Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

That’s why I sprinkled fish scales on them.

The man winces in anticipation, vocalizes.

It takes a bite out of his arm.

An almond-sized bite.

Enough to make him whimper.

And bleed.

It spits out shirtsleeve.

It chews.

A tongue comes out of its head. He suffers it to lap at him; it clutches him almost tenderly, it is not unlike nursing. A thought from his days as a man occurs to him.

For thy desires are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous.

He makes a sound like laughing.

There is no time for one and one. Call them all.

She is not in the hut, at least not all of her.

Just her voice, the horsefly in his brain.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up,” he says, crying and laughing, gesturing like a mother calling children to come hear a story.

ALL!

He says it five more times.

Their outsized eyes blink in their burlap heads.

All looking at him.

The first one moves, then they all do.

They crawl to him, cover him.

He brays laughter to get through the pain.

His eyes watering and bugging.

This is hard, but he does it.

She will not punish him.

“There it is. I see it.”

Michael is looking through a brass naval telescope from 1888.

Andrew can see Michael’s breath.

“How far?”

“Hundred yards. Hundred and ten.”

“Too far?”

“Yep. Twice too far for that. I’ll have to wait till it comes closer. You sure she’s in there? Anneke?”

“Yes,” Andrew says.

Michael shakes his head a little.

Andrew looks over at Salvador, who holds night-vision binoculars flat against his portrait head, scanning the other side.

“Whoooa Nelly,” Michael says.

“What?”

“Something’s coming out of the window.”

“Binoculars!” Andrew says, and Salvador crosses the attic with them.

Michael counts.

“Two, three-four. Six.”

Andrew looks.

The hut is pitched forward, like a man getting sick.

He watches three burlap dolls fall from its eye window, like it’s crying them. No, they’re not falling. They’re leaping.

“ Caprimulgus. Go see,” he says, and points at a stuffed nightjar. It gives itself a shake and a stretch, then just looks at him.

“Ah, right.”

He opens the window.

Snow wisps in.

The bird flies off, churring and buzzing.

A moment later.

Andrew sees through the bird’s eye.

It flies to the hut, peers through the window.

Anneke upside down, hanging like meat, all but asleep.

A torque on her neck.

I know that fucking thing.

I know what it’s doing to her.

A madman bleeding, rocking himself, manacled. His skin gouged.

It doesn’t take long to go nuts in there.

Don’t lose your shit now, Blankenship, stay strong.

Higher power, help me.

Now the hut moves off.

Have to see what came out of it.

The bird flies from tree to tree now, scanning the ground.

Movement!

A man in military gear?

Soviet, 1940s.

The bird turns just in time to see a second man pointing a rifle.

The muzzle flashes.

“Ow FUCK I’m shot! I’m shot!”

Andrew falls to the ground, holding his eye, panicked.

Michael, who got away from the window and ducked at the sound of the gunshot, bends to him, pulls his hand away.

“Let me see.”

The eye and face are whole.

“You’re okay,” Michael says. “Calm down. It’s just the bird. Get the rest of the way out of the bird.”

Andrew does.

Looks at Michael, who raises both eyebrows at him.

“Soviet soldiers. World War Two.”

“Shit,” Michael says.

“Yep.”

Where the other neighbors hear a dog barking or a car horn, John Dawes hears a gunshot. He’s about as luminous as a brick, but he has spent so much time at the gun range and on maneuvers with his World War II reenactor friends that he hears the sound as it is, magical or not.

He had been standing in front of the open refrigerator with mustard and a pack of hot dogs in his hand, scanning for relish. No relish, no hot dog. That’s just how it goes. He had just caught sight of the jar, was in the process of gauging whether he could spoon out enough of the green sludge to properly coat a wiener, when he heard the pop of a 7.62- millimeter round.

So now he stands there, eyes wide.

He shuts the fridge door, kills the kitchen light.

Shakedown is barking in the yard.

Back and forth on his run.

Good boy!

Call the cops?

Hell with that, Fruitloop’s already on the phone.

Fruitloop, the widowed lady next door who sets out no fewer than fifteen versions of the nativity on her lawn each Christmas, is actually watching today’s recorded episode of The Price Is Right for the third time. She heard the gunshot as an extra-loud squeal of enthusiasm from the Iowa stewardess who just won a set of patio furniture.

Dawes grabs the loaded Luger he had duct-taped to the side of the fridge, goes upstairs as quickly as he can in the darkness, picking off tape, opens the door to the spare room he has converted into a sniper’s roost and German militaria shrine. Kneels a few feet from the window, tucks the pistol in his waistband, picks up his Liebling , a German K98 sniper rifle with Hensoldt scope.

“That’s it,” he says. “Come to Johannes.”

He scans the street.

Too dark to see much.

Couldn’t bear to fit a modern night-vision scope to his vintage rifle.

Doesn’t actually believe there’s a problem—he’s very much playing a game. Lots of people shoot things around here; it’s just on the edge of farm country. He waits for a moment. Watches. Gets bored. Decides to go back downstairs and see about his hot dogs.

The light comes on.

He didn’t flip the switch.

Someone else.

“Hunh!” he says, reaching for the pistol, drops it.

He hops a little, as if he expects it to go off.

Like in Band of Brothers when the guy shot himself in the leg.

Two highly authentic-looking Soviet soldiers stand before him, one in a sapper’s steel breastplate. Both of them dirty and stinking of cigarettes. And gasoline? And lots and lots of sour sweat. One carries a Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle. The engineer a Tokarev pistol and a handheld bayonet.

A very sharp-looking bayonet dark from scrubbed-off rust.

Is that snow on their shoulders?

“Very funny,” he says, thinking at first it’s two guys from the Soviet team in his reenactor group. Then he’s not so sure.

He’s never seen these guys.

The one with the rifle looks rough.

Like he hasn’t been eating so well.

And like he’s shot people.

The one in the sapper’s plate looks around at the room, enjoying himself. Smiling beneath his walrusy mustache.

Something catches his eye.

“ Shto eta? ” he says.

Dawes doesn’t speak Russian, but the meaning is clear enough.

The man is tickling a poster with the edge of his bayonet.

What’s this?

John Dawes has a lot of posters, and they’ve been hanging so long he doesn’t much see them anymore. He sees this one now. The bayonet traces a blown-up cover of a Hitler Youth propaganda magazine called Der Pimpf , showing a German tank running over Polish cavalry.

Next the walrus-man looks at the poster next to it, a homoerotic masterpiece showing a brown-shirted, black-tied bohunk with blond televangelist hair and a swastika flag smiling unrepentantly, the legend reading Der Deutsche Student kämpft für Führer und Volk!