Something Always Remains

by M. L. S. Weech

  But they talked. She told him about her father, the life he led, and the kind of man he was. Bob could tell she thought the world of him. She told stories about being a little girl and how he’d pretend to be a knight and rescue her from a tower. She told him how he was the first person at her graduation and the last member of her family.

  Bob only listened. It wasn’t a power God, or whoever, gave him, not a mystical one anyway. It just felt right to him. He didn’t Manipulate her emotions or even speak a word. He was there for her because someone should be. Even Patience had me with her at the end, pitiful and useless as I turned out to be.

  A nurse walked in. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did you two need more time?”

  “I was just leaving,” Bob said. The words escaped him before he realized what they were.

  “Could you ... ” the woman said quickly. “I’m sorry. You probably don’t—”

  “I’d be honored,” Bob said.

  It seemed to happen too quickly, in Bob’s mind. The nurse walked over to the machine and pushed a button. Bob had fought for days just to keep Patience’s soul from ending up with a monster. The man in the bed, Arnold, had lain in agony for a year, fighting death, and his daughter, Rebecca, had spent that entire year finding the strength to let him go.

  It took another minute for Arnold to die. Bob rested a hand against him and felt Arnold’s soul Pass through him and into Rebecca. The same strange feeling flowed through Bob. It felt as if his soul had held Arnold’s for a moment. Bob wanted to imagine it was Patience, letting the last part of Arnold know he was OK. Her Bob was taking him to someplace wonderful. He couldn’t bring the fantasy to mind. He had too little information to keep up faith and had seen too many terrible things to have any hope.

  “I’ll let you grieve now,” Bob said softly as the smallest bit of Arnold’s soul slid into Rebecca. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Bob wanted to kick himself for feeling tears form in his eyes. He blinked them away before they could fall. He’d seen hundreds, maybe thousands of people die throughout almost four hundred years. Why should one man be any different? A small voice from a part of Bob he couldn’t hide from seemed to whisper, Because one woman was. Aren’t they all special? To someone?

  Therein lay the problem. He’d lost one who was special to him. It only verified how important it was for Bob to do more than just collect the dead. Helping Arnold and Rebecca wasn’t enough to take away his anger at himself. It didn’t even take the edge off his hatred for Grimm, but it reminded him of who he was and how he was unique. It made him different, and that might have been what had convinced Patience to love him, even though his life was, quite literally, death.

  Helping Arnold wasn’t enough, but it was something.

  3

  Chasing Shadows

  Drisc was glad to be paired up with Todd Evans while searching for Grimm. They’d already spoken in Syracuse when this mess with the Blacksouls started, and they’d known each other for some four hundred years, which was almost the length of time Todd had been a Journeyman.

  Their investigation began in Ohio, where they found the first ruined corpse. A simple car accident became a murder investigation when the medical examiner noted that each victim bore a cut along their midsections that didn’t match up with the circumstances of the accident. Todd worried that Grimm had finally figured out how to kill, but Drisc still doubted it. Otherwise, mortals would be dropping like flies.

  Through Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, Grimm collected no less than thirty-five more Blacksouls and left ruined corpses in his wake. Every scrap of information they could gather led to the same conclusion for Drisc.

  So they wound up in the small town of Middleton High, Oklahoma, where Grimm had apparently lost his temper when an old man’s heart gave out before Grimm could cut it out. They stood talking to Ryan Arlynn, the medical examiner, in his lab, which was a small, white room with two rows of those slabs they keep bodies in. They’d caught a break in getting to talk to the short, brown-haired man. Ryan was a Journeyman.

  “Everyone I can get a hold of says the same thing, sir,” Ryan said. “Every one of them died of natural causes or in whatever accident they were in. Then some nut job came by and shredded their bodies. The one here in Middleton High was the worst.”

  The body on the stainless-steel slab between the Senior Journeymen and Ryan was enough evidence for that. Grimm hadn’t left an inch of uncut flesh on the old man’s body, except for the face.

  Todd pulled out fifty dollars and handed it over to Drisc. Drisc took it with a smile. For one, he’d just made fifty bucks. Also, the world wasn’t coming to an end; Grimm hadn’t found a way to kill.

  “What was that for, sir?” Ryan asked. He was young, even for a Journeyman. For thirty years, he’d only known one other Journeyman, his mentor. Now the poor bastard was standing in front of two Senior Journeymen, answering some very important questions. Drisc had never heard the word sir more in his life.

  “Senior Journeymen business,” Drisc said seriously. No need to damage the boy’s opinion of us. “So Grimm isn’t killing, but after a person’s dead, the Blacksouls can damage the corpse?”

  “That’s right, sir,” Ryan said. “But, sir, that makes a lot of sense. Once the soul is gone, the body is a shell. So it stands to reason that a Blacksoul can cut dead flesh.”

  Drisc didn’t understand a word of what Ryan had just told him. “Well, of course,” he said. “We already knew dat. I’m here ta see if you have something we did’na already figure out.” It was important for a young Journeyman to have proper respect for the Seniors, really.

  “Well, sir,” Ryan said. “I mean, it’s obvious you already had a certain amount of information, sir, but do you know about the burns?”

  “What burns?” Drisc asked. Something about the night Bob’s girlfriend had died stirred in his memory.

  “Well, sir,” Ryan began. “The cuts aren’t cauterized, but they are badly burned. It’s like they were cut with something very hot. It’s like a residue the Blacksouls leave. The police here think it’s some sort of ritual sacrifice of the dead.”

  Todd found enough stomach to take a closer look at one of the cuts. Even from where Drisc stood, he could see the black-crusted skin along each slit in the old man’s flesh. The man is pissed, and he means to let the world know about it.

  “You should give the police whatever evidence you need to reinforce that suspicion,” Todd told Ryan.

  “Yes, sir, but, why, sir?” Ryan asked.

  “For one, that keeps police away from Journeymen,” Todd said. “And since I doubt there’s actually any sort of occult here in Middleton High, Drisc and I don’t have to worry about innocent people being wrongfully accused of this mess.”

  “I see, sir,” Ryan said. “But what if they find someone?”

  “Make sure ya have evidence that clears him,” Drisc said.

  “You want me to falsify evidence?” Ryan shouted. He followed it up with a belated, “Sir.”

  “Did ye hear me say that, lad?” Drisc asked. “I said what I said. Don’t let some idiot mortal get arrested for something Grimm did.”

  They’d had enough trouble with that in the last five states, and the more questions mortals started asking, the more trouble Drisc had to think of. As if a deranged immortal with an army of Blacksouls wasn’t enough.

  Drisc reached into his coat pocket, where Lynne had melded into the folds of his jacket. The Blacksoul didn’t feel hot. Truth be told, it was damn cold to touch. “Are ye sure those are burns?” Drisc asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Ryan answered. “But not from heat. Those burns are actually more similar to—”

  “Frostbite,” Drisc finished for him. Ryan looked suitably impressed. Drisc thought that meant it was a good enough time to end the interview. “We’ll leave ye be now, lad. Do us a favor and start calling other Journeymen. Find anyone who’s ever done any sort of combat work: Boxers, policemen, arm wrestlers ... if they can fight
, I need ‘em to head west.”

  “Of course, sir, but—”

  “Don’t ask why,” Drisc said. If I told ye, none of them would be daft enough to actually come. Drisc and Todd left the small police station. They stopped outside to have a cigarette.

  “How’d you know about the frostbite?” Todd asked. He didn’t know about Lynne.

  “Same thing happened to Bob’s girlfriend,” Drisc said. “Tori let us in on that.” The Journeyman doctor who’d been there that night gave Drisc the full report. He even understood some of it. For all Drisc knew, frostbite was exactly what congelation meant.

  “Why west?” Todd asked.

  “Well, he’s already been east,” Drisc said. He felt a brief pang of guilt. Todd didn’t know about Lynne, Bob’s trip to San Diego, or the Clockmaker. He’d learn about that stuff soon enough, but it wasn’t easy being the oldest. He knew things he didn’t want to know and kept secrets he’d just as soon wish he’d never learned. He had to deal with it and keep the peace, all because no one else seemed to be older than he was.

  “We’re still too far behind Grimm,” Todd said. That was a damn understatement. Grimm was moving faster and collecting more souls, using his Blacksouls to do most of the work.

  It was all Drisc and Todd could do to keep the Journeymen organized enough to help each other. Every soul a guy like Ryan collected was one less weapon for Grimm to have against them. But Grimm was just too fast.

  “Well, I have an idea about that,” Drisc said, finishing his cigarette and stamping out the butt in the ashtray outside the station. “I’m thinking Grimm’s going somewhere.”

  He actually had a good idea exactly where Grimm was heading, but he couldn’t tell Todd. Damned promises and damned secrets. “I’m think’n we collect what we can from each sight’n. Then, when we find out where da bastard’s head’n, we just make sure we’re there wait’n.”

  “What do we do when he gets there?” Todd asked.

  We get our asses handed to us and possibly die. “We figure out how to stop him.”

  4

  Long Overdue

  The brass badge clattered on the desk in front of the man who was once again Sergeant Richard Hertly. He didn’t expect it to sound like a ton of bricks falling on his shoulders, but it did. He’d done everything he could, filed the proper papers, accepted a cut in pay and even apologized to the rest of the department. None of that was good enough.

  But one phone call from Lt. Wilks had made it all go away. Almost thirty years on the job had its perks. It was the lieutenant’s first question that brought Richard’s attention from the badge on the desk to the big man’s eyes.

  “Are you really prepared to take this back?” Wilks asked. Those were the words he used, but the question implied so much more.

  Am I ready to work a crime scene again? Am I ready for long hours and terrible pay? Am I ready to take my life back? “Yes, sir,” Richard answered. Am I really ready to let go of Kyle? “But I’d like to start tomorrow, if that’s OK.”

  Wilks jerked his head in a single nod and sat down; his old, leather chair creaked under the man’s weight. He placed two arms that were each as muscular and round as Richard’s calves on the desk.

  “I knew you’d come back when you had a chance to blow off steam,” he said with that soft tone he used. “So I placed you on unpaid suspension. Once you came back and proved you were ready to move on, I called to reinstate you.”

  “Sir, I’m sorry,” Richard said. He’d been saying that a lot, actually; first to Linda, then to the rest of the department, now to his lieutenant. “I know I wasn’t the first to lose a partner. You were within your rights—”

  “I know my rights, son,” Wilks said. “Truth is, you’re good at your job and, up until that moment, you were an exemplary officer. I’ve given you two breaks in this: I left you a way back, and I let you back in through the door I cracked open. I don’t give three chances, Sergeant.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “I wouldn’t have reinstated you if I didn’t think you did.”

  “I won’t let you down.”

  “Be sure you don’t; my ass is on the line here, too.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  Wilks gave an exasperated chuckle. “For the love of God, son, are you trying to talk me out of it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then go home, and be back tomorrow at seven.”

  Richard only went home long enough to pick up Linda. The drive to Dignity Memorial was a quiet one. Not because Linda was still angry—he and Linda had finally found some of their old form recently—but because Linda understood his need for quiet.

  They had just started to walk down a sidewalk lined with American flags before Richard chose to break the silence. “I should have brought him over more often.”

  “I’m sure he understands why you didn’t invite him,” Linda replied.

  Richard shook his head. “Not for him—or at least, not alone.”

  They turned right at the center of the memorial and walked hand in hand until they came to a simple iron marker that told the world a great man rested there.

  “He was a part of me I never let you really know,” Richard said, standing in front of the grave marker. “The reasons don’t matter. I know you’d have seen that part of him in time, but I didn’t give you the chance.”

  She rested her head against his chest to comfort him. He felt strong enough to stand there, but he was glad to have her to support him. “He was your friend,” she said softly. “That’s all the reason I needed to feel close to him.”

  Richard smiled and kissed the top of his wife’s head. He didn’t know how to talk about everything that had happened in Syracuse. He couldn’t explain that Kyle had given the last of his soul to him. He couldn’t explain that he and Linda were soul mates—that since a part of Kyle belonged with him, that same part belonged with her. They all shared at least a part of a single soul, if what Drifter said was true.

  “Do you want me to leave you alone?” she asked. She stepped away from him but left her hand in his. He pulled her back into his arms.

  “Not as long as I breathe,” he answered. And he had it on good authority that would be just the case. As soul mates, he and Linda would live and die together. That was, of course, with the one exception Drifter had mentioned.

  As long as you don’t screw it up, Bob had told him. Richard had risked the chance to live, love, and die with the woman he loved for revenge, then to stop Grimm. That was all a long ways away. Now, it was just he and his wife. Richard reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver dollar. He gave it to Linda.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Something Kyle and I shared. We’d bet that dollar on everything. Who would go home first, who would get their paperwork done—hell, everything.”

  “So why’d you give it to me?”

  “Because I lost the bet,” Richard said. “He’s not here to collect, but I figure he’d be OK if I paid you instead.”

  He took a knee and placed a hand on Kyle’s grave marker. He didn’t really know what to do. Meeting an actual Grimm Reaper—or Journeyman, if that’s the way Bob preferred it—made going to the grave a little less about Kyle and more about him. Kyle, the part of him that remained, resided as a part of Richard’s soul. The rest was gone to wherever souls go.

  The thing was that Richard had just gotten so used to having his partner around. It didn’t matter what he knew about souls and the afterlife and everything that went with it. Sometimes a man just needs to see something to make it real. He didn’t cry. His heart hurt. The rough, cold surface of the grave marker didn’t feel any different than he thought a piece of metal should. He wanted some sort of tangible proof that at least Kyle was around.

  He felt a breath of warm air touch his cheek before he felt Linda’s tender kiss. “He’s with you, you know?” she asked.

  His wife knew him. She had the book on him and all his thoughts, just as he d
id with her. But she’d never really read his mind before, the way people teased that he and Kyle could. She knew his faces or expressions, things years of marriage and communication teach a person. But by that grave, she knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “Yeah,” he said, kissing her hand as she helped him to his feet. “I do.”

  It was time to listen to Kyle’s last words. Live. It was a simple enough thing to do. And it was long past time he did it.

  5

  The Clockmaker

  April 6, 2008

  I honestly don’t know what to say about him. I might be crazy, but I think I know who he was, before, at least in one life before. But I don’t know what to make of him at all. It’s like talking to someone about a book, only he’s already read the damn thing, and you just bought it. He’s trying not to ruin the ending, but there are things he wants to point out.

  It’s damn frustrating is what it is. That and the ticking. Always the ticking, like Captain Hook’s worst nightmare times a thousand. I’d smash them all twice, once for me and once for good ‘ol Hook, if I wasn’t absolutely terrified of what it might do.

  For All Time was a small, artisan clock shop tucked on the tiny island of Coronado about five minutes south of San Diego. Bob couldn’t begin to tell how many clocks hung on the wall, but each one seemed to be set a second off from another. Tick-tick-tock-tock, they sounded from every corner of the shop. Grandfather clocks, small clocks, clocks made to look like forts, clocks made to look like kittens that purred on the hour, and clocks of any sort Bob had ever imagined were ticking and tocking, without any heed for Bob or his need for a moment’s peace. One creepy clock depicted a raven; Bob immediately hated it.

  A boy, perhaps eleven, stepped out from a room in the back. He smiled when he saw Bob.