Katherine Lykos

Deceiving Crows

Chapter 1

Thinking like a perpetrator was normally Detective Mavros Gimley’s specialty, but as he scrutinised the almost empty case file in his hand, he could not come up with one good reason why someone would want to steal a thousand-year-old corpse.

He pinched the paperclip icon from the file and flicked it at the wall, where it expanded the interactive holo and allowed him to select play. 

The clip showed the victim, Carmen DeCont, in her mid-thirties, sitting at a small writing desk. She flipped open an early model computer that Mav knew was called a ‘laptop’ and selected a new writing page. She began a sprint, her fingers sliding over the keyboard, her eyes glazed over as if she looked through the screen, pumping out the text as if in rhythm to the beating of her heart. Blood in the veins, words on the page. Before long, a story took shape.

Buried Alive

Nate followed me as I moved around the suspended casket. I caught the broad man opposite watching me. A chill breeze cut through the fabric of my black dress and snaked around my legs. 

Nate and I were two of only a handful of people to attend the reclusive woman’s funeral. She had died suddenly from a stroke after a two-year battle with dementia. We all stood on a small rise of land, arranged in a semi-circle.

An unmistakable sound shattered the silence. It came from the coffin, a double rap on the wood: knock, knock. 

Nate glanced at me, wide-eyed. He leaned over to whisper into my ear, his breath colder than the air around us. ‘At the open viewing… I think… she moved.’

‘What?’

‘Just a single flutter of the eyes, but I think she moved.’

I had missed the open casket viewing, choosing to sit it out by pretending to be in need of the bathroom. By the time I returned, the coffin was closed, the ceremony over. 

None of the other guests seemed to have noticed anything amiss.

Nate continued, ‘The funeral people got real mad when I suggested that she might not actually be dead. They told me it was just twitches, happens to dead people, and then they slammed the coffin shut.’

My hand flew to my mouth. ‘What if…? We have to stop them burying her!’

The watching bear of a man came to stand near us, too close to be coincidence. It was unclear what his role was. He wasn’t the undertaker, and he wasn’t a guest. 

His huge arms folded across his chest as he barred our view of the burial site. ‘The funeral has concluded.’ 

‘What are you, security?’ Nate asked. ‘Weird thing to have at a—’

The man cut him off with a look. 

Nate squeaked out an apology before walking quickly away, leaving me there with the man. I made to turn, taking one last look at the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. A backdrop of spindle-branched poplars were the crime’s only witnesses. 

My face heated. I couldn’t let them do it; I wouldn’t. The thought of what might be happening turned my stomach. It was the fate I could think of, being buried alive. 

I took off, sidestepping the large man and sprinting toward the coffin. 

But he was quicker, and I felt a tug at my shoulder. 

I jerked my body away and heard the fabric tear. I was off course, now, and couldn’t take a direct line to the coffin without being nabbed. The poplar hedge loomed but I spotted a gap between the trunks. I slid through, my dress billowing, my legs muddying. 

His thick arm reached in but missed me. 

I was almost at the open grave. The coffin had been lowered to the bottom. I ran as fast as I could, but before I reached the spot, the bear-man stepped in front of me. How would I get to the coffin, open it, and stop the supposedly dead woman from suffocating? 

The man’s open arms blocked my way. He edged closer.

My heart skidded. ‘Please, I just want to check that the woman in the coffin is actually dead because my husband Nate—’

‘Don’t concern yourself in matters that aren’t yours to be concerned with.’ 

‘I can’t stand by while someone’s buried alive!’ 

I looked over his shoulder, pretending to speak to a person that wasn’t there. 

‘Nate!’ 

It drew his eye, as I intended. Knowing this was my only chance, I darted forward, trying to slip past his overbearing frame, but again he was too fast. 

An arm swung across my gut, winding me. I was breathless but I couldn’t double over; he had me squeezed against him in a bear hug. I struggled for air. I tried batting him away, but it only made his grip tighten. I could hardly breathe. 

‘Please, you’re hurting me.’ I gasped.

Pressed up against him I felt a hard line form against my hip. I swallowed.

‘I’ll leave now. I promise.’ 

His reply came as a grunt. He slowly placed me back on my feet. 

I started walking away, then spun and darted to the grave. His muscled body tracked me but I managed to slip past. 

I leaped into the open pit, landed hard on the smooth polished wood. Dirt flicked into my face as I turned to peer out. 

The man’s face loomed above, a dark smudge outlined against the grey sky. He shuffled around the edge as I stood and peered out of the grave. There was a headstone beside him. The words caught me off guard: In Loving Memory, Carmen DeCont. 

The name — that was my name. 

What? How? 

Everything stilled. I stared at the coffin at my feet. It couldn’t be mine. 

My knees buckled, my hands slid over the smooth surface, the answer was hidden beneath a thick lid of mahogany. My nails scraped and clawed at the edges, prying, lifting. 

The wood creaked, groaning timber not made for reopening. Goosebumps coated my skin as I threw up the hinged lid. 

Inside was plush fabric, pink and fresh. The coffin was empty. There was nothing inside but the lining, in wait for flesh and bone, in wait for answers that remained missing. 

The clip ended with Carmen selecting the file location in which to save her story. 

Title: Buried Alive > Save > Browse > Narratives > Dreams. 

Mav opened the door to the horseshoe sitting area, throwing light into the space. With his finger and thumb, he pinched the icon off the wall which retracted it to a tenth of its size. When he let it go, it automatically returned to the almost empty case file and read the attached PrivNote: 

Assuming you’ve seen the news headline about this. Let me know your thoughts once you’ve watched the bookmarked clip. Barry.

The first person he needed to speak to was Dr Eve Portland, the person who had discovered that Carmen’s remains were missing. He made the call.   

‘Detective…’ Dr Portland squinted to her right, ‘… Gimley is it?’

‘Mav will do.’ The particulars were on his upper right wall-screen. ‘I’m investigating—’

‘Yes, I was told a detective would be in contact.’ 

It was fine by him to go along with anyone who had a derision to niceties and time-wasting. ‘Ok then, let’s dive straight in shall we?’ 

Her face remained blank.

Mav tried for a smile and still got no reaction. He cleared his throat wishing it were a reset button. 

‘So, give me the run down, you’re conducting research for a behavioural science paper?’

‘That’s right. I’m scanning and collating data of tube-grown brains and skulls, comparing posterior cingulate cortex sections with bone and skull analysis, to discern whether physiology plays a role in predictive forecasting, rather than — or as well as — adaptions to environment.’

‘So the old nature-vs-nurture thing right?’

She pursed her lips. ‘In a nutshell,’ she replied primly. 

‘You’re studying the regrown brains and skulls of clairvoyants?’  

‘Correct.’ Frown lines appeared on her forehead. ‘Look, can we cut to the chase, what do you want from me?’

He might have to work a little harder on the flattery if he was going to get her to be more willing to share anything other than the wall she had double-bricked herself in. ‘Sounds like interesting research, when you’re done, send it to me, I’d love to read it.’ 

Her lips moved from flatline to non-flatline, it wasn’t a smile, but it wasn’t a frown either, he would have to live with that. ‘If I finish, now that I’ve had this major setback.’

He was glad that she had raised the issue, since it was the entire reason for the call. He’d already been over to the site and spoken with the curator of the cemetery museum, who couldn’t tell him anything new, being as gobsmacked as the rest of humanity to find Carmen DeCont’s remains missing. ‘Yes, tell me about that. You have a personal interest in people described as clairvoyants?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘My interest lies in the physiology of individuals who are known as having extrasensory perception, otherwise known as clairvoyance, yes.’

‘And how did you chose your research subjects?’

‘Proof and merit.’ 

‘So some people have more than others?’

She huffed. ‘Detective. To put it simply: there are clairvoyants, and then there is Carmen DeCont.’ She eyed him with a side tilt of her head, a question.

‘I’ve heard of her. Please go on.’

Dr Portland’s eyes hovered below the screen, at a single point that Mav suspected was the nub system, the ever observing government ‘eye’. 

She jolted slightly, as if waking up. With an annoyed shrug, she said, ‘Look, I don’t know what you want me to tell you that I haven’t already said in my statement. I’m sorry to be blunt, but I have a lot of work to get to, especially since I now need to replace a major gap in my research.’

Mav had read her statement. It said that she had received the necessary clearances to perform the scans on Carmen’s remains, but when she tried to do just that, the results came up blank. 

‘Before you go, doctor, can you tell me: have there been others who have tried to scan Carmen DeCont’s remains or attempted to gain samples to regrow her tissue?’

‘I have no idea, you’re the investigator.’ 

The call ended. 

He said to the now blank wall, ‘Point taken.’ 

Mav wouldn’t read too far into her sudden fixation with the nub, it wasn’t unusual for people to be extra careful with what they said around it. He hoped he was correct in this, if not, it opened up a whole can of questions and alarms that would take him into a conspiracy warren. Better to believe Dr Portland was just being paranoid. 

A phone icon flashed on the wall, signifying a call from the superintendent. With his finger, he made a tick sign over the green pick-up and answered with, ‘Yo, Barry G.’ 

By way of reply, the moustachioed man on the wall in front of him asked, ‘Anything?’ 

‘Not yet,’ Mav replied shortly. How much did the man think he could achieve in a single morning? 

‘What do you think, are we dealing with a straight-up, old-school grave-robber, or what?’

‘Too early to know. The curator reckons no one has disturbed the site.’ He shrugged. ‘I need more time.’ Obviously.

‘Hmm. You saw the bookmarked piece I sent you?’

‘Yeah, seems the victim predicted her own crime.’

‘Perhaps.’ Barry shifted in his seat like he had a sudden prickle in his arse.

Mav had the sudden feeling that Barry knew more than he was letting on. 

‘If it’s not a grave-robber,’ he mused, ‘the next finger points at the film-makers responsible for her doco. The Obs are the only ones who have gone Back, so it’s possible they may have established a connection with her. I’m about to start interviewing them.’

‘Right,’ Barry scratched his chin. ‘Speaking of Obs, I got word that Dez isn’t doing well.’

Mav tensed. ‘And?’

‘He’s been asking for you.’ They stared at each other for a beat before the superintendent continued, ‘Up to you if you want to go.’  

It wasn’t a great shock, Mav had been half expecting it, having received word 18 months ago that Dez was fighting the last dregs of his longevity inoculation. There were no set guarantees on how many years the treatment extended life. For some, it enabled them to push to half a millennium, while others, like Dez, were wrung out a little over the two-century mark.

Getting clearance to go see Dez was odd. Normally the inmates’ requests were ignored, but for some reason Barry passed on the messages. Maybe the superintendent felt it was the right thing to do. It was that exact reason Mav decided to make his way down the ‘throat’ — the shaft to the sunken prison — to pay Dez a final visit. 

Dez had been, like the majority of the population, an academic. And not just any academic: he was an Ob, a position held in the highest regard. Obs were weavers of a person’s life, threading and compressing years of noteworthy achievement into a doco, like the forming of a piece of art. It took years of dedication and hard work to forge the story they wanted to tell: non-frilled, blunt and, at the same time, captivating.

Dez wasn’t in his usual alcove. He’d been given the mercy of a four walled cell, the lights of which were dimmed to help the man find the darkness beyond, when he was ready, so Mav enabled the multi-ocular eyepiece to allow vision in the low light.

Dez stirred in the single bed. His once muscled frame was now skin that looked like a wet rag strung over bones, with eyelids that were wrinkled clam shells closed to the ceiling. One mushroom remained, emerged from the side of his warped nose, its stem bowing toward the middle of his face. Even from where Mav stood, he could make out the deterioration of the gills, a sure sign that death knocked. The last Mav had heard, Dez had at least five fruiting bodies across various parts of exposed skin, all different forms of fungus known as Angels of Death sprouting from his hands, neck, face. It was a well-known sign. Once the sprouting stage began, the end was near. 

Dez’s breath rattled, and Mav came nearer, keeping his hood up and the multi-oculars set to adjust automatically on Clarity HD. 

Dez was probably beyond speaking, so Mav said, ‘I’m here for you.’ 

And he meant it, he wouldn’t have come otherwise. The man before him was good, he was a good man who had done a bad thing, not the other way around. He knew plenty of people, like Carne, who were bad but did good things… well, not so much good things, but things that were considered to be ‘good’, like tracking down people like Dez (who were deemed to be ‘bad’). 

As an Ob, Dez specialised in producing the biographies of historically significant figures within the field of macro-biology. And it was in that capacity that he fell in love with the past and felt the need to break the law by trying to remain there, which resulted in him being captured, sent here, and ending his days as a total and utter fuck-up.

Another rattle, this time Mav was sure he heard his name on that breath. He came closer and placed a hand on the bony shoulder. ‘I’m still here.’ 

Dez seemed to settle back into himself — at least the rattling turned to more of a rasp. Mav figured he should keep talking, so gave the man a rundown on his latest investigation, because it wasn’t like Dez was going to spill the beans of confidentiality. 

‘Pick-me…’

Mav startled. ‘You know I can’t pick you up,’ he left out the words, your bones are way too brittle man. 

‘… back,’ Dez’s voice came out as a sudden loud croak. 

Mav’s head emptied of blood as the word sunk in.

‘Back? You can’t go Back. I’m sorry.’ He paused when those clam shells cracked open and onyx pearls latched onto him. Dez’s pupils dilated, then seeped into his hazel irises. Blackness stared Mav down, and in that moment, he swore he glimpsed the dying man’s soul. 

A second later and the look was gone. 

With a last rattle, Dez’s eyes returned to the ceiling — soulless, empty. 

Mav threw off his cloak as he stepped inside his singles unit — pod G576 section, stack #539275 — and stretched his neck muscles as he made his way to the horseshoe. 

Back. What the fuck was Dez thinking? Pick me up. Take me Back. How could he ask such an impossible thing? And in front of a surveillance nub. Take me Back. Even if Mav fully understood the process of stepping into the past, even if it were up to him to grant such approval — which it absolutely wasn’t — why would Dez want to go back? He was a man of science; what difference would it make where he ended up, in the past, or here? Dust is dust, now or then.  

Mav melted down onto the padded floor. Rectangular folders flashed to life beside his thigh. With a finger he sifted through Carmen DeCont’s narratives, choosing another piece under Dreams, ranked second by popularity. He flicked it up to play on the circular walls. 

He stood to watch her write, if this was going to be a thorough investigation, he needed to watch the Obs handiwork too. 

The title: Brain Transfer.