Library of Ahb 3

The damn thing only had one eye, yellowed and dim, but it was intently focused on the spectators. It pressed its face even harder into the space between the metal fence slats, as if it could reach them by sheer willpower.

“Kind of feel sorry for the stupid thing,” Grandma Gun muttered, too quietly for their escort to hear. “It’s just hungry.”

The part of the ghoul’s face that had been blown clean off showed brain tissue, grey-pink and faintly pulsing. It didn’t have the sense to try to open the gate, or maybe it had enough sense to know it couldn’t undo the padlock on the other side.

It was, Gemma decided, important to know which one was the case before they opened the cemetery gate.

The ghoul moaned, piteous. One bloody hand caressed the fence longingly.

“It has presented quite the logistical inconvenience,” the official said. He was an awfully twitchy young man. He kept adjusting his tie. He cleared his throat, twice. “We haven’t been able to do any maintenance, of course, or any burials. And people would like to visit their dearly departed.”

“They probably should not,” Sunshine said wryly. “We should probably start burning them. I want my body to be burned.” He shifted his weight from one side to the other, rustling the thick, practical fabric of his clothing. He and Samantha were a matched set in dark blue canvas.

“Mind your own business,” Gemma said tartly. As the daughter of a mortician, she did not particularly endorse that idea. Coffins were good business. “A good sturdy coffin prevents this,” she continued. “Can’t get in or out.”

“It did manage to dig up at least one body to eat,” the city employee pointed out. His round face was a little green. 

“Shouldn’t cut costs on the important things,” she rebutted. 

This ghoul, though, had not suffered from a cheapskate family. She pursed her lips and frowned disapprovingly. Somebody had made a heartfelt and sincerely misguided attempt to secure their life after death. Some amateur necromancer, or hedge witch with more fear of the unknown than sense in their head.

Usually, respecting people’s wishes for their bodies was exactly her job, but in this case she probably ought to assume they’d made a mistake and had not intended to become a hungry corpse locked inside a rural cemetery. She’d make an exception, she decided.

Since the reanimation had been cast internally, there were no dangling threads of magic for her to pull on. It was tightly done, though miscalculated. There was always some go-getter who thought they were going to be the one to master the forgotten nonsense and secure eternal life. This sap had probably killed themselves in the attempt, lain around discombobulated just long enough to get buried, and then dug their way out.

It was impossible to tell from the body if it had been a man or a woman in life. Ghouls quickly became rather gender neutral. 

“Do you know who it is?” She asked, mildly curious if it was someone that she knew.

The official ran a hand down his tie again. “We can’t confirm, but there was a recent burial asking for the body to be accompanied by traditional tools for the afterlife…”

“I suppose that included a shovel,” she said dryly. “Mightily convenient religious beliefs, from our necromancer ancestors.”

He coughed into his hand and leaned a little further back. “Can you handle this?”

She sighed. “Yes, I said I could, didn’t I?” Her tone was crabby and she knew it, but she didn’t modulate it. Rudeness was a benefit of being old. And she didn’t appreciate being asked stupid questions. “I’m going to have to go in there. I’ll need one of you strapping young people to sit on it while I undo whatever nonsense the criminal element managed to do to it.”

The city worker went white.

Samantha cleared her throat. “I can do that.” She managed to keep a perfectly bland expression. Must have learned that in some training course. “Mr. Jhira, you might want to clear the area. We would really appreciate it if you would go to the parking lot and oversee things there, so that no curious onlookers wander by.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, a bit too fast. He was already backing away. “We wouldn’t want any distractions, or for any residents to see anything unfortunate.” He beat it down the hill, toward the line where two security guards were doing a perfectly competent job of keeping back three nosy residents, one of whom had a dog on a leash.

Gemma gave Samantha a side eye. “He’s not the brave type, is he,” she commented.

Samantha gave her a little smile and said nothing. 

Sunshine cocked his head, watching the ghoul. It was meeting his eye contact. Apparently, he seemed most appetizing. That was fair. Gemma was old and tough meat, and Samantha was just plain tough. “Do we have a plan?” He asked. “Other than, “knock it down, let Gramma do her thing, and collect money,”?

The ghoul’s eye darted to Gemma. Damnit.

“It’s sentient,” Gemma said.

The ghoul contorted its face into a snarl.

“Good lord, you chose to dig up a body and eat it?” Gemma asked mildly, seeing if she could taunt the other necromancer into speaking. If it was capable of that, it was a powerful working indeed. “How disgusting. And poor planning, besides. You want to eat old rotting things? Whyever did you wait around so long and get locked in a cemetery?”

“Gramma,” Sunshine said, a little anxious.

“I certainly would not find myself in that position. You must not have been very bright in the first place,” she continued mercilessly. “So aside from being a mediocre practitioner, you never really wrote out your grand plan, hmm?”

“Shut up!” It snarled.

Capable of speech.

“5th level working,” Gemma diagnosed. She immediately turned her back to the ghoul, dismissing it. “Human intelligence, possibly retains some magical abilities. 

Samantha hummed underneath her breath. “Not above average strength,” she assessed.

“Is that common in ghouls?” Sunshine asked.

“Yes,” Gemma nodded. “But if this one was capable of that, it would have pried those bars apart and gone down to eat something fresh in town. No one would choose old corpses over the fresh stuff.”

Metal squealed behind her. Sunshine yelped, Samantha cursed, and Gemma sighed as she turned around. The ghoul squeezed through the bars it had just bent and barreled directly towards her. 

Samantha dropped her shoulder and tackled the ghoul from the side, cutting it off at the knees. It fell under her with a squawk. It immediately twisted, trying to palm at her face. Samantha made an ugly grunt and head butted that arm’s bicep to the ground. Sunshine rushed forward and gracelessly stood on the other arm, crouching with his whole weight holding it down.

The ghoul howled.

“Chain,” Samantha bit out.

Sunshine was already taking off the length of chain at his belt, an ugly-looking black metal and spell-working thing. He wrapped it around the arm he was standing on and cinched it tight. That arm immediately went limp, searching hand laying flat on the ground. 

The ghoul bucked, throwing Samantha off. She rolled, tucking her head down, and popped immediately back up to her feet. She was already stepping back in as the ghoul managed to dislodge Sunshine from its limp arm and stand. Samantha clocked it clean in the face-

“Lovely,” Gemma said, feeling vicarious satisfaction at the crunch sound.

-and then dropped down low, snaking her chain around the ghoul’s knees. 

The ghoul’s legs immediately stopped working. It fell onto its bottom, looking rather like an upside-down beetle. It hissed furiously and waved the one working arm it could boast, wiggling its torso.

Samantha stood back up and placed a booted foot on the ghoul’s chest, and then lightning-fast swept the other foot up to force the remaining arm down and stand on the bicep. Sunshine hurriedly joined her, putting his full weight into the effort.

“Ms. Gemma,” Samantha said politely. “If you don’t mind…?”

“Don’t rush me,” she said, and hefted her handbag further up her arm. She shuffled around the ghoul, pursing her lips. 

It watched her go, eye narrowed. A false pulse was jumping furiously at its throat, especially visible as the dead skin there was taut and drawn. It made a hacking sound and spat out something- a tooth. “Old woman,” it hissed. “You should listen to me.”

“Might as well not,” Gemma said tartly. 

“I know you’re magic,” it continued.

“Of course I am, that has been mentioned twice. Do keep up.”

“No!” It convulsed and bared teeth at her. It might have been a smile. “I know the feeling of your magic,” it said, and she understood its meaning this time.

“Have we met?” She raised an eyebrow. “I must say you’re not looking like yourself these days, if that’s the case.”

“No, no, no….” It was definitely smiling, a smile that showed no missing teeth. …ah, that hadn’t been the ghoul’s tooth it had coughed up. Charming. “Familial magic, yes? Your mother. Mother was a necromancer.”

She stopped cold and frowned.

The ghoul didn’t look anywhere near old enough to have been a contemporary of her mother. She had been in secondary school when her mother had died, and she was thoroughly antique now. 

“You are an insolent young person and I won’t be listening to you further.” She came around to stand at the top of the ghouls head and bent down on creaking knees. It twisted, trying to see her, even as she wound her fingers through short, filthy hair and gripped. She closed her eyes, probing within and focusing on what she felt through the pads of her fingers. 

Oh. Oh, interesting. It didn’t feel like the work of any hedge witch she’d ever met. This person had been classically trained. She recognized the smooth lines and circular patterns as the same thing she’d studied at university, and seen in the work of that ancient necromancer. 

This person, however, hadn’t been well-suited to the style, which caused a buzzing friction at the places where the threads of magic were twisted together. Instead of reinforcing the magic, the twists were wearing away. If left to its own devices, this creature was going to collapse and rot away within a week, two at most. No wonder it had been desperate to patch over with rejuvenating bites of life. 

“How did you end up getting such a good education that you were clearly unsuited too?” Gemma actually felt a bit curious. “Any competent teacher would have recognized your inclinations and chosen a different style, or referred you to another teacher.”

Samantha gave Gemma a very dry, unamused look.

“It’s a fair question,” Sunshine agreed.

“Perhaps it was not a good faith effort,” the ghoul said, sounding bitter about it. “This was not the result I was told to expect. I have been considering that I may have been less of an apprentice and more of an experiment.”

“Ouch,” Sunshine said, sounding sympathetic. “Wanna talk about it, man?”

The ghoul hesitated. “Who do I hate more?” it asked, sounding honestly puzzled. “The mediocre hacks who will kill me, or the false mentor who set me up for failure?”

“Already dead,” Gemma muttered, too soft for it to hear.

“No point being mad at mediocre hacks,” Sunshine said, eminently reasonable. “We’re just doing what mediocre hacks do, man. Just trying to get paid. I have school loans.”

“Ha!” The ghoul grinned, showing dried blood cracked around pale gums. “I just realized that I won’t have to pay mine. In case of death, I am no longer legally liable.”

“You’re living the dream,” Samantha said blandly. “I will be paying for years.”

Gemma’s knees were really hurting from bending in the dirt. She shifted her weight. “If you’re going to tell us something useful, now is the time.” She had to take a deep breath against the pain. “We can try to get that skunk who set you up for this.”

The ghoul twisted its head in a way that a living person definitely could not have, surely dislocating several neck vertebrae in order to look at her. There was something cruel in the smile it leveled at her. “Go to the old campus university,” it recommended. Its voice dropped down, husky and confidential. “Look in the yearbooks, at staff.”

“Or you could just tell us,” Gemma said, annoyed. “I don’t have time for this nonsense.”

“Oh, I want them to know you’re looking for them before you know who they are,” the ghoul said. “More fun that way.”

Gemma made a disgusted sound. “Right,” she said decisively. “It’s nearly teatime, so I’m going to finish up.” She twitched her fingers through the ghoul’s hair, pulling gently at the taut scalp and the lines of magic underneath. It came undone with a pop. The ghoul went totally limp, flopping in a way that was somehow wet.

“Dramatic hack,” Samantha said, stepping off of it.

Sunshine hummed, putting his hands in his pockets as he stepped back. “I kinda liked the sense of the theatrical he had. If you’re going to be a horror of the night, you might as well lean into the role.”

Gemma hefted herself to stand, wobbling painfully. Walking up the damn hill had been hard enough on her joints. She really couldn’t do this for much longer. But since they’d come out of that tomb intact, they’d been asked to clean up problems like this every other week or so. It was good money, but more importantly, she didn’t know who else would do it. 

Maybe she ought to get a protege of her own.

“What was that about your mother?”

It took a moment to register that Samantha was talking to her.

“Nonsense,” Gemma said, feeling her hackles rise up. “An educated guess. Necromancy and other magic are often passed down from mother to daughter. This idiot was just trying to unnerve me.”

“It seemed like it worked,” Sunshine said.

She bristled. “It did not.” She took the soapy washcloth out of the plastic baggie in her purse and wiped down her hands, keeping her chin haughtily high. “As I am, in fact, very old, my mother is deceased and has been so since long before this person has been around.”

“Maybe you had an evil aunt, who taught a cousin the same stuff,” Sunshine suggested.

“I do not have an evil aunt. I had a very conventional aunt, who was a lady bachelor.”

“Not a bachelor if she’s a lady,” Sunshine countered, and he was just making trouble now.

So she ignored him. She put the washcloth back and settled the purse strap back on her shoulder. “Let’s go collect our check and eat lunch.”

“And then we’ll investigate at the city university, possibly uncovering a shady ring of mysterious characters doing malevolent nonsense?”

“Yes,” Gemma agreed, “but after lunch.”