The Cold Inside: Call of the Necromancer (Open Novella Contest II)

Chapter 1: It Begins

The grey cardboard, nondescript box had come in the post in August just after Becky's first year at uni. With it had been a short letter from a solicitor telling her that her great great Aunt Rosalind had died and left her the contents of the box in her will. Becky hadn't even known she had a great great Aunt Rosalind. Her parents were both the black sheep of their families and didn't have a whole lot to do with their relatives.

A large piece of costume jewellery on a discoloured chain hadn't exactly been exciting at the time. As family heirlooms went, it hadn't seemed worth inheriting. It had been relegated to the cupboard in her room and promptly forgotten about.

Becky hadn't thought about it for years. Which made waking up in the middle of a very dark night, with the dream image of it still in her head, really odd.

After the break-up of all break-ups, she had moved out of the flat she shared with Sarah and was currently back in her old room in her parent's house. Her mum had been amazing and listened to her rage and cry, and rage some more. She had caught Sarah cheating and, just like that, their four-year relationship was over. Her dad, ever stoic and not very good with crying women, kept making her cups of tea.

She decided that that was probably what had woken her from the peculiar dream. There was significant pressure in the area of her bladder. With a sigh she sat up and stared into the blackness for a bit. The house was on a quiet village lane that had two street lamps, total, neither close by. The moon was hiding, but Becky could still make out the shapes of her furniture. She'd always had surprisingly good eyesight in the dark. Sarah had - she stopped that thought before it started.

With a sigh, Becky sat up. Using muscle memory more than anything else, she pushed the duvet back, swung her legs off the mattress and stood. The floor was surprisingly cold, so much so that it woke her up a bit. The house was 1970s, but it was fully carpeted, had had new windows at least twice, and had top notch central heating—she had never thought about needing slippers before. The chill around her bare toes made her shiver.

Frowning, she rubbed her eyes and padded towards the en-suite bathroom.

"What the hell?" she said as her right foot came down on the laminate tiles.

It was distinctly freezing.

"Bloody hell, Dad," she complained as she curled her toes and walked as quickly as she could to the bath mat, "what have you been doing now?"

There had to be a direct opening to the outside somewhere under the floor for it to be that cold. She could only think that her dad had had one of his weird ideas. Her mum was the calm rational thinker when it came to such things as house improvements, but occasionally her dad just went for it without asking. The light pipe incident of 2013 was still whispered about down the local pub—the house had nearly lost half its roof.

Becky used the facilities without bothering to turn on the light, washed her hands after stepping from bathroom mat to bathroom mat, and made it back into the bedroom without frostbite. If this continued, she was going to need her thermal socks. It was as she was contemplating where they might be that she heard the singing. There were no words, just a voice vocalising notes. It only lasted a few seconds.

She looked over to her phone, but it was dark and inactive.

The cold had to be getting to her, because she shivered again. It was time to get back into her nice warm nest of duvet and forget about freezing floors and weird singing.

When she took another step, the singing started up again. Looking around, she tried to figure out where it was coming from. It wasn't a tune she could name, but something about it sparked a reaction in the back of her brain. Not that it could be called a memory, because there was nothing to go with it, but the tune felt familiar.