Wrapped in Black: Thirteen Tales of Witches and the Occult

by Jennifer L. Greene

  Mme. Tournier took off her gloves and apron. “Come with me.”

  Landon followed her out to the backyard.

  Landon, suddenly feeling weak, had to shield his eyes against the sun, though it remained curtained by dense cloud cover. Mme. Tournier’s pace seemed agonizingly slow.

  “I warn you. Once you see this, it will be over quickly. But I promise, that’s for the best.”

  Mme. Tournier walked to the edge of the yard and then beyond, into the forest, very slowly. Or had Landon’s perception of time changed? Seeing something ahead of Madame Tournier a few paces, he stopped.

  She halted at an oblong mound of earth, and gracefully knelt as Landon came to her side.

  At the head of the mound was a small, simple tombstone, reading only:

  LANDON STOWER

  BELOVED

  “...What is this?”

  Mme. Tournier placed the rose at the foot of the stone. “That child nearly drove me to my own.”

  Landon knelt beside her, stared at her. “What the HELL IS THIS!?”

  She finally looked at him. “All that’s left, child.”

  “...What?”

  Mme. Tournier started to stand. Landon stood first, and tried to help her, but she avoided his touch.

  “That poor ballplayer. She wanted him to want her, so bad,” Mme. Tournier began, with melancholy in her voice. “He was so handsome and confident. Agnes was starstruck with American athletes, like so many young, foolish Haitian girls.”

  Landon thought of his missing Buzzards cap.

  “She did the ritual and planted the seed--and the boy fell for her, like a great tree.” Mme. Tournier's brief chuckle was contradicted by her mournful sigh. “And that was when she realized she didn't desire him at all. His desire was what she wanted.”

  Landon couldn't remember when the Buzzards had become his favorite team--or even when he had started watching baseball.

  “So, she turned that boy -that Landon- away. I warned her about trifling with a man's heart! She just went on her way, sowing her wild oats. She thought a man like that would find another girl and forget her soon enough, you see.”

  “What does this have to do with..?”

  “She didn't even bother to undo the magic,” Mme. Tournier interrupted. “Just went off and sowed her oats. So Landon undid it his own way. He took his life. He took away his mam and pap's boy, his sister's brother, his team's star hitter--he shook the whole world, the same way Agnes shook his world.”

  Landon stared at the grave, wanting to see this voodoo/vodou nonsense as a silly superstition and nothing more. He wasn’t in the grave after all. It was just a stupid little show. “...I don’t...”

  “-That boy would have married her, you know.” Mme. Tournier seemed almost unaware of Landon’s questions. “Would've given her the world. And me some grandbabies. She was not ready, or even interested.”

  Landon grabbed her shoulders and roughly turned her to him.

  “-Stop talking this fucking BULLSHI-”

  “LACHE’!” Madame Tournier extended her palm slightly, never touching him -yet he was propelled backwards onto his grave with humbling force.

  “She grew, and learned the true ways,” continued the priestess. “She realized her mistakes, her responsibility. And she didn’t want to carry the burden of the great pain she caused.”

  Mme. Tournier sighed as she absently plucked a weed or perhaps an herb from the dirt, and stuffed it in her pocket. “We can wait for our wrongs to catch us. Or we can go on and pay our own way. Did you know that?”

  “The...voodoo thing...” Landon whispered.

  “Of course you didn’t. We came here to the United States and Agnes wanted to get on with her life and start fresh, with good work. But first--you.”

  Landon stood. “What does that mean?”

  “She just made you up, Landon.” Mme. Tournier almost put a hand on his shoulder, but withdrew it. “To hurt herself.”

  Landon blinked.

  “But I couldn't watch it anymore, her taking those beatings. Endangering her life. I had to stop it.” She gave him a lingering gaze that was somehow both mothering and detached. “You never was really...real, baby.”

  Landon uttered a tiny nervous titter. “That’s...that’s fucking nuts.”

  “Don’t you think she could’ve defended herself?” Mme. Tournier posited. “Just like I did?”

  “Do you realize how this sounds?” Landon tried.

  “Maybe, somewhere inside, she wanted you to kill her.”

  “No. I would never do that.”

  “You’re starting to fade away, Landon. It’s gonna take a while. Unless, you go on and accept it now.”

  “You...are a fucking lunatic.”

  Mme. Tournier suddenly slapped him -and Landon felt her fingers pass through his cheeks, his teeth, the flesh of his mouth, as if through some kind of gelatin, with a muffled, gooey sound.

  Landon stared at her, then grabbed her wrists, relieved that his fingers felt solid and strong on her arm. That relief crumbled like dead rose petals, as Mme. Tournier simply drew her wrist through his hands if through molten mercury, and shook away the vanishing wisps of his residue.

  His hands somehow reformed themselves, but fleshy wisps began to float away like gossamer. “This...no...”

  He pressed his hands together and they seemed to fuse. He quickly pulled them apart, loosening more threadlike filaments. “No. Nononono. Tell me how to stop this!”

  Mme. Tournier looked at the grave. “The ceremony is done. It is permanent. Yet, soon...it never happened.”

  Landon looked down at the grave, only to find his feet sinking into the dirt. “No...No. I’m...I’m REAL!”

  He yanked his foot up from the sod violently and kicked the grave stone. His foot broke at the ankle like wet kindling, filaments of flesh trailing from the two stumps as he fell to his back.

  Crying out, he turned over and furiously dug at the dirt, to unearth his Buzzards cap, or whatever had been used to unmake him.

  “I’ll undo this. I know enough about voodoo...vodou, I mean...if it can be done, it can be undone!”

  Mme. Tournier watched, shaking her head like a sad grandmother. “Life is but a dream, baby.”

  When Landon tried to sink his fingers into the dirt, they came off, dissolving quickly.

  “NO!” He mashed his nubby hands into their disappearing digits, only destroying them all the more quickly. “NOOOOOuugh-!”

  His tongue fell out, truncating his scream.

  Landon felt the tendons in his neck popping loose as he turned his deteriorating face pleadingly up to Mme. Tournier, but she turned away, clearly appalled. “I’m so sorry, Landon.”

  His left eye fell out, rolling to a stop looking up at him, and for an instant he could see both the eye and his own horribly disintegrated face via the orb’s foggy, dirt caked point of view.

  He grabbed at it with his ruined hand, mashing it into a gooey viscosity. Then he was blind, his mind trailing off into shrinking rivulets in a growing nothingness.

  Horrific, tongueless vocalizations melted in his throat, as his body melted into the grave dirt to become indistinguishable from it.

  Mme. Tournier sipped from a cup of calming chamomile tea, lamenting the horrors her traditions visited upon her when she or her fellows breached reality. All traces of her daughter’s recompense manti might have vanished from the world outside--but it would be some days before her own memory released him as well.

  The sound of the door opening distracted her from her sadness. “That you, baby girl?”

  Mme. Tournier put on an assuring smile as Agnes entered the room, looking over a printout.

  “You’ll be glad to know it’s all done.” She took a slow, self-assured and deliberate sip of her tea. “He...chose the quick way.” She sat the cup down with not so much as a tiny clink. “How was your visit with the doctor?”

  Agnes seemed dazed, shaking her head slowly as she met her mother’s smili
ng gaze.

  “...What is it? What’s wrong girl?”

  “Mama,” Agnes murmured, “I’m pregnant.”

  ***

  HÄXENHAUS

  by Nick Kimbro

  06 Jan

  The Häxenhaus resides on the northern edge of the Black Forest. This is the fourth time I’ve been sent away.

  “I’m very sorry, Kramer,” Father Schulz says. “But being here will not help your grief. You should be with your wife.”

  “My grief has nothing to do with it,” I say. “I’ve come only to serve our Lord and Savior.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but even if it were so it would not be right for you to have part in this. Go, and God’s peace be with you.” He makes the sign of the cross and I bow my head. Then he closes the door and it is dark again, and cold.

  I glance at the road leading back to the village, then circle around to the creek. The water is freezing. I wade waist-deep, slide my fingers through the metal grate, and peer into the bowels of the Häxenhaus. I can’t see much—just some dim light flickering against the stone—although their screams are like crystal. They begin at a high pitch and become low and guttural as their suffering deepens. The sound carries to the far bank where familiars lift their voices in an awful cacophony of howls and mewls and chirps and croaks. Vague outlines of stakes stud the ground like charred headstones.

  I listen until the numbness in my legs turns bitter and I can no longer control my breathing. Then I go back through the forest to my home in the village, where my Helga waits for me. The musky scent of old bed clothes greets me as I lift the blanket and climb in. I slip my arm around her stomach and she grunts. When I realize where my palm is, I readjust.

  When I cannot sleep I like to imagine the witches’ screams. Although, eventually my thoughts shift to the familiars and their mourning song. Only then do I grow weary. Then I sleep like a babe.

  08 Jan

  My friend, Georg, knows one of the sextons at the Häxenhaus. After several beers we’re able to convince him to speak on some of the devices.

  Most common, he says, is the rack: a wooden bench with rollers at either end where the accused’s hands and feet are attached. When the handle is turned, they rotate in opposite directions, eventually causing the subject’s bones to dislocate.

  There are the bootikens: a pair of iron casings that cover the witch’s shins and feet, and which are tightened with blows from a mallet, crushing them to pulp.

  The Judas Cradle is a tall, thin stool with a metal pyramid on top, which the victim is suspended above and lowered onto. The victim can be rocked or dropped repeatedly, and the device is never cleaned. If the pain doesn’t kill them, the infection often will.

  Perhaps most interesting is a device called the Pear of Anguish: a metal orb inserted into one of the witch’s orifices with a collection of metal “leaves” on top that separate when the technician tightens a screw.

  The sexton catches me smiling and looks surprised. Aghast even. He asks me why I want to know these things. Doesn’t the thought of them make me sick? I tell him that if ever a thought makes me nauseous I have only to think of my Klaus and all the things he might have been.

  “Witches or not,” the sexton says, his cheeks red as cherries. “I don’t care if it’s Lucifer himself, nobody deserves to suffer that way.”

  I look around to make sure no one has heard. “Perhaps not,” I murmur at last. “But they suffer all the same.”

  09 Jan

  “Good Evening, Kramer,” Father Schulz says. He is rubbing his temple, and his expression is haggard.

  “Good evening, Father. You know why I have come.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” He leans back and glances around the doorframe at something inside, then turns back. “Please wait here one moment,” he says, and disappears. I peer in after him. Despite the warm light seeping onto the doorstep, the front chamber is cold and bare: a circular room with stone walls and a high ceiling, several plain crucifixes adorning the stone.

  Father Schulz returns, carrying a broom and two wooden blocks—clackers used for contemplation. “You have seen them across the creek, haven’t you? The animals gathering?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “If you would like to help, please take these.”

  He hands me the broom and the blocks. “Pardon, Father, but wouldn’t it be better if I were to use something more… er… convincing?”

  Father Schulz shakes his head. “They are only animals—bewitched, but harmless. When you hear their voices use these to disperse them.”

  He pauses a moment, perhaps waiting for me to say something. “I pray your success,” he says finally. “Their sound has been disturbing Father Werner’s sleep, and the deprivation has begun to… affect him.”

  I can tell by the red rim around his own eyes the Father Werner isn’t the only one. This could be my chance. “I will carry out this duty with humility of heart, and sanctity of spirit…”

  “Thank you, Kramer,” he says, and slowly closes the door, smiling kindly until it is shut.

  I’m surprised by how clearly the witches’ screams carry across the water. I stroll along the channel of unwooded land between the creek and the forest, listening, until at last I hear their bitter whining down the bank. I hurry to the spot, twirling my broom and, because I cannot wield it and the clackers at the same time, shouting nonsense. A formation of silhouettes scatters, probably twenty different animals of varying shapes and sizes, back to the tree line, except for one: a dog—shepherd, it looks like—paws stretched in front of it, muzzle in the dirt, gazing across the creek at the Häxenhaus. I stop several feet away and stamp the ground with my feet.

  “Get thee gone, beast! I command you in the name of the Father, the Son…” but the dog doesn’t listen. Not until I smack its nose with the frayed edges of the broom does it shuffle backwards and look at me. I expect to see malice in its eyes, but there is none of that. Just a confused, hurt look that makes me suddenly want to love it.

  “Away!” I shout again, and this time it lowers its head and turns, slinking back toward the forest. Just before it disappears though, I catch another glimmer of those sad, pitiful eyes.

  I wait for a while longer, but I do not hear them again. At one point a toad croaks and I crush it with my boot, although looking back I think it was just the regular kind.

  I wade back across the creek to inform Father Schulz of my success. His enthusiasm isn’t what I’d hoped.

  17 Jan

  When I brought the dog home finally, I thought by Helga’s face that we’d woken from a bad dream. I’d expected him to be timid, careful with his new surroundings, but as soon as he heard her voice in the other room he went to greet her, burying his cold snout in her bed sheets. I followed, a little bit worried what the sudden unrestrained affection would do to her nerves, but found her smiling, full and flushed, sitting up in bed with the black shepherd standing with his front paws on the mattress, licking her cheek.

  “Oh, Kramer,” she said. “What is he doing here?”

  “I found him, darling,” I said. “I found him in the forest and he followed me home.”

  “He’s beautiful,” she said. “Are we going to keep him?”

  “Why not?”

  “What shall we name him?”

  I thought a moment, considered Klaus, but of course that would not be appropriate. “I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps he already has a name he answers to.”

  “We should ask him.”

  I sat down on the bed with the dog between us. Helga looked him in the eye while his tail wagged in my face. “What’s your name?” she asked, and at this his tail went rigid. I leaned back so I could watch my wife’s face; there was something solemn and focused in it, something I hadn’t seen before.

  “It’s Abalard,” she said at last, definitive.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, that’s what he told me. Abalard of Bern.”

  “He told you that?�
�

  She just smiled and turned back to the dog. I’d never heard my wife speak that way before, and at first I was concerned. Claiming to understand the thoughts of an animal was no little thing. But I could not be sure she was serious and, in any case, for the moment at least, did not care. She was smiling, she was happy, and in that moment I was sure that, whatever else it was, this was a dream we could live in together.

  18 Jan

  The Scavenger’s Daughter is a metal rack that compresses the victim’s body, forcing her head down and her knees tight against her chest, so the blood drains from her nose and ears. Subjects will often be left here to prime them for the rack, which stretches them back to excruciating effect.

  The Judas Chair is a throne studded with small iron spikes—a thousand of them—covering the back, arm rests, seat, leg rests, and foot rests. To restrict movement, the victim’s hands and feet are bound using leather straps, and iron bars are fitted across her chest and knees.

  Thumbscrews are often used, slowly crushing the accused’s thumbs as they are tightened.

  And there is the Virgin of Nuremberg, also known as the Iron Maiden: an iron coffin, seven feet tall, with strategically placed spikes along the inside that, when closed, pierce the victim’s flesh without harming any of the vital organs. None of the victim’s screams can be heard from outside, and nor can any sound reach the victim. It is completely dark, so that when the coffin opens and light suddenly pours in, the victim is overjoyed, even though it is only for a moment, and even though it is only so that the spikes may be reinserted.

  Suffering is an art form at the Häxenhaus. Idealized, with none of the complicated edges or hidden prongs we find in daily life. What you see is what you get, and what you get is awful. But at least you understand it. I wonder sometimes if I’m not being too generous, wishing such treatment upon people.

  24 Jan

  A group of witches is being brought to town today, to be burned in the square. All morning friends and strangers have been bringing by cakes and pastries, congratulating us. I try to be polite about it, to appear happy. Helga stays in the bedroom baby-talking Abalard of Bern.