The Necromancer's House (29 page)

The entrance to the cave is easy to miss, situated as it is between two large rocks mostly hidden by maple saplings. Three
P.M.
Andrew wants to make sure he has plenty of daylight left for this; visiting Ichabod is among the creepiest things he ever does.

He casts a minor light spell, brings a marble-sized amber sphere about twice as bright as a candle into existence, sends it into the cave ahead of him. Ichabod could extinguish that if he wanted to, so he brings backup—a sturdy black flashlight that would also make a fine blunt instrument.

Not that hitting Ichabod would be effective, wise, or useful.

Despite recent shenanigans, he's pretty sure it still has to obey him, as long as the command is simple and makes sense.

“Ichabod.”

His voice echoes slightly.

The cave is not huge, about the size of a smallish high school cafeteria, but its darkness makes it seem vast. He glances up, sees a cluster of bats hanging directly above him.

“Here, sir,” a voice like a bored teenaged barista's sounds.

Movement to his right.

This will be one of the thing's mannequins.

It likes the weight of a body, moves around in mannequins.

“You wanted to see me?” Andrew says.

Waking up to see

COME TO THE CAVE, PLEASE!

spelled out in wine corks on his ceiling had been disconcerting.

They had all fallen as soon as he read them.

Not on him, though; that would have been rude.

He has no idea where the thing got them.

I don't want to go to the cave.

He thought about summoning it to the house, but fears now to give it commands, not knowing how much leash he still has on it.

I'm going to the cave.

 • • • 

“I most certainly did want to see you,” it says.

A female mannequin strides into the circle of light, a feather boa around its neck, its painted-on eyes staring blindly. “This may well be the last time before you die. In fact, I'm quite certain it will be unless you accept my offer. Come and sit down.”

“I prefer to stand.”

“If you insist, of course. But I feel like such a poor host. Won't you come in?”

“This is far enough, thanks. I like being able to see the entrance.”

The entity now affects a Southern belle's drawl.

“I have failed to put you at ease. My life is not worth living.”

The mannequin's wrist goes to its head.

It collapses into a heap.

He hears steps.

Another mannequin comes into view, this one male, wearing only underwear, well endowed in that strangely sexless underwear mannequin way, carrying a chair. It sets the chair down, gestures at it.

Andrew sighs.

Sits.

Now the mannequin steps behind the magus, picks up the chair with him in it, and carries him effortlessly before it.

The light-casting marble follows.

A table comes into view, a cheap folding table.

Mannequins and dummies, male and female, of several varieties and hues, sit around the table, as if in at a meeting. Empty glass and plastic bottles crowd the table, each with exactly one dead bee, wasp, or june bug in it.

The one carrying him sets him down.

Collapses.

Now the one directly across from him, a flesh-colored, featureless crash-test dummy with black-and-yellow pinwheels on either side of its head, jerks to life, leans forward on its elbows, rests its chin on its hands.

An old British man's voice comes through it.

“May I interest you in a libation?”

“Ichabod, please just tell me what you want.”

“I want to be a good host, sir. Please allow me that honor.”

Now the crash-test dummy slumps on the table as if it fell asleep studying.

Another mannequin, this one male and somewhat Asian-looking, wakes at its chair, produces a bottle and a glass from the darkness at its feet, and sets these on the table. Both slide forward to Andrew. Andrew's flashlight unpockets itself, turns on, illuminates the bottle's label.

“Croatian,” the British voice says, “truly robust, sediment on the bottom like the gravel in an angel's viscera.”

“I'm sure it's delightful.”

The foil top removes itself as if cut by an invisible knife, and then the cork spins, squeaking, from the bottle's mouth.

“Ichabod, I really can't.”

The bottle upends itself, spilling a splash into the wineglass before Andrew. The wineglass moves on the table as if a practiced sommelier were swirling the wine therein.

The glass slides closer.

It smells like sex and ink and stained moonlight; it smells like the afterlife of sainted grapes, the elect of grapes.

“No.”

At this refusal, the insects in their diverse bottles flutter and buzz, one moth too well stuck in some syrupy residue to do more than quiver pathetically.

They stop.

“New world manners,” the British voice says.

The bottle and glass slide to one side.

The Asian mannequin falls.

The crash-test dummy sits upright, points at Andrew.

“You.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Me what?”

“Need.”

“I need you to stop fucking around.”

“Is that a command, Father?”

“No. But this is. Tell me what your purpose was in summoning me to your cave.”

“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.

His fault.

All his fault.

He had flipped the lights off for a joke, doing fifty.

She had said “Andrew” in admonition, her last intelligible word.

He can't save her.

But he knows something that can.

He sticks his thumb out and the big Swede in the pickup truck stops.

“I'm taking you to the hospital,” the man insists.

“You're taking me home,” Andrew tells him, charming him hard. Too hard.

“Sure!” the man says, his cheek twitching with a brand-new tic that may or may not be permanent. He drives the crazed, injured drunk home.

“See you later!” the Swede says, pulling out and waving, his face a-twitch.

Poor bastard just wanted to help but I can't think about him Sarah Sarah Sarah.

All folded around her tree.

Salvador barks, jumps up on him, tries to lick the tears and snot and blood from his cheeks. Spins in glad circles.

“Not now, Sal,” the magus says.

He goes to the library.

Kneels before a trunk.

Opens it by telling it his name.

The trunk contains a Russian cavalry officer's revolver, one bullet, and a shaving razor. He loads the bullet, spins the cylinder.

Puts the barrel in his mouth.

Sarah.

Pulls the trigger.

Click.

A book appears.

He puts the gun down.

Cracked blue leather. Engraved in circles of gold and silver.

Hair soaked in long-dried blood laid into sixteenth-century Russian letters:

BOOK OF SORROWS.

He cuts his thumb, bleeds several drops into the hair.

He thinks about what he wants.

The book opens to a page near the end.

Handwritten letters, ink, not blood, tell him what to do.

He does the first part correctly, despite his inebriation.

 • • • 

He is not in his library anymore.

“Going to California” plays on the radio of his wrecked car.

It
stands there.

Black, its blackness seeming to stick to everything around it.

Not magic, but a weird, dead feeling antithetical to magic.

A headless, hulking form that's about to need arms and legs, so it forms those. No head yet.

The headless horseman.

Ichabod Crane.

Its name sounded like Ichabod.

“Ichabod will do just fine,” it says.

It unfolds the dead woman from her awful nest of sticks and greenery.

It picks her up.

Its size reminds him of Frankenstein's monster, and now it leaches the image from his mind and turns into that, a black-and-white version. Like Karloff's monster but not quite. Karloff's version filtered through Andrew's mind, corrupted a bit with a graphic novel version he once saw, and just a whiff of Herman Munster. It winks at him, holding the broken girl, who already looks a little less broken. It passes its palm over Andrew's face.

“Forget,” it says. “For now.”

He is already forgetting it as it lopes off home.

He knows he will find her safe and well in their bed.

He follows behind it, much more slowly.

He stops to pour blood out of his boot.

A pickup truck pulls over.

 • • • 

Sarah lives another year and a day.

The length of a handfasting.

She has her aneurysm at Darien Lake.

After the roller coaster.

Sits down.

Falls over.

And that's all.

 • • • 

The following year, Salvador chases a doe into the road.

The big Swede in the pickup truck misses the doe.

Not the dog.

Andrew drinks for two more years.

Thinks that's when he calls Ichabod.

Thinks that's when he botches the spell to send him back.

Thinks it's time to stop drinking.

When really it's long past time.