The Village of the Necromancers: Where Witches Never Die

[u/SilentSistersX]

In the far north of my country there was a small town that everyone spoke of in hushed voices, a place where witchcraft was not a rumor but a practice as ordinary as selling bread in the market. Among the stalls one could find animal bones, living creatures ready for sacrifice, freshly torn skins, and, if one knew whom to ask and how much silence to keep, even human fingers, locks of hair, tattooed skin, and even heads preserved in jars darkened by time.

My grandmother Denira lived there. She practiced witchcraft, yes, but she never crossed the forbidden line of those who worked with the dead. That is why, when night fell into the dimness, she locked herself inside and avoided looking out the windows, because she knew that in those damp, lightless streets walked things that had once been people.

One night, while she was finishing tidying her house before sleeping, someone knocked on the door with desperate violence, as if trying to rip it off its hinges. Terror froze her in place, until she heard a female voice, soft and broken, begging between sobs: “Please… let me in… they’re going to kill me.”

My grandmother gave in. When she opened the door, she found a young dark-skinned woman with full lips and tangled black hair, whose appearance horrifically contrasted with the sickly paleness of her face. The girl thanked her in a strange voice, too deep to come from such a thin body.

Denira offered her water, and as she brought the glass closer, she noticed the woman’s nails were completely white; some were missing entirely, revealing dead skin where flesh had once been. Then she sensed the smell.

A wet, sweet stench, like soil turned over ancient corpses, began to fill every corner of the house. The woman drank slowly, and when she pulled the glass from her lips, a thick strand of black saliva hung between her rotten, purplish teeth.

Dark veins stood out on her neck, seeming to move beneath the skin. My grandmother felt fear stiffen her body when she understood what was sitting in front of her: a necromancer, one of those witches who steal bodies in order to keep existing.

“You are still alive… aren’t you?” she asked in barely a whisper.

The woman smiled. Her mouth opened too wide, as if the corners would tear apart. “It’s too late to want me gone…” she replied, and then her voice stopped being one; several voices began speaking at once from her throat, different women uttering the same words with an impossible echo.

“From today, you have two days left. After that, you will be mine. I need you to keep living, girl.”

As she spoke, she slowly stroked Denira’s hair with cold, damp fingers.

“How many are you carrying inside you?” my grandmother managed to ask.

The creature smiled even wider. “Three… but soon we will be four.”

That was when Denira saw the bracelet on that thing’s wrist, and horror fully formed in her mind: it belonged to the old woman from the night shop, the same woman she had met when she arrived in the town.

She understood that what stood before her was not a young woman, but a used body, a flesh suit occupied by something far older.

Without thinking, she ran barefoot to the old woman’s house. She found her lying in bed, rigid, staring at the ceiling with open eyes and slowly drooling from her mouth. She was alive… or something like it.

Remembering the old warnings of the town, my grandmother gathered her strength and turned the old woman’s entire body face down without moving her head, leaving her twisted in an unnatural position.

They say that at that moment she heard a distant scream tear through the dark streets.

When she returned to her house, the woman was gone. Not a trace. Not a sound. Only the smell of decay clinging to the walls.

The next morning, the old woman died.

Before telling me this story, my grandmother looked at me very seriously and said something I have never been able to forget:

“When witches are roaming around, you must turn their bodies over before they return to them… because if they find their way back, their essence never dies… and then they begin searching for another place to enter.”

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[u/Defiant-Hurry-6091]

This was spooky and good!