Wrapped in Black: Thirteen Tales of Witches and the Occult

by Jennifer L. Greene

  The convulsions grew stronger, and foam, brown with chewed cake, began to spurt from Mama’s mouth. The broken chair groaned under the strain of the giant woman bucking and shaking upon it. One of Mama’s flailing arms finally tossed the plate of cake into the air. It did a few somersaults and landed frosting side down on the matted carpet. Maybe after this was done, Louise would bring in Kippy, the mutt Mama kept on a chain out back, to clean it up and die too. She had always hated that damn dog.

  Finally, Mama was still. She stared up at the water-stained ceiling, blood raining from her eyes like tears, her mouth frozen into a permanent snarl. The foam dripping down her chin looked like one of those fancy coffee drinks folks get in the shops up the city. Cappoccini, or something like that. Phelan would know. He was a big city man.

  Have to check, Louise. Have to check she’s really gone. She heard Phelan’s voice in her head, felt him tugging her out of her stand-still. She didn’t want to touch her dead mother, but she would. For him.

  Louise got up and edged her way over, watching for the faintest movements in the enormous slab of flesh that used to darken her doorway at night when she was a child, and would pull her out of bed by her hair. You didn’t finish your dinner, Little Louise. Eat your goddamn beans, you ungrateful little bitch! Despite the blood coming out of every orifice, Mama might still be faking it, waiting until Louise had come close enough so she could grab her by the hair and punish her for trying to kill her, or for not eating her slice of cake. You didn’t finish your cake, Louise. Eat your goddamn cake!

  Louise reached out like a timid mouse and pressed her fingers into the fold of flesh on the side of the woman’s neck, just below the jaw, like Phelan had taught her. No pulse. She felt courageous enough now to lean down to listen for breathing, holding her breath as she did so. The stuff coming out of Mama’s mouth didn’t smell like a fancy coffee drink. It smelled like death and rotted meat. There was no breath on her ear.

  It had all gone to plan, just like Phelan said it would.

  But Louise had one more thing to get before it was done. Phelan had been very specific about what it was, and he’d warned her that if she didn’t get it, he would be very angry with her. Louise didn’t have any notion of what he’d want with the key to Mama’s hope chest. There wasn’t anything in it but some old pictures and ratty blankets that smelled like mothballs, and the chest itself was just some dusty old box. Mama was never real secretive about where she kept the key either. It wasn’t like she had anything of value to protect. Folks like Mama either sold or broke everything good they ever had. Louise went down the short hallway, toward the room at the end.

  “You’ve done well, my dear.”

  Louise jumped and screamed when she heard his voice behind her. Phelan always had a way of sneaking up like that. It was like he lived in dark corners, where he watched until he was ready to show himself. But he’d probably just come in through the backdoor like a normal person. And he was a normal person, her heart insisted. Well, mostly normal.

  When she saw him standing there, tall and tan, bright green eyes the color of Mama’s birthstone and silver hair pulled back into a ponytail, Louise got weak in the knees. She also felt a warm tingle in place between her legs that Mama always warned her never to touch. Don’t you give it one bit of mind, Little Louise. It’s a cave of filth and stink, especially when it bleeds, and no one that was ever worth a damn would want to play around down there.

  Louise had always done as she was told, never touching that secret place in all her thirty-six years, except to wash in the shower and wipe after she peed. She always did it quickly, like something might reach through the hair-covered seam and bite her, but Phelan loved to touch her there. He even put his mouth in it, and that was Louise’s favorite part. He thought it was the most beautiful and delicious place in the world, and he’d taught Louise how to touch herself, and how to like it, guiding her hand just so until she found the little nub that made her shiver. When she did it long enough, a rush like white lightning shot through her body, and she screamed in both terror and ecstasy. But Phelan had been there to calm her. There there, Lovely Louise. Nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a little coming. The use of the word “coming” had confused her. It always felt more like arriving.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said.

  “Well, from what I can see in the living room, you were a little occupied.”

  “Did I do good? Was it how you wanted?”

  “It is perfect, love. You are free now.” His grin was feral, hungry.

  She tried to go to him, but he held up his hands and she stopped cold in mid-step, unable to move even an inch. Phelan always held her in place like that, but she didn’t mind it. She’d get to touch him all she wanted later if she was good, and she was always good. “First, the key Lovely Louise.”

  Her cheeks warmed every time he called her that. Not “Little” but “Lovely.” Mama about spit first time she ever heard him say it. There wasn’t anything lovely about Louise, though. She could look in the mirror and see that much. Mousy brown hair with wiry gray strands running all through it, pale skin with wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, flabby stomach that would be as big as Mama’s before long if she didn’t stop eating so much fast food. But Phelan worshipped every piece of her. Even the flabby ones.

  “It’s on the nightstand,” she said. “I don’t know what all you’re lookin’ for in it, though. Mama never kept anything special.”

  Phelan laughed and sunlight outside dimmed. “She kept you, didn’t she dear? Besides, you didn’t know your mother the way I did, Louise. She was one of mine long ago, you see. But you’d never know it to look at her now. Horrid creature. Her one redemption was that she made you, and for that I don’t mind her thievery. Especially not now.”

  Louise gaped at him. What in the world was he talking about? She wanted to ask, but Phelan never liked when she asked too many questions, so she kept quiet. As he moved toward the nightstand, the little bar of sunlight coming in through the curtains seemed to move away from him, like it was afraid. A shaky gasp came out of him when he touched the key and he whispered something in a weird language.

  He knelt down at the foot of her bed where chest had sat for as long as Louise could remember, and he muttered more of that strange talk as he waved his hands over it. Bright blue fire lit up the roses carved into the wooden lid, and right before her eyes, the flowers changed into strange symbols she didn’t recognize. Fear tickled the edges of her mind, but she was too entranced with what was happening to react.

  Out back, Kippy began to howl.

  Phelan put the key into the chest’s lock, which was also filled with that bright blue light, and he turned it. Louise heard a snap as the key broke, but the chest popped open and the light changed from blue to the color of blood. Snarls and shrieks of unearthly creatures issued forth from the opening as well, but still Louise wasn’t afraid. She was . . . aroused.

  He jumped up and threw out his arms. “To me! To me my luscious darlings!” He hopped onto Mama’s bed and began to hop up and down like an excited little boy as a creature with long red claws and black wings climbed out of the chest. Its eyes were the same color green as Phelan’s, but it had long black hair and a woman’s full breasts and hips, and a bush of thick black hair where its legs came together. Another one crawled out after it. Then another, and more after that. Some of them were male and all bulging muscles, and she looked away when she saw they were naked and stiff below the waist. She remembered her mother saying that Phelan had the devil in him. The invisible bonds holding Louise in place still wouldn’t budge, and for the first time since she sat down to watch Mama die, she entertained that fear. The mean old woman had been right, after all. But Phelan didn’t have the devil in him. He was the devil. He had to be.

  Finally, she cried out. “Phelan! What are you? What are these things? Are they . . . are they demons?”

  He laughed again, and jumped over to her, his eyes glowing like road flar
es now. The teeth in his smile looked longer too. Sharper. But he was still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. “Demons? Why, they are angels, love. My beautiful angels.”

  Tears welled as her heart shattered. He’d used her, just like Mama said he would. Louise should have known she would never be good enough for a man as gorgeous and powerful as Phelan. Why would he want some fat slob in trailer park country who could barely read, who was too dumb to know she was dating a creature from Hell? She didn’t want to blubber and beg, or make herself look a fool, but she couldn’t help it. “What about me?” she whimpered.

  Phelan placed his hands on either side of her face and kissed her. His long teeth bit into her tongue and she tasted her own blood. But it didn’t hurt. Quite the opposite. She cried out and fell against him as that tingly spot down below burst in a hot explosion of lust. The wings of the other creatures brushed against her as they gathered around, hissing and moaning, and it only turned her on more. Dozens of rough hands moved up and down her body and tore at her clothes until she wore only scraps.

  He broke their kiss and licked the blood from her lips. “You, my Lovely Louise, are going to be my number one angel.” He led Louise to her mother’s bed, where the other creatures were clawing and biting and licking one another other. The sky outside had gone as red as the light spilling from Mama’s hope chest. There were more noises out there. Barking dogs. Police sirens. Screams. But she didn’t give a flip about what might be happening to the rest of the world. It had never given a flip about her. Everything she needed was here, and everything she ever knew, which never amounted to much in the first place, was obliterated as Phelan revealed his true self and entered her with a force that ripped her apart and made her whole at the same time.

  And as the last of the blood that made her human drained out onto the sheets, Lovely Louise grew her wings.

  ***

  UNTO THE EARTH

  by Patrick. C. Greene

  Landon Stower strolled with his dog Shucky along a clean sidewalk, contented in the placidity of the neighborhood he’d called home since his release from hospital two years before, sporting a battered baseball cap insigned with the logo of his favorite team, the Baton Rouge Buzzards.

  Whistling as he went, Landon waved to his next door neighbor as he turned into his own fenced yard and closed the gate behind him, removing the leash from the panting black lab. He gave the dog a vigorous cheek rub. “Niiiice boy, Shuck.”

  Entering his house, Landon was greeted with an exotic, redolent scent and the rhythms of a soft voice.

  “Mm!” Landon sniffed the air. “Agnes!?”

  When his wife did not answer, Landon set aside the leash and followed his senses to the kitchen. Dressed in hospital scrubs like the day she attended him after his accident (and stole his heart in the process) she was working over a steaming pot, humming “Row Your Boat” as she twisted and crushed dried herbs into the boiling concoction.

  “Uh oh. Another voodoo spell?” he joked.

  Mildly startled, Agnes laughed and turned to kiss him. “VO-dou,” she corrected in her rich French-Haitian argot. “And no, it’s dinner, my silly handsome boy.”

  “Boy?” He drew her into his arms. “Mmm. You do keep me young, I think.” Agnes’ embrace was warm, comforting, enrapturing. Landon breathed of her neck and hair and the scrubs top, loving even its antiseptic hospital smell, as long as it was accented by her.

  She finally pulled away and returned to the stove. “Aaaaah don’t leave me hanging!” he protested. He grabbed her ass, kissing her neck.

  “Ooooh I don’t deserve you,” she teased. “You do want your special dinner don’t you?”

  “...How special?”

  Her smile was wide and playful, as she gestured at the pot with her wooden ladle. “You said I keep you young!”

  “So it is a voodoo hex!”

  “VO-DOUUUUUU!”

  Landon went to the living room, laughing as he tossed his good luck charm Buzzards cap onto the couch and sat beside it, switching on the television to watch the cap’s namesake team play.

  But there was only static.

  “Dammit!” he got up and checked the hookup. “Hey Aggie? Did you pay the cable?”

  “Oh! I thought so!” she called.

  “I don’t think so,” Landon muttered, rubbing his face. “First game of the season tonight, Ag.”

  His mood ruined, Landon muted the television and picked up a magazine--finding it was in French. He tried a Newsweek--also in French. “You subscribed to these fucking magazines in my name but they’re in French!”

  She only continued to hum the childish song.

  “You read English, but I don’t read French. Didja know that?”

  “Oh, you should learn!” was her cheerful response.

  Landon frowned. “Maybe YOU should just..!” He trailed off, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “...nevermind.”

  Her humming shortened the song by a few notes, becoming more monotonous. Landon’s stomach growled at him. “How long till dinner?”

  “Oh...an hour.” Even more cheerful--and annoying. The humming began again; only five notes this time, and off key.

  “Shit...” Landon whispered under his breath.

  It seemed to grow louder, to echo throughout the house and his head, filling his ears, becoming grating.

  “Agnes...AGNES! STOP!”

  She did not. Landon stared at the static, the magazines, the open doorway from which the discordant notes reached his burning ears, and he began to seethe. He sat still for several minutes, hoping she would stop, or at least change it up some. But she didn’t.

  “Are you listening to me!?” He was suddenly standing, taking impatient strides toward the kitchen.

  He entered the kitchen, his love for Agnes absent as he stared at her back, sure she knew he was there, though she just worked and hummed and hummed, offering no acknowledgement.

  “STOP, GODDAMMIT!”

  She turned and looked at him. There was no sense that she had been startled this time, no expression at all-and she continued to hum.

  Landon lunged at her. As his slap caught her hard across the face she squeaked out a brief and truncated scream, falling to the floor as the ladle spun through the air in a fantail of steaming soupy liquid that spattered and burned her arms.

  Landon loomed over her as she rubbed the burns, tears forming around her light brown irises. “Now you finally shut up, huh!?”

  She cowered, silent as she stared at him, her lips trembling as she clutched her ladle like a crucifix. Landon slapped her again. “Damn you! When did you become such a FUCKING BITCH!” He emphasized the last word with a kick to Agnes’ ribs, then stormed away, uninterested in her muffled sobs. Outside, Shucky began to bark.

  Landon plopped violently on the couch, grabbing his hair and squeezing his eyes shut, waiting for the labrador’s incessant alarm to trail off. “Gaaaaaahhhhhd, shut up, Shucky!”

  Shucky instantly fell silent.

  The sudden silence was like an abrupt deafness; it made Landon open his eyes--to see the television on, displaying the Buzzards game.

  Landon grabbed the remote and found with a mounting sense of horror that all channels were coming through with perfect clarity. When he un-muted it, the audio was fine too.

  He looked toward the kitchen, and his eyes fell on the Newsweek beside him--printed in English.

  He snatched it up and leafed through it quickly, finding all the pages he had thought were in French very much in English.

  He turned to the side table and quickly went through the other magazines there, finding no French duplicate. All were in English.

  Landon sat back, perplexed-and stricken with sudden guilt. “Shit. What the fuck is wrong with me?” He stood, hating who he had been just moments ago. “Agnes? You okay baby?”

  He wasn’t surprised when she didn’t answer. He went to the kitchen, his strides much slower, even timid, and saw the silent form of Agnes at the oven, back at work on h
is dinner, her thin shoulders bobbing with her silent sobs. He slowly walked to her. “Aggie?”

  No answer.

  Spooked, he grabbed her shoulder, turned her. She gasped with a paroxysm of renewed fright. Tears and swelling marred her beauty.

  “Oh god. I’m sorry, Aggie, I...”

  She shivered, holding herself.

  “I can’t believe I did that again. I was doing so good, I...”

  His soul plummeted to dark depths when she looked at him, the pain of a betrayed innocent trust in her eyes. He gently wrapped his arms around her. “It didn’t even feel like, I was...in control,” he whispered, feeling like a liar. “It was like...I’m just making excuses aren’t I?”

  She looked at him, offering no response, save her trembling lips.

  “I...I’ll get some help for this,” he promised. “I will, baby. I’ll go see Trudy again.”

  She lay her head on his shoulder.

  Landon had quickly downed a six pack while watching the game, hoping the combination of both would fan away the ugly smog of tension hanging in the air. He heard Agnes moving about, cleaning pretend messes and generally avoiding contact before she trod off to bed early.

  He crept to the bedroom, wishing he could gently seduce her, knowing he could not. He placed his Buzzards cap on the bed post, dressed in pristine pajamas Agnes had bought for him that very day, and slipped in to spoon her. “Are you... hurting?” he asked.