The Many Laments of Dagda Lichfield
by Kit Zimmerman
Dagda could hear the mob beating on the many dilapidated entrances of Ashview Manor. Sweat, dripping from his aquiline nose, conspired with wheezing, panicked coughs to extinguish the flame of his tenuously held candle as he lit the wicks of others lining the tiered shelves of the cellar’s cool stone walls.
His fears dissipated when candlelight revealed his wife’s withered, decomposing body—clothed in a clean white shift—resting on a tall wooden table in the center of the chamber and intersecting ley lines drawn in chalk and bone powder on the granite floor. Inhaling, Dagda delighted in the sweet aroma of decay, appreciating it as Renee’s way of letting him know she was present.
By his account, her death had been much like his parents’—unexpected and undeserving larceny of the highest order. The illness he’d suffered in childhood had robbed Dagda of both his health and family, and only Renee’s unwavering support had seen him through his formative years, notwithstanding the vast wealth of his inheritance. If only she had not tried to leave me, her life might not have been stolen by that murderer, he reasoned. Life in the wake of Renee’s loss so soon after their destined wedding had been unbearable. But death, he’d learned, was a temporary state if one only had the wit and will to see it ended.
Another round of hammering from the ground floor broke Dagda’s reverie, reminding him why he’d been forced into attempting the ritual. He knew why the misguided peasants of Sableton had come; regular deliveries of food and supplies to his intentionally understaffed home had enabled Dagda’s survival and assured his self-imposed isolation immediately following Renee’s undisclosed death. Nevertheless, there’d been a recent change in who handled the deliveries—a change, it seemed, that hadn’t been without consequence. I’ll have that loose-lipped lackey whipped for inciting these imbeciles to interfere with my work!
Circling the table, he ignored—as he had for quite some time—a glimpse of his emaciated form in the nearby standing mirror against the wall by the door. Chin-length, unkempt hair—white, despite youth—parted, revealing jaundiced blue and bloodshot eyes in their gaunt sockets. Dagda also ignored the scuff of his feet through threadbare, hole-ridden socks and the chaffing of his pale and bruised skin against the coarse, tattered remnants of his once finely tailored attire. Halting, he assessed the items covering a desk beside the table: a glass bottle filled with alkahest, an ebonite rod with a glimmering green baetyl socketed into the grip, and a black-handled dagger—carved from the thigh bone of a cleric—rested near two metal spheres situated atop the points of a U-shaped copper stand connected to a gearbox by a single wire. A tall, lamp-like contraption—its long, sturdy pole made of yew with a thin, circular lens of clear quartz bracketed at the end—rose above the rest. Relieved to see everything in order, Dagda poured alkahest over the lens and swiveled the pole, pointing it at Renee’s body. He flipped the brass toggle on the gearbox, and the spheres began rotating in opposite directions.
Reaching for the dagger with his right hand, Dagda upturned his left. His gaze traveled from his black onyx wedding band to the bulbous scar marring his palm.
Glass shattered upstairs.
Spurred by the cacophony, Dagda sliced. A red ribbon bloomed, and the scar burst open. Blood gushed, but a surge of adrenaline kept him from swooning as he reached for the ebonite rod. Setting his wound against the baetyl, he withdrew from the desk and aligned the rod between the spheres—tip pointed at the lens.
Invading footfalls battered the floor above.
A moment of doubt seized Dagda as he recalled a snippet from the grimoire where he’d learned the ritual: “For the dead to walk, one soul is required for each vessel raised.”
“Down there!” a man shouted. “Look in the cellar! You lot, check upstairs! Everyone else, spread out! Find him!”
Though he finally possessed all the proper tools, the unresolved question of a soul’s existence was all that’d forestalled Dagda’s second attempt at the ritual.
Until now.
We are nothing more than flesh, bone, and sinew, he decided.
Visible electric currents ignited between the spheres. Unpredictable bursts of violent, crackling blue energy ionized the air and illuminated the room.
Footsteps thudded on the stairs outside the cellar. “I hear something!” a shrill voice called. “He’s in here!”
“Step back,” the man from before said. He pounded on the door. “Dagda Lichfield! You’re under arrest for necromancy and murder!”
Chest heaving, arms shaking, Dagda stepped forward and brought the rod within inches of the spheres.
“It’s locked! Break it down!”
Bodies rammed against the door, bending it inward, and additional disembodied voices joined the others—a choir of ignorance unworthy of recognition insofar as Dagda was concerned.
“Put your backs into it!”
“For Renee’s sake, stop this!”
The air snapped and sizzled.
“Gods! Hurry! He’s going to try it!”
Dagda’s arm hairs stood erect.
Flesh . . .
Electricity whipped and popped.
“No, Dagda!”
. . . bone . . .
“Don’t do it!”
Revolving metal hummed—shaking the desk.
. . . and sinew . . .
“Open this door immediately!”
Renee . . .
Dagda plunged the rod between the spheres.
Searing pain ignited in his palm, traveled like lightning up his arm, and erupted between his shoulders as a green beam of light sprouted from the rod’s tip and into the lens. Blood and bile pooled in Dagda’s mouth. Convulsing, the acrid stench of burning flesh and heated metal invaded his nostrils. A kaleidoscope of colors erupted before his eyes. His vision blurred, then faded . . .
A chorus of muffled shouts stirred Dagda awake.
Disoriented, he rose from the table. He nearly toppled when he swung his legs over to stand, but his strong grip on the table’s edge kept him upright on trembling legs while he surveyed the room.
Smoke, rising from the smoldering remains of the nearby desk and the shriveled husk of a body on the ground, caught his eye.
The door rattled on its hinges.
I burned her, Dagda thought, numb. I’ll have to try again . . . He ventured forward from the table, but fell when his foot caught the hem of his long white shift.
Confused, he glanced down from where he sat on the floor.
His left hand had healed—the skin of his palm smooth and hale. A wedding ring—engraved with the intricate, swirling lines of a leaf motif that symbolized his noble house—adorned a bizarre, elegant finger. He tugged at the shift, revealing bronze legs bespeckled with tiny, healthy brown hairs.
The cellar door split at its center, and the repeating thud of a ram resonated throughout the chamber, each blow punctuated by people heaving in unison.
No . . . Crawling, Dagda lunged toward the mirror. No, no, no, no, no!
Splinters skittered across the floor, and a burly hand thrust through the door’s widening rupture, reaching for the sliding lock.
Dagda froze.
He had intended to offer the mirror as a gift for Renee upon her waking so that she might see herself as he always had, dead or otherwise.
But what Dagda saw in the reflection was no gift.
The doe-brown eyes staring back at him through brunette locks were not his own, nor was the voice that issued a strident, agonized scream when the cellar door flung open.
Kit Zimmerman is a debut Texan author and college writing tutor pursuing a BA in Creative Writing and English with a concentration in Fiction.
