Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

His tether spasms, nearly whips him back into his body, then nearly… what? Breaks?

Not out here.

Not with that.

It stops.

It starts to drift toward him now.

He thinks of the Titanic steering away from its iceberg, slowly, too late.

Only I’m the Titanic and that’s the iceberg.

Oh, fuck that.

He flies lower, skimming the water like a pelican.

He knows he is moaning in the barn.

The tether pulls at him, but he resists.

Not yet, I haven’t learned enough yet, and I’m not going to let that thing scare me off; even if I’m what it’s looking for, even if it eats souls, I defy it to find me.

(Careful!)

He moves over the shore, up a small bluff, into the woods.

He moves now as if on legs, down a fire trail.

A bat flutters near him, through him, reaping mosquitoes and moths. He flinches, his body jerking on the couch, but then it flies through him again, then again; it knows he’s there, it likes the feeling like Anneke did. He relaxes, lets it. Feels the purr of its tiny heart beating hundreds of beats per minute, feels the craving for moth in its mouth, the dusty, gritty joy that moth flesh is, and then he wants the bat to go away and it does, careening off into the night.

Behind him, a reddish glow on the water, still far away, but he moves faster now. The fire trail becomes a paved road and he moves along its side. A cabin looms on his left, light pouring from its front window. Inside, a sixtyish bald man with a beard and small glasses hunches over a chessboard, his legs crossed at the knees European-style, but he senses that the man is American, has trained himself to do that. He moves a white pawn, consults a book, then moves a black pawn. He lifts a glass of wine to his lips, a rubyish droplet spilling down his beard, then disappearing within it.

Now the glow is over land, but farther away, heading toward Rochester. It moved fast when he wasn’t watching.

Or there are more than one of them.

That’s your fear talking. There’s only one. It doesn’t see you, doesn’t want you.

He flies again, moving left, back toward the water.

To his right, a dark cabin, wooden stairs leading sharply down from its back deck.

Beneath him dry sand becomes wet sand becomes rocks, here and there punctuated with driftwood or seaweed. He pelicans over the water again, and then he sees it.

It sees him.

A ghost.

Under the water.

A bloated older man’s ghost floats under the surface of the lake, its form luminous gray-green, like algae, its eyes two holes of starlight, locked on Andrew.

It surfaces.

Oh shit, it’s time to go.

The tether jerks.

A luminous hand rises from the water, grabs something.

Grabs the invisible umbilicus anchoring him to his body.

Shakes it savagely.

NO!

Shakes it harder.

PLEASE!

The puffy phosphorescent head of the dead man comes out of the lake and bites at the air with black teeth. Andrew feels something like pain where his belly should be.

Now it is pain, excruciating pain.

The tether is down to threads, but the last threads are tough and the thing can’t quite sever them.

Cold I’m cold!

Andrew tries to move away, but he is pulled down by his tether until a fatty dead arm loops around his neck, pulls him under the surface of the water.

How do I have a neck? Oh fuck my soul is almost all here now, I’m about to die. Help! HELP! PLEASE!

The dead face leers at him.

No bubbles.

It doesn’t breathe.

But it speaks.

In Russian.

“It is an unpleasant thing to drown.”

The eyes are not starlight anymore, just milky white lamps, like the lamps deepwater fish use to lure prey.

Panicked, Andrew tries to think of what to do. He cannot escape the half headlock he is in, the soft but insistent mass of it somehow handling his nonmass, nor is his tether strong enough to snap him back.

“With your permission, I would like to show you my new home.”

Dragomirov!

And now they dive.

Down and down.

Past a school of fish, just dark, blunt shapes moving around and through the diving souls.

A ship comes into view on the bottom, lit only by the witch-light given off by the ghost.

“Isn’t it pretty?”

Andrew is shoved now, pushed through a tear in the hull.

He sees a quintet of skeletons through the murk and detritus, all sitting at a table with plates and cups near them, the remains of their clothes around them.

The rusalka had been busy.

Maybe only one drowning a year, if all of them were here, but since this had started before 1930, she had brought a lot of lives to their end.

She is a one-woman disaster, played out in slow motion.

She is a monster.

Now Andrew is held by the nape, brought face-to-face with a skeleton sitting in the corner.

“Look. This one is me. You can see my clothes are in better repair, and those fucking mussels haven’t had time to grow on me like the forgotten ones in the engine room. She tends us, you know, the recent ones. Keeps us clean, like dolls in a dollhouse. I bought those jeans at the Nordstrom, International Mall, Tampa. One hundred fifty dollars. And now, look. Look at the dental work I had done in Mexico, such art, these crowns, art by Dr. Hernan Rodriguez of Leon, and for what? For your pretty bitch to drown me for a joke in a cold lake.”

I’m sorry.

“The devil take your sorry.”

The fatty thing holding him shudders violently, begins to come apart, bits of its not-flesh drifting off it. Andrew can see through parts of it now, but also its witch-light is fading. It is getting dark in this ship.

“I have to go now, the bitch is coming back.”

Nadia!

“But let me tell you something, Mister Andrew. You’ll be sorry soon. I know who you are now, and I will tell her .”

Your niece?

“You poor fucker!”

It laughs now, shaking itself to pieces, its light almost completely gone. Its voice is strangled, as if it is drowning again.

“But I’ll tell her to make it quick. If you do something for me.”

What?

“Find my dog. Find my little Caspar.”

Complete darkness.

Cold.

Andrew screams.

Cold arms find him, cradle his head, a stiff, cold nipple brushes his cheek down in the dead ship.

“You idiot,” the rusalka says, kissing his mouth.

Light.

Warmth.

Andrew screams.

Warm arms find him, cradle his head, a soft breast beneath the cotton of a T-shirt.

Anneke is crying.

“You idiot,” she says, kissing his mouth.

“I thought you were dead. You looked pretty dead.”

She uses a roll of paper towels and a bottle of rubbing alcohol to swab his upper lip and chin. While the weightless parts of Andrew were touring the depths of Lake Ontario, his body sprung the mother of all nosebleeds. It dropped its other ballast, too, but Anneke won’t let go of him yet.

He is lying under a blanket, the blanket topped with his leather jacket.

“I need to change my pants.”

She hugs his head to her chest one more time.

Salvador paces behind her.

“Send Jeeves for new pants. I don’t want you walking yet.”

“Salvador, please get me a pair of jeans.”

Happy to have a task, the wicker man disappears from the buggy barn and heads for the main house.

“Well, since you’re my sponsor, I guess you’re the one I tell I really want a drink right now.”