Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

It picks up its foot to come in, but a fast, white arm is around its neck. Its eyes bug, a pretty face terrible behind it framed in red dreadlocks, her teeth gritted in pleasure. She giggles while she runs with it, bigger than her, but it might as well be a doll.

My friend the monster.

Like me.

Andrew picks up the skin again, is about to put it on.

Can’t resist while he still has a mouth, but has to hurry—soon you start to feel your skinlessness and that REALLY hurts, your whole body an open blister.

But he does say it.

Yells it through the door.

“Whoever made me is a giant asshole!”

On with the skin now.

His favorite one.

Oh, it feels good.

Three of them have gathered in the room of skins.

One stomps on the pelt of their father.

Two have cornered Sal, are beating him and getting savaged in return. The lake-woman has drowned two and is loping up, hoping to take a third.

One has gone upstairs.

“Whoever made me is a giant ASSHOLE!” one says, kicking in the door to the room of skins. The other yells, “Asshole!” in agreement. They are supposed to kill their father. But this room is empty, except for a human pelt that looks strangely like their father.

In the living room, the dog fights hard but has been injured.

A broken foreleg.

One of them gets an idea, sacrifices itself, lets the dog tear its belly open so its brother can grab the dog’s neck.

Fighting hurts, but it’s better than being in the ground, which is all they have to compare it to.

The one who got torn open is dying but still kicking at the dog.

The other is about to kill the dog by twisting its head.

Although it senses the dog has already died before.

If the dog dies again, the magic in it will go out; the other thing it is will not move again.

That would be good.

Except that it can’t feel its arms or legs anymore because something has it by the neck, yes? Yes. Something much stronger than the dog has broken its neck.

It sees a piece of the thing, consults its father’s murky bag of facts.

Dog?

No.

Tiger.

Bengal tiger, native to India.

They can get up to ten feet long, tail included.

This one is ten feet long.

“Whoever made me… giant asshole,” it complains.

And dies.

The tiger goes through the three in the room of skins like they’re nothing. They are nothing next to the five-hundred-pound cat, which twists heads, rakes out insides, and bites off limbs with the ruthlessness of a wild animal and the tactical savvy of a man. It takes less than a minute.

Worrisome that one of them had the man-pelt in its hand, but Andrew-in-the-tiger will think about that later.

Thinking like a man is harder in the tiger; tiger essence is truly dominant, and much less manlike than bear is.

Andrew-in-the tiger licks his gory chops, yawns a big, tongue-curling yawn (it has been a very long night, after all), licks the injured dog in the living room, who licks him back, and then smells with his tiger nose.

One more.

Upstairs.

In the library!

Must kill it!

Big books there!

Up the stairs.

Library door is open.

The last not-Andrew stands there, dirty and nude, looking around, not touching anything.

Its eyes shine blue.

It isn’t like the others.

When it sees the tiger stalk in, it smiles.

The tiger was about to launch itself on the little monkey-thing, but something about its smile, its luminous blue eyes makes the tiger stop.

Andrew-in-the-tiger growls, though it feels doubt.

Like it hasn’t felt since it met an elephant in 1913, the day it was shot.

“Congratulations,” not-Andrew says.

Andrew’s voice, but thicker.

Slavic accent.

The tiger’s growl rolls on, continuous.

“You passed the test. Now the fight begins. You are a very pretty man. I wonder if you are too pretty to fight? Pretty or ugly, here is what you have to look forward to.”

It reaches down now and, with some difficulty, yanks off its own testicles .

Begins to eat them.

Holy shit! NOOOO! Andrew-in-the-tiger thinks.

Tiger-around-Andrew thinks I was going to do that!

The tiger pounces.

Finishes things.

Drags it out of the library.

Down the stairs.

Outside.

“Oh no,” Andrew says, looking in the mirror.

Even in the yellow brass he can see how bad it is.

“Oh Christ.”

“What happened to you?”

This is Bob, just outside the church before the AA meeting.

His normally huge smile has been shelved, his twinkling eyes now radiating sincere concern. A few of the others hover near.

“I got mugged.”

He looks like he got mugged, all right.

On his way back from getting run over by an ice-cream truck.

“Where?” the bottle-red mom asks.

“Syracuse. Clinton Street.”

They all nod.

When the others walk away, Bob says, “If you need anything, and I mean anything, don’t be shy about asking me. Okay?”

“Thanks, Bob.”

That night is an open meeting. Friends, the curious, anybody who wants to show up can. Not the best night for Andrew to come in looking like a lopsided eggplant who ran halfway out of hair dye, but he needs this tonight. Now. He had slept all day, nearly got talked into going to the emergency room by Chancho, decided against it, but then Chancho mentioned the meeting and Andrew had nodded, holding frozen peas against the side of his face and drooling.

The bruising was wretched, covered what seemed like a third of his body. Getting his cast-off epidermis stomped against the hardwood floor by a Neanderthal version of himself had spared him broken bones and damaged connective tissue, but when he suited back up he started bleeding in six places and the swelling was horrible. His left eye swelled shut, the right one nearly so. He looked a bit like the raccoon he had seen running with the bag of eggs.

First he had seen to Salvador, who swiftly ran out of alarm-triggered dog-magic and changed back into wicker. That had been hard to watch, but then so had a lot of things. At least a wicker arm was easier to fix than a dog’s broken foreleg.

Then Sal helped him, got him ice, a bag of frozen peas and ibuprofen, sat with him rotating the ice and peas.

He watched Nadia drag one lumpy, dead Andrew after another out into the lake, far into the lake.

Tiger-killed bodies make a big mess.

Salvador mopped first, and that took some time. Then he spread stain-removing goop on the oriental runner rugs in the hallway, only one of which would probably be salvageable. In the kitchen, he gathered the broken shards of the coffeepot, plates, and glassware, trashed the wrecked blender, as well as the coffee table and several nonmagical statues. He had just been duct-taping plastic sheeting over the kitchen door window when Chancho came over.

Made a face when Salvador opened the door on Andrew.

Some at the AA meeting had made the same face when he walked in. He felt like the Elephant Man.

The looky-loos are thinking I’ve been in a car wreck, gotten in a drunken fight. Okay, I have done those things, but not last night. It’s okay. Let them look. Let them think they’re not as bad as me, therefore they’re just fine, because if you’re still playing that game you probably haven’t hit bottom yet, won’t make it stick. Some can, but not most.

I almost died last night.