17 – i – The Hanged Man in the Moon

“I’m afraid there isn’t much more I can do for you. To most other patients, I would suggest rest and recovery. Your body wouldn’t benefit, unfortunately.”

The Hanged Man drew in a deep breath, tasting the doctor’s genuine apology in his words.

He hadn’t expected any other response. Revenant, Specter-class being, scourge… zombie, even. In the years since he woke up dead, he had heard just about every name, term, and slur for those like him. While there were a great many myths and rumors about revenants, and nobody quite understood what made people rise from their graves, one thing was certain: his body did not function. His heart did not beat, his organs required no oxygen, his breathing existed solely to project words.

Importantly, he did not heal.

For all its fragility when faced with the monsters of the night, the human body was remarkably resilient. Modern medical marvels weren’t so much about fixing the body as they were about allowing the body an opportunity to fix itself. A broken bone, cuts and gouges, and even dismembered limbs could all be repaired, mostly, just by setting them properly.

Most people never realized how many tiny cuts they accrued over the course of a day. Dozens of minor, insignificant cuts in their skin ended up healed over by the time they woke up in the morning.

The Hanged Man traced a finger over his sternum, following the line of patchwork skin grafts that now marred his emaciated chest. Underneath the skin, he could feel small protrusions jutting off from his ribs—metal pins and plates drilled into his bones to keep him from falling apart. They could never be removed; his bones would never mend themselves. Rips and tears in his skin, held together with thin, nearly-invisible strands of wire, would have to be replaced regularly.

Specters in ages past developed some remedies, magic-infused ointments, minor rituals, and other methods of staving off a second death at the hands of a thousand cuts. Those remedies were not equipped to handle the level of damage Jack inflicted on him.

“Thank you, Doctor,” The Hanged Man said, keeping the irritation in his breath from spreading throughout the room. He stood, buttoning up his charcoal gray shirt.

“I wish there were more I could do for you,” the shorter man said, frowning to himself as he turned back to a series of X-Ray images hanging from the wall. “You have contacts among other Specter-class beings—”

“I’ve already reached out. We are fairly adept at maintaining our… exterior,” The Hanged Man interrupted as he twisted his tie into a simple Eldredge knot. “Replacing organs is not so easy. But, I can still speak, and I do not feel pain. I can manage without eating and my heart was useless anyway.”

“But eating, even if it isn’t necessary for you, is grounding, psychologically speaking.”

“Perhaps my contacts will develop a way of properly transplanting a stomach. Until then, I’ll manage,” he said, more for the doctor’s sake than for his own. Truthfully, The Hanged Man rarely ate to begin with. He didn’t find the sensations of food traveling through his body particularly pleasant, and only did so out of politeness in group meals. If anything, this gave him an excuse.

Losing his image concerned him far more. Reclining in his reading chair with a book in one hand and a glass of wine in the other was his trademark. The ensemble just wouldn’t feel the same.

Turning to a mirror as he straightened the lapels of his suit, The Hanged Man’s lips quirked into a scowl. A thin line ran from the edge of his collar, up his neck, and just around his chin, slicing right through a corner of his carefully managed goatee. He felt marginally lucky to have most of his injuries so easily concealed beneath his usual attire, but that scar sat prominent and would never heal.

At least not without aid.

The Eclipse’s retained doctor, Reginald Davies VI, lacked his normally cheerful demeanor as he pored over an old textbook written on the subject of revenants. Having read the book himself, The Hanged Man knew he wouldn’t find anything that could help here and now.

“Thank you, Reginald,” The Hanged Man said—politeness cost nothing even if he didn’t particularly care for the little man’s invasive prodding. “I’ll be sure to return if there are any further complications.”

“Live transplants will rot, but your body shouldn’t suffer complications from an inanimate implant,” the doctor hummed. “A simple plastic hose to bridge the gap from your esophagus to your small intestine would at least allow you to consume small amounts of—”

“Thank you, Reginald,” The Hanged Man insisted as he laced his shoes and got out of the examination room.

If he stuck around, he might end up like one of those monsters that came out of The Castle.

Rather than head out the main exit of the hospital wing, The Hanged Man slipped through a maintenance corridor and into a freight elevator. His mood left him unenthused with the prospect of meeting anyone else at the moment. He let out a long, weary sigh filled with agitation, irritation, and general unhappiness. It helped, but not as much as he hoped.

Whipping out his phone as a distraction, The Hanged Man scrolled down the list of recent messages. A handful of The Eclipse left him well-wishes of varying levels of sincerity. The head cleaner sent periodic reports of incidents in the city, many of which the cleaning crew handled on their own. A bulletin of newcomers to the city, both those who introduced themselves properly and those who tried to slip in unnoticed, had been updated with several new entries, all of whom were under his purview.

One thing was missing, however.

His thumb paused at Contact Delta, one among many Contacts in his list who The Hanged Man paid for information, except this one was a bit special. Or… she should have been special.

He hadn’t received a message from The Stalker in two full months, not since near the end of January.

The first two weeks of silence, he hadn’t thought much of. He knew that The Puppet got wrapped up in some trouble around the night all the maggots appeared in the city, and figured she had simply been unavailable. Work at The Eclipse had been on overdrive around the time, and since then, really. That left him with less time to think of her than she was likely to tolerate, so he had been quite happy for the relative peace.

But the silence continued.

When someone who once sent him over two thousand messages in one day suddenly vanished, he might have thought she died. But she hadn’t. He had seen her, out and about, working just as she always did. Sometimes she was with The Hunters, sometimes with The Puppet, sometimes alone, but obviously and plainly alive—as alive as someone with their condition could be.

The Hanged Man stared at the few dozen texts he had sent over the last several weeks. None had a response. The first bunch had been left on read, but at some point, she stopped even checking his messages.

Maggot cleanup has mostly concluded. The others are hunting down a few hives, but I’m free from that disgusting job. Want to meet?

Bird things have The Emperor upset. Might not be able to meet for a time. I’ll try to make time if you’ve got a few.

Haven’t heard from you in a while. Everything okay?

Heavily injured. Can’t move anything below my waist.

Stalker?

Have a ritual from a friend that might get my legs working again—minor animal sacrifice, the kind of thing you like. Want to help?

Ritual succeeded. The Art helped me.

The Hanged Man stared at that last message. The Art was a fairly taboo subject, and he tried to avoid her name whenever possible, attributing things she did to The Aeon or The Fool instead, just to keep The Stalker’s lid on. He dropped her name there specifically because he knew it would set her off, but…

She hadn’t even looked. It hadn’t been read, which he presumed was the only reason The Stalker hadn’t dragged him off in chains to some dungeon.

Unless she just didn’t care anymore. Could that happen?

The Hanged Man didn’t actually know what he did to draw her attention in the first place. All he did was help out someone who woke up dead; he did the same for most every revenant whom he came across. At one time, he might have been relieved that she wasn’t dragging him off in the middle of work.

Now…

The freight elevator’s doors rattled open to a loading bay in the car park below the Sears Tower. The Hanged Man pushed himself off the wall, phone back in his pocket, and stalked through the quiet parking garage. He felt rigid and unusually stiff in his movements. It wasn’t his first time out since being injured, but it was his first since they found a new fracture in his hip and patched it up with a few metal pins.

The Hanged Man wondered how much pain he would be in if he could feel pain.

“Yo.” The Fool pushed off the side of The Hanged Man’s car, sliding his phone into his pocket while offering a polite, though not friendly wave. “Doc let you out early? Figured you’d be another two hours.”

“I might have been had I let him continue talking.” The Hanged Man frowned, looking over the shorter boy. “Did you need something?”

“Didn’t you read through your task list? I’m assigned to help you out.”

The Hanged Man pursed his lips. He had skimmed his tasks, but must have missed that tidbit. He had been distracted with other matters. “I typically work alone.”

The Fool shrugged, sweeping a hand through his frosted white curls. “Don’t care. Orders are orders,” he said, undaunted by The Hanged Man’s stare. “Guess they don’t want an invalid collapsing out in the middle of nowhere with nobody around to help drag your corpsy ass back.”

The Hanged Man didn’t rise to his taunt, simply choosing to look The Fool over. He wore a slim, somewhat stylish white coat with a fluffy scarf draped around his neck. His coat and matching pants were clean and pressed, though he had a few stray cat hairs that The Hanged Man itched to brush off. Overall, he managed to look presentable.

The docket for the evening didn’t include anyone to intimidate, so his flashy style would be fine. If trouble did crop up, having a hulking mountain of rock to cover behind would help too.

“Get in,” The Hanged Man said, unlocking his sleek car with a key fob. “Try not to smear your fingerprints all over everything.”

The Fool gave him a flat look, then pulled a pair of white dress gloves from his coat pocket. “Happy?” he asked as he slipped them on.

“Happy enough.”

“I expected a little more arguing, you know?” The Fool said as they got in. “Maybe you aren’t as recovered as you should be.”

“Doesn’t matter. My body doesn’t heal. Another week on bed rest won’t do anything.” Everything in The Hanged Man’s car was exactly as he left it, but he still adjusted the seats and the mirrors. Maybe it was the pins in his spine, but everything felt just slightly off. “The best I can hope for is a few bone mending rituals, but they have to be crafted specifically for each little crack in my body. It might be a year or more before my contacts get back to me.”

“Ah… that sucks. I could have Sanatus try fixing you up.”

The Hanged Man shuddered. “Absolutely not.”

“Just an offer…” The Fool trailed off, sighing as he stared out the window.

The city of Chicago blazed by, undaunted and unaffected by the myriad problems that lurked in the shadows. One of the corpse birds perched in an alcove, watching traffic. There were still several dozen left; they hadn’t simply vanished upon the Carrion █████’s ruination. Current orders were to catalog and monitor them, with extermination pending based on the Library of Alexandria’s verdict of whether their existence posed a threat to supernatural discovery, or whether they had entered into public consciousness too deeply to remove easily.

No one had heard them speak since dealing with the Carrion █████, nor did their numbers seem to increase, but the threat alone sounded existential to The Hanged Man.

But it wasn’t his job.

Pulling off to a highway leading out of the western end of Chicago, The Hanged Man carried on in blissful silence. The Fool had returned to scrolling endlessly through his phone, swiping left and right every few screens. The Hanged Man didn’t pay him much attention.

Having a partner wasn’t entirely alien to him. One of the reasons The Stalker hated The Art so much was simply because she got herself assigned to him anytime the docket came up with something sketchy. Normally, greeting newcomers to the city wasn’t an exciting affair; he showed up, told people to keep their noses out of trouble if they didn’t want their faces rubbed in their messes, offered assistance if required, and then everyone moved on with their lives. Most individuals showing up in the city were either from smaller communities in need of aid, people who thought big cities were filled with glitz, glamour, and opportunities, or people just passing through. When someone wanted to make trouble, smaller towns and villages were far easier prey.

“Place looks creepy,” The Fool muttered, staring out the window again.

The city petered off, with buildings growing smaller and smaller, with more and more space between. Farmland stretched out behind a mild smattering of trees, poorly lit by a sliver of the moon hanging in the sky. The Hanged Man pulled off onto a small dirt road. The kind of road a farmer would use to get equipment to some far off corner of their land.

As The Hanged Man passed between a pair of trees on either side of the road, something changed. The air felt stale, even within the closed confines of his car. He could see further, with a bright, full moon dominating the cloudless sky dead center above the road. He slowed the car to a stop, not bothering to pull over.

“Interesting,” he muttered, glancing back the way they had come. The pair of trees marked a sudden shift back to a darker atmosphere, with the road barely visible beyond. A handful of headlights passed back and forth on the distant highway, marking its position.

“Another portal?” The Fool asked, leaning out the window.

“Not quite. I’m not The Hermit, but…” he trailed off, eyeing the trees and the odd shift in hue. “I think it is just a ward, hiding this place, not a whole parallel space.”

“It’s too large. An entire farm?”

“More than that,” The Hanged Man said, pointing a finger ahead.

Atop a gentle hill, a manor sat, wide and squat. A tall conical roof towered over one corner while the opposite turret gently sloped into the rest of the roof. Between the two corners, two dozen amber-lit windows, arrayed in two stories, ran the length of the front face of the building. Only a vaulted archway in the dead center broke the lines of windows.

“Creepy,” The Fool muttered. “Is this The Castle?”

“No,” The Hanged Man said with a small chuckle. “The Castle got an invitation as well; The Director confirmed they weren’t behind sending those out.”

“Surprised we believe them…” The Fool trailed off with a shake of his head. “Then this is The Mummy again?”

“That seems to be the case, yes. And this is where they want to meet.” Reaching over to the glove compartment, The Hanged Man pulled out a set of binoculars.

The building looked real enough. The gray stone of its walls wasn’t typical around Chicago, making him wonder if it had been transported somehow or if the entire building were an illusion. A slight shimmer where the roof met the sky might have been magic, or it could simply have been a haze from residual heat wafting off the black slate tiles.

“We’re not going in there, are we?”

“Just scouting today. I intended to get closer, but…” The Hanged Man glanced back at the trees again. “No. We’ve already crossed one magical ward. For all I know, mutant demon hounds are already racing toward the car, ready to rip trespassers to pieces.”

The Fool sent him an alarmed look, finger firmly pressed on the window controls, rolling it up. “Why are we still here?”

“Wouldn’t be much of a scouting mission if I came back with nothing.”

The Hanged Man angled his binoculars further up, staring at the moon. It was out of phase, obviously incorrect. Even on the night of the meeting, still a few days out, it would only reach a half moon.

Frowning, The Hanged Man turned his binoculars back to the manor as he spotted a hint of movement against the brick walls. The moonlight gave him little more than a silhouette—a man in a well-fitted suit, much like his own. The figure in the distance stopped its walk around the manor as The Hanged Man watched, and slowly turned. With the moon at his back, his face was nothing but shadow, but just enough light reflected off his eyes to make The Hanged Man feel like the figure was staring down the other end of the binoculars, examining him and him alone.

The figure reached up, brushing against his lapel like a speck of dust offended him. He turned, and resumed his trek around the manor, disappearing into a darkened doorway along one side.

The Hanged Man lowered his binoculars, lips pressed firmly together.

“What is it?” The Fool asked, still looking around like a monster was going to jump out of the woods and onto their car.

“If we weren’t noticed before, we have been now.”

“And we’re still here? Maybe we should call in backup?”

The Hanged Man shook his head, now turning his binoculars onto the land around the manor. “I’m sure they expected people to be curious about those invitations. We won’t get closer,” he said, making mental notes of lone trees, a small building to one side, and any other landmarks or vantage points—especially vantage points. He wasn’t sure how The Castle or The Hunters intended to approach this meeting.

The Eclipse would be prepared.