The Necromancer’s Reunion
By
Mortimer Jackson
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Copyright 2011 The Morning Dread
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The Necromancer’s Reunion
Chapter 1
Out With The Old, In With The New
It was a Saturday morning when Sebastian Grimm found himself on the front door of Dina Malloy's two floor address. A bright and sunny Saturday morning. The kind he had long grown accustoming to spending alone reading the morning paper, attempting crosswords while occasionally examining the poorly written comic strips that populated the following page.
On the day of this tale however, things were different. Sebastian was almost forty miles away from his funeral home, clad in his finest beige suit, a box of chocolate in hand, and suffused with every intention of changing his life for the better. So hopeful was the necromancer in fact, that throughout his hour long drive around traffic he'd done nothing but whistle the tune to Singing In The Rain.
It was only once he arrived at Dina's address and knocked on the front door that he felt any shift in his mood. He'd gone from joyous and merry, to joyous and merry but with butterflies bouncing about his gut. He devoted his remaining time alone to feeling suddenly conscious of his breath, and realizing that he didn't know what he would say once the door came open.
There were solutions to this, of course. First, Sebastian sprayed his entire mouth with mint enough times that he began to lose feeling in his tongue. Second, he prepared in his mind an introduction, and rehearsed it to himself until he was able to let it all out without a second's thought.
“Hi, my name is Sebastian Grimm. You probably remember me from a while ago. We used to be next door neighbors when we were kids.”
“Oh my god!” he imagined Dina would say. “Sebastian. It's so great to see you. What are you doing here?”
And to this, Sebastian would find himself stumped. At a loss for words to explain the deduction behind the circumstances that brought him to where he was at that immediate moment. He thought it best not to spoil the mood with speak of near death experiences and bouts of loneliness. So in lieu, he imagined he would simply shrivel up and stare awkwardly while desperately trying to summon a reply.
“That will do,” he thought out loud. Only he knew that it wouldn't, and so off he set his brain to account for every foreseeable inquiry that might follow their imminent reunion.
This was when he noticed that the more time he spent thinking to himself, the less imminent their reunion seemed to be.
He knocked on the door and waited once again.
Nothing. Not so much as a verbal response, or the faint introduction of looming footsteps.
It was dead silent on the other side.
Sebastian’s first guess was an assumption that there was no one home. A blue sedan was parked on the driveway, but there was room enough for an additional vehicle. According to the detective John King, she didn’t share the house with anyone. Dina wasn’t married, and the two story house she was living in had been passed down to her from her grandparents by way of inheritance. By all accounts she lived alone and without a job, occasionally selling paintings from time to time to pass the time.
Dina was an artist by hobby. This Sebastian knew, both because the private investigator had told him so, and because he remembered it well from back in the days of their childhood.
Sebastian knocked the door once again. By now his knuckles were beginning to feel the light strain of his repeated tapping.
Once again, no response. Clearly, no one was there.
The necromancer sighed deeply, releasing microbes of hope and optimism from his lungs into the bright warm air. He decided he would come again another time, though when he didn’t know.
He left the chocolate by the door, along with a note that read From Sebastian. He was all set to leave when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of something rather conspicuous.
From the window of Dina Malloy’s home, past the fragment of glass that wasn’t covered by curtains, Sebastian noticed a book shelf on the floor. A heavy, cherry wood 25 x 10 book case with pages and books scattered all about, and a human arm buried underneath the furniture.
Being a funeral director and part time necromancer, Sebastian Grimm had seen this sort of thing many times before. But as he saw it now, he was hesitant to believe his very own eyes. Afraid, in fact. Afraid, and unwilling.
The front door was locked. Sebastian threw himself against the edge, ramming hard against the hinge until it finally gave way. He ran inside, past the living room into what appeared to be the study. Mustering every ounce of strength he had within his scrawny form, Sebastian clamped his hands against the bookshelf and pulled it free from whoever was lying underneath its weight. Once the shelf was tossed aside, Sebastian’s arms fell limp to his sides. And he panted like a raving dog. What’s more, he saw the corpse lying above the Persian carpet, and immediately recognized its face.
It was ten years past, but it was Dina Malloy as he remembered her. With long, shiny blonde hair, dark hazel eyes, and red freckled cheeks.
She was exactly the same as he’d remembered her. Except ten years older. And dead.
In the forty or so minutes it took for Sebastian Grimm to find himself where he was right now, he’d hoped to escape his lonely life of corpses and secrets for one that contained the slightest semblance of normalcy. But perhaps it is that in the lives of some, fate takes precedence over all.
If so, then it should follow that some things are destined never to change. In the case of Sebastian Grimm, where some go looking for a life, they may find only death.
Chapter 2
The Necromancer’s Surprise
Sebastian Grimm did not enjoy surprises. In his entire life it had followed that good things were never to come from unexpected truths. This had proven itself true when he was eight years old, learning first-hand of the secret affair that his father had kept for so long from his mother. And it had proven itself true on the night he first discovered his necromancer's tome. And today it had proven itself true once again, when he found the closest being he’d ever known to a friend, killed by her own book case.
Sebastian examined her body, noted the purple pressure marks around her limbs. They were fresh. And based on her color, hot pink and white, he placed the time of her death to somewhere along the lines of minutes. Certainly not more than half an hour.
It was with this that he mused to himself how different things would be had he arrived sooner. If he’d simply hurried his way in the morning, or better yet shown up last night. Perhaps the disaster before his eyes would not be if he had only been around to help.
There was only one recourse now. Though it was one that Sebastian Grimm had dreaded to consider. But as far as he could tell, he had no other choice. And so he went outside into his car, to grab his things.
As a man who did not enjoy surprises, Sebastian Grimm often stuck to the rule of preparedness. Expect the unexpected. Or at the very least, carry all tools that may come in handy under the event of death. It was for this precise reason that the necromancer carried all the tools of his undead trade under the trunk of his car. Chalk, pint of cow’s blood, candles, egg timer, and all. He also carried a spare battery for the car, and a five gallon gas canister filled to the brim, in the off-chance that he would ever find himself low on fuel, and without any avenues to refill. An event that has not and has yet to occur.
But I digress.
The necromancer brought the essential materials into the house, spending every moment in between doubting himself, and what he was about to do. He arranged the pieces in all the right places, grabbed a ladder from Dina’s garage,
and scrawled in the Mark of Moor on the ceiling above her body. He was about to set the spell’s limit on the egg timer when he stopped, and found that he didn’t quite know how long to set it.
The average had always been under five minutes. But this was not an average circumstance. He was reuniting with the girl (now woman) he had known for so long. And the spell of Moor didn’t allow for second summonings. Once the egg timer rang, Dina would be gone forever. No other spell would ever be able to bring her back after the fact.
So what would it be then? Five minutes? Ten? The longest he could keep her alive would be sixty minutes. So according to the egg timer, and the guidelines of the spell of Moor.
But that was not what Sebastian had wanted either. He didn’t quite know what he had expected from his reunion with Dina Malloy, but whatever it was, it was more than sixty minutes long. Although apparently, this would not be the case.
Dina was dead. There would be no changing the fact. All that Sebastian could hope to do was prepare himself for their final moments together.
Sebastian was on the verge of casting the spell of Moor, when much to his surprise he detected sirens blaring in the distance. Police sirens, growing louder every second. He gazed out the window.
“No,” he gasped.
There were police vehicles lined outside the house. Two. And then three.
Before he could think or react, a swarm of men with pistols and badges barged through the door.
“Freeze!” yelled one.
“Get down!” came another.
“Drop the weapon!” barked a third.
Sebastian Grimm was at a loss over what to do. His heart raced, and due to the confusion brimming in his mind, he remained as he was, unsure of what to do. He froze just as he was told, though this seemed to contradict the second order. As for the third, he believed that certain clarifications were in order.
“It’s not a weapon. It’s an egg timer.”
“Get back, he’s got a bomb!”
“It’s not a bomb,” he added. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
But what did it look like, pray tell? And was that any better?
Sebastian didn’t have the time to think it through. The policemen shoved him hard against the ground, cuffed his wrists, and shoved him outside. He was thrown into the back seat of a police car, and driven away from Dina’s home. Away from Dina.
Sebastian tried to explain himself to the policeman driving, and his partner staring out the window. But they told that it would have been in his best interest if he simply didn’t speak.
“Shut your trap,” had been the eloquent manner in which the case was made.
When asked where they were taking him, their answer was accompanied several times with the word prison.
Sebastian Grimm did not like surprises. And this he could add to his list of reasons why.
Chapter 3
The Necromancer’s Incarceration
In prison, there are three kinds of people. First, the one who is found guilty of committing a crime in light of tangible evidence. Second, the one who is found guilty of a crime he did not commit, framed by an unknown evil doer whose cunning evades the attention of the police. And then finally, there are those like Sebastian Grimm, who wind up trapped behind bars due to awkward misunderstandings.
On the afternoon of the third, the Hillside Police Station housed precisely three of these exact types of people. One, an unkempt man clad in a dusty jacket arrested for sleeping on a public bench. Two, a man who would not cease to profess the fact that he did not murder his wife.
“I did not murder my wife!”
And three, a necromancer arrested by the police due to a profound misunderstanding.
“This is a profound misunderstanding!”
But it is as the saying goes; those locked behind the bars of judgment are presumed guilty before they are proven innocent.
Sebastian Grimm stood at the center of his holding cell, unwilling to have a seat on the stain-covered cushions, and wise enough not to lean against the grime-infested walls.
Worry clouded the necromancer’s mind. So much so in fact that he paid little attention to all else that was happening around him. He feared dearly for his life, his funeral home, his work, uncertain that he would ever return to any of them after today.
Funny, he thought, that in searching for a new direction, he had only come to jeopardize the one he had. And now he’d felt as though he’d taken it all for granted.
A policeman arrived bearing keys to the holding cell.
“Grimm,” he called.
Sebastian shook from his trance, looked up.
“That’s me.”
“You got a phone call.”
“I did?”
“Follow me.”
The policeman led the necromancer to the front desk, where sat an old, black rotary telephone. He picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“What the hell are you doing in prison?”
It was John King.
“How did you know I was here?”
“Never mind that. What I want to know is why the police found your voodoo equipment at the scene of a homicide.”
Sebastian stirred.
“Homicide?”
As far as the necromancer had been able to discern, Dina Malloy had been killed by a fallen book shelf. An accident. No reason or evidence to believe otherwise.
“A 911 call was made from that address before you showed up.”
“A call? From who?”
“Who do you think?”
“Dina. Dina Malloy.”
“Someone wanted her dead. And if you hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have had to spend all this time trying to convince the cops that you’re not a cold blooded murderer, but a mentally handicapped PI’s assistant.”
“You’re backing me up? Wow. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
“Shut up. The cops are letting you go. I made a deal with the family. The parents are willing to let you handle the funeral arrangements. And to top it off they’re hiring us to catch the killer. You work your magic and find out what the dead girl knows. Call me as soon as you find some answers.”
“Thanks,” said Sebastian.
The line disconnected. The necromancer’s appreciation failed to go through.
Chapter 4
The Necromancer’s Spell
Sebastian Grimm recovered the Black Grimoire of Necromantic Arts from a hidden box in his attic. He blew the dust from its leather-bound seal, and cleared away whatever specks of dirt remained. The pages were brown and frail, and every turn of a page was followed with that distinct, crumbling noise of old paper.
He searched the contents of the Grimoire until he found a different spell. One that the necromancer had only used once in his life, and one that he had sworn never to use ever again.
“The spell of Harkin.”
The Spell of Harkin*
* (As it is written in the Black Grimoire of Necromantic Arts)
EFFECT: Will raise any given deceased for an indefinite period of time. Subject’s mind and body will function for as long as it remains under the influence of the spell. Spell does not, however, revitalize body tissue. As a result, the longer the subject is kept undead, the more it will progressively rot over the course of time.
Recommended Time Limit: Inconclusive. Vitality of spell is unique to each individual, and is dependent on conditions of subject before spell is cast. Use proper judgment. Monitor subject at all times. Harkin is highly volatile. As a result, the full extent of its effects have been difficult to calculate. Further study is required. Expect an update in the next volume.
IMPORTANT: Spell is not to be considered a permanent solution against death. Prolonged use will have dire ramifications for subject’s physical and mental stability.
Once upon a time at the age of eight, Sebastian Grimm had once used the spell of Harkin to resurrect a dog. His name was Cutter, and he was
a beloved member of the household Malloy. He did this so that young Dina and her family would not have to mourn the loss of their one and only pet.
Suffice to say that the spell had done its due. With the right materials, following the right procedure, Sebastian brought Cutter back to the home that had welcomed him so long ago. And with the reunion of man and dog came as many smiles as far and wide as the eye could see.
Happiness abounded. The family was united once again. Together, and in peace. That was, until the price of admission emerged.
Almost precisely four weeks after Cutter was brought back to life, things had begun to change in their dog’s behavior. First, that no matter how many times the dog was bathed, the mere smell of him would only get progressively worse. He reeked of a thing most foul, and dead. What’s more was that his functions had also slowed down considerably. His enthusiasm for playing fetch with young Dina had waned, and whenever he ran, it was in a manner both sluggish and uncoordinated. His capacity to think and eventually to act instinctually diminished until he spent the remainder of his days drooling on the floor, unable and unwilling to even raise his paw.
The spell had gone on for too long. And when Cutter could no longer feed himself, young Dina took it upon herself to plop spoonfuls of food in his mouth. The family worried and prayed until neither resolved the issue, and they had to put him back to sleep.
From the window directly overlooking the Malloys, Sebastian Grimm saw that for all his good intentions, all he had done was given them the pain of having to see their dog fade before their very eyes, and at the end bear the blood of his second death on their hands.
Today, Sebastian Grimm was going to resurrect Dina Malloy with the same spell that he’d used to summon her dog back to life. The spell of Moor was one in which when cast, the subject could only live for one hour, and their only functions involved being able to see, and being able to speak. Moreover, under the guidelines of the necromantic text, the spell of Moor could only be used to summon a life for a period of time between one second to a full hour. Once the spell's timer was up, the subject was to revert back to the way they were. Dead. Only forever.