Chapter 3: To Your Grave I Spoke

10 years ago

Lacy and her classmates sat in the cramped basement of Saint Cecilia’s Catholic Church, pinned between the white ceiling and the beige-carpeted floor, boxed between walls covered in finger-paintings by younger students. Ten other children sat at the round tables scattered throughout the basement, pooled in groups of twos and threes at their respective seats. Lacy sat at the center table with Danny, her shoulders slack. Her hands were jammed under her rear as she twitched her legs, leaning back and listening to the torrential rainfall outside. It struck the ground creating a steady, rapid rhythm, mesmerizing her, taking her away for precious, fleeting instants from the masculine body that did not fit her

“Now class, who can tell me about the Tower of Babel?” Drew asked.

“It was really, really big,” Danny said, eyes narrow and voice flat.

“Yes, but why was it so big? What were they hoping to accomplish? O’Sullivan,” Drew said, turning his pale gaze to her. “Why don’t you tell us?”

Lacy jerked forward in her seat upon hearing her surname. She looked at her teacher, Mr. Lightman: he was barely any older than her- either fifteen or sixteen, depending on whether the rumors he’d skipped a grade were true. He had close-cropped blonde hair and blue eyes that were always opened a bit too wide, and he wore khakis and a cheap button-down shirt both a size too big. He stood at the front of the classroom, beneath a clock and a crucifix. The clock was broken, stuck at 2:16, while the crucifix looked down at everyone in the room.

She wasn’t really here, not in mind and not in spirit. All she wanted was to crawl into her room, blare old rock music and drown everything else out. But that wasn’t today, wasn’t this moment. The clock was stuck, and she was stuck, and everything was stuck-

“Well?” Drew said.

Lacy rubbed her eyes, then looked up at the crucifix. Easier than keeping eye contact. She hated being called on, even when the answer was obvious to her. The wooden cross and the gold-painted figure were all she could focus on.

“If you’re trying to run down the clock again, Liam, we’ve still got a half-hour left.”

Ah yes. Her other name. Her not-name. Her deadname. Drew still slipped up sometimes, even though he knew better. Dissociation drummed inside her skull, threatening to take her even further away, into the blackness she always felt surrounding her life, so she breathed in deep and planted her feet on the ground, trying to recenter herself.

Lacy finally met Drew’s gaze. “They wanted to get to heaven.”

“Oh? And why’s that?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

Drew cracked a smile. That was the worst part- the guy was standing at a podium talking to middle schoolers about the Bible at 2 PM on a Sunday, and he wanted to encourage her. A thick layer of perplexed silence choked the basement, and Lacy went back to listening to the rainfall drumbeat. Drew eventually accepted the limited capacities of his eleven year old charges and let them talk amongst themselves until Mass.

The Church was tall and spacious, with three columns of pews in the center leading up the altar, a white marble platform beneath a wooden cruciform. Father Cameron, a Vietnamese man in his early thirties, stood front and center and read from the Old Testament, while Lacy sat in the middle of it all between Danny and Drew. She was warm and comfortable inside the church, with her friend and her teacher surrounding her. She was safe. She was able to listen to the words being spoken in their entirety- she didn’t retreat into her mind, or into the rain. She simply listened. During the sermon, Father Cameron spoke of truth and reconciliation, of forgiveness, and the thought occurred to Lacy yet again that she needed to tell her parents the truth. She needed to tell them she was really a girl, even if it killed her. By the end of the service, her hands were trembling.

As they left, Drew pulled her aside, asked her what was wrong.

“I’m going to tell my parents today,” Lacy said.

Drew balked. Lacy had come out to him a month prior, and he’d agreed to keep it a secret for her, even around others. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

He nodded- that was enough for him. “Are you nervous?”

“Obviously,” Lacy said, standing in the doorway to the church. The stairs led down a slope to town square, where Danny looked up and waited beneath a black umbrella, unable to hear the conversation.

“Well, let me know how it goes,” Drew said with an encouraging smile. “I’ll see you next week and we can see how you’re doing then. And if you need anything, let me know- my number’s in the phonebook. If my dad picks up, just ask for me by name. I can be there on the double. With a shotgun, if necessary.”

Lacy nodded, and with her own fragile smile, she said, “Thank you.”

She ran down the steps with her heart pounding inside her chest. Their small town dwelt in a lazy collective state of half-consciousness as the cold, wet grip of winter gradually loosened. Puddles of dirty snow and slush decorated the streets, while a dull gray cloud-layer unleashed a harsh assault of rain. She listened to town, to the cars driving by, to the hundred footsteps, to the cracks of wind and chirps and flutters of birds against the sky, to the raindrops exploding as they hit the ground. She met Danny at the bottom of the stairs and began walking forward into the rain without an umbrella.

“Are you alright, Liam?” Danny asked.
“Hm?” Lacy said as a filthy sting filled her chest. Just hearing the name ‘Liam’ was almost too much for her now. She had to tell her parents, had to tell Danny, had to, had to-

“Dude?” Danny said.

“I’m fine,” Lacy said, having to swallow her own rising heartbeat.

“Are you sure?” Danny said, increasing his stride to keep up with Lacy.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m good. Thanks, though.”

“Okay,” Danny said, rolling his shoulders. He was nosy, but good-natured. She could tell him she was trans after she told her parents. They were enough of a challenge for one day.

Danny lived in a nicer house than she did. It was made of brick, like most of the houses in the area, but it was three whole stories tall, with glass in all the windows instead of cardboard or foil. It sat at the bottom of a small hill, no other houses around it for a hundred yards in all directions. He said his mom made millions of dollars a year selling knives, but he still went to a charter school two towns over with Lacy, so she wasn’t sure how true that was. He waved good-bye as his brunette head vanished inside the doorway of his brick mansion.

Lacy’s house was another twenty minute’s walk. It was a tiny bungalow made of oakwood, hiding beneath the canopy of an overgrown weeping willow. The wind reached its fingers through the reed-like leaves, and Lacy heard each shake and shimmer, each twitch and jolt of the branches, even the small, quiet movements of the insects inside the tree. Her skin wanted to flee her body hearing some of it. Breathing slowly in and out her mouth, she reached for the doorknob and twisted.

Broken glass was scattered across the kitchen floor, and Lacy’s mother sat at the kitchen table pressing a bag of frozen peas to her swollen left eye. Lacy stood in the doorway, staring at her mother in shock and pity. Lacy’s hands trembled. This hadn’t happened in months.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Siohban said, not making eye contact. Her eye was beginning to bruise.

Lacy’s ears twitched, and the closed door to her parents’ bedroom opened up on her right. Her father stepped out, a wretched little mongoose of a man reeking of alcohol and holding a half-finished beer. “You heard your mother,” Declan smiled. He put a hand on her shoulder, gripped so tight his nails pricked her skin. “Don’t worry about it. It’s all good.”

Lacy tore herself from her father’s grip. She ran. The front door was still open, and she jumped past her father and ran and ran and ran. She ran until the rain stopped, until sun had set over their small northern Michigan town, until she’d exceeded the town limits, until she found herself on an open, empty road. It stretched out in front of her in both directions, no cars in sight, the only lights reaching down from the cosmos as the wind carried away the clouds. Distant stars reflected off the puddles, dancing and sparkling in brief but powerful bursts.

She looked up at the stars shining in the night sky. One of them seemed brighter than normal, and lower than normal. From the darkest depths of space, it lowered itself. It grew closer and closer and closer to Lacy as she stood on the road, until it was hanging directly above her: a small orb of burning blue light and gas. A star. No, this can’t be a star- it’s too small. It shouldn’t be hanging right in front of me. It should be burning everything in sight, she thought. And yet there it was- no larger than basketball, not hotter than a burning hearth. It descended from the air and hung directly in front of Lacy, spun about and danced and twirled. Lacy could not take her eyes off of it- the light, the warmth, it drew her hand forward. She touched it. It was like a flint struck, and the spark caught on her soul.

Then everything burned.

She saw herself above the world, and she saw the world burning. She breathed fire and tore with fangs and claws at the ground below. She fought with fist and flame and sword, tearing through countless charging people like wet cardboard. The sky burned and the ocean boiled and the walls that separated worlds shattered. The earth broke under the force of her horrible death-grip, and she smiled and drank it all in as she killed and killed and killed. Her victims were human, but she no longer was. Those at her back, flanking her, following her down the road of blood and ice were not human. They were something else, something older, something more vicious, with fangs and claws and pointed ears. They sang a beautiful, terrible song, an eldritch choir of incomprehensible tones that drove mad the mortals who heard it. The world broke like glass in the face of their alien resonance, and the shrapnel was vaporized by their power. Everything fell- towns, cities, governments, mountains. Oceans froze and forests burned and human flesh fertilized the soil in which the new world would blossom. Sounds of life and scents of death overwhelmed her senses, and every cell in her body screamed in agony.

Lacy yanked her hand away and backed away from the star. She couldn’t take it- she would not take it. She couldn’t even risk becoming that. Not someone like that, who hurt people, who took things, who destroyed.

She turned around and she sprinted, until she found herself in a park.

The moon and the stars hid behind the clouds, while a single street lamp flickered its dull orange glow over the park, the seesaw, the jungle gym, the swing set. Lacy stood beneath the bell jar of light, leaned against the pole. She closed her eyes and let her ears open, and she listened to the world around her. The wind scattered lightly, while blades of grass and tree leaves shook and swayed. All the noise in the area reached her ears and translated themselves through her brain. She listened to one particular blade of grass, listened to it dance back and forth and twirl about. A swath of mist rolled in and dulled the burning itch of her sprouting body hair.

Something hit the ground and splattered.

A liquid droplet that sounded different from water.

Blood. It smelled like blood.

Lacy opened her eyes and turned herself around, slowly. Behind her was a line of trees, and through it was the outline of a man hunched over a body laid out flat.

She could hear… Everything. The world was impossibly loud, even more so than before. Flesh shredded and bones crunched, and the drumming of a single heartbeat faded. Then there was a moving body without a pulse, raking its clawed fingers through a corpse. That someone looked up and saw Lacy, stared at her with pulsing red eyes as it hunched over its kill.

Why doesn’t it have a heartbeat? She thought. Why am I able to hear-

It charged.

Inside Lacy’s heart, a new spark caught and burst into flames. The fire surged through her veins, saturated every fiber of her being, until, as the raw terror of her attacker threatened to topple her, it exploded. As if pulled aloft on a string, her sinister hand raised itself and exposed her flattened palm to the charger. As her fear crescendoed, power burst alight inside her, and a lance of lightning surged from her hand. For a moment, she was strong. She was safe. She had power, like she’d never known before.

She was too slow.

Her attacker was upon her, and her hand slipped upwards and launched the bolt at the sky. A new pressure built up inside her right arm, with its roots all the way into her heart. It swelled inside the palm of her right hand, and in her terror Lacy found it escaping. A barrage of thunder exploded out her hand, between herself and her attacker.

Lacy’s ears rang, and all her energy dried up at once. Her attacker slowed and shook its head, and she got a good look at it beneath the cone of orange light: a man in a tattered business suit. He had blood-red eyes, skin like stone, black claws punctuating each finger, and sharpened fangs in place of each tooth. In response to the thunderclap, he covered his ears and shook his head, and Lacy tore herself free from beneath him.

She ran, and in her disorientation and exhaustion she ran into the woods. She ran towards the monster’s previous victim, and as she fell over his corpse, she looked at him.

It was Drew.

No.

No, no that was impossible, it couldn’t be Drew. No, it must be Drew’s face on the dead body. A body with its throat torn open and a gaping cavity in his chest where his heart was supposed to be. It was a lie, a fake, an illusion, a hallucination- anything but the truth, anything but the simplest explanation, the most likely reality, growing cold on the ground. Please no. Anything but that. Anyone but that. Her own parents- herself, even. Just not Drew.

And yet no matter how much she wished, no matter how much she shook her head, no matter how much she begged, the face did not change, and the reality of what she saw remained apparent.

A burning rage filled her, and the surge of power from moments prior filled her once again. The spark in her chest burned hotter, and a burst of power sang behind her eyes. She looked behind her and saw the monster charging at her once again. She let the electricity surge through her, aiming her palm.

A new heartbeat entered the scene.

Then came footsteps.

A hand around her wrist, pulling her palm out of the way.

The source of it all brushing past her, moving her aside.

As the monster charged at her, and the new player put herself between the monster and Lacy, Lacy felt the power she’d gathered dissipate. Like dust blown about in the wind, all the strength she’d held moments before scattered. The spark cooled, and her heartbeat steadied.

The heartbeat belonged to a young woman, college-aged. She was taller than Lacy by several inches, and she had white-blonde hair tied back in a tight bun. She wore blue jeans and a leather jacket, and she had both a pistol and a bowie knife holstered on her hips. Her voice rang low and smooth as she raised her palm and said, “Toter engel.”

From her hand emerged a swirling mass of white light. It was like looking at primordial fires of creation, mesmerizing, indescribable, tantalizing. It shaped itself like water, flowing into the silhouette of a human with wings sprouting from its back. The white angel fluffed its wings once before bending its legs and jumping from the ground. It crashed into the monster, which dropped dead with a sudden, dull thud. Lacy stood a hundred feet back by the darkened treeline, hearing it better than she could see it. But she needed to focus her eyes on something other than her friend’s half-eaten corpse.

The woman turned around. She had a beautiful face, with high cheekbones and a button nose and light gray eyes. Lacy gulped as the woman walked towards her. She stepped back, but stopped again when her ankle bumped into Drew’s body. The woman caught up to Lacy’s frozen form, and the whole time Lacy heard the woman’s heartbeat grow louder and louder until she was right in front of her. Finally regaining control of at least some of her muscles, she flinched when the woman got close. “Are you alright?” the woman asked.

Lacy said nothing.

“Are you alright?” the woman repeated.

Still Lacy said nothing.

“Kid,” the woman said. “Please respond. I am begging you.”

Lacy blinked. “My name’s Liam,” she lied.

She smiled. “Nice to meet you, Liam. My name’s Gwen. Are you okay?”

“No,” Lacy said automatically.

Gwen gestured to Drew’s body behind her. “Did you know him?”

“He was my CCD teacher,” Lacy said. Drew was gone. “I didn’t expect to find him out here… I was just… Out walking and I… I found them… I… I…”

The tears came after that, gushing from her, until Lacy dropped to her knees. Gwen wrapped her arms around Lacy and said, “It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

But Drew was gone, and she was alone, so she knew she wouldn’t be okay at all. When the tears stopped, Lacy asked, “What… What was that thing?”

“A ghoul.”

“A ghoul? Like a monster?” Drew was gone, and she was alone in a world of monsters.

“Exactly like a monster. They usually rob graves to look for human flesh to eat, but lately they’ve been getting bolder and going for fresh kills more frequently. Your teacher… I’m sorry about him. He never stood a chance against that thing.”

“But you… You used that… That thing.”

Gwen grinned. “Yeah. I did. And you look like you’ve got some moves yourself.”

Lacy gulped. “What do you… What do you…”
“That lightning bolt. And that thunder. That’s magic. You did magic, Liam.”

“No, no that’s not possible. Magic isn’t real.”

“I’d say you’ve seen some evidence to the contrary. Even submitted some of it to the jury yourself.”

Magic was real. Monsters were real. And she was alone. Lacy blinked rapidly. “I’m a… A…,”

“A mage,” Gwen said. “Congrats. There are fewer and fewer being born to each generation, so sincerely, congratulations. Though it will complicate things for you.”

It all went through her like a bramble, the thorns piercing the lining of her stomach. Trying to avoid thinking about these feelings, Lacy asked, “You can do magic too, right?”

“Yup,” Gwen said, standing up straight. She gathered the cold corpse of the ghoul, and asked Lacy to help her prop it up. Lacy took the body by the feet and helped Gwen carry it into the woods. They came upon a silver Toyota Prius parked in a clearing in the trees. Gwen popped the trunk and retrieved two shovels, tossed one to Lacy.

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Lacy asked.

“And how do you plan on explaining this to them, exactly?”

“Say I found a dead body?” Lacy said.

“And then what? Do you want them to investigate, get the truth of what happened? If you do that, they’re gonna wanna lock you up. Study you. Most people don’t know about magic- there’s a reason for that.”

“What reason?”

“They can’t handle it. By the look of it, I’m not even sure you can.”
Lacy’s brow furrowed, and she protested, “Yeah I can.”

“Well then there’s a program you’re gonna need to get with- don’t tell people what you are. Even if they believe you, they never react well. Now help me.”

They dug a hole for Drew and the ghoul, and when both bodies were deposited Gwen held out her palm and breathed through her nose. A small ball of flames ignited in her hand, and she dropped the fire into the pit and let the bodies burn. “It’s not a proper funeral, I know, but you said he was Catholic, so he shouldn’t object too much to cremation.”

“I think he’d be fine with it,” Lacy said. “I think he even mentioned wanting to be burned when he died.”

Gwen blinked. “Morbid fellow, was he?”

“I mean, he taught CCD. As a high schooler.”

“Fair point.”

I can handle it. I can… I can run. There’s something for me to run towards. And maybe… Maybe if I have a teacher, what I saw won’t come true.

Maybe I won’t have to go back to them.

Something to run towards. “Could you teach me to do magic?” Lacy asked.

Gwen cocked her head to the side. “Probably not.”

“Why?”

“For one, I’m a necromancer, and based on the light show earlier, you’re a druid. Not that it’s impossible for the latter to learn the former, or vice versa, it’s just really fucking difficult. For another… You don’t want me as a teacher.”

“But you seem so-”

“I’m not,” Gwen said shortly. “Whatever it was you were about to say, I’m not that. You don’t want me as a teacher. There would be complications. A truly insane number of complications. And I have stuff I need to do- I don’t live around here. I travel.”

“And hunt ghouls?”

“Among other things,” Gwen said. “And you’re just a kid. You should stay here with your family, go to school, get a job, and grow up to become a big strong man.”

Lacy’s heart sank into a tarpit. “But I don’t want to do that.”

“Don’t want to do what? Grow up?”

Lacy knew how to answer the question, but the words caught in her throat as her heart pounded in shame. “No. I do. I just… I don’t wanna stay here.”

“It’ll be okay, kid. This is a pretty ordinary town you’ve got here- dunno why there’d be ghouls here at all, almost never happens. Now, I have to get going- I’m supposed to meet someone. Get yourself home safe, alright?”

Before Lacy could nod in affirmation, Gwen left. Simply walked away. Left Lacy there in front of her friend’s cooling ashes.

Eventually, she found feeling in her legs. She dragged her feet through the woods, the stars now hidden behind mist, the night cold and empty. She didn’t want this, but she didn’t know what else to do but try to keep on living as she had, carrying the weight of yet another secret on her back.

Everything hurt. She just wanted it to stop. She just wanted to be who she truly was. But she was going back to who the world wanted her to be.

As she made it out of the woods and back onto the main road, something bounded out of the bushes: a small mass of white fur. It landed in front of her and began zooming around her in circles, squeaking happily as it made its rotations.

A white fox.

What the hell was it doing here? And why was it sniffing her?

Hesitantly, she stuck out her hand. The fox sniffed her, and licked her. She sat down on the empty street, and the fox cuddled in her lap for a few moments. She wanted to sit still, absolutely still and silent in the endless dark where nothing could hurt her.

But that wasn’t how it worked. There were lots of things out here that wanted to hurt her. The wind howled, carrying with it all the hideous noise of the world, grubby fingers prying into her ears. She needed to get away- she couldn’t stay out here all night.

She sat up, and the fox scampered away.

She went home, arms and legs and heart heavy after the day’s events.

Her father was passed out on the living room chair with three more empty beer bottles next to him; her mother sat in the kitchen listening to radio static, a tight grip around a half-drunk glass of sangria. Lacy opened her mouth, but her mother cut her off: “Go to your room, Liam.”

Lacy blinked, and then nodded, and she crawled into bed and sobbed her eyes out for all that had happened. She went numb as she listened to the rainfall pick back up outside.

***

Lacy sat up, and she said a prayer for her dead parents. She didn’t think they deserved that much, but God probably disagreed. After that, she forced herself to her feet, back into her house, into her bathroom. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror, stripping naked again, hating her reflection again, running her fingers through the beard she’d stubbornly refused to shave for reasons she wasn’t sure of. Again.

Finally, her reservoir of patience, for herself and for the rest of the world, ran dry.

She picked up her razor and set to work. When she was done, her face was bare and smooth. For the first time in years, her skin could breathe. She did not want to stop, and so for the fourth time in thirty-six hours she climbed into the shower and attacked the jungle that entrapped her body.

Two and a half hours later, it was done. The water had gone cold, but it still felt amazing as it collided with her smooth, soft skin. She couldn’t stop running her hands over it, and she wept for entirely different reasons than she had before.

She clothed herself, the fabric tickling her clean skin delightfully. She stayed in her room and disassembled the old radio again and again and again. Eventually, Danny returned home and asked if she wanted to watch television. She went out and watched the Red Wings game with him, twitching in her seat the whole time even as she tried her best to let the game distract her.

When the jaws of night clamped shut over the sky and Danny finished drinking himself to sleep, Lacy said a quick Hail Mary and then climbed onto the roof. The evening wore a layer of cold fog, through which little could be seen. She sat up straight on the roof and closed her eyes, and she listened.

Wind twisted and curled around the forest, while further up the road people snored and watched television and fucked inside their homes. She pushed past all that, into the city of Grand Rapids, where she quickly lost herself in a disorienting quagmire of disparate voices. She withdrew, and pushed her hearing into the woods, where bugs buzzed and brooks babbled and animals ran about. She listened and listened and listened for a familiar heartbeat, until, finally, deep in the woods, she found it. She jumped off the roof and hiked towards it.

The journey took two hours through unmarked paths, but she still found it: a one-story log-cabin deep in the forest. Gwen sat on the front deck, wearing a red-and-black flannel bathrobe and smoking a cigarette while reading a paperback novel titled The Tombs of Atuan. She sat up and balked as Lacy approached. “Uh… Liam?” Gwen asked. “Is that you?”

Lacy breathed in deep through her nose, out through her mouth. Fuck it, it was time to stop hiding. She didn’t care who knew anymore- she had bigger problems. “Yes and no.”

“What does that mean?”

One more deep breath. “It means I’m trans.”

Gwen sat up straight. “Oh?”

“Yeah. I’m a woman,” Lacy said. A warm tingling ran through her when she said it, and in spite of her instincts, she tried not to snuff it out for once. “My name is Lacy.”

After a moment, Gwen smiled. “What a lovely name. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lacy.”

The warmth tripled. “You too.”

“How did you find me?”

“I just… Listened,” Lacy said. “I was looking for you because I was thinking about your offer. If it still stands, I’d like to take you up on it.”

“You wanna be a monster hunter?” Gwen asked.

“And I want you to train me,” Lacy said.

“What changed?”

“My parents are dead,” Lacy said.

“I’m so sorry-”

“Thanks,” Lacy cut her off, holding up a hand. She didn’t particularly want or need anyone’s sympathy about Declan and Siobhan; they didn’t remotely fucking deserve it. What she was going to do for them now was all that was needed. Violent closure for violent souls trapped in violent memories. “Ghouls did it. Same as they killed Drew. Same as they’ve been coming after me since I was eleven. It’s… Not stopping any time soon, is what I’ve realized. I’m tired of just reacting. I need to do something about this before they kill me. But I’m not ready. I’m not strong enough yet. And you’re the only person I know who knows anything about this. So I’m asking you: please train me to use magic, and to hunt these things.”

Gwen ran a calloused, manicured hand through her golden hair, then took a long drag on her cigarette. “... Are you sure about this?”

“Yes. I finally am.”

Gwen heaved a heavy sigh, and then broke into a light grin as she stubbed out her cigarette on the side of her rocking chair. “Well okay then. Let’s get started.”