necromancy – Diabolical Plots

DP FICTION #118B: “Margery Lung Is Unstoppable” by Lisa Cai

edited by Hal Y. Zhang

Content note (click for details)

Content note: anti-Asian racism and misogyny, murder, body horror, gore, pet death.

The first time Margie raised the dead, it was to prove she didn’t eat her dog. As Harold hadn’t been walked around the neighbourhood recently, her classmate Brenda assumed Margie’s family devoured their dog and caught SARS.

Harold was a beloved member of the Lungs. That grey fluffy Pomeranian guarded Margie since she was born. He spent his final months lying limp on his beanie bed, yet he growled and his fur stood on end whenever the doorbell rang.

Margie arose before dawn to bring Harold back. She squeezed between the backyard’s fence and shed to reach his resting place. She flung fistfuls of dirt off the soaked shoebox. Worms and maggots crawled up her wrists at the sudden disturbance; she brushed them off with her hands.

Poh Poh taught her to raise the dead; with brushes dipped in chicken’s blood, they wrote spells on paper, copying from old instruction manuals, and practiced on mangled squirrels and sparrows in the backyard. Those animals stood, brown wings and furry black arms raised, and hopped towards a small ditch as Poh Poh knelt and rang a bell. Their powers were used for undertaking. Why not do other things before the dead were laid to rest?

Margie pulled a yellow talisman from her waistband and punched it through the box. Gas, grit, and flies burst from her force. The cardboard coffin and surrounding dirt trembled and collapsed inward. A high-pitched yelp came from the grave.

Harold poked his head out of the ground. He licked his pointed nose. His beady black eyes widened staring up at her. He yipped a greeting and wiggled his whole form to shake the insects off and out of him.

“Morning, Harold.” She pulled him by the paws to get him to stand on all fours. Harold wagged his short tail with vigour and smiled with his tongue out. He was so excited to see her and have his strength back! “Wanna walk?”

Harold limped towards her; the surgery he had on his hip last year never fully healed.

Margie retrieved the black leash from her pocket and attached it to his collar. When her parents buried him, they left his collar around his neck because he was irreplaceable.

Margie led them out the backyard. Harold hopped once, twice, then kept to it to follow by her side. The talisman on his back flapped up and down with each bounce. No matter how stiff, goeng-si could always jump.

Based on the dark sky and bright streetlights, it was around six a.m. Brenda’s dad jogged wearing a Walkman, fanny pack, and tracksuit with orange neon stripes. If Margie found him and showed him her dog, he could tell his daughter nobody devoured Harold and he died of old age.

Cedarvale Park’s entrance opened with a misty paved path flanked by tall trees. Leaves crunched under Margie’s slippers. Harold panted. Drool dripped out his mouth and onto the sidewalk.

“Are you tired?” She couldn’t wait for Harold to adjust to his new state; her family wouldn’t understand her motives. They ran a funeral home to send the dead away, not bring them back. Or, at least, they didn’t anymore. They ended the whole leading-the-dead business generations ago.

Her parents and older sister, Evelyn, told her it was disrespectful to revive the dead. How did they know? They never asked goeng-si what they thought. In movies, they usually went on rampages until they were subdued by someone. Margie wanted to sit one down and ask why they came back with bloodthirst.

“Margie, stop!” Evelyn pounded towards Margie in her pajamas.

Harold’s tail wagged and he yipped in greeting.

Margie was going to get an earful from Evelyn. Margie snatched Harold into her arms and charged into the park, dashing up a slope with tall grass. Evelyn, chasing her sister, tripped and slipped into the dirt. Margie reached the top. A man with a racket in the nearby tennis court turned to her. Harold bared his fangs and snarled at the stranger.

“What’s wrong with your dog?”

Nothing’s wrong with him. Margie ran around fencing and hid behind a tree, leaning against the trunk and panting. She’d never find Brenda’s dad now. She had to try one last thing. She held Harold up, so their dark eyes stared straight into the other’s.

“Find Brenda’s Baba!” She had the image of a middle-aged skinny jogger in her mind and burned her gaze into Harold.

He stared at her in concentration. She was trying to teach him a trick and he couldn’t decipher the action he had to perform to get a treat.

Evelyn yanked Margie by her shirt collar. Harold dropped to the ground. Margie kicked and shrieked as her sister gripped her by the waist, but she wouldn’t let go.

“Do you know how much trouble you’re in?”

***

Harold barked and barked at the sisters. They were a pack; infighting like this was never allowed! Sometimes, the two of them argued, but it never got this physical.

Margie’s mouth released a long high-pitched cry. Tears streaked her face. She wailed like that when she was a puppy, spending her days sleeping and feeding. One day, she’d be as big as the other humans because he protected her. Why he had been buried in a box in the backyard was a mystery, but he could bark and follow Margie again.

Margie collapsed onto the ground and he ran up to her. Evelyn yanked the paper off his back and the world went black.

***

The second time Margie raised the dead, it was to extend a long life that should’ve gone longer.

Poh Poh chose to die at home. She didn’t want to be tended to by strangers in a hospice and have instruments run on her. She lay on her wide bed with several layers of blankets. Her cheeks had grown sallow and the outlines of her neck and collarbone creased her skin as she lost weight. A black beanie covered her head as her white hair was styled short.

Mama raised a spoon of congee to Poh Poh’s lips. “Eat.”

Poh Poh parted her lips, took a small sip, and turned her face away. Margie stayed by her grandma’s side, scribbling in a notebook, as relatives entered and left checking in on Poh Poh.

In the afternoon, her chest went still. With her eyes closed and face laxed, she appeared to be sleeping. Once an aunt noticed Poh Poh wasn’t breathing, she called for everyone to gather in the bedroom. Among the crowd, several sniffled or covered their teary eyes. Murmurs about what to do next circulated through the room. Margie knelt in the corner and put her hands over her ears.

Harold’s body rotted behind the shed years ago and was unretrievable, but Margie wouldn’t let Poh Poh leave, not until she was ready. They were supposed to grow bitter melons together in the backyard, as they did every summer. The seeds in the aluminum dishes they set on a windowsill had germinated with tiny white roots sprouting. The crops’ yellow flowers sometimes moved in the direction of the sun. Their leaves shriveled as the nights grew colder. Who was going to look after them with Margie?

Life wasn’t fair. Death was unfair. Why just stay here and accept death? Who was Margie, other than someone who could redefine what being alive meant?

Margie dashed to her bedroom and rummaged through her drawer. Poh Poh was illiterate, but she taught Margie how to write and copy spells. If she had regrets or things left unsaid in this life, Margie would give her one last chance before moving on.

“Get out of the way!” Margie waved the talisman above her and charged into Poh Poh’s room.

“Ah-Margie, stop!” Mama grabbed her daughter’s arm, but Margie jerked away as her mother’s nails left long pale scratches along her skin. She slapped the talisman on her grandma’s forehead. Poh Poh’s eyes popped open and she sprang sitting up.

A cousin screamed at the back. How could Margie use her powers on their matriarch?

“Poh Poh!” Margie grabbed her grandma by the sleeve and shook her. “Say something!”

She passed away ten minutes ago. If she needed to speak, she could do it now, before it was too late. Relatives yanked Margie back. She cried out and stretched her hands out to Poh Poh. She couldn’t be the only one who wanted Poh Poh to stay with them. Who didn’t want their grandma to live forever?

***

Poh Poh observed wrinkles and spots on her adult children and pimples and braces on her grandchildren; her sight had never been better in years. Everyone yelled at each other in the room. All their words meant nothing, travelling jumbled in a circle.

The yellow talisman fluttered up and down Poh Poh’s face. Ah-Margie did that. She was brought back to life minutes after death. Was it worth it? It had been generations since their powers were needed to lead the dead home. She wanted to be buried here, in Canada, beside her husband; she had no intention of returning to her birth village.

Ah-Margie’s eyes were round and focused on Poh Poh even as she was pressed down on the floor by relatives. Poh Poh’s false teeth gleamed between her lips as she smiled. Her laugh was dry and hoarse as her chest expanded with air. She was right to pass on her knowledge of raising the dead. Ah-Margie could, would grow and guide the dead to a dignified final journey. That was all Poh Poh wanted.

She yanked the talisman off, lay back, and resumed being dead.

***

The third time Margie raised the dead, she didn’t have any other choice.

No matter the trauma, body bags were supposed to be still. The zipped white pouch was motionless on the table, yet something beat within Winona’s body.

Margie rubbed her blurry eyes. The back of her head buzzed. Was she imagining things? She had stayed late at the funeral home browsing online.

When Winona was found dead, stabbed outside Spadina Station, a media circus broke out. Editorials discussed how this was related to the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, or how it wasn’t. Authorities investigated it as a random incident; the killer was unknown, so there was no evidence she was targeted because of her race or gender.

On social media, people declared this sort of thing didn’t happen in Canada. Others posted proof to the contrary: the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Vancouver anti-Asian riots, internment camps, the head tax and Chinese Exclusion Act, border controls, carding, the bamboo ceiling—that was their Canada. What did people do when faced with this? What could someone do?

Winona was named after the area her family immigrated to in Toronto. Margie lived nearby, walked through it, and went to school there. They might have encountered each other in a convenience store selecting candy, browsing through an aisle of books in a library, or waiting at a bus stop.

The body bag expanded and deflated; Winona breathed.

Margie’s hand twitched. This corpse needed to be controlled before it arose and sought vengeance. Anger was the fluid that brought her back to life. Margie was supposed to quell goeng-si from rampaging by placing a talisman on their forehead and leading them to their resting place.

When Margie brought the dead back, she was supposed to guide them towards peace. She had done things backwards with Harold and Poh Poh; they had no reason to come back as they lived long, fulfilled lives and were cared for at death. Winona had none of that. She wouldn’t leave for the afterlife until she got revenge. All Margie needed was a talisman written with chicken blood to give Winona peace. What was the point of having powers if you didn’t use them to fight for a good cause?

The body bag trembled and drummed against the table. Winona extended her limbs and clawed and kicked the pouch like a creature emerging from a womb. Margie unzipped it.

***

Winona had to escape. In the dark, she swiped and punched. Her heels banged the solid surface behind her as the world shook. She tore at her back and dug nails into her wounds. He stabbed her there so many times, when would he stop?

White light beamed on her. Was this a trick of her assailant? Winona extended her fangs and claws to counter whatever came at her.

Her forehead was slapped and vision obscured in white and black by a strip of paper. Her body froze. The world was now dark blue. A small stream flowed over mud and stone. On each side of the water were trees with yellow and orange leaves. Cedarvale Park: she had jogged through there, years ago. Why was she seeing this?

“You’re safe in my family’s morgue,” a woman spoke.

What was she doing here? She was fending herself off from an attacker after leaving Spadina Station. She wanted to grab a book from Robarts Library; classes were finally happening on campus again. The students in her tutorial expected to discuss the professor’s assigned readings. She had to grade papers, edit her thesis, and grab groceries for herself and her fiancé. She couldn’t be dead.

Why was this happening to her? Why did she live to learn about her own death? Winona uttered a cry; something hoarse and hollow emerged from her mouth. Had her body decomposed so far that she was without speech?

A hand stroked her hair. “I’m here to help.”

What could this stranger do for her? She couldn’t return to what her life was.

“Winona.” The woman clasped her hands, claws, and flesh. “They haven’t found your killer, but you can. You’re both connected, whether you like it or not.”

Winona gripped the hands that were offered to her. Her pointy nails dug into the other’s skin. Warm droplets of blood rolled down her wrists. If Winona did nothing, he’d get away with murder.

“I’m from the same place as you, Winona. Men honked at you from cars since you were a teen too, right? You’ve been followed and asked where you’re from. No, where’re you really from?”

It wasn’t just strangers. Her classmates, acquaintances, and exes grabbed her, insulted her, hit her. She was punished for just existing. She always kept her head down and fled in silence. What else could she do? She was helpless, until she died.

“You’ve thought about getting back at all those assholes, haven’t you? We all have.”

Her killer was like all the others who wronged her. He’d continue hurting and targeting others if she didn’t stop him. Winona ground her fangs. Her sharp teeth could crunch down on her killer’s bones and reduce them to bits. She’d render him small for her consumption by tearing up his flesh with her bare hands. She defied heaven and hell to return here; she was the strongest being alive.

She’d thoroughly disrespect him. Her feet could stomp and crush all his organs. She’d splatter blood over his home’s walls and ceiling with the force of her fists. He’d never find closure to his violent end.

“You have a few hours before you have to come back here.” The woman let go of Winona.

***

As the blue-haired VTuber hit the high note at the end of her song, clapping hand emojis flooded the chat. Margie watched the singing streamer on her phone as she waited in the kitchen. She sent several messages with heart icons.

Margie grabbed a dampened cloth and lifted her wok’s lid. Steam puffed up in a cloud, as did the aroma of shrimp, eggs, and chives. The stirred eggs in the tin dish solidified into yellow and white, with a bubbly surface spotted with chopped green onions and mini shrimp. Their tiny black eyes dotted the surface. This was how Poh Poh made it. Margie set it on a coaster and cut it apart in quarters. As she lifted a slice up, the ends of glass noodles hung out.

Her apartment door creaked open. The footsteps were heavy with every stomp and hop.

“Oh, you’re here? Are you hungry?” Margie set up two bowls on her table with steamed eggs and rice. Margie held a spoon; if Winona needed to be fed, she’d help.

The goeng-si turned the corner into view. Winona kept a hand on the wall to support herself. Her palm left streaks of blood on the white wall. Her head tilted right, along with the talisman on her forehead. Margie’d scrub up the blood soon.

Winona stared at Margie. The rank pungent smell of human flesh and blood wafted throughout the kitchen as she exhaled; it was stronger than when corpses were drained of blood for embalming. Winona’s clothes were soaked red. They dripped a dark trail on the floor. She had eaten well.

Margie doubled the portions for nothing. She’d stretch her rice and eggs for lunch and dinner, maybe save some for tomorrow.

“Sit down, at least.” Winona was going to continue hopping as she stiffened and returned to death. Margie retrieved a dark hoodie from her bedroom. She stood by a seated Winona and held the garment up.

“Wear this and we can go back to the funeral home.” Did Winona understand the implications? Her family wanted an open casket viewing. Her face needed to be patched up with wax, clay, and makeup to hide the cuts and bruises.

Winona turned her head up to Margie. Her glassy eyes were spotted red, brown, and black.

“You killed him, right?” Margie said. “Is there anything else you need to do?”

Her head bobbed back, then forward as a nod to her first question, then her head swayed left and right for no. The talisman followed her movements. Margie couldn’t peer into the goeng-si’s mind. If she could, she would’ve asked Harold if he appreciated her placing blankets on him as he slept on his beanie bed and questioned Poh Poh about her adventures subduing the undead.

Margie covered Winona’s head and arms with the hoodie. From a distance, the blood was unnoticeable. The bandages around Margie’s hands pressed against the other person.

In the morgue, the goeng-si’s nails dug deep into Margie’s skin. One way to become a goeng-si was through infection. Tomorrow, she’d unwrap her bandages. If the punctures were coloured anything like a corpse’s, she’d consult the old manuals for antidotes to remove her poison; if that didn’t work, Evelyn would have to subdue her by slapping a talisman on Margie. As tempted as Margie was to prepare comebacks for her sister’s scolding, she had to deal with Winona first.

“Can you run for thirty minutes? That’s all we need.” If Winona jumped from roof to roof as Margie jogged on the sidewalk, they could travel without raising suspicion.

“Y-s….” Winona’s legs trembled as she stood. Margie held Winona by the arm to help her stand.

Her parents would have arrived at the funeral home about now and they’d have to let her in. They sensed when corpses arose. This time, they were too far away to control her. What could they do? Turn her in to authorities and expose their powers? They were forced into silence now. In the end, Margery Lung was unstoppable.

Margie patted Winona’s shoulder as she headed to the front door. According to Poh Poh, their ancestors, for a fee, may have marched the dead from cities back to their birth villages at night by using talismans. They rattled bells to warn people to stay away from them.

She rang her handbell to begin the final command.

3288 words

Author’s Note:

The story’s setting is close to home; I live, work, and play near the Oakwood Village area in Toronto, where Winona Drive is. While Canada likes to prop itself up as a welcoming and multicultural place, it is not without its flaws. I wanted to highlight the historical, cyclical, and systemic violence Asian people, especially Asian women, are subjected to. Using the goeng-si, I wanted a victim of such violence to get revenge.

Goeng-si (also called jiāngshī) are hopping vampires or zombie-like creatures from Chinese folklore. They’re usually depicted wearing Qing dynasty official outfits with talismans clinging to their foreheads. A human may turn into one due to things such as getting attacked and infected by a goeng-si, a bad death (i.e. murder, suicide), or a Taoist priest needing to transport the deceased. Goeng-si genre films experienced breakthrough success in the 1980s with franchises like Mr. Vampire, a Cantonese language series produced in Hong Kong.

Lisa Cai is from Toronto, Canada. She has been published in The Dark, Polar Borealis Magazine, and others. When not reading or writing, she is probably wrangling with IT at a university, watching anime, taking a long walk, or solving crimes in Among Us. Her socials are listed at https://linktr.ee/lisacai.

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DP FICTION #116B: “Bone Talker, Bone Eater” by D.S. Ravenhurst

edited by Chelle Parker

Mama’s bones scream as the writhing mass of beetles cleans her skeleton. My fingers bury themselves in my ears against my will, trying to block the shrieking no one else can hear and the squish of macerated flesh they can. I don’t know which one’s worse.

The hedgewitch watches me from beneath her fur-trimmed hood, her sunken eyes eerily like the beetles in the flickering lantern light. I look towards the silent forest, the trees an army of mourners watching the funeral beneath the velvet sky. The spaces between them could hide countless monsters, but nothing there scares me more than the yawning space at my side where Mama has always stood.

Not even the whispers of the villagers on the other side of the beetle well, or the way they shrink from me in fear.

None of them can hear the bones.

I first heard them ten years ago. I was seven, and they whispered inside the wall, the click and chatter of a decaying mouse. It was a sound I heard in my own bones, like the marrow called to its sister. A cold sound, not meant for the living. Even then, I knew not to tell people I could hear the bones, knew they’d say I was no better than a Bone Eater myself. I didn’t tell Mama until I was eleven, when Granny died and we took her bones down to the crypt.

Granny’s bones didn’t scream. They sang with the sort of sad contentment that I now know only comes from a life well-lived and a peaceful passing. Mama didn’t get that. The wasting sickness didn’t let her have even that at the end.

I sink to my knees before Mama’s beetle-swathed corpse, waiting for the last of her pain to stop boring through my eardrums, rattling my skull. A hand clamps on my arm, bony fingers digging deep into my tender flesh as though they might rip it from my bones just like the beetles.

“Up, Suvi.” The hedgewitch’s red-painted, hollow-eyed face wavers into view through my tears. “It’s time to go.” She jerks her head towards the cloaked villagers sidling towards us from the other side of the pit like vultures. Only they aren’t looking at Mama’s corpse. They’re looking at me.

“She’ll bring a Bone Eater down on us,” someone says.

I flinch. I don’t want to be a Bone Eater’s meal any more than they do.

I stumble to my feet and follow the hedgewitch through the grasping trees. My arms drop from my ears with relief as the shriek of Mama’s bones fades, and I nearly choke on the bitter guilt of leaving before the defleshing was complete. The dead aren’t supposed to be left alone until their bones are laid to rest in the crypt. Safe from the Bone Eaters.

The hedgewitch pulls me through the front door of her squat, moss-covered hut and pushes me onto a rough-hewn chair.

“They’ll not wait much longer. Not with your mother gone.” She spits in the corner to keep Mama’s spirit at bay.

“I know.”

The wind sets the trees to caressing the bubbled glass of the window above the hedgewitch’s work table, and I feel as though the touch follows the curve of my spine instead. The villagers have been baying for my blood since old Ritva heard me telling Mama the slaughtered hog in the smokehouse was scaring me because its bones wouldn’t stop screaming. I was only eleven, and they tried to stone me. No one wants a Bone Talker nearby. They always blame us when the Bone Eaters find them. Mama was no witch, but she hadn’t been afraid to barter for whatever power she needed to keep me safe. Even her health.

I ought to hate the hedgewitch for that. For taking Mama away from me. Or maybe I should hate Mama for selling her life for mine. But there is a chasm in my chest where my feelings are supposed to be, and the only thing clinging to the handholds of my ribs is grief.

“Will you run?”

I appreciate that she doesn’t tell me I should. That she doesn’t act like leaving the only place I’ve ever known and the only people who’ve ever loved me—for all they’re naught but bones now—is the obvious choice. I should run. I could leave and make my way through the woods and across the Salted Plain to the city, choose a new name, start a new life.

But cities are built on the bones of their past. The forest twines its roots through the skulls of its creatures. There is nowhere I can go where the bones won’t call to me. Someone always notices, sooner or later. And then comes the fear.

“No,” I say, and the word snaps like a femur.

She watches me over the sharp ridges of her painted cheekbones. The lantern light can’t drive the flickering shadow of fear from her eyes. “I still owe you my protection. I do not go back on my bargains.” The twist of her mouth adds a silent ‘However much I want to.’

“Thank you.” I let her think the words are for her, but they are for Mama.

I have settled down to an uneasy rest when we hear them outside. At first, in my sleep-fuddled haze, I think it’s just the branches again, but branches don’t wail and shout like that. Those cries are reserved for humans and bones.

The noise resolves into words. “Bone Talker! Come out! You can’t hide behind the hedgewitch’s skirts.”

I recognize the voice of the village headwoman, Leppa.

“Ignore them, girl,” says the hedgewitch. “They can’t get past the twisted pines.” I do not know if she means the trees merely mark whatever wards she keeps on her home or if the eyes I’ve felt on the back of my neck in this forest are more than my imagination.

I press my face to the window and peer into the night. Lanterns glow like eyes among the tree trunks.

“Come out now, Bone Talker, or we will grind your mother’s bones to dust and let them blow into the Salted Plain.” Leppa drops a sack on the ground in front of her, and I hear the bones cry out with the impact, their yelp of pain withering to a moan. The voice of Mama’s bones may not be that of her living voice, but I would still recognize it anywhere.

A small, broken sound escapes me. Without Mama’s bones safely interred in the crypt, how will her soul recognize Granny in the afterlife? How will she watch over me, stuck here without her? How will she find me when I eventually join her in the forests of the dead?

The mob can’t do anything worse to me than that. And Mama’s bargain with the hedgewitch only protects me, not herself.

“Consider your bargain fulfilled.” I lurch through the front door, shaking off the hedgewitch’s clawed fingers, ignoring the sting as her nails break the skin on my upper arm.

As soon as I pass the twisted pines whispering warnings into the cold night, the villagers surround me. But Mama’s bones sigh in recognition.

I stumble on their cloaks as they drag me along in a puddle of lantern light, hissing their rage with words I don’t bother to parse. Mama’s bones chitter with worry as the sack swings from Leppa’s hand in front of me. The ground begins to slope beneath my feet, the walls of the gorge rising to block out the stars, and I know where they’re taking me.

At least I’ll be with Mama and Granny at the end.

Hands drag me through the narrow fissure into the vestibule where mourners come to burn offerings to keep their departed loved ones quiet. They fear the bones as much as they revere them. My foot scuffs through the ashes of an old fire, and the quiet chorus of the bones in the crypt sets my rib cage to resonating in harmony. Most of these bones are old enough that their voices are mellow, the pain of their time among the living faded to a faint dissonant whine beneath the chord.

Mama’s bones in their sack bark with a rawness that carves into my sternum each time they carom off the ground or Leppa’s legs. They should have been laid out with care, marched through the village and down to the crypt on a litter strewn with living green, lovingly placed into the crypt by me, her only living relative. Instead, Leppa lifts the bar on the door to the crypt and hurls the sack into the darkness. She didn’t even bother to knot the sack closed, and Mama’s bones chatter as they spill onto the floor.

“Better you’re with your own kind, Bone Talker.”

I don’t make them push me. I fall to my knees inside the crypt, collecting Mama’s bones against me, making the same sort of hushing noises I’d use with a nervous cat. Or a baby, but no one has let me near an infant since they found out I was a Bone Talker.

Leppa drops her lantern by my feet, and then the door shuts behind me. The bar falls into place with a muffled thump, and I am locked in.

Alone, but not alone.

Empty eye sockets webbed in spider-spun shadows watch me from the grinning skulls that line the corridor, singing their welcome. They seem to stretch on forever beyond the small globe of light cast by the lantern.

Mama’s bones hum with contentment at my touch, joining the chorus of the dead. I gently place Mama back in the sack and stand. My footfalls echo through the maze of chambers, bouncing back to remind me how alone I am, even as the singing bones remind me that I am never alone down here.

I don’t bother to try the door. The bar can’t be dislodged from the inside, and Leppa and the others have been waiting for their chance for years. They won’t have squandered it now.

Though I know I’m walking deeper into the crypt, it feels as though I haven’t moved at all, bubbled in golden light, watched by a hundred pairs of depthless eyes. Every so often, a new chamber branches off this original corridor, walled in bones, with magnificent arches built of long bones sweeping to meet a flared rib cage in the center.

After an unknowable amount of time, I reach the newest of these chambers, with half its shelves still empty, bare even of dust thanks to the wards. The bones are louder here. Fresher. They haven’t forgotten who they are, yet. I place Mama’s skull on the middle shelf and kiss her forehead.

“What am I going to do?” Even whispered, my words split the still air like a broken tibia through skin. I have no food. No water. I knew I’d die here when I left the hedgewitch’s hut, but there is knowing a thing and being confronted with it, and I find I do not want to die just yet, not even to join Mama and Granny in the forests of the dead.

Mama’s skull hums louder, a lullaby that I know is meant to be comforting. But there is no comfort strong enough to warm me here, in the grave. I’m already dead; my heart just hasn’t realized it, yet.

The incorrigible thump of it skips a beat as the sound of footsteps echoes through the crypt. The feet belong to something large, something heavy. Something scrapes along the stone with every step.

The sound grows louder and the bones grow restless, jabbering with agitation. From another chamber, a crack reverberates, a high, terrible shriek chasing it through the maze of chambers. I sink to the ground, still clutching Mama’s humerus—whether as a comfort or a weapon, I’m no longer sure.

A Bone Eater. The thought brushes the back of my neck like a lock of wet hair, sending a trickle of terror down my spine. The wards are supposed to keep the Bone Eaters out. But the crypt sprawls deep into the rock, and there’s only the old sentinel Otha and her apprentice to keep the wards. And no ward is ever perfect.

Better you’re with your own kind.

The bones? Or the Bone Eater?

I choke down a bitter laugh. What does it matter? Dead of thirst or dead at a Bone Eater’s feet, dead is dead.

The scraping footsteps are closer now, the screaming of the bones making me clasp my ribs to keep them from shattering. I can’t tell where the bone cries end and my own terrified shaking begins. Somewhere in this crypt, the Bone Eater lurks, with his char-black beak and crown of splintered bones. I tremble as I imagine the flash of claws and beak, the spray of blood, joining Mama and Granny in the forests of the dead. Another bone lets out the scream that’s trapped in my throat, and I feel the crack as he splits it open, looking for marrow. Thousands of bones beg me for help.

Maybe I’m the real monster, because I cower with half of Mama’s bones in my lap and let the Bone Eater do it. I don’t want to be cracked open for marrow either.

I fix my eyes on the empty doorway and wait for it not to be empty anymore.

When the Bone Eater finds me, I stop hearing the bones. I know they are still screaming. I can still feel their fear. But my world has narrowed to liquid black eyes and a hooked black beak.

“Bone Talker.” His beak clicks when he speaks. His voice is harsh, raw. Like the bones he eats have torn his throat to shreds. “Welcome. It has been a long time since I’ve seen one of my own.”

My lips tremble as I stare up at him, my fingers aching with the strength of my grip on Mama’s humerus. One of his own?

“They are right to fear you. But you have no need of fear. Take the power that is yours.”

He steps into the chamber, his talons dragging across the stone. I am frozen. I may as well be one of the skeletons on the shelves for all the good my living flesh does.

“What do you mean?”

“Seize your power. You’re holding it in your hands.” He nods to Mama’s bone in my hands, the polished protrusion of the shoulder joint above my fist, and his crown of cracked bones sends spears of shadow through the lamplight. “Let me show you.”

He turns to the shelves and selects a bone, a scapula this time. He brings it to his face and drags his beak across its edge with the barest touch, savoring it. Without warning, his beak flashes and the bone cracks. The Bone Eater digs his beak into the marrow and feeds.

The Bone Eater’s presence mutes the shrieking of the bones, but I can still hear the echoes from before he arrived. My jaw clenches.

He turns his glittering eyes on me. “You need not join the bones. You hear them. You can join me. If your people will fear you anyway, do something to deserve that fear. And live.”

I look down at Mama’s bones, run my hands along the smooth, cool shafts of the long bones, the curved balls and concave hollows of joints, the ridges and tubercles and foramina. They are too still, too quiet. My ears ring with the absence of their sounds.

“Why can’t I hear them?” The words are too loud in the echoey chamber.

The Bone Eater laughs, beak clicking. “My apologies. That was me.” He makes a courtly bow, one talon skittering across the ground behind him as he inclines his head.

He rises, and the screams return, tearing through my skull, my ribs, making my eyes water.

I should have known. Once the bones start talking, they never stop.

“Please stop scaring them,” I beg. I can hardly feel the vibrations of my own voice over the terror of the bones.

The Bone Eater ruffles his feathers and the wailing of the bones goes dead again. “I cannot. Their fear is only natural. What salmon would not fear the bear?” He turns his back to me. “It is not always so terrible a thing to be feared.”

I snort.

“That’s why you should join me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I was once like you. Afraid. And feared. I am still feared. But I am no longer afraid.” He nibbles at the bone still in his hand. “All you need to do is eat.”

My mouth floods with saliva as if I’ve just smelled the freshest bread, and I drop Mama’s humerus in revulsion. How can I want to eat her? But I think of the glee on Leppa’s face when she shut the crypt behind me, and I want to make her pay. Her and every other person who cast me out for this power I didn’t ask for.

“I’ll leave you to think on it. You needn’t fear me until you’re naught but bones. The bones can always tell you where I am, should you choose to join me.”

The frightened cacophony of the bones echoes through the crypt again before his shadow has even crossed the threshold. I bury my face in my knees. I have no way out. I can die here, or I can become a monster. I can’t hear my own thoughts over the bones, and I wait, eyes closed until their panic turns to murmuring anxiety.

I climb to my feet and face Mama’s leering skull. I press my forehead to hers. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Eat and be free,” whispers Mama’s skull without words. “Eat and protect yourself the way I could not.”

It’s like Mama’s bones are the only ones left in the world. The others still sing and talk and cry, but I hear only Mama. “I can’t.”

“You can. They are wrong. I do not need my bones. I am safe in the forests of the dead. Eat, and give the village something real to fear.”

I pick up one of Mama’s tiny finger bones and turn it over in my hands. I raise it to my lips.

It cracks between my molars and the bones begin to scream again.

Someday they will not be the only ones who scream.

3089 words

D.S. Ravenhurst writes horror and fantasy about women faced with impossible situations, impossible choices, and bittersweet, impossible endings. Her work can be found in Shadows on the Water Short Stories (Flame Tree Press, 2024). In between her (too) many hobbies, she studied Linguistics at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, and Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, focusing on the endangerment, minoritization, and revitalization of Celtic languages. When she’s not planning new adventures or listening to sad, traditional Irish and Scottish songs, she can be found Irish dancing.

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DP FICTION #62B: “On You and Your Husband’s Appointment at the Reverse-Crematorium” by Bill Ferris

You place the urn carefully onto the examination table. The doctor opens the lid, takes a peek inside, sniffs a little. He nods, like he’s evaluating a new blend of coffee, then dumps half of your husband’s cremains into a big metal mixing bowl, the kind they had in the restaurant kitchen you used to work at. He uses a large copper whisk to mix in a bottle of purified water.

Your eyes scan the renovated warehouse where the doctor has set up shop, which doubles as a Pilates studio at night. You ask how many times he’s done this before.

The doctor stops whisking and cracks open a soda can. He says he’s performed this procedure literally dozens of times. Several droplets of Diet Mountain Dew splash into the mixing bowl, but the doctor appears unconcerned. You look for reassurance in the form of laboratory equipment, all of which looks state of the art, judging by the assortment of alembics, vials, and tubes on his table, and the size of the 3D printer, which has been whirring since you arrived, churning out a neon-orange human skull. (The Pontius Pilates T-shirts sold at the front desk also appear to be tastefully designed and a flattering fit.) The doctor resumes whisking, mixing in three cups of plaster of Paris and most of an already-open box of baking soda from the break-room refrigerator. He adds the last of the cremains to the cremixture. With each stroke of the whisk he counts aloud, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty. You don’t want to over-beat the batter, he says.

The 3D printer stops, and the doctor remarks on its perfect timing. The skull is the last piece of your husband’s new skeleton. He picks up the skull and examines it like Hamlet pitying Yorick. Think fast, he commands, tossing you the skull. You drop your keys to the table as you grab for the plastic skull. You bobble it, but manage to clamp your hands around it before it hits the floor. The doctor laughs—what fun! You nod as your blood pressure de-escalates out of hypertension. You carefully hand your husband’s skull back to him as he makes the “gimmie-gimmie” gesture. He then wheels a gurney out from behind a curtain, upon which rests a plastic skeleton rendered in lemon yellow, except for the collarbone and left shoulder blade. He had run out of the yellow resin, the doctor says, and used the next closest color to finish up. The hues clash, but God willing, you’ll never see your husband’s candy-corn-colored skeleton again anyway.

He jams the skull onto the spine in a manner resembling, both in physical strain and amount of cursing, the time your husband replaced the front axle of the Hyundai. A loud click makes you think his plastic spine has snapped, but the rapidity with which the doctor extends his hand toward you for a fist bump suggests the skeleton is officially ship-shape.

The doctor startles, realizing he almost forgot an important step. It’s the third important step he’s almost forgotten, but who’s counting? You hand him the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone that will serve as your husband’s new brain, which will regulate all bodily systems, including the Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine that will be his new heart. You were up all night loading photos of you and your husband, the honeymoon, the house, Max the doggo, and your vacation to Colorado that one time into the special Dropbox folder labeled “FRIENDLY_FILE.” You also sprung for Spotify Premium and loaded it with playlists of his favorite songs. And for good measure, you pirated Seasons 1-5 of Game of Thrones. The doctor snaps the brain into place, plugging the USB cable into the complex system of wires that snakes through and around the skeleton. Several times he pauses and rewinds a YouTube tutorial on how to wire a drone helicopter to make sure he’s got things right. The doctor sees you looking and reassures you that he’s done this literally dozens of times.

Now it’s time to add the chicken wire. Wrapping it around the bones like he’s taping a sprained ankle, he explains the wire mesh gives the new flesh something to grab onto, like patching a hole in drywall. Most importantly, it functions as a cage for the skeleton. Did you know we’ve all got a spooky skeleton trapped inside us that wants to escape? You point out that this skeleton is plastic. The doctor shakes his head–a well-made skeleton knows it’s a skeleton, ready to burst out of at the first sign of weakness. You can find no fault in his logic; they can do amazing things with 3D printers these days.

The doctor secures the chicken wire with a bag of zip ties from Home Depot. He then grabs a drywall knife and scoops a big pile of the cremains mixture onto the wire-encased right shin. He mentions his patent-pending skin formula is completely full-moon proof. You ask what happens on a full moon. The doctor beams—NOTHING, thanks to his secret formula! His hunched-over posture of concentration reminds you of the tattoo artist when you and hubby got matching pinup girls with the word “LOVE” inscribed underneath. The doctor draws several occult-looking symbols onto your husband’s chest with a chopstick you’re not sure is unused. You decide not to remind him of his promise to re-create the tattoo.

By the by, the doctor wants to know how your husband will be spending his time once he comes back to life. There’s lots of red tape about reasons for reanimating a loved one. For instance, valid reasons include appearing as a surprise witness at a murder trial, spending one last Christmas with the fam, or firing their loathsome successor at the family business. Activities such as acting as a human shield, digging their own grave, or being the patsy in an elaborate jewel heist are strictly verboten (though for jewel heists, the role of “the brains of the outfit” is acceptable). You respond that your husband is dead, isn’t that reason enough? You miss the conversations, the cuddles, the creature comforts of living with your best friend. You can’t cope with your husband’s death without him, and yes, you know how crazy that sounds. The doctor nods—moving on is a lot harder for the living than the dead.

The doctor positions several oscillating fans next to your husband, and invites you to join him outside for a smoke while the new flesh dries. You confide to the doctor that you feel like you should stay there with your once-and-future husband, but part of you doesn’t want to be alone with this mound of corpse batter. He says that’s a perfectly natural response. Also, could he bum a smoke from you?

The mixture has dried, and the doctor tells you—and these are his words—it’s time to turn and burn, baby. Or perhaps he was talking to your husband, and you’re not sure which makes you more uncomfortable. He grabs a series of electrodes connected to a thing, licking each one like it’s a postage stamp, and attaches them to your husband’s new flesh. The doctor dons a pair of heavy rubber gloves, a welding mask, and a lead vest. He then hands you a pair of safety glasses you wouldn’t trust if you were making a homemade birdhouse. When he tells you to stand back, you backpedal behind a reinforced shield wall at a velocity that will leave your muscles sore for two days.

Before he throws the master switch—one of those oversized red buttons labeled “easy” they sell at Staples for six bucks—the doctor rattles off the safety concerns you’d already learned from his website, but which he’s required by law to mention again. For example, your husband will go out looking for those responsible for his death. You reply that he was killed in an unsolved hit-and-run accident. The doctor winks and points at your husband. He knows who did it. Oh-ho-ho-ho, he knows.

The doctor asks if you have pets. You mention your corgi, Max, whom the doctor advises you to give away. When you protest, the doctor purses his lips and puts a hand on your shoulder. In his gentlest voice he tells you that, two weeks from now, one way or another, the dog won’t be living with you. This information was not on the website, and you mention, rather forcefully, that Max had been your husband’s dog and without him you couldn’t have held it together, and it would’ve been good to know he couldn’t stay before you started this process. The doctor thanks you for this constructive criticism. You ask the doctor if anybody loves him enough to reanimate him after you strangle him to death. He laughs and says yes, his credit card company. You don’t know what to say to that.

The doctor asks if you have any final questions. Just one, the one you’ve been dreading, the one about which the website was very vague—will your husband still be capable of love? The doctor’s face contorts to one of revulsion as he tells you no. You only meant to ask whether your husband could still feel love as an emotion. He chuckles, relieved, saying the answer to that is also no. All his favorite sports teams? Hubby hates them now. He will harbor a deep, unspoken resentment toward all living creatures, and you especially. Maybe it’s because you disturbed his rest, or you dragged him away from Heaven, or who knows what. Your husband won’t really know, either. He’ll probably lash out at you. He might say something passive-aggressive while watching TV. He may lift the car over his head and hurl it at you. He might start a petty argument for no good reason. This is all perfectly normal and expected. While you will be legally responsible for him, he still has his own will and desires, and he’ll want more out of his new life than reliving his old one; the dead are, by necessity, better at moving on than the living.

The doctor asks if you still want to go through with this. His face shows none of the mirth he’d exhibited up to that point. You pause, contemplating how easily you could tell your friends the doctor turned out to be a flake. You could walk away and keep your dog with nothing lost but your deposit. Well, that and the idea of seeing your beloved’s face again. And he would still be your beloved, no matter what the doctor said. You give the final okay.

The doctor presses the button. You’re half-expecting lightning to course into your husband’s new body, for him to let out a monstrous growl as raw animal life surges into the waiting vessel. What actually happens is much less dramatic, more like a vibrating massage chair; you hear the muffled ringtone of your husband’s Samsung brain, like when your iPhone slides between the couch cushions.

It takes a minute or so for your husband to boot up. The skin starts to move, then all at once, it sucks inward like a vacuum sealer, forming the contours of your husband’s face.

He rises. The doctor had warned you about the eerie red light that now pours from your husband’s empty eye sockets, but you can’t really prepare yourself for the first time you see a living, breathing monster. The doctor corrects you—the scientific term is “abomination before God,” which his lawyer has assured him is very different, legally speaking.

Your husband looks at you. You go weak in the knees—his loving gaze always made your knees weak, but this is different. He opens his mouth, and the light pours forth from there as well. Oh, God, it’s weird. His voice sounds delayed, like he’s speaking to you via satellite from somewhere far, far away. OH HEY. I MUST’VE. DRIFTED OFF FOR A. BIT. But at bottom, it’s his voice, and you throw your arms around him. He freezes. The light inside him intensifies, redder and redder, so bright you can hear it. He puts his arms around you. For a moment, you think (hope?) he might crush you, but he does not. He pats you on the back a couple times.

Tears overflow from your eyes. You want to kiss him, but you don’t dare, lest that red light enter your body. You just tell him how much you love him and how you’ve missed him and you can’t believe he’s back, and so on.

The terrible red light now glows through his flesh. DID YOU. WATCH GAME. OF THRONES WITHOUT. ME?

You shake your head and wipe the tears away. You were waiting for him.

He shrugs and the light subsides. WHATEVER YOU. WANT, BABE.

You scoff at the doctor’s notion that the dead are better at moving on than the living: you’ve moved on from the very concept of moving on. You forget about the life you may have had as a family of one. You forget about the dog, for what living creature can compete with nostalgia in (mostly) human form? You can sit on the couch with your sweetie again, or a reasonable approximation thereof. The doctor was right, it’s the little creature comforts that make life worth living, as long as you don’t think about it too hard.

During your reverie, your husband had started to strangle the doctor. You put your hand on your husband’s shoulder, and at your touch he releases his grip. The doctor gives you a thumbs-up to show he’s okay, this happens all the time.

You smile at your husband. It’s time to go home.

Bill Ferris writes mysteries, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. He has published several short stories in literary journals, and writes an advice column at Writer Unboxed designed to help dilettantes and hacks learn nothing whatsoever. When he’s not typing words into a thing, Bill develops online courses at an organization his lawyer advised him not to name. He has two sons who asked not to be mentioned in this bio, but Elliott and Wyatt forgot to say “please.”

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DP FICTION #11: “The Osteomancer’s Husband” by Henry Szabranski

He warned his wife the villagers would come. With their pitchforks, their fire. Their hateful ignorance.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We have to leave. They saw beneath my mask.”

She did not listen. This was their home. Their little cottage by the burbling mountain stream. Their hard-won resting place after years of rootless travel, where they kept their lovingly tended garden with its fragrant roses and flowering vines, where she eschewed her strange abilities and practiced only mortal skill. An ideal place for a family, though they knew they could never have children now.

When he began to protest her lack of urgency she forced him into stillness and silence. She had that power.

“We’ve made friends in town,” she said. “They’ve no reason to harm us.”

Always prepared to believe the best of people. Always willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. That was his wife. Too trusting. Too optimistic. One of the many reasons he loved her.

Struck mute by her spell, he could not share his thoughts. Or warn her of the fear and revulsion he had witnessed on the townsfolk’s faces when his mask slipped and they glimpsed his true nature.

“We mean you no harm,” she cried as the mob at last turned up at their rose-entwined gate. “Can’t you leave us in peace?”

No. They could not. They died even as she tried to spare them.

Banished into the deepest shadows of the house by her unbreakable command, he could only watch as the slaughter unfolded. In the end, the townsfolk’s bloody determination and sheer numbers overpowered her best defenses. Only when she fell and uttered her final spell was he at last free to move, but by then it was too late. Countless bodies littered the garden, their bones dissolved or stretched into gruesome, unsurvivable shapes. Hers lay at the center.

He ran to pick her up. He hugged her close, kissed her cooling skin, rocked her back and forth as if she were a child in need of comfort, as if holding her tight could prevent any further life force from escaping. But it was already gone. No power he possessed could bring it back.

More people from the town approached the house, stragglers to the promise of violence or perhaps those simply curious of the outcome. They darted away again when they saw the scale of the devastation. The true cost of their mindless intolerance. The osteomancer’s husband didn’t look up. He no longer cared if they returned.

On sudden impulse he laid down her body. He tore off his carefully painted mask, his human skin gloves, the cloak and thick clothes that padded and hid his body. He stood and walked to the potting shed — leaning precariously but otherwise undamaged by the violence — and retrieved a rusty but serviceable spade from inside. He stabbed the blade into the trampled lawn and carved out a shallow grave. No longer encumbered by his public disguise it did not take him long to bury his wife, his motions swift and efficient. Afterwards he sat down beside the freshly piled earth. He felt numb and hollow, unable to think of what else he should do.

He expected to die soon. To wind down. His fate was tied to hers, wasn’t that how it worked? Spells faded with their caster. But he had never really known much about her strange magic. He had always been more physical than cerebral, a doer rather than a thinker. Her perfect complement. Of her magic, he knew only that she used it to heal and to help. The children with their broken limbs. The horses and the cattle in the field when they stumbled and shattered their legs. Even the loudmouth drunkards who smashed their skulls fighting each other every payday night.

And he himself. He had felt her power, too, those years ago. Darkness one moment. Then back again, as if the fall had never happened. Except he had felt that terrible crack, that shooting final pain as his neck snapped. His lungs become so heavy he was unable to draw breath. He would never forget that.

After her magic touch he moved and spoke and did so many things as he could before. But her power was only over his bones, not his flesh. It soon began to decay. All the ointments and bindings she so desperately tried to apply could not hide the truth or stop his skin and muscles and sinew from unraveling. All too soon he was nothing but bones. Bones, and an indomitable animating spirit.

For her it was enough. “I see my memory of you,” she said. “Not the reality.” And when he got used to the strange practicalities, it was enough for him too.

The sound of shifting earth disturbed him from his thoughts. At first he feared some scavenger had slunk behind his back to disturb her grave, but when he turned he found no dog or cat or rat foraging in the freshly turned earth. Instead, he saw a creamy white stalk snaking up from the soil.

The growing bloom swayed gently, almost imperceptibly, like some undersea coral agitated by the slow tides and currents of an invisible ocean. It slowly rotated towards him.

He fell to his knees and said, “My dearest, I knew it! Have you returned?”

There was no reply.

As night descended and the townsfolk gathered again with their newly lit torches, he watched the ivory flower grow taller and sturdier and more intricate. It grew despite the sun having escaped the sky–a night bloom. Before long it was twice his height. Roots like femurs twisted through the soil, sprouting into a crescent of pelvic bones, exploding into a bloom of ribs and tibias and a crowning display of skulls and grinning teeth. Despite its grisly nature, he thought it beautiful.

For he saw the memory of her, not the reality.

The night deepened and the bone flower grew more complex, more intricate, sprouting a thousand petals, each like a curled finger bone. And clustered deep within, growing larger every moment, tiny seed-like structures.

A hot wind swirled around the devastated garden. The amassing villagers grew more bold. More belligerent. They jeered and shouted of vengeance and justice and burning out evil. A daring few drew closer, retreating as he made a move, but never quite far back as before. It would not be much longer before they realized he posed no real threat to them. His hands were stiffening, his joints seizing. Every move more difficult than the last. Eventually he knew he would simply tumble apart.

The villagers let out a roar and broke towards the house. He reached up and snapped off a handful of enameled seedlings. Like tiny teeth, tiny skulls, tiny snowflake vertebrae. The rising wind swept them from his cupped fingers, up and out, far and wide. Escaping like willful, eager children. Like dreams and hopes of what could have been.

What strange flowers they might grow.

Author’s Note: The inspiration for this story were a couple of photographs used for a writing group prompt challenge. One image was of flowing water (“…the burbling mountain stream…”), the second was of a hand tossing what looked like tiny bones to the wind (“Like…tiny snowflake vertebrae…”). To me the bones looked like seedlings, so I immediately began to wonder what their origin might be.

Henry Szabranski was born in Birmingham, UK, and studied Astronomy & Astrophysics at Newcastle upon Tyne University, graduating with a degree in Theoretical Physics. His stories have previously been published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Daily Science Fiction, Lakeside Circus, Fantasy Scroll Magazine, Kaleidotrope and in Fantasy For Good: A Charitable Anthology, amongst other places. He lives in Buckinghamshire with his wife and two young sons. Visit his blog at http://www.henryszabranski.com or follow him on Twitter @henryszabranski

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