“Some of us, we can add to our body. Change it. Build it into more than it was in life.”
“Like you,” I say.
Marsh scowls. “Why the hell do you say that?” he asks, his words dripping with a threat.
“Well, because, you know.”
“You think my face isn’t naturally this pretty?”
I look at the massive size of him. I find it hard to imagine him as a normal living person of that size. With blood pumping, all his organs intact, he would have to weigh well past 300 pounds, maybe closer to 400. “You, no, you’re yes, because you’re pretty, handsome, pretty handsome. Go on.”
“Anyway,” he growls sourly, continuing. “Some of us, we can rebuild our bodies, heal injuries. There aren’t many who can, but some.
“And then there’s those like the captain. Who is something else entirely.”
I hold up my fingers to start ticking them off. “One kind is ghosts. Then revenants, strong revenants, and then the something elses? And the ones that can heal themselves they are the strong revenants and the something elses?”
Marsh nods. “You got it.”
I don’t bother trying to get a better clarification than that. “You stuck around though. After you died. What kept you around? Was it something supernatural?”
Marsh shakes his head. “No. Nothing like that.”
When nothing else is forthcoming, I try another tactic. “How did you die?” I prod him.
The smile he gets on his face gives me shivers and about stops my heart. “How did I die? Not alone.”
He shakes his head, lost in thought. “There were some people who needed killing. I got some of them before I died. Plenty more after.” He chuckles.
I don’t get a chance to ask a follow-up. Ms. Greystone enters the room, casts a disdainful gaze around at the other detectives, finally settling on Marsh and then me. The other detectives in the room stop what they’re doing, eyes locked on Greystone. Wait, are they . . . They’re totally checking her out. I don’t get it. What am I missing?
“Detective Marsh,” Ms. Greystone greets coolly. “Detective Green. The captain wants to know how your first night is going.”
I shrug. How am I supposed to know? It’s not like I have any stick to measure this against.
“The kid’s doing alright,” Marsh says, his gaze traveling down, then back up Ms. Greystone’s body. “Solid first day. He might even last the week.”
Ms. Greystone nods like that’s what she had expected. While it looks outwardly like she is oblivious to the leers of the other detectives, I can feel her anger at it pulsing out from her. “Then you are to meet the captain down at Pier 12.”
Marsh looks surprised. “Pier 12? What’s down there? Is that all he said?”
Clearly, she doesn’t like to be second-guessed by Marsh any more than she likes it from me. “The captain’s exact words were, ‘Bring Detective Green and his endlessly-irritating partner down here on the double.’”
She smiles, then sinks through the floor.
“What’s Pier 12?” I ask.
Marsh shakes his head, puzzled. “Let’s go take a look.”
Chapter 13
We take a coach over to the docks. This time, though, I convince Marsh that I want to ride on the top. I don’t want to be confined to a dark box all night; I want to see where we’re going. He tells the driver to take a hike, and we both climb up into the driver’s bench. Marsh has the reins, of course, which is fine with me as it gives me time to take in the sights. And it spares me having to try and control the horses.
The coach moves at a brisk pace down the center of the roads. It looks like most of the time, the center lane is kept clear for us. Convenient. Now that I’m up in front of the coach, I get a better view of the city. The streets here are very confusing. At first, I thought it was the speed of the coach making the edges of my vision blur, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it is actually some mystical aspect of the city itself. The streets merge with each other, pavement to cobblestone to dirt to gravel. I don’t mean that on one block it’s one and on the next block it’s different. It’s like several roads overlap each other, and in some places, one imposes itself on top of the other. A clogged gutter slowly shifts into an overflowing dirt trench within the space of a few paces. It’s less prevalent in the downtown area where I’ve spent most of my time, but out here in the neighboring areas, it is more common. It doesn’t seem to happen as much when I’m down walking at street level; it’s like my presence tends to hold one of the super-imposed streets in place. But up here on the coach, moving at a faster pace, I can see the constant shifting. I pull my eyes up from the ground before I get too nauseated.
The crowds shuffle up and down the streets in the overcast gloom. Now that I’ve been here a while, and now that I’m starting to understand the differences in the types of bodies, I can see some variety in the corpses walking past. Some are barely lurching, some are just ghosts, but some walk confidently down the streets. Once again, I marvel at what I see: clothing styles several decades to a century or more out of fashion. Along one street I see men wearing top hats and bowlers, walking with canes, wearing suits or work overalls, carrying briefcases and valises. Women with full-length dresses and poofy skirts walk beside others with parasols and slacks. It’s like I’m behind the scenes on set at a movie studio, and I’m watching all the extras from various films mingling together.
Marsh notices my interest.
“This is a weird place for you, isn’t it, kid? Surrounded by hundreds of walking, talking, thieving, whoring, lifeless, immortal dead people. Some are flesh eaters. Some are blood drinkers, eaters of carrion, offal, and souls,” he explains.
“And then there’s the nice ones like me, of course.” He smiles.
I grunt, nodding. Nice isn’t the first word that comes to mind.
We crossed the bridge leading to the precinct early on and are now heading back into the central portion of the city. The crowds are thicker here where the buildings are packed close together. The undead cluster on the sidewalks and loiter against brick walls or even in the gutters. The breeze from riding in the open air is a refreshing change for me.
“Keep your gun handy,” Marsh says. He nods towards the crowds lining the sidewalk near my side of the coach. “Most of the folks here, they don’t pose you no danger. But some of these folks feed on mortals. Or they would if they could get their hands on some. Here, the pathways to your world are blocked. They don’t have any access to living people. But now that you’re here with them, well, they might not be able to resist the temptation. You’re a bottle of whiskey being paraded in front of a roomful of drunks. You think someone is coming for you, you drop ’em. Understand?”
I look sideways at Marsh and nod. I thought the badge was supposed to help with that, but I guess it’s not foolproof. The gun feels a little heavier in my coat pocket.
We take a turn that leads us away from downtown. It is still disorienting to me to see an old Victorian clock tower rising above thatched roofs or junked car salvage yards. Occasionally I’ll see the glow of eyes from one of the figures walking near the road we’re on, just to give it that extra dose of the surreal. There are a lot more coaches out on this road; it looks like a main thoroughfare from downtown to wherever our destination is located. I can hear the sounds of running water nearby over the tumult. On all sides, I see battered warehouses in a variety of styles. I have more questions, and Marsh can’t avoid me for a few more minutes.
“We’ve gone a couple of miles, now. Even though the sky’s never changed, the temperature has. Sometimes it’s hot, sometimes cold. Humid then dry. Now humid, again. I’ve felt a few drops of rain—even a snowflake or two. The buildings are all different. Different styles, ages.”
“There a question in there?” Marsh growls.
“Explain it to me. I’d guess, it’s just whe
rever these people come from, they build buildings they’re used to. But that doesn’t answer it all.”
Marsh sighs. “The city. I’ve told you some of it before. It’s made up of places from all over the world. It’s not just styles of buildings from around the world. It’s actual places. We’re moving from one place in the world to a completely different place in the world as we go down the street. For us, it’s a single street, but in your world, we just skipped all over the globe, hitting places out of sight. Forgotten places.”
He points to a couple run-down buildings as we pass. They look completely unlike each other, even though they are clearly warehouses of some kind. One is faded yellow brick with wooden sills and frames of colorless peeling paint. The other is corrugated steel, rust-colored and flaking.
“Those two buildings are right next to each other here. But in the real world, one could be in the Midwest, the other in China. Our town is folded pockets of reality crammed together. A place for us—one breathing saps like you aren’t supposed to find.”
“But how? Don’t people just wander in?”
“You’d be surprised how much of the world is in front of your eyes, and people just don’t see it. No, our Necropolis is made of up of the pieces no one remembers. There are a few doorways that allow passage back and forth, but most of it no longer exists in any living memory.”
He sees me struggling to comprehend. He pauses to curse at a slow-moving driver and basically runs him off the road to get around him. I hold on tightly to my seat until we swerve back into the middle of our lane.
“Let me give you an example,” he continues like nothing happened. “Remember a place you stumbled across once when you were a kid? Some shop you didn’t know, you couldn’t remember how you got there? It had stuff you couldn’t make sense of inside? Fading what-cha-call-em doilies, glasses in greens and browns, old antiques and other junk? Or maybe it was an alley behind a boarded-up gate, blocked by dumpsters that never get emptied? You snuck back there and saw locked doors leading into dark empty buildings.
“Yeah, those places aren’t here because you remember them. I’m talking about forgotten places no one remembers anymore. The people that built them are no longer alive, plans or writings no longer mention them. Boarded over rooms, bricked-up buildings, sewer tunnels that have been closed down and neglected. That’s what we’ve got here.”
I think this over. I wonder how many times I’ve passed by a building or street in my life, a place that I just didn’t notice. A business located between two others that completely escaped my notice. Or a turn I failed to realize was there. I think of all the many places I passed every day and never noticed. Then I try and stretch that to every city, in every country in the world. It’s dizzying. I wonder how big this place really is. I’ve never been at a vantage point to look down over it. The world feels like it is getting smaller every day, filling up with more people, satellites exploring nooks and crannies. But even then, how much don’t I notice even in my own backyard?
He turns the coach on a wide road filled with large wagons hauling boxes and materials. It’s busy here, carts and coaches of all sizes filing past and around us. We join the press and pass through a large gate. Stone pillars rise up on either side of the road, nearly fifteen feet tall. The iron gate is standing wide open. The docks.
The docks are old, with massive wooden pillars holding up piers for a stretch of about a half-mile in either direction along the banks. The docks are all different in style and size. Some look solid; others seem like they’ll fall apart with the next wave that crashes into them. But they are all built for receiving ships of various sizes. Fog looms out on the water, making it hard to tell how wide the river is, where it goes, or from where it originates. The water is black, churning, the current swift. There are at least ten long wooden piers, each about 200 feet long. I don’t know when they were built, but it looks like they are as old as anything in this city.
There are some boats out in the water, disappearing into the churning mists. One vessel is tied up at the end of the pier that we’re approaching. Don’t ask me what kind of boat, I don’t know. Some are simple sailing craft, fishing boats. But I see at least one steam-ship moored at a nearby pier. A yacht drifts further up in the fog. Behind it, I see a hulking shadow with masts and sails. At the end of the dock we’re on, there is a steel cargo ship of some kind. I would expect this pier to be crowded with workers like I can see on other piers. Here, officers are holding the crowd back at the entrance. Down by some large crates at the end, I can see the captain. The air seems darker, more oppressive around him, a concentration of power that he carries around with him. He stands by himself, and even the other officers seem to avoid him. He is standing motionless, studying something on the ground.
Marsh gets down off the coach and clears our way past the cops guarding the entrance. “The captain’s standing over running water. He never does that. It’s dangerous for him. This must be important. Let’s go see what this is about.”
I give the horses hooked up to our coach a wide berth as I set out to follow Marsh. I’m conscious of what he said about some people wanting to eat me if they could. I’m even more suspicious of the looks the horses are giving me, now. I don’t know how serious he was, but he sure seemed like he wasn’t exaggerating. Even though the crowd parts for both of us, are some of them looking at me with more than simple curiosity? Are they gazing at me hungrily? Speculatively? I stick close to Marsh all the way down the length of the pier.
“Detectives,” the captain greets without looking up. His suit hangs loosely off his skinny frame. Its fabric is darker than the shadows swirling around him. At one time, it may have been exquisitely tailored, but now it is rumpled, torn and stained. I initially thought he was wearing a trench coat, but on closer inspection, I realize it’s a cloak of some heavy material. It billows slightly, but not in any way that appears affected by the wind. He waves us near with slowly curling fingers on one hand, then leads us over behind some crates nearby and indicates something on the ground, covered by a tarp. “Take a look. Tell me what you see.”
Marsh squats, lifts one corner to the tarp, stares down, and doesn’t move. His arm holds the tarp, and his scowl gets fiercer.
“Another one?” he whispers.
I look over his shoulder. There is a body on the ground. This body is just lying there. This is a corpse.
I haven’t seen dead bodies that didn’t move since my first encounter with the captain. At the time, I didn’t understand the big deal. I mean, so what? But this is a dead body that used to be undead, and they can’t figure it out.
“I don’t suppose he’s sleeping?” I ask.
“No,” the captain replies. “The body is there, but nobody is home.”
Marsh is quiet, the way the air in a snowstorm is silent. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Marsh at a loss for words, or at least a rude grunt.
“I don’t understand,” I admit. I notice only one other thing out of the ordinary, a familiar detail that I have seen before just once, on a similarly dead body. The eyes are gone, like they’ve been burned out. The sockets are empty, smoking craters.
“Neither will anyone else,” the captain sighs. He looks like he ate something foul, his mouth scrunched up in distaste. “This is the fourth one I’ve found over the past few weeks.”
“What?” Marsh looks up in shock. “You’ve been keeping them from us? I thought there was only the one.”
“Non, malheuresement. I wanted to keep this contained. I would have brought them to you eventually. I’ve managed to keep the others covered up, but this one . . . This one was too visible. There’s no keeping it quiet now.”
Neither Marsh nor I say anything. I keep looking at the body on the ground, over to the captain, then back again.
Finally, the captain snaps, “Don’t you understand, Detective Green? For the first time ever in our history, we have murders. A
nd I need your help to solve them.”
Ten Weeks Ago . . .
“Craig?” I croak, reaching out for my brother. Then I remember he’s long gone, eight years now.
I wake up in the dark. As I struggle to crawl up to consciousness, it feels like something must be draped over my head. Everything feels stuffy, dull; my senses don’t give me input the way I’m used to. I struggle for a moment, trying to push away whatever is covering me until I realize nothing is there. Am I leaning against a wall? No, I’m sprawled out on the floor.
Suddenly everything comes rushing in at once, and the avalanche of sensation threatens to drop me back into unconsciousness. I’m in darkness, and I can’t immediately see the limits of the room. I’m cold, my clothes in tatters. My joints ache, and I feel bruises all over. There is a ringing in my ear that won’t go away. It feels like my ears are stuffed with cotton. I can feel a loose tooth and a sharp stabbing pain in my side.
The floor beneath me is concrete; its damp chill seeps up through me. Where am I?
“Hello?” I call out tentatively, and the words scratch at my throat as they come out. I immediately start coughing. The sounds echo back around me, giving me the sense I’m in a small room.
My last memory is of Marsh asking me more questions. I may not know where I am, but I’m sure it’s not in the same place I last saw Marsh.
There is no response. I feel my way along the wall a few feet until I find a corner where I huddle up to try and keep warm.
I don’t know how long I’m there before I nod off back to sleep once more.
I wake up after an indeterminate amount of time. What am I hearing? The ringing is still there, more in my left ear, but there is something else, something external. Whispers?
Yes, I’m hearing whispers, hushed voices around me.
“Hello?” I call again. The voices cease. “Dammit! Please! Is anyone there?”
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