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The woods were cold as Sam sat within them, ready to communicate with the dead.
She finished lighting the last candle in the ring that surrounded the runes she’d already drawn into the earth as she sat back, the old grimoire she bought from the Skulk And Lurk open in front of her, the other components of the ritual ready.
“Okay, Manson,” Sam muttered as she adjusted her position, raising the grimoire as she looked at the pages and the spidery letters written across the crumbling pages. “No backing out now. It’s now or never.”
Something cracked behind her.
Sam jolted, whirling around with her flashlight. That while she would never admit it, her heart had given an irregular thump at hearing that as she peered into the woods around her, the darkness swallowing up the light of her candles and flashlight like a hungry mouth.
That in the wake of the ghosts that had started attacking her town, the darkness held a lot more teeth than it once did.
Shaking off her unease, Sam turned back to the ritual, determination setting in once more. Shifting her weight, Sam’s eyes roved over the ritual, the incantation she’d memorised on the tip of her tongue as she kneeled on the ground, the cold wind rustling the tree branches as the candle flames wavered and the shadows deepened, a haunted feeling in the air.
The perfect night for summoning ghosts.
Sam never intended on doing necromancy or communing with the dead—she loved learning about the occult, but she had a healthy respect for the dead and would have never considered doing something like this, let alone and in the middle of the woods.
But after ghosts had become a prominent force over the past two months, Sam had grown interested in what lurked on the other side. Of what ghosts were like when they weren’t fighting with the white-haired ghost boy, to know what it was like in the afterlife.
And now, she was here. In the middle of the woods. Ready to do some necromancy.
Gripping the grimoire with the necromancy spell, double-checking the candles were arrayed in the right way and the runes were correct and the right offerings were in the circle, that the spell was right, Sam cleared her throat and began the chant.
“Oh spirits near and far, beyond the veil and tied to this earthly plane, I seek you out. By the light of candles, the power of these runes and these humble offerings, I call to you from beyond the grave, to bring me the soul that which I wish to speak to.”
As the words left her mouth, the air chilled, a heavy weight underlying it as the candles flickered frenetically, the wind growing silent as the shadows trembled. Sam held her breath, heart pounding in her chest as the candles blinked out, plunging her into darkness.
Then, the candles erupted with flames that burned green along with the runes as the temperature dropped to below freezing and the air pressure built, Sam resisting the urge to cover her ears as her eardrums popped. Mist slithered in from between the trees as howls and whispers filled the once silent-air, phantom claws dragging across her shoulders as wind built up in the circle, a hazy shape forming in the circle. Sam stared at it, not even moving as the ghost’s form warped and shuddered, and something about it almost seemed familiar…
Then, it disappeared as the temperature lifted and the wind picked up, the claws and whispers disappearing, the mist fading as the candles went out again, wisps of smoke trailing up from the stubs.
The offerings were gone. So were the runes.
Sam stared at the circle, at where she had summoned a ghost, before she scowled at her grimoire.
“Damn it. Guess this spell was a bust,” Sam muttered as she put it in her bag, cleaning up her ritual and double-checking the runes and offerings were, indeed, gone, a chill running down her spine as she packed up and walked out of the woods, intending to head to her place where Tucker and Danny would be meeting up. She hoped Danny came. He’d been so distant lately, and it was worrying both her and Tucker…
As Sam walked away, she didn’t notice the slight chill still lingering in the air, smelling of metal and ozone and citrus.
And that nearby, the earth shifted as a black-gloved, decomposing hand burst through the ground.
***
“So your seance didn’t work, huh?”
Sam rolled her eyes. “It did, Tuck, for about two seconds.”
Her best friend chuckled. “Man, I’m glad I said no to coming along. That would have been so freaky.”
“We see ghosts everyday.”
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t freaky to summon one! Why did you even want to summon a ghost anyway?” Tucker questioned, sipping his Coke.
“Just curiosity, I guess,” Sam answered as she drank her lemonade.
Tucker was quiet, before saying, “Well, I guess it’s a good thing it didn’t work. At least you didn’t summon an army of zom—“
BANG!
Both teens jumped, almost dropping their drinks as they turned wide-eyed looks on each other.
“Did you hear that?” Tucker whispered.
“Must be the house settling. It’s an old house,” Sam reasoned, only for another BANG! to prove her wrong.
The friends shared a look as Tucked theorised, “Is it Danny?”
“He said he was running late,” Sam shot down as more banging came, and much more insistent.
Tucker’s eyes widened and he hissed, “Sam, what if it’s a zombie you summoned?!”
“It’s not a zombie!”
“We see ghosts, Sam! You said that yourself! Why wouldn’t zombies be a thing?!”
Sam didn’t have an answer to that, as the banging continued.
Sharing a look, Sam decided, “Okay, let’s check it out. If it’s a zombie I summoned, maybe… maybe I can control it and send it back?”
“Yeah, that sounds right. You summoned it, you should control it,” Tucker said.
“Okay. Then let’s do this,” Sam said as she Tucker got up and headed for the stairs leading out of the basement—right as a crashing sound came.
The friends shared an alarmed look as they crept forward more stealthily as stumbling footsteps registered to their hearing. As they walked out of the basement and into the house, Sam was suddenly glad her parents were out of town for a business meeting; she just hoped this didn’t wake her grandma.
As they made their way to the hallway, more noises could be heard as whoever was inside her house moved about, centred in the back of the house, a shadow shambling across the wall. Sam and Tucker looked at each other before they stalked deeper into the house, coming closer as now she saw the shadow’s body standing between the living room and kitchen, shattered glass shining in the faint moonlight, the figure moving its arms about stiffly, posture rigid. A smell wafted off it, like rot and charred meat and burned rubber.
“Sam,” Tucker whispered as Sam stepped forward, steeling herself as she marched toward the figure—
And froze as the figure turned to her, hearing Tucker make a strangled noise as Sam kept staring at what was in front of her, who was in front of her.
A blackened HAZMAT stuck to the rotting, charred body, melted into the flesh, parts peeled away to show the decomposing muscles and tissues and the white of bone. Patchy black hair hung in front of a face charred to the bone, an eye melted and running down the face like jelly, the other milky and unseeing. Tips of bone poked out from the gloves where they scraped away at the earth, grave dirt still caking the hands, the body, falling from the hair, earthen footsteps trailing behind it. The stench of decomposition and burned flesh and rubber curdled in Sam’s nose as she kept staring at the corpse in front of her, the corpse she summoned.
The corpse that, despite the burns and decomposition, wore her best friend’s face.
“Danny?” she choked out, eyes still locked on the corpse of her best friend. Tucker made another noise, a mix between sob and gag.
The corpse tilted its head, a gloved hand outstretched to her and Tucker, mouth opening as it croaked, “S..m… Tu…k’rrrrr….”
The words slurred in the corpse’s mouth, the voice raspy but Sam recognised it.
She would recognise Danny’s voice anywhere.
“Oh my God,” Tucker choked, also recognising Danny’s voice. “That… that’s…”
The corpse shambled forward, milky blue eye fixed on them, before it stiffened and collapsed to the tiled floor at their feet, mouth gaping open as the reanimated life died away, the spell Sam had done releasing its grip.
And leaving the corpse of their best friend at Sam and Tucker’s feet.
Tucker gagged behind his hand as Sam stared at the corpse, paralysed by horror and shock.
“That’s Danny,” Tucker managed to get out, voice trembling. “Fuck, that’s Danny. That… that’s his corpse.”
Sam didn’t say anything, staring at the corpse at her feet.
“But Danny—he can’t be dead! We literally talked to him an hour ago! He sounded alive! Our best friend can’t be dead! We would know if he was dead,” Tucker denied, gripping his beret. He looked at Sam, and whispered, “Wouldn’t we?”
Sam pressed her mouth into a thin line, something wet entering her eyes. “I… I don’t know. He’s been pushing us both away and… I don’t know. We… we didn’t know.”
The silence from that was deafening.
Tucker looked between the corpse, then at Sam as he asked, “Did you know that spell… it would do this?”
“No! I thought it was a spell to summon a ghost, not raise the fucking dead! If I had, I would have talked to him, not fucking resurrect his corpse!” Sam yelled, before her mouth snapped shut and her fire banked away because she said it, they both had said it.
That was Danny. That was his corpse. He was dead. Their best friend was dead, and they hadn’t noticed.
So then why did he act so alive?
Tucker looked at the corpse, emotions running over his face before he sighed. “What are we going to do with it?”
“We can’t leave it here. There’s no way we can get away with it if we hide it here,” Sam said, eyeing the corpse and the broken glass of the back door—how Danny’s corpse had entered.
“So then what do we do then? Put it in a body bag and bury it in the woods?” Tucker asked.
At the silence from Sam, he gaped at her and exclaimed, “Sam, I was kidding!”
“If we get the tarp from my greenhouse and roll him up and skirt around the neighbourhoods, we could get into the woods and leave it there without anyone noticing before coming back with shovels and burying him.”
“Sam, we can’t do that! We have to call the cops or something! Maybe they can figure this out or—“
“The cops won’t believe us. Danny… he’s still walking around town. He still looks like he’s alive,” Sam argued. “We… we need to handle it ourselves. No one else can know.”
“But his parents and Jazz… they deserve to know,” Tucker countered, voice growing strained as he looked at Danny again. “Our best friend deserves a funeral.”
“I know,” Sam whispered, voice tight. “But what other option do we have?”
Tucker was quiet for a long time before he said, “Okay. I guess we’re actually doing this. We’re burying our dead friend’s body in the woods.”
They went into the kitchen, grabbing the spare pairs of gloves her mom stashed away and went to the body, bending down.
“You take the arms, I’ll take the legs,” Sam ordered. “On three. One, two…”
On three they picked up Danny’s body, Tucker’s face wrinkling.
“It stinks,” Tucker complained.
“That’s decomposition,” Sam said bluntly as they began to walk toward the door that lead to Sam’s greenhouse, where a tarp was they could roll Danny’s body in. She frowned. “How… how long do you think…?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a couple months? That’s how long Danny’s been acting weird,” Tucker answered.
Sam’s frown deepened. “Then how come his body isn’t a skeleton?”
Now Tucker was frowning, before something like hope entered his eyes and he said, “Hey, maybe we’re wrong and this isn’t actually Dan—“
The front door banged open, startling Sam and Tucker and nearly making them drop the body as a familiar voice rang throughout Sam’s manor house
“Hey, sorry I’m late, guys, something came up, and—“
Danny froze in the middle of the living room, staring at Sam and Tucker as they stared back at him, still holding the body. As Danny soon stared at the body and in that moment both Tucker and Sam knew.
That was Danny’s corpse they were holding. Any hope of it being otherwise was erased by the look on Danny’s face, the way his blue eyes went emptier and duller. More dead, and otherworldly, pinpricks of bright green burning in the pupils, features blurring and looking so slightly off.
Like he had finally stopped pretending to be alive in front of them. To be human.
That now, both Sam and Tucker knew why their best friend was so distant.
Just in the way they never thought or wanted to find out, holding their best friend’s body and staring at his ghost.
That in the silence of the Manson manor, cold chilling the air and quiet between the three best friends, the necromancy spell had indeed summoned something from beyond the grave.
And that it would be wearing their best friend’s face.