Moot (4 page)

I climbed over the
worshippers. Isabel’s head was chin to chest. I slapped her face. Her eyes
fluttered.

“You’re too late,” O’Shea
said. It’d propped itself up against the organist and was examining its lack of
knee. “It’s over. It’s all over now.”

I pried her eyelids open
with my fingertips. She pushed at my hands, moaning.

“Isabel, stay with me,” I
said. My voice was thin, harsh. My one lung pushed harder. “Carmen wants you
back. I’m here to take you home. Stay awake.”

“She’s already dead.”

I shook her shoulders.
“Cora’s waiting for you, Isabel.” Saliva dribbled from her mouth. Her breathing
shallowed.

I stood, reloading Marion
as I strode to O’Shea. “Antidote?”

It shook its head. I
plugged the bishop’s other kneecap. It took the violence quietly.

“Why?”

It sighed, picking at the
new wound. “Because they
want
this existence. They
crave
it. They
come here
begging
to be moot. Who am I to deny someone their fondest
wish?”

“How many?”

“Hundreds. Thousands.” I
shot it twice more in the chest.

“How many have come back?”

It dismissed the question
with a weak wave of its hand. “Not that many. After they die, we leave. When we
come back, any rebirths are gone, we clean up the leftovers and divide the
cash. I give my share to the few bastards I’ve left around. I can at least do
that.”

“Seeking absolution?”

“Absolution no longer
exists. I could tell them this, but it would make no difference. They simply
cannot accept the truth of it.”

“Truth?”

“That there is nothing
beyond this world. No Heaven, no afterlife. No God.” It snorted a laugh. “After
all I’ve done, all the people I hurt, I couldn’t even suffer the torments of a
hell.”

I knew it was right. I had
experienced the nothing, and returned. I had spent years outrunning the dark
that awaited me.

I looked to Isabel. Her
breathing had stilled.

“They’re so jealous,”
O’Shea continued. “They think we’re God’s children. Every moot a messiah. It
offends them. They can’t
bear
to
be
ignored
. Not when they’re so
deserving
.
So they seek me out, they make a payment for past sins, and I remove their
pain.”

I sank into a pew and
cradled my head in my hands.

“You fool them,” I said at
last, furious. At Isabel. At O’Shea. At me. “No-one would willingly do this to
themselves
.” I fought to get
the words out, refusing to believe the fundamental untruth of them.

O’Shea looked at me,
philosophical. “I’m only an instrument. They’re just afraid to do it
themselves. I give them a show and help them cross the river.”

The congregation died as I
watched. One by one.

“Faith doesn’t move
mountains, Detective. It just obscures the view.”

I checked my gun. Three
bullets left. Thought things over.

“I hadn’t heard you’d
died,” I said.

“I was
shivved
in the yard. Nasty business. After I returned, I played doornail. The prison
didn’t want me, so the church dropped me off in
Greytown
.
As I suspected they would. It didn’t take long to find gentlemen willing to
fund my new church. Even less time to find clients.”

“And
Nex
?”

“Short for necrophilia. My
own little joke.”

I stared at Isabel. Looked
at her life. Wondered what she could have become.

Thought about Marion.
About So and Jo.

“What now, Detective?”

I counted my bullets
again.

“You won’t let me go
unpunished, will you?”

I looked to the Bishop.
Its eyes were pleading.

“I deserve punishment.”

I looked back to Isabel.

“You want to do it.”

I caressed my scars.

“End me.”

One for So.

“
End me!
”

One for Jo.

“I’m going to wait,” I
decided. “Until something happens.”

I waited a long time.

#

I called Miss
Lopez, told her I quit, Isabel’s trail had gone cold. I hung up when she asked
for specifics.

I pass the days now
shuffling through
Greytown’s
streets, gun by my side.
Most moots avoid eye contact, lurch to the other side of the street. They’ve
heard the stories; even if they haven’t, self-preservation demands the
response.

I ignore them. If they are
cognizant enough to avoid me, they’re plainly capable of making up their own
deteriorating minds.

Once in a great while one
will get it in its head to take me on. It’ll lumber up to the sidewalk beneath
my
Greytown
apartment window and groan a threat,
sometimes heave a brick ineffectually into the air.

It’s usually the new
arrivals. They haven’t figured out yet what it means to be dead. They think me
a vigilante. A sheriff no one elected in a town no-one wants to live in. I give
them a chance to leave me alone. Then I let Marion speak for me.

Sometimes, they’re older
moots, looking for a way out, knowing I’ll provide one. All they’d have to do
is ask. But they believe it better to go in a blaze of glory than a mewling
plea to end it all.

To moots, I am the
avenging angel now. Or the nightmare of nightmares.

Same result either way.

Other days I can’t bring
myself to face the grey. I stay in my apartment, waiting out existence,
O’Shea’s brain set companionably beside me in its bowl. I fancy I can hear the
man within shrieking into the void.

Neither of us
deserve
to escape our hells.

I stare at the wall.
Feeling myself slowly rot away. Wishing it
were
quicker. Glad that it isn’t.

On the wall in front of
me, two photos make up my world.

Sophia and Josephine: the
two I couldn’t save.

Isabel: the one I did.

About the Author

Corey
Redekop’s
debut novel
Shelf Monkey
won Best Popular Fiction Novel at the 2008 Independent Book Publishers Awards
and was declared one of the “Top 40 Novels of the Decade” by CBC Canada Reads.
His follow-up novel
Husk
was shortlisted for the 2013
ReLit
Award and
chosen as one of the top books of the year by the editors of Amazon.ca and
January Magazine.
It
was later released in a French translation as
Mister
Funk
(Les Éditions XYZ Inc.) and as an
audiobook
(Audible).

His
short stories have appeared in anthologies such as
The
Exile Book of New Canadian Noir
,
Licence
Expired: The
Unauthorized James Bond
,
The
Bestiary
,
Superhero
Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen
, and
Those
Who Make Us: Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories
.