Secondhand Souls (Grim Reaper 2)

They stared at the doorway as they listened to Minty Fresh’s steps recede and the front door close behind him.

Audrey checked the clock. “I have to lead a meditation at seven. They’re going to start arriving soon. You might want to get out of sight.”

“I should have asked him about Lily.”

“He would have brought it up if he wanted to talk about it. Why don’t you go ask Bob and the others if they remember all the places they ­collected soul vessels? They really might be able to help.”

“I don’t really feel welcome down there.”

“Don’t be silly. They love you.”

“Lately it feels like they might be plotting to kill me.” Despite having been liberated from his beta-­male DNA, Charlie still viewed the world with glassy-­eyed suspicion, due in no small part to the fact that he had already been murdered once and hadn’t cared for the experience.

“Take snacks,” Audrey said. “They love snacks. There’s some trail mix on the counter.”

“Sure, snacks,” Charlie said, heading for the kitchen. “If only Jesus had thought to take snacks with him into the lion’s den.”

“Jesus didn’t go into the lion’s den, that was Daniel.”

“Well, Daniel, then. I thought you were a Buddhist.”

“I am, but that doesn’t make me an oblivious nitwit, too.”

“Is that any way for a nun to talk?” Charlie called back, but Audrey had already headed upstairs to change. He scampered into the kitchen, grabbed a packet of trail mix off the counter, jumped down, ducked out the dog door, hopped down the back porch steps, then through the little hatch under the steps into the sanctuary of the Squirrel ­People.

The city under the house was a maze of mismatched found objects patched together with zip ties, silicone glue, and duct tape, all lit from above by low-­voltage LED lights strung along the floor joists of the great Victorian, which kept the entire space in a state of perpetual twilight. Audrey had purchased the lights at Charlie’s request, after he had watched several of the Squirrel ­People nearly burn the house down while trying to construct an apartment from dis

carded yogurt containers by candlelight.

There was no one around.

Charlie had spent very little time down here, choosing to spend his days on the upper floors of the Buddhist Center, either with Audrey or reading from the many books in the library. When he was reading he could fly away into the wildest skies of imagination, untethered to the reality that his soul was trapped in a wretched creature cobbled together from meat and bone, like us all.

Charlie entered the main passage, which was constructed entirely from automobile side windows. Once in it, he felt as if he were walking in a long, serpentine aquarium. Despite the disparate materials from which it was constructed, the Squirrel ­People’s city had a strange symmetry, a uniformity of design that Charlie found comforting, because it was built for someone his size, yet disturbing, because it was so unlike anyplace human beings lived.

“Hey,” he called. “Anyone home?”

He made his way along a street that was lined by old computer monitors, each gutted of its electronics and filled with a nest built from throw pillows and fabric scraps.

Still no one. The city had tripled in size since he’d been down here, and as he moved he encountered open, communal spaces, as well as what were clearly spaces meant to preserve privacy. The Squirrel ­People did not mate, as there were no two alike, no two made from the same sets of parts, but they paired off, each finding some affinity with another that Charlie could not see. The only thing they had in common beyond their size—­which was chosen quite by accident when Audrey was studying to be a costume designer, long before she’d gone off to Tibet, and she had wanted to design and sew elaborate costumes without the expense of the materials for full-­size models—­was that each housed a human soul. The first of the Squirrel ­People had been little more than animated dress forms. Later, Audrey had scavenged the shops of Chinatown for animal parts, trying to give each of them a distinction, trying different parts for limbs, testing efficacy, using first fresh meat and later smoked for the protein that the soul would direct into forming a unique, living creature.

“The universe is always seeking order,” Audrey had said. “The Squirrel ­People, how they come together, is the best example I’ve ever seen of that.”

“Yeah, or it’s black magic and creepy necromancy,” Charlie had said.

She’d smacked the tip of his enormous dong with her fork, which he thought a not very Buddhist thing to do, and said so. “Buddhist monks invented kung fu, Charlie. Don’t fuck with us.”

“Hey, Bob!” Charlie called down the corridor. “It’s Charlie, I need to talk to you.”

He didn’t really need to say it was Charlie, since he and Bob were the only of their kind for whom Audrey had constructed vocal cords. After Charlie, she’d found out she hadn’t actually been saving souls by making the Squirrel ­People, but had stopped them in their karmic progression, so he had been the last.

The computer monitor street branched into a half-­dozen different passageways, each constructed from a different material. Charlie ducked into one that looked to be made of plastic drainpipe, and shuffled along its length, cutting back and forth until he heard voices coming from the far end. Voices?

He slowed as he approached the end of the passageway and peeked into the wide chamber it opened upon. The Squirrel ­People had excavated an amphitheater here, under the house, perhaps ten feet below ground ­level, and it was larger than the grand parlor upstairs. He was looking down over a large group of the people who were surrounding a central platform that looked as if it had been constructed from an old snare drum. How could they have gotten all this stuff down here without being seen?

Bob stood on the snare drum in his bright red beefeater uniform, holding his mighty spork over his head as if it were the staff of Moses.

“Bring the head for Theeb!” he shouted.