In a little pastel house, a seer and a psychopomp have questions. This week on Drabblecast– something’s fishy in a curious small town. We bring you a paranormal murder-mystery by
Cormack Baldwin & EV Smith. Enjoy!
Cormack Baldwin (he/him) and EV Smith (he/she/they) are a daring duo of authors and editors. Together, they run Archive of the Odd, a found fiction press. Apart, they have done such jobs as “working in an abandoned lighthouse grinding up fish to feed to other fish” and “succumbing to madness among impossible maps” (no, really!). They went to the coast recently. It was nice. You should see it.
Episode Art: Shane Bevin
Pastorale
by Cormack Baldwin & EV Smith
It was supposed to be a perfect vacation. No, it was going to be a perfect vacation. Horatio had peered into every future he could see long enough to understand, and there he had found rolling hills and whispering waves. For him, it would be a break from the city, with its fates and possibilities tangled into a single, pulsating knot. For Davide, a break from the bereaveds’ requests for the passage of their troublesome loved ones. They would not be a minor seer and a psychopomp, but tourists. There would be sweet country air mixed with the salt tang of the ocean. There would be a seaside cottage painted in pastels.
“There’s a body in the pipe organ,” Davide informed Horatio matter-o-factly not ten minutes after they entered the stone cathedral, the first stop on their itinerary.
Perhaps it was his fault for bringing a psychopomp on vacation. The thought of skeletal remains sandwiched between oak and ivory made Horatio queasy. “They used to do that, I think. Churches and such.”
Davide’s lip pressed into a half frown as he walked over to the behemoth structure, so large it forced the pews to crowd together like teeth in a too-small mouth. “No, this is recent. They’re not at peace at all.”
Horatio swallowed. Flickers of darkest night entered the static of futures. He opened his mouth to ask a thousand questions at once. Can you see them? Why would they be in the pipe organ, not the walls? How recent? Last century or last week? Do we have to do anything about that?
He rubbed his eyes, forcing away charcoals and reds that crept like disembodied veins into his vision, as well as the dread swirling in his stomach. There were good futures yet. Shepherds with little yarn shops. Seaside toffee, the kind with chunks of salt. Nice things. Things that did not include bodies in instruments. “Is this something you’d like to focus on?”
He needn’t have asked. Davide was already lifting away the outer panel of the pipe organ, its designer evidently not having thought to install screws to protect entombed corpses.
“What are you doing?” Horatio protested as Davide leaned the panel up against a wall.
“I’m a mortician, it’s my duty,” Davide replied.
“And I’m a bookkeeper, that doesn’t mean—” he began, but the words dried up in his throat. There, and in the firework of futures, was a body—fresh, rotting, leathery, skeletal, a thousand ways at a thousand points of discovery. White, at least for now, dark hair, younger than not. And very, very dead. “Oh, dear Lord.”
“Mm,” Davide agreed. He traced a finger down the body’s unbuttoned dress shirt, clean of blood, before hooking a finger around the middle hem. Initially, Horatio thought he was just pulling the shirt aside. Instead, the cavity in the man’s stomach gaped back at him. Red slick glistened over the bump of vertebrae.
A suggestion to call the police was abandoned before he could even attempt it. The odds of anything good coming out of the authorities seeing a Black man and a Filipino man standing over a body after vandalizing a church were astronomically low. At least Davide assisted in murder investigations for his work, though usually at the behest of his partner, Richard.
No amount of rationalization would make him feel better. Bucolic futures fizzled and popped out of existence, consigned to pastel flickers in a world of stone and somber faces. And that was before Davide started speaking to the empty air.
“Ah, hello. My name is Davide.” The mortician removed his hand from the man’s empty abdomen and gestured a gore-streaked finger towards Horatio. “This is Horatio, a friend of mine.” After a moment, Davide turned and said, “His name is Andrew Germeyer. He was an architect.”
“Pleasure,” Horatio lied. No, he oughtn’t be rude. Not the man’s fault he had been murdered. “I’m sorry to hear what happened to you.”
For a moment, they waited in silence, then Davide shook his head. “I’m afraid he doesn’t know what happened to him. The last thing he remembers is putting on the kettle at home.” To the air, he said, “Even in non-traumatic deaths, the endings frequently aren’t easily accessible. Nothing to worry about.”
It seemed rational for one to worry about the fact that his guts resembled a poor man’s wallet, and evidently, Andrew agreed.
“Would telling the minister help you move on?” Davide asked. Pause. “If you’d prefer to find out what happened, it may be more prudent to go to the police. Alternatively, I know a fine private detective—” A frown, perhaps at having the extolling of his boyfriend’s values cut short. “Alright. Do you know where I might find him?”
#
It was not the manner in which Horatio had expected to take tea in a seaside cottage, but the minister’s wife, Julia, was polite enough to provide it with a platter of biscuits. Horatio watched her throughout the futures, murmuring, crying, excusing herself to other rooms, as he took tentative sips. Knowing that it wasn’t poisoned did not make him feel better.
“Everyone loved Andrew,” Julia said after Davide explained their visit. “He only moved here a few years ago, but he’s really made himself at home.”
“How wonderful,” Horatio said.
“He died last night,” Davide said. “Do you know of anything that could have been happening then?”
She considered it for a moment, then shook her head. “Well, I was home with the children. Gerald—my husband—was running a community meeting at the pub until nearly ten. Much of the town would have been there, I imagine. We’re tight-knit here.”
Dozens of faces ticked by in the back of Horatio’s mind, each giving the same alibi. Everyone had seen each other, and none of them had done it. He nodded, and Davide gave a short sigh.
“Would anyone else have access to the cathedral?” Davide asked.
Julia shook her head, eyes trained on the floor.
Horatio drowned his burgeoning headache with a swallow of tea. This wasn’t going anywhere, not that he could see. Future alibis paraded by his vision, each as steady as the last. “Well, we would hate to keep you, ma’am. Thank you for your hospitality. Would it be possible for us to speak to your husband?”
She worried the hem of her shirt, as possible versions of her stammered apologies, or ushered them out the door. “Well, he’ll be at the church today, and probably won’t be home until evening.”
Davide perked up at that, and the babble of voices cleared like a radio being tuned through static. A chorus of tips, threats, and excuses. A hundred faces, suspicious and welcoming in turn. A future of interviews in between slammed doors. People talking, talking, saying—
“Well, I was at the town meeting, anyone could tell you that.”
“Who the hell are you? Don’t look like any constables I’ve ever seen. Get the hell out before I—”
“One step more and I shoot. Try me! Try—”
—Nothing he wanted to hear. “Thank you,” he interrupted before Davide could speak, “but I’m sure we can find it if we need to. We only came because we thought the minister ought know.”
Her frown deepened, but she accepted effusive thanks for the hospitality and walked them both to the door.
It was not a triumphant return to the hotel, though Horatio had assured Davide that it was an opportunity to strategize and not just a rest on his headache. He’d explained what he’d seen from the chance of them asking around, leaving out the death threats.
“Nothing of use,” Davide sighed. “You said they’ll all have alibis?”
Horatio nodded. It was mostly true. Everyone gave alibis, but everyone also confessed. If there was a killer among them (and he had it on good evidence that one did not lose their organs by accident), they wouldn’t confess any easier than someone bullied into making it up. “This may be beyond our skillset,” he said.
Somewhere, in some future, the shutters kept on flapping open and shut on a deathly dry wind. It was as Horatio peered into that orange haze that Davide announced, “I’m going to call Richard.”
The futures scrambled to keep up with the decision, sparking randomly between shores, fields, and returns to the city, and dry air, dead earth, and mocking clouds.
“I don’t think that’s—” he started, but the words seemed to stick in his throat. The static of the future washed over his vision like a television whose antenna had been knocked askew. Blacks, reds, oranges, empty whites. Screams, sighs of wind, nothing at all.
Richard’s voice, tinny from the connection, cut through the wall of noise out of sheer improbability. Davide must have already called. Hadn’t it only been a second? Time wasn’t acting right, it—
Desolate air burning sun, everything is dry, dry, dry, fire on the–
Vortex of clouds, clockwise clockwise switch turn turn and churn and–
“Are you sure—” static turned Richard’s voice to a mumble. A cough cleared it again. “Well, if I were you, I would look into the minister. He’s the hinge in the alibis, isn’t he?”
“Oh, good point, love. He wasn’t available earlier, but—”
It’s all falling it’s all falling it’s all falling–
A hand on his shoulder. “Are you alright?” Davide’s voice was an anchor in a stormy sea.
Here was where a Poirot, a Sherlock, someone other than a bookkeeper with a tendency toward prophecy, would say something to set the whole timeline right. Phosphenes of lush green and turquoise meant it wasn’t a given, not yet. He could unwind the machine and pull out the key, let Davide give up so naturally he wouldn’t even notice. The best he got was, “I need air.”
“Of course. We can go down to the shore for a bit, how about that? After that, Richard suggested going back to the church.”
Horatio mentally threw out the last sentence. The thought of the gentle roll of waves soothed his burning mind. He nodded.
The sky flickered between blues and blacks, reds and yellows as they walked. Horatio squeezed his eyes shut to keep the shifting ground from tricking him into tripping, but–
Broken promise, broken bones, break the city, broken tome–
–the smell of the ocean was what caught him first, the tang of salt mixed with the rich scent of decay. A breeze played across his face, depositing grit that wouldn’t come out for another too-many showers. Slowly, he opened one eye, then the other.
Teal water lapped at the sand, rolling tiny white stones into oblivion. Even in his doubled, tripled vision, a single boat bobbed peacefully along in the placid water. Through the window, he could make out moving shapes. Fishermen, or, or—
Red sky in morning, black clouds bring no rain. Run from what has waited on the shore, not sleeping, not fearing. Run, for the deal is broken.
Breathe in the musk of rot, the only thing that will be left of you when it is done. Gaping silver faces, eyes twitching awake as white mold turns scales to fur.
Look ahead, see what the vengeful sea has offered. Colossus in yielding flesh. Its tentacles reach far into the horizon. The squid roils with death. Darkened veins paint its endless arms. It hits you, that smell, that awful smell, not its death alone—
Horatio dropped to his knees and vomited. The hungry sand drank the bile all at once or perhaps not at all or perhaps never again because—
It’s coming it’s coming it’s coming it’s—
#
The brief peace of sleep was interrupted by his senses coming on one by one, as if each had to be checked before continuing. Vision, showing speckles of red sky and falling fish, but mostly a tin ceiling that swung back and forth. Smell: salty, but not infernal. Taste: rancid.
Hearing… he wasn’t sure. The futures had retreated, only babbling in the background. But he couldn’t make out a single word of the overlapping voices of the present. Maybe he’d suffered some sort of brain damage, and that was why he had fainted. Just his luck.
“Nagising siya, saglit lang. How are you feeling?” Davide’s voice. His face, surrounded by echoes of the future, appeared above him.
Horatio blinked up at him, as well as the repeated versions of him. “Where am I?” he asked.
Another face, sea-worn and curious, entered his vision.
Davide continued without noting the woman, “Fishing boat. These ladies saw you and offered to help. Horatio, this is Celeste, Tess, and Rosa.” He pointed at each, though only Tess was visible to wave. “Aunties, this is Horatio, as I said.”
“One too many?” Tess asked. The aunties behind her chuckled, and she cut them a glare.
“No, we were… we were going to…” the memories kept slipping away. He wasn’t making his denial sound more plausible. “We were going to the bait shop?” That felt right. It stood in the future, hooks and leads rusted, beaten by the unforgiving sun.
“The Bait and Tackle?” one of the aunties, perhaps Celeste (somewhere in the clang of futures, that name appended itself to her), chimed in. “That place is fantastic. Gives us free bait when they have extra. Nothing much, just some chum each summer to welcome us back, but better than buying it, eh?”
Pink and red wriggled across Horatio’s vision. He couldn’t recognize anything from the flashes, but the mixed dread and nausea told him that it was something important. Bracing himself, he asked, “Do you have some now?”
Celeste scrutinized him, clearly wondering what sort of man woke up from a bender to ask about fishing. “Just got it yesterday. You’ll need to pay if you want any, though. Here,” she shuffled out of sight, then returned with a cooler as large as her torso. With a flourish, she lifted the lid.
Had anything been left in Horatio’s stomach, it certainly would have come up then. The smell, gamey and rank, filled the microscopic cabin as a wave of red skies filled Horatio’s vision. Even unflappable Davide gave a short, “Hm,” at the bed of off-pink paste, slippery chunks of intestine surfacing like fish. On top, like a garnish, lay a heart the size of a fist.
Horatio slid off the bed, catching himself on the railing. “I’m sorry, do you mind if I talk to my friend alone for a moment?” he asked.
“You can go to the deck,” Rosa said.
“Thank you.” Horatio ran his hand along the wall until he reached the door, then shouldered it open.
Davide had to duck to make it through. After easing it shut behind him, he turned back to Horatio. “Well, either the Bait and Tackle doesn’t know, or they’re in on it as well.”
Sealed storm shutters flaking paint and rusted iron bolts snapped shut– the thud of Davide’s solid body on a steel door that won’t budge– “By the time that we get there, the shop will be closed,” he warned. “What do you suppose we do now, then?”
Davide’s somber expression and silver hair matched the grey sea around them, the crests of sloshing white. “I’m a mortician. I need to return what’s left to Andrew.”
And so, with Davide fifty pence lighter, Horatio found himself holding an ice chest on the threshold of a pipe organ.
“—it’s not much, but hopefully you’ll feel more whole,” Davide was explaining to the air.
Horatio turned his back. Even then, there was no escape from the slick sound of blood, flashes of red streaking Davide’s fingers.
The noise’s abrupt stop was not the relief it should have been. “That’s interesting,” Davide said slowly. “How do you suppose this got here?”
Horatio could neither offer nor hear a response.
#
“What did you find?” Horatio asked as they walked back to the hotel. The light rain that had started up, interspersed with flashes of deep, viscous red. He didn’t really want to know.
Davide ignored the question. “He remembered something. He told me that the day before he was taken from this world, the good minister came to visit him,” he explained, “to convince him not to attend the next community meeting. He would be the only one not in attendance.”
Carnage solidified in the writhing futures. Horatio could see it now, the two of them marched down at gunpoint past the rivers of fish, a mob of villagers at their back. “Everyone is in on it, then,” Horatio said. A laugh bubbled out of his throat as the realization hit him along with the rain of rotting fish in his nostrils and the corners of his vision. “What, are we going to get the whole town arrested? Or do you want to be the one in that cooler?”
“They can’t kill me, you’re the only one who really needs to be concerned,” Davide said.
Horatio slapped a hand to his face, the sting briefly chasing away the encroaching desolation. “Oh, even better! Is that why you won’t let what needs to be, be?”
“It’s what’s right,” Davide said.
Horatio’s blood threatened to boil over. “’What’s right’ is going to get us killed! Oh, I’m sorry, it’s going to get me killed, let me not rope you into this.” He hated himself for the hurt on Davide’s face. He hated himself for being here. He hated that somewhere in there, he still wanted to grasp for something beautiful, and hold it tight. A turquoise sea, an ice cream melting onto white sand. Tears threatened to spill over his cheeks and join the sea. “Davide, I brought you along because I thought we could both use a break. A week with no more death, no more calamity.”
Davide bit his lip, eyes scanning the horizon of bobbing boats and open ocean. He watched a lemon-yellow trawler putter out into the setting sun as Horatio watched it sink. “There’s no getting away from it,” he said finally, certainty exchanged for resignation. “I realize that this isn’t what you wanted, but this is what we do. People die everywhere. The future goes on everywhere. We make the best of what we can’t control.”
The boat rose again, pulled by a phantom hook, waiting for something that had never happened.
#
It was dark when the minister, an aging man with a hangdog expression Horatio suspected was permanent, came out to where they waited on the whitewashed porch. The comforting hum of charming, consistent life in the little town had sputtered and suffocated into a quiet that unnerved Horatio more than any storm.
“And how can I help you boys?” came his weary baritone, as he eyed Horatio carefully. Horatio tried to make himself smaller, never mind that he was nearly thirty-two years old.
Davide gave a tight smile. “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening. I spoke to your wife, earlier.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you for alerting me to the… situation. It’s a terrible business, Lord help us.” The minister bowed his head in respect.
“I just have a few questions, if that’d be alright,” Davide pushed. He didn’t give the minister chance to refuse. “There was a community meeting last night?”
The minister cleared his throat with more force than necessary. “Well, yes. It ran late. Lots of business to address, you know. New construction.”
Davide narrowed his eyes. “Without your architect? Perhaps you came by his house. Told him to stay home.”
The Minister schooled his terror behind an awkward smile that made no attempt to reach his eyes. “I’m sorry?”
“And perhaps you came back, with all the people in this town lying on your behalf. Perhaps you killed him, and shoved him in an area where no one but you would have reason to access for a while,” Davide continued, ignorant of or disinterested in how Horatio’s stomach dropped further with every syllable.
The minister sputtered then straightened, anger growing in the place of his fear. “Now you listen here, you filthy–”
Davide held up his hand, and he stopped dead. “I don’t actually need you to tell me why I found this on the body. In fact, you may want to save that speech for the authorities.” In his palm, he clutched the black scrap of priest’s chasuble for all to see. The low light had him looking like the corpses he swore to serve. “I just need to know who exactly did it, and why. Why was there a man in the pipe organ, diced up to be dumped into the sea?”
The minister withered, giving a small cough. “Not dumped,” he replied primly. “Given. The ritual requires entrails to be sacrificed into the water. The organ was just a convenient place to store him away from any scavengers until the tides wouldn’t carry the corpse into trawler nets.”
Horatio blinked. “The ritual?” Images of hands raised in worship clicked into place.
“Our town serves the ocean,” the minister said. “It has for centuries, if not longer. Each year we find someone who does not know its glory, and we give them as gift. You must understand, we do what we must to receive its blessing—if we don’t—” His voice broke, the last of his resolve shattering into terror. “Without the seas, no one comes. Without fish, we cannot eat. Either they die or we all do.” He turned imploringly to Horatio, tears streaking down his cheeks.
Horatio hesitated. Through the swarm of rot and desolation, he could still do the math well enough. No easy answer anywhere in the crashing wave of reality. There was no killing it or sating it. One person a year, ad infinitum. Or the town, the county, expanding out and out and—
He bit back the wave of futures. Reluctantly, he nodded. “They’re what’s holding it back, whatever it is.” If there was a solution, it didn’t show itself any time soon. One did not argue with elder gods.
“You give them no rites,” Davide snapped.
“Their rite is honor our god,” the minister ground out.
“You’ve taken their life. You have no right to their afterlife as well. We have enough evidence to—”
Let it break, let it grow, let it come from the sea. Years of placation will never make up for an eternity of want. The contract is broken, the deal is—
“How about a compromise?” Horatio suggested. The others stared. He continued as if his voice wasn’t shaking. “Your town knows about what they’re holding back, correct?”
The minister paused, but eventually agreed, “They’re aware. They do their duty to help each year.”
“Then sacrifice one of them, someone who knows what’s coming and who will want to save the people they care about.” The words turned into ash in his mouth as green and blue spread across the futures. “Offer them the rites they deserve. Let them move on. If you can promise that, we’ll leave on the first train tomorrow morning.” He looked between the two. “Do we have a deal?”
#
Horatio wished he could take comfort watching fields of snowy white sheep roll by train windows.
Davide had almost said the words so many times that they felt familiar by the time he finally asked, “Did we even do anything?”
Somewhere, never far enough away, there remained a town that would slit someone else’s belly the next year. In another year’s time they would gut one another, organs spilling out in halos before being fed to the gulls. Burials, cremation, funerals, it didn’t change that moment where someone went from an end to a means.
But the red had receded. Veins of annihilation no longer crept into visions of family asking how his vacation went. As pastel pastorals passed by, he said, “No, I don’t think we did.”
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