Sam Eldritch took a swig from the bottle of four year-old Kentucky red eye and waited for the monsters to go away.
Downing said bottle had become his usual Friday night ritual, though lately his partner managed to show up sooner or later to talk him out of it. This was quite a trick, considering his partner had been dead for almost a year. So far, he was a no-show. It was almost midnight, and wasn’t that the witching hour? Wasn’t that the time when old Chen said the spirits got out for a stretch?
Sam lifted the half empty bottle to his lips again. The amber liquid slid down his throat like a slug of hot lead. Not very smooth; definitely not the good stuff, but it would do the job nicely. He stared at the ceiling, waiting for the warmth in his belly to spread out to the rest of him.The empty chair across from his desk squeaked, and when Sam looked down he saw his partner, Jim Malone, sitting there.
“You’re late,” said Sam.
“I got caught in traffic.”
“Funny. You always were the funny one, Jimmy.”
“And you were always ready for anything,” said Malone’s shade.
“You look like hell,” said Eldritch, desperate to change the subject.
The ghost shrugged. “I’m dead. What’s your excuse?”
They sat in silence for a time, Sam drinking and trying not to look at his ex partner.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Malone’s ghost said after a while.
Sam shrugged. “Birds gotta swim, fish gotta fly, Sammy boy’s gotta get hammered.”
“You’ve got a job to do.”
An icy finger traced a line up Eldritch’s spine. He slammed the bottle down. “I’m workin’ on it, Jimmy. These things take time.”
“It’s been a year.”
“Chinese demons ain’t exactly in the phone book. Chen’s working on it.”
“I don’t care about Chen. I care about you.”
“Oh yeah?” Sam said, anger–and the booze–filling his face with heat. He looked at his partner–through his partner–to the office door. He could clearly see the black lettering spelling out Sam Eldritch Private Investigations on the other side of the frosted glass, backwards from his viewpoint, like some foreign language in one of Chen’s ancient spell books. “You’re not the only person your death inconvenienced.”
“I see,” said Malone. The ghost leaned back in the chair, and Sam idly wondered how ghosts could sit in chairs but walk through walls. “So this whole thing is an inconvenience.”
“You know what I mean. My point is, why can’t I be left alone to get drunk in peace?”
“Because there can be no peace for me or anybody else while that demon is out there. It killed me, but it gave you a gift. There must be a reason for that.”
“Yeah, some gift. Now I see ghosts and devils and even worse things coming out of the woodwork. Things no man should ever have to see. Things that might just go away if I could only get staggering drunk for a few hours or so.”
“That won’t help and you know it, said the ghost. “Hell, if I was still alive, I’d join you, but you’re still gonna have the same old problems come morning.”
Sam nodded. Ghost or not, he certainly couldn’t fault the man for his logic. Jim had always been the sane, rational one, while Eldritch always wanted to trot right in, guns blazing, usually getting brained with a lead sap for his trouble.
