Testimony of the Dead

“Y-you can speak to the dead?” John asked, giving the detective a double take.

“Necromancy?!” Moira spluttered in equal surprise. “That is a horrendous art. The Order allows this?”

The detective turned his cool grey eyes to the Warden, his waxy face neutral. “Like all magic, necromancy is neither inherently bad nor good; that is up to the wielder. Your god-given power is the same in that regard; though it is coated in a gloss of ‘goodwill’, chastity, and a healthy amount of servitude, it may be used for vicious cruelty as easily as it may for heroism. For my part I choose not to dip into the aspects of necromancy involving the enslavement and **** of the dead and instead only put this power towards solving crime and saving lives. If you take issue with that, then kindly leave this crime scene.”

An indignant blush crept up on Moira’s cheeks at the Detective’s words and her eyes drifted to John as if seeking support; only to widen when she found John to be unperturbed. “He’s not unleashing a zombie plague upon the world, he’s working with the Order to protect this city,” John shrugged. “I mean, he might be a bit grim, but does he really seem like a bad guy to you?”

“B-but…” Moira stuttered before lowering her head meekly. “F-fine, I’ll trust your judgement.”

John nodded before turning back to the detective. “Alright, so what do you want with us?”

“I want you both to think of what you’d like to ask the victim,” Detective Lee continued as if nothing had happened. “What do we still need to know that the scene has not yet told us? What more can we learn that will give us an advantage over the killer?”

“Well, you said it before, right?” John voiced. “Why not just ask who killed him?”

“We can and we will,” the detective replied. “But there is much more to learn about this creature. So think, what else can you ask of him?” Lee left the two of them with that question as he reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a silver dagger. It was of ceremonial design with a black gem the size of John’s thumb embedded into the blade proper while the grip, carved from what looked to be mahogany and wrapped in tape, seamlessly twisted into a screw-like pommel.

John watched with interest as the detective used the blade to draw a circle around the corpse. It was by no means a perfect circle like you would see in FMA, but that didn’t seem to matter to Lee. Then, with his gloved hand he reached into his breast pocket producing four coins that looked to be made of pure gold and a black gem identical to the one embedded in the dagger. A different image was depicted on the face of each coin… a skull, a cup, a tree, and a flower. The coins he spaced evenly around the perimeter circle before carefully prying open the corpse’s mangled jaw and forcing the gem down its throat. Moira squirmed uncomfortably as she looked on.

Lee paused for a moment to make sure everything was in order before somberly turning to John as he shrugged off his suit jacket. “Do you mind?” he asked.

“Oh, sure,” John replied as he took the grey-striped jacket from the necromancer.

He gave a small nod before turning away from John and quietly unbuttoning his left sleeve. When he rolled it up, John saw hundreds of small scars lining his bony skin. The cuts all seemed to be horizontal to the veins in his arm. Without the slightest bit of hesitation, the detective added a fresh line to the collection, and a small but steady stream of warm blood poured from the wound directly into the mangled mouth of the dead. Now John was feeling squeamish.

As Lee began to mutter under his breath his dull eyes seemed roll back into their pupils. A faint glow began to emanate from them and the very air around them seemed to grow cold and heavy. “Voco super Plutonem… Voco super Mors… Accipies sanguinem meum… Aperi et portae inferni…”

John could only hear bits and pieces of the incantation, not that he could understand it anyway. Latin was one subject he had weathered by means of a nap or several and was now consequently left scratching his arse and watching with wide-eyed curiosity. Still, John did his best to listen in attentively.

“Statim det vitam huic amplius…” a voice that was not Lee’s joined into his ghastly chorus with wispy tones that straighten the hairs on John’s neck. To his left, John saw Moira reach for the pin on her shirt which he knew harboured her shield and hammer. He held up his hand to caution her just as black sparks radiated in a brief burst from the corpse. The sparks emitted no light, rather seemed to drain it in the brief second they held together before dissipating. From where they had burst furth, a steady black smoke spiralled from the corpse’s flesh.

“Tell me your name,” Lee spoke slowly as he moved his bleeding arm away from the corpse’s mouth to drip onto the nearby grass; keeping the blood away from his clothes. Lee’s voice was devoid of all emotion while his face was blank of both colour and expression. His eyes had turned to the colour of lifeless onyx leaving John with the uncanny impression of a ghost. Perhaps that wasn’t too far of the truth.

As this was happening an Order Knight hurried forward to stand between John and Lee on the outside of the circle. He carried a recording device in his hands, seemingly prepared to document the ensuing exchange.

But John’s attention quickly swerved away from the knight as the corpse began to shift and shudder. “Peter… Keaton,” the corpse spoke with a strange gargle, though his jaw never shifted. As John peered closer he saw Lee’s blood seemed to bubble with a strange life to it, as if someone was releasing air underwater. Bony hands began to grip into the grass and fruitlessly push as if trying to sit up straight; but with a severed lower half and mangled arms, the feat was impossible. The leg with some semblance of flesh still attached to the bone simply spasmed like a lizard’s tail.

“Mr. Keaton,” the detective began coolly, “I am Detective Lee, and these are my assistants Moira Brighton and John Newman. You were murdered last night, or perhaps slain by a wild beast. It is my job to investigate what happened and prevent it from occurring again. My hope is that you will be able to answer some questions.”

John saw the muscle’s in the undead’s face flex loosely in place while his one good eye simply stared blankly up at the sky as it registered the information. “I… I’ll do my best,” the corpse replied with a lack of expression. His response surprised John. He expected panic, tears, denial… or something of the sort, but it was as if the corpse had already come to terms with its circumstance.

The detective nodded once. “Ask your questions,” he spoke to John and Moira without sparing a glance towards them. “Keep them small and to the point; you only have a few minutes.”

“Uhh… w-what attacked you?” John stuttered nervously. Never in his life had he imagined he’d converse with a corpse.

“I don’t know what it was,” the corpse groaned. John imagined the man’s lips would have curled into a frightful grimace had he not been defaced. “It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

“Can you describe it to us, then?” John followed up.

“It was dark and happened so fast… I didn’t see much…”

“Try,” Lee cut in firmly; his eyes seemed to flash with those black sparks, swallowing the light around him.

The corpse let out a violent jerk that caused Moira to jump before it relaxed again, its head tilted slightly, as if entering deep thought. “It… looked like more than one creature had been jammed into one body,” the corpse rasped as if speaking caused it great pain, “...like how kids mix up the pieces of different puzzles and try to **** them together-”

“Different creatures?” John voiced curiously. “Like what?”

“I-it had the face of a cat… with horns protruding above either ear. And there was some sort of crystal between them… It walked on all fours but its front legs were cat-like while the back two looked like a bird’s. It had two large wings curled up on it’s back… scaled, not feathered, like some sort of dragon in a story book. And its tail... ” the corpse paused and shivered. “It looked like it was covered in some sort of flexible shell. The only thing like it I’ve seen are those scorpions you see at the zoo, except it was spikier.”

There was a brief silence as the three of them digested the information and tried to construct some sort of mental image. The cat-like body and scorpion tail really made it sound like a manticore to John, but the horns and bird feet didn’t exactly fit with that. Maybe the Abyss had different species?

“Um…” Moira swayed nervously as she reluctantly cast her gaze towards the undead corpse. Her fingers were now locked tightly behind her back, as if she was actively suppressing the urge to pull out her hammer and put an end to this. She was unable to mask the conflict on her face and her eyes seemed to glimmer with a faint wetness to them. John placed a hand on her shoulder in a gesture of comfort. She glanced towards him and briefly smiled before turning back to the undead man. “You mention a crystal… can you describe that? What kind was it?”

The undead’s face slowly tilted towards Moira, causing her to avert her gaze. “I do not know what kind it was; it was too dark,” he said. “But the creature’s fur seemed to form around it; I think it was embedded directly into its skull.”

“O-okay, thank you…” Moira replied weakly before entering a tense silence.

That silence hung awkwardly in the air as neither she nor John could think of what else to ask. It seemed to them like anything significant had already been answered. Realising this, Lee let out a small sigh before taking the baton. “Can you recall how things unfolded? Did you see which way it came from? Or which way it went?”

The undead shook uncomfortably for a moment. “I couldn’t see it at first… but I heard it… panting, growling… it appeared right in front of me, right from nothing but thin air, and took a swipe at me. Everything else is a blur… I’m sorry I don’t know what else happened.”

“That’s fine,” Lee nodded slightly. “You’ve been very informative, thank you, Peter.”

The detective began to shift as he prepared to end the spell, before the corpse suddenly spoke out. “C-could you do me a favour?”

“If it’s within my power,” Lee replied slowly, settling back down.

“I have a wife… and two kids, a little boy and girl,” the corpse spoke with a slight waver as if he was crying, but his ruined face was incapable of shedding a single tear. “We’re separated, my wife and I… and she got custody… I haven’t seen my kids in a while… could you tell them daddy loves them?”

“Of course,” the detective replied somberly. “I’ll see to it personally.”

The corpse tried once more to sit upright, as if in an attempt to thank Lee. But at that moment there was another burst of arcane darkness and the body went limp. There was a long and awkward silence as John and Moira simply stared down at the corpse, now returned to its lifeless state, while Lee tended to the cut on his arm.

“You alright?” John nearly jumped as a voice spoke behind him.

He turned to see Red looking at him with concern. “Sorta…” John sighed. “It’s all just a bit surreal. How much of that did you see?”

“Just the tail end of it,” Red replied.

“It is grim work,” Lee voiced as he rejoined the three of them and took back his suit jacket from John. Somehow even more colour had been drained from his waxy face. “But someone has to do it. Take comfort in the fact that the cause is just.”

“So this is just another day in the life for you, huh?” John asked the detective.

Lee glanced towards him briefly, his expression neutral. “Somewhat. It’s not everyday we’re fortunate enough to be left with a body. In this line of work, most crimes are left undiscovered or unsolved; it’s easy to make something disappear permanently in the Abyss.”

“...So what do we do now?” Moira voiced the question that was on all three of the teens’ minds.

“We accumulate the information we’ve learned and make sense of it,” the detective replied before his eyes wandered to Red. “What did you make of the tracks?”

“Well,” Red hummed. “They’re weird. The forelegs belong to a large cat while the back legs belong to a bird.”

“That’s consistent with both the wounds on the victim and his testimony,” Lee replied before gesturing to continue.

“I’d wager the creature’s heavy, whatever it is,” Red continued. “It left fairly deep footfalls for a grassy field… and the way they’re spaced is… odd, like it was drunk or didn’t know how to walk.”

“Drunk?” Lee hummed. “Or perhaps ****? It fits with the possibility that this creature escaped from some form of captivity.”

“Yeah, I’d put a pound on that,” Red agreed with a slight sigh before sparing a glance towards the corpse. “So what’d our mate here have to say?”

Lee turned to John and Moira. “What new information did we learn?”

John paused for a moment as he recalled what had been said. “Well… uh… the description of the beast was helpful, some sort of manticore with bird feet and draconic wings.”

“If it has wings, they’d have to be pretty damn big to fly,” Red opined. “They’d be carrying a lot of weight around.”

“It also had that gem in its forehead,” Moira added. “But we have no idea what it is or why it’s there.”

“Yes. What else?” Lee prodded.

“It can turn invisible — maybe,” John suggested. “I mean… the cor- the victim said he heard it before it appeared right in front of him.”

“That seems likely, yes,” the detective agreed, a slight smile playing on his lips. “Well done, all of you. You handle yourselves well given the circumstances. There are a few final things to go over, but we’re otherwise done for the day. You’ll have the rest of the day to yourselves while I sort out measures to catch this creature.”

“You don’t want us around for that?” John asked curiously.

“There won’t be much for you to contribute,” Lee replied swiftly. “Anything you could learn I will go over with you all tomorrow. That means I expect you to report to the Central Precinct by 8:00 o’clock am and not a second late — Don’t give me that look, Newman, I know it’s a weekend, but this beast won’t be going to Sunday mass.”

“Yeah, I know that…” John grumbled unhappily at the thought of another early morning. Mornings were rarely kind to him.

“Good,” Lee replied sternly. “And ensure you dress sharply. Remember this is your job until this case is closed.”

John sighed and suppressed any snide reply that might have been bubbling inside. He may not have asked for the job per se, but now that he had seen the aftermath of the attack for himself, he felt compelled to help prevent it from ever happening again. Before he could reply, however, his attention was wrenched away as his phone buzzed suddenly in his pocket.

He glanced at the unknown number showing on screen briefly before answering. “John, it’s Sam.”

“Sam?” John groaned as the surprise and embarrassment he’d awoken to earlier that morning suddenly came back to him. “L-look, I promise I’ll be back in thirty minutes to an hour, okay? Hell, I’ll even bring cleaning equipment.”

“What? Oh uh… right, forget about that for now, just get back here right the fuck now, please!” The tone of anger John had expected was absent from her voice. In its place was a sincere plea of urgency that immediately sounded the alarm inside John’s head.

“Did something happen?” he asked with genuine concern.

“It’s Emelia!” Sam’s voice was hushed but serious.