GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER 19_WHEN THE DEVIL WEARS YOUR FACE

{"At some time in our lives a devil dwells within us,

causes heartbreaks, confusion and troubles.

We then either revolt or live as slaves to darkness.”
Theodore Roosevelt.}


{Ghosts learn not to say “I told you so.” But I wanted to tell Roland that.

After all, who was the beloved writing genius, him or me, Samuel Clemens?

It was too late, of course. He had already walked through the Door of Nasah, of testing. The ghost of Marlene Dietrich and I had been severed from him.

‘Course, whoever tried to cut us off from Roland hadn’t counted on the Valkyrie linking the three of us earlier back in our adventures.

But for a time, Roland is trapped by himself back in Meilori’s, facing his double. Now, let Roland tell his tale.}:


The me that sneered back into my eyes wasn't me, of course. Who was he? There was only one person in my novels who wore the faces of other people to mock them.

DayStar.

Who is DayStar you ask?

Good question. In my novels he was an almost supremely powerful paranormal who suffered from a unique delusion. The name he went by was a clue to his delusion.

DayStar. It was the English translation of the Latin name found in the Vulgate version of the book of Isaiah. The Latin name 'Lucifer.'

In my novels, I left it for the reader to decide if he was delusional or not. But if the Rind I had seen earlier here at Meilori's had been the real Death, who was this DayStar?

And did I really want to know?

He raised a hand absently, and the crowd around him froze. I went cold. He smiled colder.

“That is the least of what I am capable of, champion of truth.”

He face screwed up. “Truth? Bah! Truth is what I say it is.”

“You don’t look like President Obama.”

“You task me, talking monkey. You task me. Those who own the studio’s, the news outlets, the governments? I own them. They are puppets who dance when I pull their strings.”

“Gee, your fingers must get tired.”

His eyes said he wanted to rip off my lips. “What does it take to destroy you?”

Any answer to that seemed stupid or suicidal, so I merely said, “You’re behind the murder of the ghost of Hemingway?”

“Oh, puh-lease. That simple gambit?”

“Not so simple to me.”

His copy of my face sneered, “The clues are right in front of you. Hemingway BY your bed. That tramp IN your bed. Clues!”

“I don’t see ….”

“No. You do not see.”

He took in a deep breath. “Nor do you ask the obvious questions :

Why was that German actress in your bed in the first place?

Why was Hemingway by your bed? What was by Hemingway?

Marlowe literally handed you the answer, and you stared at it with all the awareness of a cow ready for slaughter.”

He stood there calmly, but his shadow flexed its fingers, then clenched them. And that creeped me out more than I can say.

“Marlene actually spoke the clearest clue, and you went on your way blindly like some ….”

He smiled wide. “… talking monkey.”

He gazed towards a horizon only he could see :

“Why would I want to kill the ghost of Hemingway and end his eternal wandering? All who die faithless are cursed to forever wander the face of your pathetic planet.”

He turned the copy of my eyes to me :

“It is why I do not want you killed. Why put a stop to your torment when you infect Marlene and Mark and thus lose them?”

I frowned, “So you don’t want me killed?”

He sighed as if at some addled child. “You are a virus, infecting each person you meet with your damnable worldview.”

He glared at me with my own eyes, unnerving the hell out of me :

“You inoculate by giving a person a mild form of the disease. I needed to undo the damage you have done by exposing them to you without that accursed faith of yours.”

I stared without understanding at the other me, and he growled,

“Rafferty was supposed to have been raped before your very eyes. That Victorian child’s death was supposed to have shattered the remnants of your faith.”

“Life happens,” I said. “So does death. Like the tides I can’t stop them. I can only be the change I want in the world.”

His eyes became slits, and he waved absently to the crowd, unfreezing them in time. “There are other ways to negate you, Talking Monkey.”
****

CHAPTER SIX : THE GAUNTLET

{"Not only is life a bitch, but it is always having puppies.
- Adrienne Gusoff.}

Mark Twain looked at me with narrowed eyes. "You killed pretty easy there, Roland."

I shook my head. "No, it wasn't easy. Not for me. Not for Shakespeare. But Marlowe took such delight in ... in ...."

I squeezed shut my eyes, knowing I would see the image of the Elizabethan assassin being literally swallowed by death for the rest of my days.

I smiled what I knew had to be a bitter twist of my lips. The rest of my days didn't promise to be much longer if I didn't start thinking smarter.

I smelled Marlene's perfume as I felt my arm hugged. "Come, Liebchen. You did what had to be done. There is no shame in stepping on a cockroach."

Mark Twain dourly snapped, "Human being, Marlene. A bad one. But still a human being."

I opened my eyes to see Marlene's icy face. "You are human because of your deeds, Twain, not your DNA."

His eyebrow rose. "DNA?"

"Unlike you, scribbler, I read more than my own writing."

"We're stuck on the wrong question," I said.

"Do tell?," frowned Mark Twain.

"Yes, it's not why I killed Marlowe, but why he didn't kill me."

Marlene's slim hand went to her mouth. "Mein Gott, he was not working for the ghosts but for those who want to know how to kill them."

Mark Twain looked uneasily over his shoulder at the narrowly watching patrons of Meilori's as they sat at their oval tables, sipped their drinks, and ran light fingers over knife edges and gun barrels.

Any one of them could be working either for the ghosts who wanted me dead or for those in the Shadowlands who wanted me alive just long enough to gasp out the secret on how to kill the unkillable.

The darkness, barely kept at bay by the old Victorian gas lights, suddenly seemed alive ... and deadly.

Mark Twain smiled grimly. "I do believe that Toya gal had the right idea : losing ourselves deeper in this beknighted hostel for the damned may be our only hope of keeping our scalps."

Marlene, her eyes even more grim than Twain's, nodded silently. I nodded along with her. And we walked into the waiting shadows.

We hadn't gone seven steps before a stout woman in Renaissance robes grabbed Mark's left arm. "Oh, Mr. Twain, where have you been all my life?"

"Avoiding you, Madame," he gruffed, extracting his arm with difficulty from the human killer whale.

She seemed to swell with indignation. "Why, I never!"

"Miss an opportunity to eat? And it shows, Madame, it shows."

And so the gauntlet began. What gauntlet? The one that always started whenever Marlene walked into a room filled with men and alcohol. A samurai hoisted up on the belt that held his twin swords, swaggered from the bar to our left, and winked at her.

"I know I could make you very happy," he leered.

"Why," she murmured, "are you leaving?"

A scruffy man in battered khaki and fedora shoved the samurai aside. "Out of the way, loser."

He flashed a wide smile, seeming to be glowing white appearing as it did in the midst of a two week’s growth of beard.

"Go on. I know you want to. Ask me out."

Marlene kept on walking past him. "Certainly. Get out."

We walked through the cluster of glowing tables amidst the hoots of the samurai.

A sound of a scuffle broke out. The rasp of a drawn sword. The snap of a whip.

Marlene sighed, "Men. So predictable. So full of ego."

With a graceful twirl of her hand, she plopped whip-boy's fedora on my head at a rakish angle.

"How?," I sputtered.

She smiled like an evil pixie. "Have you not heard the gossip, Liebchen? I am fast."

Mark Twain grinned crooked, "That is one word for it."

I turned to him. "You should be ashamed of yourself."

"I am ... most nearly every night."

I shook my head. "Marlene is a hero. For three years she entertained the troops on the front lines with a death sentence from Hitler on her head. She raised millions of dollars to buy bombs that were then dropped on Berlin -- where her mother still lived.

She risked not just her life, but the life of her mother, to fight Hitler. And it haunted her each night of that long, long war."

Marlene patted my cheek, kissing it lightly. "Always my champion, Liebling. I love you for it."

A tall, wiry man in a black suit with wide lapels, wearing a hat with an even wider brim, got up from his table. He shifted his shoulders in an unsuccessful attempt to hide the gun he wore in a shoulder holster. He strutted up to Marlene.

"Where have you been all my life, doll?"

"Hiding from you."

His face got hard. Unfortunately, his jaw was not. Marlene moved faster than my eyes could follow. A fast uppercut and he went down to the floor with a loud thump.

Quarters spilled from her tiny fist.

She frowned. "I had that roll of quarters for fifty years."

She stepped over him, with the grace of a lioness.

Mark Twain startled me by bending down, stripping the man of his coat and shoulder holster. He put it on awkwardly until Marlene helped him.

He smiled like Huckleberry Finn.

"Damnation. I'm beginning to list to the port. However does Captain Sam walk straight?"

I had hoped that this would put an end to our gauntlet. But male hormones are notoriously single-minded and short-sighted. I wondered how the human race has survived as long as it has. We traveled all of three paces before it started up again.

A musketeer, leaning on the bar to our left, reached out and stroked Marlene’s hair. "Haven’t I seen you someplace before, wench?"

She kneed him once, hard, four inches below his belt buckle. He went down huffing and squealing. She reached out and poured his mug of ale on his face.

"Yes, Rüpel, and that is why I do not go there anymore."

A bare-chested black man walked like a rooster towards us. He seemed to be wearing a woman’s hose on top of his head and more gold chains than Midas would have found decent.

His baggy shorts went below his knees. His shoes were canvas. His fashions were tacky. His attitude was worse.

He walked right up to Marlene, looking her up and down, stopping where no man should look, much less stare. "Yo, mama, what it is?"

She flicked the point of her saber to his Adam's Apple. "Unobtainable."

He staggered backwards, holding his throat. "Chill, mama! I didn’t mean nothing."

Marlene murmured, "That is true, Flegel. You mean nothing. To me. To us. And sadly, it would seem you mean nothing to yourself."

She slashed a small cut on his throat. "Go! Be nothing downwind of us. Go!!"

He went.

Mark Twain rubbed his own throat. "Valkyrie, remind me never to rile you."

Her eyes were windows into a cold, unruffled sea. "Remind yourself and be spared much unpleasantness."

Looking into those eyes, I saw, not her, but the dead ghost body of Hemingway.

I shivered. Could a ghost kill another ghost?
******************

CHAPTER FIVE : MURDERING SHAKESPEARE

{"It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake."
- H. L. Mencken}

I recognized the face above the luger pointed at me.

He was dressed in a black, high-collar Elizabethan outfit of leather, hose, and sword.

His haunted face seemed to have seen too many of life’s bitter ironies.

His eyes probed me from under his brown, thinning hair. I judged him to be about thirty, and his manner whispered he was an adept at trickery, both verbal and physical.

But then, my knowing him was hardly the feat you might think. I recognized him from his drawing made in front of The Globe Theater in London when good Queen Bess was neither good nor regal.

Shakespeare.

Marlene grunted, "Shouldn’t you have a dagger in your eye?"

His face went hard, his eyes cold. "You have the advantage of me, dear lady."

"And of everyone else I meet, Christopher."

His eyes became a wolf’s. "I go by the name William now."

"As you did when I persuaded you to let me play the lead in your new play, The Taming of the Shrew."

Mark Twain chuckled, "Obviously, he was a believer in type casting."

She shot him a look a lesser man would have fainted from. "Cute."

"A living legend actually," Mark smiled wide.

"And humble, too."

Shakespeare/Marlowe snorted, "You should read your history better, Twain. Boys played women roles at The Globe Theater."

I turned to Marlene. "But that was before you were born."

She winked at me. "Time does not exist for ghosts as it does for you, Liebling. I go where there are challenging roles."

Mark muttered, "Hardly a challenge for the Valkyrie to play a shrew."

Marlene raised her saber towards my friend, but Shakespeare gestured with his luger. "No, no, dear lady. Another inch, and I will kill Roland."

Mark Twain growled, "If you don't lower that weapon, I will knock you so far into next week that it will take a team of surgeons to extract Thursday from your posterior."

Shakespeare half-covered a mock yawn. "I have not cheated death all these centuries to be threatened by a ghost who cannot even touch me."

I pulled up straight. Cheated Death? Death who had shaken me like a cheap blender, who had given me ... a box filled with darkness? I suddenly knew who the box was for. But could I give it to him, knowing what it held?

Marlene's ice-blue eyes narrowed. "You would hurt my Liebchen?"

So fast it was a blur, her right boot toe slammed into Shakespeare's groin. He squealed and bent double, clutching himself. He weaved unsteadily on his feet, the luger slipping from his fingers.

"L-Low blow, Milady."

Marlene snatched up the luger, shoving it into her own golden waist sash. "All blows are low, Marlowe."

She sneered down at him. "And were you as clever as you believe, you would have known that in Meilori's, ghosts become solid."

"You keep calling him Marlowe," I frowned. "But Marlowe died from a dagger in the eye."

Christopher smiled a thing of pure, gleeful evil. "I gave it to that young upstart named Shakespeare. He stole my lines. I stole his identity. Seemed fair to me."

Mark Twain frowned, "And how did it seem to young Shakespeare?"

Christopher’s face grew cold. "Quick."

And just like that are lives decided. The wrong word at the right time. A proud crowing when silence would have saved.

I have a weakness : bullies. They had made my life hell when I was a young boy, moving from city to city, school to school. Whenever I met one, I always went a little crazy ... as I did at that moment.

Clenching my teeth against the pain of the dry-ice agony to it, I pulled the rune-covered box from my jeans and shoved it into his right hand. "Here. This is for you. From a devoted follower."

The lid of the box snapped open. A billowing cloud of darkness swallowed Marlowe. It howled hungrily, the speed of it frightening the hell out of me.

Marlowe screamed wet and shrill like a little girl. I suddenly felt sharp regret for what I had just done. Then, in my mind, I saw a young, struggling playwright with a dagger in his bleeding, blank eye.

The regret ebbed back a bit. As quick as the turning off of a light switch, the cloud and Marlowe were gone.

Gone. But the memory and my regret stayed.

I forced my throat to work. "Say Hello to Faust for me."
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And to hear the theory that Marlowe stole Shakespeare's life :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTM0wW2SNlU&feature=related

CHAPTER FOUR : A BOX FULL OF DARKNESS

{"We are but of yesterday and know nothing because our days upon the earth are a shadow."
- Job 14th chapter, 1st and 2nd verse.}

Toya, manager of Meilori's and proud possessor of the shortest skirt in all creation, glowered at me. "What brings your sorry hide here?"

"Trouble," I said, hoping to ease on by her.

She pulled her cutlass from her buccaneer's sash and lightly touched the front of my black T-shirt. "Not good enough, writer boy."

Toya glared at me as if I symbolized everything she hated. Who knows? Maybe I did.

Marlene Dietrich, still trying to burst out of her snug Prussian calvalry outfit, slapped the cutlass away with her saber. "Dirne, the dead ghost of Hemingway has been found by his bed and me in that bed. What does that tell you?"

Toya appraised me with cool eyes. "It tells me you've been a busy boy, Roland."

"I didn't kill him!"

"Of course, you didn't kill him, writer boy. You a boy scout. But every creepy-crawlie out in the Shadowlands will think you did. So the ghosts want revenge and every other damned thing wants the secret of how you kill what can't be killed."

She shook her head, nudging her pirate hat a bit more to an angle. "You're screwed."

"Thanks for the newsflash, but I already had that figured out."

To my left, a leisurely Missouri drawl spoke. "Toya's like an elephant. Everyone likes to look at her, but no one wants to keep her."

Toya grunted, "Clemens, no likes a smart-ass."

I turned to see an auburn-haired Mark Twain laugh, "Why sure they do, Missy. All except the one he's talking to, that is."

Marlene smiled mischieviously. "Sam, your hair seems to have become as dark as Toya's."

He put a forefinger to his lips. "Shhh. When folks hear that name they think McCord, and he has too many enemies here who shoot first and look second."

Mark Twain winked at Marlene and stroked his auburn moustache. "The ladies like the color, don't you know?"

"Sa-Mark," I said. "You're married."

His face lost its light. "Yes, I surely am. And I have been looking for my Livvy ever since I died. I haven't found her. But I will. I will."

Marlene seem to glide more than walk to Mark Twain. "Old friend, you both have died. And so you both have parted. It is a harsh truth."

He patted her slender hand. "You have your truth. I have my dream. We'll see, Valkyrie. We'll see."

Toya gestured to the back of the club with her cutlass. "Shoo, all of you! I will have no maudlin scenes up here spoiling the mood of my place. To the back with all of you."

Mark Twain bristled. "Woman, I thought you liked Roland. The further back in Meilori's you go, the worse it gets."

Toya nodded. "Yes, with HIS creations from HIS unconscious. They haven't been talked about the internet and all God's creation. Roland dies. They die."

Marlene shook her head. "You have never heard of the fable of the scorpion and the swan?"

"Yeah, sweet cheeks, I have. And you'll just have to take your chances with their natures. Or do you want to deal with those Shadowlanders coming in through the front door?"

The three of us whirled about. No one was coming in. I turned back to Toya who only smirked.

"Not yet. But soon."

I suddenly realized Marlene wasn't holding Gypsy's carrier anymore. "Gypsy!"

Marlene smiled. "Do not worry, Liebchen. Elu has her safe in his mirror world."

I swallowed hard. Safe? With Elu? In his deadly mirror world? How safe was that? It occurred to me that it was probably safer than here with me.

Toya broke into my brooding. "Oh, I almost forgot. Death said to give you this."

She reached behind her sash and pulled out a small, ornate box covered in strange runes. She handed it to me. I almost dropped it. It was as cold as dry ice. With burning fingers, I shoved it into my right jeans pocket. It still burned, but not as much or as badly.

"What is it, Toya?"

"Death said it was a box full of darkness."

"How appropriate," softly spoke a silken voice behind me.

"Marlowe," snarled Marlene.

Toya sighed, "I tried to warn you." She spun about on her high heeled boots and left us.

I turned and froze.

"Shakespeare?"

The bard aimed his luger straight at my heart.

"Man wants but little here below,

Nor wants that little long."

His smile was even colder than his eyes. "You murder my prose. I murder you. Fitting is it not?"

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For my friend, Gardner West, the musical question of the weekend :