The Book of Shadows

by James Reese

  Three girls are on their way up to the nun’s chamber, said Madeleine. Please, hurry!

  Sebastiana bent over me now; she’d plucked hairs from above my right ear before I even heard her apologize for doing so. My eyes flew open as though those hairs had been strings tied to my very eyelids; and I watched through tears as Sebastiana wound the hairs around the head of the ill-formed doll. She said something. Part of a spell.

  “Very…nearly…ready,” said she. “And you?”

  “Yes,” said Asmodei. “Much easier on my end: no doll to worry about. I just stick the needles right into the flesh, correct?” Sister Claire screamed, screamed till she choked on the gag, beat her heels against the oak. Asmo, apparently, had needles of his own.

  “Oui,” affirmed Sebastiana. “As I stick the doll, and no sooner. Remember: timing…c’est très important.”

  Father Louis stood over me, across the table from Sebastiana. He took my hand, and it was then I knew, truly understood that what they were going to do would hurt. And, though I am ashamed to say it, knowing that the rite—whatever it was—would hurt Sister Claire worse than it would hurt me did lessen my pain.

  Madeleine reported that the girls were knocking now on Sister Claire’s door. Indeed, I could hear them.

  “Witch,” said Asmodei with impatience, “what is taking so long?”

  “Silence,” commanded Sebastiana. “I haven’t fashioned an effigy since, well…it’s been some time.”

  “Perhaps you should have practiced.”

  “Perhaps I should have. On you…. Now silence!”

  A muffled cry from Sister Claire. And light laughter from the incubus, who looked over my head at the nun. What was Asmodei doing to Sister Claire? Whatever it was Sebastiana told him to stop, and he did, countering her command with, “Get on with it then, or I’ll simply strangle this one and we’ll leave the other!” He meant me, of course.

  No! begged Madeleine.

  “Brilliant,” said Sebastiana. “Litter the convent with corpses and arouse all suspicion. Start an inquiry that will—”

  “Surely you’re not afraid of these fools?” asked Asmodei.

  “Of course not. But neither can I be bothered with them.”

  Please, do not abandon the witch.

  I heard Father Louis whisper to Madeleine, “Do not worry. They want her as badly as we need her. She,” and he meant Sebastiana, “has to save her. It’s part of their creed or…or some such thing, is it not?” Sebastiana said nothing.

  We all of us heard then the cries from the girls at Sister Claire’s door—cries that summoned townsmen upstairs. This was followed by the slow beating down of Sister Claire’s door. Madeleine had bolted the door from the inside after Asmodei had taken Sister Claire away. Hurry, said Madeleine now. They are almost in the nun’s cell.

  “Genius, to have slipped the bolt that way,” said Sebastiana. “We’ll need the few moments that bolt will earn us.” She wrapped pieces of the pink dress around the doll. “Genius,” said she again.

  “Thank you,” said Asmodei. He was teasing Madeleine, whose response was:

  It was my idea. I ought to be commended.

  “What I ought to do,” said Sebastiana, “is leave you to bleed through another century or two…. Silence, both of you!”

  How did Madeleine and her bleeding factor into all this? Why did she seem so intent on effecting my escape? What was this “plan” of theirs? I knew not to ask such questions. Still, Father Louis, mercifully, offered an explanation of sorts.

  While Sebastiana worked, while Asmodei waited to play his part on the body of the nun and while Madeleine stole through the halls of C——unseen, Father Louis explained. “It’s simple, really,” said he. He bent over and whispered in my ear so as not to disturb Sebastiana, who worked the wax doll and seemed to struggle a bit with the requisite spell. (I know now that he sought to distract me from the coming pain, too.) “Madeleine left the library earlier, during our…tête-à-tête”—here he smiled and tightened his cold grip on my hand—“and met up with Asmodei in the nun’s cell. She slipped into the cell, visited the nun in the shape of your lost one, Peronette—that was her name, was it not?” I nodded. “Madeleine worked upon the nun, who took it all to be delirium, some sublime dream. A dream she’d had a hundred times before. But then Madeleine…my sometimes mean and mischievous Madeleine, changed shape. I don’t know what shapes she took. Perhaps just her own—that can be frightening enough to a mere mortal.” Here he laughed. “Then again, in the past, she has been wont to adopt the shapes of the most ghastly hags.”

  Sebastiana worked on the wax, the words of her spell having fallen to a whisper. Asmodei stood silently by. Sister Claire was still. And Madeleine, I assumed, checked the progress of my accusers.

  “Meanwhile,” continued Father Louis, “Asmodei worked up a golem from soil and blood. A simple spell and such golems take the shape of the intended.” I wondered, Is this Asmodei a witch, or a warlock, or a wizard or whatever one calls such a…? “No,” said Father Louis, reading my thoughts. “But he has…access, if you will—access to…let us just say he has access to aspects of the craft.” The incubus said that Asmodei had left the likeness in the nun’s stead and carried the true and struggling Sister Claire down to the library.

  So far I understood; and I nodded when he asked as much.

  “Now Sebastiana is making an effigy. A likeness of you; but unlike the golem, this one will be alive…. A much more difficult task.” It seemed he couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, I know,” said he, “believe me, I know how hard it is to understand all this. Indeed, it’s only slightly easier to explain. But you’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

  Finally, he spoke of the plan’s end, said we’d leave Sister Claire—who’d appear to be me—in my place and make our escape. Escape. I clung to the word. That I could understand.

  “As I say, you’ll see for yourself.” The incubus stood and shrugged his shoulders at Sebastiana, as if to say, That is the best I can do.

  Madeleine reported that the door to the cell was indeed down. She said too that they’d discovered the “dead” Sister Claire de Sazilly. And the blood trail as well. They’re taking fast to it now, said she.

  “I am ready,” said Sebastiana; and then two things happened simultaneously: Sister Claire let go a pained noise and I felt a quick, sharp stab in my chest.

  “Hold her,” said Sebastiana to Father Louis, adding, to me, apologetically, “The first one hurts the worst. Just twelve more now…”

  She was piercing the wax doll with thirteen silver needles. And as she was sliding the thin needles into the doll and causing my pains, Asmodei was driving his set of needles into Sister Claire’s very flesh.

  “Count with her, Louis. Twelve more.”

  The next pain came to my right hand. Then the left. Tolerable. Though not so for Sister Claire: she rocked the table and screamed despite the gag that choked her. Her screams were more than matched by Asmodei’s laughter, which rang like a cracked bell and resounded through the lesser library.

  “Nine more,” whispered Father Louis. “Nothing to it.” A cold kiss at my temple.

  Each foot. My forehead. “Eight, seven, six,” said the priest.

  They’re coming. Hurry! said Madeleine. Sebastiana tensed. The distant screams no longer seemed so distant. Asmodei no longer laughed. They were coming, indeed.

  The final five needles were the worst. My breasts. My navel and my anus. The very last one was in my mouth, at the center of my tongue. “That’s so she’ll sound like you when she speaks,” said Father Louis. “Or rather, screams.”

  “Done.” Sebastiana held up the doll—a thing of white wax, pink tulle, and hair, run through with thirteen silver needles—and asked Asmodei, “Success?”

  “Indeed. Nicely done.”

  Father Louis, too, commended Sebastiana.

  Please, shouted Madeleine. They are on their way!

  What happened from that point forward remains a b
lur of magic and motion. I rose naked from the table, aided by the priest, and stepped into the blue wrap proffered by Sebastiana. I then turned to see…I saw standing…right before me…. My twin! Sister Claire de Sazilly. As me! Dressed in that foolish frilled pink dress—resewn through some aspect of the Dark Art—she stood barefoot before me, and I stood staring…at myself! Perhaps I spoke. More likely, no.

  Sister Claire did not speak. She was still gagged.

  Asmodei hauled the effigy to the chair and chained her there. She did not struggle. Was she resigned, spell-bound…had Sebastiana, in changing her outward appearance, also rendered her docile, dumb? Or was it simply a trance?

  The cuffs were clamped around her ankles, just as they’d been around mine. Sister Claire choked on the gag, seeping now like a second tongue from her mouth. Asmodei laughed, laughed till Sebastiana scolded him, told him to step back from the effigy.

  …The shuffling of slippers and boots along the stony corridors, on the central stairway. The scratch of metal on stone: They have weapons, said the succubus. They will strike.

  “They are too late,” said Sebastiana. “We have already struck.”

  Father Louis shoveled the books from the sill into a large leather sack that he drew from I don’t know where. Madeleine returned the library to how it had appeared when first my jailers had locked the door against me, not twelve hours earlier. The earthenware pitcher, the candle, the chipped crystal goblet, everything was put in its place. (The blood she spilled in the process only furthered their end. “That is good, yes,” said Father Louis of the blood. “The Devil’s Trace,” he called it.) Sebastiana tied the needles into the black velvet case.

  I stood watching. It was then I realized something: none of these four—two spirits, incubus and succubus; a witch; and a demon or sorcerer or devil-man—none of these four feared for themselves, for their safety…. It was then I knew I would leave C——alive.

  Asmodei tore the wet pink gag from the mouth of the effigy. Sebastiana cast words in an ancient tongue. And Sister Claire…rather, me…the effigy…I started to scream. It was my voice I heard. Screaming.

  “It worked,” said Sebastiana. “Are you all right, dear? Not bad, I should think, considering.” And then, to Asmodei, “Are we ready?”

  He said indeed we were, and we—excluding Asmodei—gathered at the lesser library’s back door. Sebastiana and I, hand in hand; Father Louis, holding the bag of books; and Madeleine. Sister Claire sat staring at us, at me in particular; and from her issued screams and screams and screams; and then somehow she stilled herself enough to speak. I stood listening to…myself, or my voice as it railed against devils and demons and all the misdeeds she’d seen; as it began to spin the tale she’d deliver to the disbelieving assembly, then being led by Madeleine’s blood to the library’s primary door. Dumbstruck, I would have waited to hear the whole tale told, but Sebastiana called me back with a tug of my hand. “Let us quit this place,” said she, “as soon as…”

  …It was Maluenda. I watched as Asmodei lifted the cat from the effigy’s lap. It would not go without a final scratch, fast across the face. My face. I flinched when I saw it, fairly felt it!

  “Shhh!” said Asmodei to the crying cat, holding it near enough to the effigy for its every third or fourth swipe to catch the disguised Sister Claire. “Your cries are loud enough to…to wake the dead!”

  “Come,” said Sebastiana, stepping from the library, into the gallery. We could all of us hear the footfall of my accusers, coming along the corridor. It sounded as though some already stood on the far side of the library’s main door.

  Please! Do it now! moaned Madeleine. She spoke to Asmodei, still holding the cat.

  “Oh, all right,” said he to the succubus; and I watched as Asmodei took Maluenda to the window and, throwing it wide, with all his strength hurled the cat out over the sill. Yes, hurled it out! Out the window! I let go of Sebastiana’s hand and rushed forward a step, two steps…but I stopped when I saw:

  There, against the rising blue, the cat had burst into a flock of blackest birds. Rooks, or ravens. Birds that darted and wheeled through the dawning light.

  I stopped. Was still.

  It’s part of the plan, said Madeleine.

  Sebastiana, coming to stand behind me, said I ought not worry, that I would see the familiar again, and very soon. She said too that she liked the name I’d given her precious pet (and I knew then: it was hers, not mine), liked it far better than the name she’d called it all these years; with my permission, she thought she’d keep it. “Maluenda,” said she. “Oui, c’est parfait!” As for me…all I could do was stare out at the brightening sky beyond Asmodei, where the black birds soared and spun, looped and dropped away one by one. I stared till the last of the birds flew from sight. And I would have stood there forever, slack-jawed and staring, but for Sebastiana.

  “Now!” she urged. There came the first, still-tentative rapping at the library’s main door. “Follow me!”

  “Wait,” called Asmodei. “What about these chains?”

  “Hang them from the door’s latch,” directed Sebastiana. “Let them think, let them know this witch’s devils have snapped them.”

  “Of course,” said Asmodei. “…Yes, yes, I like that.”

  Understand: to my accusers it would appear as though someone or something—Satan, or whatever lesser demons they cared to conjure—had broken into the library. And, at my bidding, surely, these Dark Beings had stolen up to Sister Claire’s chamber and killed her. Now, having already found the nun lying lifeless on her pallet, my accusers were hurrying to the library as we stole from it. There they’d find “me” just as they’d left me at dusk of the previous day. And in the lesser library they would be met with a screamed story of witches, of spells and succubi, et cetera. “I” would insist that I was Sister Claire de Sazilly, Mother Superior of the House at C——. “I” would say that I’d seen Peronette Gaudillon in the night, that she’d taken some horrible shape before me. “I” would swear that I’d met a cast of devils who’d done me indescribable harm. And every word would be heard as a lie. Or even more damning, as the truth. “I” would be condemned without further process. “I” would be deemed too dangerous to bring to formal trial. “I” was bedeviled. They’d do to me what they would.

  Finally, with Asmodei, we all of us stood in the shadowed gallery, at the top of the covered stairwell. Madeleine reported that the first of the accusers now stood at the library’s other door, but no one dared enter without the Mayor present. They stood listening to the screamed story through the closed oak door, screaming in their turn.

  I pitied Sister Claire then, if slightly. Something in my look must have betrayed the sentiment, or perhaps Sebastiana could access my thoughts as Father Louis could, for she said, “Forget her,” and added, “Her final prayer before sleep last night was that she’d wake to watch you die.”

  And I did forget Sister Claire, for just then the screaming redoubled. The screams of the girls and nuns of C——, for, damning the absent men, they did finally open the library door to see the thing there. It was this discovery, and the attendant disorder, that we’d been waiting for. Now, under its cover—the slamming doors and all manner of hysteria—we took to the stairs.

  It was all I could do to keep up with Sebastiana and the others. All I could do to not be trampled by the blond monster coming down the stairwell behind me. Soon we stood in the shadow of the convent wall. To our right sat the path leading to the stables.

  I was blinded stepping out into the early sunlight behind Father Louis. I closed my eyes against the sun—they were closed but an instant!—and when I opened them I saw no sign of Father Louis. Nor Madeleine. They had disappeared. I was left standing between Sebastiana and Asmodei, our backs flush against the cold stones of the wall, lest we be spied.

  Asmodei made a noise, though I should say that had I not been looking up at his face I would not have heard it. It was a whistle, seemingly too high and thin a noise
for a man to make, or hear. It was a summoning. And sure enough, I followed his green-eyed gaze to where a huge white horse came rounding out from behind the stables. A horse I’d never seen before. Not a horse of C——. It stood too many hands high for me to quickly count. From Asmodei, then, I learned the beast’s name. Cauchemar, he called it. The ground shook at its approach. Its coat shone as bright as the risen sun. Its mane had been braided. A puzzle of muscle and bone worked beneath its flesh. It was unsaddled. Seeing Asmodei astride it—up, up with an effortless leap—he appeared as blond and bright and strong as the steed.

  Then: “Call her.” Sebastiana spoke to me. I did not understand. Not at first. But then I smiled at her, turned toward the stables, and more exhalation than speech, let go the words, “Maluenda. Maluenda, come!”

  And she came. Came to the fading accompaniment of the ravens, which were nowhere to be seen…. A horse black as pitch to carry us away. Rounding out as Cauchemar had in a flash of sleekness and strength from behind the stables…. My Maluenda.

  She stood as tall as Cauchemar, was as black as that horse was white. She came up beside the other, stomping and steaming, eager. Asmodei reached over her and helped us both up, Sebastiana and I. I settled behind Sebastiana on the horse’s unsaddled back. Sebastiana’s legs hung to the side; I straddled the horse. Sebastiana held tight to Maluenda’s black and unbraided mane—her ears were torn, forever ragged despite the shape she took—and I held tight to Sebastiana, my cheek flush against her blue silk, her warm back. I listened to the beat of her heart. I felt the warm horseflesh beneath me. Finally, Sebastiana kicked into the horse’s flank with her slippered feet.

  We rode up the drive, passing the bushes in which I’d hidden, despairing, fearing for my life. Too late, I remembered the cypress cross. The one I’d left in the cellar. I started to ask Sebastiana to stop, to…

  But that cross had been a mere weapon. A weapon I neither wanted nor needed now. So I let it lie.