Body of Ash Read online

  “That would be my grandmother’s doing. She loved the flowers, said they were fleeting and lovely like life,” I walk out next to him. I can hear Dean rummaging about in the service room, moving chairs and getting ready to vacuum.

  “Very poetic,” Terrance says it with a hint of sarcasm. That wasn’t like him. I didn’t say anything though. We all deserve to be out of sorts now and then.

  We stand in silence until a set of ambulances, their lights quiet and their sirens off, pull into the drive. They navigate the circular path slowly, as if they may jar the bodies they carry otherwise. I could have told them that the vessels can’t feel pain, that pain and terror is long gone for the spirits once housed inside. But that’s the way of the living—the way of holding onto life and thinking that flesh and bone are still important in the end.

  Terrance signs for the bodies and he has me cosign beneath his name. I let Dean show them where to put the black bags—one six feet long, one five feet, some-odd inches, the other two so small that I can’t bring myself to guess the heights. I know they’re a baby and a toddler. I knew that. I’ve been preparing for it, but seeing the reality of those deaths is a different animal than simply imagining them.

  The ambulance drivers don’t stick around once they’ve made their deliveries. You can see on their faces that they are just as bothered by having to carry the tiny inert bodies as I am by seeing them, let alone having to cut into them and... I let my mind carry me elsewhere, to avoid what I must do in the near future. Terrance leaves soon after, his face grim, a reminder on his lips to call him if anything seems amiss.

  I fully expect his gut to be wrong, though. The fire department says it was an accident; the family was unfortunate enough to live above a restaurant with a faulty stove. These things do happen.

  Yet I will give Terrance the benefit of believing him, that there might be more to the story. Besides, we live in Bonneau—anything is possible here, especially strange, supernatural things.

  I don’t want to work on the bodies immediately, but I make myself go down to the storage room. Dean has unzipped the bags, pulling them away from the bodies so that each figure, in various degrees of burned, are framed by the black material and slightly shiny zippers. The children are the least burned, as if the parents had placed themselves protectively around their children. That chokes me up, more so than seeing the size of the black bags when they were still zipped closed.

  But smoke inhalation will still kill a person, even if they are not close enough to be charred by flame. I can immediately see that none of the visible fire injuries are enough to have killed any of them on their own. No, the family had suffocated while holding onto one another. They’d been found in the same room... God, that’s a terrible way to die. My biggest fear, truth be told.

  To burn and choke on smoke. To have it fill your lungs like so much blackening poison.

  I make damn sure not to touch the bodies yet, because if I do before I’ve taken the proper precautions, then I will plunge into that fire myself right now. I will feel the heat searing my skin. I’ll hear the crackle of wood being ruined by flame.

  I’ll truly feel what it’s like to be burned alive.

  Hey though, if I do accidently get a taste of that death, then at least if the wrong people find out what I am, I’ll be ready for the brutal end that awaits all necromancers at the hands of normal humanity.

  There’s always a damn silver lining.

  Chapter Two

  “KIDS ARE ALWAYS THE worst,” I murmur. Dean nods his head beside me. I’ve mentally and emotionally safeguarded myself from experiencing the burning death and I’ve warded the underside of the embalming table with my blood to keep the souls from reentering their vessels. Any souls, really, not just those that once resided within. I can’t imagine a spirit would want to enter the severely-damaged bodies... I can’t imagine it would be comfortable for them.

  I’ve also sprayed saltwater on the floor. I’ve found this is nearly as effective as a salt circle, but it’s less visible so I can do it when Dean’s around. I sometimes even reapply with him right next to me, saying it’s disinfectant. So far he’s not questioned it.

  Honestly, I don’t even know if any of these measures are truly necessary. At least not for the family. The spirit world that is a constant, translucent blanket around me, has stayed quiet since the ambulances brought the bodies to me.

  I jump with a small gasp when Dean’s phone ‘bringggggggggggs’ loudly to life. I hate when I startle like that. It’s like painting a sign on my forehead ‘I’m a girl, I get scared’.

  Before I can say anything he’s fumbling for it, muttering apologies. I have a strict ‘put it on vibrate’ rule while we’re working downstairs together. I guess that’s silly, considering that when I work alone, I stick in earbuds and blast the loudest possible music to drown out the world. But Dean is still learning the ins and outs. He needs to focus.

  We work slowly, diligently, processing the children first because they’re the least damaged.

  “I need some air,” Dean says, a catch in his voice. He’s just helped me place the children in the cool storage room. There are permanent warding runes carved in the walls behind the paneling in there now, brushed with my long-dried blood. “Only time this job doesn’t feel right for me. You know? Dealing with kids.”

  “I’ve got this. Just help me move the male onto the table and then why don’t you take the rest of the day?” Though it’s a question, I don’t intend it as such. Dean needs to leave, for his own sanity. And I need him to leave, so I can see if any of the souls that once lived within the charred bodies are still floating about outside the ether. I don’t think they are. I’ve not felt even the slightest whisper of afterlife against my power.

  But, still. I take Terrance seriously. I take his instinct seriously. So, I’ll call out with my voice, with my gift, with the darkness inside of me that seeks the dead, and I’ll find out for sure—if this family truly died by accident, or if something more nefarious had a hand.

  I start by using distilled water and clearing away the saltwater that’s dried on the floor. I pour it, hot and steaming, and watch the stream find its way to the drain in the center of the room. Then I sit on the damp floor and lean beneath the table to scrub away the blood runes that have helped the salt ward any spirits from entering the bodies. Of course, this means a wraith could possess the vessel, but I feel no such blackness in the Victorian right now. No, everything is still and at peace.

  Which gives me pause over Terrance for only a millisecond, and then I move forward with what I am doing. Just because I cannot feel a spirit does not mean there is nothing here in this house, in this room, with me. I’d learned that lesson a long, long time ago. The dead can hide, even from me, if they want.

  I’m glad the children are finished and in storage when I do what I must next. I drain the father’s body of blood. I do not do it as a mortician would, but as a shaman-taught necromancer. I use my scalpel to carve blood-letting symbols into the skin of his wrists. This is a new skill to me, learned from my studies with Liam. Who seems to know... so much about everything. All the bump-in-the-night things at least.

  I call, my power whispering across the room, to the crimson life-force that is still somehow warm to the touch of my gift. I try to keep my shields up. I try not to feel the body’s death.

  At first, the blood is only a trickle. I wonder if the heat from the fire has done that—caused the blood to get so hot that the water began to evaporate, the proteins to denature, the fat to break down. I push my power forward, asking the blood to return, sending almost the ghost of it back into itself—the way I would with a spirit and a body.

  Then it hits me.

  The blood runs free. It flows like a death river, down to pool beneath the table that the body lays across. It begins to rain down the sides in a waterfall of viscous garnet. It is a horror movie. And I do not shrink away, so ruined am I by shadows.

  I feel the burning. I feel the wa
y the fire reaches out to lick my skin.

  I am choking on smoke.

  I am suffocating in a room I cannot leave.

  I am dying, hugging my children to me.

  My children are dying.

  With every ounce of my will, I drag myself away from the blood memory. I need to focus on the task. Even when I am back, in the present, in my uncharred body, I can smell smoke. But I must do this. I must find out the truth.

  I’d promised myself that I would never do what I am about to do again.

  I’d promised myself.

  I am about to yank a spirit to me. I am about to force it with my will to return. Because the spirits have not yet presented themselves in any way, have not yet made me aware that they still exist on this plane, it is possible that they are all in the ether. I pray none of them are in the anti-ether. That is a place that hurts to touch.

  Closing my eyes, I lift my hands out in front of me and I feel for that tendril of coldness that is where the ether and anti-ether converge. It is something Liam has recently taught me. The blood that smells like metal around me pushes my power further. I could have taken it another step, pricked my own finger and used the letting of my essence send my gift into overdrive, but I am still learning. Still so much to learn. And Liam says history is littered with those with the blood gift going mad.

  I push my hands together as if I am praying and I point my fingers forward, pushing into that space that feels like ice gone rubber. I push and push against the frigid slickness and I feel the spine-tingling thrum of a million souls rushing about in endless nothingness. I focus on the ether. I focus on the lightness I feel, not the tar that reaches out like living smoke to touch me.

  I think of the family. I think of their belongings, nothing but ash now. I think of the children.

  I think of the fire.

  No one responds to me.

  According to Liam, there are places beyond the ether and anti-ether. Those are the places of true tranquility or damnation. I wonder if the father is within one of those places, moved on past the waiting places.

  I pull myself back from the ether. I open my eyes, and when I glance down at my hands, I see my fingers have turned blue with the cold, though it is quite warm in the embalming room at the moment.

  “Well, you’re not giving me any answers, are you?” I frown and set about cleaning the blood with more hot water.

  As I pour neutralizing cleaner onto the floor, a coolness at my back announces that I’m no longer alone. Something has answered me, after all. But nothing came out of the ether or anti-ether. I had not used my power to yank a soul unwilling forth to the land of the living.

  No, this spirit had never moved onto the next place. It had stayed. I looked at the father’s body, waiting for it to come alive with the essence of what once flowed through its form. But it does not move. A scuffling behind me has me turning towards the narrower mobile table where the mother’s body is laying.

  The fingers are twitching slightly, her burnt nails scratching across the metal. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Not quite as bad as nails on a chalkboard, but still my ears protest.

  “Mmmmm. Mmmmm.” The body is trying to move its mouth. Or, rather, the spirit inside of it is. “Mmmmm.” The lips are dried from the fire, the jaw stiff from even the short span of disuse since dying.

  I grab a small cup and walk over to the clean sink. I fill it with cool liquid and then walk over to the body and dribble it across the mouth, hoping it will ease the burden of re-animation so that she can speak.

  Her eyes are still closed, but as I continue to sprinkle the water, they flash open. It is unsettling, but I control myself. I don’t flinch. I don’t want to scare the spirit away.

  “Hello?” I question, watching the half-blackened face with its too-pale, slightly sunken eyes roll about as if half-detached from the sockets. “Are you...” I hesitate and set the cup down so I can move slightly over and rifle through my copy of the paperwork from the body delivery. “Are you Marissa?”

  I wait for some show of recognition. Then, slowly as if the body is the tin man and I have just provided oil instead of water, the head shakes back and forth. I frown, puzzled. “Who are you then?”

  “Dooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm—iiii” The voice cannot finish speaking the name, but it is enough.

  “Dominique?” I turn the page, glancing at the photograph of the family. The father is stood tall and proud behind the beautiful raven-haired mother who is seated. He has broad shoulders and a neatly-trimmed dark goatee. His suit is an older style, yet well-made. The curly-haired children are both sat upon their mother’s knees wearing white shirts with lace collars, which feels very old-world, yet suits them and calls attention to the gorgeous and deep honey-glow of their skin. They are all smiling like the world is a good and wonderful place. It had to have been an accident.

  The world could not be so cruel as to take away those smiles maliciously.

  “Are you Dominique?” I repeat, a little louder and staring at the vessel.

  Now, ever so slowly, the head nods.

  I want to ask him why he’d gone into his wife’s body, instead of his own, but I can’t waste precious time. He may not hold on for long, inside such a damaged vessel. I think about expelling him, forcing him into his non-corporeal form, but again, I am afraid I will lose him and lose this chance to get answers.

  “Dominique, I need to know. Was the fire an accident? Did it just happen? Or did you see someone...maybe someone going into or out of the restaurant downstairs?” It’s too many questions at once, and I know that. I should keep it simple. He’s not young, not clear-headed, and he’s died traumatically. Neither of those things made for a well-functioning spirit.

  Marissa’s forehead scrunches a little and her mouth struggles to move once again. No... not Marissa’s, the vessel’s body, which is now containing her husband. I can only make out one word. One heart-stopping word when he finally exhales something understandable between all the groans and murmurs.

  “Nooooooooooooo.”

  My voice is thick with emotion when I speak again, because this is the opposite of what I wanted to hear. I wanted Terrance to be wrong, for his cop instinct to just be off on this one. “How do you know?” I feel a tear escaping my left eye, but I ignore it. Even as it races down my cheek and pools at the corner of my lips, I ignore it.

  Dominique tries to answer, but the body convulses around him. There’s too much damage, too much pain, for his spirit to hang on. “Please, Dominique, how do you know it wasn’t an accident?”

  With what I imagine is a mighty, mighty force of will, he makes his once-wife’s mouth move again. “Naiiiilllssssssss.”

  With that final utterance, a rush of cold pushes out of the body and races towards me and through me. Instantly, my skin sprouts goose pimples and I shiver violently. People joke about someone walking over their grave. But it’s really someone already-dead walking through you. That’s the sensation you’re feeling. It has nothing to do with the future, and everything to do with the ever-present now.

  I’ve no idea what nails could mean. But it has to be important. It has to be, or else why would the spirit use his final ounce of strength to let me know it?

  I do not want to cremate the father and mother, but that is the plan and will likely be the case. They have already burned enough. The thought of subjecting the bodies to more fire cuts me to my core.

  I bathe the mother and father, though there will be no identification of who they were. The bodies will not be embalmed. Not for cremation. I make sure the bodies bear no jewelry or other artifice. I manage to transfer the bodies each to their own caskets—the kind specially made for burning—and then I roll them on their carts to the holding room, so that the family can be together again one more time.

  When I am done, I dig my phone out from my pocket and take a deep breath. Terrance wasn’t going to like this any more than I did, but he’d been right. I might not know much yet about why the family died, but I
knew that. He was right. Spirits don’t lie. I won’t say never. But generally, they don’t lie.

  Terrance picks up on the first ring. “Can I come by the station?” I rush out before he can say anything.

  “Why. What’s going on? You got information for me?” Terrance’s voice is suspicious and a little breathy, which seems odd.

  “Yeah, but let’s talk in person.”

  He tries to say something else, but I hang up. He does it to me quite often. A little payback might do him good.

  Chapter Three

  I HATE GOING TO THE station and dealing with Ms. ‘Giant Chip on her Shoulder’ Andrea. She’s like someone made a little girl, but forgot all the sugar and everything nice and, instead, just settled for all the damn spice they could find. And not even good spice either. Not... like... clove and cinnamon and ginger. No.

  She’s a bucketful of nothing but mustard seed and white pepper. I mean, I like white pepper sometimes, but it also smells distinctly like feet. So, now she’s a grownup stinky sweat sock.

  “Hi Andrea,” I say cheerily as I walk through the station doors and see her behind the receptionist desk a few feet away.

  “Ms. Cage.” She stresses the ‘miss’. She got engaged a few weeks ago, after only a few months of dating the guy. If I thought she was intolerable before some poor unsuspecting sap had parked a diamond on her finger, then I’d been sorely mistaken. Now it was ‘did I tell you I’m engaged’ and ‘look at the size of the ring Scotty bought me’. My favorite, though, was ‘how old are you, Ms. Cage? Any marriage prospects? Time’s ticking you know. I’m only twenty-four’.

  To which I normally replied as politely as I could muster ‘no, no plans for marriage. It’s a personal choice’. Then I’d bite my tongue when she’d, less politely, respond with a final jab. ‘Well, some women just aren’t meant for it’.