by J. C. Nelson
I snapped a picture of its finger painting with my cell phone and called Dale. “I put our walker back to bed. You’ve got to see what it was drawing. I’m sending a picture now.”
After a moment Dale swore. He’d tweaked the inflections on his voice module to get the curses just right. “You didn’t repeat any of that out loud, did you?”
“According to you, I can barely read the instructions on a condom wrapper. Pretty safe bet I didn’t read the glyphs. That what I think it is?”
When Dale spoke, his voice trembled, as much as it could, being mostly mechanical. “Wipe it off the walls, get the hell out of Dodge. I’m booking you a flight back to the U. S. of A. We need to talk to the director.”
I rolled the corpse over, making sure it was dead for good. “The Re-Animus threatened me. It might just be some sort of curse.”
I waited for what seemed like an eternity for Dale to answer.
“No. I’ve seen that pattern before. I think it’s a spell.”
Two
GRACE
I didn’t do evenings, weekends, or fieldwork. Not because I had a six o’clock bedtime, a social calendar, or a problem handling guns. Working for the Bureau of Special Investigations didn’t pay well enough to justify staying past five, missing the evening news, or getting torn to pieces by an animated corpse.
So a phone call at three in the morning on a Saturday from the BSI headquarters in Seattle started my day off wrong. Having to travel from Portland to Seattle before seven o’clock on a weekend didn’t fit my idea of an auspicious beginning. If I had my way, starting the workday during single-digit hours would be illegal.
I made good time, catching the train in Portland, and then a cab to BSI headquarters at the south end of the lake. Like every day in Seattle, the clouds hung overhead, obliterating vitamin D and drizzling depression on every inch of the city. No wonder those folks worshipped coffee.
Unlike our Portland branch, BSI headquarters in Seattle never closed. I walked through the door at a quarter to six, waving to the security guard in the lobby.
He looked me over, letting his gaze linger in all the wrong places, and gave me a cheesy smile. “Receptionist training doesn’t start until eight, miss. But if you wait, I’ll show you around the cafeteria when it opens for breakfast.”
I let the friendly demeanor I preferred to use drain away. I could be a bitch if I had to. “That’s Senior Analyst Grace Roberts. I’m here for an emergency meeting, so you can sign me in now and show yourself the cafeteria.” Men tended to look at my hair and think “Blonde, and dumb.” They’d look at my face and say “Barbie got a college degree.” God only knew what they thought about my figure, but regardless of what my first supervisor thought, the only assets I used to advance my career were between my ears, not my legs.
He kept his mouth shut while I signed the logbook and scanned my badge. When I stepped out of the elevator on the twentieth floor, I found a shriveled, ancient man in a lab coat, waiting. His white skin had more liver spots than a leopard and enough spider veins for an army of tarantulas. I read the tag on his coat and froze.
Dr. Alvin Thomas, BSI head of Analysis. Meeting Dr. Thomas was like meeting Elvis, the president, and Albert Einstein all at once. Dr. Thomas turned out to be depressingly short, making my six feet feel like eight.
He peered up at me through thick glasses, and the wiry white mustache on his face spread as he smiled. “Grace Roberts. So good to finally meet you, after reading so many of your papers.”
I froze.
My papers? I’d jotted down theories on the BSI contributor net, more rambling rants than proper papers. “Which rants—I mean, what subjects did you find—”
“Your theory on viral susceptibility for Re-Animus control. Your field protocol for proper assessment of control violation.” He nodded. “And of course, your rebuttal to Operative Kingman’s protocol for dispersal of evil. While I could have requested almost any translator, I would prefer the assistance of another skeptic.”
The field teams carried iron crucifixes and wooden crosses, garlic and a million other herbs. Relics, they called them. Yet behind every one of these, a principal surely lurked. Herbs, for instance, might interfere with communication pathways in hosts. Iron impurities might disrupt communication. Wood could (and did) cause allergic reactions.
Even the Re-Animus, or controlling mind, was more likely a composite organism than an evil entity. Such opinions did not earn me many drinks from my coworkers. My aversion to mixing business and pleasure earned me fewer invitations to drink at all.
“I’m definitely skeptical.” I reached out, and he shook my hand in a weak grip.
With that, Dr. Thomas turned and opened the door, leading me into the lion’s den. Inside, the mauling had already begun, delivered by the BSI director herself, Margret Bismuth. Meeting Dr. Thomas fulfilled one check box on my bucket list. I’d imagined meeting Ms. Bismuth, but in my mind, it involved power lunch at “Women of BSI” and trading stories, not getting glared at on entry.
An average-height African American woman with mottled brown skin, she radiated power. From her crossed arms to the way she looked over her bifocals, everything about her gave off an essence of pure authority. Her silver hair and sharp features made it easy for men to distort her into a caricature, judging from the notes I’d seen posted on Analysis message boards. I stood, smiling, as she roasted the older man across the table, her tone a blast of napalm. “Dale, I believe it’s time for you to explain why you’d wake me up at midnight for something like this.”
Her victim stammered, then sat up. When he spoke, his voice was a machine, mechanical, but broken in gasps. “We found another spell, ma’am, in Greece.”
Dr. Thomas and I snorted in unison. A spell? Hardly. The field teams labeled anything that disrupted a Re-Animus a “holy relic,” even the most disjointed vocalizations became “a curse,” and in the rare occasion that a corpse so much as stumbled into a wall, the resulting marks got called “a spell.”
Director Bismuth clicked a key on the presentation screen, bringing up a picture.
Taken by a drunk on a cheap cell phone by the light of the moon, the image was less writing and more a jumble of incoherent glyphs. My training kicked in. Like any writing, the key was to pull out distinct terms and break them from pictures to concepts. The tension that had built up in my shoulders drained out as I fell into a comfortable pattern.
I walked around the table, entranced by the images.
Before I ever became interested in pathology or radio waves, before I developed my first composite theories, I’d had a solid job reading hieroglyphics. But this writing looked like the scrawlings of a syphilitic maniac.
I pointed to one image, the sign of a pintail duck. “What made this? What was the writing implement?”
Blank faces stared back at me, until Director Bismuth cleared her throat. “Ms.—”
“Roberts.” Dr. Thomas answered before I could. “Grace Roberts, senior analyst. Her theories on co-organisms . . .” He trailed off under her withering gaze.
“Ms. Roberts, did I invite you to speak?” Her eyes shifted to Dr. Thomas. “Or to this meeting at all?”
I took a seat across from the field team, beside Dr. Thomas. He waved a hand, as if it were an explanation. “Ms. Roberts is here at my request. Our normal translator came down with an unfortunate case of maternity leave.”
Director Bismuth scanned the field team. The man with the mechanical voice had to be their field commander. The one on his left, their equipment manager. Her eyes stopped on the last man. His silver pin identified him as a field operative, but that wasn’t what caught my attention.
From the close-cropped black hair to the prominent nose, his face resembled a renaissance sculpture more than a man. Not a model but a man of action, and probably little thought. Wide shoulders and an easy stance said he wasn’t afraid at all of meeting the director.
Which meant he’d probably never met her before.
&
nbsp; She nodded to him. “Go ahead.”
With flowing ease, he rose from the chair, easily my equal in height, if not experience, and strode to the screen. “These parts were here when I arrived. This over here, the meat-skin wrote with its finger. Well, what was left of it.”
His voice, rich like coffee with caramel, brought a smile to my lips.
One I squelched.
“That explains the sloppy penmanship.” I pointed to the vast smudge in the middle of the picture. “But not that.”
He laughed, a deep baritone. “That’s where I tackled and staked it.”
How could he be so cavalier? Such artifacts gave us our best insight into the Re-Animus consciousness. From them we’d pieced together theories that actually made sense, compared to “evil spirits” and “demonic possession.”
I risked the director’s wrath to drive my point home. “Do you have any idea what you did? What the value of these scenes are?” I couldn’t help myself. The clearest sample of co-org writing in one place I’d seen in six years, and not only did he kill the co-organism, he destroyed the evidence.
He put his hands together and bowed his head. “I’m sorry.” His tone said differently. “I was more concerned about the fact it was trying to crush my windpipe than about taking a picture for the fridge.”
What kind of rookie with dreams of “monster hunting” would engage up close and personal with a co-organism? “Why didn’t you use standard tactics? Back off, trap it? Pin and hold? We could have had firsthand samples.”
I hadn’t made it six years in the BSI without learning to pay attention. The stares, the hidden smiles suggested I’d made an embarrassing mistake.
Director Bismuth cut in before he could answer. “His field team is currently short three members; Operative Carson took appropriate measures. What can you make of the remnants?”
Carson. As in Heinrich Carson? BSI operative number one? He’d been hunting co-organisms long before the government got involved. No. Heinrich Carson would have been at least sixty if he were still alive, ready to stake out a desk instead of a co-org.
Which meant the cocky man in front of me had to be—
“Brynner Carson.” I didn’t mean to speak his name out loud. A name associated with as many disasters as perfect operations. A man I’d heard stories about more than once.
He grinned back at me and winked. “Guilty as charged.”
No wonder people told stories about him, though the Brynner Carson before me didn’t quite live up to the legend. No woman on his arm; no smell of alcohol on his breath. In fact, a seeping bloodstain over his right pec told me the man could and did bleed.
I looked back to the director. “It’s interpretive. Neither completely phonetic or symbolic, these glyphs indicate host exposure to late Egypt. If memory serves, it’s a passage from The Book of the Dead. At least, it was.”
I ignored the laser pointer, choosing to move closer to the screen and point things out myself. “This would have been interesting. This”—I pointed out the smudged area—“is repeating the same set of ideas over and over. Unique content was in the destroyed area; this represents degeneration of the pattern, where it simply repeats.”
Director Bismuth nodded, her eyes flicking over and passing on, in what I took as a form of approval. “And what is it repeating?”
I broke them down again, trying to keep my gaze on the screen instead of the man it wanted to wander to. He watched me, his eyes locked on my face. I’d probably missed the wholebody-scan most men couldn’t or wouldn’t avoid. Instead I focused on the table, going over the symbols. Organ center. Spirit center. “It says ‘The heart.’”
BRYNNER
No one told me there’d be special company. I’d been called up before Director Bismuth more times than I could count. I’d own more medals than any other operative if it weren’t for a fifty/fifty split between commendations and criminal charges.
Meeting in person with Dale always left me creeped out, because his dedication to making sure he died of lung cancer made him a walking monument to the tobacco trade. No one said anything about her.
Grace. Grace Roberts, according to Dr. Egghead. When she focused on the screen, I focused on her. Must remember her name. Couldn’t forget her face. The smooth sweep of her nose, the way she kept her golden hair pulled back, and enough curves to tell me I sat across from a woman, not a girl.
Must not stare, I reminded myself. Last time I let my eyes wander, I wound up climbing a fire escape. I couldn’t look away, but I could keep my eyes off her rear. Okay, I looked once. Twice, just to be sure I saw right. If I had any prayer of not getting chewed out, I’d have to look at my laptop or her chin, ignoring all points in between.
Work women. Completely off-limits. Absolutely forbidden, and in this case, totally unforgettable. She looked to the director over and over. Probably hoping for approval, recognition that Grace had done a good job.
And my reputation must have preceded me, because no matter how I moved my head or tapped my pen, she kept her eyes off me. Smart woman. Of course, she was upset about the smudges on that spell.
It sounded like she’d drunk Dr. Egghead’s Kool-Aid and gone back for seconds. The name “corpse-organism” didn’t do a meat-skin justice. In fact, it implied exactly the wrong thing, in my opinion. That it was alive.
The good doctor and the director argued over the significance of “the heart,” while I turned over its words in my head. Dale raised a shaky hand and waited for our attention before wheezing out, “It asked for Brynner by name. Carson.” Dale’s arms trembled as he slapped another nicotine patch on. By my watch, he’d made it almost eleven minutes without a cigar, which was an improvement.
The director’s eyes swiped to me like a sword blade through a meat-skin. “Mr. Carson? Confirm?”
I nodded. “And it asked if I brought the heart. Said my blood took it, and my blood would pay if it wasn’t returned.” When I said “heart,” Grace leaned in, listening. I locked my gaze on the laptop rather than let it coast down her cleavage.
Director Bismuth nodded. “Indeed. The same Re-Animus you dispatched two nights before. Angry about losing a host?”
I shook my head, wishing I could ask everyone to leave before I answered. “It said it was delivering a message. And it was talking about my dad.”
Three
GRACE
The co-org spoke? About Brynner’s dad, Heinrich Carson? The original field operative, killing co-orgs before there was a BSI. Author of most of the field procedures. Also, distributor of countless superstitions and other bunk. I knew the name. Knew the legend of the man that even the Re-Animus feared.
I couldn’t contain the question. “What did it say about him?” Brynner turned toward me, his face suddenly tense. Worried. Then he looked back to Director Bismuth. “Could we discuss this in private?”
She nodded, her gaze never leaving me. “Ms. Roberts, I’d like a report on the spell by eleven o’clock. Both a literal translation and your best interpretation of what remains.”
“It’s not a spell.” I enunciated each word and met her gaze.
Challenging the director of the BSI might not be a good career move, but letting professional people bandy around words like “magic” was even worse. “There’s no such thing.”
“Get her out of here.” Brynner glared at me, his chest puffed out like a rooster.
Dr. Thomas beamed at me. “A woman after my own heart. The number of times they’ve thrown me out of—” He cut off as the director’s gaze swept toward him.
And on to me. The director kept her tone completely neutral. “I’ll be waiting for that report. The good doctor will find you a temporary office while you work to translate that . . . passage.”
“Spell.” The man with the oxygen mask took three tries to spit out that one word over his ragged cough. “Call it what it is.”
My BSI badge didn’t have a black diamond in the corner for nothing. I’d registered myself as a confirmed atheist a
nd absolute skeptic days after taking the job. With the minuscule pay hike came a duty, an obligation to be the voice of reason. “I’ll call it what it is. An artifact. An engraving. A text.” I looked to each of them in turn. “You don’t need terms like ‘magic’ for such things to be fascinating. You don’t need mystical forces to want to understand. There’s no need to make up—”
Brynner shot to his feet, then winced and held his arm across his chest. “Get the hell out.”
I should have left. Swallowed my pride and walked away. But after so many years of listening to crosses, crucifixes, ditch witches, and crap, I’d had it. “People look up to you. When you say things like ‘spell,’ you perpetuate myths.” I looked to the director, making my case straight to her. “Have you ever seen a spell performed?”
She shook her head.
“You know anyone who has?”
I didn’t think she was going to answer. I’d already gathered a handout with the pictures and a transcript of the event, ready to leave, when she spoke. She looked at Brynner, and her eyes glistened. “There have been reliable witnesses.”
And his gaze, full of anger moments before, now fell. He closed his eyes and sat down, still holding his arm across his chest.
To quell my frustration, I nearly ran from the conference room, pacing the halls until I found a kitchenette where I could curse in peace. Why did I have to challenge the director? I needed this job. Needed the steady pay, the reliable hours. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut, black diamond or not.
“You did well in there.” Dr. Thomas walked in after me and poured himself a cup of coffee so stale it smelled like burnt paper. “I’m sure Portland misses your services.”
“That was well? I challenged the director and pissed off the BSI golden boy and whoever cancer man is.”
“That would be Dale Hogman. Field team commander for all of BSI, and the only one allowed to give direction to Mr. Carson.”
