Occult Detective

by Emby Press

  It had no interest in Heller, but instead reached for Jiao. The valet stepped back horrified, placing the table between himself and the corpse. Heller raised the machete above his head and chopped down. It took several times, like cutting cordwood, to stagger the creature. Thick tainted blood seeped from the wounds. “We should avoid touching that.”

  “What do we do now?” Jiao asked.

  “I think I have what I need.” Heller ensured that the head was completely severed from the body and kicked it over to the other side of the room. Then he started putting away his tools. “Inform the porter that we are done and that he should seal off this car until we make our destination. And then meet me in my room.”

  Jiao bowed and Heller prepared for his last meeting of the night.

  “What will you do?”

  “Depends on what Shihuo was trying to do. Most of the Board of Directors appear to be good and decent men. I doubt they want to hurt the land, merely to put it to good use for the country,” Heller answered. Jiao said nothing, but his expression was credulous. “I certainly doubt that they would wish to open a mystical route to Leng.”

  *

  Jonathon Heller waited at his table sipping his decanter of brandy. Jiao brought a tray of tea. “You’ve had a long night, you should sit.”

  “It isn’t proper, Mr. Heller.”

  He shrugged and placed his father’s machete on the table. “I insist.”

  Jiao nodded and sat. “How did you know?”

  “You were utterly convincing.” Heller kept his hand on the machete. The blade had several runes inscribed upon it. “My tongue was too thick when you woke me. A side-effect from a number of barbiturates.”

  “Why did you let me continue like a fool?” Jiao asked.

  “You could have killed me like you did Shihuo. I was completely at your mercy. You might have even saved me by waking me early. Am I correct?”

  Jiao shook his head and Heller imagined he saw a trace of revulsion. “I couldn’t harm a good man.”

  “Why didn’t you steal the machete like you intended?” Heller asked.

  Jiao’s eyes opened slightly wider. “You are very astute. How did you know?”

  “The belt moved several times ever so slightly. And then you kept asking about it. I presume that you are not of this world. How did you get past the Great Barrier? Why did you wish to steal it?” Heller asked.

  Jiao nodded approvingly. “You are more astute than the wisest of my kind. To answer your question, it is impossible for me to pass the Great Barrier.”

  “That would mean that you have been here for thousands of years. The idea is staggering.”

  “I have watched over the people of this land for many years. A patron you might say,” Jiao admitted. “The drug would explain a human suspect, but not a supernatural cause. How did you know? My glamour should have been perfect. You should have found me beautiful and desired me.”

  Heller sipped his brand and laughed. “It was perfect. I found it very difficult to contain myself. I noticed that others were staring and realized it was at you. They were jealous. And then I noticed a small error. The porter called you lovely and dainty. Not something one calls a handsome young man in public, even in China. And then it occurred to me that they didn’t object to you because you were a low class servant. They expect such people to do what is needed. They objected because you were a beautiful young woman to them.”

  Jiao blinked and then smiled. “You hide your preferences quite well.”

  “My weakness isn’t tolerated openly in my country,” Heller admitted.

  “Three thousand years and still you humans puzzle me, but then my form and gender is more fluid.” Jiao smiled. “I should have killed you when I had the chance. I have never been able to resist a pretty face. You would think I’d be immune being able to have any face I’d ever want. Alas, in this enclosed metal space, you’ll be able to cut me before I escape. I presume you planned accordingly.”

  Heller tilted his head, a bit surprised Jiao’s calm tones. “You find me attractive?”

  “I did everything but wag my tail at you,” Jiao protested.

  “I’m far too old for you. At least at a glance,” Heller said lamely. “It wouldn’t be proper. And I couldn’t force myself on a servant.”

  “I’d like to see the man that could force himself on me.” Jiao laughed and there was a flare of his power in his eyes.

  “Thank you for not killing me in my sleep. I’d like to pay back that kindness, but I have some questions for you,” Heller said.

  “Of course.”

  “Why did you kill Shihuo?”

  “You were correct about the feng shui. He wanted to power a bridge into the Dreamlands to establish a clear route to Leng. The poppy had devoured a good portion of his mind. He was reduced to eating human flesh to maintain his appearance. This land is my home. Such a bridge would have harmed my adopted family.”

  Heller nodded, putting together the pieces in his mind. “What are you? Clearly, Shihuo couldn’t have harmed you.”

  “Not necessarily. I feared that his infection might have spread. I wasn’t certain if I would be immune,” Jiao said with a smile. “As to what I am, I’ve been trying to tell you since we met. Why do you think I kept telling you the stories?”

  “Tell me in words. Directly.”

  “The name humans have for my breed is Dragon. On other worlds, we’re called Derkomai. That word was incorporated into Greek by my sister. It roughly translates into ‘I see’ or ‘that which flashes or gleams.’ And I have been alone for a very long time.”

  “Why did you want my father’s machete?” Heller asked.

  “It was a weapon tainted with power. I thought to use it to seal the portal to Leng,” Jiao explained and then smiled uneasily. “I didn’t realize that some of that energy came from you. Your blood has power invested in it. Dark things are attracted to you. Really, I can’t help myself.”

  “A story for another time.”

  “What now?” Jiao asked.

  “You stop killing and sabotaging the eastern railroad,” Heller ordered.

  “What about the portal? If they continue with the plan…”

  “I’ll meet with the Board of the Directors and explain why they need to select a new route,” Heller stated.

  “What of the cost?” Jiao asked. “Greed will not permit them to bargain with us.”

  Heller shook his head. “My family has dealt with the railroads for a very long time. You don’t understand them like I do. You’ve already caused them a great deal of money. It would be more profitable to come to an arrangement. Especially if we can alter the feng shui of the railroad to benefit everyone.”

  “You want to use it to ensure that the portal remains closed forever. Clever. How can we convince them to do this?”

  “Such lines of power would also bring fortune to the land by obeying the laws of the stars and land, yes? Besides, who can say no to a dragon?” Heller asked.

  “And then what? Will you go back home?”

  Heller removed his glasses and cleaned the lenses with a white handkerchief. “I have a mission to complete.”

  “The Cult of Leng?”

  “There are dangerous things out there wanting to get to this world. I’d rather stop it now,” Heller said. He paused and then smiled. “Having a dragon along would be useful.”

  Jiao laughed. “I could never resist the pretty.”

  AFTERMATH III

  Glynn Owen Barrass

  From petty crimes to soldiers gone AWOL, and from sexual harassment to rape, Security Chief Dylan Ronson had seen it all in his twelve years as a Military Policeman. This incident, in a new career on a new world, was something new however. The Station Commander, Ursula Lopez, had contacted him as soon as the body was discovered. As head of security, it was his job to investigate anything that affected the smooth running of Terraforming Research Station B-9. No one would have expected this, a murder.

  Level Four, Habita
t Wing, the room of Technician First Class Andrew Collins. The man lay naked on the floor, his body split open from throat to crotch by what appeared to be a laser cutter. Surgical maybe. His insides were scooped out, missing from the room, and there wasn’t a single trace of blood to be seen. Another anomaly: Collins’s window was broken, a pinkish light visible between the shards and the stench from the dying jungle beyond making being in the room uncomfortable, regardless of the eviscerated corpse in Ronson and Lopez’s midst.

  He turned to the commander. The small chubby, black haired woman was staring at the corpse, her top lip wobbling. Her eyes, shielded behind large black spectacles, were dilated wide. He almost felt sorry for her, if every interaction since they’d met at the Company briefing on Earth hadn’t been strained by her contempt for anyone connected to the military. He scrutinized the terrified expression on Collins’s face and said, “We need to get him autopsied, right away.”

  Lopez harrumphed and turned her large hazel eyes his way. “A silly question, I know, but it couldn’t have been something… something from outside?”

  Ronson was taken aback. First, because Lopez hadn’t answered his statement with her usual sarcasm, and secondly, because the woman actually seemed frightened. In different circumstances, if he’d suggested some thing had entered the station and killed a man, he would have been laughed at, scorned. The only life on Aftermath III, apart from the flora of the jungles, were the bugs, most of them no bigger than a man’s hand and already dying out due to the Terraforming Installations arrayed along the Continent’s Eastern shore.

  He replied to her naive question with, “The window was broken from the inside commander, and if there were any carnivorous insects here, they wouldn’t have made such a… clean job of things.”

  “Yes, yes you’re right,” Lopez replied absently. She was staring at Collins’s corpse again, entranced. “Okay,” she shook her head. “It’s time we started clearing this mess up.” She pressed what resembled a mole on the right side of her neck. It was in fact, a communication device.

  “Doctor Schweitzer, can you come to Level Four, Room 26? Bring assistants, and a body bag…”

  Those last words made Ronson cringe. So far only himself, Lopez, and Collins’s friend Temple-Tudor, whom he’d escorted to her room in shock, knew of the death. Now the whole station would learn of it.

  “If it’s okay, I’m gonna take a look outside,” he said.

  Lopez nodded, slack jawed, still entranced by the corpse.

  *

  Just as I told Lopez. There we are. Ronson knelt, retrieved one of the glass shards littering the concrete below Collins’s room. He examined it, searching for any kind of residue, but finding it clean tossed it back to the ground. He stood and stared suspiciously up Station B-9’s galvanized steel walls, curving upwards into a near dome except for the flattened top that functioned as a landing pad.

  The walls were mostly without feature, except for the windows and bulging air ducts which lined the station like the veins of some massive metallic organ. Ronson spotted the window to Collins’s room, a hundred and twenty feet or so above him, boarded up now with a sheet of surplus flexiglass. He went to tap his lip. A transparent breathing mask stopped his hand and he lowered it. The mask wasn’t a necessity, the terraforming machines had taken care of the poisonous atmosphere, but the jungle stood not fifty feet behind him and without the mask, the stench would be intolerable.

  He considered Lopez’s theory again, of some unknown creature killing Collins, jumping through the window and falling over a hundred feet to escape to… where? He turned and examined the jungle surrounding the station.

  The thing looked monstrous – he always connected the jungle to a thing, a huge purple and green mass of fetid, alien approximations of the trees and plants of Earth. The trees, resembling huge, upside down firs but with bulbous, purple leaves, towered over sixty feet tall, intertwined by brownish green, snaking vines. The vines themselves bore dangling, cone-shaped yellow insect hives, mausoleums for tiny creatures long dead now. Below the wilting trees the floor of the jungle was chaotic. Large, orb-shaped plants, once bright purple but mottled now with black decay, spotted the ground in profusion, Everything was dying, to be cleared away eventually by the same huge dozers that had cleared the space for the station when it was erected, five years earlier.

  So if it ran there… Ronson humoured himself, began walking the fifty feet to the jungle. He reached it, braced himself, and after finding a space between two smaller orbs entered the fetid confines. It was a dark, sickly space he stepped through, between the bases of trees overgrown with tumorous orange growths. Further in, he encountered, and was forced to step over, thick black roots, protruding from the rotted matter on the ground. This matter included fallen leaves, dry and dark purple, like discarded organs scattered upon the floor of some alien abattoir. Some plants appeared almost Terran, green sprigs with white, cup shaped flowers peeping from the rotten ground. There were also some larger plants, far from the Terran norm, that had fared far worse than the smaller species, things with boles two times wider than a man and four times as tall, terminating in open orifices lined with twisted members. Their boles were rotted now, the members bent back to reveal dead white suckers.

  The carnivorous plants were dying a slow death, decaying by the hour as they choked on an atmosphere growing only suitable for Earthmen. Ronson gave them a wide birth anyway, for induction videos he’d seen before arriving on planet had shown healthy specimens catch flying insects from the air, using their members to pull the bugs down into serrated maws.

  There were no bugs though. Nothing moved in the jungle. Ronson guessed their carcasses were rotting underfoot. Collins’s death by an alien intruder had been an outlandish theory anyway, but at least he’d investigated it further.

  He turned to make the return walk to the station and paused at the sight of the healthy plants. On a whim, he leant, pulling one from the ground, a specimen with yellow star shaped flowers spotted in blue dots. “Something for the exobiologist,” he said, for that was whom he intended to see upon his return.

  *

  “This plant, I think it’s a grex,” said the exobiologist, Sylvia, a short slim woman with black hair cut into a fringe. She spoke excitedly, with a German accent, had been excited since he’d dumped the flowering plant, soil covered roots and all, on her worktable.

  “A what?” Ronson asked.

  “A naturally occurring interspecific hybrid, or nothospecies,” Sylvia replied. She stood, straightened her stained white lab coat, and walked a few feet to her right, retrieving and pulling on a pair of blue vinyl gloves. She returned to the plant and examined it eagerly, stared at the star shaped flowers with one eye squinted shut. “Hmmm. It happens when two plant species cross-pollinate and end up creating an entirely new type.”

  Now he was getting the gist of things. “So this is something rare?”

  She looked at him with a lop-sided smile. “Two species hybridising into a species that adapts to our murdering this world? Damned straight it is!” She deposited the plant on the worktable and opened a drawer.

  Ronson backed off to give her room.

  “The powers that be,” she said, preparing a microscope slide, “will not be happy if these non-terran things start cropping up all over the place.”

  Ronson stared at her back as she worked, then said the words he’d been afraid to ask since entering the Exobiology Lab.

  “There aren’t any species, non-plant species, out there that could do any serious harm to humans, are there?”

  Sylvia turned from the slide and said, “Nothing from a hundred surveys Dylan. All we’ve ever encountered are organisms on the insect level and although ugly, they’re the most harmless things here.”

  This reply wasn’t the one he desired. For now, for all intents and purposes, he was dealing with a murderer on the station.

  He said his goodbyes to Sylvia and headed for the lab one floor down, to see what had been dis
covered during Collins’s autopsy.

  *

  A crowd had formed inside Schweitzer’s lab, a dozen or so curious station operatives who’d gotten news about Collins. Ronson squeezed past two of them, a man and a woman dressed in oil-smeared orange coveralls, and tried making his way to the front of the crowd.

  “Disperse!” Ronson froze at Lopez’s shrill voice, couldn’t see her at first, then spied her small form near the operating table providing the focus for all the attention. Her neck was flushed red, her manner panicked as she tried to form order within the room. Beside her, behind the operating table, stood Doctor Schweitzer’s cadaverous form. The tallest person in the room, hollow cheeked, sunken eyed, the man resembled some grey haired, middle-aged ghoul. And this ghoul was obviously stoned. He looked to Ronson and grinned. Ronson smiled back. Schweitzer wasn’t a bad man, but drank heavily and played poker like a fiend when he wasn’t working.

  “Look everyone I just need you out of here.” Ronson turned to Lopez and watched her panic, feeling some measure of satisfaction at her distress. As Schweitzer had said over more than one card game, “The bitch is a bitch.”

  Then he took charge of the situation.

  “Okay you heard the commander – MOVE!” he said, and began tapping shoulders at random. “Get out of here all of you or you’ll have me to answer to.”

  Stubborn, disappointed glances met his own but people started to leave.

  Instead of thanking him, Lopez took the opportunity to start ushering people out. Ronson turned to the doctor and found him laughing into his hand.

  Soon the room was empty apart from Ronson and Schweitzer. Beyond the closed door he could hear Lopez scolding the staff. On the steel autopsy table, between him and the doctor, lay a corpse under a dark blue sheet.

  Schweitzer’s face straightened as Ronson approached. He went to lift the sheet but Ronson stopped him with a shake of his head.