#THE_UNKNOWN (A series of short horrifying tales)
   
Author: Sam Freddy
   
Issue 4: NECROMANCER.
   
Part 8
   
    “What the f–” was what I shouted at the gruesome sight before me. “Are those bullet wounds?”
   
    Currently, I wasn’t sure what to be more freaked out by; whether the disgusting wounds on the necromancer’s head or her half-decayed wrinkled face, which seemed youthful on one side, and aged on the other. Subconsciously, I dropped the veil as we all watched in horror. Even Lalita was stunned beyond measure, as though she’d never seen her mother that way before.
   
    “Oh, my God!” screamed Sewa, covering her mouth with her hands and rising from the floor. “What is that?”
   
    “Mom, what the heck happened to your face?” Lalita asked, wide-eyed. “Why’s your head bleeding?”
   
    Silent and enraged, the necromancer seized me by the neck and dragged me up to my feet, peering me in the eye with hellish, bloodshot eyes. “You!”
   
    For a woman her age, she packed so much strength than her body should have, considering she lifted me with just one hand. The force with which she used in slamming me against the wall spoke volumes beyond what we saw physically. It was almost like she was half young and half old, a deadly combination.
   
    As I struggled to breathe, gripping the woman’s repulsive hands, Sewa said, “Great one, what are you doing?”
   
    “What I should’ve done a long time ago,” she snarled, pressing her clawlike fingers into my neck. “You stupid, ignorant youths!”
   
    A loud thunder boomed at the end of her speech, giving a sinister effect to the moment, the lightning providing a quick flash on her monstrous face through the window.
   
    “But, mom, why’re you doing this?” Lalita, who was now standing, demanded rawly. “Leave him alone!”
   
    “Stay out of this, Lalita. This does not concern you!”
   
    “I think it does,” she argued, earning a deadly look from her mother. “In fact, I think it’s all starting to make sense to me.”
   
    “What are you talking about?” asked the necromancer, tightening her grip on my neck, strangling me brutally.
   
    “Mom, I’m seventeen years old, but I’m not stupid, you know?” Lalita stated confidently, her eyes locked with her mom’s. “This whole thing you’ve been doing would be your nemesis tonight. I’ve observed how you manipulate youths under the guise of helping them, just to sap their youthfulness for your selfish interest. I’ve always suspected that your seasonal beauty isn’t natural because one moment you’re prettier than Snow White, and the next you’re hiding your face with black veils, claiming that it’s a mandatory practice for your so-called fetish rites. Am I wrong?”
   
    Shutting my eyes and reopening them quickly, in-between suffocation, I noted the epic surprise on the necromancer’s face, as though she was convicted for a crime she didn’t know was known to her own daughter.
   
    “That look says it all. You’re guilty,” Lalita nodded slowly, motivated to proceed. “I’ve had my suspicions about you, but I took them lightly because I trusted you. I thought that underneath that fierce cloak of sternness was a kind and loving mother, but now it’s clear that you’re a callous person who tricks young people with this facade of fortune-telling to steal from them. If I’m correct, you diabolically tap from young girls’ beauty to look young, and then suck the men’s lifespan to extend your days on Earth, yes?”
   
    At this point, the necromancer dropped me as a result of extreme shock, facing trial from her offspring. The shock induced by Lalita’s confession outweighed what I felt whilst coughing and regaining my breath and composure.
   
    “Lalita,” Sewa’s voice was heavy, her lips quivering, “is this all true?”
   
    Lalita nodded, proceeding with, “As a matter of fact, there’s been reports of some missing persons in this town, whom just coincidentally visited this place weeks before their mysterious disappearance. You must’ve heard about them or seen their pictures pasted all around at strategic places, right?”
   
    “Yes.” Sewa and I nodded, and I cleared my throat and said, “Yes. Till this day, they haven’t been found.”
   
    “Well,” Lalita gazed at her helpless mother, “do you mind telling us how a group of college students that visited you for divine intervention varnished without a trace, mother?”
   
    “You dare stand before me and question my authenticity?” The old lady’s voice commanded another thunderbolt, balling her hands into fists. “Since when did you become so audacious?”
   
    “Since the day you fell off the path of righteousness and started sacrificing people’s souls for your benefit,” Lalita clapped back, unfazed by her mother’s show of dominance. “I’ve read enough books in your chambers and researched on the sorcery we possess, and if there’s anything I learned, it’s that our lineage was all about goodwill. Our generation was built on kindness and benevolence. The long line of witches we descended from were a blessing to the Earth, helping people all around them, not what you’ve turned it to.”
   
    I could sense the necromancer’s blood boiling as the veins in her clenched hands protruded, offering Lalita the deadliest look I’d ever seen, with a mixture of red and black blood sliding down her face from the gaping holes on her half-bald head.
   
    “Well, well, well, I see you’ve got it all figured out,” she started clapping, appearing even deadlier. “Yes, I strayed from the path of our ancestors and turned rogue, so what? I shelved my conscience to feed on people’s lives, so what? You’re talking like you don’t know how cruel people are. All my life in this city, no single person has ever shown genuine love to me, except Sewa who stands here…”
   
    I glanced at Sewa who swallowed hard in silence, listening attentively.
   
    “She’s been so different from the rest of her kind who only see us as freaks and misfits of nature, and that’s the only reason why I’ve never tapped from her life source. She’s gifted with divine vision and understands that having powers doesn’t make you weird,” the necromancer explained, her temper rising fast. “You, of all people, should know how cruel humans can be. You’ve had your fair share of mockery and discrimination from your peers at school, just because you’re my daughter. You’ve been bullied, spat at, sidelined and neglected, which has massively contributed to your cold and reserved nature, and here you are, defending the same people who condemn us?”
   
    “Look, mom, I understand everything you’ve said, but that’s the beauty of life, can’t you see?” Lalita reasoned, gesticulating erratically. “I’ve come to terms with reality a long time ago. Not everyone would like you in life, and that’s okay. People are bad, but not everyone. Even if it’s the love from just one person like Sewa that stands out, be glad and hopeful because it means that there’s still some good left in the world, which’ll spread with time. Good people are rare, yes, but they still exist. You shouldn’t lose hope in humanity.”
   
    “I’m afraid that’s too late,” the angry woman said, looking down. “You know, you were right.”
   
    “About what?” Lalita said.
   
    “About our ancestors’ benevolence,” she said. “I may have fallen a little bit off track, but this is still my own way of helping the world. I’m exterminating the bad seeds from this world, one by one, and that’s why I killed those college students and buried them in the woods after convincing them that we’d need to carry out a sacrifice there.”
   
    We all gasped in horror.
   
    “Stupid kids came to me asking about their future, wanting to know if they’d be rich, successful and famous, after talking smack about me before entering the shop. They didn’t know I could read minds and smell conspiracy from miles away, yet they expected me to help them like a slave, thinking they were doing me a favor by stopping by and paying a few cents for my services,” she added, sounding spiteful at the memory. “So, I led them to their deaths, after sapping their souls dry, of course. And so shall be the fate of anyone that crosses us again, I promise.”
   
    “My God.” Sewa’s mouth fell open, resulting from extreme shock. “I can’t believe this.”
   
    The woman’s face bore some sadness on seeing Sewa’s mystified state. “My dear, you have to understand that there’s a reason for my actions,” she said to Sewa. “You’re in this, too. You know how inconsiderate people are, like the first time you told this man about your special power of sight,” she turned to me. “What did you think? Tell us your initial thought, and don’t you dare lie because I’ll know.”
   
    Shivering, I went down memory lane. What was my initial thought about Sewa’s gift? Did I embrace it wholeheartedly, or bask in doubt and label her as a freak of nature?
   
    I was too ashamed to speak. Even I was guilty of the necromancer’s opinion about people.
   
    “See? He’s embarrassed because he thought lowly of you in the first place,” a jolly, fat smile graced the woman’s face, knowing she was right. “And that’s exactly why I’ve tried to kill him, too, but your intervention has ruined my plans.”
   
    “I don’t understand.” Sewa said, deep in confusion. “What do you mean?”
   
    “Oh, come on!” the woman scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Did you really think those so-called ghosts you saw were his parents?”
   
    My heart leaped and backflipped. What was she talking about?
   
    “You must’ve seen the signs already,” she confessed, biting the tips of her dirty, scrawny, long fingers. “I was behind everything, everything entirely. Your family’s ghosts were never here or after your life. The presence you’ve always felt was mine, the spirits you saw were simulated, mind manipulating tricks. That was just me sitting here and haunting you because, as you can see, the rituals I do with young people wears off quickly and needs constant renewal. You were my next big target to extend my lifespan until I could find a female victim to use and replenish my fading beauty, but Sewa just kept interfering and saving you!”
   
    “Jesus!” Sewa uttered, covering her mouth again.
   
    “Don’t say that name here!” The necromancer’s face squeezed up, casting a hateful look at Sewa. “You were never in the picture, Sewa, but the more you interfered with my schemes, the more you drove me over the edge. So, I was forced to possess your friend, Dorothy, to keep you at bay, at least. Back there, I never intended to stab you to death, believe me. I know I pressed your eyes at some point, but I never wanted to kill you. All I wanted to do was stab your shoulder to weaken you, but this moron shot the girl dead before I got the chance.”
   
    Sewa and I had the same expression on our faces—indescribable shock! Who would’ve thought that the necromancer was behind our problems? Who would’ve ever imagined that the same person we believed was on our side was the one tormenting us in actuality?
   
    I had no idea how to react, what to say or do about this all. All I could do was stand still and ponder over this entire shocking plot twist.
   
    “Ugh! Screw this!” Lalita walked past her mother to the back of the oak tree and returned with a cracked baseball bat, swinging it in the air like a lethal piece of weaponry. “I’m sick of your bullshit!”
   
    “And what are you going to do with that?”
   
    “This!” She leapt forward and dealt a lethal blow on her mother’s back, straight to her spine.
   
    The necromancer crashed on the floor, yelping and grabbing the affected area in pain. Lalita lifted the bat to strike again, bearing no compassion for her mother, but Sewa raised her hand and signalled for her to stop.
   
    “Come on, let’s get out of here.” Lalita breathed out, lowering the stick.
   
    “And go where?” I asked, clueless.
   
    “Somewhere,” she said, swinging the bat side to side on her way to the door. “Anywhere else but here.”
   
    Choiceless, we followed her out of the fetish chambers, and she locked it outside, trapping her mother in. She then tossed the key out the window and glanced at us before walking off with the bat on her shoulders and her arms supporting it behind like the comical Harley Quinn.
   
    Sewa and I exchanged glances, quietly, and continued following her lead. I was certain that Sewa thought exactly as I did about Lalita’s dangerous tendency and how strong-minded she was to harm her own mother without remorse.
   
    But as we arrived at the entrance of the shop, we discovered that the door wouldn’t open. No matter how hard we pulled the handle, it didn’t budge, as though it was glued to something invisible.
   
    Lalita even backed up and kicked it karate style, but it stood strong like her attempt meant nothing.
   
    “It’s jammed! This is my mother’s doing,” she said, glancing back at her mom’s door, her breathing haggard. “She’s trying to box us in.”
   
    “Is there no other way out?” Sewa asked, panicking. “A back door or something?”
   
    “I’m afraid not,” she replied, looking around. “But, wait, right there!”
   
    We watched as Lalita rushed to a glass window and raised the bat up high, and out of desperation, she started shattering the glass with blows after blows. The breeze started blowing in heavily, carrying droplets of rain with it.
   
    “Come on!” She called us, attempting to jump out the window, but all of a sudden, she fell off the low ledge and started sliding back in that position, being dragged by something abstract, unseeable.
   
    “What’s happening?” I shouted, not because I didn’t know the force behind it, but because I was confused and scared. But I got no reply whatsoever. Sewa was busy running forward to help Lalita from the invisible force, and I joined in too, but we were too late because Lalita ended up in her room without the baseball bat and the door shut itself immediately.
   
    We would’ve tried to rescue her, but immediately her door closed, the necromancer’s opened with a big, loud bang. Terrified to death, me and Sewa’s eyes swerved in that direction to see a crooked figure lumbering towards us like the undead, a zombified walking pattern.
   
    “You idiots!” She snarled aggressively, quickening her steps with bloodshot eyes. “I’ll deal with you both so bad that you’ll wish you were dead!”
   
    Hardly had she finished speaking when the bat started floating in the air and tried to hit our heads from behind, but we dodged it, and it rolled by, straight to the necromancer’s hand, which caught it in midair.
   
    Meanwhile, Lalita was banging furiously on the door and trying her best to be free from entrapment, but all her efforts were in vain. “Sam! Sewa!” She called from inside. “You guys should run! You don’t stand a chance against her! Go!”
   
    Hearing that, Sewa and I opted for the broken window, but before leaving, I grabbed an ancient axe from the wall and a torch on the counter because the lamp we came with was kept in a locker with our shoes and phones before we entered the necromancer’s shrine.
   
    Now, outside the shop, in the dead of night, surrounded by the blistering cold and the lessening rain, I held Sewa’s hand and walked barefooted with the torch lighting our way, while she held the axe for me. I wasn’t familiar with this terrain behind the antique shop, especially in the dark, so we soon found ourselves in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees.
   
    “We are in the woods,” Sewa observed, beyond scared. “We should go back.”
   
    I agreed with a nod and turned around, ignoring the prickling sensation under my feet, just to realize that we were lost. I didn’t understand how, since we just walked in here, but nothing seemed recognizable anymore. Even Sewa couldn’t pinpoint where we followed.
   
    In the middle of this confusion, we started hearing classical music playing from nowhere. The loud rhythm of the instrumental kicked in first, frightening us, and then the lyrics followed:
   
    “It’s close to midnight, and something evil’s lurkin’ in the dark . . .”
   
    I knew that song—Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
   
    The lyrics came off as a major coincidence, matching our present situation and intensifying our fears, but we couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
   
    “Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart . . .”
   
    Something suddenly moved past the trees behind us and rustled the bushes, but we didn’t see a thing when I pointed the torch there. Our only sources of light were the dim torch and the moonlight itself, which seemed more like a blood moon now.
   
    “You try to scream, but terror takes the sound before you make it . . .”
   
    Now, it was getting creepier as the music screwed with our minds. We couldn’t just stand there and wait to die, so we began to trace the sound at once, desperate for survival.
   
    “You start to freeze, as horror looks you right between the eyes… You’re paralyzed! ’Cause this is thriller, thriller night! . . . And no one’s gonna save you from the beast about to strike . . .”
   
    Where the hell was this song coming from?
   
    “You know it’s thriller, thriller night! . . . You’re fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight!”
   
    As the chorus ended, we stumbled on an old gramophone buried under a pile of bushes—the source of the music—and I stooped, unpinned the disk and tossed it away. Afterward, I collected the axe from Sewa and smashed the record player to pieces, thinking we’d been liberated, but that was only the beginning of our problems.
   
    The rattling in the bushes resumed, seizing our attention and forcing us to target the flashlight there. Adesewa kept the light focused, while I posed for battle, prepared to slash anything that walked out to death.
   
    As the disturbance loudened and neared us and I raised the axe higher to strike hard, Lalita popped out of the bush like a deer, wide-eyed, startled to see a blunt axe towering above her head.
   
    “Whoa, whoa!” She exclaimed, raising her hands so that the lamp she held shone on her face. “It’s me! It’s just me!”
   
    Relieved, I lowered the axe and Sewa diverted the flashlight from her face too, and asked, “Lalita? Ah, thank God! How did you escape?”
   
    “Same way y’all did, through my window,” she replied Sewa, sighing. “I’ve been looking for you guys. Thank God for the flashlight you pointed up before that helped me find you easily.”
   
    I looked around, conscious of the environment, for fear of a surprise attack from the tricky necromancer. “So, how do we get out of here?”
   
    “I know this place very well,” she said, taking another path ahead. “Come on, follow me.”
   
    We did just that. Although it was strenuous walking barefooted with someone who wore comfy slip-ons, we didn’t complain, as long as she was saving our lives. We started off with walking, and gradually switched to racing through the woods when we heard an animal’s sharp, electrifying howl from a distance.
   
    “Oh, my God! Was that a wolf?”
   
    “Nah, just a shark on vacation from the Atlantic Ocean,” Lalita coated Sewa’s answer with sarcasm, running faster than us. “Of course it was a wolf!”
   
    “Hey, slow down!” I called out to her, but it was too late because a sharp outcry of “Ouch!” escaped Sewa’s lips, evoking a “Shit!” from me.
   
    Lalita stopped and looked back at Sewa, who’d been injured for trying to keep up with her, and I caught her before she could fall. Gently, I set her down on a giant rock and observed the wound closely. Thank God it was just a rupture from a splinter and not a fracture or a dislocation, which would’ve been worse.
   
    “Okay, good news is, you’re gonna be fine,” I said, seeing the pain in her eyes, as blood trickled from the wound.
   
    “And?” She said, grimacing, wrestling with the pain.
   
    “Bad news is, we don’t have the tools to remove the fragment of wood in your foot,” I said. “We’ll need tweezers and proper lighting to get it out; otherwise, we’d be risking an infection.”
   
    “Oh, please! Excuse me.” Lalita shoved me away, carefully, and bent on one knee before Sewa. “Desperate times require desperate measures.”
   
    “Did you even hear a word I said?”
   
    She ignored me and raised an eyebrow at Sewa, and earned an instant go ahead nod, and before I could protest further, Lalita pulled the splinter out of Sewa’s foot, setting a grand opening for more blood.
   
    As Sewa covered her mouth to stifle her screaming, Lalita removed a pocket knife and cut the right sleeve of her pajama, which she used to wrap Sewa’s foot up to ease the bleeding.
   
    “There, all done.” She smiled at me, rising. “Come on, let’s help her up and move. We can’t stay here.”
   
    Stunned, I directed my gaze to Sewa and asked, “Can you walk?”
   
    “I’ll try.”
   
    That said, we lifted her up on both sides and assisted with her movement. Her constant limping slowed us down, but I believed that slow progress was better than none.
   
    But, suddenly, something sprang forth from the earth and held my leg tight. Freaked out, I looked down and saw a long, black, decayed hand covered in numerous creeping maggots.
   
    The impromptu attack made me leave Sewa’s arm to get the hand off me, thereby making her lose balance, but Lalita’s staunch support sustained her stance in no time.
   
    I tried to kick the hand off to no avail, but once I slashed it with the axe, it rolled and dropped into a pool of mud nearby, sinking deep inside.
   
    “Where the hell did that come from?” I demanded, and was greeted by a creak beneath the thick layer of leaves I stood upon.
   
    “Did you guys hear that?” I said and got a nod from both ladies. “There’s something down here.”
   
    Instead of continuing our run, I knelt and started digging into the spot, packing and separating the leaves from the soil, and a second later, two large caskets showed up underground.
   
    Horrified, I backed off, but the deed had already been done. We all watched as the coffins burst open, revealing several dead bodies inside.
   
    “Oh, my God!” Sewa’s high-pitched scream could shatter glasses. “Those are the missing students!”
   
    “Yes, they are!”
   
    The accompaniment of lightning and thunder with that voice wasn’t new to us. Her grand, dramatic entrance always spurred shivers from any living organism around, so much so that I jerked up to my feet and gaped in her direction.
   
    With a dispersing, overflowing garment, the necromancer arrived, gliding in the air with carabao horns and fingernails and toenails that’d increased like claws. Her eyes were the color of the moon—crimson, and the corners of her lips were torn, having created space for her now lengthy and slimy tongue that stuck out of her mouth, moving rapidly from side to side.
   
    “What the hell happened to your mom?” I said, shifting back as the necromancer landed before us.
   
    “No, no, no.” Lalita muttered, unsettled. “This can’t be happening.”
   
    “What?”
   
    “She’s morphed into her true witch form,” she said to me. “And she has become more powerful. Any attempt to stop her now would be futile, unless . . .”
   
    “Unless what?”
   
    “Unless I die,” Lalita’s head lowered, her voice soft.
   
    “Huh?” Sewa chipped in. “What are you saying?”
   
    “It has to be done,” Lalita elucidated. “To kill a rogue witch in my lineage, she has to lose something vital, something dear to her that she loves wholeheartedly. And I’m the only link in this case.”
   
    “No, there must be another way.” I suggested. “You can’t die!”
   
    “I wish there was, but it’s impossible.” Lalita said. “The only alternative is for the witch to be subdued and binded to hell by a coven, but we are the last of our kind, so… yeah.”
   
    I would’ve persisted more if I wasn’t cut off by the necromancer.
   
    “By now, you should know that there’s nowhere on Earth you can hide from me!” Her voice thundered, echoing through the forest. “I will always find you!”
   
    “And who said we were hiding?” Lalita challenged her and stepped forward, after helping Sewa to rest against a withered tree.
   
    I quickly went to assist Sewa while Lalita contested with her mother, prepared for a hot conflict.
   
    “Mom, back off.” She warned. “Last chance.”
   
    “So you’re now bold enough to go toe-to-toe with me, child?” The witch laughed spasmodically, amused.
   
    “No, I’m not, but everyone’s got a weakness.” She removed her pocket knife and flashed it to her mother’s view. “And yours is the fear of losing someone you love.”
   
    A low gasp came from the witch, her eyes widening.
   
    “When I told you I studied our tradition in depth, I wasn’t joking.” Lalita expatiated bravely. “I know that it’s forbidden for a necromancer of your status to cry, no matter what happens, for it shall be your doom in the blazing furnace for eternity.”
   
    “Lalita, no, don’t do this!” Sewa begged, but the teenager’s mind was made up.
   
    She looked back and said, “I’m sorry, I have to.” Then she closed in on her mother and said, “You can’t live forever, mom. Sacrificing people’s lives for yours isn’t right, and if killing myself is the way forward, to stop this madness, I’m willing to do it.”
   
    The necromancer tried to reach for the knife, but Lalita had already set it against her throat, her eyes glistening in surrender.
   
    “I’m sorry.”
   
    Those were her last words before she slit her throat open and clashed with the wet ground, her neck spilling blood like a fountain. Sewa and I screamed at the gory sight, but our pain was incomparable to the grieving mother who dropped to her knees, her heart split in two, watching life seeping from her daughter’s body.
   
    As Lalita’s blood gushed with her eyes open, tears formed in her mother’s eyes and every intent to harm us vanished. She was a renowned necromancer, strong enough to raise the dead, but this was beyond her control. At some point, she always knew that nature would take its course, and this was one of those times.
   
    A single tear slid down the witch’s face and tapped Lalita’s forehead, and instantly, something strange started happening.
   
    The woman’s skin started to randomly disintegrate into dust, starting from her feet. She seemed unconcerned because she knew that her time was up, and all she wanted at this point was just a few more seconds with her daughter.
   
    This was not a necromancer anymore. This was just a heartbroken woman expressing motherly love to her seed and regretting her actions.
   
    She kissed Lalita’s forehead and hugged her passionately as her legs faded away, followed by her hands, and then her face. Her entire body turned to sand and drifted off with the wind, straight into the coffins, which shut themselves once they’d contained her remains.
   
    Amid our shock, the clouds opened, the rain stopped, the cold ceased, and the moon returned to its normal form, but seeing the innocent lifeless body of a teen before us, nothing seemed normal anymore.
   
    Nothing at all.