by Graham Wynd
Agnes – quiet little Agnes! – let forth a howl of triumph. “It’s in me, I can feel it!” She reached up to grab her own breasts, squeezing them so her fingers left tracks in the smeared blood. “We don’t need him any longer.”
The frat boy looked up, confused and dazed yet. “Trixie?” he muttered, vainly trying to blink the blood out of his eyes. Agnes frowned at him and hissed.
Trixie fell down beside his body and repeated, “Una nobiscum!” Then she plunged the athame into his neck. Blood shot out in a stream, pumping onto Trixie and Agnes both as the boy shrieked like a banshee. Trixie laughed at him, but Sandra bent down to cover his mouth.
“Let him screech,” Trixie laughed.
“We don’t want anyone to hear him.” What part of secret ritual do you not understand? His eyes were turning glassy already as the blood pooled around his head and shoulders and Sandra took her hand away to watch. “He’s gone.”
The sisters all cheered and then they took turns wetting their hands in the pool of blood and leaving prints on him, the floor and soon each other before lapsing once more into a frenzied orgy of flesh.
Agnes rocked back and forth, still impaled on his cock, eyes closed and an almost seraphic smile on her lips. “Una nobiscum, una nobiscum, una…” Her hands squeezed her breasts tightly enough to make the soft skin bulge between her fingers. When her eyes fluttered open they seemed brighter than usual, the fierce beams of them striking Sandra. She shuddered. Something was inside Agnes, something not of this world. She felt an electric shock move through her body as the truth struck her.
“It worked,” she whispered. Then shouted, “It worked. The Dark Lord is with us!”
“Of course it worked. We are powerful,” Trixie said, throwing her arms around her. “We are magic!” And then like all the others around them, Sandra and Trixie sought every pleasure of the flesh, coupling atop the corpse Agnes still rode defiantly. Trixie’s hand slipped between Sandra’s thighs as she pushed her back onto the frat boy’s chest.
“We still have to carve his flesh. Keep the bond,” Sandra murmured.
“Soon, soon,” Trixie promised before diving between her thighs and making Sandra forget everything except how wonderful it was to be in the sorority, to have Trixie love her and to ride such waves of ecstasy far into the night. Blood-covered and wine-splashed, they wound around each other, moaning and sighing until the dawn arrived.
Sandra raised her head. Most of the girls were quiet now, snoring in heaps on the floor, mouths on breasts, arms and legs entangled. Miranda and Lois cuddled upside down, faces between each others’ thighs. Trixie lay with one arm thrown back over the corpse at the center of the circle. Time to carve his skin with the necessary binding sigils so they would keep the power they had gained tonight.
It thrummed through the room, through Sandra herself, through them all. She smiled. No one would stand in their way, ever. Not any more.
xii
The sisters planned to pull a switch the next night: the frat boy’s carved corpse for the skeleton in the coffin, the centerpiece of the Kappa house holiday decorations. It was a risk that someone might report Pole as missing, but frat boys prided themselves on their wild ways, maybe his brothers would assume he got lucky. They cleaned up themselves and the attic room that Halloween morning. “Thank goodness for well-waxed wood floors!” Trixie said with satisfaction after they had mopped up the various occult symbols scrawled in blood.
Then they had dressed in cute costumes, given out candy at the animal shelter – in a unanimous vote they had chosen it as their official charity, much to Sandra’s amusement – then got back to Sigma Tau Nu to be part of the Greek Row Halloween open house, offering candy and fizzy drinks to all who dropped by while Richard Pole loitered in a tarpaulin in the cellar, awaiting his grand comeback.
The parties at the wilder houses went on until almost dawn.
Just as the light began its tentative return, four Nus dressed in black sweaters and trousers dragged Pole back to Kappa and switched him with the skeleton. At the last minute, Sandra had a thought to pose the skeleton so it looked as if it were choking the frat boy in his coffin – or else trying to drag him out of it.
Of course, all hell broke loose that cold first day of November.
Much was made in the newspapers of the ‘sadistic’ killers, which amused the girls no end. “They have no sense of humor!” Trixie declared. Indeed the pall the crime cast over the town – to say nothing of Greek Row itself – was huge. The girls couldn’t help being a little gleeful.
“It’s bigger than the H-bomb!” Lois said as she eagerly added clippings to the scrapbook while Lena and Miranda danced to Bill Haley’s Thirteen Women, which they had declared the official Sigma Tau Nu theme tune.
“We’d better be ready for the grilling,” Sandra warned them all as they read the latest theories in the campus paper. “Keep it simple. Stick to the truth as much as possible. Don’t let them trip you up.”
Trixie threw an arm around her waist. Sandra had been a bit different since the ritual. Trixie couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she had been a little snappish. She was eager too, but Sandra needed a little patience. It was too soon to tell if it had worked or not. They would feel the presence of the Dark Lord. Even if the ritual had been meant to give it physical form, surely it was too much to expect it to just pop into the room like a magic trick.
Well, it was magic, of course – but not like stage magic. Surely not.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. Why would they suspect us anyway? We’re just a bunch of sorority gals. Couldn’t harm a fly.”
“Help me! Help me!” Lena said, pretending to be the half-human fly caught in a web as Miranda menaced her like a spider. The two of them loved all the scary sci-fi movies. The others were willing to watch them all together late at night, but they weren’t willing to go to the theatre.
“Just the same,” Sandra said, “We can’t be too careful.”
As if on cue, the doorbell rang and a familiar face waited outside with a couple of new troopers. “Hello, I’m Detective Walker. We’d like to ask you girls some questions about the recent unpleasantness.”
Trixie did her best to hide a smile. ‘Unpleasantness’ was it? Depended on your point of view!
Sandra however had no trouble looking appropriately grave. “Hello, Detective Walker. Do you remember me?”
“Yes, miss. I’m sorry that you have to be in the midst of another tragedy. Did you know the boy?”
“He was in my English class. Just last week we were reading parts in a play together. It’s so hard to believe. And such a terrible way to be displayed afterward. How many people walked by thinking it was just part of the decorations?” She shook her head wonderingly.
She’s really good at acting, Trixie thought, impressed with her lover’s performance. Next she’ll be sobbing that she had a crush on him. Despite herself, she felt a bit nettled at the notion. She knew it wasn’t true, but there was a gut feeling that something was wrong. After the cops left, she would ask Sandra flat out what it was. She knew from living in a close-knit group for years now that little problems quickly grew to become big ones if you didn’t nip them in the bud.
The cops interviewed them in small groups. Trixie figured there must be nothing too suspicious about their house because of that. If there were concerns, they would have been grilled separately. They got the usual ‘where we you at X o’clock, did you see anything unusual, when did you last see, etc.’ questions. They all told the same bland hijinks tale: they were here at the sorority house, getting ready for Halloween shenanigans, putting up more decorations and preparing treats. It was all rather dull. There was just enough variation in their individual tales to make it believable, though Lena and Lois might have gone overboard arguing about whether they baked the peanut butter cookies first or the chocolate chip.
The cops seemed convinced and they departed with promises to be back if they required any further information. The
papers seemed to be correct however: the police were clueless.
Which meant they hadn’t paid any attention to Agnes; to be fair, it was generally hard to notice her unless you knew her. She had a habit of slipping into nigh invisibility when she didn’t want to be seen. It wasn’t just that she was so pale and quiet. It was almost as if she had some uncanny ability to fade into the wainscoting. If you didn’t know what she was usually like you wouldn’t know just how weird she had been acting. Trixie thought they all had changed since the ritual but it was mostly in good ways. In the midst of November’s dull greyness they positively glowed. It had to be the demonic influence. An impromptu orgy broke out last evening without anybody intending it. They were all just so sexy.
But Agnes didn’t join in as usual. Oh, she wanted the attention but she wasn’t giving anything back. She wanted to be adored like some demonic Virgin Mary.
“Something’s growing inside me. I can feel it.” Agnes would rub her hands along her belly as if the growth were tangible, then invite the others to touch her. Almost any touch would make her orgasmic with pleasure. Despite their growing lasciviousness, it was a little unsettling for them all. Lois found it hard to conceal her contempt.
“Maybe the frat boy knocked her up,” she smirked after rolling her eyes at Agnes’ beatific shuffle through the parlour on her way to the kitchen for yet another snack.
“Nah, she asked me for a pad this morning,” Lena said. “I don’t think she’s actually pregnant. Not with a human baby anyway.”
Trixie looked at the absently smiling Agnes and pondered. Later she asked Sandra about her thoughts on it. “Could that be how the invocation manifested? Something organic inside Agnes?”
Sandra frowned. “I suppose it’s possible. There was a story in Khunrath’s volume on alchemy, I think it was, that suggested such a thing was possible. I suppose we can wait and see. A demon grows much faster than a regular baby.”
“If it is, surely she’ll be showing sometime soon,” Trixie said as she caressed the curve of Sandra’s breast. Her chest was so much smaller than her own, but nicely curved, like little scoops of ice cream, like all of Michelangelo’s women. If my art history professor could see me now! She chuckled to think of it.
Sandra, however, seemed to be somewhere else entirely. “I suppose we could always cut her open to see, if we get tired of waiting.”
Trixie blinked. “That’s not funny. She’s one of us.”
Sandra sighed. “I know. I’m just frustrated. Nothing seems to be working the way I want it to. We give so much and yet what have we got for it?”
“Two horrible and annoying people are out of this world forever and good riddance?” Trixie smiled and kissed her lover. “Surely that counts for something.”
“I want power. I want to be able to rule. I don’t want to be just a nobody sorority girl at a New England college.” Her jaw set, firm and obstinate.
“Like everything, it takes time,” Trixie soothed. “We have to earn it. There’s more work to be done. And we’re figuring out more all the time. Why look, the police don’t suspect a thing. I am pretty sure we are being protected. That must be a sign of their favor for us, right? The infernal realms love us.”
“I suppose. But I think we need more.”
“More killings?” Trixie discovered that her need for blood had been pretty much sated for the moment. Most of her lusts had been consumed by, well, lust. Clearly that was not the case for Sandra. “Did you have someone in mind?”
Sandra stared off into space. “Not yet, but I’m thinking.”
Involuntarily Trixie shuddered. There was something uncanny about the cold way she spoke, something inhuman almost. A line welled up from memory, Yet each man kills the thing he loves. She shivered again. There was some wild and unpredictable part of Sandra that the rituals had unlocked. Maybe Agnes wasn’t the only one carrying something.
Then all at once that strangeness was gone and Sandra turned to kiss her. All was well as they tasted each other’s pleasures in the warm bed, more cozy than ample, but wide enough to hold their love.
Yet Trixie couldn’t help thinking as they drowsed afterward that something else lay with them, too.
xiii
“A road trip?” Trixie frowned. “We’ll miss our classes.”
Sandra gave a snort of impatience. Trixie was the last person she thought would complain about missing class. “This is important. And we have a small window of opportunity.”
“Why is that?”
Sandra sighed. “The Munich Handbook!”
“I know, an important necromantic book. You said so. Why is it worth missing class for? And to go all the way to Yale!” Trixie kept applying mascara, looking far too unconcerned with such an important matter. She had a trivial nature sometimes that frustrated Sandra so much – and a typically Connecticut view of travel.
“It’s being repaired right now. This is our chance.”
Trixie seemed completely occupied by the black wand in her hand. “But why?”
Sandra sighed. Sometimes she felt as if she were the only person breathing. It drove her crazy when Trixie behaved like the stereotype of a sorority gal. Worse, she thought that the girl knew it and did it deliberately sometimes just to get a rise out of her – which unfortunately worked. “Normally it’s in the Sterling Library special collections. You can’t check it out and if you ask for it, they ask why and you have to, like, have a note from your professor, or be a professor to even get access to it.”
“So where is it now?”
Sandra jumped up and down a little with excitement. “I overheard Ballard saying her friend was repairing it. The old librarian’s network: they all seem to know each other. Her friend is like the whiz of book repair or whatever. So instead of hidden away in special collections, it’s in her office. I told you working in the library would pay off.”
“All right,” Trixie said, smiling again. “I suppose I can get notes from someone. And there’s a great little dress shop in New Haven. You’d like it. Very à la mode.”
Soon they were across the river and heading south. It was kind of nice being away, just the two of them, after so many weeks of intense togetherness with all the girls. Sandra read from the newspapers they’d picked up at Pappy’s. Most were speculating ever more wildly about the killings. “Witches! The idiots. Do they know nothing? Clearly these are necromantic crimes. They could do a little homework.”
“I think most people are too ignorant to know the difference,” said Trixie. “Anybody who does something they consider magic is a witch. Probably because they only know fairy tales. Light me a cigarette, will you?”
Sandra never much cared for smoking – something she associated with her father and her aunt and old age – but she had found herself lighting up for Trixie. She passed her the lit cigarette and marveled again at her beauty. Of course, she looked much better naked and covered with blood, but you couldn’t walk around the Yale campus like that. “My dad took me to Mory’s once. The great tradition, I guess. It was a dingy old place. Women are only allowed upstairs in the dining room. Supposedly there are necromancers meeting in the Temple Bar.”
“Men like to try to keep us away from all the really good stuff,” Trixie said as she puffed. “We’ll just have to work around them.”
“And start our own traditions.” Sandra smiled to herself. She liked that idea very much. She would write her own necromantic book one day, a compilation of rituals that actually worked. There was something intoxicating in the thought. ’Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me!
They lunched at a lovely café just off campus, full of sorority girls in sweaters and pearls. “Camouflage,” Trixie smirked.
To an outsider they probably did look as if they fit in, scrubbed of their blood and burnt offerings. Sandra took in the middle-class rabble around them and thought how they would cower if they only knew what these two innocent looking co-eds had done. The poets often claimed that death wore a mask, but they never s
aid it wore a sorority pin.
Not yet anyway.
It was nearly closing time when they wandered through Sterling Library. As expected, there were a lot of people bringing piles of books to the circulation desk to be checked out at the last minute and all hands were on deck to meet the charge. Trixie and Sandra edged back to where the offices were, armed with an elaborate plan of messages to convey from Mrs. Ballard to the specialty librarian, Miss Johnson, but the area seemed deserted. Either all the librarians were out front or taking a day off.
Trixie kept watch while Sandra raced to find the right office. There! It was impossible to mistake the book which lay face down, the way you were told never to do, though propped up on a kind of pyramid. The newly strengthened binding, however, seemed to have been completed. It was surprisingly plain, reading only ‘Cod. Lat. 849’ on the spine.
Sandra lifted it gently from the workplace and slipped it into the large leather satchel she had brought for the purpose. Then she ran back down the hall to where Trixie waited and the two glided out into the library and headed to the door.
“May I check your bags, ladies?” A pimply undergrad sat at a table near the door.
“Yes, but my friend is menstruating right now and we need to get her home or there’ll be blood everywhere,” Trixie improvised.
The Yalie turned pale and waved them away, looking as if he might faint.
The girls ran arm in arm all the way to Trixie’s sedan. “Oh my God, you were so funny!” Sandra clutched the satchel to her chest like the treasure it was. They kissed quickly and then set out on the return trip, singing old camp songs along the way to amuse themselves.