Confessions of an Aspiring Resurrectionist - part 2

[hakoMike]

Continued from Part 1.

Part 2: Picking Up The Pieces

This chapter has been included on The Aethervox episode 5.

Peter Green patted the dirt flat on the top of his former boss’s grave. He knew Dietrich Dassault did not have any family, so there was nobody to inform or ask about burial wishes. Internment at Shady Rest seemed as appropriate as anywhere else, given the time that Dietrich had managed the cemetery and the fact that he had lived in the small cottage at the edge of the property. Burying him there was almost like he had never left home in a way. Peter had picked out a nice spot under a tree. He didn’t know what kind of tree it was; the indigenous fauna of Malifaux was similar enough to their earth-side versions that most of the time he looked past them without thinking about the fact that this it a species that was completely foreign to the world on which he was born. The particular tree under which Dietrich held his final repose had broad leaves of a deep green. If the dead could find comfort in their resting place, this one seemed a good choice to Pete. He marked the grave with a head-sized rock he had unearthed while digging it and sat down at the base of the tree.

“So what happens now?” Pete asked aloud. In some sense Pete already knew what would happen next. The mausoleum still had bodies to bury from the winter, and it was becoming more crucial by the day to get them underground. He knew that he would have been doing all the digging anyway, but without Dietrich the idea seemed more daunting. Having someone for company when you are standing in the bottom of a grave was a comfort for Pete, even if that company was mostly just Dietrich chastising him.

A nut, something like an acorn but with a larger cap, fell from the tree to land on the grave. Pete heard the scrambling of a squirrel in the branches. Malifaux squirrels were a good 50% larger than their counterparts across the breach but just as twitchy. “Get away, tree rat,” Pete scolded. It’s not that he really minded the squirrels most of the time, but the distraction right now was unwanted. He stood up and kicked the quasi-acorn off the grave. He wasn’t sure why but he wanted to preserve the purity of the fresh earth, at least for a few minutes. It wouldn’t be long before the grave was as covered with leaves and grass as all the others. Pete sat again and listened to the birds. He couldn’t remember if their songs were the same as earth-side birds or not. The longer Malifaux was home the more some differences became muddied in his mind.

It had been two years since Pete crossed the breach piercing the unfathomable membrane between worlds. He had been given a simple choice at the time, either to pay reparations for his stupidity or accept indentured servitude for three years. Given his financial situation, there wasn’t much choice. The circumstances around the accident were the sort of misfortune that most people laugh about in taverns for years afterward. He had been running materials at a construction site when, through a complex series of trips, spills, and poorly executed attempts to correct the problem Pete had caused the entire framed building at the construction site to burn to the ground. Pete himself had only a vague memory of the event, having been struck in the head by a large piece of lumber at some point just before the fire started. Fortunately there were no fatalities among the workers in the ensuing blaze. Unfortunately for Pete the investigators had traced the events back enough to see that he had caused the blaze. Several corroborating witnesses placed Pete at the scene, tripping over things, spilling things and his ill-fated attempts to fix his blunders. In his defense, Pete thought the portable forge at the site was the bad decision, and the fact that he caused that particular substructure to collapse into it was a testament to poor management. It made little difference now. At least he was two-thirds done with his stint, the first year having been spent at another construction site before the foreman there was able to determine that Pete might be better suited working on things that could not fall. Grave digging seemed a low-risk position for him, and so he came to be placed at Shady Rest. Even with his second year behind him Pete had little idea how he would escape the employment of the Guild once the three years were complete. He had managed to accumulate no small amount of debt just feeding and clothing himself over the pittance that he received as living expenses. He was working now as recompense for the building that was lost. Once that was completed he’d be working to pay off the debt. Pete couldn’t see any way out of it. He was beholden to the Guild, possibly for life. Although part of him rankled at the idea, most of him had a dull acceptance of the fact. With Dietrich’s death still affecting his current situation it was difficult to look much beyond that. There was a lot of work to do.

The mausoleum was a stout stone building a stone’s throw from the office and crematorium. Pete began the arduous task of relocating each of its occupants to a permanent home. Dietrich had always handled the paperwork for keeping track of who had been buried where, so Pete was at a loss as to how to handle that. Fortunately Dietrich had started letting him choose the actual plots for burial, so Pete did not hesitate to choose new homes for the thawing corpses and got to work burying them. Each one he buried he noted on a sheet of paper the name of the deceased and as accurate a description of the burial location as he could muster. He resolved that as soon as the more time-critical work was complete he would figure out Dietrich’s method for recording that sort of thing, then send a communique to the Guild to inform them of Dietrich’s death and to request a new cemetery supervisor. Soon, but not until the mausoleum stood empty again. Pete did not want new management to think he was slothful. There were worse Guild work assignments than grave digging.

One by one the simple wooden boxes resting in the mausoleum found their way to new resting places. The papers tracking each burial location grew as Pete started realizing that more and more information was required to precisely indicate where the deceased were now located. Pete figured there must be a code or a chart or something to indicate where bodies lie, but until he found out he was forced to capture locations such as “4 yards North of the tree immediately West of the grave marked with the three rocks with red veins.” Pete was initially confident he could find each of these graves based on his directions, but as more and more bodies were put in the ground the less he felt confident with the method with which the location was being recorded.

“At least the worst that can happen is that we dig another grave and accidentally find one I’ve already buried,” Pete thought to himself. He found himself hoping the Guild would send someone by to check on him so that the Guild officer could carry news of Dassault’s demise back instead of Pete having to write something. He had no idea what to write or even where to send it. He figured he would find a communique from the Guild and send it back to that office. They could figure out where the request should go from there. “It’s not my job to hire my own boss,” Pete complained to the air as he dug another grave. “The Guild should figure this whole thing out. They were plenty quick to figure out that I should give them three years for a stupid accident, that’s for sure.”

Several days of hard work came and went and the number of boxes was almost gone, much to Pete’s relief. He was sore from the work, lonely (which surprised him greatly, given how tedious Dietrich’s company could be) and feeling increasingly overwhelmed with being forced to know what to do and how to do it. Pete had just closed his eyes for a few minutes of rest after eating his lunch near the most recently finished grave when the sound of hoofs snapped him to alertness. The pay delivery! Of course! He jumped up and ran toward the office, leaving the tools scattered on the ground.

The paymaster’s wagon was drawn by a swayback old horse that looked like it had come out of retirement at pasture to work again. In contrast, the guard officer’s horse was an alert, energetic beast clearly frustrated by having to keep pace with the slower animal. The small cart carrying the paymaster and the wage scrip in an iron bound box bounced on the uneven road leading to the cemetery office. Pete ran to intercept the paymaster, but the guard interposed his mount and drew his gun in warning. Pete came to a sudden stop and held his hands up near his ears.

“Put it away, McDorn,” the portly paymaster scornfully sighed, going around to the back of the cart to unlock the safe-box. “The kid works here.” The guard holstered his pistol and guided his horse out of the way but kept a stern and disapproving eye on Pete as he approached.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” Pete gushed.

“Yeah, I get that a lot in this business. Where is what’s-his-name? The old guy?”

“Mr. Dassault is dead. That’s why I need your help.” Pete was speaking so fast the paymaster barely understood him. “I need to report this to the Guild office and ask them to send a...”

“Whoa, hold on there. It’s not my job to report about what you are doing or not doing here. I’m here to deliver the pay and that’s it. Show up, deliver the pay, and leave.”

Pete stopped short. He had not expected to be so shut down. “Can you deliver a message back to the office for me then?” he asked. “I need to tell someone what happened.”

“Son, unless the message is in writing and you have it in your hand at this exact second to hand to me, which you clearly do not, then the answer is no. I’m here to deliver the pay and anything outside of that is none of my concern. I can take a message back for you if you give it to me next week. So, if you don’t mind, here’s the pay parcel for Shady Rest. Please sign here and I’ll be on my way.” Pete signed the register the paymaster was pushing in his face and accepted the cloth bag containing the scrip. “Where’s last week’s bag?” the paymaster asked. His voice was thick with exasperation.

“Last week’s bag?”

“Never mind. I’ll get it next week. I show up and give you the pay parcel. You give me the empty bag back the next week. That’s how it always works. Please don’t forget it next week,” the paymaster explained with the sort of exaggerated politeness designed to convey the opposite attitude.

“Oh, okay. I will. I mean I won’t. I won’t forget.”

The paymaster swung his bulk back into the wagon’s seat. “Come on, hotshot. We’ve got more stops still.” The guard glared at him but kept silent and followed the wagon down the road away from the cemetery. Pete watched them until they were around the bend and out of sight. He looked down at the bag he was holding, not quite sure what to do with it, then started walking back toward the office. Back at the office he opened the pay parcel to discover bundles of scrip for both himself and for Dietrich. For just a moment his heart skipped a beat seeing all that scrip. Dietrich had always handled the pay, and only handed Pete the pay he was entitled to. Pete quickly reminded himself that once the Guild found out that Dietrich was dead they would be coming back for his pay. Looking over the much larger bundle that comprised Dietrich’s wages, he reasoned that he had been acting as the supervisor of the cemetery for nearly a week now and therefore should be entitled to a supervisor’s pay. He rubbed the bundle of scrip with his thumb thoughtfully, then let prudence get the better of him and he put it back in the cloth bag. He put the bag up on a cluttered shelf.

Turning around to exit the office, Pete upset a pile of papers on the desk. The resulting chain reaction caused hundreds of sheets of paper to either slide across the desk haphardly or spill in chaotic piles on the floor.

“Aw, great. The boss is gonna...” he started, stopping when he remembered that the boss wasn’t going to be doing anything. The next boss however was a different story. What if they send a new supervisor and he finds the place like this? What if he blames Pete for the state of the office, thinking Pete ransacked it in Dietrich’s absence? Panic started to set in. There were only two bodies left to bury and Pete decided the office would get a serious cleaning and organization after that. He picked the papers up the floor and started to put them on a wall shelf, and saw the lacquered box containing the strange metal shapes. The box had been sitting on that shelf since Pete had put it there after Dietrich’s death.

“This is all your fault,” he scolded the box. “If the boss had never found you he’d still be alive and I’d be able to finish up another year and then I’d be free to go.” Pete’s voice got progressively louder as he vented his frustration. “Stupid box and stupid shapes and stupid ideas, and I’m the one who has to pick up the pieces.” At that he slapped the box with the back of his hand, accidentally catching the latch with his sleeve and pulling the box onto the floor, spilling its contents. “I suppose I deserved that,” Pete moaned. As he picked up the metal pieces to put them back in the box he couldn’t help but stop and examine some of them. They really were quite pretty, even if they were clearly killers. The green ones were especially pretty, and some of the shapes were unlike anything he had ever seen. Pete touched two of them together and they stuck in place. Oddly, they also came apart easily when he pulled on them, leaving no evidence of the prior connection. Pete took some more of the shapes and constructed a small metal man. Amused by his own cleverness, he took the man apart and made a dog, then a bird. By the time he had constructed a small hut with the shapes he had all but forgotten the mysterious end that Dietrich had suffered shortly after using the shapes to partly reanimate a corpse. To Pete, they were novel and fun, and he hadn’t experience a lot of fun recently.

Pete sat on the floor looking at his creation, a somewhat oddly shaped house with an asymmetric roof and irregular windows. It looked alien, and likely would not have been mistaken for a house by anyone but its creator. Pete picked up the pile of papers that had been stored in the box. He expected mad rantings and scribblings, but instead what he saw was a compact, legible script that appeared more scholarly than insane. He considered the hermit in the horrible hut in the woods where the box was found, and wondered whether this was the work of the hermit or if the hermit was studying someone else’s work. Pete flipped through a few pages, reading a line here or there or examining a diagram. In multiple places he recognized Dietrich’s handwriting in margins making notes on the meaning of various passages or diagrams.

Pete was overcome with curiosity about what Dietrich had written. The old man had devoted himself to learning to use the shapes to perform resurrectionist magic, albeit for only a short time, and it had killed him. Pete wanted to know what was so compelling to Dietrich, having never experienced anything that drove him to that extent. As Pete thought about it, he realized that he was jealous. He was jealous of Dietrich having something pushing him to try to be something greater. Peter reminded himself that a high tendency toward accidents and misfortune had pushed him to a path of caution just to preserve his skin, as well as that had worked. Why couldn’t a man like Pete have a passion? What could that blowhard Dietrich do that Pete could not? Peter quietly rebuked himself for disrespecting his late boss, and reminded himself that Dietrich had been given authority over the cemetery and gone his career without being forced into indentured servitude. He suppressed the negative thoughts and focused on what Dietrich had said shortly before he died, that the world was full of secrets waiting for a person like Pete to unlock. Pete flipped through more of the sheets, comparing Dietrich’s notes to what the text read. He stepped through each advancement in Dietrich’s understanding of the shapes and the magic they represented. He read the neatly printed text and examined the diagrams, and came to a sudden and shocking conclusion.

He knew what Dietrich had done wrong. He knew he could do it right.

Continued in Part 3.

Edited August 8, 2011 by hakoMike
added title

[osoi]

Excellent second installment, this story is really sucking me in