"Dig him up."
It was a rite of passage for those newly in the family. Ravi had done it, at 19. He watched the young men take shovels to the dirt in silence. They brought no lights, since the air was crisp and the moon was full. It was a gamble being so out in the open, but this was time sensitive. Maybe, he considered, already too late. He would not speak this thought aloud, and cast it in with the soil piling up beside the grave.
Dull thuds, not very deep in. The coffin would be put back at a proper depth later, once its quarry outlasted its usefulness. Perhaps he'd have these boys do it tonight. It was a good a time as any. His underlings pried the box out from the earth and set it on the rim of the grave. A few crowbars slid in the cracks and the top was off. Ravi wished they could just leave the lids unattached, but he only had control of the funeral processes maybe a third of the time, and moreover, nailing the coffin shut was somehow an important step. None of this worked right if it was skipped. The men clambered out of the grave, and gathered behind Ravi. As was procedure, one stood on his left with kerosene, and one on his right with a road flare, unlit but readied. There hadn't been an incident in decades, but his grandfather had said to him, "Fortune can favor the bold all it wants. Longevity favors the prepared." The death of Ravi's father had been proof of that, elsewhere. One of his lieutenants came up to him with a pocketwatch. Past midnight. The lieutenant snapped it shut, retreated back into the ranks. Ravi commanded, "Mortchanteur, you're up."
A tall, burly woman stepped out from the others, and shed her longcoat. She pulled a flask from her vest, took a belt, and tucked it away. "How long has he been dead?" 'Ow long 'az 'e been dead? Her accent was thick. It drifted between quebecois and parisian from day to day, for reasons only she knew. Ravi had his guesses. He also posessed a great deal of tact.
"3 and a half days. Close as we could get to the limit. The embalmer complained about being rushed but he was in the ground as quick as we could."
"Anyone looking for him? Asking questions?" The woman asked.
Ravi Laughed dimissively, condescendingly. "Get to work!"
Mortchanteur stepped in front of the coffin, first spreading out her fingers, then curling them slowly, cracking all her joints. Ravi was not a small man, but only stood about 5'8", and next to the easy 6-and-change of the person beside him, he felt tiny. Her biceps weren't bigger than his head, at least for now, yet he suspected if she needed to, she could have lifted the coffin out all by herself. She slid a pair of dark glasses from her pocket, put them on, and began to sing.
No one would call it singing, if heard in isolation, but given that Ms. Mortchanteur's name translated literally to Deathsinger in english, he was hard pressed to call it anything else. It was unnatural, hollow and rasping, gutturally resonant yet almost inorganic, something that defied any neat category of pitch but definitely followed the rhythms of a melody. Ravi did not describe it in any level of detail nor try to reproduce the sounds himself, not only because Mortchanteur's method was unique even among her trade—he was afraid. He scared little, killed plenty, nearly died even more. This was a ledge he refused to approach. The way it echoed, sometimes overlapped and doubled back on itself, tested anyone's mettle. Sure enough, one of the newer family members ran off with hands clamped on mouth to keep from screaming, and a seasoned veteran towards the edge found they could not keep down the contents of their stomach.
The corpse gasped. Eyes shot open, hands fumbled for something to grip, legs kicked softly. The horrid reverie in the french woman's throat stopped suddenly, empty reverberations trailing into the newfound silence. The light that Ravi tried and always failed to ignore around the edges of the tinted lenses on the necromancer's face faded, but did not disappear completely. Not yet.
Mortchanteur crossed her arms as Ravi jumped down into the grave. Sidling up beside the corpse, he threw an arm on the side of the coffin, leaning on it like a neighbor might lean on a fence. "Hello there, sir. Do you know who I am?"
The dead man blinked a few times, bewildered, and looked at him. "...I think so. I've not met you in person, but I've seen pictures. You're Ravi Manjhi."
Ravi slapped the top rim of the coffin. "Correct, my friend! Although, we have met, I should say."
The other man frowned. "We have?"
"Indeed! Well, not face-to-face. I came up behind you, and—" he tapped along the wood, hitting the holes where the nails had been, "—fired four shots into your spine, careful not to hit the lungs or brain. Not that you would be useless, but it would be more work for my associate and I hate to inconvenience her more than I already do."
The dead man looked up at the mountain of a woman standing at the end of his pinebox, then back to the grinning figure next to him. "I'm dead? How can I be talking to you? What do you want from me?"
"Answers, my good man, answers." It was rare for Ravi to be this involved. Usually they sought out the already dead, or someone else did the killing. The closing time window and the personal nature of the situation meant he needed to see it through directly. If you want it done properly, well...
"What if I don't want to help you?"
Morchanteur spoke up. "You do not have a choice."
The corpse sneered. "You brought the frog. This about that bi—"
"Did you know, my dear fellow, that the dead cannot lie? When buried in sacred ground, the soul pulled back to the body must tell the truth, no stories, no excuses, no fabrications? It's fascinating, I wonder who discovered it." Ravi shrugged. "It certainly wasn't my family. We cremate our dead. Always have, cultural thing, waaay before anyone tipped us off to this neat little parlor trick. Folks around here love to bury their dead, especially you Catholics. Fair and easy pickings, I say."
"You killed me! I won't answer anything. This place is unholy. You profane it, you bastards."
"Nonono, I assure you, it's all on the level, hallowed ground, done by a priest and everything." Ravi nodded over his shoulder. "He's buried about 3 graves that way. We can dig him up if you like, he can confirm this for you." He shook his head and put on a mocking frown. "He's always so glad to be revived, always desperate to talk to people. I do not think he got into his paradise unending..."
The corpse gulped, and laid back down a little. "I don't remember anything. No, I do, there was a line."
"I'll admit my knowledge of Christianity is a little rusty, but sounds to me like either that was a purgatory, or the...ruby gates? Onyx gates? I can never remember, the gates of your afterlife have an overloaded queue."
"Pearly gates." Someone said from the back.
Ravi snapped his fingers, and pointed to whoever said it without looking. "Pearly, thank you. I owe you a drink, bud."
"Hurry up." 'urry up. More a growl than a request. The necromancer was impatient. Ravi couldn't blame her for a second.
"See what I mean? I'm inconveniencing her. First question, did you answer to the Don directly?"
"Yes," the dead man answered quickly, then grimaced, as if he couldn't stop the words leaving his mouth. Which, of course, was precisely the case. "I'm not telling you where he is."
"You would, but I couldn't give a shit. He tasked you with retribution, correct?"
The dead man laughed. "For your botched little bomb? Yes, yes he did. I oversaw all of it."
Ravi could feel his temper rising, and in the corner of his eye he could see the necromancer's hands clenching. He walked to the end of the grave, put up his hand. With a quiet oui, Mortchanteur pulled him up and out. He patted her shoulder, then walked around the coffin, squatting on the other side.
"You knew where to hit us. Do you have anyone in our organization?"
The corpse shook his head. "No. The Don told me he had informants, and a lot of men watching you, but we couldn't get anyone inside. I refuse to give names."
Ravi absentmindedly adjusted his pant legs, shifting to get comfortable. "You can't refuse me, but again, I don't care. You aren't a cleaner, so he didn't give them to you anyway. You didn't need them to do your job."
"Don't act like we started this, Manjhi. If your stupid little sister hadn't blown herself up, we could have—"
A hand as hard as stone and just as cold grabbed Ravi's arm before he could swing his fist. He exhaled slowly, and collected himself. "Vanessa was older than me by a few years, actually. Women just tend to look younger than men at our age. You're kidding yourself if you think this started a few weeks ago. The Don's been moving in on us since my father's funeral, and you look like you were in grade school when we held that. What happened—and what's probably going to happen to him—has been a long time coming. But I'm tired of repeating myself about how little any of this means to me. Did you take Joyce Harlow?"
"And now you're asking me questions you already know the answer to. Of course, I was there, or you wouldn't have told me." This was the problem with the dead, Ravi found. They had to tell the truth, but there was no bounds, no rules on taunting or decorum. This one had figured it out quickly. You had to be strong. More than a few Q&A sessions had been ruined by a lost temper. It continued, emboldened. "Is that why the french whore is here? Because we took her mistress? Her little plaything? Is that why your sister went all kamikaze on us? Because she found out her wife was fucking another girl? At least she cremated herself for you, saved you the trouble."
Ravi wasn't as spry as he once was, but he still moved incredibly quick. He couldn't possibly stop her physically. She could throw him the length of a swimming pool if she wanted. Still, his hands on her stomach had stopped her. The necromancer radiated hatred so intense he swore it singed his stubble. "Miranda, please." She relented, finally. He turned back to the corpse. "I know what you're trying to do. It's not going to work. I need names. Locations."
"Fuck you, Manjhi."
"Question," The Necromancer reminded him.
"Where is she? Who's guarding her? How many?"
The corpse stared daggers at him, but told him everything. More than he asked for, technically. Layouts. Where traps were. Ravi knew she was still alive, but they were running out of time before the Don realized what was going on and killed his only bargaining chip to spite them. It was possible she was already dead. Not likely, but possible.
Mortchanteur was nervous. Ravi had never seen that before. "They must have noticed he was gone. We will be too late."
Ravi smiled broadly. "They have no idea. He told you to lay low." He looked back over at the dead man, who was scowling. "The Don knew you'd have a target on your head. So did you. You told him where she was, that you'd be gone for a week, so I couldn't find you. You didn't even tell him where you were going. There's not even a payphone out there! But you were sloppy, and your driver knew. We didn't kill him, we didn't even have to lean on him, he found us as soon as he dropped you off and sang like a one-man barbershop quartet."
The corpse tried to spit, but nothing came out. "Traitor."
Ravi raised his hands up. "You're not wrong. He got you killed. And everyone who isn't Joyce in that safehouse. But he might have stopped a war. We'll keep him safe, don't worry. I owe him big. And you owe me something else. What's the password?"
"Beef stroganoff."
Ravi genuinely laughed at that. Threw his head back and everything. Pretty fucking good. "I am out here defiling your cultural traditions left and right, what makes you think I give a fuck about mine? Miranda, what's my favorite meat dish?"
The necromancer smiled in a terrible way. "Veal, mais non?"
Ravi leered at the corpse. "Veal. I know jews who put cheese on their burgers and a Muslim who eats more bacon than anyone else on the planet, you piece of shit."
The dead man floundered. "B-but you said you cremate your dead—"
"Hey, some habits die harder than others. Besides," Ravi said, waving a hand at the cemetary around them, "It's just a smart business practice at this point."
"Someone will notice a fresh grave. They'll dig me up, The Don will find out. Someone will—"
Ravi laughed again. "Who? Who? You just don't get it, do you? My family owns almost every graveyard and half the funeral homes in the tricounty. We've been doing this for decades now. Anywhere that we don't own directly is either on our payroll or is smart enough not to fuck with us. The cops aren't going to come looking, because I pay them, just like everyone else does, and they don't say shit to anyone because taking anybody's side is bad for their business. No one's going to stop me. The Triad owe me a favor, the yakuza don't care what I do, the mobs are afraid of me, Scots and Irish both, and my grandfather wiped the Russians off the face of this city for what they did to my dad. And he didn't even like my dad. Have I missed anything? Any secret bits I might have to watch for? Timed phrases, anything like that?"
The corpse answered no, then began spewing some of the worst racial epiphets Ravi had heard in a hot minute.
"Oh, shove it, asshole. Your people got to this country, what—a generation before mine? Two? This isn't your homeland, either. For all we know your family and mine came over on the same boat." He looked over to one of his younger men. "You, take your shirt off."
The dead man called him a slur. Ravi chuckled sadly. "God, I wish. It would have made my life so much easier. Kid, give me your shirt." The young man obliged, and winced when Ravi tore the sleeve off. Ravi rolled his eyes. "Oh, get over it. I'll buy you another shirt. A better shirt."
He set the sleeve aside and shoved as much of the shirt into the corpse's mouth as he could. The dead can't suffocate, but it muffled the thing. Normally at this point, the necromancer would stop animating the corpse and they'd bury it again. Not this time.
"You know, I heard a long time ago from someone that some christians will bury the truly wicked face down, to give them a view of where they're going next. Ms. Mortchanteur, if you would do the honors?"
"Avec plaisir, monsieur Manjhi," said the woman, and with one foot shoved the coffin back into the grave, rolling it as it went. The box splintered a little on impact. Ravi went over to the two men who had stood next to them, and took the kerosene from one. He dumped a little on the shirtsleeve, and the rest onto the pinebox. He grabbed the road flare, started it, used it to light the shirt, then tossed them both into the grave. He and Miranda left before it had finished burning, but the light stopped glimmering around the dark lenses and she took them off before they'd even gotten to the car.
As they hurdled down the hillside in the dark, between passes of a bottle of whiskey and drags of cigarettes, Ravi asked Miranda, "Could you bring back someone from ashes, do you think?"
"Most necromancers couldn't." Miranda took a strong belt from the bottle. "I'm the only one 'alive' who can. Joyce could have learned."
"Harlow will learn, I'm telling you she's alive. What about...someone who's as scattered as Vanessa was?"
Miranda looked away. "That damn corpse was right, Ravi. It's my fault." Ravi realized he had never seen her cry before. "I drove her to—
He cut her off. "I wasn't asking you to bring her back. Miranda, did you hear what the witnesses said? Or read any of it?" The large woman shook her head. He pressed on. "She was trying to plant the bomb under the car. I have no idea where she got it, but she had it under the bumper when one of their crew spotted her. She was halfway through attaching it, but they made her stand up with it. She tried to talk to one of them, but another fired a gun in the air, I think to intimidate her, and it scared her enough that she accidentally lost her grip on the explosive. It detonated when it hit the ground."
Miranda's eyes went wide, and she looked away. He didn't like seeing her this vulnerable, this childlike. It wasn't right. He continued, "Vanessa was afraid, terrified, that if she divorced you, you'd be cut out of the family, or worse. You loved her, but never in the same way or anywhere near as much as she loved you. You knew that. She knew that. She came to peace with it, Miranda. She wanted you to be happy, truly happy, even if that meant you'd never love her the way she loved you. I know she was coming back, because she had this whole plan, this secret 'wedding' for you and Joyce, and she spent so fucking much on it and roped Joyce in on it, too and—"
"Arrêt." She'd started saying quietly, building like an earthquake. "Arrêt, arrêt, arrêt, arrêt, ARRÊT, ARRÊT—!"
Her fist slammed into the door of the car, hard enough to knock the whole inner panel loose. The driver faltered, but Ravi barked at them, voice cracking, to keep going. Tears streamed down his own face. "Do you think if I thought, even for a second, that she killed herself over you, you would still be alive? Or Joyce? I love you like family, Mia, I do, but I'm not just doing this for you." He shook his head. "All the time she knew you, she did everything she could to make you happy. I'm just doing what I think she would do. If nothing fucking else, I owe her that. You'll have your beloved back by dawn."
She nodded at that, and for a while there was only the sounds of the travel and the engine.
Half an hour later, Miranda said, "When I was a child at the academy, reading all the pirate novels I could find, I always thought that 'Dead Men Tell No Tales' was a lecture on the importance of not leaving witnesses, not that the deceased cannot make up any 'tall' stories."
Ravi, his head leaned against the window watching the dark countryside roll by, replied with a weak smile, "Yeah, well...shows you what they know."
