Necromancer

Graverobber

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As I pulled into the student parking lot I already knew something else had gone wrong. Call it intuition. I looked up to see the frenetic jerking of anxiously gossiping teenagers. It wasn't something I'd normally notice – everyone was always gossiping about something. But I saw one girl giving her account to a serious but excited group, only to run off and retell it to another small audience. The deputy principle strode past, bald head downward. He looked glum but he walked quickly into the administration office.

Scone may have found itself another tragedy. How much shitty luck could one small town have? You'd think we were cursed or something.

I shut off the engine and pulled the door lever, swinging out the car and catching a glimpse of my clear blue eye in the rear-view mirror. There was a knowingness in that eye. I locked the car with my beeper, slung my bag over a shoulder and hopped up the curb. I paced quickly down the pavement to meet my friends. I needed to find out what everyone was talking about.

In the back of my mind, like a pulse, I couldn't fight the jarring concern that something had happened to him. Ever since the last tragedy I was thinking about how easy it would be for something like that to happen to him. He seemed the type. The thought had popped up randomly since last fortnight, and I'd squashed it each time. Now it pulsed in constant rhythm. Not settling into fear, but some kind of perverted urgency leading me to desperately find out I was wrong. Even though there was no chance. No chance it happened to him. I kept telling myself that.

My three closest friends had all beat me to school for once. Lazing around by our usual hangout, under the concrete staircase by English block. They looked bored, huddling into their jumpers on this cold winter morning. Fighting to keep out the crisp cold beneath leaveless trees. Misty breaths. From looking at them I got the impression they'd already heard the news and were unimpressed by it. I needed to hear them say it for this suspicion to fade.

"Melanie," I said, she was the first to notice me walk up. "Erin. Jane. Morning guys."

"Morning, Peter." Dark-haired Melanie answered, then went back to picking lint off her stockings. Definitely unimpressed.

"What's going on?"

"You heard the news?" Lighter-haired Erin was sitting on the metal bench.

"What is everybody talking about?" In my head I prayed. Don't tell me another student hung themself.

"It was on the news. Someone dug up Tommy Phelps." Melanie's eyebrows were raised, looking like she was very disappointed in whoever committed the grave-robbery.

"What?" Despite my confusion, I felt that other worry go away. Fading into its usual place in the background.

"Peter!" My other friend Jane, brown-haired like me, had the shameful excitement my other friends lacked. "Even the news crew was saying the coffin was dug out from the inside. There was a hole in the lid, like Tommy scratched his way out."

I looked at her blankly, feeling the same kind of illicit excitement but knowing to keep it off my face.

"Hasn't their family suffered enough." Melanie glared into the distance.

"He died like, two weeks ago." Erin agreed, gripping the bench and glaring at the concrete. "His funeral was Saturday."

"There's a police tape line around his grave at the cemetery." Jane continued with too much eagerness. "On TV there was just, like, this hole by his tombstone. Did you hear me, Peter? It looks like he dug himself out! Even the news crew thought so but they had to change their story cause of how crazy it sounds. But they did say that!"