Resurrection

The scent of old books clung to her clothes that morning as if the stories themselves had reached out and touched her. Maybe it was wishful thinking, or maybe her dream would finally come true—to work in a place surrounded by the quiet companionship of words. She’d always loved libraries: the silence, the dusty rows, the way every shelf seemed to hum with untold secrets. He drove her to the interview; the car filled with the tension of her nervous breaths. For a few moments, they sat together, his gaze steady as she tried to calm herself. A day later, she got a call letting her know she had got the job. She was thrilled, but he had said little—just stared at her like she was something fragile and perfect, a creation of his own.

He’d promised to pick her up after her first day.

Instead, he was picking out flowers. Pale lilies for a girl who never got to wear her first name tag. A bus hit her that morning, crossing the street with that same smile she’d worn in the car. They told him she died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and he remembered only the image of her leaving the house in the morning light, heading to her new life, a life he had no place in. A life that was hers to own.

That life had ended before it even began.

That’s when the library became his sanctuary, his prison, and his haunt. Every day, he wandered in, always around the same time, drifting through the aisles like a ghost himself. He’d sit where she might have stood, staring where she would have looked, his eyes following the librarians as if one of them might suddenly turn and transform into her. He barely noticed their discomfort, the way they shifted under his gaze, too focused on how to bring her back, make her smile again, make her his again.

In the dustiest, darkest corner of the library, he found a section of books with obscure titles or no titles at all. The heavy covers were often bound in cracked leather, filled with rough, uneven pages that felt frail under his fingers.

Hermetica, Lesser Key of Solomon, Ars Notoria, Voynich Manuscript, Atharvaveda…

It was the beginning of an obsession, a path he would follow deep into forgotten realms. He wanted her back; he needed her presence to fill the void. It wasn't enough to have loved her, to have known her and made her smile; he needed to have her again, even if it meant summoning something dark to make it happen.

He started with the introductory texts, the ones merely hinting at a world beyond the grave, their pages filled with academic curiosity rather than the desperation he felt. But as he worked his way through the library’s collection, each book brought him closer to something old, something real. The whispers of Greek necromancy lured him first—the rites of katabasis, where ancient souls ventured into the underworld with sacrifices and charms, attempting to coax spirits from their dark slumber. He read about Orpheus, who nearly brought back his lost Eurydice, and he clung to the idea that perhaps he, too, could defy death’s merciless finality.

His fingers, dusty and trembling, slid over pages of ancient Egyptian rituals meant to reanimate bodies, passages soaked in the legend of Osiris and his resurrection. The Egyptians believed that a soul could be bound to its body through elaborate rites—Opening of the Mouth ceremonies, rituals involving talismans, and chants in forgotten tongues, each syllable designed to bridge the realms of the living and the dead. He devoured these texts, taking notes feverishly, his mind already shaping a vision of her return.

Days turned into weeks, and the spells grew darker. His apartment did too, mirroring the decay of his mind it looked like the lair of a madman. The curtains, once a cheerful shade of blue, now hung lifeless and heavy. The windows behind them smeared with streaks of grime, turning what little light dared to enter into a sickly, jaundiced glow. Pages ripped from ancient texts clung to the walls like accusations, their curling edges and scrawled symbols giving the room the oppressive aura of a tomb.

He no longer recoiled at words that once horrified him. Bone-conjuring rites now filled his evenings, and he spent countless hours sketching magic circles and glyphs he could barely understand, drawn in by their terrifying promise. He learned of complex summoning rituals and wielding talismans to channel the forces of life and death. In the center of it all, a crude magic circle drawn in chalk and salt sprawled across the floor, its lines smudged by frantic pacing and sleepless nights. The apartment was no longer a place to live; it had become a shrine to his obsession and a prison of his own making.

He gathered items for his final ritual with methodical intensity. The ceremonial dagger arrived wrapped in layers of butcher paper, its hilt ornate but cold to the touch. He tested its edge on the tip of his finger, a bead of blood blooming instantly—proof it was sharp enough to slice flesh and perhaps the veil between worlds. An oak wand lay on his bedside table; its grain was rough and ancient. He had purchased it from an obscure shop of oddities that reeked of mildew and forgotten time. The shopkeeper, an old man with milky, glazed-over eyes, had barely acknowledged him, whispering prices to the air more than to him.

The shopkeeper’s gaze had lingered somewhere over his shoulder, fixated on something unseen in the dim light as if communing with ghosts of customers past. He had felt an unease he couldn’t quite shake, the wand heavier in his hand as he walked out into the evening, leaving the shopkeeper still muttering to his ghosts.

A macabre aesthetic marked the necromancer’s path. He surrounded himself with the morbid relics of his loss and her death. Her old sweater, soft and threadbare, draped over his chair, its scent long faded but still carrying a phantom trace of her. It became his shroud as he studied late into the night, a talisman against the cold emptiness threatening to consume him. He tore at the unleavened black bread, its dry crumbs catching in his throat, and washed it down with deep purple wine that clung to his lips and stained his tongue. The flavours were blunt, like ashes and shadows, meant to drain him of vitality and align him with the spirits he sought to summon.

The air in the apartment grew thick with the smell of wax and smoke from candles that burned endlessly, their stubs forming puddles of melted wax on every available surface. The line between life and death began to blur, as though his rituals were bleeding into him, hollowing him out. In that closeness to the grave, he found a strange, cold comfort—a quiet intimacy with the forces he hoped to command.

The ritual he wanted to try was complex, a blend of symbols from many cultures' necromantic practices. Endless months of researching finally paid off, and he went to her grave after the sun had set. He would need to draw a circle with salt, overlaying it with symbols in chalk, a perfect rendering of the Egyptian ankh and the Greek labrys, axes that spoke of power over life and death. He’d need talismans—a carved amulet to protect his soul from the wrath of the dead, a feather to judge his heart, a black candle lit from the same fire every night, burning as a constant witness to his transformation.

At last, he uttered the incantation he had practiced endlessly, each phrase—drawn from ancient cultures and long-forgotten eras—woven into a single, desperate chant. His voice trembled, the words reverberating through the silent cemetery, straining to rend the fabric between this world and the next.

“Eileithyia, bringer of life, Osiris, keeper of death, open the gates that bar the spirit’s path, and let her return to life from death.”

He whispered it first, then louder, letting each syllable reverberate, feeling it seep into his bones like the promise of something dark, something permanent.

As he chanted, the cemetery turned icy, the chill seeping through his skin and sinking into his bones. A thought gnawed at him: he didn’t know what he was summoning or if she would return as she was. But the idea of possession consumed him. To claim her again, to bind her spirit so she could never leave, eclipsed every doubt. This ritual, this desperate act, had hollowed him out until nothing remained but the unbearable need to bring her back, no matter the cost.

He knelt in the cemetery, the final lines of his incantation hanging in the air, their echoes swallowed by the night. The earth trembled beneath him, a deep, bone-rattling tremor that sent a surge of electric static through the air. He held his breath, waiting, every muscle tense as if he could pull her back through sheer will alone. Then, just as the shaking peaked, a hand shot up from the dirt, pale and clawed, fingers reaching toward the stars.

He stumbled back, a scream on his lips. Eyes wide with awe, and scrambled for the shovel he’d left by her grave. With manic but reverent care, he began digging, loosening the surrounding soil, pulling it away with a gentleness reserved for something precious and fragile. Soon, her face emerged, the sight sending him a shock of triumph. She was back. She was his again.

As he unearthed her, the truth struck him like a blow. This was not the woman he had loved. Her eyes, dull and lifeless, flickered with an unsettling awareness, a stare that seemed to pierce straight into the depths of his soul. A faint, unnatural smile curled her lips—a smile he had never seen before, one that did not belong to her. It was a mockery of joy, a reflection of something far darker. As he stared into her hollow gaze, he felt the weight of his own madness pressing down on him. This was not her soul, reclaimed from death’s grip, a twisted echo of his own desires, dragged into the world by his obsession.

She rose from the grave with an unsettling fluidity, standing beside him as if gravity held no sway over her. He could see in her gaze a depthless hunger, something wild and unshackled, and he felt a thrill unlike any he’d known. Her beauty was more haunting, more terrible, with a dark aura that called to the empty places within him. She was the woman he had always wanted her to be, submissive yet feral, her movements like shadows in the night. He reached out, and she took his hand, her grip firm and cold as the grave itself.

“Come,” he whispered, drawing her close, feeling the chill seep into his skin as she pressed against him, her breath icy on his neck. She followed him willingly, almost eagerly, and he marvelled at the way she moved, fluid and silent, her steps echoing his. Her gaze held no spark of humanity, only the faintest trace of recognition. She was a vessel now, and he revelled in the power he felt, his heart pounding as he led her away from the graveyard.

This was no longer his lost love, no longer the girl who had laughed and dreamed of quiet days in the library.

What stood beside him now was a shadow of his own making, a vessel carved from obsession and filled with darkness. Once warm and alive, her eyes held only an empty void, reflecting his desires back at him in their endless emptiness. She was malleable, eager to please, and in her silence, he saw the grotesque masterpiece he had unknowingly crafted—a monument to his broken soul.

In her presence, he felt a strange exhilaration, a rush that drowned out the whispers of doubt that had plagued him in the nights spent alone. She was his now, wholly and irreversibly. Yet, as they walked into the shadows, he couldn’t help but sense the subtle wrongness in her movements—too fluid, too detached from the earthly constraints he knew. It thrilled him, this untethered version of her, even as a faint unease tickled the edges of his mind.

The world around them faded into obscurity as they moved deeper into the night, her hand cool and lifeless in his own. He felt no fear, no regret. What he had summoned was not her, but it was better than her. She was his creation, bound by the echoes of his will, shaped by the dark corners of his mind. A ghost of flesh and bone, animated not by love but by the unrelenting hunger for possession.

And yet, as the darkness swallowed them whole, a flicker of something unrecognizable crossed her face. A slight turn of her head, a shift in her gaze—almost imperceptible. He dismissed it as a trick of the dim light, his focus fixed on the thrill of having her by his side once more. In that moment, he felt complete; his blackened soul mirrored perfectly in the hollow being he had torn from the grave.

For the first time, he was not alone. He had made her, and in doing so, he had made himself whole. Together, they were something unnatural, something eternal. As the night deepened and their figures disappeared into its embrace, the stillness left behind seemed heavier, charged with a presence that did not belong to this world.