Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

It arches its abdomen; it wants to sting him.

But it can’t!

This is almost fun.

Then he sees the next one.

The imported fire ant.

Solenopsis invicta.

Common to the American South, accidentally brought up in the 1920s on fruit boats from its native South America, it doesn’t like cold. But this nest is doing all right in its climate-controlled attic terrarium, periodically fed crickets and moths and chanted over by a magus.

The first worker finds a strange, burnt bug it can’t quite get its jaws around or arch its abdomen up to envenom. Their struggles move soil, of course, so the others come. Several hundred others. They don’t know what laughter is, so the sound the bug makes as they swarm it means nothing to them. They don’t understand Russian, or insults, let alone Russian insults, so what it says about their mothers (not knowing they all have one mother, nor that her promiscuous egg-laying allows little time for the activities he suggests she enjoys) goes unappreciated. The venom has little effect on it, but they find themselves well able to rip it apart. Its pieces try to lurch away from them; they’ve never experienced that before, but eventually they get all of it down to the late-stage larvae who manage to digest it.

Not much meat on it.

In fact, “Not much meat on me, bastards!” is the last thing it says.

Just the head and a section of spine.

Then that is broken up, too.

And the magic in it sputters and dies.

Moroz goes to the west side of the house, where the two big windows of the family room overlook the woods.

The windows the Thief first saw him from.

Now another face peers at him through one of these.

An old man.

The stone warlock.

Powerful, but less so than the Thief.

He is not permitted to kill the Thief—that honor is for the witch—but this man is fair game.

Let’s see how strong you are!

Moroz walks up to the window, knowing how hideous he looks.

The old man just watches him.

Frost has formed on the windowpane.

Moroz writes on this with his finger.

Before he can write the rest, the old man puts a toothpick in his mouth—a toothpick!—and walks away from him. Just walks to the window on the other side of the fireplace.

Moroz becomes one with the snow from which he is made and appears in front of the other window.

he writes, but even as he dots the question mark, the old wizard disappears. Moroz senses something behind him, re-forms himself facing backward. The American boy-host he inhabited dies a little more every time he abuses the body like this, but his work here is nearly done.

It is not the old wizard that he sees.

Now he sees a little stop-motion figure popular in the Soviet Union.

A fuzzy little figure with large ears, supposedly an undocumented tropical forest creature fond of oranges.

How many times had he watched children’s television through the window and seen this little thing?

What was its name?

“Cheburashka!” it says in a childish voice, in Russian, eating an orange. “You made it very, very cold,” it says sadly, lowering its head. “But can you really freeze me to death?”

Moroz grins, and the stand of trees behind Cheburashka grows icicles. A squirrel tries to run from its knothole den and cracks as it freezes solid, falls from its branch.

“Very sad,” Cheburashka says. “But that was just a squirrel. You should try harder if you want to be my friend. Do you?” It offers Moroz its stop-motion orange.

Something about this strikes Moroz as familiar, but he never knows which memories are his and which are the street-boy’s.

Moroz breathes in.

Breathes out hard.

Frost, snow, and ice shavings blow from his mouth.

The trees get so cold they grow brittle.

Branches fall.

Animals crack and die.

“I guess we can’t be friends,” the little creature says sadly, dropping its orange. Now it produces a pipe, lights it with a finger. “This belongs to a crocodile. Gena. He is my friend, even if you are not.”

Moroz can’t freeze the beast.

But perhaps he can rend it.

First he must stop making the blizzard.

Cheburashka draws on his pipe, which glows an animated glow.

Moroz tries to shut his mouth and stop blowing frost but finds that he can’t.

His mouth is stuck open.

The little creature is drawing snow out of him!

As Cheburashka breathes in, the essence of Moroz begins to jet out.

He vomits snow, so much snow that he blankets the side yard.

Still the creature smokes, tittering just a little, quite cheerful.

Streetlights flicker on Willow Fork Road.

The snow falls and falls.

Moroz shudders, almost empty.

No longer blue.

His hair black again.

Mostly boy now, but enough of Moroz remains to hear.

Cheburashka points the stem of its pipe at him, cocking an eyebrow.

Its voice is different now.

It is Stalin’s voice.

“You and I are alike in that we both respect our boundaries. You can’t harm the wizard. I can’t harm the witch. But nobody said a thing about you.”

Moroz recognizes it now.

They have met before.

Moroz says its true name.

Cheburashka draws one more puff from the pipe.

Exhales.

The pipe glows bright and hot in the moppet’s mouth.

The shadow of a thrashing squid on the snow behind him.

Moroz is no more.

The caveman wakes up under his overpass.

He had a dream about a woman.

She gave him twenty dollars.

(Lying under the brick he uses to smash cans)

She took away his tinnitus.

(It’s still gone)

And then?

Blurry.

But at the end, the Heat Miser character from the Christmas special carried him like a bride.

Carried him from some hellish North Pole, where the elves had button eyes and bloody mouths.

But he’s in Syracuse now.

At the end of summer.

A warm night.

It’s ten minutes ago.

He knows that somehow.

The Heat Miser gets to play with time.

Because he’s the Heat Miser.

It’s ten minutes ago, but no different than any other time, as far as he can tell.

He’s still a caveman.

Cars and trucks rush above him as they always have, as they always will.

Bled-out urban sky above the overpass.

He is sick of the city.

He wishes he were somewhere where he could watch the stars.

He sees one, though.

A falling star, quite bright.

He wishes on it.

My name is Victor.

Michael Rudnick collects himself at the window.

Nausea hit him seconds after he tugged the meteor down.

No time for this.

Get your shit together, Rudnick.

Hears the fight downstairs, feels the building rock as the Russian grenade blows the front door in.

He needs to get downstairs, even though the meteor strike took everything out of him.

It was a big spell, maybe too big.

He’s out of gas, doesn’t feel capable of levitating a grain of sand.

Rifle fire cracks loudly just downstairs.

Andrew.

He’s alone.

More concussions downstairs, a sound like Gabriel’s trumpet blaring.

Quite suddenly his head feels like it has a horseshoe in it.

He moves through the snowy attic, makes his way to the ladder.

The first step is all right, but then he can’t make his right arm or leg work so well, and he half slides, half falls down to the hardwood hall floor.