A Grimoire Dark

by D. S. Quinton

  The two women sat around the large, round table where just the night before, Del had been the child in the room; talked about in third-person as if she was not there; wondered over as if she were an oddity; feared slightly, although none would admit it.

  The two women wondered about each other. Were they on nearly equal standing? Had the elder woman misinterpreted her own trances? Was Del the center of this whole thing?

  The older, settling her girth into the same chair she always used for readings, seances and trancing, had reached the peak of her abilities long ago. Although she still picked up a new spell now and then, she knew there were certain things she would never be able to do. Mama Dedé was excellent at reading signs and concocting the standard love potions and good-luck charms. Her trancing abilities were nearly unmatched, which gave her a unique perspective on people’s lives. She could trance almost back to the very start of a person’s issue, which gave her an uncanny ability to create a remedy, even if the unfortunate person had suffered for years. However, she knew she would never match Marie Laveau or Dr. John. She would never have the ability to raise the dead or bind the soul. The power simply wasn’t in her.

  The younger, lithe and limber, sat cross-legged in a chair across the table and exuded an aura that none could see but everyone could feel. A powerful river of life flowed through the younger woman. It wasn’t bravado or arrogance; it was purer, but just as dangerous. Del seemed to sit atop a deep well of life, a dark well that held many secrets. Secrets that wanted to rush forward, upward and outward, to be known and consumed. No one knew what power may lay within that well.

  The heavy smell of candles and incense was cloying, but settled Del’s nerves. When entering the parlor, she had noticed that dark curtains had been pulled over the windows. Not a ray of light seeped into the room from the gloomy day. The only light was generated by one of the dozens of candles that were burning, although even they seemed to cast a dark, half-luminous glow over the room.

  “Now listen, honey,” Mama Dedé said, “da only thing you got to do is follow what I say. When it’s time for trancin’, you’ll know, den you just let your mind relax. I’ll lead da way this time, but at some point, you’ll be able to do dis on your own. It’ll be like you’re searching in a big dark closet for interesting things. You understan’?”

  “Not really,” Del said. “Well, maybe. But I got what you asked for.”

  “Already? We don’t need it today, but you got it already, huh?”

  “Yes,” Del said, taking the tiny, nearly weightless bundle from her pocket.

  “OK, put it in dis here jar. We cain’t get it mixed up, but we’ll figure out why we need it later.”

  Del reached her hand out and carefully placed a lock of Josephine’s hair into the small jar.

  “She didn’t ask you why you need it?” Mama Dedé asked.

  Del thought about the surprise kiss that had stunned her, then the second kiss that she had invited to happen, which gave her the opportunity to run her hands through Jo’s hair. “No, not really,” Del said, looking down at the table.

  Mama Dedé saw something in Del’s face, but simply said, “OK, now give me a lock of your hair.”

  “Why?”

  “Cause dat’s how I’m gonna keep track of you when we start. Da first lesson in spells is dat if you want to control someone, even just a little, you got to have something from ‘em.”

  Del fingered her own curly hair, thinking about being controlled by someone. She didn’t like the thought of it. She looked up and saw Mama Dedé watching her patiently. Del sighed and looked around the parlor room once more, then pulled a small lock of hair and handed it to the woman.

  “Do you give dis freely?”

  Del wrinkled her forehead as the side of her mouth curled. “Yeah… I just gave it to you.” She didn’t understand the question.

  “Good,” Mama Dedé said. “Cause people got to give freely, otherwise, da spell can go bad.”

  “You mean, you just can’t control anyone you want with Voodoo?” Del asked.

  “It depends. If you want to help someone, you always got to ask if they want help, and if they give freely. That makes da best magic. Some people, especially those that get a little tricky, try to cast without askin’. Sometimes it will work, but sometimes the person can… pull away from da spell. That’s how spells go wrong.”

  “Then how do you cast a love spell on someone?” Del asked. “Do you ask the person’s permission for that?”

  “A love potion? Honey, that’s a suggestion spell, not a controllin’ one. Hell, it’s part coffee, some Ginko, a little Ginseng root… and a lot of sweat.”

  “What? Coffee and sweat? Are you kidding?”

  “No, da Ginko and Ginseng is good for da blood. Gotta get da blood moving for love. The sweat, that gets da person’s scent in their nose. You know… hormones.”

  Del wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  “Don’t knock it till you try it, honey.”

  “Mama D, seriously?” Del tried to hide her embarrassment, but her cheeks betrayed her.

  “Ha! You young girls. By the time I was your age… Well… let’s not worry ‘bout dat.”

  Del let a rare smile color her face as she cast a knowing look at the woman.

  “Ok, then,” Del said. “Why the coffee?”

  “Easy. Stimulant. Got to make ‘em horny quick, before they see someone else! Ha!”

  “Oh my gosh!” Del said, covering her ears in mock surprise but real embarrassment. She suddenly realized that within the last twenty-four hours she had been elevated from a thing of amusement, to a person who could be trusted with an adult conversation.

  Mama Dedé let out a belly laugh at Del’s embarrassment. Del chuckled in response.

  Del felt that the stress of the last few days had been bottling up inside her. In fact, ever since leaving the orphanage two months earlier, the heavy weight of stress had been bearing down on her. Watching the old woman belly laugh caused her to break into her own string of laughs, releasing the pent-up stress.

  As tears streamed from Del’s eyes, she knew it wasn’t all from laughter, but welcomed the camouflage. After several more belly laughs, both women settled to an occasional giggle, then announced their readiness with a deep sigh.

  Del’s brown rosy cheeks gleamed with a youthful, inner radiance. Yes, Mama Dedé thought, the well of life is deep with this one.

  Mama Dedé pulled a small gris bag from a hidden pocket in her dress. It was made of a deep green silk and had a small silver tie around it. She pulled a small piece of tape from a dispenser on the table and carefully stuck the hair to the piece of tape, then stuck the piece of tape to the inside of the gris bag. She pulled the drawstring tight and tucked it away.

  She gave a knowing smile to Del, patted the bag under her dress, and nodded. She unlidded a tea pot that had been sitting in the middle of the table and a pungent, slightly familiar scent took Del back to her childhood. She had smelled this before.

  Mama Dedé poured two small cups of the dark black liquid and said, “OK good, now drink dis tea.”

  Del hesitated for only a brief second, then felt a rush of trust overwhelm her and flow out toward the old woman. She picked up the small teacup and drank it.

  “Now, repeat after me.”

  The trancing session had begun.

  Del repeated the words she heard. At first, it was a strange sensation, as the words came slowly from Mama Dedé. Eventually—how long, she couldn’t tell—it was no longer necessary for the next line of the incantation to be spoon-fed to her. Soon, Del repeated the words at the same time Mama Dedé spoke them. When it first happened, it almost took Del out of the trance, because she had never heard this chant before and wasn’t sure where the words were coming from, but she stayed focused and quickly fell back into step. Soon, the two women were incanting in sync.

  Del felt the room slowly peel away around her. The walls seemed to dissolve, along with the roof and floor; suddenly sh
e sat at a table that floated in the middle of nowhere. She was not scared and felt no wind, so she thought she must still be in the parlor room. She thought briefly about the chair she sat in, which she assumed was still sitting on the wooden floor of the halfway house, but when she thought this, she felt herself slipping out of the trance again, so let the thoughts of physical things fade from her mind.

  In her mind she now floated above the chair while Mama Dedé held her hand. They floated into a white, cloudy space void of color. A faint sound tickled her mind. It was a strange sound, but familiar somehow; the sound of a single drop of water, only in reverse. A drop of water that she somehow knew wasn’t falling into a well, but was falling out of one. Her well of life was deep, but every few seconds, another drop was sucked out of it with a strange, backward sucking sound.

  She listened to the drops of water as they were sucked out of existence. How many drops have disappeared since I’ve been sitting here? she wondered. Eleven? Twelve?

  She tried to count the timing between the drops; why, she wasn’t sure. She soon realized that the drops were evaporating once every two or three seconds. This thought gave her a bit of relief, as she had felt like her own life had sped up immensely since leaving the orphanage, and the constant ticking of the second hand always reminded her she had just lost another moment of her journey towards freedom.

  She felt a tug on her mind. Mama Dedé was trying to show her something.

  They slowly floated through the white clouds. Del started to see shimmers of color beneath the white. She heard the old woman’s voice—from inside her head—tell her to focus on the yellow shimmer up ahead. As Del concentrated, she saw a scene form in her mind. Somehow, she was looking at the halfway house and two women that were sitting inside of it. The cold drizzle of the day was there, but could not be felt. Shadowy movement shimmered just outside of her view and somehow she felt it was a car passing by on the road. She liked the feeling of trancing; it was pure freedom.

  Mama Dedé spoke in her head again. “Del, I want you to think of a place now, or a scene. We’ll see if you can conjure an image.”

  Before Del could ask, an image of the orphanage flew into her mind. She was looking at the waiting room.

  Del tried to back away from it. Why this image? she wondered. Of all the things I could think about!

  Mama Dedé felt her struggle against it, but held her mind tight. “Just stay with it.”

  After several more seconds, Del concentrated on the image and it began to clear. It had the slightest yellow tint to it, but mostly looked just it had this morning. She saw the hallway that led to the large sleeping room. She was aware of some chatter and movement, but it was faint. Suddenly she saw Jimmy, still asleep in his bed.

  Mama Dedé was seeing the same thing as Del. What does the boy like? she asked.

  I don’t know, Del thought. He’s always trying to catch butterflies. And as soon as she thought the words, Del saw a butterfly form in the scene. She heard a faint exclamation from the old woman, but ignored it. She watched as the butterfly grew to the size of a bird. It changed colors several times until it became a wild palette of crimson red with blue and gold trim on its wings. Jimmy suddenly saw the butterfly in his dreams.

  How is this—

  Quiet honey, Mama Dedé thought, just concentrate.

  Del watched Jimmy as he watched the butterfly. She didn’t know how this was happening, or if he was dreaming other things, but she was certain he was seeing what she had just created.

  The butterfly flapped lazily in the space of Jimmy’s dream, floating on a warm breeze of love that radiated from Del’s mind. She saw the wonder in Jimmy’s eyes as he watched the magical thing. He cracked a toothy smile and waved at the butterfly, eyes shimmering with wonder. The butterfly, seemingly of its own accord, flew slowly around Jimmy’s head, then tickled his nose with a velvet wing and disappeared. Jimmy went right back to sleep as if nothing had happened.

  OK honey, enough for now, Mama Dedé thought. And as fast as it had happened, the trance was over.

  Del opened her eyes slowly and let them focus on the familiar parlor room. The old woman was staring at her from across the table.

  Chapter 41

  Jimmy hopped through the grass after a blue frog. He was careful not to jump on it—and he didn’t want to scare it—but he was trying to teach it to talk, and the best way to do that, he thought, was to pretend to be a frog himself.

  He had been chasing a butterfly, but it flew up into a tree and turned into the frog. It sat there for a minute, then hopped out of the tree and looked at him. It had winked its left eye and tried to tell him something—at least he thought it was the frog’s left eye, until he thought of himself as the frog, which meant he’d be looking the other way, and if he was looking the other way, he was pretty sure it would have been his right eye. Jimmy thought it was strange that the frog would get this confused, which is why he had to teach it to talk so he could ask.

  The frog hopped three more times and turned around, looking at Jimmy, waiting. Jimmy hopped one big hop and landed to the right side of the frog. He giggled at what a good hopper he was.

  The frog winked its right eye this time—although Jimmy thought the frog still had them confused—and hopped a big hop and landed on a lily pad in a small pond. There it sat.

  Jimmy never wondered where the pond came from, only why the frog didn’t want to talk to him, and sat still for a long time, letting the sun warm his back.

  The frog croaked at him from the lily pad, the slight movement of which sent small ripples out across the pond, and Jimmy could see something reflected in the water.

  Finally, Jimmy crawled the few remaining feet to the edge of the pond and gazed into the water.

  On the right side of the lily pad, the sun reflected bright. As he looked at the sparkling water, he saw that he was playing a game of tag with Del. He waved at her reflection, but didn’t think she could see him.

  On the other side of the lily pad, the sunny reflection faded to dark. The ripples seemed higher there, as if someone had thrown a rock into the water. Jimmy could see little water bugs skittering across the ripples, leaving tiny indentations on the surface. They were the ugliest bugs he had ever seen and he wanted to look away, but one of the bugs was looking at him. As Jimmy watched the ugly bug, it suddenly stood up on its hind legs—it had several pairs—and started spinning around on the water. A little whirlpool grew beneath the spinning bug and suddenly sucked it down. The whirlpool slowly grew larger until it began sucking the other bugs down, along with bits and pieces of debris that floated on the surface. After several minutes, there was nothing else to consume, so it started floating toward the lily pad and the refection of Del.

  Jimmy suddenly felt that Del was in trouble. The whirlpool was heading straight for her, but he didn’t know what to do. The ripples in the pond grew higher, distorting Del’s reflection. The blue frog clung to the tilting lily pad, watching Jimmy. It was waiting to see what he would do.

  Jimmy watched the whirlpool as it moved closer and closer to Del. He suddenly thought he heard a tiny voice—it was Del’s voice—cry out for help. He looked around, but only saw her distorted reflection in the ripples. It was as if the ripples were washing her away somehow; with every wave of water, a small piece of Del was washed away. She was dissolving.

  The frog watched carefully.

  Jimmy looked around again and started to yell out, but no one was there. He was in an endless field; the sun was almost gone behind a set of large black clouds, and the whirlpool was coming after Del.

  Jimmy suddenly remembered something that Del told him once. She had to go away for a while, and he was supposed to be brave while she was gone. Maybe the pond was where she had to go—he wasn’t sure—but she needed help now.

  He started slapping the water, trying to make the whirlpool go away. He was now on his knees at the edge of the pond, leaning as far as he could over the water. The whirlpool was almost within reach,
and if he stretched just a bit further, he might be able to slap it away.

  The whirlpool was larger now, at least a foot across, and looked like it went straight to the bottom of the pond. There was nothing but a black hole in the center and it was sucking everything it could into it. The lily pad seemed to cling like magic to the side of the swirling water as the water slid beneath it. It tilted severely as part of it drooped into the black void. The frog sat watching. As Jimmy stretched his arm out in one final attempt to slap the whirlpool away, he felt his knees sink into the soft side of the pond, which caused him to tip forward. He was falling into the pond.

  As if knowing, the frog looked once more at the spinning black void, then at Jimmy, and suddenly leaped into the whirlpool. In slow motion, the frog disappeared over the edge of the water and into the black void. Satisfied, the whirlpool abruptly stopped, and the ripples faded to a shimmer.

  Jimmy was still falling. For a brief instant he knew that Del was safe, but he was still falling. He flailed his arms as he fell forward. Instead of the cold water of the pond, he fell into a void of clouds that was filled with strange colors and sounds. He thought he heard Del in there as well, but her voice was quickly drowned out by a loud bellowing laughter. The voice wasn’t laughing at Jimmy, it was just an echo, but it was a scary voice. Jimmy fell forward, out of the cloud of blankets he was wrapped in, and hit the floor of the orphanage with a thud.

  “Oww, I feh down!” he cried as he blinked his eyes open.

  Josephine had been watching him from the corner of the room where she had been doing her chores. He had been thrashing through a fitful dream. Del had left just a few hours ago after tucking him in, but the only thing Jo cared about was that Del had given her the best gift she could have ever given. Hope. She loved Del, and now knew that Del was at least receptive to her. She was close to getting what she wanted. Very close.

  Suddenly the back door of the orphanage came open behind Jo and a stream of kids washed down the hall and into the main sleeping room. The noise rose to a low thunder, but was split by the sharp lightning voice of the Crow. “What’s that wretched boy doing on the floor again?”