DISCLAIMER: Hunter: the Reckoning is the property of White Wolf Publishing. All characters in this story are, however, my own creations within that framework.
Oh, and I apologise in advance to any residents of a certain American state who might read this and feel insulted. Catherine is rather prejudiced – and she is as bad at accents as I am… =]
***
From the journals of Doctor Catherine Faller, entry # 6:
Today was one of the more interesting days. It didn't start out that way, of course. In fact, I spent the day going through an old condemned building that's reputably haunted. I thought that it might contain an Intangible. If so, it hid from me – I went through that old dump of a house from basement to attic three times, and not as much as rattled chain! Shows how much you can trust word-of-mouth, I suppose – but I have precious little else to go on.
You'd think that when you can see supernatural beings – actually see them, bright as day – finding them would be easy, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, that's only true in the same sense that it's easy to find the police – that is, it's all too easy when you don't want to do it, and all too hard the rest of the time.
But I digress. When I had finished with the damn house, it was after midnight (another old myth I decided to put to the test – ghosts always come out at the strike of twelve, right?), and on my way home, I saw something that I wasn't meant to…
***
One thing death did to you, apparently, was to make you a great deal less perceptive. Dead men did not, according to popular wisdom, talk. Neither, apparently, were they very good at hearing and seeing. Catherine appreciated this a great deal as she shadowed the dead man through the empty night-time streets. She did not pride herself on being overly good at stealth. A more observant mark would have spotted her almost immediately.
The dead man, however, was not observant. He did not even look around as much as once; he just kept walking forward in a slightly unsteady manner that hinted that his legs were not what they had once been. Neither was any other part of him, to be honest. The skin was hanging off of him in folds, exposing soggy flesh in some places and naked bone in other. He still wore the suit he had been buried in, but it was in tatters, partly from rot, partly from his efforts to free himself from the grave.
That had been something to see, to be sure. Catherine had been strolling home from a failed stake-out mission as she passed the cemetery, and heard strange sounds from within. She had looked over the fence and realised that someone was creeping out of a grave.
Now, this had not overly surprised Catherine. She had already had opportunity to confirm that the world was a lot different from what they had taught her in school, that it contained things like incorporeal entities, dead things that walked and people who could turn into Bigfoot look-alikes at will. It had, however, disturbed her sense of propriety. People ought to stay in their graves once they had been put in them. Being stayed in was what graves were for. Seeing someone leave one, digging himself out with one painfully clumsy motion after another, had been rather upsetting.
On the other hand… it would be very interesting indeed to know just how it had been done. If people could somehow wake from the dead, could not the very same technique be used to make people wake from comas? Would not that, in fact, be a much simpler thing to achieve? It was in the interest of humanity that Catherine figured this out!
Okay, so the fact that if she could find some sort of ground-breaking method for making people get up and walk when they really did not have any business getting up and much less walking she would become a very wealthy woman was not very far from her thoughts. But nothing said that you could not make a buck while benefiting humanity, did it?
She smiled to herself. As she did, she looked more like a teenager about to do something naughty than a respectable woman in her late twenties, with a medical degree and everything. She also looked very pretty – any man who happened to see that wicked smile together with that slim figure and those long curls of smooth black hair would not mind a second look.
Catherine wondered faintly what the Corpse would do if it ran into someone. It did not wear the kind of disguise that Catherine had come to expect – one that only she could see through. It was walking along the street in all its rotten glory, plain to see if there had been anyone to see it. Didn't the supernaturals have some sort of rule that said that they had to hide their existence from ordinary people?
On the other hand – there was no one to see it. Maybe it had some sort of telepathic don't-look-this-way thing going. It was impossible to tell, really – Catherine was not affected by such things as far as she could understand, and there were no mundanes around to test the theory on. Pity.
The Corpse had apparently reached its destination; it walked into an apartment-building doorway, tugging at the door. It was locked, but that did not stop the Corpse. It just pulled a little harder, pulling the door loose from the hinges. Catherine raised her eyebrows. It was in good shape for something that was dead already. Most Corpses she had seen so far had been more into fancy foot-work than super-strength.
That was not the only difference between it and them, for that matter. The Corpses she had seen before had moved like cats – this guy shambled along like he could barely hold himself together. They had been dangerously clever – he seemed barely sentient. They had moved in a pack – he was alone. They had worn humanity as a mask to cover their rotting features – he looked like exactly what he was.
Maybe it's because he just got up from his grave, Catherine theorised. Maybe it takes a little while before they learn to adjust to not being alive anymore. Good, that should make him less dangerous.
Stealthily – or as much so as she could – she followed the Corpse into the building. It was easy enough; dark though it was in there, it was no trouble following those heavy footsteps. Trusting the Death Vision to tell her if she was walking into a trap, Catherine sneaked up after him.
Another clack-clack-clack-CRRRRRASH! told her that the Corpse had found another door that started out resisting but finally submitted to his tugging. Catherine came to the right floor a few moments later, finding a new doorway where the door had been ripped out. From idle curiosity, she checked the name on the maltreated door. Rebecca Moray. She wondered how great the chances were that the Corpse just wanted to pay Ms. Moray a friendly visit. Not too great, she supposed.
She picked her gun out of the pocket of her black coat and checked it over. To be honest, she had no idea what you were supposed to look for when you did that. Her brother was quite the gun-fanatic, but she had fired one for the first time only a few days ago. She had yet to apply for a licence to this one. Things had been a bit hectic.
She contented herself with the fact that the gun looked about like it used to, and that there was a full row of bullets in the clip. They gleamed in the faint light; they were pure silver. Some things needed all the encouragement you could give them when it came to lying down and not trying to savagely butcher people for the greater glory of Gaia, whoever that was. She pushed the barrel in again with a satisfying click. All right, then. Showtime.
As she took her first steps into the apartment, she heard a woman scream. Ah. Rebecca Moray had made the acquaintance of the Corpse. She was not, it seemed, especially happy about that. Catherine abandoned her careful walk and started to run.
It was a quite small apartment – following the scream to the bedroom was easy enough. Catherine hit the light-switch just in front of the door, showering the room in all the illumination a 60-Watt bulb could manage. The Corpse was standing at the foot of the bed, his one, maggot-plagued eye – the other one was just an empty socket – was focused, almost longingly, on the woman lying in it. She was redheaded, in her early twenties, and was probably quite pretty in any situations that did not involve the walking dead having awakened her from her peaceful sleep.
"Excuse me," Catherine said, raising the gun.
No one listened. The Corpse started to stagger around the bed, and the woman (Rebecca Moray, presumably) kept screaming and tried to get as far away from it as possible. This proved difficult, as the bed was placed against the wall on two sides, but Rebecca was doing an admirable job at trying to push herself through the wall. Fully understandable, Catherine supposed, but it would have been nice to get some attention.
"Excuse me!" she shouted.
The Corpse reached for Rebecca. Catherine sighed and fired.
She was not very good at aiming, but the target was mostly stationary and standing only a few meters away. She hit him around the area of his left kidney, or at least where his left kidney had been. There was no telling how much of him was still left, between rot and maggots and all. Rebecca screamed again, more from surprise than from fear this time. The Corpse turned its head to look at Catherine from the first time, almost comical surprise on its decaying face.
"That was a warning-shot," Catherine said. "Would you mind stepping away from the lady? I don't think she likes you much."
The Corpse hesitated. Then it growled, a deep, wet sound, and turned around fully. Arms outreached, it started shambling towards her. It moved slowly but firmly, like an advancing bear.
Not good.
Catherine shot again and managed to completely miss the target and hit the wall not at all far from Rebecca, who was cowering in the corner, screaming and crying as if it had been she who had a Corpse attacking her. Catherine felt that this was very unhelpful, even though she supposed she could sympathise. The Corpse took another step, and when Catherine tried to shoot again he swung out with a bony arm and hit her on the wrist. It felt like being hit by a sledgehammer; the arm went numb up to the elbow, and the gun flew out of her limp hand.
(the Corpse reaches for Catherine's throat, she tries to duck but it's too late, the decaying fingers squeeze her fragile wind-pipe, crushing it; the Corpse turn back to Rebecca as Catherine sinks to the floor, drowning in her own blood)
Catherine gave off a scream of desperate denial and threw herself to the right. The Corpse's grouping fingers closed around the space where her throat had been, just as the Death Vision had shown her, but this time they did not catch anything. Catherine, calling upon muscle-strength she had not known she had until she learned what pure terror could make a person do, rolled around on the floor, came back up and looked frantically around for her gun. There was no way she could fight a Corpse unarmed! If it hardly noticed bullets, her hands and feet would do her little good.
No time; the Corpse was coming after her again. Catherine took a jewellery box from the dresser next to her and threw it at his head with all the power and accuracy she could muster. The Corpse swapped the heavy metal object aside like an insect, but by then, Catherine was already moving again, running right and back. Her enemy was not quick on his feet, and since that was the only thing that she had working for her right now, she had better make the most of it.
But it was a small bedroom, and her stamina was not the best. This would end quickly, one way or another.
She just wished that Rebecca would stop screaming. It was really interfering with Catherine's ability to focus on the task at hand, i.e., trying to not dying horribly at the rotting hands of a man who just would not give up and admit that he was dead himself. The bloody woman would call everyone and his grandmother here in no time. While this of course meant that there would be more people to help her with the Corpse, it also meant that pointed questions might very possibly be asked about unlawful entrance and the carrying of unlicensed heavy-calibre guns loaded with silver bullets. She could do without that, on the whole.
There was the gun, lying by one of the bed's legs. Catherine reached for it…
(as Catherine grasps the gun, a half-putrefied fist hits her in the temple, making her loose her grip of the weapon and fall to the floor, all the strength leaving her muscles. As she lies there helpless, the fist falls again and again, the pain mercifully ending as her as her skull is crushed)
… and then pulled back with a gasp, dodging as if by a miracle the punch the Corpse had aimed at her while she was occupied. As the dead man was off balance by the unexpected miss, Catherine grabbed the gun and scrabbled backwards, somehow getting to her feet in the process. She aimed the gun at the Corpse with trembling hands.
"Right," she said. "You move one inch and I'll…"
(the Corpse moves with more speed than Catherine had thought possible as it rushes at her, and it slams her head into the wall, again and again, the gun falling out of her hand as she falls unconscious)
Catherine fired three times in rapid succession. The first shot missed, striking a mirror across the room and shattering it into a thousand pieces – hopefully the saying about seven years' bad luck was just superstition, unlike a lot of other things Catherine had used to think was just superstition – but the second caught the Corpse in the chest, breaking his charge. The third hit in the stomach, actually pushing him backwards.
"Told you!" Catherine yelped hysterically.
She was not entirely sure how the Death Vision worked. She certainly had no idea why she had it, even though she was certainly not ungrateful. What she did know was that it had some severe limitations; for one, it might warn her when her current course of action would get her killed, but it did not guarantee that there would be a better course of action. Nor did it give her a great deal of time – at such times as the Vision was triggered, she was rarely in a position to study the matter with detached logic, but she thought it gave her a warning five seconds ahead or something like that. Sooner or later, every possible future would contain her death.
And as far as she could see, bullets did not work, silver or not. They made holes, yes, but this guy was already falling apart, and that did not seem to stop him. She did not need a gun, she needed a bloody meat-grinder! That might do something, but…
She paused in her thoughts, watching almost absently as the Corpse regained his balance and started to approach her again. Slowly, she let the gunpoint swing to the left, away from the Corpse and towards Rebecca. As she aimed at the woman, though, her eyes never left the dead man.
"Go away," she said, slowly and clearly. "Or I'll spray-paint the wall with her brains."
***
From the journals of Doctor Catherine Faller, entry # 6 (continued):
Even in my wildest dreams, I never thought I'd ever say _that_. I doubt I'll ever be able to convince her that I wouldn't have done it. I certainly did my best to sound sincere, since the only other alternative I could think of was to run like hell and leave her to whatever the Corpse had planned. But I wouldn't have fired.
Though the thing is – I knew that I wouldn't have to.
And just how to you explain that to someone who's just been scared out of her mind? Or to the calmest and most objective person in the world, for that matter? What am I supposed to _say_? That I just _knew_? That one minute I didn't have a clue how to deal with the situation, and that the next it was just… obvious? It doesn't even make sense to _me_, and I'm the one it _happens_ to. Just like the Death Visions happen, or the Second Sight that lets me see supernaturals in their true form in the first place.
I think I'm starting to see why Hunters band together. Who but another Hunter would believe that you're not insane when you say things like that?
Come to think about it, a lot of Hunters _are_ insane, but I'm sure that's beside the point…
***
The Corpse looked at Catherine for a long moment, its twisted face full of mute hatred. Then it collapsed, falling limp to the floor like the piece of meat it was. For a second, a pale shape floated in the air, a shape of a handsome young man with fury in his dark eyes, glaring at Catherine. Then it was gone.
That was an Intangible! Catherine thought, stunned by surprised. It looked a bit more humans than those I saw back at the lab, but it was a bloody Intangible all the same! Is there some sort of relation between Intangibles and Corpses? It almost seems that way… but…
She was broken out of her awe by the sound of muffled, hiccupping sobs. They were coming from Rebecca, who sat in the corner with her arms around her legs and her knees against her chin, as if wanting to make herself as small as possible. Catherine followed the gaze in her panicked eyes and realised that she was still pointing a gun at her.
"Oh. Sorry," she said sheepishly and put the weapon back in her pocket. "Uhm. Are you okay?"
Rebecca did not seem to know what to make of that question. Catherine had to admit to herself that it might not have been such a clever question. Women assaulted by dead men and threatened by armed women were not normally okay.
"Sorry," she said again. "But, er, I wouldn't have hurt you. Really. I knew he would back off if I threatened you." She fumbled for words. "I really did…" she finished weakly.
Rebecca nodded quickly, seemingly eager not to offend this armed madwoman. Apparently, she was having some difficulty getting the words I'll spray-paint the wall with her brains out of her head. Catherine had to admit that she was not quite sure where that expression had come from. Some movie she should really not have seen, probably.
Catherine wondered why no one was showing up to check on the noise. Surely there were more people living in this house? Then she realised that no one would come. Screams and gunshots in the middle of the night? Everyone was bound to stay very far away. But several of them had probably called the police by now. Damn. Somehow, she did not think that the cops would be very receptive when she blamed everything on a cadaver that had obviously been dead for several months.
"I don't suppose you'd care to tell me if you knew that guy?" she said, motioning at the Corpse. "He went straight for you, past lots of other houses, and tore out two doors to get to you. Seems to be a bit too much trouble just to get a snack."
"S-s-snack?" Rebecca whimpered.
"They drink blood, or so I'm told," Catherine said, shrugging. "I have to admit that I've never seen one of them do it."
Rebecca stared at her with terror in her eyes. Then she broke into more helpless sobs. Catherine groaned and facepalmed. She had not been like this after her first contact with a supernatural, and she had been attacked by a monster ten feet tall with huge claws. In comparison, a Corpse was a piece of cake.
"Come on, snap out of it!" she said. "You're all right. I'm all right. Everyone's all right except for this guy, and he's been dead for quite some time, so it's really a bit too much to ask for him to be. Do you know him?"
Slowly, looking like she was not quite sure why she was doing this, Rebecca leaned forward and forced herself to look at the Corpse's face. Then she quickly shook her head.
"No. I've never s-seen him before," she said in a trembling voice that was nevertheless making an effort to steady itself.
"You sure? He's pretty far gone."
That caused a pause, followed by another attack of sobs. Catherine closed her eyes and sighed. Great God almighty! Why did everyone have to be so sensitive?
Catherine herself was not sensitive. She prided herself on being practical. She had on no occasion found a rampaging Corpse in her bedroom and had her life saved by a valiant (well, kind of) Hunter, but she felt sure that she would not be in this much of a state if that ever happened. Instead, she would be practical about it. She would ask herself some important questions, such as…
"What are you going to say to the police?"
Rebecca blinked.
"W-what?"
"The police, woman, the police!" Catherine said irritably. "They will be here soon! Haven't you thought about what you are going to tell them when they ask why the doors are torn off the hinges, why there is a dead, not to mention half-putrefied, man on the floor, and speaking of which, what's with the silver bullets in the walls?" She made an impatient gesture. "Really, you don't have time to fall apart before you've thought about these things! I do have a certain personal interest in what you're going to say, you know."
"Who are you?"
Great. Now she developed some healthy curiosity.
"I'm a scientist. I study events that are not part of accepted natural laws."
I'm also a Hunter, she thought. But I'm not telling you that. Mostly, I have to admit, because I don't quite know what a Hunter is. I mean, you're walking down the street one day, and you see a guy who looks kind of shaggy and wild-eyed, and then there's this voice in your head saying FIND THE ANSWER and when you look around, the guy has turned into a huge, hairy monster.
And that's not where the weird stuff ends, that's just where it starts…
"What was that?" Rebecca said, pointing at the Corpse with a trembling finger.
"It's called a Corpse." By her and not all that many others, admittedly, but still. "Dead, but won't admit it. Pesky things."
"And they drink blood?"
"Well… that's hearsay." Catherine grimaced. "But everyone seems to agree that they do."
"So they're, like… vampires?"
"No!" Catherine snapped. "They are not vampires! Vampires don't exist! I'm an enlightened, educated person and I'm not going to start believing in vampires just because some people so happens to rise from the grave and drink blood! It's a matter of self-respect!"
"Okay, okay! Christ!"
Catherine considered vacating the premises. Rebecca was really in no condition to give accurate descriptions of her. And she had not mentioned her name… well, she did not think she had mentioned her name. Things had been rather hectic. She was not quite sure what she had said.
On the other hand, there had been a reason for why the Intangible had dragged a dead body out of its grave just so it could have a physical form to use to seek out Rebecca. Catherine wanted to know that reason. It might give her an idea about how Intangibles thought, and so far she had only guesswork about that. A Wolf Man was relatively easy – all people were animals under the surface, and Wolf Men just had a little less surface – but something that did not even have a body? How could you even begin to theorise about the emotions of a being that had no glands and no brain?
And Catherine was not opposed to risking a bit of her safety for an answer.
"You haven't been meddling with the occult or something?" she said. "Pissed off any demon lords? Made questionable bargains with any spirits?"
"No! Nothing like that at all!" Rebecca shook her head. "I've never believed in anything like that!"
"That's sensible of you," Catherine said. "It's all nonsense."
"But then why did you…?"
"Just because it's nonsense it doesn't have to be harmless." Catherine smiled crookedly. "There's an unseen world all around us. Trying to talk to it might just lead to it talking back. And in my experience," which was rather limited, but nonetheless, "it doesn't usually have much nice to say."
Much to the scientist's surprise, she could hear steps coming down the stairs. She put her hand in her pocket, closing it around the handle of the gun. She was not planning on resisting arrest or anything, but then, the police would be coming from downstairs. If someone was approaching from above, it was either a neighbour with a very limited self-preservation instinct – or the Corpse had a friend in the area.
"H-hello?" a voice called from the door. It did not sound very Corpse-friendly. It sounded like it was very desperately trying to keep its courage up, as a matter of fact. "'Becca? Are you… er…"
"I'm okay!" Rebecca called back. "It's all right!"
Catherine gave her a disbelieving glance. All right? Rebecca shrugged apologetically.
A plump, middle-aged man in a dressing gown walked into the room, looking around nervously. He was bald aside from a ring of hair circling the tip of his head, was unshaved and did not look especially dangerous. He looked at Catherine in a way that suggested that she might explode at any time.
"Er… take it easy, Miss," he said desperately. "No one has to get hurt here."
"Except maybe you," Catherine said flatly, "if you don't knock off the dealing-with-a-maniac routine."
"No, no, Marcus." Rebecca smiled thinly. "This is my cousin, er…"
"Karen Beckham," said Catherine and extended a hand. She supposed that being a relative from out of town would give her an excuse for being in Rebecca's apartment in the wee hours of the morning – a charitable cousin might very well lend you a couch, after all. Now to hope that Marcus did not ask why she was fully dressed and wearing an overcoat at this time of night. "How do you do?"
"Oh. Uhm. Hi," Marcus said. He made a serious attempt to shake her hand while touching as little of her as possible. "'Becca, what's happened?"
"Uh… there was this guy who broke in," Rebecca said. "But Karen has a gun, so she scared him off."
"She has a gun?" Marcus said.
"She's Texan," Rebecca said.
Texan? Oh, for the love of God…
"'S about right, that," Catherine said desperately, giving Rebecca a very angry glare when Marcus was not looking. Her family tree was all-Yankee at least two hundred years back. Could she not carry a gun without being some sort of cowgirl? She only had the most basic of ideas of how Texans talked!
Marcus looked less than convinced by Catherine's valiant attempt to adapt a southern accent, possibly because she had not had it the two first times she had spoken, but he apparently decided not to press the issue. The situation was insane in either case. There was a dead guy on the floor, for heavens' sake! With that in mind, what was an infrequently appearing accent between friends?
"Why," he said, in a voice that hinted that he did not really want to hear the answer but that he would be utterly disgusted with himself if he did not ask the question, "is there a dead guy on your floor?"
"Er…" said Rebecca.
"Gawd demnit, you're gonna have ter ask that boy who broke in that, buddy," Catherine said. "Reckon he was some sorta loony, myself."
"Yes… yes, he was carrying that… thing… when he came in here." Rebecca shuddered, a bit theatrically to Catherine's eye. "He dropped it when, uhm, Karen scared him off."
"Oh." Marcus grimaced. "God, that's horrible. This really isn't a good week for you, is it? What with… everything…" He looked uncomfortable. Rebecca looked at her knees.
"Yeah…" she said weakly.
Catherine looked from one of them to the other. Okay, now what had that been about? Something 'Cousin Karen' should know about, presumably – so she could not really ask.
Feeling grumpy, she looked around the room. It had not suffered all too well from her fight with the Corpse. Furniture was knocked over, decorative items were spread over the floor, and a lot of the walls had gotten holes in them. Absently, she bent down and picked up a framed picture that had stood on the nightstand. The glass over the picture was cracked, but you could still make out Rebecca posing together with some guy. He was cute, Catherine noticed.
She turned the picture over. I love you forever – Derek someone had written on the back. Catherine sighed to herself. She had not had a boyfriend for ages. Too much working. And she was not likely to get more time now that she was a Hunter as well. Too much that needed investigating. Too many answers to find…
The room was getting colder. She had thought it was just her own reaction to almost dying, or the fact that all the doors between her and the outside world had been torn away. But no, this was too much – she was starting to feel like she was standing in the middle of a snowstorm, only without the wind and the snow…
"Something's happening…" she whispered to herself.
"Did you say something?" Rebecca said.
Catherine opened her mouth to answer, but at the same moment she saw the transparent shape of the Intangible appearing again, its face filled with grim satisfaction. It hovered over Marcus for a moment, and then – Catherine felt her stomach turn at the sight – it seemed to disappear into him, hiding within his body. Marcus' eyes went wide, and he stiffened where he stood, threatening to fall over.
"Oh, shit," Catherine said matter-of-factly.
"What?" Rebecca said. She looked at her neighbour with dawning fear in her eyes. "Marcus…?"
Marcus turned around slowly, like a sleepwalker. Catherine realised that she could actually see the Intangible inside of him, curled up in the middle of his abdomen like some horrible mimicry of an unborn child. It looked… expectant. There was really no other way of putting it. Like something was about to happen, and that made it feel happy and scared at the same time.
Catherine drew her gun and pointed it at Marcus with what she personally considered to be an impressive quickness.
"You stay right there!" she yelled.
Marcus made no sign of staying right there. Instead, he kept advancing sluggishly, his eyes unfocused. Catherine bit her teeth together and took aim.
And then hesitated.
Shit, what am I doing? I can't shoot someone who hasn't done anything wrong except been conveniently close to an Intangible who needed a host…
That hesitation gave the Marcus-thing all the time he needed; he grabbed the gun by the barrel and pulled it right out of her hand. Catherine gave off a cry of shock and stumbled backwards. Now she was unarmed again, and she had an angry possessed guy who probably did not much like her to content with.
In fact, he hardly seemed to notice her; he pushed her aside and went on advancing towards Rebecca. She gave off a terrified, sobbing cry of protest – "Noooooooooooo…" – but otherwise, she did not seem to have the strength to fight back in any other way.
Can't shoot him, Catherine thought. Don't have anything to shoot him with anymore, anyway. Can't wrestle him – he doesn't look all that strong, but neither am I, and he's bigger than I am. Can I talk to him?
It was worth a try.
"Wait a minute!" she shouted. "Let's talk this through like civilised people… or creatures… or whatever the hell you are… Er, anyway, I'm sure we can work something out that will make us all happy."
Or, at least, something that would make her alive and it a long way away from her. That state of affairs would make her very happy indeed, to be honest.
Still, there was the matter of Rebecca, who, admittedly, was not Catherine's favourite person in the world right now, what with forcing her to talk with a silly accent and everything, but who nevertheless did not deserve to be killed by a… well, strictly speaking Catherine did not yet have a name for what Marcus was at the moment, but Rebecca did not deserve to be killed by one of those, anyway.
Marcus turned on heavy feet and squinted at her. She got the feeling that the Intangible that was running him had trouble getting his senses to work properly.
"Wwwwwwhat… yoooooou…?" he managed to get out, sounding like he had to struggle for every word.
"I'm a Hunter," Catherine said.
"… Hunnnnnn-terrrrrrr…?"
"I don't know either," Catherine confessed. "It's just what other people like me call it."
The possessed man – Catherine decided that 'Sleepwalker' was probably a good enough term, since that was what the guy mostly reminded her of; someone who was not quite awake – slowly shook his head. He did not seem to comprehend. Then he turned away, apparently deciding that he did not need to know.
He doesn't seem to be too bright, Catherine thought. Could I trick him or something?
But no tricks seemed to present themselves.
Marcus the Sleepwalker had reached Rebecca, and now he put his arms around her, pressing her against him. If he noticed her helpless crying, he did not show it.
"Bbbbbback…" he sighed blissfully.
Something in that word made things click into place for Catherine. She looked at the Intangible riding Marcus. She looked at the picture that she still held in her hand. The man on it was a more solid version of the Intangible.
Feeling as if she was moving through a dream, she turned over the picture. The text on the backside had changed. Now it said It loves her still.
"Oh, God," Catherine gasped. "Oh, my God…" She looked up at the two figures on the bed, the Sleepwalker clutching Rebecca so close that the poor woman had to struggle for every breath she took. He was rocking back and forth, tears running down his plump face. "Derek!"
Marcus' head slowly turned towards Catherine, a look of confusion in his eyes.
"You're dead," Catherine said flatly. "That was what Marcus meant, wasn't it? That's why this hasn't been a good week for her. You died a few days ago."
The balding head slowly turned from side to side, trying to deny the statement. But the Intangible inside of Marcus already had a look of dawning, horrified recollection on its face. Rebecca sucked in a long, wheezing breath as the arms restraining her relaxed.
"You shouldn't be here," Catherine said. "You have no business taking over someone else's body, and that other one shouldn't be out walking in the first place. And you have no business with her."
"… Derek…?" Rebecca asked, disbelieving. "Is that… you?"
"Not anymore," Catherine said. "But some people don't know when to quit, do they, Derek? Get out of that guy now. I know what you came for, but that's not anything you'll ever get back."
Nothing moved in the room for a moment. Rebecca was staring at Marcus with horror and disbelief. Marcus was staring at Catherine with hatred and pain. Catherine was evenly returning the glare.
She held up the picture to him, pushing it close to Marcus' face so that he could do nothing to avoid seeing it.
"Remember?" she insisted. "This was you. But this guy isn't around anymore, is he? He died. But that's not him." She pointed at the half-rotten corpse on the floor. "That's just some poor dead guy you took over, isn't it? What happened to your body? Why didn't you use that one? Was it too smashed up? It was, wasn't it?" She glanced at Rebecca for confirmation.
"Car crash," she said in a thin, broken voice. "There was fire… They said… they said there was almost nothing… l-l-left…" She started crying again.
"Remember that, Derek?" Catherine demanded. "Remember who you really are? Not that guy, no. Not the guy you're using now, either." She took up one of the larger mirror fragments from the floor and held it up for the Sleepwalker to see. The Intangible was starting to look downright sick. "None of them is yours – and neither is she!"
Marcus and Rebecca flinched in unison.
"Leave her alone," Catherine said softly. "Whatever you felt for each other, that's all over now. You've got nothing left to offer her. Let her put her life back together in peace."
"For… ever…" Marcus gasped.
"No. It sounds good, but it's not true. Nothing's forever."
Marcus screamed, a high-pitched shriek that sounded bizarre when coming from the throat of such a big, chunky man. The Intangible, the used-to-be-Derek, screamed with him, though its scream was soundless. Catherine clutched her ears. Her head felt like it was going to burst.
Then it stopped, and Marcus fell down on the bed, his eyes rolling up into his head. The Intangible was just… gone. The only sound that Catherine could hear was Rebecca's sobs.
She turned the picture over again. The text said I love you forever – Derek. Catherine wondered if it had ever really said anything else. Life was full of those little questions when you were a Hunter.
"I don't think he'll come back again," she said, mostly to herself. "I think I made him understand, at least a little…"
"It was Derek," Rebecca said. There was bottomless pain in her voice.
"No. Derek is dead. You told me yourself."
"It was Derek, and you drove him away."
"He was hurting you," Catherine said coldly.
"He would have stopped!" Rebecca snapped. "He came back to me, and you made him go away!"
Catherine felt tired and disgusted. She should have left this stupid bitch with her undead boyfriend. She had risked her life, and this was her thanks?
"Fine. Be that way." She took the gun out of Marcus' limp fingers and walked towards the door.
"Wait!" Rebecca yelled. "What am I supposed to tell people? Who are you?"
Catherine turned around in the doorway and raised an eyebrow.
"I'm your cousin Karen," she said flatly. "From Texas, or so I'm told."
Then she walked away.
***
From the journals of Doctor Catherine Faller, entry # 6 (continued):
Okay, so I overreacted. Sue me.
I don't know, I guess I believe that there is such a thing as a point of no return. That sometimes, things are just over, and that nothing good can come out of ignoring that. Even marriage vows specify 'until death do you part'. If nothing ever ended, how could anything begin? If nothing ever changed, where would _life_ be?
Or maybe that's meaningless rhetoric. I'm just not sure anymore.
Damn. It's catching up with me, isn't it? I've prided myself on how well I've handled the transition to this new world-view I have to embrace, but every now and then, I just feel like going to bed and not getting back up until the world starts making some sense again. Hunter blues, I suppose. We do love feeling sorry for ourselves. But self-pity disgusts me, and even more when I find it in myself.
What is death, when you get right down to it? I have never believed in the existence of an immortal soul. I guess that in the wake of recent events, I have to change my view on that. Obviously, something survives. But what? A divine, perfect part of us, who can pursue its full potential once it's been freed from the shackles of flesh? Somehow I doubt that.
Here's what I believe – my latest theory, as it were. Regardless of what we might say, the dying wish of almost everyone is not to die. What if some people actually manages it? What if somehow, their stubborn refusal to die gives them a way to stay behind, to save some of their thoughts and feelings even though their brains shut down?
If that's true, how large are the chances that the creature born from that act of will – the ghost, the Intangible, whatever one might like to call it – is a perfect copy? Very small, I think. It seems inevitable to me that what most people manage to create is a flawed copy, a memory of life with no life of its own. Something that can remember, but not understand – that can think, in a way, but not reason.
If the present has no value, and you have no concept of the future – what choice have you, but to try to return to a past where you no longer belong? To creep under the skin of a body, any body, living or dead, that you can commandeer… and go searching for what used to be important to you?
Is the world full of demented copies of dead people?
No, screw that last question, I just thought of a more important one.
I want very much to live. Does that mean that when I die – and I will die; Hunters are notoriously short-lived, from what I have been told – I will become one of those demented copies myself?