Graveyard Uprisings

by Jason Paul Rice

  He continued, “I am here to talk to you about visiting with the Gods. They would enjoy conversing with you on a myriad of subjects.”

  Cool, but suspect. “Why me?”

  He shifted around in the chair. “You may not care to acknowledge it, but you are a rather unique individual. Your skills and moreover, your honor, have been noticed far and wide. They asked me to bring you back to the Olive Pit. I hate that stereotypical name, but they do have the most delicious briny treats down there. Would you like to talk to Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo, Demeter and even Hades?”

  Hades, not so much. But the rest of them, hells yeah. “I’m still a little confused. Why did they send you?”

  He leaned to his side and crossed his legs, trying to get comfortable. “Several reasons. First, I am a good representative. Please excuse the blatant narcissism. Second, they respect you. The Gods could have sent a seductive temptress to appeal to the shallowest of senses, but they didn’t. They sent me because we respect your mind, young wizard. There’s much to be learned, but we expect greatness out of you.”

  “You do know that I swore an oath to the Celtic Gods and I can never take that back?”

  He ran his middle finger over his golden belt. “We will not ask you to swear an oath. This is more along the lines of working together to keep Pittsburgh safe. An information sharing partnership. You help us and we help you. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the backing of two sets of Gods? Nobody else can claim such an accolade.”

  I’d heard about the Greeks moving into Pittsburgh, but never expected them to recruit me. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to hear them out. Long as they know where my ultimate allegiance lies, I’ll take the meeting.”

  He grinned, keeping his teeth hidden. “Wonderful news. I shall come back tomorrow, but I will leave a nugget for you to savor. If strange supernatural event started, and there is an all-out war, you aren’t very safe with the Celts. The Greeks will win out easily. Not the Celts, not the Romans, not the Egyptians, not the Norse. It will be the Greeks. You’d be well served to listen with open ears.”

  “I understand.”

  “Until tomorrow then.”

  “I will see you then. Thank you for stopping by.”

  Socrates had trouble getting out of the chair. He walked to the door and tapped it with his cane. The werewolf driver pulled open the door and held it as Socrates walked outside and up the red carpet to disappear into the back of the limo. The chauffeur rolled up the red carpet by using a little hand crank, closed the door, and hopped in the driver’s seat.

  I stepped outside and shielded my eyes from the sun that had peeked out from behind the clouds. I noticed a crowd gathered on the other side of the street. What, they’ve never seen an immortal ancient Greek philosopher with a werewolf driver before? Normals.

  That wasn’t exactly the philosophical experience I was looking for. I had wanted Socrates to impart some knowledge to me, not recruit me like a college football coach. I would never turn my back on the Celtic Gods, but double backing of both groups of deities would give me more power in the city.

  I’m glad I wore the suit now. It did feel good to have another group of Gods show interest in me. Felix had said that he was close to the Japanese Gods, but I thought he was lying to impress Satoku. The phone rang, and I snapped out of the deep thought and went back inside.

  I sat down and checked the caller ID on the phone. Jonathan Rickleshaw. Just the man, excuse me, vampire I wanted to talk to. I was surprised he was awake in the morning.

  I kicked back in the chair and hit the Answer button. “Hello, Mike Merlino.”

  “Mike, excellent news for you. This is Jonathan, by the way.”

  “Great to hear, Jonathan. What did you find out about them?”

  Not only was he awake, but I could hear excitement in his voice. “I knew they were old. Didn’t I tell you? I found out that they were crafted likely in the seventeenth century, most likely the 1620s.”

  My eyes widened, seeing dollar signs. “That’s a little older than I had anticipated.”

  “Here’s the kicker. If these were your run-of-the-mill petite cabinets from that time period, they would be worth a few hundred apiece. However, these are made with the highest level of craftsmanship I’ve seen in a long while.”

  “Wow,” was all I could manage to get out.

  He continued talking fast, “They have quite the history too. Apparently, they bounced around Europe before settling back in Poland. During World War 2 when the Nazis were blitzkrieging their way through Poland, the Jews were obviously desperate.”

  Made sense. He continued, “Some of them even turned to dark magic to trap the malicious Dybbuk spirits into the boxes. I assume they planned to open them when the Germans arrived, but most of the time, they were forgotten and not opened. These particular boxes were sent home from a WW2 veteran and that’s how they eventually ended up in Pittsburgh.”

  “Quite a life.”

  He agreed, “Quite a life indeed. A harsh one no doubt, trying to keep those raging, malevolent spirits inside forever.”

  “So what do those spirits do? They just scare people from what I know.” I’d actually heard much worse.

  Jonathan cleared his throat. “They can, but I’ve heard it can get much worse than that if they start to work together. Dybbuk spirits work together to form into Sendal Spirits. Individually they aren’t very worrisome, but when they combine twenty spirits to make one super spirit, you can imagine the power. That’s why I didn’t want the owner to burn those other boxes. If the spirit from one of those boxes merges with another spirit, I can get both of them back into the box.”

  I wanted to press him on that, but I couldn’t contain my excitement. “How much do you think they are worth?”

  He paused for a few seconds. “I’ve talked to about a dozen people and a conservative estimate would be around five to ten thousand.”

  That. Was. Awesome. “Total?”

  He laughed. “Five to ten thousand per.”

  I smiled as a one-thousand-dollar job just received a major monetary upgrade. “Now we’re talking. That’s a nice slice of cheese.”

  His tone went from chummy to serious, “Don’t forget about fees too. You’ll be taxed and have to pay a fifteen percent premium on each item.”

  Considering this was basically found money, I didn’t mind paying the fees to make it happen. I joked, “Then I won’t sell them.”

  Jonathan paused for several moments and I could almost feel his heavy breathing through the phone. “Really?”

  “No, I’m just kidding.” Our humor didn’t mesh very well.

  He didn’t laugh. “Smart man. Have you made any progress with our friend that we discussed?”

  I convinced my brain of the lie. “Still nothing on that front. Nobody that I’ve contacted so far has even the faintest clue as to where she might be.”

  His voice latched on to some anger. “She will be found. That I can tell you.”

  “Did you ever think that she split town? She could be across the country or even the world by now.”

  “I have people everywhere. She will be found and she will be dealt with. Let’s not discuss this much more over the phone.”

  That was something we could agree on. “Good idea. Just give me a call if I need to do anything to facilitate the items for the auction.”

  “I will need you to fill out some paperwork before we get those before the public. I will call you when I get the paperwork together.”

  “Thanks, Jonathan.”

  “All right, Mike.”

  I still felt weird being in the middle of this vampire sandwich. I couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t going to work out well for me.

  Just a normal day, you know, talking to Socrates and a vampire with a total combined age of about 2500. No biggie. I sat down and kicked my feet up on the desk.

  An artic chill swept through the room, causing the windows to frost up. I shivered and jumped up from my desk, wondering what was
causing the temperature drop.

  14

  Not the thermostat. As I peered around the office, I zeroed in on a heating vent near the ceiling. A glimmering fog escaped from the openings and floated around before taking shape. The fog was a mixture of silver, blue and green with little sparkles.

  It took on the adumbration of an ogre that must have been over eight-feet-tall. An object that appeared to be a club materialized in his right hand. The vaporous ogre drew the club back and took a long, slow swing at my head.

  I easily ducked the foggy club. The follow through smashed the computer on my desk and busted out the window. How had I not detected any magic in the area? That realization scared me as much as the ogre did, who turned around and grabbed the empty desk in the corner of the room.

  The see-through beast lifted the solid pine desk off the ground, whirled around and launched it at me. I slid out of the way, narrowly escaping a painful death. I couldn’t draw any fireballs in fear that I would burn down my office.

  I manipulated an air pocket and formed it into a rectangle before heaving it at the ghostly figure. The condensed pocket went right through the spirit and crashed into a bookshelf against the wall.

  How come it can hit me, but I can’t hit it? The ghost hissed, taunting me, and hit me with an invisible force that launched me against the front door.

  I tried to catch my breath as the spirit closed in on me. I kicked helplessly at the ghost and my feet passed through the opalescent fog, doing no damage. A strange force brought me back to my feet with my back against the front door.

  Before I could regain my wits, I was flying across my office again, landing with a harsh thud. So much for wearing the nice suit to work today. I loosened the tie and opened the top button of my shirt. The silent spirit assassin shifted its shape to what appeared to be a centaur.

  The mythically-shaped gas started pulling in the chill from around the room and the spirit appeared to be absorbing the frost and solidifying. I looked around for an escape route as the centaur’s rear right leg swiped the ground, readying for takeoff.

  Smoke came from my black carpeting as the centaur kept striking his foot against the floor. He leaned back and forth, sizing me up, as the ice inside the spirit cracked with the movements. Maybe I could hit this thing with some magic now?

  Too late. I watched as the beast crouched and prepared to crush me against the wall. Never thought this would be how it ended. I don’t even know what this was. Sendal Spirits?

  Just as the centaur went to spring into action, the front door swung open, and a sexy young vampire rushed through the jamb, bringing one hell of a fury with her. The spirit reacted to the sound from behind and turned to find out what it was.

  Carolyn, with full Wolverine-style purple fingernails extended, took an elegant sideswipe, slicing through the body of the horse. A terrible shriek of pain coupled with the sound of shattering ice, and I swear it could have been heard from miles away.

  The spiritual body fell to the ground with a plopping sound and the ice melted into the carpet. Carolyn leaned down and quickly extended her nails into the beast one more time. The spirit became silenced and completely disappeared, slowly seeping into the carpet.

  “Holy shit, how did you do that? I couldn’t even touch that thing. I assume it was a Sendal Spirit.”

  “Probably. That’s why these help.” She flipped around her long fingernails to expose the undersides. Rune symbols from her vampire clan had been etched into the nails.

  This woman could kill me at any moment with a simple swipe of her nails. I could feel the power emanating from them as they got closer to my face. Scary, but pretty frickin’ cool too.

  “Cheater. I need to grow my nails out too.” I almost asked how they retracted and kept the symbols, but I knew she wouldn’t reveal her secret. “On a serious note, thank you. Very much. We make a pretty good team. You sure you want to leave with all the fun we’ve been having? Hell, we’re just getting started.”

  “Ha ha. We do make a pretty good team. You get your ass kicked and I save you.” She stole Reg’s laugh. And she insulted me. Evil succubus. She continued, “I think I need to get out of this town. Does Jonathan know anything yet?”

  “I don’t think so. He seems to be pretty frustrated about it too. You probably shouldn’t expect a Christmas card this year.”

  She laughed like Reg again. He must have been rubbing off on her. She said, “I’m more worried about a toe tag right now.”

  “That’s reasonable. He knows something happened to the two vamps he sent after you.”

  She picked up my busted monitor and put it back on my desk. “Too bad that’s where it stops. Dead men don’t tell stories. Not good ones anyhow. This is either going to go one of two ways. He either gets tired of chasing me and totally gives up, or he gets frustrated and sends an army of creatures to find me.”

  “What do you think it will be?”

  She sighed. “You’ve met Jonathan a few times now. Which one do you think it is?”

  I didn’t need to answer and she knew it, indicated by the shit-eating grin on her mug. She was still in battle mode with the tips of her fangs peeking out of her dark lips.

  I said, “You look exhausted. Sorry I dragged you out of bed for all this.” I gestured around my destroyed office. “Why don’t we go back to my house before the cops show up and start asking questions. I’ll tidy this place up tomorrow.”

  I stayed for a few minutes to patch up the window so that the entire room wouldn’t be a popsicle when I came back. Carolyn and I went back to my house. I changed out of my suit into much more comfortable gear.

  I went downstairs and joined Carolyn and Colossus on the couch. I still couldn’t believe that she’d got my dog to warm up to her, especially if the pooch knew what she had eaten for breakfast. Speaking of which, was it feeding time for the vamp? Who could keep track of her insatiable appetite for blood?

  I felt like I was bleeding internally from the ass whipping courtesy of a mystery spirit. Colossus ran under me as I went to sit down, a bad habit he just couldn’t seem to break. Wrenching my body to the side to avoid him, my back locked up for a second. I stretched out the cramp, and slithered down on the couch as my dog jumped onto my lap. Picking up the pillow beside me, I tucked it behind my head.

  This day had certainly taken a strange turn after such a promising beginning. I was worried that Felix was correct and these were Sendal Spirits. That crazy brawl in my office had convinced me. Panic rushed around my chest, and I realized I was overmatched.

  Worry about my girlfriend and father snaked through my body, mingling with the panic. It erased the pain from the fights I had gotten into this week, which was a plus.

  How could I defeat thousand-year-old spirits that combined and consolidated their power into a super-force? The Celtic Gods might need to give me some ancient help to defeat this ghostly group since Carolyn had to use her rune claws to kill it. I needed to get more information on how to battle these spirits.

  The meeting with Socrates had been interesting. Perhaps I could get some answers out of the Greek Gods about the Sendal Spirits. Peeking over at my small vampire friend, I couldn’t believe she had saved my life twice.

  The most sensible thing to do was to listen to what the Greek Gods had to say. It could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship or just a wasted conversation. Hopefully they can help me get these malevolent spirits out of Pittsburgh.

  I talked to Carolyn and my eyelids began to get heavy. I leaned back, mashing my head into the soft pillow, and faded out. Strange dreams swirled inside my head in which an unidentified person was yelling at me. Berating me.

  The lids of my eyes slowly flickered open as the voice from my dream became clear.

  Satoku screamed, “What the fuck is going on here, Mike?”

  15

  I looked down and knew I was in deep trouble. I had passed out sitting up and my trusty vampire friend had curled up next to me and used my lap as a pillow.
Reaching out, I shook her neck and she sat up next to me, groggy.

  “Oh. Her? There’s nothing going on here.” I stammered.

  That answer did not satisfy my girlfriend. “Nothing? Sure as shit doesn’t look like nothing. Who the fuck is she?”

  “Who? Her? Oh, she’s nobody.” Bad choice of words.

  She paced the length of my coffee table, chest heaving in and out, full of anger. “Nobody? Nobody? I must be hallucinating then, you know, because I do that all the time. You better start explaining what is going on here.”

  I stood up and moved toward her until she put her hand up for me to stop. “She’s part of the new job I am working on.” I turned to Carolyn. “Show her your teeth.”

  The vamp smiled, and her incisors extended into sharp fangs.

  I explained, “She is a vampire and we are working on a case together. I didn’t want to say anything to you because of Felix. I couldn’t afford to have him running around town talking to everyone about it.”

  She shook her head, disgusted. “You’re going to use Felix as an excuse again? Unreal.”

  “It’s not an excuse. He’s connected to a lot of supernaturals in Pittsburgh and this is a very delicate matter.”

  She leaned down and stroked Colossus’s chin. “I just don’t know anymore. I get that your life isn’t going to be ordinary, for lack of a better word. I get it. But when I find you passed out on a couch with a sexy vampire on your lap, what am I supposed to think?”

  She had made a fair point. “I don’t know. How am I supposed to feel when you ditch me to hang out with another guy all the time?”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Felix? I don’t even really look at him like a guy. He’s just a friend.”

  “Carolyn is just a friend too.”

  Colossus ran to the front door and Satoku stood up again. “Yeah, but there is a big difference here. I’ve openly told you that I was hanging out with Felix. I’ve never kept anything a secret from you. If you showed up at my house and saw me lying in bed with him, I would anticipate the same reaction from you.”