Still Not Dead Enough , Book 2 of The Dead Among Us (10 page)

Ag grinned. “You would do anything, eh?”

Anogh dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “Anything, Your Majesty.”

“An interesting thought, my Summer Knight. Perhaps it would be of some benefit to join the two Courts in this way.”

Ag paused, clearly considering the matter. “Very well, I will grant you my daughter’s hand in marriage. But only on the condition you take solemn oath to protect her, to see that no harm ever comes to her, and that should you fail in that oath, you will be bound to the Winter Court for all eternity.”

Anogh looked up at Ag. “I cannot take such an oath, Your Majesty. My oaths to the Summer Court prohibit such an open-ended binding.”

Ag smiled. “Very well, then. Should you fail to protect the Winter Princess, you will be bound to the Winter Court until the death of the Summer Knight. And you may not take his life, nor arrange for another to do so. That’s not so open-ended, is it?”

“But he’s immortal.”

Ag’s smile widened and he nodded. “Yes, he is. Granted, it’s a subtle and fine distinction, but that is enough of a limitation that it will not violate your oaths to the Summer Court. Eh, Summer Knight?”

Anogh lowered his head again. “Yes, Your Majesty. I can take such an oath.”

. . . Anogh had been such a fool, all those many centuries ago. He knew that now, had even, deep down, known it then. But he’d been blinded by his love for Taal’mara, and his need to have her by his side. And in any case, no one would be foolish enough to harm Taal’mara and face the wrath of the Summer Knight and the Winter King.

Yes, he’d been such a fool.

~~~

It was McGowan’s idea to try to raise the spirits of the other victims. “It can’t hurt,” he’d said, “and maybe we’ll learn something.”

If they wanted to go to graveyards and raise the spirits of the dead, that was fine with Paul, as long as he didn’t have anything to do with it. Raising the dead; the whole idea was just too creepy. And then, listening to them talk, Paul realized it wasn’t
they
who were going to raise the dead. They expected him to do it.

“Me? Raise the dead?” he asked, pacing back and forth in Salisteen’s kitchen. “I don’t know anything about raising the dead.”

Paul turned to Stowicz, who nursed a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. “You’re this super, wizard magic guy. Why don’t you do it?”

Stowicz grimaced. “I could, but that’s extremely difficult sorcery, and quite dangerous. It takes days of preparation for anyone but a necromancer. And you’re the necromancer du jour. It’s supposed to be easy for you.”

“But I don’t know anything about necromancy.”

McGowan walked into the kitchen carrying a notebook. “The kid’s got a point, Charlie. None of us really know anything about necromancy.”

McGowan sat down next to Stowicz and opened the notebook. “Take a look at this. I got this grimoire a while back, gotta be thirteen, fourteen hundred years old. Pretty authentic too. Fellow who wrote it was a nut-case monk, but, based on the spells he documented, he was a pretty good sorcerer, claimed to have assisted the Merlin, documented some of his necromantic spells, though he was smart enough not to try them himself.”

McGowan flipped through the pages of the notebook, opened it to a particular page and spread it flat in front of Stowicz, then stabbed a finger at the page. “I think this one. What do you think?”

Stowicz’s head began tracking side-to-side as he read the writing on the page in front of him. Colleen and Salisteen crossed the room to stand behind him and look over his shoulder. Paul pointed at the notebook. “That doesn’t look fourteen hundred years old.”

“Nah,” McGowan said. “That’s just my notes, and some translation. Original’s too delicate to carry around.”

Stowicz nodded. “Ya, this just might do it.”

Standing behind the two men Colleen and Salisteen both nodded their agreement. Colleen added, “But it’ll have to be done at midnight, in the cemetery. And it’ll require a death.”

Chapter 7: An Ancient Invocation

Greenwood Cemetery was on the northwest side of Fort Worth. They arrived about an hour before midnight. Apparently, when a sergeant of the Texas Rangers wanted access to a cemetery at midnight, there were no questions asked. Or maybe Ramirez was experienced at fielding questions about unusual requests.

The caretaker let them in through the main gate. Like the surrounding countryside the cemetery was flat and sprawling. Wide lanes bisected plots of graves situated among large, old oak trees. The whole place seemed peaceful and well maintained. As they spilled from two cars Colleen said to Katherine, “Do you sense it?”

Katherine nodded, “Yes. It’s strong.”

“What?” Paul demanded.

Katherine took Paul’s arm and held back as the rest of the retinue followed Ramirez’s flashlight. “There’s a strong ley line running right through the cemetery. Not unusual really.”

“Ley line. What’s that?”

“You tapped one when you torched my father’s kitchen.” She tripped as one of her high-heels caught on something. Paul caught her in his arms, held her there for a moment, and the old Katherine emerged. “Conklin, you have a one track mind.”

“Hey, buddy,” McGowan shouted. “Get your hands off my daughter. And let’s have some focus here.”

Katherine pulled herself out of Paul’s arms with a laugh, turned and followed the others. Paul followed her. “Ley lines,” she said. “They’re alignments of natural—or even man-made—features of significance, and they facilitate the flow of power between the Realms. Could be an old path people have followed for centuries, especially if it connects to an old monument or place where people gathered, or, for that matter, died or were buried.”

She stopped and turned around to face him. “Let’s try something. Close your eyes and try to clear your thoughts.”

He did, though he was nervous about performing the necromantic spell and it was difficult to get that out of his thoughts.

“Now try to sense the ley line,” she said. “It’s like using the
sight
. This one is strong enough it should be easy for you to sense it.”

Paul certainly felt something he couldn’t define, a sense of personal power, as if the cemetery itself lent him strength. He focused on that feeling that didn’t seem to be a normal part of him, had an impression of something flowing like a river about the edges of the cemetery.

He described it and Katherine said, “Yes, that’s it. We’ll have to practice more ley line techniques later.”

Paul had spent the afternoon memorizing a string of Latin. He knew nothing of Latin, but even the translation McGowan read to him was meaningless gibberish, stuff about “transcending the boundaries of the living,” and “fomenting the corporal life of the hereafter.”

Paul said, “It’s a bunch of nonsense.”

McGowan shrugged. “I told you he was a nut-case monk, probably locked himself away on some mountaintop and smoked the evil weed all day.”

Tandy Simpson’s grave was a flat, marble marker laid flush with the lawn. Tandy Simpson, beloved daughter of Andrew and Laura, had died of unknown causes at the age of nine. They gathered around Tandy’s grave and Ramirez said, “This one I got to before they buried her. Demon stink all over her.”

McGowan had brought along a number of items, including a small cage with a sedated chicken in it. On the ground near Tandy’s grave he placed a crucifix, an iron knife and a flint axe—Paul didn’t even want to ask how he got his hands on a flint axe. By prior agreement Katherine and Paul would work the spell, so the rest of them walked back to the cars and waited there.

Even though he’d memorized the Latin, Paul had a flashlight and a cheat-sheet. He and Katherine stood on opposite sides of Tandy’s grave, though Katherine wobbled a little, trying to stand in the grass on high-heels. Paul glanced down at her feet and did a poor job of hiding the look on his face.

“Listen to me, Conklin,” she said angrily. “This is dangerous stuff. So if something happens to me, I’m not about to die, or go to the hospital, in flats, or, god forbid, sneakers.”

Paul smiled and said, “My mom always told me to wear nice underwear in case I ended up in the hospital.” He leered openly at her ass. “What kind of nice underwear did you wear, McGowan . . . just in case you end up in the hospital?”

She leaned toward him, the beam of the flashlight adding emphasis to the angry glare on her face. “Just the kind you, or any healthy man, would really like to see, Conklin. And if you don’t wipe that leer off your face, it’s the kind you’re never going to see.”

Old man McGowan shouted, “Focus, children.”

Paul bent down, and as he’d been instructed he removed the chicken from its cage. McGowan had sedated it with some sort of spell, and when Paul placed it carefully on Tandy’s grave it sat on the grass quietly, its head lulling lazily from side to side. Paul used the flashlight to scan the cheat-sheet one last time, then bent down, took the iron knife and plucked the tip of his thumb with its point. A little squeamish about drawing his own blood he didn’t press hard enough the first time, then pressed too hard the second time. “Damn,” he said as blood flowed down his thumb and into the palm of his hand.

Katherine hissed, “Be careful! Just seven drops.”

Paul had a small puddle in the palm of his hand. “Can I dump the excess over in the bushes?”

“No. You might raise some other spirit. Here.” She handed him a terrycloth towel and he wiped up the puddle of blood. Then he stood over Tandy’s grave and carefully squeezed the cut on his thumb while Katherine counted the drops and they fell to ground in the beam of the flashlight: seven drops. He wrapped the towel around his hand to make sure he didn’t spill anymore on the ground.

He and Katherine both squatted down over Tandy’s grave with the chicken between them. Paul took up the flint axe in his right hand, held the chicken’s head pressed against the ground in his left hand. Katherine checked her watch, and they waited for a few minutes until she said, “Ok, you can start.”

She held the cheat-sheet in front of his nose, lighting it with the beam of the flashlight. And Paul began the chant.

Thirteen times he repeated it. He started out carefully, reciting the Latin in what was undoubtedly poor pronunciation, but McGowan had told him that wouldn’t make any difference. He didn’t feel anything unusual until he began the seventh repetition, and then a shiver crawled up his spine, though he chalked it up to nerves. But by the end of the seventh repetition he sensed something in the graveyard, as if some undefined essence observed and watched and waited.

The feeling grew with each repetition, and by the end of the tenth he grew exceedingly nervous. By the end of the twelfth Katherine, looking closely at her watch, held out her hand signaling him to slow down. He needed to finish the thirteenth repetition at precisely midnight, so he paced his words carefully. The sense of watchfulness had grown palpable, and in Katherine’s eyes he saw that she too sensed it. And as he approached the end of the thirteenth repetition she twirled her finger in the air to get him to speed up while he raised the flint axe a few feet above the ground. By that time he no longer needed to look at the cheat-sheet, and oddly enough the Latin had begun to make an odd sort of sense. He timed it carefully, following the cadence of her finger like a violinist following the baton of the conductor, and with the last word of the thirteenth repetition he brought the axe down and chopped it hard into the chicken’s neck.

Something in the graveyard snapped with an almost audible twang. Paul’s heart lurched at the same moment, and as the ground pitched crazily beneath him he fell forward onto his hands and knees on Tandy’s grave.

Shouts of fear and anger broke the quiet of the night. The ground beneath his hands churned unnaturally, then a small hand erupted from the dirt and gripped his wrist with vice-like strength.

He looked at Katherine; she too had fallen to her hands and knees opposite him, and another small hand had erupted from the ground to grip her wrist. Behind her a zombie from some cheap monster film erupted from a nearby grave and climbed stiffly to its feet, its rotted face falling away in chunks of corrupted flesh. It lunged toward Katherine, but Colleen stepped in its way, and with her hand glowing with some sort of weird fire she slapped it down. More ghoulish creatures erupted from the ground all around them, tipping over gravestones as their emergence churned the earth of the graveyard.

Jim’Jiminie and Boo’Diddle appeared next to them. One griped Katherine’s wrist and the other Paul’s, and both tried to pull their wrists free of the grip of the small hands protruding from the ground.

Paul looked into Katherine’s eyes, saw his own fear starkly reflected there. A stream of maggots poured up out of the earth between them, followed by the decayed and corrupted head of a small child. In its blood-red, goat-slitted eyes Paul saw the same evil he’d seen in Monica.

Tandy rose up out of the ground, a specter wearing a colorless pinafore over a white dress, knee-high socks and shiny black shoes, her hair in pigtails. She opened her mouth to scream, and a dark, oily cloud of smoke poured forth, enveloping Paul before he could react. It wrapped his heart in a wave of bitter cold, and a malign presence clutched at his soul, dug into it with talons and claws not visible to mortal eyes.

~~~

Katherine saw it all this time, the tiny, childish hands that erupted from the ground to clutch at her wrist and Paul’s. She saw the maggots boil forth, then the decayed head of the dead child emerge between them, then watched as the ghostly child rose up and vomited a cloud of evil. She saw the cloud envelop Paul, watched him collapse to the ground and roll away from the grave.

Jim’Jiminie screamed, “Help him, girl.”

All around them every monster from every horror movie ever made erupted from the ground: zombies and shades and ghosts and spirits. Her father and the older practitioners waded in, fighting them off.

Katherine struggled to her feet, found that again she clutched the sheathed sword in her hand, wondered only for an instant how it had come to her. She staggered across the quaking ground to Paul, who lay lifeless on the ground, the monstrous cloud of corruption slowly entering him through his eyes and ears and nose and mouth. A tendril of it swirled around behind him, beneath him, seeking any point of entry it could find. “The sword,” she screamed at him and held it out, but his eyes saw nothing but pain and terror and fear. Then the dark, smoky substance swirled about her and wrapped itself around her ankles. Her legs went numb to the knees, and she fell forward, landing on Paul heavily.