Far Harbor, 1925
Special Agent Maggie Conroy’s headlights cut through the evening fog as her busted old car crested the hill overlooking Far Harbor. It was almost a relief after nearly ten hours of driving treacherous roads with nothing but her dread and frozen trees for company. The town curled in on itself below her, the lighthouse, docks, shops, and homes trying desperately to hide from the frigid water of the Atlantic. The only warmth in the night sky came from the glowing red neon sign for the Magnus Hotel, sitting on its little island in the bay, insulting her with its memories and its threat. Far Harbor wasn’t a place she ever wanted to see again, but a murdered parent tends to make people do a lot of things they otherwise wouldn’t.
Director Harrison dispatched her from Titan City this morning. “It’s a sensitive case, Conroy, and no one knows the area or the vic better than you.” The truth was, Maggie would have come whether Harrison sent her or not. The victim was her father, Leo Conroy. He’d been found dead at the Magnus Hotel in Far Harbor Bay and the local sheriff’s department wasn’t equipped to handle the investigation, but this has nothing to do with the prestige of the hotel. Nor was it because it catered to the wealthy and mysterious who couldn’t abide a scandal, but because it was haunted. DMA-certified haunted.
This wasn’t a quaint, Victorian ghost story, an alcoholic housewife with a spirit board, or a country bumpkin jumping at the sound of their house settling either. The Magnus Hotel was owned and operated by the dozen or so specters that called it home. The sheriff was right to reach out to the Department of Monster Affairs for assistance. Most people were uncomfortable speaking with any form of the living dead, except maybe vampires, but ghosts in particular tended to raise the hackles of the mundies.
None of the spirits at the Magnus had a history of violence. Yes, some of them had come to violent ends on hotel grounds: Some haunted hotels did commit murders trying to “recruit” new attractions, but the Mangus was a classier joint than that. There had not been a spiritual manslaughter at the Magnus since they registered with the DMA before the war. Still, someone killed Maggie’s father, and she was going to find them.
Maggie’s car sputtered as it cut an uneven path through the ankle deep snow. A row of dim-bulbed street lamps cast a pale yellow glow over the brick facades and frosted windows of Main Street. She pulled the car to a stop in front of a small building labeled, Sheriff’s Office. Its walls were piled with snow almost to the windows, and the two wall sconces on either side of the entrance looked more like incandescent ice cream cones. A deputy in a thick wool police jacket shivered in the vestibule, warming his hands with his breath between glances out the fogged window. Maggie switched off the ignition and rushed across the sidewalk and up the three stairs to the door.
The deputy pushed it open as she reached the threshold. He was bald with kind blue eyes above his cherry red nose and beneath his bushy blonde eyebrows. His voice stuttered from the chill as he said, “Agent, thank Skadi you made it here in one piece.” There was an accent to his voice, Swedish or Danish maybe.
“She certainly didn’t make it an easy trip.” Maggie stepped into the station and stuck her hand out. “Agent Conroy, at your service.”
“Deputy Lindström,” he took her hand with a slow dubiousness. His body language was tense, almost as if he was handed something fragile and told to watch it for a moment. “May I take your coat?”
Maggie gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Not just yet, I think I need to warm up a bit.”
“I just put on a pot of coffee; I can get you some.” Lindström returned her grin, seemingly happy to be of service.
“That would be great. Is the sheriff in?” Maggie brushed the snow off her coat and looked around. The station’s wooden interior and slate floor made the place seem smaller on the inside. A door to the left was marked Jail, in simple white letters, and an open doorway to the right seemed to descend into a sitting area. There was a too-large oak desk at the back of the room that almost gave the appearance of a judge’s bench with its imposingly exaggerated size. A simple bank of filing cabinets choked the walls on either side, starting at the doors and leading back to the corners.
Lindström shook his head. “He went home for the night when we brought the body back.”
“You brought the body here?” Maggie wheeled around, faster than she intended.
“Yes?” Lindström recoiled a step, raising his hands as he flinched. “Sheriff Armstrong said that’s all you would need.”
So, Director Harrison told the local cops about her abilities. That would certainly explain why Lindström was so cautious around her. “I wish you wouldn’t have done that. The crime scene is going to be contaminated.”
“Why do you need to see the crime scene when you can,” Lindström slouched his shoulders and leaned in like he was trying to keep a secret, “you know, just ask him what happened?”
Maggie sighed and recited her least favorite bit of legal jargon. “Evidence obtained solely through magical means is not enough to gain a conviction in criminal court proceedings. Juries still think magic is too easy to fake to prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt. Besides, talking to corpses doesn’t always paint the clearest picture.”
“I’m sorry, Agent Conroy, I didn’t know. We don’t get a lot of violent crime out here, especially not crimes involving vidunder.”
“Monsters?”
“Ja. We don’t have many in Far Harbor, outside of the hotel, I mean. And I suppose the other agent.”
“Other agent?”
“Ja, the skelett who came in here before you, he’s waiting in the back.” Lindström pointed to the jail door.
“What’s he doing in there?” Maggie followed Lindström’s finger to the door.
“The other room has food in it, didn’t seem safe to have it around a dead body.”
“The corpse is back there too?”
“No, of course not. He’s outside in the shed. Nice and cold!” Lindström smiled like everything he said made sense.
Maggie rubbed the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “Why don’t you just grab that coffee while I go check on the other agent?”
“I’ll get right on it.” Lindström saluted and ran off to the other room.
“Thank you, deputy.” Maggie watched Lindström as he disappeared from view, then made her way to the jail and opened the door.
The biting cold from outside reasserted itself as she stepped down the one concrete stair into the slightly recessed area. Gray stone made up three of the four walls, interrupted only by the iron bars of four small jail cells. Each had a simple wooden slab bolted into the wall and a pot for pissing. Only one was occupied by a man crazed with fear. He sat on the ground as far as he could from the bars. The man hugged his legs, making himself as small as possible. Maggie could just make out the whites of his eyes poking over his kneecaps.
Across from him, leaning against the cell door, smoking a cigarette, was a skeleton in a blue, pinstriped suit. His tie dangled loosely as he blew a puff of smoke into the cage. The single lightbulb in the room glared off the top of his amber-brown skull. A chrome-plated .45 hung from a shoulder holster just beneath his jacket.
The man in the cell noticed her first, pointing with a sharp ferocity. “It’s not my time, take her instead!”
The skeleton turned his head, regarding Maggie with empty sockets, save for two pinpricks of canary yellow light. He stood and sighed. “Finally, Agent Conroy. Can you please explain to this dipshit that I’m not the Grim Reaper?”
Maggie nodded and took a step forward. “Director Harrison didn’t mention that you were a skeleton. Agent?”
“Agent Jones, but most people call me Bones. Well, most people call me, ah please don’t eat me Mr. Skeleton, but Bones is fine.”
“Bones it is.” Maggie stuck out her hand. The grip that answered hers was surprisingly warm, though she felt like they were about to start a thumb war. She turned her attention to the man in the cell and flashed her badge. “Sir, this man is not here to hurt you. He is a special agent for the Department of Monster Affairs.”
“He is no man, he is the Harbinger of the End he is.”
Bones groaned, his neck creaking as he said, “For your information, I’m actually the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. I just left my robe in my car.”
Maggie glared at Bones and grabbed him by his thin arm. “Outside, now.”
“I hope this taught you a valuable lesson about the meaning of Christmas, young man.” Bones’ laughter clattered off the stone as he was dragged down the hall.
The two almost bowled over Lindström on their way out of the jail. He had two mugs in his over-sized hands, he barely held onto them as Maggie’s weight slammed into him. He caught himself and smiled: “Coffee?”
Maggie pushed Bones forward and snatched her cup. This case was already proving to be frustrating. “Thank you, deputy. I need somewhere proper to conduct the autopsy and examination.”
“An autopsy? Doc Simms won’t be awake for at least twelve more hours.”
“I am a doctor, I can perform the autopsy.” Maggie took a sip of the still too hot coffee. “I just need space.”
Lindström nodded, “I’ll see if I can get a key for the clinic down the street, but the doc’s not going to like this.”
Bones looked at Maggie, “Do we really need to do an autopsy? Harrison told me you could talk to him.”
“Ja, can we try that before we wake up half the town?” Lindström’s kind blue eyes turned puppy dog for a moment.
“Fine, but start making those calls. I don’t know how much help he’s going to be.” Maggie took her coffee and Bones out into the winter night.
Shed was perhaps too generous a term for the structure behind the sheriff’s station. It was more like an armoire with delusions of blue collar grandeur. How her father even fit in there was a mystery to Maggie, he must have been propped up like a bag of golf clubs. Maggie steeled herself for the sight within and handed her mug to Bones.
“No thanks, I don’t have the stomach for it.” Bones laughed at his own joke and took the mug.
“You do that a lot, huh?” Maggie put her hand on the door, realizing the shed wasn’t even locked. She was so grateful she left Far Harbor for Titan City.
“What?”
“Mess with people, make little comments.”
“It’s not my fault, with a face like this, you have to have a personality.” Bones paused a moment, clearly expecting a response.
“You want me to say that you don’t have a face. Well, I won’t give you the satisfaction.” Maggie opened the shed door and her heart dropped. There was her father, his face frozen in pained terror. Frostbite ate at his extremities, probably postmortem damage from how he was stored, but there was no way to know. His dark hair was loose and slick with blood or grease; a shock of pure white ran down the center, possibly a sign of ghost attack. He was dressed in a bloodstained white undershirt and slacks, with bare feet, his brass DMA badge clipped to his belt, and an empty holster on his hip. Of course the gun was missing.
Maggie slipped on a pair of gloves and began examining the body, probing and poking for wounds, loose fibers, anything that could point to a cause of death. It was difficult in the low light of the shed, but his standing position helped. She couldn’t focus on the fact that the decedent was her father. He would have wanted her to push the emotion down, focus on the case. The facts would solve this mystery, not her tears. Her fingers slipped over a wound in his chest, a gunshot from the feel. Small caliber and close enough to the chest to possibly be fatal. If it was the cause of death, it was possible he’d seen his killer.
All that was left to do was ask him.
Maggie reached into her coat pocket and grabbed the amulet she kept there. It was a small thing, a delicate silver chain ending in a tear drop pendant fitted with an aquamarine gemstone. The letters DMA were carved into the back, just above a message written in cursive, “For my little Psychopomp, may you always guide the dead to their justice. Love, Dad.”
“Your dad thought you were a psycho?” Bones interrupted her quiet reverie.
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Psychopomp, it’s a Greek word for someone who guides souls to the afterlife.”
Bones chuckled with a dryness that suggested no joy. “Ah, I must have missed them the first time I went down.”
“Hush, I need to concentrate for the magic to work.” Maggie drew a deep breath of cold air into her chest, suppressed a cough from the frigid burning, and closed her eyes. The silent, wintery yard fell away as she dove into her own psyche. Time froze as energy passed from the world around her and into the amulet. “Leo Conroy, hear my call. I beckon you forth to reveal your secrets and to lay bare your burdens before you pass into oblivion.” Her voice took on a monstrous quality, reverberating through the small space. A cloud of aquamarine vapor washed over her father’s body, clutching at him like a drowning man looking for a lifeboat. Its tendrils snaked up his chest, tearing and ripping at his nose and mouth, until crawling inside with a sucking snap. Maggie clenched her fists, cutting herself on the pendant in the process. The gem hungrily devoured her warm blood as she brought the spell to its climactic end.
Then nothing. Her father didn’t stir. She waited for a beat.
Bones shifted his weight on his opposite hip. “Is something supposed to be happening?”
His soul wasn’t answering her summons. This had never happened before and it frightened Maggie to her core.