The first sensation of awareness is always touch. Nerveless, but there. A root’s-eye-view of my being, of every headstone, corpse, coffin, and iron bar. Spreading outwards from the yew tree. That is always the way.
And always, always, always when this happens, there is the moment where something-is-not. A cavity in my being, mind and body both. The self-that-sleeps, wakes.
This is something that must be sorted.
A body is made. Bones from roots, flesh from soil. The eyes are damp pebbles from deep underground, the veins sluggish worms, pulsing soft and slow. The heart is a knotted piece of wood from the yew, gnarled over and over into something harder than matter and narrower than mind. To inhabit it is… strange. Barely conscious of it though I am, I know what I am. To be in this shape, this not-I, is limiting. For some time I stand there, on myself, in my new-self, watching the sun set, feeling the world breath. Its breath is fouler than the last time I was needed.
Dark comes, and I leave. There are priorities. The station across the road is still there, strange as it is, odd as these streets are, filled with noisy metal things and strange lights. People stare at me, dressed in odd clothes. They are currently irrelevant.
I enter the lawman-station, passing men in uniforms I do not recognize. But the badge is the same, the emblem is right, and I know what I may ask here as I walk to the desk with the sergeant at it. His eyebrows are jumping around as he watches me, his lip quirking as he puzzles something out – from head to toe, he resembles a plucked string that has never stopped vibrating, even his clothes tucked to breaking point with tension. But he does not reach for his weapon, as his constables did; he knows what I am, even if they have forgotten.
He is familiar, and I do not know or care why.
“Lawman Sergeant,” I say. My new voice is weak, breathy, a death rattle made from old gravel and knucklebones.
He nods. “Sergeant Mulroney. Your, uh, nameplace?”
“Saint Martin’s at Crescent-and-Ash.”
“Good. That’s right. It’s been some time since you showed yourself, is it, uh, a hundred?..”
“One hundred forty six years. Lawman Sergeant Mulroney, I require transport to find a thief. A good carriage, and a competent Lawman Constable to drive it.”
“Right. Right. Beckworth’ll do. Something to get her off her ass and busy. Jackson, get the car and the constable ready five minutes ago – you do NOT keep this sort of business waiting.” He looked at me again. “Just put a, uh, tarp on the back seat or something first.”
The constable is female. That is new. She also manages to keep her hand from swooping to her gun on sighting me. That is also new among her rank, and pleasing.
“Where to?” she asks me as I climb into the strange metal box. Bits of my superstructure grind and mash against its walls, and I see her wince at the scraping of paint.
“Drive north, Lawman Constable. I will correct our course to match the thief’s as needed.”
“Right. Right. Look, what do you want me to call you?”
“I am Saint Martin’s at Crescent-and-Ash.”
“No other name?”
“That is my name. I am Saint Martin’s at Crescent-and-Ash. This body is a temporary tool.”
“Okay. So you’re the cemetery.”
“Yes.”
“This is a little strange. Look, the last time anything like this happened was, uh…”
“One hundred forty six years ago, Lawman Constable. Your Sergeant Mulroney’s great-great-great grandfather aided me in that investigation.”
“Yeah? Figures.” She stopped at a red light, then moved at a green light. Why was not evident. “What I’m getting at is that this is all pretty new to us – to me. What exactly are you again?”
“I am that little-known?”
“Buddy, if you’d made one move that seemed sketchy in the station half of us would’ve shot you no questions asked. You’re lucky you got Mulroney on desk that night; he’s a real history freak, even if he is an asshole. Probably knew your name on sight – he’s into anything occult like a cat-on-cream. Goes up and chats with some of the gargoyles on city hall on his offdays now and then. Wanted to get into the Occult division proper, got turned down – must’ve wanted to be like his great-upteen-grandaddy, if you’re saying he was neck deep in your business.”
“Turn west.”
Beckworth swore and wrenched at the controls of her machine, spinning us around halfway through an intersection. Strange bleating wails echoed from the vehicles around us.
“CAN IT!” she yelled out the window, then rolled it shut with a few unrecognizable curses. “What I’m getting at here is what the hell are you? You a ghost? I’m not on Occult duty, but I’ve dealt with – talked with – a few ghosts. Nothing that could shift this much matter, though.”
“I am not a ghost. I am a cemetery. Conscious ground.”
“I thought that didn’t happen to man-made spots, you needed an unspoiled spring or a really old tree or something, right? Like Everest. Genus loci.”
“Death is the great naturalizer. Your headstones are sufficiently primitive in terms of desire to avoid contamination. So much concentrated decay acts as a natural stimulant to my presence.”
“Right. So, is this common?”
“Yes.”
“How common are we talking?”
“The chances of consciousness arising in any cemetery more than a century old are almost one hundred percent, Lawman Constable. Directly correlated to local death rates.”
“So almost every cemetery in the country.”
“The world.”
“Jesus.”
“Turn north, Lawman Constable.”
“Next intersection. If you guys are so common, how come nobody pays attention? Most genus loci are pretty talky.”
“We awaken for defense of selves. Unspoilt ground necessitates defense, or we weaken and die. Our soulpoints require defense, or we die. Sometimes defense through speech, sometimes force. Cemeteries are not frequently harassed, so we sleep longer there. Turn north.”
“Right, right, I’m on it… don’t you ever have to deal with vandalism? The kids around here are pretty bad.”
“Low threat. The level of consciousness required is barely above passive sleep. Erasure of markings, ejection of intruders, both take minimal energy on myself. Full consciousness is required to form an independent body to locate a thief.”
“Pretty big deal then.”
“Yes. To be separated from myself is weakness.”
“You’re eight foot three and your arms are bigger around than my torso.”
“I am several hundred square yards and extended over two dozen feet underground.”
“Okay, good point. What’d this guy steal from you? A headstone? Like I said, some of the kids around here…”
“A body. We are here.”
The building was some sort of home in a neighborhood that seemed wealthy; there was scarcely any refuse in the streets- but then, I hadn’t seen much so far. Perhaps they’d stopped doing that.
“Right. Let me do the talking. And no violence unless they start it, okay? And keep it nonlethal.”
“Your nonlethal is not mine, and I do know what has changed. Will silver kill them, as I? Physical harm alone, as before? A child’s curse, as a faerie? The touch of living wood, as -”
“No yes no no. Just don’t tear, punch, throw, or choke anyone. Can you do that?”
“Yes. Answers only come from live bodies, Lawman Constable. Even for me.”
She knocked.
Silence.
Knock-knock-knock. “Police.”
Silence.
“He is dead.”
“Pardon?”
“I feel it. He is dead, upstairs.”
She bit her lip. “I think that falls under reasonable evidence for Occult. And assisting a genus loci allows for some pretty loose behaviour anyways, so… what the hell.” She tried the knob. “Locked.”
“I will open the door,” I said, and put my arm to it. One, two, three pushes to test, then a fourth to smash it open, lock spraying apart.
“Nice.” Beckworth pulled out her gun, checked some of its smaller parts. “Upstairs. The bedroom?”
“It is likely.”
It is the bedroom. And the body is not old. A man in his thirties, dead for a few hours from a slit throat, named a man’s name that Beckworth found from his wallet. It does not matter.
“So, he’s the one that did it. Where’s your body?”
“Not here, Lawman Constable. The trail changes.”
“Takes two to graverob, huh?”
“This time, yes.”
“Whose body was this anyways?”
I shrug. “I do not know. It is not theirs any longer. It is mine.”
The constable sighed. “We still don’t have a motive. The stupid-college-kid theory is sunk, and we’ve got someone else running around who-knows-where who values this body of yours enough to murder his accomplice to cover his tracks. If we know whose it is, we might start to find out why.”
“Any of myself has power; the older, the moreso. We can ask for specifics later. There is a fresh trail now.”
“I’ll call Mulroney while we follow it. How do you track these guys anyways?”
“Guilt.”
“Gross. Was it this bad last time?”
“Took longer. Elder Lawman Mulroney had only a carriage, and the city was more tangled. We killed six men to reach the thief.”
“Jesus.”
The constable’s machine that talked over distances was not working.
“This is common?”
“The phone? Yeah. The phone not working? No. Shit luck, that’s all – I thought we weeded out this kind of crap last year. How fresh is this trail?”
“Within the hour, Lawman Constable.”
“Then we’ll go now and sort out the details later. I don’t think you’d wait if I asked you to, would you?”
“No.”
“Take the law into your own…uh… roots, huh?”
“Your law helps me, Lawman Constable, so I use it. Beyond that I do not care.”
“Y’know, that’s the kind of forthright honesty that really makes this job so goddamned fun. Also, would you quit saying ‘lawman’? I’m constable Beckworth.”
“Lawman Constable Beckworth.”
“Fine.”
The trail leads to a tavern, guilt smelling strong underneath the weaker haze of alcohol.
“Here.”
“Whack a guy and then straight to a bar, huh? Pretty confident. He must’ve thought we’d take a few days to find the body. Let me go in first, you wait out here.”
“No.”
Constable Beckworth sighs. “Fine. Not like I can stop you. Same rules as before; don’t start anything. Hell, who am I kidding, just walking in there’s going to start something.”
She reached for the door just as it opened. A very large man with vomit on his shirt blinked in the half-broken streetlight glow and muttered something obscene at the world.
I picked him up and placed him in the middle of the sidewalk. He fell over.
“That was unnecessary.”
“He was blocking the entrance.”
Men yell things inside. There is a crash, and the sound of running feet.
“That’s him,” I say, and begin to run.
Constable Beckworth outpaces me almost instantly; I had built my body for strength over speed, and even if I had, roots and earth are no match for bone and sinew in speed. I wade through the air, rumbling through tiny corridors and doorframes that scrape and twist against my shoulders. Men, sweaty, angry, and drunk, rise in my path – disturbed by the constable’s wake – and fall again, paling and screaming. One, too blind or angry to back down, I run over, his crushed nose gushing fluids into the sole of my foot.
The constable is in an alley at the building’s back, a knee planted in a man’s spine as she attaches metal locks to his hands. His resistance is feeble, and blood is trickling from new bruises on his face.
“I’m guessing this is him,” she tells me. Her bleeding cheek and a knife lying on the ground nearby told her story for her. “And if it isn’t, hey, assaulting an officer’s enough charge for one.”
“It is him.” I pick the man up and stare at him, watching his eyes roll around me, attempting to make me go away. “Where is my body?”
“Right to remain silent,” he mumbles out, saying the words quickly.
“Occult investigation,” said constable Beckworth. “We’re playing by rules that weren’t made by humans tonight. So why don’t you tell the nice graveyard where you put his body? We can handle the murder charges later, after you’ve had a nap or three.”
The man groans and spits. I take his head in my free hand and position his face against mine.
“Where have you taken my body?” I repeat, as the sweat on his face runs slicker.
“Was a job. Gave it to the guy with the money. Paid me extra to do the other guy. Look I needed the money real bad I have to leave the country and-”
“Who was the man with the money?”
“I don’t know I got the number looking for work and he just used the phone please don’t-”
I turn away from him, blotting out the rest. “I have the trail now, Lawman Constable Beckworth. We must go.”
“We’re bringing him with us. There’s enough room in the back for both of you.”
“Yes.”
We march back to the car through the place of alcohol, and not a single face is to be seen.
Constable Beckworth’s phone still isn’t working.
“I don’t get it. All the really shitty ones were supposed to be gone by now; half the force were complaining last year until we replaced them.”
“It is irrelevant. I have the trail. We leave now, Lawman Constable Beckworth. South.”
“You know, you’re a real pain in the ass.”
“South.”
The ride in the metal thing that the constable calls a car is quiet. She broods, I give directions (East. South.), and the thief curls himself away from me and flinches whenever I move or speak.
“East.”
“You know, we’re on Crescent.”
“Don’t you know anything about city geography?”
“No. I do not care about the city.”
“The point, jackass, is that we’re headed straight for, well, you. What do you think that means?”
The world feels very cold to me now. “It makes no sense.”
“Yes. Which is very, very bad and makes me think we’re walking facefirst into something nasty. We’re stopping off at the station first, okay? This guy can’t be more than an hour ahead of us by now, and he won’t be expecti -”
“No. The thief will not cause more harm. I do not require aid beyond transport.”
“Thank you oh-so-much for openly referring to me as your chauffeur, Your Royal Grimeness. If I wasn’t here you wouldn’t have caught that pal of yours sharing the seat with you. If I wasn’t here you’d be walking down Ash in broad daylight by now, looking for a thug that’d caught a nice jet to Timbuktu. And you don’t even know what the hell a jet is, do you?”
“No.”
“Great. If you can’t show an inch of respect for me, at least you’re honest about it. Just one ‘thank you,’ that’s all I ask, not one thing more.”
“I am sorry. As an apology, we will stop at the station.”
The car swerves alarmingly for a moment. “Well. That’s a good start.”
“He is on me. I can feel it from here. If he runs, we will catch him.”
“Right. Good.”
The station is dark, and the door is locked.
“The HELL is going on here?”
“This is unusual?”
“This is impossible.”
“No.” I turn and cross the road, the constable three steps behind me and already with her hand on her gun.
“You know what I mean, damnit!”
“No. Lawman Constable Beckworth, the thief is on my soil at this moment, and I am going to him. I will have my body back.”
“If you’d like it, you’re welcome to it. I already took the important bits anyways.”
The voice is male. It is lazily happy. It is also recognizable, in more ways than one.
“Lawman Sergeant Mulroney.”
“Yes, that’s me,” said the sergeant. He is leaning against the gates to myself. His badge, I notice, is missing. In its place is a tarnished, nearly-illegible copy “Well, sort of. Just plain Justin Mulroney, if you, uh, please. I’ve left the force. As has my staff.”
Beckworth has her gun out. “What the hell are you doing? You took everyone else with you? Where are they?”
“Well, they, uh, sort of didn’t plan on it. But when I left, well, they didn’t take it kindly.” Mulroney shrugs. It draws attention to the stains on his shirt, which is no longer tucked in. “Suits me fine. I’ll be out of the country by, uh, morning.”
“Was hoping you’d get done for in the chase, constable. But you’ve always been a big, well, pain-in-the-ass. Too much to hope for that the hired knife’d know how to use it, I, uh, guess. The plan can adapt.”
“Where is my body?” I ask.
“Chucked it back in the grave,” he says with a big, beaming smile. “Minus the badge. Dear ol’ great-great-great granddad Mulroney, lifetime hero, family aspiration, the great damned hero of the Occult investigations teams. All he needed to do his job were a few trinkets, and I needed one or two of ’em that he just couldn’t bear to part with. eBay only goes, uh, so far, you know?”
Beckworth fires three times, and the air around Mulroney ripples in a heartbeat pulse, spreading softly from the old, old badge on his chest. He grins, pulls out a worn old gun made more of rust than steel, and fires once. She drops.
“Still works,” he said with a grin. “Gargoyles said it killed one of their bulls with one shot, eh?”
I rush forwards, arms raised, legs in full sprint – clods are falling with every step; this is not a sustainable movement, it is a killing charge. Mulroney’s eyes are so very large as I close with him – his squeal echoes through my knot-wood heart as he tumbles over backwards. Up come my fists and down I tumble, feet burned away to the knees so suddenly that there isn’t even time for confusion. My soilflesh is burning, being scalded away wherever it meets dirt.
“This isn’t yours anymore,” hisses Mulroney, scrambled away on his knees and elbows, crablike. “Not anymore! Warded up the entrance good and tight, you overgrown hummock! Good and tight! You gave me your name freely, arrogant cadaver’s-bastard! Me, descendant of the Occult department’s golden boy! Did you really think we were that weak and stupid now? To back down and let you do what you want?”
I am in too much pain to reply.
Mulroney is pulling something shiny and silver from his pocket, thin and deadly. “Just one little cut, and it’s all over, uh, all over. Take heart, haha, that’s all there is to it. No ritual, no suffering, just one little cut. Like a needle. One little cut, and that’s all I need. Forever. Give me forever.”
The blade needles at my side, and is in. Whole chunks of my body go dead, sloughing away into the hostile soil beneath me.
Mulroney is humming, what I’m not quite sure, a tune out of patience and out of mind, in time with the digging numbness. And there, right at the root, I feel the tickling prod of something nudging my heart of yew.
“Beautiful,” breathes Mulroney. And he fell over with a bang, fingers slipping from the knife’s hilt even as it dropped from my side.
I lay there, unmoving, as a scuffing sound and a careful hand scrubbed away the hidden runes laid across the arch to Saint Martin’s cemetery, removing the bane from the soul, the venom from my skin.
“Lawman Constable Beckworth?” I ask. As I slide upright, an ache seizes me. I shake myself, and a sliver of heartwood drops from the gash in my body. It will regrow, in time.
“Yeah?”
“Are you injured?”
“A bit.” A cough. “Nicked me – no, got me – real good. But the idiot didn’t put two and two together. If you use the gun of a famous Occult officer, you use it on Occult problems.”
“Lawman Constable?”
“My nonlethal isn’t your lethal. The thing was loaded with yew splinters.”
“Lawman Constable?”
“Wonder what the idiot was going to do with the heart anyways? Get away and live forever in Jamaica somewhere?”
“Beckworth?”
“Oh, yes?”
I lean over and carefully place the yew splinter in her hand. “Thank you.”
And as I sink into the ground, back into the myself that is larger, the self-that-sleeps, I hear her laughing.