29. Revelation
twenty-nine
Revelation
Liam
The whole trip home was me trying to hold in my tears. If Fabian was on the train, I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see him. I sat curled up in a corner, just hoping no one would want to come near me. From there, onto the Tube, and all the way back to our flat, I held it in.
The last thing I need right now is the third degree from my mother, but the second I walk in the door, there she is, keys in hand like she was about to go to work, disappointment branded on her face.
“What are you doing home?”
I take a second to stifle the tears. “I finished early.”
“Have you been fired?”
No prelude, nothing. Straight to it.
“No, I haven’t been fired.” I probably will be tomorrow, though, for walking out on the job.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I just know it’s either Ted or Archer, so I ignore it, leave it for future-Liam to worry about.
Her tone turns sharp when she asks, “Then why are you home?”
I push through to the kitchen, turn the kettle on just to get away. But now I’m here, all I can think about is that fluorescent light over Jem’s head, those people he was with in that kitchen. How real it all seemed.
“Liam?” She’s right behind me, like a cadaver dog on the scent of a corpse.
“I finished early. The, uh… the job’s done.”
“The man you were seeing?”
The man I was seeing. Christ, if only she knew. “Yeah. Him. Doesn’t need me.”
“He doesn’t? Just like that?”
“Yeah, I guess…” I place a cup down too hard. So hard it makes a loud cracking noise, and I have to check I haven’t chipped it.
She follows every movement with quick eyes. I can feel her scanning me for any sign of drug use, putting every nervous mannerism down to that, her own anxiety building, taking her back five years ago to watching Jem in this kitchen, worrying over every movement of his.
So I still my motions. All of them. Just come to a dead stop. Then I do the only thing I can do and tell her, “I’m not okay, Mum. I had a really bad day. A really, really bad day.”
Her hand lands on my shoulder, and I know, for her sake, this is the only decision I can make.
But I’m not ready to tell her a word about it.
What am I supposed to say to her? I don’t even know what just happened.
I can’t say a thing about Jem, about what I saw, about what Archer is or isn’t, about that room of his, about how I know he’s been lying to me, that he’s involved somehow with all this death, and I don’t understand it. I can’t say a word.
She doesn’t make me. She just draws my head to her shoulder and lets me cry.
Cry there against her like a little kid.
Someone who’s so exhausted from trying to be the adult, from trying to be the fixer, and who can’t fix a single thing.
Someone who’s sick to death of being tossed about by fate and the world, because I don’t have a clue what’s going on.
I never have had. Not once ever. I just live this life with no plan and no way out, day to day, and I thought I saw some glimmer of something.
Some path out of this. Some hope for the future.
But it’s drying up in front of my eyes, and why?
Why did my brother do those things? Why did he go missing? Why can’t my mum cope? Why am I always dragged back into this when I’m trying so hard just to get a foothold? Taking this job, this insane, ridiculous job, pinning all my hopes on it.
But even this, it’s not the actual job that’s the problem.
It’s not ghosts at all. It’s this dark thing.
These horrible visions. These cruel memories.
And it’s Archer. Archer making me breakfast and making me fall for him.
Archer being so sweet and so kind. And now Archer, who I should never have trusted, hiding something from me.
My phone vibrates again, and Mum pulls back in response. “Did he…” She takes a moment before she presses on delicately. “Did he pass on?”
I almost laugh at the thought of it. Did Archer pass on? No. Last I saw, he made someone else pass on. Then that person wasn’t dead at all. “No. No, he’s still there. Just he…” I wipe away the tears I’ve already shed, hoping I can hold back the rest of the deluge. “He doesn’t need me anymore.”
“Ah, Liam.” She tsks her tongue sympathetically. “Did you get attached?”
A sad chuckle finds its way out. “Attached. Yeah. Yeah, I think I did.”
“Honey…” She strokes my arm while I pour water over the tea bag. “You always were a bit of a softie.”
That’s me. A bit soft. A bit ineffectual. Here. Always here.
“And they’ve moved you to another job?” she pursues.
“Mmhmm,” I agree, because it’s so much easier.
“And you’ll miss him?”
“Mmm.” A tear drops again, too fast for me to stop it.
“Oh, Liam.”
“I wasn’t ready,” bursts out of me. “I’m not ready. But I can’t go back there. Because that’s done. It’s not… I can’t…”
Her eyes, sad and concerned, find mine. “Are you worried about him? Now he’s all alone again?”
Her voicing of it makes my stomach twist. Yes, I’m worried for him. Because whatever the fuck just happened, the Archer that kissed me this morning, that embraced me… he’s still there. In that house. With that thing.
This morning can’t have been fake. That felt so real. And he was trying to keep me away. Trying to fire me. Trying to keep me safe. About to take me straight home.
He protected me.
But then he did that to Fabian. I saw it with my own eyes. His hands wrapped around that stake.
But then Fabian was fine.
Just like Raul was fine…
My phone vibrates again. And again. Someone calling. She looks at me expectantly.
So I take it out of my pocket and check the screen.
Archer.
I walk back into the living room to answer it, not knowing what to say, so I don’t say anything, just hold it to my ear and wait for him to speak.
The first sound is a long sigh. As if he doesn’t know what to say either. Until finally, “Can I come over?”
“No.”
“Can I explain?”
Again, I say nothing, waiting for what he could possibly tell me to make this all make sense.
Then he says about the last thing I would ever have expected him to say.
“Liam, I’m a necromancer.”
My heart stops.
“This is all my fault,” he goes on. “This whole mess, everything you’ve been going through, all of it. It’s my fault. But I never meant to hurt you. I never meant for—”
I cut the call. Switch him off, just like that.
Necromancer.
The word dances, spins in front of me, like a diamond that I can’t touch, locked away in a display case.
Necromancer.
I know what a necromancer is. Everyone knows what a necromancer is. But I still swish open my phone, scroll past all the messages that Archer’s left me already, and tap out, ‘You wake the dead?’
The three little dots are immediate, but they disappear quickly. Then reappear. Then disappear. Then, finally, ‘I wanted to tell you.’
A few seconds later he adds, ‘Can we talk?’
‘No,’ I reply.
The three dots stay there for some time. Then disappear.
And they don’t come back.
Mum had to go to work. I’d already made her late.
I could tell she felt bad about leaving, but it’s best for both of us.
She needs to be out of the house, seeing people, doing things.
And I need the space. Space to flip through this ExorSquad manual, to see if it says a single word about what to do when the owner of the haunted house is the one who’s actually raising spirits.
Of course there’s nothing
So I turn to the internet.
My first search is Necromancers. Half the pictures are of old men with long beards, wearing robes and hunched over. The other half are demonic-looking things, creatures with skeletal faces… Not unlike the thing that’s been haunting him. Haunting us.
Something in that idea gives me pause. Because it is haunting me too. And so specifically. It’s not like I’m just caught up in Archer’s nightmares, if he even has any. Maybe he just doesn’t register the same things as nightmarish that the rest of us might because he’s used to seeing dead people.
Dead people.
Like Jem…
Lying flat on my back on my bed, I let the phone drop onto my chest while I stare up at the ceiling. All I can see is Jem’s face, with that bullet hole in his head.
Why that? Every time, over and over. It could have tormented me with a thousand things. Even the spiders would have been enough. Or any other way Jem might have died, worse than that. Visions of my mother, even. Why that so specifically?
I meander over it, pulling it back and forth, slowly, deliberately, methodically, but I know, deep down, it’s all an attempt to distract myself from what’s right here in front of me. A cold, heavy weight settles in my gut when I face it head on.
Jem really is dead.
He got shot.
Those people took his body and buried it somewhere, and we’ll never find it.
The awful thing is, somewhere in the back of my mind, I figured that was the most likely thing to have happened. That he got caught on the wrong end of some drug deal. That he spent just one too many days around those people. And that was it. He’s really never coming home to us.
I roll onto my side, letting my tears sink into my pillow.
It’s not as if I didn’t know, but I’d hoped.
I’d hoped over and over again that some day he’d walk back in that door.
That there would be some explanation. And we’d grieve all the years lost. And my mother would cry, and she might have another breakdown.
But her baby would be back. Her first born, who she loved so much.
Sacrificed everything for. Worked so hard to pull him into line.
I have to wonder, if he is dead and gone, is it better for her to know?
Would it be better to try to find his body, if this is really what happened, if I could identify who these people are?
Or is it better for my mum to live with that shred of hope, no matter how small it is? Something to keep her going.
Does she also know, deep down? Does she secretly believe he’s gone?
I don’t know what to believe about any of it. But I know someone who might.
I swish my phone open again, scrolling through the images of necromancers. None of them are like Archer. Even the ones I eventually find on Japanese manga covers. They’re handsome. Mostly tortured-looking, powerful, with bolts of light coming out of them, surrounding them in dramatic haloes.
But Archer…
Archer, who is all aprons and baking. Fresh flowers and floral silk wallpaper. Restorations and nice cars, and his incredibly cute and odd… pet raven?
The pet raven, who he says isn’t really a pet. Who’s so intelligent. Really weirdly sort of… aware.
I flip onto my stomach and tap a new search into my phone. ‘Do necromancers have familiars?’
Yes. Yes, according to this, they do. Bats, cats, toads, spiders, and… ravens.
The room falls away as I sit bolt upright, staring into my screen.
‘Are necromancers born with their powers, or do they learn?’
Both. Either. They can be born into it and it can be… terrifying…
The way Archer saw all those people in the hospital, yet didn’t even react to them. Barely registered Jem.
God, does he see them everywhere he goes? How the fuck does he cope with that?
No wonder his house is full of ghosts. They must be drawn to him, knowing he can see them. And that’s why…
That’s why he didn’t want us to hurt them. He was trying to protect them. Even though he called the ExorSquad, had to call us once that thing showed up. And Raul didn’t listen, and Raul…
The scene explodes in my mind’s eye: the chandelier falling on him, the blood everywhere, the limbs poking out…
Then Fabian today, that stake in his chest, blood on Archer’s hands…
My fingers fly across the screen. ‘Can necromancers really bring people back to life?’
Yes.
Yes, they can.
Holy shit.
No wonder… No wonder he saw all the same horror I did and didn’t think a trip to the hospital was really necessary. Because he knew they would be okay. Because… because he did that!
My pulse is pounding in my ears, my eyes seeing nothing but that text on the screen.
Necromancers can raise the dead.
I swipe my finger to Archer’s messages, tap out the start of a new one, then delete it.
Do I really want to do this? Do I really want to go back into his world, face this thing that I’m not sure I can handle?
And then… maybe make a choice—a mistake that’s… unnatural. A thing of horror. A Pandora’s box that I cannot ever close again.
Would Archer even help me if I asked him?
Just then, three little dots appear at the bottom of the screen.
I watch them, tense, hoping that whatever he’s about to say can make this decision for me.
A little emoji of a black bird pops up. Then another. Then another.
It should be creepy, but already there’s a slight smile on my face because I think I know what’s happened. Despite everything, a laugh finds its way out, breaking what feels like hours of tense and sad silence.
Three more ravens, then the dots again. Then, ‘I’m so sorry. Sorry. It wasn’t me. Sorry.’
I can virtually hear Archer’s voice, scolding Edgar, who’s probably there on his bedspread next to him pecking at his phone.
The scene’s so delightful in my imagination that even if I’m still miserable, still confused, I tap back, ‘It’s okay. Tell him I said hi.’
Dots, dancing on my screen for so long.
Then gone.
Then a new message pops up: ‘I miss you already.’
Of all the things he might have said.
I pull the phone against my heart and roll onto my side, holding it there.
I can’t help but imagine him doing the same, all the way out there in his weird, lonely, isolated house. With his raven and his ghosts. And that thing.
I click my phone onto silent and put it on my bedside table for the night.
I don’t know what to do.
All I know is, I do miss him. I miss what I’d hoped today was going to be. I miss all the daydreams of what I imagined this might become.
I miss feeling hopeful for the first time in so long.
I miss him.
I miss Archer.