Necropolis PD
by Nathan R. Sumsion
Parvus Press, LLC
PO Box 224
Yardley, PA 19067-8224
ParvusPress.com
Necropolis PD
Copyright © 2019 by Nathan Sumsion
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, magical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
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It just so happens that the Parvus staff are only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do . . . Go through our pockets and look for books.
ISBN 13 978-0-9997842-3-5
Ebook ISBN 978-0-9997842-2-8
Cover art by Ronan LE FUR
Cover design by R J Theodore
Designed and typeset by Catspaw DTP Services
For Becky
Necropolis PD would have never come to be without your inspiration, love and support. I’m looking forward to all the mysteries we’ll solve and challenges we’ll overcome together, both in this life and whatever comes after.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
About the Author
A Word From Parvus Press
Chapter 1
I stare into the vacant, sunken eyes of a cadaver's face, inches from my own. The viscious eyes, fogged over and yellow, reflect my own gaze blurrily back at me. The corpse pins me down, the full weight of it crushing me into the cold ground. The face looms closer as I struggle to push the body away from me. Its eyes, they grow nearer still. And then they blink.
The recent memory replays incessantly in my brain, looping endlessly in my thoughts. It’s a nightmare that plagues me whether I’m awake or asleep. Looking back, it’s odd how clear some events seem now that it’s too late to do anything about them.
If only I hadn’t hit the snooze button one morning three months ago and hadn’t rolled over those extra ten minutes, I may not have run into unexpected traffic in the pre-dawn hours on the usually sleepy streets. If only I took that left instead of the right at the long red light, trying to shave some time off my drive. If I hadn’t stopped at the scene of the accident. If I hadn’t stepped out of my car to help. If I hadn’t chased that . . . thing.
Or the door . . . if only I hadn’t opened that damned door, the hinges screeching, with its rusted patina of orange covered with peeling once-blue paint raining down like snowflakes. That forgotten door, the lock forced and the handle bent. One door out of all those I’ve entered throughout my life. Walking through this one door stranded me far from home with little hope of ever returning. Changing any of those decisions could have prevented me from coming here. Right? Or did it go back further than that?
I keep turning these choices over and over in my mind, trying to drive away the thoughts of the blinking corpse, whenever sleep threatens to overtake me.
Wrong decisions. Wrong decisions and their consequences.
Sliding further into my seat, I sink into the shadows around me and further into the gloom, bury myself away from the gaze of everyone around me. I’ve been sitting here at my booth in the corner for hours, alone. Empty, stained glasses that once held flat, warm beer sit on the table in front of me. The buzz from the alcohol isn’t enough to keep my thoughts from bothering me.
The shadows are thicker here, literally deeper, denser than they should be. The light from the room’s few oil lamps fails to penetrate the shadows like it should, the glow falling short of reaching all the way to my seat. There is a small lamp on my table, but the glass is cracked, the metal base dented, and the whole thing is cold without oil to fuel a flame. They will fill it again soon I’m sure, but not until after I leave. No one wants to call attention to me.
I finger the hunk of metal hanging from around my neck by a piece of twine. A talisman, they call it. They claim it is something to protect me, to deter those who would do me harm. It is supposed to be enough to keep all but the most determined away, so I assume it’s a warning sign of some kind. Or actual magic, something that would have been laughable to me before all of this.
The metal looks and feels like lead, but I can’t tell for sure. It’s about the size of a playing card, with a crude symbol I don’t recognize carved in it. I am given a new one each morning with the promise that if I keep it on me, and keep it visible, I may live another day. Seriously, it sounds so ridiculous, something I wouldn’t have believed in pre-school, much less now. I can’t tell if it is a joke, a prank at my expense, but I don’t dare put it to the test. I nervously take my hand off of it. The tingling sensation in my fingers is surely just my imagination.
The dead eyes blink at me, the mouth below smiling with split lips. A foul stench wafts out from the blackness behind jagged yellow teeth inching closer to me. A fluid thicker than drool drips from the mouth onto my face.
Closing my eyes, I try to dredge up some other memory, but I can only recall that dead face leaning towards me. My current surroundings do little to distract me, but they’re the best I can manage. I’m listening to the drone of conversation floating around me without paying attention to the words. The bar is crowded with despairing patrons, tables full of morose souls with hardly any room to turn much less move, except for a small bubble of space around my table. My hand grips tightly to a shot glass—the one glass before me not empty, the liquor in it untouched.
Typically, I have a pint of what passes for beer in this place. But tonight, I need something stronger. Judging from the thickness, the color—hell the weight of the glass—I’m sure I’ll regret my decision later.
I sneak a glance at the bodies around me. Most ignore me. But some of them gaze back at me with all-too-familiar dead eyes. Do their eyes flicker to the hunk of metal hanging from my neck? Or is it just my neck that gets their attention? What about the blood pumping through my arteries, the breath coming out my mouth?
“You gonna drink that or stare it
to death?” The voice coming at me sounds like gravel scraping across glass. It reminds me of another voice: the one that won’t leave my thoughts.
You’re a long way from home, aren’t you, child? it said, a whisper slipping from a dead face. Such a long way to come to die.
I glance up into cold eyes and an uncaring stare, the hard frown of the bar’s friendliest waitress. She stands over me at my table, her disinterest radiating in waves. Her hair has the color and brittleness of straw, pulled back into a ponytail, the bald patches beneath mostly hidden. She is dressed in a faded blouse and short skirt full of holes and smeared with dirt and grime, the colors looking brown in the gloom. Her clothes do little to hide her skeleton-thin frame underneath. She has an empty tray tucked under her arm, which could easily carry away the glasses on my table. She conveniently ignores them.
My gaze returns to the glass in my hand. “Don’t worry, Annabelle, I’ll drink it. Thanks,” I say, feigning cheer I don’t feel.
She turns before I’m finished answering, and mutters as she shuffles away, her putrid scent lingering in the air. I bring the glass to my mouth but stop and slowly lower it again as I get re-lost in thought. Some dead man’s white shirt itches across my shoulders, and I tug absently at the dark tie knotted loosely around my neck. My clothes are hand-me-downs from who-knows-where. The stink doesn’t completely wash out of them, no matter how much I try. I won’t even hazard a guess as to how it got these stains. A coffin got raided at a funeral home somewhere to get this cheap suit on me, no doubt. The suit coat sits beside me on my bench; it’s too hot for me to consider actually wearing it. I can feel the trickle of sweat running down my back. My belt is cinched to keep too-big pants from slipping down. They are not the clothes I wore when I arrived in this town, but they are all I have to my name, now. My old clothes were too bloodstained, too saturated with pus and shit and gore to salvage.
A loud sigh escapes me in the hopes it will push back the despair waiting to take hold. I lived in sheer terror for the first several weeks I was here, my brain exhausted by the constant fear, but, now, I’ve settled into a state of numbness, the acceptance of inevitability. Running away never worked; they caught me easily. And punished me. Hiding didn’t work either. They could always track me down. And then punished me. I’ve lived here longer than I expected to, though I think I hear the final ticks of the clock.
Somewhere in the crowd, at least one of my captors waits patiently, observing. I don’t know them all; I can’t recognize every one of them, but I’ve been told at all times, no matter where I go, someone is watching me. And if I stray too far, if I ask too many questions, if I do anything they don’t want me to, I go back into the cell where I spent my first two months here. The dark hole filled with pain and questions and cold. My hand spasms at the memory, nearly tipping over my glass.
I’ve taken to coming here, to Warner’s, what passes for a bar down the street from where I’m living now. To call it a dive would be an insult to scuzzy bars everywhere else. No matter how run-down or trashed a bar gets, they can take solace that this place exists in the world to make their wreck of a watering hole better by comparison.
The hours slip past as I wait here, while they examine me, weigh me on their scales of justice and decide my fate. This is one of the few places they’ll let me go, so it’s become my new home when I can take no more of the isolation of my apartment, when being surrounded by a horde of strangers is preferable to spending another minute alone. It’s not the kind of place I would normally hang out since it lacks TV screens and Wi-Fi signals and other modern amenities. I have yet to see electricity or modern conveniences anywhere. The kerosene lamp on my table probably passes for cutting-edge tech. Warner’s is dreary, depressing and lonely, but it has become my favorite place in this town. It’s one of the few places where I can stay any length of time. Where I can have the façade of company, but where I’m left alone.
None of the patrons here attempt to speak to me. I make them uncomfortable. I remind them of what it was like to be alive, perhaps. As long as I stay out of their way, as long as they don’t have to actually acknowledge I’m here, they tolerate my presence. They cast curious glances at me out of the corners of their eyes. Some of these glances are frankly hungrier than others. The observers mill in the shadows, staying out of the dim light as much as possible. Conversation quiets if they notice I’m paying attention. Annabelle has to interact with me since her job requires it, but she’s usually the only one.
Warner, this place’s namesake, is behind the bar slinging drinks. It looks like he measures his lifespan in geologic ages. He grudgingly allows me to come here. As far as I know, he never leaves except to go in back the kitchen or down into the cellar. I think it’s where he brews the rotgut liquor he passes for drinks. Behind him, rows of liquor bottles extend into the shadows, their labels all unfamiliar and all hand-made. A lazy curl of smoke burns off the ever-present cigar hanging from his pinched lips. His cragged face is lit by a fire that crackles in a massive fireplace on the far side of the room, his bare scalp reflecting the light wherever he turns. He growls and snaps anytime someone actually orders a drink, but then pours it and slams the glass down, handing it over with curses and glares. I hope he doesn’t live off his tips.
The room consists of a long wooden bar, booths lining the walls on all sides, and mismatched tables haphazardly arranged with chairs jammed between. The chairs tend to be crooked, unsteady, so I avoid them when possible. Plus, using one would put me in the middle of the throng, and no one wants that. No matter how crowded the place is, when I show up, this booth frees up pretty quickly. Warner’s has a quaint charm to it if you can get past the needs-to-be-condemned décor.
There are two smaller spaces off the main room. One holds a large table set aside for private meetings. The doors are usually closed, so I rarely see who uses it. The other room holds four booths, but they are all taken up by some historian with papers and photos sprawled over every possible surface. Since that, at least, looked interesting, I once tried starting a conversation with him, but he proved as unfriendly as the rest of the stiffs around here. I’m not sure what hold he has over Warner to rate him an entire room, but he’s evidently been here as long as the bar.
Up in an alcove overlooking the floor, some guy sits at a battered piano, plunking out meaningless melodies. The keys have lost their finish and one leg’s been replaced by cinderblocks. This guy is better than most who come through; his plunking is more-or-less in tune. Lacking a jukebox, this is the best I can hope for.
I feel cold, rubbery skin brush my cheek; it reeks of blood and death. His nose presses up against mine, horribly intimate. I struggle frantically to keep him away, pushing him with one arm while the other searches blindly in the refuse beneath me for something, anything to use against him.
I focus on the present, look through slits in the blinds to my side, and stare into the dim, wet streets outside. There’s no way to determine what time it is. It’s impossible to guess whether it’s day or night. The sky is overcast, the gray ever-present. It’s always so hot. And it is forever cloudy here, raining or not. It’s gloomy even in the middle of the day. The sun hasn’t shone since I came here.
Sighing, I look down at the glass in front of me. Tonight. I find out what they’ve decided, tonight. They won’t let me go home. Of that much, I’m certain. So they either kill me, or, hell, I have no idea what a different alternative might be. One way or another, my months of terror and captivity are over tonight. And I’m powerless to affect the outcome.
I curse myself. Before I came here, I had so many months, years of doing nothing, wasting the hours and days away, carelessly spending what little I had. And now, at the end, I can only see all the things I have yet to do.
My hand finds something—a chunk of wood from a broken pallet. I feel slivers bite painfully into my palm as I grab it and shove it at the thing on top of me.
The guy a
t the piano starts a new tune that grates on my nerves. No way I want to suffer through it sober.
I down my drink in one swallow. Then I grimace and use every muscle I have to keep that swallow down while I hold onto the table for dear life, my world tilting crazily around me. Holy Hell, that is strong. How do the locals stand it? My nasal cavity feels like it’s been fire-bombed. I’m not their typical clientele, I understand, but I have serious concerns about what damage it might be doing to my insides. Note to self: steer clear of the varnish Warner calls hard liquor and stick to beer. I’m starting to suspect the bottles on the shelves behind Warner are different brands of embalming fluid rather than alcohol.
I feel a lurch. I can’t figure out if it’s me or something nearby until someone’s knees bang against my own under the table. My vision swims back into focus and through my tears I see a dark shape looming from the other side of the booth. Someone is sitting across from me. Now that I think about it, some of those shudders and lurches could have been made by this giant of a man striding across the room.
Even in the gloom, I recognize the smile that forms in the darkness.
“I’ve been looking for you, Jacob Green,” the hulking shadow says.
“Marsh,” the words burn in my throat. And like every other time I’ve seen him, I wait for the pain to begin.
Three months ago . . .
A late night out with friends drags on. We’ve all had too many beers, and the night descends into complaints about the homework and assignments we all should have been doing. I’m in my last year of school, and I’m anxious for it to be over. I think we all are. Finally, I say goodnight and walk home with Amber. The wind cuts right through our layers of clothing, ignoring our coats like they aren’t even there.
Laughing, we lean on each other until we arrive at my ratty one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a building near campus. Despite the chill, we start peeling off each other’s clothes outside the door while I’m trying to get the keys into the lock. We stumble over each other and eventually make it into the bedroom where we collapse exhausted into my bed. I fall asleep an hour later, further exhausted.
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