Page 1 of Grave Curse

Prologue

“It took me a while to find you.” Slowly, because I didn’t want to screw this up by rushing, I made sure the frayed wires from the ancient, unplugged extension cord curled in a sloppy manner on the garage floor. Right next to it was a spill of paint, also sloppily cleaned up, with loads of rags soaked in turpentine and a nearby open and rusted can of turpentine. The entire garage was a fire hazard all by itself, stuffed with boxes and boxes of shit collected throughout a lifetime of boring, middle-class life. Luckily there was a distinct pathway that wound its way through all the junk, wide enough to maneuver from one end of the garage to the other.

Certainly wide enough for me to set the scene for my trussed-up audience.

“See, the fact is, my uncle Hades never mentioned you by name. Just that you existed.” The mingling scents of turpentine and paint made my eyes water, and I couldn’t wait to breathe fresh air instead of sucking it in through an N95 mask. I needed to get things going before the fumes made my brain hazy. “You know what I had to do to find you? I had to go through the entire roster of guards and general personnel employed by the Illinois State Penn and put it on a spreadsheet. Don’t tell anyone, but I love spreadsheets. They make me feel like I’ve got a real solid overview of a situation.” I glanced over at my audience lying on the floor and tipped him a wink. “Control freak, plus closet nerd, equals me. That’ll be our little secret though, yeah? I’ve got a badass biker rep to uphold.”

Staring up at me with wild eyes and sweat pouring off him despite the coolness of the early October pre-dawn hour, my audience whimpered behind his gag and struggled at the bonds around his wrists and feet. I’d made sure to pad those bonds so no ligature marks would show up, but he’d been trussed up a while. I needed to move this along before he bruised himself trying to get free.

“Once I had my list of suspects, I eliminated all the women. That’s not me being sexist, so don’t go down that road. My uncle simply indicated the person he’d blackmailed into coordinating the death of my old man was a dude. But since that still left over a couple thousand names on the list, I had to get creative and figure out how to chop that list of suspects down to size. Uncle H told me the guard who helped unalive my pops was a family man. He had a college-aged daughter, so that meant he was older, like you. No offense. I’d like to get old myself one day, though I doubt it’ll happen. Generally speaking, Colgraves don’t grow old. They’re in the ground long before Father Time can look our way.”

The man on the floor mumbled against his gag.

“You’re right, I’m wasting time.” I splashed more turpentine on the ground, then let a handful of rags soak it up before tossing the rags on the extension cord. How much was too much? “So, as I was saying, I had a big-ass list, but I was able to cut it down by going through all the clues Hades had given me. My list of thousands dwindled to about eight-hundred older family men, before I remembered the guy I was looking for was a girl dad. A dad to a college-aged girl who went to not just any college, but some fancy Ivy League university. Well, that cut things down big-time. You know how many of you there are working at the state Pen? Seven. Out of thousands and thousands of you, there are only seven dads who have a daughter who made it into an Ivy League school. You should be proud.”

Behind me, the man began to cry.

“Now here’s the plot twist, dude. Uncle Hades decided to drop a name near the end of taunting me about how he’d killed my old man. He said, ‘Little Gigi would be kicked out of her Ivy League school faster than you can say three-way.’ But here’s the problem—no one had a daughter named Gigi. I began to wonder if my uncle had simply decided to mind-fuck me for shits and giggles, but I still had to investigate it to the end. I’m nothing if not thorough.” Spilled paint, check. Old, fucked up extension cord, check. Careless use of turpentine, check. Fire hazard of a garage, check. Ajar door leading into the kitchen to feed oxygen into the garage, check.

All I needed now was a solid reason for why someone got trapped in this garage. My packrat hoarder surroundings gave me plenty of inspiration.

“I looked into the backgrounds of all seven girls but didn’t find anything. Then I looked up the name Gigi, thinking it might be a nickname for one of the names on my list. Instead I found some old movie by that name. It’s about a young girl, Gigi, who’s being taught how to be the perfect French mistress for older, married dudes who’re wealthy enough and powerful enough to afford jailbait side pieces. Kinda fucked up if you think about it, but I try not to judge. And yeah, if that kind of shit is romanticized by Hollywood and turned into a fucking musical, I can see how that sort of thing might appeal to an impressionable girl. Thank heaven for little girls, and all that. Am I right?”

The man on the floor made a supreme effort to communicate, and it sounded like “Pease.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got no intention of turning my sights on your kid, or anyone else’s, for that matter. This is about fathers, not daughters.” I looked at what was right above my audience and saw potential. Heavily laden planks of wood on brackets. Leaning over, I hefted one, saw that it wasn’t nailed or screwedin place, and shook my head. This was almost too easy. “You really are a half-assed slob, you know that? I’m amazed this place hasn’t gone up years ago.”

“Pease, pease, pease.” The man began to sob.

“Your daughter, Genevieve LeMieux, is the only one out of the seven Ivy League girls who uses the name Gigi on all her social media platforms. Studies both international law and French at Colombia University. She has aspirations of living in Paris as an interpreter in the diplomatic field, and you know something? I think she’ll make it. That is, if no one discovers the amateur porno flick she posted on OnlyPorn, where she’s getting pegged in the ass from one guy while taking another guy’s cock down her throat. Then her diplomatic career might be over before it begins, but hey, let’s be honest. She could also have a great career in the porn industry, and that’s okay, Hugo. Seriously, there’s nothing wrong with that. She’s obviously got talent, drive and a whole lot of self-confidence, and I think that’s something you should be proud of. I know we haven’t had the chance to talk much, but I get the feeling you’re not proud of your daughter’s life choices. That’s a real shame. I mean, if you’d just accepted that your kid has an adventurous sexual appetite and doesn’t mind letting the world see it, you wouldn’t be living your last few moments of life lying on this disgusting garage floor.” I glanced back at him, and sighed. “Lying on this disgusting garage floor, pissing yourself. Jesus, Hugo.”

The smell of urine mingled unpleasantly with the turpentine and paint.

“Pease donn.”

I knew what he was trying to say, but since these were his proverbial last words, the least I could do was let him say them. I wasn’t a complete monster, after all.

Squatting down, I tugged the gag from his mouth. “Go ahead.”

“Please don’t kill me. I have kids. I have kids.”

“So did my old man. Three of us—me, Loki and Hel, our baby sister. Crazy names, I know, but since my dad was named Odin and our uncle’s name is Hades, we were destined for the shitty names we have. I mean, my name, Tyr, sounds like the water leaking out of your eyes right now. One of my earliest memories of life is of a kid in kindergarten calling me Boohoo, and telling me to cry tears because that was my name. That’s the first fight I ever got into, but I can guarantee you no one at that school ever made fun of my name after that. Tyr was the Norse god of war, and I’ve more than lived up to that name from the time I could walk, because waging war is what Colgraves do best. Maybe you should have thought about that, and about Odin’s children, before deciding to kill him.”

“B-but I didn’t kill him. I didn’t do it myself.”

“No, you didn’t,” I agreed, nodding. “But the ones who wolf-packed him inside the facility’s laundry room…you’rethe one who let them in.You’rethe one who sent the guards who were supposed to be overseeing that area out on an unscheduled break. You did that, Hugo. If it weren’t for you, my old man would still be alive today. Still behind bars, of course, but alive.”

The inescapable truth of that statement was there in his eyes. He knew it, and he seemed to deflate in front of me. “I’m sorry. I swear, I’m sorry. I had no choice. Your uncle made me watch that… that video… Oh God, he was going to expose it, expose my baby girl. I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

“I’m sure you are. I’m sorry, too. I mean that.” At last I stood, more resolved than ever to tie up this loose end. “If a Colgrave touches your life, it’s rarely for the better. We’re cursed, you know, us firstborns, like my father and me. Cursed to never know happiness. Cursed to never be free of blood and death and the deepest fucking despair known to man. Just… cursed. If we’re not very careful about what we do and who we get close to,the lives of the people we touch get ruined beyond repair. Like your life, Hugo.”

The man on the floor began to sob.

“You forfeited your life the moment you chose to help Hades kill my father. But I promise you here and now, this messy chapter ends tonight. That’s why I’m trying so hard to make this look like an accident. Usually I want a scene like this to send a loud-and-clear message that this is what my enemies will suffer if they dare to cross me. But I’m not doing that this time. I don’t want Gigi to go through life eaten up with rage and vengeance, knowing her father was murdered. And I sure as hell don’t want her to blame herself for this. Yeah, if she’d never posted that video, you and I wouldn’t be where we are now, but I don’t want her to know that. I want her to be at peace with how this was just a terrible accident that was bound to happen, considering the shithole this garage is. Not to mention she’ll get a hefty life insurance payout that much quicker if there’s no long and drawn-out investigation into your death. You’ve got a policy worth half a mil, so I want her to get it as quickly as possible. I hope that’ll cushion the blow of losing you.” With that, I stood and upended the plank shelving, letting the contents pelt down all over him.

Hugo let out a strangled scream as I plucked up the now-empty plank.

“Y-you don’t have to do this, please, you don’t have to—”

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