trigger warning: self harm
I.
The wind smelled like ashes and the air tasted of salt.
I could hardly breathe.
The woman had died on the cliffs below. Her neck had snapped, her bones had broken, and the black sea had swallowed her. It kept her for days before it spat her out onto the cold sand.
She was bloated and blue. The familiar scowl on her face was gone, eroded by the current and hungry fish.
Nobody knew how Mrs. Dena Black had really died.
Everyone thought she had fallen.
The police captain wasn’t too sure about that.
He had called me for help and begrudgingly I left the warmth of my bed and the softness of my fiancee’s breasts pressed against my back.
I didn’t want to be here, but a woman was dead and it hadn’t been an accident. I saw it clear as day.
The sea wasn’t far from Black Manor. And Mrs. Black knew the path so well she could walk it in her sleep. Everyone knew about her affinity for the cliff.
Every day, she is at its peak, right at the very edge, her legs dangling childishly. She spent hours gazing at the churning sea below.
She laughed at those who warned her. Her children tried to reason with her.
“I’ve been doing this since you were a twinkle in your father’s eye. Leave me be.”
She loved the spray of water on her face, the smell of the sea invading her senses.
She had sprinkled her daughter’s ashes there and then, years later, her son’s.
Her remaining children said she used to talk into the wind and pray for her babies to come back to her.
They hadn’t ruled out suicide because she had never recovered from the losses. Maybe she had had enough.
But I knew the truth.
I knew because she told me.
I heard her behind me. Her footsteps had a disgusting, squelching sound to them. She was coming for me because I had called for her. The sooner I had the answers, the sooner I could go home.
Her hand fell heavily onto my shoulder. Her fingers were blue and swollen and as she leaned in to whisper to me, I felt gritty sand on my earlobe, and smelled death on her breath.
“I didn’t fall, and I didn’t kill myself.” She gurgled. “Someone pushed me and you know it. You see everything, don’t you? We both have the same smell. You smell of Hell.”
And you smell of dead fish, I thought.
I wish I could say I was used to this, but each ghost was different. Sometimes they looked as they lived. But other times they appeared like Mrs. Black. Their death was a statement.
I repeated, “Someone pushed you.” The air still smelled of ashes and I remembered the cremains that Mrs. Black had sprinkled into the wind.
“Who pushed you?” I asked. “Did you see them?”
Her laugh sounded distorted, as if someone had sawed at her vocal cords with glass.
The Black family didn’t have the best reputation with the rest of the town.
They were cruel, demanding, and strange.
Creepy.
The townspeople heard screams coming from the manor, and people regularly went missing in their dark woods. Their servants would run from the manor and leave town. They never said why, they just disappeared, never to be seen again.
Mrs. Black’s death was a cause for celebration.
“If I knew, wouldn’t be here, would I?” she sneered. “I wouldn’t need someone like you? Would I, Ms. Necromancer?”
I felt the irritation rise inside of me.
Fuck, it was so cold. The sky was gray, and it started to rain.
Again, I thought of my girlfriend and fantasized about her warm touch.
The sooner I did this, the sooner I could leave. Begrudgingly, I turned to the water and lost myself in memory.
I saw flashes of Mrs. Black’s life.
The abuse from her father, the negligence of her mother. She would escape to watch the sea on the cliff side.
Her parents never noticed.
She spent hours there. She imagined she was a bird and wished she could fly. It would be so easy. So easy to throw herself into the water. But she never did.
Her parents died in an accident when she was a teenager and she inherited their wealth and Black Manor. She met her husband and birthed her first child.
For the first time in her life, she was happy.
But her husband was jealous of her pedigree, the money, and her ownership of Black Manor. The darkness inside of him would bloom whenever he drank. He reminded her of her father.
She grew to hate him, but at least she had her children. She loved them more than anything in the world.
She had 5 daughters and 1 son, and they were perfect. She lived for them and she would die for them.
Her husband went missing one day. They never found his body. I had a feeling about what happened.
I felt her joy after he disappeared; her agony when her daughter committed suicide; the grief that submerged when her son was stabbed to death during a fight at the local bar.
She drowned.
Ashes in the sky and dust in the wind.
She was older and sat on the cliff. Her lips moved rapidly, but the wind drowned out her voice.
And then I saw what I had been waiting for. The moment of her death.
A tall figure stood behind her. She twisted her body to see who it was.
They pushed her, and she fell and she broke. The sea swallowed her whole.
She drifted and awoke on the beach. I summoned her, and she came to me.
I had brought her back to allow her the dignity to move on, to punish the one who had killed her.
I snapped out of the reverie, and before I could stop myself, I looked over the edge.
Down below, the drop was endless. Eternal. What was that saying?
If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back.
Something like that.
But I couldn’t look away.
Waves crashed, and the sea foamed. It reminded me of clouds. I thought of how nice it would feel to lie to them. Surely they would cushion the fall.
The height hypnotized and terrified me.
I took a step and then another. I snapped out of it just in time.
I inched away from the cliff carefully.
Let’s not die again. There’s nobody around you to bring you back.
Not like last time.
After they extricated me from the wreck, they made me live again. I remember the first breath I took and the screams that erupted from my throat.
I screamed while the car burned, and ash filled my throat. I pleaded, and I wailed and I fought as they took me away.
They must have given me something, or I passed out because once again the world went black.
Mrs. Black rasped behind me. She coughed and she wretched and I heard a loud splat hit the ground. The stench made me nauseous. I had to get the hell out of here.
“You’re right. Someone pushed you, but I didn’t see who did it.. Do you know anybody who would do this? Somebody who would like to hurt you.”
Everyone, I thought. Everyone hated you, and as though she heard my thoughts, she laughed and then she grabbed my throat. She squeezed.
She was so very strong.
I clawed at her as I struggled to breathe. I left long scratches on her arms; her face. But the dead don’t feel pain and black, green liquid oozed from the wounds.
She held me over the cliff, and my feet dangled in the air. She loosened her grip on my throat so I could breathe.
“Look,” she said, her voice low.
I didn’t. Instead, I kicked wildly, trying to get back on solid ground.
“I said look.” She said forcefully. She shook me and I looked into the abyss.
What the fuck?
There were bodies in the sea. I counted at least 6. They bobbed like untethered buoys, naked and long-limbed.
I fell into another vision, but this time, I wasn’t a spectator. I was the main character.
I was in the water, my clothes weighed me down. I was sinking. I was going to drown.
I had no choice. I treaded to the nearest corpse and grabbed onto it. It was a woman. She was cold and pale. She looked like a statue. Her features were lovely even in death.
I knew her.
Mrs. Black’s daughter looked just like her mother in her youth.
She opened her eyes; they were milky white.
She caressed my face, slowly, lovingly, and then she smiled.
I looked around as the corpses floated listlessly in the water.
I nearly gasped when I saw him. Mrs. Black’s husband. Not missing, but dead. Of course.
His lip curled as he bared his teeth at me.
There was thrashing in the water, and hands grabbed me. Mrs. Black’s son.He grinned at me and grabbed my hair. He forced my head under the water.
I fought hard and furious and I broke free. I hungrily gulped air. But it didn’t matter. The dead surrounded me and pushed me back under.
They held me down, and I couldn’t escape. My lungs burned, and I saw white.
When I woke up, I was mercilessly on land. My throat burned and my clothes were soaked through. I cried.
Mrs. Black stared at me. She drooled and her sunken eyes rolled in their sockets.
She grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.
“You see them, don’t you? You see my babies?”
I tried to free myself, but she just laughed at me.
“What is this?” I gasped. “What was that? What are you? Your kids were cremated.”
“’No, I buried them and then I brought them back,” Mrs. Black breathed. “I brought my babies back. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You aren’t the only one who can reanimate. I’ve been doing it since I was a girl.” She frowned. “But something went wrong.”
Her grip loosened, and my heart pounded in my chest. If she let go, I would die. The sea would take me.
“Stop judging me,” she said through clenched teeth.. “You did the same. You’re not as virtuous as you think. I know what you did.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I cried. “I help people. I free them. I let their families find closure. “I only bring back those who have something to say.”
She shook me, and a long strip of skin peeled off her face. “Don’t lie to me,” she hissed. “You smell like corpses and death.”
Shut up, I wanted to scream, but my throat hurt too much. Shut up! I only did what was for the best.
I did it for her.
II.
It rained that day. I was driving. You could cut the tension with a knife. Raquel, my fiancée, sat in the passenger seat, looking out the window. Her expression was stony.
We were angry at one another. Lately, we were always angry.
We fought, and we made up, and then we fought again. It was exhausting, and I was tired. I’m sure she was too. But we were both afraid to let go. Neither of us wanted to be alone.
It happened so fast. A car cut us off.
“Watch out!” she shrieked, and she grabbed the wheel. I yelled at her to stop, but it was too late.
The road was slick with rain and as the tree loomed closer; I closed my eyes before the impact.
The silence was deafening.
My legs were on fire, pinned under the console. I tasted blood and my chest felt crushed in. It hurt to breathe.
I turned my head to look at her, ignoring the excruciating pain. I forced myself to look at her.
“Raquel?” I croaked. “Raquel, wake up.” But she didn’t. Her eyes were open and a long shard of glass pierced her neck. I reached to touch her cheek, and the pain exploded.
I died.
I was in purgatory. That space not quite heaven or hell. I walked endlessly down a long black corridor. I walked, and I walked until I heard footsteps.
Somebody ran past me.
Her hair, long and braided, streamed behind her and I knew that smell, the scent of her perfume.
“Raquel?” I gasped and chased after her. She kept running down the endless corner. We ran into the abyss and a light appeared. A golden light that warmed my insides and told me everything was okay.
Raquel looked behind at me. She smiled and then she was gone. She disappeared into the light and I followed.
Forget the fighting and the anger and the days we spent ignoring one another. Life was too short, and I loved her. In death, everything would be fine.
We would be together.
The light felt so good and I couldn’t stop smiling. I would live here eternally. I would be so happy.
But they brought me back, and the pain exploded. But that was nothing compared to witnessing my car catch on fire and watching Raquel burn.
III.
The hospital was my first experience in raising the dead. Believe me, you don’t know terror until you wake up to the corpse of an elderly man staring down at you.
“I called you, but you didn’t come. So I came for you.” He said gravely.
I was alive, but I might as well had been in hell. I didn’t have Raquel anymore.
What I had was the power to hear the dead and the ability to hold their souls and reanimate them.
They whispered to me 24/7. I never got to sleep. I learned that I just needed to give in and go to them, otherwise they wouldn’t let me sleep and I would die (again) from exhaustion.
I hated every bit at first, but I soon found purpose. I had killed Raquel, but I could help others. I could help the dead find their peace.
I had fun with it. The dead are interesting. Some came back looking as they had once lived, others were rotting in the various stages of decay.
They all asked for my help. Whether that was assisting them crossing over or giving their loved ones a message.
With every person I helped, I thought of resurrecting Raquel.
I wouldn’t. I never brought back those who didn’t ask.
Guilt ate at me daily.
Why I fought to keep with her so much?
Was I driving too fast?
Why did she have to die and not me?
Why didn’t I tell her I loved her more?
One day, as I was washing the dishes. I heard her voice clear as day in my head.
“Dena?” she whispered. “Dena? Where are you? Why did you leave me?”
A plate crashed to the ground and broke into pieces.
“Raquel?” I said out loud. “Raquel?”
But silence answered, and I cut myself as I picked up the shattered silverware. Blood dripped down my fingers. I held them to my face and cried.
I wanted to hear her again, but it was as though we were on different channels. Sometimes it hurt so much that I wouldn’t leave my bed.
The only thing that helped was resurrecting those who needed me.
One night, somebody must have seen me in the cemetery. They called the cops.
I was listening to the confession of Celeste Knickerboxer, a petite woman in her 80s who had just died.
She was downright giddy as she told me when that she was 40 she killed her cheating, abusive husband.
She giggled, “And I’d do it again.”
I was confused. “Mrs. Knickerboxer, how is this supposed to give you closure?”
She laughed again. “It’s not. I just wanted to tell somebody.”
I had just closed her casket when two police officers shone a light on me. They asked me what the fuck I was doing.
It was hard to explain and impossible once Mrs. Knickerbocker angrily opened the lid.
“Can you please hurry up! I want to go back to sleep!” She cackled.” I love to watch my husband burn in Hell.”
It was a long night of talking about what I was, how it had happened, and what they were going to do with me now.
The captain looked at me. His eyes were flat and gray.
“Well, we’re going to need you to help us.”
So I helped.
When they called, I went to help them solve murders, collect clues, and locate the missing.
I wasn’t a fan of the police, but this was about the dead and their families.
Days passed, weeks, months, years…My necromancy skills bloomed. I learned how to control it. No more waking up to corpses staring down at me or knocking in my window, face pressed to the glass.
I thought of Raquel often. I hadn’t heard her voice in so long and then one day, my birthday, I did.
“Dena, I miss you. Dena I need your help. The others have said that you’re able to help me. Why won’t you come? Please.” Raquel’s pleaded with me and this time I didn’t hesitate. I picked up my keys and drove for hours to the town where Raquel had been buried.
After she died, I moved. There were too many memories, and too many people hated me. Her gravesite was in horrible condition. It crushed me to see that her gravesite hadn’t been tended to for a long time. Her parents hadn’t cared for her in life, so why would they in death?
My heart beat in anticipation and finally, I did it. I brought Raquel back.
It was wonderful. She was exactly as she had been alive. The only difference was the zigzag of scars across her face. She thought they made her look badass.
She kept questioning me about why I had not come to her earlier.? She was hurt. She felt abandoned.
“I didn’t know if you wanted to come back,” I said. “I only help those who ask. Wouldn’t it be like waking someone up from a nap?”
She pursed her lips at me and rolled her eyes.
“Heaven is boring. “
So that was what happened and for the first time in years, I was happy. We were happy and nobody knew. Nobody would ever know.
Except Mrs. Black knew. Mrs. Black, the necromancer.
IV.
“What do you want with me?” I said. It was suddenly so cold. The sky was dark and rumbling. There was a storm coming, and the rain had become a downpour.
The dead woman stared at me.
“I want my babies,” she murmured.
“They were supposed to be right here with me, but,” she trailed off. “It wasn’t enough…I am not strong enough for this anymore.”
I saw it all.
I saw how she had unearthed her children from their resting places. She laid their crumbling skeletons on the ground, walked to the cliff, and began chanting.
She sprinkled ashes into the wind and I watched as they formed shape and glittered in colors I have never seen before.
Her necromancy technique was so much different from mine. I have never met another necromancer after all. Maybe everyone performed it differently.
I watched as her children’s’ bones fused together and raw skin molded onto their skeletons. In the end, they had a porcelain translucent appearance.
They looked like human sized dolls.
I felt Mrs. Black’s joy, but also her grief and her guilt. She had wanted this all her life. She had spent years studying the darkest of the arts.
“You’re self taught,” I realized. The realization shocked me. “You taught yourself necromancy.”
She sneered at me, her grin horrific because of her lack of lips.
“I’ve been practicing since the age of 10,” she said sharply. “Mother and father were the first of my experiments. It was so lovely.” She whispered, lost in remembrance.
“I killed them again and again. Every time I brought them back, they begged me to stop. Give us peace, they said! But I didn’t. Why would I do that? They never apologized for what they’ve done. They denied it. They never gave me peace.”
Her eyes grew sharp again. “You are not better than me. Yes, my age has changed things.” She admitted. “I could have finished the ceremony alone, but…”
“You need me,” I finished.
My vision blurred. I was back in her memories.
Mrs. Black dragged her son and daughter up the cliff, where her power was the most potent. I watched as she took out a small bowl and smashed ingredients with a pestle.
It hadn’t been ashes she had been tossing into the wind. But a mixture of herbs, crushed animal bones, and desiccated rose petals.
She stood there, and she prayed. She screamed into the wind.
Behind her, her son and daughter rose. They approached their mother on unsteady legs.
Those ghost white hands touched Mrs. Black’s back. She smiled with tears in her eyes and she turned.
They pushed her off the cliff, together as one. Mrs. Black’s face went through many phases. Happiness, surprise, terror. For a moment, she was suspended in the air.
I watched as she plummeted.
She slammed into the rocks below, breaking bones and scraping away skin.
She was barely alive when she hit the water. The water washed her away and she drowned..
Her children looked down at her, expressionless. It began to rain.
Mrs. Black stared at me.
“You knew,” I said. “You knew all along.”
“Of course I knew, you idiot. Who else could it have been?”
“Then why am I here?” I shouted. “What is the point of all of this?”
That grotesque smile again, made up of broken teeth and bleeding gums.
“You are going to bring me back and together we will resurrect my children.”
This woman was out of her fucking mind. I felt bad for her, sure. Her life had been full of heartache. She just wanted her children back.
I brought Raquel back. Wouldn’t me denying her make me a hypocrite?
But this wasn’t the same. She wasn’t a good person.
I only brought back those who asked.
Not a single person had asked her.
Those bodies in the water, the missing, and the murdered. I had an idea who some of them were.
This woman was dangerous, and I would not bring her back.
I shook my head.
“No, I won’t help you.”
She laughed.
“I may be old and self-taught, but I’m stronger than you. I was going to give you a chance, but you are an absolute fool.”
She grabbed my wrists and turned me to face the corpses coming towards us.
They were ghost white. Some had skin sloughing off their forms. They limped towards me like pale zombies. I knew who some of them were.
Her parents, I surmised. Her husband and the missing townspeople. And of course her son and her daughter, their eyes filmed over milky white.
Her grip on me was like a vice. I gagged looking at the maggots that squirmed in and out a gash on her forearm.
Mrs. Black began to sing and chant and I saw her memories, and I saw mine. They intertwined.
Raquel’s cut and bleeding face. The smell of burning flesh in the air.
The man who asked me to help him while I lay in my hospital bed.
A heartbroken woman tightening a noose. Her pain.
Dark red blood pooling on a hardwood floor. The pale face of a young man. The rattling gasp of his last breath.
I grew tired and my body went limp.
I wanted to close my eyes and let her do what she wanted. I was tired. I was so tired.
I just want to sleep. I want to be back in bed with Raquel and want to tell her I love her and I’m sorry.
Thinking if Raquel made me sick with guilt. With my necromancy gone, I wouldn’t be able to go back to her. I had to get back to her.
And also I hate to lose. I wouldn’t let this dead bitch win.
I could not stand the thought.
Anger pulsed throughout me. I felt my body grow hot.
Blisters appeared on Mrs. Black’s skin. They popped. She hardly noticed. She was dead, after all. Nothing hurt her. Nothing physical.
I shoved my memories away and instead focused on hers.
Her daughter’s neck bent to the side. Her body swinging gently, her legs suspended in air. Mrs. Black’s horrific scream when she found her. She fell to her knees.
Her son looked no older than 17. He had provoked the fight, and he watched gleefully. His joy turned into a grimace. Pain. He looked down at the knife buried in his guts.
He fell onto his knees and then onto his back. He cried as he bled out.
So much blood and wailing. My ears popped.
Please, let it end.
I want to die I want to die I want to die!
Leave us alone, mother. We are at peace.
Mrs. Black pored over her books. Days, months, and years went by. And then one day she felt confident she could do it.
It was time.
Mrs. Black gasped, and her grip on me loosened.
I broke away from her and pushed her as hard as I could. I was going to send her back to the sea. I felt elation as she fell backwards.
She grabbed me, and momentarily I was suspended in the air. It was wonderful. I felt like I was flying.
I was ash in the wind.
I fell into the abyss.
V.
Death isn’t as fun the second time.
Everything was pitch black. I walked, but I was getting nowhere. Would I be stuck in purgatory forever?
Finally the light appeared, a glowing gold. Heaven. I hesitated. Did I want this? Did I really want to leave? Did I get another chance to live? It wouldn’t hurt to ask…
“I don’t want to go.” I said, my voice echoing. “Please send me back.”
For a moment, nothing happened.
And then there was light.
I heard waves and the low cawing of the gulls. I was on the beach and surrounded by a crowd of people. EMTs, the police, curious beach goers.
I was dead and there was nothing more to see. The crowd dispersed. The EMTs slowly packed up their equipment and the police captain’s face was as gray as his eyes. His guilt emanated from him like waves.
I gasped and coughed up salty water. I heaved and my chest ached. My entire body hurt, my bones were pulverized. I have never felt so much pain.
It was quiet. Everyone was in disbelief.
The EMTs jumped back into action and worked as fast as they could.
They asked me questions. Did I know my name? What was the date? Who was the president? They documented every injury they could see.
Every bone in my body is fucking broken, I wanted to say.
“How is she alive?” One of them asked the other. “That cliff is a 70 foot drop. How did she survive that?”
I didn’t; I tried to say. I died.
I emitted a guttural wheeze instead.
I wanted to say I didn’t. I had died.
I’m not too sure what happened. I can only make a guess of why I am alive.
As we dropped, I held onto Mrs. Black and again the warmth spread throughout my body. This time, I didn’t take her memories from her. I took the last bit of necromancy she had. I stole and used it. I died and reanimated myself.
Smart girl, I thought. Smart, stupid girl.
It was still possible I would succumb to my injuries, but I would fight to the very end.
They loaded me onto a gurney and one of the EMTs injected me with something.
The pain was slowly fading. I could think clearly again.
I wondered if Mrs. Black’s victims were still on the cliff. If her son and daughter had watched her fall again.
What would become of the halfway reanimated bodies? No souls, they were nothing more than zombies.
I imagined the corpses shambling towards the secluded Black Manor. Another legend for a haunted town. Don’t go into the woods, that’s where the undead roam. They’ll eat your organs and steal your soul.
I knew they would never find Mrs. Black’s body.
I felt bad for the old woman. She had never had a chance. After all, she had just wanted her children. I understood the torture of sudden loss.
Soon, I would be home with Raquel.
I’m going to take a break from helping the dead, I thought.
But I knew I would. When somebody called, I would go.
It’s why I was brought back after all.
aelily 