Dead Set: A Novel Read online

  “Can I help you, young lady?” the man said.

  “Are you Am . . . ?”

  The man smiled. “It’s a tricky name to say right,” he said, and came around from behind the counter. “Just call me Emmett. All my friends do.” He extended his hand and Zoe shook it.

  She couldn’t begin to guess his age. When Emmett turned his head one way, the shadows on his face made him look eighty. When he turned another way, he looked twenty. But she was sure that he couldn’t be that young. His skin was strange. Smooth and stretched a little too tight, like Laura’s aunt’s face. She got Botox injections all the time and Laura said that she’d had about fifty face-lifts. Emmett didn’t seem like the face-lift type, but who knew?

  “What lovely eyes you have,” he said. “Like a cat’s.”

  “My mom used to say that all the time,” said Zoe.

  “Your mother is a smart woman.”

  Zoe nodded, not because she agreed but because she didn’t want to talk about it with some guy she just met.

  “Is there something I can help you find? We don’t get many customers your age.”

  “I was just going by,” said Zoe. “I don’t want to buy anything.”

  Emmett waved a hand to the records. “That’s all right,” he said. “Look around. Maybe you’ll find something for next time.”

  Zoe walked to the closest bin. It was so stuffed with ragged old records that they barely budged when she tried to flip through them. A plastic hand-lettered divider read TRAD JAZZ.

  “Do you have any punk?” Zoe asked.

  “We don’t carry new releases, you know. No Green Day kind of stuff,” said Emmett.

  “I like the old bands,” said Zoe.

  “Good girl,” said Emmett. He pointed. “Over against that wall.”

  Zoe went to where he indicated and found the “Punk” divider. The bin wasn’t as crowded as the jazz section but it was just as beaten up. The first record was Frankenchrist by the Dead Kennedys, a San Francisco band her parents had played a lot when she was in elementary school. There were other records she recognized from the old house, now boxed up and put in storage like baby clothes and furniture no one liked in the first place. Toward the back of the section, Zoe found a single by the Cramps that looked familiar. She looked at the back and saw her mother’s name at the bottom. She’d designed the cover.

  Zoe put the record back and wandered through the rest of the store, running her hands along the smooth wooden bins and across the tops of the disintegrating cardboard LP covers.

  “Why is it so dark in here?” she asked.

  From behind the register Emmett looked up from a book. “It hurts my eyes,” he said. “I can see fine like this. If you can’t, I can turn some light on.”

  “No. That’s okay,” she said. Emmett went back to whatever he’d been reading.

  At the back of the store was a beaded curtain and printed across it was a burning heart encircled by thorns. Zoe could see more record bins beyond the curtain. She looked around, and when she didn’t see an “Employees Only” sign she pushed her way through.

  The back room was different from the rest of the shop. It was brighter, but in a soft and diffuse way, like sun through water, though Zoe didn’t see any lights on the walls or ceiling. The room had a thick smell, like burning pine. She followed the scent and found an incense burner in one corner. It was a chipped ceramic volcano. Dark lumps, like brown sugar, burned at the bottom and smoke curled out the volcano’s cone at the top.

  Zoe circled the record bin. There weren’t any plastic dividers saying what kind of records these were. She picked up a couple of LPs at random. They didn’t have regular covers with a picture and the name of the band. Instead, they were wrapped in coarse brown paper printed with strange symbols that reminded her of the Egyptian hieroglyphics she’d seen in the mummy program. Some records only had a few symbols, while others were almost covered with them. Zoe slipped one of the records from its case to check the label, careful to touch only the edges of the disc the way her father had taught her. The record didn’t have a label. It was the strangest record Zoe had ever seen.

  The disc wasn’t black, but milky white and translucent, shot through with a spidery red-and-blue web work that looked like veins and arteries. At the center of the LP, pierced by the round spindle hole, as if wounded, was a heart. In the strange underwater light of the back room, Zoe could swear the heart was beating.

  “I had a feeling those cat eyes of yours would lead you back here,” said Emmett. He was standing by the beaded curtain. Zoe hadn’t heard him come in and the beads were silent and still, like he’d come through without moving them.

  “Most people walk right by this room. They can’t see it or they don’t want to and they stroll by as if it wasn’t even here,” he said, opening his hands. “But here it is.”

  Zoe held up the strange LP. “What kind of record is this?” she asked. “There’s nothing written on it.”

  “Actually, there’s quite a lot of information on the cover, but you have to know how to read it.” Emmett gently took the record out of Zoe’s hands. The heart seemed to beat faster when he touched it and he slipped it back into its case.

  “These symbols, they tell names, places, incidents. The shape and texture of an individual’s life on earth,” Emmett said. “To answer your real question, these aren’t records of music. Each of these records is a life. Not the recording of a life, but a life itself.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Zoe.

  “I suppose it is a little hard to understand at first,” Emmett said. “These are the lives of people who’ve passed on. They’re what you might call souls. Or ghosts, but solid, not the wandering kind.” He leaned on the bins and looked down at Zoe. “When some spirits depart this world they leave nothing behind. Like a baby coming out of its mother’s womb, the transition is simple and complete and nothing more is necessary. Some spirits, though, get stuck. They get lost. Some don’t even know that they’re dead. And some of those spirits end up here.” Emmett nodded toward the records.

  “How?”

  Emmett shrugged. “They just do. Like you.”

  “I don’t know if I believe that.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. You’re a material girl living in a material world. See, I know some new music,” he said proudly.

  Zoe didn’t want to be rude and tell him that the Madonna song was a standard on oldies stations.

  “How can I show you what I’m talking about?” Emmett muttered. He clapped his hands together. “Would you like to see another life? Something old. Something from another time, so you can really feel the difference.”

  “It sounds like a virtual reality ride I went on once at a museum. All it did was make me dizzy,” she said.

  “I tell you what, try this and then you tell me if it’s virtual reality.”

  Zoe thought about it for a moment. She’d already ditched school and lost a shirt. Maybe she could salvage something from this lousy day.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Emmett looked through the bins and selected an LP with a complex collection of symbols on the front—fish, birds, plants, and jagged lines that might have meant water. He went to the incense burner and opened a large box standing next to it. Zoe followed and stood behind him, peeking over his shoulder. Inside the box was a strange machine about the size of an orange crate. Brass fittings gleamed in the diffuse light. Under a rubbery turntable there were delicate gears, lenses, and faceted jewels like insect eyes. Zoe thought it looked like a Halloween spook-house version of the record player her parents had in their bedroom back at the old house. Emmett set the LP gently on the machine and positioned six silver legs on different parts of the disc. Each of the legs had a barbed needle at the end. They made Zoe think of giant spiders.

  “This is an Animagraph,” said Emmett. “There are very few left in the world and fewer people who know how to use one. It’s how we can see, touch, and experience the life of these lost s
ouls.” When he was finished setting up the Animagraph, he held up an elaborate set of headphones for Zoe.

  She hesitated for a moment, then took the phones and slipped them over her head. They didn’t seem to fit right. There were extra wires and straps.

  “Allow me,” said Emmett, sliding the phones off her. He put them back on her the other way around, with the part that looked like it should go over Zoe’s head covering her eyes. The ear parts fit snugly, but then Zoe felt Emmett pulling more straps across her face. They went across her nose and mouth and wrapped around her throat. What the hell? she thought. She started to say something but the strap across her mouth kept her from opening her jaw. She pulled at the strap around her throat just as she heard a familiar scratching: the sound of a needle sliding into a record groove.

  And she was standing on a green lawn behind an enormous white house. There was a badminton net a little off to her left, which was funny because until that minute she’d never seen the game, yet now she knew exactly how to play it. There were people around her, all dressed in strange old clothes, like photos she remembered of Steampunk cosplay. The older men wore dark suits while some of the younger ones had on jaunty striped jackets and flat straw hats that she remembered were called “boaters.” The women, including Zoe herself, wore long, wide skirts that smelled faintly of some flowery perfume and starch. There was a tart taste in Zoe’s mouth. Lemonade. She looked down at her hands. She had on white gloves and her hands were too large. An adult woman’s hands. Then Zoe saw her belly. It was enormous. A man she knew to be her husband came over and laid his hand on her stomach. He smiled down lovingly at her.

  “Are you comfortable, dear?”

  “Yes,” she felt herself say.

  Squirm. There was something inside her. She was pregnant.

  Zoe heard a soft scratch. A second later she was back in the record shop with Emmett unstrapping the headphones. At first she couldn’t speak. She touched her stomach, relieved by its smooth flatness.

  “You just experienced a few moments in the life of Caroline Lee Somerville from Manassas, Virginia. You were there right at the end of her life in 1904,” said Emmett. “She died giving birth to that baby you felt.”

  “Holy shit,” whispered Zoe. “That was so cool.”

  Emmett beamed. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He set down the headphones and returned the record to its slipcase.

  Zoe could still feel the life moving inside her. She could see her husband and the mansion. She knew every room inside.

  As Emmett returned the LP to the bins Zoe asked, “Can I try that again?”

  “I was going to suggest that very thing,” said Emmett. He stepped over to another bin and picked up a record. “Would you like to see your father’s life?”

  Zoe went cold inside. She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right, but she knew she had. There was a strange feeling in her stomach. Not fear exactly, more a feeling of being empty and queasy at the same time, like she might be sick.

  “Your father is right here, with us,” said Emmett, weighing the record in his hands. “And I can let you see him. But, of course, this is a place of business and I’m a businessman.”

  Zoe knew what he meant.

  “How much do you want?” she whispered.

  Emmett shook his head. “Money? I don’t want your money,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost closing time. You should be getting home.”

  “How much?” Zoe asked, quietly and insistently. If Emmett was telling the truth and she could see her father, she’d find some way to pay whatever he asked. And she knew he knew it.

  Emmett set down the LP and led Zoe to the front of the store. “I don’t want much at all, really,” he said. He opened the door and gently pushed Zoe through. “Come back tomorrow at the same time and bring me a lock of your hair. Then I’ll let you see your father.” He locked the door and turned around the little sign in the window from COME IN to CLOSED.

  That night, when Zoe got to the tree fort, Valentine was on the roof looking at the mountains through a telescope. The telescope looked old, patched together with duct tape, rusting rivets, and lumpy, ragged welds. Zoe had never seen it before and wondered where it had come from, but there were other, more important things on her mind.

  Without waiting for Valentine to turn around, she said, “I met a man who can let me see Dad.” He kept scanning the mountain. “He says Dad is a lost soul.”

  “There’s definitely someone on our mountain,” Valentine said. “But I can’t get a good look through all this fog.” The mist was heavier than Zoe remembered. It shrouded the mountain, roiling and swirling from the summit to the ground. It had even begun to send out white, ghostly fingers onto the green grass plain.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Zoe asked. “I’m going back tomorrow to see him.”

  Valentine took the telescope from his eye and looked at her. “How do you know you can trust this guy?”

  “I guess I don’t.” Zoe shrugged. “But it’s not like he copped a feel or asked for money, and he could have. I have to go back and see if he was telling the truth.”

  “If he didn’t ask you for money, what did he ask for?”

  “Nothing,” Zoe lied, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. She didn’t want to have to explain about the lock of hair. She knew it was a little weird, but she couldn’t take the chance on being talked out of going back to the store.

  Valentine turned back to the telescope. “Mother is worried about you.”

  “You think so?”

  He nodded, inching out the lens to change the telescope’s focus. “She’s afraid you’re going to hurt yourself again.”

  Zoe tugged down her sleeves and snapped the rubber band, suddenly self-conscious. “You know I don’t do that anymore.”

  “But you have razors hidden in your room.” Valentine closed the old telescope and turned to her. “You took Father’s shaving kit when you and Mother were packing up the old house.”

  “I’m not going to use them, I swear.” Zoe sat, arms around herself, her knees drawn up to her chest. Valentine limped over and sat down next to her.

  “Throw them away. Please.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I need them. I’m not going to use them, but it helps to know they’re there.”

  Valentine turned over his skinny, dirt-grimed arms, holding them up so Zoe could see. “When you hurt yourself you hurt me, too,” he said. Seeing the long overlapping scars that extended from her dream brother’s wrists almost to his elbows took Zoe’s breath away.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

  “Because you needed to stop for you, not for me. And you did and that makes me happy,” said Valentine. “But I’m asking you, for my sake this time, not to start again.”

  She nodded, her arms and legs still tucked against her. Wrapped tight like a little ball of pain, Zoe leaned against Valentine. “I won’t. I promise,” she said. “I’ll throw the others away.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But not Dad’s razor. It was his and I’m keeping it.”

  “Okay,” said Valentine. He didn’t sound happy about it but he didn’t argue with her.

  “I’m going back to the store tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get to see Dad.”

  Valentine opened the telescope and handed it to Zoe. “I’m going to keep watching the mountain.”

  He sounded more serious than Zoe had ever heard him sound before.

  Three

  Later, Zoe had another dream.

  She was lost in a strange city and rain was coming down in blinding sheets, coming down so hard it was as if she’d been swallowed by an invisible monster. Through the beast’s clear hide she caught distorted glimpses of buildings and streets, but she couldn’t tell where she was. People rushed past her, bundled against the cold and the storm. She had a feeling that it had been raining for a long time. Maybe forever. The crowd swept her up and carried her along.

  “Hello?” she said. “Can someone h
elp me? I don’t know where I am.”

  People kept moving, faster and faster until they were sprinting around her. Hands shoved her out of way. Shoulders bumped into her, almost knocking her down. No one spoke or looked at her. Everyone just kept moving in a kind of desperate rush.

  “Dad!” Zoe yelled. “Dad! Are you here?”

  A noise came from behind. Deep and menacing. She didn’t just hear it. She felt the growl in the pit of her stomach. It was the dogs. That’s why everyone was running. There was a pack of the black beasts behind them. A faint shadow in the shape of a woman with something like a crown on her head had them on a leash. Then she released them.

  The mob rounded a corner onto a long street unmarked except for a bus stop. The dogs were close on their heels. There was nowhere else to run. But running was becoming impossible. Zoe felt pavement turning soft under her feet. It rolled and squirmed like cement-colored taffy until deep cracks formed. The fissures split, pulling back like lips to reveal rows of gigantic, needle-sharp teeth. The great mouth moved down the street and, one by one, swallowed everyone in the crowd ahead of her. Each person disappeared without a sound. Zoe turned around hoping to find somewhere else to run. The dog pack waited at the end of the block for anyone foolish enough to try to double back.

  Zoe broke from the group and started across the street. The mouth swam toward her, gaping wide, showing its black gullet. As she ran, she heard her mother calling, but when she tried to answer she slipped and the needle teeth rose like a wave from the pavement and swallowed her.

  “Zoe!” yelled her mother, shaking her. She came awake with a start, her mother standing over her. “Your alarm’s been going off for fifteen minutes. You’ll be late for school.”

  Zoe blinked, her eyes crusty from deep sleep. She rubbed her face, trying to force the image of the pavement’s teeth from her brain. Her mother balanced on one leg in her doorway, pulling on her high heels.

  “I might to be late tonight,” she said. “I have a couple of interviews, then I’m meeting with the lawyers. There’s a frozen pizza in the fridge if you get hungry.”