Chaos Lives in Everything - 21. Chapter 21

Reynolds held the little glass vial up into the sunlight and examined the small black crystalline shard with a deep frown. It did not look like the plague that had ravaged the world and almost eradicated the human race. He swivelled around in his chair and tossed the vial in Skold’s direction.

“Careful, you fool!” Skold hissed, catching it in his hand. “Do you want to cause the end of the world?”

“Sorry it just doesn’t look very...threatening.”

“But it is threatening. And just because it has somehow assumed a solid form doesn’t mean that it still isn’t hazardous. Take it. Send it to someone that can run some tests on it and see what they can find out.” Skold set the vial back on the desk.

Reynolds looked pained. “Fine, as if I don’t have enough shit to do already.”

“Reynolds, this is important,” Skold said patiently. “If this is what I think it is then everyone in this city and possibly the world is in danger.”

“I will send to the CDC and see what they make of if. But are you sure this is the plague from before?”

“I’m sure. But somehow it has been changed; to do what I am not entirely sure. But it cannot be good.”

“I thought all traces of the plague was destroyed at the end of the war.”

“It was.” Skold paced back and forth in front of Reynold’s desk. “Somehow has found a way to remake it. The matter is how, not so much why. The reason is obvious. Someone is trying to start a war. Continue Paladin’s work.”

“Well regardless of how non dangerous it looks this is very interesting. That and the fact that you ran into the path of a revenant...now that is disconcerting.” Reynolds shivered and reached for his bottle of blood pressure medicine. “The very idea of some undead thing running around gives me the fucking creeps. There is something, well two things that I think might interest you. Yesterday was a very busy, very interesting day. I got two calls back to back. I guess it would be better to show you rather than tell you. Are you ready to go for a little field trip?”

Skold nodded. “I’m ready when you are.”

Reynolds led Skold past rows and rows of tombstones. Reynolds had the collar of his Cartahart jacket pulled up high and his gloved hands stuffed in his pockets. Skold as always appeared unbothered by the cold though his cheeks had taken on a rosy glow. The Roc City Cemetery was deserted. To the outrage of the city Reynolds had the cemetary closed off due to a pending investigation.

Skold had a certain amount of respect for Reynolds because of this very reason. Reynolds did not care about what other people thought of decisions. He did what he thought was best for the city as a whole and went about his job using his instincts despite all of the blacklash that he would recieve in the end.

“Here it is,” said Reynolds, pointing at a tombstone. The grave was for a Robert P. Smith. Engraved on the front it said THE MOST LOVING HUSBAND THAT A WIFE COULD ASK FOR; HE WILL BE GREATLY MISSED. Robert had lived to be forty-eight when he died. Skold wondered if this was the man that had attacked Rebecca and Melanie. What the curious was the rune that had been drawn underneath the engraving in what appeared to be blood: an M laying on it’s left side surrounded by a circle.

The grave had clearly been disturbed as if someone had crawled out of the grave. Skold knelt down on his hands and knees and brushed away some dirt. He could see ten holes punched in the dirt where fingers had dug into the dirt.

“The grave is empty?” he asked Reynolds.

“Yep. What do you make of the rune?”

“It’s death magic.”

“Excuse me?”

“Necromancy.”

Reynolds shivered again. “I don’t know if it’s just because it’s colder than a witch’s tit or I’m just scared, but things are getting creepy.”

Skold wasn’t listening. He was looking at the rune again. Something about it made him feel uneasy and cold inside. I’ve seen it before, but where? He could feel cold fingers scratching at the back of his mind, in the place where there was nothing but blackness and forgotten memories. He could feel the finger scratching at the very barrier that Yaldon had put in place to keep him from remembering.

Skold bit back a scream of frustration. He clenched his fists, his knuckles digging into the dirt. He wanted to pound the ground with his fists, pound it into the world shook. Damn Yaldon, Skold thought. Damn him for taking what was mine. Damn him for taking what he had no right to take. If I was standing before him now I would rip his head from his shoulders with my bare hands and shit down his throat.

Something caught his attention. The rune was glowing with a bright ambient red light. He looked back at Reynolds. Reynold was tapping his foot against the dirt impatiently, waiting for Skold to conclude his investigation.

“Are you almost done?” Reynolds said. “There’s something else that I need to show you and there’s other things that I have to do today.”

“Do you not see it?”

“See it? See what?”

“The red light. The rune...it’s glowing.”

“No, I don’t see anything.” Reynolds frowned. “Skold are you losing your mind...” He waved a hand. “You know what, never mind. I’ll just go wait for you back in the car. Let me know if you find anything interesting.”

Again Skold was not listening. He felt a child-like temptation to touch the wound. He could feel energy warbling from it. Maybe Reynolds cannot see it because he is not meant to see it, Skold thought. Perhaps I am the only one that is meant to see it. Whoever did this must be trying to leave me a clue. Playing a game...Reynolds was already out of sight. Good, Skold didn’t want an audience.

He touched the rune and…

...found himself standing on top of the mountain looking over the ruined village. The wind whipped at him so strongly that he had to shield his face with his arms. The wind was so ruthlessly cold that his body instantly became numb. Already he could smell the smoke, the death, and the blood.

“Skold.”

Skold turned and turned to face the thing that had spoken. Standing before him stood a tall, robed figure. The hood was pulled up so that he could not see its face. Where the hole was was nothing but shadow. Oblivion. The robes, ripped and tattered in places and smelling of rot, rippled wildly in the wind.

Skold braced himself for battle. He wore the very battle armor that he’d worn in the Paladin Wars. He and the hooded figure walked around each other in circles. Skold did not know what was happening. He didn’t know if this was a dream, some kind of powerful spell conjured by the thing that had raised Robert Parker from the dead, or if this was really happening. Either way it felt real. All too real. However none of this mattered. He could sense that the being before him was very danger, very powerful.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Skold.” The thing’s voice sounded like a man, deep and resounding. It moved swiftly, gracefully, as a man might of moved, but Skold knew that this was no man. It was something else. Something inhuman. “Did you think that I would not find you? Did you think that our paths would not cross again?”

“I demand to know who you are! Tell me now or I will strike!” Skold’s voice somehow carried itself over the wind. His eyes glowed with anger.

“This is an illusion,” said the stranger. “It might feel real but I can assure you it is not. I cannot hurt you anymore than you can hurt me. This is simply my way of leaving you a message.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Oh I know everything there is to know about you,” said the necromancer. “I know you better than you know yourself. But of course you do not remember me, do you? They locked away your memories.”

“They didn’t lock them away, they erased them.”

“Is that what they told you? They lied. They did not erase your memories. They merely put a barrier around them. And any barrier can be taken down. But it does not matter. That is not why we are here, having this conversation.”

Skold and the necromancer stopped circling around each other. They now faced each other directly. Skold was shaking so hard that it felt as though his bones were knocking into one another. How could this be an illusion as the necromancer had claimed when it felt so real? If he were to stab the necromancer would it not do him harm? Would it not pierce through decayed cloth and flesh, if there was indeed flesh behind that hood?

“What do you want of me?”

“To warn you,” said the necromancer. “I am here, in your city and I have set in motion a plan that is too big for you to possibly grasp. I have eyes everywhere, thousands of souls right here, in this very city, working with me to make it happen. It goes all of the way to the top and the battlefield is right in the streets of the place that you now call home. So listen carefully, old friend: Stay out of my way. Don’t you dare to stop me.”

Skold was in the graveyard again, kneeling before Robert’s desacrated grave site. Slowly he got to his feet, head reeling. The bloody rune was no longer glowing. Apparently the necromancer had told him what he needed to tell him.

Skold strolled stolidly in the direction of Reynold’s cruiser. He recognized a feeling that he was not accustomed to: fear. The creature, whatever he may be, scared him, scared him perhaps even more than his father had scared him when he was a child. The necromancer had called him by name; the creature knew about things that he did not know about himself. The creature had told him that his memores were not erased but just locked away. Did that mean that there was hope? Did that mean that there was some way for Skold to get them back, to become whole again?

Do not believe his lies, Skold told himself. It doesn’t matter what he knows. He is just trying to get into your hand. He is the one who is behind this. That Skold was certain of.

He climbed into the car.

“Did you find anything?” Reynolds asked. The heater was humming. He had his hands placed on the dashboard by the air ducts.

“I don’t know,” Skold said, frowning. “I can’t make heads or tails. What was the other thing that you wanted to see?”

“Robert P. Parker’s widowed wife, Beverly Parker, called yesterday to say that her dead husband paid her a visit. She came downstairs and found him sitting at the dinner table. She was so shocked that when she woke up he was gone. I want you to hear her story yourself and see if you can find anything at her place.”

“What did you tell her you were going to do?”

Reynolds shrugged. “I don’t know. I told her that we’d do what we could, look into it. But until you called me this morning we didn’t have anything. And now you’re going to have to tell her what happened to her husband. She won’t take it well but at least she will have closure. I will say this. This whole investigation has turned into a real clusterfuck. First the troll that massacred over half of my SWAT team and now this: dead spouses running around, engineered to carry plagues. What next?”

To this Skold had no reply.

Beverly Parker lived in a quiet farmhouse five miles outside of Roc City. The house sat on twenty acres of farmland that was now covered in snow. There was a small barn twenty yards away from the house. Beverly owned no farm animals. In the eight months since Beverly’s death the farm fell apart. Beverly’s grief was too strong over the loss of her husband to be able to keep the very thing that he had worked so hard to create alive. Though no one knew it Beverly herself wished for death so that she could join her husband wherever he may be.

Skold and Reynolds sat on the sofa of her living room and she sat in the armchair across from them; Skold could feel the weight of her grief. It surrounded them, lurking underneath the walls of a house that might of once been beautiful but was now gloomy with grief. She wore a blue dress, her hair wrapped into a haphazard bun. Skold was confused by her grief. He had never known it himself, could not remember feeling it. The day that his father’s corpse had returned from the war he remembered how Candestine had cried, kneeling over Kane’s body in the snow. She remembered how she had tried to shield it with her own as if to prevent anyone from taking it. Skold had only felt a jubilant glee. The elf that had mutilated his body was gone. But humans grieved over everything. They grieved over their pets, over the loss of their homes, at the slightest departure from what they knew. Grief had transformed the woman before them into something old and bitter.

Sitting on the coffee table was a tray with a tea kettle and two steaming cups of tea. Skold could not remember Beverly asking him if he wanted tea but she’d fixed him a cup anyway. Reynolds sipped at his politely. He’d just explained to her that Skold was helping the police with the investigation on what happened to her husband. Somewhere in the house Skold could hear the tick tocking of a grandfather clock; he found it distracting. He did his best to keep focus trained on the matter at hand.

“I know I asked you this already, but would you mind telling me about the night that you found your husband downstairs in the kitchen?” Reynolds asked.

“Um, sure.” Beverly cleared her throat, preparing herself to speak. She kept her eyes trained on her feet; her blue house slippers matched her dress. “It was sometime around three o’clock in the morning I think when I found him-I mean that thing-sitting there in my kitchen. I woke up in the middle of the night because I could hear the front door banging against the wall. I didn’t think anything of it. The wind the other night was pretty strong. I went to close it and that was when I saw noticed the dirty footprints in the moonlight.”

She paused, glancing nervously at Skold. It seemed that she did not want to go on.

“Your tea is delicious,” Reynolds said. He smiled kindly at her, his moustache quivering. “May I have some more please.”

Beverly gave him a tired little smile. “Sure.” She got up and grabbed the oven mitt off the table. She poured the steaming hot tea into Reynold’s cup carefully and sat back down.

“I know it’s hard for you, but will you please continue,” Reynolds said gently.

Beverly sniffled before continuing. “I don’t know how long I stood there, in the dark, wondering if I should run out the door and drive away or go back up the stairs and call the police. I wasn’t thinking. You know how it is when you’re awake but your brain is still asleep. I walked into the kitchen. I could feel the dust and snow underneath my feet. The snow had already melted. I can’t believe he walked all of the way here from the city. Anyway there he was, sitting at the kitchen table. It didn’t look like him. His skin was grey, what was left of it anyway, and I could see bits of skull. And I could see maggots wiggling...” She shuttered, recalling the horrible memory.

“I know it was him. I mean why else would he have come here? But what did he want, to say goodbye. I don’t know and I don’t think I ever. It was necromancy wasn’t it? Yes, that must be it. It was necromancy that brought him back. I don’t know much about that stuff and frankly I don’t want to know. Anyway I ran back upstairs to call you and when I went back downstairs he was gone. At first I thought it was a dream or I was going crazy...grief does crazy things to you...but then you came over yesterday afternoon, Sergeant Reynolds, and told me that his grave was empty. Tell me, have you found my husband?”

Reynolds turned to Skold. His expression said: You take it from here. I’ve done what I’m willing to do.

“We found your husband,” Skold said.

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”

“There were complications,” Skold said.

“What kind of complications?” Beverly was biting her lip in fear.

“He attacked two civilians. He had to be put down. We had to examine his body because he was vomiting a black fluid. I’m not sure when or how but someone used him as a carrier to carry a plague. A remodified version of the Black Death.”

Beverly immediately burst into tears.

“We had to dispose of the body,” Skold said.

“Dispose of…?” Even with his superior sense of hearing Skold could barely understand Beverly her voice was so choke of with tears. “So there’s nothing left to bury?”

Skold did not answer; he chose to let his answer silence answer for him. She fell to her knees and weeped fresh tears. Skold got out up and walked out to the car without saying goodbye or offering any consolation. I have done my work for the day, he thought.

Twenty minutes later Reynolds came back to the car. Once he closed the door he glared at Skold. “You are a heartless bastard, you know that?”

Again to which Skold did not have a reply.