Grave Beginnings (The Grave Report, Book 1) Read online

  Grave Beginnings

  A Case File From: The Grave Report

  By: R.R. Virdi

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright R.R. Virdi 2013

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Acknowledgements

  Ashley Johnson for helping me muddle through the reviewing process and all the other help she’s provided in helping me understand the literary world. Also for reaffirming my long held suspicion that editors possess some hidden superpower that mere authors like myself will never understand.

  Table Of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter One

  I woke up in complete darkness; well I guess that’s what you’d call it because I have no idea what the hell incomplete darkness was. It was narrow, cramped and I was surrounded by wood. Oh, there was also a really disconcerting musty and rotting smell as well as very little air, which meant I was dead and buried in a coffin…again.

  I was running out of air fast and I couldn’t see a thing, not exactly a great combination of circumstances. Fortunately I’ve been in a few of these situations before, so I know how to get out of them.

  See, coffins aren’t really for keeping bodies locked in, you’re probably dead if you’re inside of one unless you’re me…or buried alive. Coffins are simple; a big wooden box with a few hinges to keep the lid shut. There’s always a way out of a situation like that, you just have to find it…before the oxygen runs out and you suffocate.

  I tried to remain calm in an effort to conserve what little air there was but something was bothering me. There was very little room in there, (there generally isn’t much room in a coffin), but I’ve been in enough of these to know that I was seriously cramped. I started feeling around and that’s when my hands started brushing up against something that was certainly not wood, it was kind of like stone, rough here, rigid there, smooth in some places with a few gaps here and there.

  It was bone.

  “Sonuvabitch!” I screamed, which wasn’t all too smart considering that I was already low on air. I was buried in somebody else’s coffin, which was my first clue that I was probably buried quickly and rather unceremoniously, which meant there might be a way out of there…hopefully. There are many ways out of a coffin; unfortunately, I was blanking on all of them at the moment, it happens when there’s a brain damaging lack of air.

  Suffocating in a coffin doesn’t even crack the top twenty worst ways to die; suffocation is somewhat peaceful, if you can get over the psychological part of being buried alive, or in my case dead and running out of air. Your lungs start to get a bit heavy, so do your eyelids and you just go to sleep.

  I rubbed my hands together, running them over my wrists in an effort to release some tension and paused when my fingertips brushed up against a coolness of a metal band strapped to my wrist.

  This guy had a watch!

  Now, if you’re stuck in a coffin with a watch or keys or anything sharp or really hard, there is still a way out, albeit a painful way, but it’s still a way. I quickly slipped the watch off and set it over my tightly closed fist in a poor set of makeshift brass knuckles, it would have to do for what I had planned.

  I was going to punch my way out of this.

  By the smell and feel of the coffin around me, I could tell this coffin was old, meaning that the wood wouldn’t be as strong. I started punching the roof of the coffin with all the strength I could muster, as my fist collided with the rough and rotting wood, the watch face shattered. Tiny flecks of glass bit into my aching fingers, but with a determined snarl, I worked through the pain, pumping my fist harder into the roof as I willed the wood to splinter above me.

  I can still feel pain like everyone else and I still haven’t gotten as used to it as I would have like by now.

  I kept punching slowly, trying not to waste any effort, making sure every punch was calculated, hard and delivered to the same spot. My arms and lungs were beginning to feel like they were made of lead. I was getting tired and heavy, not to mention that the watch was tearing into my skin. My knuckles and fingers were bleeding and I definitely broke some of the smaller bones in my hand but I was soon rewarded with the lovely sound of wood splintering.

  Now, some survival experts will tell you that survival is all about perseverance and never giving up. They’re right, I should know seeing as I’ve been inside a few. I’ve been inside a lot of people and picked up a lot of skills and memories, at the cost of many of my own.

  So I continued hammering away at the small crack in the coffins roof, listening to thud after thud as my fist impacted the roof, causing the wood above to slowly give way. My hand was in really bad shape, you know it’s bad when you start to lose all sensation in a body part, the pain becomes a distant numbness, but I kept it going. The watch had all but dug half way into my fingers and knuckles, and after what seemed like the thousandth punch, something sprinkled onto my eyes, nose and mouth.

  Dirt!

  It was only a speckle, but that was enough. I jammed my fingers into the crack, the splintered and jagged wood bit into my flesh as I pulled hard. The weak rotting wood slowly gave way and split, causing a mountain of dirt to come crashing in and bury me, again.

  I quickly spat out the vast amount of dirt that managed to find its way into my mouth and rolled over onto my stomach, I began sweeping as much of the dirt as I could beneath me. This brought me closer to the ruined coffin lid, forcing the dirt into a tight packed layer beneath me, I got onto my hands and knees and pushed up with my back against the lid. It rose briefly, more dirt came showering in, I repeated the process, packing the dirt beneath me, getting even closer to the lid and pushing hard. This time it rose higher, more dirt came in meaning there was less on top of me and there was something else, air! Musty, dirty air but it was still air and it smelled like the best air ever to me! I was laying directly against the half broken coffin lid now, a massive crack ran down it from top to bottom, I placed my knees against it and gave one final push.

  It didn’t rise this time so much as completely crack in two, allowing the remaining dirt to come raining down on me but I was free. I frantically clawed my way through the dirt with only my left hand, my right hand completely useless from the feverish punching. Dirt found it’s way into my eyes, nose, mouth, ears and everywhere else. After what seemed like an eternity of digging, I made my way out of the grave and onto fresh open ground, the air was thick like soup, it tasted delicious. It was lung nectar.

  I couldn’t see with all of the dirt in my eyes, causing them to itch, I rubbed them vigorously to help clear them up. My vision quickly began to clear and I was greeted with sight of dark skies with no stars. The sky was caked with the
glow of bright lights dotting the mass of buildings towering in the distance.

  “Ah, New York,” I said, warmed by the sudden flash of memories that the concrete jungle evoked in me. I spent many of my cases racing through the cities gritty underbelly, and then there were the few times I was rewarded with a chance to see some it’s glory. I remembered the mouth-watering smell of hot dogs from my favorite food cart on Broadway and the scent of the spring leaves in Central Park, too bad it was winter.

  My damaged right hand started twitching, I was getting some feeling back in it, I should probably mention that when I’m in a body, that I break many of life’s rules. I can regenerate from certain injuries such as having my right hand bludgeoned into oblivion or even a bullet wound, well if it didn’t kill me that is.

  It should be obvious my now that I’m not exactly normal, completely broken and nonfunctional hand, no problem, heals damn near instantly. Hell, I’ve been shot before and ended up fine after resting for a while. I don’t really need hospitals…the sort of dead generally don’t.

  I turned around to get a better look at the grave I had just punched and clawed my way from. The name on the headstone read Emmanuel Suarez, I’m guessing that Emmanuel was the poor stiff whose grave I just sort of desecrated.

  “Sorry about that Emmanuel, nice to meet you, I’m Vincent Graves.”

  Well Vincent Graves probably wasn’t my real name; I’ve been doing this for so long and been in so many people that I can’t really remember my real name. Though, Vincent Graves seems to fit with my line of work. I have so many memories in my head that it’s hard to tell which are mine and which belong to the many hundreds of people whose bodies I’ve been in. Every time I’m in someone I get fragments of their memories and they all stay with me unfortunately. The skills and memories I’ve picked up have saved my life many times though, so they’re worth it.

  I looked myself up and down to see if there was anything that could help clue me into who this body was and what killed him.

  I? He? We?

  I didn’t know how to properly refer to myself since I wasn’t using my own body, I would…if I still had mine. I lost my body a long time ago due to some “strange and unexplainable circumstance” and never really managed to solve my own murder. So, because of that and all the free time I have now, I’ve been tasked with solving other people’s murders, murders caused by “strange and mysterious circumstances,” which is just another way of saying the supernatural did it.

  I should probably add that I’m not ghost, or a poltergeist, there are dozens of types of undead and I don’t have the time to explain their differences. To keep it short, a ghost is an imprint of a person, a recording of sorts of a person’s memories and behaviors. I’m not a shadow of the person I once was, I’m still all me… sort of, minus the body, but in essence I’m something more complete.

  I’m a soul.

  We’re all souls, you, me, that annoying kid next door banging on his drums at two in the morning ‘cause he didn’t take his adhd medicine the day before. The difference between everyone else and me is that I’m only a soul, simply put; I’m you without the body. See, you’re not really a person with a soul inside you, you’re a soul that has a physical form to play around with, to get drunk with, have sex and all the other things you can think of. When someone dies, their soul leaves their body and goes; well I never really figured that part out seeing as how I’m still stuck here, working…while being sort of dead. But in a nutshell, your soul is what makes you, you, it’s what defines you and makes you the either really great or asinine person you are. Without a soul you’re just a meat suit, one I can jump in and out of, much like the person I was in now.

  I was wearing what would have been an impressive navy blue pinstriped suit if it wasn’t covered with dirt and there was a black dress shirt underneath. The black leather Italian dress shoes looked expensive and somehow still managed to retain a glossy shine. Other than that, all I had on me was a broken and expensive looking watch. As far as clues go, it wasn’t much to go on. I groaned as I realized just how much work I had ahead of me to figure out who this guy was.

  “So, I am a really well dressed, well off man…in New York. That narrows it down to Goddamnit!” I’m not all too keen on the almighty and those up high, mostly because I have the feeling that they’re responsible for me being stuck in this gig. It doesn’t pay well…actually it doesn’t pay at all, not to mention that it’s probably a great source of amusement to whomever’s in charge.

  Disembodied cosmic assholes…

  A clatter of noise tore me away from my metaphysical musings, I whirled around to get a look at the source of the noise, standing all but ten feet from me, this whole time probably, was an elderly man. He had short cut graying hair with a very pronounced widows peak, severe crows feet around his eyes and a tired and worn face. He stood there slack jawed and staring at me, flabbergasted no doubt, probably at the fact that I had just burst out of a grave. His dark and simple overalls were speckled with dirt and lying at his feet was the shovel that most likely caused the noise when he had dropped it.

  He and I just stared at each other for a good while before I said, “Well whaddya know? You really can dig your way here from China!”

  He collapsed to ground the very next second, at his age that could have been fatal but I was sure hoping it wasn’t. Not because I was worried, ok maybe a bit, but I was really hoping that he was just unconscious so I wouldn’t run the chance of having to come back as him.

  He died via heart attack caused by “strange and mysterious” circumstances, a dead guy rising out of a grave, yes. That fit the criteria for my line of work.

  I mean how would that even work? Would I have to hunt myself down, case solved, I killed him by freaking him the hell out.

  I quickly ran over, checked his pulse, breathed a sigh of relief that he was still breathing and decided it best to get the hell out of there.

  “Right first things first,” I said aloud to help focus my train of thought, “got to find out how much time I have and who the VIC was, this means church.”

  I quickly hit the sidewalk and started walking fast, both hands in my pocket so to cover up my bleeding watch encrusted right hand until it healed completely, too bad the watch wouldn’t, it was a Rolex, emphasis on was.

  I kept strolling at a very brisk pace, keeping my eyes open for the first church I could I find. I didn’t matter if it was Catholic, Protestant, Episcopal or even one of those Scientology ones, no matter what it was, it would be empty save for one person, it was always like that.

  It was only ten or fifteen minutes before I found a nice quiet little Catholic church and promptly entered it. A lone figure was sitting with his back turned to me…in the very first and furthest pew, because apparently it was too much to ask for him to sit in one closer to the entrance. As I drew closer I could see that he was scrawling in something, a small black moleskin notebook, which he abruptly shut as he rose and turned to face me.

  He was a handsome guy; I’ll give him that. Chin length wavy blonde hair with a few locks falling over his glacier blue eyes, which were framed by a pair of thin rectangular glasses, the dark color of the frame sharply contrasting his fair skin. He slowly put the small leather notebook into his khaki pants and his pen into…I swear to God, the pocket protector on his full length white collared shirt. His hands were gently clasped together and resting in front of his waist as he slightly rocked back and forth in his brown oxford style shoes. All in all, the guy looked like an I.T guy who could have done a fair bit of modeling on the side and I looked like, well I really didn’t know what I looked like yet.

  Graveyards aren’t exactly known for their overabundance of mirrors but I had a feeling that I didn’t look all too well, (dead guys who come back to life generally don’t).

  He smiled politely when he spoke, “Vincent, nice to see you,” he said, holding out his hand.

  I shook it and grunted, as much I liked the guy, I couldn’t complete
ly trust him. I had worked with him for…well I don’t even know that, he never told me and I can’t remember but it seems like forever. Also, in the entire time I’ve known him, I never really actually knew him, I didn’t know where he was from, how he got into this or even his real name. All I knew is that when I started a case, I would head to the nearest church, he would be there alone, give me my time limit, maybe a clue and send me on my way. I asked him what his name was once; he looked around a bit, smiled and just said, “call me Church.”

  Friggin’ wiseass.

  “Ow,” I yelped as he forcibly clasped my left forearm with his left hand, pushing my sleeve up out of the way as a burning sensation rapidly overtook me. He let go and there was a big red patch of skin that looked as if I had been sunburned. At the middle of the red patch was a big black number twenty-four emblazoned into my arm, which made my forearm feel like it was a cow’s ass.

  That was how Church gave me my time limit, by essentially branding me with a magical countdown tattoo. The tattoo would decrease in number with every hour that went by until I either solved the case or failed, although come to think of it, I haven’t actually ever failed one case yet. I have cut some pretty close, really pretty close, minutes close.

  “You know,” Church began, “you scream every time I do that,” he said not quite smiling but his eyes shone with amusement.

  Ass.

  “First of all,” I said, trying to clear this misunderstanding up, “I don’t scream, I exclaim via the use of onomatopoeia.”

  “That’s called a scream,” he said neutrally.