Sarcophagus

Randall sat drowsing over a translation of an Egyptian magical papyrus, something about spells to grant the heart’s desire, which he’d thought would be interesting until he read nine or ten of them in a row, at which point they started to blend into a sort of uber-spell about the one thing you had to do to win your true heart’s desire, and she looked at him with her big, dark eyes and reached over to the book in front of him and turned the page and pointed at the symbols and said, You can’t have your true heart’s desire until you—

—Jangly guitars interrupted her, and Randall’s head jerked upward and his eyes snapped open as his “Don’t Fear the Reaper” ringtone blasted him out of whatever sleep-adjacent realm he’d wandered into. He cursed as he scrabbled on his cluttered desk for the phone. He shouldn’t have nodded off while studying, but the woman with the dark eyes had seemed too real to be just a dream-figment; she must have been a genuine entity from the Darkworld trying to tell him something important. And now he’d never know what it was! How was he supposed to make any progress in his studies when shit like this kept happening to him?

When he finally got the phone in his hand and looked at it, his heart sank. It was Diane, his study partner, who was also the last person in the world he wanted to talk to right then. Randall and Diane were planning to meet in a few days to compare notes on the Hermopolis papyrus, and he wasn’t even halfway done reading it yet. He started formulating possible excuses for falling behind—for some reason “sore throat” was the one that rose to the top—so he made a big show of clearing his throat and coughing as he said, “Hello?”

“Clyde Braveboy is dead,” Diane said.

In the silence that followed her words, Randall’s heart turned over in his chest, just as it had done in high school when he tried out for the debate team, and they called his name to get up and deliver a speech (his was titled “Why Neutral Evil Gets a Bad Rap”). His heart turned over again, and one more time, before he allowed himself to think the thought that was suddenly huge in his mind: now that Clyde Braveboy was dead, Randall was one step closer to being the top necromancer on D Street.

He reminded himself that there were other pretenders to Clyde’s now-vacant throne, students and apprentices who were drawn to the Midnight Art, as Randall was, and who would see Clyde’s death as an opportunity for themselves, as Randall did. In fact, he had one of those people on the phone with him right now. Which meant he better be ready to compare notes on the Hermopolis papyrus in a few days. That was probably the least of what he better be ready to do.

Randall dragged his clawed fingernails across his scalp, trying to wake himself all the way up. “How did you find out?”

Diane said, “There’ve been some powerful shockwaves rolling out of the Darkworld lately. I’m sure you’ve felt it.”

“Oh, yeah,” Randall said. The only thing he’d felt lately was tired: tired of working a full-time job at the downtown branch of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library and then coming home and studying translated grimoires until two in the morning; tired of having a study partner who always seemed to be a step and a half ahead of him; especially tired of having no idea how far he was from his goal, which was to move into an apartment on D Street and hang out a shingle that said “Necromancer for Hire,” as Clyde had done.

Randall could at least say he’d gotten good at a kind of modernized Greco-Roman style of necromancy, which focused on communicating with the spirits of the dead. If Randall, like Odysseus, wanted to talk to the shade of the blind prophet Tiresias, he wouldn’t have to travel to Hades to make his request. He could strike up that conversation from the comfort of his own living room.

But Clyde Braveboy had been in a different league. When Clyde left the mountains of North Carolina, moved to Atlanta, and set up shop on D Street, he was already an established necromancer in a lineage that supposedly went back to the earliest days of the pharaohs. His necromancy practice had gone far beyond mere communication: he could find a corpse like a natural-born psychic, dispel a tomb curse like a veteran wizard, and help a troubled spirit pass on to the Darkworld as well as any shaman. And some said his abilities didn’t stop there. Randall had heard that sometimes Clyde could even reanimate the dead.

Diane said, “A couple of weeks ago, I started to hear rumors that Clyde had gone missing. People are saying he left town to work on some big job, and he didn’t come back.” By “people” Diane no doubt meant her D Street friends. D Street teemed with magicians and the magic-curious, drawn there by the neighborhood’s unusual metaphysical properties, and Diane seemed to know at least half of them.

She said, “I called my friend Lucas, who lives in Clyde’s building, and he told me there’s an eviction notice taped to Clyde’s apartment door. So I went down to D Street and stopped by Simon Magus to talk to Djamila about it. You know Djamila? The medium?”

Randall made a noncommittal noise. He’d been to the magic shop Simon Magus a number of times, but he hadn’t befriended any of the shop’s exotically named staffers while he was there.

“She’s awesome,” Diane said. “You should go talk to her sometime. I think we can learn a lot from her, since she can do naturally what we have to use magic for.”

Randall made another noncommittal noise. He didn’t see the point in talking to someone who didn’t even have to work at it. That would only make him feel more frustrated than he already was.

Diane said, “Anyway, I got Djamila to confirm it. Clyde’s passed on. She tried to get him to tell her what happened, but he told her that if she didn’t fuck off and leave him alone, he’d use their channel of contact to possess her and make her eat her own shit. I guess the rumors about his personality were true.”

Diane was proving to be a veritable fount of Clyde-related information tonight. Randall squirmed at his desk as he felt a familiar stab of anxiety. Diane knew more than he did about Clyde Braveboy’s existential status because she was far more involved with D Street than Randall was. She sent undulating tendrils into that odd little neighborhood tucked away in a corner of downtown, and information flowed out of D Street, along those tendrils, and back to her. That gave Diane an unfair advantage. It wasn’t Randall’s fault that he was an introvert living in a world that rewarded extroverts.

“So I think Mr. Braveboy got in over his head,” Diane said, “and now he’s gone. And you know what that means.”

“Room at the top,” Randall said. Was she calling him to declare her intention to make her own grab at the brass ring and leave him behind?

“Well,” she replied, “I don’t think either one of us is ready to step into Clyde’s shoes just yet. I only meant his apartment had come open. So I went down there and put in an application, and guess what?”

The feeling in Randall’s stomach told him he didn’t have to guess what.

She squealed, “I got it! I got Clyde’s apartment!”

He knew he was supposed to congratulate her, but he just couldn’t utter the words. He said, “When do you move in?”

“Week and a half. I am so excited. This will be the best thing to happen to my studies since . . .”

He waited for her to say, Since I started studying with you.

She said, “Well, since ever. This is going to take me to the next level.”

Her words stung, but he knew she was right. Diane and Randall both had a long way to go before either one of them could quit their jobs and do professional necromancy full time. They were barely able to get occasional gigs charging reduced rates to friends of friends who wanted to talk to their dead grandma. So meanwhile the smart thing to do was to snag an apartment on D Street and embed yourself in a neighborhood where the four-dimensional reality array operated according to slightly different principles. Doing magic on D Street was like lifting weights on steroids: you still had to work at it, but the same level of effort accomplished so much more. And you’d be surrounded by people who were there for the same reason you were—magicians you could meet, network with, learn from. It all made sense. She was a step and a half ahead of him again.

“And then we can meet at my place every Friday,” she said. “I want this to be a good thing for you too. And I’m planning an epic housewarming bash. You’ve been warned.”

Randall had already suffered through a couple of those exhausting affairs Diane liked to put on every time she moved. Her housewarming parties were chiefly notable for their droves of hipsters and Instagram witches taking one group selfie after another. He had already promised himself never to go to another one—but this one would be on D Street. In Clyde Braveboy’s former apartment.

“Oh, I’ll be there,” he said. “How could I miss the chance to absorb the lingering aura of the great man’s presence?”

“I know. I’m just hoping he left something behind—a clay tablet, a scroll, a diary, some scrap of all that information he carried around in his head every day. I guess the manager will clean out the apartment before I move in, but maybe he’ll overlook something . . .”

Diane kept talking, spinning out a scenario where she found a trick floorboard that lifted up to reveal arcane secrets. Randall ignored her. He was spinning out his own scenario. If Diane wanted to know what Clyde knew, she didn’t have to go around tapping on floorboards; now that he was dead, she could summon his spirit and talk to him herself. And yet it seemed that she wasn’t even considering the idea. Perhaps that unsettling session with the medium had scared her off. It shouldn’t have, because necromancers used magic to protect themselves from the spirits they summoned. Then again, maybe Diane thought Clyde was a special case because he was Clyde.

And that was probably wise. But Randall was a special case too. Because he was Randall.

He suspected that, ultimately, Diane didn’t seek Clyde out herself because she was simply too timid. She had other things going for her; she was plenty smart, and hard-working, and ambitious as hell. She was also gifted at birth by virtue of being born an extrovert, which she deserved absolutely no credit for—still, a good necromancer. On her way up. But when it came right down to it, she didn’t have the guts to do what it would take to become the top necromancer on D Street. And that, he thought sadly, was the thing that would finally drive them apart. She would keep having parties in her D Street apartment with all her woke, witchy friends. He, meanwhile, would be getting down to the real business of necromancy. Just like Clyde.

Diane had called Randall tonight to crow about getting Clyde’s apartment. That was fine. Randall would get the man himself. Then they’d see who was a step and a half ahead of who.

Step and a half ahead of whom, he thought, hearing his mother’s teacherly voice.

* * * *

Randall knew there were people who had always wanted to be lawyers, or doctors, or librarians—or even necromancers—and who went on to become exactly what they wanted to be. Randall hadn’t always wanted to be anything, even though he worked in a library and was studying to become a necromancer.

The first thing he’d ever wanted to be was a boxer, so he could beat up the kids who tormented him for being fat. After he found out that boxers spent a lot of time jumping rope and avoiding pizza, he decided it would be cooler anyway to be a spy, like James Bond, who had a license to kill. Once he got to high school, Randall’s aspirations mainly focused on leveling up his D&D character and trying to survive the redneck hell that was his hometown of Manchester, Georgia. At UGA he changed majors almost every semester: political science, during his brief, ill-advised flirtation with the idea of actually becoming a spy for the CIA; business administration, because his parents told him that was a nice practical major; English, because he couldn’t stand all that practicality, and his mother was an English teacher. His grades reflected the fact that he was “having trouble finding his niche,” as his mom said.

“Once you know what you want out of life, then you’ll be able to go out there and get it!” she said with inspirational vigor when he went home for winter break during his freshman year. “Just keep looking. You’ll find it.”

So he kept looking: taking courses, dropping them, switching majors. The only constant in his college career was the gaming group he joined, and the only constant in the gaming group was D&D, and the only D&D character Randall ever played was his bad-ass neutral evil wizard, Lladnar. If he could have just majored in D&D and gone on to get a job as a professional player, he would have combusted with joy.

The closest he came to any kind of joy at college outside D&D was when he fulfilled a curriculum requirement by taking an anthropology course called Ancient Magic. Randall knew nothing about anthropology and didn’t care about ancient history, but he thought about magic every day, if only in fictional terms. It almost came as a surprise to him when he considered the fact that there had once been “real” magicians who claimed they could use their magical powers to . . . do what? Make crops grow? Find gold? Bring back the sun after an eclipse? What did magicians do, anyway? Despite Randall’s love of D&D, he doubted that the magicians of the ancient world had spent a lot of time flinging Magic Missiles at each other.

Perhaps not; but he did learn that three thousand years ago, in Mesopotamia, there had been a class of professional oneiromancers who exorcised the evil spirits that caused nightmares and divined the future from people’s dreams. Professional magicians! Who knew? At approximately the same period in history, sorcerers in China would stuff a jar full of scorpions and snakes and poisonous insects and let them sting each other to death until only one of the creatures was left alive; and then the sorceror would extract the survivor’s concentrated venom and use it to commit all sorts of unsavory magical acts, from seducing lovers to killing people. Well, that sounded interesting.

As the semester progressed, with each new kind of magic the class learned about—spells to defeat rivals from the Indian Atharvaveda, demonic summonings from the Greek magical papyri, murder curses from the Jewish practical Kabbalah—the scare quotes began slowly fading from around the word “real” in Randall’s mind, and he started to entertain the possibility that they were learning about real magicians who had done real magic in some distant, enchanted past. He knew that sounded stupid, and he didn’t share these unorthodox thoughts with anyone; but it didn’t feel stupid. It felt fascinating. Randall had never been so interested in a class—he had never been so interested in anything—in his life.

His turning point came one day when they were discussing Siberian shamanism. The professor, a thin, birdlike woman with short gray hair, stood in front of the class with her hands behind her back and said, “Now, according to Hutton, when was the earliest account of Siberian shamanism recorded?”

Randall’s hand shot up. No one else moved. The professor pointed to him, and he said, “Sixteenth century.”

She nodded and started to pace. “In 1557, an English explorer looking for a naval route to China landed on the northwestern coast of Siberia, where he encountered the Samoyed people. While he was with them, he saw one of their priests conduct a bizarre ritual, full of strange costumes and outlandish playacting. He wrote down a detailed description of this ritual, and when we read his description today, we can see that this ‘priest’ was actually a shaman, performing a shamanic ritual. So that tells us what Siberian shamans were doing in 1557. The Samoyeds told the Englishman that they’d been doing this ritual since time out of mind, but since they hadn’t discovered writing yet, and they had no historical records of any kind, we simply don’t know how long the Samoyeds have been practicing shamanism.”

Something about the verb tenses in that last sentence made the English major in Randall prick up his ears. He raised his hand again. “You said ‘have been practicing.’ Does that mean the Samoyeds are still practicing shamanism?”

“Yep,” the professor said.

Randall frowned and sat forward. “There’s still shamanism going on in Siberia today.”

“Sure is,” she said. “It went underground for a while during the Soviet years, but now it’s making a resurgence. You can see videos about it on YouTube.”

Randall experienced a sense of dislocation, as if his desk had become the epicenter of a subtle earthquake. This professor was telling them that ancient shamanism—an artifact of that distant, enchanted past they’d been discussing all semester—had emerged from its hidden cave and was now blinking in the sunlight of the modern day. He turned in his seat and looked around at his classmates. No one else seemed to care. He turned back to the professor and said, “So, like . . . what do they do?”

She chuckled and said, “Well, we’ll get to the details soon, but as far as we can tell, they do what they’ve always done.” In answer to Randall’s piercing stare, she said, “Like, for instance, if a shaman wants to escort the soul of a dead person to the other world, they’ll eat fly agaric mushrooms, which have hallucinogenic properties; and then, once the shaman is under the influence of the mushrooms, they’ll use specific shamanic techniques, drumming and whatnot, to enter a trance state that allows them to journey between the worlds.” She shrugged. “Stuff like that.”

The professor continued her lecture, but for the first time since the beginning of the semester, Randall was too distracted to listen to her. Siberian shamans were still doing magic today? Right now? Why wasn’t the professor telling the class about that? Talk about burying the lead! And what about all the other kinds of magic? Oneiromancy? Chinese sorcery? Greco-Roman necromancy? Was all of that still going on too? He felt a ravenous hunger to know about all the magic that was going on now, right now, in the world of today. Who knew what kinds of magic were being practiced right here in the United States? Right here in Georgia? And if other people were doing magic—real magic—maybe he could too. This was what he should be spending his time on, not bullshit biology and math classes leading to a degree he didn’t want so he could get a job he didn’t want in a society that didn’t want him. If Randall could have majored in magical studies and gotten a job as a professional warlock, he would have glowed with a colder, more severe joy.

So he did the next best thing: after his last day of class in Ancient Magic he dropped out of UGA, moved to Atlanta, and got a job in the huge public library system so he could have access to research materials—and interlibrary loan privileges—that would allow him to conduct magical studies on his own. But interlibrary loan wasn’t going to be enough to teach him everything he wanted to know. If real magic still existed in the world, he was going to have to find people who had already discovered it. They would be his access point. And Atlanta had to be a better place than Athens (and incomparably better than Manchester) to meet such people.

Once Randall got to the big city, he was confronted by a question he’d never needed to ask himself before: where do the magic-users hang out? He had no idea. First he looked on Google, where he found a smattering of local pagans and Wiccans and druids who claimed they were doing magic. A perusal of their social media pages and websites revealed just the opposite. The kind of magic Randall sought did not involve joining hands in a circle on spring equinox and saying prayers to the Goddess or Brigid or Frigid or whoever. He wasn’t searching for some latter-day hippie religion. He was searching for real magic.

He did find a website for a magic shop that seemed more serious than the rest—a place called Simon Magus that was supposed to be downtown somewhere. Unfortunately, none of the online maps he checked could find the shop’s address or even the street it was supposed to be on. Randall chalked it up to Atlanta’s famously confusing street system and resigned himself to investing some shoe leather in this quest. He started taking himself on little self-guided walking tours in different parts of town, looking for something, he didn’t know what; just letting himself be guided by feel.

Randall found himself drawn to dilapidated buildings on trash-strewn corners where drug deals went down, even though he didn’t do drugs; bars and clubs where everyone was covered in tattoos and wore black, even though he didn’t look like any of those people; neighborhoods where you were relieved if your car didn’t get broken into or stolen when you parked there at night. He didn’t know why these places drew him. Something about the darkness that seemed to coagulate there.

One drizzly evening he was taking a reconnoitering walk down the cracked sidewalks of Little Five Points when he looked through a coffeeshop window and drew up short. On the shop’s back wall there was a lurid full-color mural of a furry, goat-headed creature with pendulous breasts and an upside-down star emblazoned on its forehead, squatting behind a giant mug of steaming coffee. By now Randall had done enough self-guided research to know that the goat-headed creature was Baphomet, an occult figure associated with the Satanic Temple, and that the upside-down star was actually an inverted pentagram—another Satanic symbol. Could there be such a thing as a Satanist cafe?

He went inside and ordered a latte from the barista, a skeletal guy who looked like an ambulatory piercing salon. While he was waiting for his drink, Randall did his best not to stare at the stylish goth woman reading at the plywood bar. The book she held was bound in faded black cloth, plain and unlettered. Letters were stamped in flaking gold on the spine.

She said, “You could just ask.”

“What?”

He was glad she’d spoken to him because it gave him an excuse to look at her directly: straight magenta hair with severe bangs above precisely contoured eyebrows, maroon lipstick, and close-fitting black clothes on a slim body that spoke to either a cigarette habit or a fondness for yoga. Women like that usually wouldn’t condescend to speak to a guy like Randall. Did she have a thing for chubby men?

She closed the book with an index finger keeping her place, and she held the spine up so he could see it.

“Fire, Milk, Honey, Blood,” he read.

She set the book down on the bar and looked at him coolly. He felt like he was supposed to say something. The title stirred a memory in him: something he’d once heard, or read, or learned . . .

“Evocation!” he blurted. “Ancient Greek evocation of the dead, right?” When she smiled and nodded, he continued. “Circe, in The Odyssey. Those are the ingredients of the ritual she gave to Odysseus, so he could summon, uh, what was his name . . .” He snapped his fingers.

“Tiresias.”

“Tiresias!” He snapped his fingers once more. “The blind prophet. Who told him how to get home.”

“Not quite.” She slipped a bookmark into the book and closed it. “Tiresias told Odysseus that if he wanted to get home with his ship and his crew intact, they would have to sail toward this island where the sun god keeps his cattle, but they should definitely not stop off and eat any of the cattle. Which of course is exactly what they do.”

“Right,” Randall said. “His crew disobeyed him and ate the cattle while he slept. Why do people do stupid shit like that in stories?”

“Why do people do stupid shit ever? They give in to weakness. Odysseus didn’t even want to put in at the island, but his men were like, ‘Waaah, we’re tired, we’re hungry, we wanna get off the ship and cook dinner.’ So they land, and at first they eat their own food, but then they get socked in by a long spell of bad weather, and eventually, one thing leads to another . . .”

“Nature takes its course,” he said.

“Only if you think weakness is natural,” she replied. “Which I guess it is. Since you see it all around you.”

Randall did not actually think he saw weakness all around him, but he nodded and began sucking in his stomach, very very slowly, so she couldn’t tell.

“So,” she said. “You into classics?”

Randall wanted to say yes, he loved classics, he ate classics on toast for breakfast every morning, but that would have been an utter falsehood, easily discovered. Should he reveal the truth? He looked at her, considering.

His mother said, Go out there and get it!

“Uh, no,” he said, “not really into classics. I’m into magic.”

She smiled. “Me too!” She patted the book on the bar beside her. “I’m studying to be a necromancer. What are you working on?”

“Uh, working on?” A necromancer? She was a necromancer? Had he found a real magician? A viable access point? She was so matter-of-fact about it. He realized he was staring at her. “Uh, not working on much, yet, really,” he said. “I just moved here not long ago. Still kind of feeling my way. Where’d you get that book?”

She leaned toward him and said, “I got it at the best bookstore in the world: Alexandria, on D Street. You know it?”

He shook his head.

“You been to D Street?”

“No. Where is it?” He took out his phone. “Can you give me the address for this bookstore?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” she said. “It’s in this funky little neighborhood downtown, very cool, but you can’t just go there. On your own.”

“Why not?”

“What I mean is, if you’ve never been there before, you can’t find it.”

“Like, it’s hard to find?” He waved his phone. “That’s what this is for.”

“No, like, if you haven’t been there before, it’s impossible to find. Unless someone who’s already been there takes you.” She glanced at his phone. “GPS won’t help, Google Earth—none of that works.”

He shrugged. “Regular paper map, then.”

She shook her head. “D Street’s not on any map. No map that’s accurate, anyway. People have tried to map it out before, but somehow . . .” She lifted her hands and shrugged in a pantomime of confusion. “The maps always turn out to be wrong.”

Randall stared at her. She seemed completely sober.

“You’re serious,” he said.

“Mm-hm.”

“How is that even possible?”

She smiled quizzically. “How do you think? It’s magic.”

Randall’s heart turned over in his chest as the last faint ghost of those old scare quotes burned away, and he understood that he was talking to someone who believed in real magic, just like he did—like he did now, fully, at last.

He said, “Do you—do you think maybe you could take me sometime?”

“Sure! Always willing to help out a newbie.”

Randall drew himself up. “Well, I have done some magical study on my own. I’ve learned about Chinese poison sorcery, and murder curses from the practical Kabbalah, and . . .” The entire rest of his semester of Ancient Magic flew out of his head. “ . . . various other types of magic.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t been to D Street,” she said. “You’re talking about the history of magic. On D Street, magic is happening right now.”

Randall’s chest filled with a rising excitement. He felt a childish urge to call his mom and tell her he was about to finally find his niche. She wouldn’t like the niche itself, but at least she’d be glad that he was going to get what he wanted out of life.

* * * *

Except getting what he wanted out of life didn’t make Randall nearly as happy as he’d thought it would.

He didn’t understand why. Everything was going according to plan. He’d moved to Atlanta to meet magicians, and he met Diane that day in the Satanist café. He’d hoped magicians would give him access to magic, and right away Diane took him to D Street, where she showed him around Alexandria, and Simon Magus, and other places, introducing him to practitioners everywhere they went. He’d wanted the magicians he met to help him learn about magic, and Diane loaned him her copy of Fire, Milk, Honey, Blood when she was done with it. After he finished the book and told her he was interested in being a necromancer too, it was she who suggested they become study partners. Diane had been unstintingly generous to him every step of the way.

So why did he hate her so much?

He didn’t hate her hate her. But she had this subtle way of getting under his skin and making him feel inferior that just made him want to grind his teeth down to nubs. Randall suspected that the main reason Diane liked having him around was that it allowed her to feel magnanimous and superior at the same time. However, that little scheme would only work for as long as she was ahead of him, and that was about to change, tonight, as soon as he could get into the ritual space he’d rented from The Omphalos on D Street. There he would perform an evocation that would summon the departed soul of Clyde Braveboy from beyond the grave; and then, glutted with Clyde’s encyclopedic knowledge, Randall would be the top necromancer on D Street.

He didn’t have to go to a location on D Street to evoke Clyde’s soul. He could have done it at home, and he almost did—but at the last second he decided to be extra careful about it. This was Clyde Braveboy he was planning to evoke. For his own safety, Randall would need as much reinforcement as he could get, and that meant doing the ritual on D Street, where every magical command had more force behind it, and every mystical boundary was stronger. His heart darkened with envy when he thought of Diane being able to infuse that kind of mojo into her workings just by sitting up in bed or clearing a space on her kitchen counter, now that she’d moved into Clyde’s apartment.

It had been a couple of weeks since she’d called Randall to boast about getting the apartment. Her housewarming party was tonight, and he was going, but not until he stopped by The Omphalos first. He wanted to show up at Diane’s party cloaked in the grandeur that only Clyde Braveboy’s level of expertise could confer. He wanted to let her know, in the very moment of her triumph, that he had just surpassed her. He wanted to walk in there and show them all who the top necromancer on D Street really was. Randall wasn’t sure exactly how he would do that—what kind of entrance he would make, what he would say and do—but once he got the download from Clyde, he’d sort through his new surfeit of options and come up with something appropriately awe-inspiring. Ghost in a bottle, perhaps, flaunted like a Fabergé egg he’d just happened to pick up at auction? Zombie on a leash—maybe with a stout chain that rattled every time the zombie lunged at somebody’s face? Randall felt giddy just thinking about the possibilities.

That giddiness was almost enough to take his mind off the too-tight waistband of his dress pants cutting into his midsection as he drove downtown. He hadn’t worn these pants in over a year, since the last time he’d attended a compulsory Christmas Eve service with his parents back home. Apparently Atlanta’s much-vaunted restaurant scene had made a stealthy impact on his waistline. He would start getting his weight under control once he began building up his client list and giving consultations in person.

One perk of being introduced to the D Street district was that you could usually find parking in what Randall thought of as the liminal zone, a web of nondescript alleyways surrounding D Street that nobody ever seemed to use unless they were on their way to or from the district. Randall parallel-parked in one of those alleys between a gleaming white Tesla that looked like it had just rolled silently off the lot and some ancient orange compact car with wraparound windows that resembled an inverted fishbowl on wheels. He made sure to lock his car, and he looked around in all directions before pocketing his keys, slinging a backpack over his shoulder, and walking through pools of darkness toward D Street. He’d never heard of crime being a big problem around here, but this was still downtown Atlanta at night. Randall worried that when potential muggers looked at him, they wouldn’t see a necromancer who shouldn’t be trifled with; they’d see a nerd wearing pants that were a size too small.

He felt better after he made it to the lights and people of D Street. The first time he came here with Diane, he was flabbergasted to find a neighborhood of this size tucked away in Atlanta’s small, cramped downtown. D Street was several blocks long, with bollards at either end of the street that fenced out motorized vehicles and allowed pedestrians to walk in the road. The street was paved in what Randall supposed were the original nineteenth-century cobblestones. As he walked past bars and restaurants, cafés and nightclubs, shops and offices, he thought about how many of these places he’d visited in the months since Diane first brought him down here. In each one of them, all he had to do was tell someone who worked there he was a friend of Diane’s, and the level of service they accorded him went up a notch.

It went up a notch at first. After repeated visits to Alexandria to get books or to Simon Magus to get magic supplies, he noticed that people soon went back to treating him like one of the great unwashed. And then, while he was browsing the wares, he might hear some kind of genial hubbub erupt at the cash register, and he’d look up to see that a tall, skinny guy wearing a fluorescent, psychedelic onesie was wowing the staff with an anecdote—delivered in the properly ironic tone, of course—about how his latest attempt to enchant an amulet had gone hilariously awry because of how high he’d gotten before the ritual. Or it might be a woman in a hooded cloak of shimmery black, talking in a low, mysterious voice about the disembodied presences that had begun stalking her, and she couldn’t figure out whether they were ghosts, demons, or jealous ex-girlfriends astrally projecting. Or it was someone else with a similarly bizarre appearance and a similarly outlandish tale to tell, and the staff and the other customers lapped it all up.

In other words, D Street was just like Manchester High School, with cliques of popular kids who looked down on everyone else. Randall wasn’t popular in high school, and he wasn’t popular now. And that was why he would always be at a disadvantage compared to smiley, friendly, pretty Diane, with her elaborate makeup always just so. People all up and down D Street bent over backward to help her, and those same people treated Randall like a subhuman. That was all right. They would all soon get their richly deserved comeuppance at the hands of the one they’d scorned.

He who once was scorned shall now do the scorning.

No, that didn’t sound very impressive. He would come up with something better.

Ah, here it was: The Omphalos. Randall pushed through a glass door and entered what was probably the most conventional-looking commercial establishment he’d yet seen on D Street: plush gray carpeting, white acoustic tile in the ceiling, and walls made of regular old drywall—which concealed specially manufactured sound-deadening panels. The Omphalos website explained that every feature of their space used innovative engineering techniques to reduce conduction of sound from one rented room to the next, “to give your rituals maximum privacy.” They had also installed some sophisticated HVAC to remove the smoke from everyone’s rituals, leaving only the smell of the sage that was used to smudge each room between rentals. The pricey hourly rate meant Randall would have to be late on another car payment, but he had to consider the big picture here. He was about to become an instantaneous adept of the left-hand path. The power he would acquire was worth far more than the money he was about to spend.

It’s an investment in my future, Mom. Penny wise and pound foolish.

He couldn’t see her buying that. There had to be a good way to explain it to her. He’d think of something later, before the next time they talked on the phone.

Randall checked in at the desk. The clerk, a smirking young nonbinary type with a buzz cut and ear gauges, slid him a room-key card and told him he’d be in room 11. He had already paid for the rental and signed the requisite waiver online (“Delphi, Inc., d/b/a The Omphalos, shall not be held liable for any harm suffered on its premises, whether mental, emotional, physical, or metaphysical, in this world or any other”), so he took the card and turned away, but not before shooting one final venomous glance at the clerk:

You’ll get yours, motherfucker.

Randall clenched his jaw with deep satisfaction as he walked down the hallway toward his room. He was used to people acting superior to him, and he was used to swallowing his anger about it. After tonight, he would start getting used to issuing consequences when people condescended to him. And then he would start getting used to being treated with the respect he deserved.

Oh, that’s Randall. You know, the necromancer. Give him the best room.

Only Randall wouldn’t need a rented ritual space, once he had his own office/apartment here . . . he still needed to work out that part of the plan. There was time for that after tonight.

Randall found his room, unlocked it with a beep and a click, and stepped inside. More of the same careful, soundproof blandness, now augmented by a plain black table, two aluminum chairs, and a steel flip-top trashcan. He closed the door behind him, relishing the sound of the electronic lock clicking solidly shut. That was the sound of a portal closing behind him as he exited his old life, leaving his former self behind. The next time that door opened, a different person would be opening it.

Gripped by a sudden urgency to bring that new version of himself into being, he moved quickly to set up his altar on the table. In a few minutes he had everything in place on a shimmering silver cloth: a small cauldron, a smaller censer, an assortment of tiny jars, some candles, an artist’s paintbrush, a black-handled athame, and in the center, the star of the show: a human skull.

It was a real skull, not a plastic model, as demonstrated by its irregular, discolored teeth and asymmetrical occiput. Randall had heard of necromancers who robbed graves to get their skulls—this was apparently the done thing in New Orleans, with its plethora of mausoleums available for easy plundering—but he had ordered his online from a legit merchant that also sold mounted butterflies and books on natural history. It was damned expensive, but his only other choice was to ask to borrow Diane’s, which he refused to do. The skull looked like what it was—a piece of ordinary human anatomy, repurposed to serve as a teaching tool or a curio—except for the elaborate binding sigils Randall had carved all over its surface. These symbols turned the skull into a cage that would keep Clyde bound and powerless, once he was inside it.

Now to get him there. Randall lit the candles and flicked off the overhead light. The candles weren’t necessary from a magical standpoint; they just helped him feel more magical. Who the hell could do magic under a fluorescent light? Leaving the overhead light on would be too much like sitting in a classroom at UGA and listening to a grad student drone on about monetary policy, or sitting behind the circulation desk at work and trying to stay awake until the end of his shift. He was leaving all that behind now and entering a world of candlelight and magic. He would never leave this world again.

Welcome to my office. I hope you don’t mind the candles. They help me maintain my connection to the Darkworld. Now, how can I help you?

Yes, he liked the sound of that.

Randall sat down at the altar, unscrewed one of the tiny jars, dipped the paintbrush in, and daubed a cloudy, oily liquid onto one of the sigils on the skull, muttering the symbol’s name. He did the same for each sigil, taking comfort in the time he’d spent meticulously preparing the anointing mixture: finely crushed sulfur and juniper berries mixed with lentil flour, sesame oil, blood (his own, collected in installments over a week and stored in the fridge until today), and other ingredients. The roasted sesame aroma combined with the juniper’s piney astringency to fill the air over the altar as he worked.

After all the sigils were anointed and gleaming in the candlelight, Randall lit the incense inside the censer and used one hand to waft the smoke toward the skull. The smell of burning cedar resin mixed with the anointment to turn into something like pot, but stronger. He fancied that he felt a little light-headed as he began to speak:

“Hail, Shamash! Hail unto you, the one who opens the darkness and lets in light!”

Randall wanted to like doing the incantation, because this was the part that made him feel most like a wizard: calling out to a Mesopotamian solar deity and commanding such a being to do his bidding. But he hated doing incantations because he hated the sound of his voice—the high rasp that the other kids on the high school debate team had made fun of, which drove him to quit the team before their first competition. In his more objective moments, Randall knew he should be over all that by now. Very soon he would be. He spoke again:

“Judge of Heaven and Darkworld! Foremost among the gods! Resplendent one! You carry those from Above down to Below! You carry those from Below up to Above! May you summon a ghost from the darkness for me! May you put life back into a dead man’s bones! May you bring to me Clyde Braveboy!”

Randall unscrewed the lids of the other little jars on the altar, and he poured their contents into the cauldron one at a time, chanting in Sumerian to accompany each propitiatory offering: water, milk, honey, wine, olive oil, barley. Once all the jars were empty, he looked down into the cauldron, and his voice reverberated within it as he said, “Therefore give spirit to the mystery I have prepared, O Shamash. Give breath to the mystery I have prepared.”

Time for the main event. Randall licked his thumb, put it on the sigil on the skull’s forehead, and said: “Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? You who always seek out life! Shake off the dust of the Darkworld and speak to me! I call upon you, O skull of skulls! May he who is within the skull answer me! Clyde Braveboy—”

Enough with the ringing declarations, said a tinny voice from within the skull.

Randall made an involuntary noise of fright and jerked his thumb away from the skull, almost knocking over a candle and the censer. The sigil where his thumb had been was glowing slightly; all of them were, all over the skull, making it look as if it was lit from within by a small golden sun.

I’m here, the skull said. No need to start a fire on my behalf. Unless you just feel like celebrating.

Randall swallowed, and it wasn’t dry and clicking, like in the books; it was full of phlegm and saliva, and he almost choked on it. He coughed, cleared his throat, swallowed, coughed again, and said, “Clyde? Clyde Braveboy?”

Yes, it’s me—but tell me: how do you know it’s really me?

Randall looked at the skull. Was it quizzing him? “Uh . . . well . . . I beseeched Shamash—”

You do understand that “Shamash” is not the name of a deity who’s sitting by a phone in paradise, waiting for you to call, right? That name is just a placeholder for a principle of the universal matrix of consciousness. It’s a word for something vastly bigger than any word.

This skull was definitely giving him a hard time. “Yes, of course, but the principle brought you to me.”

It did, but how do you know who I am? I could be anybody. I could be a demon playing the infamous demonic impersonation game. Surely you know about that.

Randall did not actually know about the infamous demonic impersonation game, because that was part of demonology, a separate field of magic that he hadn’t studied. He said, “Well, you seem to be an asshole, like everyone says about Clyde, so—”

Do they? The skull sounded pleased. Aw, you know just what to say. Okay, I’ll stop fucking with you. I’m Clyde. But you need to have better verification protocols in place.

“Well, see, actually, that’s why I summoned you. So I could learn from you. I’m … I’m a necromancer too—”

You are technically a necromancer because you can evoke a departed spirit to speak to you. But do not put yourself in the same class as me. You’re a licensed driver. I’m Mario Andretti. Got it?

 “Yes. That’s my point.” Randall opened his mouth to say more, but his mind was overtaken by an image of himself standing on one side of a crevasse, looking across it and preparing to jump. What awaited him on the other side? Was it the Blessed Fields of Elysium, a neutral-good plane of clear rivers, flowering trees, and verdant grasslands populated by guardinals, innately good celestial beings with muscular bodies and the faces of noble beasts? Or was it the Gray Waste of Hades, a neutral-evil plane of barren soil, rocky outcrops, and dying trees, teeming with night hags and demons?

Randall decided, or realized, that he didn’t care what awaited him on the other side, so long as he got what he wanted.

“I want your knowledge,” he said in a voice that shook.

I see. So … you are a seeker.

Randall sat forward. “Yes.”

And you are willing to do whatever it takes to acquire what you seek.

He put his face a foot away from the skull. “Yes!”

Bull shit you are. You’re not even willing to do what it takes to get through college, loser.

Randall sat back. “What are you talking about?”

I’m talking about you flunking out of UGA.

“I—I didn’t flunk out. I decided college was a waste—”

Give it a rest, please, just this once. You’re not talking to your mom. You’re talking to a discarnate consciousness that can utilize the nonlocality of spacetime to discover that you were dismissed from the University of Georgia for academic nonperformance. Colleges don’t like it when students can’t keep their GPA above 2.0. You call yourself a necromancer; did it not occur to you that a deceased spirit would be able to find this out?

Randall shifted uneasily in his chair. The way he saw it, he’d been on the verge of dropping out anyway, and he should have dropped out, and the university had actually done him a favor by making the decision for him and sparing him another pointless semester; so what was the point of splitting hairs about it?

The skull continued. If you don’t have what it takes to maintain a C average at a state school, you definitely do not have what it takes to plumb the depths of necromancy. You’re not worthy of my knowledge. You wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it. Besides, my knowledge is not what you truly want.

Randall frowned. “How can you say that? I want your knowledge more than anything.”

No. You don’t know what you want. But I do. And I’ll tell you. The next time some cool kid smirks at you, like that clerk at the front desk, you want to be able to make them regret it so no one else will do that again. The next time you walk into Alexandria or Simon Magus, you want to be treated with the respect you deserve. And the next time you see Diane, you want her to ask you for help, not the other way around. Am I getting warm?

Randall nodded before he remembered the skull couldn’t see him. “I mean, yes,” he said. The candlelight played across the glistening skull. The golden sigils glowed.

My knowledge, the art of necromancy, magic itself—for you, those are all just means to an end. What you really want is power.

Randall nodded again. Power, he thought. Power. Unaccountably, tears began to well in his eyes, blurring the glowing sigils into hazy, golden orbs that refracted anew every time he blinked.

The good news for you is, I can cut out the middleman. I can give you what you really want. My power. Every bit of it. But full disclosure: there’s only one way to do that.

Randall wiped at his eyes. Something like a cold wind moved through him. “Possession,” he said, and let out a shaky sigh.

You pop me out of this skull, get me into you, and we’ll start making changes around here right away. What do you say?

He shook his head. “Not, not … I don’t want to do it like that. I don’t want to be, you know, some puppet. I mean … how is that giving me power?”

Don’t look at it that way. Look at it as having a magical teacher, personal trainer, and life coach all wrapped up into one. Even better than that, because you’ll have no choice but to do everything I tell you. Zero cheating! And then you’ll reap the benefits, because you’ll share all the experiences. When we perform rituals, it’s your body that will feel the mystical energies coursing through it. When people start treating us more respectfully, you’re the one they’ll be deferential to. I bet I can even get you laid. With Diane, for instance?

“We’re just study partners,” Randall said reflexively, even though he had masturbated to this very thought more times than he cared to remember. “Besides, she thinks she’s better than me.”

She thinks she’s better than you for now. What I’m saying is, we can change that—with her and with everybody. So how about it?

The cold wind moved through Randall again, and he sighed shakily once more. “What would I have to do?”

It’s simple. You use your athame to cut a tiny little paring of bone off this skull, no bigger than a fingernail clipping, and you swallow it. Then you set the skull on the floor and stomp on it until the cranium fractures open. And then you say one little phrase, I’ll rush right into you, and we’ll be in business. Okay?

Randall’s lips trembled for a few seconds before he could form words. “You’re not doing this for me. You just don’t want to be dead anymore.”

Of course I don’t. And you don’t want to be a loser anymore. I’m just suggesting we help each other out. You have a better plan?

The only other plan Randall had was to wind up this ritual, blow out his candles, pack up his magic kit, and go to Diane’s party, where he would attempt to curry favor with her and her magically delicious friends, in the hopes that he could stay in their good graces and try to ride their coattails to some kind of success. Eventually. And not hate his life too much along the way.

Randall, you’ve tried it your way. Now try it mine. What do you have to lose?

Randall knew the answer to that. He had everything to lose. And now he realized that everything he had amounted to a pile of shit and ashes that he was trying to spin into gold. But he was no alchemist. He was barely a necromancer. Really, he was just a wizard trying to level up. Did he want to keep grinding out dungeon levels, making slow, unsteady progress, with no end in sight? Or did he want to skip to the head of the line and start wielding real power?

Go out there and get it, his mother whispered.

The athame’s blade was barely sharp enough to free up a little scraping of bone from one corner of the skull. Randall got it down with no trouble. Then he stood, picked up the skull, and placed it on the floor in front of him. He set his feet and prepared to raise one of them up high. Randall was only half-listening as the skull told him the words to say. He was asking himself if this would make him the biggest loser of all, or if it meant he really did have what it took to become the top necromancer on D Street. Diane had gotten Clyde’s apartment, but Randall had gotten the man himself; and now the man would get him.

Randall raised his foot above the skull. Its sigils glowed brighter than ever. He gritted his teeth and drove his foot downward, imagining that he was stomping on the skulls of everyone who had ever sneered at him, ridiculed him, bullied him, humiliated him, in the past or in the present, in school or on D Street; every kind of jock who had twisted his arm and threatened to break it, and every kind of cheerleader who had watched and laughed. His foot blurred with speed, and the other side of the crevasse rushed toward him, and all the skulls crunched open on the first try; and as an astral gale roared into life around him, Randall staggered above the splintered bones on the floor, and he looked up at the white acoustic tile and shouted in a high, raspy voice:

“I shall be your living sarcophagus!”

The room’s sound-deadening features performed as advertised, so that when he left a few minutes later, no one at The Omphalos had any idea of what kind of ritual he had just conducted. Although Diane could tell, when he walked in the door at her party, that some sort of change had taken place in him. Had he lost weight?

“Hey, I’m so glad you came!” she called out, wriggling through a knot of her friends to get to him. They turned to see who she was diving toward. When she reached him she surprised herself by giving him a big hug.

“Wouldn’t miss this for the world,” he said, hugging her back. “So. Do you feel the great man’s presence?”

She released him and sighed. “No, can’t say that I do,” she said, glancing around at the apartment’s high ceilings, plaster walls, and hardwood floors. “It’s weird. He must have recalibrated this place’s energy signature back to baseline after every single working. And forget about finding a hard drive or something. It’s like he was never even here.”

“You sound disappointed.”

She shrugged. “Minor case of buyer’s remorse, I guess.” She took a sip from her red plastic cup. “Be careful what you wish for, and all that.”

He nodded. “Like in the Hermopolis papyrus.”

“What do you mean?”

“All those spells about granting the heart’s desire. They left out the most important ingredient: you have to know what you really want.”

Diane snorted. “How the hell are you supposed to figure that out?”

“I know,” he said ruefully. “I didn’t figure it out myself until—well, just a little while ago, to be honest.”

She studied his face, its features so familiar to her, the expression on it so strange. “I thought there was something different about you. So what is it? What do you really want?”

“You’ll find out,” he said, his smile wider than she’d ever seen it.