Hart frowned. “Is he senile, or something?”
“Something,” said Ash. “Definitely something.”
He got to his feet and waited patiently while Hart drank the last of his beer. Hart put the empty glass down, and looked over at the bar. The bears and the pixies had left, and so had the Sheriff. The only person at the bar now was a large day-glo pony with its head buried in a bucket of champagne. It was wearing stockings and suspenders and heavy eye makeup. Hart decided he wasn’t going to ask. He didn’t think he really wanted to know. He got to his feet and nodded to Ash, who led the way out on to the street.
“We’ll try the Gallery of Bone first,” said Ash. “And let us hope and pray he’s in a good mood.”
“And if he isn’t?”
“Then we run like hell. That scythe of his isn’t just for show, you know.”
—
The Morgue was bitter cold, but Rhea had expected that. What she hadn’t expected was to be kept waiting in the cold for almost twenty minutes. What was the point in being Mayor if you couldn’t make people jump when you snapped your fingers? Of course, Mirren had always been a law unto himself, like most doctors. Rhea hugged herself, and wished she’d worn a heavier coat.
The Morgue wasn’t very large, as Morgues go, barely twenty feet square, but the snow and ice caking the tiled walls and ceiling made it look even smaller. Icicles hung from every surface, and a faint hint of fog pearled the air. Whoever had set up the freezing spell to save relying on a generator’s electricity had done their work perhaps a little too well. If it had been any colder, the Morgue would have been full of polar bears doing… well, whatever it is polar bears do. Rhea realized she’d lost track of the thought, and let it go.
A single body lay on the examination table, respectfully covered with a sheet, for which Rhea was grateful. She’d seen the state of the other corpses, and was in no hurry to see the damage done to this one. His name was Oliver Lando. Used to be a detective in a series of stories written in the sixties. His brief star soon faded, and by the seventies no one remembered him save a few collectors. He came to Shadows Fall in 1987. And that was the last anyone had heard of him till now. Rhea had never heard of him at all, till she read Erikson’s file on him.
She jumped despite herself when the door slammed open behind her. She took her time turning to glare at Doctor Mirren as he slammed the door shut again, but he only had eyes for the body on the table and the clipboard in his hand. Doctor Nathaniel Mirren was a short, squat man in his early forties, with an unhappy face and a receding hairline. He was brusque, sarcastic, and didn’t suffer fools gladly. His bedside manner was just short of distressing. But he was an expert at diagnosis and puzzle-solving, so everyone made allowances, and bit their lip a lot when they had to have dealings with him. Rhea knew him of old. They’d crossed swords more than once on the town Council over town funding for his various researches. Every time she had to meet him, she swore she wouldn’t let him get under her skin. And every time he did it to her again. He could put her teeth on edge just by the way he entered a room and pretended not to see her. She glared at his unresponsive back as he stalked over to glare at the body on the table, then took a deep breath and moved over to join him.
“Well, Doctor? Did the autopsy reveal anything useful this time?”
“Not really,” said Mirren. He scowled at his clipboard, sniffed once as though in disgust, and dropped it carelessly on to the corpse’s chest. Rhea winced in sympathy. Mirren pulled back the sheet to reveal what was left of the victim’s head, and Rhea fought to keep her face calm. The skull was a mess of torn skin and broken bone, held together by dried blood. One side of the head had collapsed inwards, and the features were indistinguishable. The teeth were broken and shattered, the jaw hanging loosely, barely attached to the head. Mirren touched the head here and there with surprisingly gentle fingers, then covered the bloody mess with the sheet and picked up his clipboard again.
“As with the previous six victims, death resulted from extensive damage to the head. A frenzied attack. From close examination of the various injuries, I was able to determine that the damage was caused by a blunt instrument of some weight, probably metal, approximately one inch in width. I counted no less than seventy-three separate injuries, undoubtedly delivered in swift succession.
“I can determine the time of death fairly accurately. The victim’s watch was smashed, presumably when he lifted the arm to protect his head, and the watch face shows ten minutes past five. This would agree with the state of the partially digested meal in his stomach. And that is as far as my examination has taken me. Anything more would be guesswork.”
He dropped the clipboard back on to the corpse’s chest and glowered at Rhea, as though daring her to disagree with anything he’d said. Rhea pursed her lips thoughtfully, and let him wait a moment or two before speaking.
“Seventy-three blows in swift succession. A frenzied attack. Could our murderer be… more than human?”
Mirren sniffed and frowned, as though considering the question, but Rhea had no doubt the thought had already occurred to him.
“This could be the result of an inhuman or paranormal attack, but I would have to say it could also have been accomplished by a normal human, if sufficiently strongly motivated. You’d be surprised how much damage a man can do, while in the grip of rage or terror.”
“What about forensic evidence? Have you found anything that might help us identify the attacker?”
Mirren looked away for a moment, his scowl deepening. He always hated having to admit anything that might seem a failure on his part. “Forensic medicine is not my field. You need an expert for that, and we don’t have one in Shadows Fall. I have performed as thorough an inspection of the body as I could with my limited equipment, and found nothing of any use. Which is only what I expected. If we are to proceed any further in this investigation, you must allow me to use my own methods.”
“I don’t believe in necromancy,” said Rhea flatly. “The dead should be left to rest in peace.”
“Your prejudice arises mostly from ignorance,” said Mirren, barely bothering to hide the contempt in his voice. “We don’t have the time for such squeamishness any more. All the previous victims were brought to me too late, but I can do something with this one. Provided you don’t interfere.”
“Have you contacted the next of kin?”
“Doesn’t appear to be any. This is your decision, Ms Mayor.”
“What precisely did you have in mind?” said Rhea reluctantly, and Mirren smiled.
“First a sample scrying; see what can be seen through his blood. Then I’ll call his spirit back, bind it with Words of Power and ask it questions. We’re near enough to the Forever Door that I can tap some of its power and break through the Veil, enabling us to have a nice little chat with the dear departed. But you’d better make up your mind quickly. The silver cord that links the spirit to this body is growing weaker by the minute. It’ll break soon, and then even I won’t be able to call him back.”
“Do it,” said Rhea. “Do whatever you have to.”
Mirren had enough sense to smile only briefly before turning away to rummage through the instruments in his bag. Rhea looked away, and folded her arms tightly across her chest. There was a chill in her bones that had nothing to do with the coldness of the Morgue. They were treading dangerous ground now, and Mirren wasn’t anywhere near as skilled in the Art as he liked to believe. If there’d been anyone else… but there was no one else she could trust, and he knew it. And she was, after all, desperate for any kind of lead. Four men and three women were dead, and the Sheriff hadn’t been able to provide her with a single suspect. So now she had no choice but to put aside her misgivings and her scruples and turn to Mirren, in the hope his dark magics might help where science had failed her. She had to put her faith in someone.
The trouble was that as Mayor, everyone turned to her for answers and decisions. But there was never anyone she could turn to. Her family
didn’t understand the pressures, Erikson was always busy, and Ash was dead. She was alone, forced to be the solid rock to which everyone else clung. Only some days she didn’t feel like a rock at all. She smiled briefly. She’d known what she was getting into when she campaigned for the job of Mayor. Only the dedicated, the obsessive and the more than slightly crazy could handle all the things the job entailed. You couldn’t deal with the casual insanity of Shadows Fall day after day without some of it rubbing off on you. Rhea didn’t give a damn. Mostly. She’d wanted the job because she’d known she could do it. She was proud of her record. Or had been, till the murders started. Now every new death was like a slap in the face, a reminder not just of her continuing failure to stop the murders, but also, on a deeper level, of her failure to understand and control the nature of the town itself.
There was a time she’d thought she understood the town, but it had grown and changed dramatically even in the four years she’d been in office. Shadows Fall had only ever been intended as a resting place for those the Forever Door called. A place to stop and say goodbye, before going on to death or destiny. But over the years more and more people had turned away from the call of the Door, and settled for the strange reality of Shadows Fall rather than face the unknown. The town’s population had more than doubled in the last twenty years, and while its enchantments kept the town safe and protected from the outside world, the growing mass of people stretched and tested the magic’s limits more and more every day. Something would have to be done, and soon, but for the moment she was forced to spend all her waking hours trying to solve the mystery of the murders. There just weren’t enough hours in the day to worry about both.
She pushed the thought to one side, and made herself concentrate on Doctor Mirren. He took a test-tube full of blood from a rack on the table and poured it out on to a silver platter, muttering under his breath as he did so. The crimson pool swirled and heaved on the platter, rising suddenly now and again before falling back, as though disturbed by something just below the surface, though the liquid could only have been a fraction of an inch deep.
“I took this sample directly from the brain,” said Mirren casually. “It should provide acceptable images of everything the victim saw prior to his death. Ideally, I would have liked to use the vitreous fluid from the eyeballs, but both eyes were severely damaged during the attack. Which suggests, if nothing else, that the killer may have had a reason to be fearful of what a scrying might reveal.”
Rhea nodded non-committally, and watched interestedly as Mirren stirred the pool of blood with the tip of an ivory wand. The blood steamed where the wand touched it. Mirren chanted something rhythmic in Gaelic, moving the wand through a series of patterns. The surface of the blood bulged suddenly upwards, forming a demonic face. Mirren fell back a step, startled, and yanked the wand out of the blood. Horns sprouted from the crimson forehead, and the leering mouth gaped wide with soundless mockery. The air was thick with the stench of blood and the buzzing of flies. Mirren shouted two Words in quick succession and stabbed at the bloody face with his wand. The face exploded, spattering both Mirren and Rhea with blood. For a moment they just stood there, breathing heavily. Without quite knowing why, Rhea had no doubt they’d just had a narrow escape from something very dangerous. She glared at Mirren as he wiped blood from his face with his sleeve.
“What the hell was that, Doctor?”
“I must admit, I’m not entirely sure.” Mirren reached cautiously forward and prodded the few drops of blood remaining on the silver platter with his wand, but there was no response. “Most interesting, though. Most interesting. It would appear our killer has enough magic to cover his tracks quite efficiently. Certainly we can forget any further attempts at scrying. Which leaves us with only one option. Questioning the victim directly.”
“Are you sure about this?” said Rhea. “If the body was warded against scrying, it’s probably warded against necromancy too. There could be all kinds of magical booby-traps, just waiting for us to activate them.”
Mirren looked at her and smiled superciliously. “I know what I’m doing. I’m not an amateur. I have done this before, you know. The victim has only been dead a matter of hours, so the spirit will still be within reach. Called in the correct manner, with the proper terms and commands, he will answer. He’ll have no choice.”
“You’d better be right about this,” said Rhea.
Mirren took that as permission to go ahead, and began the ritual. It was simple and vulgar, and not nearly as repellent as Rhea had expected. Mirren ran through the ritual with a speed and ease that suggested he’d done it many times before. Rhea made a mental note to look into that. Even the dead were entitled to privacy. Mirren began a long, involved incantation studded with words from a dozen dead languages. Sweat beaded on his face despite the cold. Rhea could feel a growing tension in the Morgue, a feeling of pressure, of something struggling to break into, or perhaps out of, reality. Mirren broke off, and stared at the corpse eagerly, almost greedily.
“Oliver Lando; hear my words. By the power of this ritual, by agreements entered into with the Powers and Dominations, I command you to rise and speak with me.”
For a long moment nothing happened. Then shadows swayed disturbingly across the Morgue’s walls, though there was nothing present to cast them, and the buzzing of flies returned, louder than ever. Rhea looked at Mirren questioningly, and then jumped back, as the corpse sat up. It slowly turned its destroyed head and looked at Mirren with its blind eyes.
“Who calls me? Who disturbs my rest?”
“I called,” said Mirren firmly. “I conjure and command you, speak only truth in my presence. Do you remember your name?”
“I remember. Send me back. I should not be here.”
“Answer my questions, and I shall release you. Did you see the face of your murderer?”
There was a pause, and then something changed. There was a new presence in the room, something old and sickening. Rhea backed away another step. The corpse ignored her, its attention fixed on Mirren. The jaw settled comfortably into place, and a slow smile spread across the dead man’s face, cracking and splitting the dead lips. Pinpoints of light glowed where the eyes had been, and two thin plumes of smoke curled up from the ruined eyesockets.
“Little man,” said the corpse, “you should not have called me here. I am old and powerful, potent far beyond your feeble magic’s control. I shall tell you secrets, dark and awful truths that will destroy your reason and sear your soul.”
“You’re not Oliver Lando,” said Mirren, struggling to keep his voice calm. “Who are you? Speak, I command you.”
“You have no power over such as I,” said the corpse. “Don’t you want to ask me questions? Isn’t that what you did with all the others? You wanted knowledge of what lies beyond the Veil. I can tell you that, but you won’t like my answers.” It turned its head suddenly, and looked at Rhea. It giggled happily. “Welcome to Hell, girlie. We’re going to have a great time.”
The corpse swung its legs over the edge of the examination table. Mirren stuttered out an incantation, but the words had no effect. The dead man rose to his feet. Mirren shouted a Word of Power, and the corpse shivered a moment, but was not stopped. It took a step towards Rhea, its hands reaching out eagerly. Mirren shouted another Word, lunged forward and thrust his ivory wand into one of the corpse’s empty eyesockets. A horrid screaming filled the Morgue, harsh and primal and deafening, and then there was silence, and the body collapsed to the floor and did not move again. Rhea realized her hands were shaking, and not from the cold. She thrust them into her pockets and glared at Mirren.
“What the hell was that?”
Mirren tried for a casual shrug, but couldn’t quite bring it off. “Whoever our murderer is, he has powerful allies. Powerful enough to override my summoning, and send that… thing in place of the true soul. The implications of that are… disturbing.”
“You always did have a gift for understatement,” said Rhea. “
Make the proper arrangements for the body, and then write up a full report of what just happened here. One copy to me, one to the Sheriff. Apart from that, you don’t talk to anyone about this. Understand, Doctor?”
Mirren nodded, just a little shakily, and Rhea stalked out of the Morgue, while she could still trust her legs to support her.
—
It was comfortably past midday, in the lazy part of the afternoon, and Suzanne Dubois and Sean Morrison were sitting together on a battered old sofa on the front porch of Suzanne’s shack. They passed a hand-rolled back and forth, and looked out over the river Tawn. The sun poured down like honey, thick and slow and golden, and butterflies flickered by like pastel leaves tossed by the breeze. They’d been sitting there for the best part of an hour, talking of this and that and nothing in particular, and Morrison still hadn’t said why he’d come to see Suzanne. She didn’t feel any need to hurry him. He’d get around to what was troubling him eventually, and until then she was content just to enjoy the moment and the sunshine.
Suzanne looked down at the river’s edge and smiled as she watched the cartoons playing with the animals. The real and unreal creatures found each other endlessly fascinating, and there were always a few of one kind or the other playing their simple games near Suzanne’s shack. She seemed to attract them in some way, like all the other walking wounded who came to her for comfort. She sometimes thought they came because they felt safe with her. She wished there was somewhere she could go to feel safe, and protected. She didn’t feel safe anywhere any more. Finding Lucas’s dead body had been bad enough, but to discover it in her house, the one place where she’d believed the world couldn’t touch her… Her mouth firmed into a flat line. She should have known. She should have known there was nowhere really safe, not even in Shadows Fall. A hot flush of anger swept through her, as much at the spoiling of her mood as anything else. The shack was her home, and she was damned if she’d be driven out of it by anyone or anything. But at night she locked the door and checked the single window and slept with the light on.
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