“Can they be salvaged?”
“Come on, just one booby.”
“I’m looking for a transcript of an interview with someone named Luke Piper.”
“Oh, that,” Isaac said. “All I’m saying is just a tit. What harm can come of it? I’m a dead dude.”
“Will you tell me about the transcript?”
“I’ll tell you everything I know about the transcript.”
Abby considered this a moment, then pulled aside her nightgown to reveal her left breast.
“Oooooh…” Isaac moaned, sounding like a real ghost for the first time. “That’s what I’m talking about. Touch the nipple, make it hard.”
Outside the window the ghost rose and fell as if mounted on a spring, slowly, then faster, his right hand pumping what Abby assumed was his small, ghostly prick. Isaac grabbed the sill with his other hand, moaned, grunted, and ejaculated some phosphorescent ghost semen onto the foot of the bed. Revolted, Abby tucked her breast back in and crawled away from the ectoplasmic splooge.
“Gross! Why’d you have to do that?”
“Don’t tell me you weren’t at least a little bit turned on, baby,” Isaac said. “Seriously—how many times did you come?”
“Jesus! Now you can at least tell me about the transcript.”
“As promised, here’s everything I know about the transcript. I know absolutely nothing about the transcript. You’ll need to talk to the archivist. Besides, rubbing one off isn’t the real reason for this supernatural visit or whatever you want to call it. I’m supposed to get all Hamlet’s dad on you. You’ve got to get out of here, Abby, before you get trapped in the play. You’re getting sucked into a loop. Your selfhood, it’s in superposition.”
“But the archives.”
Isaac sighed. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. And thanks for the flash.”
“Get out of here,” Abby said.
“Suit yourself, baby,” Isaac said, “You know you liked it.”
The spirit dispersed in the wind.
The next morning Abby passed through halls decorated with eye-violating phantasy art. In each one a muscled warrior defended a barely dressed maiden from some sort of dragon or monster or many-tentacled space- being. On closer look Abby recognized the maidens as Kylee, and the buff heroes as Isaac, whose bespectacled and combed-over head topped each rippling, sweaty torso.
A Federico stopped alongside her. “They were commissioned,” he said. “Isaac hired some of the most acclaimed science-fiction-and-fantasy cover artists of his day and presented these great works of art as gifts to Kylee.”
“I think the period-appropriate word to describe these paintings is ‘rad,’” Abby said.
“You’d be one to know. I know very little about those times.” The Federico stiffened and gazed into the middle distance as if he’d heard something alarming. “Oh dear. In the billiard room? Oh dear, oh dear.” He scurried up a spiral staircase with Abby trailing behind. “You don’t need to see this,” Federico called over his shoulder. “Really. You’d best be enjoying complimentary refreshments in the dining room.”
Abby kept on his heels, coming to a room where a crowd of Federicos had gathered. Kneeling on the floor, Kylee jaggedly wailed and lamented. Abby pushed her way to the front of the scrum. On a billiard table with balls frozen midgame lay the prone body of a Federico, his head ringed with sleeping pills.
“He’s dead,” a Federico whispered beside her, and several other Federicos, mostly the younger ones, began softly to weep. Kylee clawed the floor, blubbering and writhing. An older Federico came to the lady’s side and carefully lifted her, directing her to an overstuffed chair.
Kylee blubbered, “Did he leave a note? Did he at least say why he did it?”
The suicide note was conveniently located in the body’s left hand. One of the Federicos retrieved it and read it aloud. “
Shoulders heaved, palms rubbed backs in consolation, and a nearby box of tissues was quickly depleted. To be polite, Abby pretended to sniffle. It all felt disingenuously theatrical. Kylee fainted and was borne away by six sobbing Federicos. When they were gone the remaining Federicos cleared their throats and started discussing various household tasks and funeral arrangements. Abby tapped an older Federico on the shoulder.
“I’m really sorry for your loss,” she said.
The older Federico shrugged. “We’ll miss him, I guess, but there’s always another Federico to take his place.”
“I need to talk to the Federico who was supposed to show me to the archives.”
“I’m afraid you’re out of luck. That was the Federico who just offed himself.”
“Is there another Federico who can—”
The older Federico scowled. “We’ve got a family tragedy on our hands here, miss. The archives are the least of our problems. If you want to make yourself useful, you’ll join the funeral party at noon. We’ll drop a dress and a veil off at your room and convene in the great hall.”
The Federicos, dressed in black suits and ties, gathered in hushed clumps of conversation. Kylee sat in a creaking wheelchair, clad in a black dress and superwide hat with a veil. In the center of the room, on a couple of collapsible luggage stands, sat a varnished cedar coffin. Six older, pallbearing Federicos hoisted it on their shoulders and solemnly bore it out the front doors. Kylee followed immediately behind, pushed by a young Federico. The Federico children trailed, holding the hands of their older brothers. Abby merged into the procession, which heaved along a path through the posturban woods. Two Federicos who’d been bred with a special gene for bagpipe prowess played a mournful dirge. The music was elegiac, the sky overcast, the wind a union of pine and sea salt. The party progressed about a mile up the path, hemmed in on either side by swirling conifers, then turned onto a path carpeted with rust-colored fir needles. Winding around the stumps and nurse logs of the cool forest they entered a patch of salmonberry and huckleberry bushes, still wet with morning dew. They proceeded single file now, a black, melancholy swath through the greenery. At last they came to a clearing of sorts. Abby crept through the gaggle to glimpse the proceedings.
They were in a vast cemetery, maybe forty or fifty acres square. Hundreds of headstones marked the graves that dotted the anally maintained grassy expanse. Abby looked to her feet and read the one nearest.
Nearby, a couple of Federicos in mud-spattered overalls began lowering the coffin into a freshly dug grave. Kylee sat graveside in her chair, honking into a lacy black handkerchief. Another Federico had taken the role of minister, reading the ashes-to-ashes stuff. In groups of twos and threes the surviving Federicos clutched each other, wiping tears, pressing their foreheads together in the solidarity of grief. Abby glanced at other headstones. Federico #301, Federico #425, Federico #16, Federico #27, Federico #153. Each of them a beloved friend. After the coffin came to rest the survivors took turns tossing in shovels full of dirt until the cavity in the earth was filled. A light mist began to coalesce. A Federico unfolded a black and Gothic umbrella over Kylee’s head as they made their way from the cemetery to the path. As they proceeded a Federico sidled up to Abby and explained how the numbering system worked.
“We’ve all got a number, sure, but the number changes based on deaths. So if Federico #1 dies, all the other Federicos move up a number. So #2 becomes the new #1, #3 becomes the new #2, and so on. That way there are no gaps in our numbers. Now it looks like I’m going to be Federico #178.”
“What about the little Federicos?” Abby asked. “How often do they arrive?”
“Every couple months or so. We’ll put in an order for a new Federico now that we’ve lost one. When the boat shows up with a new Federico, it’s quite a big deal. Maybe you’ll be here to see the arrival of a new little one.”
