Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

Andrew is feeling dizzy with exhaustion, but Chancho wants him to push through it, so he does, the sweat drenching his long hair even in its ponytail, making his bare chest glisten and soaking the waistband of his jeans.

“Now you. Twist at the hips so I feel it. You’re little, so it’s even more important for you to get your hips in it. I want twenty on each side.”

When the drenched and reeking pads are lying on the table and the panting men sit down on their benches, Salvador walks from the back door carrying Mexican Coca-Cola bottles on a tray.

“Good boy,” Andrew says. “Thank you.”

Six years now since he used his secret books to bring the dog back. Chancho watches Salvador with a fixed eye; looking away from the clockwork figure is difficult, especially when he swivels his Dalí head around to meet your gaze. The thing moves so… fluidly.

Chancho likes Mexican Coke because it’s in glass bottles and has sugar, not that corn syrup crap they drench everything in now.

He likes it so much he doesn’t cross himself when he takes the bottle from the stick-man.

Instead he turns his gaze on Andrew.

“You’ve got to quit smoking.”

Andrew, who knows how green he looks, just nods, sipping his cola.

“I know. But isn’t that pretty pot-kettle? You smoke.”

The sweat on the green bottles looks heavenly to Chancho and he studies his, pressing it now to the side of his temple.

“I know.”

“You smoke my cigarettes, for fuck’s sake.”

“Your cigarettes are good .”

“So buy some. They’ll sell ’em to you.”

“Got to go to the hippie shop for that.”

“I’m just saying a smoker ought not tell a man to quit.”

“I don’t wheeze like a busted vacuum. I ought to quit. You got to quit.”

“Maybe.”

“Ain’t there a pinché spell for that?”

“Yeah. It’s right next to the one for quitting drinking.”

Chancho smiles.

“Maybe we could get you a hip’motist.”

“Ever seen one?”

“Heard about ’em.”

“Well, they scare me fuckless,” Andrew says. “I saw one make a guy think he came all over himself right at a café table, so that when the waitress came the guy pulled the tablecloth half off trying to cover up his lap.”

Chancho laughs, broadly enough to show the gap where the tooth behind the canine should have been.

“Funny. A man scaring you . Just a man, I mean. When you play with dead girls and dead dogs and stuff. That fishy girl, you said she kilt herself, right?”

“Her sister stole her man and she threw herself off the bluffs.”

“McIntyre Bluffs?” Chancho asked.

Andrew nodded.

“’Cause I know a guy took his lady there and they both fell off f’ing. Only nobody died. But he got his back broke, but could still walk. I think she landed on him.”

“Nadia died. Broke that pretty neck back in 1926.”

Chancho squints at him and tilts his head up, assessing.

“You need to get right with Jésus.”

“I’m fine with Jésus.”

Silence.

“Can I drive the Mustang?”

“If you shut up about Jésus.”

Chancho smiles.

Years ago.

Night.

Another Mustang, the ’65.

Upside down, wheels spinning, engine running. Andrew uncomfortable, scratched, confused. Can’t reach the keys to shut the motor off because there’s a branch in the way. Led Zeppelin is singing about California but it sounds wrong because only one speaker works.

He climbs out into cool spring air, smelling radiator fluid and oil.

Nearly falls; something is wrong with his leg.

The peasants! The peasants cut my leg off!

He looks down, but his leg is there.

Mostly.

His jeans are ripped and lots of little somethings hurt, far away.

His heart is pounding.

Just breathe.

Just walk.

Andrew walks, his back to the lamplit greenery and spinning wheels of the wrecked Mustang.

Ford.

First on Race Day!

(F)ucked (OR) (D)ying.

Andrew in his snakeskin boots and tight black jeans, walking down 104A, tempted to stop at a house but senses he’s done something wrong; he needs to get back to his own house and Sarah. He’ll be safe there; he’ll sleep and he’ll know what to do in the morning.

The left leg hurts; he sits on a guardrail and pulls his boot off, pours blood out of it, it won’t go back on.

He holds it and keeps limping, waving off several cars that stop, actually yells at one big, Swedish-looking fellow who insists that he should get in his pickup truck, but he won’t go away. Looks like he means to wrestle him into the truck. Until Andrew points at the big man’s face and gives him a cramp in the cheek muscles

How Prospero of you oh that wasn’t nice he just wants to help but I have to have to just please God get home

and the big man drives off, scared because he knows the wild, injured little man did it to him. Andrew doesn’t understand how mud got on him, but mud is drying in his hair and on his face and he pulls at this, spits on his hand and wipes his cheek.

The boot swinging in the other hand, the magus limping.

Only ten miles to Dog Neck Harbor, should be there by morning.

He waves off two more cars, but the third one pulls in front of him, its roof exploding in sharp but beautiful flashes of blue light.

Andrew says some words in medieval Russian.

Andrew disappears.

Knows the spell won’t last, hobbles into a soy field.

Invisible.

I don’t drive so well but I’m not too drunk to fucking DISAPPEAR!

He curls up in the soy plants, feels something like a beetle crawl on his hand but doesn’t slap at it.

Says “I pardon you” in a German accent like Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List and laughs until he passes out.

Dreams his car is radioactive, luminous with it, enough to poison Cayuga County, that he has to shovel enough dirt over it to protect everybody, but he can’t. He just can’t. And he holds his shovel and cries. Because he really, really fucked up.

In the morning, a trio of dogs sniffing him, a man’s good, lined face, a giant looking down on him.

Fu fu fu, I smell Russian bones.

“Ambulance is on its way. You want some water?”

He does.

O God I fucked up I did.

He did.

More than he knows.

He sits up.

He reaches into his pocket, thinking something in there will help him.

A napkin with a note on it, a semicircle of cabernet from where the glass rested on it, a crescent moon of vice and folly.

I want you in the library tonight.

I want you to fuck me in that leather chair.

When did she slip that into his pocket?

Is it even from today?

Sarah.

“Sit up slow. No hurry.”

The farmer again.

He shows the farmer the napkin note.

“Do you know when this was written?”

The farmer shakes his head.

“A pretty girl wrote it. She writes grant applications. And they say she plays guitar. And laughs and sings.”

The man smiles, points at the ambulance, walks off to talk to them, leaves a jug with a thumbprint of red paint on it.

Andrew notices the bright red silo.

Nice work, mister.

The water tastes like plastic.

And dirt.

Dirt in my mouth.

La la la la.

“Whatcha thinking about, brujo ?”

“My personal bottom.”

“Bang!” Chancho says, swerving the wheel just a little, grinning.

The Mustang is doing seventy on a two-lane country highway.