13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days
Eternal Necromancer
The date was going well, but Dana still had to know. She’d seen better guys than this crash and burn.
“So,” she said, looking casually at him from her over her soup dumplings. “Your dating profile says you like reading?”
“Oh, totally,” the guy said, brushing a wispy piece of hair from his forehead. “I’m a total intellectual.”
Dana took a deep breath.
“Do you have any suggestions for me?” she asked.
His eyes lit up and her heart sank. She texted Miranda the SOS without breaking eye contact. She knew what was coming before he even started speaking.
“Have you read Eternal Necromancer?” the guy said, eagerly.
Dana exhaled out her nose and offered her most insincere smile.
“Oh wow, no. What is that? Tell me about it,” she deadpanned, waiting for her phone to start vibrating.
“It’s the funniest book ever written,” he said. “And also the scariest. And the deepest. It’s a meditation on loneliness, wrapped in a story about being together. It’s like if Hemingway had a baby with David Foster Wallace and that baby hung out with Bukowski. I’ve read it three times.”
“Three times you say,” raising her eyebrows. “Wow. It must be something.”
“It’s like a really smart book.”
“Sounds like it…”
Her phone started vibrating. She put it in her pocket without checking it.
“That’s my friend Miranda,” Dana said. “She’s in trouble and needs me to pick her up. Sorry to cut the date short. Had fun.”
“You didn’t even look at your phone,” he said, the confusion on his face revealing he was not quite the intellectual he claimed to be.
“Yeah. I know. This was great. But don’t call me.” She stopped and grabbed the plate of soup dumplings and balanced it on top of her purse. “Thanks for the soup dumplings.”
A half hour later she sat next to her best friend Miranda at Devil’s Tavern, eating the last of her soup dumplings while staring deep into a glass of white sangria.
“Long night?” Miranda asked.
“An Eternal night,” Dana said, unhappily.
“No!” Miranda said. “Again? He told you to read it? He said he’s read it?!”
“Three times,” Dana said, holding up three fingers.
“Ugh,” Miranda said. “Every Dude Bro that tells you they love that book is a total liar. You know they’ve never even read it.”
“Of course they haven’t read it!” Dana said. “Literally everyone who reads Eternal Necromancer dies a horrible death upon reaching the last page. So am I to believe that Darren, the freelance podcast reviewer, is the one person who has survived reading Eternal Necromancer, just because he went to Wesleyan?”
“It’s not even that good of a school,” Miranda said, fishing out the olive from the bottom of her drink.
“I’m just tired of them lying,” Dana said. “Why put in your dating profile that you like to read if you’re just going to suggest the same book that everyone puts on their bookshelf to look smart, but literally no one has read because you die the second you finish it?”
“Maybe he did read it and he was a ghost that’s been dead for 20 years,” Miranda said.
“Maybe,” Dana said. “But he said he volunteered to ‘work with old people’ a few weeks ago.”
“Ugh, what a liar,” Miranda said. She signaled for another round. “Anyway, you look amazing. No sense in wasting a good hair night.”
Dana caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror behind the bar. Miranda was right. Her hair did look good. She pulled out her phone.
“Back to the old swiping mines,” she said. Then she put her phone away. “Nope. Not doing it. I’m done with the online scene. I’m tired of lying Dude Bros on the internet. I’m living in the real world.”
Miranda calmly folded her hands in front of her and leaned in close.
“That’s good because the real life urban lumberjack over there will not stop staring at you,” she said.
Dana looked up and stared right at a handsome bearded man in a flannel shirt. He smiled at her. Her face flushed and she turned quickly back to Miranda.
“Oh God, you’re right,” she said. “I’m going to look again.”
They both turned and looked at him. The guy laughed. Dana dropped her head and whispered
“Should I talk to him?” she asked.
“Yes!” Miranda said.
And so Dana did. His name was Mike Baxter and he wasn’t a lumberjack, he was an English teacher for underprivileged students. On the weekends he made furniture from reclaimed wood.
“English teacher, eh?” she said. “You must love books.”
“You could say that,” he said, with a laugh.
Dana looked at him skeptically
“Do you have any suggestions for me?”
“I’m not going to suggest it, because I’m sure you’ve read it,” Mike stated. “But my favorite book is The Bell Jar.”
She looked up. That was her favorite book, too. Most likely he was lying. But maybe he wasn’t. Even if he was, at least he was smart enough to not recommend Eternal Necromancer.
“Do you want to get out of here?” she asked.
Hours later they sat up, drinking wine and swapping life stories. He was from the Midwest. His father had been a trucker who lost his job and now raised chickens and drank too much. His mother was a retired librarian. He had two sisters. One was a wedding photographer. The other ran off with a travelling salesman. Dana told him she used to dream of running off with a travelling salesman. He told her he found that fascinating.
On the coffee table, rested a face down copy of a Zora Neale Hurston novel, as if he had put it down before she came over. The book was worn and the binding was cracked at the spine.
“I know, I know,” he said, closing the book. “I’m a monster. I break the spines of my books and dog ear them. Don’t tell my mother.”
Dana was honestly just impressed to see a white man reading a book by a woman of color, even if it was from the required reading list.
“Are you in a book club that’s trying to read more diverse authors?” she asked.
He laughed. “What?”
“Nevermind.”
“I re-read books as my students read them,” he said, fanning through the book and showing highlights and notes in the margins. “I wouldn’t ask them to do homework that I’m not willing to do myself, you know?”
“Does it work?”
“Their essays tell me no,” he said. “But it makes good company on long nights. I don’t date that often.”
Clearly, Dana thought, because every guy active in the dating scene apparently went to the same meeting where they agreed to recommend Eternal Necromancer to impress lonely literate women.
He retreated to the kitchen to pour another glass of wine. She got up and analyzed his bookshelf. The guy was legit. He did have a dog eared copy of the Bell Jar. He had several Joan Didion books. He even had some books by women of color that she had never heard of. She pulled out her cell phone to snap a couple of pictures. She actually was in a book club that had been trying to read books by more diverse authors.
When she reached the end of the shelf, she froze. There, on display between Roxane Gay’s latest essay collection and a biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was a copy of Eternal Necromancer.
Mike walked back into the room, holding two glasses of wine.
“Everything ok?” he asked.
“So, what?” she asked. “You have this book as a joke or something?”
Mike smiled knowingly. He flipped over Eternal Necromancer and showed her the back cover. The image of a bearded white man with glasses stared back, mocking everything she stood for.
“It’s one of my favorites,” he said. “I read it every year around Halloween. Changes my life every time. They say it means different things to different people.”
Dana blinked. Everything about the night had seemed so perfect. Could she have been wrong about the book? No. She was wrong about Mike. He was a Dude Bro, like the rest of them. She held up her phone.
“My friend Miranda just called and she’s in trouble,” Dana said. “I have to go.”
“Oh, wow,” he said, looking genuinely concerned. “Is she OK?”
“No,” Dana said “Yes. I mean, I don’t know? I just need to handle it. Alone. Right now.”
“Well let me know if I can do anything to help,” Mike said. “Tonight was fun.”
“Yep,” Dana said, gathering up her coat. “Right. Bye.”
She stood frozen outside his front door. She was being stupid. It was just a book. Mike seemed great. Maybe she had it all wrong. He had read a lot of good books. She weighed the options. Should she really do it? She knocked on his door. He answered, still showing that million dollar smile.
“Could I borrow the book?” she asked.
“What?” he said.
“Eternal Necromancer,” she said, quickly. “Give it to me. Please.”
“Oh sure,” he said, then he went back in and grabbed the book. “Here you go.”
“Thanks. Bye.”
Dana closed the door on his face and went home.
She went straight into her room and lit some candles. She threw the book on the bed and jumped down next to it on her stomach. Then she started reading.
Hours later she was crying. Then she was laughing. Then she felt exactly like she did in seventh grade the time Danny Tanelli told her he liked her. Everything the Dude Bros said was true. It was so deep, and so funny. She flipped over and looked at the bearded white face of the man who wrote it. She thought back to all her favorite childhood books and wondered how it was possible for anything to recreate those feelings. How could a man write a character that felt like Jo March and Jane Eyre at the same time? And how could she have avoided reading it for so long?
Dawn broke and she finally closed her eyes, dreaming the book as she drifted off to sleep. When she woke up she ordered dim sum and kept reading. Soup shot out of her soup dumplings and landed all over page 547. It was fine. She was never giving this book back to Mike.
Her phone vibrated. Miranda calling. She let it go to voicemail. Hours later, during one of the book’s truest moments, she felt bad. She shot a quick text, “Reading Eternal Necromancer. I don’t know who I am anymore!!!”
Miranda called her back immediately. Dana flipped the phone over. It vibrated off the bed and landed on the floor. She ignored it, kicked up her feet and kept reading.
Epilogue
Mike Baxter, Mr. B to the kids at P.S. 66, sat in the back of the teacher’s lounge, holding a newspaper. He was still a little confused and heartsick, wondering where things went wrong with the woman from Devil’s Tavern the other night. It was then he learned about the fire that nearly destroyed an entire apartment building on the hipster side of the city. It had started from a candle, in a single woman’s bedroom. It wasn’t until he got home and saw the TV news report that he realized it was Dana, the woman from the other night.
He was a decent man, so he took the morning off to attend her funeral. He recognized her friend from Devil’s Tavern and gave her a solemn nod. The woman stormed over to him.
“How’d you do it?” she asked.
“Miranda, right?” Mike said, remembering why Dana left so abruptly. “Did everything end up OK the other night?”
Miranda held up a finger.
“How’d you read the book without dying?” she said. “Tell me.”
“Wait,” he said. “What?”
“She left with you and the next thing I know, she’s reading Eternal Necromancer. And you seem like the kind of guy that a girl will trust the reading recommendations of even if she knows the book is going to kill her in a horrific way if she ever finishes it,” Miranda said, pointing a finger at his chest. “So I’ll ask again again. How’d you do it? How did you survive? Who are you? Are you a devil or an incubus something? You have to tell me. This is a place of worship. You can’t lie in here.”
Mike rubbed the back of his neck and stared toward the pulpit. The funeral was about to begin.
“I never read the book,” he said. “No one has. I was just trying to impress her.”
Miranda turned and stormed away. Mike took a seat in the back of the church and listened as the priest describe dearly departed Dana as a lover of good books.
The only rule of 13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days is that the story must be posted the same night I started writing it.
Previously on 13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days:
2020:
Day 13 A Very Kaboom Halloween
Day 12 Save the Cat
Day 11 Vampire Weekend
Day 10 What We Drink at Brunch Besides Mimosas
Day 9 Lightbulb Moments
Day 8 Gift of the Magi 2
Day 7 The Hook
Day 6 Die School Musical
Day 5 The Viscount’s Supporter
Day 4 Eternal Necromancer
Day 3 Right Now
Day 2 Good Bones
Day 1 The Girl with the Green Mask
2016:
Day 1 The Ghost’s Girlfriend
Day 2 The Girl with the Puka Shell Necklace
Day 3 The Time I Went to the Old Church Later Than I Should Have
Day 4 Ride Scare
Day 5 Miranda, Who Appears as a Portent of Death
Day 6 A Halloween Carol
Day 7 El Mariachi de los Muertos
Day 8 Death on Demand
Day 9 The Ballad of the Cursed Mudville Maroons
Day 10 Officer Mac’s Last Day
Day 11 Chad vs. The Genie
Day 12 Luigi’s Coins
Day 13 Somewhere Beyond the C
