A Grimoire Dark

by D. S. Quinton

  Frank was sitting back in his chair, shaking his head slowly at the dangerous path he felt they were on.

  “But, the piece de résistance of course is my verse three, which appears to be a continuation—with possible gap—of your verse one.”

  Del leaned close and read the scrawling script:

  * * *

  Verset III

  With demon-will I wholly bind, your tattered soul, black heart and mind

  To me you see, for I am kind except to those I doth abhor.

  Evil things were done to me, but no worse evil can there be,

  To that which I will die to see, unleashed from beyond abgEL’s door.

  Unlock it spirit, I beseech, for I deserve revenge galore…

  Just one night? Not evermore?

  * * *

  Del felt her stomach do a slow flip and she grabbed her head as a bolt of pain shot through her temple.

  Armand watched her cheeks turn white. Frank was on his feet.

  She stumbled a bit and Armand grabbed her arm to steady her.

  “Let me sit down, please,” she said weakly.

  “Del, what’s da matter, honey?” Frank asked.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know,” she said. “I just got dizzy is all. I think I’ve had enough wine.”

  Armand helped her back to the old loveseat, where she curled up with a crocheted blanket that hung over the back.

  Frank walked around the table and stared at the passage that Del had just read. He started to turn the page and look at the other incantations, but thought better of it. He’d rather not touch the book at all.

  Armand brought a glass of water for Del, then motioned for Frank to join him in the large wingbacks that sat in front of the fire; a small table sat between them.

  “So, what we lookin’ at, ya think?” Frank asked as he settled into the chair.

  “It’s quite the mystery, eh, mon ami?” Armand said. After tweaking his bushy mustache into two upturned swoops, he lowered his voice, glancing at a peacefully resting Del and said, “I think there’s a chance you’ve found yourself a modern case of a possession,” finger pointing in the air, “at a minimum.” He stroked his beard. “A theoretical worst-case scenario… which admittedly stretches credibility, is that you’re looking at some type of reanimation.” He clasped his hands thoughtfully and gazed into the fire.

  “Reanimation?” Frank said quietly. “You think dat’s true?”

  “Theoretical possibility. Even I, surrounded by all this,” he waved at the towering bookshelves, “have trouble believing, but I’ll tell you Frank, there is volume after volume of stories and reports on these shelves, and none of these books were written as fiction in the sense that we know it. These authors, and sometimes they were family matriarchs, sometimes priests, sometimes researchers like me, these authors believed what they wrote down. Something happened to cause these stories to be recorded. That I believe.”

  Frank rubbed his thick chin and stared at the fire.

  “There’s something else that I haven’t mentioned, Frank.”

  “Oh, great. And what’d dat be?”

  “I looked on the inside of your book. At the bottom of the first page, there’s a small inscription.”

  “I didn’t see it. What’d it say?”

  “Trois de trois.”

  Frank understood the French, but not the significance.

  “Three of three,” Armand said. “And my book has a similar inscription. Written on the inside of my book are the words L’un des trois, ‘One of three.’ Whoever made these books clearly wanted to keep them separate, but still be able to put them back together, logically, at a later time. What’s odd is that your book, although labeled as part three, appears to be fairly benign in nature. A white grimoire if you will—with the exception of that hellish first verse. My book, labeled as part one, has verse three of the poem and appears to be a… grimoire strange, for lack of a better term. Someone went to great lengths to obscure the structure of this poem.”

  Realization dawned, flickering with red firelight over Frank’s face.

  “Der’s anutter book,” he said flatly.

  “Yes, mon ami. There’s another book. And I fear what it may contain.”

  Chapter 28

  As the dying embers of the fire glowed with failing light, Frank and Armand dozed, one then the other. The brandy and wine had finally overtaken them, and they slipped into a deep sleep.

  The old house moaned its nightly sighs and the rain drizzled cold and relentless. A dark shape flew to the top of the glass dome roof and cast a feeble shadow into the study and across the open books. It pecked three times on the glass. It spoke an unheard word. The hand-written passages in the books shimmered ever so slightly, as if an ancient life, somehow stored within the pages, suddenly awoke, pulsing to life on a frail alternating current to breathe the cool night air. Del dreamed a fitful dream.

  She dreamed of the books on Armand’s working table; they were catching fire and slight wisps of smoke were floating up from them. All the magic contained within the books, meant to be kept secret and separate, was now mixing into something beyond that which the original author had intended.

  The wisps floated above the books and curled together, living, entwined into shapes that faded from mind as soon as she thought on them. The fleeting thoughts were maddening to her. She was supposed to know what they meant, but the meaning escaped her.

  The smoke formed a large cloud in the room, and she floated through it. The cloud smelled of burnt garbage and plastic, like a house and all its belongings burning, acrid to her lungs. Flames leapt out of the dark at her and burned the side of her neck, under her ear. As she floated through the cloud, she became a fifolet—a spirit of the night—and was leading someone deep into the swamp. She floated around one tree, then another, teasing the person as she glowed with a gentle silver light. She saw that a woman followed her, walking through the swamp in bare feet and a torn, muddy dress. Other fifolets floated quietly out of sight, vibrating to each other, waiting for the Del-fifolet to lead the woman a bit further.

  As Del stopped floating, hinting that the woman would catch her, a green fifolet slithered out of the ancient mud and caught the woman’s foot in its mouth. The woman did not scream but seemed to regard it with a breathy anticipation. It slowly devoured the woman’s leg, gentle pulsations sliding up translucently. The leg was visible, as if a ghost snake shimmered around it. The woman, with one leg anchored to the ground, appeared to lay back upon the air, surrendering, and slowly drift to the ground, finally laying in the mud as the snake spirit moved slowly up her body.

  The cat-beast, hanging beneath a low tree branch, dissolved into a large blue fifolet, misshapen and grotesque, and dislodged itself from the tree and descended upon the woman. It covered her body in a deep blue cloud and quivered as its misshapen form undulated over and over, changing shapes rapidly, then settling into a slow rhythmic movement.

  Her arms and legs writhed slowly in the mud of the swamp and grasped at the changing shapes. She shivered, as if an exquisite pain coursed through her body, and opened her mouth in a silent scream. The green spirit, now slithering out the top of her dress, tongue sensing the air, struck once at her face, covering her mouth, then dissolving, slowly wiggled into her throat, stifling her screams. The body of the snake was still emerging from the swamp and devouring her leg, but now appeared to grow heavier and opaquer, pulling her body beneath the surface of the mud.

  In her dream, Del floated above the woman and gazed into her multi-colored eyes, right before she slipped beneath the mud and disappeared.

  Several minutes later, small gas bubbles began forming in the mud where the woman had sunk. They expanded slowly, finally popping when a small head broke the surface tension of the bubble. Five bubbles in all had expanded and popped. The large blue fifolet descended on the spot again and formed enough of its shape that it appeared as a four-legged animal lowering itself over the patch of excreted bubbles. It low
ered a bloated stomach-shape into the mud and quivered. When it stood up, five teats stretched out thin from the cloud body. First, the bald head of a tiny creature appeared from the mud; eyes blind, tiny translucent beak tearing the end of the teat; then, a tiny neck that pulled a hairless body up, long and slender like an eel, with six short stubby legs with three-toed claws, clicking at the air; finally, as the tiny abominations pulled free of the mud with a slurping suck, a tiny split tail twitched in the night air.

  Five abominations were pulled from the ancient swamp, all clinging to the teats of a beast that should not exist in any dream. As the beast-spirit took physical form, it sauntered off into the swamp. A strange shape on its back bobbing back and forth as if on a long pin.

  Del screamed in her sleep, but the screams fell silent against an oppressive weight that filled the night air. The lightly glowing grimoires dimmed to a dark void and the raven flew off into the night.

  Chapter 29

  Josephine walked quietly through the dark halls of the orphanage. The nuns had made their final rounds for the night. Josephine had mastered the art of slow, deep breathing long ago—which Sister Eulalie would always listen for—so knew she was clear to venture forth.

  All day the vision of Del emerging from the steam had stayed with her. Laying in her bed trying to sleep, it had teased and haunted her; she had to walk it out of her system.

  Heading to the coatroom, she passed the boy wonder, who was sleeping peacefully, no doubt dreaming of giant birthday cakes, magic owipops and flying on the back of the angel Saint Del. She briefly thought of placing a dead cockroach on his pillow as a joke, but didn’t want to deal with the morning commotion. Besides, it wasn’t like she really hated him—she had actually felt kind of bad for the trouble she’d caused him this afternoon—but Del’s desire to protect him had always baffled her, and her frustrations with her own situation were getting the better of her.

  She slipped into the coatroom, donned an old, dark raincoat, quietly opened the obscured shutter and window, and slipped down to the sidewalk. She pulled the window down as far as she dared and stuck a small piece of wood into the jamb to prevent it from sliding shut. She was free to roam the night.

  The thoughts in Jimmy’s head had never been logically structured. He knew he was slower than the other kids—when someone told him—and knew that even the younger kids could learn things faster than he could, but he’d accepted that this was how God made him, so God must have wanted him this way. He never understood why God needed to borrow his whistler however—he tried very hard to whistle, but could only ever manage to blow spittle from his lips—but Del told him that he must have had such a great whistler that God needed to borrow it, and that answer suited him fine; he was glad someone could use it.

  He always tried his very best at whatever was asked of him—even when it took him ten tries to make a King in checkers—and he always tried to remember to “leave it all on the table” as Del would say, although he also knew he had to pick up his games when he was finished, so he thought maybe Del had gotten that one wrong.

  Because he always did his best, despite his shortcomings, he slept the peaceful sleep of someone who had attained all they could, with the God-given abilities they had; he had risen to his potential—with one exception.

  Del was the bravest person Jimmy had ever known. The way he understood it, she had survived the fires of H-E-double-L, and he didn’t know anyone else who had done that, not even the nuns. She had come to the orphanage to be his guardian angel, and if there was one thing that Jimmy aspired to be, it was brave. Brave like Del.

  In his peaceful sleep, Jimmy dreamt an unpeaceful dream. The issad was chasing Del to steal something from her. She was lost in the woods and was yelling for Jimmy to help her. In his dream he could run really fast and he never fell down. He yelled to her and thought he heard her voice far away. Lassie the wonder dog ran in front of Jimmy and led the way. When he found Del, she was surrounded by a strange cloud of mist, and Jimmy knew it was the issad but couldn’t see him. Jimmy was scared of the cloud, but threw a rock at it anyway and it disappeared. Del was happy and they ate cake.

  Josephine walked the alleys toward the French Quarter. She had made this trip before, but now that she was almost eighteen, she took the liberty to wander closer to the action and could hear music wafting through the mist like a siren’s song. Once she escaped the orphanage for good, she would come here and get a job at one of the many music houses, cleaning tables or whatever it took. She would never look back.

  She turned on a cross street and started up the next alley when she caught sight of a group of men huddled around a low fire in a steel drum. She stopped instinctively, her fledging street-smarts warning her to detour. One of the men caught sight of her and whistled attention to the others. Watching them from under her hood, she slowly turned and started to walk back the way she had come. This signaled her as prey to the predators, and the men began walking in her direction. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the men and broke into a sprint. They followed with a loud whoop.

  She sprinted down the sidewalk of the cross street and cut up the next alley she came to, hoping to throw them off by heading in her original direction, just up a different path. She heard them far behind, but still in pursuit, and made several quick turns, not paying attention to the streets she turned on. Several minutes later she stopped to listen and was satisfied to not hear anything behind her. She looked around to see where she was and realized that she had zig-zagged her way to the St. Louis Cemetery #1. She knew where she was.

  As she walked the sidewalk that followed the wall of the cemetery, she derided herself, partially for her stupidity of almost walking into a bad situation, but also for being scared. How was she to break free of the orphanage if she couldn’t handle a few drunks in an alley. She thought briefly of retracing her steps and confronting the men, but decided instead to brave the cemetery. That would be enough for tonight.

  Squeezing through a loosely chained side-gate, she entered the cemetery and was immediately struck by a cold pall that fell about her. The legends of the old cemeteries were well known to her, but she always thought they were told by people less brave than herself. When the hair stood up on her neck, she wondered how brave she really was.

  Pallid lights along the outside walls cast ghostly images over the cold stone vaults, emphasizing the finality of the place. Josephine walked slowly down the dark alleys and past the crypts, feeling the cold, wet stones. She was drawn to the back of the cemetery for a reason she could not explain. The further she walked, the greater the weight she felt lay upon her soul.

  She turned a corner and stopped suddenly, staring at the faint outline of a strange man that stood in front of her.

  Later she would think she saw him speak briefly to the vault that sat at the back of the cemetery, but her mind was immediately overwhelmed with a sense of excitement and revulsion that she couldn’t separate.

  The man stood with a slight hunch, nearly six feet tall, she thought, if he could straighten up just a bit. He wore a strange hat and a long overcoat covered with small bags, and carried a walking stick that she wasn’t sure he needed. Despite the blackness of the night and the heavy mist that swirled around him, he wore dark glasses that shimmered blue.

  Greeting her as if she had been expected, he said, “Hello, my dear. Whose acquaintance do I have the pleasure of making?”

  Josephine shuffled her feet and glanced over her shoulder, looking for the exit. The rows of crypts were shrouded in a thick fog that fell about her the moment she saw the strange man, and she wasn’t sure where the side-gate was from here.

  The man stared at her with a face as blank as the stone vault.

  “I’m Josephine,” she said, trying to hide a crack in her voice.

  “Come my dear, don’t be frightened,” he said. “Josephine?”

  “Yes,” she said, already regretting giving him her first name.

  “And your last name, my dear?�
�� he asked. “I know many people here. Perhaps I’ve met your family.”

  Glancing at the vaults, a name popped into her head.

  “Laveau,” she lied. “Josephine Laveau.”

  The man’s head cocked unnaturally to the side and a convulsive shiver ran the length of his body. The image in the blue mirrored glasses briefly went out of focus.

  “Laveau, you say? How interesting.” He rolled his head from side to side. “How utterly, utterly, interesting.” She heard small bones cracking. “That is quite a famous name you have.”

  She shuffled her feet again. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt giving him that name had been more of a mistake than the first.

  “Well, Miss Laveau. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said with the slightest nod.

  “Why is that? And who do I have the acquaintance of ma… who do I have… who are you?”

  The man smiled a telling smile, an indifferent smirk to her uneasiness.

  “Why, I’ve been called many things. Depending on my profession at the time, of course,” he said, leaning towards her. His long hands stroked delicately at the air as he wove his tale. “I’m a bit of a collector, you see, so were we transacting a deal, Monsieur would do; but I have a fair hand at healing as well, so if it were a bit of gris that was needed, then Doctor would suffice.”

  “Gris? Are you a Voodoo man?”

  His hands stopped, and the thick fog seemed to stop with them, as if this time and place were frozen.

  “Yes Josephine, I am. What ails you, my dear?” His voice twinkled upon the air.

  She looked at her feet and pulled her jacket tight. She remembered where the exit was now, and adjusted her feet slightly, just in case.