Ungrateful Dead

Tuesday night, on his way downstairs to the combined AA/NA meeting, Luther glanced out his office window and saw a redheaded woman on the sidewalk next to the parking lot across from the University of Memphis campus. Tall and slim, she'd stood like a fiery beacon among the river of students rushing to their cars after the last classes let out. Then, as he rolled his eyes, bored almost to tears by the balding FedEx pilot who was explaining, yet again, how the company's refusal to recognize the pilot's union had driven him to drink, Luther saw the woman staring at him from the doorway.

Of course, he couldn't really see her all that well; she was standing out of the light, and in a room full of people and cigarette smoke, she could actually have been looking at the guy in the chair next to him, or even at the pilot droning away up on the podium. Yet somehow Luther didn't think so. For when he glanced in her direction, she dropped her eyes and inched back into the dimly lighted hall.

Luther got to his feet and, being careful to avoid the cigarette butts and discarded gum wrappers on the floor, made his way down the row of nervous knees to the table at the rear of the classroom. There, he emptied six packets of sugar into a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee and took a sip. It was a new blend - mud and warm piss. With a final glance at the pilot, Luther strolled out into the hall to look around. The woman was standing in front of the bulletin board beside the elevator, pretending to read a circular advertising aerobics classes.

Luther wondered who she was trying to fool. Even with her back turned, a blind man could see she had a body that made the very idea of aerobics ridiculous. He liked the way she dressed too: a simple black-and-beige sweater dress that reached just past her knees, a pair of mid-heel black pumps, and a tiny shoulder bag with a gold chain.

Strolling down the hall, he paused and, with what he hoped was a nonthreatening smile, said, "I don't mean to pry, but were you looking for someone?"

She turned, and Luther saw that the whole left side of her face was horribly scarred. He tried to hide his shock, but like most people, he had never been very good at that sort of thing and shame flitted like a shadow across her features. She quickly shifted so that the "good" side was facing him and offered her hand.

"Doctor Shea?"

Her good side was stunning, and Luther was suddenly very conscious of his faded jeans and rumpled plaid shirt. He wiped his hand on the seat of his pants before accepting hers. "Guilty as charged, Mrs..."

"Alana Magnus... and it's Ms."

"What can I do for you, Ms. Magnus?" Luther asked, making a face as he took another sip of coffee.

"Is there some place we could talk?" She cast an eye at the classroom where the meeting was still in progress. "Some place... private?"

"My office is on the third floor - if you don't mind the clutter of a disorganized mind."

"No. No, that would be fine."

They took the antiquated elevator to the third floor where Alana allowed Luther to lead her down a dimly lighted hallway, past rows of locked doors, to his office. After unlocking the door and turning on the overhead lights, he shifted a stack of ungraded exam papers from the chair in front of the desk to the floor. Alana sat down, angled her left side to the shadows and demurely crossed her legs.

The office was pretty much the way he had characterized it: institutional-green metal bookcases overflowing with occult texts and manuscripts, mounds of magazines and yellowed newspapers, a gray metal desk supporting a dust-covered, Apple IIe computer with a half-dozen empty Styrofoam cups on top. On the wall behind the door was a photo of Luther standing with a group of smiling Little Leaguers, and a diploma (cum laude) in Paranormal Psychology from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Behind the desk was a window that offered a breathtaking view of the brick wall across the quad, and the sill provided a platform for his collection of venus flytraps and African violets.

Luther took a seat behind the desk and casually arranged his hands over the strips of electrical tape that were holding the chair arm's padding in check and then took a deep breath and put on his best "conference with student" face.

"So, what can I do for you?"

"Well, I don't really know just where to begin," said Alana, her eyes studiously inspecting the shine on her shoes. "Like I said, my name is Alana Magnus, and I work for Federated Department Stores as a buyer. I'm not from Memphis, as I guess you can tell from my accent. I was recently transferred here from Macy's in New York." Her voice trailed off, and she smoothed the front of her dress. "A friend of mine told me about you. She said you're the local expert on the supernatural."

Mystified by the sudden shift in direction, Luther's eyebrows formed twin arches over his ice-blue eyes. "Expert? I wouldn't -"

"You wrote those books on the paranormal?"

"Book!" he corrected. "I wrote one book. And it was just a compilation of legends and myths." He wondered why he was being defensive.

"What about that story in the Commercial Appeal?"

Luther remained silent for several seconds. It was too bad, for he felt sorry for the woman and had hoped he would be able to help her with whatever her problem was. Now it appeared that she was just another kook.

"Don't let these plush accommodations fool you," he said, waving his hand around the cramped office. "The university pretty much considers what I do a joke."

"I... I don't get it."

"Neither did I, at first. It seems one of our corporate sponsors visited the Psi Lab at Duke and then came back and laid a ton of money on the school to start one here. I was as far as the administration got. I think the rest of the grant went for new basketball uniforms." Luther rose to his feet. "Well, if there isn't anything else..." He was already thinking about the medium-rare hamburger and home fries he was going to order at the Belmont Grill.

The woman didn't move. "Yes, but you do know about the supernatural? I mean, you do teach classes on it?"

Luther's sigh made the wind chimes in the corner tinkle like glass bells. "If you call explaining to a bunch of Star Trek junkies coated with acne cream that Bram Stoker did not write Nightmare on Elm Street teaching about the supernatural, then I guess I teach about the supernatural. May I ask where we're going with this?"

Alana drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. Her nails resembled pieces of clear plastic that had been gnawed by rats.

"I may be losing my mind," she said at last.

Luther tried without any success whatsoever to fathom what was going on inside the woman's head by reading her expression. Like most people, a disfigured person - especially a disfigured woman who would have been absolutely gorgeous otherwise - made him uncomfortable. And feeling that way made Luther angry at himself. She was obviously upset, but he couldn't allow himself to be sucked in by that either, for after all, weren't most paranoid schizophrenics upset about something? He reached for his address book to give her the name of his friend, Cal Weinberg, the super-shrink.

"Unfortunately," he said, "mental problems aren't really my thing. But if it makes you feel any better, I always heard that if you're sane enough to think you're going crazy, you're probably not."

"I'm possessed!" she blurted out.

Well, he thought, so much for that idea.

Locating his address book, Luther began flipping through the W's.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" she asked.

"I'm going to call a friend of mine who has a lot more experience in these matters than I do. His name's Cal. You'll like him. He has a nice office; all chrome and glass. And saltwater aquariums and -"

The cold click of the pistol's safety shut Luther up like a sudden attack of anarthria.

"I know how this looks," she said. "Please say something."

"I've always found that guns tend to inhibit the free exchange of ideas."

"Look, I'm not crazy. And I'm not dangerous."

"Obviously."

"I want you to come with me; to listen to me. An hour maybe two. What could it hurt? Maybe then you can tell me what to do."

The longer Luther stared at the gun muzzle, the larger it appeared, until, at last, he forced his eyes up to Alana's face. Her eyes were clear and almost painfully green. She didn't look crazy.

They never look crazy, moron!

"Please don't make me use this," she said.

And she sounded so reasonable, he thought, for a woman with a gun in her hand.

"I don't think I could kill you, but you might never walk without a limp again."

He didn't really think she would shoot him. But then again, he would never have believed that such a big gun could have come out of such a small purse.

"What do you say?"

Luther smiled and turned his palms up. "Why not?"

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Excerpted from Ungrateful Dead by Gary L. Holleman. Copyright © 1999 by Gary L. Holleman. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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