Chapter 17 As the Dead Rise
AS THE DEAD RISE
Cesar
“I have a bad feeling about this.” Elena hugged herself while she sat in the corner of my workroom, the furthest she could possibly be from Mistress Magdalena.
“Quit being silly. Come here and hold her head.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind? I’m not touching that thing.”
“For all the gods on earth, Elena, I need help. It’s dead. It’s not going to attack you.”
“Not yet. You’re about to change that.”
“This isn’t a zombie. It isn’t going to eat you, and we’re going to change that. Remember, I need your help.”
“Hmph. Not gonna come alive. Says you.”
“I do, now come here.” The words were stern.
They had that ‘dad’ tone to them. The resonance implied that a serious beating would occur if compliance wasn’t met with immediacy.
I had heard the exact same tenor from my father numerous times.
And here I was, a million years later. It’s true what they say: you become your parents.
“You know I love you, and we’ve known each other for a lifetime, and I know you’re a bone witch, but dammit, Cesar, this is the first time I’ve seen you do your thing with a corpse.
This is disgusting and hugely disturbing.
” Elena walked over, albeit cautiously and hesitantly.
“I’m going to have nightmares for weeks. ”
I laughed.
“If you think this is bad, wait until she tries to sit up and take her first breath.”
“Fuck off, you asshole. I didn’t need that image in my head.”
Elena could curse like a sailor.
“You won’t need an image; you’re going to witness it. Hell, you’re going to help channel some of this energy, so I don’t completely lose my mind. If that happens, you’ll be left dealing with the oracle yourself.”
“I haven’t thought this through.” Elena took a step backward. “I can’t do this.”
“Oh, bloody hell—” I grabbed Elena’s wrist and placed it onto Mistress Magdalena.
“Nope. Seriously, I’m going to puke.”
I glared at her and then rolled my eyes.
“Stop it. Just lift the head up slightly so I can slip this around.”
Elena grimaced as she ever so gently raised the head.
Bones cracked.
“Oh, my gods!” Elena wretched.
“Don’t you dare throw up all over my subject,” I warned her. “There, done. See, not so hard.” I had cinched the lock around Magdalena’s head.
“Sure.” She ripped her hands away and rubbed them on her pants. “I need to wash my hands.”
“You’ll be touching her again shortly, so don’t bother. Besides, we don’t have time. Now light these candles and place them where I told you.”
Elena carried out her duties while I scrutinized my workspace.
One freshly cut Black Dragon hibiscus bloom.
A bucket full of hyssop.
A bushel of Sanjivani.
I plucked the bloom and placed it where I would be able to easily access it, between my clenched teeth. I pulled apart the black lace dress that covered Mistress Magdalena’s torso, exposing her hollowed ribcage.
The body is a miraculous piece of machinery, even in death. I admired the decay process. Efficient—and, here in the tropics, fast.
But Mistress Magdalena had had many magical workings completed on her, and the rate of decay had slowed almost indefinitely.
Even though she had been gone for a generation, she still had skin covering her bones.
Albeit the tissue was grey, dried, and stretched over her emaciated body.
I took a scalpel and sliced the flesh from the throat to the belly button.
The tension in the dried skin released and pulled away, exposing bones and inner organs. Or what was left of them.
“If I thought I was going to heave before—” Elena wretched again.
“Not now, girl!” I said, with the hibiscus still clenched in my teeth. The stench was almost unbearable, although over so many years of doing this, I had grown accustomed to the odour. It was thick. The stench coated the back of my throat. I could, at the very least, forgive Elena now.
Taking the flower from my mouth, I shoved my hand as far as I could up into the chest cavity. I wanted the memory anchor as close to the heart—or where the heart had been—as I could get it.
Happy with its placement, I continued with the other ingredients.
“Elena, pass me the Sanjivani, please.”
She passed me handfuls, and each bunch got wedged in around the waxy bloom until the chest cavity was tightly packed.
“Now the hyssop.”
Taking the jaw, I pulled the mouth open.
A couple of teeth fell out.
“Shit.” There would be no placing them back into the mouth without glue. Still, the corpse wouldn’t require a full set of chompers, so I brushed them away from the body and began stashing all the dried herbs left into her mouth.
“What is this going to do, other than make her smell marginally better?” Elena asked.
“Oh, wait until it all begins to burn.”
“The corpse?”
“No, the herbs. They smoulder at the end. The combination of the two isn’t pretty.”
“Great.”
As much as she protested how grossed out this made her, my friend watched with fascination.
“What’s next?” She asked.
“Communing with the bones.”
“Okay. What do I have to do?”
“Stand there and look pretty.”
“Finally, something I’m good at.” Elena stood back.
“Just concentrate on me. Find the vibrations I’m emitting. If you can pull that through you, that will help channel and merge my powers with yours and hopefully decrease the amount of magic I need to use and lessen whatever damage might happen to me.”
“Okay, I can do that. Goddess, I hope this works.” Elena blew me a kiss.
Looking at her, I nodded slowly, then shut my eyes.
I ran my hands over the body, gingerly, letting my fingertips ghost the remains until I picked up on the right spot. I wanted to find a place where the bones were yelling out to me.
Grab me, hold me, caress me. I have things to say, tales to tell, memories to share.
Typically, the skull was the best hot spot, but the Hurtado ancestor was cold and dead there.
Her rib bones provided no distinct energy, nor did her arms—until I got to her wrists and hands.
They were burning hot. Yearning for attention, screaming for release.
Clasping my hands around hers, I dove toward the memories calling me.
Come closer, they yelled.
In my mind, I saw black smoke swirling counterclockwise in a whirlwind—a six-foot tornado that beckoned me, luring me toward darkness. Elena stood on the periphery, doing her job. I stepped into the vortex.
The storm was a brewhouse of the Mistress’ past life. All her memories spun around me in short bursts of scenes from yesteryear.
A picnic date with champagne and roses.
A painful push as a baby was born.
The eyes of the woman I communed with turning pitch black as she foretold the future.
A spirit that haunted her.
Ephraim binding their souls and lives together using the black tourmaline crystal.
Her husband lying sick on his deathbed, and the Hurtado clan transforming him with dark magic into the wight we had met just days earlier.
Magdalena losing her fight against old age.
It was all here, clear as day, but the sensation left me cold, shivering, and terrified. Each memory tainted with maliciousness. Dark thoughts. Blood-soaked sacrifices made along the way for power.
Dead bodies.
Graves in the backyard.
Sociopathic tendencies with intent on claiming more power.
The woman was a murderer several times over.
She was a thief, stealing power from other witches.
Her husband was a sadist who took joy in torturing others while Magdalena watched.
My blood ran cold.
Elena shook her head, consumed with the life of a manipulative woman bent on becoming more. I could sense her unease, her distaste.
Moonlight, mingled with the candlelight near the corpse, cast an odd glow of silver tinged with yellow. As the remnants of the oracle’s life swirled around me—and Elena—her soul appeared in the maelstrom.
“You’ve come to fetch me?” Her voice was melodic and smooth. Her dark beauty—deadly.
“I have. You have been requested for Dia de Muertos. Will you come with me?” I asked, extending my hand.
“Finally.”
She reached out and clasped my fingers.
I pulled hard.
Viciously.
Through the darkness, we travelled: a malevolent hurricane of thoughts. Several times, Magdalena gasped, then screamed. So did Elena.
Breaching through the veil, a blinding white light surrounded us.
An explosion of telekinetic energy took both Elena and me by surprise.
The darkness evaporated.
The moonlight glowed, casting shadows but edging everything and everyone with a metallic sheen. The candles had been blown out.
I leaned back, clutching my chest, eyes wide, as my brain seized in white hot pain.
Elena screamed. Her mind had let go just before Mistress Magdalena—despite the restraints—sat up in her coffin, her fists clenching the black silk lining as her eyes began to glow with that dead white light of rebirth. She inhaled a raspy breath.
The dried herbs inside her ignited and began to burn, sealing the soul to the body.
As long as they burned, the soul would reside in the body.
Magdalena’s chest glowed hot red as the Black Dragon hibiscus bloom seared itself into the heart muscle, making it beat once again, pulling the lost and forgotten memories of the Hurtado oracle’s life back to the forefront, into her brain where, for a short period at least, she would regain consciousness.
“Ephraim, I am here,” Magdalena whispered, then closed her eyes and lay back in her coffin.
I’ve seen many resurrections, but I’d never had a corpse lie back down and be restful.
Elena stared at me, though she was recovering from the blast and her experience.
And then the brain fog descended, like cheesecloth being wrapped around my head, obscuring my eyesight.
My head felt weighted. I couldn’t keep it up. My face drooped on one side as it became numb.
“Cesar!” Elena rushed to my side, holding my head up and staring at me. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
I blinked as I studied the pretty girl standing in front of me.
She seemed so kind.
Her eyes were full of love and caring.
“My dear, thank you, but who are you?”
“No! Fuck, no!” The pretty girl’s eyes glassed over as they filled with tears.
“Oh, child, don’t cry,” I said, as I wiped away the moisture from her cheek.
She grasped my hand and leaned into my palm.
“Oh, Cesar, no.”