The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [12]
“What’s his name?” The dead man was sprawled on a red couch. Thick, sticky puddles of blood were congealing around him. A woman and two children, presumably his wife and children, lay in tangles of limbs around the room. They looked as if they’d been picked up and just tossed haphazardly about, like a lazy child with its dolls. Blood pooled around them, and stuck to Beckett’s shoes as he entered.
“Herman Zindel. Wife Isabel, children…” Skinner swallowed hard. “David and Michelle.”
“Who called us?”
Skinner shrugged. “I don’t know. The milkman found them. He said they hadn’t put their old bottles out, so he rang the bell. When no one answered, he got worried. Door was unlocked. He said he didn’t touch anything, just ran out into the street, screaming about the sharpsies. Mr. Stitch must have gotten word of it, somehow. He was the one that called me down here.”
“We’ve got a statement from the milkman?”
“Not yet. But I’ve got his address.”
Beckett nodded, and then turned his attention back to the corpses. Somehow, the fresh blood made them more nauseating than the dead flesh of the Reanimates. A twisted, hollow feeling thrummed in the coroner’s stomach, accompanied with a buzzing behind his ears. He badly wanted another veneine injection. “See anything, Valentine?”
The young man had just come into the sitting room, studiously snuffing candles on the way. “Uhm. Throats are…torn out, I’d say. Shredded, like with something sharp. Lots of blood. Hm.” If anything, the young man was understating the fact. The entire lower half of each corpse’s face had been torn away, all the way down to their collarbones. The woman and children had their bones picked clean, but someone had simply torn out Herman Zindel’s entire lower jaw. Valentine turned away from the bodies and looked at Beckett, who met his gaze. They took a long moment to avoid looking at the corpses. “Could be sharpsies.”
Beckett watched Valentine make the exchange. Beckett had been doing it himself for years, ever since he first saw a dead body hacked apart by a greedy necrologist. The exchange was this: you learn a little bit more about what the world is really like, and in exchange, you give up a little bit of your ability to feel. Beckett had been surrendering tiny bits of himself to the job for three decades. He knew a lot about what the world was really like. He could see the change happening on Valentine’s face, an exchange prompted by necessity. The young man’s face goes pale, his eyes widen, he starts to feel a little sick. Then he swallows and sets his jaw, determined not to let the mess get to him. When Beckett was a young man, he’d always thought that it was a good thing, being able to grit your teeth and look right down onto a broken, bloody body like Herman Zindel’s without feeling that knot in his stomach. Valentine probably thought it was, too.
“Stitch says no, and I’m inclined to agree with him.” Beckett turned back to the corpse of Herman Zindel, and knelt beside it. “Look at his arms. What’s wrong with them?”
Reluctantly, Valentine followed Beckett’s attention. “Uhm. Nothing?”
“Right.”
“So?”
With an exasperated groan, Skinner filled in. “So, if a sharpsie comes into your house and wants to bite you in the face, or something, what do you do?”
Valentine looked at her, then back at Beckett. “I don’t…uh…I guess, shoot it?” He looked around the room. “But there’s no gun. He could have grabbed that poker, by the fire, for a weapon. Handsome piece of ironwork there, too.” Blinking quickly, the young man looked around the room again. “Hey, that’s funny. There’s a lot of nice things here. The gramophone over there, it’s still got all its cylinders, even. It’d fetch a few coppers, at the least…”
“Valentine.” Beckett