The Girl On Victoria Road: A Tim Reaper Novel Read online

  The Girl On Victoria Road

  A Tim Reaper Novel

  Sean Cummings

  Back Alley Books

  The Girl On Victoria Road – A Tim Reaper Novel

  Copyright © 2017 Sean Cummings

  Sean Cummings asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  ISBN 978-0-9958441-0-0

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means – by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without prior written permission.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Also by Sean Cummings

  Acknowledgements

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  16. Chapter 16

  17. Chapter 17

  18. Chapter 18

  19. Chapter 19

  20. Chapter 20

  21. Chapter 21

  22. Chapter 22

  23. Chapter 23

  24. Chapter 24

  25. Epilogue

  Don't Mess with Jia Song

  About the Author

  Also by Sean Cummings

  Tim Reaper Series

  IMMORTAL REMAINS

  Jia Song Series

  #GRUDGEGIRL

  For Teens

  Poltergeeks (Shadowcull Series Book One)

  Student Bodies (Shadowcull Series Book Two)

  Straight Up Urban Fantasy

  Marshall Conrad – A Superhero Tale

  Shade Fright – A Valerie Stevens Novel

  Funeral Pallor – A Valerie Stevens Novel

  Post-Apocalyptic

  The North – A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

  For Children:

  To Catch a Cat Thief

  Visit Sean online at:

  sean-cummings.ca

  Twitter: @saskatoonauthor

  Facebook

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  PSST! Want a free copy of one of my books? Post an honest review on your Facebook page (yes, even if you thought my book was terrible) go to my Facebook Author Page and pop the link on the wall! I’ll send you a MOBI or EPUB copy of one of my books! -or- CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER & GET A FREE COPY OF ONE OF MY BOOKS!

  For Cheryl.

  Acknowledgements

  Tim Reaper is back and I hope to heck you all love this one as much as the first book in the series. It was a challenge to write because, for some weird reason, I suffered from writer’s block all through 2016 If you’re a writer, you know how frustrating it is.

  What sustained me are two things. My wife’s steadfast belief in me. She never wavered. She always encouraged me to press on and that’s what I did. Finally. The second thing that sustained me was the fact that book one, Immortal Remains, sold like crazy. (And is still a very good seller.) That it got mostly five-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. That it was in the top 100 for dark fantasy for six months. That’s a big deal to me. It also helped that I was getting fan mail. People wanted more Tim Reaper. People wanted to learn more about Sparks, as well. (And the good detective appears in nearly every single chapter of this new book so we get to learn a bit more about her.)

  Thank you to Wendy Lemauviel and Carla Willems for their help with this project. Thank you to my writer’s group who has been coming out regularly to meetings even when I couldn’t because I had nothing to offer in any way of creative or supportive insight.

  A final note of gratitude to fans of this series. I am so chuffed that you have taken to Tim Reaper and I hope this second in the series doesn’t let you down. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

  SC

  Saskatoon, September 4, 2017

  “Adults are just outdated children.”

  —Dr. Seuss

  “Love and pain become one and the same

  In the eyes of a wounded child.”

  —Pat Benatar

  1

  Detective Sergeant Carol Sparks wasn’t yelling at me, which is always a good thing, though it’s a rare event.

  Of course, I hadn’t opened my mouth yet.

  I rubbed at my eyes with the heel of my left hand as I sat up in my bed. The clock on my smartphone said it was 1:40 AM, on the floor next to my nightstand, was an empty whiskey bottle and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.

  I reached for my package of Player’s shit ends and lit another.

  My back was killing me and I groaned as I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. The used mattress I’d bought at the Sally-Ann for twenty bucks felt like it had been stuffed with rocks and a current of pain shot up my spine as I put Sparks on speakerphone.

  “Yeah, Sparks … what is it?” I said through a phlegm-filled cough. My head felt like it was filled with lead.

  “Oh, did I wake you, Reaper?” she replied with a flicker of sarcasm in her voice. Or a twinge of anger – it’s hard to tell with her sometimes. “I’m so sorry to disturb you what with your having exposed me to psychopathic angels, passive-aggressive demons, and a front row seat to my birth and death. I’d let you sleep, but you know … you owe me.”

  Yeah … she was pissed at me. I rule.

  I reached to the nightstand and grabbed a half-empty bottle of Golden Wedding Rye Whiskey. I gave it a little shake and then grimaced as I gulped back a mouthful. “Yes, Sparks, I owe you. I’d have thought that forty-ouncer I bought you made us square but apparently not.”

  “Not even close.” she snapped. “Are you drunk again? I told you to lay off the booze. If I have to come over there, I’m going stick my boot so far up your ass you’re going to be able to taste the polish.”

  I might have been drunk – or maybe I’d forgotten what sober felt like over the past few weeks. I’d stopped drinking when I passed out watching a hockey game on TV – that was more than five hours ago. No worries, a few good slugs of rye would take the edge off the guilt I’d been experiencing – a new feeling for me, I might add. It didn’t matter that I’d recently prevented an all-out war in the heavens thanks to a delusional angel named Jael who’d been killing some of the Supreme Being’s senior management. More than five months had passed since the day I ended the life of an innocent young woman named Amy Curtis whose only crime was hooking up with yours truly.

  Me.

  She died because of me.

  And there was little comfort in the fact that Amy was possessed by the aforementioned angelic sociopath when I unleashed Holy power, killing every living thing on the land and in the sea within a square mile of that windswept beach. It didn’t make me feel any less guilty about the choice I was forced to make. A choice the Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, had decided was all about my becoming human.

  And I�
��m not human. In truth, I don’t know what the hell I am and there are times when I wish that I’d rejoined my death-dealing associates in the blissful, guilt-free existence of claiming souls.

  Except they’re all assholes and they tried to kill me so that wouldn’t work.

  I sloshed back another mouthful of rye and said, “No, Sparks, I’m not drunk … yet. It’s nearly two in the morning and I’m not being carted away in handcuffs, so I’m going to assume you’re deeply concerned about my welfare. You know, you could have just sent a card … or a pizza.”

  I could hear her teeth grinding together.

  “All right, you know what? I’m the only friend you’ve got so just shut the hell up and listen,” she snarled into the phone. “I’m across the bridge from you in North-End Dartmouth.”

  “Good for you,” I gloated. “If you’re going to Bedford, don’t bother cutting through Halifax – that’s the long route. Also, you know, wear a stab vest or something. You’re in a shitty part of town.”

  She exhaled heavily and said, “Damn it, Reaper … I need your help. I’m at a murder scene so get your ass in gear and head over here. There’s something you need to see because I don’t have a clue what the hell it means.”

  I arched my eyebrows. “What kind of something?”

  “It’s the kind of something that’s beyond anyone’s pay grade at the Halifax Police Department. Look, what I see it’s … just bizarre. I’ve got the body of a woman – stabbed to death in her bed while she slept, it looks like.”

  “That sounds messy … it also sounds like a pretty straightforward murder to me. It’s probably the ex-husband or boyfriend. Find the guy and bring him in.”

  “And under normal circumstances, we’d be knocking on his door, but we’ve got to start canvassing the neighbourhood to see if anyone knows anything. We found a little girl hiding in the broom closet. She’s eight, and I think she’s the victim’s daughter but—”

  “A little girl killed her mother?” I interrupted. “That’s messed up, Sparks.”

  “She’d be covered in blood if she’d done it and she’s not. If anything, she’s catatonic, and we can’t get her to utter a peep,” Sparks answered. “I don’t think the killer knew the little girl was home otherwise we’d be dealing with two murders instead of one.”

  I took a deep haul on my cigarette and coughed heavily into both hands. “So, get a social worker or something, maybe they could get her lips flapping. Then ask her if she can ID the perp. After that, get her a shrink to deal with the trauma,” I said, a little too impatiently for Spark’s liking. “You don’t need my help for this.”

  I could have sworn I heard a low rumble in Spark’s voice. “She can’t talk, damn it. She can barely even move.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Stop being an ignorant twat, Reaper. We had to carry her out of the broom closet – she’s catatonic.”

  “Then call a shrink – you don’t need me for—”

  “Listen, you supreme asshole. Six months ago, you’d have been begging for work from anyone willing to pay, and now you’re some kind of a pathetic shut-in. I know you’re hurting over what happened to Amy…”

  “Don’t go there, Sparks,” I warned in a voice that could freeze a bucket of water in about two seconds flat. I dug my fingers into my whiskey bottle. “You don’t know anything about me or how I feel.”

  “I know you’ve probably felt nothing in your entire … whatever the hell it is that your kind calls a life,” she shot back. “That’s why you’re messed up right now. And if you needed someone to hold your hand and help you through whatever it is you’re dealing with, I’ve always been a phone call away, and you never called me. Not once. And by the way, you think you’re screwed up? Hello … I met the Archangel Gabriel you freaking dolt; there are not enough pharmaceuticals in a Costco warehouse to deal with that kind of shit so get a grip on yourself! I’m hanging up, and then I’m going to text you a picture. When you see it, I’ll be at 228 Victoria Road – bring me a coffee while you’re at it. If you’re too hung over to drive, take a cab. Goodbye.”

  Well, she certainly told me off.

  Okay, so yeah, Sparks did wind up on the receiving end of a shit storm of supernatural weirdness in the past few months. She’d been exposed to elemental beings that Sunday morning evangelicals on the TV claim surround us every day. (I hate those guys. I can’t stand that a bunch of trailer trash preachers with hillbilly accents know the truth of things when big-brained theologians talk about religious symbolism and ancient Aramaic scripture.)

  The truth is that all those hot-gospelling preachers are bang on. An age-old battle for the souls of men exists. A war pitting demons against angels and in some cases, angels against their order. That’s when Sparks first learned the truth of life as we know it and worse, the truth of me because I’m not an angel and I’m not a demon. I’m somewhere in between because Reapers are basically celestial janitors in the great big public works project known as mortality. I’m death itself, and I live among humans because I did a very bad thing that got me thrown out of the death-dealers club more than a century ago.

  I’ve led a fairly sketchy existence since then, imparting my essence into the newly deceased and using those bodies until they became too damaged to continue, (read: shot to pieces, burned, blasted or buried, you choose) and then hopping into another one after that. My latest body is that of an investment banker named Scott Richter and up until Amy Curtis came into my life, I didn’t worry too much about human affairs. But I fell in love with the girl, and she died because of me. I’d been set up by the guy with the Big White Beard. He gave me an impossible choice – kill a girl I’d fallen for or let her live and watch all of humanity burn.

  The creator of all things has a sick sense of humour, by the way.

  I grunted as I stubbed my cigarette into the ashtray. Then I grabbed another cigarette from the nightstand and lit it with my Zippo. I took a deep haul and stared at my phone as I waited for the text from Sparks. After about two minutes of silence, my phone vibrated, and I brushed my thumb over the text message icon. The screen flickered and then a picture of a bedroom showing a tidy child’s bed covered with a My Little Pony bedspread appeared on my screen. A small stack of books was piled neatly on a night table but what grabbed my attention was the wall next to her bed. I was half-expecting to see a powder-pink mural filled with unicorns farting rainbows and a few posters of whatever incarnation of Barbie was currently on the kid’s hot-list. Instead, the wall was plastered with what at first glance appeared to be graffiti of some kind. I blew up the picture to enhance the image and did a double take because I could have sworn I was looking at a calculus formula.

  What the hell?

  Symbols the likes of which I’d never encountered were mixed in with powers and indices, Greek letters and integrals. Seemingly endless strings of continued fractions and operators radiated out, each written using what appeared to be a thick black felt marker. There were even symbols and formula written on the stippled ceiling.

  “Math?” I whispered.

  My phone buzzed again, and another picture from Sparks downloaded. I swiped the screen to see another wall, similar to the first one but this time there wasn’t any brain melting equation that would take the entire Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at Dalhousie University to decipher. Instead, there was a single word repeatedly written in neat rows hundreds and hundreds of times. I blew up the image and what I saw told me precisely why Carol Sparks wanted me at that crime scene.

  It was the word, Richter.

  2

  I miss my old Ford pickup truck, but I had to ditch it after my previous host was destroyed by one of Jael’s button men – an angel named Sariel. There was also the matter of having been set up for the murder of a priest, so, yeah, switching bodies can save your bacon nine times out of ten.

  Scott Richter did have a bit of money squirrelled away – as in nearly six hundred thousand bucks in investments. Unfor
tunately, I don’t know any of his account numbers let alone his PIN, so I’m poor again. Go me. I would have loved to have splurged and bought myself a gorgeous condominium overlooking the Bedford Basin and a beautiful automobile like a Ferrari or even a Bentley. Instead, I bought used Ford Explorer for about three grand on his credit card because I’m not one for drawing attention to myself. It ran for about three weeks before the engine seized so I bought a beater for five hundred bucks. It’s an old Ford Tempo, and I hate it. I had to find a new place to live – I abandoned my old flat in Uniacke Square furniture and all. Now I reside in a furnished two-bedroom basement flat on Chebucto Road, about ten minutes from the old bridge over the harbour and in a thoroughly respectable neighbourhood.

  We’ll see how long that lasts.

  My landlord is a kindly old bird named Mrs. Gillings. She’s an octogenarian now, but I happen to know she’ll be sticking around until she’s 103 years old at which time she’s going to pass away in her sleep at 3:13 AM on February 6th to be precise. Frankly, that’s the best way to go. The souls of the departed are always docile instead of kicking and screaming about the fact they’re no longer alive or worse, heading for a first-class trip to eternal damnation. She makes steak and kidney pies for me, and something called salt cod and pork scraps which is quite possibly the vilest tasting dish I’ve ever consumed. I rake the leaves and tend to her property the best way I can and my rent here is only five hundred bucks a month. I always slip in an extra $100 and then insist that she take it for the power and oil for the furnace.