by Kat Turner
The sixth in a series depicted a double image—the splayed body in one circle next to an identical, empty one. Scribbled beside the drawing, the words “curse” and “transfer” loomed large on the page. Six drawings like this. Huh. Nerissa brought up the number six and said the book would answer all questions. So she had to be doing the right thing, researching.
Drowning in a sea of words beyond her capacity to decipher, she ferreted out a paragraph in English. Excellent. Progress at last.
Helen ran a short red nail down the page and read:
Curses of the flesh spring from requests made from a space of desire, and all crave a referent. These parasitic forces seek a host body to use as a vehicle or puppet, for they strive to move through the physical world with ease. Exorcism has proved unsuccessful or deadly for the practitioner, but transference spells may achieve success, esp. when used in accordance with personal talismans or charms.
A list of page numbers followed the directions, and Helen flipped to the first one. In Roman Numerals, it offered steps.
First, arrange charms or talismans into a circle of protection.
Alright. Helen shook the crystals onto the carpet and laid them in a circle around her body.
Next, practitioner utilizes personal charms to drop self into trance state. Once altered state of consciousness is achieved, practitioner travels astral highway and visits alternate dimensions in search of new host.
Recruitment and retention may entail visiting and manipulating dream states of others, bewitching target via hypnosis, seduction of a male, or psyche splitting. All require craft proficiency to execute.
Pinching her bottom lip, Helen eyed her circle of crystals. Though she’d chosen the Left Hand path, Nerissa had talked about astral travel as associated with the Right. Maybe she could mix Left and Right.
She sure as hell didn’t want to “recruit” any poor, unwitting person to be the patsy for this hex by infiltrating their dreams like some creepy succubus. Brian deserved to be saved, yes, but as good of a person as he was, his life didn’t warrant the sacrifice of another.
Helen pressed a palm into her forehead in hopes of calming messy thoughts. Her classes in ethical and utilitarian philosophy never covered conundrums of the magical persuasion.
Maybe once the spell got underway, answers would unfold. No way to gain craft proficiency unless she practiced. Helen pinned her stare on a crystal the color of rouge and speckled with garnet spots, allowing her mind to melt into its waxy surface and jagged edges.
She drew in a long, mindful breaths and took a crack at color magic.
Starting with a chakra meditation would lower her brain waves to a state necessary for meditative calm, so she focused on the lowest chakra, the red wheel of incandescent energy spinning at the base of the spine. Yogis associated this energy channel with safety, grounding, and security, so with any luck those traits would protect her and Brian from fallout while she hunted for answers.
Helen counted off seven seconds on the inhale and eight on the exhale. Soon, her head grew fuzzy and light, a floating balloon. Warmth enveloped her scalp, body melting into a weightless state. Her mind blanked. She was nothing but breath, in and out, moving through her energetic nodes and animating the whirling disc near her tailbone.
A shade of red so saturated the hue surpassed maraschino cherry flooded her mind’s eye.
She didn’t realize that her lids had closed until they opened to mysterious surroundings.
Though some facets of Helen’s condo remained the same—the full bookshelves, her patchwork couch made from upcycled clothing—others morphed. Walls bent and shifted, stretching into shadowy corridors. Her living room expanded, tripling in square footage as cream-colored carpet changed to tile flooring patterned like a chessboard. To her right, a wide staircase, marble steps crumbling and banister carved into ornate swirls, curled to a second floor.
She was aware but spacey, like living in a dream, and electricity buzzed up and down her spine as her activated root chakra engaged energetically.
This had to be some kind of astral shadow realm, so she might as well explore the alternate dimension. Her barefoot steps silent against the ground, she walked down a narrow passageway, tile cool against her soles and the foreign smells of dampness and musk in her nostrils. She went on for another ten or so feet until distraught moans and a mechanical screech like a dentist’s drill floated down the hall.
She ran in the direction of the commotion, opened a door, and stifled a squawk. Images bombarded her eyeballs in stabbing assaults. Concrete floor, stained a monstrous, sanguine shade. Runes and symbols painted walls black. In the corner, a temple stood erect. The chamber smelled of sweet smoke, a bit like incense and fittingly occult.
Some statue, a frightening mystery of loops and arrows and crosses forged in iron, served as a scary altar. Lodged in a circular depression near the apex of the shrine, the lost clear crystal glittered with diamond majesty.
At the base of the idol lay a staircase descending into a pit that ate light. Tile drenched in ruby gloss embellished the fucking hole in the ground with unmistakable ceremonial flair.
The scene in the middle of the room was so horrific her brain melted into a puddle of incomprehensibility.
Three figures, robed in black with mirrored slabs shielding their faces, chanted. In the middle of them, a lifeless body lay on a cot. The masked men pulled entrails from their victim, tossing them to the dirty ground where they landed in coils like shell-pink snakes. She clutched her belly, empathetic agony gutting her midsection.
Helen forced herself to look at the face of the sacrifice. And yes. Brian on the cot. A growl murmured in the pit, animalistic yet terrifyingly other. The crystal pulsed in spurts of phosphorescent light, peppering the grim surroundings with a jumble of wavering pastels.
“Do you forsake all other masters, both worldly and beyond, giving yourself in joy and supplication to the joining?” Joe said, flinging a handful of Brian’s guts to the floor.
Brian croaked nonsense.
“Do you forsake all other masters, both worldly and beyond, giving yourself in joy and supplication to the joining?” A different man spoke, frustration sharpening his query.
The noises in the pit grew louder, snaps and snarls of pure evil. A cone of brightness streaked in the corner of Helen’s eye.
She looked, oh God, she looked. Sinewy hands the size of dinner plates and capped by scissors of claws raked the floor above the top step.
An aberration crawled out of the depression and came into view, lithe and terrible. A cool, pyramid-shaped glow cast off by the crystal illuminated what slunk forward on hands and knees. Hunched shoulders, bald head, nude flesh the graying color of decomposed hamburger.
The face was a skull. Smoke like cumulus clouds floated around the fiend’s outline.
“It’s coming, it’s ready,” Joe hissed. “Do you forsake all other masters, both worldly and beyond, giving yourself in joy and supplication to the joining?”
“No.” Brian slurred like molasses filled his mouth. “No, no, no.”
“No use. We need to find the hex generator and bring them into the fold, like the spell said. I keep telling you.” The man who wasn’t Joe wiped his hands on his robe.
Posture stiffening with alertness as he seemed to notice something, Joe swiveled his head in Helen’s direction. In his mask, her own horrified, grimacing expression stared back at her as a reflection.
Joe advanced, left palm raised. He chanted. Frigid water invaded her veins.
“Come here,” Joe whispered, reaching for her. “Join us on our Left Hand journey, coven daughter. One of six, a sacred order, we welcome you to the helm of our practice.”
“Yeah, that’s a hard no.” She broke into a run, weaving down hallways.
Catching her breath, Helen stopped and took stock. No Joe. She’d lost him. Helen found herself in a square room about the size of L&E’s yoga practice floor. Four mirror walls populated the unfurnished space
with images of her.
Helen felt for a door, but her hands brushed smooth glass. One reflection moved on her own, squishing the side of her face in an absurd distortion of features. Yelping as shock jolted her system, Helen jumped backward.
“Let me out.” The other Helen knocked on the glass, wild eyes matching the frantic plea of her voice. “Save me, help me.”
Helen shook her head and fumbled shaking hands along the wall until she found a latch hidden between two panes of glass. She wouldn’t be freeing anyone or anything until she touched base with Nerissa, thank you very much.
“Please. I can bear the load of your curse. I volunteer.”
Helen pulled her fingers away from the handle, meeting her own desperate, undignified face. She recognized that expression, having pulled it while begging foster families to allow her to stay. Pity wrenched her. “Why would you do that? What’s in it for you?”
Clone Helen hung her head, brown hair blanketing her features. “I ferry curses back here and feed them to my master, and he rewards me with peace.”
This mirror-her worked as some kind of hex mule for her overlord?
“What are you? An aspect of me who lives in another dimension?”
Clone Helen lifted her face to view, a pitiful smile crossing her lips. “I’m your castoff parts. Those broken pieces your psyche can’t integrate. Your weaknesses, fears, envy, and hate. Your subconscious sends those elements into me, and as penance for accepting them, I must toil in the inferno until my master deems me worthy of absolution.”
Heavy guilt piled upon Helen’s shoulders. She’d created some kind of psychic scapegoat. Unconscionable, and shot through with somber irony.
She’d been slotted into the fall guy role time and again in her foster homes, taken the blame when some other kid broke a glass or came home from school in a foul mood. Though she assumed she’d gotten over her resentment, had she instead poured the poison on some version of herself locked in a dimension of suffering and grief?
“So if I agree to do this, if I hand the curse to you and you feed the hex to your hell overlord or whatever, we both get a break?”
The double nodded. “Do you know the spell for psyche splitting?” Hope pitched her tone to a squeak. Helen’s own sad eyes stared back at her.
Helen rubbed her thighs in fast motions. “No. Tell you what, I’ll wake myself up and study Psyche Splitting in the grimoire. Then I’ll come back here and help.”
Shrugging, the clone tapped her toe into the edge of the mirror. “If you managed to get yourself here, you probably have enough skill to try. Psyche Splitting is a lower-level spell.”
Though her intuition requested she slow down and proceed with caution, urgency pushed back against the sensible inner voice. Time marched on, with Brian facing a gruesome fate. She’d come this far, and reluctance could result in death.
“Okay. I’ll try—I’ll do it.” Hey, in the immortal words of Yoda, do or do not. She’d act with boldness, striking that impotent word “try” from her vocab.
The clone pressed hands together in prayer. “Thank you.”
Helen concentrated on the orange crystal on her floor until a tangerine orb appeared between her brows, figuring that her best bet was to move up the chakra chain to the next highest level. She drew upon the power of the sacral chakra, site of fluidity, creativity, and flow.
The mineral glowed like a crackling fireplace, moving down and taking a seat right below her navel. She pictured the graphs in the book, those sketches of bodies with lines overlaying them, doing her best to remember relevant text.
Psyche splitting, psyche splitting, psyche splitting. She repeated the mantra until coherent words blurred into meaningless sounds, the chant dropping her mind into a strange frequency where fur covered her thoughts. Ripples undulated across the mirror, wobbling from center to end in concentric circles as they invited Helen to infer what to do next.
She stuck her hand through the pliant glass, her fingers making quicksilver flutters as they sank into liquid. Flesh met flesh when a warm, strong hand gripped Helen’s. The mirror yielded, a quivering hole gaping in the middle. The clone stepped out, the look on her face unsettlingly smug.
“Are we done?” Helen asked.
The clone smirked and blinked into nothing.
Well, great. In trying to solve her problems, she may have created a new one. Helen concentrated on the mundane details of her living room until she woke up in the fetal position. She snatched her phone, gritting her teeth when she brought up three missed calls from Nerissa. The witch couldn’t have reached out a wee bit sooner?
An orange digit indicated a single text. From an unfamiliar number: I found what you’re looking for.
Helen Googled the area code. Los Angeles. Brian.
She texted: Good. I’ll come to where you are. Until then, stay away from Joe. Rule number one: don’t let him lead you anywhere. I’ll explain in person ASAP.
Eight
On the hotel telly, a brunette reporter spoke with grave certainty, “Something in your kitchen wants to kill your children. Details at ten.”
The ad for the evening news cut to a different commercial, some inane animated gimmick to sell potato chips.
Alone on a plush bed shrouded in pristine sheets the color of snow, Brian yanked one of the pillows out from behind his head and pressed cloth against his face, growling his frustrations into marshmallow softness. Speaking of reporters, he could be getting his cock sucked by one right about now. But alas, his pesky conscience and aversion to using women for sex got in the way of quick release, like always.
So instead of exploiting Christine like the chauvinistic sociopath he wasn’t, he hung around a generic, posh hotel room somewhere in Wyoming with bugger all to do while he waited for his dodgy manager to take him to a party where he’d mingle with a bunch of aging men in ties.
Ah, to live the crazy, hedonistic life of rock star Brian Shepherd. Born to be mild.
He threw the pillow across the room and grabbed the remote, shutting up some onscreen clown with the push of a button. On the night stand, his mobile beeped. Brian scooted to the end of the bed and checked the latest notification. At the sight of Helen’s name, a blend of giddiness and dismay battled for control of his emotions.
Recalling the havoc in the dressing room reminded him that he couldn’t let his guard down and trust the witch who’d given him the stones. Not yet.
Brian typed. Hi. Thanks for thinking of me, but it was all a misunderstanding. Turns out I put it somewhere and forgot about it. Can u send me your address so I can mail it?
So what, she was an attractive, interesting, alluring woman. Didn’t mean anything, except perhaps that his libido wanted attention. But not from her. She was too eccentric, and in all likelihood disingenuous. Hiding things, withholding. Nope. He could not give in, no matter how deep she’d burrowed into his marrow.
Helen: Can u text me a pic first?
Sliding off the bed, he crouched and unzipped the inner pocket of his suitcase. The original stone from the fair rested against the second one, twins reunited. Brian caressed the first stone, the little piece of Helen he’d stuck in his luggage in some forgotten moment.
Warm pulses radiated from the rock and into his fingertips, and for a fleeting instant he imagined the nub he massaged between his thumb and forefinger was the sensitive pleasure center situated an inch above the entrance to her body.
What types of strokes did she prefer? Hard and fast, or soft and slow?
His cock swelled, balls tensing. Pressure gathered in his lower abdomen as the fantasy took over. In his mind, he rubbed her and rubbed her, making her moan and spread her legs wide.
He bet she was flexible, able to make those long legs span the width of a king-sized bed. His eager dick ached, begging for a kiss or caress.
Brian dragged himself out of the lust haze. Doing his best to ignore the tightening of his trousers, he balanced the crystal on his thigh and positioned his phone camera. He m
aneuvered his leg, angling it so that his raging erection didn’t sneak into the frame. Even if he never saw Helen again, he’d hate to offend her by sending a dick pic on accident.
After a few tries, he got a focused shot of the stone and texted it to her.
Helen: It’s a fake. Someone wants to lull you into a false sense of security. Do you have the second one still?
Brian: Yes.
Helen: Let’s see it. Please.
He repeated the photographing process with the second stone, taking a picture of the two side by side for good measure.
Helen: They’re both different than the ones I gave you. Bogus. So someone stole both clear crystals and replaced them with these duds.
Brian: None of this makes a shred of sense.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. An expansive cast of staff including Joe and the security guards he liked to boss around had access to Brian’s personal effects and could have switched out the stones.
To what end, he couldn’t say, but he could say with certainty that Joe would not blab what he knew unless offered an incentive or given no choice. Which was the purpose of the party, to back Joe into a corner and get him confessing.
Helen: I know. Can I come see you? I have some explanations. I think we should go over the situation in person.
A numbing sensation marked Brian’s emotional retreat, blotting his nerves in an anesthetizing current. Perhaps he ought to cut ties with Helen and block her number. He had enough on his plate with Joe and didn’t need another problematic person in his life, strength of the pull he felt toward her be damned.
But three bouncing white dots on his screen, the signal of an incoming text alert, prompted him to keep looking in anticipation of what she’d say next.
Helen: The original crystal is being used for nefarious purposes. Demonic stuff to hurt you. I’m guessing they think they can use the second one to enrich their power. I already told you who’s in charge. I might be able to stop the plot, but you need to listen and be in this with me.
A shudder swept over Brian. He held his phone at arm’s length, shaking his head though his conviction wavered. Tilly had seen things of a sinister persuasion. So had Jonnie’s ex.