Today’s short story is pretty fun, with a good tension build-up!
October 4th – John Galt – ‘The Buried Alive’ (1821) – Read it here or, for a more accessible version, here. Listen to it here.
So, once upon a time before The Crows was in its current form, I wrote a novel called The Reckoning, in which a necromancer from another world came to Pagham-on-Sea to save them from one of Death’s escaped minions, running riot in our world. It was a pretty cool story, and it was here that Ricky Porter – in embryonic form, and not as fleshed out as he became – first appeared.
It was also the book where I properly explored Katy Porter and her powers, but with a different dynamic and purpose to her current one in Thirteenth.
In this novel there is a scene in which Katy Porter is buried alive, is found dead, and then the family decide to resurrect her… I won’t put the whole thing up, but enough to get a flavour of it.
Two nights later, the moon was waxing gibbous. The hill was being watched.
About a mile away from the stakeout site, Katy Porter was walking the lanes from her cousin’s cottage, tucked away among the trees of The Chase, once a wood belonging to the medieval monastery which, after the Reformation, became part of the Fairwood estate, and was now public land maintained by the County Council. Budget cuts had left the Council without the means to send in tree surgeons and the like, so now The Chase was wild and overgrown, and Ricky Porter’s crooked old cottage sat in the middle with a dilapidated air of mouldering neglect.
Katy had stayed a few hours, her uncle and aunt looking on as Ricky performed the first rite of the Change. “Glad you changed your mind about all this travelling, Uni, nonsense,” her uncle had said gruffly, while her aunt rested in her natural form beside him, her many beady eyes blinking in unison as approving slime dripped from her maw. “Don’t see the fuss, myself.”
Of course you wouldn’t, Katy had thought angrily, you can’t even spell India never mind point to it on a map. But she had kept her peace, out of respect born of fear.
The tea Ricky made her drink was bitter and vile, but no worse than the stuff Dr Monday had made her take. Ricky’s second mouth had gaped in a grin at the back of his half-shaven head whenever he turned around, like it could see the faces she pulled behind his back.
“Thirteenth daughter of a thirteenth daughter,” her aunt had said, replacing her thick black veil as Katy made to leave. She had showed Katy to the door, leaving a trail of slime behind her beneath her Victorian mourning gown. “We will expect great things.”
Now, the night had fallen, and Katy was pondering this. She wished she could speak to her gran, but Bez Wend was dead, killed in a nursing home protecting some secret. She knew that much. A sad, cold ache in her chest slowed her steps. Head down, she trudged along the lanes without paying attention to where she was, remembering the little things: the clicking of the knitting needles by the gas fire, the fresh baked cakes and the way the smell wafted through the hallway, the gingerbread every Winter Solstice, the pearly buttons on her favourite cardigan, the Sunday roasts with all the family around the table and muffled cries coming from the oven,the lily of the valley scent she wore on special occasions. Katy sighed. Her gran had made the best gingerbread.
There were no pictures of her grandad. He was a mythical figure, and no one had any clear memories of him to share. It was like he had never existed. But Katy had once been allowed into her gran’s private room, down in the cellar, to see the little shrine of bones in his honour and put an offering on it. Little Katy had reverently placed a bar of chocolate between the dribbling candles, still wrapped, because it was the most precious thing she had in her pockets at the time. She still treasured the pride and pleasure in her gran’s indulgent, approving smile.
“I bet I’ll be slimy like Aunt Lucretia,” Katy muttered glumly to herself, imagining she was talking to her gran. “It’s not fair. I bet I’ll get tentacles with suckers on them, or start growing snakes out of my head…” she kicked a stone moodily along the road. “…I don’t want to be like Aunty Maud, or Ricky, or Uncle Darryl, or Pete…” She started to run through her family members one by one, but gave up. “I like being me.” The moon would be full next week, and Ricky would perform her second rite then. She had a week before some of the attributes she would be stuck with emerged and settled down. “I guess spines wouldn’t be too bad. Useful.” An owl hooted in the distance. “I mean, I guess, ok, tentacles would be useful,” Katy continued, hands in the pockets of her jeans, scuffing her trainers on an uneven patch of tarmac, “I just don’t fancy the slime thing. Tentacles might be cool, actually. Like the whole sea hag aesthetic, that’s pretty badass. I could pull that off. I’d have to change doctors though, and Dr Debas is always so busy, there’s a waiting list… and I don’t like him as much as Dr Monday.” She huffed. “Swings and roundabouts, I guess.”
A rustle from the hedgerow made her turn around.
It was probably just a rabbit or a hedgehog.
Katy backed away a few paces and carried on going.
“Wish I had some now,” she muttered. “No one would fuck with me then.”
Behind her, a twig snapped.
Katy didn’t bother to look. She picked up the pace, an adrenaline surge zipping through her veins and lending her speed. Don’t run yet, she thought. Try and Change… but she couldn’t turn it on and off at will. Not yet. That wasn’t how it worked.
Her own brisk steps and the rustling of her jacket played tricks with her hearing, making her think she heard sounds that weren’t there. She forced herself to stop, listening hard, more to prove to herself that there was nothing there.
The soft rustle, identical to the sound of her own waterproof jacket, continued on the other side of the hedge, catching up.
Katy lurched into a full pelt sprint. She powered down the lane, flat out, phone and house keys bouncing awkwardly in her jacket pocket and banging against her hip, ragged, panicked breaths not deep enough, lungs and legs starting to burn. She raced around the gentle curve in the road where the hedgerow broke, vision blurring and spots dancing before her eyes. Just as she got level with the stile, a dark shadow bounded over the top of it and slammed hard into her side.
Katy had no breath left to scream as the weight smacked her down, her ankle twisting under her, and she hit the road forearm first, flinging out her arm by instinct. It didn’t hurt at first. A cloth was pressed over her face, blocking her nose and mouth with its sweet, slightly acrid, smell. The world turned a sickening shade of blue-black flashed through with bursts of polka dots, and she didn’t know anything else until she woke choking, wracked with pain, and another shovel of earth was dumped on her face.
~~~~
At five in the morning with two hours left of the shift, Jazz made them another coffee and triple-checked the rota. It was a slow night. There had to be someone on at all hours this time of year, just to check on the bodies. Leaving them to their own devices unmonitored was generally frowned upon.
Tonight, everything had been still.
The cleaners turned up with the bits of the Riser in the canteen in a black bin liner, and Tina volunteered to lay them out to pass the time, although this was a body destined for the ghouls who worked at the Crematorium, and ghouls weren’t fussy on food presentation.
Jazz knocked the office window to get her attention.
Blinking and stiff, she waved and wandered back into the room. “Nothing going on out there,” she said. “Parts are ready to go off to the Crem. I still can’t believe top floor let one get in the lift.”
“Just had a call from Viv,” Jazz said, looking haggard and serious. Their usual forensic pathologist, Vivien had a long-standing relationship with the Underground and had just returned from annual leave. “He’s been in a field all night. You’re not going to believe this. Katy Porter’s been buried alive.”
Tina gasped. “Katy? She’s not – she isn’t dead?“
“Found at about ten o’clock,” Jazz muttered. “Shame Yury’s help couldn’t have been everywhere at once, but there’s miles of fields to cover I guess. She’d been buried earlier this evening or late this afternoon, and then dug up again a few hours later – and there’s a puncture wound in her arm.” He sighed. “No sign of him. They’re going to bring her in soon, another hour maybe. Weather’s turning to shit. Viv says he’s got all the video and the pictures, he wants us to prep.”
“No,” Tina exclaimed, staring at him. “We can’t. We can’t do an autopsy for twenty-four hours, not on someone like her. Make sure Viv and Paula know she’s a VIP guest with a twenty-four hour wait.”
‘VIP guests’ of the morgue were treated with kid gloves, generally because you never knew what they might do if disrespected. Waits varied, but Tina was very good at information recall: two years of careful study had enabled her to produce a colour coded wall chart that tracked VIP waiting times, with emoji stickers to show what happened when these were ignored. It had been a labour of necessity rather than love, and the result of much trial and error. The most common emoji on the chart was the face screaming with fear.
Jazz shrugged. “On it. Find a place we can store her at a reasonable temperature.”
“She has to be kept warm,” Tina said, thinking fast. “I’m going to take the trolley and set up something in the boiler room, ok? I’ll get some blankets.”
“You better be right,” Jazz muttered, calling Viv back. “Hi, Viv. Eglantine says it’s a VIP guest with a twenty-four hour wait so she’s setting up in the boiler room not the lab. Ok? Yes. Yes, sure. I’ll – No I don’t think that’s a problem. Thanks. Bye.”
“Are we good to go?” Tina was shivering with impatience and urgency. “Poor kid. She must’ve seen something, surely.”
“If there’s nothing by the end of the wait, they’re going to conduct the full autopsy like the others,” Jazz said. “The scene is going to take a few days to process, it’s a bloody big area. Viv says they’ve had a nightmare with one of the floodlights – it’s been on the fritz all night. Now the weather’s changing. So if she didn’t see anything, or we wait and nothing happens… hopefully he’s left a trace, this time.”
Tina frowned and peered out of the window, cupping her hands around her face as she pressed up to the glass. “Can’t see any rain.” The threads of dawn were beginning to appear on the horizon, and the sky was cloudy but clearing up. “If it’s localised… how long has it been since she was found? Seven hours? That bodes well, doesn’t it?”
Jazz was back on the phone. “Viv? Move her, asap. It’s not raining here at all – sky’s looking pretty clear. If you want to preserve the scene, get her shifted. Egg- Tina- thinks it’s localised… bodes well for her being a VIP. Yeah, she does know her shit, doesn’t she?” He grinned at Tina and gave her the thumbs up. “Yeah no worries, we’re on it. Prepping now. See you in a few.”
Tina beat him to the door. “Right,” the medium said, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s see what Katy Porter knows.”
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