The Ten-Year-Old Necromancer: Chapter Nine

Jasmine flushes a startling shade of red. That answers my question well enough.

“You’re a mess,” I say, “I save your life and you kidnap me?”

“I didn’t kidnap you!” She protests.

I roll my eyes and slide off the couch. When my feet hit the ground, a plume of dirt blooms, and something crunches beneath my heel. Feels like cereal.

The room smells something fierce, like something died in here. But, after racking my brain for my Weird Psychedelic Powers Trademark, it becomes clear that the only thing rotten in here is the shoddy, soggy carpet.

There’s a window, though the sunshine is shielded by yellow-tinged carpets. (Whether it’s by age or something else, I don’t want to know!) I stride over and throw them open, bathing the mancave in afternoon light. Somehow, it looks worse.

“How long have I been out?” I ask.

Jasmine startles, apparently lost in her own thoughts. Now that I’ve cleared space, she’s spread out on the couch. “Barely an hour.” She says, “Mom and Dad came to look for me after I didn’t come home. They found the monster at the base of the hill, but it was all-mush after you were done with it.” She scrutinizes me, her brows knitted together. Without her glasses her eyes look smaller. I am unnerved by them- the way the white of her eye’s completely absorbed by her pupils. Though she had proven herself to be rather silly, she looks much more sinister this way. When she asks me “What did you do?” I realize I lost thread of the conversation.

“What do you mean?” I ask, deciding playing dumb seems like a smart bet anyway.

“You know what I mean.” She replies.

I sigh. And now we are at an impasse. But the distance between her and I grows wider with every second I keep my mouth shut, so I stop holding my tongue and hedge a bet.

“I’m a necromancer,” I say. And shrug, to lessen the impact of those words. I figure, the truth is too large and strange that she’d never believe me. Maybe she’ll demand a better answer, but I won’t- and can’t- give her one.

Yet, to my horror, her eyes are suddenly wide and glittering, “Really?” She asks, her mouth agape. “Is that what the witch is too? A necromancer?”

Now, I half want to lie and tell her ‘No, I am most certainly not.’ Maybe throw in a couple jazz hands and say ‘gotcha!’ I could call her a fool for falling for such an easy trick, I could gaslight her into thinking the monster never existed. My mind is still racing ahead through all the different possibilities as I nod my head yes.

She jumps up to her feet and bounces on the couch, like she’s bobbing midair. She wears mismatched socks, one green with orange stripes, and one blue with the word Thursday written across the side. I’m terrified she’s going to topple off and bonk her head on the coffee table. Imagining the carrot soup strewn across her corpse or her mother walking in to find an undead Jasmine is enough for me to walk back towards her.

She glares down at me and proclaims loudly; “I do not believe you!” My heart soars, and she must see the expression on my face, for she then says, “So you must show me!”

Back in Kindergarten, other kids used to tell the most awful fibs. Anything from celebrity parents to magical powers- kind of like here. I channel my inner five-year-old as I say, “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I close my eyes and tilt my face towards the sky, (or, in this case, a particularly grimy popcorn ceiling) “I can only use my powers in the light of the full moon!”

She crosses her arms, still standing on top of the couches cushions, “That’s not true. You killed that monster without lifting a finger, right in front of me.”

“Oh, but you see,” I say, smiling, “That was a special case!”

Before I can continue my elaborate and purposefully ill-thought-out explanation, she leans down, scowling. “You’re lying to me.” She says.

“No.” I say, “About what?”

“You’re trying to make me think that you don’t have powers by saying you do have powers but by saying you have powers in the worst way possible, like a double, triple, quadruple agent person.”

That’s exactly what I’m doing, but the way she says it gives me the worst headache. “Yeah. Absolutely that. Listen, if you thought I was serious, you’re even dumber than I thought. But it’s okay, people see weird stuff in swamps all the time. It’s actually way more common than you might think.” I rub my head and stand up. She sits down, “I want to go home. Is there any chance of your parents giving me a ride?”

“Dad might,” she says. I can hear the bitterness in her voice, “But you listen here, Kimberly; I know what I saw, and I will not rest until I know exactly what it is I saw.”

“You used ‘saw’ twice there.”

“I saw that as soon as I said it. But I told you to listen! Whatever demonic deeds you’re getting up to in our forest, my friends and I will get to the bottom of it! For you may fool me with your devilry, but there is nothing that escapes the watchful gaze of the Wonder Scouts!”

I snort, “That was the least eloquent threat I have ever heard-“I grin evilly and turn to face her, “In my entire career as a witch.”

I leave our conversation at that, walking out of the room as dramatically as I can manage. Jasmine was certainly nothing like Catherine, (for that, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed) but boy, was she fun to mess with.

Jasmines Dad was even dorkier than his daughter. I found him organizing his baseball cards by some inscrutable system at the families dinner table. I end up borrowing their landline (who uses landline anymore anyway?) and calling Grandma from there, thankful I already memorized her number. When her pickup truck rolls up into the driveway, I wave goodbye to Jasmines Dad, and Jasmine herself, who is peeking out from behind some door. I wink at her as I leave, and I see her retreat into the darkness.

My good mood subsides however, as I step into the truck.

“What in gods good name were you thinking?” The car bolts off as soon as I close the door. I rush to buckle my seatbelt.

“Sorry?” I ask.

“Running off into the woods without me? Disappearing without a trace? Isn’t that the express thing I warned you against?” She swerves, the seatbelt strangles me. “Who knows what could’ve happened to you? Who could’ve gotten their hands on you, again? I was worried sick!”

Fingers, closing around my throat. Lungs, filled with mud. I can’t breathe, “I’m sorry,” I say, struggling not to cry.

Grandma sighs as she pulls onto the highway. It’s filled with so much pent-up rage and frustration that I shrink back into my seat. “It’s okay,” she says, “really.”

I don’t respond. Instead, I count the cars as we zoom past them. There are fewer, as we draw closer to our exit.

When we get home, the silence is suffocating. I fumble to unbuckle my seatbelt, and then shoot away from the truck, up the path and into the house. The house shakes with my footsteps as I storm to the library- to my room- and slam the door. I’m really crying now. The tears burn my face and fall from my chin.

I keep forgetting that this is my life now. My future. No matter how I denied it, I hoped Mom might come back for me. But she hadn’t, and I didn’t understand why.

Jasmine calls Grandma a witch. And if she’s a witch, what does that make me? Monsters roam this swamp and I’m starting to think I might be one of them.

There’s a knock. I think for a second it’s Grandma, but then I realize it’s coming from the other side of the room. I look up at my window, and gasp. Pecking ferociously at my window is a bird, twice the size of any I’ve ever seen up close. And it’s very clearly dead.

My hand is already halfway to the handle, but there’s something in the birds talons. It’s a package, and someone has tied a sad, brown ribbon around it, so it almost looks like a gift.

I let my fingers twitch over the doorknob for a moment more. I know I should call for Grandma, but she hasn’t given any satisfying answers to any of my questions. She would never tell me the truth about a third necromancer in these woods. She’d shoo the bird away, and the package along with it.

My hand leaves the handle and I stride across the room, stumbling briefly over my mattress. I wipe my eyes, then pull a large, wooden chest underneath a window. Carefully, I clamber onto it, then leverage my fingers underneath the window, and push it open.

The bird squeezes itself into the room. I flinch back, repulsed. It’s a weird feeling, not one I normally associate with dead things. But there’s something peculiar about this bird. Something wrong. It’s very soul is rotten, all the way down to its core.

It flutters into my room and falls onto the floor beside the mattress. When it stumbles back to its talons, I notice a reddish fluid left behind. Butterflies pirouette in my stomach. Whoever revived this bird- because it wasn’t me, and it surely wasn’t Grandma- did not have particularly good craftmanship.

I don’t have time to stop it before it hops onto my mattress. I splutter, and take a half step towards it, but it’s already too late. The only thing left to do is to carefully unwind the package from its talons.

The bird watches me as I do so. It still had both its eyes, and it keeps turning its head side to side to watch me with one, then the other.

But as soon as I unknot the last string from the parcel, the bird falls dead, truly dead, onto my bed. Blood like bodily fluids and all.

I stare at it for a moment, shocked to find my disgust subsiding. Whatever corruption had perverted it, it had to do with the magic- not the poor mangled bird on my pillow.

There’s nothing more I can do for it. The thing’s long gone, and it had been long before it tainted my windowsill. Still, there was a necromancer out there who was cruel enough to revive an innocent bird just long enough to accomplish its task. I had to ask how necessary it was to drag the dead so shamelessly into it.

I turn my attention back to the parcel, and find my hands are quivering. Carefully I unwind the ribbon, then tear open the package. My anticipation builds quickly, but I can’t bring myself to move any faster than I already am.

In the end, I’m left with torn up packaging, a dead bird, and another book in hand.

This one though is not leatherbound, nor is it very heavy. In fact, it has a very modern and clean look about it. My art teacher would call it a hotdog, rather than a skyscraper. Across the front of it wasn’t a title, but a very long quote. It was in cursive so I couldn’t read it.

Beneath it though was a picture. A family of three was on the beach, but it wasn’t a very good group photo, because with the sun behind them you couldn’t see any of their faces. I squint at it for a moment. There’s something familiar about the women I can’t place. But when I turn the page, I figure out why.

Mom. I think, that’s Mom.

And the baby in her arms is me.

She’s sitting in a rocking chair. I recognize it from our garage, but I don’t remember a time where it was ever in use. Beneath the photo, which takes up the entire page, is a date and a caption.

September 10, 2012. Baby Kimberly’s first day home!

There’s another photo the next page over, but it takes me a moment to tear my eyes from my mothers face. There are dark circles around her eyes like she hadn’t slept in days, but still, it’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her. Her face is all-crinkly, like the photo taker told a particularly funny joke and she’s about to burst out laughing, but has to hold still for the picture.

When I do turn my attention to the next page, my heart stops all over again. For I’m sure, right as rain, that the man depicted there can only be my father.

He’s holding me, just like Mom was in the last photo, and I notice the resemblance between us right away. More than I ever did with either my mom, even between me or Grandma.

Though in the picture I’m lighter, we’re both now the same dark shade. We have the same nose, the same eyes, and, though it’s hard to tell in this picture, I think we have the same smile.

There’s a horrible pang in my chest, and it’s not going away, so I turn the page without even looking at the caption.

Here, there are more photos, just of me. I start flipping through the book without really looking at them, and it’s like flashing past a life I don’t really remember. Here, my first Christmas, there my first steps. I pause when I see a picture of baby-me in this very room, in front of this very bookshelf. I’m staring up at someone beside me, who I can only assume is Grandma.

I’ve been here before. I think, feeling stung, why has no one ever told me?

I look towards the bookshelf; at the very spot I once sat. I quickly returned to the album.

I’m halfway through the whole thing when the photos just stop. The last picture is of my mother standing in an empty house, our things packed neatly into boxes. Even here she is smiling, looking forward to her future with her young family.

But then it ends. And I’m left with the creeping feeling that I’m forgetting something important.