Page 5 of Dead Rockstar

And Sloan didn't think I'd really do it.

I'd told her it was a joke so many times, but I'd collected all the supplies and written out a spell, hadn't I? Now that I was certifiably sloshed, I allowed myself to sit back and brood a little on just how funny my best friend had found the whole thing. She'd always found my obsession with the Bloomer Demons hilarious, and I supposed it kind of was, the level of fandom that I rose to. God knows I'd taken it to some spectacular heights over the years. That's just who I was...I took to the things I loved – my music, my books, even Tess – to the extreme. I loved hard. Sloan could always be relied upon to bring me back down to earth – but shit, sometimes I didn't want to come back down. Didn’t I deserve to enjoy things?

I'd record myself performing the spell. Send it to her. After all, she pulled no punches, so why couldn't I troll her back a little while she was on her date?

So I set to making everything perfect. Conducting a spell, after all, was a serious business that involved ritual. I didn't have any candles, but I had a wax melt burner that Tess' mom had guilted me into buying on one of our “mother-daughter-dates” at TJ Maxx (Tess’ mother was sweet, and I missed those excursions with her. I wondered if she took Roberta out for lunch and home décor shopping trips now that I’d been cast aside) along with four or five packets of scented wax. I plugged it in near my makeshift altar and broke off a square of “Cinnamon and Clove” to put in. I cleared off my narrow glass side table and set the record, sleeve and paper on it, along with a picture of Phillip I'd ripped out of a music magazine, chest muscles rippling beneath his flowing black hair (“Blaze - the Goth Issue”). Rummaging through my jewelry box, I found an old gemstone – sapphire – that was once part of a now-broken necklace and a pentagram on a string that an old boyfriend had given me in high school. I sat them in a row on the glass table along with a smooth, black stone I'd pulled from the creek behind my trailer and a piece of weather-bleached sea wood I'd found the last time I was on Driftwood Beach.

Now for the last preparation. I had recently bought a bundle of sage at the Brunswick farmer’s market. A woman there had called hello to me and I'd stopped at her booth to be polite. She sold sweet-smelling goat's milk soap and perfumed lotions, but it was her “pagan priorities” that caught my eye. Among them were sage, candles, what looked like jewelry made of twigs, different cloths and little jars that appeared to hold sand, dirt, shell, and maybe even bone. I didn't believe in that sort of crap, but I was intrigued. The red-haired lady had pressed a bundle in my hand, saying softly, “To clear the air, honey,” and on a whim, I decided to buy the little bundle of sage and try it. I might not believe in it, but there were plenty of things I had believed in, like my marriage, that had turned out to be horseshit, so what the hell. Plus, I'd seen a few acquaintances in a local Facebook group I belonged to making fun of the woman – they called her “Goat's Milk Soap Lady” and joked about how “woo” she was. That stuck in my craw, so it made me grin to throw a few bucks her way. Trust me to always go against the grain. I wondered when I'd ever stop letting it get me into trouble.

I sat down in front of the table and rummaged in my bag for a lighter just as Phillip began to sing his Italian verse. “Trova l'incantesimo e riportami indietro.” He could have said it over and over in his regular speaking voice and it would have sounded like music. A chill crept up my spine and I resisted the urge to melt into the carpet. His baritone seemed to slip over me like silk; both cool and warm at the same time. I lit the sage, turned on the wax burner, and poured another glass of wine, feeling both important and impossibly silly all at once.

I grabbed a box of tarot cards from my bag. In the “New Age” section at work we had a few things like that. Mainly books by Sylvia Browne, the psychic, a couple of ghost stories, a withered, donated copy of the Necrocomicon with a giant coffee ring on the cover, and a few assorted boxes of tarot cards that the stoner teenagers liked to check out. I'd start with the tarot and go from there.

I scanned the back of the box and decided to do a simple spread, just four cards; that seemed easy enough. I shuffled the deck, laid out the cards, and pondered. The box said to, “ask a question in your mind,” but nothing was coming to me. Instead, I thought This is stupid. I am drunk. Find the spell and bring me back. With a shrug, I turned over the first card.

Judgment. I smirked. Okay, that was fitting. I was definitely full of judgment when it came to shit like this. I thumbed through the crumbling book to find out more.

The Judgment card may indicate the beginning of a new phase. The Questioner should feel that they have accomplished all they can and leave old phases with a sense of purpose, moving forward with the freedom to begin a fresh and unfettered start. New beginnings. Reanimation of long-dead feelings. Autumn leaves may die, but new life emerges from the barren tree.

I gaped at the card, which depicted a trumpet-bearing figure from the heavens playing for three barely-clad androgynous beings, who appeared to be dancing themselves out of shallow graves, then put it down in disgust. “These things are always like this,” I said aloud, ignoring the rising of my gorge. “They seem super specific but really you just read yourself into it.”

Reluctantly, I turned over the next card.

Death.

“Oh, fuck this.” I wasn't drunk enough for that. After what I'd read of the judgment card, I was in no mood for whatever the death card had to tell me. Nope. I glanced briefly at the illustration on the card - a grinning skeleton holding a skinny scythe, tipping forward as though holding an imaginary hat - and put it on top of the pile. I shuffled the cards back in the deck and shoved the lot in my purse, spilling wine on my skirt in the process.

A card slipped out of the deck as I was putting them back. I turned it over and groaned. The death card again. This time I all but crammed it into the box and shoved my purse, deck and all, under the couch. Fuck you very much, no thanks, I'm good.

I should have taken it for the sign it was and put the kibosh on the whole plan, but I was stupid, drunk, and I get myself in trouble a lot due to those two aforementioned conditions. I sucked down the rest of the wine and decided to start the spell before I lost my nerve, threw up, or both.

Once the phone was propped up and filming, I held up the paper. “Sloan, you bitch. Look what you've made me do. You didn't believe. And now I'm here, sitting by myself, drunk on a Friday night, and what am I about to do? I'm going to raise the dead.” I winked at the phone and turned back to the paper. A giggle escaped my lips, but suddenly it didn't seem all that funny. My arms were erupting with goosebumps.

I realized, as I began to read, that this was the first time I'd said the words out loud. The spell seemed simplistic; it rhymed, and it seemed so basic somehow. Cheesy or not, though, I couldn't deny the chill creeping up my back. I stubbornly continued anyway, inserting Phillip's name in the last line as I suspected I was supposed to do.

With salt in air and water in veins

I call the pale rider to loosen his reins

I call for death to loosen his chains

I call for air to return to the breast

I call for fire to ignite the rest

Let what was earthside return once more

Restart the clock, and settle the score

Reanimate the dead flesh of man

Render Phillip Deville alive again.

As I uttered the last word, the song abruptly stopped, and the lights went out. I was pitched into darkness.

Three

Startled, I fell backward. “What the fuck?” I felt like I'd been hit with a jolt of electricity right as the power had flickered off. My trailer was pitch black, and the air felt like it was thrumming. The hint of acrid smoke drifting past my nostrils smelled faintly of sulfur, but how could that be? I had only burned cinnamon clove scented wax and sage. Was it the breaker? Had the trailer been hit by lightning? I dusted myself off and got up off the floor, cursing. The bundle of sage was still smoldering on the table, so I grabbed it for light and stood up, feeling my way toward the kitchen.

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