Chapter 5
The Necromancer’s Answers
Sebastian Grimm the necromancer propped the anonymous dead man on his operating slab inside his basement. A place where by day the embalming procedure of his funeral work usually took place. He summoned the Mark of Moor by way of chalk, lit several candles about the room, placed an extra pint of cow’s blood underneath the slab, and set the spell’s timer for exactly four minutes.
Before Sebastian cast his spell, he promptly stepped outside to ask his partner if he was certain he wouldn’t rather be inside for the questioning.
“I’m not accustomed to seeing dead people talk,” John King replied. “Gives me the heebie jeebies. The less voodoo magic I see around me, the better it is for my mental health.”
Sebastian quipped, “Are you implying that I’m crazy because I can communicate with dead people?”
John King craned his neck.
“Boy that’s the least of your problems.”
John King had never been one to show much in kindness. Since the beginning of their three month partnership, the private detective had never been known to speak highly of his partner despite his contributions to their work. And yet in spite of this, he was still the closest thing to a friend that the necromancer had ever had in his adult life.
Perhaps John King was right. Perhaps the necromancer truly did have problems.
But now was no time to delve.
“Is there anything that you want me to ask him?”asked Sebastian.
“Ask him who he is. Then ask why Jacob Trent had him killed. I want specific information. Preferably empirical. If there is any proof to be found, I want to know what it is, and where I can get it.”
Sebastian nodded.
“Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“Alright then.”
The necromancer shut the door behind him, and began the ritual. Half a minute after, and the nameless man opened his eyes to reveal a pair of bright blue pupils.
“Where am I?” he asked.
Sebastian sighed, internally dreading the same lines of exposition that he would inevitably have to go through with the unknown man as he had for everyone else that he had ever brought back to life. Nevertheless, he went through the painstaking exposition without delving into the details. And like all those before him, the stranger’s reaction was a look of utter disbelief followed with a question.
“What do you mean I’m dead?”
Foregoing dear reader the added minute or so that it took for our necromancer to awkwardly explain away the logistics of his spell, let us fast forward to the case at hand, to when Sebastian Grimm asked the unknown man, “Who are you? And why were you killed by Jacob Trent?”
“Carlson Mays,” he replied. “And I was killed by Jacob Trent because I saw him murder Samantha Sweeney.”
Sebastian noted the dark red strangle marks around his neck. Size and shape of which indicated two hands clasped around his throat.
“You mean you saw it happen? You were there?”
“I’m pretty much always there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Samantha and I were friends.”He paused. “In fact, in many ways she was really my only friend. It used to be custom for us to get together at her apartment every night and chat. Mostly about our day, or whatever else came to mind. Hopes. Dreams. Gossip. Things like that. Sometimes we’d even watch movies until midnight. That was lots of fun.”
Carlson’s mind loomed off into the distance, bearing that easily discernible expression of reminisce that Sebastian had so often seen in his years directing funerals. And in light of all the sadness that surrounded it, it was an expression that the necromancer had always cherished to see. Be it in the faces of the mourning, or those of the dead. For it was a sign that even in loss, one still had memories worthy of celebration. That a life had not been spent in vain. That good things had been done with what little time was had.
Sebastian Grimm was alive; Carlson Mays was dead. And yet even so, the necromancer found himself in envy of what the corpse had once had when it was still alive.
“The door was open that night,” Carlson continued. “I saw him toss the television over the tub. That stupid girl. I always told her it was dangerous to keep a TV in the bath.”
A tear streaked from his eyes.
“She never listens. Oh god does she never listen.” A sniffle. “I miss her so much.”
As Carlson Mays descended into sobs of melancholy, so too did the necromancer fall into his own emotional plights of woe.
Sebastian held himself as composed as he possibly could. But it was a challenge to watch the dead man shambling with emotion and not feel his pain. Sebastian also realized then that if he were to die at that precise instant, he would not have been missed by anyone he knew, since he did not truly know anyone.
Carlson Mays had died on account of a friend, while Sebastian Grimm had gone his entire life without so much as one.
For all the funerals he had prepared for others, he knew as a matter of fact that when that day came, there would be no one to mourn in his. It was a frightening thought. And one made even more so by the sudden appearance of a stranger with a gun.
“It’s him!” Carlson cried.
Sebastian turned around, and was immediately taken aback by the sight of who he presumed to be none other than Jacob Trent. He was a short man with short black hair, clad in dark long pants and a red wind jacket. Situated on his protruding hand was a gun that Sebastian recognized as having belonged to his partner, John King. The sidearm was silver, sparkling clean to the point of reflection (an indication of his unhealthy passion for firearms), and it bore his initials on his custom grip (a fact for which John King had only been far too proud to share with others).
But John King’s gun wasn’t the only object of John King’s possession that the villainous Jacob Trent had with him. He had also John King himself, locked by the neck around his tightened arm.
“You’re making a big mistake,” rebuked John King.
“Shut up,” ordered the murderer, brandishing his gun to the private investigator’s face to earn his silence. It worked. And then the pistol went back to Sebastian Grimm.
The necromancer held his hands out in front of him, as though attempting to block any incoming bullets with his palms.
“Easy,” he urged, though with a voice that failed to convince the murderer, and least of all himself.
“Who are you people?” Jacob demanded as he closed in on the necromancer.
Sebastian failed to muster a reply. He remained frozen as he was, apprehensive and pale, attention steeled at the sidearm’s barrel.
“Who are you?” asked Jacob again, louder this time. Meaner.
John King entered, “Like I’ve been telling you, we’re both funeral directors.”
The detective appeared fairly composed given the circumstance of life and death. In fact, more than that it seemed as though he did not truly believe that his life was at stake. Either that, or he simply wasn’t afraid of dying. Whichever the case may have been, his partner’s confident demeanor had a calming effect on the necromancer’s already shaken nerves. It made him think that at the end of all this, nothing bad would happen to either of them.
And that was when John King began to cringe.
“Dead body,” he squealed, and averted his gaze from the dead, talking Carlson Mays. “Talking dead body.”
Jacob glanced at the direction that John King had so desperately wished to avoid.
“You’re supposed to be dead!”
“And you’re supposed to be in prison!” retorted the dead man, who was unable to stray an inch from the slab despite his every effort to do so.
And now Sebastian Grimm had not only his life to fear for, but that of his well-kept secret as well. For not only was the killer staring at his two day old killee with a look of utter disbelief, but the necromancer’s partner John King in his fear of such thing
s would not cease to mutter the words Talking dead body again and again and again. And the necromancer feared that if the killer had heard these very words enough times, then the chance was there that he would come to believe it himself.
“Shut your trap,” Jacob said instead to the private detective. And in this, Sebastian agreed.
“And you, die.”
In this, Sebastian did not agree. But the murderer raised his gun nevertheless. He lowered his index finger on the trigger, and the weapon’s hammer arched back.
Under the circumstances, Sebastian Grimm had no choice but to close his eyes, accept the fate that was to come, and hope for the best.
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