Chapter 6
The Necromancer’s Epiphany
It has been said that at the moment before one passes away, their entire life flashes before their eyes.
Given the secluded nature of his life, there were not a great deal of memories for Sebastian Grimm to browse back upon. But there were certain moments of interest that stood out in his mind.
He remembered for instance, the time when his uncle learned him the basics of embalming. Not because his uncle had any association with funerals or any other professions of the matter, but because his hobby was taxidermy, and he enjoyed hanging dead animals in the walls of his living room.
Sebastian also recalled the day he acquired his own funeral home. The one that he owned right now. The one that began his career as a funeral director, and the one in which he would soon meet his untimely end.
He remembered staring at the building from the driveway the moment after he received his lease, capturing the entire building in the frame of his eyes. The necromancer smiled that day. And he told himself that it was the happiest day of his life.
But from amidst the subconscious of his mind had been a small, nagging voice telling him that this was not, in fact, true. That not only was this not the happiest day of his life, but that he was deluding himself in thinking that it was happy at all.
Four years had passed since that day. And it was only now that a loaded gun was staring down his face that he decided to listen. And this begged in him the following question.
If that was not my happiest day, then what was? And if I can’t remember it, then did I ever truly have one?
The necromancer’s thoughts raced through every significant event in his life. From early childhood to where he was right now, standing two seconds away from his inevitable end. The cackle of gunfire went off, and a flash of light pervaded his vision. He flashed back to the one event that for some reason or another stood out amongst the rest, which had been a little over eight years ago.
He was seventeen years old, in his last year at Elsinore High. One afternoon, as he was walking back home from school, he was met by a young Dina Malloy, who was one year shy his age, and who lived in the home directly next door from his.
It had become something of a tradition that since they both shared the path home from school, they would on occasion find time to chat. Or perhaps to put it more accurately, Dina would chat while Sebastian remained in silence, pretending to listen to what she had to say.
Sebastian did not think very highly of Dina Malloy. But then again he didn’t think highly of very many people at that point in his life. Least of all himself. It was a time of particularly troubled self-esteem. So when Dina asked Sebastian if he had any interest in attending the school dance, his first reaction had been to mockingly scowl, and then to deride the dance as being an idiotic event for uneducated apes. This, but in harsher words.
Dina spoke nothing more of the dance, but Sebastian could tell that she was hurt by what he’d said. He didn’t think anything of it at the time. But now more than anything else, he wished he could take it all back. He wished he could have been nicer to the boys and girls at his school. Maybe then things would have turned out differently. Perhaps if he had been a better person then, his life would have been steered to an altogether happier path. Preferably one in which he could forego being shot inside his own funeral home.
Gunfire blasted in both his ears. The ringing an exclamation point to the end of his life. He squeezed his eyelids, and held his breath for the inevitable pain that was to follow.
Only the pain never came.
Sebastian slowly reopened his eyes. He was still standing. He was still alive. Flouts of anxiety rattled about his nerves, but as far as he could tell, he had suffered no physical injuries. After scanning the background, he realized that he was still in the basement of his funeral home. The man with the gun, Jacob Trent, was still there with the gun in his hand, its barrel aimed squarely on his forehead. The necromancer’s partner, John King, was still locked around his arm.
Nothing had changed.
Except of course, for the smell of gunpowder inside the room. Proof enough that a gun had in fact been fired.
That was when the necromancer considered the dead Carlson Mays, and promptly turned around. He was lying still on the operating table, dead once again, and bearing a hole the size of a bullet in between his eyes.
Jacob opened his mouth to speak. He uttered a few words, but Sebastian couldn’t hear him. Perhaps it was the sound of gunfire still blaring inside his ears. Perhaps it was something else. But the necromancer was disoriented. His sense of sound was failing.
“I caught this one tailing me,” Jacob reverted the gun to John King’s face. “I saw him steal the body and drive away. Now tell me. What are two funeral directors doing stealing bodies out in the middle of the night?”
Sebastian picked out only a minor fraction of the murderer’s words. And what little he did catch he’d hopelessly misinterpreted.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you want to schedule a funeral?”
“What?”
This was not a What of having misheard the question, but rather a What of utter annoyance and confusion.
“What my partner is trying to say,” added John King. But before he could finish the thought, he reached for the gun in Jacob’s hand and veered its aim away from the necromancer’s face. He twisted the murderer’s arm until Jacob Trent had no choice but to let free of the detective’s gun.
Once the gun was returned to its rightful owner, John King struck a heavy pistol whip at the murderer’s nose. Jacob Trent fell back and tripped, landing with the back of his head against the floor. Before he could get up, the detective revealed a pair of handcuffs from the breast pocket of his suit, and had him tied to a rusted pipeline running along the basement wall.
“We got him,” John King applauded.
Sebastian Grimm joined his side, recovering by now from the events that had just transpired.
“I suppose we did. But maybe next time you don’t wait until he shoots me.”
“I wasn’t waiting for him to shoot you,” the detective replied, heavy emphasis on you.
Sebastian hesitated to make adequate sense of it. But when the answer finally came, he found himself appreciating the detective for being far more tact than he gave him credit for.
The death of the neighbor under the given circumstances had been proof enough to suggest that Samantha Sweeney’s passing might not have been a suicide. And if Jacob Trent had been allowed to finish off the man he had earlier killed, then there could be no discrepancies as to the cause of Carlson Mays’ death. Jacob would naturally assume that the man he had strangled to death did not actually die, and that the funeral director and his partner had nursed him back to health. That was of course, until he put a bullet inside his head. This, as opposed to falling back to his grave at the sound of an egg timer.
A convenient wrap-up for an otherwise complicated dilemma. Now the passing of Carlson Mays could easily be explained without having to resort to the complicated fact of necromancy.
“So what happens now?” asked Sebastian.
“Now you pay me,” replied John King.
“Get me out of here!” barked Jacob Trent.
“Hush up. You’ll get to talk all you want once we put you in the clink.”
“What about everything that’s happened here?”
“You leave that to me. I’ll clear it up with the police once they get here.”
And with that, Sebastian Grimm ceased to fret.
The detective was a man of many resources. Not the least of which happened to be the police itself. Given his talent for solving crimes and tailing perpetrators of misconduct, he had become something of a friend of the men in blue, and they in turn a friend of his.
It was nice to have friends. More and more, Sebastian Grimm was finding this to be true. And it was precisely for this reason that two weeks after the events of his
first near-death experience, he decided that he would reconnect with the one girl who had ever shown him a sliver of affection.
With the assistance of private eye John King, Sebastian Grimm was able to find the home in which Dina Malloy now presided. It was a two story residence in the suburbs, located in a richly decorated neighborhood almost as exquisite as the one that he and Dina grew up in as children.
A brick path led from the sidewalk onto the entrance. Two Roman style pillars propped a sheltering arch over the welcome mat. And it was there that Sebastian Grimm stood, on the platform of her doorway, fumbling over what words would best rekindle their ten year estranged relationship.
He wrapped his left hand into a fist, and then gently tapped the door.
Sebastian Grimm did not know what he would find on the other side. But for what it was worth, he wished himself the best.
* * * * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mortimer Jackson is a self-published author living in the underbellies of suburban California, where as a novelist he writes in the hopes of one day joining the ranks of the overrated. His first novel, Fear of The Dead, will be released Fall of 2011.
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