by John Russo
Everybody was momentarily stunned to silence, even Mama, because Papa seldom showed such a violent outburst of temper.
The children couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. They couldn’t help being thrilled and excited, even a little pleased, that they had had a man like Grandpa Barnes, so famous and powerful, and even possibly evil, in their very own family. It made them feel special, in a way. It gave them something to share and be proud of. And in their secret dreams they entertained obscure but enticing visions of worldly delights, fame, and riches that might lie in store for them someday, if they could truly inherit the powers of the Cunning Man and have a congregation of their own.
When Cynthia was nine years old, Papa went away on business and did oot come back. For a long time Mama would talk about his letters, making lighthearted small talk about what was supposedly in them, even though no letters actually came.
Mama began spending more and more time in the back room of her shop, poring over rare and expensive grimoires, books of magic, covering subjects such as divination, conjuration, and necromancy—the art of communicating with the dead. Something bad had happened to Papa, and the family knew it.
There was very little money coming in. People no longer wanted to come to Mama’s shop after finding out that they had to wait impatiently at the counter or browse through the place unserved while Mama stayed in the back room, totally absorbed in her books. She began to hoard herbs, potions, occult works and ritualistic paraphernalia that might have been sold at a good profit. Papa had insurance, but it could not be collected until he was proven deceased or legally declared so at the end of seven years.
Sometimes when the children came home from school, or when they got up in the morning, the house would be full of the heavy, yet sweet, smell of incense mixed with candle smoke. Mama paid less attention to their meals, their grooming, and her own housekeeping. They had few friends at school or in the neighborhood. Other kids started picking on Cyrus with increased frequency, intensity, and nastiness. His sister or one of his brothers had to walk him to the bus stop each morning to see that he got off safely to his special school, and he had to be met again at the bus stop in the afternoon.
Desperate to help their mother in some way, Cynthia, Luke, and Abraham began working in the store after school and on weekends. This was partly because they didn’t know what else to do with themselves; they felt like outcasts, rejected by the community. Many people referred to them as “the witch’s kids” and either secretly feared them or openly made fun of them.
Working in the store, Cynthia began to read books on sorcery, spell-casting, and magic. She learned that a Cunning Man, like Grandpa Barnes had been, was in reality a white witch, with the ability to combat the power of Satan. But in the end, Grandpa Barnes had been overcome by a witch practicing black magic, as opposed to his own kind. According to Mama, in his old age he succumbed to a stroke, the product of an evil spell cast on him by a rival witch who had gotten a lock of his hair. He knew it was no use to struggle, for the rival witch had stronger magic, and he predicted the time of his own death down to the very hour and minute. Did this not mean, Cynthia pondered, that black magic must be stronger than the other kind?
She hated her father for leaving Mama. But she loved him, too, and wished he would return. Many a night she cried herself to sleep, hoping to see him bending over her in the morning, laden with the usual armloads of presents. Not having been raised in the ways of the church, Cynthia found herself “praying” to Grandpa Barnes to bring Papa back to her. The Cunning Man appeared to her once in a dream, but when she tried to talk to him he vanished and she awakened. Repeatedly dwelling upon the meaning of this, turning it over and over in her young mind, she was struck by a realization of what Grandpa must be trying to tell her—that he was not strong enough to help her and her own spiritual resources were not sufficiently developed to stay in communication with him.
Every time she had the opportunity, Cynthia studied her mother’s library of modern and ancient witch’s lore, much of it seeming weird and incomprehensible to her at first. But it began to flesh itself out with meaning, to become more meaningful and real to her than her daily chores. Because she herself was distracted, Mama did not notice her daughter’s intense absorption in matters that did not concern the average nine-year-old. In the shop Meredith would hobble past Cynthia, eyes straight ahead, as if her mind was far off somewhere, her arms laden with tomes she was taking to the back room to study alone, while Cynthia engaged in her own studies behind the counter.
Neither mother nor daughter paid much attention to customers anymore, or seemingly to each other, as their lives went on amid an array of herbs, potions, amulets, Tarot cards, altar cloths, grimoires, and other such equipment. Luke or Abraham waited on the few people who came into the place, and played gin rummy, pinochle or double solitaire between customers. Cyrus was easy to handle; he could remain busy for hours, doing the same things with the same objects, over and over. His favorite playthings were such items as voodoo charms and witches’ bottles from the merchandise in the store.
Late one evening at about midnight Cynthia was awakened by the odor of incense and flickering shadows cast by candlelight spilling into her room. Propping herself up on her elbows, she heard Mama’s voice coming from somewhere in the house but could not make out the words. She tiptoed down the hall and saw what Mama was doing. Then she went to the boys’ room and awakened them, her forefinger touched to her lips.
The children gathered around Mama at the dining table. She looked up at them but said not a word. To them she seemed uncannily serene, preoccupied, yet intense and commanding; her demeanor filled them with an unfamiliar solemnity and awe. She was wearing a black robe cinched at the waist with a gold cord, and around her forehead was a wide black ribbon with a name inscribed upon it in shimmering gold letters: TETRAGRAMMATON. From her reading, Cynthia knew this was the usually unspoken name of the Spirit of the Universe.
The dining table was a large round one, and over it, centered, Mama had draped a black cloth with a magic circle printed on it in gold, inscribed with mystical symbols and formulae. Inside the magic circle next to an ornamental copper incense burner there was an iron retort, or witch’s bottle, supported on a ringstand over a lit candle, so that the substance being heated bubbled and seethed, transmitting its vapors throughout the semi-darkened dining room. The stench of urine, or something like it, was recognizable despite the efforts to overwhelm it with incense.
Cynthia realized that the words Mama was reciting came from Lemegeton, a medieval grimoire, the text of which lay open before Meredith at the dining table, which was now an altar.
“I conjure thee, Sheldon, my husband, the father of my children, that thou forthright appear and show thyself unto me before this circle, without delay.
“I conjure thee by Him to all creatures are obedient, whether alive or dead, and by this ineffable Name, Tetragrammaton Jehovah, which being heard the elements are overturned, the air is shaken, the sea runs black, the fire is quenched, and the earth trembles.
“I invoke and command thee, O Spirit, to come from whichever place in the world thou art. And give answer to my questions, answers that shall be true and reasonable. Come, then, in visible form, and speak that I may understand thy words!
“Come, visibly, before this circle, obedient in every way to my desires! By these holy rites, I conjure and exorcise thee, distressed Spirit, to present thyself here and reveal unto me the cause of thy calamity, where thou art now in being, and where thou wilt hereafter be.
“If thou dost not come, or disobey in any way, I will curse thee, and will cause thee to be stripped of all blessings and powers, and consigned to the bottomless Pit, where thou wilt remain until the Day of Judgment!
“I will cause thee to be bound to the Waters of Everlasting Flame, Fire, and Brimstone!
“Come, then, Sheldon, spirit of my husband, and appear before this circle, to obey me utterly!”
The chi
ldren kept their heads bowed, afraid of what might happen—and yet desirous of seeing it. They wanted their magic to succeed in bringing a spirit into their midst. From time to time the smoke and the candlelight played tricks on their eyes so that something seemed about to happen. They thought they saw forms moving in the shadows. Cynthia was sure for a moment that her mother’s magic was working. But eventually for the boys the excitement of anticipation wore off, their eyes began to go shut, their heads to nod. Cynthia, however, remained wide awake long after her brothers had crept away to bed, their mother not venturing to stop them.
“Why didn’t it work?” Cynthia inquired at last.
Mama replied somberly, in a soft, persuasive timbre. “It may not work the way we would like it to. Magic does not always succeed completely, because there are sometimes strong forces to overcome. But if we have succeeded partially, if Papa’s spirit is trying to reach us, we may get a sign. He might be trying to break through sinister, evil forces that are surrounding this family.”
“Why would they pick on us?” Cynthia asked, frightened.
“I don’t know,” Mama replied. “Perhaps it has something to do with Grandpa Barnes. Perhaps the witch who killed him put a curse on him and his descendants.”
Three days later, on a Sunday, Aunt Edna and Uncle Sal were killed in a fiery automobile accident. They were on their way to visit Meredith and the children, having made arrangements for the occasion two days before by telephone. During the course of the call they had tactfully expressed their worries about the state of Meredith’s emotional health and her ability to “cope with things.” But an enormous tractor-trailer truck lost its brakes behind them on a steep, winding grade and pounded down on them, unable to stop, crushing their small foreign car like an accordian against a sheer rock wall. The driver of the rig and Edna and Sal were incinerated in the violent explosion which followed the impact.
It was not lost on Cynthia and her family, attending the closed-casket funeral, that Edna and Sal had been virtually cremated: the exact punishment ordered by Meredith to be brought down on the spirit of her husband if he failed to appear. Was this retribution?
One week after the burial, Meredith was summoned by her relatives’ attorney to a disclosure of their last will and testament. All their property, money, and worldly goods were now hers, which amounted to the mansion eighty miles away, its contents and surrounding fifty-five acres, the chapel on the grounds, Sal’s unsold paintings, contracts, and royalties, a savings account containing fourteen thousand dollars, and insurance policies totalling seventy-five thousand dollars.
In succeeding weeks, the decision was made to leave the town and the shop, for which they were paying rent, and go to live in Uncle Sal’s and Aunt Edna’s house.
Her inheritances, and the financial security that came along with them, enabled Meredith to give herself completely to the occult. She could live off the insurance and the savings until the expiration of the seven years when her husband would be declared legally dead. Then she would get more insurance money, and Social Security.
The family name had been Brewster, assumed when Meredith married Sheldon. But with the move to the mansion, Meredith began telling the children their last name was now Barnes, her maiden name while she was growing up in England, the daughter of Luke Barnes, the Cunning Man. “It’s a name to be proud of,” Meredith said. “In reclaiming it for ourselves, we lay claim to Grandpa’s heritage, his powers.”
Mama had discovered a trunk full of the Cunning Man’s books and magical equipment in the attic. The stuff must have been shipped over from England when he died, and Edna had never let on that she had gotten hold of it. Maybe she had been ashamed of it—she and Sal had often accused Meredith of being superstitious. In any case, it was quite an exciting find, and it occupied Meredith and Cynthia for days on end, as they read through everything and then discussed their discoveries. There were many diaries and notebooks kept in the Cunning Man’s own hand. Both mother and daughter, by this time, were deeply intrigued by witchcraft—its origins and possibilities. Luke and Abraham were in awe of it and were believers in its potential power, but they were content to allow Mama and Cynthia to become the experts.
Cyrus, who was fifteen at the time of the move, seemed to blossom in the country. It was as if the rural atmosphere—the outdoors and the absence of strangers in large numbers to nag and tease him—formed a more hospitable environment for his uncomplicated mental processes and abilities. He began to look more healthy and strong, if not more intelligent. He liked to pick flowers or catch butterflies. He never harmed the butterflies, always letting them go. One morning he found a dead bird and cried over it till Cynthia, trying to appease him, came up with the idea of having a funeral for it. She found a few scraps of wood and showed Cyrus how to make a small coffin. They went into the chapel, which had been Uncle Sal’s studio, and made up a few prayers, which they recited. Then outside, in the small cemetery that had been the family plot of the overseer who had owned the place back before the Civil War, Cyrus and Cynthia dug a hole, tied two sticks together to make an upside-down cross, and had a burial ceremony that mimicked a Satanic one Cynthia had read about. After that, Cyrus was always looking for dead birds or mice that the cat had killed. He took to making small coffins in advance or saving shoeboxes to have in a pinch. Cynthia always helped him by reciting prayers and incantations over the tiny graves he dug.
None of the children was supervised. Meredith spent long hours upstairs in her room reading or feeling sorry for herself over the loss of her husband. She never ate much anymore and didn’t cook, either; the family subsisted on sandwiches, canned goods, and sometimes fresh fruit bought at the country store up the road or picked from fruit trees in the surrounding woods. Meredith began to look gaunt, sickly, even jaundiced, but the children grew accustomed to her deteriorated appearance. Without discussing it in so many words, Meredith and Cynthia both knew that they intended to tryout some of the things they had learned from Grandpa Barnes’ notebooks. Nothing had been attempted since the day Mama had invoked Papa’s spirit—with disastrous results.
One day, to amuse themselves, Luke and Abraham rummaged around and brought out the traps Uncle Sal had given them for Easter two years ago. They jauntily made a foray into the woods to set the traps and could hardly sleep all night waiting for dawn so they could get up and go see. Cynthia and Cyrus went along, too. One by one the six traps were checked, but they were all empty. Luke angrily kicked a clod of dirt, while Abraham hung his head and looked dejected.
“What kind of bait did you use?” Cynthia asked.
“Bread. We wet it and made dough balls,” said Abraham.
“Huh! Who taught you to do that?”
“Nobody. I mean, I know you can use a dough ball to catch fish.”
They all laughed, even Cyrus.
“I guess there ain’t too many fish swimmin’ through these here woods,” Luke admitted.
“Why don’t you use a carrot?” Cynthia suggested. “Then you might catch a rabbit.”
“Yeah, at least we know what rabbits eat,” Abraham agreed.
“One rabbit caught, and each of us could take a lucky rabbit’s foot!” Luke exclaimed in gleeful anticipation.
After the change in bait, for three more mornings all the children went out and checked the traps, only to find them empty. This was all the more frustrating because most of the time when they were on their way to the traps they would see plenty of rabbits and other game scampering around in the fields. Luke threw rocks at the animals, but he never hit one.
“Shit! Wonder what these rabbits around here eat?” Abraham grumped.
“Lettuce, maybe,” offered Cynthia.
“Gonna try it one more time with carrots,” Luke pronounced determinedly.
“Why don’t you let me work a spell for you?” Cynthia blurted.
They all stared at her. She knelt by the last trap they had checked, and with a stick she drew a magic circle around it. Then she got some
dew on her fingers and sprinkled in on the fresh bait. Bowing her head, still kneeling, she said the following words, paraphrasing something she had read in one of Grandpa Barnes’ notebooks: “May the dewy tears of Almighty Tetra-grammaion, Lord of Creation, anoint the tools of the hunter. May the Spirit of the Hunt bring food to our table. Amen.”
“We’re not gonna eat the rabbit, are we?” Abraham said.
Cynthia got up, brushing dirt from her jeans. “That doesn’t matter, silly. The important thing is the charm. Tomorrow we’ll see if it really works.”
They went around repeating the ceremony over each trap, and for the boys it got a little boring. But Cynthia was intensely excited, more so than she let on, for this could be a test of her power. Mama had told her that she could be the Chosen One of the family, because at birth a caul—a portion of her amniotic membrane (whatever that was)—had remained covering her forehead, and according to tradition among white witches, this was a sure sign of tremendous psychic powers to be vested in one so blessed. Mama had dried this membrane and kept it locked in her cedar chest, and she said that it must remain with the family forever and never be allowed to fall into strange hands, for the loss of it would bring dreadful results.
The next day they caught a rabbit. When they spotted it struggling in the trap, they all ran up and stopped short, out of breath, staring at it. They had run up whooping joyously, but up close it wasn’t a very pretty sight. The animal was weak from loss of blood; the mauled grass around it was streaked red. The rabbit’s leg was bitten or gnawed down to the white bone, and still it remained locked in the steel jaws of the trap, vainly trying to pull free.
“Poor thing,” Cynthia said. But an inner part of her was thrilled because the rabbit had been caught as the result of her magic.
For long moments the boys were speechless, in shock.