Christmas is a Busy Season for the Necromancer

When Karen Joy first heard rumors about a real, practicing necromancer in her city, she hadn’t realized it would be so difficult to book her services.

Apparently, like most merchants, Ella Parker was busiest during the holiday season.

Karen Joy was surprised to hear this. She assumed that Ella would be most in demand around Halloween. But Ella told her that was only the second busiest day of the year for her services. The veil was even thinner on the night of the winter solstice. Plus, it was easier for a necromancer to contact someone on the exact anniversary of their death.

And people were always dying around the holidays. 

Karen Joy met her out in front of the Aegis Senior Care Center.

“You’re Ella? But you don’t look like a…” Karen Joy glanced around, wondering if this was some kind of hoax. The girl didn’t look like how she’d imagined a necromancer, especially one as competent and dangerous as the reports had led her to believe. 

Ella rolled her eyes. 

“You were expecting black lipstick? Fishnet tights? A forked tongue?” Ella stuck her very normal looking tongue out at Karen Joy and waggled it mockingly. “I’m a professional, not some goth girl wearing Satanism as a costume. Inconspicuous is how I’ve managed to evade the law for this long.”

Karen Joy nodded. This made sense. It was the very reason it had taken so long for her to track down this girl, earn her trust, set up a meeting.

But she couldn’t help but be thrown by Ella’s girl-next-door appearance. 

Was she the real deal?

Ella looked as unremarkable as humanly possible. She wore plain jeans, a white t-shirt, and non-descript tennis shoes. Her face had just enough makeup to make her look becoming yet plain, and her light brown hair was pulled back in a clean ponytail. Her only adornment was a complicated looking silver talisman that hung around her neck.

“You want a show?” Ella asked. “Go to a Madam Maroni séance at the Magic Castle. But if you want actual results, follow me.”

Ella adjusted the heavy designer backpack on her shoulders. Karen Joy took a deep breath, hoping her nerves didn’t show or, if they did, that she looked like any other customer Ella was used to dealing with. 

“You brought everything I asked?”

Karen Joy nodded, hefting the gym bag of food, clothes, and personal affects over her shoulder. She was ready.

“Including payment?”

Karen Joy unzipped the bag and pulled out a small manila envelope, stuffed thick with cash. She made sure her hand wasn’t shaking before she passed it over to Ella.

Ella thumbed through the bills, counting them. 

Darkness had fallen, but it wasn’t cold. Not here in Pasadena, where each winter was unseasonably warmer than the last, and people kept their air conditioning on twelve months out of the year. Palm trees cheerfully lined the parking lot as if this building wasn’t full of the almost-dead. 

The lobby smelled like a mixture of stale vinegar, latex, and artificial pine. 

Ella slipped the receptionist a Benjamin and led Karen Joy to the elevator, then down the hall to room 205. 

As arranged, the room was empty tonight. Its former resident had died exactly one year ago tonight, when the dementia had finally won out.

Ella locked the door behind them and started unpacking her bag. Karen Joy watched uncertainly from the corner, looking for any evidence that this woman was actually capable of the kind of sorcery that she promised. In this lighting, with this outfit, she looked more like a kid setting up an art project. 

First, Ella took out a thick, black, leather-bound book. Then, she unfolded a cloth and laid it out on the floor. Sewed into the fabric was a circle, five feet in diameter, its border etched with runes. A pentagram connected five points in the middle. 

“Less cleanup than drawing directly on the floor,” Ella explained when she saw Karen Joy watching curiously. “Same effect. Come stand here in the middle of it. And do not,” she looked Karen Joy directly in the eyes to show how serious she was. “Step outside of it. No matter what.”

Karen Joy nodded. Ella flashed her a professional smile that was probably intended to be comforting. But it didn’t reach all the way back to her eyes. She turned away from her middle-aged, frumpy customer and busied herself with placing five thick black candles out of the bag, placing them at the five points of the pentagram.

“So, who is it we’re going to be contacting today?” she asked.

“My grandmother,” Karen Joy answered truthfully. “She died last year.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ella said, but her condolences sounded rote. “But hopefully tonight we can get you the closure you need.” 

Karen Joy nodded, fingering the outline in her back pocket to comfort her. She did plan on getting closure. That was why she was here. She could do this. She just needed to see Ella in action. Prove that she was really practicing the black arts she claimed were within her capabilities. 

A shiver went up Karen Joy’s spine as Ella gently pulled a real human skull out of her backpack and placed it at the north facing point of the circle.

“Where did you get that?” spilled out of her before she had a chance to stop it.

Ella shot her a sharp look.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to. Jewelry?”

Karen Joy unpacked the things that Ella had told her to bring: The wedding ring her grandmother wore, a lock of her hair, a small Tupperware container of her favorite food (chicken and dumplings she’d made earlier this afternoon. They were cold now). 

“And the soil?”

This had been the hardest for Karen Joy to bring herself to acquire, but she was willing to do anything it took to see this mission through. She shakily reached into her bag and pulled out the last item: a small Ziploc bag of dirt taken from her grandmother’s grave.

Ella took it brusquely from her hand. She was all business as she laid the items in her position. From her own backpack she set out unleavened black bread, unfermented grape juice, a delicate crustal jar, a wand, and a spirit board. 

Ella lit Frankincense and myrrh, then turned to Karen joy with the crystal jar in hand.

“Put this on your arms.”

Ella unscrewed the lid and slathered the thick ointment on herself. 

“What is it?” 

“Henbane. And some other stuff.” Ella smiled that fake comforting smile again. “I make it myself. Trust me, we need it for this to work.”

Karen Joy took a deep breath and did as she was told. 

Ella lit the candles, then held her wand and faced East.

“For the living know that we will die. And the dead know all. For they have the reward of Asmodai. For the mercy of them is eternal. Her love and her hate and her envy have not perished. And forever she shall share in all that is done under the moon of Malkuth.”

Ella took a deep breath and then took a bite of bread. She held it out to Karen Joy.

“Eat.”

Karen Joy’s heart was beating through her chest. Her hand hovered next to her back pocket, but she had to know if this was going to work.

Ella repeated the chant.

“For the living know that we will die. And the dead know all…”

She took a deep drink of grape juice from the chalice, then held it out to Karen Joy.

“Drink.”

Karen Joy obeyed. But still, nothing happened.

“For the living know that we will die.”

After the third repetition of the chant, Ella reached for the bag of dirt. Karen Joy watched in horror as she opened it and tipped the bag into her mouth, chewing and swallowing the dirt from her grandmother’s grave.

She handed it to Karen Joy.

“Eat.” 

Karen Joy shook her head, too disgusted to speak. Ella shoved to towards her.

“Do you want this to work or not?”

Karen Joy was shaking. She wasn’t even sure anymore.  Did she? What could be so important?

She slipped her hand into her back pocket and felt the smooth comfort of metal. Her head was swimming. She was starting to feel delirious. What was in that ointment?

But the feeling of the handcuffs steadied her. She knew she had to do what she came here to do.

Karen Joy grabbed the plastic bag and tipped it up to her mouth. She poured dirt into her mouth until she choked on it and coughed, sputtering. 

The East facing candle went out. Karen Joy froze. Had she ruined the ritual. She peeked at Ella for guidance. Ella’s eyes had rolled back into her head. She was in a trance. 

Karen Joy looked around wildly, waiting for any spirit to show itself. The room went freezing cold. 

“What?” Ella asked. “She’s a—”

Ella snapped her head in realization towards Karen Joy. 

The time to act was now.

She pulled the handcuffs from her back pocket and lunged toward Ella.

“Ella Parker, you’re under arrest for—”

But half a second ahead of her, Ella tucked and dove out of the circle, hitting the floor of the hospice room outside of the cloth. Karen Joy went to take a step towards her, but Ella held up her hand.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

She was right. Karen Joy’s throat seized up in fear as she looked around. 

She wasn’t sure what she had expected. Something that looked more like ghosts. Karen Joy was starting to realize that she watched too much TV. That the enchanted world was much more subtle, much more terrifying than she ever would have predicted herself.

Each wall of the room around her undulated as if it were a turbulent water. 

Hands attempted to press through it. She even saw outlines of some faces. Some feet. Pushing to get through.

“That circle is the only thing preventing the dead from dragging you to the otherworld with them,” Ella told her, gasping for breath.

“But what about—”

“Me?” Ella laughed, holding up the talisman she wore around her neck. “You think I’d be in this line of work without a backup?”

She stood up and fixed Karen Joy with a dark, betrayed gaze.

“What are you, BEC?” 

Karen Joy nodded. 

“Did you bring back up?”

Karen Joy shook her head. 

Ella studied her, ultimately deciding that she was telling the truth. 

“I should’ve known better.”

Karen Joy been working for the Bureau of Enchanted Containment as an undercover agent for three years now. Bringing in a sorcerer-level necromancer would be enough to earn her a huge promotion. 

But now she was regretting coming here alone.  

“Ella, you need to call them off,” Karen Joy said, motioning at the straining limbs of the dead pushing the walls of the room in around her. “Come with me. Let me take you in. There’s a reason this kind of magic is illegal. You’re hurting people. There needs to be a separation here. People need to let go, not fall for whatever this is that you’re selling them.”

“You surprised me, Karen Joy, I’ll give you that. I am rarely surprised these days.”

Ella looked at the spirit energies around her. She did seem bored. 

“I’ve been doing this for years. It’s always the same questions. ‘Do you forgive me?’ ‘Where are you?’ and yes, the occasional ‘Where is the will?’ or ‘Who killed you?’ The living are so selfish, so small-minded. 

“I got into this in the first place because I love mystery. 

“And death is the greatest mystery of all. 

“Our culture is obsessed with ignoring it. We string up lights, tie a pretty little bow on the darkness, push it to the back of our minds, but it’s always there. Whispering. And we are so, so afraid. Constantly.

“You know the feeling: You’re just going about your day, driving to the grocery store or whatever, when suddenly the terror claws itself out of the back of your brain and into your conscious surface thoughts. One day, you will no longer exist. The world will continue to stretch on for hundreds, thousands, even millions of lifetimes, and you won’t be here to see it. To know it. Any of it. At all. Forever, without end.

“Just like before you were born, billions of years passed without you ever being aware of them. One day you will close your eyes, everyone will forget your name, and the billions will continue.

“What will that be like? How can we even comprehend it?

“Our stupid little mammal brains can’t. So, we invent comforting stories of a consciousness living on, in an existence even better than this one (or worse, depending on who you are). But only a few zealots actually believe this fantasy unquestioningly. We call them saints. But for the rest of us, for you, there’s that little nagging question in the back of our minds.

“How can we be sure?”

“Is that what this is about?” Karen Joy asked her. “Reassuring people?”

Ella laughed.

“No. It’s about making money off their fear. 

“I practice necromancy to gain knowledge. Real knowledge. Of the universe. But these ceremonies require resources: specialized herbs, tools, access to places people have died. And I still have to pay rent in this expensive as hell city. 

“So, I take clients, and I’m building up my savings. One day, I’m moving to Europe. A plague city, ideally. Edinburgh, perhaps. And there are so many places I want to travel to: Cairo, Athens, Mexico City, Kyoto, Jerusalem. There are so many people I want to meet, so much I want to learn.

“Apparently my reputation here has gotten too good. I’m impressed you managed to find me.”

“Please, don’t leave me.” Karen Joy looked around the room terrified as Ella edged towards the door. “I have your things. Don’t you need your book?”

“Please don’t insult me,” Ella grinned at the cop. “I have it all up here. Things can be replaced. Goodnight, Karen Joy.”

She put her hand on the door know.

“Wait!”

“Oh relax,” Ella looked at the room around them, at the candles flickering on the circle in front of her. “Once those naturally burn out, the spirits will be put to rest. By then I’ll be long gone. But hey, if you do want any of those boring answers the living are always seeking, you can still reach out to your grandmother. I’m sure you two are overdue that long conversation.

“Maybe you’ll get some closure after all.”

Karen Joy glanced at the book in front of her. Did she dare?

“Oh, and Karen Joy?” 

“Yes?”

“She was on her knees, trembling as she looked up at Ella.”

“Tell the Bureau not to come for me again. Or next time I won’t be so merciful.”

Without waiting for a response, the unremarkable looking girl disappeared into the hallway, leaving Karen Joy all alone in the middle of the flickering candlelight as the dead pressed in on her from all sides.