The little woman put a hand to her chest.
Victoria stood up. She took down a crucifix and a painting of the Virgin Mary that hung from the wall and put them inside a drawer. Then she took a small vial full of a dark liquid out of her pocket. “Here,” she offered it to Josie with a contrite face. “Mix it with dust from the tomb of one of the ancestors of the one person you want to hurt. Add a drop of your own blood, and then put it under that person’s mattress. Is she a woman?”
Josie nodded.
The old woman frowned. “She will get the shingles the next morning.”
“Thank you,” the girl said.
“If you pee in it,” the old woman continued, “and you put it under her pillow, she will be dead in three days. But then you’ll age ten years; that’s the payback, so you better not do it.”
The girl nodded.
“You have to do it by night,” Victoria returned to her seat, “when it’s the darkest; so Death won’t recognize you.”
“How much do I owe you?” the girl asked, timidly.
“One dollar,” Victoria responded evasively. She stole a look from her sister. “But you can pay later.”
Josie broke into a nervous laugh. One dollar? Was that all? She had been more than ready to say farewell to her twenty.
“Thank you!” She breezed back to the telephone.
The little woman ran back to the bedroom extension.
“Eva’s aunt is buried at Woodlawn Memorial, in Santa Monica,” Heather said, after Josie explained to her what had just happened. “We can go there tonight, if you want.”
“Tonight?” Josie asked in a soft voice.
“Tonight is the new moon. It will be so dark, the Devil will need a searchlight to see your freckles. Did she say what time is best? I think it will be better if we do it close to midnight. The cemetery closes at six, but I don’t think there’s a gravekeeper, so we can go anytime. I’ll pick you up at eleven thirty, how does that sound?”
“Terrific.”
“Oh, my goodness,” President Buer said to the little woman, after she updated him on the conversation between Josie and her friend. “This a marvellous coincidence! The recipe for beauty and young looks calls for a demoiselle killed on a moonless night, remember?”
The demon’s head was now covered with curlers. He jumped off Victoria’s bed, where he had been sitting, and opened the armoire to check himself in the mirror. He adjusted one of the bobby pins in his rollers.
“You must absolutely go with them to the cemetery; I’ll never forgive you if you don’t,” he continued. “Oh, I have tortured you long enough, you silly,” he looked at the little woman through the mirror. “Of course I will be your familiar, and of course I will tell you what to do. The fact that you stole a child and feel no remorse for it is proof enough that you’re evil and rotten. You deserve to be imprisoned in a stream of burning pitch in the eighth circle of Hell forever. I am henceforth your familiar. Here is what you need,” the fiend squatted down and pulled a long roll of parchment out of his anus, which he then extended to his now–formally appointed mistress.
The little woman inspected the parchment with attention. It smelled of roses.
“The recipe for beauty and young looks,” the demon announced proudly. “The first and most important ingredient: fat from the chin of a young maiden, killed on a moonless night, preferably, but not necessarily, on a Tuesday. You are welcome,” he said with a flourish. Then, noticing her demeanor, “Oh, don’t look at me with that face. Of course you can do it—duck soup! Tonight is the perfect night. You must go with them. God bless, this is just what we needed! Isn’t it like a coincidence sent from heaven? You should climb inside the back seat of the fat woman’s car. That will save you a ride to the cemetery.”
He clapped a couple of times. “You’re going to need a weapon, of course,” he continued. “A hoe, perhaps?” he flicked mentally through the little woman’s possessions. “Or a mattock? You’re going to need something sturdier than a kitchen knife to sever the head from the body.”
The little woman had a pair of hedge clippers that she could easily hide inside her coat.
“Brilliant,” President Buer responded. “Absolutely brilliant. Now, you still have to kiss my arsehole. A mere formality, so we can seal the agreement. Go brush your teeth. I don’t want any unpleasant surprises.”
At eleven thirty sharp, Heather drove into the alley behind the sisters’ house. Josie was already waiting for her outside. She lost no time getting into the car.
“Where’s Tyler?” she asked.
“At home,” Heather responded, “watching a horror movie. ‘You’re going to have nightmares,’ I said, but he never listens.”
Neither of them noticed the hooded figure shinnying up into the car’s trunk to join them on their ride to the cemetery.
“Eva’s aunt’s name was Cecilia Domynzcik,” Heather explained as she drove down Venice Boulevard. She passed a piece of paper to her friend so she could read the spelling. “She was Eva’s mother’s eldest sister. She married a diamond trader from Brooklyn. When the war ended, she and her husband went back to Europe to rescue Eva from an orphanage in Sweden. It’s such a sad story. The Nazis killed her whole family. Her parents, her siblings, her cousins, her aunts and uncles—they all died in the extermination camps. Eva survived thanks to a neighbor who agreed to pass her off as one of his daughters. Her blonde hair was what saved Eva. But then the Soviets killed this man too, and somehow she ended up being sent to Sweden.”
“How do you know all this?” Josie asked with surprise. “Did she tell you?”
“Of course not,” Heather responded. “Big Daddy told me. Sully told him. And I guess she told Sully—but not everything. There’s a lot she doesn’t tell. Isn’t it incredibly sad? I think that’s why she’s an alcoholic.”
Josie stared at the moonless night through the car window. How awful, she frowned, to lose your entire family to the Nazis…
“Sad story or not,” Heather continued, “she should have not stolen your boyfriend.”
“She shouldn’t have,” Josie bobbed her head in agreement.
“Eva’s uncle is still alive.” Heather resumed her story. “He lives in Palms, in a duplex. But they don’t talk. I don’t think that they get along.”
“Do you know where her aunt’s grave is?”
Heather shook her head. “I don’t. But I don’t think it’ll be too difficult to figure it out. How difficult could it be to single out the Jewish graves from the Christian? If it has a cross or an angel, don’t bother. If it has a six-pointed star or a golden rim—read the inscription.”
“That makes sense.”
“This is fun, huh?” Heather giggled as she veered the car into the cemetery’s entrance. “I mean, I’m a little scared, we’re breaking into a cemetery, but I’m also excited! Aren’t ya, girlfriend? We’re going to do witchcraft! Wooooo, scary!”
Witchcraft? Josie couldn’t help smiling. Up until that moment, she had thought of the whole affair as way to obtain justice. Divine justice, perhaps, for she was the victim of a malevolent woman. But Heather was right; what they were planning to do was actually witchcraft. And she was not going to be a victim anymore. She was going to be the executor. It made her feel powerful. And it was scary. Even a cemetery full of palm trees and flowery bushes like Woodlawn Memorial could be scary at night. But fun scary, not frightening scary, like amusement park rides. Not scary to the point of being terrified or to wish to cancel, but thrilling. It would be fun.
Heather pulled the car over to the curb.
“I am excited,” Josie confessed. “But I’m also quite upset.”
Heather put the transmission in park. “You have reason to be. That wench stole your man. And that’s unforgivable. You have nothing to feel sorry about. This is good versus evil. It’s tough, but she has to pay. Ojo para oj
o y diente para diente. Don’t worry, evil never wins.”
They stepped out of the car. The night was unusually dark, “darker than the intentions of a child murderer,” Heather commented, and extremely foggy. If a demon were to follow them—and sure enough, one was following them, three tombstones behind, holding a pair of rusty hedge clippers—it would have to stay close in order not to lose them.
They turned on their flashlights and moved hastily through the first rows of graves. Soon enough they realized that the expected Jewish section at Woodlawn didn’t exist. The deceased had been buried at random, as the lots had been sold, and not based on their earthly beliefs. The two women forced themselves to start over and scan row by row, headstone by headstone. Heather inspected the graves to their left and Josie the ones to their right.
Every time one of them found a stone with the name of Cecilia engraved on it, they exclaimed: “This is it!” But it was either a Cecilia Stein or a Cecilia Hoffman, at best, or a Cecil, with a cross instead of the Star of David.
Josie checked the time. It was already half past midnight. Finding that stupid tomb, she feared, may prove to be much more difficult a task than obtaining the vial from her landladies.
“And once we find it, if we ever find it,” she asked Heather, “how are we going to get the vial under her bed?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
By one o’clock they decided to take a rest by the steps of the mausoleum. Josie lit up a cigarette and Heather pulled out of her jacket the small tin box where she kept her marijuana. She lit up a small roach.
“We’ll find it, girl.” Heather sucked in. “If not tonight, we’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow it won’t be as dark.”
“Maybe we’ll need to know where it is first.”
“And what if after all this work we can’t get to her place,” Josie whimpered. “I don’t know where she lives. Do you?”
“Nope.” Heather sucked on her reefer and then passed it to Josie. “But don’t worry about it. I’ll find out—I always do, Josefita. Have I ever let you down?”
“No.” Josie held away her cigarette and breathed in a small toke of Heather’s joint. “You’re a true pal, Heather.” She held in her breath. “You truly are.”
“Don’t mention it. You’d do the same thing for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course,” Josie lied.
“That’s what friends are for.”
“Friends forever.”
They kept on walking.
Josie complained about the cold.
“Have my jacket,” Heather offered.
An hour later, they found the headstone in the northernmost section of the cemetery, behind the mausoleum. It was a simple slab of granite with the name of Eva’s aunt and the years of her birth and passing.
The two friends exchanged a perverted smile.
“Go on,” Heather said, turning off her flashlight.
Josie turned off hers too and took the vial out of her jeans pocket. She squatted down, removed the cork, passed a finger tip over the headstone and brushed the dust into the small bottle.
“Now cut yourself,” Heather ordered. She had sat down on the grave, busily trying to roll a new joint in the darkness.
“What?”
“We need the blood.”
“How?”
“Bite yourself.”
“I can’t!” Josie cried after a pitiful attempt to bite her thumb.
“Try this.” Heather offered a safety pin from the hem of her skirt.
Josie pinched her left palm, stifling a cry, and then poured a drop of blood inside the bottle.
“Didn’t you have to say something?”
“I don’t think so,” Josie squinted her eyes, trying to remember. “I think it’s done.”
“Say something. Otherwise it won’t be like a spell.”
“What should I say?
“Anything. Make it sound like magic.”
“Is this black magic?” Josie asked.
“Don’t be stupid. It’s white magic.”
“Okay. Please, Lord Jesus Christ, kill that woman,” Josie chanted.
“That will work,” Heather laughed.
“Make her twist in pain in her bed and worms come out of her cunt…”
“Amen.”
“And may she rot in Hell forever. Amen,” Josie finished. She made the sign of the cross and put the cork back into the vial. Then, she hid the bottle inside her bra.
Heather offered her friend the now–fully rolled reefer. Josie lit it up and had a long drag.
“Heather,” the girl began with a snivel, “what if he never forgives me? What if Russell finds out what we’ve done tonight and he gets angry?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Heather took the joint back. She sucked twice then offered it back to her friend. “He’ll never know,” she added, holding her breath.
“But what if he does?” Josie took a second drag.
“He’ll never know,” Heather repeated. She took the joint back and spat on the tip to put it out. “I’m not going to tell and you never will, either.” She reached for the tin box inside her jacket, now draped around Josie shoulders, and put the joint inside.
Josie lit up the last of her cigarettes. She tossed the empty box away. “But…” she insisted, “everyone knows how much I dislike Eva. What if she gets sick and everyone starts to suspect me, and Russell pieces things together? He may find out what we did tonight. What if she dies? I’ll go to jail and he will never forgive me.”
“We’re not going to kill her. We’re not murderers. You’re only taking back what is yours: your man. Russell will forgive you because he loves you and because he will never, ever learn about this. That’s it, girl.” She took the cigarette from Josie’s hand. “It’s like cheating,” she sucked in. “If your boyfriend doesn’t find out, it never happened. And he won’t find out unless you tell.” She stood up. “Come on, let’s go—now, what?”
Josie had started crying.
“What is it? He will never know.”
“What you just said,” Josie stuttered. “I never told you the whole story.”
“For God’s sake, you’re high. What is the whole story?”
“I never told you what I did last night.”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, Heather,” Josie cried, “promise me that you will never tell! Promise me that you will die before telling anyone about this…”
“I promise,” Heather responded.
“I slept with Peter last night…”
Heather opened her mouth in surprise. Then she took a long drag off the cigarette.
“I knew it,” she held the kick in, with a tone of baleful satisfaction.
“…and with Paul, too…”
“You slut!” Heather chuckled.
“…at the same time.”
Josie collapsed on the tomb, crying. “I didn’t want to,” she added. “I swear I didn’t want to. I was drunk and they insisted! All I wanted was a ride back home. They offered to walk home with me. You cannot blame me. You know how it is. There are only so many times that a woman can say no before succumbing to a man’s pleading. And there were two of them.”
Heather remained silent for a second. She couldn’t believe what she had just heard. Then she started laughing.
“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” Josie asked, terrified.
But Heather wouldn’t stop laughing.
“You promised me that you wouldn’t,” Josie cried. “You said you would die before telling anyone. You promised!”
“I didn’t say that,” began Heather. “I didn’t say I would die before telling. I said I promise, not that I would die if I—”
She stopped at the sound of footsteps on the
grass.
“Did you hear that?”
“No.”
“Somebody’s here.”
Josie turned on her flashlight and looked behind her.
“Turn that off!” Heather snapped, pulling the lamp from Josie’s hands. She turned it off and put out her cigarette. “It must be the gravekeeper.”
“You said there was no gravekeeper!” Josie whispered.
“I said I thought there was no gravekeeper.”
Another step.
“We need to go.” Heather said. “Hide over there,” she pointed to a tree and returned her flashlight to Josie. “Don’t move. But if I yell—run!”
“Run to where?” Josie cried.
“To my car, silly. Unless you want to walk back.”
Josie staggered towards the tree and Heather crept in the opposite direction, towards the mausoleum.
Which one to follow? the hooded figure wondered. Confused by the jacket that Josie was now wearing, the little woman darted behind the wrong girl.
“All of this is that stupid kike’s fault,” Josie mumbled to herself, crouching behind the tree. “Everything is her stupid fault.”
Heather hid behind the statue of an angel. She crouched down, leaving her neck exposed.
The little woman pulled the hedge clippers out of her coat…
“I’m not going to get arrested again,” Josie said aloud. “Not before I finish this.” She groped inside her blouse for the vial. “She deserves to die,” she added, feeling a sudden rush of hatred crawl through her chest all the way up to her nostrils, and with no other precaution than a fast peek over her shoulders, she pulled off the cork with her teeth, unbuttoned her pants, and peed inside the small bottle.
A scream of horror.
“Heather?” Josie leaped up, yanking up her panties.
No response.
“Heather?” Josie asked again, buttoning up her pants. She put the vial back inside her bra and dried her hands on her blouse. “Are you alright?” She turned on her flashlight and browsed through the darkness for her friend. “You’re kidding, right? You’re fucking with me, right, Heather? Are you hiding in there? Come out now. It’s not funny.”
Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle Page 26