It had been a long and stressful day, and I was glad to come home to my cat. I flopped into my recliner, cursing the current fashion in mens’ dress shoes, the current stupidity so rampant in Western youth, and the flow of time in general for bringing me to this gods-forsaken juncture in my life. Golem, my massive black cat immediately pounced into my lap and curled up for his daily allotment of petting. We had both come to appreciate the modern attitude on pets in general, namely that they filled the same role in the family as children. Really they had always done that, but people used to expect more from their children too.

I realize how stereotypical it is for a necromancer to have a black cat, but he had been with me for a long time, and neither of us could bear him leaving. I had found Golem in an alley in Prague, one of the reasons for his name. I still have no idea how he got there. I’ve never seen another of his breed in Europe, at least not loose, and he can’t remember much before the streets of Prague. At the time he had been fending off a street kid and his mangy dog. The kid had been throwing stones at my soon-to-be cat while the dog growled. I think if either of them could have seen how big their victim was they would have run away screaming.

Golem is a black tom. I keep his coat fairly short since winters, where we live, aren’t as cold as he’s used to. He’s a big beast, at almost a meter long and about one stone. Sometimes I put a leash on him and we walk down the road to fuck with the neighbors. He thinks it’s as funny as I do. No idea what breed he is, or if there ever was a breed that he could have belonged to. He’s a giant among cats, though, especially among cats from when he was born.

I had chased them off ,the child and the dog, but Golem had not been in good shape. A little inspection with the dark showed a broken back, pierced lung, dislocated jaw, and a number of other more minor injuries. Carrying him back to my apartment had not been easy for either of us. He could see that I was trying to help, but that didn’t stop the pain as I moved him the five blocks back to somewhere with a little more privacy.

The next several hours had been easier, but still difficult. Cats are natural creatures of the Dark. They can see in that direction, and some of them can cross over at will. On the way back the cat and I communicated about what he would want to do. Did he want to cross over? How much pain was too much pain to live with? Most people can’t deal with questions like this, but they are necessary for those of us who traverse the Dark. By the time we had reached my home, we had reached an agreement. I would repair his body with necromancy and he would be my familiar. Seventy years later we are both still satisfied with the arrangement, and I see no reason to change.

“How was your day little one?” Most cats understand tone more than words, but I was speaking through the Dark as well.

Satisfied laziness, the feeling of sun on my face and belly, and the comfort of a well groomed coat. Golem sent me a summary of his day with a flick of thought.

“Well, at least one of us had a good day.” I was a little jealous honestly. The modern world did not leave a lot of room for lazing around the homestead.

I dumped him out of my lap, at which he yowled good naturedly, and pushed myself out of my chair. “Time for a walk, lazybones.” I pushed my sore feet into a pair of half-boots that were at least ten times more comfortable than the torture devices that passed for dress shoes in this day and age. The fact that I had owned these shoes since before I had found my cat may have contributed to this. I grabbed the leash that Golem did not need and clipped the hook onto his collar and we padded out into the dusk to take a turn through our neighbors’ yard. We had gone in a merry circle with the local police about whether cats fell under the local leash laws. It had been an interesting argument if nothing else. We had graciously capitulated after the third officer had been unable to bring himself to collar Golem himself.

Of course Golem had been pretending to be highly incensed at the time, arching his back, hissing like a leaky propane tank, fur standing on end making him look twice as big as his usual impressive self. I may have also been subtly enhancing how scary he was with a little magic.

I had gotten a really good deal renting this house, mostly because of the neighbors. We lived next to one of the oldest graveyards in the area. Death dates ranged from the mid-1700s to the current decade. The ghost population was fairly modest given the size of the necropolis, but it had a reputation for being haunted anyway. I liked to think that I had helped in that regard somewhat, but a necromancer’s job is never done.

We left through the front door and strolled left down the street towards the nearest entrance to the cemetery. Ten steps or so took us to the edge of our yard and we slid over the low stone wall that bounded the property. We strolled along the edge of the border trees, both happy to soak in the quiet of nature and the peace of the dead.

We had walked for almost ten minutes when I sensed something. The spirit wasn’t even strong enough to form an image in the Light. Despite that it tugged at my other sense, insisting that I pay attention to it. I glanced through the Dark and saw a massive dog standing where I could sense the spirit. I had not thought this cemetery was old enough to have a church grim, but evidently I had been wrong.

Golem deigned to notice the spirit dog as well, and they eyed each other for a moment before the cat approached to rub against the spectre’s side. The grim gave Golem’s ear a friendly lick before turning back the way it had come from. A look over the waist high black shoulder let me know that I was expected to follow.

We had only gone a few tens of yards toward the center of the necropolis when I heard a sound that no necromancer appreciates. The sound of steel on a headstone has a distinctive ring, but it also resonates through the Dark. It tends to be very noticable for things that like to eat unsuspecting morons, and makes a lot of work for necromancers as a result.

Gods-damned kids.

I skulked closer, keeping to shadows and behind trees. I didn’t outright hide myself in the Dark, but enhancing my stealth with a little magic had long ago become second nature. A group of five teenage boys were swigging from liquor and beer bottles, swinging tire irons and baseball bats at random gravestones and flower arrangements. They were oblivious to anything but their drunken vandalism and the need to impress each other. Two of them wore letter jackets from the school where I had been teaching biology for the last few weeks. Typical jock behavior then.

The grim noticed me noticing the boys, and expressed his indignation over the destruction of his home. The howl he loosed was full of a sad longing for life and a confusion over a human wrecking the resting places of his charges. No one but me and Golem could hear him, but it was heartbreaking nonetheless. He could not fathom that these humans would so callously destroy what he spent his whole existence protecting. In some ways his howling helped us. It told the denizens of the Dark that this graveyard had a grim to chase them off. On the other hand it meant if something did show up, it would be something that thought it could face down a church grim several centuries old.

The howling also had an effect on the boys. All but one looked wildly around, trying to find the source of a noise that their ears couldn’t hear. It must have been pretty unnerving because they circled up around their leader. He was evidently too drunk to notice the spectral howling.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Okay,” I said to myself and my two animal helpers. “You two are going to chase these idiots out of here.” I pointed at the pack of idiots brandishing crowbars and bats. “Try not to hurt them too much. They might be too stupid to live, but I don’t want them killed today.” The grim woofed softly and trotted off through the sparse tree cover. Golem gave me a satisfied look of anticipation. Play. Chase. Fun. Big? He sent me a mental snapshot of himself chasing a mouse, pouncing on it only to let it scurry away before another pounce. Laced through it was a request for access to some of my magic. I lent him a small portion, deciding he could be trusted to have a little fun.

“It’s going to stink if they shit themselves. Try to contain yourself.” He slunk through the shadows with a jaunty tilt to his tail. I could feel him drawing the Dark around himself as he went.

I put them out of my mind and pulled the Dark around myself as well. The shadows that my eyes could see got deeper, but also more permeable. I could see into their depths in a way that I couldn’t with just my physical eyes. The world also gained that other dimension that stretched toward the gate. The direction that the Dark came to the physical dimension from. It had taken a lot of training to get used to, but I had mastered this sight long ago.

I started preparing myself. Imagine those Asian guys on the Internet that pull the cotton candy from the machine and do tricks with it. Now cross that with a balloon artist. Now imagine the stuff that is being used isn’t spun sugar or latex balloons, but a hologram that sucks in Light instead of being made from it. This is how I imagined it looked when I pulled my arms and armor from the Dark.

I gained a sleek carapace of darkness that clung and moved with me like a leather coat. My legs were similarly coated. My head stayed uncovered, the better to hear and see my foes. In my hand was a foot-long double edged dagger, an almost exact replica to the one that I had trained with when I was a boy.

It had taken me a long time to improve on the original armor I had crafted when I was younger, but I couldn’t find a better thing for killing Dark denizens than a sharp piece of not-quite-steel. Preparations done, I knelt next to a tree and waited. Senses extended into the Light and the Dark for a little warning that something was on the way.

While I waited I checked on Golem and the grim. Both were having fun, but none of the boys were. The cat was feeling generous apparently, and had siphoned off enough of my power into the grim to make him visible. The dog was stalking through the tombstones, growling and snapping at the drunken teenagers. I could feel his vindictive pleasure radiating through the Dark. The boys were being herded, albeit slowly, toward the edge of the cemetery. At least one of them had pissed themselves. It didn’t seem like anyone was injured yet, but if they kept running through the grave rows like that someone’s shin would get broken.

My dramatic troll of a cat, however, had made himself the size of a tiger and was bounding from tree to tree. He was making a squalling, yowling, screeching sound that I had not heard him make before, but it sounded like the hinges of Hell if they hadn’t been oiled in a few hundred years. The grim was doing most of the motivating and Golem was keeping the terrified boys from splitting up. They were doing a good job of herding them away from danger, in other words.

I felt the Dark move just then. Imagine that you are a fish, well a shark. As you move through the water you can feel other things moving around you. You can feel boats going by overhead probably. That’s what it feels like when the Dark moves. It’s not nothing, and it reacts to those of us who move through it.

So when the thing tried to sneak up on me, it wasn’t very effective. I had not lived to my current venerable age without developing some survival habits.

I did not react to the presence behind me, let it think that I was unaware. I could smell its … aura…, for lack of a better word, through the Dark. It was old, not as old as me, but older than many things I encountered day to day. I could tell that it had been human once. This was not going to be fun.

I let the thing get closer, almost right on top of me before I started reacting. It was reaching toward me. I could feel the appendage? coming through the Dark toward me. A human soul that had survived as long as this thing felt like it had needed to develop some way to absorb energy. Nothing can survive without eating after all.

I let it think it had me. Its feeder actually touched my armor and I gave it a nice little jolt of Dark energy as a ‘fuck you’ for attacking me. I brought my knee up and came to my feet with a turn that left me facing the thing. Knife it hand and ready to fight. I could see the graves and the trees, the sun shing on the grass. I could also see this withered thing. It looked like a mummy, except it was still moist. The flesh was drawn over the bones and joints like badly cured leather. It was thin and wiry, standing a little taller than me with bent knees and a swaying stance. The fingers had elongated into bony claws, and the arms hung down almost to its flexed knees.

The head was by far the worst. The skull had warped toward the crown of the head, stretching the thing’s face across a taller area than it had been meant for. All the hair had fallen out and the lips had pulled away from the teeth, giving it an evil grimace. The tongue had become a prehensile tentacle that currently dangled down the thing’s chest. That must have been what it tried to feed on me with. Eww. The nose had flattened and stretched until it looked more like two slits in the middle of the thing’s face. The nostrils fluttered and wriggled as it scented me, the graves, and the boys. A high keen made its way out of the things throat, and I felt a wave of hunger as it pushed its feelings outward.

Not to be outdone, I pushed back. I sent smug satiation, and slapped it across the face with the full-belly feeling of eating family dinner. I also sprinkled in some of my disgust at its appearance with confidence about the outcome of our eminent fight. A shriek of rage and sadness made its way through those nightmare teeth. I bared my own teeth in response and beckoned it to its demise with my free hand.

Gods it was fast. The next several seconds were a blur of claw swipes, parries, ripostes and scratches along the surface of my armor. I opened an equal number of cuts in the thing’s arms and torso, from which leaked a noxious flavor of ether. I made a mental note not to get any on me.

It pulled away after realizing that it wasn’t going to get me that easily. It looked calculating somehow, for just a moment, before it sprang away toward the boys that were still 30 yards from the cemetery gates. A fast meal was evidently more tempting than a tough one.

I raced after it. Those stupid kids were basically defenseless and they were in my area of responsibility. If one of them died I would feel terrible about it. And I also had some professional pride to uphold.

In the heat of the fight, however, I had forgotten something. Golem and the grave dog had not been caught off guard by the thing. Both had sensed it coming and neither seemed inclined to let it escape them. As the thing ran through one of the trees, still incorporeal in the Light, Golem pounced from directly above it. He was still tiger sized and hit the things shoulders like a ton of bricks, driving it headfirst into the ground. Somehow he had brought the thing more fully into the Light in the process, because its head didn’t pass through the headstone the way it had gone through the tree. It bounced off with a sickening crunch and an ugly, rubbery twist of the thing’s neck. I almost felt bad for it as the cat bounded over its head and turned to face it.

As soon as the thing was on the ground, the grim rushed in. The thing was stunned and wounded, but the black dog latched onto it’s deformed elbow and shook. An unholy scream rent the air as the whole arm came off at the shoulder.

One of the boys screamed too, and they all resumed running toward the graveyard’s main gate.

The thing struggled with one arm, trying to swipe at Golem and the grim as they harried it, keeping its attention firmly on them. A glance from the cat told me that he, at least, saw me creeping up behind the thing.

As I inched closer the thing drew back too far after a particularly vicious swipe. I took my chance and lunged at its back, driving the dagger into the space where its heart had been in life. As the blade pierced it I channeled a current of the Dark through the handle. In the same way a taser can kill if the voltage is too much, that amount of magic tore apart the thing’s spirit from the inside. It dissipated with a last wail and the three of us were left standing in an empty cemetery around a patch of ordinary grass.

Golem, in all of his wisdom, proceeded to piss on the spot where the thing had been. The grim trotted over to me, panting happily and radiating satisfaction. I gave him some well deserved attention, rubbing his ears and stroking his belly.

“Good dog,” I said. “Good boy.”