The Book of Shadows

by James Reese

  The largest man I had ever seen. Tall and broad and blond, with thick arms that seemed to wrap twice around the struggling nun. He filled the doorway. Then, as a child lets go a toy top, he spun the nun from his hold and sent her reeling into the library proper, where she landed dizzily on the stone floor at Sebastiana’s feet. He stepped through the door behind her—stooping to do so—and running his hand through the curls of gold that hung to his shoulders, he hissed, “Damnable bitch!” and kicked the length of broken chain toward the nun. (How he broke the chain, I’ve no idea.) “She bit me!” He pushed up the full sleeve of his white blouse to show the marks on his thick wrist. Sebastiana said nothing, but it seemed the corners of her lips rose ever so slightly. As for Father Louis, he laughed aloud. At that the man slammed shut the library door.

  “Quiet!” chided Sebastiana. “They will come soon enough without us drawing them here.”

  “Tell that to this screaming…thing!” said the man, bending over Sister Claire and taking up a length of broken chain to wind around his fist. All the while he glared at Sister Claire, who continued her litany of curses and prayers. “Yes, yes, prattle on, you scheming, sanctimonious Christ-whore!”

  This man was Sebastiana’s age, perhaps a bit younger. Remarkably strong, the muscles of his forearms moved like snakes in a sack as he worked that chain. Indeed, it seemed he might pulverize the chain, grind it down to a silver powder. It seemed too that he might at any moment work the chain upon Sister Claire. With a single strike of his chain-wrapped fist he could split her head and…But all he did was speak, mocking Sister Claire, in simpering tones: “‘Dis Pater! Satan!’ Keep on! But be warned: flattery will not save you.” His wide, full mouth was twisted into a sneer, and his squared jaw, covered with some days’ growth of beard, was fiercely set. His eyes were a green to rival the blue of Sebastiana’s, and they shone out coolly from under his brow.

  As I admired him—not knowing I did so, at first—he turned and faced me for the first time. He took me in without comment, without expression. I felt my heart stop. I did not, could not draw a breath. Finally, thankfully, he looked away. Turning back to Sebastiana he said, flatly, “Let me kill her. Here and now.” I thought for a moment he meant me, and I—But no. He meant, of course, Sister Claire.

  Sebastiana rolled her eyes—those eyes!—and sighed. “Patience, patience.” And then she tried to calm the man with a question: “Besides,” she asked, “won’t our plan be more fun than simple, mere murder?”

  “Bah! I want her now!” And with that the man fell to one knee—his black leather boots rose high, over the knee and almost to the thigh; I could not tell where the soft hide ended and his black tights began—and he grabbed Sister Claire by the hair. He cocked his arm, his chain-wrapped fist poised to strike. “Yes,” he said, dreamily, “one blow to the face to break the bones of the cheeks. Or perhaps I should slap her into unconsciousness first. Show that much mercy at least…. Or should I wring her neck till the skull pops from the spine. Pop!” He laughed close in Sister Claire’s face. Hers was the face of a corpse dead of fright—the fixed expression of fear. Now he leaned even nearer; his lips fairly touched Sister Claire’s as he whispered, “I could kill you forever, and in infinite ways.” He then let the nun drop back onto the stone—her skull met it with a horrible crack—and he said, “But I won’t.”

  He stood. A full head taller than me. I could not look away from him. Who was he? Clearly he knew Sebastiana and, I assumed, the specters standing silently in the shadowed corner. How many more saviors would come? Yes, strange as they were I knew now that they’d all come to save me. You are safe…. But all thought withered away as I stood admiring the man. Such strength and beauty. Father Louis was a beautiful man, in life and after; but this being was different, more animal than man it seemed. His skin was tanned, bronzed by the sun, but still I could see that his excited blood had risen up the sides of his thick neck, risen to the surface of the thin skin under his eyes. He’d been enraged and was only now growing calmer. I was, at once, afraid and awed. He stood over Sister Claire, and his thinking was plain.

  “Asmodei, enough.” Sebastiana went to him, placing a hand on his rock-like shoulder to soothe and distract him; it seemed neither the gesture of a sister nor a lover—or was it both at once?—and again I wondered who and what my saviors were, what were they to one another?

  “Do you have the case?” asked Sebastiana. “The needles, the things we need?”

  The man—Asmodei—nodded; he could not pry his eyes from Sister Claire, who might have succeeded in crawling from him had he not brought his foot down on her ankle just then, pinning her in place. She screamed and he bent to slap her with the chained fist. “No, no,” said Sebastiana. “Behave…. Now, do you have the—”

  “Yes, yes, I have it,” he said. “I have the case.” He lifted his shirt and drew from his waistband a thick pouch. A square of black velvet. He handed it to Sebastiana. He looked at her, looked at me (my heart!) and, sighing, he walked to the window. “Yes, yes,” said Sebastiana; what she meant was, Yes, go, calm yourself.

  Though her tormentor had left her, Sister Claire knew better than to move. She lay crying on the floor. Her shift of worn burlap had risen over her hips to reveal her sex and the sets of stitch-like scars on either side of her stomach.

  Madeleine warned of passing time. She said that the others were gathering downstairs, that indeed they had heard the struggle between Asmodei and Sister Claire, the rattling chains, the slamming door. They attribute it to the advent of her devils.

  “For once they’re right,” opined the priest.

  Asmodei turned to look at Madeleine, who moved nearer Father Louis. “So be it,” said he, emphatically. “Let them come to die one by one! All their spilled blood will not sate me!”

  “Mon Dieu,” said Sebastiana, “such drama!” She was busy with the contents of that black pouch. “You send me back to the high days de l’opéra!”

  Father Louis’s laughter incited the man more.

  “I won’t have her,” said Asmodei, pointing at the succubus, “telling me what to do when—”

  “Take your ease, friend,” interrupted Father Louis. “All she says is that we must hurry if we are to save the witch.”

  Save the witch, echoed Madeleine. It was a plea, one she repeated twice more. I assumed she meant me. I was the witch to be saved. I concluded this not from what Sebastiana had said earlier. Rather, I was the one who needed saving. And quickly.

  It did not occur to me to wonder how it was Madeleine tracked the goings-on in the convent that morning. I’d later learn that while we’d all watched Asmodei grapple with the nun, she’d slipped away for the first time, unseen, to speed through the halls of the house. Before we even realized she had left, she returned. She would do this time and again, returning to offer her report.

  “All right. Let us start,” said Sebastiana.

  “Start what?” I asked.

  “Hush, dear heart. Do as I say; and ask no questions now.” And so when Sebastiana directed me to lie atop the library table, I did. And it was from there—supine and still—that I watched my saviors set to work.

  Father Louis cleared the table around me, piling the S-marked books on the windowsill, setting the painted platter and silverware aside and gathering up the torn dress, stained with blood and wine. Madeleine had taken the loaf of hardened black bread; softening it with wine, she fed pieces of it to Maluenda, who seethed audibly at Sister Claire from the library’s darkest corner. Indeed, my familiar had returned. (Surely it was she who’d snacked on that rat earlier.) I’d missed her! There she sat now, seemingly fine, her ears cut as they’d been, but she looked no worse for having flown from the library’s sill. I was so relieved to see that cat again, so relieved.

  While Sebastiana busied herself with the velvet case and its contents, Asmodei moved to stand over Sister Claire. I watched from where I lay on the long table. I expected him to attack. And judging from Sister Claire’s crab-li
ke scampering away at his approach, so too did she. Asmodei, with one lunge, overtook her. He towered over the cowering nun, whose threadbare shift now revealed even more of her body. I saw then the scratches on her neck and face that Maluenda had left; apparently, in the struggle with Asmodei, the clotted wounds had opened and begun to bleed again. She was praying. She wondered aloud why God had shown her Satan, to which Asmodei responded, “You’ve not seen anything yet, ma chère.” And with one quick tug he stripped the nun of her shift, tore it from her. And then he tore from her the hairshirt, the rough-dried animal hide she wore beneath her shift. I saw more scars, those horrible markings of her false faith, the black and infected Xs that ringed her hips; the rose thorns she’d sewn into her shift to sanctify her sleep had scarred her deeply. “So,” mused Asmodei, speaking to no one in particular while looking the nun up and down, “it seems the good sister has a fondness for pain. Interesting.” He knelt, took up that same length of chain again, and leaning into the nun’s face, said, “Well, this must be your lucky day, holy one.” He fingered a dark scar at her side; this caused the nun to wince. I turned away, toward the window.

  But he didn’t beat her. All he did, chain in hand, was lift the naked nun and carry her to the table. He laid her down so that, head-to-head, Sister Claire and I covered the length of the table. I could no longer see her, but I could sense her—too near—and I could of course hear her cries until Madeleine, saying she’d heard enough, tore a strip of pink fabric from the dress and fashioned a gag, which she stuffed in the nun’s mouth. And then I heard again the rattling of chains as Asmodei, presumably, secured Sister Claire to the table; perhaps he used those same shackles that had held me, perhaps it was some other lock.

  Secured as she was, Sister Claire could do nothing but writhe and rock from side to side on the table. Her muffled screams and prayers, her curses and those rattling chains…she must have exhausted my saviors’ patience, for I heard them confer—the men laughed, though it was Madeleine who first mentioned Maluenda—and next thing I knew they’d set the cat on Sister Claire, on her chest. As if to weight her, still her. Sebastiana cautioned the cat against the too liberal use of her claws. “Only if need be,” said she. Sister Claire’s cries stopped. Rather, the cries devolved to pleas and more prayer, whimpering, simpering prayer. I could tell she prayed, even though the words themselves tangled in the net of that gag. Yes, her voice was fraught with fear. But the cat remained, and the nun lay still beneath it. I wondered if she’d fainted away. I almost pitied her. Almost.

  “Are you ready yet?” asked Asmodei.

  “Nearly.” Sebastiana, who’d been muttering her own imprecations over whatever it was she drew from the velvet case, came close to tell me, with apologies, that I had to be naked. Before I could wonder why, the priest appeared beside me to peel away the thin blue robe Sebastiana had wrapped around me earlier—a bolt of blue silk, really; unfitted, fine. He unwrapped me, slowly, as though I were a gift he’d been given. He savored me, looked me up and down. Admired me. “Amazing,” said he, setting his icy hands on my small breasts, where the rush of blood took fast effect. He took each thickened nub between a forefinger and thumb and pinched, just so, lightly, as he said to Asmodei, “Come see.”…Perhaps I was growing accustomed to the priest’s…attentions, but as for this Asmodei…

  The other man came to stand beside me, just behind Father Louis. “Look,” said the priest, waving his hand over my body. “Have you ever seen the like?” But Asmodei did not answer. His eyes ranged up my body to stop at my eyes; his were the hard green of emeralds, emotionless. He neither ridiculed nor admired me. Mere appraisal, it was; and this I took as a kindness. Then I saw Sebastiana pass him the black velvet case. “It is time,” said she. I saw again the flash of anger, the flush of blood to his cheeks as Asmodei looked behind me to where Sister Claire lay. Then he stepped back and I could no longer see him.

  Hurry, urged the succubus. The girls are gathered in the Great Hall, waiting only for Sister Claire to descend. She said too that certain elders and villagers had just arrived.

  “Well,” said Asmodei, “I’m afraid they’ll have to wait a long while, for their Head, as they call her, is…is distracted at present.” He was teasing Sister Claire, teasing or torturing her; judging by Father Louis’s laughter, it would seem both men were engaged in the playing of a game.

  “Tell me now,” said Sebastiana, busy beside me, working her hands over the contents of the case, “did everything go as planned in the nun’s cell?” I’d assumed she addressed Asmodei, but it was Madeleine who responded:

  Yes. Yes, said the succubus. Perfectly as planned; and then she went on to tell how she’d appeared to Sister Claire in her cell. How she’d taken the shape of “the other one” (only later would I learn that she meant Peronette) and had “sexed the woman good.” Given her what she’d long desired and denied. Made a mockery of her desire and denial. And, laughing, Madeleine told how, in the throes of passion, she’d shape-changed and bled her own blood all over the impassioned nun. Quite a show, it was, said the succubus to me.

  It seemed that Asmodei had appeared just as Sister Claire tasted the succubus’s blood and started to scream; as planned, he silenced her, restrained her, and relieved Madeleine, who returned to Father Louis and me in the library. (Here again she referred to me as a witch—“Louis and the witch,” she said.) So she hadn’t been in the shadows all night; she’d visited with Sister Claire as Louis had visited with me; but where Louis had sought to teach, to pave the way for belief, Madeleine had sought to terrify, to torture…. I could not, cannot imagine what she might have done to Sister Claire.

  “And you, Asmo?” asked Sebastiana. “I was a bit worried. It’s been a while since you—”

  “Yes,” admitted the man. “It’s been a long while; and as you know,” over this they shared a smile, “I have never been one for the subtleties of your craft.”

  “To say the least,” concurred Sebastiana.

  “And making a golem,” said Asmodei, “…c’est difficile. The infernal words of that spell…”

  “Infernal, indeed,” said Father Louis.

  Asmodei went on: “I stumbled a bit over it all, yes, but in the end it worked. It worked quite well, in fact.”

  “Excellent,” said Sebastiana. It was then I saw she worked her fingers over a collection of silver needles, such as those Father Louis had suffered long ago in his attic cell. I said nothing. Sebastiana spoke:

  “Creating the likeness from the soil and clotted blood, that is the easy part,” said she. “It’s animating the golem that is tricky.”

  “But a golem is not animate,” said Asmodei. “That would be an effigy, no? That is what we must do here. Is that not the plan?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Sebastiana; “…minor distinctions….” She looked up from the needles, which she held fanned in her hand, and asked, almost dreamily, of Asmodei, “Do you remember back in Paris, on the eve of the Reveillon riots, when we—”

  Please, moaned Madeleine. We haven’t an eternity!

  “No, dear,” returned Sebastiana. “But you will, if I fail here due to your distraction. Hush!” Sebastiana, ignoring the specter’s sulky response, said to Asmodei, in summation, “It went well then, upstairs?”

  “As planned,” said he. “A likeness now lies upstairs on the nun’s pallet. Dead, or so it will seem to whoever finds it…rather, finds her there.” He spoke quickly of the fun he’d had stabbing a dagger down into the golem while Sister Claire watched. “Running it through, thinking all the while of this one!” He must have pained Sister Claire then, in some way, for a muffled cry escaped from her. Father Louis, too, took a turn: her cry built to a terrible moan, and under it he and Asmodei laughed lightly.

  “Boys, no,” said Sebastiana, unhappily distracted. “Wait.”

  Asmodei, as if to recap his achievement, told how, when Madeleine returned to check his progress, he’d had her splatter the nun’s cell with her own blood. “No one,” he c
oncluded proudly, “no one will doubt that the newly named Mother Superior was murdered in her sleep.” What’s more, he’d had Madeleine leave a blood trail between the nun’s cell and the lesser library, “to help the simpletons put all the pieces together.”

  “But the blood, it fades in a few hours,” said Sebastiana.

  And so they will have a slight miracle, too, answered Madeleine. Now on with this, please! The girls are asking after Sister Claire, wondering why she has not yet descended. They speak of sending a party up to her cell.

  “All right, quickly then…” This from Sebastiana, who placed the cool back of her hand against my cheek, caressed me, and said, “This will hurt, dear heart; but it must hurt if it is to work.”

  “And it won’t hurt you nearly as much as it will hurt her,” added Father Louis; I could see him nod toward where Sister Claire lay beneath Asmodei’s ministrations. “Take solace from that,” said he, “from your accuser’s greater pain.” Again, visions of Father Louis suffering the Question, the search for the Devil’s Mark, the consuming flames.

  “What…what are you going to do to me now?” I asked.

  “Do you trust me, totally?” asked Sebastiana in response.

  I said I did. I heard again her words: You are safe.

  “Good. Let us begin,” and as she signaled Asmodei thusly, I saw the silver needles glinting in her grip. Each as long as my first finger. Each so sharp the tip was invisible. In her other hand was a small, crudely shaped wax figure. A doll. Fashioned, I saw, from the candle that had burned all through the night, until Father Louis had put it to illicit purpose.

  “Close your eyes,” said Sebastiana.

  Yes, counseled the succubus. Do.

  I prayed that whatever would come would come quickly; and I braced for the pain. “That’s a good girl,” said Sebastiana; and at this, Asmodei laughed till silenced by the succubus: