Necromancer
an excerpt

John Visnic unlocked the front door to his home and walked wearily inside. A yawn caught him by surprise as he threw his keys onto a table in the foyer and kicked off his shoes. He knew he shouldn’t have had that third martini at dinner. The damn things always made him tired and there was more work to be done this evening. He’d needed it to deal with that arrogant son of a bitch, Jack Dandridge. There was nothing more infuriating than a man who was neck deep in debt, needed your bank to loan him money, and still managed to insult you at dinner.

He’d endured the usual quips about his ex-stripper wife, the fact that he had no kids, but the man really pushed it when he started talking about John’s hair.

“You know, John,” Dandridge had said through a mouthful of medium rare steak, “In this light, that little ring around your head really does look like a halo. They said you were a saint, but I had no idea they were being so literal.”

He was too old to put up with that nonsense, really, but some deep part of his character refused to take the bait. John blamed his father, God rest his soul, for instilling such an indisputable work ethic in him. The job came first, always, no matter what it was and no matter who was left in the dust. John had rarely seen his father, the man had always been working, and the lifestyle rubbed off. John also knew that Dandridge was desperate and no other bank in the St. Louis metro area would touch him. That put the final serve in John’s court and Dandridge had played his McEnroe card, hoping to upset and rile the banker into being stupid.

John had secured the Dandridge account, which meant millions for the bank in interest over the course of the next five years. Now that he was home, he was going to get started on the initial paperwork to be sent over to Dandridge’s downtown office tomorrow afternoon.

His study was lavishly decorated in oak and leather. He kept a roll top desk with a big executive’s chair. He walked past these and went to the bar where he poured a tot of whiskey and added two ice cubes. This was the workingman’s drink, not something in a glass with a stem, an olive, and gin. Gin, for Chrissakes!

John left the lights off, preferring to work at night by the light of the computer screen only. He rolled up the top on his desk, flipped on the laptop that sat there and sipped his drink while waiting for it to warm up. He smacked his lips appreciatively as the alcohol warmed him from top to bottom. The only thing that could possibly have made the drink any better would have been having a loving wife here to greet him at the door, to ask him how the meeting had gone, and to have already had the drink made. He could have kissed her on the cheek straightaway and left her standing in the foyer just as he’d watched his father do to his mother so many times during his youth.

The bank’s intranet website came on screen and John typed in his password. He’d lived the cliché of looking for love in all the wrong places, having found many bed partners in his life, but never a single woman that he could love or that could love him. Oh, he’d married a few of them in his time, and the current Mrs. Visnic, who was supposed to be spending the weekend at some out-of-state spa and resort with some female friends was undoubtedly shacked up with her latest boyfriend. He didn’t love her and therefore, he didn’t mind that she was getting her rocks off elsewhere. She still took her clothes off for him and did what he asked, when he asked.

Unlike his other wives, Bambi seemed to realize that the fastest way to a divorce and being written out of his will was to act like she was only interested in his money.

John pushed the thoughts out of his head and focused his attention back to the computer screen. He called up the forms that would need filled out by the bank’s loan staff and would require signing by Dandridge. These were forwarded via email to his Vice President with a note explaining whom they were for and where they were to go in the afternoon. Next he called up the forms he would be required to fill out and set them to print. He pulled his drink back into his hand and leaned back in his chair while the printer chattered away.

Mr. Dandridge, he thought. Thank you. You’ll be ensuring my bonus for this quarter and I think I might use that for by that summer home you have for sale down in Lake of the Ozarks. That would bring his total net worth up by another quarter million or so. Not too bad for a fifty-six year old balding banker, John thought. Father would be proud. So proud that another drink was needed.

His head felt light as he stood and when he looked around the room, his vision blurred slightly around the edges. He reached up and loosened the tie around his neck. Visnic knew he was slowly getting drunk but what the hell? He was the President, not anyone else, and it he’d secured the big account. The paperwork could wait until the morning. It wouldn’t take him long to fill out and as long as it was there before the afternoon courier left, no one could really say anything about it. They’d better not, if they knew what was good for them, anyway!

He drained another whiskey, this one straight, and grimaced at the burning sensation in his chest and stomach. He coughed and whooped into the empty air.

He realized now that initial thought that he was slowly getting drunk was off. The room was slowly brightening behind him. It wasn’t the white light of the overheads or the pale reddish glow that would emanate from his computer. The light was pale blue in color and reflected off the walls like the shimmering waters of a nighttime pool. John held up the whiskey decanter and used it as a mirror, trying to find the source of the light.

“Bambi? That you?” he asked and turned around.

John Visnic stared across the room at the source of the light, his mouth hanging slightly open. It hung there, a giant shimmering ball of light, like a blue sun that radiated no heat. The center of the ball looked gaseous in nature, swirling over itself in all directions while the outer edge flared and spiked in all directions. He reached out, fingers splayed, and felt a slight tensing of the air between him and the light. It pulsated sharply and blue rings of light rippled across the walls and ceiling like water rings from a pebble strike.

John dropped the decanter. It struck the floor and shattered, splashing his socks with liquor. The sound acted like a starting pistol. The blue light shot forward toward him.

John dodged to the right, slipped on the wet floor, and landed hard on his knees. The thing sailed over his head, hit the wall with a wet smack, and the room suddenly went dark. The banker rose to his feet and backed away, then ran as the blue light reappeared, flying through the wall like a ghost.

He screamed and ran into the hallway. He slammed into the opposite wall and a picture fell from its place. John ignored it, kept running. He bounded up the stairs, trying to take them two at a time. His foot slipped and his right knee hammered the stair. Pain flared up and down his leg and he whimpered. The blue light appeared at the bottom of the stairs and started up after him. The closer it came the brighter it glowed. There was a certain malevolence about the object that wasn’t there before. With a cry of fear and panic, John pushed himself up the last few steps.

At the top of the stairs he tried to stand and found he couldn’t. As soon as he put pressure on the leg that had slammed into the stairs the muscle in his calf buckled. He used a hall table decorated with a vase of flowers to lever himself back to his feet. Once on his feet he grabbed the vase and hurled it down the stairs at the approaching orb. The vase passed harmlessly through the thing.

“What the hell are you?” John screamed and began limping down the hallway toward an open door. His whole body was bathed in sweat and he couldn’t get breath fast enough. It felt like someone had dropped a lead weight on his chest. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

The blue glow brightened the hallway behind him as he reached the door to his bedroom, threw himself over the threshold and slammed the door. With a quick flick of his wrist he snapped the lock in place.

The orb rocketed through the door. John staggered backwards toward the bed that occupied the middle of the room, threw his arms up to shield his face.
The light exploded into a million tiny particles upon contact with his skin. John felt warmth and happiness, smelled the old familiar scent of baking bread. He had a brief glimpse of his mother cooking long ago. It was a happy memory. He breathed deeply, trying to recall more of that day. His lungs locked and the warmth he’d felt a moment ago was replaced by a numbing cold as he fell backward onto the bed.

NEW *******

“You shot me right there,” she said. “Right there.” And she stuck her finger in the bullet hole, rooted around, as if she were digging for a hunk of gold. The skin bulged and he could see the outline of her finger wherever she moved to. Torrin gagged and slammed the receiver down on the phone and fled the store, leaving Vicky Dergo and her accusations behind.

********************

And why not, he thought. He’d shot her, sure as shit, and deserved her hate. His earlier rationalizations that he’d had no choice had cracked and weakened like the levees in New Orleans, and while he knew the truth in that statement, could taste that fact plainly in his mind and body, like a peppercini on a pizza, it was no longer enough. He slammed a fist down on the steering wheel and screamed into the empty car. All his rage, all his fear, went into that one voiced outburst. When it was over, his throat was a brillo pad and each swallow hurt worse than the last. Te thought the tears would come then, but they didn’t.

***************

Torrin read the section again and set the report down, looked up at Bobby who was staring at him.

“Strange, isn’t it?” Bobby asked.

“It goes beyond strange,” Torrin admitted. “That one, too?”

“Yes,” Bobby said. “Cause of death is listed as suicide, self inflicted gunshot wound to the head.”

“Let me guess,” Torrin said, “Lots of brain and bone on the wall but no blood at the crime scene or in the blood. And the poor bastard had shriveled arteries.”

“One could almost believe you were a detective,” Bobby said.

“Almost,” agreed Torrin. “What does yours say about the heart?” he asked, flipping pages. He scanned Benson’s report and found it here. Signs of infarction. Almost identical to Visnic’s report.

“It says possible infarction.”

Torrin nodded. “Just like this one. And just like Visnic’s.”

“What the hell does it all mean?”

“I don’t know,” Torrin said. “A disease maybe?”

“That was my first thought, but if it was a disease, wouldn’t the ME’s have caught it?”

“I don’t know,” Torrin said. “I’m not a medical examiner. I would think so. Let’s just say yes for now. If not a disease, then maybe a poison?”

“We run into the same problem with that,” Bobby said. “If it was a poison, you’d think it would be listed.”

“Unless you can only detect it in the blood, which is why the blood is gone in all three victims.”

“But where did it go, Torrin?” stressed Bobby. “There wasn’t even a needle hole in Visnic and the other two died in ways that there should have been blood everywhere. That would indicate the blood was taken before they died, which is impossible, too.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Torrin said. “I don’t have a single idea in my head that makes sense.”

“Throw one at me that doesn’t make sense then.”

**********

And, he wondered, just like Vicky Dergo had said, what would his daughters think of him then? Would he still be their hero or would he be transformed into a paragon of evil? He didn’t think he could handle his daughters looking at him with anything less than love. It was his responsibility, his fucking job, to protect them from the horrors of this world. Instead, he’d invited some of those horrors into their life, and they were currently hiding, waiting to leap out with fangs and claws exposed like the proverbial closet monster.