Authors: Jonah Hewitt
“What?! What will announce our presence?” Lucy asked indignantly, and she skipped to keep pace with Moríro’s long stride.
“They don’t have any names that I know of,” Moríro said simply, “Mütter was a brilliant surgeon, but he was bit sentimental about some of his specimens. He collected deformed abnormalities and couldn’t help but bring a few of them to life. They should have been left asleep.” His tone indicated he disapproved of such things. “I’ll have a devil of a time explaining it to the new director – Gretchen would have understood.”
Lucy had a vague memory of hearing about Mütter somewhere, some famous surgeon who collected medical oddities. “Mütter was a member of the family? He was a…a
necromancer
?” Lucy asked nervously.
“Obviously,” Moríro answered sounding annoyed. Lucy went quiet. Moríro had an annoying habit of being horrendously condescending. Then he looked down at Lucy with as much empathy as she had ever seen him muster.
“You are a necromancer, Lucia, perhaps the last one of any measurable talent. You must remember that and try to act like one.”
Lucy didn’t like his tone, but it was at least somewhat supportive. She didn’t like feeling like a little kid. She wanted to feel like an adult. As much as she didn’t want the role, she did want to do it well if there was no other choice, and she wanted an opportunity to prove herself. She didn’t have far to go before she got her chance.
The burrowing abomination had led them through the dense woods into a small clearing. There at the other side, was a large, brick building from colonial times – a giant manor. Lucy nearly fainted. It was the one she had seen in vision just a few hours ago at the scene of her mother’s death. She instantly wondered if the other things she saw were true and if all necromancers had the ability to see the future. She decided not to ask.
“Vek-veki!” The strange little deformed baby popped up from the leaves to make one last salute at Moríro. Moríro gave a little nod in return and it disappeared back into the underbrush on some other errand. Graber and Moríro walked on to the building with the rest of the crew following. Miles and Schuyler followed the sounds of the deformed baby through the underbrush with some apprehension until it was gone. Lucy thought this got a smile out of Tim for some unknown reason.
Moríro was about to step up onto the large, columned porch and entryway to the manor when he hesitated. Graber instantly came to a halt at his side and waited for the Necromancer. Moríro turned slowly to look at Lucy. Lucy quickly turned around to see if he was looking at someone behind her, but the boys were looking back too, equally confused. When she turned back, Moríro was standing on one side, with Graber on the other. Moríro had his hand outstretched indicating she should come forward. He wanted Lucy to take the lead! Lucy hesitated at first, then, wiping her hands on the tattered white bathrobe, she walked forward, albeit rather slowly.
When she reached the porch, the rest gathered ranks behind her when Lucy placed her foot upon the first step. No sooner had she done so when two horrific, skinless creatures like dogs bolted out of nowhere and confronted her on both sides, barking and bleating maniacally.
“Aah!” Lucy gave out a small squeak and might have backed down and fled had Moríro’s hand not reached up to stop her retreat by holding her firmly at the shoulder.
Lucy recoiled as far as Moríro would let her. In addition to being skinless, they were literally gutless too. They were slabs of meat, bone and sinew stitched together into monsters. One was a creature with a goat’s head with its eyes sewed shut with sutures. This head was stitched onto a strange body that looked like a pig in the front part and a sheep in the back. The second one had TWO heads – one like a dog and the other like a calf – with the skinless body of a calf except it had six legs. Two of the legs were stuck on the midsection, and instead of touching the floor they rose upward in a grasping position. Neither thing had proper feet but walked on the bony stumps of their ham hock leg bones. They both smelled like day-old road kill.
“What are they?!” Lucy whispered, trying to hold down the panic in her voice.
“Meat golems,” Moríro responded, as if this was painfully obvious. “Oh, so
these
are what
meat golems
are!” Lucy thought to herself sarcastically. Knowing what to call them did not help in the slightest.
“They are soulless creations, golems, made to do the bidding of their masters. We use them as watchdogs.”
“Soulless?!” Lucy winced as one sniffed at her.
“Yes, you can summon a soul into a body, but it is forbidden to try to create a new soul for an undead creation. That was the sin of the Bezalel of Prague and of young Victor Frankenstein.”
Lucy turned and goggled at Moríro. She just wasn’t prepared to ask if she was related to
Frankenstein
just yet. The second meat golem sniffed her with one head while the calf head bleated at her disconsolately.
“But why make them out of pieces?!” she hoarsely whispered, “Why not make it out of just one animal!”
“Because one carcass would attract the return of the animal’s original soul which could take possession of it. Making it out of several confuses the spirits, making them less likely to be…temperamental,” Moríro rushed through this explanation and then quickly issued an order, “Now command them.”
“What?!” Lucy desperately wanted to ask for more instruction than “command them” but she never got the chance.
“Remember, you are a necromancer. A master of all dead things.” Moríro said one last time before he shoved her forward.
Lucy skidded onto the porch spinning her arms wildly to keep her balance. When she stopped she realized she was frozen in a ridiculous position, bent over with her arms far forward like someone who had just recovered from nearly falling; hardly a commanding position. The two beasties were snorting around her. She stood up quickly and went rigid without a clue of what to do. Should she pet them and say “nice doggy?” They weren’t exactly dogs. Somehow she instinctively reached out her hands, palms out. At first the wretched things just sniffed them, and she was certain she was blowing this trial by fire that Moríro had forced her into. But then they stopped and began backing away as if they could sense the blood of a necromancer. She stepped forward and extended her hands and the undead critters backed away even further. She felt more confident and took another step. They sensed her unspoken wish for them to back away. Eventually, they retreated to the sides of the opulent, columned porch where they assumed positions so still they were like stone gargoyles. Lucy lowered her hands and peeked over her shoulder. Moríro’s face was expressionless, but at least he wasn’t scowling. That must have meant she did okay. Moríro merely indicated the front door with one hand. He meant for her to enter the house.
Lucy swallowed hard. She walked up to the ornate double doors that had a large, broken pediment over the top of them. She grabbed the big, brass door handle and turned it. It was unlocked. She didn’t know what to expect inside, but she knew her mother’s body was in there somewhere and she wanted to see it. She took a breath. She had been through a lot tonight – vampires, demonically possessed psychos, zombies, imps and now mutant baby specimens and meat golems, but she had somehow managed through all of it, perhaps not brilliantly, or without the occasional breakdown, but she had survived this far. She was beginning to think she was prepared for whatever was behind this door. She turned the door handle and pushed the door open and took a step inside. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
She had no words for what she was seeing. The room was full of dead things: the undead, zombies, skeletons, vampires, mummies and other monsters and things she couldn’t even name, and every eye or empty socket was staring right at her. She turned to look behind her for assistance, but Nephys and the others seemed equally shocked and amazed. Only Moríro and Graber were nonplussed. Moríro took a step closer to her and stood directly behind her, waiting for her to advance. She had no choice but to go forward. She took one cautious step, and Moríro and everyone else took one step as well. Then she took another, and everyone else kept pace, preventing any possible retreat. It was very annoying. Slowly she walked into the center of the room, and the crowd of dead parted deferentially around her like water around the prow of a ship. Whether they were showing respect to her or to Moríro, she didn’t know, but she was glad they were keeping a respectful distance.
It was a large, elaborate ballroom, but it had been through a lot. There was broken and peeling plaster everywhere and even several smashed walls. It had obviously seen better days. Everywhere were large, standing candelabras with dozens of candles, but none of them gave off a warm yellow light like regular candles. Instead, they gave off an eerie bluish-white light that made the lifeless occupants look even less lifelike if that was possible. They were a horrendous and motley bunch of corpses.
On the right, there was a gathering of tall figures in long, black robes that covered them from the floor to their faces. Only when the hoods turned towards her did Lucy realize they were skeletons. They were sharing a silver ball like an eye, passing it between them, holding it up to their empty sockets like a monocle in their bony fingers. Some were sitting in chairs also made of human bones, but they stood up and bowed slightly as she passed. Then the chairs they were sitting in stood up and reformed into several separate skeletons themselves who also bowed!
Moríro leaned over and whispered into her ear, “High Ossurans,” he said simply. This meant nothing to Lucy. “Probably from Baltimore. Ossurans never disrobe in front of non-skeletals. Don’t bow to the chairs,” Moríro offered, “They’re just the help – common bone golems.”
On the other side was a gathering of emaciated figures with leathery skin, most wrapped in linens and shrouds, but a few were wrapped in vibrant, geometric textiles.
“Mummies,” Moríro continued his commentary, “Some from Peru, but most are from Egypt. These likely came from the university collections.” They bowed from the neck and Lucy returned the nod uncertainly.
Next was a group of what looked like zombies, but they weren’t shambling and filthy. While their flesh was blue and rotten, their clothes were spotless. They were wearing spats and pinstriped suits and dressed like mobsters from the twenties. “They probably
were
mobsters from the twenties!” thought Lucy.
A little further up was a gathering of women in black. They were wearing old-fashioned clothes, long gloves and veils. They pulled up the veils as Lucy passed and she had to try desperately not to flinch for fear of offending them, because their faces were like wax with half-melted features.
“Soap mummies,” Moríro whispered, “Alkaline water leeches into the coffins and partially saponifies the body fat, turning it into grave wax.” Lucy only partially understood that. “These are from a Quaker cemetery north of here, but I don’t see any of the famous Mexican ones.”
Lucy was really beginning to wish that Moríro would drop the running commentary as he introduced her to countless ghouls, monsters and other dead things. There were incorporeal wraiths floating on the ceiling and black ghosts writhing on the floor like shadows. There was a whole collection of blood-drenched figures that only appeared in your peripheral vision or in reflective surfaces but disappeared whenever you looked directly at them. Lucy checked twice just to make sure they were really there. She was only positive they were there because none of the other things would stand in the space where she had seen them out of the corner of her eye.
Moríro had names and classifications for all of these too, but it was beginning to overwhelm her. Slowly, they made their way to the opposite side of the hall. There was a sort of raised dais, like a platform for nobility or maybe a chamber orchestra. Here were some things she could finally recognize because she had had some rather unpleasant recent experience with their kind. They were vampires.
They were all superficially pretty and pale, young and beautiful, dazzling even, with piercing, pale blue or golden eyes. Each had a sort of aura, a magical glamour about them that made them look scintillating and attractive. None looked over thirty and while many of the other undead were plump or misshapen, they were all tall, fit and thin. Only the skeletons were thinner. They were obviously the celebrities of the undead world, the popular kids, but it was all a lie. When she narrowed her eyes at them, she caught flashes of the same dead eyes and corpse faces she had seen when she had first seen Schuyler for what he truly was back in the Impala.
There was a group of five teenage girls, nearly identical, like quintuplets in identical old-fashioned nightgowns. They were all very thin, very pale and very pretty, with long white hair and they clung together in languid poses like pretentious supermodels in a perfume ad. They were quite toothsome and reminded Lucy of a pack of fierce kittens. The second they saw Lucy’s group approach, they hissed like cats and rushed at them. Lucy froze for a moment in terror, but they rushed right past her. Lucy turned to see what their intended target was, only to see them pawing and clawing at the admittedly gorgeous and naked torso of Schuyler, squealing like a pack of ravenous, Japanese, school-girl, pop-star groupies. They even nipped him around the ears and shoulders affectionately.
“Ladies! Ladies! Ouch! Calm yourselves! Watch the upholstery!” Schuyler faked demurred embarrassment well, but Lucy could tell he was reveling in it. He already had two under each arm, while the fifth clung to his waist and mooned up at him running one clawed hand over his rock-hard abs.