Story My Little Necroprancer

[Maime]

Notes: had a cute idea for a horror story. Very macabre yet humorous. Be warned this is a necromancer story so there is death and descriptions of decay and bodies/corpses.

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Prologue: Every Horse Girl You Ever Met...Sorta

Mallory Jane McKinney wasn’t just a horse girl. She was the horse girl—the one who wore saddle boots to school and smelled faintly of hay even at prom. Her backpack had horse stickers. Her bedroom walls were covered in rosette ribbons. Her social calendar revolved entirely around grooming schedules, riding lessons, and Elvis.

Elvis was a towering black Hanoverian with a white blaze shaped kind of like the state of Florida if you squinted. He was all muscle and myth, with eyes so dark they looked like they were thinking about deep, philosophical issues. Mallory believed they were. She believed Elvis was special—maybe even magical. He always knew exactly how to move in the arena, like he was reading her mind. Like he wanted to win.

Together, they crushed competition after competition, until their living room looked like a shrine to equestrian excellence. She didn’t just love Elvis. She worshipped him. She whispered secrets into his velvety ears, kissed the dip between his eyes, and told people he was her soulmate, half-joking—but only half.

Then, one sunny Saturday in late spring, Elvis died.

He was grazing by the fence, the sun haloing his back, when his legs buckled. Just folded up underneath him like a house of cards. He hit the ground hard enough to startle birds from the trees. By the time Mallory got to him, he was gone—still warm, but unmistakably dead. His mouth hung open in a soft, slack O. His eyes, wide and glassy, caught the sun but didn’t return it.

The vet said it was an aneurysm. Fast. Painless. Nothing anyone could’ve done.
Mallory didn’t cry right away. She sat with his body for six hours. She braided his mane one last time. She wiped the flies off his face. When someone tried to help her up, she bit them.

After the burial, she didn’t go back to Fairview Stables. She stopped answering texts. She stopped eating anything that wasn’t freeze-dried or neon. Her mom signed her up for grief counseling. Mallory went to exactly one session, during which she calmly told the therapist that death was "just a very old habit" and that she planned to break it.

A week later, she checked out Introduction to Practical Necromancy from the county library.

“I’m looking for something with stronger results,” she told the clerk, a wiry man with a Dale Earnhardt Jr. tattoo on his neck.

“You mean… more advanced?” he asked.
Mallory’s eyes didn’t blink. “No,” she said. “I mean stronger."

 

[Maime]

Chapter 1: The Dewey Decimal System Doesn't Have a Section for This

The first thing Mallory learned about necromancy was that the library kept all the good books behind the counter.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" Dale—that was his name, according to the chipped plastic tag pinned to his faded Metallica t-shirt—squinted at her from behind the circulation desk. The Dale Earnhardt Jr. tattoo on his neck flexed as he swallowed nervously. "Because we've got some nice Stephen King over in Fiction."

"I've read everything Stephen King has ever written," Mallory said, which wasn't true, but sounded better than explaining that she was on a mission. "And this isn't for a book report."

Dale scratched his patchy beard. "You're the McKinney girl, right? The one with the horse?"

Mallory's chest tightened like someone had cinched a girth around it. "Elvis," she said, her voice shrinking to a whisper. "His name was Elvis."

"Was," Dale repeated, something like recognition flickering in his eyes. He'd been working at the county library for eleven years. He'd seen every kind of grief walk through those automatic doors—divorces, deaths, diagnoses. But there was something different about this girl. Something feral and electric in the hollow spaces under her eyes.

"Wait here," he said, and disappeared into the staff room.

When he returned, he was carrying a thick, leather-bound volume with no markings on the spine. "This isn't in our catalog," Dale said quietly, sliding it across the counter. "And technically, you need to be eighteen to check it out."

Mallory stared at the book. It looked ancient, the cover a mosaic of cracks like dried mud. "What is it?"

"Thresholds: A Practical Guide to the Spaces Between Life and Death," Dale said. "And I mean it, McKinney. This isn't Introduction to Practical Necromancy. This is graduate-level stuff."

"I'm a fast learner," Mallory said, reaching for the book.

Dale's hand stayed firmly planted on the cover. "Three weeks. And I want it back in the same condition. No food stains, no dog-ears, no... weird substances."

Mallory nodded solemnly, as if she were taking an oath.

"And hey," Dale added, his voice softer now. "I'm sorry about Elvis."

---

Mallory's bedroom had changed. The horse show ribbons still hung on the walls, but they were now accompanied by printouts of anatomical diagrams—equine circulatory systems, nervous pathways, cardiac chambers. Her bulletin board, once covered in photos of her and Elvis clearing jumps, now displayed index cards with complicated symbols drawn in red marker.

The bookshelf that had once housed young adult paperbacks and Horse & Rider magazines was now stacked with titles like Conversations with the Departed, Rites of Return, and Dale's leather-bound loaner, which Mallory had wrapped in a pillowcase to protect it from—well, everything.

Her parents had noticed, of course. But when they'd asked about her "new academic interests," Mallory had shrugged and muttered something about a special science project. They were so relieved to see her engaged in anything that they hadn't pressed further. Her mother even bought her a set of colored highlighters and a stack of composition notebooks "for her research."

If only they knew.

The truth was, Mallory was three weeks into the most intensive self-directed study of her life. She'd always been a good student—not great, but good enough to keep her grades up so she could compete with Elvis. Now, she approached necromancy with the same disciplined focus she'd once reserved for perfecting her posting trot.

Her daily routine was exacting:

5:00 AM: Wake up (sleep was for people who didn't have dead horses to resurrect)
5:15 AM: Meditation on mortality (which mostly involved staring at Elvis's empty halter until her vision blurred)
6:00 AM: Physical conditioning (necromancy, it turned out, required stamina)
7:00 AM: Breakfast (eaten standing up while reading)
7:30 AM: School (an eight-hour interruption she endured with increasing resentment)
3:30 PM: Library (where Dale would wordlessly slide new reference materials across the desk)
6:00 PM: Dinner (picked at while scribbling notes)
7:00 PM - Midnight: Practice

The practice was the hardest part. Mallory had started small—a dead cricket she'd found on her windowsill, a mouse the cat had left on the back porch. The results had been... messy.

The cricket's legs had twitched for exactly four seconds before crumbling to dust. The mouse had opened its eyes, blinked twice, and then deflated like a punctured balloon, leaving behind a smell that had forced Mallory to bury her clothes in the backyard at 2 AM.

She kept meticulous notes of each failure:

Subject: Common house mouse (Mus musculus)
Time since death: Approximately 6 hours
Ritual: Modified Hesperian Awakening (pg. 147)
Results: Temporary animation. Subject opened eyes and exhibited minimal respiratory function before complete cellular breakdown. Significant odor.
Conclusions: 1) Need fresher subjects? 2) Modified pronunciation of third invocation? 3) Buy more baking soda for smell

Tonight was attempt number seventeen. Mallory sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor, a dead sparrow arranged carefully on a circle she'd drawn in chalk. The bird had hit her bedroom window that morning—a perfect specimen, still warm when she'd scooped it up and hidden it in her sock drawer.

She consulted her notes, then Thresholds, then her notes again. She'd been making the same mistake for weeks—focusing too much on the physical and not enough on what Dale called "the ephemeral tether." The soul. The essence. The thing that made Elvis Elvis and not just a collection of very expensive horse parts.

Mallory closed her eyes and thought about Elvis. Not his body—though God knew she missed burying her face in his neck and inhaling his warm, grassy smell—but his... Elvis-ness. The way he'd nicker when he saw her coming across the paddock. The specific tilt of his ears when she whispered secrets to him. The gentle way he'd lip at her pockets for treats, even when he knew they were empty.

"That's the bridge," Dale had told her yesterday, when she'd finally broken down and asked for help. They'd been sitting in his car in the library parking lot, steam from two gas station coffees fogging the windows. "You can't just repair the body. You have to call the spirit back across. Give it a reason to return."

Mallory opened her eyes and looked down at the sparrow. What reason would it have to come back? It was just a bird that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It probably had no unfinished business, no great love left behind.

Unlike Elvis.

She sighed and closed her ritual journal. The sparrow wasn't going to work. None of these practice runs would work, because they weren't what she really wanted. They were just... homework.

Mallory stood up, brushed chalk dust from her jeans, and gently wrapped the sparrow in a tissue. She'd bury it tomorrow. For now, she had research to do.

 

[Maime]

Chapter 2: Twisted Arms and Other Prices

"I need to see the restricted section," Mallory announced, slapping her library card on the circulation desk with the authority of someone placing a badge on a bar.

Dale didn't look up from his computer. "We don't have a restricted section. This isn't Hogwarts."

"Then I need whatever's behind door number three." Mallory pointed to the locked door behind him, the one with the small, handwritten sign that read: STAFF ONLY - ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS.

"That's the supply closet," Dale said, finally meeting her eyes. "It's full of toilet paper and those little packets that go in the bottom of shipment boxes."

"Liar," Mallory said, but without heat. In the three weeks since Dale had slid Thresholds across the counter, they'd developed a strange relationship—part mentorship, part conspiracy, part mutual recognition of the weird. "You gave me a taste, and now I need the hard stuff."

Dale sighed and checked his watch. "I'm off in twenty minutes. Meet me at the Waffle House across the street."

Ninety minutes and two orders of scattered-smothered-covered later, Mallory had learned three things:

1. Dale Garner wasn't just a library clerk. Before moving back to take care of his ailing mother, he'd been an associate professor of comparative mythology at a small college in Vermont.

2. His interest in necromancy wasn't purely academic. Five years ago, his fiancée had been killed in a car accident. He'd spent the next eight months trying to bring her back, until the day he'd looked in the mirror and realized he was becoming something he didn't recognize.

3. He was absolutely, unequivocally not going to help Mallory bring Elvis back from the dead.

"It's not that simple," Dale said, pushing his empty plate away. "You're talking about a seventeen-hundred-pound animal. The energy required would be..." He trailed off, shaking his head.

"I have energy," Mallory insisted. "I've been training."

"Not that kind of energy," Dale said. "Look, there's a cost to this kind of work. A price. And it's not just candles and chalk and weird herbs."

"I don't care what it costs," Mallory said, her voice low and steady. "I'd give anything."

"That's what I'm afraid of." Dale's Dale Earnhardt Jr. tattoo seemed to watch her with the same concerned expression as its owner. "Mallory, grief is—"

"Don't," she cut him off. "Don't tell me this is about grief. Don't tell me I'll get over it or that time heals or that I should get another horse." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she swallowed hard. "Elvis wasn't just a horse. He was the only one who ever understood me. And I know—I know—he's waiting for me to bring him back."

Dale was quiet for a long moment, studying her face. Then he reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a small, worn book with a faded red cover.

"If—and this is a massive, universe-sized if—you were going to attempt something like this, you'd need to understand the Vasiliev Principles," he said, sliding the book across the table with the same careful movement he'd used with Thresholds. "It's all about equivalent exchange. You can't get something for nothing."

Mallory reached for the book, but Dale kept his fingers pressed to the cover.

"Promise me you won't do anything without talking to me first," he said.

"I promise," Mallory lied, already calculating how much of her college fund she could access for supplies.

 

[Maime]

Chapter 3: You're a Cautionary Tale, Kid

The next day, Mallory didn't go to school. Instead, she took three buses to reach Gallows Hill, the next county over, where rumor had it there was a shop that catered to "alternative spiritual needs."

Hemlock & Hawthorn occupied the basement level of a Victorian house that had been converted into retail space. A dusty sign in the window advertised TAROT READINGS - CRYSTALS - HERBS - CONSULTATIONS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

The bell above the door jingled as Mallory entered, and the smell hit her immediately—a complex mixture of incense, dried plants, and something older, like library books left in the rain. The shop was cluttered but meticulously organized, with shelves stretching from floor to ceiling and narrow aisles barely wide enough for a person to navigate.

Behind the counter stood a woman so unremarkable that Mallory almost didn't notice her. She was neither young nor old, neither tall nor short, with hair of an indeterminate brown and clothes that seemed to blend into the background. Only her eyes stood out—sharp and pale as winter.

"Can I help you?" the woman asked, her voice surprisingly deep.

Mallory approached the counter and set down her backpack. "I need supplies," she said, trying to sound confident. "For a... specific ritual."

"We have many rituals here," the woman replied. "Protection. Prosperity. Finding lost objects or people. Which interests you?"

"None of those," Mallory said. She unzipped her backpack and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "I need these items."

The woman unfolded the list and scanned it. Her expression didn't change, but something in the air did—a subtle tightening, like the moment before a storm.

"This is quite a shopping list for someone your age," she said finally. "Black salt. Graveyard dirt. Bone ash." She looked up. "The tears of a widower cannot be bottled and sold, I'm afraid."

"I have those already," Mallory said, and technically it wasn't a lie. Dale had cried when he talked about his fiancée, and Mallory had been prepared. The tissue was folded in a Ziploc bag in her dresser drawer.

The woman's gaze sharpened. "And what exactly do you plan to do with these items?"

"That's personal," Mallory said.

"So is death," the woman replied. "And yet here you are, planning to make it very public business."

They stared at each other for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then the woman sighed and began gathering items from behind the counter.

"I can provide most of these," she said, placing jars and packets on the counter. "The mandrake root will be expensive. The obsidian blade more so."

"That's fine," Mallory said, already pulling out her wallet. "I have money."

"I'm sure you do," the woman said, her pale eyes never leaving Mallory's face. "But money isn't the only currency that matters in these transactions."

By the time Mallory left Hemlock & Hawthorn, her backpack was heavier, her wallet was empty, and she'd given the woman a lock of her hair "as a deposit on future business." The woman—who never offered a name—had also slipped a small, unmarked bottle into the bag.

"For afterwards," she'd said cryptically. "When you realize what you've done."

Mallory had almost asked what she meant, but something in the woman's expression stopped her. Instead, she'd nodded and hurried out, the bell's jingle following her like a warning.

 

[Maime]

Chapter 4: Having the Epiphany is Half the Battle


That night, Mallory sat on her bedroom floor surrounded by her purchases. She'd arranged everything in precise circles around her: candles at the cardinal points, herbs and powders in small dishes, the obsidian blade gleaming in the center.


The red book—Vasiliev's Principles of Spiritual Exchange—lay open in her lap. She'd read it cover to cover twice now, and while she wasn't sure she understood all of it, she grasped the central thesis: To bring something back, something of equal value must be offered.


"A life for a life," she whispered, tracing the diagram on page 73.


But that wasn't quite right, was it? The text stressed that the exchange wasn't necessarily literal. Value was subjective. Personal. The sacrifice had to mean something to the practitioner.


For Mallory, that was easy. Elvis was everything. The question wasn't what she was willing to give up—it was whether anything she had would be enough.


She closed the book and picked up her phone. Three missed calls from her mom. Seventeen unread text messages from friends she hadn't spoken to since the funeral. A reminder about college application deadlines.


None of it mattered.


She opened her contacts and found Dale's number. He'd given it to her "for emergencies only," which this technically wasn't. Not yet.


What if the thing you're giving up isn't something you have, but something you could have been? she typed.


The reply came faster than she expected. That's the most dangerous kind of bargain. Where are you?


Mallory didn't answer. Instead, she set her phone aside and picked up her final supply—a small box containing a lock of Elvis's mane, carefully preserved after his death. This, according to everything she'd read, would be the anchor. The connection. The bridge.


"I'm coming," she whispered to the silky black strands. "Just wait a little longer."


She'd been right all those weeks ago, when she told the grief counselor that death was just a very old habit. What she hadn't mentioned was her suspicion that life was an even older one—stubborn, persistent, and impossible to completely extinguish.


All she had to do was remind Elvis of that habit. And she knew exactly where to start.


Tomorrow night would be a new moon. Perfect for beginnings. Perfect for a resurrection.


Perfect for a necroprancer to make her debut.