1. Creepy Mabel

Chapter 1

They call me Creepy Mabel.

I'm such an awful sight.

And if you're acting naughty,

you will not last the night.

Ten steps to the stairs. Twenty to the door.

Three to the corpse on the concrete floor.

I grin as I sway back and forth to the music of Mardi Gras coming from the streets outside. It's party night again here in the city. People in funny masks dancing and laughing everywhere you go.

I like to laugh.

I don't wear a mask.

Well, besides the other, but then, she would say that about me.

I'm no mask.

The corpse gurgles.

I stop swaying. I bend at the waist, my hands clasped behind my back like the teachers used to do when they were getting our attention as we played on the floor in preschool. They weren't fun, though. They talked like we weren't both there. They made us sit at a table and smile pretty.

They didn't like it when I made the bad principal scream.

I cock my head to the side, sending my dark hair swaying. He's an interesting corpse, in a way. Well, an interesting not-yet corpse, but that part will happen soon. He carried a special keychain, for one. All twisty and shiny like brass. And he has freckles on his cheek that form the shape of the other's favorite constellation, Libra. His brown hair was made of boingy curls before his blood turned them into a mop, and he has three earrings in his left ear and none in his right. Tattoos of roses cover his left arm, but there's only plain tan skin on the other. Keeping the sides of himself apart, maybe.

Silly.

But in every other respect, he's the same as any other soon-to-be corpse. He has keys for a rental car on his twisty little keychain. He stayed in a hotel that takes cash, not card. He knew what he wanted, and he'd had a plan—to find somebody at the party, have fun in his special way, and then return to his life of boingy curls and triple earrings, where maybe he'd get a brand-new tattoo.

And same as every time before, he thought no one would ever know a thing.

But I knew. I saw him in the alley. I heard the scream past the music, past the party, and I heard the struggles and the cries. Figures twisted around him, ghostly and half lost to the dark, wailing in voices no one else could hear. They sobbed because they were his roses, each as unable to stop him in death as they had been in life.

But that's why they have me.

I am the vengeance and I am the blood, the one to whom dead souls cry.

I am the one who lives in the dark, born to set the wrong things right.

Slinking along the wall, lost in the shadows and the garbage and the stink, I stalked him and he never saw me coming. The dead did. The dead always do. Not all the dead are tied to those who killed them, but sometimes they linger out of pain or rage or because they're trapped until justice can be done. Their wails grew louder at the sight of me, begging me to act, begging me to stop him from adding her to their number.

The other tries to give them a different kind of vengeance. She calls police and talks to lawyers. She seeks justice from the living on behalf of the dead.

I am not as patient as her.

I act now.

When I rose up behind him, the one he'd made his prey spotted me first. She was pressed to the brick wall, her cheek bloody from where he'd hit her. The horror in her eyes when she saw me was unavoidable.

His horror was candy.

At first, he blustered. He spat out curses and slashed at me with his blade even as his grip on his prey faltered and let her slip away. But when his silly little weapon didn't work on me, he retreated instead, puffing himself up with arrogance like he could scare me, right before he tried to run.

They always try to run.

"Please…" he whispers from where he lies on the ground.

"Beg me, beg me, says the judge's man. Beg me, beg me while you can."

His bloodshot eyes widen like he's latched onto something hopeful. "Please. Please, I'll give you anything you want. Please just don't?—"

I bend closer. My lips pull back as I smile. His horror rises again, flickering past his hope as he stares at me. I see my face reflected in his terrified bloodshot gaze.

Teeth stained black. Large orange-ringed eyes. Skin green and mottled like the pretty lichen that grows on a tree. My dark hair hangs like a curtain around my face, long and stringy just how I like it. The other one wears hers pink and bright like she's trying to balance us out, and she never lets her green eyes bulge like mine.

She's worried by me, the other is. She lets darkness take her when I come, and she hides in her life of light when I leave.

I scare her.

That can't be my focus, though. Not right now. Not when there's work to be done.

"But did they scream?" I whisper to him. "Did they beg? And did you listen, or did you just make them dead?"

My knife takes his throat in a single slice.

Blood sprays the concrete floor. I flicker away just long enough to avoid a single drop. The other would be upset if we became coated in blood spatter.

She's so picky about such things.

The dead cry out, descending upon him as his soul escapes his body. They won't hold him for long. Just enough to return their pain. Just enough to give it to the one who dealt it, and who will bear it from now on.

Light spreads above them, emanating stronger and stronger from the single bulb hanging in the room. The glow is bright like the sun and soft like the moon. It washes away the pretty moldy walls and the sweet mildew of decay. There is only the glow and the sense of voices just beyond hearing, calling come see, come see.

The peaceful dead melt into it. Below them, his soul writhes, seeing the light, unable to reach it. Held down by what he did and wailing as all his victims float into a glow that slowly fades.

Darkness rises from the shadows in the corners of the room now. His soul thrashes harder. He screams as the deepest darkness has its way.

And then all the dead are gone.

Mold and mildew return and the only light is the glow of the single bulb above me, dim as a candle and flickering from its old wiring. Laughter and song carry from the street.

I look down at the body and smile.

"Waste not, want not, so they say. It's time for Creepy Mabel to sit down and play. So from the tip of your toes to the top of your head, you'll serve a new purpose, now that you're dead."