Bentley Little - The Burning

"When I told my mother about it, I remember she seemed scared. I think she even shivered, although that may just be my memory. But what she said was, He's trying to raise the dead.' That was enough to scare me, and it's all we ever said about it. My uncle left the next day, and I never knew if that was why, if my parents kicked him out or he stormed off, but he never came back to visit.

"I know my parents were never involved in any such thing, and I've never heard of anything else like it since. But my uncle said all good Chinese should perform that ritual, and I've thought about that over the years, wondered if there were others. Now I'm wondering if it's not connected to those bodies in the tunnel."

They were silent, no one sure of what to say after that. Angela's head was spinning.

"More iced tea?" the waitress asked cheerily, stopping by.

They acquiesced, fooled around for a few moments putting sugar in their glasses, squeezing lemon, stirring. Edna sipped her water.

Trying to raise the dead

It had to be related.

Derek began updating Edna on the most recent events, including their aborted sojourn into Babbitt House, and the old woman, shocked and frightened, said they had to call the police. And tell the county health authorities. "This could be the beginning of an epidemic," she said.

Neither of them had thought of it that way, and they both realized Edna was right.

"You don't know anything about this mold or fungus or whatever it is, do you?" Angela asked.

Edna shook her head. "I'm sorry, no. I've told you everything I know that could possibly help. This I never heard of."

Angela thought about the riots. Mob violend spread through crowds much like a disease or viru infecting ordinarily rational people. Maybe this blad mold had been around back then, too. Maybe it had sparked the anti-Chinese sentiment that had led to these horrible consequences. Maybe Flagstaff had been built on ground saturated with this toxic spore, and unearthing the tunnel had once again released it into the general population.

She agreed with Edna that the authorities needed to be notified, but she had no confidence that the people sent out to investigate wouldn't be affected, too. She glanced suspiciously over at Derek. Had he been contaminated? He hadn't actually touched the mold And he looked okay. But ...

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to cut her losses and speed back to California as quickly as Greyhound bus could carry her.

A cell tone rang out at the table, and all of them checked their phones. It was Edna's, and she looke down at the text message. "I have to go," she said. "Problems at the office. As always." She smile kindly, touching Angela's arm. "I'm so sorry, dear. This just hasn't been your semester, has it?"

Angela smiled back. "That's the understatement of the year."

The housing administrator took out two dolla from her purse and placed the bills under the shaker. "If you need me, you know where to find me.

"Thank you," Angela said.

"Thanks," Derek echoed.

Edna hurried off, and the two of them looked at each other. "What now?" Derek asked. "Police station?"

Angela quickly finished the last of her iced tea. "Yeah," she said. "Let's go."

Nineteen

Washington, D.C.

Greg Rossiter stared glumly out the window of his office at the cubicles of junior FBI agents, all of whom wanted his job.

His old office had had a window that looked outside. At the city. At the sky.

He pulled the shades, hiding the outer office from view. Ever since The X-Files had gone off the air, his stock had gone down in the bureau. Sad but true. No matter that he had successfully investigated over fifty cases in the last five years and had worked on two high-profile incidents featuring objective, verifiable supernatural phenomena-the presence of that fucking TV show had granted him more legitimacy than any closed case could. Now he was on the outs, considered passe, a relic from another era.

Just like Fox Mulder had been.

Goddamn, he hated that program.

Rossiter paced restlessly around the room before returning to his desk. Everything was focused on counterterrorism these days. That, too, had knocked his career off track. Not that he didn't understand, but, shit, there were other domestic threats as well, other crimes, other dangers that deserved the bureau's full attention.

Like vampires.

It was strange how dispassionate he was about the paranormal phenomena he had encountered. Uncovering the existence of these monsters hadn't turned him into a paranoid Chicken Little but had left him surprisingly unaffected. His job was still just a job to him, not a crusade, not a lifestyle, and instead of spending every waking moment worried about the infiltration of the supernatural, he was more concerned with how such things affected his career trajectory. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

The door opened, and his assistant poked her head into the room. "Sir?"

He looked up, scowling. "What is it?"

"The director wants to see you."

The director? Rossiter stood, straightened his tie, made sure his shirt was tucked in properly. "Where? In his office?"

"Yes. Now."

A lot of agents, he knew, would be quaking in their boots at the very thought of such a summons, but he thrived on opportunities like these, knew how to work them to his advantage. They were openings, not challenges, and if he played his cards right, he could use this brief meeting to jump-start his stalled career.

But what did the director want to see him about? That was the only variable here.

It didn't matter. Even a dressing-down could be spun into gold if the spinner knew what he was doing.

And he did.

Rossiter looked at his ghostly reflection in the window to check his hair, then strode purposefully out of his office, past the cubicles of the junior agents, down the outside corridor to the bank of elevators. Once inside the elevator, he stared straight ahead, a neutral expression on his face, acutely conscious of the fact that he was being observed.

He was expecting others to be present at the meeting-his immediate supervisor perhaps, other agents with whom he'd worked-but he was unprepared for the level of high-powered attendees that greeted him, and though he tried not to let it show, the sight of the White House chief of staff, the national-security adviser and the head of the Secret Service all seated in a semicircle in front of the director's desk left him feeling overwhelmed and slightly intimidated. Still, he acted as if this happened every day, as though he were used to such company, and he took the remaining empty chair and sat down quietly, waiting to be told why he was here.

"Agent Rossiter," the director said curtly. "There's been an incident in Manhattan, and as you're reported to have some experience with unusual or ostensibly unexplainable occurrences, I've decided to bring you in on the case."

"Thank you, sir."

"Put simply, Grant's Tomb has been defiled. We've blocked off Riverside Drive to keep the public away, and the area around the building itself has been cordoned off. Bomb scare's the cover story. As you doubtlessly know, the sepulchre is guarded at all times, as well as being monitored by our best surveillance equipment, so theoretically such a thing should not be able to occur. In fact, we have no idea how it did occur, and this colossal security failure is what we've been discussing for the past forty-five minutes." He glanced disapprovingly around the room, and Rossiter was amused to note that the other men looked chastened. "To state the facts, President Grant's body has been removed from its final resting place and ... butchered. The desecration was conducted with such ferocity that it would be easy to conclude that it was perpetrated by a wild animal, although obviously it would require a human to disinter the corpse. The purposeful dismantling of the body, however, and the distribution of the parts, imply that the entire operation was human in origin. In addition, the tomb's walls have been defaced with childish drawings.