Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

“Me. You need me.”

“Go on.”

“To help you.”

Andrew raises his eyebrows at it.

“With her ,” it says.

Andrew narrows his eyes.

“Her. Yes. But who is she?”

“An old friend.”

“How old?”

Now the crash-test dummy slumps.

Another automaton, a female mannequin with a huge underwire bra and eyeglasses held to its head by a nail between the eyes, gets up and approaches an old-style school overhead projector. Clicks it on. The fan inside the projector whirrs. An image lights up the cave’s wall.

A beautiful woman with a mole.

Walking through the airport.

Marina.

Andrew’s heart beats fast.

“Her daughter?”

The machine cuts off.

“She came over under the name Marina Yaganishna. I suppose that name carries some freight for you.”

“She helped me against her mother.”

“She’s not here to help you now.”

“The rusalka killed her half brother. Is that why?”

“You haven’t got time to worry about why.”

Andrew breathes in and out, calming himself.

“Tell me what you want.”

“What would you want in my place?”

Andrew looks around him.

“Insulation.”

All of the mannequins stand up at once.

It startles the magus.

They all point at him.

A chorus of voices, men, women, and children, now says, “I need you to stop fucking around.”

Now they all fall as though dead.

Andrew’s light goes out.

It’s dark.

The projector clicks on again—the image on the cave wall changes from Marina Yaganishna to an image of a demon. Andrew recognizes it as the cheesy black-and-white demon on the train tracks from the 1957 film Night of the Demon . Only it doesn’t look so cheesy in a dark cave full of animated mannequins.

“Stop trying to frighten me. You’re not a demon.”

The still image on the wall now moves, becomes the scene from the film. The creature smokes and moves forward as the sound of a train is heard.

“Trying? Do you think I don’t know how fast your heart is beating? Now tell me what you would want in my place.”

Andrew opens his mouth.

Closes it again.

Finds himself in the film.

He is the chubby man with the bad beard, running on the train tracks, trying to reach the piece of paper blown before him by the wind before it burns away to nothing, damning him.

He looks at his hands, his suit.

Black and white.

The demon is coming.

A train comes from the other direction.

The paper blows.

He lunges for it, the train’s lamp in his face.

In the film, the man was too late, but Andrew-as-the-man grabs the parchment.

Opens it.

One word typewritten.

He finds himself sitting back in his chair, just watching the movie.

He says the word freedom as the train now flattens the fat man and the train’s whistle cries.

The projector goes off.

Full dark.

Except for the flashlight on the table, its feeble cone of light illuminating only the table and the crash-test dummy.

Ichabod’s voice, now Andrew’s father’s voice, says, from nowhere in particular, “If you promise to free me when it’s done, I’ll help you against her .”

“I’d be delighted to free you. Except that I don’t want you hanging around if I have no control over you. I mean, would you want that? If you were me?”

It considers.

“Yes,” it says. Now it uses Andrew’s own voice. “But I know my motives. They’re a lot more benign than you might imagine. You have no idea how much I protect you.”

“Against what?”

“Yourself.”

Water drips.

“Explain.”

Water drips.

“Ichabod.”

“Yes, yes. I’m just considering the consequences of my words. Something more of us should do more often, don’t you agree?”

Drip.

Now the crash-test dummy wakes up, leans forward, lit by the flashlight as if undergoing some low-tech interrogation.

“Do you know why you called me in the first place?”

Drip.

“Yes. It was an academic exercise. I did it… just to see if I could.”

Drip.

Drip.

“Do you know what I’d have done to you if that were true? If you had bound me to your will for something so petty and egoic as a test of your own power? No, Andrew. The fleshed call those of my rank for a very few reasons. All of those reasons are only subcategories of two motivators. Extreme love. Or extreme hate. Which do you think yours was?”

Something very unpleasant moves in Andrew’s subconscious.

Sarah.

The entity continues.

“What happened after you wrecked your car?”

He concentrates.

Nothing comes.

“I was drinking a lot then.”

“I’ll say.”

“I have holes in my memory. Like Swiss cheese.”

“You hurt yourself. Quite badly. Do you remember wearing a cast? Summoning some magical nurse-witch to knit your bones? Conventional physical therapy would have been quite memorable, from what I understand of such things. Where was Sarah that night?”

“She was…”

Nothing comes.

“She was home?”

“That was a question, not a statement.”

Drip.

The unpleasant something in Andrew’s mind kicks like a baby. It positively squirms. He breathes hard and his heart races.

I want you in the library tonight

I want you to fuck me in that leather chair

“I think I know where you’re going with this, and she died later. She died of an aneurysm.”

“Yes,” Ichabod says. “Although it’s not how she was meant to die.”

“Shut up,” Andrew says.

“We can’t stop death. Only delay it.”

“Shut. UP.”

“Is that a command, sir?”

“Yes,” Andrew says. Barely audible.

“Protocol, sir.”

“I, Andrew… I…”

“Yes. Well. While you compose yourself, I wish to show you something. After which you’ll be in no shape to negotiate. Please understand that unless you agree to free me, you have no chance whatever against the being known as Baba Yaga.”

Andrew fishes a bottle of Klonopin out of his pocket.

Swallows one.

“Panic attack? Yes, extreme stress and guilt can bring those on. Nasty things. Hardly the sort of stable platform a warlock needs when he’s about to wage war.”

“Please, Ichabod.”

“Agree to free me or I’ll show you something you don’t wish to see.”

“Please.”

“Oh, another thing. The stakes are higher than you might think. You know where she lives now, yes? An irradiated exclusion zone is perfect for someone who wants solitude, lawlessness, and the feudal loyalty of simple, superstitious people who live off the land. And yet, boredom, as you well know, is a constant companion of those who have mastered most of Maslow’s little pyramid. Perhaps she wishes to see if she can recreate her wilderness here.”

The nuclear plant?

“She didn’t cause the meltdown of reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant, of course; she’s oddly sentimental about her Slavs. I assure you she has no such reservations about America.”

“You’re making this up.”

“I suppose you can’t know whether I am or not. But it’s time for you to remember something I made you forget.”

The badly injured man limps by the side of the road, carrying his cowboy boot because he couldn’t fit his broken foot back into it. He doesn’t feel it. He is drunk, but that’s not why. He can’t feel his foot because he has the focus of a man in a life-or-death situation. His lover is dead in the woods. Thrown clear of the wreck into a stand of trees.