by N. P. Martin
Dalia smiled at Davey like he was her new favorite person. In truth, I think she still missed her own father, whom she was close to before the Fae took her. That relationship had since been taken up by the "other Dalia", the impostor left in her place when she was taken. Davey was as warm and jovial as Dalia’s father was, so I could see why she was latching onto him.
"All right guys," I said as we stood in the darkness of the cemetery, the granite chapel looming in the shadows nearby. "We have a few hours until daybreak. Let’s try to get this done as quickly as possible."
"Are you sure you’re okay with this?" Dalia asked.
I nodded. "Let’s just get it done."
Mount Jerome Cemetery was filled with many grand monuments and statues that dated back to the Victorian age. It was hard not to stare at them as we made our way to the north side where my mother’s grave is. Dalia especially seemed taken by the statues of angels dotted about. "Some say the Sidhe are really Fallen Angels," she said, her voice low in the quiet of the cemetery.
"Having met one or two Sidhe in my time," Davey said. "I don’t think that’s true. I just think some of the more Christian-minded people would like it to be true. That rumor didn’t start until after Christianity was established here in the fifth century."
"I still maintain they are aliens," I said as we passed yet another grand-looking tomb. "It makes more sense."
"That would make me part alien as well then," Dalia said. "Since the Fae share the same DNA as the Sidhe."
"Do you have a constant urge to 'phone home'?" I said, doing my best E.T. voice.
"Screw you," she replied as Davey chuckled to himself. "I actually think it would explain a lot if the Fae turned out to be alien in nature."
"You’re not wrong there," I said. "Strange lot that you are."
"No stranger than you, Chance. Remind me what we’re doing here again?"
I shook my head dismissively at her. "Martin Cahill used to be buried over there," I said, changing the subject. "You remember him? The General?"
"That bastard had a friend of mine killed," Davey said. "An innocent man."
"You aren’t the only one who hates him," I said. "His gravestone was vandalized that many times they had to move him to an unmarked grave."
"Good enough for him," Davey said.
"On a more positive note, this place is also full of writers and artists," I said, as much to keep my mind off what we were about to do than anything else. "W. B. Yeats’ artist brother is buried here, and Oscar Wilde’s father."
"And your own father," Dalia said.
"Yeah, I nearly forgot that. Thanks."
"Just saying."
Eventually we made it to the north end of the cemetery and my mother’s grave, her grave stone erected right next to my father’s. What would he say if he was here now? I wondered. Would he be mad? I didn’t think so. He would want justice for my mother as much as I do, and if this was the only way to get it, then so be it.
The first thing I did was to use a spell to create a light that hovered a few feet above the gravesite. The light was yellowish-white and about the size of a tennis ball. It would remain there until I made it disappear.
There were no stones or concrete over the plot yet, like there was on my father’s side, so that would make it easier for us to dig, though the ground itself appeared to be rock solid thanks to all the hot, dry weather of late.
"I think the best thing to do here is use a little magic to break up the ground first," Davey said. "That will make it easier to dig."
"Good idea," I said. "You want to do it?"
Davey stood a few feet in front of the grave and raised his hands in preparation for the spell. But as he did so, an unearthly groaning sound coming from the far end of the cemetery made us all freeze and look at each other. "What the hell was that?" I asked.
Davey frowned for a second. "If I had to guess, I’d say it was a ghoul."
"A ghoul?" Dalia said, seeming excited. "I’ve never seen one."
"They keep out of sight for the most part," Davey said. "They like to haunt these graveyards at night, feasting on freshly buried bodies."
"Jesus," I said, suddenly realizing something. "What if one got to my mother?"
"The ground doesn’t seem like it was touched since the burial," Dalia said.
"That doesn’t mean a ghoul wasn’t here," Davey said. "Once they’re done feasting, they usually put the grave back the way they found it. You wouldn’t know they were here most of the time."
I sighed. "Fucking great. So a ghoul might’ve eaten me ma?"
"Let’s hope not," Davey said, just as the ghoul nearby groaned loudly again, a mournful sound that I couldn’t help but be creeped out by.
Ignoring the ghoul, Davey raised his hands again and said the word, "Rumpis!"
After he said it, the ground around the gravestone began to tremor and then crack apart as if an earthquake was happening.
"Don’t go too deep," I said. "Or you’ll break the coffin apart as well."
"This isn’t my first rodeo, son," Davey said. "I know what I’m doing."
When Davey had finished, it looked like the earth in front of the gravestone had been freshly tilled by some machine. I then grabbed one of the shovels and went to hand one to Dalia as well, but she had disappeared. As I looked around, I saw her moving away in the direction of the ghoul. "Dalia!" I hissed at her, but she continued walking away like she never heard me, or more likely, because she was ignoring me. "Fucks sake!"
"I think she’s gone to observe the ghoul," Davey said.
I shook my head. "Her morbid curiosity gets the better of her sometimes."
"I like her." Davey had now sat down on the edge of a nearby grave and was busy filling up his pipe. "She reminds me of a girlfriend I had once, long ago. Darkly sweet."
"That’s one way to describe her, I suppose." I had started digging by now, the earth as fine as freshly screened top soil thanks to Davey’s magic.
"So, Corvin," Davey said after he’d lit his pipe and was sat puffing contentedly on it, as though he often sat in graveyards at night. "What are you doing with yourself these days? You’re still trying to make it as a musician I take it?"
"More or less," I replied, my breathing heavy already as I shoveled earth from the grave and piled it up to the side of me.
"You should’ve stayed at college. You had a promising academic career ahead of you before you decided to drop out."
"It wasn’t for me, Davey."
"You’ve a good head on your shoulders. You should use it more."
"I am using it, to figure out who killed me ma."
"And then what?"
I stopped digging for a moment to look at him. "What do you mean?"
"A man needs a purpose, Corvin."
"Music is my purpose. It always has been."
"Don’t kid yourself. You’d’ve made it by now if it was."
I shook my head at him and went back to digging. "So tell me, what do you think my purpose is?"
"That’s for you to find out, not me. But your Touched, Corvin, and that comes with responsibilities."
"You sound like my—" I cut myself off before I said mother. Given I was knee deep in her grave, it didn’t seem right to mention her.
"All I’m saying is, you have other talents that you could be putting to good use to help other people." He paused a second to blow out a puff of aromatic smoke. "It’s not all about you, you know."
"I’ll bear that in mind."
I dug steadily for the next hour or so, the pile of earth beside me growing ever larger as I went deeper into the grave. Then eventually, I felt the shovel scrape along something hard. My mother’s coffin, which I was now standing on top of. I looked up to see Davey staring down at me, the half moon to his back, the stars out in full in the cloudless sky. "Come on out of there now," he said. "I’ll take it from here." He reached his hand out for me to take and then pulled me up.
"You sure you don’t need my help?" I a
sked him as I wiped the sweat from my face.
Davey shook his head. "You shouldn’t be around when I open the coffin. Why don’t you go and find your friend? I should be done by the time you get back."
I stood by the edge of the grave as I looked down at the half exposed casket.
I’m sorry, Ma…
"I’ll leave you to it then."
It took me five minutes of careful searching before I found Dalia, who was crouched in the shadow of a large tomb, barely more than a shadow-form herself. I crept around the tomb and crouched beside her as she looked at me with a finger over her lips while using her dark energy to conceal me in the shadows. About a dozen feet away, I could see that one of the graves had been disturbed and that earth had been piled up in certain places. As I couldn’t see the ghoul, I assumed it had burrowed its way into the grave like some kind of animal. I had to admit, I was strangely fascinated by what was happening, like I was observing some rare creature in its natural habitat.
A few moments later, there was the unmistakable crack of wood as the ghoul must’ve broken through into the coffin. Then there were grunting sounds, followed by what sounded like a muffled cry of victory. A moment later, the ghoul backed out of the hole it had made, a dark form covered in soil and muck. As it stood up, it seemed to look straight at us for a few seconds, as if sensing it wasn’t alone, although I knew it couldn’t see us thanks to the shadows Dalia had concealed us in. The creature itself was human in origin, but it’s limbs were thin and twisted, its body hairless, grayish-green skin sagging on it in certain places. Its head appeared misshapen as well, its mouth wide and twisted, its eyes dark and squinty. And in the creatures hand, its prize: an arm taken from the body in the grave. I watched with disgust as the ghoul bit into the bicep of the detached arm and stood munching on the flesh for a moment, the smacking sounds it made seeming loud in the still of the night. Then the ghoul carefully placed the arm on the ground, leaving it there will it went about filling in the hole it had made. When it was finished, it picked up its dinner and shuffled awkwardly away, finally disappearing behind a distant tomb, where it probably sat to finish its dinner.
"Well, that was gross," I said quietly to Dalia.
"It’s a fascinating creature," she said as we both stood up.
"To you maybe. C’mon, I want to see if Davey is done yet. I still have to fill the grave back in."
Davey was out of the grave and just closing up his black medical bag when we arrived back. "All done," he said. "You can close up the grave now."
"What did you find?" I asked him eagerly.
"Nothing yet. I took samples so I can run tests at home."
I couldn’t help feeling a sense of disappointment, even though I knew he wouldn’t immediately find anything out. "Was there enough magic residue left to work with?"
"The magic used on your mother was strong, so yes, I would say so."
"Enough to trace it to one person?"
He hesitated before answering. "I’ll cautiously say yes at this stage, but I won’t know for sure until I’ve run the tests."
"How long will that take?"
"A few days at most."
"A few days?" I sighed.
"I’m sorry, son, but the process can’t be rushed."
"I’ll help you fill in the grave, Corvin," Dalia said.
"No," I said. "You two go back to the car. I’ll finish up here."
They both looked at me. "Are you sure?" Dalia asked.
"Yeah. I won’t be long."
As the two of them headed back to the car, I walked to edge of the open grave and stared down at the half-buried coffin below, still hardly able to believe that my once vibrant and alive mother was lying inside, rotting away. Wiping tears from my eyes, I grabbed the remaining shovel and began to put the earth back into the grave, which didn’t take me very long. By the time I had finished, it just looked like another recently dug grave.
I then spent the next few minutes standing before my parents’ gravestones, the tears once again brimming in my eyes until they started rolling down my cheeks. "I’ll get justice," I said before walking away. "For both of you."
18
Dalia stayed with Davey when we got back to his place. She wanted to discuss further her possible apprenticeship with him, which Davey didn’t seem to mind. The impression I got was that he was glad of the company, as I don’t think he got much since his wife died a few years ago. I thanked Davey for what he had done tonight, and for what he was going to do, and then told Dalia I would see her later.
It was after daybreak when I got back to the flat. Even though I was exhausted, I didn’t much feel like sleeping. Instead, I sat on the couch with my guitar, the same acoustic I’d had for over ten years now, and did some gentle jamming. There was so much going through my head that I needed not to think for a while, and playing guitar was the best way for me to accomplish that. It was like meditation, only not as boring, and I still got some good practice in.
My quiet time was soon interrupted, however, when my phone rang on the coffee table in front of me. "Fuck’s sake," I muttered, stopping playing and leaning over to grab the phone, wondering who the hell would be calling at this time of the morning. When I looked at the caller ID I saw it was an unknown number. For a moment, I considered not answering it, but then I thought that if someone is calling this early, it must be important.
So I answered. "Hello?"
"Corvin. Did I wake you?" It was Iolas.
"No," I replied, trying to contain my surprise. "I wasn’t sleeping."
"Good. You need to come to my house. There’s someone here I think you would be interested in meeting."
I shook my head at his arrogance, at the way he expected me to just come when he called. "Who?"
"The person who killed your mother. I’ll expect you soon."
He hung up then, leaving me to sit in shock for a moment while I tried to process what he just said. A plethora of different emotions ran through me, until I thought to myself that Iolas had to be playing some kind of game with me. But an elf like Iolas didn’t play games, which meant he was actually holding someone whom he claimed had murdered my mother. I didn’t know what Iolas was up to, but I knew there was only one way to find out.
I grabbed the car keys of the table and left the flat.
On the drive over, my mind was beset with confusion. How could Iolas have found my mother’s killer when it was highly likely that it was he himself who had killed her, or at least had someone else do it for him? That was the main question going through my mind, to which there was only two possible answers. One, that Iolas was telling the truth and he really did have the real killer in his custody. Or two, that Iolas was lying, and he was producing some patsy just to make himself look innocent. Whichever case turned out to be true, I was dreading what I was walking into. What would I be expected to do when I got there? Was Iolas expecting me to kill whoever he was holding? Or for me to watch as someone else killed the person? If it turned out it really was the killer, did I have it in me to kill them in cold blood as they killed my mother? To exact the revenge and bring about the justice I had promised to my mother only hours ago at her graveside?
Iliphar, Iolas’ assistant, met me at the front door, his pale face as expressionless as it was last time I met him. "Mr. Chance," he greeted me. "Iolas is waiting."
"I’m sure he is," I said as I walked into the stately house.
Unlike last time, Iliphar led me to the west wing of the house, and then through a door that led down a lot of stairs, which in turn led into a large cellar that was inadequately lit by a few bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling.
Jesus, Amelia wasn’t joking when she mentioned Iolas had a dungeon.
Speaking of whom, I was surprised to see Amelia standing in the room not far from her uncle. Leaning against the bare stone wall, her expression was grave and serious as she nodded once at me. Iolas himself was standing near the center of the room, the sleeves on his white shirt rolled up, which
I also noticed was speckled with blood. Not his own blood, but the blood of the person he was standing in front of. A man it seemed like from behind, dark-haired, stripped to the waist, sweat dripping off him onto the stone floor, mixing with the blood already there.
The atmosphere in the room was tense and oppressive, made worse by the fact that Iolas was staring at me in silence, a dark look on his face as if he planned to strap me to his torture chair next, which may well have been his plan for all I knew. Perhaps he was just guaranteeing that I would show up to my own death when he called earlier. Either way, there wasn’t much I could do now except to wait to see what happens.
"What the hell is this?" I asked, looking first at Iolas and then at Amelia, who merely stared back at me as if the whole situation was self-explanatory.
"I’m glad you came, Corvin," Iolas said. "I wasn’t sure if your thirst for justice would extend this far."
"What do you mean?" I walked further into the room until I could see the face of the man sitting in the chair.
"I think you know what I mean," Iolas said. "This piece of scum killed your mother."
I stared hard at the man in the chair, thinking I might recognize him, which I didn’t. His face was swollen where Iolas had obviously been beating on him, and there were also strange wounds on his body, pieces of skin missing, as if they had been ripped off, and burn marks as well, as though Iolas had been pressing lit cigars into the man’s flesh. Frankly, I was a bit sickened by what I saw, especially when the man looked at me with his one good eye, the other being swollen shut, and started pleading with me. "Please…" he said. "I didn’t so anything…"
"Tell the truth!" Iolas demanded of his prisoner. "You killed this boy’s mother…in cold blood!"
"No…I…" The man started shaking his head in denial, looking like he’d been strapped to the chair for a long time now. The chair itself was metal and bolted to the floor, with leather straps for the man’s wrists and ankles, reminding me of some kind of electric chair without the skullcap. "It wasn’t me…"
I’d had enough already, and I turned to Iolas. "You’d better have proof this man killed me ma, or I’m walking out of here right now."
