Wm. F. (Bill) Sattelmeyer

Writer

Interactive Designer

Twice Die

Maggie McAuley thinks she knows what it’s like being dead; after all, she’s been drifting through the afterlife herself for the last six months. She even survived a confrontation with a tormented spirit that might have destroyed her soul completely.

But for a former surfer girl and graduate student, the silence of the grave is a lonely place.

When the spirit of Allison Chang arrives in the afterlife, Maggie feels she has finally found someone to share her joys and fears. But Allison is both more and less than she appears, and she is somehow responsible for the appearance of yet another lost soul: silent film star Mary Pickford.

And with a love-lorn Douglas Fairbanks come to bring Mary back to Hollywood – not to mention the appearance of a handsome ghost of a soldier killed in the Battle of the Bulge – life after death has become increasingly confusing.

And then it really goes to hell.

Prolog – Three Months Ago

The ghost of Sergeant Daniel Tucker arrived like a patch of fog blown in on a cruel wind, materializing halfway down the talus slope below Big Rock. I could tell he wasn’t surprised to see the spirits of Samuel Clemens and General Grant waiting for twenty feet higher, where he’d hidden the esplosives. Sam tossed his cigar, and it sparked as it bounced down the slope of crumbled rhyolite into nonexistence. Grant kept his in his teeth, but it, too, slowly vanished. Tucker stood still, only his eyes moving, his Union Army field jacket a smear of phosphorescent blue against the loose, unstable stone.

I wrapped my own phantom fingers around the park bleacher’s guardrail. Thirty feet below, a drama was about to play out that dwarfed in consequences the Civil War reenactment commencing behind me. Hundreds of tourists expecting entertainment under the redwoods would die senselessly if we couldn’t stop Tucker.

Sam looked up at me from beneath shaggy white eyebrows and shook his head, which probably meant “don’t get involved.” Too late for that.

Tucker had ‘ported hundreds of pounds of black powder beneath the loose rock, turning the unstable scree into an antipersonnel fragmentation mine. If he set off the gunpowder, there would be little left of the bleachers or the people sitting on them. Including the man who’d been my fiancé before I died.

To either side of the bleachers at the edge of the coastal redwood forest, Civil War re-enactors moved from the cover of sorrel and sage, firing muzzle-loaders that belched great clouds of gray smoke. A great gloom, taking on a life of its own, swirled over the mock battlefield.

From the top row the ghosts of Corporal Wood, “Maz” Maslowski, and I had a prime view of both public and private battle fronts. Wood tore off the end of a paper cartridge and poured the gunpowder into the barrel of his musket. Maz, who died as a young man in the 1930’s, bit nervously at a fingernail. Below us the ghost of Ulysses S. Grant walked down-slope to meet Tucker.

The bleachers vibrated as two-dozen 12-pounder field cannon continued to fire behind us. The sound of their thunder, though, failed to reach the afterlife, a never-never land where I had found myself after a death by drowning I barely remembered. I could see the world I had known when I was alive, but I couldn’t hear it or touch it, and I couldn’t remember feeling more helpless than the day I awoke in this place between life and death: from blonde surfer-girl to disembodied spirit.

“Don’t get involved”? I was involved up to my insubstantial eyebrows. I grabbed Corporal Wood’s arm and pointed my finger at the demented spirit who in the past week had murdered both my friend Charley and my father. Tucker would have killed me, too, if General Grant hadn’t fought him to a stalemate. And if there was one thing I had learned in the process, it was that ghostly weapons could kill a ghost as well as the living.

“Corporal, if that... man... attempts to ‘port out or bursts into flame...if he does anything without General Grant’s blessing... I want you to shoot him.”

Wood squinted one dark-circled eye set above an unkempt gray beard. “Flames, Miss Maggie?”

Grant hoped to avoid killing Tucker. I didn’t feel the same way. “If he lights up a cigar. If he blows smoke out of his ears. If he even gets a sunburn: stop him before he sets off the gun powder he buried in those rocks.”

Wood, who had followed Grant deep into the Wilderness campaign a hundred and fifty years earlier, slitted ghostly eyes as a cold wind swirled around him. “Yes, ma’am! Pass it on, Maslowski.”

“You got it, Corporal.” As Maz vanished to alert the shadow sharpshooters on the far bleachers, Wood handed me a revolver. “Got it from the Lieutenant. Real nice single-action Colt.” He tapped the hammer. “Pull her back and then site along the notch there.”

I tried to hand it back. “I don’t do guns.”

He ignored me, checking the contents of his cartridge case. “Yes, ma’am. But other people do.”

An amber wave of embers scattered overhead. People at the top of the bleachers stood, brushing at their clothes. Down on the battlefield sparks spun in tornado-like swirls around a cannon and its crew. Rebel soldiers in the line of fire rolled on the ground and beat at their uniforms. Union re-enactors scrambled away from the smoking revetment. I felt a twinge of guilt along with a surge of hope that our plan to clear the park was working.

A second cannon went off, and a long tongue of orange flame licked out, spitting fiery droplets that set bushes fifty feet away on fire. One cannoneer’s jacket burst into flame. Nearby pine trees started smoking. A third cannon belched a sparkling cloud of fire that dropped red hot cinders on dozens of stunned re-enactors. The remaining guns fell silent as fire spread slowly across the tinder-dry field.

I looked back as I heard Tucker bark a laugh. He had pulled out his revolver and leveled it at Grant. Grant stopped about six feet away, arms slightly out from his navy greatcoat. Slowly he raised his right hand to the brim of his cavalry hat. As he tossed it aside Tucker’s revolver was torn out of his hand, bouncing into the rocks. For one brief moment Tucker stood stunned, and Grant threw himself at his opponent. They tumbled down the hill in a glowing blue tangle.

I shoved the pistol under my belt. “Don’t wait,” I ordered. “As soon as you have a clear shot.” Wood braced his rifle on the railing. He grunted an assent as I ran down the bleacher steps.

#

As I rounded the back of the bleachers I saw that Tucker had broken away from Grant—or the other way around, it was hard to tell. Tucker stood bent at the knees, arms out like a wrestler. Grant quickly shed his jacket as they circled clockwise. Behind them Sam edged along the slope, a spectral second line of defense against Tucker setting off the very real explosives.

Sam looked dapper in his linen suit against the red cliff face, and he shifted from foot to foot like a prize fighter. But Sam had probably never even killed a mosquito in anger. He knew more about being dead than I did, but Tucker had hate on his side. It would be an uneven contest. The bleachers above my head rocked as spectators leaped off in frantic clumps. The forest fire set off by the cannon continued to spread... I hoped not too fast or it might kill more people than Tucker would.

Grant and Tucker moved tentatively in their dance. Tucker suddenly bellowed and ran at Grant who tried to twist aside. He lost his footing, and Tucker slammed him to the rocks. He hunched over Grant and pounded his face with great sweeping sledgehammer blows.

No ghostly minié balls spat from the bleacher-top. Even a near miss might kill Grant instead. I, on the other hand, had a clear shot. Tucker glanced in my direction as I climbed upright. He growled at me, dismissing Grant’s struggles. He drew his fist back and fired it at Grant’s chin. I heard the sharp crack as the general’s head hit the rocks.

Ghost head: real rocks. The physics of their interaction was beyond me, but it was why ghosts could climb stairs and rattle cupboards. Ectoplasm we might be, but the physical world still held us in thrall.

As I reached for my revolver, Tucker rose to his feet and began to vanish.

Sam Clemensbraced himself as Tucker started to reappear in front of the fissures we thought held the black powder. If Grant couldn’t stop Tucker, Sam didn’t stand a chance. Even as I realized I was doing something extremely stupid, I ‘ported out myself.

I reappeared a second after Tucker, only a step behind and below. Sam was in the midst of throwing a short right that was sailing over Tucker’s head. I dove into Tucker’s legs as he ducked, and we both were suddenly tumbling down-slope. Impossibly sharp rock edges sliced at my ghostly shoulders and back, and the pistol scraped free. I heard it clatter away and saw it disappear into a crevice.

Tucker grabbed at my legs, got a grip on one foot and twisted it sharply. Volcanic rock scraped at my face as he dragged me down to him. I had no time to wonder why it hurt as much as when I’d been alive. He grabbed my shirt front, twisting it around in his hand, and hit me on the side of the head with a fist that felt like iron.

Everything went dark for a second as I bobbed on the surface of a storm-tossed sea. The sky spun left, then right, as I rolled down the talus. Tucker rose above me like a massive black wave.

Grant streaked across my vision in a white and blue blur, shoving Tucker away from me. I struggled to crawl away, the mountainside spinning around me. I sat up too quickly and almost vomited. Uphill, Sam moved down a couple of steps, uncertain whether to protect the explosives hidden in the fissures or join the fight.

I looked for my pistol—didn’t see it. Off to my right Tucker screamed. He slammed two haymakers into Grant’s face with the fury of the doomed, and spun out of Grant’s grip. I stood slowly on legs of sand and saw Tucker's revolver lying against a rock, two steps below me. Tucker looked again at the emptying stands, realized his opportunity for revenge over long-forgotten injustices was fading, and shouted as he ran uphill.

“Damn you all to Hell!"

Still swearing, he grew transparent as he burst into flame. I could see pain film over his eyes, even as he managed a triumphant grin. The grin vanished as Grant threw himself at Tucker’s back and wrapped his arms across his chest. Grant’s eyes squeezed shut against the flames that began to consume him too as he fought to prevent Tucker from ‘porting himself into the explosive-filled scree. Both men screamed, a high shrieking wail like the sky tearing itself apart.

I fell on Tucker’s revolver and tugged at the hammer. Tucker threw his arms into the air and tossed Grant aside. Grant collapsed in a shapeless mass like a jellyfish flung ashore, his white shirt blackening and smoking. Tucker’s flames exploded an incandescent white as his lips pulled back over yellow teeth crushed together against the pain, and he began to fade.

I shot him in the chest from six feet away. Four other shots rang out simultaneously and three of the other bullets tore through him less than a second after mine. He was thrown back, teetered, and dropped to his knees, the fire still consuming him. He looked at me with disbelief.

I pulled back the hammer of the Colt to cock it again; the cylinder spun. “This is for Dad,” I said, and shot him in the head. He fell sideways and lay still while his own fire destroyed what was left of his ghostly body.

Grant struggled to hands and knees. The revolver fell from my hand. Above the bleachers the oily black smoke was turning gray. A wave of dizziness swept over me as the slope shifted like a surfboard rolling over the lip. I saw Sam leaping down the rocks, incautiously. He was going to kill himself if he wasn’t careful. Hey, I thought, I made a joke.

My chest hurt with every breath. I looked at my hands. A viscous purple fluid dripped down my left arm. I touched my shoulder, and my hand came away bloody. I laughed and showed Sam my hand. Ghost bullets. Ghost blood.

“I think they shot me,” I said. So that’s where the fourth bullet went. Probably Maz’s. He was a lousy shot. The talus slope tipped over on its side, and I lost my balance. Sam caught me as I fell. Treetops poked up into a deep blue sky growing smoky and dark. “Looks like rain,” I said. Sam’s face blurred and faded and I surrendered to the whirlpool of night.

 

 

Chapter One—Friday Night/Saturday Morning

Three stories up. Thirty feet down. At thirty-two feet per second squared, it was just one second from parapet to sidewalk where, once again, her body was at rest. The reverberation of her death echoed through the afterlife, and those of us already trapped between the here and the hereafter paused in whatever we were doing.

The ghost of Samuel Clemens and I had been sitting under the Christmas-light-trimmed awning of Bookshop Santa Pasa, grousing about the winter rains that had pounded Monterey Bay most of January. Sam plucked at his white linen pants as he grumbled, keeping his broad-brimmed white hat low over his bushy eyebrows, all the better to glare at any of the living who came near.

The renovated two and three-story, stone and stucco buildings of Santa Pasa’s revitalized downtown shouldered the inclement weather better than its inhabitants who, whether living or dead, expected California to be the land of perpetual sunshine. Even the ubiquitous street-performers had temporarily left for sunnier climes, and many of the local proprietors had joined their erstwhile customers bemoaning El Niño at the many coffee shops scattered up and down Pacific Avenue.

Even dead, the weather affected my mood—not to mention that moving water was problematic for us ghosts—and I longed for Spring, where sunlight would shred the early morning gauze of Pacific fog and set the palms afire against a sapphire sky.

“Your impatience will be the death of me, dear girl,” is what Sam said to that. I reminded him that he was already dead and that I’d probably killed him several times over in the six months since he and General Grant had found my newly-passed-on spirit. He retorted that he was also fond of stray cats and that they had caused him far less annoyance in this life or the one that preceded it.

“You old softie,” I said.

I had just warmed up my phantom cup of coffee, and Sam had relit his cigar when there had been that blur seen out of the corner of the eye and an almost-felt blow that meant one more life had ended.

Not every death went remarked, but several souls a week found a need to stop here in mid-journey. Sam greeted those he could, and I tagged along most of the time. I had been a lifeguard once, and this was a little like that. And I needed to feel useful. Without another word we set off across Pacific Avenue’s brick-inlaid thoroughfare to wait for events to unwind.

Less than a minute passed before the Pizzas of Eight delivery boy, his pirate hat doing a poor job of keeping him dry, ran around the corner onto Locust Street where Sam and I now stood in the rain shadow of the Compass Building. He almost tripped over the young woman’s body draped over the curb, splashing through a thin stream of blood washing away into the drain at his feet. A fan of black hair spread out from a head twisted wrong, and the woman’s outstretched arm covered the legend above the storm sewer that read “Flows to the Sea.” The boy took a step back, then turned and raced for the restaurant.

I peered up at the Compass Building’s roofline. A soggy banner hung over the side for the weekend opening of SPIFF—the Santa Pasa International Film Festival.

In less than a minute a small knot of people had gathered at the corner of Pacific and Locust. My sister Janelle had run over from the Bookshop, and held her umbrella over the body while someone checked for a pulse and gave a sad shake of his head. A gust of wind shook the row of maples up and down the Pacific Avenue mallway in sympathy. At the end of the street, the familiar red and white lights of Rescue Three raced from the fire station a half-dozen blocks away, too late for anything but the morgue.

A police cruiser sluiced to a stop at an angle across Locust, and the officers stepped out with studied efficiency, pulling their plastic-covered hats down low as a microburst danced down the street. The heavy drops sleeted through our ghostly forms, briefly chilling. The air smelled of chocolate and new mown hay and something else... something burning in the distance, not quite cleansed by the rain. The smell of death and sadness.

We found a dry spot under a narrow awning over one of the shops that ran along the front of the Compass Building, and I created a gray UC Santa Pasa sweatshirt with the Banana Slug logo. It was as immaterial as I, but I felt warmer once I’d pulled it over my head.

“Do you think she jumped?” I asked.

Sam ran the fingers of one hand through his shock of curly white hair. “We’ll wait a bit. It won’t take long before we know for certain. No suicidal spirit desires to remain attached to a life miserable enough to want to end it.”

“What would make anyone think there is something better than life?”

“It’s not whether it’s better, it’s the feeling it couldn’t be any worse. But here… here there is at least hope. So we wait.”

“I can’t imagine that kind of pain.”

Sam stared up into the darkness. “Couldn’t you? I dare say the past six months haven’t been the most pleasant for you.”

“I know.” Losing Jimmy. Losing Dad. But Sam wasn’t going to give me time to be melancholy. “How long?” I asked.

Sam tilted his head to the right. “Not long now.” Another figure sheltered against the building where a display window made a little alcove: a little taller than me, her arms wrapped around herself, head bowed, her shoulder-length black hair partly hiding her face. Perhaps she hadn’t jumped after all. Her rust-colored turtleneck and cinnamon corduroys matched the victim’s. I hadn’t looked quite so good when I died, appearing here wearing only jean cut-offs and a pale green camisole. And my engagement ring.

The EMTs strapped the body onto a gurney and lifted it into the back of Rescue Three as the crowd slowly dispersed. Detective LaSalle rolled up in a nondescript silver sedan that matched his nondescript gray trench coat and exchanged banter with the other officers. Through it all the woman remained still, only her head moving slightly. LaSalle glanced up at the rain as if it were a personal affront before stalking past us and into the Compass Building. Sam waited patiently. I fidgeted.

“So if she didn’t jump, then how?” I asked.

“Not our problem, Miss Maggie,” Sam replied. “That isn’t what will be important to her right now.”

The woman finally looked up. Her face was thin with brown, almond-shaped eyes and an afterthought of a nose. She took a deep breath and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her slacks. She glanced our way, and, as usual, Sam was worth a double-take.

“Wonderful,” she said, then closed her eyes and leaned back against the building. Sam looked at me.

“I knew that,” I said.

Sam’s cheeks flushed as he cleared his throat. “I don’t believe we have been formally introduced.”

Her reply was scratchy and faint. I knew only too well how drained she had to feel, but I was impressed with how quickly she was adapting. I had been afraid. I had run… shifting in and out of existence. I almost hadn’t survived the transition.

“That’s all right. I can tell who you’re supposed to be.”

“Flattering, I assure you,” Sam said. “But you have the advantage of me.”

She studied his face a moment longer. “The detail is incredible.”

“And every line tells a story, although sometimes too long and without a proper ending. And you are?”

She licked dry lips and extended a slim hand. “Allison Chang.”

“Samuel Clemens.”

Her head tipped just slightly. As with many who recognized him, she had expected him to introduce himself as Mark Twain. “Pleased to meet you.”

“As you should be.” Sam swept his cigar in my direction. “And this is Miss Maggie McAuley.”

I held out my own hand, and she took it in a firm grip. She looked me over in embarrassing detail—my ruddy Irish-Italian complexion, sea-gray eyes, perpetually wind-whipped hair, narrow hips, swimmer’s shoulders—and seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. She nodded to herself. “Very realistic.”

Sam shook his head. “Would that it were so.” Sam said. Allison gave him a quizzical stare. “You were thinking this is all a dream.” With one hand Sam swept a small arc that encompassed the corner where we stood, Santa Pasa, the California coast, life, the universe, and everything. “It is more real than you can imagine, but it is definitely not a dream.”

“Really,” she said. “Looks pretty dreamlike to me. I mean, looking down on my dead body, talking to Mark Twain… seems a little much even for reality TV. Ergo: dream.

“Do you remember falling asleep?”

“No. Doesn’t mean I didn’t. I’d pinch myself to prove it, but I hear that doesn’t work.”

“What is the last thing you remember? Although, admittedly, when I was younger myself, I could remember almost anything whether it had happened or not.”

She examined Sam closely and folded her arms. “I get it now,” she said. “You’ve captured Twain’s essence quite well. Almost as good as Hal Holbrook,” she added as an afterthought. “But I’m not the person you want to talk to. You’ll want to see someone in charge of casting.”

Sam’s eyes grew wide and his mouth hung open. “By God,” he said finally, “I have been called many vile and reprehensible things in my time, but I have never been called an actor.”

“An unemployed actor, apparently,” I said.

Sam harrumphed.

Allison stepped away from the building, only slightly wobbly. “I hate to be rude, but I need to get back to work.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said. “Work is a tad irrelevant.”

Her eyes flicked from me to the street corner and back, and I could see she’d suddenly made a connection. “That wasn’t me…”

“I’m afraid so.”

“So, I’m dead.”

“Yep.”

She tucked her hair behind one ear. “Wonder what that means.”

LaSalle trounced down the stairs and hesitated at the doorway before ducking under our awning. The three of us edged closer together to give him some room. He’d put on 20 or 30 pounds since he’d been a beat cop, but we moved more to avoid the consequences of coming in contact with the living. He fumbled with his cell phone unaware of his ghostly company.

“It guess it could be an out of body experience,” Allison said. She held her arms out to her side. “I should be floating, though, shouldn’t I?”

I looked at Sam. He rolled his eyes and gestured at me to keep talking. “You’re definitely out of your body,” I said, “but you aren’t going back. It’s too late for that. Especially considering your body is gone, but you’re still here.”

“Wow. I hope I remember all this when I wake up.” She turned a full circle. “And it’s in full color, too.”

“Was I this dense?” I asked Sam.

“You know,” he replied, “I was just thinking you two must be related.”

Allison shook her head. “Death would actually be a relief, as if I could be that lucky.” She looked over her shoulder, then back at me with a smirk. “Nope, no wings. Not exactly the Pearly Gates either.”

“I wish,” I mumbled.

“You’ll find no angels or devils here, I’m afraid,” Sam said.

“Just us dead people,” I added.

Sam ignored me and stuck out an elbow. “Why don’t we take a walk, Miss Allison, and we’ll try to explain.”

After a moment’s reflection Allison shrugged and took the offered arm. “Sure. What the hell. Why not?” She laughed as we set off for the Bookshop café. “I guess this makes me one of the walking dead.”

I swear, if she had started humming “Thriller,” I would have smacked her. I guess I was a little miffed that she was taking her transition so calmly.

She wasn’t the only wayfarer Sam and I had greeted as they passed through a spectral Santa Pasa on their way we-knew-not-where. Some, like Sam, General Grant, and Corporal Wood had never felt the need to leave.

Most, though, went directly from alive to whatever-comes-after. And some — like me — had no idea why we were here or how to continue on our journey. And aside from it being disconcerting to have become a bodiless spirit, the netherworld was a lonely place to pass the time.

Not that it was always dull. Evil was no stranger to the dead. Nor insanity. Four short months ago a deranged former Civil War sergeant had tortured and killed my father in front of me, and then tried to steal my soul. I hadn’t known how close I had come to dying a second and very last time. Death in the afterlife was the ultimate end of everything.

The final bullet obliterating Sergeant Tucker’s existence in this or any other life had come from the revolver in my own ghostly hand, and I had done it only partially in self-defense. I shivered, but not from the rain. Destroying Tucker’s soul had cost me more than I wanted to remember. And it was something I could never forget.