The Rising: A Badlands Novel

by Morgan Brice

  “Hey, hey. It’s all right. You’re safe.” The familiar voice sounded steady and calming, but Simon was breathing too hard, and his mind was spinning. His whole body was primed for fight or flight.

  “Simon? It’s me, Vic. You’re safe. You’re in our house—the blue bungalow, remember?”

  “When?” Simon rasped. “What year?”

  Vic answered, and Simon shook his head. “That can’t be.”

  “Simon, you’re starting to scare me. Come on—wake up. You had a really bad dream.”

  Simon closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, willing himself to stop shaking, and feeling his heart jackhammer in his chest. When he opened his eyes, he saw Vic standing just out of reach, eyes filled with concern.

  “Simon?”

  Simon nodded, folding forward to rest his hands on his thighs as he tried to get himself under control. “I’m…okay,” he panted.

  “Is it all right if I get closer?” Vic’s voice had the tempered concern Simon had heard him use with crime victims. Simon looked up and saw a red spot on Vic’s cheek.

  “Oh my God, did I hit you?” Anxiety and embarrassment gave way to shame.

  “I caught your elbow when you bolted,” Vic said with a shrug. “I’m fine.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Simon’s stomach pitched, and he ran for the bathroom, shouldering past Vic to drop to his knees beside the toilet and heave his guts up.

  “Easy,” Vic said as if he were talking to a spooked horse. He knelt beside Simon and stroked circles on his back, gathering his hair and keeping it out of the way. “Whatever it is, you’re safe, I’m here, and you’re okay.”

  Simon rested his forehead on his arm, still leaning over the toilet. His body shook, and he tasted bile. Vic left his side for a moment and returned with a paper cup of mouthwash. Simon managed a weak smile in thanks, rinsed and spat.

  “Come on,” Vic said, helping Simon up and steadied him while he brushed his teeth. “Let’s get you to bed. I’ll make sure everything’s locked up.”

  Simon let Vic take his weight, leaning on him when Vic slipped an arm around his waist. They made it to the bedroom, and Vic lowered him to the mattress.

  “I’m sorry,” Simon said miserably. “This isn’t the kind of end to the evening I had planned.”

  “Don’t worry about it. How many nights have I gotten called out in the middle of things?”

  Simon appreciated that Vic was trying to make him feel better, but he still felt shitty about ruining their evening. He reached out for Vic’s hand and twined their fingers, then pressed them to his lips. “I love you.”

  Vic rustled his hair and squeezed his hand. “Love you, too. Stretch out, and I’ll be right in.”

  Simon stripped down to his briefs and got under the covers. He heard Vic moving around the front rooms, turning off lights and the TV, checking the deadbolt. Minutes later, Vic cleaned up in the bathroom, then slid into bed beside Simon, putting his phone on the nightstand.

  “It was a vision,” Simon said in a voice just above a whisper. “It was real. I saw a hanging a long time ago. Pirates. I was really there.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have watched that Johnny Depp movie so many times,” Vic teased gently.

  Simon shook his head. “No. This was something that really happened.”

  Vic put his arms around Simon and pulled him close, warm and protective. Simon let himself sink into the strength and security and reached out to trace the infinity symbol that was Vic’s newest ink, in the cleft of his hip, done just for him.

  “It might be real, but it’s not able to hurt you now,” Vic murmured. “I’m not going to let anything near you. Tomorrow, maybe you’ll have an idea why you saw what you saw.”

  “I know what I saw. I saw the Gallows Nine. That’s…bad.”

  “Who?”

  Simon was glad for the darkness, so he didn’t feel as awkward sharing what he’d seen. “Nine pirates, hanged back in 1765. They cursed the crowd before they died, and legend has it that seeing their ghosts is a harbinger, an omen that something awful is about to happen.”

  Vic kissed the top of his head. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. And we’ll deal with it—together.”

  2

  VIC

  “So how is the cohabitating going?” Ross Hamilton, Vic’s police partner, asked as he gave Vic a ride to the precinct. The rainy day was miserable for a walk, and Simon didn’t need to go into the shop for hours yet.

  “It’s going…okay,” Vic replied. “Technically, it’s not any different than before, because I was always over there. But—”

  “But it’s still different because now you can’t just go home if you need space, and it feels strange,” Ross finished for him.

  Vic hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Did you and Sheila live together before you got married?”

  Ross shook his head. “Nope. Her folks were real old fashioned about that. We moved in together after the honeymoon. Let me tell you, that was an adjustment!”

  “But you made it,” Vic said. “And you’ve been together how long?”

  “Five years.” Ross drummed his fingers on the wheel as he waited for the poky driver in front of him to turn right.

  “It’s nice, living together for real,” Vic said after a moment. The distance wasn’t very far, but catching the lights wrong could add minutes to the drive. “It feels settled. I’ve never lived with anyone before. So it’s kinda a big deal.”

  Ross slanted a look his way as he angled the car into the precinct parking lot. “Not even the loser you dated back home?”

  Vic sighed. His ex-boyfriend, Nate, had been a fellow cop. When Vic had been involved in an on-duty shooting that had a supernatural cause, Nate pretty much threw him under the bus and refused to move with him. “No. Which is a good thing in hindsight. We were never really that much of a couple, I guess.” He could see that now, but Nate’s betrayal had hurt like fuck at the time, and for years afterward until Vic met Simon.

  “It’s an adjustment, for sure,” Ross agreed. “All the little things—like the way you hang the toilet paper roll, whether you squeeze or roll the toothpaste, where you leave your towel—they add up.”

  They were still a few minutes early, so Vic took a chance. “Do you ever just know that Sheila hasn’t told you everything on her mind, even when you ask? Simon’s worried about something, and he’s trying not to let on how much it bothers him. I asked, but he won’t say. I don’t know why he won’t tell me.”

  Ross chuckled. “You’ve got to leave cop mode at work.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” He shifted in his seat. “So after Sheila and I had been married for about two years, we were arguing about a lot of petty stuff. We went for couples counseling. And one of the things the counselor said was that I had to quit interrogating her like a suspect.”

  “I’m not—” Vic frowned. “Shit. Is that what I’m doing?”

  Ross shrugged. “Dunno, but I guess it’s pretty common with cops. We’re trained to watch body language and look for disparities. But on everyday stuff, it’s not usually important. I had to learn that if Sheila needed to think something through, she wasn’t ‘withholding evidence’—she was just noodling it out.” He cocked an eyebrow at Vic, who huffed out a breath.

  “Yeah. Maybe. I hadn’t thought about it that way,” Vic admitted. “I’m just not sure I know how to turn off ‘cop mode.’”

  “Well you’d better learn. Trust me on this. It’ll make it easier on both of you.”

  They headed inside, and Vic played Ross’s words over in his mind. As much as he loved living with Simon, making the commitment also fed his worries. He’d lived alone since he had moved out of his parents’ house before the Police Academy. While there had been other dates and hookups before Nate, Vic had rarely brought anyone back to his place. Nate almost never stayed the night, even if Vic invited him—something that made sense in retrospect.

  Vic loved falling asleep with S
imon and waking up with his lover in his arms. He enjoyed quiet nights on the couch and found that even chores seemed like less work when he had someone to talk to and joke with. Still, insecurity nagged him. What if Simon decides that I get on his nerves? What if he misses having his own space? What if I miss having my own space, for that matter? What if living together turns out not to be what either of us expected?

  Vic shook his head, trying to clear away the noxious thoughts. Simon had given him no reason to doubt. If anything, Simon seemed even more enthusiastic about their new arrangement than when they were planning the move. Vic knew it was his own anxiety manufacturing worries, but he couldn’t entirely squelch the thoughts. We’ll take it one day at a time. And I’ll work on trusting Simon to tell me what he needs to say in his own time and try to stop grilling him. That, Vic knew, might be easier said than done.

  Vic headed into the break room for a cup of coffee. As usual, the bitter drink made him grimace. If there were an award for “worst coffee,” cop shops would be right up there with hospitals as a contender. Still, it got the job done—partly because of the caffeine and partly because the awful taste assaulted his mouth and stomach into wakefulness.

  He sat down at the desk he shared with Ross. “So—anything going on?” he asked as he switched on his computer.

  “Got warnings about a winter storm coming in off the ocean,” Ross observed. “Too late for hurricane season, but they’re saying it could be bad.”

  “Lovely. We barely got the damage fixed from the last hurricane,” Vic muttered.

  “Horrey Area Museum reported a break in—someone stole three antique daggers,” Ross said, glancing down through the morning’s recap.

  “Unless someone gets killed with one of them, it’s not our gig. Next?”

  Ross didn’t answer right away, and Vic looked up. “What?”

  “We’ve got a death that the coroner said looked like a suicide, but the family is insisting is a murder.”

  Vic frowned. “I guess some people might prefer thinking that their loved one didn’t have a choice about dying.”

  “Maybe,” Ross agreed. “But the family’s filed a formal report, so we have to investigate. Everyone else is already out on cases, so it’s ours. C’mon. Maybe we can be done by lunchtime.”

  Vic and Ross drove out to the victim’s condo, a nice high-rise on a quiet street removed from the more touristy areas. Vic scanned the report as they drove. Mike Mitchell, age thirty-five, had a good job with a local bank.

  “I don’t get it,” Vic said. “The guy didn’t owe money, and there’s no evidence of a drug problem. No history of mental health issues. He’s single, divorced—but that was several years ago and amicable. Friends said he had a new girlfriend, and she told the cops everything was good. So…why?”

  Ross shrugged. “I imagine that’s what made his parents ask for a closer look. But you know as well as I do, there are plenty of times someone’s struggling and never lets on until it’s too late.”

  Vic had struggled himself, in those first lonely months after he left Pittsburgh and Nate had dumped him. He’d landed on his feet with a new job, but even sunny Myrtle Beach hadn’t been able to boost his mood for quite a while.

  “This is his condo? Nice digs,” Vic said as they parked. The terra-cotta stucco exterior had plenty of large windows to make the most of a view of the beach in the distance. The condo might not be the most expensive in town, but it certainly lived up to its upscale reputation.

  They took the elevator up to the twelfth floor, and Ross led the way to an apartment where the door was still tagged with police tape. Ross had the key, and they ducked under the tape. Both men pulled on latex gloves and put booties over their shoes. The forensics team had already been over the place, but neither of them wanted to accidentally contaminate the scene.

  “He must have been making good money to afford this.” Vic glanced around. The room wasn’t lavish, but the furnishings were nice quality and fairly new. The large flat-screen TV and sound system didn’t come cheap. Ross turned on the lights, making it seem a little less gloomy. Still, the condo smelled off—no doubt the after-effects of traumatic death.

  The whole place made Vic feel jangly, and he thought about how Simon frequently told him that Vic’s intuition was just another type of psychic knowledge. Vic used to shrug the comments off, but when he thought about all the times he’d followed a hunch or gone with his gut and had it pay off, he began to believe Simon might be right.

  Vic made a slow circuit of the living area, noting photographs, knick-knacks, and books, taking in everything and hoping his mind spotted connections. The TV remote and an e-reader lay on the couch as if their owner had just stepped away. The kitchen was tidy, but the smell coming from the dishwasher told him it hadn’t been run, and a glance inside confirmed as much. Vic poked his head into the bathroom, which was clean but still had a lived-in look. He caught up to Ross in the bedroom, which smelled of shit and piss, the byproducts of death. Until they closed the investigation, the apartment was still a crime scene, so clean-up crews hadn’t been in.

  Ross stood just inside the doorway, taking in the unmade bed, a few pieces of dirty laundry strewn about, and the odds and ends of an entirely unremarkable room. “The police report said the locks hadn’t been forced, and there was no evidence that a second person was in the room. The door was locked.”

  “Note?”

  Ross shook his head. “Not that anyone’s found. No indicators on social media that he was having problems. His office got worried when he didn’t come into work and called his emergency contact, which was his sister. She’s the one who found the body.”

  Vic cringed at the thought. He’d escorted family members to identify the victims of violent crimes, and it was always utterly awful. Not that he’d expect it to be anything else, but still. Vic couldn’t imagine anything worse.

  “He did it over there,” Ross said with a nod toward a chin-up bar in the closet doorway. “Hanged himself.”

  “Seriously? From that? How much did he have in his system?” The exercise bar looked sturdy, but it wasn’t much more than six feet off the ground. He couldn’t imagine how the victim had managed it, since he could have touched down and saved himself at any time.

  “That’s what the report says,” Ross replied. “I don’t get it, either. As for whether he was high or drunk, we’re waiting on the tox screens.”

  Vic put his hands on his hips and did a slow turn, looking for something—anything—that might indicate more than a suicide. “I’m not sure what to look for, besides what’s already here.”

  Ross nodded. “Yeah. Me neither.”

  Vic pulled out his phone. “Something about this isn’t right. I’m going to bring Simon in on it.” He couldn’t keep from smiling despite the situation when Simon answered. “Hey, can you spare some time? We’ve got a suicide that might be a murder, and I think there’s something hinky about it—your kind of hinky.” When Simon agreed, Vic gave him the address and promised to wait for him in the lobby. He ended the call and looked up at Ross.

  “It’s possible that Simon won’t pick up on anything—that happens. Apparently, ghosts don’t always hang around. But if he can read anything, we might have a short cut in knowing whether to keep treating this as a suicide—or investigate a murder.”

  “I don’t doubt Simon’s word, but it won’t officially count,” Ross pointed out.

  “Maybe not, but it gives us a signal of which way to throw our effort.” Vic checked the time. “It won’t take him long to get here. I’ll go meet him and bring him up. You stay with the scene.”

  Vic headed downstairs, pacing in the empty lobby while he waited for Simon. Myrtle Beach wasn’t a big city, so it didn’t take Simon long to arrive.

  Vic buzzed him in, and Simon took a look around.

  “Thanks for coming on short notice. The victim’s name is Mike Mitchell. Long and short of it is, the scene looked like a suicide, but the family isn’t accepting t
hat. They believe it was a murder, but there’s nothing to support that conclusion. So—”

  “You’re hoping I can find something,” Simon finished.

  “Yeah. If there’s something to find.”

  Simon was quiet as he followed Vic into the elevator, and they rode up. Vic had learned Simon’s silence usually meant a combination of getting himself in the zone and listening for spirits. They reached the apartment, and Simon greeted Ross with a nod as he suited up with gloves and booties. Just inside the doorway, Simon staggered and gasped. Vic reached to steady him.

  Simon’s eyes were wide with terror, and his entire body went rigid in a way Vic knew meant a powerful vision.

  “What’s happening?” Ross asked, worried and curious.

  “Vision,” Vic grated. “I’m guessing Simon’s getting a look at how it all went down.”

  Simon’s body jerked, and his hands came up to his throat, clawing at an invisible noose as his breath came in painful wheezes. His eyes bulged, and his face reddened.

  “Fuck! Get me some salt from the kitchen. Do it!” Vic ordered.

  Ross raced away, and Vic heard the sound of cabinet doors opening and closing. Simon bucked like he was fighting for air, and Vic knew all too well the signs of strangulation.

  “Now, dammit!” Vic yelled.

  Ross rushed back, handing over a container of kitchen salt. Vic upended it over Simon, dumping it onto his throat and chest. He knew that there would be hell to pay for contaminating a crime scene, but right now, his priority was making sure Simon didn’t end up like the dead guy in the bedroom.

  As soon as the salt poured over Simon’s skin, the vision released him. He dropped onto his back, gasping for breath but no longer straining, although his whole body trembled from the fight.

  Ross had also grabbed a bottle of water and handed it to Vic. Vic helped Simon sit up and held the bottle steady for him while Simon drank.

  It took Simon a few breaths to recover. His eyes were still wide, and despite the cool day, sweat beaded his brow.