“You make monsters,” I said.

“Believe what you will, chica, but I am here to persuade you to raise the dead for Gaynor.”

“Why don’t you do it?”

Gaynor’s voice came from just behind us. I whirled, putting the wall at my back so I could watch everybody. What good that would do me, I wasn’t sure. “Dominga’s power went wrong once. This is my last chance. The last known grave. I won’t risk it on her.”

Dominga’s eyes narrowed, her age-thi

“She could do it, Gaynor, easier than I could.”

“If I truly believed that, I would kill you because I wouldn’t need you anymore.”

Hmm, good point. “You’ve had Bruno rough me up. Now what?”

Gaynor shook his head. “Such a little girl to have taken both my bodyguards down.”

“I told you ordinary methods of persuasion will not work on her,” Dominga said.

I stared past her at the slathering monster. She called this ordinary?

“What do you propose?” Gaynor asked.

“A spell of compulsion. She will do as I bid, but it takes time to do such a spell for one as powerful as she. If she knew any voodoo to speak of, it would not work at all. But for all her art, she is but a baby in voodoo.”