He was ten years old, living with his mother and father in their perfect, suburban home. Cottonwood, the place was called. And in it, the sun was always bright at noon, the front lawns posed as fields for the neighborhood botanical arms race, and as of the previous night, the next door neighbor’s dog Cutter had died of an unfortunate poisoning.
Young Dina of the Malloy family was playing fetch with her shaggy white terrier at the Idlewood Park three blocks from her home. An activity not out of the ordinary for the young girl of eight. What was unordinary in this instance, was the unexpected presence of a deadly cobra. And even more so, that it happened to be right beside Young Dina’s bright green tennis ball when her noble terrier ran to fetch it.
The dog was bit time and time again until it fell. Unable to move. Unable to think. And unable to breathe. By the time that our young Dina Malloy was able to carry her small, sick dog back to her home, Cutter had already passed away.
Young Dina’s heart was torn inside out. She cried and cried until her face was but a pool of tears. Her parents mourned with her in their moment of loss, and after much affliction of sadness thought it best to bury their noble Cutter beneath the grounds of their back porch, where he would be with them forever.
Young Sebastian Grimm watched as the events unfolded from the window in his room. He watched as Father Malloy dug into the ground, Cutter lying beside him, awaiting his final place of rest.
In the middle of his labor, Father Malloy stopped, and retreated to his home for a glass of water.
For the briefest of minutes, Cutter was left unattended.
Seeing the opportunity set before him, Young Sebastian Grimm left his room, and snuck across the fence of the Malloy residence. He carried the dog in his arms and into his home, and using his gifts of necromancy, he brought the dead creature back to life.
When the Malloy family returned to their back porch, prepared to complete the deed of burial, they were dazed to find that nowhere in their line of sight was any indication of their dead dog.
But alas echoed the noise of a distant bark. First loud. Then louder. And before they could investigate the origin of the unexpected call, none other than Cutter himself had leapt from the cover of shrubbery, into the view of his family.
Young Sebastian Grimm caught it all from the window of his bedroom. And he reveled in the fact that by the use of his unearthly talents, he had just given the family Malloy the happiest day they would ever know.
Of course, as he would later come to find out, no good thing can ever come without the guarantee of something bad.
In its own unique way, and as cliché as it may at first seem, the necromancer’s talent, as much as it was a gift, could at times become its own curse. This had proven itself true in the weeks following Cutter’s resurrection. And it had proven itself true once again almost sixteen years later, when Sebastian Grimm found a corpse lying on his front porch.
“What is this?” Sebastian asked.
John King stood in pondering bemusement.
“I think that a man in your profession should know full well what that is,” he replied, jutting his eyes directly at the dead man beneath his feet.
“What I meant is, why is it lying outside my doorstep?”
“I found him out in the sticks when I was tailing our man Jacob. He dumped the body out of his trunk, and he was getting ready to light it up with gasoline. While he was out taking a whiz I was able to grab his body and drag him over here. I figured he might have some answers for us.”
Sebastian struggled to process the reality of his situation. It seemed that with every new day came one more example of what John Eleanor King would do in the name of his profession.
“Is it common for private detectives to go dragging around dead bodies?”
“Is it common for funeral directors to be able to question dead bodies?”
A valid response it was, and one for which Sebastian Grimm had no immediate rebuttal. Save of course, for the lingering question that hovered above his mind.
“Shouldn’t we be calling the police?”
“I could have gone to the police,” he said. “I could have stuck my gun up our man Jacob’s ten spot and waited for the cops to show up. He’d have gone to prison alright for the murder of John Doe here. But that doesn’t give me the evidence I need to prove that he killed Samantha Sweeney. And my client, you, paid me to solve her murder. Which means that I’d prefer to be the one who solves everything that can be solved of this case. And not the police. Catch my drift?”
Sebastian did catch his drift. But it reeked of illegality and potential prison time. Two things that any common citizen would know better than to invite into their homes. But Sebastian Grimm was not exactly a common man. And his response to the situation at hand reflected this well enough.
“Get him inside before someone sees us.”
John King slung the dead man over his shoulder and laboriously lugged him inside while Sebastian cautiously examined the surrounding neighborhood for signs of witnesses.
It was dark outside, and thus difficult to see. But so far as he could tell, there was nobody there. He went back inside and shut the door behind, not realizing that even in this he would find the yang to his yin. For though he was about to uncover the truth to Samantha Sweeney’s murder, it would be at the price of finding out too late. For the murderer was right there outside his home, hiding, and prepared to kill once more.