With Ms. Cummings’ precise technique, she was able to decipher a message of vice and perversion in all sources of writing, from children’s fairytales to books on science, especially those written by Marxists or that supported evolution, a lie as harmful, Ms. Cummings’ said, as that told by the snake to the first woman.
She read The Complete Works of the Brothers Grimm, British edition, and from “The Twelve Brothers” she learned to trace her first circle.
She read The Origin of Species, seventh edition. If you start from the second word in the title of its 1872 Preface and read the sixth letter from the sixth word from the sixth paragraph from the seventh page, then the sixty-sixth, then the six hundred sixty-sixth, beginning to count from the second chapter, and then from that point you go back and forth thirty-three pages—the age of Jesus Christ when he died—and search for the sixth and the thirteenth letters, beginning on every second word from the seventh and the ninth paragraphs of the third chapter, taking a few letters in and out as it becomes necessary, you will be able to spell, in German: SATAN PRINCE OF HELL VERY MUCH LOVES YOU, which is the equivalent of saying amen in a book of maleficium.
Nowhere did she find more depravity, however, than in the books produced by homosexuals: H.C. Andersen, Wilde, Whitman, Dickinson, García Lorca. In their writings, which can so easily be found in any small library despite the obvious hazard that this sort of dark literature presents to children, these perverted sodomites reveal their true fidelity to Satan and the many ways to invoke his name and summon the spirits from the Avernus… Basically it is the same offensive message in every book written by the Uranian people: good is evil, and vice versa; evil interferes with the will of God; evil effects can be brought about through the art of witchcraft, and witchcraft is the work of the Devil against God. What else could be in the minds of men that perform such twisted acts as penetrating each other through the anus? And God may be all love and compassion, but he does hate homosexuals, doesn’t he? Ms. Cummings thought so. Why else would he make them wear clothes a size too small and in such unflattering colors? Why else would he make them beautiful and vain and ever sharp-witted but to prove that they’re related to the fallen angel? Homosexuals are evil. Share your bed with one, open your heart to him, tell him that you love him, tell him that you will follow him to the end of the world and back, tell him that every moment without him hurts inside your chest like a burning iron, tell him that you’d rather die than live one day more without him, and chances are he will never call you, and if he sees you walking down the street he’ll pretend that he never met you…
The little woman had read Proust before, but she never realized what the episode of the madeleine really meant, until she read it backwards.
As she learned, she started working. Deciphering the hierarchical order in which the demons’ names should be pronounced from the works of Oscar Wilde took her almost a week; finding proof of evil in a Dickinson poem just a bit longer. The floor of her backyard shed started to look like a constellation map full of strange symbols and the orbits of yet-undiscovered planets. The center of the map was not the sun but an upside down pentagram drawn with the wax of black candles and the face of a male goat in the center.
One night in mid-July she felt ready. She recited the appropriate verses during the current alignment of the planets. She offered a sacrifice of her own blood mixed with the right spices. She spat six times over her shoulder and said aloud the name of one devil.
Alas, she had been flagged all throughout the nine circles of Hell as unwanted.
“Who is it that invokes my name?” asked the first spirit that stayed long enough to speak to her, after half a dozen had vanished before materializing completely.
The little witch (this title would be now more appropriate for her nameless persona) took a deep breath. She didn’t know she had to give a name. Before she could explain that she didn’t have any, the fiend took a clear look into her face and, with an expression of extreme fear and repulsion, as if he had been the one seeing a demon, he disappeared, puff! leaving behind a stench of sulfur.
She kept trying. And she kept failing. The candles darkened the walls of her room and left a tacky residue on her blanket. She didn’t know it was she who scared the demons. She thought she had done something wrong, hadn’t quite followed the recipe for summoning a spirit, drawn the wrong symbols. Eventually, some of the demons started talking to her, to insult her mostly, to call her an abomination. One stayed long enough to disclose that neither he “nor anyone else in the netherworld” had absolutely any desire to entail in business with someone that had forever been identified as by-all-means “undesirable” by the Prince of Darkness.
Not even Hell wanted her.
She hadn’t felt so disheartened since the day her godfather left her.
Was all hope lost? More research. More and more reading. And after days passed, and then weeks, and soon months, browsing through all sorts of printed materials, after going through anything that included the word Lucifer, either explicitly written or coded under utterly bewildering prose, she realized that there was no way she could persuade Hell of her good intentions, and that the only way to obtain help from a spirit was not by asking for it, but by demanding it, by forcing a fiend with some mischievous trick to submit to her will as her familiar.
That’s how that woman, Heather, had managed to get her ex-husband to propose marriage.
“But what did he say when he realized you weren’t pregnant?” Josie asked.
“He never did,” Heather responded. “I got knocked up as soon as I could.”
The little witch disguised herself as a different person. She trimmed her hair short, drew a black mustache beneath her nose with a piece of coal, and dressed in her father’s old’s clothes that she found in her mother’s closet.
Demons, however, are very much like mothers: they can see through our flesh and find the true color of our soul; they know when we are sad or when we’re happy; they know what we like, what we aspire to be, and the one word or phrase that can disarm us.
“Bull dagger” was what that night’s visitor called her.
She was close, though. She knew it. She procured bribes to the demons. Spider legs and wings of unhatched chicks, delicacies that, according to “The Rose Did Caper on Her Cheek,” when read properly, no evil spirit can resist, if seasoned with cumin. She left the shed and spied through the keyhole, waiting for the moment a devil would crouch and start eating, ready to storm into the room with an already filled-in, soul-binding contract in exchange for an answer to her one and only question: how to steal the beauty and youth of fair Josie García?
Nothing worked. Either the fiends sniffed the treats and left them untouched or, worse, they snatched them and disappeared in a cloud of smoke before she could enter the shed.
“It won’t look too bad if you cover your head with a scarf,” Josie commented about her hair. “Maybe next time you’ll let me do it? A little longer would make your face look less full and more youthful.”
“You look like a monkey,” Victoria said.
This time, she had seen her fair share of primates at the zoo.
“Like a monkey’s butthole covered in vomit!” added Rosa, looking around for something to throw at her.
Back at the dining table, the little woman looked at her piece of paper. How? How could she trap a demon? Suddenly, she knew how. She had read it before in a fairytale from before she started skipping letters: she would have to resort to violence. She ought to trap the fiend inside a sack, pull the straps tight, beat a “Christ, my Lord!” out of him and demand complete allegiance.
Her first attempt was almost successful. Not knowing what kind of sack to use—canvas, hemp, wool, or leather?—she went for the most readily available material: a paper bag. She redrew the black circles on the floor, set up the candles, dismembered a few spiders, and splattered a few drops of chicken blood and fis
h entrails inside. Then she recited her summoning spell, learned from Wilde’s third act of Salomé, and left the room.
Here entered her old dog, Cautious, attracted by the smell of the blood inside the bag. The mutt stuck his snout from under the little woman’s bed, where he had been hiding, and, right at the moment when a cross-eyed devil searched inside the bag with his rear end pointing to the ceiling, he barked. The demon fell into the bag, and, confused about where he was, whether it was time to mortify some fallen souls or to seduce some new ones, it took the fiend a full two seconds to remember that, made out of thin air, he could easily escape through the paper. Two seconds only, but that was time enough for our little witchery apprentice to enter back into the room, yank up the bag and tighten her fist around the opening. Had it worked, she would have gotten herself a demon.
She tried again several times that week, using different sacks, until she ran out of spiders.
What sort of material, she wondered at night in bed, would a sack need to be made of to prevent a devil from escaping? She knew only of things that either attracted or repelled demons, not of materials impermeable to demons. She knew that a crucifix would scare away a demon, but that a baby’s photograph would make him stay a bit longer. She knew that if she bound the Holy Scriptures with a rope and tucked it under her mattress, the demon would feel calmer.
Her sisters kept a bottle of consecrated oil under the kitchen sink. That wouldn’t help, she thought. On the contrary, it would scare away the… The little woman stood up, eyes and mouth wide opened. That was it! Consecrated oil! Repellent is a synonym for impermeable! What she needed was a bag through which a demon couldn’t pass, not just a bag that attracted a demon.
She jumped off her bed and pushed all the furniture away to reveal the circles, then rushed to fetch the bottle of consecrated oil. She rubbed the outside of a burlap sack with it and dropped some chicken bones inside—no time to search for more spiders. She recited her summoning spell, jumped back on her bed, together with Cautious, and hid under the blankets.
She captured a chief demon that night: President Buer, a “member of the Legion of Leviathan, Great Archduke of the Ninth Circle of Hell and Earl of Tartarus,” the fiend introduced himself, standing up within the sack.
The little woman didn’t know how to respond to all those titles, so she curtsied. President Buer had a crisp received pronunciation that reminded her of the days when she listened to the BBC for news about the war.
“What’s that smell?” the demon sniffed. “What sorcery is this?” He asked, poking the interior of the burlap sack. “What powerful glamour have you cast on this sack that I cannot escape it? Release me!” He bawled.
It wasn’t the time to get scared. The little woman pounced on the sack with the heel of her shoe and rapidly tied a strap around it to close it.
“You have awakened my rage!” The demon hollered. “I am a blood-thirsty, vengeful spirit, with fifty-two legions of demons under his command…”
The little woman whacked the sack against the wall.
“Who are you?” The demon screamed, rolling inside. “What is this substance covering this sack? It burns! It’s sticky and it burns, like holy water! And I hate all holy things. I hate the sacred name of God over all things, and I deny Jesus, his son, as the world’s saviour…”
The little woman pitched the sack against the wall again, then against the floor and her bed’s footboard a good fifteen times, until the devil called for mercy.
“By the milk of the Virgin Mary and the foreskin of the one true king, the son of God, Lord Jesus Christ, please stop!” the demon cried. “Ask for whatever you want—have pity on me! I will be your familiar—is that what you want?”
The little witch nodded.
“I’ll work with you in anything,” the demon sobbed. “I promise to serve you in every matter, to bewitch your enemies and cause illness to your neighbours… Of course, you will have to pay the toll. Each time. A drop of blood, a scab, a tooth, or a piece of dry skin—whichever grace you will me. Just let me out.”
The little woman wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, and put the sack down.
“You gnaw her flesh down to the bones,” the demon said, before she could pose her question.
It couldn’t be that simple. Feeling a charge of anger that she hadn’t felt before, not since she had tried to break in two the skull of her father with a rock, the little witch flung the sack against the floor a few more times until the devil called again for mercy.
“Let loose the strap a bit, darling,” he begged. “I cannot breathe.”
The little woman did as requested. President Buer stuck his face out of the sack. The little woman flinched at the sight. The fiend’s nose was a rather large appendage. The skin was burnt, like bricks inside a fireplace, with splotches of black and red. The whole face was burnt and covered in blisters. His eyes were like two black marbles with no white part. Surprisingly, he smelled not of rotten eggs but of freshly mowed grass and the tang of yeast and mold that smacks your face upon entering a pub in England.
“Thank you,” the demon said, taking a long gasp of air. “One’s heart is weak. It is not every day that one is summoned from the netherworld to be treated so unkindly. Would you be so good as to fetch me a glass of water? It is unbearably hot in here. I could go fetch it myself, if you could let me out for just a minute…”
The little woman didn’t let him continue. She smacked the demon with the sole of her shoe, forcing his head back into the sack.
“I’m not allowed to tell you!” President Buer cried. “Not before we formalise our relationship!”
The little woman opened the sack again and looked inside. The demon had shrunk to the size of a little mouse. He trembled, curled up at the bottom. He didn’t look at all like a president, the little woman thought. His body was full of sores and carbuncles. Where the skin wasn’t completely burnt, he had patches of black hair that made him look like a dog with mange. No horns or wings, but a fuzzy short tail, like that of a deer, and long, furry ears, like those of a squirrel.
“You have not yet been forgiven, ma’am,” the demon wailed. “And I am bound to obey a higher master. He must give his authorisation first. I can help you achieve forgiveness, though, if that is what you want. Then I will be your familiar. Four points in particular are required: First, you must renounce the Catholic faith and all of its dogmas—can you recite the Symbol of the Apostles?”
The little woman shook her head.
“You cannot?” The demon seemed to have grown a few inches. “That’ll be enough. Secondly, you must devote yourself to evil. Is there any room inside your heart for love?”
Did the girl count? Not if she was willing to kill her. The little woman shook her head.
“That’s truly sad,” the demon replied, raising his eyebrows. Now he was almost a foot and a half tall. “Don’t you care about anyone or doesn’t anyone care about you?”
Again, the little woman shook her head.
“I can understand why not. You are quite unsightly, and not the most benevolent creature I’ve run upon, but it is still quite sad. Thirdly,” now he was as tall as the sack, “you must offer an unbaptised child to Satan, of which I will share a piece… Make it a fat baby; old enough to walk but not yet officially admitted to the Catholic Church. Do you have a child? Witches often sacrifice their own children… Do you know of any? Fourthly,” the demon continued, ignoring the look of anguish on the little woman’s face at the idea of having to steal a child for her familiar, “you must indulge in every kind of carnal lust with Incubi and Succubi and in all manner of filthy delights. I have some friends I can summon… We’ll have a naked party! Do you like to stick things inside the orifices of your body? Once I had an entire Italian village living in my arse,” the demon snickered. “Once you have fulfilled these demands I will be your unconditional servant. Althou
gh for every favour, you will have to repay me with a little bit of blood, remember. I like blood so much,” the demon showed his fangs, about an inch long, and his eyes multiplied, imitating a spider’s. “You must be so tasty. Aren’t you? Have you tried your own blood? Have you ever licked your own wounds, enjoyed the iron-like taste on your tongue? I like blood so much. It drives me crazy…”
The little woman closed the sack.
An unchristened child? How on earth was she going to get a baby! She never learned where her mother got them. And—she did not want to be prudish, not at this point, when she was so close, but—would she have to take off her clothes, too? President Buer was incredibly unattractive. She didn’t know if she could make herself touch him in all the ways he wanted.
“I can make myself a little more presentable,” the demon said from inside the sack, reading her thoughts. “And finding an unchristened baby should be no trouble. With all the Japs and Jews living in this neighbourhood, you’ll have plenty of children to choose from. A Baptist child, perchance? Or a nice little boy with brown eyes from a Mexican family that has lost count of their offspring? You know how negligent your people can be with their brood; they do not baptise their children until they’re old enough to waddle around, sticking their fingers in all those places they shouldn’t.”
The little woman looked one more time inside the sack.
“Once you serve me and the Little Master with a child for supper,” the demon said, “I’ll let you go down and peck the little rose in my anus. Then I will be officially your familiar. You will be my mistress, and I will tell you everything you need to know about magic.”
Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle Page 15