The Boy Movie Brahms Heelshire x reader FanFic

Part 53 - Rest in Peace

You're standing with your back to the dry stone wall.  It's pouring down and black as pitch.  The beam of the torch you're holding shakes and jitters creating diamonds of the raindrops.  You can't stop the trembling in your limbs.

Brahms glances up at you.  He's kneeling beside Joel's grave, a heavy spade in his hands.   The dark curls drip crystal onto the soil, those green eyes paler than ever in the torch light.  

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

You nod mutely.  

"What will we find?"

"I don't know."

"What are we looking for?"

"Something on him.  In a pocket...round his neck."  You rack your brains to try and remember what Joel wore the day he died.   "It could be a talisman, a stone...just...something."

"Couldn't we do this in daylight?"

You shake your head.   "I know nobody ever comes here but we can't risk it.   At least it's a foul night and no sane person will be out in this weather."

"Nobody but us."

"I don't know what else to do, Brahms.   This isn't something I can run from."

You watch Brahms bow his head.   You know he thinks this is madness, but both of you also know what you saw in the shower and that monstrous doppelganger on the landing.   

He begins to dig.

A  creeping emotional horror  begins its ascent through your feet  and legs like some vile osmosis.    You feel it reach your bowels as they clench painfully and you feel sick.  How long has Joel been in the ground?   Over six months.   What will he look like now?   What if some diabolical magic has rendered him still alive?   Will those dead eyes snap open as the earth's cleared from his rotting face?   Eyes milky as opals, burning with vengeful malice?   Mouth yammering accusations and curses through a throat thick with mud...

You push yourself against the wet stone and moan.   Brahms glances up at you and stops digging.    "Y/N?"

"I'm OK."

He straightens up.  "I'm taking you back to the house."

"No!"

"I can do this, there's no need for you to be here."

"Please, Brahms, I'm fine.  Truly."

He resumes digging.   He'd down  to two feet now.  Then three.   At four feet he stops.   The beam of the torch clearly shows a swatch of filthy denim.  Jeans.   Carefully,  Brahms scrapes the soil away from what's left of the man you thought you once loved.    You can barely look down into that grave but know you must.    Brahms hisses as the smell hits him.  You watch him reach into the earth with gloved hands, pulling the remains free of the pit.  Mercifully, Joel's features are caked with mud and barely recognisable.  Tufts of hair stick up from his skull, still the same mousy brown as in life.   You close your eyes momentarily, fighting for control; then shine the torch away from his head and onto his torso.

Brahms works swiftly, searching pockets, checking round neck and wrists.  There's nothing.   The stink of the corpse is rank, but you know...just know...that what you're looking for has to be here.

"Lift his tee shirt."

You grimace at the cheesy expanse of ruined flesh.   Stepping closer, you shine illumination onto the dead skin.  "He's hardly decayed at all," you murmur.

"The soil here is peat," Brahms explains.   "It has preservative qualities."

A particularly ripe waft of decay reaches you and that's it.    Doubling over you lose the pasta you ate for dinner, heaving wretchedly.  Turning your head from Brahms you hold up a hand, then wipe your mouth on a tissue.  With a sob,  you brush  soaking hair from your face, spit a mouthful of water brash onto the grass then glare down at the body and grate, "Yield, you fucking bastard!"

Scanning Joel's belly and chest, you lean down and rip the tee off his body with a savage yank.    With one booted foot you kick an arm upwards. First one, then the other.   Brahms watches you impassively.   

Then you see it.  

"Jesus!"

Regardless of the cold soaking ground and rotten meat stench, you kneel down and press your fingers to the tattoo in Joel's left armpit.  It's a sigil wrought in spidery lines in the shape of a triangle.   A Latin inscription, barely legible, lurks at its centre.  Beneath, the flesh is raised as though something is embedded there.    Reaching into your pocket you pull out the knife brought to cut through any clothing.   With gritted teeth you slash at the tattoo, and the slack flesh parts to reveal the dark wink of something slick and shiny.  Loathe to put your fingers into the cadaver, you pry the object out with the tip of the knife.  It's flat and oval the size of a hen's egg and looks like a stone, or crystal?  

"What's that?"  Brahms whispers.

"What we came for.  I don't want to touch it with my bare hands.   Put it in this."   

You reach into your pocket and pull out a crumpled carrier bag.  "We need to get him back into the ground now.  Quickly, please."

It takes another twenty minutes to re-bury Joel.    Overhead the rain eases into an annoying drizzle.  The vile smell of decomposition is something you don't think you'll ever erase from your nostrils!   Brahms hands you the carrier, and you fold it around the talisman then stuff it into your pocket.  "I need a fucking drink!"

The walk back to the house seems to take forever.  Somehow, it feels darker  going back, as though the batteries in the torch are dying.   You glance over your shoulder, then hesitate.

Brahms, two strides ahead, stops to follow your gaze.  You swing the light across the expanse of grass and trees, this way and that.  "Something's there...following us!"

Brahms takes the torch, sweeping it around.  "Your servitor?" 

"No.  This feels different.  It's not anything we can see with our eyes."

"Then it's nothing that can hurt us."

You  shiver staring back into the night.

"It's late and you're tired.  Come."   He takes your arm gently and leads you back to the light and warmth.