Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

He clicks.

A wolf crouches on the path. A skinny wolf, not like the ones you see in pictures from Alaska or Yellowstone—this critter is gray and ratty and hungry-looking.

Small.

Nose pointed like a gun at the owner of the inanimate foot.

(Click)

That wolf is nearly out of the shot, its tail all that’s visible; it’s sniffing her. Perhaps doing more to her than that. Two more wolves have appeared on the path before the hut, coming to share the prize.

—Now watch the house.

(Click)

The house has turned.

He sees one of its windows like a dark eye.

It has turned ninety degrees toward the wolves, the dead woman.

(Click)

Fully turned, facing them.

More wolves have come, two of them crouched and growling at the house, the rest circled around her.

Feeding.

—You won’t believe this. Are you sitting down?

(Click)

Motion. Things get blurry now. Something has flashed from beneath the house; the wolves have reacted. One was too slow. The blur has the wolf.

(Click)

A huge chicken’s foot.

That’s what has the wolf.

Still blurry, but less so, still in motion.

The wolf struggling, trying to twist out.

(Click)

The wolf is dead.

Its brains dashed on the ground, as dead as Haint’s iguana.

Two others are growling at the house, front halves low as if salaaming, like dogs at play but not playing. Not surrounding it as they might a giant elk, but blocking it while the others retreat.

The rest are dragging the old woman away, about a third of her in the shot now, swathed in dried blood.

(Click)

Everything blurred, house twisting, motion beneath it.

(Click)

The house turning away, just a corner of it in frame.

Two dead wolves as limp as dishrags.

The woman and the other wolves have gone.

(Click)

Just the garden.

The path.

One of the wolves trying to get up.

Wasn’t dead after all.

Will be soon.

Too much of its insides outside.

That is the last image.

He clicks back through them two more times.

—What do you think?

—I think maybe you’re right.

—I am right. She’s deader than hell. You’re in the clear, my man.

—Thanks. Really, Radha. Thanks.

Andrew feels pretty good as June gives way to July and July sheds days.

Baba Yaga is dead.

He has Radha’s car to work on, and it’s a damned fun little car.

The woman he loves is newly confirmed in witchcraft and studying for a month in Vermont.

Chancho, who has family coming up from Texas, has invited him to a fiesta, and that means piles of oily tamales and pans of enchiladas and bowls of the best guacamole this side of Austin.

Who cares if his cousins move drugs for the Zetas?

He can almost completely ignore the tinny little voice in his ear saying

Something’s wrong,

Something’s coming.

July 14.

Bastille Day.

Anniversary of the storming of the Bastille in Paris, of course, but also a very personal anniversary for Andrew Blankenship.

Seven years exactly since Sarah collapsed at Darien Lake.

Aneurysm.

Just after she rode the Mind Eraser.

One of life’s stupid, mean little jokes.

Enough to make one conclude there is a God and he isn’t all that nice.

He was handing her her earrings to put back on when she said she didn’t feel well.

Wanted to sit down.

Slumped over like a kid playing a prank.

And that was it.

He had just started looking for a ring, was thinking about asking her on Halloween.

Now he hovers at the top of the stairs that lead down to the media room.

I shouldn’t be doing this.

Why am I doing this?

It doesn’t hurt her.

No, but it hurts me.

I just have to see her again.

God.

God.

Downstairs.

Quickly, before he loses his nerve.

From the box of VHS tapes, one tape marked SARAH .

In it goes.

Stop.

He does stop, but only because he has to shut the door to the media room and lock it.

Salvador cannot, must not see this.

Sits back down.

Pushes play.

Push stop.

No, really. PUSH STOP.

The woman throws a Frisbee, probably an hour before sunset.

The McIntyre Bluffs.

2004.

Eight years ago, before the path to the promontory had eroded into a crumbling saddle, when a brave or foolish soul might still skitter upright over something of a spine to the platform of turf that remained.

But the woman.

Thirtyish, sandy brown hair cut into bangs.

That smile would melt an iron heart.

That smile could stop evil itself.

It is the sun on toast, it is the sun on Christmas morning with all wars over.

It is a smile to give up magic for.

Her faded jeans, all the rings on her fingers, one a teaspoon ring.

Should have thrown myself from that promontory.

Just like the rusalka did all those years ago.

What have I done with myself since Sarah?

She hated this part of you, this self-pitying part of you.

No she didn’t.

Sarah didn’t hate.

Now the camera follows something flashing through the high grass.

A swatch of the lake behind it.

It’s really tearing ass.

A dog.

A young border collie, not a year old, already an acrobat.

It leaps, yanks the red disk from the air as if tearing it from the swatch of blue sky hung behind the cliff.

The camera dips back to where the woman laughs and claps.

The trapdoor is coming.

“Good Sal! Good, smart Sal!” she says, and the dog drops the Frisbee in the grass at her feet. Her lace-up thrift store boots. Sarah is a thrift store empress, five foot four, size seven shoe, tiny through the waist, fucking everything fits her.

And the thrift stores took it all back.

Here’s the trapdoor.

The drop of the Frisbee marks it.

He can call her name, have her lock eyes with him, speak to her.

He has done it exactly three times.

Only once sober.

Not today.

Not never, it doesn’t work like that.

Just not today.

“That’s my boy,” she says, and gives the Frisbee a lusty throw.

“Some arm on you,” younger Andrew says.

His one contribution to this tape.

She looks at the camera.

Looks at the younger Andrew she loved like that.

The trapdoor is still open.

If he speaks.

If he says Sarah .

She is about to speak to younger Andrew.

Her eyes cut left and she smiles that smile instead.

Now Salvador bounds into view but doesn’t drop the Frisbee.

Wants to play chase this time.

The hump of his running back in the high grass.

Whatever she was going to say goes unsaid, turns to laughter as she runs after the dog. Out of frame. Young Andrew is smart enough to stop filming, put the camera down, join the chase. Live. Soon the young couple will pack their dog and blankets and empty wine bottle into the Mustang, go home, back to this house, and make love.

Older Andrew isn’t welcome to that party.

Let’s say now-Andrew , shall we?

Now-Andrew isn’t welcome to that party.

But that’s okay.

He’s not entirely sure he believes in time anymore, and if there is no time, he is making love to Sarah even now.

He often thinks of the Russian word for wing when he thinks of making love to Sarah. Krihlo. Said with that little Russian vowel that sounds like i but in the front of the mouth, like you’re trying to sneak a w in there. That o that opens the lips instead of closing them.