Strays

By Clark Boyd

The blessed coffee cup is almost to my lips when the call comes.

“Linda, 10-91a. Fifth and Columbus.”

Carla. She’s one of the few cops open-minded enough to take me and my work seriously. 10-91a is the code for “stray animal.” In my case, though, it means something different. Carla leaves her mic on so I can listen to the ambient noise from the scene. Buried in the static, I hear it—the long, low wail of a distressed spirit. Banshee.

“Roger. Probably rabid.”

It’s my way of alerting Carla we could be dealing with an especially troubled entity. For everyone’s safety, she’ll secure the area.

“I’ll be there in 20.”

I put down the coffee cup and grab my car keys.

While I carry a police radio, my office is tucked away in a forgotten corner of the sanitation department. The cops call it the “Casper Disposal Unit.” Hilarious, but accurate. The plaque on my desk says, “Senior Garbage Technician,” but the boys in blue have their own pet names for me: Ghoul Girl. Ghostess Hostess. Spirit Sister. Carla’s different, though. For Christmas last year, as a gag gift, she gave me business cards that read “Linda Patterson, Spectral Liaison.” We laughed, but I like the sound of it.

Thirty stoplights and three middle fingers later, I park behind the barricades on Columbus. As I approach the scene, the temperature drops, and I detect a whiff of the ethereal—a cocktail of ancient perfume, cheap vodka, and Salisbury steak. It’s hard to tell what smell is coming from which plane of existence—to separate the stench of spirit from spirits, as it were—because the haunted object is a city garbage truck.

Carla smiles and lifts the tape for me. “Driver said it appeared in the passenger’s seat. He panicked, hit the curb, and flipped it.”

I glance at the overturned truck. It’s leaking a slimy trail of ectoplasm and trash juices.

“Hey, Spectral Liaison Patterson. You want some Tiger Balm? For the smell?”

“No, thanks.” Carla’s a peach, but she has no idea how ineffective that stuff is for me.

“Why a garbage truck?” she asks.

“No idea. The ‘whys’ aren’t exactly my area of expertise.”

She nods. “Maybe we can grab a coffee when this is finished?”

“Sounds good.”

I’m flushed and distracted by thoughts of Carla and coffee. But I have work to do, so I pause and take a deep breath. I notice the gawkers gathered behind the police tape. As far as they’re concerned, the trash truck is just another barely Instagram-worthy entertainment. I scan the onlookers’ faces and pick out a mother and daughter. The little girl points and laughs at some misshapen toys that escaped when the truck flipped.

“Daddy would love this,” she tells her mother. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know, sweetie, I haven’t heard from him all evening.”

The mother quickly checks her phone, then bites her lip.

The exchange gets me thinking about my own father. He spent years trying to talk me out of being me. “I’m not telling you to deny your ability,” he’d say, “but don’t embrace it either. It scares people.” When I was younger, I agreed with him. I didn’t want such a macabre power to define me. Aren’t most of us weird enough already without being able to talk to the dead? Then I realized how much the city would pay a person with my particular set of skills. Which reminds me, it’s time for this Senior Garbage Technician to earn her salary.

I kneel down and take off my gloves. When I touch the truck, the spirit’s vibrations creep up my arm, cold, like an anesthetic. Then I hear her voice in my head. It’s best to just listen. Many of them are desperate for a sympathetic ear. Any ear. I’ve heard their stories. The dead are as lost as the rest of us.

A cocky young cop sidles up and momentarily breaks my concentration.

“Why don’t you start the crusher? Just wring Slimer right out of the truck, you know?”

Humans make this job unbearable sometimes. “It’s a banshee, moron, not a friggin’ dishtowel.”

He shrugs and moves away.

Good thing. Banshees hate loud noises, and if one hears something screeching, she will automatically try to out-screech it. And then all of us on this block, including wringer-boy, will need hearing aids and psychotherapy for the rest of our terror-shortened lives.

I get back to the task at hand.

“My husband, the lying cheat,” the banshee groans.

As the spirit’s all-too-familiar story unfolds, I drift away in thought. Why do the dead haunt the objects and the places that they do? But, I don’t get paid to understand. My job isn’t to trap them, exterminate them, or bring them eternal peace. All that’s above my pay grade. I’m here to coax strays out of city property.

With her kind, it’s never that easy. Sure, they moan about their corporeal and ethereal lives like all spirits. But, in the end, I know she’s talking for a specific reason—she needs to announce an imminent death. That’s what banshees do. Someone here is about to lose a person close to them. I hazard a quick glance at Carla, who is busy directing traffic in the intersection. What if…?

For another hour, I push that dark thought away and listen as the banshee describes her husband’s lecherous life and her own gruesome end. When she finishes, I offer my sympathies. Then, after some give and take, I convince her to move into a flophouse across the street.

As her pale form begins to drift away, the unbearable tension in my neck and shoulders lifts a little bit. But then she turns back and bends her ragged mouth toward my ear. Her deadly secret comes on an icy vapor trail.

Coffee with Carla will have to wait.

I wipe away a tear and approach the mother and daughter behind the tape.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Clark Boyd lives and works in the Netherlands. His fiction and essays have appeared in High Shelf Press, The Esthetic Apostle, Flumes, Slackjaw, and various DBND horror anthologies. He’s currently at work on a book about windmills. Or cheese. Maybe both.

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