Pentacle - A Self Collection

by Tom Piccirilli

  "Who was it?" I asked. "Who approached you to make the pact?"

  "Belial."

  Beli ya'al, meaning 'without worth,' lovely in appearance and with a soft voice, commander of eighty legions of hell and one of Satan's most evil, I could see how the demon could deceive an innocent man about to be hanged as a witch, offering him the fruits he would have died for anyway.

  "For what?" I asked.

  "Not much, not enough."

  "What was the deal? Who's the driver?"

  He wouldn't answer. "We're merely paying back death for death, those damnable children! You wouldn't understand, Necromancer!"

  I already knew the rest. The power of the hag stone fell into place, and I understood now why Bysack's name rang a far off bell.

  The witch-hunters Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne had tried John Bysack in Bury St. Edmonds, England, in 1645. Sixty-eight witches went to the gallows that year. History told how Bysack confessed he had been approached by the devil in the shape of a dog and renounced God. Margaret wasn't his sister; Margaret Wyard had kept seven imps of her own, most of them flies, but she only had five teats and so they had to fight for her curdled milk.

  "So you and Margaret bear children."

  He nodded. "Yes!"

  "And give them to Belial as sacrifices."

  "Not merely sacrificial lambs! This is payment owed. The children must die."

  The insanity of hell was too great to imagine; murdering their own brood for three centuries, out of hatred for children already a hundred times dead, feeding the devil's maw in an effort to reclaim justice for souls now deservedly lost.

  I called Self. We're through here.

  He drove his teeth one final time into what was left of the dog and then climbed my neck. Aren't you going to kill him?

  He was hanged three hundred and fifty years ago. Our battle's with Belial.

  You can't fight one of Satan's favorites!

  I left Bysack weeping with his imps, rushed down the stairs and off the porch into the street. The bus approached, shifted into high gear going full throttle and aiming for me. Headlights blazed. Self licked my fists, the dog's blood a lusterless, dripping black. I pulled back my arm and blasted the ponderous and powerful hex straight at the bus' front grille. The force grew as it moved, until it struck as horribly as the lightning hitting the stand of Doug Fir—eruptions of green and blue, and now the shrieks of dead children—as I was thrown off my feet. The bus slowed but didn't stop. I scuttled forward and ran, grabbed the bus door and climbed aboard.

  Is it Crowley again? Self asked. I hate that pompous bastard!

  A face rose from the pit of damnation; he wept as Jesus must have wept on the cross, fearing his Father had forsaken him and his pain and belief had been for nothing. That face had all the sorrow of an afterlife gone wrong, heavy with all the failures and nightmares of a heaven ungained.

  No, not the faker Crowley. It was Cotton Mather, the esteemed puritan minister, Boston-born and Harvard educated, who'd chronicled the Salem trials. He held the Malleus Maleficarum under one arm—the Witch's Hammer—his inquisitor witch-hunter's handbook. He'd worked too much evil in the name of God, and too much good in his righteous convictions to join the devil. Now he simply drove. We headed up main street. Mather begged me silently, wracked and sobbing. The cadavers of the children slowly smiled.

  I said, "Let's go, Cotton."

  He let me and the children off on the other side of the highway where I'd first entered the town, and pointed towards the burned Doug Fir. The toppled trees formed a bridge of sorts, across the embankment. I climbed down, step by step on the ashen wood, to the forest floor. Moonlight seeped through the foliage. Murdered children played hide'n'seek in the woods around a small clearing. They giggled and snickered and chanted, forming a ring around Haley, who stood in the middle half out of her mind with fear.

  "Help me!" she screamed, the kids rushing in at her, and out again. "Daddy! Arne! What's happening?"

  It took too much effort but I flicked a sleeping spell at her and she closed her eyes. God, if we lived through this, what could I tell her?—how could I explain she'd been raised by witches only to die in the name of some ridiculous concept of right in the name of the devil?

  I entered the clearing and the children backed off, uncertain of who I was or what they were. Self climbed down and danced with them, playing leap frog and monkey in the middle. I could feel Margaret's presence as she cloaked herself in a Gnostic spell I didn't fully comprehend. It didn't matter; she remained as hollow as Bysack, the two of them meaningless though they knew no better. Belial was the true enemy, and would be coming for us soon; the greasy charge in the air proved that.

  But Margaret thought she was still alive and came at me through the trees. "Come, my mysterious traveler. I'm yours again, for now and forever." She took the form of my lost love Danielle, the one truth of my life, lost to me years ago back at the beginning: innocence in its purest essence, with golden hair I'd once dived into, skin in which I drowned, blue eyes alike and unlike every cliché of love any poet ever imagined, and the blood was still all over her.

  But therein swirled the same fury I'd seen yesterday, the charms and fetishes swinging about her neck. She had more power than Bysack, and used it against my heart; I couldn't help snarling, wavering back a step. It struck deep, a stiletto in my weakness, and I fell over. Self screamed, That part of you is gone! She's dead! Now hate! Hate! She dropped and moved crab-like now, scuttling among the children and moving in on me. My love. When she was close enough to touch she opened her mouth to take me in.

  My love, my hate. I reached out and pulled something from the bottom of my loss and hammered her point blank between the eyes. In that instant, most of her flesh sizzled and disappeared, replaced by a lizard's scale-ish skin. She took two faltering steps and stared agape at the children, her own brood, and the imps clinging to her belly began to curl. I could read her eyes as she wondered how she could ever have come to this, what madness had possessed her—why the hysterical children pointed her out as a witch before she ever became one, and why she had trusted Belial at its worthless word? I felt an intense moment of sympathy for her as Self repeated, Hate! Even as Haley lay in the leaves with her soul offered down. I turned my back on Margaret and wished she'd leave already, go sit with John Bysack, and together wait for the end. "Go on," I called. "Get out of here." She gathered her dying imps and headed home.

  Children played on for a time, and I took Haley in my arms and wondered if I should make a run for it, but that was merely my fear. Fighting Belial would be nearly as bad as fighting Satan itself. I didn't know what to do, what spells to voice. I'd been on an archeological dig in Turkey that unearthed a city Belial had taken for its own; on the first night five thousand people had pulled out their own hearts, and on the second the rest had given birth to the insect brethren of a lowest pit. I didn't have the strength, knowledge or power to do much to save Haley, or myself.

  Kill the girl, Self implored. Let me, let me.

  No.

  It's your only chance.

  Shut your mouth.

  You really ought to listen to me for once. Give her to me.

  Christ, Self was probably right, but Jesus, help me out this time.

  No, I'm trying something new here.

  Ohboy. What?

  Enochian majik.

  Self trembled and pulled away. No, you're messing with the angels! Demons are bad enough, but the pawns of heaven . . . ?

  It's worth a shot.

  Self jittered and said, Then hurry. Beli ya'al is coming.

  The murdered children stopped playing, froze, turned as one and stood looking into the forest. I threw back my head and called up a cone of power, digging down through the aethyrs, the floors of the otherside, rising higher and higher through the levels of life and death. I spoke the Tetragrammaton, the soul of the word; there is no struggle at this point, either you are accepted or rejected. Unable to press onward, I still felt the
soul of the world reaching back out to me.

  "Who are you?"

  The angel's name floated into my mind backwards, as it does for the devils, the way it must: leahpaR: Raphael. Impossible to describe because it took no form yet contained all form, remaining bodiless and shapeless but somehow human. No wings this time, no heavenly choir or golden light or harps. Raphael proved to be uglier than most demons and more beautiful than anything imaginable—this was the inescapable duality of existence. It was nonsensical and necessary. This is how God intended his elite to be, faults lying even in His perfection, proving why He must be held accountable. This was the reason why Lucifer was His most beloved, and why we can never get along. We are all the same image, and there it stops.

  It was true for Belial, the worst of Satan's servants, who now appeared with half its legions waiting in the background, and walked towards Raphael. The two didn't fight, didn't speak or waver or screech. Instead, they understood—pawns that they were—that they now existed for a moment in a man's service rather than God's. They both turned back and looked at me, sneering, the infinite and eternal hate clear and bright. Their duality was the same as mine and Self's; and as they met like brothers, they dissembled as they touched, Armageddon being the only time and place they would ever truly fight.

  Alone in the woods, the moon floated and hovered. I screamed and dropped to my knees and vomited, the fear all at once rushing in and taking hold to shake me like a dying man.

  You are so damn lucky, Self said. Though you made no friends today.

  I picked up Haley and held her close, whispering in her ear words she wouldn't remember but would never quite forget. In the morning, her father and aunt would be found dead from a fire, and Arne's family would take her in until the two were ready to marry. She'd have it better than most who came so close to sacrifice, in the straits of Purgatory. She sighed in my arms and snuggled closer.

  God, let it be enough.

  MALEFICIA

  No more than twelve, the child hummed softly to himself at the bottom of the grave.

  A pale wash of light from the sliver of moon displayed his bleak blue eyes, blond hair, and smile: those white teeth burned in the cemetery night of Calvary, Queens. Seated in a brackish puddle, splashing as he rocked back and forth, his voice grew intense. The song became unfathomable, words twisting into an unknown language, but still so rhythmic, with a nice Latino beat he pounded out kicking in the mud. At one point he held a high note for nearly half a minute, gently crooning, chin raised as the walls of earth suddenly roiled with nightcrawlers and larvae, and he broke into giggles when dogs barked insanely in the distance. Tendrils of mist twined about his waist and hands like tugging ropes trying to haul him to his feet—until finally the boy glanced up at me.

  "We've been waiting for you," he sang with a tra-la-la melody.

  I swallowed thickly, my fists filled with hexes. "Who?"

  More of that happy, puerile laughter, fog rolling from his throat and weaving against the worms. "It's your anniversary."

  I nodded and backed up a step from the edge of the grave.

  "We knew you'd return. You always come this day of the year."

  "Not always," I said. "What do you want?"

  "You, silly," the child answered, tra-la, proverbial picture of innocence, shivering and staring as if hoping I'd wrap him in a blanket and carry him to safety. Wind tore at the brush, whistling through the clapping branches. Stunted, leafless trees behind me scribbled at the cracked slate walk. Red sparks skittered along my fingernails. The boy laughed wildly, his timbre dropping into a guttural growl, voice splintering until there were many of them inside the pit at once—older and younger, male and female and neither, an ethereal chorus. He shifted now, skeleton lengthening, eyes receding, flesh drooling off bone, and spun over onto his knees, grunting on all fours and scrambling at the earth like a pig, reached a hand up for me and said, "And her, of course!"

  Tittering as hideously as the boy, my second self sheared from me and leaped into the grave, fangs bared, claws extended. The heat in my hands burned painfully, and I slung an incantation at that grinning, sweet-child's melted face a moment too late. He yawped and faded from view, dissembling backwards into shadow as both my familiar and the fiery glow of hex reached him; the explosion brought a wave of dirt hurtling up against my legs, worms shriveling as the mud instantly baked.

  Self hopped about angrily and said, Your spell got in my way.

  "Danielle," I whispered.

  I ran the quarter mile to her grave, stumbling over broken tombstones and crumbling angels and saints. Gnarled roots shoved at the pedestals of faceless Madonnas and overturned crucifixes, dead flower petals flying against my chest. Twice I nearly fell into open plots, intent only on getting to her now, my desperation years too late. God, who had found out? My stomach churned with thoughts of what they might have done to her.

  Soil lay heaped. They had dug several feet down, almost to her coffin—almost touching her—but not quite. It had taken them a while to counter my warding spells. I stared at the coffin, the oak still shining where it had been uncovered, the seam in the top begging to be opened. Jesus, I could almost smell the honeysuckle scent of her hair, listening to the throaty way she laughed, feeling the touch of her hands on my waist, curving around my back in an embrace. It had been so long.

  Damn them, what had they done? What was I thinking? I fell to my knees and covered my face in my hands, Self crawling along my back, lapping at my throat. He jabbered. My mind reeled into a world of nearly-lost memories, a bolted door thrown open again. My breathing hitched with the possibilities: I could hold her close again for a time—I knew invocations that would bring her back. Words and glyphs from a civilization fifty centuries dead beneath Egyptian dust came easily enough. Danielle's body would rise to meet mine, and at least a portion of her true soul would be left behind within that satin lining.

  She still has great power, Self said. We can do it.

  His subtle lilt of temptation wasn't quite as subtle as it had been years ago. Quiet.

  Take her. They've already done most of the work.

  Shut your mouth for once.

  It was too easy to fall in. Drifting back to a time before the madness of majiks, when we studied calculus together, and watched bad horror movies on the living room couch while her younger sister, April, ate all the popcorn and made a pest of herself, and we dropped her off at ballet lessons before heading out to Coney Island to learn the opening volleys of love, fooling around at the shore in a Chevy Nova that got eleven miles to the gallon. Self clawed at my skull trying to extract a life of which he'd never been a part.

  I stood and turned away. The strong blood stench flowed on the breeze. Other graves in the area had been desecrated and corpse-lifted: exhumed bones were scattered across the grounds, burial clothes shredded and strewn about. Yellowed and gnawed femurs, ribcages, and bits of vertebrae littered the patchy lawn.

  I followed the red stench down a different path through the black trees. Beyond another rise I found their sacrifice creaking in the wind: hands tied behind his back, the old man swayed at the end of a noose. He looked like a derelict, several layers of clothing little more than rags. Dried blood thick on his lips and chin and chest. I checked his mouth and found that most of his teeth had been extracted, his heart removed and replaced with a nest of sterile raven's eggs. I checked his pockets—a handful of small change, but no identification. On the dirt by his feet lay a fifth of rum in a paper bag—clearly they'd baited him with this. Also in the bag was a receipt from a liquor store on West 56th Street.

  Someone makes maleficia, Self said, clutching my leg, fawning over me. My love for Danielle had always proven a sore point for him. Teeth of a wrongfully hanged man can be ground into a powerful poison.

  "I know," I muttered. "Someone's started another coven."

  Whoever they are, they expect you to find them.

  Any ideas?

  He thought about it. Let's go to t
he Caribbean.

  I spent hours raising the proper wards and charms of protection once more: against other malefactors who would make use of her dead power, and against my own human weakness to give almost anything to be with her once again. It took me until dawn to refill all the graves. Life would be so much easier if you ever listened to me, he moaned. Traffic on the Long Island Expressway roared past not so far off. I was sweating and covered with mud, the sunrise brightening over the slopes and mausoleums, as if the light itself were urging me towards the Mid-Town Tunnel, pressing me westward to the stone island of Manhattan.

  And into Hell's Kitchen.

  Where boiled witches' brew, homeless clotted the doorways and alleys, holding jingling Styrofoam cups half-filled with change—some were young and robust, smiling and in action with an entertaining rap, trying to earn money with a few laughs, a friendly plea to strangers—others had already been rolled and pawed and dragged halfway under by death, the disease of drugs and liquor having replaced mind and spirit. They didn't jangle their cups or smile or speak, merely held out their stiff, scarred hands and glared through the center of the earth. Vacuous, depraved eyes and crack vials were all that remained behind.

  I scouted the area and staked out the liquor store for most of the morning, vainly hoping that something suspicious might reach out and gain my attention. Nothing. Freezing Coney Island nights replayed in my thoughts, pangs working in places I didn't know existed anymore. I ate at a nearby diner, and handed a buck in nickels and dimes to a woman sitting on a sewer grate with two plastic garbage bags wrapped halfway up her legs. She touched my hand and said, "Sad man, damned man," got to her feet, then dropped the coins to the sidewalk and scuttled away.

  Every so often Self would murmur and hiss and nibble at my jugular, flush with blood, and I knew we'd be close to a place of recent and lethal crimes. When we passed De Witt Clinton Park I saw a section cordoned off with yellow police tape, a number of cops and news cameras on the scene. Self slunked free and nimbly dodged through the crowd of gawkers. When he returned he said, A pretty girl child, still alive. With pentacles for earrings, snake tattoos, crystals dangling around her neck. They started to cut her, but the police came too quickly. He couldn't quit grinning, tongue lolling, breathing rapid and shallow. Bile rose in my throat. His fangs went deep. I forgot how much fun New York is.