50+ Ways to Annoy the Death Witch: Chapter 4

 Chapter 4: Dealing with a Fucking Necromancer God Dammit

We ate, we went to my place (he drove, I napped), we spent several hours swearing at various household and sundry items as we tried to put some spells together.

He called the Council, but- it’s like I said, we have been the ones dealing with this kind of shit. They didn’t really know how to handle it, and I still am the only person in their sphere of influence who can see and handle death magic without a ton of prep.

The Council was going to reach out to the OSBI- they have contacts everywhere, basically- and see if they could get photos of the crime scene, assuming someone took them before they dug the broken coffins out. I wanted to see as much as they could get, but that wasn’t really going to help us with the task in front of us. I was curious as to how this had been done- now, I had a basic idea.

Someone had managed to concentrate and focus all the death magic in the space the graves occupied back into the occupant, and used that to wake up the dead, and tether them to the Necromancer. I hadn’t seen this before, but it’s technically possible. The how, though- I was interested in it from a technical standpoint, but it didn’t really matter that much.

We needed to get the bodies under my control, and snatch all that death magic off of her. If I couldn’t take it, Callahan needed to. (Depended on if she’d managed to convert it into something she could use, or was just harnessing.)

He was gonna knock at the front door, and try to distract her for as long as possible, and I was gonna go over the fence into the yard, and try to get to the bodies and pull them away from her control. Assuming she was the right person- we weren’t sure if she was, of course, but this was the only lead we had. If it wasn’t her, regroup, and maybe get in touch with Dylan, see if he had a hint.

Last we heard from them, one of their mom’s exes had pointed them at a rehab place that she’d supposedly checked into, and they were trying to verify that she was still there. The problem was that it was after hours. Apparently checking into rehab and then flaking out and taking off was a kind of normal thing for her, but Callahan and I were both fairly sure that they weren’t in danger, for the moment.

After a brief debate (me against, Callahan for) we updated the boys that we were checking back at their grandmother’s old place, and sent them numbers on how to get in touch with the Council if they hadn’t heard from us for a few hours.

And then we were driving back in the dark. Instead of using the truck A/C, we cranked the windows down, both craving the fresh air of the late spring night.

We didn’t talk much.

Wasn’t much to say, we knew what we were about.

One of the things about us is that this is the thing we’re good at, handling this kind of shit. We’d never been in it this deep before, but he knew what he was doing, and I knew what I was doing.

She had neighbors to either side and behind, so he was gonna drop me on the street behind her house. The neighbor behind her had a chain link fence, and looked like maybe nobody was home.

My palms were sweaty. It was always like this.

“Be safe,” he said.

“Yeah, you too.” I reached out- I don’t know why, except it felt like I needed to do something- and he took my hand.

His palm was sweaty, too.

It was reassuring, that we were both nervous.

“You know what you’re doing, and so do I,” he said. “We got this.”

I nodded.

He squeezed my hand.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m ready. Be careful, I’ll see you soon.”

“You be careful, you’re the one doing the heavy lifting.” Magic washed over me, and the inside of the truck seemed to glow for a minute. “Watch your step.”

I nodded, and slipped out of the truck. In my pocket, I had a moth’s body in a little paper packet, and I pulled it out.

It was the small corpse Beautiful Wood Nymph. They’re very pretty enough moths when they’re fluttering around, I guess, but when they’re folded up and laid flat against something, they look like a splat of bird shit.

“Hide me,” I whispered to the moth, and the package got warm in my hand, paper burning away. The dead moth took brief flight- it was not truly resurrected, magic was just moving its body around- and then it poofed into a rain of dust that coated me.

It’s not impossible that someone could see me, but it’d be hard. This spell, unlike the ones I usually have, one is an optical effect, so it’ll work on cameras. Usually I use ‘don’t notice me’ spells, but those work on people alone. They’re easier and cheaper in magic.

I turned back to watch Callahan’s truck driving away, and then he turned the corner, and was gone.

I swallowed, and the thunder rumbled distantly. It was supposed to storm, tonight, but the storm that was heading this way seemed to have stalled out over Purcell.

It was supposed to storm, tonight. That was for the best, might help cover up for us, but the thunder was distant still.

I could see shockingly well. While I usually could see fairly well in the dark, Callahan’s magic must have granted me cat eyes or something. It’s so funny, I didn’t even ask what he did, just trusted that it would help.

It always does.

This house looked unoccupied- the grass was tall and there were a stack of newspapers in the driveway. I probed inside with my magic, but I didn’t feel a body- not a human one, anyway. There were a couple of pets buried in the yard, and some dead insects, but the neglect here was not because the person was dead in the house.

I slipped through the fence, no need to climb, the gate opened easily, and headed to the shed. There had been one on the google map we’d looked at, and my hope was that there was a ladder of some kind in it.

Unfortunately, the door was rusted shut, and opening it might ruin my camo spell.

It was fragile.

There was a door from the sideyard into the garage, so I went and checked that, and it was open.

This was riskier. Just because it looked unoccupied doesn’t mean that it was. And the camo won’t hold up on close inspection, it’s to make it hard to spot me, and hard for the camera to pick me out.

Remember, I can’t see if there’s living bodies in a place, just dead ones.

But there was no car in the garage, although there was room for it. There was a deep freezer in the garage, it was plugged in, but not buzzing- the power was out.

There was a ladder on the wall. One of those aluminum ones, it looked fairly old. I carefully eased it up, trying to breathe as quietly as I could, although I didn’t hear anybody moving in the house.

Odds were good that nobody was home officially, but that didn’t mean there weren’t squatters, and they might think I was here to poach on their territory, or to get them in trouble, or something- I have had this come up before and I got out without bloodshed, but I’d prefer to avoid it.

I let the breath out when I got into the yard. No outcry came from the house. There was no light flashing from within, no sign someone lived there- I was probably in the clear.

I headed to the back of the yard. These yards were deep- I think the lot size was about an acre- and the yard had not been mowed yet this year, I didn’t think. I’m not particularly tall, so I was wading through grass that came up over my knee (well over, in some places) and trying not to drop the ladder.

The chain link fence met the tall privacy fence for the house we were looking into, and I set the ladder up, although not without pinching my fingers in the hinge, because nothing ever goes off seamlessly.

I managed not to yelp, though, and climbed up the ladder to peer over the fence into the backyard in question.

And I was certain, now. The place was as null as the flower beds out front had been. There was just no way a full acre of soil in the plains part of Oklahoma had absolutely no death in it of any variety. There were several animal corpses in the side of the yard I was on, rotting tree leaves, fallen logs- I was perched on the ladder between two trees that were, I believed, slowly dying- huge chunks of the trees were dead, anyway.

The yard was also bare as hell. The backyard I stood in had trees along the edge, bushes. There was a blackberry bush somewhere nearby that I could smell. This yard wasn’t, like, whatever that new thing is, where you do no water landscaping or anything, it was just bare dirt. No trees, no grass, no décor, no chairs, nothing. Just an empty, bare yard. There was a storm cellar to one side, set into the ground- an older model, with the double doors that swung open. It looked like it might have a padlock set on it.

There was a small rut from the back door to the storm cellar that indicated she went out to the cellar fairly often.

Distant thunder rumbled.

It was not, I suppose, impossible that someone would go out to their storm cellar every day of the week, I could not imagine this woman with no cultivation in her yard had any kind of project in the cellar. The storms had been plentiful, but this area had not been under watch too often, that I could recall. In theory, given that it was May in Oklahoma, she could have been prepping her shelter, but-

It’s hard to explain how unsettling the lack of death magic in her yard was. Here’s the closest example I can come. You go to a lake, right? And you’re standing on the shore, and you walk along, and you come to a huge section of the lake that’s just dry. You can walk along the bed and see into the water that is being held aside by some force you do not understand.

What is dry should be wet, every law of nature demands it.

It’s like that. It was like that in the graveyard. It was like that with her flower beds out front, though a smaller patch is less obvious.

Are you kind of getting how freaky this was? She was definitely our Necromancer- or lived with them. We’d looked up property records, and it looked like whoever bought the house wasn’t married. Not impossible that she had a friend or roommate who lived with her, but- well, it was a gamble that she didn’t.

As I looked into the yard, a bright motion light came on. I’d been standing there for at least a full minute, maybe two, so it wasn’t me that triggered it. Motion lights like that can be really reactive to fuckin nothing.

I probably flinched, but as I said, there were big shaggy, dying trees on either side of me, and I was well into the shadows of them. She’d have a harder time seeing me now than she would have with the light off.

But it was going to be probably impossible to make it across the lawn without triggering the light. Fortunately, I’d come prepared.

I’d ditched the backpack for a fanny pack. I’ve heard they’re actually back in fashion, these days, but probably not the way I wear them. It’s just a little handier to have a pouch of magic shit where I can reach them. I dug into my fanny pack.

There was the knock. Nice and loud, like he’d promised.

Front door opened, voices.

Go time.

I pulled a dead tv remote out of my fanny pack, pointed it to the light, and hit the power button.

The light went out.

Sometimes the best spells are the simplest. She’d have to flip the light off and on again to get it to work.

Remote went back in the fanny pack, zippered shut, and then I was scrambling over the fence. It wasn’t the most graceful of landing, and I laid on my side for a full minute because I was worried it was too loud.

I could still hear them talking. She sounded mad.

I pushed myself to my feet, and walked over to the storm cellar.

People tend not to have people with true basements in Oklahoma. I don’t know why, I’ve heard it’s something to do with the clay, but they’re just not common here. Storm cellars, sure. My mom’s folks had one. There’s one on my property, although I haven’t been down there in years.

Grandpa warded the house against storm damage years ago. I think Granny mostly used it to store pickles.

I’m not the hugest fan of being under ground.

But that’s where I was headed. I could see something etched into the metal door- runes, it looked like.

Even if there weren’t other signs, that’s where I was gonna check first. Do the worst thing first, then the rest of the task is easier, right?

There was a padlock on it, but the thing about most locks is that they’re really more a deterrent. They’re easy to get through with a little practice and some know-how. They’re a lot easier to get through if you have all that and some magic.

Fumbling through my bag for all this shit in a hurry wasn’t great, but the wooden skeleton key I’d carved didn’t take me too long to find, and I could hear voices carrying from the porch still. I couldn’t quite make out what anybody was saying, it was just noise, but heavy magical shielding can do that, sometimes.

I’m gonna have to practice with this shit if we’re gonna do this kind of thing more regularly, I thought. I pulled the key out and pressed it to the padlock, which jumped open, and I dropped it in my fanny pack with the key.

What the hell, right? Stolen padlocks got all kinds of uses in magic.

I took a deep breath and steeled myself, and pulled the door open, heading down the steps, closing it after me, which plunged me into pitch black dark that caused my breath to freeze in my chest, for a second.

The spell Callahan had done didn’t go so far as to let me see in total darkness, so I dug my phone out, flipping the flashlight on. One hand on the railing- the last thing I wanted to do was eat shit on the concrete steps.

It was a normal storm cellar. Bog standard, as far as I know. concrete steps, concrete room. There were metal shelves along one wall, where one might store pickles.

No pickles, though. The shelves were empty, rusting slightly. Probably as old as me, these shelves, if not older, and the rust was no doubt load-bearing, by this point.

The back wall had been cut out, or busted out, or something, and instead of concrete, there was an opening into the earth under the house.

If you’re not from Oklahoma, you might not know, but a lot of the dirt around here is red. Not blood red, more like rust. I think it is something to do with iron oxide, actually, though I don’t know for sure. The visible soil in the backyard had been brown- that’s really common when a yard has been sod- but this far under the house, the dirt was rich rusty red. I could smell damp earth, and something underneath it-

Decay.

She had to be some kind of earth witch, there was just no other way around it. And she had to be looking for that money, right? People have killed over 5 grand, but a late model 4runner, a place in Del City, a college education, stability for that amount of time- we had to be looking at 6 figures worth of cash, here.

And the Necromancer was looking for it. She’d gotten those poor souls out of their graves for money.

I was almost disappointed, honestly.

I followed the tunnel under the house, down the slight incline. I realized that the foundation was above me- the tunnel was shaped by magic, I hoped, but this was the kind of thing that led to sink holes, years down the line.

There was a faint scent. And, as I walked deeper into the earth tunnel, I could hear the faintest shuffling sound.

I didn’t want to be down there. Like, at all, not even a little. But there was nowhere else I could be- this was where I had to be. But I had visions of the house collapsing on my head, as I moved forward.

Finally, I turned to see the end of the tunnel.

There were two bodies. They weren’t as goopy as I’d feared. Grandpa was more of a mummy- he kind of looked waxy, and I wondered if he’d turned to soap.

Bodies did that, sometimes.

He was the one moving, he was shuffling around. Grandma was partway to being a skeleton. (I wondered what different conditions they’d been buried under.)

There were runes on the dirt ground, trapping them.

They both looked up at me.

It was actually my first time dealing with the dead who were aware.

She’d managed to recapture them and put them back in themselves. It was horrible.

Grandma’s eyes were gone, but Grandpa seemed to still have his- though his were sewn shut, so I could only see movement under the eyelids.

Grandma gestured me away- a shooing gesture, some viscera dangling and flapping around her forearms.

“No, I can help,” I said. “I’m here to help.”

No telling if they could hear, actually. And the runes that separated us would interfere with me regaining control of them, or talking to them in a way I knew they would understand.

I felt horror and pity both.

Bringing a corpse back to shuffle around was one thing- that was bad enough. To slam a soul back in its rotting body? Monstrous, and took an incredible amount of power.

I looked at the runes. I knew most of them, but there were some I didn’t recognize.

Something slammed behind me, and I jumped.

It had to be the door to the storm cellar.

Fuck. Fuck.

I turned back to them, and decided I would try to free the corpses, erasing the runes. I could hope it was Callahan joining me, somehow, but I didn’t think so. All I had to do was break the runes, right?

Except I couldn’t. I tried to wipe them away- they looked like they were drawn in chalk or talcum powder on top of the earth, but they weren’t on top. It had been driven down into the earth, driven deep, and I dug my fingers into the powder, trying to find an end to them.

Talc, I think. Chalk I have a bit of an affinity towards, but this was as inert and null as the earth around us.

The runes were deeply etched, and there was no way I was going to be able to dig them out in time. “Fuck,” I breathed, turning around, digging into my fanny pack.

She was right there, and the earth opened up underneath me, and swallowed me down to the neck, pressing all around me.

My phone went bouncing across the dirt floor.

Before I could breathe enough to scream, corpse hands were coming down over my head, looping a ribbon around my neck, and I bleated in horror as my magic drained out of me.

We were so wrong about being ready for this. We were so fucking wrong.

She knelt down and yanked hair out of my scalp. “Nosy bitches get what’s coming to them,” she said. “But your body might be very useful.”

“Fuck you,” I said. Which, I’ll admit, not the most original thing, but I was buried up to my neck and couldn’t move.

“I’m glad you didn’t come back with those kids. Making that go away would be a lot harder.”

Faintly, I realized, I could hear talking.

I sucked in a deep breath, and screamed Callahan’s name.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Nobody can hear you. Good to know his name, though.” She walked over to my phone and scooped it up. “What’s the code?”

“Eat me,” I said.

“I’ll get an answer at some point. What about his first name?”

I shook my head.

Agony shot through my body, pain radiating out of my feet. It felt like they were being crushed, and I made a sort of horrible pathetic agonized noise.

“Come on,” she said. “What’s his first name, what do you call him when you’re in bed with him?”

“Jesus Christ, lady, go fuck yourself!”

Agony racked me again, and I screamed in pain. “What’s his name?”

“Adam!” I shouted.

As a reminder- I didn’t know his first name. He told it to me long ago, and I’d forgotten it. Adam was just the first name that came to mind. It was definitely not his name.

“Good girl. Where are you supposed to meet him?”

I could feel tears running down my face. What do I do?

Pain twisted through my legs, and I heard something in my ankle snap.

“Where are you supposed to meet him?”

It occurred to me- she thinks this is like a movie, that she can hurt me enough that I’ll tell the truth. She believed his name is Adam. Fucking lie.

It was the only tool I had.

“At north end of the street, under the broken streetlight,” I said.

“See? That wasn’t so hard.” Magic surged through the air, and she turned into me. “I’ll be back.”

She left with my phone, taking the light with her, and I plunged into the dark.

She was going to trick him, or try. Lure him somewhere, hurt him, kill him- and blame me, no doubt.

And the earth seemed to be pressing in on me, as I struggled against it, squeezing me more and more tightly.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t breathe.

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