Grave Beginnings (The Grave Report, Book 1) Page 10

  “I’ve been waiting here for bloody ages, I’ve got things to do, you’re not the only person I’m visiting tonight,” he said tersely.

  “What’s that? Santa’s got you on toy delivery or somethin’?” I quipped.

  “Oh real funny, yeah, you’re a comedian aren’t ya?” He started, “bloody tosser,” he muttered below his breath.

  Tosser? I thought, confused.

  “Well alright then, seeing how as you’re done and you’re so upset, why don’t you oompa loompa your way out of here cabbage patch, kay?” I said snappishly, replying to his insult…or at least I think it was an insult.

  Tosser isn’t in my vocabulary.

  His little hands closed into tight fists and I could here his knuckles cracking menacingly, I suddenly remembered that a gnome could kick a person’s ass very easily. I may know how to kill ‘em but I wasn’t prepared to at the moment and I had other concerns. Plus, I didn’t think Gnosis would appreciate me killing his hired help, though at the moment that’s not how it would likely go down. The doctors would be pretty baffled at how to remove my head from up my ass because this tiny guy could sure do that to me.

  I put my hands up, open palms, gesturing to calm down.

  He did.

  Whew, not that I was actually sweating going toe to toe with the little guy, except at the moment I was, but he didn’t need to know that. Like I said, they have to respect you, maybe even fear you a bit. Most things in the supernatural world that know of me are well, terrified of me really. I know I don’t come off as terrifying at times but think about it, I can’t really be killed, or well I don’t stay dead. I’ve had years of nonstop cases that have led me to know how to hunt and kill a variety of supernatural creatures. And the biggest thing of course is, that I have hunted down and killed a fairly large amount of supernatural creatures, effectively, so yeah.

  Enough bragging and bolstering my ego though, it just needed explaining that Vincent Graves ain’t a pushover!

  So I muttered a gruff thanks to the gnome and told him to go his way.

  He did.

  See, that’s how you deal with the supernatural.

  I thumbed open the binder as I ascended the steps up to Norman’s place, unlocking the heavy oak door and slipping in quietly. I shut the door behind me with one hand, the other being used to hold the binder as I flipped through the pages using my thumb. It was everything I had asked for and more. Gnosis had provided me with an abundance of info, all the employees who have ever worked at this place, the ones still currently working, anyone who was hired within the past year, anyone one hired more recently, like a month for example.

  It was amazing.

  The little guy really went the distance, but then, he would. Gnosis was the best information broker in the supernatural world for a reason, no one had ever been let down by the quality of his work and as such, he could demand outrageous prices. Prices that everyone always paid, in some form or another. Gnosis never failed to collect on a debt.

  There was too much info here and it would take time to go through it all, hopefully I wouldn’t need to go through the entirety of it to find what I was looking for.

  “Errgh,” I moaned, rolling my shoulders and neck, all of which were considerably stiff and aching, not to mention that I was starting to feel really fatigued. I thought about Norman’s shower and my previous heavenly experience with it. I convinced myself that I needed another one.

  I headed upstairs, passing the kitchen and the gym on the way to Norman’s disheveled bedroom, which was a mess because I had torn it up in search of clues.

  When I got there, I first stepped into the bathroom, looking at the gigantic mirror fixed into the wall behind the sink. I wanted a better look at the sorry state I was probably in, it wasn’t too bad though. Norman’s hair was a bit messy, it looked like someone had taken a high speed drive in a convertible, nothing a shower and comb couldn’t fix. The eyes however, they showed fair signs of fatigue, a weariness hung in them. The suit, well that was done for, tattered and torn from all of my running and jumping with the tiger, I didn’t have to look at it to know any of that.

  But I did.

  There was the tear from the tiger’s claws, which shredded the fabric as well as my calf, tears and tears waiting to happen from falling to the ground whilst inside a crumbling fire escape. There were probably sweat stains and other stains saturating the suit, holes peppered it here and there, there was also the soot.

  The soot that was my only clue at the moment, the soot that I was most definitely going to wash the hell off, I didn’t need it on me for it to be a valuable clue.

  I planned on flipping through my journal for any references to anything in the supernatural world connected to soot, anything that left it as a residue, was made of it, used for any type of magic, whatever. There had to be a connection, there always was, no reason that it would change now. So delving into my journal was the best bet I had at the moment, that and then going through the information Gnosis had provided me.

  But first, that bath I sorely needed.

  I went into Norman’s hallway esque closet and rummaged through his less than stellar collection of clothing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a diva or anything but still, if I’m gonna be running around in someone else’s body, I’m gonna look damn good doing it!

  I settled for a nice clean simple white dress shirt, a pair of navy blue jeans and slightly worn but nice looking black polished boots. Not the most amazing of styling choices I know, compared to his other clothes though, well it’s like the saying goes, keep it simple stupid.

  …. I’ve been in some very fashion conscience people before; some of it’s stuck around to my displeasure.

  After picking out my new attire, I sauntered back to the bathroom, hung up the clothes on a nearby polished metal fixture and stripped. I turned on the shower but didn’t hop in immediately; I stood there mulling things over while the shower got up to a nice temperature. After I could see a considerable amount of steam begin to fill the massive bathroom, enough so that the mirrors were fogging over, I stepped in.

  The heat more than anything was an immense relief from the day’s hardships, every ache, pang, dull throb and more seemed to vanish. “Ohhhmyarrghhh,” I groaned pleasurably.

  After fifteen or maybe twenty, actually I think it was closer to thirty minutes of steaming hot nirvana; I finally stepped out of the shower. I wrapped one of Norman’s towels around my waist, it was a thick plushy material, black and embroidered in gold lettering with Norman’s initials.

  What man does things like this?

  I shook my head in an attempt to clear out that train of thought, walking up to the mirror to inspect my hopefully somewhat looking better visage. Norman’s previously haggard face was looking considerably better, the eyes and skin looked considerably less sunken and sallow, the stress was gone.

  I had to wipe the mirror down quite a bit whilst inspecting myself, the built up steam kept causing it to fog over. After the fifth time of having to wipe the mirror, I noticed something really strange, strange in the supernatural way.

  At first I thought it was steam near my face but steam doesn’t tend to emanate from one’s mouth, I could actually see my breath when I exhaled. That’s when I began to feel it as well as see it, my muscle were shaking, no, shivering. The temperature had dropped and was continuing to drastically. The mirror was the biggest indicator though that something was going horribly wrong, where there was once heavy condensation from steam, now there were crystalline shapes forming over the glass.

  The bathroom wasn’t caked in steam any longer but an icy cool fog, that permeated the place, it was really disconcerting. I knew what was coming; I could feel it and I’d felt it before.

  I looked around frantically, trying to find the location of where the creature would try to enter the bathroom.

  That’s when my concentration was broken by a crackling noise; I turned to see bathroom mirror, which was previously frozen, had now begun
to develop spider web cracks. The glass paneling surrounding the walk in shower had also become littered with cracks and those cracks rapidly became more until the inevitable.

  The straining glass reached its breaking point and shattered, violently! The room erupted into a frenzy of glass daggers of all sizes hurtling towards me. I quickly hit the floor to avoid being hit, some shards still found their way into my skin, the thick towel around my waist offered a bit of protection.

  Atleast I’ve got the important bits covered, I thought.

  The rest of my body found no respite however, glass bit into my back, scalp, arms and more, it didn’t prick or sting so much as bite. In conjunction with the already freezing temperatures, the glass didn’t feel like glass as much as it did icy shards that sank into the flesh like a cold bite.

  I was shaking from the unforgiving temperature as well as the shock of what had just happened but I knew worse was to come; this was just a warning. My senses were overwhelmed from everything that was happening to me but I managed to pull myself together and just in time. I looked over to the far wall in the bathroom; the caulking between the tiles no longer shone bright white, no.

  The tiles were oozing a thick, black, gelatinous substance. Something akin to very thick dirty motor oil, it was a heavy dark ominous looking thing. It was pushing heavily, forcing itself through the tiles, causing them to lift slowly from their foundations. The liquid tar kept forcing itself through, bit by inky bit, causing many tiles to break off completely. The entire far side of the bathroom wall was leaking the substance now; it was pouring out and sliding to the floor where it would soon pool together.

  The scene that was enfolding before me was much like those scenes in movies where a crack springs in a dam, water begins to leak and leak until the dam bursts. The only difference was, well in my situation, the dam was going to leave me stuck with one of the horrors of the supernatural world.

  It was disturbing as it happened as it all happened in silence, no sound save for the slow cracking of tiles, my mind told me to run but I my body didn’t get that memo. I was transfixed at the sight as more and more poured out, until finally, the entirety of the wall exploded much like the glass.

  This time I hurled myself completely out of the bathroom, flying out onto the floor of Norman’s bedroom, landing hard. Bits of tile came shooting out in every direction but I managed to kick the door shut at the last second, the sound of porcelain impacting and shattering upon the door filled my ears. It was like heavy rain.

  The door opened and it wasn’t I who opened it.

  All the heat in the room was instantly sucked out in a raspy sort of hiss, I rose awkwardly to look at the monstrosity that was forming in Norman’s bathroom. The pool of thick and murky liquid was coalescing, rising and yet falling at the same time, as a figure begun to rise, trickles of the liquid rolled down its form like massive tears. It kept rising and congealing until it was the height of a full-grown man, only then did it start to take a more defined shape. A small mass of the liquid began to protrude from the body, extending forwards and taking on an oval like shape.

  I was unprepared for this, literally caught with my pants down or in this case, off! The problem with my line of work is that because I jump from body to body, it’s difficult to always have materials to fight off any creatures I get ambushed by.

  And I get ambushed a lot!

  I stood there gawking as the creature’s sides began to fill out; its shoulders were rather narrow and sprouting out from the sides of its narrow inky neck. The rest of its body, if you could call it that, wasn’t really shaped like a man’s. It was long and sinuous, serpent like. Its lengthy thin decrepit looking arms hung limply at its sides, its long spider like fingers wriggling like a newborn infant moving its digits for the first time.

  “Great,” I growled angrily, “a wraith.”

  Most people think of wraiths as something related to ghosts but they aren’t, they aren’t related in the slightest. A ghost like I said before is an imprint of a person left behind, almost like a supernatural memoir, most are harmless. Ghosts are a person’s emotions and memories left behind if they died in a horrible manner that more often than not remained unresolved. They needed closure to move on, part of what I did was to prevent ghosts from actually being born.

  Wraiths are abominations, shadow and horror given form. They were animals that were bound to serve as supernatural attack dogs by more powerful beings. It would be severely wrong however to say that they were mindless killing machines, they were intelligent killing machines. Think of it like a baboon, feral, intelligent as many primates are, just forget about the brightly colored ass part. They may not have been as smart as humans but they were smart enough, they could hunt, rationalize and some could speak.

  Wraiths were a perversion even in the supernatural world, they were aimless, no purpose except to be controlled by something more powerful and used as tool for murder really. They fed off human emotions and eventually their life force; they fed off heat too, thus the room growing increasingly cold. They made the world around them quickly become cold, physically and emotionally; you grew depressed the longer you stayed in their presence.

  It hung there for moment, motionless save for the constant trickle of tar like fluid that ran down its body and somehow found its way back to the top. It was like one of those decorative waterfalls that keeps pouring down water and recirculating it. Balanced there on its snake like inky tail, it stared at me, its head too, moving side to side in a serpent like manner.

  Then it hissed, slowly and eerily, it sent shivers up my spine. It recognized its target, its prey, its food and slithered forwards. Well, slithered is wrong, it glided forwards almost like it wasn’t sliding across the floor so much as floating. It moved effortlessly with a slow sinuous grace.

  I knew how to hurt wraiths, how to trap them and fend them off but all of them required me doing one very important thing at the moment.

  To fucking run like hell!

  So I did.

  I dashed out of Norman’s room, heading downstairs the very second it lunged with its thin, elongated hands.

  “Gyah!” I yelped as its strike narrowly missed.

  It let out a rather nasty hiss, it sounded like the hiss made by icy cold water hitting a burning hot metal, just violent.

  Guess it was mad that it had missed, too fucking bad for it!

  It snapped sideways, literally, the top half of its body just swung into a different direction, separate from the rest of itself. It lurched forwards with snake like speed in pursuit of me.

  “Damnit,” I swore, grabbing my towel as I ran, trying to keep it from falling…as if that mattered. It’s weird, even whilst being chased by a supernatural horror; society’s conditioning about modesty and manners is pretty damn strong. Here I was in a life-threatening situation and I’m worried about my towel falling and revealing all of my, well not even mine but Norman’s, junk.

  I ran awkwardly as fast as I could, occasionally swerving and changing directions in hopes of avoiding inky’s clutches. So far so good.

  I didn’t know what else to do, wraiths are notoriously hard to kill, one of the only ways to hurt them are with a select few pure metals and minerals. Salt and iron for example.

  I ran through Norman’s gym, hoping to find something I could stave off my attacker with, everything was either high quality plastic or stainless steel. One of the weight racks looked like it might have been made out of heavy cast iron but I couldn’t exactly throw or wield one of those. I decided it best to keep running until I hit the kitchen.

  I came flying in, diving over a small wooden counter and landing, naked, before a series of cupboards and shelves near the fridge. I shot upright and began tearing through them, searching for salt.

  “Yes!” I shouted in triumphant joy, I managed to find and grab an unopened bag of salt! Now I know salt isn’t the most threatening of things, unless maybe you get some in your eye but it’s not about looking menacing. What it is ab
out is the principles and rules of the supernatural world, wraiths are abominations, perversions and essentially impure.

  Salt is the opposite, salt is part of the Earth itself, it’s a life giver in ways, it’s pure and has purpose, it’s a boon of the world whereas wraiths are a stain upon it. Simply put, look at it like fire and water, water puts out fire, now while both of those things are part of our world and have their uses.

  The whole myth about spilling salt and then throwing some over your shoulder to “blind the devil?” Well this is sort of where it comes from in a way; salt sort of interferes with the very essence of wraiths and many other dark creatures from the supernatural world. It makes them lose the ability to hold themselves together in a way, it’s like pulling out a piece from a Jenga tower, it wobbles a bit until it stabilizes or you decide to put the piece back in. That’s what salt does to wraiths.

  And now I had me some!

  I whirled about in my, Norman’s naked glory and ripped the top of the bag wide open, sending one of my hands crashing into the bags contents and scooping some up. I held a good fist sized amount just as the wraith came slithering in.

  It released another angry hissing noise, sending more shivers up my spine, as it entered the kitchen’s temperature plummeted to degrees that could have adverse effects on certain parts of Norman’s anatomy.

  “Come get me you Jiffy Lube reject!” I snarled defiantly.

  It let out a venomous sound, a massive inhalation of air, different from the sounds it was making earlier, it was like a high-powered vacuum cleaner.

  I flung my salt filled hand in a wide arc, sending a shower of the coarse white substance flying across the room and the wraiths being.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  The wraith reared up like a bucking bronco, its hands flailing wildly before itself as if trying to ward off a swarm of insects. It wasn’t hissing, rasping or making anymore vacuum cleaner noises, it was shrieking in agony.

  It was like that saying about fingernails on chalkboard. It was excruciatingly loud, disturbing and chilling.