The Necromancer's House (24 page)

“What happened to you?”

This is Bob, just outside the church before the AA meeting.

His normally huge smile has been shelved, his twinkling eyes now radiating sincere concern. A few of the others hover near.

“I got mugged.”

He looks like he got mugged, all right.

On his way back from getting run over by an ice-cream truck.

“Where?” the bottle-red mom asks.

“Syracuse. Clinton Street.”

They all nod.

When the others walk away, Bob says, “If you need anything, and I mean anything, don't be shy about asking me. Okay?”

“Thanks, Bob.”

That night is an open meeting. Friends, the curious, anybody who wants to show up can. Not the best night for Andrew to come in looking like a lopsided eggplant who ran halfway out of hair dye, but he needs this tonight. Now. He had slept all day, nearly got talked into going to the emergency room by Chancho, decided against it, but then Chancho mentioned the meeting and Andrew had nodded, holding frozen peas against the side of his face and drooling.

The bruising was wretched, covered what seemed like a third of his body. Getting his cast-off epidermis stomped against the hardwood floor by a Neanderthal version of himself had spared him broken bones and damaged connective tissue, but when he suited back up he started bleeding in six places and the swelling was horrible. His left eye swelled shut, the right one nearly so. He looked a bit like the raccoon he had seen running with the bag of eggs.

First he had seen to Salvador, who swiftly ran out of alarm-triggered dog-magic and changed back into wicker. That had been hard to watch, but then so had a lot of things. At least a wicker arm was easier to fix than a dog's broken foreleg.

Then Sal helped him, got him ice, a bag of frozen peas and ibuprofen, sat with him rotating the ice and peas.

He watched Nadia drag one lumpy, dead Andrew after another out into the lake, far into the lake.

Tiger-killed bodies make a big mess.

Salvador mopped first, and that took some time. Then he spread stain-removing goop on the oriental runner rugs in the hallway, only one of which would probably be salvageable. In the kitchen, he gathered the broken shards of the coffeepot, plates, and glassware, trashed the wrecked blender, as well as the coffee table and several nonmagical statues. He had just been duct-taping plastic sheeting over the kitchen door window when Chancho came over.

Made a face when Salvador opened the door on Andrew.

Some at the AA meeting had made the same face when he walked in. He felt like the Elephant Man.

The looky-loos are thinking I've been in a car wreck, gotten in a drunken fight. Okay, I have done those things, but not last night. It's okay. Let them look. Let them think they're not as bad as me, therefore they're just fine, because if you're still playing that game you probably haven't hit bottom yet, won't make it stick. Some can, but not most.

I almost died last night.

Would have died if I had a bottle of wine in me.

That was.

Awful.

I need to get out of this.

But first I have to get ready for her.

The niece, the relative.

She's so fucking strong.

And she found me.

How?

His eyes widen as far as they can in their catcher's mitt of bruises.

The Jehovah's fucking Witnesses.

She saw them canvassing, maybe they even ding-donged her wherever she is and she charmed them.

Got them to deliver her magic payload.

It's only starting.

I could run, but where?

She found me here, she'll find me again, only next time I won't be in my own house, on my land. Terroir isn't just important for grapes; it's important for users. We take strength from our own land; it's why so many here have at least a pinch of Indian blood.

Flee or dig in?

I could abandon my books, give up magic, go back to Ohio. Or anywhere. She'd like that . . . to take my library without a fight, then find me cowering in Enon and pinch me between her thumbnails like a flea. Crucify me and hang me upside down at the Apple Butter Festival as a big
Fuck you
to Christ, Ohio, and apple pie. I could fight her on the Adena mound, but with what? Dead porcupine guy wouldn't help me; I peed on his grave.

 • • • 

Chancho nudges Andrew, whispers in his ear.

“Hey,
brujo
, you dreamin'? At least look like you care—this guy's talkin' about his mom who beat him up.”

A guy with a curly red frizz of hair and one of those necks that looks like it has an extra joint in it,

a neck like the pipe under a sink

is talking about his mom who would huff gas and drink cheap gin and sometimes work him over with a toilet plunger, but he got away from her and went to college, where he, too, started drinking and found out he couldn't stop.

Andrew writes on his coffee napkin.

Chancho grunts, then writes back.

Andrew flips the napkin.

Toilet plunger mom?

wtf is wrong w/people?

THEY
SUCK
!!!!

ALL EXEPT JÉSUS

he's not a people

PAY ATENCION TO DUDE

he looks like Art Garfunkle

YOU LOOK LIKE A TURD

A Turd? Really?

PORPLE TURD

Now they're both trying not to laugh.

Chancho bites the inside of his cheek so hard a tear falls down his face.

 • • • 

After the meeting, the DUI guy from before, the ejecta from the Lexus, approaches Andrew at the doughnut box. Andrew isn't hungry, but he's standing next to Chancho, who is tucking half a cruller into his mouth.

“Andrew? Right?”

“Yep.”

“I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Jim. Here's my card. Let me know if there's anything I can do for you.”

SIMKO, MOSS and MCALLEN

Jim Simko, PA

When you need a voice

Now it clicks.

He's seen this guy's obnoxious commercials; his billboards are all over Rochester.

An ambulance chaser of the first house.

Probably sidestepped the DUI conviction, used his own dark magic to transmute it into reckless driving, but the AA meetings?

Judge wouldn't budge.

I got a card because I look like a PORPLE TURD.

He manages not to laugh.

He manages not to say three words in Aramaic that would make Jim Simko have a minor seizure in court tomorrow, voiding bladder and bowels.

Ten years ago he would have said those words.

Last night, in his tiger suit, he would have cheerfully batted half the lawyer's face off, then sat on his legs and watched him expire, because tigers are all about impulse.

Now he just takes the card, puts it in his back pocket where he knows it will get mushed into a ball in the washing machine.

I don't like this guy, I don't have to like this guy, but I have no right to judge him. He's doing the best he knows how, just like me.

Oh, but he is a smug bastard, isn't he?

Stop hanging
good
or
bad
on everything.

He just is.

Like that killing bitch who's after you.

No, you can't suburban-Buddha your way out of this one.

No gray area on her.

She's bad.

She's really, really bad.

And she's not going to walk away from this unhurt.

He should give
her
the card.

“Thanks, Jim,” he says.

Follows still-chewing Chancho outside to smoke.

Pats Bob gently on the back on his way out
.

I'm not running.

I'm digging in like a goddamned badger.

Andrew hasn't been on the Internet in a while.

He logs in, holding frozen okra to his head.

He's had the okra for a while because he's meant to make gumbo, but hasn't gotten around to it. Okra works almost as well as peas, but he ate the peas.

It delights him to see an e-mail from Radha in his inbox.

Chicagohoney85:
The car is bombdiggity. Radha is a happy girl. Do you know, I parked it past the ‘no parking to corner' sign right on Clark Street and left it ALL DAY. No tickets, nothing. Just some dude who saw me going into the coffee shop left me a note on the wiper, drew a flower on it, a good flower, and his phone number and website. An actor. Has his own website but hasn't really done anything yet except for some wretched naked musical at the Bailiwick. Which my friends call the Gailywick because everything there is Gay-oriented and sucks. Not very PC, but it's kinda funny. Gay people call it the Gailywick, too, so it's probably OK.

Anyway, the Cooper?

You killed that car.

The zebra skin seats really gave you most favored nation status.

And this is how Radha does gratitude.

INFORMATION!

And you want this.

It's interesting.

This is about Daddy Bear, Yevgeny Dragomirov.

Two things.

One: I dug around in Soviet military archives, not the kind of thing Americans get invitations to see. But I have inroads and people. Dragomirov fought in Stalingrad and Kursk, really heavy fighting, really nasty, some of the most brutal stuff of the war. Kursk was huge, 5,000 tanks mixing it up, more than two million combatants. Hitler was trying to double down after losing his ass in Stalingrad, but he lost more ass in Kursk.

My point is, this was survival of Mother Russia shit, not the kind of fighting you get leave from, and Yevgeny and his T-34 were tangled up in it from November 1942 until at least August 1943. Mikhail Dragomirov was born in December 1943. You might think you see where this is going, but you don't.

I don't think Mama Dragomirov had herself a fling; she was a mousy little thing loyal to her husband and scared of him, too. Busted her ass in a factory that made soldier's boots, belts and satchels.

No, it wasn't her.

There's a twist.

I found record of a soldier, a Gennady Lemenkov, an illiterate farmer from the Urals, who, with the help of a friend who could read and write, sent a letter of complaint to a superior officer about comrade D.

Here's the letter:

Comrade Junior Lieutenant,

I know the danger to our beloved country and so I would not waste your time with small matters. Please believe me when I say, however, that our comrade Efreitor Dragomirov, Yevgeny, steals away from his post to have relations with a woman. This woman follows the column. She may well be a spy for the fascists. She comes and goes as she pleases, and knows tricks only a spy would know. I saw her bring him wine, which he shared with us, but when she left, there was only one set of tracks in the mud, belonging to a snowshoe hare. I saw her come to him as a beautiful woman where he slept in a stable. When she left the moon was out and I could see that she had become an old babka. A costume trick! I know that comrade Dragomirov has been a loyal soldier. I wish him no ill. But please, for the sake of our lives, come to investigate this matter of the woman. Before she can betray us to our enemies. Which I believe she will. Others believe this, too. One simple Cossack whose name I forget said she is a witch, a very bad witch, and that she pulled dead men from tanks and cooked them as her meat, and that was whose smoke we saw in the trees though the scouts found nothing. Another man agreed that she was a witch, (Baba Yaga herself, can you believe it?) but said that she was against the Germans, that she had brought a hard winter to kill them all and that frost went with her in the form of a starving wolf. I do not believe such childish things. But I know she is bad for morale. And I believe she is pregnant now. And even if she is not a spy and not a witch it is not fair that one man should have the comfort of a woman when the rest of us do not.

There's no record of follow-up, at least not from the Soviets.

I'm sure they laughed their dicks off at this guy.

But someone wasn't laughing.

This Lemenkov went chasing a doe a few days later and disappeared. They thought he deserted. But they found him dead, naked, holding a tree. He had been crying; they know this because his tears were frozen on his cheeks.

His eyes were frozen in his head.

The dude who told on Dragomirov froze to death.

In June.

And nobody fucked with Yevgeny Dragomirov again.

Are you following this? He got some spooky witch pregnant at the same time his wife supposedly got knocked up. But his wife took no time off from the factory. Even hardcore soviet chicks take a little maternity leave. Nothing. Nada. Nyitchevo.

You know what I think?

I think that was Baba Yaga, in the woods, with the smoke and rabbit tracks.

I think she walked right up to Dragomirov's house with an infant in her arms and made Dragomirov's wife raise the baby.

I think your rusalka killed Baba Yaga's son.

 * * * 

Two:

I attached a one-paragraph article about a grave-robbing near Nizhny Novgorod.

A body was taken last week.

It probably would never have made the paper, but it was the body of a heavily decorated hero of the war against the fascists. Even in these days, you don't fuck with Second World War heroes. You know how protective we are about ours? The Russians are even more hardcore about their WW2 vets, they worship those guys, and for good reason.

I'm getting off topic.

The point is, it was our guy.

Yevgeny Dragomirov got exhumed last week.

 * * * 

I didn't advertise a three, but there's a three.

Three:

Somebody's trying to hack me.

Hack ME.

Seriously?

I tracked the probable source to the Ukraine, and it shouldn't be long before I have a name and address.

And then?

I bring the whoop-ass.

I'm thinking maybe a . . .

But I'll keep that a secret in case he or she intercepts this.

I REALLY don't think there's much chance of that.

But.

 * * * 

If you ARE reading this, cocksucker, you should think about taking a little vacation, and not going near anything with a screen and a plug until Carnaval season. Or until the Mayan apocalypse comes.

Which it won't.

Except for you if you don't go low-tech, and I mean now.

Which I hope you don't.

I'VE GOT SUCH A COOL SURPRISE FOR YOU!