Walking onto the back porch, she breathed in the fresh morning air. She couldn’t remember if she had ever felt this happy. She rubbed her shoulder where her wound was healing, and thought it would be a good day to get some sun on it. It was sure to scar, but that was how she was made—a series of small scars—and she was OK with that.
Jimmy rounded an overgrown planter, walking backwards, watching a pair of butterflies overhead. He tripped over a loose cobblestone and stumbled backward. Del held her breath, but Jimmy righted himself—with flailing arms—and stood, amazed in the sunshine.
“Hey, I dint feh down!” he told the butterflies.
“No, you didn’t!” Del said from the back porch.
Jimmy spun around at the sound of her voice and peered through the sunlight. “Deh!” he said with a squinty smile. “You a seepy head!”
“Me?”
“Yeah. An you ‘ate.”
“Late? Late for what? It’s Saturday. You can’t be late for anything on a Saturday.”
Jimmy considered this intensely for a minute, then said, “Fo da movies.”
A smile broke Del’s face that she couldn’t hide if she had tried. “Well, Jimmy Lareaux, you are right again. We wouldn’t want to be late for the movies on a Saturday, would we?”
“No, an you ‘ate.”
“For breakfast? How late am I?”
“No Deh, not beakast. Fo pwayin.” At this he looked at his watch and decided, “You sic ‘minunds ‘ate Deh. Sic minunds.”
“Oh well, then we better get some playin’ in before breakfast. What are you doing?”
He turned to point where the butterflies had been, but they were gone.
“Hey, dey gone!”
“Yeah, they flew off.”
“Wheh’dey go?”
“I think they flew off to play the birds and the bees.”
“No Deh, not da biwds da bees. Deh pwayin’ buttafwy!” he said, and walked up the back steps shaking his head.
“My mistake, Jimmy Wawoo. My mistake.”
Chapter 64
After breakfast, Mama Dedé drove Del and Jimmy to the movies. Frank and Armand sat on the back porch with their after-breakfast cigar and bowl. Their lives had changed drastically over the last few weeks, and each was adjusting at his own pace, but they thought they were progressing, all things considered.
Frank still stayed at his own place, but took to arriving at Armand’s early in the morning to check on Del and eventually to take over making the sausage gravy, which Armand had no business making.
The night they’d encountered the Gris-gris man, upon returning home, they had carried Del to her—at the time—temporary room, and both men knew somehow that it was where she should stay. Frank would have certainly made arrangements, but his small Craftsman house was still filled with memories of his wife, and there was no room, mentally or physically, for another woman.
The new arrangement took on a life of its own almost immediately, and each person knew that it was good.
“So Del’s lookin’ good,” Frank said between puffs. “Nice to see her up and movin’ around.”
“Indeed, she is,” Armand said. “Fascinating. Simply fascinating how the psyche can experience something so traumatic, yet seem to bounce back after some good rest.”
“Yeah, fascinatin’.” Frank rocked his chair a few more times. “So was his eyes really gone, you think?”
“Mon ami! Please…” Armand said with exasperation, pointing to his pipe as if to say, Before my second bowl is finished?
“Well hell, we gotta talk about it someday. Don’t we?”
Clutching his pipe in his teeth, Armand shrugged his hands to say, I suppose.
“Besides, I can’t get da damn images outta my head.”
“Yes, I agree,” Armand said. “I worry about poor Del. How much of it do you think she remembers?”
“Hell, who knows? I just hope she forgets about me grazin’ her before I die.”
“Grazing her?” Armand rocked forward and leaned on his knees, peering at Frank. “Mon ami, you shot her in the arm!”
“I told you already. I didn’t shoot her!” Frank turned away from Armand. “At least not on purpose. Da damn thing ricocheted was all.” He puffed furiously at his cigar as Armand rocked back. “Damn near died myself when I saw her lyin’ der. Holy Christ.”
“Anyway,” Armand said, “she seems to be well on the mend physically. Regarding what she remembers now, or may remember in the future… who’s to say? Even if she does remember, will she believe?”
“How da hell could you not? Damn door to hell openin’ right in front of us; crazy voices on da wind; and den you got da damn hell-dolls screamin’ like banshees—”
“Mon ami, please,” Armand said, touching his ear gently.
“Oh, sorry,” Frank said, rocking some more, then said, “At least you didn’t get yer handsome mustache et off!” and burst into laughter.
“That, my friend,” Armand said, pointing at Frank with the mouth-end of his pipe, “is an excellent point,” and laughed in response.
Armand went back to cleaning his bowl, and let the spring breeze blow some of his scarier thoughts away. Although some would not leave with a hurricane, he thought.
Frank watched him as a shadow crossed his face.
“Frank, what did you hear that night?”
“Hell, everything was jumbled. You askin’ ‘bout somethin’ specific?”
Armand tapped his bowl out and looked at the deep shadows forming in the garden. What unnatural things lie deep within those shadows, waiting for their turn to emerge? he wondered.
“Well for one thing, do you think they’re all accounted for? You know, the things he created. The weasels.”
“Well,” Frank said, resting his hands on his belly, “I kinda thought when he snapped out, all da other things went wit him. You don’t?”
“I saw the beast get sucked in first. Well, I don’t know which was first, Henri flaking apart or the beast—”
“I knew dat sumbitch was tainted,” Frank said, pointing a finger at Armand. “Dat’s why I kept da gator teeth to myself! It’s probably how he got to Captain so quick after I left; cursin’ people and what not. He sure was interested in dat Glapion case, I can tell you. Sorry, go ahead.”
Armand continued. “After Henri and the beast, then of course all the chaos with Jimmy and Josephine happened, and… well, that poor girl… but when the Gris-gris man hit her, and the two of them… fell in, to whatever the void was, that was all I saw. I didn’t see anything else fall in.”
“Mmm, hmm,” Frank mumbled. “Did ya see any… lights? Blue maybe? Real faint?”
Armand looked at the boards beneath his feet and thought maybe he would paint them this year. They were currently the color of a dull void, and he had seen enough of that color for an entire lifetime.
“Perhaps. Do you suppose some of them are still out there?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care to ever know, really. You?”
“I suppose not. As long as the little cannibal made it in.”
A long silence passed between the men as they tried to piece together the missing scenes.
“It did make it in, didn’t it?” Armand finally asked.
“Da little crazy doll? Hell—”
“It wasn’t a doll, mon ami. With every bit of what sound mind is left in me, I believe that thing was alive. Not just bewitched, but somehow… alive. I felt its presence.”
Frank whistled his disbelief, which deep down inside, was true belief. He was very afraid it was true somehow.
“When I yanked da damn thing outta yer shoulder, I threw it as far away as I could, but I cain’t honestly tell you where it fell. Maybe we take a trip back—in da daylight—and look around for it.”
“I’ve looked already,” Armand said. “I’ve been there twice and it’s not there—”
“Well den dat—”
“—but I did find part of the book.”
Fran
k’s cigar drooped down as his face went slack.
“Oh hell… what do you mean, part a da book?”
Armand rocked in silence, feeling the implication weigh heavily on himself. It was as if the entire house had hunched its great walls a bit closer to him. The porch shadows hung cold, feeling the dismay. “The pages that Henri was reading from appear to be the missing pages from my very own grimoire. My Grimoire Strange.”
“What da hell?”
“Yes, I always knew that part of my own book was missing, but as mismatched as the pages were, it was difficult to guess just what may have been there. Alas, now I know.”
Frank puffed hard on his cigar, looking for an answer in the thick smoke. “So, dis means,” he calculated carefully, “da third book, da missin’ grimoire, is still missin’. Dat right?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. That is to say, the book that we have referred to as the third book, which presumably is deux de trois—part two of three—is still missing.”
“Then how da hell did da spell get spoke?
Armand nodded to the house. “You know she said the pages turned themselves, right?”
Frank stared at Armand through a thinning cloud of smoke. “It was awful windy.”
“Yes, it was. Quite windy… Howling wind, I’d say. Kind of like voices.”
Frank dropped his hands heavily on the chair arms and leaned forward. “I knew you weren’t gonna let dat go.”
“No, mon ami. This one I cannot let go. I asked you earlier what you heard that night, but I’ll save you the trouble of stating it. Instead, I’ll tell you what I heard.”
Frank leaned back heavily in his chair, watching Armand, waiting for him to state the thing that Frank had wanted to forget the most, but that which would never go away. Ever.
Armand cleared his throat, relit his pipe and began.
“I remember Mama D. telling us about the book. I remember her warning well because I knew the warning before she stated it. I’m a researcher, Frank. I live inside books and legends. I live inside the stories of old. I live for the turning of the next page where the thing is unknown. She warned us that once the spell was cast, that a secret part of the spell would show itself in the pages. As far as I know, no one has ever seen the hidden part of the spell, or, if they have, it has surely announced their doom, for any that look upon it are then known to the creator of the spell. That’s how these things work, you see.
“What I wouldn’t give to know if the hidden part of the spell actually appeared in the book that night. That hellish book… that… Grimoire Dark.
“But alas, the thing I do know, is that the words were upon the wind, because there were voices driving them, Frank. Not Henri’s voice, not ours, or… his, but other voices. Thousands of them Frank, all saying the same words. And they were upon the wind.”
The men sat in long silence, as they both knew this to be true. As they sat, a cloud passed overhead, blocking the warm spring sun, and a cold wind chilled them. For a moment, each man feared that their words had called something back, for they each believed with their hearts that once a thing was spoken, it could never be unheard.
“What do you think is out there, mon ami? Beyond the pages of our lives?” Armand finally asked.
Frank considered his cigar thoughtfully, and rocked his chair to the slow rhythm of the world. He considered all that he had ever seen or done. He considered the unholy things they had seen that night. He rocked this way for a long time until Armand thought he had forgotten the question. Finally, Frank spoke.
“Der’s a few angels out there. Like Del.
“Der’s a lotta good people tryin’ to get better. Like Del.
“Der’s some people fightin’ der own black streaks.” He paused. “Like Del.
“And der’s monsters…”
Chapter 65
A Bid Farewell
The binding spell, long forgotten, with your chant has been begotten,
By you now, to bind us morrow,
and you ask, ‘On even shore?’
Fool you are for spirit speaking! Soon this demon will be wreaking,
hell, upon your spirit shrieking, burning to your very core!
Fool you were to go on chanting, dared to open Legba’s door.
Just tonight? Ha! — evermore.
Deux de Trois
* * *
Alas! Alas! Your death-chant has come, pray to wonder where I am from?
* * *
The depths you see, ancient and dark, spawned before this time began.
* * *
You called me forth by page of book, this Grimoire Dark hiding the rook,
* * *
Your hands now hold the missing book; the words were always the plan.
* * *
Your words I hear upon the wind, we’ll meet as soon as I can;
* * *
For I, Dear Reader, am the Gris-gris man.
A Note from the Author
I hope you enjoyed reading A Grimoire Dark as much as I enjoyed writing it. It seems to be true that we really should be careful what we read, for the path rarely leads where expected.
I also hope you caught the references to other authors and books I sprinkled within this story—some obvious, others not—but the one reference I hope was obvious was the call out to The Raven, by Edgar Allen Poe.
I knew I needed a spooky incantation for the binding spell—but of course, it had to be tricky—and when I came across The Raven again, I knew I had found the right structure. It was interesting to decipher the rhyme and meter of this iconic poem, then write something specific to the book, but in the same style. Granted, I understand it is NOT Poe, but just creating something in the same style was one of the high points of writing this book.
Anyway, for those interested—and possibly thinking back to
Once upon a midnight dreary—here is the poem in its entirety.
The Song of Abgel
Hellish spirit hear me clearly, grant you now full use or nearly,
Of my soul for use and toiling, at the work of evil lore.
This damned soul is ripe for taking, in its core with trembled shaking,
Hunger-lust pang never slaking, begging at your ghostly door.
Use me spirit, just tonight, that I may unlock Abgel’s door.
Just tonight, no less, no more.
* * *
I call to you, by way of chanting—lest a demon voice be ranting,
Ranting in my wretched mind to call you up from days of yore.
I summon you to evil deed, your voice as one my mind will heed,
Seeking someone sure to bleed, to right a wrong done to my core.
Use me spirit, just tonight, that I may open abGel’s door.
Just tonight, no less, no more.
With demon-will I wholly bind, your tattered soul, black heart and mind
To me you see, for I am kind except to those I doth abhor.
Evil things were done to me, but no worse evil can there be,
To that which I will die to see, unleashed from beyond abgEL’s door.
Unlock it spirit, I beseech, for I deserve revenge galore.
Just one night? Not evermore?
* * *
Just one night not surely just, for break and maim and kill I must;
With this new power all will see, that hell hath come upon their door.
I freely spill this blood of mine, and with a drop, do fully bind,
My tattered soul, black heart and mind, to abgeL’s beyond the door.
My chanting, spirit, hear it right. Bind us now on equal shore.
This I pray, forever more.
* * *
The binding spell, long forgotten, with your chant has been begotten,
By you now, to bind us morrow, and you ask, ‘On even shore?’
Fool you are for spirit speaking! Soon this demon will be wreaking,
Wreaking hell upon your spirit, burning to your very core!
Fool you were to go on
chanting, dared to open Legba’s door.
Just tonight? Ha! — evermore.
Acknowledgements
Thanks again to my wonderful wife Mary for the long hours reading and discussing this story, especially considering the content. You are right more often than I realize, and this book is better for it.
Also, many thanks to: Christina, Ryan, Lauren, Steve and Joe, the close family and friends who read this story in its imperfect state. I hope you recognize where your suggestions have been applied and realize that your words are now upon the wind.
More Books by D.S. Quinton
Thank you for reading A Grimoire Dark!
It was a fun book to write and woke up a dark corner of my mind, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear more from Del, Jimmy and the others at some point. I’m assuming Eddie will still being hanging around, waiting… and listening.
If you’re looking for another read, maybe explore where the supernatural power came from. Remember, Armand had a theory about this, based on the diary of a very unfortunate boy.
That theory is FREE to download and read!
The Phoenix Stone – A Dark Beginning
Would you die to expose the secret of mankind’s origin? Otto just might...
Desperate to journal his grandfather’s discovery before his capture, young Otto hides in a secret Egyptian chamber avoiding nomads and flesh-eating beetles to chronicle an amazing story—How we began.
A Grimoire Dark Page 30