Story Five: Black Summer

I fight the nausea as voices swirl around my head. The smoke of gunfire recedes amidst the stench of death, and queries drop like hits of acid, flipping the restaurant upside down: spinning me in circles, my feet twisting and turning me, as I look around at the carnage. God. If I had thought my summer internship would be anything like this, I don't know if I would have done it.

Another light bulb flashes, triggering yet another yell by one of the police officers. Latex gloves snap on at regular intervals as more and more investigators arrive: dusting, poking, prodding, doing all the things that they have to do to get their answers from dead bodies.

Somehow I didn't think that being an FBI photographer for the summer was going to be like this: a bloodbath in the middle of a Chinese restaurant, corpses everywhere. I have seen dead bodies before, but these are messy. They reek too. I wrinkle my nose. I'm not sure exactly what I expected—but something different. I figured, hey, a scholarship kid from George Washington? They wouldn't throw too much shit my way. Was I wrong.

I take the camera out and start shooting pictures. I'm not even sure what I am looking at. There are bullet shells everywhere and almost half a dozen dead by gunfire; they're strewn about in a close area, like somebody just busted out a semi-automatic in the middle of dinner hour. It might have been dark outside, but they had to realize that this was not a subtle crime. I don't know why they'd do it like this, or for what reason. Yet I wasn't paid to walk around and wonder why, so I kept taking pictures.

What I can't figure out, as I change the film in the camera, were the three or four that were torn open. By what I have no idea. Their guts are ripped open, rib cages and shit just poking out. I have to hold back the bile that almost bolts out of me. It's like someone let a tiger free in here and it just ripped them up. But what really did it?

It doesn't make sense. And nothing makes less sense than the last guy I get to. He's right by the back door, like he was trying to get away, only he couldn't. Out of curiosity, I ask some of the SWAT guys from the local precinct about it. They say that he was running out the back door when they ran in and opened fire on him. He's got plenty of bullet holes in him. But where's the blood? It's almost like he's not even dead. I reach down and examine him. His skin is rough. Yet even through the latex gloves, I can feel that he's cold to the touch. He has a deathly pallor, but there should be more blood. Fuck it. The investigators will figure it out. I just have to take the picture.

I put the camera up to my eyes, when something catches my eye.

I open the flap of the corpse's jacket a little bit to get a better look. Right over his left pectoral is a tattoo of a black hand. What the hell does that mean?

I figure I better get a picture of the ink. There's something distintinctive about it. Something that makes me feel like it might mean something. I line up the shot, ready to take the photo.

I raise the camera to my eyes. The rubber eyepiece circles my eye softly, and I look through the lens. I stare at the tattoo.

Only now the flesh is rotted and porous.

My jaw drops. Slowly I pan the camera up to his head, and I see a hideous face. The skin is jaundiced and green, the flesh stretched, and the nose is rotted away under sunken, red orbs of malice. Suddenly, its jagged teeth move to form a smile.

My head jerks away. I dare to peek over the camera and glimpse at the corpse. Only it doesn't look the same. It looks regular again, a vacant, dead stare on its face. I look through the lens again. I swear the thing—this hideous thing—is getting up to get me, when a hand drops on my shoulder.

I jump, snapping my head up as I rise, and see the face to my side. It's just him. "God, Fox. Don't do that."

"Sorry. You okay?" the FBI agent asks me.

"Yeah. Just thought I saw something."

"What?"

"Nothing. Where's your partner?"

"Pursuing another lead on the case."

"This is really spooky," I say.

He puts his hands on his hips and gives me a crooked smile "What do you mean?"

"Don't you think you should be asking forensics? I'm just a photographer."

"I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to know," he says.

Run.

"What'd you say?" I ask.

"I said I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to know."

"No. Didn't you -- "

Run now.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Fox asks me.

Where the hell did that voice come from? I'm starting to freak out Fox. Cops are milling about, not even paying attention. I'm scanning the crowd; there's no one in this back corner of the building. Just me, Fox, and the body. Shit.

I push Fox over, rolling and hitting the floor just as a clawed hand rips through one of the tables near us, right where we had been. Fox is caught off balance by my action, but he's experienced; his gun is out almost as soon as we hit the ground. Before I can figure out what is going on, Fox is pushing my head down with one hand and firing his pistol at the thing with the other. All I can do is wonder what would have happened if he hadn't reacted so fast? Maybe it would have kept coming for us. When I finally look up, the body is gone. Then again, so is Fox. But Fox isn't supposed to be dead.

Uniforms scramble after Fox, wondering what they missed. I on the other hand, wonder what it was that I hadn't missed. Who had warned me? I mean, I know about magick and remember the teaching of my master. I had learnt what a Euthanatos was, who other mages were, and what we could do. But I didn't know much. I knew just enough to grasp the basics and to never let anyone know what I could do. My mentor had found me early, and had started my training when I was maybe 12. He said it was better that way so I didn't have to unlearn everything. But after six years, he sent me to have a college education before teaching me any more. Yet despite all of that, I have no idea what had just happened. I don't know any mages that could do what I had just seen. I still had so much to learn.

What's up?

Huh? That voice again. I turn behind me. Nothing but the red and brown walls of the restaurant, a scattered few agents and cops still left. The bodies are still here, as is the bloody mess: tables knocked over, chairs pushed aside, but no one to whisper in my ear.

Just look.

"Where?"

What the hell did that mentor of yours teach you?

"Not about you. Where are you?"

Right in front of you.

"Where?"

Look. If it helps, look through your camera.

Tentatively, I pick up the camera and look through it. Before me is a wavering form that vaguely looks like a man. I almost drop the camera.

Don't look away from the camera.

"Okay. What are you?"

Many of your kind call me a spirit.

"How can I see you and no one else does?"

The same way you saw the vampire.

"The what?"

The -- whoops. Gotta go.

I was left peering through the lens like a goon as Fox returned.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking photos."

"Of the wall?"

I pulled the camera back down to waist level and looked at him without speaking.

"You look like you just saw a ghost."

I laugh nervously and play it off. Fox thanks me for moving him out of the way and is going off saying that it fits in with a theory of his, and that if he didn't have work to do he would buy me a beer and if I could please make sure to get a copy of the photos of that particular body to his office, thanks, and then he is gone. A bloodbath, a black hand tattoo, a dead man returning, spirits, and God forbid, maybe a vampire? What hadn't the master told me? Maybe it was a good thing I was almost done with school. I needed some more coaching. Funny, I had wondered before if I wasn't learning enough, but never if I was learning the right thing. Until now.

I kept taking photos. I had to find another one of those spirits, one of those wraiths. Whatever you call them. But not now. I have pictures to take.