Auntie Ann’s lips flattened into a thin line, like a grim scar of pale white flesh.
“Who the hell is that?” Maria’s voice shook a little as she glanced back and forth at the others. “What the hell is that?”
“A vampire,” Lorraine murmured. “Be careful, Maria.”
“He isn’t here for the girl,” Auntie Ann said.
The boy – Lorraine couldn’t help but think of him as that, with his taut skin and bright eyes and features forever frozen only most of the way to manhood – took a couple of steps toward Auntie Ann before smoothly dropping to one knee, his eyes downcast. “I need your help.” He paused. “Please, Annie.”
Lorraine noted with genuine surprise that the monster’s voice was shaking.
Auntie Ann did not address the visitor when she spoke. Her eyes stayed on him but her voice was pitched at Maria. “Percy killed my father,” she said. “You wanted to know about my past? There it is.” The thinnest knife’s edge of bitterness crept into Auntie Ann’s voice, a scalpel in an old wound. “This creature is why I’m here.” She paused and seemed to address him now. “You’re why I became a witch.” To Maria again: “See, my Daddy used to drink too much. Percy saved me from him, but that salvation came with a price: joining Percy for all time. When I refused, Percy broke half the bones in Daddy’s body then turned him so he’d be trapped that way forever.” Her voice stumbled for just a moment. “Daddy ended it at the next sunrise. I had no family left: just me and my books and a world to understand.” She finally met Maria’s wide eyes. “And here I am.”
“I meant to save you,” Percival said. His voice threatened to crack. “I was young. I thought…”
“You thought?” Auntie Ann’s voice was sharp like an arrowhead, stabbing deep. “Don’t lie to me, Percy.” She made a noise a little like a laugh. “Don’t lie to your betters. I was a girl when you met me but I’ve gotten old. So have you.”
“This…” Warren finally spoke from the corner. “This is some seriously weird reverse-Bella shit.”
“Tell me what it is you want.” Auntie Ann’s voice was hard and cold and sharp, but also low. She never yelled. She was still the crone and her voice strained under the weight of all this speaking.
Percy remained quiet, his eyes low. He opened his mouth, drew part of a breath, held it and considered what to say. “I’m on a quest,” he said. He addressed it to Auntie Ann’s black and gray comfort slip-ons, the ones Lorraine always thought of as being old woman shoes. He looked up. “I want to die with a clean conscience.”
Auntie Ann raised one eyebrow just the tiniest bit. “Do tell.”
Lorraine wondered if Percy saw Auntie Ann as she was or as she had been the last time he had seen her. A lot of years had passed, and Lorraine knew Percy had, in his own way, loved the maiden who was now the crone.
Percy spoke again. “Used to be, I could just wander all up and down the mountains on my lonesome until I found some company for a while. Now things are different. There are cameras everywhere; cars everywhere; people everywhere. There are houses and highways and lights on all night.” He looked away from Auntie Ann as he trailed off, his eyes focusing on some middle distance where he could watch remembrances of times gone by.
“So now it’s difficult, you’re going to give up?” Auntie Ann was unimpressed. She’d crossed her arms over her chest and gazed down at the boy.
“People are so afraid now, Annie.”
When he said her name like that, Lorraine’s heart nearly broke despite knowing better than to trust or believe. That was precisely what Auntie Ann had said: if you meet a vampire, never trust and never believe. They will show you how much monster they are.
“You remember the way we walked through those woods when it was dark and you were scared? You were scared of one man, one set of fists. People these days – the whole world – they’re scared like that all the time: scared of what they see on the news, what they hear from their kids…” He trailed off for a moment. “I went out in the world to find someone who could be brave, someone who could love. I don’t know if that exists anymore.”
Warren scribbled furiously in his grimoire. Maria stood in silence. Auntie Ann’s features did not soften.
“If you just want to die, that’s easy,” Auntie Ann said. “Death’s never further than a sunrise away. My father knew that. He didn’t need a quest to do it, either.”
“I know,” Percy lowered his eyes again. “But there’s… an old story. A legend. Some say there’s a way for me to go to Heaven and I’ll be damned if I’m not gonna try. First, I need to ask the forgiveness of someone I’ve wronged.”
“So you’re here to ask me to forgive you?”
“No.” The room fell silent. “The rumor is you know someone who can make a ghost appear if I have something precious to them. Is that true?”
Auntie Ann looked away from Percy at last to shift her gaze first to Maria and then to Lorraine. “I think we’ve found the one who needs us this night. Do we agree?”
Lorraine nodded. “We do.”
Maria’s voice was practically a squeak. “We do.”
Auntie Ann looked to Warren, waiting while he wrote. He finally looked up. “Uh,” he said. “We do.”
Auntie Ann nodded “We’ll help you, Percy. But you will owe us a great debt. Do you accept?”
Percy did not hesitate. “I do.”
“I think it’s only fair to warn you,” Lorraine said to Percy as they stood outside the Hinson Memorial Library, “This witch is not on friendly terms with us. He may drive a hard bargain. He may refuse altogether.”
“And we will not force him to act on your behalf.” Auntie Ann’s voice was quiet but serious. This was the unwritten law between covens and between one witch and another: no one is in charge. No one wanted a repeat of the wars.
“You won’t have to,” Percy said. “If I’m to prove myself worthy I must act alone.”
“Semi-alone,” Maria said. The vampire showed a moment of surprise tinged with insult and Maria blanched. “I mean, you had to come to us to find the guy, right?”
Lorraine knocked three times, a trio of firm raps with a heartbeat of silence between each. It was a witch’s knock: in the South, people still say the Devil knocks three times when he calls.
There was a long wait. This library was a squat, dilapidated structure of old concrete set back from the road. It had seen better decades. The door swung inward a couple of inches as though the building itself didn’t want whatever they were selling and was tired of telling them no. Eyes gleamed in the shadows beyond.
“Hello, Harold.” Lorraine said. Her tone was not unkind; nor was it kind. “Merry meet.”
“Go to hell,” the old man said.
“Not just yet,” Lorraine said with a very small smile.
Percy stepped forward, green eyes blazing. “I need to speak with the dead, sir,” he said very softly. “I’m told you can help with that.”
“I’m not in that practice anymore,” Harold growled in reply. He glared at Lorraine. “They won’t let me.” Looking directly at Lorraine while he spoke, he said, “They took all my tools, all the precious things I used to call the dead.”
“We told you not to abuse the dead.” Auntie Ann’s voice crackled and spat but it also commanded attention. “We said nothing about stopping communication altogether.”
Harold looked back and forth between Lorraine and Auntie Ann and then at Percival. “No. You can’t make me.” He chuckled. “Witches don’t hurt one another. They may have taken my tools but they didn’t hurt me.” He smirked now, brimming with tiny triumph. His tone curdled as his wrinkled face bunched up. “They left a ghost here to watch over me.” Harold laughed a strangled chortle. “Can’t touch me, can’t so much as lift a paperclip, but it tattles.” He grimaced. “So no, I won’t help you.”
Percival stepped closer, skin glowing in the moonlight, and whispered as he spoke. “Witches may not hurt one another,” he said, “A ghost may not be able
to harm you, either.” He smiled. “But I am something altogether different.” His fangs slid into view. “They’ve already told me they won’t intervene on my behalf. I wonder, does that go both ways?”
Harold’s lips quivered and he let out a sound of disgust but his eyes gleamed with something like an idea. “Fine, I’ll do your magic – if you’ll pay my price.” He smirked a little. “I want a pint of your blood.”
Percy snarled and put his finger in the middle of Harold’s chest. After a moment he recovered something of himself. “That’s a lot to ask. We don’t just go around handing it out.”
“That,” Harold said through gritted teeth, “is my price. Take it or leave it.”
They held each other’s gaze for a moment and then Percy fluttered his lips in frustration. “Fine.” he said. “It won’t matter for very long anyway.”
Harold turned and shuffled off deeper into the library. He didn’t invite them in but neither did he shut the door.
“Did you really station a ghost here?” Percival looked at Auntie Ann.
“Yes,” Lorraine answered. “Grant was once one of us. Now he keeps an eye on Harold because Harold needs eyes kept on him. Is it wise to give such a man some of your blood?” She arched one eyebrow.
“It’s been a long century,” Percy said. “I’m ready to go.”
“You must have something precious to the spirit,” Harold said. “If there’s any night when magic is easy, it’s Samhain, but you must have something they most dearly loved or lost, to form a link.”
“I have the spirit’s blood,” Percy said. “I’ve had it in me for many years. If it isn’t in your jar there, it’ll be in my veins.”
Harold smiled, screwing the top onto an old jelly jar he filled with the viscous, oily blood Percy squeezed from the wound he made in his own wrist.
They gathered in the middle of the library’s main room. There were rows of bookshelves taking up most of Harold’s library but the very center was a large, open circle with a reference desk to one side. Behind it was what had been his shrine to Santa Muerte: an ancient book pedestal fashioned from dark wood. Harold worked quickly to arrange a handful of candles around it. The pedestal itself was draped in a thick black velvet shroud. It said “witchcraft” in a way few other arrangements could.
Lorraine was a little surprised to find herself admiring it.
The Book People had taken four points describing an arc around Percival with Harold as the fifth. Harold struck a match and with it lit each of the candles in rapid, practiced motions. Light sprang from them and the whole room was bathed in gold. He took the edge of the black shroud between his fingertips and said simply, his voice flat, “The veil is thin.”
With a tug Harold pulled the shroud from the shrine and revealed the book underneath: an old black journal of the kind found amongst school supplies. Stepping from the shadows, a sixth form joined them in the circle; but this one existed only from the waist up and was slightly transparent. Grant’s ghost and Lorraine nodded at one another. Just like that, one of the dead had arrived.
Harold turned and held the black fabric before him, speaking in hushed tones. “Let the veil be drawn aside for the one you seek. Speak their name to call them here.” His magic was clean, efficient, sparse. Lorraine wondered if they’d done Harold’s magic a favor by taking his tools, and forcing him to boil the process down so.
Percy spoke without hesitation. “Jefferson Wall.”
Auntie Ann drew a sharp breath.
The spirit arrived in the blink between two instants of time. One moment, nothing, the next there was a man in a filthy shirt with mussed hair and hollows where his eyes had been. Those cavernous not-eyes, black and shining like opal, revealed no movement but Lorraine could sense the spirit searching around himself as if to find his bearings.
The ghost’s voice sounded like wind in the branches on the other side of a deep wood. “Who disturbs my rest?”
“Percival McAllister,” Percy said. His head was again bowed. He was deferential to the point of making obeisance. “I have brought you here to ask the unaskable, sir: to be forgiven for the crimes I perpetrated against you.”
“You…” The spirit’s voice was a sorrowful sigh. “You took my little girl from me.”
Percy was silent, as though debating with himself whether to object. “Yes,” he finally said. “I come now seeking your leave to set aside the guilt I feel for having wronged you. I wish to die forgiven.” Percy’s voice faltered for a moment, though Lorraine couldn’t tell with what exact combination of emotions.
The ghost’s eyes searched blankly for long seconds. Finally it replied. “For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. James, chapter 1, verse 20.” The ghost’s face turned towards where Percy knelt before it. “I forgive you; not for your sake, but for mine.” The ghost lifted its face and turned in the direction of Auntie Ann. “Is there another here who would speak with me?”
Lorraine looked at the crone and was surprised to see tears on her cheeks. Auntie Ann was quiet for a moment before saying, “Be at peace, Daddy”
There was a sound like a door closing and in the space between two measurements of time the ghost was gone.
Percy started to stand, but Harold’s voice rang out clear and strong. “Kneel, slave.” He looked at the vampire with open contempt and his lips curled back with smug satisfaction.
“Annie?” Percival said, still bent. “Annie, I can’t move.”
Harold looked around at them. “You know how my magic works.” His voice was reedy again, the momentary surge in power gone. “I control the dead by what’s most precious to them. You let a vampire give me his blood. Oh, you miserable, do-gooder fools. We are witches! No, I am a witch. I wield the power I have. I suffer no insult and take no pity because none has been taken on me.” He spoke with renewed strength. “Stand, slave.”
Percival rose, standing now, his eyes wide with panic. “Annie,” he said, though he didn’t scream. “Annie, he’s making me do what he says. Annie, you have to run. Annie run.”
“She’s an old woman. She can't run.” Harold smiled, his back to the candles, and Lorraine could just make out the glint of his glasses and the shine of his teeth. He coughed once, a wet rattle. “And as for you, a vampire is just as dead as any spirit. You said you could hurt people? Let’s find out just what you meant. Destroy them, slave. Destroy the ones who dared to take my tools and shame me. Destroy the witches who interfered.”
Percy’s jaw opened and his lips pulled back. His tongue lolled out, red and wet as fresh blood. Lorraine could see the teeth of a monster, and his hands curling like claws. The eyes, though: the eyes never ceased searching and Lorraine could see the sorrow deep inside.
Lorraine did the thing she knew to do. Drawn from some unexpected memory, some half-remembered reading from college days: “I do not want to know you, and I will not know you. Don’t try to come nearer! Ship of Fools!” Auntie Ann’s book at their first Wandering of the night had looked familiar to her and Lorraine now remembered a line from it on her own.
Percival dragged himself forward and stood a few feet from Auntie Ann, hesitating before taking the next step. Clearly terrified of his own body and the terrible weapon he had become, Percy squeezed shut his eyes and stood, blind and wavering, mid-advance.
Warren said, “I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: that piece cannot be moved.” He drew a rapid, shallow breath. “Kierkegaard.”
Maria grinned. “You taught me language and my profit on it,” she said, her maiden’s voice high, “You taught me language, and my profit on it is, I know how to curse. The Tempest.”
“Kill them, slave!” Harold howled the command, fighting back against the witches’ magic, the jelly jar clutched in one of his hands. The air around them surged and bucked with magic. “I hold your blood!”
Auntie Ann, last to speak, narrowed her eyes at Harold and whispered, “For words are slippery and thought is
viscous. The Education of Henry Adams.”
The vial slipped, suddenly slick between Harold’s fingers, and shattered against the library floor.
Percival remained, wavering, his features twisted, his eyes screwed shut.
Harold growled as though pushing a great weight with tremendous effort. Percival took another slow, grinding step towards Auntie Ann. The vial of thick, black blood had been destroyed but the magic was still working. Percy stood no more than three paces from his ancient love.
Auntie Ann suddenly laughed, a girlish sound, shocking in the darkness and candlelight, in the frozen moment of their mutual doom. “Of course,” she said. “Of course.” She clucked her tongue, ignoring the struggle Percy waged at the center of the magical tug of war between the others. “Percy’s blood isn’t the most precious thing he’s ever known.” She smiled. “And my father’s blood was not so precious to him, either, considering how eager he seemed to water it down in the end.” Percy took another step – just two away – and Auntie Ann stepped forward to close the gap. Her hand lifted to touch the razor’s edge of that monster’s skinny jaw.
“I was the most precious thing to each of them, and it’s my presence here that gave you the power to summon and bind them both.” Auntie Ann spoke calmly, clearly, more so than Lorraine had heard her speak in a very long time. Quicker than anyone could see, there was a silver knife in Auntie Ann’s hands.
“You can’t intervene!” Harold cried out in desperation, straining with all the will his wilted frame could muster, pushing with the potent magic of hate. “You told him so yourself, you can’t intervene on his behalf. You set your intention. You made the rules.”
Auntie Ann lifted the knife and smiled. “I may not be able to do it for him,” she said, “or for you. But I can refuse to be a part of magic without my being asked. I can do that for me. I won’t watch it happen and I sure as hell won’t be used.”
Wrapped in Black: Thirteen Tales of Witches and the Occult Page 8