Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

She pulls a folding knife from her pocket and slits the paper, cigarette jutting upright Franklin Delano Roosevelt–style because she’s grinning like a little girl. Because nobody gives presents like Andrew Ranulf Blankenship.

The book has a red cover and black print, cheaply glued bindings. Somebody did this at home, or maybe with the help of a FedEx Office. She thumbs through it, squinting in the starlight. The text is two thirds photocopied hand script from the 1800s, one third badly typed Smith-Corona, impossible to read in this dim light, but probably no easy task under a lamp.

“A spell book.”

“The originals are more powerful, of course, but that’s why they’re priceless. With study and practice you may be able to get a few tricks out of this, especially Rudnick’s stuff. He started as a potter, too. Working with clay and stone as much as you do should give you that sweet-spot intuition.”

“Can you do the things in here?”

“Not easily. Nor well. But I never tried very hard at these arts. Not my specialty.”

“How did you get this one?”

“With my specialty.”

She knows the answer even as she asks it. They rarely buy anything. They barter. They are a community unto themselves, spread out across the globe, known to each other by reputation and now, thanks to the Internet, able to communicate in real time with science’s answer to (and improvement upon) the crystal ball. No doubt Andrew performed some act of film necromancy (speaking with the dead via film media captured while they lived) for another of his kind who rewarded him with this book.

His kind.

A wizard.

But he hates that word.

“Thanks for the book, great wizard.”

“I hate that word. It sounds like something cold-blooded.”

“It is.”

He pantomimes punching her arm.

“So what do I call you?”

“There’s no good word for it. Most of us say user . But that sounds like a smackhead.”

“Magic user?”

“That’s Dungeons and Dragons.”

“Oh. I never played.”

“I did.”

“No shit, a dork like you. But what do I call you?”

He thinks. Plays with his samurai bun.

“I like magus .”

“Sounds pretentious.”

“I know. But it’s better than wizard . Magician ’s a guy with a top hat who fakes it. Brujo isn’t bad, but Chancho makes a face when he says it. Male witch. Going to hell. Communes with demons.”

“Don’t you?”

“What? No!”

“What’s that thing by the train tracks?”

“Not a demon.”

“What, then?”

“An… entity.”

“That you summoned with a spell to do your bidding, but fucked up and it won’t go away now. Sounds like a demon.”

Andrew doesn’t say anything.

Floridachica:I heard about something called a high-bottom drunk & then herd it again. Cab anybody tell me what that is?

BRUTUS:A high-bottom drunk is somebody who thinks his s*** don’t STINK.>>>>>>>>>

MikeTinfoil:That’s sorta crude but BRUTUS has the right idea. A high bottom drunk is someone who has yet to realize what alcohol means to take from him and tries to pretend he can manage. Can’t fully surrender. Will probably quit coming to meetings, relapse, etc.

Wookie:A High Bottom Drunk is like my dad, whose on his third wife and doesn’t know that the stuff he says while ‘buzzed’ is why they keep packing up and leaving and also why I left home in such a hurry-just cuz he keeps his job and hasn’t been to prison he thinks he has a handle on it.

PaulaQ:Wookie-Is your dad in AA?

BRUTUS:People gotta LOOSE s*** and thats HARDCORE loss I’m talkin about. We got low bottom meetings here. This s*** is REAL with HORSEMEN all FOUR of them. People think they’re all good 2 EARLY and they BLOW UP>>>>>>>>

Wookie:No. Hense drunk, not alcoholic.

Ichthus70:I think there’s a lot of confusion about what a high-bottom drunk is, and a lot of people with low bottoms are (understandably) chafed because they had to have such awful things happen to them before they “got it.” Everybody in recovery has one thing in common, and that’s the realization that their lives have gotten out of control, whatever that means to them. It’s like Matthew 20: 1-16. The workers were all called at different times of day, and they all got a denarius (NIV) or penny. Those that showed up early griped because the ones who showed up late got the same penny. AA’s like that. Whether you wrecked your car and killed people or just showed up with high blood pressure from drinking, you found you couldn’t stop so you came to the program. And you got the same penny or denarius. You got clean. Nothing more, nothing less. Take my buddy Ranulf. He got drunk on really expensive wine (the only kind he drank) and called up something he calls an “entity” (but it’s really a demon), and because he had ‘glass in hand’ the spell to send it back went wrong and, even though he has some control over it (the bigger the command, the more likely it is to be able to disobey-the more it disobeys, the more it CAN disobey) it lives semi-autonomously in a cave near his house. But did he give up tampering with magic? No. He gave up drinking! LOL!

PaulaQ:Are you really saying there’s a demon in a cave somewhere? This is a serious discussion, not a joke. But I like the first part of what you said, Ichthus70.

BRUTUS:F*** your demonz and s***. U want DEMONZ, we got em at our low-bottom meetings. >>>>>>

Ichthus70:No, it’s really a demon. As in “we are legion.” And, Brutus, I can’t help but notice you like to put greater-than symbols after your posts, but that the number of them varies. For instance, your three posts have gone from 9 to 8 to 6 >s. Is it that your passion about this thread is diminishing, or are you using a more complex formula obvious only to fellow juggalos?

Ranulf:How did you get a computer?

Wookie:I don’t like it when these things get all religious. Can we just stay on topic? And I thought a high-bottom drunk was somebody who

Ichthus70:I know what you thought, Wookie. But you were wrong. Just like you’re wrong about the rash on your girlfriend’s po-po. It actually is herpes-2, and you’re now a carrier, and, even though you’re lucky enough not to manifest symptoms, you will actually pass the virus on to one partner for every > BRUTUS uses in this thread.

Wookie:How did you interrupt me?

PaulaQ:Where’s the moderator?

Ranulf:Sign off, Ichthus70.

BRUTUS:Think your SMART but I DON’T THINK UR SMART. OR FUNNY>>>>>>>>>>

Ichthus70:Alas, BRUTUS, that’s ten more itchy ladies in the greater Baltimore area. @Wookie: If I told you, I’d have to kill you. @Paula: The moderator actually had his first narcoleptic event, but he should be shutting this down within three minutes. @Ranulf: is that a command?

Ranulf:Yes.

Floridachica:LOL I live in Baltimore, too. Who are you, wookie? Better not be who I think you are ;)