Fancy Hansey Does Necromancy

Handsome sits in the windowsill of a one bedroom, rambler style home, soaking in the sunlight. He can still remember the days before Old Woman brought him here. When he'd been tied up and left outside for days at a time until he cried so much he lost his voice, permanently.

Old Woman came and rescued him. She cut the rope that held him and she named him Handsome even though he wasn't. He was weak and he hadn't eaten in days. His eyes were crusted over from a weeping that never totally went away.

Somewhere along the way he'd lost the ability to retract his claws as well, so that he got stuck in the carpet everywhere he went and couldn’t call for help.

Outside, Wednesday ran in the yard chasing birds. Wednesday was a demon. Not in any figurative sense either. She was literally and truly a demon disguised in a cat’s skin. She crawled through a portal from Hell a couple years prior and straight into their lives.

Wednesday liked to hunt the birds not for any primal feline desire but because she liked to practice her Necromancy and for that, she needed dead things.

She’d spend all day chasing birds, killing them, and bringing them back to life.  

Over the years, Wednesday had tried to teach Handsome how to do it..  

“It’s easy,” she would say. But Handsome would always decline. He remembered too clearly what it was like to fear death and had no desire to deal that feeling to anything, or anyone, else, no matter how temporarily.  

Wednesday had a bird’s corpse pinned to the ground; she was breathing into it and saying The Words. She took a few steps back and a moment later the bird hopped up, looked around as if it wasn’t sure where it was, and fluttered away.

Handsome could hear Wednesday laughing with joy as she loped toward the window. She sat in the grass outside, cleaning herself, and called to him.

“Handsome.”  

He pretended he couldn’t hear her. Just taking a nap, I’m asleep and you can’t wake me, he thought.

“Handsome! Come out and play!”

Handsome opened one eye just a crack so that he could see her looking in at him with those falsely adorable eyes. He knew what really lay behind them, mischief and fire.  

“Just join me for one little resurrection and I’ll let you alone for the rest of the day. I just want to teach you. You never know when a murder or an un-murder might come in handy.”  

While the offer of a day undisturbed was tempting, he knew exactly what she was doing. She’d made him watch more times than he cared to remember and he wasn’t interested in seeing it again.

“Raising the dead only might kill you, probably not, and I’ll be right there to bring you back. What are you so afraid of?” she said, as if that was supposed to comfort him.

“Leave me alone, Wednesday. I’m perfectly happy right here.”

It was too much to hope that she’d leave it at that. Wednesday wasn’t accustomed to not getting what she wanted, powers of evil and all, she found Handsome incredibly frustrating. She began pacing in front of the window, taunting him.

“Look at me, I’m Fancy Hansey. I’m much too proper to play outside, or run in the woods, or gasp kill a bird.”

She actually said gasp, he couldn’t stand it, and he hated when she called him Fancy Hansey.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t understand what Old Woman saw in her. But he loved Old Woman and Old Woman loved Wednesday, so he tolerated her as best he could.

“You truly are a poor excuse for a cat.” she said before trotting away and disappearing into a portal that appeared, only for a moment, in the yard. Wednesday’s verbal assault was shorter than he’d expected. Pleased with himself, he went back to enjoying the sunlight in the window and before long, he was happily snoozing.  

Handsome awoke sometime later to the sound of keys jingling at the door. Old Woman was home. He leapt from the window sill and greeted her at the door, rubbing his scent along her stockings. She greeted him with a scratch behind the ear. How he loved scratches behind the ear.

Handsome followed Old Woman to the kitchen where she set down her bag, weaving between her legs all the way, then out to the yard. He glanced from fence to fence for any sign of the devil-cat and was glad to find her missing.  

They walked together, he and Old Woman, out to the barn where the horses lived. Handsome feared and respected the brutish creatures, keeping a watchful eye on their crushing hooves while Old Woman climbed an old wooden ladder to the hay loft, her spindly frame moving carefully rung by rung.

He didn’t like it in the barn; it reminded him too closely of the days before Old Woman had come. When the most he could hope for in the way of shelter was a rickety shed that threatened, every winter, to collapse under the weight of the snow and crush him while he slept.

“Look out below.” Old Woman said as she toppled a bale of hay down from the loft. It bounced off the old wooden ladder and crashed on the dirt below. The horses snorted and jumped in anticipation of the meal and Handsome made sure to stay well away.

Old Woman placed a foot on the top rung and braced herself with the railing to make the trip back down. Handsome was beginning to regret his decision to come along on this errand. The sun would be down soon and it was already getting cold. He longed for a warm lap in front of the television or a bite to eat and a discarded sweater to curl up in at the very least.  

Then Old Woman put a foot on the next rung and it gave way. A crack echoed through the barn sending the horses into a panic as the rotted wood fell to splinters beneath her. Her hands let go the railing and she fell. Handsome heard a second crack when she hit the ground and panic seized his heart as well.

He ran to the woman, nudging her with his forehead to get up, but she wasn’t moving, not even the slow movement of breath.

Handsome ran out of the barn calling for Wednesday all the way. He ran to the four corners of the yard pleading for her to show herself but there was no sign of her anywhere.  

In desperation, Handsome returned to Old Woman, clamped down on her wrists, and pulled. She didn’t move and when he let go her wrist it fell limp, back into the dust.  

He took three deep breaths, letting them out slowly to steel himself for his next move. Then he leapt onto Old Woman’s chest and licked her lovingly on the face.

 “It’s okay. I can fix this,” he said.

He knew exactly what to do. He had seen it more times than he cared to remember. He let the last breath out slowly into Old Woman’s mouth and said The Words.