“The ones on the left have been there the longest,” he called as he walked a third of the way down the aisle with the crook of his arm pressed into his face. “Mrs. Sarah Linstrom was the first. The next was Mr. John Fleming. He died in a mill accident; you’ll notice his arm is missing. Then, there was Mr. Roger Ekland. He went after Mr. Hogarth and killed him, but Hogarth’s buried elsewhere. Miss Annabelle Harrison was the last one I mentioned in my letter.”
Oliver stared at the closest sheet-covered body. Cold dread clawed up his throat at the realization that there was another victim. “And the fifth person?”
“We had another attack between when the second investigators left and you arrived. Even though it was only two weeks ago and it’s been cold, he isn’t in the best of shape. His name was Horace Ridder.”
Oliver locked eyes with Gwen as she wrote down the last of the information. “Thank you, sir. Inspector Galvan will want to collect more detailed information about the… risings. If we have a question, we’ll call you.”
Mr. Allen nodded, looking as relieved as Oliver felt as he slipped into the fresh air. Staring down at the five bodies, Oliver tried to ground himself with the weight of the tether hanging beneath his heart and Gwen’s comforting, familiar presence near the altar. He had dealt with plenty of bodies that were thoroughly decomposed, but he had never dealt with so many all at once. He didn’t like these cases. On one hand, it was easier to forget they were once people as he worked. On the other, it reminded him far too much of his own mortality, and no amount of scrubbing could wash away the thoughts after.
“Gwen, are you sure you want to see this?” Oliver paused, trying to put into words the shock of seeing a person who was not only dead but breaking down to reveal that humans are but flesh and bone. They all knew it, yet seeing it was different. “Some of these people are going to be in bad shape. I just wanted to warn you since every dead person you’ve seen and smelled in my lab has been far more whole. While I know you can handle it, I don’t want you going in unprepared, and if you have to take a break or step outside if it’s too much, only say the word and we’ll stop.”
Tapping the pencil against her lips, Gwen stared at the first shroud with her head cocked. “I think I can handle it, but let’s go on a corpse-by-corpse basis.”
Nodding, Oliver was about to reach for Mrs. Lindstrom’s shroud when Gwen swept it away with her powers. Relief washed over him at the sight of a thoroughly desiccated corpse. As the chapel’s oldest resident, what tissue remained beneath her burial clothes was bone or dry to the point of being mummified. Her flesh had tightened and pulled back to reveal a set of even, white teeth. The fabric of her gown was half-rotted and speckled with dust, but there were no signs of purge by her mouth or the ruddy, lifelike complexion one might expect in a suspected vampire.
“Any bite marks?” Gwen asked as Oliver carefully turned her over.
“No, but there appears to be a little blood in her hair.” Gently probing the back of her head, Oliver felt her skull crunch beneath hisfingertips. “I think she has a skull fracture that might be pre- or perimortem. Make a note of that, Gwen, and that I need to ask Mr. Allen about her cause of death. Besides that, there’s no obvious signs of vampirism or consumption.”
“Are you going to do a full autopsy on each of them?”
“Not if I don’t have to.”
Mr. Fleming and Mr. Ekland were in far rougher shape. The man who had been killed in the mill accident was missing the majority of his right forearm and had what looked like a shotgun blast in the middle of his ribcage, but his corpse was otherwise unremarkable apart from the lack of blood around the bullet hole. Mr. Ekland, the third risen deceased, was so decomposed that Gwen had to turn away, and Oliver couldn’t blame her. His skull was peeking through his face, and when Oliver tried to examine him, his skin sloughed off in a slimy pulp beneath Oliver’s forceps. If there was anything to glean from his body, Oliver wasn’t seeing it in the low light or without a full autopsy.
Annabelle Harrison was the closest any of them came to resembling a vampire. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen with a head of light blonde curls, a thin frame, and a mouth painted with blood. He rattled off his findings to Gwen, pointing out the ways one could have mistaken her for a vampire: the rosy complexion, the purge around her mouth, the amount of preservation despite how long she had been dead. Oliver assumed she had died during the colder months, and the ground had acted as a natural refrigerator. The only thing he couldn’t explain was the blood on her hands.
“She reminds me of the Mercy Brown case,” Gwen remarked as she leaned closer to get a look at the dead girl. “Consumption swept through the family, and the poor dead girl got blamed for everyone else dying. They burnt her heart, I think, but her brother still died. I wonder who this girl went after.”
“Hopefully her doctor,” Oliver murmured as he replaced her shroud. “If it was consumption, living in this damp, dreary place certainly didn’t help her. Brace yourself for the last one. I can already smell him.”
Gwen pressed her makeshift mask closer as Oliver carefully peeled back Horace Ridder’s shroud. For a moment, Oliver stared down at the dead man, unsure of what he was seeing until a scream ripped from Gwen’s throat.
***
Waiting outside the church doors, Felipe stood with his hand on his gun and his ears on Oliver and Gwen. When he was certain they were safe and some hidden danger wasn’t going to burst out from beneath a pew, he relaxed and walked far enough away that he could no longer smell the bodies. Saliva pooled in Felipe’s throat and his stomach roiled, despite the handkerchief. Where was the man who could deal with the bloodiest crime scenes without blinking?Dead, Felipe answered as he pulled the cloth down and stared at the town spread out before him. In the distance, the smoke from the ironworks drifted up and dissolved into the storm-grey sky. From where he stood at the top of Cemetery Hill, he could make out the steeple of the new church, a row of storefronts that looked as tired as the inn, and streets of houses in the distance, but what kept drawing his eye were the pitch pines and black oaks. The sensation of being watched wasn’t as intense as it had been when they arrived, but Felipe felt a fleeting glance at his back as if whatever it was still searched for them. Felipe straightened at the thump of Mr. Allen’s cane against the floor of the church and the grassy flagstones at the front door. He winced, his limp becoming more pronounced with each step.
“Pull up a grave, inspector,” Mr. Allen said as he perched on the nearest headstone. When Felipe hesitated, he let out a hoarse laugh and nodded toward the grave beside him. “I don’t think they’ll mind.”
Between his mother snapping at him for leaning on gravestones while preparing for Día de los Muertos and Oliver’s strict morals regarding the dead, Felipe still thought of graveyards as hallowedground, even if he saw death as frequently as a former soldier. Felipe read the name off the stone before offering a silent apology and gingerly sitting on the grave beside the innkeeper.
“Your partner says I should tell you about the dead and who they went after. Might be a good idea to eat your snack before I do.”
Felipe’s cheeks heated as he reached into his coat with shaking hands to grab his notepad and pencil. “That can wait.”
“Eat. It’s good you have someone who looks after you. Besides, I need a minute to catch my breath.”
Forcing his hands steady, Felipe sighed and took out the cheese. It had crumbled into a dozen pieces, so he took a chunk and held out the paper to Mr. Allen. A small smile crossed the other man’s lips as he popped some into his mouth.
“Your friend has good taste. No, thank you, the rest is yours,” he replied when Felipe offered him a second piece. The innkeeper’s blue eyes flickered over Felipe’s form as he quickly tipped the rest of the cheese into his mouth and dusted his hands on his trousers. “You know, I remember reading about an Inspector Galvan in the papers years ago. This was before I moved back to Aldorhaven. Oh, it had to be in ‘82 or ‘83. He helped take down a gang of train robbers, all while getting shot multiple times, and he still managed to locate what was stolen. Was that you?”
“Yeah, that was me,” Felipe said, mustering a smile he knew didn’t reach his eyes. It felt like a lifetime ago that he was proud to recount his acts of daring.
“How long have you been with the Paranormal Society, inspector?”
“Twenty years. Why?”
“The way you reacted before made me think of my time in the army. They would send us on missions where we would see horrors beyond comprehension, but it never showed until the moment we were safe,trulysafe. That’s when the shakes would set in or the vomit and tears. It’s like your body can only handle so much poison before it has to come out. Then again, there were men I knew who went straightfrom the Union Army down to the South to keep the rebels in check during the reconstruction or went out West with the army to fight a far less noble war without a second thought. They would rather drink poison for the rest of their lives and hope they became immune than deal with the weakness after.”
