Saint Know-All

A short story I wrote for a contest on a forum. This is a very safe prose style for me, spare and straightforward.

Some strong language.

Haunted
“Honey, the walls are bleeding again.”

I looked up. My husband stood in the doorway of the kitchen, cup of coffee in one hand. He looked about as bad as I felt. The low moaning from the floors had kept us up all night. Rubbing my eyes, I said, “Which ones? I’ve used nearly all the towels here in the kitchen.”

Donald just grunted and took another sip of his coffee. The doorway above him rippled like a pregnant belly suffering from contractions, and I felt my hand instinctively press against my own swollen stomach. The towels I had stapled to the walls were soaked to the point of dripping, and several drops splattered into Donald’s cup and onto his arm.

“Shit!” he said, jumping back. “Goddamnit, it can’t have already been a month since we had the necromancer in here.”

“No, only two weeks. It’s happening to the entire apartment complex again,” I said, approaching him with the last clean towel. I was still in my old polyester robe and bunny slippers, and ignored the increasing dripping. “I talked with Mrs. Petti this morning. Their faucets are gushing blood again. At least we’re still getting water out of ours.”

“Nice location,” he said mockingly, unresisting as I took the coffee mug and wiped his arm clean. Thankfully he had rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. It had taken most of his last paycheck to buy it, a deceptively simple design of real cotton. “Perfect for raising a family. Yeah, sure. A family of little serial killers.”

“Go on, get to work,” I said. “I made an appointment for ten o’clock with the necromancer; he’ll be here and gone by the time you’re back. The closet didn’t leak on your suits again, did it?”

“Only my best one.” As he disappeared into our bedroom, his voice drifted back to me. “Are you sure you don’t want me to be there for the necromancer? I know you hate him.”

I turned on the kitchen faucet to wash out our coffee cups and momentarily stared at the gush of blood before turning it off. “He just makes my skin crawl, that’s all.” There were some things I still couldn’t tell him. Donald was a good man, and good men can’t conceive of what I had seen at the hands of the necromancers. I smiled as he reappeared in his suit and gave me a kiss goodbye, and watched through the window as he left, waving one final time.

The necromancer arrived a quarter after ten. I hadn’t bothered dressing in anything nice. A lawyer’s wife is supposed to look presentable at all times, but then a lawyer’s wife isn’t usually charged with keeping a bleeding apartment.

I opened the door after the first knock, used to his presence enough by now to not shudder at the pallor of his skin or the circle charred into his forehead. I still didn’t know what title to use for his kind; back home we settled for “rotters”. I somehow doubted that was still appropriate.

“Hello Andrea,” said the necromancer. I smiled widely, too soon, and knew he registered my discomfort. “Your apartment is acting up again?”

“Yes,” I said, stepping to the side so he could see for himself. “And we had just wallpapered the place. Perhaps we should paint it red and save ourselves the trouble.”

He stepped inside, ignoring my joke as his eyes scrutinized the damage. The floors moaned once at his presence, then fell silent. His gait was too smooth to be natural, and with his black robes covering his feet he appeared to glide through his surroundings like a shark’s fin cutting through water.

“Why is this happening so soon? The landlord told us to expect it only monthly, if at all,” I said, crossing my arms and following at a safe distance as he ran his hands along the walls. The blood shrank from his gloved fingers, absorbing back into the walls without a trace. The trick had impressed me the first time I had seen it performed. Then I’d realized the coppery, stomach-turning smell of the blood remained long after the walls were pristine. Donald and I spent more money on air fresheners than on food.

“Inferior material,” said the necromancer. One wall of the kitchen was already clean, its calm plaster surface showing no sign of the muscles behind it that strained to hold the entire building structure together.

“It can’t be; all apartments built after ‘17 need to use cloned flesh as building materials, by law. And only perfect specimens were used for the cloning prototypes. I did my research before we moved in here.” The smell seemed to be getting worse instead of better. Damn my sensitive nose. I’d always had a good sense of smell even before my pregnancy, but now it verged on the point of ridiculousness. I fought back a wave of nausea and tried to listen to what the necromancer was saying.

“It’s true that there are less…issues than what we used to have with non-synthetic flesh, but that doesn’t mean all the problems have been solved. Flesh remembers what it’s supposed to do, even if it has never had a brain to guide it.” He pulled off the towels and handed them to me. “I can’t get the blood out of these. You’ll have to throw them away.”

“What triggers the episodes?” I said, dumping the dripping towels into the sink. “And is there anything we can do about it? My husband and I are getting very tired of the floor screaming every time we walk on it.”

“It’s you.” He said it so calmly that I was sure I misheard him.

“I’m sorry?”

“Come now, don’t play stupid. I know what you are. Have since the first time I met you.” His pale eyes studied me as I flushed.

I still tried to put up a front. “What, a spoiled lawyer’s wife?”

“A refugee from Fandele. That is where most of the flesh prototypes were found. You may be stepping on your aunt’s face every time you walk across the bedroom. It‘s no wonder there is such a strong reaction.” The necromancer continued his work as he spoke, his hands moving of their own accord as he watched me. “It is a pity what they did to your kind; we were lucky to cull what we could from the remains.”

His words had stung like a slap, and it took me a moment to answer. “From Fandele? Nonsense. I have no accent. Furthermore, no true Fandelan would consider living in a house made up like some Frankenstein’s monster.”

The necromancer smiled. “You cut your hair. Dyed it. Found a human and got with his child so you can say you have human blood in you. And you might have even had some plastic surgery to reshape those ears of yours, though with that haircut I can’t really tell. These little tricks are enough to fool the living, but are merely laughable in the eyes of the dead.”

I shook my head, wordless, but he continued. “It’s a small world, Andrea. I was there during the war, raising the soldiers every time one of them fell from a shell or bullet. I remember seeing the royal court the final time it convened for the treaty. Your family was there. You were there.”

The smell of blood was stronger than ever, coming from the walls, from the towels in the sink, from him. I was going to be sick. I wanted to vomit on him just to see that smile fade. Instead I only said, “It doesn’t matter now. It’s been five years; the world is close to forgetting it.”

“Yes,” said the necromancer, sadly. “Such a pity; those were wondrous times.”

We didn’t speak to each other again until he had finished the entire apartment. After I wrote out a check to him and escorted him to the door, I finally broke the silence. “Have a good day. I don’t expect to see you again.”

His mouth turned up in an ironic smile. “That is impossible, my dear. Your kind is at death’s door, and we are waiting on the other side.”

At that moment I felt my child stir inside me. “Life also waits,” I said, resting a hand on my belly.

For the first time a hint of discomfort appeared in his eyes, but he said nothing more than, “We will see each other again.”

I watched him leave much as I had done with my husband only hours earlier. Then, once the door was firmly closed between us, I finally broke down. The tears didn’t last long, and even the redness of my eyes had faded by the time Donald returned from work. He didn’t suspect a thing.