Mort Graveston's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Mort Graveston had forgotten his own face, and the last man who might remember it had just run. Mort chased him down the alley, coat flapping, fedora clutched in one bony hand. "Wait! Tell me my name!" The man glanced back, saw the bare skull grinning above the collar, and screamed. He tripped over a crate and scrambled off on all fours. Mort stopped. His shoes scraped the wet stone. Same as always. Death had stripped him to bone years ago. It took his name, his face, everything a mirror used to show. Someone alive had known him once. If Mort could find that person, he could learn who he had been. But no living soul stayed near him. His skull did the same work every time. Fear, then flight. Mort had found the beetle weeks ago, half-hidden under his ribs. It was pale as chalk, shaped like a scarab, and it stayed still in his palm without fear. Bone did not scare bone. He drew it from his coat pocket now. Its shell caught the gray light. Six thin legs stirred against his finger. "You don't run," Mort said. "Good."He leaned against a damp wall and thought. The problem was his face. So he would send a messenger without one. He knelt and spoke to it low, the way you'd brief a partner. He needed a name. His name. He pictured the beetle slipping through doorways, listening under tables, crawling close to the living while they talked. It could hear what no skeleton could reach. It could carry answers back. Mort set it on the stone. "Find someone who knew me. Bring back what they call me." The beetle sat a moment. Then it turned, antennae testing the air, and scuttled toward the mouth of the alley where lamplight and voices spilled. Mort watched it vanish into the crowd's shifting feet. No one screamed. No one even looked down. For the first time, something of his went out among the living and was not chased away. He waited in the dark. An hour, maybe two. Then a dry ticking came across the stones. The beetle returned and climbed his coat to his open hand. It carried nothing he could hold. But when Mort brought it close to where his ear had been, it made a sound. A rasp, shaped almost like a word. It had heard something. It had a lead. Mort closed his fingers gently around the shell. His questions could travel now. But the beetle had brought back more than an answer. It had brought back a place, and a face that knew him waited at the end of it. Someone alive still spoke his name. Now he had to go and take it from them.