While I was busy at the brothel, Sheyenne had done her homework about Jody Caligari’s landlord. Officially, I’m the detective, but my ghost girlfriend has connections and resources. She knows who to call, and she can track down information that eludes other detectives—whether humans, zombies, or even werewolves in pin-striped suits.
She levitated from her desk to greet me. “I dug up everything I could find about Ah’Chulhu, Beaux—and it’s a sordid story.”
“Hmm, I never expected that.” I hung my fedora on the hat rack. “He seemed like such a normal person.”
Sheyenne looked determined as she reviewed files and printouts, calling up more scraps of detail from online records. “Ah’Chulhu had a twisted life. It’s no wonder he’s at war with the world.”
“I thought he was a real-estate agent and a slumlord.”
“It’s all interconnected. He has great power and great potential, which comes from his parentage, even though his mother and father are no longer in this universe. They retired to another dimension, but in their day they were quite notable Senior Citizen Gods.”
I had never heard the term before. “Don’t you mean Elder Gods?”
“Not quite the same. Senior Citizen Gods get discounts, and they tend to cause most of their mayhem between four and six p.m. But you don’t have to worry about those two, Beaux—they’re long gone. Ah’Chulhu hasn’t had any connection with them since his childhood. In fact, he’s probably bitter.”
“Plenty of us have parental issues,” I said.
“This guy has it worse than most. He was discarded as a baby, dumped into a manhole, and left to die or fend for himself. Apparently, since so many alligators had been flushed down toilets, the parents assumed their infant half demon would be devoured in the sewers.”
“They couldn’t just put baby Ah’Chulhu up for adoption? With all those wriggly tentacles on his face he must have been a cute little tyke.”
“This is the sordid part.” Sheyenne pointed to pictures. I was surprised she had been able to find the old photos and obscure reports, until I remembered that people have a tendency to share even the most intimate and uninteresting details of their lives on social media. “When Ah’Chulhu was born, his parents were horrified—a tentacle head like they expected, but a human body. It caused quite a scandal. The mother was forced to admit that she’d had a torrid affair with a human and gotten pregnant, which resulted in the half-breed child. The mother attempted to keep her infidelity secret, but she couldn’t deny it once the baby was born.”
I glanced at the blurry image of the horrific, slimy, and tentacle-faced female that was Ah’Chulhu’s mother. I tried to imagine any human man entangled in a passionate embrace with that squid demon from another dimension. And then I couldn’t get the image out of my mind. “Ewww,” I said.
“Some people have a foot fetish, some people get turned on by tentacles,” Sheyenne said. “The two Senior Citizen Gods had such a titanic domestic dispute that it nearly ripped the cosmos apart.”
“I think I remember that,” I said.
“They initiated divorce proceedings, but finally committed to do their best to patch up the marriage. Since baby Ah’Chulhu was a painful reminder of the mother demon’s indiscretion, however, they discarded the half-breed creature, and the two Senior Citizen Gods disappeared into the Netherworld, where they vowed to go through couples’ counseling and attend a relationship-building retreat.”
I nodded. “Ah’Chulhu must have been a tough little creature if he survived and thrived in the sewers.”
“Yes, even as a toddler he befriended the gator-guys who were supposed to have eaten him, trained them to walk erect and be his henchmen, then built up a successful business selling sewer laboratory space for mad scientists, before expanding to other real-estate investments in low-lying areas. In fact, he’s made quite a name for himself.”
“Ah’Chulhu is, indeed, quite a name,” I said.
Robin emerged from her office. It was late, and I thought she might have gone home by now, but she often worked all night on one case or another. “Sorry about his troubled childhood, but that doesn’t excuse what he did to Jody. Unless Ah’Chulhu stacks the benches with enough demons, no jury will buy that sob story. Even the illegitimate half-breed son of a human and a Senior Citizen God still has to follow the law.”
“Ah’Chulhu’s background shows that he’s a fighter, though,” I pointed out. “This might end up being a rough and tumble battle.”
“I’m ready to get down and dirty,” Sheyenne said.
“So am I,” Robin added.
Considering where the battle would likely take place, that was exactly how it would have to be.