by DC Malone
I had stood there, pondering deeply for at least a couple of minutes. I mean, when would I ever again get the chance to say a priest, a construction worker, and a Necromancer walked into a bar? It was an opportunity that had been almost too perfect to pass up, but eventually good sense won out. I had not only been drained, but my hand had also felt like it was practically on fire.
The burning pain had subsided considerably during my walk home, but the lessening sting didn’t do a great deal to assuage my unease about the thing. In my mind, being marked, pretty much in any way, meant one thing. You were a target. A target for what was up for debate, but I didn’t think it could be anything good. People were marked for death, or they were marked so they could be tracked, but I’d never heard of anyone being marked for free money or bottomless wings at the local Chick ‘n Chug.
After showering, which seemed to rid me of as much dread as anything else, I decided to seek some answers from the only Gifted scholar I had at my disposal. It took me almost twenty minutes to powerwalk the distance between my place and Hiram’s apartment, and by the time I got there, some combination of the exercise and the shower had me in much higher spirits.
Normally, I would have called first, but seeing as how he still hadn’t gotten back to me about the unusual bathroom art I had sent him via text last night, I figured a one on one was needed. My physical presence had a way of impressing the importance of a situation on Hiram.
“Meredith?”
I stopped with my hand on the door to Hiram’s building and then turned back to see the man himself standing behind me. He was holding a pair of paper coffee cups—one for him, and one for the too-young-looking Custodian standing next to him.
I tried, and mostly failed, to suppress the groan that came when I spotted Gwen and her excruciatingly cheerful smile.
“I need to talk with you.” I wondered how impolite the unspoken alone part of that sentence seemed to Gwen. I hoped at least a little.
“Meredith! We meet again. And so soon!” Gwen snatched one of the cups from Hiram, and for a moment I thought she was going to shove it into my hands, but she settled for shaking it in my direction by way of extended greeting.
“Yes, it’s very, very soon. Too soon for another session, I’m afraid. Why are you two together?”
“I figured Hiram was the next best thing after our meeting this morning was cut short. He has a wealth of observations about you. Our friend here is both a scholar and a gentleman, but I’m sure you of all people are well aware of that.”
I looked from Gwen to Hiram. He was almost always sporting a scowl or a grimace, but just then his grimace had a grimace. His dark eyes flitted away from mine without any attempt of maintaining contact, but I kept staring until he visibly squirmed.
“You son of a—”
“I guess I’ll let you two visit,” Gwen bubbled. “Unless three’s company?” She couldn’t have done a worse job of reading the room if she had tried.
“No,” Hiram and I answered at the same time.
“I’m afraid three’s a crowd this time,” I said, not taking my eyes off Hiram.
“Okay, then. But we still need to meet up soon. Sound good, Mer Bear?”
I grunted something that may have been a reply or a death threat, and Gwen eventually smiled her way back down the sidewalk, still jabbering either to herself or one of us.
“You,” I said.
“Meredith, I can explain.”
“You’re the one who put that—” I stabbed a finger in the direction Gwen had gone. “That half-shrink, half-cheerleader on my trail? She just called me Mer Bear. I’m pretty sure that’s a hate crime!”
“I didn’t know they were going to assign a Custodian to you,” Hiram said, still grimacing. “I just happened to be talking—”
“About me?”
“Well, yes. Yours is an interesting story. A Necromancer, but something else as well. Academically speaking, there could be much to learn from you and—”
“I am not a case study, Hiram, and I do not like being probed and prodded. More than that, I don’t like being blindsided by teenybopper psychoanalysts before I’ve even had my morning coffee.”
Hiram held out his cup. “You’re welcome to mine.”
“That’s not—” I stopped and reconsidered, then took the cup. Far be it for me to turn down a free coffee.
“And I do apologize,” Hiram said, clearing his throat. “We were both blindsided a bit here.”
I took a swig from the cup. The coffee had cream, which I didn’t care for, but it was hot and I needed the jolt of caffeine. “Don’t think this makes up for that tween dredging up my ancient memories.”
Hiram held the door as we entered his building, then led the way to the elevators. It was a far cry nicer than my building, not the least of which because it was an actual apartment building and not just some finished attic above a Middle Eastern restaurant.
When we were in the elevators, I noticed a greenish cast to his skin and figured he hadn’t taken his antinausea meds yet. I couldn’t make myself feel too upset about that; he was due a few more licks before we’d be even.
“It is fascinating, though. You have to admit.”
“What is?” The elevator dinged, and I walked out first onto his floor.
“Those ancient memories of yours,” Hiram said, fishing a keyring out of his pocket and walking over to the apartment door opposite the elevator. “I mean, that darkness that seemed so familiar to you. That entity. What was it? And why did it seem like family to you?”
Hiram pushed the door open and waited. When he noticed that I wasn’t coming, he turned back to stare at me where I still stood by the elevator. “Meredith?”
“How did you know that?”
“What?”
“My memory, how did you know about it?”
“Gwen—”
I felt a rush of irritation, mostly at myself. “I’m such an idiot. That sneaky little liar. Oh, I’m not a psychic. I’m just here to amplify your memories. It was smart of her to ambush me at the crack of dawn. I was way off my game.”
“I don’t know exactly what’s happening here,” Hiram said, still holding the door open. “But I have a feeling it’s not putting me back into your good graces.”
“You want to be in my good graces?” I pushed past him and into the apartment. “Just do me a favor and don’t bring that stuff up anymore, okay?”
“I can do that.”
“Great.” I walked over to an overstuffed leather armchair and sank into it with a sigh.
I had only been in Hiram’s apartment a handful of times before. Mostly, that was because it wasn’t that large a space, and Hiram didn’t like to meet with me in close quarters because of the whole proximity sickness thing. But really the place was fairly large for an apartment in the city. It was more than a studio, at least. He had a discrete living room, bedroom, and kitchen. So that put it lightyears beyond the average place in New Alcott.
Hiram’s choice of decoration tended toward a kind of retro country club aesthetic. Heavy, dark woods and leathers, broken up by the occasional leafy plant. It was cozy in a hyper-masculine sort of way. The place also had an almost overwhelming scent of cinnamon and clove, which wasn’t exactly unpleasant, but it was a bit of a mismatch for Hiram’s surly persona.
“So, I suppose this impromptu visit has something to do with the images you sent to my phone.” Hiram produced a small bottle of pills, opened it, and shook a couple into his mouth. “I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to get back to you about those yet. As you saw, I was otherwise occupied. How did you come by them?”
“It’s part of that case I’m helping the detective with,” I replied. “They were left at the scenes of all of the murders—on walls, ceilings, you name it. All of the murders were strangulations.”
“Interesting.”
“Interesting like you know what they are? Or…”
“I have seen something like them. Just a moment.” Hiram trudg
ed out of the room, then reappeared with a thick photo album in hand.
“About a decade ago, I went to study with a sect of Gifted monks in a little village in Spain.” Hiram began to leaf through the album.
“That’s a thing?” I asked. “Gifted monks?”
“Probably more often than the non-Gifted kind, actually. Here, look at this.”
He dropped the album on my lap. It was opened to a series of color photos of hyper-realistic greyscale images of various people. There were four photos, each showing a different person and each painted or printed onto a different type of material. One image, depicting an old man with a sallow face, appeared to have been rendered onto a kind of pale mud. All four renderings appeared to have been cut from the surfaces where they originated, apparently for preservation.
“The monks had these? They look almost exactly like the image I saw. Did they know how they were made and who was behind it?”
“They were quite tight-lipped about the whole thing,” Hiram said. “I came across them by accident during my perusal of their archives and thought they were the work of a talented local artist. When I questioned the monks about them, they shut me down at every turn. You see, they were a very superstitious group, believing their gifts to be attributable to some deity or other, and they thought discussing those images would be inviting evil into their midst.”
“Evil? Why did they think the images were evil? On the surface, they just look like portraits.”
Hiram shrugged. “Like I said, they told me very little. But it says something that they kept them. And it says more still that they feared them.”
“Was there anything about them that suggested they might be related to, uh, mind control of any kind?”
“Mind control?”
I explained my observations during my death visions and how it appeared that the murderers might not have been in control of their actions.
Hiram listened patiently, but when I finished, he shook his head. “That’s an interesting theory, but it doesn’t add up.”
“Why not?”
“For one, the type of mind control you described would be very hard to pull off. There are Gifted people out there with that ability, don’t get me wrong. But forcing an otherwise unwilling person to murder someone would be extremely difficult. Mind control doesn’t work in a brute force manner; it’s more like a very persuasive suggestion. Getting someone to pull their pants down and quack like a duck is one thing but convincing them to kill with their bare hands is something else entirely.”
“But it’s not impossible?”
“Close enough. The only thing harder would be telling the controlled party to kill themself. No matter how strong your ability, you’re never going to override the brain’s inbuilt survival mechanisms. It’s just not going to happen.”
“What if they were really powerful?” I asked. “Like, the most powerful mind-controlling murderer out there?” It was starting to sound farfetched to me, but I didn’t want to dismiss the mind control angle entirely. It was the only thing I had to work with at that point.
“I suppose someone like that might be able to push someone to murder for them.” Hiram didn’t sound entirely convinced. “But I think the mind control victim would have to already have some propensity toward violence or murder. Really, though, it’s all still a moot point.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because, even to pull off a minor control job, the Gifted perpetrator would have to be close to the person he or she was controlling. They’d pretty much need eye contact through the whole thing. Did you see someone like that in your visions?”
“No.” I felt all of the air go out of my theory at once. “I don’t suppose you have a theory? You’ve done an excellent job of telling me what it can’t be. Any ideas about what it could be?”
Hiram sighed. “If the monks were onto anything, maybe it is some great evil who has returned to wreak havoc and death upon the populace of the city.”
“Great, thanks,” I said. “That pretty much solves it. I’ll just go and be on the lookout for what? The devil?”
I ran my hand back through my hair, then closed my eyes and gave my temples a light squeeze. I had hoped to get some answers from Hiram, but it looked like I was only going to leave with another headache.
“What is that?”
I opened my eyes to see Hiram peering down at me with a worried look in his eyes. I followed his gaze to the mark on my hand.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” I held my hand up to give him a better look. “I’m pretty sure I got that during my last vision. It burned a little earlier, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. Any ideas what it might mean?”
Hiram grabbed the photo album from my lap and began to hurriedly pore through the pages. When he found what he was looking for, he turned the album so I could see.
It was a photo of the back of a hand. Etched across the flesh in red ink was a symbol that matched mine.
“This was from one of the monks,” Hiram said. “It was the only photo I had a chance to take, but at least two others had that mark on their hands.”
“Why? Why did they wear it? Did it mean something to them?”
“It wasn’t by choice,” Hiram said solemnly. “How ever the mark came to be, when it became known to the others in the order, the marked individual was immediately ostracized. At the time, I thought it was all down to some kind of politics within the order—a way of getting rid of those that were no longer deemed worthy of membership or something. But now…”
“Now you get to see the same thing in the wild,” I finished. “I don’t suppose those rather unhelpful monks of yours told you anything else about it, did they?”
The worried look on Hiram’s face didn’t lessen any. “Just that they had to shun the marked monks for the safety of everyone around them.”
Chapter 8
I spent the better part of the next few days locked away in my apartment and brooding over the implications of that weird symbol on the back of my hand. On the one hand—pun absolutely intended—I had to consider that my main source of concern was coming from the beliefs of a fearmongering sect of superstitious monks who very likely thought every eclipse was due to the vengeful wrath of some sky spirit.
But could I take that chance? My own first thought was that the mark on my hand might make me a danger to those around me. Even if the murders didn’t have anything to do with mind control, something was driving people to murder others, seemingly at random. The fact that the symbol didn’t appear on either the victim or the murder didn’t necessarily mean it was totally unrelated to the act. Maybe the thing just disappeared right before the murder was committed.
Then there was the other hand to consider, as there almost always was. Hunkering down in my apartment wasn’t going to let me figure out anything at all, so people very likely were going to continue to be murdered by whatever forces were at play. So, every moment I wasted in inaction was another chance for someone else to come to harm.
Carter wasn’t having any luck on his side of things either. He had called only once since I last saw him in person, and that was only to let me know that the department still hadn’t turned up the most recent murderer or the woman he was with. They had full names now—Caleb Hicks and Denice Oliver—and they had found that the pair worked for a local home care service, but neither had been heard from since the night of the shut-in’s, Charlie Polk’s, murder.
It was midafternoon on Saturday when I decided enough was enough and I needed to get back out there. It was partly because I had run out of coffee the evening before, but mostly it was because I decided it was silly to try to account for the unknown. For all I knew, the mark on my hand would activate me while I was at home hiding, and I would immediately run out and murder the most convenient person around. There simply was no way of knowing. I still didn’t like the idea of going near my friends, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t put boots to pavement and try to figure out what was going on.
I zipp
ed up my jacket and hunched my shoulders against the cold of the day as I stepped onto the sidewalk in front of Sason’s. The rain had let up for the first time in three days, but the sky was still a roil of bruised and bloated clouds and the wind seemed to be trying to make up for the absence of precipitation. At first, the bite of the air was a welcome change from the stuffiness inside my apartment, but it quickly seeped into my bones.
Cold and irritated at myself for the lost time, I set off walking south in the general direction of Vellis Industries. A plan of action had yet to form in my mind, so I figured retracing my steps would have to do until I thought of something else. The morgue was the obvious next step, there was still one victim I hadn’t had contact with yet, but when I tried Carter, I only got his voicemail. Maybe he’d had enough of this crazy city and decided to retire to some beach house in the south. It would be hard to fault him for it. Right about then, with the unyielding wind stinging my eyes, the thought of a blazing sun and warm sand between my toes was as close to paradise as anything I could imagine.
The throng of pedestrians was sparser that afternoon, probably because of the combination of rain and cold, but I was still more than four blocks from my apartment before I noticed the guy tailing me.
He wasn’t being particularly subtle about it, shambling along about a dozen yards behind me. But I only noticed him when I stopped to grab a plastic bottle dropped by a litterbug in front of me. As soon as I stopped, the guy behind me stopped, making him stick out like a sore thumb among the several people pushing past him. I stood and walked another twenty or thirty feet, before stopping and casually making an excuse to look back. Sure enough, he stopped again. He certainly wasn’t a pro at this tracking thing.
The thing was, my tail looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t for my life place him. He was cleanshaven with close-cropped gray hair. Maybe mid to late fifties. And even though there was a bit of a fish out of water look to him, he still managed to pull off a kind of straight-backed authoritativeness like he was used to being in a situation where he played the lead. He was tall and thin and bore absolutely no resemblance to anyone who should be stalking another person in broad daylight.
