#330: More Untold Tales of the Ghost Taxis: Road To Nowhere
Previously: #329: Untold Tales of the Ghost Taxis
Last Friday:
The drivers were assembled in the main garage, huddled round a brazier in a tight sullen knot; brooding and plotting. Roswell saw them glance guiltily over at her as they were washed in the glare of her headlights.
She pulled the yellow and grey cab into bay 13 and parked. “What’s this?” she asked as she switched off the engine and folded the keys under the sun-visor. “A union meeting?”
“Maybe it is,” replied Korvo defiantly. “We’re allowed to talk.”
“Just chatting,” Myrna told Roswell guiltily. “We was just chatting. Friendly like. About… stuff.”
Rosalind ‘Roswell’ Fellkirk looked round at the circle of drivers illuminated by the brazier’s flames. “Stuff,” she repeated. “Stuff like what?”
The taxi men shuffled uncomfortably. None of them would meet her eyes. Korvo tried, but even he had to shrug and turn away. The half dozen others looked sheepish and frightened. Some of them flickered almost to transparency in their nervousness.
“Stuff like what happened to Francine and Larry and Morton?” Roswell prompted them. “You’re discussing whether to quit.”
“No,” denied Myrna, shaking her head. “Of course not.”
“Yes,” admitted Korvo. “Of course we are, Roswell. Why would we not?”
“It is not that we want to,” Levi interrupted. He showed he was nervous by pressing his hands to his chest where the old bullet holes still gaped beneath his checkered shirt. “We’re all grateful for… for the chance to be here. But we have to think again now. Now that…”
“Now that my father’s dead?” challenged Roswell. “Say what you mean.”
“What we mean is this then,” Korvo told her. “While Mister Fellkirk was alive and running this joint we had a chance. Maybe not much of a chance but we had one. Since he got sick things have gotten worse. We all pretended to be shocked when Francine and Larry and Morton took other deals, but really all of us wondered whether they were the smart ones.”
“The deal they took wasn’t smart,” Roswell insisted.
“They don’t got to worry about getting fired no more,” Myrna noted.
“They don’t have to worry about anything any more because they don’t get to make choices anymore.”
Korvo shook his head. “I’m not saying we take the deal that they took,” he argued. “Just that this job ain’t what it was. And this place ain’t a haven now, if it ever was.”
Roswell’s temper flared. “You were happy to take the job when you died,” she snapped at the cabbie. “When you were a lost soul, unable to get free of this polluted psychosphere. You were quick enough to sign on as a driver and hope that one day you’d find the right route to the light.”
Korvo took a step back. “Yeah, but I’ve not found it, have I? And when this firm’s under new management what happens to our contracts then? The new management have a nasty way with contracts.”
“There is no new management!” Roswell almost shouted. “It’s business as usual, right? We just do the job, take the fares, drive the cabs.”
But there was something on the drivers’ faces, something they weren’t telling her. “What?” she demanded of the Ghost Taxi crew. “What is it?”
Myrna glanced by reflex towards the office complex and the living quarters beyond.
Roswell started to run.
***
Dancer smiled at Nats. “So, did you like it?”
Bill Reed, the telekinetic superhero newly returned to the Lair Legion was reluctant to dampen his companion’s enthusiasm, but he couldn’t suppress a shudder. “It’s not what I’ve gotten used to,” he admitted. “I guess I’ve got rather spoiled.”
The attractive brunette in the danskin shrugged. “No problem, Bill. We’ll just keep trying until we get it right.”
Nats nodded. “I know I’ll find the right place eventually,” he assured her.
Dancer smiled. “You know, if anyone had come in on this conversation just now they’d have no idea that we were apartment-hunting for you.”
“I guess all that time lodging in the luxury of the Lair Mansion where the only problems were the occasional lab explosion, supervillain attacks, and Flapjack’s hidden videocameras makes it difficult to get excited about a des. res. w. half bathroom that turns out to be a damp shoebox with an opening down to the sewer system.”
“Those rats seemed quite friendly though,” Dancer pointed out optimistically. “And the rent was in your price bracket.”
Nats sighed. “I have so got to get a job that doesn’t involve me delivering things for Miss Framlicker. I was a Hell-Lord dammit. I had a palace. People delivered things to me. Mostly threats from the other Hell-Lords, but still, I got deliveries.”
“Hey, it takes a while to put your life back together after an overseas trip. Sarah and I are still trying to find all our missing shoes after the Lair Legion Musical gig in Paris ended. And there’s always one thing you forgot to empty out of the fridge before you left that’s now green, furry, and crawling. Fortunately Lisa’s cat caught and ate it.”
“So you’ll never know exactly what it was anyhow.”
“Not necessarily. The cat managed to sick it up on Vizh’s bed so now Al B. and the EEE people are investigating a possible new bioweapon and Ebony is thinking of organising an exorcism. For the furry thing, I mean. Nobody’s saying that Vizh’s bed need exorcising. Except for that one website.”
Nats felt himself in danger of vanishing into the spiral of chaos that was Dancer’s life. “Perhaps we should take a look at the last two apartments on the list. I mean, how much worse can they be than that last one?”
“Let’s go and see that one in Manny’s old building that says it requires ‘some modification and fixing up’ then, shall we?” Dancer asked brightly.
Nats shuddered again.
***
Mr Testament and Mr Mortlack wore traditional undertaker’s garb, with long black frock coats and top hats with a black silk ribbon around them. They were in the front office measuring Arthur Fellkirk for his coffin.
Roswell burst in on them with clenched fists and a hot fury. “Get away from him! Get back!”
Mr Testament and Mr Mortlack didn’t move from the body. “Our deepest condolences and sympathies,” Mr Testament said. “A great loss.”
“I said back away,” Roswell insisted.
The morticians from the Westminster Necropolis Company still didn’t flinch. In fact they may not even have breathed. “The dear departed will require a shroud and a casket,” Mr Mortlack declared. “He needs to be disposed of properly.”
Roswell tried to push Mr Testament away from her father’s corpse. Her hands were chilled where they touched the undertaker’s body.
“We will take care of all proper arrangements,” Mr Testament promised. “It is only fitting that we should offer our services to the employees of a company which now falls into the WNC group.”
“This is not your company!” Roswell almost shrieked. “The Ghost Taxis are independent. Always have been, since the charter was sealed. We don’t work for anybody.”
“The charter requires there to be a Manager,” Mr Mortlack pointed out, “a person of a certain calibre, with certain special qualities. One who can manage the considerable karmic debts that the company accumulates. That is one of the key provisions of the deal struck by the sorcerer supreme all those years ago. In the absence of any other candidate, the only manager available is supplied by the Westminster Necropolis Company.”
“You get out of our rank. Get out of our home. Get away from my father!”
“He made this company his life’s work,” Mr Testament eulogised. “Now it is for us to carry forward that work on his behalf. The assets of the company will be put to good use.”
Roswell had a canny idea that those assets included all the spirits that had signed up as staff, and maybe the few mortals that had taken jobs driving the Ghost Cabs too.
The undertakers ignored her protests and attempts to stop her and continued measuring her father. “Stop it!” she shouted, hammering uselessly at the morticians until her hands were almost frozen. “Don’t take him.”
“He too is an asset,” advised Mr Mortlake.
“Better an asset than as asshole,” growled a newcomer at the door. Roswell got the impression of a pile of high wicker baskets stacked between huge hairy biceps. Then the laundry containers were laid on the ground and a perky young woman dodged around the large delivery man.
“You okay, Ros?” asked Ruby Waver of Mr Li’s Laundry of Doom.
“This is no concern of yours,” Mr Testament told the young woman. “Go about your business.”
“We’re making this our business,” insisted Tanner, the hairy delivery man who had been behind the baskets. “Because we’re concerned.”
“Mr Li has no authority here,” Mr Mortlake scolded.
“Well, you can always go complain to him about our behaviour,” Tanner offered, cracking his knuckles. “I’d really like to see that. Or you can crawl back where you came from while you still have all your limbs attached. Your pick.”
“They’re trying to take father,” Roswell told Ruby. “They want the Ghost Taxis.”
“But not today,” Tanner insisted. “Not without taking their teeth home in a doggie bag.” He pointed to the baskets. “By the way, Shadrack says some of those overalls are getting a little worn. You might want to ask the new manager about getting some new ones.”
“This firm is now under Westminster Necropolis Company Management,” Mr Testament declared.
“Not yet, buster,” Ruby told him. “Now go before Tanner gets blood all over the laundry again. You’ll just have to wait for your big takeover.”
“The Westminster Necropolis Company is used to waiting,” Mr Mortlake promised. “Everybody comes to us in time.”
***
“Are you okay, Bill?” Dancer asked solicitously.
“I will be until Hatty gets the bill for damages,” Nats sighed. “I mean, if you’re advertising a spare room don’t you think it would be a good idea to put in the ad, P.S. My son is the supervillain Atomic Bumpkin and when you meet him in the hallway he’s going to think the Lair Legion has come to take him in, inbred idiot that he is’?”
“Hey, it’s not like I didn’t help funnel that radioactive cloud into the freezer so you could launch it into orbit,” the Probability Dancer pointed out. “It’s just a shame you had to hurl it out through the roof of the spare room. I thought that was quite nicely decorated.”
“I have a headache,” Bill Reed complained. “Redirecting a nuclear blast does that to me.”
“Yeah, me too,” agreed Dancer, “Plus I need to be getting off, because I’ve got a date tonight. Elvis. But not the real Elvis. Well, I’m sure he’s real, because otherwise he’d just be an imaginary Elvis, and I’m pretty sure we’d all spot those if they ever attacked again. He’s just called Elvis, and he’s really cute. I think he might be the One.”
“You want me to fly you back to the Mansion or the Bean and Donut?”
“Nah. I’ll hitch,” Dancer grinned. She held her hand out and waved at a passing truck. “Mr Carnstein! Hi!”
Bill Reed watched Dancer disappear into the traffic chatting animatedly with the lorry driver about his kids going to college. It began to rain.
“Great,” Nats sighed. Telekinetically deflecting rain only made his headache worse. “Maybe I’ll just slink along in the rain getting soaked, then, and think about how much my life isn’t going anywhere.”
He got half a block before the rain managed to find a way inside his collar and down his neck.
“%$£&* this,” the irritated flying phenomena growled at last. He held out his hand to a passing cab. “Taxi!”
***
“What did you do?” Tanner demanded of his smirking co-worker Ruby Waver.
“Do?” Ruby asked innocently. “Why would I do anything? What could I do?”
“Well,” the gruff hairy lycanthrope considered as he bundled piles of newly-pressed washing into Mr Lye’s Laundry sacks, “you might do something to help out your old friend Rosalind Fellkirk because she’s getting hassled by the Westminster Necropolis Company now her dad’s gone, even though the boss says its none of our damn business. You could have gone to Callie and got her to pull a few threads on that incredibly scary loom of hers so that something unlikely happens and a coupled of strands get twisted together that wouldn’t otherwise. And that usually ends up with you in deep trouble and me having to rip something’s head off.”
“So,” breezed Ruby, smiling sweetly, “business as usual.”
***
Rain ran in great runnels down the windows of the cab as it navigated through the crowded streets of Paradopolis. The heavy spray and heavier downpour obscured the view out of the steamed windows, but Nats was pretty sure that on several occasions his driver had cut across junctions against a red light, and on at least one occasion she’d driven straight through an oncoming vehicle.
“Excuse me…” Bill ventured, leaning forward to the girl in the driving seat. “Hello?”
“What?” she answered brusquely. Her curly ginger hair was coiled up under a cap and her body language wasn’t set to friendly.
“When I asked you to get me to Parody Island by the quickest route I wasn’t meaning against red lights and through other cars,” Nats pointed out. He winced as the vehicle veered right through the front of one of the new monorail pylons and emerged on the other side without harm. “Or though, you know, buildings,” he added.
The vehicle screeched to a halt. The driver turned round to look at him for the first time. “You can see that?” Roswell checked. “You can see when we’re shadow-phasing?”
Bill hesitated. “Have you been crying?” he asked the driver as he saw her blotchy face and reddened eyes.
Roswell ignored his question and stabbed his hand with a biro.
“Ouch!” complained Nats, sucking his palm. “What was that for?”
“You’re alive,” Roswell admitted. She accelerated again, sending Bill hard into the spring-worn back seat. “I thought you might be one of the recently dead, wandering the city looking for the exit ramps. We do sometimes come across new drivers that way, but not so much since they closed the Paradise Turnpike.” She glared at him. “So what are you? Whackjob Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu cultist? One of Morgosa’s toy-boys? A guy who got on the wrong end of one of Damien Soulshredder’s deals? Oh, please tell me that you’re not from Infernal Revenue, because I swear the forms must have been lot in the post.”
“Did I take another head injury?” checked Nats, wincing as the yellow cab swerved right through a semi-rig. “Or maybe I’ve been drugged again. I’m about due.”
“I have a wrench underneath this seat,” Roswell warned.
“Look, I just want to know how you’re – look out for that bus! – managing to drive through solid objects without causing any harm. Except to my laundry bill.”
“Ghost taxi,” his driver answered promptly. “You wouldn’t have seen me to hail me if you hadn’t needed one. Or unless you were more than you seem.” She suddenly squealed the car into a bootlegger turn then halted mid-traffic. The oncoming vehicles drove through the cab without halting or even noticing. “You’re not with the Westminster Necropolis Company, are you?” Roswell demanded, reaching for her wrench.
“The WNC? No way!” Bill Reed denied. “The Lair Legion battles guys like that. In fact we’ve stopped the WNC a couple of times when they were up to nasty things. Especially that Ultimate Lair Legion dealie that their boss-lady Symmetry tried to pull that one time.”
Roswell’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You’re a superhero? You?”
Nats glanced down at his faded EEE jacket and his somewhat-grubby orange and black spandex shirt. “Sure, why not? I’m Nats. The flying phenomenon? The wise-cracking warrior?” Roswell’s face remained blank. “The guy who used to have a stick?” he ventured.
“You have a strong affinity with necromancy,” the woman said.
“Yeah, I hear that a lot,” admitted Bill. “See, there was this alien psychostave, and a whole big thing about Dead Galaxies, and then this mix-up where I became like this temporary Hell-Lord, and then I got dropped in a sex-jewel in an alternate dimension that didn’t exist. It could have happened to anyone.”
“You have a strong affinity with necromancy,” Roswell said.
“Um, sometimes,” agreed Nats. “I can see ghosts and stuff, and sometimes I can use my telekinesis on them.” He winced as a cement truck drove through him. “Um, could I go to the Lair Mansion now?” he asked plaintively.
Roswell rummaged in her pocket and pulled out a thick wedge of closely-typed papers. She reluctantly peeled off the back sheet and gave it to Nats.
“What’s this for?” he asked.
“I want an autograph,” the girl replied. “Not every day I get a big-name superhero in my cab. And to think I wouldn’t even have had to do this shift if Lukas hasn’t defected to the dark side. Just sign at the bottom there, then give me five dollars.”
Bill frowned. “This looks more like a contract to me,” he noted. “And I’ve learned to be a bit wary of…”
Roswell blinked back tears. “Just sign the damn paper, will you? You’re supposed to be a bloody superhero, saving the day, aren’t you? So just give me your autograph and five dollars and shut the hell up!”
“I’m not signing my soul away again,” Bill warned.
“You’re not selling anything, I promise,” Roswell told him. “Cross my heart and hope to die at last. Please, just sign.”
Nats noticed that it has got very dark outside. He could no longer see traffic, or street lights. It was getting cold.
“Quickly,” Roswell told him, and there was a hint of fear in her voice. “They know what’s happening.”
Sometimes a hero has to go with his gut. Sometimes he just doesn’t want the bother of figuring it out. Bill Reed scribbled his name on the paper. “Er, I only have three dollars twenty-two cents in change,” he admitted apologetically. “I was going to stick Yuki with the cab fare when we got to the Mansion.”
“Three dollars twenty-two cents is fine,” agreed Roswell through clenched teeth. “Give it to me now. Sold!”
“Sold?” Nats puzzled. “What’s sold?”
Roswell handed him the cab keys. “You are now the proud owner of the Parodiopolis Ghost Taxi Company,” she told him. “Congratulations.”
Then the darkness swooped in and enveloped them.
***
The gaunt man in funereal garb removed his top hat and bowed to the woman in black. “Madame Symmetry, we have a problem.”
The chairwoman of the Westminster Necropolis Company laid down her quill pen and raised one perfect eyebrow at Mr Wormcallow.
“The purchase of the Ghost Taxis,” the pale undertaker continued. “Rosalind Fellkirk has found another buyer. One who meets the criteria of the charter.”
“Has she indeed? An enterprising child.”
“She gave him the papers we had prepared to transfer the ownership to us, but substituted his name for ours.”
Madame Symmetry seemed mildly amused. “She clearly didn’t understand all of the small print then, or else she’s very eager to be indentured to this new owner for the rest of eternity. But doubtless she will find out later what she has bound herself to.”
Mr Wormcallow was puzzled. “You are not angry, Madame, that our hostile takeover has been thwarted in such a manner?”
Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity was not angry. Her duties and scope had expanded considerably since she had been appointed to the cosmic office of Shaper of Worlds, responsible for new plot stands in the Parodyverse. “Not at all, Mr Wormcallow,” she replied, picking up her pen again. “We’ve achieved a suitable beginning, and whatever happens next will open up… possibilities.”
“You haven’t asked the name of the new owner,” the mortician noted.
“I have not,” agreed Symmetry. “Is it by any chance… William Reed? Nats, of the Lair Legion?”
“Yes, madame. It is.”
Symmetry dipped her pen into her inkwell and signed the papers she’d been preparing. “Send this to the Hell-Lord Sage Grimpenghast. It sells him all the Ghost Taxi Company debts we’ve accumulated. He can be responsible for getting what he’s owed back from the firm’s new owner. And send this to the new sorcerer supreme, to warn him that he’s going to have to arbitrate what could turn out to be a major interdimensional incident, complete with invading demon hordes and a full infernal rift.”
“Madame, Xander the Improbable is still missing. Our best attempts to locate him have been… unfortunate.”
“Yes, I know that. I’m nominating an acting Sorcerer Supreme until he appears.”
“Very good madame.
“Of course, that could be quite a dangerous role for the new incumbent, given the number of people gunning for any sorcerer supreme, and given that Xander himself felt it best to be absent for what is happening just now.” Symmetry stamped the papers with her seal of office. “I look forward to hearing how young Mr De Soth reacts to the news.”
***
Today:
“Hey, listen up everybody!” came the excited call from the ginger girl behind the caller’s booth security screens. “Bill Reed’s arrived! Everybody come and see the new boss!”
The Librarian and Vinnie de Soth turned to look at their companion. “Something you want to share with us?” Lee Bookman asked the flying phenomenon.
“Well…” Nats admitted. “You know how after an immense near-death trauma with a massive miasma of evil you can sometimes get memory blackouts and end up passing out on the doorstep of your ex-girlfriend…?”
“No,” said the Librarian.
“I usually just get hives,” confessed Vinnie.
“And then when you see the girl who made you sign this contract to own this weird Ghost Taxi company it all just pops back into your head, like a sudden plot recap?”
“This is the new boss?” Korvo asked, limping over to examine Nats carefully. “Him? He don’t look like much.” He wiped a smudge of engine grease from his face and smiled at Bill hopefully. “Can I get a raise?”
“This is all just one big misunderstanding,” Nats explained. “See…”
“He’s the boss alright,” Myrna the bookings girl snorted. “Just like old man Felkirk when he got asked that question.”
“No, I mean I’m not really the owner of this place,” Bill called out urgently. “I was out looking for a job and an apartment, not the latest spooky weird status quo setup. I’m not your boss. I don’t own the company.”
Things went very quiet. Suddenly everybody in the dim garage was looking at Nats, Lee, and Vinnie.
“You’re not the boss?” Levi said dangerously. “You’re rejecting us. Leaving us to our fates.”
“You can’t!” shouted Roswell, storming out of the caller’s booth. “Have you forgotten last night?”
“You didn’t have sex with him, did you?” worried the Librarian.
“We nearly got consumed by a Wasting sent by the Westminster Necropolis Company,” the ginger-haired girl reported. “But in the end we were protected by the Charter, because Bill Reed here was eligible to buy my father’s firm and he did so. Sure, I had to sell him the thing that means more to me than everything else in the world for three dollars and change, but at least it was safe!”
“Until now,” realised Vinnie. “Because the Ghost Taxi Co. has just been put back into play.”
“But at least you didn’t have sex with Nats, miss,” the Librarian comforted her.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Nats promised Roswell. “If I had any idea what was going on…”
“It’s the end of the world,” Vinnie pointed out.
“Hey!” Nats was offended. “Usually people know me for more than an hour before they start dissing me. Well, actually not, but still…”
“No,” Vinnie corrected him. The young occultist pointed to the three morticians gliding across the garage towards them. “It is the end of the world.”
“Good evening, Mister Reed,” Mr Wormcallow said, assaying a small bow. “May I present my associates Mr Testament and Mr Mortlack? I am given to understand that you have renounced your claim to the Parodiopolis Ghost Taxi Company and that the establishment is therefore available for purchase, after due debts have been assigned to the principal creditor.”
“No!” shouted Roswell. “That’s not…”
Choking noises came from Vinnie’s direction as he opened the letter addressed to him. “Are you quite alright, Mr De Soth?” enquired the Librarian. “Do you need a glass of water? An oxygen tank?”
“Principal creditor?” questioned Nats. “Plot sense is tingling here. What am I missing? I mean what else am I missing?”
“Oh, that would be me, Mr Reed,” noted the ascetic scholar in the skull-cap. Sage Grimpenghast, Master of Ignorance and Teacher of Deceptions, Hell-Lord of the Abyssal Plains, shifted into view. “I have acquired this company’s debts. Miss Felkirk and most of the employees now belong to me.”
“Sage Grimpenghast,” recognised the Librarian. “Oh, this day just gets better and better.
Roswell had gone as white as a ghost herself. “A Hell-Lord…” she whispered.
“You don’t take anyone, Grimpenghast,” Nats declared. “Only over my dead… er, you don’t take anyone.”
“Nats, you are aware of the difference in power levels between you and the greatest of the current Hell-Lords, aren’t you?” Lee Bookman muttered to the flying phenomenon. “And you’re recalling that he’s hated you for years and would like nothing better than an excuse to smear your screaming soul across the depths of his domain of eternal torment?”
“Thanks for reminding me of that, Librarian,” gulped Nats. “Fancy me forgetting it.”
“Once Mr Reed revoked the contract it was bound to come to this,” Mr Wormcallow noted. “Now we must merely dispose of the remains. And then the Westminster Necropolis Company has an ambitious new business plan for the Ghost Taxis.”
“I bet you do,” muttered Vinnie De Soth, stepping forward. He was trying not to tremble. “But I’m guessing that Nats is rethinking whether he wants to claim ownership of the company. Am I right, Nats? Nats?”
“Ow!” complained the flying phenomenon as Vinnie kicked him on the shin. “Yes. I’ve changed my mind. Sign me up. Nobody takes my company from me without a fight. Preferably a fight after I’ve put in calls to Donar, Dancer, and Finny.”
“You have already revoked your claim,” Sage Grimpenghast pointed out, advancing.
“Well, that’s in dispute, isn’t it?” Vinnie challenged. His voice hardly broke at all. “That’s why there has to be arbitration, from the sorcerer supreme.”
“Xander is absent,” noted Grimpenghast with some satisfaction. “And therefore we…”
He halted as Vinnie held out Symmetry’s note. “Hi,” the acting sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse called.
“And how do you intend to arbitrate?” Mr Wormcallow demanded. “How can these conflicting claims be decided upon, in any way that you could enforce?”
Vinnie glanced at Nats and the Librarian. “The only possible way, of course,” he announced with growing authority. “by Scavenger Hunt.”
***
Next Time: It’s Ghost Taxis vs Undead Hearses in a treasure hunt through the occult corners of the Parodyverse with everything to play for! And if you can’t work out where Nats might find people foolish enough to play passenger in those cabs as they face sanity-mangling soul-crushing supernatural evil then you’ve not read your Who’s Who of the Lair Legion carefully enough. Watch out for Yet More Untold Tales of the Ghost Taxis: Fare Play, lumbering out of the shadows to a Parodyverse near you!
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Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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