The Summoning

As I watched Mom's coffin being put in the ground, I couldn't stop the tears that rolled down my cheeks.

This was because I knew her death could have well been avoided. I knew Mom wouldn't have died if she didn't embark on that journey. But no one ever listened to me. My Dad said I was too emotional for a nine-year-old boy. Mom said she'd be okay.

Tell that to the horrible car wreckage and the blood everywhere.

Dad's tears at the funeral were about as real as Santa Claus. I knew he hated Mom - he was almost always coming back home drunk to stupor, grabbing mom by the neck and beating me with his leather belt. After this, he was probably going to give me a few cents for the bus home, and then he'd go to the bar and flood his liver with more poison.

Why hadn't he died instead?

The next couple of days were sad and uneventful. I cried at school most of the time, and only the teachers could understand my feeling. None of the students could. None except Elsa.

Elsa wasn't the kind of person you wanted to see at night, For one, she wore really dark eyeliner for a third-grader, but it did nothing to hide her heavy eyebags. She wore a lot of bangles and beads on her hands, and she had curly but very unruly black hair.

And her parents were Necromancers. Or that was what I heard our class teacher whispering some time ago. I didn't even know what a Necromancer was, but I felt it was something spooky.

"I understand how you feel," Elsa said one day, seating beside me. It was so out of the blue, considering we'd never been made eye contact before, talk more of talking.

"No, you don't. Your parents are still alive."

"They're my foster parents. My real parents died when I was six," she said quietly.

I looked up at her, teary-eyed. "Then..."

"I can help you," she said, answering a question I never been asked.

"Help me do what?"

"Talk to your mother."

"What? That's..."

"Necromancy? Yeah. My foster parents are doing that stuff, so I read in their books how to talk to the dead," she answered.

"Woah! They let you do that?"

"No. I'm not supposed to touch their stuff. But I did anyway,"

"I-I really don't think that's a good idea. L-loads of spooky st..."

"Chill out, Mac. I just got the right words to say and things to do, that's all."

"And then what?"

"Then I started seeing my parents again. All the time,"

"I don't get it," I said, confused, "didn't they go to heaven?"

"Well, if they did, they come to visit, I guess," she shrugged, "do you want my help or not?"

"I-I do," I said, not only elated at the prospects of seeing my mom again but also unableble to say 'no' to the persistent and scary Elsa.

"Okay. All you need to do is..."

******

I stood in front of the great mirror in the sitting room and gulped. Pricking my thumb with a pin, I pressed it and used it to smear the word 'mother' on the mirror, according to Elsa's instructions.

Taking a deep breath and swallowing my saliva, I said:

"With the blood smeared on the window between worlds, the condition has been met. Death, release she who has been summoned!"

Nothing happened.

Nothing.

Nothing.

"Damn it, you..."

I froze in shock as I looked at the mirror.

My mother did not wear an apron and she definitely didn't carry a bloody cleaver with a crooked smile on her face.

Who did I summon?