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Mounted on the wall, the phone rang. He let it, warily regarding the dark brown blur in his good eye’s peripheral, only picking up the receiver when a flicker of anger moved his body for him. He raised it but did not say hello.
“Meet me.”
Kane’s grip tightened at the sound of that breathless voice, receiver and leather gloves creaking in tandem.
“Where.”
“Your grave.” The line went dead. Eventually, Kane shoved the phone into its cradle, stalked through the dark home, and ducked out the back door. A brief examination confirmed his suspicions: The phone line was still cut, the power hadn’t run in years.
-
Familiar with his symbolic final resting place on account of a decade of vandalising it, Kane waited adjacent, fingers dipping into the engravings on his mother’s tombstone.
“Kane.”
Grinding his teeth, Kane rose, a burning glare already prepared for his brother - and faltering. Hair veiling his bowed head, coat abandoned, boots and gloves dirtied, shoulders sagging… This was not the Undertaker that Kane had come to know, not the same man he mangled a steel cage to destroy, not the man he set the world alight to defeat. Unmoving, Kane did not greet him, silent save for his muffled breathing.
“My body… This vessel,” his brother began, strained. Tired, weak. Dark purple peered out from behind damp strands of hair. Dread coiled in Kane’s chest, curled his fingers into fists. He could burn them both. “My soul, overtaken. I… can no longer fight… I’ve come… To say… Goodbye.”
“What?” The demon growled, Kane shrinking back internally. He wasn’t dealing with this, whatever it was. Whatever vile trick the Undertaker was playing. “You’re already dead. Die.”
“I-” The mortician stilled, held his breath, and raised his head. His jaw was tight, brows pulled together and forehead wrinkled, dirt clinging to his cheek and mottled beard. All his roots were coming in red. His eyes were dull with pain and distance, pleading. “I… Have dug… My final grave.”
Enough. Growling, Kane stalked forward and seized the other man by the lapels of his worn button up. The fabric threatened to decay in his hands, buttons snapping. There was no resistance, no threat. There was no Undertaker. “My. Brother. Died.”
“As did mine,” he murmured, unafraid. Earth crumbled from his gloves as Mark Callous tightly wrapped his fingers around his brother’s wrists. One studded cuff dug into his hand. Horror washed over Kane, stifling flame and sucking the oxygen out of him. “I’ve been thinking… It’s a peaceful way… To go.”
“I already lost my brother in the darkness.” Kane tried to lift and jostle him, but the delicate fabric of their father’s good shirt gave up at the seams. He released them as if burned, dread threatening to gag him - His brother was wearing their father’s digging gloves, too. The Undertaker- Mark did not relinquish his hold, huffing a long, slow sigh.
“There is something… Calling me,” he rasped. The twilight shifted, full moon unveiled, beams lighting up the aged cemetery. The fourth plot in the Callous grid revealed itself behind his brother, dug deeper than Kane, bottom so obscured by darkness he couldn’t be sure there was one. He couldn’t even find the shovel. The last living Callous continued: “To my final death.”
Kane did not want to be left alone with the Undertaker, a parasite puppeteering his brother’s corpse. He’d spent years thinking he already had been; how was it fair to only know his brother was still in there when he was about to vacate? Kane tilted his head, heat climbing up his limbs, threatening to consume him. There was too much to say. He dropped the shirt’s tatters.
“No.”
The Undertaker- Mark Callous- were too slow. Mark, too trusting. Always so sure of himself, never seeing the blows coming until they landed. Same reasons he was bad at basketball, unless they played by street rules. Burying the memories in the images of their childhood home’s ashen debris, Kane hauled the unconscious body over his shoulder, fire secretly incinerating his bone marrow.
He could expel the immortal spirit.
He could save his brother.