Chapter Text
My name is Will Graham and I have what you might call a strange job: I find dead people. When I was 17 I was struck by lightning, and since then I’ve been able to feel them. I can sense the final location of a person who’s passed on and share their last moments. The way I see it, I’m providing a service to the dead while bringing some closure to the living—but I’m used to most people treating me like a charlatan or a freak. It’s nothing I’m not used to. You see, when I was 13 I presented as an omega, much to the shock of my father and everyone who knew me. For a male to be an omega they have to be born with an extra chromosome called a Z-chromosome. It’s a very rare occurrence, and it’s said that that extra Z-chromosome can cause male omegas to be highly unstable. So no one wants to be friends with a male omega, or date them, or even give them a job. Because male omegas are considered unstable, they’re required by law to have a registered legal guardian to keep tabs on them their entire life. My father was my legal guardian until he passed away five years ago. At that point I managed to slip through the cracks by moving from Louisiana to Virginia where no one knew me, hide the fact that I’m an omega, and I even managed to turn my freakish ability into a career.
Today I was headed for a job at St. John's College in Baltimore. It was founded in 1696 and is the third oldest college or university in the United States. I know this because I googled it. It has a cemetery attached to it called St. Margaret’s. A professor at the university hired me to put on a demonstration for his class. Since there would be no searching for bodies, this would be an easy job and I was actually looking forward to it.
Shows you what I know.
~~~⊰X⊱~~~
I didn't like Dr. Chilton as soon as I met him face-to-face in the old cemetery. There was nothing wrong with the exterior of the man: he looked like what you would expect a college professor to look like, although he dressed a bit more upscale than your average college professor. No, it was his expression I didn’t like. He had this smug, smooth air about him that said he had brought me here to prove what a fraud I was. His expression said he'd never believed I was anything but a fraud and that he was looking forward to proving it and humiliating me in front of all his students.
I forced a smile as I shook his hand, eyes focused on his chin. I’d dealt with assholes like this before. Lots of them. When you claim to be able to do what I do, people naturally think you’re a charlatan. But the fact that he’d brought me here with the explicit intent of making a fool out of me really pissed me off. As he looked me over in my faded chinos, worn shoes, and an old army jacket I’d picked up at a second hand store, I could see he was looking forward to humiliating me, and I couldn’t wait to wipe that arrogant smirk right off his face when he found out I was the real deal. But for now I would just stand here patiently waiting for his direction and let him have his fun. This was his show, after all.
I had googled Dr. Chilton and discovered that he was the administrator of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but apparently he also taught a psychology course at the college two days a week, and the title of this particular course was "An Open Mind: Experiences Outside the Box." I mentally rolled my eyes at the irony because I could tell that Dr. Chilton was one of the most closed-minded people I had ever met.
Dr. Chilton had told me that he had a medium out here last week. I didn’t ask how it went, but from the smirk on his face I had a pretty good idea.
I glanced around the cemetery. If it hadn't been for Dr. Chilton and his “secret agenda,” I would have been brimming with anticipation. I drew in a deep breath as I glanced at the tombstones, worn and weathered. This was my kind of place.
By American standards, the cemetery was an old one. The trees had had nearly two centuries to mature. Some of them could have been mere saplings when the denizens of St. Margaret's churchyard had been laid to rest. Now they were tall, with thick branches. In the summer their shade would be a blessing, but right now, at the end of October, the branches were bare, and the grass was bleached and strewn with dead leaves. The sky was an overcast leaden gray, and I pulled my coat tighter around me against the chill.
Dr. Chilton’s students were standing nearby ready to watch my "demonstration." That was the point. Looking at the twenty or so faces in the group I saw expressions ranging from curiosity to boredom to skepticism. It made me think that the medium’s demonstration hadn’t gone so well.
The trees and bushes that surrounded the old church, its yard, and its cemetery gave us a feeling of privacy. It hadn't rained in a week or two, so I was wearing my regular shoes rather than boots. I would have better contact if I took my shoes off, but the students and Dr. Chilton would doubtless interpret that as further evidence of my eccentricity. Also, it was a bit too cold for going around barefoot.
"Mr. Graham, we're all anxious to see your demonstration," Dr. Chilton said, practically laughing in my face. He made an elaborate sweeping gesture with his arm that encompassed the rows of headstones. The students looked cold, bored, or mildly curious, and I wondered who the medium had been. There weren't many with genuine gifts.
“Whenever you’re ready, sir,” I said, forcing another smile. Most of my jobs came from referrals, so I always tried to be as polite and professional as possible. Dr. Chilton looked suddenly uncertain before he got his smug face back firmly in place. I was about to wipe that look off his face, and I was going to enjoy doing it.
All the students had clipboards, and I knew the clipboards contained diagrams of the old graveyard, with the gravesites neatly drawn in and labeled. Though this information wasn't on their clipboards, I knew there was a detailed record of the burials in this particular graveyard, a record containing the cause of death of most of the bodies buried in it. The parish priest had kept this record for the forty years he'd served St. Margaret's church, keeping up the custom of his predecessor. But Dr. Chilton had informed me that no one had been buried here in the past fifty years. These records had been discovered three months ago in a box in the most remote storeroom of the St. John’s College library. So there was no way I could have found out the information the registers contained beforehand. Dr. Chilton had heard of me somehow. He wouldn't say exactly how my name had come to his attention, but that didn't surprise me. There are websites that connect to websites that connect to other websites; and in a very subterranean circle, I'm famous.
Dr. Chilton thought he was paying me to be exposed in front of his class. He thought I considered myself to be some form of psychic or spiritualist. Of course, that made no sense. Nothing I did was occult or a gift from above. When I was seventeen, I was struck by a bolt of lightning through an open window of the trailer I lived in with my father. It was just me and dad since mom had run off with a trucker when I was three. Fortunately, dad had been sober enough to call the paramedics and perform CPR on me until the ambulance arrived. So if you think God causes natural disasters, then I suppose you could say that God is responsible.
I recovered—more or less. I have a strange spider web pattern of red on my lower torso and right leg. That leg has episodes of weakness. Sometimes my right hand shakes. I have headaches. I have nightmares. And I can find dead people. I can also tell their cause of death.
That was the part that interested Dr. Chilton. He had a record of the cause of death of almost every person in this cemetery, a record to which I'd had no access. This was his idea of a perfect test, a test that would expose me for the fraud that he knew I was.
"Where would you like me to begin?" I asked, with perfect courtesy.
Dr. Chilton smirked at his students. "Why, this one would be fine," he said grandly, gesturing at the grave to his right. Of course, there was no mound, probably hadn't been in a hundred and seventy years. The headstone was indecipherable, at least to my unaided eyes, worn away by time and the elements. But that didn’t matter; I didn’t need to read the headstone to know who was buried there.
The faint tremor, the vibrations I'd been feeling since I'd neared the cemetery increased in frequency as I stepped onto the grave. I'd been feeling the hum in the air even before I'd passed through the rusted cemetery gates, and now it increased in intensity, vibrating just below the surface of my skin. It was like getting closer and closer to a live electrical wire.
I shut my eyes, because it was easier to shut out the crowd and concentrate that way. I really don’t like being watched when I do this, but it’s an unfortunate part of the job I’ve had to get used to. The bones were directly underneath me, waiting for me. I sent that extra sense down into the ground under my feet, and the knowledge entered me with the familiarity of a lover.
"This is a man, I think in his thirties. Ephraim? Something like that. A cart fell on him and his leg was crushed. He bled out."
There was a long silence. I opened my eyes. Dr. Chilton had stopped smirking. The students were busily making notations on their clipboards. One girl's eyes were wide as she looked at me.
"All right," said Dr. Chilton, his voice suddenly a lot less scornful. "Let's try another one."
I suppressed a smile.
The next grave was Ephraim's wife. The bones didn't tell me that; I deduced her identity from the similar headstone positioned side by side with Ephraim's. "Isabelle," I said with certainty. "She died in childbirth." I felt sad because Isabelle must have been pregnant when her husband met with his accident. "Wait a minute," I said. I wanted to interpret that faint echo I was picking up underneath Isabelle's. To hell with what they thought. I pulled off my shoes but kept my socks on in a compromise with the cold weather. The older the bones the weaker the signal and removing my shoes would give me better contact. "The baby's in there with her," I told them.
I opened my eyes.
The group had shifted its configuration. They stood closer to each other, but farther from me.
"Next?" I asked.
Dr. Chilton, his mouth compressed into a straight line, gestured toward a grave so old its headstone had split and fallen.
As I headed for the next grave I heard another car pull up, and a young woman with a halo of fiery red curls holding a camera got out.
"Hello!" the newcomer called out, and Dr. Chilton waved her over. "Sorry I'm late."
"Mr. Graham, this is Freddie Lounds from the press. I forgot to tell you that she wanted to get a few shots, do a human interest story. I thought it would be good publicity for the school. And for you, of course,” he added. “I hope you don’t mind."
The good doctor hadn’t forgotten. He had wanted to humiliate me further by having the press here to document my failure for all the world to read. I would have to go online after I left here and see if Ms. Lounds did a story on the medium.
I considered for a moment. I didn’t like the press, but good publicity could possibly bolster business, so I just shrugged. "It’s fine," I said. I stepped onto the next grave, close to the headstone, and focused my whole attention on the ground below me. This one was hard to decipher. It was very old, and the bones were scattered; the coffin had disintegrated. I hardly felt my right hand begin to twitch, or my head begin to turn from side to side.
"Kidneys," I said, at last. "Something with his kidneys." The ache in my back swelled to a level of pain that was almost unbearable, and then it was gone. I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. This was really taking a lot out of me.
One of the youngest of the students was white as a sheet. I'd spooked her good. I smiled at her, trying to look friendly and reassuring, but I don't think I achieved it. She took another step away from me. I sighed and turned my attention back to my job.
Next, I found a woman who'd died of pneumonia; a child who'd died of an infected appendix; a baby who'd had a heart malformation; a baby who'd had a blood problem; and a pre-teen boy who'd had one of the fevers—scarlet, maybe. Every now and then I heard Ms. Lounds snap a picture, but I tried not to let it distract me.
After thirty or forty minutes, Dr. Chilton seemed almost won over. He pointed to a grave in the corner of the cemetery farthest from the gate. The plot he indicated lay right by the fence, which had collapsed almost completely in that area. The headstone was partially obscured by the overhanging branches of a live oak, and the light was especially bad. This is a draining process and I was already chilled, and I was beginning to get tired. At first I attributed my extraordinary reading to that. I opened my eyes and frowned.
"It's a girl," I said.
"Ha!" Chilton chose to regard himself as vindicated. He kind of overdid his glee, he was so happy to be proved right. "Wrong!" he said.
Mr. Open Mind—right.
"I'm not wrong," I said frowning, though I really wasn't thinking about him, or the students, or even the journalist. I was thinking about the puzzle under the ground.
I got down on my knees and put my hands on the grave, even though I was already half frozen. That’s when I noticed that although an attempt had been made to level this grave, it bore the flattened spots that blows with a shovel on soft dirt would have produced.
Well, well, well. I remained still for a moment, the implications working their way through my brain. I was having an ominous creeping feeling about this one.
While the kids muttered nervously to each other, I stared at the headstone, trying to decipher it. It read, JOSIAH POUNDSTONE, 1839-1858, REST IN PEACE BELOVED BROTHER. No mention of a wife, or a twin, or...
It’s possible the ground had shifted a bit and the body buried next to Josiah's had sort of wandered over, but I didn’t think so. The fresher the body, the stronger the feeling I get, and this body didn’t feel old like the others.
I got up and walked around the grave, then stepped back onto the grave. Distantly, I heard the click of the camera, but it was not relevant. I knelt back down and laid both hands on the turned earth and closed my eyes. I was as connected as I could be without lying full length on the ground.
"Something's wrong here," I said.
"A problem, Mr. Graham?" Dr. Chilton asked, scorn lacing his voice. This was a man who loved to be right.
"Yes." I stood up, stepped off the grave, shook myself, and tried again. Standing right above Josiah Poundstone, I reached down again.
Same result.
"There are two bodies here, not one," I said.
Chilton made the predictable attempts to find an explanation. "A coffin gave way in the next grave," he said impatiently.
"No, the body that's lower is in an intact coffin." I took a deep breath. "And the upper body isn't. It's much newer. This ground has been turned over recently."
Finally interested, the students quieted down. Dr. Chilton consulted his papers. "Who do you. . .see in there?"
"The lower body, the older one. . ." I closed my eyes, trying to peer through one body to another, something I'd never done before. ". . .is a young man named Josiah, like the headstone says. By the way, he died of blood poisoning from a cut." I could tell from Chilton’s face that I was right. However the priest had described Josiah's death, modern knowledge could recognize the symptoms. What the priest may not have known, however, is that the cut had come from a stab wound inflicted in a fight. I could see the knife sliding into the young man's flesh, feel him staunch the blood. But the infection had carried him off.
"The upper body, the newer one, is a girl."
There was sudden and absolute silence. I could hear the traffic rushing by on busy roads just yards away from the old graveyard.
"How recent is the second body?" Dr. Chilton asked.
"Pretty recent," I said. On the age of the bones, I mostly go by the intensity of the vibration and the feel of it. I never said I was a scientist, but I was right.
"Oh, my God," whispered one of the female students, finally understanding the implication.
"She was murdered," I said. "Her name is. . .Felicity. Felicity Campbell." As I heard what my voice just said, an awful sense of doom flowed over me.
After a moment, in which the younger people in the group turned to each other and started whispering, Dr. Chilton said, "You mean the girl who went missing a few months ago?"
"Yes," I said, wiping my hands on my pants to get the dirt off. "That is apparently who I mean."
The journalist was clicking away frantically now with a kind of manic glee. At least I’d made somebody happy.