Lethal Takeout Read online

  “I know.” The dark ghost tilted his head slightly to one side, as if studying some unique and bizarre specimen. “Axe. Strange name.”

  “From a strange time in my life. You?”

  “Name’s Shadow. So…” Shadow gestured around the office with an elegant wave. “Were you a lawyer?”

  I snorted disdainfully. “As if. Nope, I was a janitor.”

  “Really? A janitor?” Shadow seemed surprised. “Interesting. You seem pretty smart, Axe Cooper.”

  “What, janitors can’t have brains?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.

  “I’m sure they have.” Shadow smiled slightly and held up his two hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Something has to fill up the space between those two ears. But I was referring to your name. ‘Axe’ makes me thing of someone with a job that’s a little less benign than cleaning carpets and unblocking toilets, and requires a bit more brainpower, if you get my drift.” Shadow’s eyebrows rose slightly, his dark eyes questioning.

  “Oh.” My frown smoothed out. “Yeah, I guess it would. It’s a nickname I got when I was in…” I hesitated. “A different stage of my career.”

  “Involving an axe?”

  I didn’t answer, my stone-grey eyes studying Shadow’s every movement. There was something different about him, something that didn’t fall neatly into either the human or ghost spectrum. He reminded me of something I didn’t want to get on the bad side of.

  “Is that how you got the scar on your chin?” he asked.

  No answer.

  Shadow shrugged, his black, well-fitted blazer lifting slightly at the shoulders. “Fair enough. You can’t blame me for being curious. So what were you before you were a janitor?”

  “An accountant, sort of.”

  Shadow’s mouth twitched into a faint smile. “Of course. Janitorial service is a natural next-step after accounting.”

  “Nope. Not really.”

  When Shadow gestured for me to continue, I stuffed my hands into my jean pockets, a frown scrunching up my forehead. What should I tell him? “Got bored with staring at numbers all day and I didn’t want to finish the degree, so I went into engineering.”

  “Ah. That’s the natural progression then: accountant, engineer, janitor.” Shadow’s faint smile stretched into a smirk. “How’d you make the leap from engineer to janitor?”

  I crossed my arms and stared down my slightly crooked nose. Except I had to look up a bit to see Shadow, which kind of ruined the effect I usually got from looking down my nose at someone. The guy was tall.

  “My very first job was an office design for a law firm. Not this one. Another city.”

  “And…?”

  I frowned. “It collapsed.”

  “The law firm?” he pressed.

  “No. The building. During a site tour. The firm’s partners were all inside.”

  “Oh dear.” Shadow shook his head, his smile widening, his teeth glowing in the dark. “How embarrassing.”

  “But the worst part was the lawyers all survived.”

  He shook his head. “How very inconsiderate of them.”

  I snorted and scratched my chin. “No kidding.”

  “That had to be messy.”

  “Sure was,” I agreed. “They tried to sue me into oblivion.”

  “And now you clean toilets for another law firm.”

  “Yup.”

  “Ironic.”

  “Yup. And poetic justice, I guess,” I admitted and clamped my mouth into a hard line.

  “Really?” Shadow leaned forward, his dark eyes glittering. “Why’s that?”

  I glanced down, stuffed my hands back into my pockets and clenched my jaw. Rain tinkled against a nearby window and someone on the street below blasted their car horn.

  “The silent type, eh?” Shadow rapped his knuckles soundlessly against the photocopier. “So why are you lurking around your old office?”

  “I’m not ‘lurking,’” I retorted. “I’m helping DD recruit some reporters.”

  “In a lawyers’ office?”

  “Ah… no.” Why was I here? “I wasn’t sure where to go, and then I got a bit side-tracked.”

  “You felt nostalgic for your life.”

  “I guess.”

  “Hey, it’s alright, man.” Shadow’s voice was smooth, with laughter tucked inside. “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of nostalgia.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So,” he continued, his dark face expressionless, “you felt nostalgic and decided to lurk around your old haunts.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” I looked up and stared at Shadow; I could feel my grey eyes swirling with storm clouds. That’s Lee’s rather poetic description, not mine, by the way. “I was in a nostalgic mood. I’m no longer in it. Why’re you here?”

  “Lurking and haunting.”

  “Fine. You lurk and haunt away,” I growled and kicked through the small dustbin.

  “You’ll be able to feel things eventually, if you want.”

  “Huh?”

  Shadow gestured at the dustbin. “Once you settle into your ghost form, you’ll be able to feel things, like that scar you keep scratching at.”

  “Things to look forward to,” I growled. “Well, great meeting you. I gotta go track down some poltergeist paparazzi person, spirit, whatever. Any idea where I can find a redhead named Faye Random?”

  “Try the Chinese diner near Gore and Pender,” Shadow suggested. A dark eyebrow rose and he smirked knowingly.

  “There’re a lot of Chinese diners in that part of town.”

  Shadow nodded his head, his smirk widening, and remained silent.

  I rubbed my chin. I imagined my eyes squinting into shards of stone as I mulled over the obvious, but highly coincidental, option. “You don’t mean Chan’s Chinese Chow, do you?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s where she usually haunts out.”

  “But why at that diner?” I demanded, my hands clenched into fists. “She can’t eat and it’s a pretty shabby place to hang out.”

  Shadow chuckled softly as his form dissolved back into the dark corner. Only his voice remained. “It’s hard to say, really. But it could be she’s also feeling nostalgic. That’s where she was shot.”

  Damn the Cockroaches

  Lee had never paid much attention to shadows before. And she hadn’t gone to Chan’s Chinese Chow in ages, even though we had takeout every Saturday evening. We’d started that tradition shortly after I had escaped from my past life choices and had started working as a janitor at Perkins & Co. We ordered the same dishes pretty much every time. It was one of the few things we agreed on, that and our dislike for CEO Perkins and janitorial work.

  “But he had to get himself shot up,” she muttered.

  Obviously, she was referring to me, not CEO Perkins. I’m pretty sure she would’ve preferred it the other way around. At least, that’s the way she explained it to me later, when she told me what happened to her that evening after she abandoned me at The Ghost Post.

  So this is her part of the story, and she’s not one to exaggerate, so I’m pretty sure it happened just like she said it.

  She walked the five blocks from my new place of work to the Chinese diner snuggled within the heart of Vancouver’s Chinatown. It was the largest Chinatown in Canada and one of the largest in North America. You would be forgiven if you thought you were in an older section of Hong Kong.

  After mulling over my untimely death, she sighed; her shoulders slumped, and her eyes drooped. Rainwater dribbled down her windbreaker and slipped under the hood. What a night: finding out her best friend had been murdered (how do you think I feel?) and then helping me get a place to hang out until I could right the wrongs and save my memory.

  “Because as much as I like you, Axe Cooper,” she reassured me while relating her story, “and I want to help you, there’s just no way I’m putting up with you haunting my place forever. That would be way south of weird and uncomfortable.
And I have enough of weird and uncomfortable.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” I reassured her back. “Just get on with your story.”

  After staring up at a streetlight that was having difficulty staying on, Lee straightened her shoulders and marched through the rainy night.

  Even though it was getting late, Chan’s Chinese Chow was still bustling and busy. Several of Chan’s deliverymen lounged about, chattering in Chinese while they waited for their next package. A crowd of noisy students laughed and tested each other’s skill at using their chopsticks to flick bits of noodle across the narrow restaurant; they were aiming for the far wall, but could only make it to the empty table halfway down. Two men were leaning against the counter at the end farthest from the door. A pimply-faced teen, known only as Chan Junior, was in charge of the cash register and kept up a very loud, continuous conversation in Chinese with the kitchen staff. The air was hazy with scents of jasmine, steamed rice and frying oil.

  The interior of the place hadn’t changed in thirty years of operation. Even some of the customers hadn’t changed in that time. The walls were off-white (really off) and bare except for a menu nailed onto the wall near the entranceway and a tattered poster announcing some event long since past.

  Three bulbs hanging down from the ceiling provided a dim, tired light. It was just enough light to read the greasy menu without straining your eyes too much, but conveniently not enough to see the decades of grime ground into the cracked floor tiles, the cheap plastic chairs and tables, and the chipped countertop.

  Lee knew about the grime, because she had actually looked closely, but she was the only customer who had ever bothered.

  If you couldn’t see the grime, you could definitely feel the oily, bumpy residue lingering on tables and counter, if you dared wipe your fingers along any surface. But why would you, if you couldn’t see anything? Let me tell you: to arrange that precise level of lighting is a skill, worth a small fortune in cleaning products not purchased. Plus they didn’t have to pay for janitorial services.

  At least their kitchen was clean.

  Lee had once checked that out, before she allowed me to get our food at Chan’s. She’d bullied her way into the kitchen, armed with a toy cop’s badge and a packet of swabs. She’d taken random samples by running swabs over utensils, cooks’ hands, countertops, cutting boards and anything or anyone who hadn’t run out the back door. I’m not kidding here. The results: we knew we wouldn’t catch some unpronounceable disease eating food from this place.

  She placed her order – the normal but, she sadly noted, half the usual amount – and was waiting, perched on a rickety stool that had been slashed along the plastic cushion so that bits of stuffing leaked out. After a moment, she got up, restless and craving sugar.

  “And why not?” she asked herself. Telling Chan Junior (no relationship to her) she’d be right back, she walked out of Chan’s and into the neighbouring donut shop, Donut Delight.

  Something that always bothered us was the smudging around ‘Donut’ on the sign. The rest of the place was neat and orderly, and we could never understand why the sign had these smudges around the one word. So maybe Lee was thinking about that when she looked at the sign. I don’t know. She didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask, but that’s what I always think about when I see that sign.

  Once inside, she ordered a couple of donuts and perched on one of two stools crowded against the counter. The stools looked suspiciously like Chan’s except without any slash marks. Maybe they’d ordered together, for a bulk discount.

  Her left elbow started to itch.

  She glanced up at the only other person in the place, but the young woman working the cash register was busy getting her order ready while nattering about the weather. That’s what Vancouverites talk about when they don’t know what else to say or they want to be polite: the weather.

  Lee scratched her elbow thoughtfully, careful not to touch the narrow counter. The place looked cleaner than Chan’s but you could never tell without a swab test or two.

  Trying to act natural, she swivelled the stool seat around to face the door: empty of watching eyes. She kept shifting around. Empty, empty, empty. Her elbow itched even more. “Where are you?” she whispered as her revolving stool turned to the cash register. That’s when she saw them: three humanoid shadows. They were huddled on the wall.

  I’m sure you’re asking the same question Lee did. What was taking the shop attendant so damn long to put two donuts into a bag?

  She kept staring at the shadows. One reminded her of someone. She scratched at her elbow and watched absently as the shadows slithered up the wall. “What the…” she said, her voice sounding like someone was trying to strangle her.

  That’s when she asked the other question. How could there be three shadows from two people?

  The shop attendant was completely oblivious to the three humanoid shadows creeping along independent of any human movement. Instead, she grinned like a sugar addict who’s just eaten a donut or two and cheerfully called out the cost of two Donut Delight specials.

  Lee ignored her, her glazed eyes fixed on the squirmy shadows. She was used to seeing ghosts floating through her living room, popping out of garbage cans or drifting through a bus. It didn’t freak her out at all. Fear was something she washed away with soapy water and a mop.

  About the only thing that could creep her out were cockroaches. Something about those little buggers really twanged on her nerves. Maybe it was the way they moved, so fast and unpredictable. Or the way they appeared out of crevices in the most unlikely places and could zip along on any surface. Or how they were so difficult to kill, damn them and their ‘survival of the fittest’ genes.

  And you can’t starve them out: some species can live for a month without food or live off the glue from the back of postage stamps. Try drowning them? Good luck: they can go without air for 45 minutes. They can even survive for up to a week with their heads cut off. Now I ask you, what possible evolutionary advantage could that give to a species? And why would anything actually want to survive without its head?

  Cockroaches are gross and bizarre in the freakiest way.

  Unfortunately, the shadows reminded Lily ‘Lee’ Chan of cockroaches.

  Really big cockroaches.

  She shrieked like a steam train and jumped around like a kangaroo dancing on hot coals. The cheerful shop attendant stopped chattering about the rain and stared at Lee, eyes wide and grin frozen in place, the small bag of dessert suspended in one hand.

  The shadows twitched and flowed along the ceiling towards Lee. Fingers morphed into dark tentacles that snapped ahead, searching, probing. She didn’t wait for them to reach her. Grabbing the donut bag, she stumbled away from the cockroach look-alikes, smacking her elbow against the edge of the counter, and backed hastily towards the door, her eyes fixed on the shadows swarming above her recently vacated stool.

  The moment she cleared the doorframe, she dashed out onto the sidewalk and swerved into Chan’s, where she literally ploughed into her other recently vacated stool with her hip. It (the stool, not the hip) crashed noisily into the neighbouring stool and both plummeted to the chipped tiles, quite possibly adding another chip to the ancient and growing collection.

  The pimply teen, Chan Junior, temporarily halted his verbal barrage to watch. The two men down the counter glanced in her direction. The students paused in their competition to snicker.

  “Eee, lay-deeee,” the teen grunted, forgetting that she could speak Chinese. “You order. Read-dee. Here. Take.”

  Her face as red as a Chinese face could get, Lee grabbed the paper bag he offered to her and walked out in the street, rubbing her aching elbow and bruised hip. Glancing back, she couldn’t see any shadows, but did see the two men staring at her from inside of Chan’s. She also noticed that they were both holding dark cowboy hats. The sight of the hats reminded her of something, but she couldn’t quite remember what.

  Lee lurched to a halt and seriously considered goin
g back in to see if she could remember whatever it was about cowboy hats that she had forgotten. Then a movement caught her attention: three shadows inched down the wall in Donut Delight towards the entrance.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, loudly enough for a passer-by to look at her fearfully.

  She ignored the look and watched the shadows. They had stopped moving as well. She didn’t know if they could go through the wall and leap over the narrow alley that separated Donut Delight from Chan’s, and she had no intention of finding out. Bags of fragrant food and fatty donuts clutched to her chest, Lee turned and ran.

  Façades

  Nope, Lee and I didn’t see each other at Chan’s that night. Lee had just made her panicked get-away. She didn’t get to tell me until later what she’d observed about the shadows and the cowboy hats. And that was a great pity, as a lot of what happened might’ve been avoided. Maybe not, but possibly.

  The point is—some time later, I floated into Chan’s. For better or worse, Lee and the cowboys were long gone. I didn’t notice the shadows over at Donut Delight, not then, but I did see the pimply teen at the counter.

  “Hey, Chan Junior,” I automatically said and then scowled. Gotta stop that. No one’s gonna hear me, except for other ghosts and Lee. I sighed. It had only been a few hours, and I was already tired of being dead. Dead tired. Ha ha.

  I glanced around. The crowd of students were hanging out in their corner, laughing extra loudly to prove to the world how much fun they were having. They weren’t playing their ‘flick the noodle against the wall’ game that Lee had seen, as they had exhausted the source of ammunition and were just getting up to go. A few delivery guys were collecting another round of takeout bags and were also filing out.

  I watched them go. I was so glad I couldn’t smell that food. Even still, I started salivating out of habit; just the sight of the white Chan’s bags with the red, three C logo had that affect.

  A moment later, I was the only customer left, if you counted a former and deceased customer; if not, then the restaurant was empty of clients. Chan Junior was facing the empty restaurant, trimming his nails with a kitchen knife, letting the shavings drop on the counter. His shouting match / conversation continued with the kitchen staff, who were all clustered together, leaning through the opening in the wall between the back and front part of the diner.