Grave Matters

by Lauren M. Roy

  After the ghouls this morning and his reading this afternoon, it was all he could do not to text back Come home. Instead, he tapped out a Be careful, and a Call if you need, and let her go about her night.

  Then he grabbed his coat and keys and set out into the neighborhood. He had leads to follow up and nervous energy to work off.

  Cavale’s house was the last officially inhabited house in the neighborhood. When he looked down one side of the hill, he saw lights on in the other residences, could see people moving about behind curtains as they went about their nighttime rituals. Down the other way, the houses were dark—no heat, no electricity, no one watching the news before ascending the stairs to their cozy beds.

  But there were people there, all the same.

  It had come to him in his sleep, why the ghoul’s face had been so familiar that morning. Cavale had seen him before, hurrying along the sidewalk, hands shoved deep in his pockets because he had no gloves. In the mornings, he’d been headed toward the bus stop, maybe off to work, maybe just getting out of the neighborhood. At night, he’d shivered his way past, back to one of the houses that sat empty, but not. Sometimes a plastic bag full of stuff from the gas station hung from his wrist; most times he’d been empty-handed.

  Cavale hadn’t paid that kid much more attention than he paid any of the others who walked the same route. The community of squatters down the other side of the hill was an open secret in the neighborhood. No one on this side begrudged them what warmth and shelter they could claim because this neighborhood, like so much of Crow’s Neck, was full of people who were one crisis away from the same. One trip to the emergency room, one expensive car repair, one unexpected bill, any of them setting off a cascade that went beyond a bounced check and a bank fee (potentially catastrophic themselves) into bigger problems—lost hours at work leading to a firing; firing to a missed rent check; missed rent check to an eviction notice.

  He descended into the forgotten part of town, assuming the same stance the squatter kids did: hands in pockets, shoulders scrunched, head down. The posture was as much about keeping warm as it was signaling you weren’t looking for trouble. Cavale figured it was like other places he and Elly’d been with Father Value: most people would leave you alone down here—if you lived in one of these houses, you had fuck-all worth stealing anyway. But sometimes new faces appeared, intent on taking as much of your nothing for themselves as they could.

  Growing up, they’d lived in enough bad neighborhoods to know that most of the inhabitants were good people.

  About half of the streetlights still worked along this stretch of road. The power company wasn’t in a huge hurry to fix the ones that were burnt out or broken. The amber glow threw long shadows across overgrown lawns gone to seed and gave a washed-out look to the graffiti on the boarded-up houses. Lots of the homes had been broken into, boards ripped off the windows, locks forced on the doors. Copper pipes could be traded in for good money, and the local scrapyards didn’t ask questions. Cavale had been in some of these houses when he’d first moved into his own. In some of them, whole chunks of wall had been sledgehammered or crowbarred in, so scavengers could rip out the electrical wire. Strip the coating off that and you got even more copper.

  A lot of the squatters nailed blankets to the windows. It trapped in the heat and blocked out the light. When a cop car cruised along, the officers tended not to look too closely as long as it wasn’t obvious someone was inside. Cavale caught flashes of light here and there, as curtains twitched or a corner of fabric fluttered in the breeze. Some of the houses had functioning fireplaces, which was good. Others, the residents had dragged old grills or camp stoves inside, or snagged barrels from construction sites.

  Cavale paused at the bottom of the hill, where his road and another intersected. Crossroads were places of power, if you were looking to conjure someone. Or something. Tradition had it you could sell your soul at them, trade it like so much copper wire for fame and riches. They were places where worlds touched, where the veil wore thin.

  It was the symbolism that mattered for Cavale’s purposes. He pulled a pendulum from the pocket of his jeans, a heavy quartz crystal strung from a silver chain. Then he unfolded a square of white silk. He’d drawn Udrai’s sigil on it in black marker in the middle. At the corners were the runes of a tracking spell. Didn’t even need blood to activate this one. Not when he was starting at a crossroads. He held the pendulum over the cloth and waited.

  At first it hung steady, unmoving. Cavale took slow, deep breaths and relaxed as best he could. It was cold out here, the first hint of winter numbing his fingers and the tip of his nose. He could see his breath on the still air when he exhaled. That feeling of being watched came back, but it could be anything, out here: squatters wondering what the hell this weirdo was doing, standing in the middle of the street staring at a necklace; ghouls or ghosts watching him at the necromancer’s bidding; or the simple feeling of being out in the open, exposed, with no one watching his back. Father Value would be having a fit right now if he saw this. If you got bit, Cavale, you’d have only yourself to blame.

  No, actually, if Father Value saw him out here alone, he’d say, Why aren’t you with Elly? Why aren’t you watching over her? If she gets hurt, it’s your fault.

  Old man never did give a shit about me, did he?

  It had never been a case of Dad likes you best between Cavale and Elly. Cavale’d never once begrudged her the affection Father Value showered on her. She was his sister, and he’d take a Creep’s bite to the throat for her. He’d never deny her anything if he could avoid it. It didn’t stop him from wishing, back then, that Father Value could show even a fraction of that fondness for Cavale.

  Didn’t matter. The man was dead, and Cavale had walked out on that life well before the Creeps got him. He tamped down the old hurts and concentrated on the pendulum.

  It moved in tiny circles at first. Those, he could ascribe to the turning of the earth, or to his own micromovements—his muscles moving in such minuscule increments that his eyes and brain agreed he was holding steady. It’d be a fair assessment. Dowsing worked that way, as did Ouija boards, when the people holding the forked stick or the planchette weren’t trained in magic. But in the right hands, they worked, they responded. They answered to nudges from spirits, or fluctuations in the ley lines. They could sniff out a magic user’s trail like a bloodhound. If you knew how to work with them. If you were good enough.

  Cavale was pretty damned good.

  The pendulum stopped its lazy circles and began describing a small arc, only a few degrees from vertical. North to south, east to west, points in between. Then, when its swing was moving northwest-southeast, it found the path. The crystal hung at an angle, defying gravity at thirty degrees or thereabouts, like someone had pressed pause on a recording. The chain was pulled taut, pointing off into a cluster of houses. When Cavale started walking in that direction, the pendulum stuttered back into motion, only this time, instead of moving in all directions it stuck to that northwest-southeast arc, even if he turned.

  Better than a compass.

  He skirted up close to the house directly in the pendulum’s path, bent at the waist to keep below window height. It was a one-story ranch, its formerly cheery red siding faded to rust with neglect. The place seemed empty, not a single blanket covering a window, no sound of conversation from within. When Cavale risked a glance inside, he saw only bare rooms—peeling paint, loose floorboards, part of the ceiling buckled from water damage. Nobody home but us mice.

  The pendulum swung again, sticking almost straight out toward the south.

  Did he sneak around me?

  He followed its lead, moving as quickly and quietly as he could toward where the crystal pointed. As he darted across the street, he kept an eye out for other movement in the area—for shadows shifting when they ought to be still, or for ghostly orbs flitting about like pale fireflies. Other hunters, mod
ern-day ghost chasers, swore by gadgets that read electromagnetic fields or detected temperature fluctuations. Cavale supposed they were valid, in their way—same as with Ouija boards and dowsing rods, as long as the user was competent, they could make it work.

  But Cavale liked the older methods. Technology wasn’t his thing. He felt clumsy around it—other people his age were constantly wired; he only accepted the weight of his phone in his pocket because Elly might call. So he got it done the old way, following the pendulum, looking for orbs, feeling for cold spots rather than reading them off on infrared from a distance.

  Another house, and again while he scouted the vacant property the crystal swung in a different direction. The necromancer was fucking with him. Had to be. That feeling of being watched—a gentle pressure at the back of his head, the itch between his shoulder blades, the suspicious, furtive, too-perfect silence throbbing in his ears—came on even stronger.

  It was all Cavale could do to stay where he was and not dive for cover. Father Value would be shaking his head and I told you so-ing in whatever afterlife he’d gone on to. Rather than feel embarrassed, though, that realization strengthened his resolve. Funny, the way resentment worked.

  He tucked the crystal and the scrap of silk back into his pocket, and, rather than walking in the new direction it had tried to point him, he picked his way over the uneven lawn of the nearby house, the thigh-high grass shushing against his legs like a librarian demanding quiet.

  The backyard was just as much a mess as the front. The bones of an old swingset rusted off to one side. The slide had a crimp in it, as if a vandal had taken a hammer, struck once, and gotten bored. One swing had been wrapped around and around the pole, so it hung only a few inches from the top. The other dangled forlornly by one chain.

  On the sagging deck, he found a dog bowl full of rainwater and a plastic patio set turned brittle from freezing winters and scorching summer sun. He set the bowl atop the table and lowered himself gingerly onto the chair. It held his weight.

  When the water had stilled, Cavale stared into it. He got right down close, so his breath made tiny ripples on the surface. The simplest way to attract a ghost was to sit quietly and open yourself up to the interactions. He’d seen those shows where a passel of tough guys ran around abandoned asylums and jails, hollering macho taunts at the spirits. There was a reason they rarely found any useful evidence or got more than a banging door for their troubles: ghosts didn’t answer to shitheels.

  So Cavale sat, silent and respectful, and waited. Now that he was no longer rushing to and fro, the cold settled into his bones. He tucked his hands into his armpits and tried not to think about how warm his house would be right now. If there were ghosts around, they’d most likely twigged onto his presence; he wasn’t exactly being subtle. It was a matter of patience, and seeing if any of them wanted to talk.

  He heard the rattle of chains and the rusty creak of groaning metal.

  The swing that had been half hanging down had been reattached. It twisted as though moved by a breeze, but the air was still.

  Cavale held still, too, and after a moment, he saw her. She was thirteen, fourteen maybe, dressed in jeans and a too-big sweatshirt. Her scuffed sneakers toed the bald patch beneath the swings, carved there by years of children’s feet. The tall, dry, dead grass was gone, replaced by a carpet of freshly mown lawn. Cavale smelled it now, the bright green of cut grass.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “He doesn’t want you interfering.”

  “Udrai?”

  “No.” She gripped the chains and spun herself around, twisting them tighter and tighter. Then she lifted her feet up and leaned back, spinning around and around. Her hair flew out around her as the chains unwound. “The thief.”

  He thought of the tarot card, lying on his floor like an accusation.

  “What did he steal?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Come swing.”

  He was too big for the swingset, but if he declined, she might fade away. The other swing hung at its regular length, unwound from the top bar. An invitation. Cavale came down from the porch and paused in front of it.

  “It’ll hold you.”

  He sat as carefully as he had on the deck chair, and once more the plastic held. He didn’t so much swing as rock back and forth; his legs were far too long to get any height without dragging the ground. It seemed good enough for her, though. She nodded and went back to her twisting. Cavale tried to find a delicate way to ask the question foremost in his mind, but he couldn’t find one. The ghost girl reminded him of Elly at that age: the hand-me-down clothes, the way she watched him warily even though she seemed to be playing. Elly wouldn’t appreciate him dancing around the subject, so he decided not to with this girl, either. “Did he bring you back?”

  She paused and rolled her eyes. “No. I’ve been here a long time. Longer than him. He’s not the boss of me.”

  “But he’s the boss of other ghosts?”

  “Some of them.”

  “How does he do it, do you know? How does he pick who he’s bringing back?”

  She stopped her twisting to scowl at him. “I have no idea. I stay away from him.” The duh was unspoken.

  “That sounds like you know where he is. Can you tell me?”

  She shook her head. “He doesn’t stay in the same place for long. I think he’s afraid someone’s coming to find him.”

  “Me?”

  She laughed, dry and husky. “No. You don’t scare him; you piss him off. You and the girl.”

  “Fair enough. Can you tell me what he looks like, then? So I’d know him if I see him?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, and at first Cavale thought she was gathering her thoughts. Then he heard it. Static, so soft at first it sounded like the wind through the dead grass. Then it grew louder, and louder. Cavale went cold as he realized it was coming from her.

  Her eyes bulged with sudden fear. She let go of the chains, and stood, her hair whipping as she cast terrified glances around the yard. “Have to go,” she gasped. “He sees us.”

  “Where—” he started, but he was alone again, the grass thigh high once more, the swingset gone to rust.

  That watched feeling from earlier returned. He forced himself to take deep breaths and turn in a smooth, careful circle, looking for anything at all.

  There.

  Furtive movement at the corner of the house, someone ducking back around the corner.

  Got you now.

  He didn’t bother shouting. Best not to bring the whole neighborhood’s attention to this if he didn’t have to. He took off toward where the figure had been, leaving a flattened swath through the overgrowth in his wake.

  He wished he’d brought a weapon, something more substantial than his keys and the multipurpose knife that lived in his pocket. No forgotten garden tools leaned against the house for him to grab on his way past; not even a broken bottle lay discarded on the ground. All he had was his momentum and his fists.

  Turned out they were enough.

  The spy didn’t have Cavale’s grace. Halfway to the street, his feet had tangled in the tall grass and sent him sprawling. As Cavale came tearing around the corner, his prey was just gaining his feet and taking off again. Closing the distance was easy, half a dozen steps and the kind of tackle that’d make a football coach proud. The other guy kissed the ground for the second time in less than a minute, this time with Cavale atop him.

  “Fuck,” the guy sputtered. “Fuck, come on, hey, there’s no need for th— Ow.” That last from Cavale’s knee meeting his kidney.

  “Who are you?” Cavale considered the merits of using the pendant’s chain as a garrote, but so far the guy didn’t seem keen on fighting him. In fact, he’d gone limp under Cavale’s weight, his hands laced behind his head like the cops asked you to do during an arrest.

  “No one,” he sa
id, his voice muffled. “I’m no one. We saw you wandering back and forth earlier and it looked weird so I came out to see if you were all right. Okay? Can we be cool?”

  He’s not the necromancer. If he were, Cavale ought to have been jumped by ghouls, or found himself besieged by poltergeists, or any number of other magical protections he’d expected the man to have in place. The other night, with the cards in his own kitchen, hadn’t been a fluke. “Shit, I’m sorry.” He eased off the guy, still wary of a last-second deception, but none of the instincts he’d developed from his years of fighting were pinging. He stayed crouched nearby, ready to bring his new companion down again if he had to.

  The guy lay there another moment before he took his hands from behind his head and—slowly, as though he expected a blow from a baton or a Taser shock—pushed himself up onto his elbows. “You a cop?”

  “No.”

  “Sure felt like it.” He was Cavale’s age, maybe a year or two younger. A mop of dark curls hung down to the collar of his sweatshirt, which was all he had on to keep out the cold.

  One of the squatter kids. That explained the wariness lining his thin face. “I promise I’m not. I thought you were someone else.” And how goddamned hollow did that sound?

  But he barked a laugh. “You thought I was the drifter?”

  “I . . . guess so?”

  “Look, I’ll tell you what I know, but can we stand up? The ground’s fucking cold.”

  “Oh. Yeah, sorry. Sure.” Cavale rose and helped him up. The kid’s callused hand was freezing in his grip.

  “Mike,” he said, turning the clasp into a handshake.

  “Cavale.” With a pang, he realized he hadn’t gotten the ghost girl’s name. Better that way. If the necromancer was listening, he might have used it. It didn’t make him feel much better.

  “I recognize you now. You live up the top of the hill.”