Free Dead Men Scare Me Stupid by John Swartzwelder Page B

only
positive thing I could think of to do right then was to get revenge on the
little pricks who had gotten me into this. So I began positively looking for Ed
and Fred.
    I tried all their
usual haunts first; the bars and coffee shops they frequented; the newspaper
boxes they favored; and that haunted house at the carnival they enjoyed
heckling. They weren’t in any of their usual places. I decided I needed to
expand my search.
    I went to an area
on the Near North Side called Odd Town. That’s where you’ll find all the people
who are a little too odd to live anywhere else. Some zoning thing, I guess.
There are lots of aged Hippies in Odd Town, as well as Lazies, Yellers,
Stealies and Stupids. I figured even if the ghosts weren’t there, these people
might know where I should look. I thought they might be a little more on the
ghosts’ wavelength than, say, the guys in the Financial District. As it turned
out, I was right.
    I talked to a
number of unusual people on the streets of Odd Town, many of whom were
convinced of some very surprising things: that capitalism would soon be gone
and be replaced by something else –photography, I think they said; that the
world is being secretly run by politicians; that school teachers are trying to
control our minds with their textbooks; that the dinosaurs evolved into flying
saucers; all sorts of weird ideas like that. Unfortunately, none of them knew
anything about my two ghosts. They just knew everything else.
    I spent nearly an
hour with one man in a bar who introduced me to what he said was a six foot
tall invisible rabbit. I thought he was nuts and told him so, in that nice way
I have. He wasn’t offended by my skepticism. He seemed to think that mine was
an interesting take on the situation – an alternative view - and was glad we
were all taking part in the conversation. Then he told me about how little
actual work he did, and how much he enjoyed wasting everybody else’s time. He
said he didn’t know where my ghosts might be, but if they did turn up he
suggested they might want to play basketball with his rabbit. After he had
gone, the bartender told me I was right. The guy was nuts.
    “Isn’t there a
rabbit?” I asked.
    “There’s a
rabbit, sure,” he said, “but he left three hours ago.”
    He also said I
should watch out for the guy because he had just killed a couple of high school
kids.
    Then someone I
ran into on the streets – an old man who said he needed money, but could no
longer remember why or how much – told me about a society nearby where they
kept track of rains of frogs and rivers of blood and supernatural stuff like
that. They might have some info on my ghosts. I gave the man a dime for this
information, which he said wasn’t nearly enough, and headed for the building he
had pointed out to me.
    The society was
called The Central City Center For Psychic And Paranormal Research, or
TCCCFPAPR for short. It was a beehive of activity when I arrived, with
researchers running around clutching stories hot off the newswire with wild
looks in their eyes.
    “Ghost train on
the West Side!” yelled one.
    “You mean the
train has ghosts in it, or the train itself is a ghost?” he was asked.
    “What difference
does it make?”
    “Well, there’s a world
of difference, Bob…”
    “We’ll discuss it
later. Just get somebody over there!”
    “A river of blood
just appeared next to the regular river of blood!” broke in another researcher
excitedly.
    “Two rivers of
blood!” said the man next to him, slapping his forehead.
    “Somebody just
dropped a house on the President!” said someone else.
    I corralled one
of them as he went scurrying by and told him I was looking for two ghosts. He
looked at me like I was a hick.
    “What kind of
cornball thing is that to be looking for?”
    “Well, I dunno.”
    He told me they
didn’t have time for old-fashioned ghosts like mine. This was the most
paranormal activity they’d ever monitored. Strange