Page 18 of Overexposed

But I did, I had to, and I did, peeking over his shoulder and past his shroud-black hair, I saw a cross, set up not only with precision, but also with steel bolts and a mind to stability. It connected both to the floor and the ceiling, and there were straps on the horizontal beam. For arms and wrists. Beaten into it, there were long nails -- blades, really -- sharp enough to mount a person on. As had been done to Auris.

“There’s no one here,” I said.

“No one, I promise you. We are alone. Come,” Auris said.

I shook my head, stood my ground.

“No, I… I meant…” I lit up the cross with my flashlight, took a step to the side so that he held on only to my elbow. “There is no one on the cross.”

I moved the flashlight right. There was a table, a toolbox on it. The box was dark green, rectangular, and it looked so very innocent. In front of it, on the wooden table there were two droplets where something dark had dried into the wood and stained it.

Before I could move my flashlight to the left, Auris reached for my wrist. “Don’t. There are… more bones there.”

I had missed those, then, upon a first glance.

Back in the motel room with its filthy bathroom, I had been helpless. Utterly. I had felt death, not the abstract. There had been a moment where it had been a certainty. What would have become of me? A skeleton to scare the living? A body, gruesome in display, the only memories associated with it the memories of crime and cruelty, not of who I had been, not of all the photos I had taken, the smiles I had demanded from people in front of my lens. Should murder be allowed to have this power, to render someone’s remains the ultimate memento of cruelty?

No, I thought. The dead are not for display, for garlands. They are not for our viewing pleasure, they are not show-and-tell for sordid tales. They deserve compassion and respect.

“Let me see,” I said, and I must have sounded certain, because Auris took his hand away and watched me explore the rest of the dark room.

The bones were on another table, laid out as if for an examination, the skeleton disarticulated but assembled, each piece where it belonged. Each piece where it should be.

“What’s wrong with the skull?” I asked.

Auris walked up to the table and picked up that skull, looked at it. “Fire. I can still smell it. This was charred.”

He looked at the rest of the bones and probably saw more there than I did. I didn’t want to know, because I didn’t need to. They had dragged another vampire in here, had bound them to the cross. There had been torture, some sort of exorcism, and then, they had beheaded said vampire, had lit his body on fire and waited until the flesh was burned away, and for some reason, some disgusting reason, they had brought them back down here. Had set them out, like some sort of display.

“Can we… take them away with us? I mean, this is… this is the vampire they were talking about, yes?”

A ripple ran down Auris’s dark hair. “Going by the teeth, yes.”

“Let’s take them. And… I don’t know. Do we bury them? I don’t like the idea of the priests getting to keep any shred of this person. Fuckers.”

My fear, hard and ruthless though it had taken me, squirmed away from the anger that was bubbling up inside me. Auris looked at me, surprise in his black eyes.

“Yes, we can take these bones. I don’t know what rites they would want. We can figure something out.”

“Okay. We’ll do that.”

“Wait here. It won’t take me a minute,” Auris said and became a blur of vampiric movement.

Less than a minute later, he was back with some sort of priest dress into which he folded the bones, all of them. He was quick, but he took care. He bound the little parcel up. It was all that was left of someone who had potentially lived ages. Of someone who might have seen festivals to long-dead gods in Aswan or wild forests in the midst of Europe in which rabbits outran foxes. What a senseless waste to extinguish all that in fire.

We left the hidden crypt. Auris put the bones on the floor with great care to close up the back of the wardrobe behind us.

“I don’t want them to know right away,” he said as he fit the wooden panel at the back of the wardrobe back into place so that it would be not immediately obvious someone had gone inside. “The priests we met weren’t involved with this operation directly, they’d just heard of it.”

I snorted. “This was a feather in someone’s cap.”

Auris nodded as he put the wardrobe back in order, moved the vestments back into place so they hid the hollow back. “I’m sure they will investigate. They might not see it for a few days. That should leave them wondering.”

He picked up the bones and took my hand. Auris’s hurry was not the panicked type, but there was surety in him making the exit, and I was in no mood to resist. When we came out the church, the presence of the caretaker made me jump slightly, and Auris hissed.

“I’m sorry, my heart. I made him come here. We are still alone -- well.”

He said the last word in a tone of voice that was colder than the November night around us. It scared me a little bit, not for myself, but for whoever or whatever had upset him.

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