Maleficarum: Hunger of the Witch

by Bennett, Jeremy

  “I want to be the one who picks the objects to put in the bottles,” Mike requested, rubbing his newly bald head.

  “OK, we’re going to need some others hanging the bottles and keeping the fires going. Me, Beverly, and Kim can do that while you and Ann start putting the shit in the bottles,” he said, pointing to the bucket. “Once we start, we can’t stop, and once the cap is put onto the bottle, the witches who have tried to cast a spell on us will feel the objects inside them. They’ll run to us and scream and beg for us to stop, but we can’t stop. They’ll say anything to get to us, but we can’t listen to them. Not if we want to live. We can’t fucking talk either. It’ll stop the spell. So I think we should put some duct tape over our mouths just so we remember. Do not talk. I cannot stress this too much, and if one of us forgets, that person has to wait for the witches to kill you. I’ll do it myself. Are we all clear on what it is that we’re doing?” Nick looked at the nervous crowd of soon-to-be spell casters.

  “Got it,” Beverly chirped as everyone else slowly nodded.

  “OK. Let’s do it.” Nick slapped a large piece of tape over his mouth. The rest followed suit and quickly went about their assigned tasks. Nick had a plan of action now. He felt whole once more. He had something to work toward and maybe a way out.

  Mike grabbed a rather large glass bottle and ran about the store frantically looking for something good to shove in it: chunks of broken wood, bits of glass, and anything he could find to fill the containers. He ran to the knife counter that Ann had broken and started shovelling chunks of glass into the bottle.

  Ann jogged up next to him and reached into the display cases, pulling out a bunch of Swiss Army knives. Quickly, she opened the attachments and chunked a few knives into her small container. Mike smiled as he watched her open the blades before shoving them in.

  He ran to fill his bottle with hair and piss, and not seeing a good way to pour the concoction in, he simply reached down and grabbed a handful of the grotesque substances and slapped it into the bottle. Ann visibly cringed a bit when she saw him do it, but she, too, repeated the act for the sake of time.

  Mike screwed the lid onto his bottle. As he tightened the top, a tremendous scream came out of the darkness, and before he could even get his deadly magic bottle back to the others, there was a hurried knocking at the door.

  “Please, no. I didn’t do it. They made me,” a woman’s voice screeched as she banged on the wall. Nick pulled a massive cauldron into the center of the room as Beverly shredded books for the fire. Nick slammed the cauldron down, and Beverly chunked the paper in and lit it up. The fire cast thick black smoke into the room.

  Ann and Mike quickly filled their bottles as the rest hung and cooked what they were given, and for each bottle that was hung, another screaming witch bashed at the building. The other witches didn’t seem to mind that their satanic brothers and sisters were having their insides ruptured, and they continued on with their diabolical hymns around the fire.

  “We’ll let you live if you stop,” one pleaded. “I never wanted to hurt anyone. Please, I beg you.” Pop! The first bottle exploded from being boiled with its top on, and it shattered into a thousand pieces. Glass and piss-covered hair flung in all directions, and one of the screaming voices went silent.

  Almost a dozen bottles swung from the ceiling now, and new candles and cauldrons had to be lit constantly. The smoke burned their eyes and filled their lungs so much that Nick started busting the glass out of the windows just so they wouldn’t die from smoke inhalation. With the protection of the cold iron and the boards that had been placed over the windows, he was not too worried that any of the witches could get in.

  Mike scooped up the glass from the newly broken windows, as the howling witches tried to poke their heads in through the barricade so that the group inside would have to see them die. Blood shot from their gaping mouths like twisted geysers and ran down their legs as they screeched.

  “Murderous. You’re all murderous.”

  “Killers are sent to hell, and that’s where you’ll go if you kill us,” some of them shouted in pain. Ann ignored their cries as she filled a new jar with tacks that she had been pulling from the posters that hung on the wall. Thinking that was not sufficient, she snatched a bit of the sword that she had shattered earlier and shoved it into the bottle before handing it off. The smell of burning hair and urine filled the room as the fire cast its flickering orange light onto the walls.

  The plastic bottles melted quickly. The glass ones took more time, but they exploded like miniature grenades. All the survivors were bleeding: the ones who tended the fire were pierced by the shattering bottles and jars, and the ones who filled the bottles and jars were cut by haphazardly grabbing every sharp object they could find. Blood ran down their arms and legs and cheeks in small streams.

  “Die,” Beverly repeated in her head. They had seven or eight cauldrons going now and about a dozen candles. Several small fires from flaming bits of paper that floated on the smoke had to be stamped out. Blood poured from the windows, and greasy pools of piss flowed from under the door; the building shook from the relentless pounding of the witches. The chanting from the monsters at the fire was starting to be drowned out by the screams of agony that came from the dying witches. The lower parts of their bellies popped like blood-filled balloons as their bottles popped. The ruptures sent them to the ground, only to be trampled to death by the other desperate witches as if it was a Black Friday Super Sale.

  The store began to resemble the darkest images from Dante’s Inferno, as more and more bottles were hung over the fires, casting a shimmering light onto the walls and ceiling as if they were at an indoor pool. Several dozen witches now cried out for mercy, and a few of the meaner witches cursed and flung threats as they met their grisly end.

  Covered in blood and piss-soaked hair, the five trapped people worked at a terrible pace. Sweat poured off them as the heat of the fires seemed to boil the air in the room. The smell of death and burning paper and plastic coated everything. They broke whatever could be broken and used it to either fuel the fires or fill the bottles, and like a death-dealing assembly line, they sent as many witches as they could to hell.

  Chapter 8: The Eater of Wings

  From outside, Hegel watched the events unfold. First there was not enough to eat and now this. It was becoming clear that this was the worst Sabbath ever. Many of the people she had known for two or three lifetimes were either running toward the house or keeling over as they danced. It was a good attempt by the trapped group, but it wasn’t going to be good enough. It was only a few minutes till the dreaded stroke of midnight, and all she needed to do was wait.

  Soon the elder witches who had not been affected yet called on the demons. “Hear us, oh dark ones; we invite you among us.”

  “Show us your love and power that we might know the truth,” the younger witches called. Hegel mounted her pitchfork and began to chant.

  “Here, there, hence, thence,” she chanted as the others joined in.

  Over and over they chanted as they lifted off the ground on their chosen flying instruments. Some used brooms, others used shovels, and some used the dead. As they flew they began to circle the great bonfire in a counterclockwise pattern. The left is the side of moral weakness, filth, and sickness, and so it was the direction they traveled to summon their masters.

  “Here, there, hence, thence,” continuously rang out in a breathy and halting manner from the fiends.

  Faster and faster, the tornado whipped as the elders screamed, “We entreat you, spirits. All who wish to come are welcome. Show yourselves or take our bodies for your own.”

  Occasionally, one of the flying witches’ bellies would burst from the witch bottles, and she would crash, howling, to the ground or into the fire. Many of the younger witches were becoming possessed by the arriving worldly spirits. They collapsed to their knees onto the blisteringly hot pavement next to the fire, and their eyes rolled into the backs of their heads, tur
ning a light shade of sickly yellow. They spouted dark sentences and profaned all that was holy as they clawed at their own flesh.

  The lesser spirits had arrived. Now the witches were hoping they would garner the attention of the fallen angels—the true sons of darkness.

  “Meet us in the fields and meet by our fires, so we can inflict your will on God’s creation,” the elders sang. “Grind the bones of our hated enemies and corrupt their flesh with your signs. Let us eat their meat and take whatever pleasures we wish from their bodies,” they droned.

  The fire seemed to cackle as if it had become alive, and the stars and moon dimmed at their coming. Surrounding the infernal witches, faint and unnatural forms began to materialize. There were more of them than the witches themselves. It seemed that all the generals and princes of the light bearer had heard their calls. The beings slowly consolidated into flesh, showing their chosen forms.

  Agares, Vassago, Valefor, Zepar, Marax, Ipes, and Ronwe were all in attendance, and they had brought their hellish legions. Orobias appeared as a giant man with the head of a horse, and his lion-like teeth gleamed from the light of the flickering flames. Andras paced in the crowd atop his monstrously large wolf. His body was that of an angel, and his head was that of an owl. He outstretched his great white wings, and in his hand he swung a massive sword. Fur Fur walked among them in the form of an upright stag, baring his hideously sharp teeth and flapping his bat-like wings.

  The air grew wet and began to smell of death. The horrendous affronts to God’s law were out in mass this night, and many had come to see bloodshed. Never in all of Hegel’s years had she seen such a gathering of hell’s royalty. Many of them were demons even she could not name.

  “What is it that you call us for, servants?” A raucous but well-formed voice spat. Agares, a great duke of hell, slithered forward, sitting atop a massive crocodile. He looked like an elderly man with a rank and unkempt beard, and his skin was pale and damp like a man with a fever. On top of his head was a crown of gold, and in his hand he clenched a great golden staff warped by wreaths of nightshade and twisted with flowers of monkshood.

  “Kill our enemies,” all the witches moaned, some even as they were falling dead from the erupting witches’ bottles.

  “We have given you great powers, and you cannot overcome a few children. You beg like the poor, and I turn my ears from them. Why should I lift a finger if you are so poor in spirit as to be unable to kill them? I should find more worthy servants to carry my name. You make me look foolish,” Agares thundered as he pointed a long and bony finger at the crowd of witches.

  “Master, we have tried, but they are protected with many elements that God has infused with the ability to destroy our works. We cannot lay a finger on their hiding place, and yet they can sling their arrows at us from their fortified dwelling,” Hegel protested as she landed in front of the horrendous being. These beings were so terrible that they filled even the hardest of hearts, such as Hegel's, with fear, dread, and cowardice. However she knew that there was nothing she could hide from them, and so she spoke up.

  “I come ashamed. I broke with the Lord to never feel shame, and this is what I see when I arrive. I have had to veil the eyes of those who would stop you because you picked a place that was so visible tonight. I have weaved power into your hearts. Flight, fire, invisibility, and the concocting of poisons have I shown you, and still you can’t stop but a few kids because they have placed a line of salt and have hidden behind cold iron. I have given knowledge that can destroy mighty armies, but look at how you repay me for my gifts,” the hellish voice grew in the throat of the diabolical being.

  Deeper into the crowd of his followers, Agares bid his unholy mount, and the demonic crocodile slithered into their midst. With a snap of its jaws, it caught the leg of a naked witch who was foolish enough not to give the beast a wide berth. The witch screamed as the crocodile sucked him deeper into its mouth, but Agares spoke over his cries as the beast chomped haphazardly at the witch’s flesh.

  “I have done so much for you, and now you will do for me. I will not kill them.” He paused for dramatic effect. “However I will break down their walls so that you can have your chance at their flesh. First though I will warn them so that they will be ready. This will be your punishment. Those who live are those who are worthy to call me god. It was your mission and your choice, Beth Hegel you caused this, so it shall be you that must fix it. You will fight them alone, and you will either seduce or die. If you fail, then the rest will attack, but not before either your blood or their blood has flavored the air.”

  Out in the crowd of demons, a frightful thing paced on his mighty steed. He was an aberration, even among the fallen. His head held higher than any rejected angels ought to, he was a thing that even other demons feared. His power was unimaginable. His hate was so contagious that it shocked whole countries. The others did not interfere with his whims. It was intrepidus paciscor poena pro sin (undaunted agreement to punish sin). He had killed multitudes, and he drank deeply of the blood of sinners.

  The Angel Crusher, the Eater of Wings, and the Destroyer of Dark Sentences were his titles. He was Heaven’s Witch Finder General. He had many titles, but his true name was hidden to all but God and the former power itself so that none could exercise power over him but God. His name was so powerful and such a guarded secret that he was often referred to as the nameless one. Only the reins that God had placed on him kept him from obliterating all of creation.

  He wore shining armor that even the mightiest kings of history would covet, and it was steel-hardened and refined for battle. In his hand he clenched a war hammer, and at his side swung a massive silver sword. His face and body were that of an angel and on his back were four wings. His face was stoic and well formed, but his eyes were another matter. Blackness was drawn to them like whirlpools, and even the angel of death feared his gaze. It was a nameless evil that could shake the foundations of the earth and hell, and in his rotting soul was only malice for sin.

  He was there to take names of the sinners and eventually repay their vices with death. He was on a mission—a mission not given to him by God or any angel in heaven, but it was his own blasphemous mission of destruction.

  Sinners killing sinners had always amused him, but that was what all killing was. He was there, not out of morbid curiosity, but out of a need to write down names in his book. Not one of the demons would protest since they knew what it meant to have him there. More than death had come to the dark proceeding, and more than death would do as he wished. From the moment Nick had picked up The Book of Eddiss, this former power had watched. He always watched the holder of any copy of the book. In fact it was all God would allow him to do since he had so abused everything else he had been given. When it came to the book and the events surrounding it, his authority was absolute. The Eater of Wings refused to accept that he had been placed in exile for his sins, but in exile he was. He would find a way, despite the will of God, to affect the world and remake it in his own vengeful image. The time for punishing all was drawing near.

  Chapter 9: The Storm Inside

  The troop cooked their bottles with as much fervor as they could muster. The fire boiled the contents of the bottles, sending yet another wicked soul to its eternal destination. There was no time to think as they roasted the souls of the damned, and it had not occurred to them that the night had gone silent except for the screams of the dying. Beverly’s arm burned and swelled, but still she kept working.

  The stillness was soon broken when all the fires of the room went dark seemingly without cause, and then the grinding of teeth became prevalent. None of the trapped survivors dared to move, not knowing what monstrous things awaited. Darkness enveloped them. The air grew cold and somehow even staler than it had been as the sound of dozens of new lungs pumping air materialized about them in the blackness. The fires inside reignited with a hellish hiss, and they burned with unnatural green and purple flames. Around the young survivors stood the hosts of hel
l in all their terrible glory. No screams made by humankind could convey their hideous, radiating hate.

  Not one of the five made a move or sound. They instinctively knew better. From the depths of their souls they shivered, and many of the survivors would have given their very souls to have the defiling forms leave them.

  Valefor stepped forward. His body was like that of a lion, but his face was the face of a man. His black mane bristled as his claws ran themselves through the carpet and into the cement slab below.

  “We are around you always. Nothing you do escapes us. No thought is secret; no deed is hidden. We know you and love you. Not in spite of what you are, but because of what you are. Hear what we holy beings have decided for you.” His voice was like the clashing of swords on armor, and the bones of his neck creaked as he gazed at each of the five fearful onlookers. “Those who wish to be saved must bow and worship at my feet.”

  Ann ripped the tape from her mouth. “No!” she screamed in as powerful a voice as she could. Every person in the room breathed a sigh of relief that someone else spoke up to address the beast.

  “Then you will be left to the witches. In one minute, we will dissolve any protection that this place and its contents offer you. They will strip your skin with their teeth and debone you slowly.”

  Nick looked into the crowd of demonic forms as the fiend spoke its words. He recognized many of them from his study of the ancient grammar, The Book of Eddiss. The names and attributes of most of them eluded him, but their terrible images on the pages were forever burned into his mind. Now they were here in front of him in vital flesh.