Necromancer Awakening (2 page)

Mr. Landing looked as if he’d been slapped.

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Nicolas said. “I’m late for my father’s funeral.”

The air was crisp in the parking garage, and Nicolas put his arm around Kaitlyn when he saw her shiver.

“Thanks for being so good with lunatics,” Nicolas said.

“I was about to bite his head off.”

“Landing’s the biggest asshole in the asshole kingdom, true. But I was talking about me.”

“You’re not crazy. You’re just…sanity-challenged.”

He laughed and ran his fingers through her hair. The red highlights were always brighter when the sun hit her from behind like this.

“We have to hurry,” Kaitlyn said. “You can play with my hair later.”

“Oh can I?” Nicolas said through a grin.

Kaitlyn rolled her eyes.

Nicolas grabbed her keys away and made a show of opening the door of her beat-up ‘91 Mustang for her.

They drove out onto the I-35 and he swore. He hated Austin traffic. Always bad, no matter what time of day.

He felt nauseated again but he shrugged it off.

“You ok?” Kaitlyn asked.

“Didn’t eat this morning.”

“I tried to make you something.”

“I’m trying not to throw up here.”

The wave of nausea passed as they pulled into the funeral home’s parking lot. He felt odd. A few minutes ago he was about to throw up in Kaitlyn’s car, but now he could run around the block without breaking a sweat.

The chapel was in the center of a cemetery that ran for at least a mile in every direction, and every time he passed a gravestone his head swam.

“You’re not hung over, are you?” Kaitlyn said.

She took his hand and led him into the chapel.

Flowers lined the center aisle, filling the room with a sweet fragrance that intermingled with the colognes and perfumes of the people in attendance. An organist pounded out a hymn as if the solemnity of the ceremony hinged on how hard she could press the keys. Colleagues and family of Dr. Murray packed the pews, and Nicolas worried they wouldn’t find seats. His eyes were drawn to a long, brown casket in front of the altar. A portrait of Dr. Murray rested on an easel next to the casket.

Nicolas had taken that photo on Easter Island a year ago. A Rapanui elder was presenting Dad with an award for his self-sacrificing contribution to Rapanui culture. Dad had tried to turn it down, holding up his hand and saying “no” through his grey beard, but the elder insisted. Even his long, graying hair seemed embarrassed, flying away from the elder in a strong gust of wind that had almost pushed Nicolas off the boulder he’d been standing on.

I’ll never take another picture of him.

They found seats near other family members and close friends. People took turns greeting Dr. Murray’s surviving brother and sister. Both were in their sixties, just like Dr. Murray, and both had the same square jaw and prominent cheekbones. Nicolas wanted to go over and talk to them, but they had been against his adoption, so he doubted they’d want to be close now.

The ceremony began with a hymn before settling down into a biblical reading. Nicolas tried to pay attention, but he felt hyper, like he needed to run and burn some energy off before it burned him up.

The minister stepped up to the podium.

A violent wave of nausea hit Nicolas. He leaned forward in his seat and took a deep breath, trying not to vomit.

The man behind him leaned forward and whispered. “Your dad was a great man. He’ll be missed.”

“Brothers and sisters,” the minister began in a low baritone. “We are gathered here…”

Something solid struck Nicolas’s chest with a force that crushed him back into his seat. Images of people and places he didn’t know flooded his mind.

“
…today to recall…
”

It felt as if someone had hooked his heart up to a car battery. In his mind, he watched through the eyes of a burly man in mechanic’s overalls as he stabbed another man in a tweed suit. Nicolas, the murderer, shouted, “You wanted my wife? You can have her. She’s next.” He dropped the bloody knife to the floor, and the jealousy and rage of the mechanic consumed him.

“
…the life of…
”

Another jolt made his heart stutter, and the dead man morphed into a little girl with blond pigtails, who clutched her teddy bear and trembled. This time he was a middle-aged man in a bathrobe, towering over the girl and beating her without mercy. The girl cowered away, but Nicolas, the abuser, punched and kicked her. He felt disgust and hatred, not because of what he witnessed, but because he felt as if the girl deserved it. He was still Nicolas, yet also this monster of a man, kicking and beating a little girl.

“…
a great friend and…
”

A third electrical shock. The girl blurred into an amorphous blob that transformed into a baby boy. Nicolas was a young woman wearing a white slip extending down to her—his—knees, and carrying the crying infant in his arms. The smells of soap and lotions intermingled as a smooth jazz piano played on an old gramophone. A high-pitched tenor voice threaded through the notes of the piano, singing the lyrics to “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, but the tenor was drowned out by the sound of running water. Nicolas stroked the child’s hair as she—he—stepped into the bathroom. The crescendo of music and lyrics combined to mask the wailing of the infant, and as the music subsided, Nicolas plunged the infant into the tub and held him underwater until the flailing of his tiny limbs stopped.

Nicolas shook his head, desperately trying to erase the horrific images. What part of his mind could harbor these disgusting thoughts?

“…
colleague. A great archaeologist and humanitarian.
”

What?

Had all these things happened in less time than it took the minister to finish his sentence?

He panicked and tried to stand, but another forceful blast of energy, and stream of horrific images, struck him. If this continued the images would kill him. There was no way he could live with that much evil on his conscience.

He looked at Kaitlyn, and the sight of her face expelled the hatred and evil from his mind. He felt an invisible wall go up between him and whatever was trying to kill him.

The force reversed direction.

His heart raced as the energy radiated away from him. There was a primal satisfaction that accompanied this release of power, and it scared him.

Kaitlyn elbowed him and gave him a dirty look. The energy field surrounding him collapsed and his mind was present in the chapel once more.

“What the hell?” Kaitlyn whispered.

He started sweating as the panic grew worse.

I can’t be here.

He squeezed past the people sitting next to him. He might not make it out of the chapel, but he was determined to make it out of this pew.

“Nick,” Kaitlyn said in a louder voice.

He stumbled over the person at the end of the pew and escaped into the main aisle.

Another wave of nausea struck him. He had to get out of the building.

The parking lot made him feel better, but not much. The energy was there but subdued, just out of reach as if he had passed through an invisible barrier. He leaned onto the hood of Kaitlyn’s car and waited for the nausea to pass.

“Are you ok?” Kaitlyn said, running toward him.

He tried to speak, but dry heaves sent him into a fit of retching.

Kaitlyn rubbed his back until the heaving subsided.

When the nausea passed, He stood up and covered his mouth with the back of his fist.

“Better now?” Kaitlyn said.

He shrugged.

“Let’s get you back home then.”

“Gotta go back.”

“Like hell you do.” She grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around. “You’re going home.”

“But my dad—”

“Isn’t here. And wherever he is, he understands. Now get your ass in the car.”

How could this happen today of all days? The man who had saved him from life in a children’s home and had given him a name and a future was lying dead in a wooden box, and he couldn’t attend the funeral because of an upset stomach?

No. He’d sit in that pew if he had to hold a bucket in his lap.

To hell with it!

He stepped forward.

Images of one atrocity after another assaulted him. Light strobed in his mind. He shot three people in the back of their heads as they knelt, then cut the tongue out of a witness to silence him. Strobe. He tied a woman down and injected her with heroin to make her more compliant. Strobe. He lit a cross on fire, and in its merry light, slaughtered the landowner and his family when they fought back. Strobe.

He collapsed and clawed at the ground, pulling himself back toward the car, and as he crossed that invisible line in the pavement, the images stopped.

He pushed himself up onto shaky legs and leaned against the car.

“Ok,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Give me the keys.”

“I can drive.”

Traffic was worse on the way back, and Nicolas cursed whoever designed the roads in Austin. Every time the car hit a bump, he thought it was the strange energy coming back.

“We can go to St. David’s,” Kaitlyn said.

“No hospital. I just need to go to bed.”

“Hospitals have beds.”

“Toby needs me.”

“Excuse me, but Toby wouldn’t eat if it wasn’t for me. Do you even know what brand he eats?”

“Puppy…dog nuggets.”

“Puppy dog nuggets. Wow, Nick. Just…wow.”

He pumped the brakes behind a moving van as he turned onto 24th from Guadalupe and swore.

His apartment building was only a block away, but a long line of cars stretched out in front of them.

“I can’t see anything,” Kaitlyn said. She craned her head out of the window.

“Accident,” Nicolas said. “Police and stuff.”

“Paramedics are working on someone on this side,” Kaitlyn said. “Whoa, they brought out the paddles.”

Nausea churned in his stomach. He put the car in idle, leaned out the window to heave, and a blast of energy entered his mind, replacing the nausea with vitality and power.

He could see it this time…a random stream of images accelerating toward him.

“Another ambulance,” Kaitlyn said.

He braced himself for the insanity the images would bring, but they carried a different set of emotions this time. He was an older man, swinging a little boy in a circle. The boy giggled with glee, and a sense of love and devotion filled Nicolas. As the boy spun, Nicolas saw his reflection in the window.

“It’s Mr. Landing,” Nicolas said. A frightening realization formed in his mind. “He’s dead.”

“No, they’re still working on him—”

“He’s dead. He was a good man. His grandkids….”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

A powerful force struck him and he was consumed by a dark stream of images.

He was Mr. Landing, only eighteen years old. The mugginess of the jungle outside of Nam Dong was oppressive, and the VC was out here somewhere. The crescendo of chirping insects made it hard to hear anyone approaching. He checked the twenty-round magazine on his M16 for no other reason than nerves. He knew how many rounds he had left. He’d loaded his usual eighteen and hadn’t fired a shot.

But a vicious and unseen enemy was stalking him through the dense foliage. His life was in danger, and his body trembled from an adrenaline rush. Where was the enemy? For that matter,
who
was the enemy? It was impossible to know.

Twigs snapped by a nearby tree, silencing the roar of the chirping insects.

Panic.

He lifted his rifle with unsteady hands and aimed it at the tree.

Movement!

He screamed and unloaded the M16 toward the tree.

The dull thud of a body hitting the ground was amplified by the silence of the insects. Dirty bastard tried to ambush him, but he’d been ready for it.

When he saw the body he grew cold and dropped to his knees.

It was a small child. His face was drawn, gaunt as if malnourished, and he was covered in scratches.

Landing, in a daze, saw the rest of his patrol running over to him, but the sound wouldn’t register. His hands trembled, and the shakes spread throughout his body until he collapsed next to the tree. He looked away from the boy, but the trembling grew stronger. By the time the patrol reached him, he was screaming the same word over and over.