The Necromancer's House (5 page)

Andrew lights the oil lamps on the big pine farm table that sits in the middle of his library while Salvador hovers near; the magus never lets the wicker man, whose wooden left hand is newer and paler than the right one, handle fire.

The servant writes on the Etch-a-Sketch around his neck, turning the knobs with his clever fingers, his wicker hips moving gently with the ghost of his wagging tail.

HELP?

“Wine,” Andrew says, and Salvador turns his portrait gaze toward the hall, starting off in that direction; then he seems to remember something important—he shudders, making a sound like a dry whimper and shaking his flat head. He clasps his hands in supplication and stares at Andrew now, still huskily whining.

“I know, boy. That was mean. I was just testing. Fizzy water will do.”

The automaton visibly relaxes and hurries out of the library. Andrew goes to the hanging shelf, a weathered blue bookcase suspended close to the high ceiling by belts, just out of reach, a baby doll with wild hair and no eyes hanging from a shoestring noose nailed to its bottom. An Indian-print blanket veils the volumes waiting within. Andrew stands close to the doll and says, “Hello, Sally. I declare myself to be Andrew Ranulf Blankenship, son of George Blankenship, grandson of Charles Thaddeus Blankenship, and I am the true owner of this house and these books.”

The doll kicks her feet now to start herself gently swinging. After three swings' worth of momentum, she latches onto Andrew's hair with one of her plastic hands. She feels his face with her other hand and, satisfied, kisses his cheek and goes inanimate again, swinging limply from the bottom of the shelf. The belts that hold the shelf loosen themselves now and it lowers so he can reach within. He pulls aside the curtain. The power drill that would have lashed out and blinded anyone but Andrew whirrs once to show it's on duty. The drill sits on the bottom of two levels, next to a rubber cobra and a mummified fist wearing brass knuckles (this Hand of Glory doesn't pick locks or light candles or stop hearts—it belonged to a Cossack pugilist hanged for beating his wife's lover and that man's two brothers to death). On the top level, nine identical-looking huge leather books lie stacked in threes, bindings out. The magus eases his fingers around the second book in the rightmost pile and slides it out from under its top neighbor, which lifts itself up obligingly. Each of the eight decoys holds a nasty surprise for anyone, Andrew included, who begins to pull it out; the book below the actual book, for example, contains several dozen dried, wormlike Amazonian parasites, normally river dwellers, that will slither under the clothes of any intruders and race for the urethra, fighting each other, if necessary, for the honor of burrowing within and affixing themselves in front of the bladder with backward-facing spines. Only a blessing from the shaman of a nearly extinct tribe administered in the actual Amazon would make the thing let go, but this has to happen within a week or the beast will catch fire. Not as immediate as the shotgun shells (once owned by Doc Holliday) that wait in book two, but any spell-caster (and who else would have gotten this far?) will have trouble concentrating on anything above the waist while the wigglers do their wiggly work.

He cradles the book and sets it on the table, now pulling a dictionary of Old Russian from a more ordinary shelf behind him, fetching a spiral notebook and pencils, and sitting down to read. Of the four books he brought home from forests near the Volga (each with its own shelf and booby traps), this is one of the two he understands least.

After
The Book of Sorrows
, that is.

But this one.

Of the Soul and Its Mutability and

How Best to Survive Death

He knows, as well, that it is the most precious book he owns, and that any magus who becomes aware of its existence will stop at nothing to get it. It is said that Rasputin was protected by some of the lesser spells held within, and that Koschey the Deathless mastered the whole thing before the crone extorted it from him in the time of the Tsar Alexander II.

So far, Andrew has come to understand parts of it but is afraid to try anything beyond a sort of dream-walking wherein he sends his consciousness, still well tethered to his sleeping body, to roam the beaches of the lake or through walls into the homes of his neighbors.

He gave this last bit up after observing his misanthropic survivalist neighbor John Dawes (across Willow Fork Road, binocular distance) drunkenly shaving his scrotum with a straight razor while watching a
Gilligan's Island
rerun. The sight had so startled Andrew that he experienced a sort of spasm and suspects he nearly snapped his tether. He has seen nothing yet to convince him that an actual hell exists (or that it does not), but leaving his body comatose while his soul haunts the house of a lonely, gun-happy ball-shaver sounds close enough. Now he confines his experiments to beachcombing and low-altitude flight, never straying more than a mile or two away from himself; he intends to push himself further if he can understand how to get back into himself without the comforting astral umbilicus that anchors him. Getting back into your own body without it is the first step. Next and harder will be taking over another body, which is a fearful business that smacks of actual evil. Temporary possession is possible, but the language in
Of the Soul
warns that stuffing two souls in one body is draining to both: The original host might succeed in pushing you out and into death's embrace; if not, the presence of multiple souls in one body attracts “other beings,”

Sign off, Ichthus70

whose company might be undesirable. Permanent occupation is, of course, murder.

And yet, one might use this to live indefinitely, practicing a sort of biological alchemy, transmuting the lead of aging and sick bodies into the gold of healthy, young ones. One might live on in beauty and strength for centuries.

Andrew strongly suspects some are doing this now.

He often muses that if he were to walk into a room full of those who actually run the world, the
invisibles
that heads of state and oil barons take
their
marching orders from, it would look like the audition room for a TV soap opera: They would all be lovely; they would all look twenty-five to forty, and whether this was accomplished by the witchcraft of science or the science of witchcraft would be even money. Those who trade in magic value money less than others, true, because they can always manufacture, steal, win, or conjure it as needed; most really powerful conjurers regard those who hoard money as nothing but glorified squirrels saving for a winter they will never live to see. But when you stack enough zeroes behind an integer, enough, say, to bribe a prime minister or buy a vast old-growth forest, even a sorcerer won't ignore it; a handful of people may well be buying their way into extended youth.

“But not eternal youth,” Andrew says at half voice.

Nothing is forever.

A memory makes him almost smile, and he shakes it off, turning his mind to the problem of the tether.

Now Salvador walks into the room and pours Gerolsteiner water from a clay pitcher (one of Anneke's) into Andrew's glass, hoping to receive another command, but resigning himself to being ignored—his master has inclined his head to study, and, although the days are past when the dry man with the dog's heart has to clear two empty wine bottles from the table and cork a third before pulling his sodden master to bed by the heels, it will be nearly dawn before the magus shuts his book.

“Get that
pinché
thing away from me,” Chancho says.

Ten
A.M.
, time for training.

Chancho has taken the morning off from the North Star Garage, which is his prerogative since he owns it. Todd, Rick, and Gonzo, his three employees who vary so much in height they could be a totem pole, will handle things at a slower pace in his absence, but they will still get the work done well, and God help them if they fart around and charge for the farting-around time. Chancho wants his customers to tell all their friends how cheap repairs are at North Star, how fast the work gets done, how polite the mechanics are. Gonzo, six and a half feet tall but so thin he looks like he stepped out of an El Greco, handles the counter and the phone—he wears his hair long and has a shitty goatee he used to wear a rubber band around

 • • • 

Why the f do you wear that thing in your beard?

You can say
fuck
to me, I won't be offended.

I don't say
fuck
no more.

You just did.

Why do you wear it?

I dunno.

Then stop. I won't make you cut the beard, even though it makes you look like a pimp, but that rubber band got to go. Put it around some money.

I don't have any.

That's because you put it in the
pinché
bank. Banks are full of robbers. Put rubber bands around that shit and bury it.

Why is it okay to say
shit
but not
fuck
?

. . .

I need to think about this.

 • • • 

but Gonzo has a voice like wildflower honey pouring winter-slow from a jar, and eyes like Paul Newman.

Everybody likes Gonzo.

The people of Cayuga County are still a little on the xenophobic side, and the Mexican invasion is only just beginning to lap at the ankles of upstate New York, so bearish, tattooed Chancho doesn't want his brown face to be the first one they see at North Star.

He doesn't need their love.

Just their business.

When it comes to love, he gets all he needs from his wife and Jésus Christ. Consuela got fat, but Jésus stayed skinny; he would have preferred the reverse, since he only has to
chingar
Consuela, but her face is still pretty and he remembers how her body was in Mexico and Texas. Maybe she does the same for him—he's got a bigger belly now, too, and fair is fair.

“No, seriously,
brujo
, get this
cabrón
away from me. He gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

Salvador stands with two bottles of mineral water balanced on a tray, his hips barely moving in the echo of a wagging tail. Salvador remembers the big man with his smell of motor oil and cumin from his four-legged days. Chancho used to throw the Frisbee for him, and praise him for how high he jumped, and scratch his ears. His master explained to him that Chancho is afraid of him now, but that he shouldn't take that personally.

Salvador really wants Chancho to like him again.

He moves a little closer with the tray.

Chancho squints, takes his mineral water, crosses himself.

Minutes later.

Chancho holds the striking pads for Andrew and begins to call off punches.

“Jab. Jab. Right cross. Jab. Jab. Double jab. Left hook.”

Chancho calls these words at the outer limit of audibility, as gently as if he were inventorying flowers at a funeral parlor.

“Now move forward with me,” he says, lets Andrew push him across the yard. He no longer calls punches, just holds the pads up and lets his friend improvise.

“Now punch while backing up. This is very important. You can knock a guy out who thinks he has you.”

Chancho moves forward slowly but insistently, alternating pads, nodding when Andrew lands an especially crisp one.

The taped-up gloves tattoo the taped-up pads in the backyard, the staccato mixing pleasantly with birdsong and a tractor straddling asphalt and dirt on the road out front.

“Don't puss out on me,” Chancho says, now gently boxing out at Andrew's ears with the mitts to show him he's letting his guard droop.

“Switch,” he says, and Andrew takes the mitts, preparing himself for the barely padded brickstorm he will now be fielding. He's glad for the rest all the same; his drills have left him wheezing.

The staccato comes faster and harder now, the bigger man pushing the lanky one back, bobbing his head and shoulders like something between an angry chimp and a piston. Chancho had been a formidable boxer fifteen years ago, and might have gone professional had he not been so fond of beer—he had never etched a boxer's six-pack into his belly. The obvious way to beat Chancho was to wear him out, and enough of them did to keep him from quitting his day job.

But many did not; to wear Chancho out, you had to be able to duck his bear-swat punches, which was hard, or absorb them, which was damn near impossible.

And you had to not smoke a pack a day.

“Okay, enough punching.”

“Thank the gods.”

“Now elbows,” Chancho all but whispers, smiling his big smile under the uneven, dated mustache, just going gray. Only the soul patch under his chin keeps him from looking like he stepped out of a
Starsky and Hutch
episode.

Chancho throws elbows first, so the magus can rest his lungs a bit more. The tattooed arms lash out and bite the pads deep, the left elbow flashing the star tattoo of Texas, where the burly man lived until he found Jésus and got out of moving drugs. Or, rather, protecting people who moved drugs.

Chancho would always be the first guy you'd want to meet in the ring and the last guy you'd want to meet in the parking lot. Or see coming up to your sliding glass door with a
lucha libre
mask on.

Andrew is feeling dizzy with exhaustion, but Chancho wants him to push through it, so he does, the sweat drenching his long hair even in its ponytail, making his bare chest glisten and soaking the waistband of his jeans.

“Now you. Twist at the hips so I feel it. You're little, so it's even more important for you to get your hips in it. I want twenty on each side.”

When the drenched and reeking pads are lying on the table and the panting men sit down on their benches, Salvador walks from the back door carrying Mexican Coca-Cola bottles on a tray.

“Good boy,” Andrew says. “Thank you.”

Six years now since he used his secret books to bring the dog back. Chancho watches Salvador with a fixed eye; looking away from the clockwork figure is difficult, especially when he swivels his Dalí head around to meet your gaze. The thing moves so . . . fluidly.

Chancho likes Mexican Coke because it's in glass bottles and has sugar, not that corn syrup crap they drench everything in now.

He likes it so much he doesn't cross himself when he takes the bottle from the stick-man.

Instead he turns his gaze on Andrew.

“You've got to quit smoking.”

Andrew, who knows how green he looks, just nods, sipping his cola.

“I know. But isn't that pretty pot-kettle? You smoke.”

The sweat on the green bottles looks heavenly to Chancho and he studies his, pressing it now to the side of his temple.

“I know.”

“You smoke
my
cigarettes, for fuck's sake.”

“Your cigarettes are
good
.”

“So buy some. They'll sell 'em to you.”

“Got to go to the hippie shop for that.”

“I'm just saying a smoker ought not tell a man to quit.”

“I don't wheeze like a busted vacuum. I ought to quit. You
got
to quit.”

“Maybe.”

“Ain't there a
pinché
spell for that?”

“Yeah. It's right next to the one for quitting drinking.”

Chancho smiles.

“Maybe we could get you a hip'motist.”

“Ever seen one?”

“Heard about 'em.”

“Well, they scare me fuckless,” Andrew says. “I saw one make a guy think he came all over himself right at a café table, so that when the waitress came the guy pulled the tablecloth half off trying to cover up his lap.”

Chancho laughs, broadly enough to show the gap where the tooth behind the canine should have been.

“Funny. A man scaring
you
. Just a man, I mean. When you play with dead girls and dead dogs and stuff. That fishy girl, you said she kilt herself, right?”

“Her sister stole her man and she threw herself off the bluffs.”

“McIntyre Bluffs?” Chancho asked.

Andrew nodded.

“'Cause I know a guy took his lady there and they both fell off f'ing. Only nobody died. But he got his back broke, but could still walk. I think she landed on him.”

“Nadia died. Broke that pretty neck back in 1926.”

Chancho squints at him and tilts his head up, assessing.

“You need to get right with Jésus.”

“I'm fine with Jésus.”

Silence.

“Can I drive the Mustang?”

“If you shut up about Jésus.”

Chancho smiles.