Resurrectionists - A Greystone Tale

by Lou Paduano

  That gave her a clear path, one that led her to Christian Fuller. Ten years ago his parents were killed, the murderer never caught. Or at least never jailed. Newborne was arrested for the crime but never went to trial. Insufficient evidence. Not to Fuller. Not to the lone survivor of such a horrific event.

  Soriya cursed, scraping along headstones in the dark. Blood ran along her arm in a thin stream down her wrist. This should have been handled better. It would have too if Loren had shown up. They were supposed to confront Fuller together. But her calls to him went unanswered, right to voicemail. Loren didn’t want to be bothered. Couldn’t be bothered. It was starting to be a pattern with the man. Her so-called partner.

  Still, she could have handled things. Fuller was a creature of habit. A stop at the local deli every Wednesday on his way home from work for the same overloaded sandwich. All she had to do was intercept him. She got cocky—she always got cocky. When he noticed her, he bolted down the block for the cemetery as the sun descended toward the horizon.

  Idiot.

  Fuller stopped, breathing hard. He leaned on a nearby tree, lurching forward as Soriya approached rapidly. The blade rose up in his hand, and the young woman skidded to a halt on the soft earth.

  “Drop the blade,” she yelled, hand inching for the pouch along her right hip. Pink ribbons skidded loose down her left side.

  “I did what was right,” Fuller said. Tears filled his eyes—the scared, lonely kid returning.

  “You killed a man,” Soriya replied, inching closer.

  “He murdered my parents!”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Fuller shook his head, the blade just over his left arm. “I do. I’ve always known.”

  “Then you should have gone to the police.”

  “No. He was mine.” The blade fell to his arm, Fuller’s eyes wide.

  “Don’t!” Soriya called out.

  Too late. Blood soaked the wooden blade, running down to the ornate handle.

  “And so are you,” Fuller finished. A spatter of blood fell to the ground. The earth shifted and moaned from the act, the sacrifice given to it. The blade might have made the cut on Newborne’s body, but it didn’t kill him. Something else did. The blade was just a summoning tool. The puncture marks made it clear for what.

  Vampires.

  The ground ripped open around Soriya. Fuller watched for only a second before fleeing the scene. Soriya noticed the blood dried to her skin down her right side.

  “Great.”

  From out of the earth they came. Large red eyes and snapping jaws full of fangs. Their bodies the size of babies, their skin like porcelain, but deadly. And hungry for blood. Her blood.

  Jenglot.

  Some believed they were once human. Others believed the Jenglot were dolls brought to life through a summoning. Or through blood. To Soriya, the truth appeared to be a combination of the two theories. Not that this was a time for study—not by a long shot.

  The Jenglot screamed, their voices high and shrill. Soriya ducked under the first, the ribbons from Kali swatting the next away. Fighting infants never made it on her bucket list and she sure as hell wasn’t going to fall to them. One clomped down on her ankle, causing her to scream. She kicked the beast away, slamming it hard against a nearby tombstone.

  “This is why I don’t want kids,” she muttered.

  Fuller was a hundred feet away already—well on his way to an effective escape. With eyes locked on her target Soriya continued to fight through the mass of vampiric infants.

  Smiling the whole time.

  Fuller never saw the arm stretched out in front of him. He had been too busy looking back at his victim. By the time it came into focus it was too late. He slammed into the arm and fell back hard on the ground. The blade skittered away. Arthritic fingers snatched the wooden weapon before Fuller could recover.

  “No!” the young man shouted.

  Too little, too late. Mentor snapped the blade in half.

  The shift came about instantly. The Jenglot, too numerous to defeat, shrank back away from the bleeding yet still swinging Soriya. Little mouths screeched in anger, their pint of blood denied them with the breaking of their link to the world. They crawled back through the open chasms in the ground surrounding her, the holes closing up behind the demons’ retreat.

  Soriya wiped her brow, staggering to greet her teacher. Mentor bent low, binding Fuller’s hands tight behind his back.

  “I had him,” Soriya said. “You didn’t have to—”

  Mentor sighed. “Just say it, child. One time.”

  “Thank you,” she said through gritted teeth.

  He stood, a slight groan escaping him. His right leg was acting up again. “You’re welcome.”

  Fuller glared up at her, eyes full of fury. She decked him across the cheek and he slumped to the ground, unconscious.

  “I was fine, though,” she said, shaking the aftershock from her knuckles.

  “It looked that way to me.”

  “You heard what he—”

  “Yes,” Mentor said. He picked up the pieces of the broken blade, tucking them into his coat pocket. “Though how he came upon the blade is a mystery. I haven’t seen one like it since the Luminaries left their library.”

  “You could ask him,” she said with a grin, knowing the answer. “When he wakes up, that is.”

  Mentor shook his head. “I’ll learn. In time. Someday you will regard patience over the thrill of the chase.”

  “Loren was supposed to….” She stopped, catching the glare. “I know.”

  “Yet you persist with the man.”

  “Tell me how you really feel.”

  Mentor shrugged then stopped. He bent low, hand resting on the headstone closest. “Strange.”

  “Mentor? What is it?”

  His hand ran along the ground, pulling up dirt. Small grains of soil trailed between his fingers back to join its brethren. “This grave.”

  “One of many.”

  Mentor threw her a look and she yielded. “Years old, but look: fresh dirt. Recently seeded even.”

  “I don’t understand. What does it mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” Mentor replied. He stood slowly, leaning hard against the stone. “I believe someone dug up this body and is trying to hide the fact.”

  Soriya glanced around nervously. She hated cemeteries. She hated being surrounded by the dead, reminded of the end to come. The everlasting stillness of eternity. But to disturb that peace? Who would do something like that?

  She circled the stone, peering into the darkness surrounding them. The multitude of the dead. Her foot slid along the ground and felt an edge. Deeper shadows circled them.

  “Mentor?”

  He turned, following her gaze before joining her. They both looked into the open grave beside them then turned to four others littering the grounds nearby.

  “Whatever they’re doing,” she said, “I don’t think they’re hiding it anymore.”

  Chapter Four

  Everything was black.

  He wanted to scream, to shout into the darkness that surrounded him, but he found no voice. He could not move, his eyes unable to adjust to the thick shade. He was lost.

  A sound caught his ear. The darkness shifted, growing lighter, yet the cloud remained around him. A fog settled over him then lowered further and he could see objects. Out of focus like the scents surrounding him. Becoming clearer with each breath. Lilacs. Like the ones Beth kept in a window box off the front window. Her excuse to keep an eye on the city.

  He was on the rooftop. Their rooftop. He had only been up there a few times, always at Beth’s will. He never took to heights. Saying no to his wife was never an option, however. He hated to disappoint her.

  Yet he did. In the end.

  Obscure images sharpened, the world screaming into focus. She stood on the ledge, always on the ledge. A red sundress with yellow lilies along the trim, running up her curves. Her blonde hair shimmered in th
e light, resting on her shoulders.

  Beth.

  She turned and smiled, the smile that took her away from him. “Greg.”

  Greg Loren woke with a start. Her voice rang in his ears and his hands fought to cover them, to block out the sound. It had been the same nightmare for weeks. Always ending the same—with his refusal to listen any further.

  Afraid to listen further.

  The couch groaned beneath him. His back followed suit, aching from the sag in the cushions. The wood frame of the ancient furniture begged for a reprieve that would never come. The television beamed soft light on his face. Another nameless comedy no one would remember in six months. Primetime television at its finest.

  Loren rubbed his eyes, his hands scraping along his thickening beard. He needed a shave and a shower. He would settle for the latter. First, he went for the window, a stick of gum substituting his morning cigarette ritual. Filthy habit. Morning was a misnomer, though.

  It was night.

  He was late for work again, the afternoon spent at the bar across from the courthouse, another mistake piled on the rest. Like the Jacobs case. Like everything lately.

  He didn’t care.

  Nor did he care about the four missed calls chiming on his cell phone, the buzzing echoing along the coffee table in the center of the room. Soriya. Late for work meant late for their planned meeting, one forgotten among the pitcher of beer and the sports talk blaring from six televisions suspended over the bar. He couldn’t keep an appointment but knew every off-season move made by the Blackhawks over the last week. Priorities.

  Soriya didn’t need him. His role in her investigation was superfluous, the leads all stemming from her work, not his connections in the department. She was better off without him. The same with Ruiz.

  Ruiz.

  He needed to get to work. Needed to figure out where his head was at with the job. With everything. Loren shambled away from the window, not bothering to draw the curtain.

  The bedroom sat at the back of the apartment, the shadows always staring at him during his trips to the toilet. Its use had become that of a giant closet, the floor taken over by laundry baskets of unwashed clothes. The bed remained made, had been for months, which was also the last time he decided to dry-clean the comforter and wash the unused sheets.

  A monument to his former life.

  He tried to sleep there once, tried to move beyond the loss of his wife. It didn’t take, couldn’t take. The couch was his refuge, but even that plagued him now, the nightmares still fresh in his mind.

  “Greg.”

  Beth called for him. Almost begging him…but for what?

  He should have left it all behind. The apartment, the furniture, everything. Years ago. But he didn’t, couldn’t. Not with the chance of some link to his wife, some clue into what happened to her so long ago. Some sign that answered all his questions about her death.

  Loren moved for the shower, throwing off his ratty T-shirt, knowing one would soon replace it from the laundry basket of unwashed clothes. The shower would be enough. Enough to drown out the sound of his wife’s voice. For a little while at least. Never for long.

  The past refused to abate.

  Like his nightmares. And the angel caught in them.

  Chapter Five

  Richard Crowne missed his wife.

  Their marriage was the bright spot in a troubled life of obligation and personal responsibility. Jennifer found a way to lighten the mood, to crack the right joke at the right time with the right people. No matter the situation, she found no discomfort. Nothing she would not do to help her husband thrive in his increasingly political position in the city.

  A bullet ended that.

  They were headed to dinner, a simple engagement, one planned for just the two of them. Unfortunately, there were hands to shake, questions to be asked, and the flow of favors to pocket for a later date.

  But it started with dinner and catching up. She did most of the talking at these occasions. His preference. He loved being able to just listen to someone, rather than analyze their every word, monitor their posture, catch every inflection for nervous tics, for tells of a less than truthful nature.

  Never with Jennifer.

  Outside the restaurant, dinner was forgotten when the crashing sound of the bullet sliced through their laughter. It took him by surprise, the sharp pain in his right shoulder. He fell, reeling back, Jennifer falling with him, locked in his grip. She cried out for him, covering his body. More thunder ripped through the air, once, twice and a final third time.

  He only saw her. Her brown eyes. Her ruby lips. The way her black hair sparkled under the starlight. She rubbed his cheek, the cold of her fingertips shocking him, dulling the pain in his shoulder. A single tear dripped down from wide orbs of light and then they closed.

  He screamed her name. He shook her off and cradled her close. She had shielded him from the final assault. She saved him at the expense of her life.

  He screamed for a long time.

  Three years did little to change his feelings. The loss. The pain in his right shoulder when the weather turned bitter cold. He missed her, and nothing would ever change that.

  Hands patted his back as he took his position in the closest pew of the church. Smiles from well-wishers, passing on messages of good luck with each nod and utterance. The church was busier than usual. It always was when they performed the ceremony.

  The Andrews family sat across from him, a family reunited with a recent loss of their own. They were surrounded by others, patrons both recent and from the start of the project, all with a look of wonderment on their faces. Richard shared the same look.

  It was time.

  The altar was ready, the figure upon it covered by a white sheet. The room hummed, the great machines beneath the church whirring to life. It caused a slight vibration along the stone pillars stretching to the roof. Richard followed them to the ceiling. Ornate glass replaced masonry, allowing everyone to peer out into the night sky of Portents through tinted glass stained blood red.

  A hand fell upon Richard’s shoulder. He turned to see the hooded figure before him, only his thick, black beard noticeable under the dim lights. The Founder. The man who started the endeavor, the man who found Richard, and who saved him from the torment of his life without Jennifer.

  They met at a fundraising gala downtown in passing, sharing stories of loss. From that first connection, Richard had come to know the Founder as a friend and more. It all led to this moment.

  Richard’s moment.

  “It’s time, Richard,” the Founder said, and the world stopped. “Are you ready?”

  Richard could not find the words. A simple nod escaped him, his eyes cast to the figure on the altar. The figure he waited three years to see again.

  He was ready. He had been since the first crack of thunder. Since learning about the church from the Founder. Since he first witnessed the work being done by the Church of the Second Coming.

  Since he first saw one of them rise.

  He tried to move on, tried not to let his wife’s death stop him from living. But he couldn’t. He missed her too much. He needed her back.

  It was time for her to return.

  Chapter Six

  Greg Loren never dreamed of being a paper pusher. Never once in his thirty-five years of life did he feel the pull to the corporate world, the sit behind a desk and shuffle reports around to look busy sort of situation. Never. Yet as the stapler clanked under his tightened grip, he felt like nothing more than a corporate shill.

  Paperwork was a necessary evil. Of course it was in a world piled high with accountability. The police, especially in the modern age, where every mistake found its way into the national spotlight, had to cover their asses as much as the next guy. Witness testimony stamped and approved next to arrest profiles, and situational reports left the exhausted detective feeling empty.

  And hungry.

  The malaise washing over Loren was the worst part. H
e dreamed of the job as a kid. Working the beat then getting his shield. Nothing could have been better. Saving lives. Catching killers. Better than any television show could depict. All completely real and made for him. Yet he failed to remember the name of the dead kid with the smear of cheddar cheese topping on his pants or the killer with the munchies. Gone. Lost. Like Loren. Another piece missing of the puzzle and the grizzled detective had no inkling why, or how to snap back into the world.

  No one questioned him. Not even after manhandling the stapler for the last three minutes across from the break room. There were stares. There always were. Ever since Beth. Ever since he separated himself from the pack, a self-imposed social exile.

  Another mistake. Another regret. Sometimes, anyway.

  “Greg, old buddy,” a voice called out, joined by a hand slapping his arm. The stapler fell to the table, scattering a pile of paperclips along the surface and to the floor below. Loren gritted his teeth, glaring at the appendage locked on his shirtsleeve.

  “Standish?” he asked in a low growl. “The hand?”

  Robert Standish sneered, his fangs showing. He was a beached whale with the grin of a shark. His gut protruded atop the tireless efforts of his belt, jiggling with his laughter.

  “Always the same, Greg,” Standish replied. He stirred a cup of coffee, the heat causing little beads of sweat along his brow.

  Standish was Loren’s former partner, their time together better left forgotten. They met under unusual circumstances, but his initial impression of the man never left.

  He did not trust him, and he sure as hell did not like him.

  Standish chuckled. “Except not quite the same from what I’ve heard. Trouble in paradise?”

  He pointed to Ruiz’s office at the end of the hall. For as long as Loren had been stationed at Central in the Detective Bureau, Ruiz’s door remained open. Minus the occasional meeting or angry phone call, it was a policy with the man, an invitation to keep the lines of communication open at all times.

  It was closed now and had been all shift, since their time at the courthouse that morning.

  “A misunderstanding,” Loren muttered with a shrug. “Your concern is touching.”

  Loren started for his office, pulled back by the man. “Hey now,” Standish replied. “No one likes to see it happen.”