The Pop Star’s Necromancer
by Ewan Davis
We’d all like to believe that our loved ones watch over us after they die. In the loneliest days of my childhood, I often imagined that all four of my grandparents’ ghosts were hovering around me like satellites. I maintained a mostly one-sided internal dialog, narrating the banal details of my day for them. You’d be forgiven for assuming this meant that I missed them terribly. But the truth is, I just wanted to be witnessed. To be idolized and validated in every moment, so that I knew that I mattered. It was never really their specters that I longed for. What I wanted, more than anything, was a devoted group of spectators.
For what it’s worth, many newcomers in the spirit realm do hang around their loved ones. Now that I am legitimately in communication with the dead, I can confirm this is true. But they only linger for a little while. Just long enough to see how they’re being mourned and remembered. Once they satisfy that initial curiosity, most spirits move on to more engrossing haunts. Because face it, once you’re free of the mortal coils that confine the living, you’re not going to waste your precious eternity watching the grandkids doomscroll for hours. Not when you can steal a glimpse into the lives of anybody on earth.
So who are the dead actually watching over? No surprise, it’s the same people they spent all their lives watching—our beloved celebrities. Actors, musicians, athletes, and even streamers these days attract ghosts like flies to a dungheap. The A-listers have thousands of adoring phantoms shadowing them at any given moment. Especially the most intimate. Whether they’re sunbathing on the veranda or gargoyle-crouched over a squatty potty, they’re never truly alone.
I don’t need to tell you that it’s a hellish way to live. Human bodies aren’t meant to withstand that much supernatural nosiness. And human minds are even less durable. When there’s one or two ghosts in your vicinity, their presence is subtle. Reality seems slightly off, like motel tap water. But when hundreds of them crowd around you all at once, you can feel their energy vibrating against every atom of your body. This is the real reason why so many celebrities crumble after too much exposure to the limelight. It’s also the reason why necromancers like yours truly have become such a hot commodity in Hollywood.
Public figures have always been more haunted than your average Joe. But it didn’t reach an epidemic level until 2014—the year that Des de Mona released her sadgirl anthem Prove It (Die For Me). Des had made a lucrative career out of cultivating her tragic, self-destructive image. Stirring up controversy with lyrics that glamorized drug addiction and sexual violence. Worried that audiences were growing tired of her shtick, she upped the shock value in the music video for Prove It. The video begins with an obsessed fan hopping the fence of her Malibu estate, while Des sings a sultry shower ballad inside. A security guard shoots the fan through the heart, and he plunges backwards into the infinity pool. A cloud of blood seeps out of his body, along with his ghost, who perseveres, snaking through the plumbing to join Des in the shower for a steamy slow dance.
It was a lightbulb moment for fanatical stans around the world, who realized they could close the gap on their parasocial relationships by turning them paranormal. Nobody was prepared for what happened to the global suicide rate after that. Least of all the celebrities who were suddenly besieged by ravenous legions of the dead. Haunted to a degree previously experienced only by prolific war criminals, they resorted to all kinds of mystical remedies. I don’t know who was more pathetic—the ones who tried to ward off the spirits by shoving jade eggs up various orifices or the ones who sought refuge in the Church of Scientology.
Everybody came around to good old-fashioned necromancy in the end. I’d like to think that’s because our ancient discipline is the real deal. But you also gotta give credit to the role of good old-fashioned Hollywood trendiness. Once a few A-listers were photographed with their personal necromancers, everybody else hopped on the bandwagon. Nowadays, every celeb’s entourage includes a cloaked and eldritch figure. Their hands perpetually clasped in billowing sleeves, their faces hidden beneath shadowy hoods. We’ve become a status symbol in our own right. Even washed-out celebrities hire cheap imitators wearing Spirit Halloween wizard robes in a desperate bid to appear relevant.
Not that my outfit was any less of a costume. The drams and talismans that clinked from my criss-crossing bandoliers were leftover props from a vampire flick. No more intimidating to ghosts than a toddler’s nightlight. But all you really need to perform proper necromancy is a good ear and a pair of lips. Spiritual presences usually manifest in the form of erratic vibrations, so at its core, necromancy is simply the art of detecting and manipulating these vibrations. I listen for the spectral frequencies, then counter them with a lip-buzzing technique that evolved from Mongolian throat singing. At the end of day, it’s about as mystical as humming along to the radio.
Of course, you already know this. You’ve seen me practice my craft on hundreds of occasions. Back when we were still on good terms, anyway. So I’m sorry for wasting your time with all these redundant details. It’s just that my rehab counselor introduced me to this thing called narrative therapy. It teaches you how to re-tell your life story in order to separate yourself from your issues. And the only way I know how to tell a story is from the beginning.
Though I guess this story really began at the daycare where we met. What was it, twenty-five years ago? We were the only two kids who stayed inside while everyone else stampeded out to the playground. Do you remember the talent shows we’d throw for an audience of stuffed animals? I pretended to be a magician sawing you in half, and you’d let out blood-curdling screams that made even the teddy bears tremble. Then you put your falsetto to better use when you took center stage and belted out your favorite Disney songs. I didn’t know the words, so I just hummed the melody. I never guessed I’d make a career out of that skill someday. But it was easy to see you’d go far with yours.
By high school, we moved on from stuffed animals to dead ones. Or I did, at least. You were mostly hanging out with the theater kids in those days. Meanwhile, I got rejected from one clique after another until I found kinship with the goths. We all sat around the lunch table in our Hot Topic hoodies, cutting the feet off of taxidermied rabbits. We’d turn them into good luck charms and sell them to football players for weed money. I was always hoping that you’d buy one off me too, but with that voice of yours, you never needed any luck. And I know you’d never stoop to using performance-enhancing talismans anyway. So our friendship consisted of little more than polite smiles when we passed in the halls.
Still, I attended all your musicals. Sometimes I felt like I was the only one who truly recognized your talent. Especially after graduation when you entered the avant-garde political phase that you’re so embarrassed to talk about these days. Those amateur music videos you filmed in the junkyard. Wearing a crown of discarded electronics while drumming on a rusted dryer and singing about American consumerism. As cringe as it was, it played a pivotal role in shaping the cyberpunk brand of art-pop that made you a breakout star on social media.
It all happened so quickly I could hardly keep up. I kept refreshing your profile page after that TikTok went viral. Every time it reloaded, you’d have a thousand new followers. A thousand new people I had to share you with.
Then the industry threw you into a gauntlet of music fests and TV spots. You looked like a startled dove in those early interviews. My blood still boils when I think about that late night host and his obnoxious hyena laugh. I was ready to punch him in the face when he asked how closely your sex life resembled the lyrics of Petroleum. And yet, I wanted the questions to get even more personal. I wanted somebody to ask about your early hints of stardom. I wanted you to tell them how we wowed the crowd of plushies at our daycare talent shows. But you never talked about your childhood. Never mentioned me at all.
Just when I thought you’d forgotten me, I got your DM. There was something spooky going on at your new place in California. Windows cracking out of nowhere. Your cats refusing to cross the threshold. And you’d heard about my business from an old classmate, so would I mind checking it out?
I was wasting away in our hometown. Working the counter at my uncle’s vape shop by day, grinding as a paranormal investigator by night. Only the former had any customers. The thing they don’t tell you about ghost towns is they don’t have that many ghosts. So when you flew me out west, I felt like one of the discarded items you’d rescued from the junkyard. I couldn’t believe that you would ask me for help, when LA’s got more necromancers than botox studios. But you wanted somebody who knew you before the fame. Somebody you could trust. Which makes it all the more heartbreaking that I was the one who ultimately betrayed you.
The first time I walked around inside your home, I was so awed by its retro-futurist vibes that I forgot I was supposed to be reading its vibrations. Once I did, it was easy to pinpoint the source of your haunting. A young fan from Sao Paulo who’d overdosed shortly after fleeing a toxic situation. Since she’d always found community in your fan club, she thought she could make a chosen family in your home—with you as the unwitting matriarch. I convinced her that if she was a true fan, she would stop causing you this distress. And if she wanted to do you a solid, she would stay out of your home and help me ward off any malevolent spirits who tried to enter it.
You were so touched by this act of mercy that you hired me full time. But truthfully, I was only so merciful because I knew all too well what it was like to adore you. To dream of protecting you. Plus, I was still a rookie necromancer back then. I wasn’t sure if I could handle the spectral volume your stardom would attract, so I needed the help of any kindred spirit I could get.
The next few years went by like a whirlwind. I had a seat reserved on your tour bus, to make sure your growing horde of departed followers didn’t follow you on the road. We ricocheted from one city to another like a diesel-powered pinball. We watched the sun rise from penthouse suites in 16 different time zones. The lines outside your venues kept getting longer, and so did the lines of coke at the after parties. Some days I’d wake up crusted in my own vomit. Others I’d wake up with my clothes dripping in the ectoplasm of a spirit I’d summoned to impress your backup dancers.
I wish I could say that I fell apart because the lifestyle was overwhelming. That I couldn’t handle all the pressure. But the truth is, this was what I’d always wanted. Not so much the drugs as the popularity. Even back in high school when I was selling rabbits’ feet to the jocks, it was never about the weed money. It was about the chance to hang with the cool kids. If I couldn’t be the center of attention myself, I at least wanted to be within arm’s reach. And every whiff of popularity got me higher than a whippit.
Well now I’d gotten far more than a whiff. After my prominent role in the BTS footage from your concert film, people started recognizing me on the streets. Not that I was easy to miss, with my leather cape and necklace of polished vertebrae. My own fandom was gradually accumulating in the orbit of yours. Influencers sharing makeup tutorials of my pagan eyeshadow. A meme format inspired by the paparazzi pic of me sipping a matcha latte in full cultist regalia. Then everything got crazy when I was cast on The Real Sorcerers of Malibu. That’s where I met the potion master who could alchemize drugs that defied the laws of chemistry. One hit of their brew sent me rocketing through the astral plane on a broomstick. I was quickly hooked on the lovely stuff. Unfortunately, the throbbing hangovers it gave me interfered with my ability to read spectral vibrations. I figured I could avoid the headaches by staying high 24-7-365. Only I never made it to 365, because my savings account vanished by the low 200’s.
This is the hardest part of the story to tell you. Even though you already know what happens next. I was too ashamed to ask you for money, so I did something even more shameful. I shifted my focus from the ghosts in your attic to the skeletons in your closet. Started selling details about your personal life to the tabloids. Harmless eccentricities at first. Like how you’d always go skinny-dipping during a full moon, even at hotels. But they paid better for dirty laundry. So I told them that beef jerky was your go-to stoner snack, despite your outspoken veganism. I told them about the affair you had with your own stunt double from that musical. I told them details that you’d shared with only me. It’s like I wanted to get caught. Though I sure didn’t act like I wanted it when you kicked me to the curb. I flew into a rage. Hurling insults. Stomping through your garden. And even as I was burning down my most cherished friendship, all I could think about was how the gossip rags were going to eat this up.
Turns out, I overestimated their appetite for the story. They moved on to the next scandal within days. Then they lost interest in me entirely. Without you, I was nothing. A coiled hair clinging to a bar of soap, repulsive the instant it detaches from the scalp. Nobody would hire me after the shit I pulled on you. And nobody wanted to buy my tell-all memoir, seeing as I’d already told everything I knew. But I refused to become just another pathetic has-been in the gutters of this city. So I chugged some potion and hatched a plan.
Which brings me, at last, to the part of this confession you don’t know. Though you surely must’ve suspected it. Once you cut me out of your life, you assumed the tabloids would stop publishing all your private details. And they did quiet down for a while. But shortly after my exile, the invasive exposés resumed. You grew paranoid that I was still watching you somehow. You dusted off the sledgehammer from your ApocaLips tour and smashed your phone, thinking I’d bugged it. You gutted every stuffed animal in your home, thinking I’d planted a nanny cam. I know all this, because I was spying on you. Only in a far more treacherous way.
My lifestyle had introduced me to countless desperate addicts. And after spending years in close proximity with the dead, I knew how to clock when a living soul was nearing its expiration. So I hung around drug dens, seeking out the feeble vibrations of users on the brink of death. I recruited the ones who’d amassed mountains of debt. The ones with families that depended on them. The deal was simple—once they died, they agreed to spy on you from the afterlife and feed me the intel. Then I’d sell it to the tabloids and make sure their families got fed as well.
Of course, I never intended to keep my end of the bargain. I’d string a ghost along for a couple weeks, pumping them for as much info as I could get. Once they figured out I was keeping all the money, I’d ditch them for the next desperate sap. It wasn’t a long-term solution, but like any addict, I was only thinking as far ahead as my next hit. I was well prepared for any vengeance they might try to take out on me. I’ve spent years mastering my heart rate, training it to beat in the syncopated rhythm that would counter the vibrations of any hostile spirits. They could never touch me, as long as I had a pulse. Even if I was unconscious. Which proved especially useful when I found myself in a coma.
I don’t know if it was a bad batch of potion, or I took too much, or mixed it with something gnarly. Honestly I don’t remember much except waking up in the hospital with a hole in my chest. The doctors told me they removed a nine pound teratoma growth. A wretched clump of eyes, teeth, and other vagrant tissues that had sprouted up in my abdomen overnight. Apparently it was growing larger by the minute. They had to call in a very pricy witch doctor to assist with the excision. So now I was more broke than ever, but I wasn’t about to return to my old ways. Turns out a three day coma was exactly the wake up call I needed.
Once I was back on my feet, I checked into rehab and started attending meetings at Hexed Anonymous. The people there taught me a lot of great techniques for coping with my addiction. But after a lifetime of craving popularity, it was the anonymity that really saved me. I realized that I had locked myself into a prison of my own making. An egocentric panopticon in which I performed every moment of my life for a hypothetical audience. Now that I had bulldozed its walls, I was able to simply exist. Confronting myself authentically was as difficult as it was liberating. Of all the uncomfortable truths I uncovered, the most painful to accept were about my friendship with you.
I used to boast to everybody that I was the person who knew you best. It’s only now that I finally understand I never knew you at all. I was just the first to witness your talent. So I planted a flag in it, like a colonizer staking a claim to your stardom. And even when I was defending your home from all the ghosts who wanted to possess you, I was the one who actually treated you like a possession. My narcissism is the cursed amulet that’s been hanging from your neck all these years, and you’re still not free of its torment.
The rehab center was a screen-free zone. Without a wifi signal, I was completely cut off from the news of the outside world. So I didn’t hear about what you were going through until I finished my treatment. First I learned that you’d canceled all your tour dates. Then I saw the clip of you visibly inebriated, lashing out at a reporter. You didn’t leave your home for weeks, and then when you finally reemerged, you were pale, wraith-like. Your eyes red and sunken in your skull, retreating from the world. Everybody thought you’d cracked under the pressure. But I could see what was really happening. The ghosts I betrayed couldn’t reach me as long as I was still breathing, so they aimed their vengeance at the person I cared about the most. Yanking you around like a worm on a hook.
There are probably better solutions than the one I’ve chosen. Solutions that would clean up my mess and provide justice to the families of the ghosts I wronged. But I didn’t know how I could ever pay them back, what with my medical debt and my career in shambles. And more importantly, I couldn’t bear the thought of all these angry spirits making a clown car of your mind. So I opted for the quickest solution I could think of. An elixir that would end all your suffering by midnight. There was no need to visit the potion master for this concoction. Its ingredients are found under any kitchen sink.
Since the vibrations of my heart protect me from the spirits’ ire, I simply needed to stop my heart. Thankfully, I had enough time to write this letter while waiting for the poison to spread through my body. I know that this doesn’t undo all the pain I’ve caused you. In fact, it will likely cause even more pain. So I’m sorry for that as well. I guess it’s on-brand that my most selfless act is still so deeply selfish.
I don’t have much time left now. My pulse is weakening. I can hear the spirits prowling all around me. They tell me they can’t wait for me to arrive in their realm. They tell me they have big plans for me. They tell me I’m going to be very popular.
Ewan Davis is a tech writer from Austin, Texas who spends most of his time reading in hammocks.