But the feeling never came, and after a moment, I realized that it was a different voice. A voice that I recognized. I slowly opened my eyes, not wanting to see what I couldn’t truly believe.
There, sitting in the chair facing me, was my father. My father, who died some twenty years ago, when I was still a boy.
For a moment, I simply stared at him, unsure of what to do or say. There was a part of me that was all for rapidly climbing to my feet, letting loose with a long, high-pitched scream and hot-footing it out of there. But another part of me, the bigger part I guess, remained calm, and examined the man sitting near my fire.
He looked good, for someone who had been dead for more than twenty years. His face was young and unlined, and his dark hair was full. The goatee that he wore gave him a devilish appearance, reflecting what I remembered of his personality. He looked the same as I remembered him from when I was a boy.
The only thing about him that was off was the faint blue glow that surrounded him, slowly fading in and out. Sometimes, it was very bright and noticeable, the aura spreading out quite some distance from his body. Other times, it drew back in, and I could hardly tell it was there.
“Dad,” I said slowly. “What are you doing here? Am I dreaming?”
"No, you're not dreaming. I came to visit. Don't ask me how. One second, I'm taking the big dirt nap, and the next, I got a sudden urge to see my son, and here I am."
"You're a ghost," I said. Ghosts weren't unheard of in Capital City, although it wasn't a place that they tended to hang out in. There were too many amateur wizards and necromancers around for that to be appealing to them.
"I guess. Now, pass me that ale."
He held out his hand, and without thinking about it, I passed him my mug. He reached for it, but it slipped through his hand as if it wasn’t there, and crashed to the floor, spilling ale all over.
But he didn't notice that. In fact, he raised his hand toward his mouth as if he held it, and lo and behold, a mug appeared there. A blue mug, like a faint off-colored picture of one.
"Ahhh," my father said, and smacked his lips. "That hits the spot. No ale where I've been. At least not that I can find."
"Uh-huh.” I watched the puddle spread across my floor and then raised my eyes to him, trying not to let the news that the afterlife was bereft of ale upset me. "Where is that? Exactly?"
"What? Where I was? Can't tell you that. Come on, Duke. You're smarter than that. You know I can't reveal the mysteries of life and death. Don't you?"
I didn't, but it also didn't surprise me. If the dead could do that, every necromancer worth the name would be rich beyond belief.
"Umm...well, how long are you staying then? Have you been to see Mom?"
"Not sure how long I'll be here. As long as it's allowed, I guess. And no, I haven't been to see your mother. It's a little crowded over there."
"What are you talking about? Mom lives alone."
He took another swig of his ghostly ale and shrugged. "She's got a bunch of visitors of her own. Maybe later on I can get there."
Wait. Mom had visitors? I mean, she had friends and all, but I didn’t think that was what Dad was talking about. Suddenly, I got a bad feeling.
"I've got to go," I said, jumping up.
"Why? What's the rush? I just got here."
"I've got to go check on Mom!"
"Oh. Good son. In that case, though, I'll wait here."
For some reason, I didn't like the idea of that either. He was my Dad, sure, but he was also NOT my Dad, if that makes any sense. My Dad loved me, and I him, there was no doubt about that, but if he was truly back, he would have made a bee-line for Mom's, crowded or not.
"Why don't you come with me?"
"Nah." He leaned back in his chair, for all the world like he owned the joint. "But don't worry, I'll be here when you get back."
That was kind of what I was worried about.
The walk to Mom's was...weird, which is a word I use often in the city, but in this case with good reason. My visitor, and apparently Mom's, weren't the only ones. Everywhere, pale people with faint blue auras shadowed the living. Some of which ran, their personal phantoms keeping pace. And while that was strange enough, it wasn't the weirdest part.
That would belong to those who were being visited by the physical remains of their loved ones. Corpses in various states of decomposition walked along next to horrified people, chatting away with different degrees of success, depending on how far gone they were. There was even one poor old guy being trailed by no less than three, all of which were little more than literal skeletons.
Mom's situation was no different. She did have several visitors from beyond the grave, but all of hers were like Dad. Incorporeal figures, who at least appeared like when they were still alive. Mom's parents were there, giving her an earful of helpful advice, and turning to me when I entered. Her great-aunt was also there, who let it be known that she disapproved whole-heartedly with the living. They should have enough class to join the rest of the family in the sweet bye-and-bye.
Mom assured me she was okay, if a little put out by the whole thing.
"Find out what's doing this," she told me. "Best thing you can do."
Mom was pretty pragmatic when she wanted to be.
Dad decided that he was hungry. When I got home I saw a couple of chicken legs and a good-sized hunk of mutton laying on the floor, along with several puddles of ale. He was back in the chair near the fire, contentedly chewing on a blue chicken leg when I walked into the room.
Against my will, I thought of the ghoul in the graveyard and shuddered.
"What's going on?" I asked him.
"What do you mean?" he asked me back, speaking around the leg bone.
"How come the dead are coming back to life? That's what I mean."
Again, he shrugged. "Like I said, I really don't know. But I'm glad we get this chance."
Yeah, he was making a mess of my house, and it was a strange and uncomfortable thing, having the ghost of my dead father show up out of the blue. But...he was my Dad.
"Yeah," I said, feeling a warmth spread through me. "Me too."
The warm fuzzy feeling didn't last long. Having a ghost in the house was terribly inconvenient. Dad had no sensibility for time and didn’t seem to care whether it was day or night, early or late. On the second night, well after I turned in, he came into my room, sat on my bed and proceeded to tell me stories of things he did as a young man. Normally, I relished times like that, but I was extremely tired, and he kept telling me the same ones.
Every time he took it to mind that he was hungry, food would end up on the floor. He never noticed this. Once his hand passed through a real piece of food, or a mug, or plate, or anything that he tried to manipulate, an almost transparent blue copy of it would appear in his hands, which he could then interact with perfectly fine.
And the fire wouldn't stay lit. No matter how many logs I put on, or how many times I tried to stoke it, the flames would flicker and die out in my father's presence. But again, he would act as if it were blazing along merrily, rubbing his hands together and sighing happily.
The following night, I was awakened by a strange feeling that something was out of place. There was no sign of Dad sitting at the end of my bed, or anywhere in the room. It wasn’t until I turned over that I saw him. Hovering above me, several feet off the floor, he was staring at me with a vacant expression on his face.
“Dad? What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer me but continued to stare. If I moved, his eyes tracked me, so he was seeing me, but he wasn’t making any sort of acknowledgment. I raised my hand, stretching to reach him, and attempted to poke his shoulder. My finger, of course, went straight through, and there was no sign that he even noticed.
He stayed there for a few minutes, staring down at me. It was creepy, I don’t mind saying. As I was getting set to roll out of bed, he gave a soft moan, turned around in mid-air, and floated from the room. The door to my bedr
oom slammed shut behind him with a boom.
I didn’t sleep much for the rest of that night.
The next morning, Dad was at the kitchen table, waiting for me. There were cracked eggs and raw bacon on the floor, along with a coffee mug and a puddle of cream. He happily tucked in to his phantom breakfast while I set to cleaning up the mess.
“What were you doing last night?” I asked him.
“Sleeping? I think. I’m not sure, really. Do I sleep?”
“Not that I’ve noticed. You don’t remember being in my room, kind of hovering over me, staring at me…”
He looked up from his breakfast.
“No. Why would I want to do that? You’re not that interesting, son. I don’t need to watch you sleep.”
He was either lying, or truly had no memory of what he had been doing.
“I need to go to work today,” I said, throwing the remains of his breakfast preparations into the garbage. “Are you going to stay here?”
“I don’t know. Thought I might go with you and see what you do for a living.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can convince you not to?”
My success as a Nuisance Man was going to be seriously hampered if I was being followed by a chatty, blue-glowing, ghost all day.
“Why would you want to do that? I’m proud of you! I want to see where you work!”
I hadn’t thought so. Given what I’d been seeing, I wasn’t surprised. Whatever was going on, the dead were glued to their loved ones.
“Hey, Sarge.” My voice sounded glum, I’m sure, when I walked into the watchhouse. Having Dad along should have been a great thing, and if he were still alive, it would have been. But he wasn’t Dad. Not really. Several times on the walk over his non-stop chatter would cease and I would turn to see him staring at me with that same vacant expression I saw the night before. Then, he would snap out of it and continue with what he was saying as if he never stopped.
But during those times of silence, when he would simply stare, I swore I could see something else moving behind his eyes. Like some other force was taking him over and watching me from him. It was an eerie feeling.
Sarge had his own problems and didn’t even bother to grunt at me. There was a large, faintly transparent, stern-looking woman in an almost military uniform standing nearby, reading the newssheet over his shoulder. She wore an unforgiving expression and didn’t so much as glance up at either me or my father when we entered.
“You too, huh?” I shook my head but moved on to the Board without waiting for a response, which I was sure wouldn’t be coming anyway.
The Board was empty. There wasn’t a single nuisance pinned on it, not so much as a goblin accused of shoplifting. Nothing.
“What’s going on?” I walked back to Sarge’s desk. “What happened to all the notices?”
“Look around,” Sarge said, actually speaking to me. “Do you really think anyone cares about that now?”
“But what about all the ones that were up there? Did the other Nuisance Men come back?”
“Word came down from above. Told me to get rid of them all. Throw them away.”
“You’re kidding.” I whistled. “Wow. Won’t be people be upset?”
Sarge shrugged. “Probably.”
I was at a bit of a loss. Without any nuisances on the Board, there really wasn’t any reason for me to be there.
“Well, then….”
“Yeah.” Sarge turned back to his newssheet.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “By the way. This is my Dad. He wanted to see where I worked.”
Sarge looked at the ghostly figure hovering slightly behind me. My father stayed silent the whole time we were in the watchhouse. I thought Sarge was going to make one of his normal sarcastic comments, but after a moment, his face softened.
“Yeah,” he said. “This is my mother.” He cocked a thumb over his shoulder at the large woman standing behind him.
I nodded, rapped my knuckles on the counter and left. That look said it all. Sure, it was his mother, the same way my ghost was my father. But they weren’t. Not really.
Dad still didn’t say anything as we left the watchhouse, or when we were back on the street. Instead, he was simply floating along beside me, his head turned as he stared at me. I tried to ignore him, which wasn’t easy, and take better notice of my surroundings.
For the first time I noticed that it wasn’t only humans who were being visited by their loved ones. Every race seemed to be having the same experience. Orcs were trailed by ghosts or walking corpses, and since they lived in such large family groups, there were lots of visitors following every orc I saw.
And everyone, human or otherwise, was having the same reaction. Panic, resignation, fear, acceptance, and sorrow. There was very little joy evident. Even seeing those that we loved again wasn’t enough to overcome the feeling of wrongness that pervaded everything about this.
I passed a group of goblins standing on a street corner. As usual, they looked like they were up to no good, but I didn’t pay much attention to them. I was armed, and aware of my surroundings, which wasn’t the type of mark they usually liked to go after. It wasn’t until I neared that the smell hit me, and I looked closer. None of them, not one, was alive. They were all walking corpses, some of them in horrible condition.
I crossed the street to avoid having to go closer to them, but as I drew abreast, they all stared at me, and followed my progress. A quick head count told me there were seven of them, but I didn’t see a single live goblin in the area. As a matter of fact, instead of being attached to a goblin relation, they started walking along the other side of the street, pacing me, their heads turned toward me the whole while.
Dad was oblivious to the goblins and still floated along, staring at me.
I picked up the pace, hustling along and hoping to outrun the crowd across from me. But they shuffled faster as well, and now I was certain. They were after me. The only reason I could think of for this was that they were the bodies of goblins I killed in my job as a Nuisance Man, here not to visit relatives, but to exact revenge.
Why me? Everyone else seemed to be getting along well, if uncomfortably, with their visitors from beyond. Why was I being singled out? Or maybe I wasn’t. Maybe it was because I was the only Nuisance Man left in town right now.
Regardless, I started to run, and pulled ahead of my followers. But then, straight ahead, more of them appeared. Plenty of goblins, with a few orcs thrown in to the mix, all of them the shambling corpse variety, and all of them looking for me.
I ducked down an alley that led to a major thoroughfare. That should at least put me among other people. Not that anyone in Capital City was all that eager to help out their fellow man, but you never knew if you’d stumble on some good-hearted soul eager to lend a hand.
No good. I made it halfway down the alley when several goblins appeared from the far end. Turning back, the crowd that was behind me poured in that way. I put my back to the wall and pulled my sword, wondering briefly if Father Magnus’s blessing would be of any help.
“Dad? Anything you can do here?”
There was no answer, not that that was unusual right now. But when I looked around, my father was gone. When he disappeared, or how, I had no idea. I was concentrating on the goblins chasing me and never even noticed.
For a brief moment, I hoped that he’d come back, but then the goblins were on me, and there was no more time to think about it.
I slashed at the first one to reach me and my sword bit into him like he was made of soft wood. There was no blood, no yelp of pain, and the only reason he even slowed down is because my blow forced him to stumble to the side. Apparently, the blessing either wore off or was useless against this foe.
I yanked the sword free and tried for a cut at the next goblin’s legs. Better. I cut through, right below the knee and he fell to the ground. But within seconds he was crawling toward me again.
A hand grabbed my sword arm and I punched the goblin at
tached to it in the face. It fell back, its mouth twisted to the side, but immediately started forward again. Another latched on to my other arm and before I could get my sword around, two more grabbed me. The one I had down crawled forward and grabbed my legs, threatening to overbalance me.
If I fell, I was done for. There were still more coming, and if I went down, I was never getting back up. I kicked out hard, freeing myself for a moment, but the goblin grabbed hold again. This was not going to end well.
There was a loud popping noise, followed by another, then another. The noise got more rapid, and over it, I heard shouting. Words ringing out in a strange language that sounded wrong to my ears. For a moment, I thought it was my mysterious voice, but the words weren’t coming from me.
The goblin who held my legs exploded, showering me in a sticky, foul-smelling fluid. The ones holding my arms went next, dousing me further. Within moments, the entire alley was free of walking dead goblins or orcs, but the walls, and me, were covered with slime.
I looked around wildly. Three figures in red robes walked down the alley. The words they shouted died down and I swear I saw a mane of blond hair relax from a giant frizzy cloud snaking out from a hood.
Necromancers from the Watch. Oh, boy. I wanted to run, but honestly, I was afraid to. These were the big boys. The ones that got called out when ordinary Watch wizards wouldn’t do the trick, or when a watchman was hurt or killed. Their reputation preceded them, and it wasn’t a nice one.
I stood, back against the wall, sword held limply in my one hand and tried to appear as non-threatening as possible.
“You alright?” One of them asked me, and to my surprise, the voice was female. I thought that all necromancers were men, although I had no earthly reason for thinking that.
“Yeah, thanks.” I wiped slime from my face and flicked it onto the ground. “That was close.”
“You should get inside…” she started to say.
“Can we go?” another of them asked. His voice was also a surprise. Rather than being stern and commanding, the type of voice that could raise the dead, it sounded petulant and whiny.
Duke Grandfather- The Whole Story Page 62