August 15th 1869 Norton

August 15^th 1869

Vanessa had done it! According to the book she had found buried under the small churchyard in Baker Street, this was all she needed to speak to those who had already moved on. Reading the book had been almost as exciting as what it had told her to do. Small notes in the margin had directed her to a particular grave, where she had done her first ever digging session. Thankfully, the corpse that was located in this coffin was old, dry and a mere husk. The grave itself have been overgrown and at the back of the ancient cemetery, as though no one knew it was there. Perhaps they didn’t. The headstone was worn to almost nothing; all traces of the lettering had been washed away over the years by the steady onslaught of the elements.

Reaching in and taking the jawbone of the occupant had been easy, the bone had come away almost as soon as her gloved hand had gripped it. Carefully, she had wrapped the old thing in a cloth before replacing the rest of the corpse back into the grave, covering it once more with the earth it had been covered with before. A quick wave of her wand and it looked as it always had, abandoned and overgrown. 

Now that she was in the back, it hit her what she had done. Sitting down heavily, she let out a sigh and ran a hand over her face. There was grave earth stuck to the underside of her shoes and she shuddered. Pressing her lips together, she took a moment. She was a necromancer, it meant digging up bodies and dealing with the occasional body. If she couldn’t get a grip, she’d need to find a new livelihood! That wasn’t going to happen!

Taking a deep breath, she flicked through the book to the right page. A lot of the pages were mildewed and unreadable but this one particular spell was intact. It was the important one, the one that would allow her to speak with the owner of the jawbone, if she was correct; it was a necromancer by the name of Norton.

There was no real preamble to what she was about to do, no prep work that needed to be carried out. She placed the jawbone in the middle of the table and took a final look at the spell she needed to cast. A tremor ran through her before she began and she forced her hand to stop shaking. She could do this. Waving her slender wand in the desired pattern, she spoke the grand sounding words in a clear voice, “Sorchundo Dracerous.”

Nothing happened. 

She waited for a moment before glancing at the book once more. Odd, according to that she had followed the instructions properly and spoke true. She shivered. Pulling her shawl around her narrow shoulders a little tighter, she let out a sigh. Another check of the book said that she had performed the spell correctly, she had no idea what had gone wrong.

A loud bang snapped her attention back to the jawbone; a faint outline seemed to surround it and the temperature dropped further. A window flew open. She knew then that she was not alone anymore. The bone jumped into the air and she shot backwards, eyes wide, heart pounding.

“It’s about time!” snapped the dry husky voice of the owner. She got the impression that the spirit was looking around for a moment before she attracted its attention. “You’re not Miles!” it said with some surprise.

“No, I’m not,” she said shaking her head.

“What year is it?” the spirit asked.

“Eighteen sixty nine,” she replied.

“The double crossing little shit!” Vanessa’s eyes widened and she sank into one of the nearby chairs, utterly amazed at what she was hearing.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Norton, I had a first name once, I don’t remember it; maybe it was Norton.” She got the impression that the spirit was shrugging at her, “You get three questions, don’t ask me why, those are the rules and I didn’t write them. You did know that already didn’t you?” She shook her head, “Merlin’s left nutsack! What do they teach you in school these days?” he asked.

“Necromancy isn’t taught at all,” she said, trying to regain some of her composure.

“You found the book then,” Norton said. She could feel the spirit pacing around the room.

“I did,” she replied. “What happened to you?” she asked.

“I was murdered,” he replied. He offered no other explanation on that point; instead, he hovered over the book that was open on her desk. “I wrote those notes,” he said indicating the neat scrawl in the margin. “It’s seen better days though, I suppose the rot gets into everything eventually,” he said. She felt eyes on her once more and she couldn’t help the shiver that ran through her. “You taught yourself?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

If the spirit was impressed, she had no idea about it. “Go on then, ask your last question,” Norton said, there was a hint of a sigh in his voice and she took a moment to think about it. There were lots of different things she wanted to ask, what was it like being dead? Was there an afterlife? A whole lot of other existential questions shot through her, but there was one far more important than that, far more pertinent than any of them. She turned sharp blue eyes back to the place she assumed the spirit was and smiled.

“Will you teach me?” she asked.

There was a sound that was an awful lot like a snort, “No!”

With that, the temperature began to warm in the room, the window shut on its own accord and the room was suddenly still. She was alone once more. Vanessa’s eyes turned to the bone on the table and she smirked, if he thought he was going to get away that easily, he had better thing again. Picking it up she carefully wrapped the bone in a cloth and popped it on its own in her bottom draw, he had given her much to think about.