A Witch's Guide to Necromancy

Most people in town wouldn’t go near Imelda Gray with a ten-foot pole–or more accurately, stake. Her tangled crow’s nest of hair, milky eyes, and persistent scent of decay didn’t help. And most importantly: She was a witch. While people in those modern, new-fangled, open-minded cities were starting to accept witches ever since burning them at the stake had been outlawed forty years ago, the citizens of Amberwood were stubbornly set in their witch-hating ways. It didn’t help that Imelda, at the young age of 17, specialized in raising the dead back to life. Which, as any self-respecting Amberwoodian would tell you, is the most blasphemous witchcraft.

Imelda, for her part, didn’t give much thought to what the people around her said. She was far too busy trying to find a corpse.

Amberwood and its witch might have stayed in its uneasy truce if not for the unfortunate death of Tyler Kendrick. While the actual death did little to rock the boat, the theft of his body from the Amberwood coroner’s office by none other than Miss Imelda Gray practically blew the boat out of the water.

It all started 5 hours and 34 minutes after Tyler’s death. Imelda knew this was her chance. She had needed a body for quite some time, and this might be her chance to impress Clark Ebon, the most powerful Necromancer in the west. Maybe if Imelda managed to bring Tyler back with the limited resources of Amberwood, Master Ebon would take her as his apprentice and appease the neighbors a bit. So, at 12:00 o’clock sharp, Imelda pulled on her black leggings and packed a dark backpack full of supplies before hopping on her bike. No broomstick license and too broke for a car, all she could do was attach a little bike trailer to her bicycle and get her exercise in.

The night was cool and foggy, but despite the weather, Imelda arrived in a matter of minutes. She could hear what Granny would say in her mind: "A corpse run? On a school night? That isn’t quite preferable, is it?" Imelda quickly hid her bike in a blackberry bush, shoved the bike trailer into a corner, and raced for the employee entrance.

The PIN pad was almost laughably easy to bypass. Imelda pulled out her pocket screwdriver (it had come as a shock to Imelda when she learned that not everyone had a screwdriver with them wherever they went) and started messing with the lock. She had done it dozens of times and had, in fact, been taught by her Granny, who had been a bit of a rebel back in her day. After a couple of minutes, the green light blinked, and the door made a few clicking noises before swinging open.

Imelda walked inside and breathed in the sweet, sweet smell of formaldehyde and blood. She swiftly pulled out a small can of spray paint and covered the lenses of the cameras as she passed by.

To bring some back to life, they can’t have died a natural death. And since most of the residents of Amberwood (which boasted a population of a whopping 950 people and 1 witch) died via disease or old age, there were not many opportunities to snatch a corpse. There had been a house fire last year, but Imelda had been dismayed to find that there wasn’t enough body left to resurrect. Tyler was an altogether different case. Tyler Kendrick had been home from his third year of college. He decided to go for a little jog in the woods, and, unfortunately for Tyler, a bear had decided he looked like a tasty snack.

Because of his grizzly (pun intended) death and Imelda’s young age, she suspected it would be just what she needed to get noticed. Imelda walked inside the coroner’s office just as the first few drops of rain fell. The office was clean, white, and very creepy. There was a metal table at the center of the room and large drawers on one side of the wall that contained all the bodies. Imelda crept up to the drawers and selected one at random. It took three drawers before she hit the jackpot. She pulled open the fourth drawer, and another breeze of formaldehyde hit her. Tyler’s face was ghastly pale and had a jagged scar running down his face. It looked slightly strange with no blood coming from it. He was tall and slightly overweight. Imelda pulled out a blanket and covered Tyler up before dragging him out of the drawer. The next ten minutes of dragging and grunting were unsightly, but in the end, Imelda got Tyler into the bike attachment and started on her way home, huffing and puffing.

The first thing every witch will tell you is that it’s always important to prepare your site of resurrection before you bring the body. Otherwise, it’s a hectic dash to compile your supplies, and it’s hard to seem professional when you're racing around looking for spare livers or kidneys. Imelda’s Granny hadn’t been particularly happy when she took over the garage and turned it into her witch cove.

“Must you empty the freezer, Immie?” Granny had sighed as she watched Imelda take the meat from the large freezer and try to cram it inside the small indoor one.

“Well, would you like your ham to be sitting beside a bottle of human eyes?”

“I thought you said that jar was full of cow eyes.”

“Erm, right, yeah. That’s what I meant.”

Now the freezer was mostly empty except for eyes and a few body parts, Imelda had collected from various mammals. There was also a long metal table Imelda had gotten at a yard sale and covered in a plastic tablecloth. Her tools and books were lying on a small desk beside the table. So, when Imelda finally arrived (the trip back had taken three times as long as the way there due to Tyler’s bulk), her space was prepared, and all she had to do was put Tyler in the freezer so that she could get some sleep and then begin in the morning. It took a few attempts, but Imelda managed to get Tyler in the freezer and nip up to bed just as the clash of thunder sounded in the sky.

The next morning was gray, perfect witch weather. Bacon sizzled as Imelda bounced down the stairs. Imelda skipped down the stairs, her brain buzzing with excitement. She had been studying how to bring the dead back to life for ages. She had read dozens of books, watched tons of videos, and even managed to raise a few small rodents from the dead.

“I got a call from one of our neighbors this morning,” Grandma called coolly to Imelda.

“Uh, really? About what?”

Granny gave Imelda an appraising look. “Is that supposed to be an innocent face? It looks like you just got stabbed with a fork.”

Imelda shoved a piece of bacon in her mouth. “What? Forks are innocent. Anyways, they need to find something better to do with their life than spy on me!”

Granny continued flipping bacon in the pan. “It wasn’t spying this time. They were concerned about a missing corpse.”

Imelda tried to look indigent. “Well, it's rude to make assumptions! I might not have done it!”

“Right. Please take a shower before breakfast. You smell like the dead.”

“I always smell like that. And anyways, I’ll just get all bloody right after breakfast anyway.”

Granny made a noise of grudging relent.

“What are we going to do about the neighbors?”

“We’ll deal with that later when the town mob comes to our house with pitchforks. Go do your little spell.” Imelda’s Granny wasn’t a witch herself, but her mother had been, and she had some respect for the art. However, she wished her granddaughter had picked a slightly less…gory witchcraft.

Imelda obediently skipped off towards the garage. “Oh, boy,” she chirped. “A body!” She tugged the freezer open and painstakingly dragged Tyler onto the table. Imelda set him up in the anatomical position (body lying flat on its back, hands facing palms up, legs straight) like they always did in the shows on TV. The damage was pretty bad, but it could have been much worse. The lacerations to his sides and stomach were deep but fixable.

“Let’s dive in, shall we?” Imelda mumbled as she pulled on her latex gloves. Back in the day, if you wanted to bring someone back, all one had to do was cut out the heart, mumble a couple of nonsense words, stick it back in, and boom: They're alive. Nowadays, it was more complicated since all of the really powerful witches had either turned into bats or been burned at the stake. Now they had to stitch things up and use coolers and blood powder, which reminded her, she needed to check what Tyler’s blood type was. Imelda got her blood test out and did a quick swipe on the cut on his face.

“A-Negative. I should have a packet lying around.” Imelda hummed as she selected a packet of A-negative dehydrated blood before going to the small stove in the corner and starting a pot of boiling water. She ripped open the packet and poured the dusty red stuff inside. It would take two or three hours for it to become nice and thick blood, but that was fine. She needed the time. Imelda had a heart to restart.

Now it was time for the fun stuff. Imelda pulled her hair back into a low ponytail (no one wants loose strands of hair in their digestive system) and pulled up a chair. The most important part of necromancy was the heart. Once you had all the organs in the approximate area they began in (like a puzzle!), you placed the beating heart inside and (with a few good spells) the body practically mended itself! Imelda set to work on getting the heart out of the pericardial cavity. She let out an excited sigh as she made the first puncture and then pushed farther, deeper. A small trickle of red stuff stained the plastic on the metal table.

Pulling out the heart was at once thrilling and terrifying. She made sure to snip the tubes connecting the heart to the body. She got the heart into a cooler by her feet without any issue. She pushed around Tyler’s organs a little and was pleased to see that most of them were accounted for. His gallbladder was little more than torn shreds, and his liver had seen better days, but that could be easily remedied. She had a few spare organs from her biology class dissections.

Steps 1-3 were done. Start the blood. Remove the heart. Check the Organs. Now it was time to check the bones. Imelda saw a few small issues with theskullll but the arms and legs were bruised rather than broken. The spine, unfortunately, had not been spared. She would have to make at least three more vertebrae and one more rib. The rib was easy. She had a pot of bone clay in her cupboard that could easily be molded into the rightshapepe but vertebrae were a bit more difficult. She pulled out her clay mold for those.

With step 4 complete, it was time to start trying to piece the body back together. She wiped sweat off her forehead and glanced at the pot boiling with the red sticky substance. It was still starchy and lumpy. 15 more minutes, Imelda estimated. Then I can start the heart and begin circulating the blood. She was very excited for that part. Imelda molded the bone while she waited and had just set it off to the side to harden when Granny came in.

“Well, it looks like you’ve made some progress.”

Imela grinned up at her. “I’ll say! This has got to impress ol’ Ebon.”

Imelda grabbed the artificial liquidized bone marrow and poured it into a syringe.

“I’m sure it will, Immie,” Granny said indulgently. “But right now you’ve got to impress Mrs. Abernathy.”

“That old bat? Why?”

“Because she’s calling all the neighbors and saying that it was you who stole the body.”

Walking over to the bone molds, she prepared the syringe and jabbed it into the hollow molds. She slowly emptied the syringe. She rattled the new rib to make sure it was fully filled.

Imelda mock-gasped. “Who, me?!” But deep down, it was rather worrisome. Mrs. Abernathy had quite a lot of influence in the town, and if she started stirring up trouble, then her time might be cut short.

Granny sighed and walked inside to continue her cooking. Imelda walked over to the cooler containing the heart and pulled it out. The heart was cold and heavy in her hands, and she felt a nervous thrill run up her spine. She flipped open her book to the page on heart rejuvenation and began compressing and then releasing the heart. She muttered the spell as she did this and felt a little tingle of electricity run along her hands. The heart had its own electrical system, and in dissections, one could even remove a beating heart from a subject and have it continue beating for several hours afterwards, in the right conditions, of course.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Imelda let out a joyful squeal and held the beating heart in her hands. Thump. Thump. Thump. The atria and ventricles were pumping, and the heart valves were closing and opening just as they were supposed to, well, minus the blood. Success! Imelda quickly settled the heart in its place and started using her SwiftSew kit (it used thread made of various organ fibers so as not to affect the heart) to reattach the heart. After a quick check, Imelda confirmed that the blood and bones were ready. With some bone glue, she reattached the new rib and vertebrae in under a minute. Ebon would be so impressed.

Imelda got out a thin metal straw and a funnel. She opened the heart's aorta (the biggest heart vessel that carries blood all around the body) and slowly poured the blood in. The metal tube, known as a Cardiac Siphon, was etched with labeled measurements. As blood filled the body, the level in the siphon would rise to one of the tick marks, indicating that the transfer was done. If there were holes in the big vessels, she patched them with a little Vessel patch (like a bandage but for arteries), but the smaller veins and arterioles would fix themselves now that the heart was beating. All she had to do now was stitch up the gallbladder and liver.

Now that the heart was pumping, Imelda could see the skin starting to mend itself. She placed a few skin patches in places where there was too much gone for the SwiftSew needle to mend. After several minutes, she realized that the gallbladder couldn’t be saved, so she decided to replace it with a lamb gallbladder. She used a hairband to hold the organ in place before stitching it to the correct place.

“Immie, dear.” Granny had opened the garage door.

“Granny, I’m a little busy right now.”

“Yes, well, Mrs. Abernathy has gathered the town, and they are coming toward our house with torches. This,” Granny continued. “Is undesirable.”

“Aw, nutterbutters! I’m so close!” Imelda slammed her fist on the metal table, making blood spurt from a hole in the vena cava. “Come help me finish this! Maybe once they see that Tyler’s alive, they will back off!”

Granny wrinkled her nose with disgust. “No, no, I’ll let you handle…that. I’ll simply try to swat away the horde of angry housewives before they set my house on fire.”

“Ugh! Fine.” Imelda glanced out the window and saw something in the distance. An orange light. She checked her watch. It had been just over three hours. Well, she wasn’t winning any awards for fastest revival. Imelda started patching and sewing with harried speed as the shouting in the distance grew louder. If she finished, Ebon would notice her, and everyone would understand that she was not the town screw-up. She was a witch, and she could do incredible things.

With a flourish, Imelda tied off the last stitch and closed the chest wounds, continuously muttering spells. His face was already sewn up, and his torso as well. She waited with bated breath. One, two, three, four, five…how long was it supposed to take again? Six, seven, eight, nine…

“Give us back the body!”

“Burn the witch!”

“KILL HER!”

“Now, now,” Granny was yelling over the crowd. “Let's not get hasty…”

“Wake up!” Imelda screamed at the prone body before her. “Wake up already! C’mon! I need you to. Wake. UP!”

Something smashed in the living room. From the sounds of it, a brick had been thrown through a window. No, no, no, no! This couldn’t be happening. She had followed every step! Taken every precaution! Followed all the rules…except maybe rule 5? She frantically searched her book for rule five. Do not use frog livers as gallbladders. Yep, she’d followed that one. Then why was it not working?!

Imelda slowly inched her way towards the living room, terrified of what she might meet. She could hear as Granny’s pleas grew more frantic. Poor Granny. She didn’t deserve this. She deserved a good granddaughter who made pies and flirted with boys. Imelda would turn herself into the police or the mob or whichever was closer. For Granny, she would. Imelda walked forward with a new resolve. If she could steal a body, she could confess to it, too.

And just as Imelda had reached the front door, she heard a panicked and dazed voice from the garage behind her.

“Who are you? And why am I so bloody?”

The end.