Max Booth III - We Need to Do Something

“Do mice watch people sleep?” Bobby asks, concerned.

“These mice did.”

“I don’t think I like mice.”

“Nobody does, son.” He massages his temple, wincing. “But not long after Monty disappeared into the walls, something happened.”

“What?”

“The mice also disappeared.”

“Where’d they go?”

“Monty started eating them all. I think he got into the wall by slithering into a mouse hole, then just slaughtered every last one of those fuckers. Ate them up one by one. Total goddamn buffet.”

“Wow. He must’ve gotten so fat.”

“The fattest snake in Texas.”

Bobby points at the rattlesnake on the bathroom floor. “This one’s fat, too.”

Dad nods. “He’s a big boy.”

“What do you think is in his belly?”

“I don’t know, Bobby.”

We sit and watch the snake lounge for a while. What else can we do? The thing has us hostage.

“Wait,” Bobby says later on. “What ever happened to Monty, Daddy?”

“What?”

“Did you ever see him again, after he went into the walls and ate all the mice?”

Dad nods, a sudden sadness washed over him. “Only one more time.” He hesitates, refusing to look at us. “One night, almost a year after he escaped, I woke up in bed to something tight around my throat. It was him. It was Monty. He’d come back to me.”

“What?” Bobby says, excited. “Wow!”

“Yeah.” Dad sighs. “Slithered up into my bed and wrapped himself around my neck. Scared the shit out of me. I started screaming and freaking out. My mom, your grandmother, she comes running in and flips on the light, sees me in bed with my snake around my neck and screams just as loud as I did.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well. I unwrapped Monty from my neck and discovered he was dead. That’s what happened.”

“ Dead? How?”

Dad shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess it was just his time.”

Bobby pouts. “That’s a sad story, Dad!”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He closes his eyes and leans against the mirror. “You know, I’ve thought about that night a lot, and there’s something I’ve never been able to figure out.”

“Figure out what?” Bobby asks.

“Whether or not he came back because he wanted to be with someone he loved as he died, or…”

“Or what?”

He leans forward, eyes open, expression blank. “…or if he was trying to take me with him.”

“I used to be dead,” Amy’s telling me. It’s the day after Joe died. The bathroom’s gone. The snake’s gone. My family’s gone. My body melts down the drain and transports me to Amy’s house. Empty again. We ditched the rest of the day following our homeroom teacher’s announcement, went back to her place. Her parents will be at work until five or six. Until then, we have the house to ourselves. Under other circumstances we might be taking advantage of this alone time with more pleasure. Today, however, we hold each other on the couch in the living room, trying not to cry and failing. Well, at least I’m failing. Amy seems bizarrely calm about the whole thing.

“I know,” I tell her. “You told me.”

“But haven’t you ever wondered what changed? What fixed me?”

“Sure.” She’s ignoring the fact that I’ve asked her before, numerous times actually, and she’s always dodged the question.

“It was a spell,” she says now.

“Like what we did to Joe?”

“…Not exactly.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“We’re talking, like, super black magic shit.”

“The tongue spell wasn’t black magic?”

“More like black magic for beginners. Amateurs.”

I sit up from her embrace and face her on the couch. “Amy. He died . We killed him.”

“I know. We fucked up.”

“We?”

She nods. “We’re in this together, aren’t we?”

I hesitate, thinking it wasn’t my idea to seek hoodoo vengeance, but it wasn’t like I’d tried to stop her, either. I’d been fully on board until the real consequences sunk in. Claiming anything else would only be hypocritical and false. “Yes.” Our fingertips connect. “We’re in this together.”

She smiles faintly. “Thank you for not abandoning me.”

“I would never.”

She leans over and kisses me. I kiss her back. Then she parts from my mouth and whispers, “It was a necromancy spell.”

“A what ?”

“Necromancy.”

“Like, raising the dead?”

Amy nods. “I found one buried on the occult subreddit. No one really took it seriously. It only had a couple comments. Something that was posted and ignored. But I found it.”

“That’s what we used on Joe?”

“No, Melli, not Joe. Me . I used it on myself.”

“You used a necromancy spell on yourself?”

“I told you. I was dead. Or, at least, I thought I was dead. That’s up for speculation, I guess.”

“H-h-how? What happened?”

She shrugs. “It was complicated, and getting into the details now… it’s not important, right? The point is this: necromancy was supposed to bring back the dead, and something inside me was dead, so it only made sense—theoretically, at least—that it could— would —work.”

“And it did?”

“I think so?”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought I was better, that I was healed.”

“And you’re not?”

“I haven’t felt right for the past couple days. I thought maybe it was just all the deepfake bullshit. But now I suspect it’s something else. Something a little more evil.”

“Amy, you’re not making any sense.”

“What if it wasn’t me who was really dead all this time? What if something else was inside me, and that’s what was dead? And when I performed the necromancy spell… it woke up? And it’s just been… I don’t know, biding its time, waiting for the perfect moment to announce its arrival?”

“Something like what ?”

“I don’t know. A demon, I guess. Something from another realm. A malevolent spirit of some kind. I think maybe it’s been attached to me all my life, and I fucked up, gave it permission to stretch its legs.”

I reach forward and caress her cheek. “You’re not evil. I would know.”

“Think of the deepfake video Joe made.”

“What about it?”

“Just, like, the concept, you know? Replacing one face over another. Masks over masks. What if I’m the deepfake, and the demon inside me is the real deal? The real me .”

“Amy, I—”

“It has to be why the tongue spell went so wrong. I know, we substituted a dog’s tongue for a cow’s, but still, I mean holy shit , there’s no way what happened should have happened. Unless, the person who conducted the ritual had something hiding inside them, something beyond human. Something…”

“Something what?”

“…something diabolical.”

I snap awake to the sound of Bobby whining about having to pee. I glance around, searching for Amy, but she’s long gone. Was she ever really here? Goddammit, I’m losing my mind. Bobby keeps whining until Mom and Dad wake up. Dad had passed out in the sink basin, the faucet driving into his spine, which he complains about the moment he regains consciousness. His arms knock over various bottles of gels and soaps as he struggles to free himself from the dip.

We scan the bathroom floor. No sign of the snake.

“Do you think it went back outside?” I ask.

“I don’t see it anywhere,” Dad says.

“I think it left,” Bobby says. “It got mad it couldn’t eat any of us so it went back home to pout.”