On Saturday morning my car died. I had a warning – the check engine light was on and the car sounded like someone had dropped a handful of coins under the hood. When I started the car and saw the signs I spent a few minutes in nervous deliberation but decided to drive anyway.

In my defense, if I towed my car every time it made a funny noise I’d never drive it.

I own, in case you are not aware, an orange 1997 Geo Prizm. If you are thinking to yourself “That sounds like a lemon” then you’d be completely right. I originally named the car “Juno” but that’s morphed into “Rust Bucket” or “The Orange Wonder” within the last few years. Car problems are normal for me; I had engine guinea pigs every time I turned sharply for a few months. When they turned into the engine demon orchestra I got worried, but for some reason, I could never get the noise to happen around a mechanic….

Either way, on Saturday my Juno died and drifted down the highway ramp to the side of the road while I pushed on my brakes with all my weight and hoped for the best. Once I stopped I called AAA and sent it off to the car necromancers for their unholy blessing.

Since this was a weekend, my usual practitioner wasn’t available. I had to rely on a larger organization whose labor payment policies I was less than fond of. Charging an arm is pretty standard these days, but they wanted an arm, a leg, a quart of blood and a promise of my firstborn. Acquiring arm, leg, and blood isn’t too troublesome (they didn’t specify WHOSE blood after all), but the firstborn worried me. If you’re never planning on procreating, what happens when you promise your firstborn to the darkness?

After leaving my car with them for a few hours, they contacted me with preliminary guesswork and questions. They suggested a full ceremony to appease the undead car spirit and return it to full wakefulness, but I told them that I didn’t have the goats available and that I just needed the car to be able to shamble about for a few more months. They couldn’t give me much information but took my concerns and limitations in stride. All rituals would be put off until Monday anyway.

On Monday I got a call from them explaining some of the problems they had discovered, such as insufficient snakes and some burnt protection symbols- but they still couldn’t get the engine to turn over and scream convincingly. They were seeking a specific relic to fill a gap in the hood altar, but because the car was “vintage” it was taking a little longer to find.

Tuesday I called them in the afternoon to check on the ceremonies. They were still scrying for the relic, but now they were beginning to think I’d also need to replace my omniscient time snake. It seems the current one was missing some teeth and that’s why no scream of wakefulness was forthcoming, in spite of all the chanting they’d done so far. On top of that, the shielding was getting pretty thin and they strongly recommended replacing those spells if I wanted to raise the car from the dead and hope to be safe from the ether. They would not say for certain that it was time to bury my dead but warned that I should consider how many chickens and goats I was willing to sacrifice.

Early Wednesday morning I groggily answered my phone to hear the sibilant whispers of the hooded figures at the car necromancers’ organization. It was time to make a decision: does the car live or die?

As I mulled it over I was informed that they wouldn’t charge for the extra chanting needed to discern the problem, and they explained (in their hissing language) all of the engine sacrifices that needed to be handled in order to raise the car. The labor costs were going to be an arm, a leg, and an unspecified amount of blood. The ceremonial needs and relics definitely cost more goats than I expected, but I decided that it was worth it to buy myself time to begin the hunt for a replacement conveyance that wouldn’t need the dark arts quite so often.

That evening my car was returned to me. It was a hollow growling shell of a creature not fit for polite company but would continue to convey me from place to place. It was welcomed back to the pack of cars that roam the roads.