Grave Errors
I’m sitting in this dive bar that smells of old beer and older regrets, sipping a mediocre craft brew and trying to convince myself I’m off the clock.
The neon sign outside buzzes, casting a sickly red glow through the greasy window. It’s South Mississippi. Heat. Humidity.
And a quiet that clings to you like sweat.
“You know they don’t clean the tap lines here, right?”
I ignored the voice and took another sip of my Southern Pecan.
“I’m just saying,” Elvis floated onto the empty barstool beside me, adjusting the collar of his shimmering white Vegas-era jumpsuit. “I saw the bartender wipe the counter with a rag that looked like it survived the Civil War. It’s a health hazard.”
“You’re a ghost, Elvis,” I muttered into the neck of my bottle. “You can’t catch dysentery.”
“I have a sympathetic gag reflex,” my Watcher protested, crossing his translucent arms.
I was about to point out that ghosts don’t have reflexes, sympathetic or otherwise, when the front door of the bar banged open. The heavy wooden door slammed against the wall, rattling the cheap tin beer signs.
A guy burst in. He was frantic. Sweating through a stained, ripped t-shirt, eyes wide and darting. He looked like he’d seen a ghost, or worse. He started babbling to the bartender, who just kept polishing a glass and ignoring him. The guy spun around, his wild eyes scanning the sparse Tuesday night crowd before locking onto me. Maybe it was the warded leather bomber jacket, or maybe I just gave off that cop vibe.
“Mister,” he said, stumbling over to my stool, his voice shaking. “There’s a monster. Out by the old cemetery.”
I sighed. I let the warm Mississippi air wash over me and stared at the remaining two inches of my beer. I really just wanted a quiet night. No demons, no witches, no sorcerers trying to open portals to the netherworld.
“Buddy,” I said, keeping my voice even. “There ain’t no monsters. Just raccoons, wild hogs, and bad moonshine. Go home and sleep it off.”
“No!” he insisted, slamming a dirty hand on the bar. “It’s real. Big. Hunched over. And the dogs are missing. The cats too.”
“Coyotes,” I offered. “Or gators. Big ones down here in the swamps.”
“Even the possums are gone, man. The raccoons. The woods are dead quiet. I’m telling you, it ate my pitbull right off a heavy chain.”
That made me pause. Missing pets are one thing. Missing possums and raccoons in South Mississippi? That’s something else entirely. Possums don’t just up and leave a perfectly good garbage can buffet unless something much meaner has moved into the neighborhood. And tearing a pitbull off a heavy chain wasn’t standard coyote behavior.
“See?” Elvis whispered in my ear. “I told you this place was a health hazard. Now we’ve got monsters.”
I reached inside my jacket, my fingers brushing the cool metal of the star pinned to my belt. The Marshal’s badge. I’m the Marshal of Magic for the East, a title that sounds a lot more impressive than it feels when you’re standing in a sticky bar at midnight listening to a local talk about eaten dogs.
I pulled the flap of my jacket back just enough for the silver star to catch the dim neon light. The frantic guy’s eyes dropped to it, and he blinked, his jaw going slack. He didn’t know what it meant, not really—the normals just see ATF or US Marshal—but it had the desired effect.
“Show me,” I told him.
We drove in my battered Ford pickup. It rattled and groaned, the suspension complaining about every pothole on the dark, cracked asphalt leading out of town. The frantic guy—who introduced himself as Cletus—sat in the passenger seat, shivering despite the eighty-degree heat.
I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to be out here either if I wasn’t getting paid. Or, more accurately, obligated by a cosmic mandate from the Judge.
Elvis surfed in the truck bed, standing right behind the cab glass, his pompadour whipping in the wind. I could see him in the rearview mirror, pretending he was riding a chariot.
“Where exactly did you see this thing?” I asked.
“Edge of the old St. Jude cemetery,” Cletus stammered. “Back behind the treeline where the crypts are caving in. I was out looking for Buster—my pitbull—and I found his collar. Smashed right through the steel links. Then I smelled it.”
“Smelled what?”
“Like… like a butcher shop left in the sun for a month. Rot. And then I saw the shape. Pale, all hunched up, digging at the dirt.”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. Magic isn’t a wand and a pointy hat. It’s a feeling. A vibration. A scent. And I was already starting to pick up on the scent Cletus was describing.
I killed the headlights a quarter-mile out and let the truck coast to a stop on the gravel shoulder. The cemetery sat on a low hill, bordered by dense, tangled woods. Spanish moss hung from ancient, twisted oaks like tattered gray beards. The air was thick, heavy, and oppressive.
“Stay in the truck,” I told Cletus. “Lock the doors.”
“You ain’t gotta tell me twice, man.”
I stepped out of the cab, my boots crunching softly on the gravel. I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses.
It hit me like a physical blow to the chest. Not the brimstone stench of a demon, or the earthy, wet-dog smell of a troll. This was different.
Rot.
Foul, decaying residue mixed with a cold, clammy darkness. A stench so thick it coated the back of my throat and made my eyes water. It was the unmistakable magical signature of a ghoul.
“Great,” I muttered, pulling my bomber jacket tight. “Just great.”
“Ghouls?” Elvis floated down to stand beside me, his nose wrinkling. “I hate ghouls. They have zero respect for personal hygiene.”
“A ghoul is a scavenger,” I whispered, keeping my voice low as I hopped the rusted iron fence. “They’re nasty, venomous bottom-feeders that eat the dead. They’re cowards. They stick to fresh graves and avoid anything that fights back.”
“But this one ate a pitbull,” Elvis pointed out.
“Exactly,” I said, feeling the familiar tingle of adrenaline starting to hum in my veins. “Which means it’s starving. Or it’s bold. Or it’s not just one.”
I followed the stench. It led me past crumbling headstones and sunken graves. The moonlight filtered through the canopy of moss, creating shifting shadows that played tricks on the eyes.
The silence was deafening. No crickets, no frogs, no owls. Cletus was right; the wildlife had completely vacated the premises.
I rounded a large, cracked marble mausoleum and saw it.
It wasn’t just one.
Three hunched figures, pale and pallid in the moonlight, were gathered around an open, sunken grave. They looked like humans who had been stretched and warped, their limbs too long, their fingers ending in dirty, knife-like claws. They were fighting over something in the dirt, their snarls sounding like a mix between a hiss and a wet cough.
I prepared a concussive spell. It’s a simple trick. Just a sudden burst of kinetic energy, powered by willpower.
Enough to knock the bastards into next week so I could figure out if I needed to bag them or blast them into confetti. I raised my hand, focusing my will. I don’t need an incantation. Just the intent.
The air crackled around my fingers. The static charge made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
The three ghouls stopped digging. Their heads snapped up in unison.
They saw me.
I expected them to cower. To run. Ghouls are cowards, remember?
These didn’t.
They let out a collective hiss that sounded like escaping steam and moved. They moved with a speed that defied their hunched, awkward frames.
My pre-cog kicked in a half-second before the first one leaped. The spidey-sense tingle at the base of my skull screamed move.
I dropped and rolled to the right as the largest ghoul sailed through the space my head had just occupied. Its claws gouged deep grooves into the marble mausoleum behind me, showering me in stone chips.
“Holy hell, they’re fast!” Elvis screamed, zipping straight up into the air.
“Not fast enough,” I grunted.
I came up on one knee, shoved my palm forward, and unleashed the kinetic blast. The invisible wall of force slammed into the ghoul that had just landed, hitting it like a Mack truck. The creature shrieked as it was launched backward, crashing through a rusted wrought-iron cross and tumbling into the darkness.
One down. Two to go.
The second ghoul scrambled over a tombstone, coming at me on all fours like a horrific, pale spider. It lunged, its jaws unhinging to reveal rows of needle-sharp teeth dripping with black saliva.
I didn’t have time to gather enough will for another blast.
I resorted to low magic. Dirty magic.
“Ralph!” I shouted, throwing a jagged spark of will directly into its face.
The ghoul intercepted the spell mid-leap. Its eyes crossed, its momentum faltered, and it hit the ground at my feet, violently and uncontrollably vomiting a black, tar-like substance onto the grass.
I didn’t wait for it to recover. I stepped forward, channeled a hard, concentrated spike of force into the tip of my boot, and kicked it square under the jaw. The ghoul’s head snapped back with a sickening crunch, and it went limp.
“Behind you!” Elvis yelled.
My pre-cog flared again, hot and urgent. I spun, bringing my arm up just in time. The third ghoul slashed downward, its claws catching the heavy leather of my warded bomber jacket. The wards flared, sparking blue as they resisted the magical venom coating the creature’s claws, but the sheer physical force of the blow staggered me.
The ghoul pressed the advantage, slamming its body weight into my chest and driving me to the ground. It scrambled on top of me, its slavering jaws snapping inches from my face. The stench of rotting meat and stagnant water was suffocating.
I grabbed it by the throat, my Kevlar-laced tee shirt holding up against its scrabbling hind claws as it tried to disembowel me. The creature was terrifyingly strong, far stronger than any scavenger had a right to be. Its eyes were completely black, devoid of anything resembling a soul, fueled only by a ravenous, unnatural hunger.
“Get off him!” Elvis yelled, swooping down and passing his ghostly hands right through the creature’s face. It didn’t do physical damage, but the sudden chill of ectoplasm made the ghoul flinch.
It was all the opening I needed.
I shoved all the rage and adrenaline pooling in my gut into my right hand. I didn’t bother with concussive force this time. I went elemental.
I pressed my palm flat against the ghoul’s pale, sunken chest and let fly.
A bolt of concentrated lightning, burning hot enough to flash-fry water, erupted from my hand. The blast blew a hole the size of a dinner plate straight through the creature’s torso.
The ghoul didn’t even have time to scream. It turned to a shower of smoking ash and charred meat, collapsing on top of me in a heavy, disgusting heap.
I shoved the carcass off, coughing and spitting out the taste of ozone and rot, and scrambled to my feet. I threw up a hasty shield spell, panning the cemetery for the first ghoul I had blasted into the woods.
Silence.
“You okay, Marshal?” Elvis floated down, looking at the mess covering my jacket.
“I need a dry cleaner,” I wheezed, keeping my hands up, willpower humming at my fingertips. “Where did the first one go?”
Elvis floated up higher, scanning the dark treeline. “It ran. Scurried off toward that big crypt on the hill as soon as you fried its buddy.”
I brushed a lump of ghoul ash off my shoulder. Ghouls don’t hunt in organized packs, and they certainly don’t coordinate attacks. They are mindless scavengers. These things fought like shock troops. They were territorial. They were defending something.
“They weren’t just looking for a snack,” I said, my chest heaving as I caught my breath. “Something is driving them. Organizing them.”
“You think someone is controlling them?” Elvis asked, his ghostly eyes widening.
I stared up the hill toward the looming, monolithic crypt sitting in the shadows. The stench of decay radiating from it was heavy enough to choke a horse.
“I think Cletus wasn’t kidding about monsters,” I muttered, cracking my knuckles and drawing fresh magic into my hands. “And I think I’m going to need a bigger concussive blast.”
I stepped over the remains of the dead ghouls and started walking up the hill. I guess I was working late tonight.
Chapter Two - (to be continued)
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