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

Chapter 2 - You Have to Be Kidding

"Take a deep breath, dear," Aunt Rosalind said. "I know this is a shock, I may be getting on a bit, but I do remember what this was like."

"You're not getting on a bit," Becky said shaking her head, "you're dead."

"True," the pendant told her as if not remotely bothered by this fact, "but I was one hundred and thirty four when I finally popped my clogs."

"Nope, nope," Becky said, "now I know you have to be lying. The oldest person to have ever lived was one hundred and twenty two. I know because I was reading a stupid article about life expectancy in the paper the other day."

She realised she was probably arguing with herself, but she couldn't help it.

"Those of us with magic in our blood don't tend to advertise our age, Rebecca," Aunt Rosalind told her. "We really don't want to have to explain why we're still spritely at ninety. I may have fudged my birth certificate somewhat, but I promise you I was one hundred and thirty four and twenty seven days precisely when I finally crossed over. Now do be a dear and push me out of the crystal, is it very odd looking out through the lattice."

"I don't know how," Becky protested.

She hoped her parents were sound asleep or they were going to think she'd lost the plot. Even if she had she'd rather keep it to herself for a while.

"That cold feeling you sometimes get that sits in the middle of your chest," Aunt Rosalind explained, "that is the power of the necromancer that lives within you. It's been mostly asleep so far, but now it's waking up. Concentrate on that feeling and then push it gently at the crystal. Once I'm through the barrier I can do the rest."

Becky hadn't even noticed the sensation in her chest. It was something that happened every now and then and she'd never really thought about it, but her aunt was right, it was definitely there right at that moment.

"I promise, this will begin to make sense, dear," her aunt assured her as she hesitated.

She still wasn't sure any of this was real, but she also couldn't see how it could get worse if she followed it through. Sitting properly on her cushion, she held the jewel in both hands and did as her aunt had instructed.

The cold in her chest spiked as she thought about it. She shivered, but it was more an instinctive reaction than because the cold chilled her in any real way. Visualising it helped and, in her mind, she could see a blue white ball. She pushed it at the jewel in her hands.

The air temperature around her dropped and her breath came out in a white puff, but she still didn't feel cold. Her skin prickled. However, as her mental projection met the crystal it felt as if she was pushing a rubber ball against a wall. She could sense the energy give as it met something it could not pass through.

"That's it, Rebecca," her aunt said, "just a smidgen harder."

Shifting a little, Becky furrowed her forehead and added a little more mental force. After that everything happened very fast. It was like a door she was leaning on suddenly opened and she almost fell forward as her body tried to react, even though it was a purely metaphysical experience. She was so busy trying to align what she was feeling with what was physically going on that she failed to note the success of her enterprise.

"Now that's better."

The voice was no longer coming from the jewel and Becky looked up sharply to find a woman standing in her bedroom. She was tall, had long dark hair, was wearing some sort of black robe, and didn't look anywhere near one hundred and thirty four. She was also slightly see-through.

Part of Becky's brain that had been trained by spooky stories and years of enjoying a good horror movie, screamed and yelled: "Ghost!" However, the rest was more fascinated and shushed the other bit as if it was an unruly child.