The Curious Case of Simon Todd Read online

  Dashing laughed, the end of his cigar ash falling on his knee. He slapped out the ember. “What’s a banker doing in Piper’s Toss?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. Simon felt the hot flush of embarrassment fill his face.

  “I’m more an accountant,” Simon corrected.

  “Rather so.” Dick let the question float.

  Simon sighed.

  “If you must know—”

  “I must.”

  How irritating Dick Dashing could be, Simon thought.

  Instead of saying so, he continued. “If you must know, I was securing some funds for Mr. Hershal. He owns some of the property in Piper’s Toss. A business or two. He wanted me to check their books, make sure his other accountants were… of some repute.”

  “Ha! I bet that’s all you were there for.” Dick smiled.

  It hadn’t been. Mr. Hershal owned the bank in Darlington. He was a rotund man of a jovial disposition, though perhaps a bit eclectic in his tastes. That he owned several businesses there was no doubt. That he owned a brothel in Piper’s Toss was a secret. Rumor was — and to Mr. Todd it was a much better known fact — Mr. Hershal’s daughter Fae had been gambling in one of the dens when she lost a rather hefty bet. A few of the owners decided to throw her into a brothel until she paid up. When Mr. Hershal found out, he was obviously scandalized. He bought the brothel and all the workers too, on the spot to eliminate larger calamity. Made them all swear to secrecy and offered each one a gold coin. Simon had been the one to inform him of his daughter’s ill luck, and Mr. Hershal offered him a big raise when he found out to what degree Simon had kept it secret.

  What Mr. Hershal didn’t know was Simon had purchased Fae by accident. It was all rather embarrassing to say the least.

  Noticing Dick stealing a glance at Miss Baxter’s ivory choker, Mr. Todd followed his gaze, but only because he had been prompted to. “It doesn’t matter a lick to me what you were doing in Piper’s toss.” Dashing stood, fiddling with his belt buckle before picking up the map on the table. “But if you’re interested in our little trot away from home, you best be letting us know soon.”

  Simon stood as well, but only when Miss Baxter did. “W-well,” he said, noticing she had hardly touched her pie. Was it bad? Had the ingredients spoiled? “When are you leaving?”

  Miss Baxter smiled. “In two days,” she said.

  “T-two?” Dread fell over him like a lead sheet.

  “Yes. Mr. Dashing doesn’t want to wait too long.”

  Dick nodded. “That’s right. What if some vagabond found the treasure before us?”

  Well they’d have to be able to cast magic, Simon thought impetuously.

  “Why,” Dick continued, “it would be all gone, spirited away before I had even the chance to spend it.”

  “Well.” Simon frowned. “I assume you’d have to acquire it before you spend it, in most cases.”

  “In my dreams, Mr. Todd! I haven’t even been able to dream how I’d spend that much money!”

  Simon almost snorted. “And how would you?” he asked.

  Mr. Dashing smiled. “I’ll figure that one out on the road with Miss Baxter, of course.” He let out a jaunty laugh. “They’ll be plenty of time to figure out how to spend a dragon’s hoard, together.”

  Miss Baxter smiled and gave a polite giggle as Mr. Dashing seized her by the middle and hugged her close. The gesture was, in all ways, much too familiar, but the poor girl had such a soft heart she couldn’t form the words to protest. Instead, Simon intervened, taking a step forward around the table, noticing a moment later how the ivory pendant on Miss Baxter’s choker was now hidden inside her bosom.

  “Two days. I’ll be ready in two days,” Simon said, feeling his allergies beginning to act up again as he removed his handkerchief. His response seemed to calm Dick’s fervor for the moment, and almost abruptly the gunman let go of the young lady’s waist.

  “Splendid!” he said, pitching forward on one foot to shake Mr. Todd’s hand, the one not currently holding the kerchief to his nose. “It shall be grander an adventure than Piper’s Toss, I bet! Two days!”

  From behind him, Simon saw Miss Baxter smile. She was still holding her polished shepherd’s crook. The sight of her elation made him almost swoon before he realized Dick was actually grasping him by the hand.

  For the three days since he perished, Simon Todd had been certain he was a ghost. He could go through things, sometimes had difficulty holding larger objects, but that someone could touch him, he supposed, meant perhaps he was more than just a wandering phantom forgotten by the Reaper. Perhaps he had a bit of body to him after all.

  “You and Miss Baxter can meet me in Darlington three hours after sunrise,” Dashing continued with a grin. “I’m staying at the Obsidian Briar.” Opening his coat, Dick deposited the map inside a pocket on his left side.

  “Well I’ll make sure to have Salvador ready then.” Miss Baxter clapped her hands together. “It will be good to have him out again. He hasn’t been since he died.”

  Simon blinked, stepping out of his own thoughts as he remembered the old donkey Miss Baxter kept at her farm. It was a smelly thing, with half a tail and a depressed skullcap where a piece of the barn roof had fallen on top of him last summer.

  All of a sudden the reality of the situation was staring him in the face, deadpan like the young lady’s old donkey. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He died only a few days ago. Could he leave? What if he was bound here by some unknown, ghostly rule? Most people hadn’t even realized he was dead. Of course, he seemed corporal, but he had noticed he could drift through certain things: walls, bridges. He had almost fallen through his bed last night while he was thinking of his current predicament. He hadn’t even been able to experiment with his ghostly form yet. Leaving his home was the last thing he wanted to do. It wasn’t a good idea. It wasn’t smart.

  Simon stammered. He didn’t really wish to go gallivanting around at all, but Miss Baxter, alone with Mr. Dashing: a vagabond… He had to be the gentleman and protect her! Besides, she had recommended him to be her champion in the first place.

  “Uh, yes,” he stuttered in reply, his outer voice noticeably different than his inner resolve. Simon cleared his throat. “I suppose I should pack a few things as well.”

  He had to pack! Pack what? Where was he even going? He had sat down for tea and now he was off somewhere, to do something about some treasure someone had left lying about for some… some vagabond and company?

  Simon Todd didn’t know if he was going to enjoy his new life as a ghost, and as Miss Baxter began wandering towards her home across the way with Dick Dashing in tow, Simon finally let out the incredible sneeze he had been holding in for the last half hour, much to his surprise and chagrin.

  “Good blazes!” he shrieked pitifully, skittering backwards and falling head over heels. Knocking the table and the rest of the pie over, Mr. Todd kicked fearfully as several hundred baby spiders spurted from both of his olfactory canals. He swatted at them, smushing them under his kerchief as they crawled over his limbs like living hairs, shouting all the while as his two new travelling companions departed — oblivious to his cries — to their homes and hotels down the way.

  Simon Todd had an affliction that was most curious. Aside from the fact he was indeed dead, he also had a horrible allergic reaction to almost everything which caused him to sneeze spiders. This had only begun when he had taken a tumble from Miss. Baxter’s roof.

  No. Simon was not sure he was going to like being a ghost. Not at all.

  Chapter 2

  Oolong Fall Down

  Simon Todd was deathly afraid of spiders and this irrational fear persisted even after the young man expired. When he tumbled fatally from Miss Baxter’s roof, it had been the fault of a particularly nasty one. With a fat belly marking the nucleus of eight spindly legs, every time Mr. Todd saw anything like an arachnid he turned a grisly white.

  Since many of the ghastly things enjoyed making a home in the rafters, climbin
g the ladder up to Miss Baxter’s rooftop had been a feat unto itself. It could be assumed that it was the fault of one of those horrid little things that made Simon tumble backwards onto the neighbor’s rock garden, perish, and turn into a ghost in the first place. However, some may say Simon had been served his just desserts.

  Mr. Todd — despite his rather earnest plea that it was all a vast misunderstanding — probably should not have been teetering on that ladder in the first place. Poor Miss Baxter, enjoying a pleasant bath before bedtime, should also have had the presence of mind to close her shutters. Can it be entirely the fault of a lovesick young man led astray? What about the poor spiders? They need a home as well as any other. Mosquitos are fattest by the lit windowsills of young girls. It is a known truth, after all.

  But whether it was the fault of the plump curvature of Miss Baxter’s physical anatomy, the spiders in the rafters, or perhaps Simon Todd himself for being upon the ladder before her window, the cause is up for debate. The fact that he did so perish and become a ghost is a matter of fact.

  What is most uncanny however is that no one had seemed to notice Mr. Todd’s demise. Mr. Todd himself hadn’t even realized until tea time. Simon had been crestfallen to discover his daily tea was as bland as gulp of stale air, and so over the course of the three days he had kept himself hidden away, Mr. Todd ascertained that ghosts — of a certain variety, he supposed — could sometimes manipulate objects, but could never possibly taste things again. A phantom’s physical framework was all wrong when it came to experiencing soft tarts and jasmine tea with milk, it seemed.

  Simon surmised perhaps this strange phenomenon was the result of Miss Baxter’s necromancy. Innocent as the young woman was, Miss Baxter and her father lived on the only farm that boasted undead livestock. After tumbling into her rock garden, Simon Todd fathomed some kind of magical spell had been activated, and so though his body had been carried off and devoured by zombified sheep (where else could his body have gotten off to?), Mr. Todd himself had kept his soul relatively intact, as well as a few handy motor skills which let him pass as an acceptably living man on most good days.

  However despite this theory, and the several pies Simon baked over the course of a long weekend, Mr. Dashing’s two days, which may have seemed a long time to most individuals suddenly finding themselves going on holiday, was full of panic for Mr. Todd. He was certainly not leaving for a bit of sun and tan. This was an expedition extraordinaire, in that Mr. Todd really didn’t know what to expect. Should he pack an extra pair of socks? The nice green ones that matched his corded brown coat? Or the darker shade that went with a corduroy auburn tailcoat? What about the fact he couldn’t taste jellied doughnuts and sometimes found himself going through objects?

  Simon also had to speak with Mr. Hershal at the bank about giving him some time off. How much did he need? Well Mr. Todd wasn’t sure, but the portly business man had agreed without much quarrel. Take the books and visit a few other of my business properties along the way, Hershal had said. Consider it a workman’s trip.

  Simon had nodded as Mr. Hershal offered him a rather large ledger that had been gathering dust in the corner. The bank was not only a collection of the town’s money, but a library of old accounting books. Mr. Todd was quite certain there were more forgotten numbers in the ledgers of Mr. Hershal’s company than coins in all the banks of the world.

  Simon sighed, slumping a bit at the weight of the old, leathery thing as he marched out from the bank. Dead and working on the road. Mr. Todd felt stressed about it already.

  After departing the bank and gathering up a few odds and ends at the grocery, Simon didn’t need to eat, but he certainly wasn’t going to let the others know about that yet, the young gentleman wandered about the town for a bit. Darlington was nothing but a loose string woven into the colorful patchwork of the surrounding Great Plains. Despite that, the main street was littered with bright timber-framed homes set upon stone cellars, and neatly laid cobblestone roads that sometimes arched upwards over the several cozy brooks that meandered about the town. Narrow roads snuggled in between most of the buildings, breathing in the steam pouring out from crowding homesteads. Off the main road, several such streets wound about the town like small threads, stitching Darlington together at the seams and boasting a majority of the mercantile populace. Small shops selling soap, clothing and granary from the plains were jostled together in those roads. So though Main Street may have been the heart of Darlington, it wholly relied on the more solitary pedestrian paths to sustain itself.

  “I’m supposed to meet him at the Obsidian Brier,” Simon mused, his head tipped up in an effort to read the many signs creaking overhead. It was a hearty morning. The sun poured out from among the clouds, warming the ladies and gentlemen already awake and attending to business. A fresh rain had spilt the day before and so the air was clean and fresh in his nose, meaning Mr. Todd was quite certain he could trust his allergies to behave today.

  I can’t believe she went on ahead. Simon had been more than a little perplexed when he went to Miss Baxter’s farm that morning to realize she had already departed. Her round father had been milking the cows — the living ones — when Simon interrupted him to ask about her whereabouts.

  “She’s left already. Went to find Dick, I guess.”

  Simon had pursed his lip at the thought. Though Jeremy Baxter was an honest man, he had all the sense of a gambling poor man. To let his young daughter go away with two men? Mr. Todd thought it was all absurd. Nevertheless Simon thanked him, noticing a rather angry bruise about his neck as he did so, and vowed to keep his daughter safe at all costs before departing.

  “Miss Baxter!” he called from the street, the sight of her jostling him from his recollections. The young lady was standing before the inn, tying her old donkey Salvador to one of the posts. She was wearing another of her gowns, though she had abandoned the white lace in favor of something a bit more plain and travel friendly.

  Simon skipped ahead, holding his hat as he went to greet her properly.

  “I went to fetch you this morning, my dear. You’re an early riser.”

  The young lady nodded. Her sunny curls were tied back into a dark blue bonnet.

  “I wanted to make sure Salvador could walk alright,” she said. “It’s been awhile since he left the barn.”

  Simon smiled. “I forgot. You must have missed him since you’ve been away.”

  Miss Baxter smiled, folding her hands before her. She made for a pretty picture, Simon thought.

  “I have,” she admitted.

  Simon could never really fathom why Miss Baxter had taken up the act of necromancy, other than her fragile heart and the passing of her late mother Rebecca two springs ago, but nevertheless he accepted it. When she had been made to attend a school council meeting at Grimguild University, Miss Baxter regrettably had to depart her farm for two weeks. Simon missed her greatly when she was gone, though often found himself visiting her bedroom window anyway, on the off chance she had returned early, and not because he wished to see her in a state of undress. Miss Baxter had only actually returned from her visit a week and four days before he took the rather nasty fall from her roof. He was glad, despite circumstances, that if she was going to leave again, this time he could at least accompany her.

  “Well.” Simon looked towards the inn where the sign was in the shape of a briar, befitting its name, even though no words were visible on it. The building itself looked rather squashed between its neighbors, but it was taller than most with a slightly crooked roof and three small bronze colored chimneys. The door in front was framed by two square, segmented windows. Simon thought they were in need of a good wash.

  “Shall we go, then?” he continued, offering her his arm. Miss Baxter, with her ivory crook and dark blue bonnet, nodded politely, allowing him to open the door before accepting his invitation inside. Here, away from the sun and fresh, dewy morning air, the inn was awash in a sooty darkness. Candles warmed the dim interior from shelves and
cubbies stationed throughout the large chamber. Simon thought it was odd there were no lanterns in the Obsidian Briar. A large fireplace burned in one wall, its black gases filtering up and out the three chimneys, and six tables, the most that this small establishment could contain, were lined nicely against each other in two neat rows.

  Dick Dashing, the scoundrel, was seated at the furthest table from the fire, a young girl on his knee. His moustache was oiled and glinted at the ends like metal hooks in the firelight. Next to him sat another gentleman reading a book. The gentleman had odd looking spectacles dangling from his nose. He looked rather bored, and didn’t look up when Mr. Todd began to walk towards them.

  “Mr. Dashing,” the young Miss Baxter called before Simon had any chance to speak. Dashing had been regaling the young lady on his knee of the time when he had blown all the heads off a young hydra in one blow, killing it instantly. She might have been the proprietor of the Obsidian Brier, Simon wasn’t sure.

  “A gunslinger knows how to infuse each and every bullet with the chemical needed to slay a beast,” he continued, his hand quite inappropriately resting in the curve of the young lady’s back. “It’s all up here.” He tapped his forehead. His hat, complete with cerulean feather and targeting goggles rested on the table.

  At least he has some manners, Simon thought.

  “But everything I need to kill a monster is in my gun.”

  The girl smiled. Simon thought the bodice of her server’s dress was open much too much for decency’s sake. She wasn’t wearing a bonnet and so her mousy brown hair fell down around nude shoulders. When she was ignored, Miss Baxter sighed with a nod of her head, walking deeper into the inn.