Necromancer - 4. Coven

I closed my car door and silence followed. Jane's eyebrows were right up to her hairline, she stared at me. Simon was hunched into the backseat of my car, knees bent between our chairs. Those dark eyes were intimidating – bright and deep. I could see why Jane wasn't feeling her usual chatty self. Simon looked between us. He really did have an attractive face, a unique kind of beauty. Dark tan skin under his matted brown hair, narrow jaw and long lashes. I shuffled uncomfortably. It wasn't until Jane cleared her throat that I snapped out of it. Simon in my car was surreal.

"Ah Jane, this is Simon. Simon, my friend Jane." I reached over to put my seatbelt on.

"Hi." She turned to chirp at him, eyes eagerly curious. He answered her with a smile that lasted less than a second.

"We've got snacks if you want them." I told Simon. As I started the car and pulled it away from the curb Jane proceeded to show him the assortment of remaining sweets. I turned us down another road. Simon started to carefully unwrap a redskin with long fingers.

"So..." Jane began, and I could tell she was itching with intrigue. "How do you know Peter?"

"He's in my Maths class." Simon answered. "And roll call."

"You guys... like batting for the same team, or-?"

"Which streets have you already checked tonight, Simon?" I quickly interrupted her, feeling my neck get hot.

"The outskirt roads on the south and west part of town."

"What roads are those?" Jane asked, clueless about directions.

"All along Pier Street then up to McDowell Road."

"So you were really out, like looking for him by yourself?"

"Yes."

I cleared my throat "You think the back roads are the best places to check?"

"What about the forest?" Jane spat out before Simon could respond.

"I only brought two torches, Jane." I reprimanded.

"Then you and Simon can share. Stay close together." She gave me a suggestive look from the corner of her eye. I wanted to throttle her. Simon was looking out the window.

We drove along in silence. Jane either not comfortable enough to be chatty with Simon in the car, or unable to come up with something to say. I was raking my head as well. Was it safe to ask questions about Tommy now? I got the feeling what Simon told me was meant to stay in confidence. Zombie classmate aside, I wanted to ask other things. I wanted to get to know Simon, but he was too difficult to read.

Simon fidgeted in the backseat. I could tell he was comfortable with the silence, but he couldn't seem to get himself comfortable in the seat. His knee started twitching.

"Woah Peter!" Jane grabbed my shoulder with both hands and I cursed.

"Dammit Jane, not another possum!"

"No seriously, stop the car! I saw something!"

"What?" I slowed to a stop at the side of the road. "What did you see?"

"Something white, an elbow, I think." She twisted her torso to the back, Simon squeezing away from her as she plucked out a torch. Jane pulled the lever and went out into the night.

"We better go after her." I reached around for the other torch, Simon's dark eyes on me. He followed me out. The sound of slamming doors echoed through the darkness. This street wasn't so regularly lit. The jostling white beam of Jane's torch was the only way I could tell she'd run down into the forest.

"Your friend is crazy." Simon breathed, the breath misting. "She doesn't believe this is real?"

"Come on." I slid my way down the dirt slope, dry twigs snapping.

It was too dangerous to go running through here. Too easy to get lost. I heard Simon, wait up, sliding down to follow close behind me. The crooked trees quietly screeched like swaying metal. Cold air rushing between their fingery tops. Dirt, low shrubbery, fallen log. It was too hard to keep up with Jane, I was losing sight of that tiny point of light, flickering on and off between the trees she passed and the swirling mist. The loudest sound was our breathing in the dark as we tried to keep up.

"Jesus, one bottle of cola and some sour strips gets her doing this..." I muttered.

"Did she fall over?" Simon spoke near my left ear. Her light had stopped.

"No... I think she's just waiting." But that was only what I hoped. I couldn't see anything. My heart was pounding as we jogged, between the dead trees, getting closer. I felt a sudden urgency come over me. This is stupid, this is wrong. If monsters do exist, we don't want to meet one in a forest in the middle of the night.

"I hear something." Simon whispered.

We slowed our approach. I heard it too, it sounded like grunting. Animal. I couldn't pinpoint its direction in the dark. I thought about calling out to my friend, but my mouth was suddenly too dry to speak. Was Jane still with the torch?

"Go away!" growled a male voice. Guttural, sounding exactly how a zombie's voice should.

I was struck by its inhuman hoarseness. Then Jane let out a terrified scream. Her light whipped manically toward us. My moment of paralysis gave way to my fight-or-flight response, and then I was legging it too. Back the way I came, Simon sprinting along with me. The three of us fled between trees and all the way back to the road, bending our knees and panting as we climbed back up the slope. Jane was close behind, she ran into the car, curling over the bonnet and sobbing.

My hands were trembling, heartbeat jumping into my throat. Simon's face had gone pale, eyes as wide as mine.

"What the hell was that?" I gasped.

"There's someone out there." Jane cried.

"It had to be just some homeless guy, right?" My voice was weak and quivery. Even as I tried to explain it away, I couldn't deny how obviously inhuman that voice had been. If it did belong to a person he was very, very sick. Or... it came from a rotting throat, the voice-box decrepit.

"There are people out there." Jane continued to cry with obvious distress.

"You saw more than one?"

"Please Peter, just take me home."

I exchanged a look with Simon while Jane hunched forward, her hair falling to cover her face. Shaking with sobs.

"Okay, okay." I moved around to the driver's side and we all hopped in the car. I started it up, glancing at Jane as she sat rigid. Pulling the car away, we drove back into town.

My thoughts were still racing when I pulled into Jane's driveway. She undid her seatbelt with shaky fingers, whimpering between shivers as she climbed out of the car and went straight inside without a word. I checked the time on my phone, it was quarter past one. Looking into the rear-view mirror I saw Simon's dark eyes looking back at me. Face blank, mouth slightly open, the shock still evident on his features.

"...Do you think-" I stopped the question halfway. The car idled in the silence. "Did you think that was something?"

Simon swallowed "Probably."

"Could it have just been... like some guy, putting on a voice to scare us... and our minds made it worse than it was?"

Simon aimed his shrewd eyes toward the window "I know what I saw last night."

"I- I know, I believe you, but..." I stopped. I believed Simon wasn't lying to me, not intentionally anyway. His expression was angry as he stared through the glass. "Simon," I got a little thrill from saying his name, even now "I think I saw something too, last night. Outside my bedroom window. It was only for a moment but... this feeling... it's hard to explain."

Simon turned his head to face me, then he leaned forward. I felt his breath on my shoulder.

"Listen Peter," he spoke slowly and angrily "Last night I was walking a track through the forest outside my house. Tommy Phelps stumbled out through the trees, a few feet in front of me. I got a good look. His face was saggy, his skin was grey with black and purple veins, his eyes were milky. He had a black mark around his neck!" Simon raised both hands, shaking with fury and fear, then slouched quickly backward against his seat.

I was quiet for a long moment, listening to Simon's breaths as he tried to compose himself. Several minutes passed before I spoke again.

"Okay, I believe you." I swallowed to wet my mouth. Simon's posture changed, he relaxed a little. I narrowed my eyes through the windshield, my hands were still clamped to the steering wheel. "She must have seen something." I murmured. "I'll have to ask her about it later. Want me to drive you home?"

Simon nodded, left his chin to his chest, eyes lowered. "Twenty-four Roberts Road." He murmured back.

I drove across town to Simon's place. Scone had become more lively. The sound of someone doing a burn-out could be heard from several streets over. I saw a group of boys at an intersection. I couldn't be sure, but I think one of them threw an empty bottle at my car. I heard it breaking into glass splinters against the road.

Simon remained quiet in the backseat. He didn't look like he was angry at me. He looked more morose than anything. I tried to think of something to say. This was the situation I'd wanted, being alone with just the two of us. I couldn't come up with anything that wouldn't seem awkward. Throughout the drive I kept shooting glances at him in the mirror. The streets were empty but I was driving under the limit, trying to prolong my time with him, I suppose.

As I pulled onto Roberts Road I took another glance and saw Simon turning over that candle in his hand. I slowed the car when I started finding letterboxes marked in the twenties.

"You can stop here." He told me. He undid his seatbelt as I pulled into the curb.

"Simon... what are you planning to do? Are you going to talk to Pagan club?"

"It's a start."

"You really think Tommy Phelps is back cause of Voodoo?"

"Hoodoo or wicca or something. Sure."

"...Why are you so interested? I mean, fair enough, you saw him face-to-face... but if Tommy is really back from the dead," it sounded ridiculous to even say it "don't you want to leave that shit alone?"

"...I have difficulty giving up on things." Simon confessed.

"...so-"

"And those Pagan club kids, they'd all be outcasts right?" he continued, voice low and focussed. Speaking quickly "What if they murdered Tommy just so they could bring him back? Just to see if they could do it. Like they were testing their powers or something."

"Tommy killed himself, he was crazy-"

"What if he wasn't?" Simon leaned forward again, eyes blazing with intensity. "He was a jock and they're losers."

My mind flashed to an image of Tommy writing on his bedroom wall with blood, just minutes before hanging himself. The Devil made me do it.

"You think... Tommy came back from magic? And that's why he's just running around town, all confused and dead?"

The silence lingered between us. The air was thick with scepticism I couldn't help. Simon unlatched his door and hopped out.

"Simon!" He stopped and stared at me. I didn't know what to say. "...I'll see you at school."

He gave another shallow nod before swinging the door closed and walking quickly toward a one-storey house, hands buried in his jacket pockets. I clenched the steering wheel. A wave of unease swept over me now that I was alone. Quickly I drove off into the night, deciding I'd head straight home. I'd tell Mum that me and Melanie had another fight if she asked, that happened all the time in middle-school.

I drove fast, as if the darkness behind my car lights was chasing me.

*

The weekend passed with little event. Both nights I spent with the curtains closed over my bedroom window. The vague plans with my friends were cancelled, which was not at all surprising. Every second weekend we usually manage to do something, during the week it was another story. Our days off were often eaten by lethargy. I didn't hear from Jane, but I didn't want to call her. I wanted to give her time to get over the trauma of whatever she'd seen. I did however get a call from Melanie on Saturday morning.

"Heyy Peter."

"What's up?" I rolled over in bed and picked the crust out of my eyes, holding my mobile to my ear and yawning. It was almost midday.

"Last night your Mum called to 'make sure you got to my place okay'."

"Oh crap!"

"Don't worry, I told her you did and that you couldn't say anything cause you were on the toilet."

I sighed in relief "Thanks Melanie."

"All good. I just wondered why you'd use me as a cover story. What were you doing last night?" She was genuinely curious.

"Ah..." I thought about telling her I was with Simon. I could imagine the gawking sound she'd make over the line. "I'll tell you in person. Monday at school, okay?"

"Okayy."

The call ended pretty quickly after that. Two days would be plenty of time for me to come up with a story for her.

Monday morning there was still talk going on about Tommy Phelps. The police had yet to find any clues. No body discovered anywhere, not even footprints. The students who weren't feeding into the story that our schoolmate was back from the dead were instead running with the idea that some crazed necrophiliac rapist had taken him. Somehow embalmed his body in their basement and was using it as a personal fuck-toy.

All we needed was for someone to come up with a street and then there'd be vigils for Tommy's anal virginity as well. God I hated Scone.

It was interesting to see how the retelling of accounts was being done in whispers, as opposed to the excited gossiping of last week. It wasn't just students, on Sunday an elderly couple had called the police because a sick boy was staggering through their vegetable garden. Lumbering around their back property. Their house was on the outskirts of town by the forest, like mine. They said the boy looked like he was rotting, dressed in a black suit.

The report had been made in the early hours of the morning, not night time. And when the police car arrived a few minutes later, Tommy had already wandered back into the forest and disappeared. This story was told on the local news, a prim white-haired woman giving an account of what she saw to the cameras.

The trouble was, with so many drunk kids around town last night and so much delinquent activity in Scone, maybe there truly was nothing supernatural going on. I heard stories of people catching glimpses of Tommy in the forest, and I also heard stories of Tommy jumping out from behind trees, vomiting blood as he chased kids to their car and they barely escaped with their lives. It was impossible to sort the truth from the lies. There'd just been so many sightings. Could it be nothing more than fear driving everyone crazy? Suspicion and dark imagination brought on from this peculiar crime.

The way I'd reacted the moment I'd seen something made everything cloggy. That full moon beaming through the window while I'd swayed and wiped at my tired eyes. Apart from Simon, there was no credible evidence that Tommy was wandering about town at all. And Simon wasn't exactly normal. For all I knew, he took psychotropic drugs for some disorder. Maybe that's the reason he moved to Scone in the first place.

Even if it wasn't all bullshit, at least part of it was.

Before the bell for roll call I found myself in the administration block. Ignoring the line of students as they waited for the bored ladies behind the counter to get off their computers and help them. A numberless clock ticked beneath the ceiling, papers were stuck all over the walls, the carpet was dusty turquoise. I could smell lemon freshener. Such a bland atmosphere soothed my worries. I scanned the corkboard and noticed a picture of Angela Preaker, smiling from her missing-persons' poster. She'd been a quiet girl that I hadn't noticed much. Nobody had said anything about seeing her running around as a zombie.

On the corkboard was the club list – a list of extra-curricular or hobby groups for students. A lot of them had a total of only four members. It was the important ones like Theatre club and Europe club that had a lot of takers. All you needed was a teacher's approval and you could get your club listed here, even book classrooms during lunch-break if you asked permission. There was an Anime club, even a My Little Pony club. I trailed my finger down the list of twenty odd clubs until finding Pagan club: usual lunchtime hangout room F10.

The only other witchy sounding club was a Harry Potter one. Most of these groups were nothing more than bored kids hanging out and talking about their favourite thing. Theatre club put on school productions, Europe club raised money for a school holiday in their final year. Vegan club was always petitioning changes to the canteen menu, while Christian club did bible studies. What did Pagan club do?

I left the admin block and saw pink-jacketed Erin, she strode over with a frown on her face.

"Hey Peter, do you know what's going on with Jane? She's acting really weird."

I shrugged and we walked down the pathway into campus.