It was dark inside the monsters stomach.
And dreadfully smelly.
Which, really, is what one would expect from the inside of a stomach. After all, how often do stomachs come with windows and air fresheners?
William listened to the sound of the previous occupants’ flesh being dissolved in the acid. It made a sort of popping, fizzing noise, not unlike the sound lit sparklers made at Guy Fawkes Night. The kind of safe sparklers small children get handed, safe and glittery and the noise they make usually lost in the big bangs of the much larger fireworks.
The noise sounded very loud in here.
William Scoundrel (yes, he actually chose that name himself) sat in the dark of the monsters stomach and pondered what he should do.
William, despite first appearances, was actually rather lucky.
Number One: He was dead before he went into the monsters stomach and
Number Two: the special resin he coated himself with every week to prevent rot has the unexpected side effect of turning his skin into something like living marble. This meant he couldn’t be bruised or cut and apparently, acid had no effect on him whatsoever. He keeps his hair out of the way of the drips of acid though, just in case.
This may tell you more than William would be comfortable with, about what kind of man William is.
Since making William uncomfortable is a rare and happy thing, and since he’s hardly in a position to stop us, why don’t I tell you a bit more about him?
William Scoundrel, family name forbidden due to his family disowning him and, on occasion if the opportunity presents himself, trying to assassinate him. This is due to William being, in their opinion, the blackest of black sheep. A position he earned when he didn’t stay properly dead like a decent member of the family should. When you come from a large family of exorcists, the undead state of being is a bit of an embarrassment to your profession.
William was never a brilliant exorcist, middling at best. He liked the money and status and the girls it got him but, unlike the rest of his family, he didn’t share in the whole gung-ho, ‘endless war against spirits’ thing. In fact, apart from the more violent ones who directed their violentness towards him, he would have been quite happy to let them be. But he was an obedient son and so did as his family asked until the day he died.
And then he died.
No one was more surprised that himself when, at his funeral. He had opened his eyes and sat up in his coffin. He hadn’t even had a moment to himself before Aunt Petunia had shot him with her specialist portable crossbow. That had been rather hurtful. Surely he could have had five minutes to adjust, or even get a word out before they started attacking. But then again, Aunt Petunia barely liked the living, let alone the dead. She had many emotional issues, most of which, William suspected, were due to being named ‘Petunia’, hardly a fitting name for a hardcore exorcist who battled demons from hell on a daily basis.
Death gives one a rather different view on life, seeing as you’re now a spectator rather than a contestant.
William, who had never once disobeyed the family (although honestly he had thought about it many times – but not actually done it), looked down at the crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest. He looked at the faces surrounding him, faces he had known all his life, faces he had fought beside, faces he had died beside, and saw not a single stirring of pity on any of them.
He made up his mind. And pegged it to the door. The family, caught off guard by this surprising act of self thought, were held stunned for a moment, giving William enough time to make his way out of the church and into the new world of the living dead.
William was surprisingly adept at hiding himself from his family. Or perhaps not so surprising, after all, he’d had a lifetime of learning how they thought. So he vanished into the depths of the city, moving from one frozen meat locker to the other, trying to preserve his decaying body and avoiding the ravens that followed him in flocks, waiting for him to stop moving so they could feast on his flesh.
William is sure that it was the ravens that let Bertie discover him.
Ah Bertie, Bertram the Exorcist. What is there to say about him?
I hate him. But I am only the narrator and therefore my opinion does not count.
Bertie, always Bertie, only the elder’s call him by his full name, any others who do better beware. His temper, though carefully hidden, is vile and vicious and bloody.
Bertie found William after dark in a closed Iceland
William heard the footsteps walking down the aisle, past the canned goods section and towards him. The person was between him and the exits and he had no weapon on him save a box of already defrosting choc ices in his hand. He threw them anyway.
‘Now, now Wills,’ Bertie ducked easily. ‘Surely that’s not the way to greet your cousin? Besides,’ He glanced at the choc ices, ‘I’m much more of a raspberry ripple fan. I’d say vanilla would be your speed.’
This is the important thing to remember here, extremely important. Bertie is William’s idol. He is everyone in the family’s’ idol. He is a bounder and a cad, suave, handsome and effortlessly charming and brilliant and one of the best exorcists the family has ever produced. He is fantastically popular with women, even though they know he will never call (although they always hope he will). When William was alive he wanted nothing more than to be just like his cousin Bertie.
Here’s something you should also know. Bertie loves to use elegant hand gestures and longs words when he speaks. He thinks this makes himself sound posh (although posh is never a word he would say – it’s far too common). Now, if posh value was counted in terms of wealth, Bertie would be so posh he would piss posh. However, posh is also determined by class – something all the family would agree they do not have. Now, they’re not what you’d call council estate trash by any stretch of the imagination but they work all their lives and this, by common acceptance, is not what posh people do.
Now, can you see how this is going?
Bertie is not here to exorcise William. He will not even tell the family that he has seen William, instead Bertie will hide him.
Bertie tells William this, and William, grateful and ecstatic not to be alone anymore (for truly, that was the worst part of being dead, having no one but the flesh eating crows for company) still has just enough sense to ask why. Bertie tells him it is because he is his cousin and the way the family treated him was just not right. Bertie thinks it’s time for a change in the way the family thinks.
As with all the best lies, this one is mostly true.
Bertie is interested in helping William because he is his cousin. Bertie does think it’s time for a change in the family. It’s just that the change Bertie wants to inflict has nothing to do with helping spirits or the undead. It’s all to do with what Bertie wants his future to be.
Bertie has got ideas above his station one might say. But these are untried, untested ideas and Bertie does not want to risk himself. He is selfish like that. However, a recently revived, scapegoat of an undead cousin would be the perfect guinea pig.
William goes with Bertie.
A naive and foolish decision one might argue, but look at it this way. William is alone and tired and dead. He’s never had much backbone to begin with and never dreamed he’d be an undead fugitive on the run from his exorcist family. What better option is going to come along? Plus this is Bertie, his hero. Surely Bertie will take care of him?
Who among us can say that they’ve never once trusted the wrong person for the right reasons?
So William goes with Bertie who takes him to a safe house, complete with a walk in deep freezer. William does not ask Bertie why he has a hidden house with a giant freezer. Perhaps he simply doesn’t think to ask it (possible) or perhaps he’s afraid to (also possible).
Bertie visits William often over the course of the next few weeks and when he senses William has gotten properly relaxed and comfortable he brings with him a guest.
This guest is a necromancer.
Now, to explain why this is so shocking, perhaps the best way to describe the relationship between exorcists and necromancers is to compare them to policemen and criminals. Policemen spend their entire career trying to undo the damage criminals’ cause. Criminals spend their career trying to have fun and earn money whilst trying not to get caught by the police. Now, times the antagonism between the police and the criminal fraternity by about a gazillion and you have the relationship between exorcists and necromancers.
Had William still breathed, he would have been breathless with shock.
As it was, once the yelling and throwing of insults and furniture had calmed down, Bertie calmly explained that this was for William’s own good, that no one knew more about preserving the undead than necromancers (almost true, but they definitely knew more than any exorcist living). Ollie would examine William and see the best way of allowing William to avoid worrying about all impacts, sharp edges and having to spend most of his days locked inside a freezer.
William, after much, much hesitation agreed. After all, if you couldn’t sleep ever, would you really want to spend most of your time in a freezer?
Then Bertie dropped another bombshell.
‘Since we know it’s possible and we want to get this sorted as soon as possible, I’ve lent Ollie our Great Uncle Archie’s work.’
At this William exploded again. Great Uncle Archie was one of the family’s greatest and darkest secrets, and the necromancers should be the last people on earth to ever know his research.
(William was quite right in this. Great Uncle Archie’s story was one of the biggest, darkest and saddest secrets their family held. It is a story full of sorrow, true love, genius and, ultimately, sacrifice and betrayal. I will not tell this story to you, it is just too sad and it makes me cry. But know this, whatever else Great Uncle Archie might have been; he was truly the kindest of men.)
At this, Ollie spoke up. ‘I am not interested in doing anything with it. Just what is asked. I might be born a necromancer but that life is a closed door to me.’
Ollie looks a bit like a washed out IT technician. His hair is long and brownish and untrimmed. He has stubble that won’t grow into a beard. His clothes are so loose and faded that you’d think an elephant had been wearing them and then washed them 60 times at high speed trying to get the grass stains out. But under his shaggy fringe his eyes are clear and firm. William wishes his eyes looked like that in the mirror but when he was alive he never bothered to look that properly and now he is dead he is too afraid to. But he knows they definitely don’t like anything like Ollie’s. If you’re wondering, William’s eyes normally look like those of a frightened rabbit.
William allows Ollie to experiment on him (although he prefers not to think of the word ‘experiment’ as it makes the more delicate muscles around his eyes twitch). William soon finds out that Ollie is a world class necromancer and a bit of a genius to boot. He also discovers, to his surprise, that he actually quite likes Ollie and Ollie, in return, discovers that he quite likes the dead mans company. William surprised him when they first started. As with all experiments, the common method is to first start with animals. In necromancy, you get a live animal, kill it, bring it back to life and experiment on it. Ollie was preparing to do this with a rabbit the first time when William, who had been watching, yanked the rabbit out of his hands before he could cut its throat. Both demanded to know what the other was doing. After Ollie had explained, William insisted that Ollie just test things out directly on him.
‘After all,’ William said, ‘I am already dead. There is nothing left to fear.’
Ollie felt like saying, ‘If that’s the case why are you hiding now’ except he noticed how much Williams hands were shaking but how he still stood between him and the rabbit cage. For this, William earned Ollie’s grudging respect, possibly the first respect he has ever earned.
Ollie’s natural genius, combined with Great Uncle Archie’s work, soon resulted in the resin. This meant that not only was William safe from rot and physical damage, but that he could finally go out in the sun (previously impossible due to the sun’s tendency to accelerate aforementioned rotting).
William didn’t think that he had ever been happier than when he was outside in the back garden with Ollie drinking beer and watching the sun glide across the sky.
Sadly, all things must come to an end. This is an irrefutable truth.
Bertie wanted to test exactly how indestructible William had become.
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