by Jonah Hewitt
“She has taken the body of this young woman, Amanda, and possessed it for herself.” Moríro explained, ignoring that last retort. “Release her, Amarantha!” he suddenly ordered, “Let her go!”
Lucy pulled her hair back from her forehead and turned from side to side as if looking for a place to hide from her anxiety. Amanda really was two people! It was almost too much to take.
“I’m sorry, godson, but this body is by invitation only,” Amanda said coolly, “Amanda wants me here.” She thumped her fist hard against her chest. “We WANT to be together.”
“Amanda,” Moríro pleaded desperately, “Force her away! Let her go! You have the power. She is a demon! She will destroy you!” Moríro implored.
Amanda just laughed. “DESTROY ME?! She only saved us…me…from dying of cancer, miserable, ALONE! When you were content to let us…I mean me…suffer and die, but only after you had tried to use us to get what you wanted of course.”
“What did she mean by that last part? What did Moríro want with Amanda…or Amarantha…this was all so confusing,” thought Lucy.
“What does she mean?!” Lucy asked.
Moríro took a breath and closed his eyes as if in shame before speaking. “I…I summoned Amarantha into the body of Amanda Tipping.”
“What?! Why would you do that?!” Lucy asked exasperated.
“Answers,” Amanda or Amarantha or whatever she was, replied calmly, “He needed answers. Answers only I could give. And now I’m here to deliver them…in person.”
“What do you want with me?!” Moríro demanded, breaking off the previous thread of discussion.
“With you?” Amanda scoffed, “I don’t want anything to do with you.” She pointed the gun at his head again. “Except for maybe tidying up some unfinished business, perhaps.”
Lucy watched as Amanda stepped forward slowly towards Moríro with dead eyes, the gun fixed on his head. She stepped forward until the gun was just inches from his forehead, her fingers tensed on the trigger. Lucy was convinced she was about to see Moríro get his brains blown out. She tried to look away but couldn’t move. She was frozen in place from sheer horror. She wanted to yell out “Stop!” or something but couldn’t make the words come out. The three teenage boys looked equally petrified into inaction. Moríro closed his eyes and waited for the gunshot, but just as if she could hear Lucy’s pounding heart beat, Amanda looked up into her tearing eyes and her face softened to the kinder Amanda once more. Amanda moved the finger off the trigger and lowered the gun to her side.
“But I didn’t come here to kill,” Amanda said simply, “I came here to save lives, unlike some people.” She turned to face Lucy. “I came here for you, Lucy. I came here to save you from him.”
“What are you talking about?” Lucy demanded.
“Hasn’t he told you?” Amanda looked to Moríro and then turned back to Lucy casually. “Hasn’t he told you the job description yet? The job he expected your mother and now you to fulfill? Hasn’t he told you what it is the Necromancer does? How he maintains the balance?” She turned to face Moríro and adopted a sardonic tone. “If you expect her to take over the family business you really should let her know what she’s in for, godson. It’s only polite.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Moríro implored.
Amanda walked back to Moríro, crouched down and looked right at him. “Tell her, Moríro! Tell her the truth. Tell her what it is you’re supposed to do for Death everyday for the rest of your miserable life. Tell her what your job really is.”
Moríro was silent.
Amanda smiled and rested the gun on her shoulder and looked between Lucy and Moríro smugly.
“What is she saying?” Lucy asked, but Moríro said nothing and remained on his knees, as if utterly defeated. Amanda sneered at him, stood up and walked towards Lucy and let the gun fall to her side again. Lucy’s eyes darted to the gun. At least she wasn’t pointing it at anyone anymore.
“The truth, Lucy. That’s all I want you to know. The truth.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Moríro yelled.
“The truth, Lucy, is that the Necromancer is not the champion of Death, no matter what he tells you. Oh, you have powers. Powers of life and death, but you are strictly limited in how you can use them.” Amanda turned and walked back to Moríro. “Oh, you can call up the dead all day if you want. Summon up all the ghosts and spooks you want. Stitch together dead meat into golems and slaves…” She strolled past the three boys, “Raise the dead, zombies and mummies, call up the shades, the inferi, dis and manibus, and all the infernal spirits and monsters of the underworld and have tea parties, wouldn’t that be lovely.” She looked Sky up and down contemptuously, “Even vampires and other worthless minions if you want.”
“Tease,” Schuyler said playfully twisting the lollipop in his mouth. Amanda wrinkled her nose at Sky, but smiled coolly at Miles, who only looked down, and then she walked back to Lucy casually.
“You can play all day long and all night too, to your heart’s content with all the dead things, but do you know what you can do for the living?”
There was a long pause. Lucy stared into Amanda’s eyes. It was hard to tell if this was the hard Amanda, or Amarantha, or the nice Amanda. Was there even a nice Amanda? Or was it all an act, like Sky in the gift shop or Tim’s fake vampire teeth? She didn’t know anymore.
“No…what?” Lucy asked, both scared and genuinely curious.
“Amarantha!” Moríro interjected but Amanda just smiled.
“Nothing,” Amanda said simply.
“Nothing?” Lucy asked, confused.
“Nothing. Nothing what-so-ever.”
“I…I don’t understand.”
“Ask him.” Amanda walked back to Moríro. “Ask him yourself. Ask him what he would do if he were to come across a gunshot victim breathing out his last.”
“What?” Lucy said weakly, unnerved by the horrifying suggestion.
“Ask him what he would do if he came upon a train wreck with all the victims splayed out and broken on the ground.”
“AMARANTHA! STOP IT!” Moríro demanded, but she went on all the same.
“Or a person dying of cancer. Or a child in the street, struck down by a car while riding her bike, her life slipping away before your eyes. Ask him. Ask him now.”
“ENOUGH!” Moríro bellowed.
“ASK HIM!” Amanda retorted angrily, and then after calming herself quickly said quietly, “Ask him what he would have done had he come across your mother’s broken body just moments after your accident.”
A deafening silence fell over the already tense gathering. Even Sky seemed somewhat shocked and taken back.
Lucy took a step closer to Moríro but didn’t come down the porch steps. “Is what she’s saying true?”
“I will not entertain the ravings of a mad woman…” Moríro began, but Lucy cut him off.
“Is it true?!”
He became imperious and evasive. “I do not have the time to explain the mysteries of the afterlife to an inexperienced little girl while in a state of duress!! I am the NECROMANCER and I do not have answer to novices and…”
“IS IT TRUE?!!!” Lucy screamed at him.
He didn’t answer, but only looked away.
Lucy was numb, and all she could see was the floorboards of the porch in front of her. She wasn’t even aware of when she had fallen to her knees. She looked around at the others. The three boys were standing there, numb.
“Whoa. Dude. That was heavy.” That was Tim. He meant to whisper that only to Sky but in the silence it carried all the way to Lucy. Miles thumped him hard on the arm and took a few steps forward, as if he wanted to say something, but couldn’t think of what. Instead, he just stood there and looked at Lucy helplessly.
“Smooth, real smooth,” Sky said dismissively looking around as if he was embarrassed to be seen with either of them.
Lucy looked at them all, but none of them had anything to say. Finally, her gaze landed on Amanda�
��s face. It was calm, sad and strangely motherly.
Amanda lowered herself into a crouching position so she could look at Lucy face to face.
“You see, Lucy, the Necromancer isn’t Death’s champion. He’s his lackey.” Her eyes shot sideward to Moríro when she said this. Lucy thought she saw a flash of grey light in them for a second, but when they turned back to Lucy they were warm brown again.
“He has all this power, but he can never use it when it truly matters. He can delay death at times, but he can never stop it. Death has forbidden him to. When it really matters, when it is the most important, Death will not let him stop the hands of time and spare one soul, not one soul has been saved, Lucy…ever. Whomever Death marks, he will take, and the Necromancer is the person who makes sure that no matter what, the condemned is pushed, dragged or shoved over the threshold into the land of the dead. And no matter how much death the Great Master decrees, it is never, EVER enough.” She stood up and looked down on Lucy full of pity.
“Death is playing a heartless game, Lucy, and he never loses. He always makes sure the flow goes one direction and one direction only. Like a soulless referee, the Necromancer never takes sides, he only tallies the score, and Death is always running up the score.”
Lucy tried to look away, but Amanda reached out and lifted her chin so she could look her right in the eye.
“That’s what the life of the Necromancer means, Lucy. You’ll be forced to spend the rest of your life with dead things. Tending over them like morbid little pets, making sure they do what they were intended to do, don’t get into trouble, play their little part in this sordid little drama we call life, that we call death. They are your minions. They are there to help you force the living down into that sunless land where we all must go, to make sure none of the prisoners ever escape, except as broken corpses or undead things like themselves who must join up like workmen shoveling coal into a never-ending furnace that can never be filled.”
Amanda paused to look over the odd assembly of dead and living persons there until her eyes fell on Lucy.
“But when it comes to the living, the breathing, the mortal, you’ll have to watch them die. All of them, Lucy. You will spend the rest of your life watching people die, people you could help – strangers, family, friends, everyone! But you won’t be allowed to help even one of them, not even your loved ones, especially the ones you love. You’ll have to shuffle them all off to oblivion, do what the GREAT MASTER says, and you won’t be allowed to do a thing about it. And you will do that for the rest of your life, which may last…centuries.”
Lucy was breathing slowly. Everything seemed to be falling in on her in slow motion.
Amanda stood up and walked closer to Moríro.
“I don’t blame Death really. Death is what it is, a desiccated monster that hardly ever leaves his temple in the afterlife anymore. He was born heartless. It’s a thing, Lucy, a monster. It knows only hunger. All he has to do is step from Limbo into the world of the living to cause endless death. It’s random, arbitrary, meaningless really. Getting mad at it is like getting mad at the weather or gravity. What’s to get angry about?” she shrugged, but something about the performance told Lucy that Amanda was very angry about it.
Lucy looked up at Amanda. The soft, tender Amanda was melting away and was being replaced by the stern Amanda, or Amarantha she guessed. Lucy didn’t much like the stern Amanda, or whatever she was, but the more she looked at her, the more she realized how much she understood her.
“No, I don’t blame Death, Lucy” Amanda said calmly, “I blame, him.” She pointed the gun directly at Moríro’s head again. “The one who has the power to stop it and yet does nothing.”
“Get away from me, you monster,” Moríro spat back at her.
“He’s the problem, Lucy. He’s the pitiless monster that won’t raise a finger to save a dying person. Not even for the godmother who saved his life!” She put the gun close to his head once more.
“YOU’RE MAD!” Moríro screamed at her.
“Who raised him! Taught him everything she knows!!”
“Go back to where you came from. Vete al infierno!” he said simply.
“Oh, we are all going to hell, godson, the only question is who arrives first.” Her finger tensed on the trigger and for a moment Lucy was certain she was going to shoot him.
“Don’t kill him!” Lucy yelled, finding her strength from somewhere. She stood up, staggered, but didn’t fall. “Don’t hurt him,” she said again, quieter this time but more forcefully.
Amanda smiled an odd smile.
“I didn’t come here to kill anyone, Lucy. Quite the opposite.”
“AMARANTHA!” Moríro yelled trying to interrupt her.
“Shut up, Lazlo. I’m talking to Lucy.” She dispassionately pistol-whipped him one more time.
“AAARRGH!” Moríro fell to the ground and held his right eye where she had struck him. Amanda looked at him like someone would look at a dying bug. Then satisfied he had been put in his place for the moment she looked back at Lucy. “It doesn’t have to be this way, Lucy. I’m giving you a choice.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Moríro tried to warn her. She kicked him hard in his ribs.
“Listen to me, Lucy. It doesn’t have to be like this. You don’t have to stay with him. You can come with me.” She held out her free hand.
Lucy looked at the proffered hand and honestly didn’t know what to say or do. She wanted to be away from this place, this mess, so much so it made her ache, but then she didn’t really trust Amanda either. Yet…the thought of a life with Moríro and vampires and zombies, surrounded by dead things?! She just shuddered. Amanda must have seen her eyes flit over to Miles and Sky because of what she said next.
“You can come and have a normal life with me, Lucy, away from all of them.” She shot a contemptible look at Miles, Sky and Tim. “You don’t have to spend the rest of your life tending dead things. You can have a normal life.”
“Normal,” Lucy thought, “What did that mean anymore?” Even if she went with Amanda it wouldn’t be “normal” to hang out with a guardian who was a demonically possessed psycho! Normal was her mom and her old life, but she was beginning to understand that she would never have that life ever again.
“You can have the life you once had and more.”
“More?” Lucy asked puzzled.
“We are necromancers, Lucy. We have powers. We don’t have to do what the Great Master says. We can right the wrongs. We can stop the random, senseless deaths and give death a purpose. We can give life meaning and use our powers to save lives, not just watch them pass, and make sure they die. We can save them, Lucy. We can save them all. We can even save…”
“AMARANTHA! STOP!!” Moríro yelled impotently shouting over Amanda. Amanda just smiled coyly at him.
“W-What do you mean?” Lucy stammered.
“I can’t say more here,” Amanda went on, “But if you come with me, I can promise you that I can give you the life that you want, the life that you had.”
“NO!” Moríro bravely struggled to his feet and stood defiantly. “It is not for you or any man to force the hand of DEATH!” he yelled. Lucy stared at him. What did he mean by that? What were they talking about?
Amanda raised the gun for another blow, but did not strike. Instead, she let if fall loosely to her side. She turned back to face Lucy, it seemed as if all her anger was gone.
“C’mon, Lucy. Let’s go home.”
Amanda held out her hand. It was the kind Amanda.
Lucy bit her lip and pulled her hair behind her ears. She looked at Moríro who had a look of scorn and contempt on his face, but that seemed to be his default expression. Tim was standing there gape-jawed. Schuyler was twirling the lollipop stick in his mouth, eyeing up both Moríro and Amanda, as if he was gaming which side to jump in on. Only Miles looked directly at Lucy. He looked sad and deeply troubled. She met his eyes for a long time. He stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged, as if
totally resigned to the situation and he had no idea what to do. None of them were any help at all. Only Amanda looked encouraging and hopeful, but then she was still the demonically possessed witch.
What did Lucy want? She didn’t know. She didn’t trust Amanda, but she didn’t want to stay with Moríro or the rest of those dead things either. She took a step forward and put one foot down the porch steps. Amanda smiled. Moríro just looked away. As she went, her fingers glided around one of the porch columns and its rough, weathered surface. She stopped and turned. She looked back at the front door and the old house, its peeling paint and mismatched aluminum and asbestos siding. She thought of the room upstairs that still had purple paint on the floor from the accident just yesterday. The fight with her mom. It had all happened here. The small windows and rooms that had never been very bright or comfortable. She had never much liked it here, but it had been a home. She looked out over the drive, past Amanda, the pick-up and the Impala, past Miles and Tim and Sky and looked out at her mother’s garden. Her mother had made it a home for her. It was all she had left of her, and she just couldn’t leave it now.
Lucy stopped, and then stepped back up onto the porch.
“I’m sorry. I am home,” she said defiantly.
Amanda looked both angry and disappointed. “You’re making a mistake, Lucy,” she said in the stern, cold voice.
“You said it was my choice, Amanda.” Lucy tried to keep her voice steady and gripped the porch column even tighter. “Back in the hospital you said it was my choice and that you would never force me.”
Amanda’s open hand dropped slowly. “Yes, I did. But this is the wrong decision. You are not safe here, Lucy. You are in grave danger as long as you are with them.” She gestured spitefully to the boys and to Moríro. “You will see that someday, Lucy. Someday soon I hope. And when you do, I will be waiting.” Amanda began to turn to go, but was stopped before getting half a step.
“You will wait in hell before I let you have her!” Moríro spat at her.