The Bad Book

Marous the nasty stood back and admired his creation with an air of reverence. He had just written, and bound the unholy volume that would forever be known as the ‘Necronominomicon’, the book of the exceptionally dead. It was twice as evil as Sour Ron’s ‘Encyclopaedia Necromica’, more accurate then Melony Trix the weird’s ‘The Undead and You’ series and contained almost four times as many dark incantations than Boris Pecker’s ‘Budget of Darkness’.

Marous had written every word by hand using a special mix of ink and blood. The letters were legible but still suitably spooky. The book was bound in human skin with a face stretched out in eternal damnation on the front cover. Marous wasn’t too sure about this part; it might be a little too on the nose, he thought, as he examined a peace of tanned flesh that had once been on the nose. It wasn’t as if you could make out like you just threw it on. It was obvious to anyone that skinning someone and carefully tanning the skin into leather, then delicately cutting it and sewing it to bind a book was a lot of effort. It was too late now. He’d have to lean into to it. Besides, no one would judge it by the cover; that was book appreciation 101.

Still, the excitement and relief he felt upon completion slowly gave way to creeping doubt. He’d put a lot of himself into his work (specifically the blood) and was unsure about whether he wanted to put it all out there. What if people didn’t like it? Or worse, misinterpreted it. His work expanding on the normal methods of raising the dead to extend the practice beyond mere humanoid corpses was revolutionary but would people appreciate the potential applications of zombie squirrels or would they immediately scoff at anything that deviated too far from the established necromancy meta?

The book contained many secrets (or had, as by definition they would no longer be secrets if anyone read the book, which was a books purpose) from how to move one’s soul between bodies, to a particularly tasty mushroom soup recipe on page 78 (mushrooms grow on dead things so it was still relevant). His every hard-earned treasure was there for all to see. Some pages were written in plain text, some in cyphers, other pages were enchanted so that the information would etch itself into the viewer’s brain whether they wanted to know how to mummify victims on a budget or not. On the one hand, a part of him wanted to keep such wisdom to himself, or perhaps he was scared others wouldn’t value such details as he did. On the other hand, he wanted to show off how talented he was. 

He needed a second opinion to get some validation. Looking around the assembled ghouls and zombies who either couldn’t read or would probably lie as not to hurt his feelings if the work was terrible, he decided to look further afield. Nancy the negative always had time for him, so she was the obvious choice, but he stopped halfway to the door. He remembered that she had been run out of town for being a downer. Which reminded him, Debbie was still around, but she was always so critical; as a first reader that would be a real trial by fire. Maybe he needed a laymen’s opinion, someone who’d take it on face value (primarily the one on the front cover) without critically scrutinising the more technical point.

He headed own of his dungeon and into the village. An old man, wheezing heavily, hobbled the other way. Marous greeted the man and asked him to take a look at a book he’d written and to give him any thoughts he might have. The man agreed, grateful for an excuse to stop and rest. He sat down, took the book and opened it at a random page and began to read. No sooner that he started he gasped, clutched his chest and remained motionless and wide-eyed. Marous waved a hand in front of the unblinking eyes.

Oops.

He gently felt for a pulse. Nothing. Wow, died instantly. that was impressive, and probably a stellar indorsement. Curious, he wondered what unholy section of unimaginable darkness pushed the old man from this mortal coil. He took the book, and, ah what? Page 78? Really? He must had died entirely coincidently. That was so annoying. No one had it as bad as he did right now, he considered, and he sulked away from the ridged body by the road.

A little further down the road, he came across a little girl picking flowers. His eyes narrowed. This was probably as far from his target audience as he could get and children could be painfully honest, which was both a positive and negative. He shrugged. To be fair, some of the most evil people he knew were once little girls and this one was murdering flowers with single-minded intent.

He made the same request he had given to the late gentleman up the road. The small child, a little confused by why she was being asked, took the tome reluctantly. She probably thought the front cover was a little obvious as well, he considered. Driven by fear or obliviousness, she opened the book at a random page as the man before her had. Her eyes widened, and the colour of her irises faded to black. She gasped but the sound was deep and other worldly. Oh boy, she had chosen one of the enchanted pages, thought Marous excitedly, peeking over her shoulder. And a particularly gruesome one at that! He watched expectantly. The girl smiled. Smiled!? He was at least expecting tears. He snatched the book off the child, whose stretched, toothy grin did not waver. Its head tilted slowly to the side. Probably awakened something there, he considered, but stormed off all the same. The single criticism has sent red-hot flames of shame and embarrassment to burn his cheeks. He was stupid. The book was stupid. Why did he ever think he could make an evil book to forever mark the world with its corruption? This was ridiculous. He just wanted to hide away forever and never show anyone his failure.

Retreating to the shadows, Marous curled up in a comfy chair. A shambling abomination brought him a hot cup of cocoa. The soothing warm liquid eased his mind a little and after a moment to calm down, he collected his thoughts to rationalise the situation. To be fair, he reconciled, she hadn’t actually said it was bad, she had in fact smiled, which though unexpected, meant she liked what she saw. What was a book of total darkness for, if not to inspire the youth of today? Sure, he couldn’t even scare a little girl but kids these days were so desensitised that they probably couldn’t even feel fear. That was it. Probably.

He looked over to the book that he had abandoned on his desk. Small clouds of shadow orbited it slowly like lazy moons. Reaching over, he began flicking through its pages settling on the chapter about potions. Potions for killing people, potions for making killed people feel less killed, but no potions of confidence, though he considered a potion of confidence was just alcohol, which wasn’t that far removed from the potions that killed people.

He shut the book and rallied his nerve. He was overthinking it. The book was amazing and everyone (of a certain disposition) was going to love it. What more could he add, after all, he was the most powerful necromancer in the land and he had put his heart and soul into his creation. Not literally, of course, that would be ridiculous and im…poss…ible.

Marous quickly turned to the back of the book. There was room for a few more pages. He worked through the night on new equations and new methods. This would be his magnum opus or perhaps his mortem opus. The impossible was a barrier other people dealt with, and after a mere 48 hours of solid work it was complete. The final draft of the Necronominomicon. Truly, Marous would be immortalised in his work, literally and literarily. As well as his heart and soul, he added blood sweat and tears for good measure.

There in a dark workshop laid the mighty book of the exceptionally dead. It thought proudly to itself, ‘I have finally done it… although I wish I had invited someone round before I had’.

The end