Necromacy By Tim: Ch 1

Chapter 1

I sat alone on a stool near the back of the morgue. I don’t much like people, and I find that privacy helps in my…methods. See, I’m a necromancer. Now most people get the hibbie jibbies when I say that, but not you right? You are far to smart and attractive to buy into the stereotypes. Well, look they are kind of true. I do spend a fair about of time with dead stuff, and most necromancers do tend to be sociopaths that will sacrifice a baby just to save money on the electric bill. However, I am not like that. I am one of the good guys. Seriously…

Anyway, I was silently doodling away in my notepad while the pathologist’s assistant examined the body. See, that’s not so spooky. The pathologist’s assistant was the only other guy actively breathing in the room. He was a lab tech of some kind, I assumed, no older than twenty-three years old, with an honest face, big nose, and straight black hair that was greased and combed to the side.

“Um detective, sir?” said the goofy looking guy.

“Yes?” I said as I continued working in my notepad.

“Can I help you?” asked the assistant.

Have you ever noticed that when someone asks, “Can I help you?” they mean, “What the fuck do you want?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Why don’t you leave? Doctor Goldman can call you when he is ready to give you the full report.”

I finished the sixth page I needed to complete.

“Ehhhh, I think I’ll wait,” I replied as my notepad snapped shut and shoved it in my coat pocket.

I wasn’t about to leave. It was the fourteenth day of the official investigation into what was called by the media “the red stick ripper.” It was my first day officially on the case. The clock was ticking, people were dying, the Baton Rouge wizarding council’s sheriff was breathing down my neck, and I needed to get to that body as early as possible.

I mean, I had already “seen” the body. It was gruesome to say the least, and that means something when I say it. From what I could tell the body had been ripped to shreds by something big and powerful. The face had been repeatedly pummeled and looked more like a bowel of hamburger meat than it did a person. One of the arms was detached and strings of muscle fiber hung loosely from the stump. The lower half wasn’t so bad, if you exclude a few bruises and the fact that the left leg appeared to have a second knee about mid shin. As far as serial killers go, this guy was particularly enthusiastic.

However, that wasn’t what I required from it. I needed to be alone with the body, and I wasn’t going to let this kid delay that with his pseudo courtesies.

Then a new fellow entered the morgue. He was wearing a white lab coat and had a round face with white curly hair that sat atop his head.

“Oh, Detective Dugas! You plan on making this a regular thing?” he said in a British accent.

I shrugged and stood up off the stool grabbing my backpack lying on the tile floor. Then, I threw the straps over my brown sports jacket. Look, sometimes necromancers have backpacks. It’s unwieldy at times, and people at the precinct look at you funny. However, occasionally you need stuff that won’t fit in your pocket.

“As long as chief wants me on homicide, and you let me do my thing.”

Doctor Goldman turned to face his assistant.

“Ok William, let’s see if you are as good as the man they call Clock.”

Clock is kind of an annoying nickname given to me by other detectives, but it is something of a complement.

“When would you say was the time of death?”

The goofy fellow, William I guess, blushed for a moment and finally said,

“Well… I took his temperature, and it was at twenty-four degrees Celsius. Meaning that, it was probably about nine hours ago.”

Doctor Goldman looked at me as I approached the body.

“What do you think, Clock.”

I cringed a little at the nickname.

It was time to do my necro thing, so I closed my eyes and placed my hands on the cold metal that the tattered body rested upon. I heard the dripping of some faucet that wasn’t turned off all the way, and the gentle patter of Doctor Goldman’s brown loafers as he approached William’s side of the table. I felt the energies pulsing through the body.

See, the thing about magic is that it is everywhere. All things are dripping with it. This is due to the miracle of existence. The simple fact that things exist is so bizarre so incredibly unlikely that something truly magical pulses through every rock, tree, and coffee pot. It flows like a current, and those who practice magic are those who are able to guide and direct this current, to harness it, to give it form, to wield it. But as magical as existence is, life trumps it. If existence is a lit match then life is a roaring furnace.

I reached out to feel this man’s energy, touched the vessel that his being once dwelled in. I felt how the energy of life now clung to the corpse like honey in a bowel turned upside down. I could feel it slowly dripping away. But, from what remained I could feel when this man had lived.

I should probably tell you now that this isn’t something most wizards do, but to a necromancer the ability to sense a past life can really come in handy. Often, when it comes to manipulation of the dead it is good to know how long it has been sense the soul left the receptacle. Sometimes you want a fresh carcass so that the corpse still has some muscle memory and skills that it possessed in life. Other times the corpse may have had some bad tendencies that you may wish to avoid. For instance, I once reanimated a cat with the habit of chasing laser pointers beyond any command or reason.

“Six and a half hours ago,” I said.

Doctor Goldman smiled and shook his head.

“Impressive. I’d say more like seven, but close enough.”

Ha! Close enough! Suck on that, arcane wizards!

“What’s your trick, detective?” asked Dr. Goldman.

I shrugged and summoned the best sheepish smile I could.

“Magic.”

William dropped his goofy mouth wide open.

“But…but doctor the temperature.”

Goldman gestured towards the body with his hands.

“This body has been ravaged. The surface area has gone up too much to hold in heat as well as before,” said Goldman, his accent and gusto making me feel like I was watching a special on the discovery channel.

Goldman grabbed his assistant by his blue scrubs and began to pull him out of the room.

“Now come on, the detective needs a minute,” said the good doctor.

His assistant jerked away form his grasp.

“Why are we leaving for him?” asked the greasy haired kid.

“Because the last time I indulged that man he caught a copycat killer,” said Goldman

William turned to look at me with eyes the size of ping-pong balls as he was slowly being pulled out the door again.

“You…you mean that’s the guy.”

I’m not sure what Goldman said at that point. It was whispered to insure that I wouldn’t hear, so it was probably something super good.

Goldman looked back at me with a big polite grin that I’m all to use to seeing from people. He waived and said, “We’ll be right outside if you need anything, detective Clock.”

“Dugas, my name is Timothy Dugas,” I muttered under my breath.

I wanted to shout this fact, but I suspect that it is best not to piss off the guy who helps me while he is in the middle of helping me. Call it detective’s intuition.

Once the pair had exited, I flipped open my notepad and began to rip out the six pages I had been working on. Each page bore a heptagram with a crescent moon in the center of each. I placed the six stars around the body, two on each side, one above the head, and one below the feet. Then, I closed my eyes, opened one to look around and make sure nobody was watching, and closed it again.

I adjusted my green backpack and spread out my arms muttering the same word over and over.

“Fatuor, fatuor, fatuor…”

Ritual is very important in magic, so are symbols. See this little circus, what with all the chanting and the heptagrams, is just tool to make things easier. I mean some people probably could do this without them, but they are freaks that should get out more. These rituals help a wizard of any type, not just us necros, control the magical energies. Think of magic as a water hose that is always flowing. A wizard just puts his thumb on the end of it. He doesn’t make the hose shoot more water he just concentrates the power that is already there. Rituals, signs, chants, are just like using a smaller hose. They are not required, but they sure are helpful.

Anyway, as I did my thing, I could feel the energies converging at the heptagrams. I guided them, shaped them, and began to use their directed power. I reach across the veil and summoned that which I sought.

Upon the faceless corpse appeared a sort of essence. Like a thin mask the man’s old face appeared on the spot it once sat. Time to go to work.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“No! No! Please, don’t hurt me!” shouted the deceased.

The voice resounded, not in my ears but in my very mind. It was as though, in his shattered form, we had to share bodies. I’m pretty sure that when communing with the dead he who summoned the dead must help make up for the lack of physical form that the spirit is missing. Look, I’m not certain, ok? Necromancy doesn’t exactly have a great wiki.
“What do you see?” I urged once more.

“I see a man, no a monster, leaving the ally! Muscular, slobber pouring from his mouth, Oh God! He’s coming towards me!”

“What does he look like? Tell me more!”

“He… he… he’s gonna kill me!”

Well, that’s probably a fair assessment.

Again I urge him, “What does he look like?”

“Please! Save me!”

This is the problem when communing with the dead, well one of them anyway. They tend to be in the emotional state that they died in. They no longer have brains to process their emotions, so they get kind of stuck.

“Is he hairy like a dog? Or does he have skin like a man?” I ask.

“Like… like a man, but he’s huge! Oh, God save me!”

“What is skin like?”

“White wreal white, with black patches all ova! He’s coming!”

“Go back Mr.… uh…” I began.

It was at this moment that I realized I never actually learned the victim’s name.

“Just go back, before the man. What do you see?”

In that moment the man, kind of, reset. His ghostly mask made a motion similar to swallowing, and he calmed down for a second.

“I’m in da alley. It’s real dark. I, I can hear a car backfire sum ways off. I hear sumthin like, like a beer bottle breakin. I hear sumone walkin.

“Who’s dere?” He gasps.

The ghostly membrane strained against the corpse as the spirit appeared to look around.

“The steps are gettin louda! Who is dere?”

“What do you see? Tell me!”

“uhhhhh, Dugas?” said a new voice in the conversation.

Suddenly, I looked up to see a thin Asian man’s headed poking through a crack in the entrance to the morgue.